If you thought the Gary Coleman* MP3, from a couple of weeks back, was "wrong", then wait till you hear what I have in store for you this week...

* Check out the above Gary Coleman link. Scroll to the bottom and read the "personal quote" section...

And here are some more dots..............................................................

Is there a theme to The Pipe this week?

Nope. It's just its usual shallow mixture of old tunes, new tunes and some bootlegs and generally what I have been listening to over the past week.

First up...

Omar - There's Nothing Like This (Electroretro's Omar In Dub Mix)
Omar - There's Nothing Like This (Sie's Reconstruction)

You should of course, by now, know these as you all frequent the forums here and on Chutney's.

Jimmy The Flid had an idea whilst driving home about making a traditional dub mix of Omar's 1990 jazz soul hit. But not having arms long enough to muck about on his PC to do this, he asked Electro and Sie, and a few others over on Glasgow's Sub Club board, if anyone was up for the challenge.

Electro was first past the post with a cheeky sped up version featuring Eric B & Rakim's "I Know You Got Soul" plopped across the top, but this was not to be the finished article. He then delivered what the task required, a killer dubwise selection featuring lots of echo chamber madness and ricocheting drum nonsense, a sprinkling of bizarre samples, a chunk of Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)", oh, and of course the infamous bassline from the original Omar track.

Sie, on the other hand, decided it would be better to redo the track from scratch, so he took the bassline, sped it up a touch, added some house beats and then introduced a lush piano line. His take on it would kill if played at the Cafe Del Mar. A beautful chill house track. He did go for the bootleg option and knock up a version with the Kelis "Milkshake" acapella, but, although it was executed well, it just distracted from the original instrumental version of his track.

MP3
MP3

Low - "I Remember (Empire State Human Mix)"

Who would have though the usually quiet and moody Low would ever have an edge like this? Empire State Human takes Mimi Parker's sublime voice and places electronic beats and spacious ambient chords over the top to create a beautiful, yet slightly dark, take on the incredibly sparse original.

(I should point out that the file below is zipped)

MP3
Empire State Human's Site

The Nectarine No.9 - "Constellations Of A Vanity"

The Nectarine No.9 are Scotlands best kept secret. They are a band very much on the outside of things and will probably never cross over. A bunch of strange and very clever men who have been kicking about on the Scottish music scene since the early 80's. Back then they were known as The Fire Engines and musically they followed the post-punk route and churned out jaggy, noisy and difficult records, including a rough as a badgers arse cover version of Heaven 17's "We Don't Need This Fascist Groove Thang". Then, in the mid to late 80's, the became known as Win and released 2 criminally ignored pop albums called "Uh! Tears Baby" and "Freaky Trigger". When I say "pop", they could easily have been a popular band, but Davey Henderson, the main songwriter and force of the band, seemed to relish in the fact of making pop tunes that were so out there, in terms of lyrics and arrangements, that it was no wonder they were ignored, well south of the border anyway, as they had a big hit in Scotland when their tune "You've Got The Power" was used in a McEwans Lager advert. Once they were dropped from Virgin they disappeared again only to resurface years later on the relaunched Postcard Records, which was the seminal 80's Scottish indie label responsible for bands like Orange Juice and Aztec Camera. This time the band were known as The Nectarine No.9. This time around they seemed to fuse the sounds of their previous projects but crank up the out there lyrics and add a dash of Captain Beefheart craziness. They have released a number of albums, including their infamous "Sea With Three Stars" album (the sleeve had the word "C***" written on it) and their stunning, but yet again ignored, "Saint Jack" album. Their fifth album "I Love Total Destruction" came out a couple of months back.

The MP3 below is probably The Nectarine No.9 at their poppiest. It features all the things that make them great, repetative guitar motifs, Henderson's lyrics ("I'm back and I'm singing potatoes! / HEY POTATOES!") and a groove to make you nod your head.

The track, "Constellations Of A Vanity", is from their "Received, Transgressed And Transmitted" album.

Enjoy.

MP3
Epitonic Site
Nectarine No.9 Site

Usher - "Yeah (Fujikato Mix)"

German wunderkid Fujikato, gets his electro hands on that Usher tune that sat at the top of the charts a month or so back. You'll know the vocal well and Fujikato's crisp electropop backing just gives the track a new breath of life.

