Tuesday, November 29, 2005
[Music] My Desert Island Records (1) – Cassetteboy: The Parker Tapes
Cassetteboy: The Parker Tapes (Barry's Bootlegs, 2002)
The world is too boring, so I started writing.
Guess the world is not only too boring for me. There are 2 guys with the names of Mike Cassette and Simon Boy proclaimed themselves as Cassetteboy and spend 7 years from 1995 to 2002 in cutting, slashing, twisting, stirring, mixing and reassembling samples from pop songs, broadcasts, political speeches, background music in musicals, dramas or cartoons and any other familiar sounds you can ever remembered of to record in a cassette-format imitation album: you can even hear the sound effect of scrolling forward or backward, ejecting and changing sides of cassette on it.
This is a 98-tracks, 70+ minutes extravaganza of continuous mix, and boy, was that fun. Numerous sound clips connect themselves fluidly, cleverly and nastily - from David Bowie, Tony Blair, Bill Gates to (last but definitely NOT the least) Frank Sinatra - there is hardly a dull moment during the journey. There had many similar sampling experiments in the plunderphonics (John Oswald), experimental hip-hop (DJ Shadow) and microhouse (Akufen) field, but none can achieve the goal of brutal and unscrupulous joy like this. Simply outrageous.
I bought this album 3 years ago while exercising the duty of national service after reading its 5-star review from the long-gone “Muzik” magazine, and I soon found out that I was repeating sections in this album all the time in my daily life – until today. This album keep forcing to me to play it cause everytime there are something new and whacky pop out. It is utility enough that I can play it on almost any kind of occasion – reading, writing, working, happy, anger, sad – it always responds. Definitely one of the rarest and best buy in my music collection career.
If there is only one album allowed for the rest of my life – you can bet on it.
By the way, one of the funniest things for me is that what this “Cassetteboy” is keep doing is a lot like what I am doing in my writing.
Related Links:
Discogs Review
Pitchfork Review
BBC Review
