
Wig out to Joey Negro, Leftside Wobble and The Found Sound Orchestra. It’s the sound of the 70s..or is it how we want the 70s to sound? Press play to brighten your day. Continue reading
Posts Tagged With: Music
Groove to the Disco Jesus!
Goldfrapp!
This is my shrine to Goldfrapp, videos I’ve made, mashups I’ve mashed and the odd remix. Enjoy!

My latest remix is Drew – Clockwork Mix, using just the vocal from the original and building a cinematic soundscape from ghostly whispers, ticking clocks and a huge orchestra.

This is one of the stand out tracks from Goldfrapp’s Tales of Us album, remixed by me, rocking the tribal flavour and adding a few angry mobs here and there. Sit back and grab a burning torch – it’s Thea, the Totem mix!

Nobody remixed Cologne Cerrone Houdini. So it was left to me to knock together a stoned sort of edit, using extracts from the track mixed into the instrumental with added samples and an interview with Alison which sums up the Seventh Tree era. It’s faster than the original and starts backwards! (This one contains cussin’ so it’s rated PG)
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Here’s some footage of Goldfrapp live in Manchester on the Head First Tour. The soundtrack was unusable, so I edited in a little remix of Beautiful, which should be their live standard. But isn’t.

The original version of Goldfrapp’s Winter Wonderland sounded unfinished. I finished it with a choir, bells and big drums. Tinkerbell meets Slade. I also added extra whistling and a quote from It’s a Wonderful Life at the end. I think it’s Animal from The Muppets on drums…
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Clowns is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard. Here’s my attempt at a music video, mixing tv performances from Seventh Tree with The Banana Splits, a children’s tv show from the 70s. I can explain. Clowns took me back to the Flake adverts of the 70s and my childhood. The Banana Splits are part of that nostalgia, and chime with Alison dressing up in a bunny costume during the playful Seventh Tree era. I opted for the balloon scene after Alison said the song was about breast implants… I used the instrumental version of Clowns and edited in just one line of the vocal, which I thought was poignant. There are also some vinyl scratches to complete the rose-coloured haze.

It was an accident, finding how well these two songs go together. I was making a compilation tape and as Black Cherry ended, Song to the Siren began. Within minutes I was mixing them together using the most primitive software I could find. Elizabeth Fraser was used sparingly as a backing vocal, allowing space for the vast emptiness of Black Cherry, until they build to a crescendo which compliments the main song. It’s quite hard to take two starkly beautiful songs like this and make them work together without ending up with Ballad Soup.
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Sparky the Amazing Dancing Cat
Watch in HD, fullscreen!
Ok, he can’t really dance. Or read. But he was definitely funky.
Ever since reading Orlando the Marmalade Cat as a child, I wanted a ginger tom. Sparky was a rescue cat, and he was old when I got him. After six happy years with me, he became ill and passed away just before xmas 2010. It was a tough time, and shortly afterwards, I went to London. Staring out of my hotel room window, it really hit me that he was gone. I distinctly remember saying ‘Thankyou, Sparky. Thankyou for leaving me. Thanks a lot.’ Not my finest hour, but by a strange quirk, at that exact moment, underneath the planet in Oz, The Found Sound Orchestra were making a song out of heart strings, called ‘Thankyou 3 Times.’ Spooky! It’s the song that soundtracks my video, and I’m glad I had the forethought to record Sparky in glorious High Definition, during a blazing August sunrise in The Northern Quarter.
As Mrs. Madrigal says in Armistead Maupin’s Michael Tolliver Lives, ‘Someone to sit in the sun with me. Who doesn’t want to go anywhere.’
(Please. Don’t send kittens.)
Black Siren – It’s a ‘Mashup’

‘A deadly warning mistaken for a distress call…’
Many years after The Devious Corporation had faded to a private joke, I started using the name as an umbrella term for my mixing and messing with music and video. After hearing Goldfrapp’s Black Cherry in 2002, I decided to have a go at the new craze for ‘mashups’, where someone like Britney is dragged screaming onto a laptop with the likes of Dead or Alive, or the Doors get spliced with Blondie. The discovery that Song to the Siren by This Mortal Coil was the perfect match for Black Cherry was a happy accident.
Alison Goldfrapp herself has described Black Cherry as ‘personal stuff,’ coming from a ‘bleak place.’ It’s a ballad built on bony despair, child-like and almost catatonic. Ultimately, the understatement is ignited by real emotion, but I felt that a sprinkle of Elizabeth Fraser might add some lush Eastern mystery to soften the stark sentiment. Song to the Siren was written in 1967 (a very good year!) by Tim Buckley and was covered by several artists since his death. The definitive version is a spectral piece by This Mortal Coil, liquid and dark, a deadly warning mistaken for a distress call.
I had a great deal of fun doing this, and it came together surprisingly quickly. It may be the best thing I’ve done. Listen to the two songs dovetail in and out of each other and let me know what you think in the comments box!
Right click to download
Found Sound Orchestra Mix – Once Round the Dancefloor and Home
The Found Sound Orchestra are a substitute for sunshine. This is my mixtape of their best stuff, produced as part of a competition over on their website to make a one-hour radio show for The Ministry of Sound. It’s the sound of a giddy, drunken night out followed by a blissful chillout afterparty. So turn on, tune in and chill out….
Mixing by Mark, philosophy by Anna Madrigal and expletives from Mother Mucca.
listen below,
or download free (right click)
You might also like- My Video for the Found Sound Orchestra