MP3
Taken from the Blog site Oorsmeer (be warned it's in Dutch)
Fujikato's Site (be warned it's in German)

Scritti Politti - "Woodbeez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)"

80's Flashback Alert. It was nice and sunny today and its songs like this that are just made for these sorts of days. A true classic. Light 80's white boy funk with Green Gartside's unmistakable vocals.

The site this is from, Bubblegum Machine, is well worth a visit as it contains some pure pop gems, lost classics and records you wished had just stayed lost, and the writing on the site is worth it alone. Go see.

MP3
Bubblegum Machine Site

One-T & Cool-T - "The Magic Key"

The best hip hop record I have heard this year. Kiddy hip hop that is so catchy that the chorus will haunt you for days. But how can a record this upbeat be all about death?

MP3
Taken from the Blog site Fluxblog (check it out, and bookmark it, as it is one of the best music blogs on the web)

Rolf Harris Vs Madonna

Rolf Harris is great isn't he? To people of a certain age, namely my own, he is a star. We've watched him on television telling us to swim ("Kids And Water, They Love It!"), we've had birthday presents of huge Rolf Harris endorsed cardboard wobble boards and xmas presents of his spacey Stylophone contraption. We've sat glued to the telly whilst he tells us about some Tom And Jerry cartoon whilst he draws us a picture of Tom getting his head caved in by that negro woman's broom, and we've shed a tear along with Rolf as he's watched some mangy ole dog getting that fatal injection. Well, now it's our turn to shed a tear...

Thanks to a guy going by the name of Mutant Miscreation, he has taken Madonna's "Secret" tune from her "Bedtime Stories" album and over the top he has Rolf Harris singing.

Is it "Two Little Boys"? No. Is it his cover version of "Stairway To Heaven"? No. It is a cover though. A cover of, fellow aussies, The Divinyls, 1991 hit "I Touch Myself".

Listen and weep.

With laughter.

MP3

Feel free to discuss the above selections in the Forums.

Budgie.

[ if anyone does not want me to link to their files, then let me know and I shall remove the link ]

You just know a film called "Violent Shit 3 - Infantry Of Doom" is going to be a great film, likewise, if I mention Boom Selection, then you know that I'm going to treat you to something special.

Back to normal this week, no swearing celebs, just sweet, random scrapings from the musical pudding bowl.

Go. Feed your fat faces.

And choke.

Boom Selection has been around for a while now, it's also had it's fair share of ups and downs.

It was one of the leading lights on documenting the Bootlegging Scene and keeping everyone up to date on all the latest tracks that were appearing on the net and via p2p sites like the late lamented Audio Galaxy. Their popularity was at a high, but it all seemed to go wrong for them when they decided to collate some of the best of these bootleg MP3s and release them as a triple CD called, unsurprisingly enough, "Boom Selection". You could order these from Rough Trade Records in London or via the Boom Selection site, but after a short while people started complaining that they never got their orders and that it was all a scam. The site was ran by 2 people and one of them went missing in action, during this CD offer, thus leaving the other to pick up the pieces and send out the CD's as often as he could. The site slowly ground to a halt and had gained a bit of a bad reputation. But, late last year it sprang back into life and is back up and running to its former glory. What happened? God knows. Are the founders of the site talking? God knows. All you should care about is bookmarking the page and checkng up on it on a regular basis as you will be treated to gems like this...

Soulwax - "This Is The Excuse"

First track to be released, sorry, leaked... from their next album. It marks a different sound to their last studio album "Much Against Everyone's Advice" and actually sounds as though it could have been lifted from their infamous "2 Many DJ's" mix album. It takes a couple of listens, but this electro stomper, to my ears, sounds like a jam between the great LCD Soundsystem and Chicks On Speed and sounds nothing like Soulwax, the band, at all. If the rest of the album sounds like this, then we're in for a treat.

MP3

Osymyso - "Puckish Mix"

You all probably know about Osymyso by now. Apart from his love of palindromes (see his name and tracks like "A dog! A panic in a pagoda") and a love of intros to records (see the stunning "Intro-Inspection" track) this record producer has recently been responsible for mixing and producing the soundtrack album to the current "Shaun Of The Dead" film. So while the world waits for his second album to drop, he has slipped out another one of his excellent mixes (see his "Glass", "Wood", "BTTB X200" and "Breezeblock" mixes). This one, called "The Puckish Mix" seems to have one foot firmly in the 80's and after a start that sounds like a Hooked On Classic's style reworking of the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams" he rattles through stuff by folk like Paul Hardcastle, Eddy Grant, Duran Duran and the Fine Young Cannibals. If the thought of this being an 80's mix, and if I tell you Coldplay's "Clocks" and 2 Unlimited also make appearances, puts you off, then shame on you as all this material is given a fine rub down by Osymyso himself and is well worth the big download (43mb).

MP3

Feist - "Mushaboom"

I'll start off by saying that this is not a bootleg, it's a proper track and it is one of the finest tracks I have heard this year. All strumming guitars, tinkled pianos, handclaps and sultry vocals. This is the sort of song that makes you wish that the good weather would just hurry up and get here. Leslie Feist is a member of the Canadian band Broken Social Scene and has decided to go it alone and release a silky solo album called "Let It Die" (out in May). It has been produced by Chilly Gonzales, yes THAT Gonzales of "Take Me To Broadway" fame, but if you are expecting electro fuelled funk and bizarre raps, then forget it as this is so-oo far removed from that. Just sit back and let this one caress your lug holes.

MP3

The three tracks mentioned above can all be found on Boom Selection. Just visit it.

Boom Selection Site

Culture Deluxe

CDX is another fine site that has been kicking around for a while now. It has always been a great source for tracks. Recently it has had a bit of make over and isn't that easy to find new tracks, you now have to kind of know what you are looking for and use the search facility to get the MP3s. This aside, the site has decided to become all charitable and offered some bootleggers a chance to bootleg a famous album. The album would then be made available to download via the site, but would urge users to make a donation to a charity (War Child, Future Forests and Cancer Research) in return for the tunes.

The album chosen was The Clash's "London Calling" and the fruits of this project are available here.

Some work better than others, but it was always going to be an incredibly hard task to try and improve on, or remix, such a classic piece of work. The ones I enjoyed best were Loo & Placido's remake of "Guns Of Brixton" (more a sample heavy reworking featuring Busta Rhymes, Christina Aguilera and many many more), McSleazy's sublime, slow motion, vocoder cover version of "Lost In The Supermarket" with added vocals from Freeland's "We Want Your Soul" and Jimmi James' bootleg of "The Card Cheat" with Christina Aguilera's "What A Girl Wants".

That Christina fair gets used a lot...

Anyway, feel charitable and then go download.

The Vector Warrior

Who is the Vector Warrior? Who gives a dogs dick who he is when he can let his music do the talking. This guy is an astonishing talent. He first came to prominence a while back when he remixed Fake ID's "I'm Not" track (sorry, I can't leave my Lionel Vinyl / Fake ID fixation alone). Since then, nothing was heard of The Vector Warrior. Until about a month ago when a mysterious track by the name of "Raul" appeared. "Raul" sounded like the bastard offspring from The Aphex Twin's "Girl / Boy" track from '96. It was like a fight between soothing strings and an incredibly complex mash of glitches and beats with none of them winning but the listener. Again, the question was asked, Who is The Vector Warrior? And like before, he slipped away as quickly as he appeared. Then last week he appeared again. Did he have a new track? Of course he did. But he also had 8 others to go with them. So, who is this masked music man? Well, I for one don't know anything other than he seems to be a friend of Lionel Vinyl, as his site is being hosted by him. If you were ever a fan of the early WARP "Artificial Intelligence" series (a body of work that highlighted a new movement in electronic music in the early to mid 90's and focused on people like, the afformentioned, Aphex Twin, The Black Dog and Autechre) then The Vector Warrior is for you. The 10 tracks available do vary though, from the frankly bizarre interpretation of Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger", the downright heavy and punky "Tony Hart" and "She's So Techno" to the absolute sublime "Dark Cambre" and "I Never Saw That Coming". Go visit his site and get your ears around his music, you need some Vector Warrior in your life.

Vector Warrior's Site.

Geoff Carpet - The Vector Warrior Vs Adina Howard

To confuse matters more, as if Lionel Vinyl didn't have enough alter ago's with his guise of Fake ID, he has a more chilled out one by the name of Geoff Carpet. Here Geoff is let loose over a Vector Warrior's track called "3 L's". A beautiful piano piece in which Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" acapella is placed over the top. Yes, that 'pella has been used many a time, but none so as chilled out as this.

MP3

Kelis - Trick Me (Fake ID Remix)

And one last bit about Fake ID... (honest) Check his latest track which is a take on Kelis' "Trick Me".
It's dark, electro, house business.

MP3

Phil N' Dog - Comfortable Tiger

Right, I may be slightly tired (drunk) as I type this, but I'm liking this one a lot. A bootleg by Philmann's and Act Of Dog, it mashes Survivor's "Eye Of The Tiger" with the Bee Gee's, sorry, Scissor Sisters cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb". Yes, like Adina Howard, the Survivor track has been used in many a bootleg (mixed with tracks by The Breeders, Coolio and Craig David) but if it works a treat, then don't knock it.

MP3
Radio Earwax Site

(if you can find it, search out Philmann's bootleg of The Muppet Theme tune with Electric Six's "Gay Bar" and, if my menory serves me correct, The Chemical Brother's "Electrobank". It's called "Gay Muppet Bar" and it's fucking brilliant.)

"It's time to put on make up, it's time to dress up right, it's time to meet the Muppets, AT THE GAY BAR, GAY BAR, GAY BAR!"

Right, that's your lot for this week.

Feel free to vent your spleen on my choices in the Forum

Budgie.

[ if anyone does not want me to link to their files, please let me know (via the forum) and I shall remove the link. ]

Kylie says "Twat", Barry White says "Fuck" and Gary Coleman basically wants to hump you.

It's the end of civilization as we know it.

No music this week, just some bad words.

Swearing is fucking great, isn't it? Of course it is you wank faced bastard. You do it, I do it and I bet the Queen even does it. Well, probably only at Phillip and only then it is to chastise him for saying something untoward about one of our commonwealth brothers skin tones.

It's always great to hear folk you would never associate with swearing let out the odd expletive, so this week THE PIPE is bringing to you a selection of MP3s of Celebrities swearing.

You've probably by now seen, doing the rounds on the internet, the Channel Four advert in which they asked various famous people, associated with the channel, what their favourite swear word was. It made for terrific and startling viewing, especially just to hear Judy Finnigan say "Rim Job" and Graham Norton saying "I like cocks up me arse". Actually, that is not what they said.

You can hear / see what they said here.
Taken from the blog nuero.me.uk

I think the advert got dropped from its intended cinema release because the powers that be thought that the language was too strong in it. A bit ironic really as the ad was intended to be aired before the 2nd part of Tarantino's "Kill Bill"...

Kylie

Kylie Minogue hit the headlines last week when it was reported that she got caught saying some rude things about a DJ on some local radio station. She was recording a phone interview with them and, after the interview was cut short by one of her representatives, the tape was left running only to let us hear what the pint sized pop star had to say about the DJ and his line of questioning...

Kylie Swears here.
Taken from the blog Oh Manchester, So Much To Answer For

Barry White

The Walrus Of Love. I've never understood the attraction that people have of claiming that they make love whilst Barry White records play in the background. I mean the last thing you want when trying to get your partner in the mood is the voice of a sweaty fat man booming out of your stereo. To me, the intro's to his records make me think of what it would be like to be in a Prison in Alabama.

I can assure you, you will not be able to get in the mood whilst listening to this Barry White cut.

Barry is trying to record an advert and he is not too happy with the guy who has written his script...

Barry White Swears here
Taken from April Winchell's site.

(Side note : Make sure you check out April's site as it is a goldmine of bizarre MP3s. My personal fave on there is the "Rapping With Gas" track. If you've ever heard DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist's follow up to their infamous "Brainfreeze" CD, "Product Placement", then you will know this song very well indeed.)

Gary Coleman

There isn't any swearing in these MP3s, but to tie in with what I said about hearing people you wouldn't normally hear cursing, here is an example of hearing something that you would never want to hear leaving this celebs mouth. Listen to this downright wrong clip by former child star and celebrity kidney failure victim, Gary Coleman. He is recording a message for a sex chat line.

It's a definite "Whatchu talkin' about?" moment.

Admire Gary's "skills" here and here.
Taken from April Winchell's site.

Slash
Mel B

Ah, the glory days of saturday morning kids TV. Who can ever forget that morning when you tuned into Saturday Superstore to hear someone call in to speak to jazz pop daddio's Matt Bianco only to have them call the band "a bunch of wankers"? Or the time Crowded House were on and Sarah Greene asked Neil Finn what the competition question was to win lots of Crowded House goodies and to see her squirm when he looked into the camera and said "Guess which member of the band hasn't been circumcised". Class.

These next 2 MP3s are culled from saturday morning kids TV. The first is by former Guns & Roses guitarist, Slash. He is on CD:UK being interviewed by Cat Deeley. Ever the professional, she lets his slip up lie and leaves Dec to tidy up the pieces. He handles it with the same grace he did when John Lydon said "Cunt" on air a few months ago.

The next MP3 is taken from "Live And Kicking" and to be fair it's not really Mel B's fault. She is taking part on some pop quiz segment and whoever is asking the questions, or wrote the script, obviously thought that it would be edgy to create a rhyme that would lead to a swear word, but stop at the last minute so as the word wouldn't be said. No one told Mel B she wasn't on Blankety Blank...

Slash Swears here.
Mel B Swears here.
Taken From the Celebrities Swearing Site.

Britney Spears

Oh Britney, Britney, Britney, I feel you've let us all down. Once the squeeky clean virginal pop princess and now you're a chain smoking, Fred Durst shagging, divorcee with a potty mouth. I bet she's glad she had a hit again with "Toxic" as she was about 3 months away from living in a Trailer. Saying that, you still would though, wouldn't you?

Here Britney appears backstage awaiting to take to the boards with her all miming, all dancing show. But wait, no one has played her crowd warm up music (called a "vamp")...

Britney Swears here.
Taken from the Celebrities Swearing site.

That's your fucking lot for this week.
Feel free to discuss this shit in the forums.

Budgie.

[ if anyone isn't happy about their files being linked to, get in touch with me and I shall remove the link. ]

It's been around for a number of years now, it's getting more and more popular by the day and it shows no sign of dying. No, I'm not talking about June Sarpong, I'm talking about the rise of Bootlegs.

The Pipe aims to bring you, yes YOU, some of the best, worst, funniest or just down right odd free, yes FREE, MP3s that you can find on this little old thing called the Internet. My findings will be posted up here on a regular basis for your listening pleasure or to just complain about in the forum.

This week, as you've guessed, I'm listing a few Bootlegs.

Bootlegs, Mash Ups, Bastard Pop call it what you want, the art of putting one track over the other is becoming more and more popular. PCs and audio software are getting cheaper by the day and anyone with a bit of imagination, and who doesn't posess Van Gogh's ear for music, can easily cobble together a bootleg track. Except, of course, for me, as I downloaded a dodgy copy of ACID and it stopped working after a week. Pfft. Serves me right.

This breed of Bootlegging is just another chapter in the ever growing history of the sampling / cut up scene. I'm not going to bore you with the history of this, so I'm bypassing the history of the tape loop / edit, turntablism, samplers etc, and I'm just going to put you in the right direction of some of the peope around the world who are making these tracks on PCs using tools such as Acid and Soundforge.

With current bootlegging artists like Freelance Hellraiser remixing people like Christina Aguilera, Richard X working with people like Liberty X, Sugababes and Kelis, Go Home Productions working with David Bowie and Soundhog finally getting signed to a label, it seems that the record industry is looking more at this underground scene to discover the future talent that is hiding there. Quite right too. And the quicker people like Lionel Vinyl and McSleazy get signed up the better.

With the current Dance scene in the UK going through a rough patch just now, is the future in these guys / producers hands?

Be sure to check out the above links to find out some more about them and to check out some of their mixes.

Anyway, down to business, here are some of my favourite boots from the past few weeks or so...

Outkast Vs The Streets - "Hey, Ya Mug"

God, the stick I got over on Chutney for mentioning The Streets... Anyway, this track by London's IDC takes Outkast's "Hey Ya!" and drops Mike Skinner's vocals from "Don't Mug Yourself" over the top. It's a sound system banger, as the cheeky Brummie would say.

Check out the Mashmix site that this is hosted on. It's not long launched and is a great resource of boots. Including some of the MTV Mash ones that air on that channel and it has a nice selection of classics on there too. I heartily recommend you get the Kings Of Leon Vs Girls Aloud and the KRS One Vs S Club 7 tracks...

MP3
IDC's Site
Mashmix Site

Dsico - "100% Electro"

Dsico That No Talent Hack, to give him his full name, is from Australia and he's been churning out bootlegs for a while now and while the majority of them are great, I have to say I prefer his other direction as featured in this MP3. He has over the past year been putting out electro cover versions of tracks by people like Nirvana, The Strokes, The Ramones, Avril Lavigne and *cough* Good Charlotte. This track is an electro / vocoder take on the classic Sonic Youth song "100%". Its taken from his "Punk As Pussy" 12" EP, which also features a new version of his Nirvana cover.

MP3
Punk As Pussy Site
Dsico's Site

DJ Dubz - Toxic Shack
John Marr - Toxic Rhythm
E-Jitz - Toxic Narcotic (No Good For Me)

As you can probably tell from the titles, yup, 3 Britney Spears "Toxic" boots. Saying that, only one carries her vocal. The first two of these tracks use the backing track and that string sound to good effect. The DJ Dubz one puts The B52's classic "Love Shack" over the top and is a fine pop boot. John Marr, formerly known as SCO Network, has been around on the scene for quite some time and for his latest outing he takes the acapella from Cutback's "Rock To The Rhythm", adds some extra drums and then unleashes a dancefloor friendly track. Just download, play loud and wait for the vocal to kick in... Finally, and added at the last minute, is Scotland's (I think they are from Aberdeen) E-Jitz. They have had a few boots out recently, about 3 or 4, and this is their latest. If the John Marr one isn't hard enough, then surely this one will hit the spot. It takes Britney's vocal and has it hammered by the old rave anthem "Narcotic Influence" by Empirion and adds a dash of The Prodigy's "No Good (Start The Dance)" for good measure. I am absolutely loving this one, but that's the old rave fanboy in me speaking.

MP3
MP3
MP3
John Marr's Site

Kasabian - "Reason Is Treason (Fake ID Remix)"

I'll put my hands up now. I'm a Lionel Vinyl fan boy. This guy is unbelievably prolific and talented and has been known in the past to knock out bootlegs in less than 15 minutes. He has an alter ego, a more electro tinged persona called Fake ID. His remixes under this guise are well worth a listen. There are far too many to mention but highlights for me are his reworks of Travis' "Re-Offender", Kelis' "Get Along With You" and Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" (which was moon miles better than Morgan Geist's remix...). Here I have plumped for his take on new band Kasabian's "Reason Is Treason" track, purely because it has an evil bassline and sounds just like what I had imagined The Cooper Temple Clause to sound like when they promised a more "electronic" sound on their, a bit of a let down, second album.

MP3
Fake ID Site

Jamspota - "Hard To Forget"

Finally a nice mellow one for you, and for Pojmasta this is a mellow one. Pojmasta is an incredible talent, another future prospect for some record company man out there. He is one of the youngest bootleggers out there and is notorious for his headfucking glitch mixes. I'm not the biggest glitch fan, but I do admire the boys talent in cutting up those tunes like that. My favourite of his glitch tracks is of Massive Attack's "Teardrop". Here, though, is a track under his alter ego Jamspota. A three way mash up between the strings from William Bell's "I Forgot To Be Your Lover" (last used to great effect on the Dilated Peoples hip hop track "Worst Comes To Worst"), the beats from NWA's "Express Yourself" and the vocals from Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"

MP3
Pojmasta's Site

Well, thats the first of hopefully many posts finished. Feel free to discuss and recommend any MP3s to me via the forum. Hope you enjoyed the selection.

Cheers,
Budgie.

[if anyone is not happy about their files being linked to, then get intouch via the forum and I shall remove the link]