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Remixes and Sampling
Written by Richmond - Hunter
Sampling, the direct use of another musicians’ work in your own song. Is it justified? I would argue yes, of course. Any piece of creative work feeds off of all works that have come before it, whether consciously or not. Every narrative written is inspired by a trail of stories dating back to tribal myths told around the campfire. Every film is packed with prepetual conscious or unconsious homages and references to the films before it. We are now living in a digital age where media is not only readily avaialable worldwide the watch and absorb, but to download, manipulate, change and alter. Today, once a piece of art is put into the public domain it becomes the property of the public, whether the artist likes it or not, who can do to it whatever they desire. I am in no way defending shameless rip-offs and plagiarisms of others, credit should always be given where it is due, but often the sampling and remixing of previous works can create something far superior. As Jay-z says in response to his sampling of Nas’ voice, ‘So yeah I sampled your voice, you was usin it wrong. You made it a hot line, I made it a hot song’.
Nowhere has the limitless possibilities of remixing become more apparent than on the internet. Online copyrights simply don’t exsist, no matter how hard you try. This means that, like the fashion industry where copyright is nonexsistent, creativity is forced to florish, to perpetuate, to never remain. This has led to the phenomenon of the internet meme, images, videos, music and jokes which often become so abstract and self referential that for those not highly in touch with internet culture they fall flat. Such as:
For those not in touch with the several different online trends being played off of eachother here, being sampled and remixed, the joke falls flat. Even for those aware of the different elements it’s not that funny, but still..
This all may seem like a slight tangent from remixes and sampling in music, but I promise to get back on topic. I really want to address one of the main criticisms against this sort of sampling, that it inhibits creativity. I think that’s bull, if anything it does the opposite. It is ofcourse important to understand that that there is not such thing as a creatively new idea, every artistic endeavor has an infinite list of inspirations and inspirations of inspirtations. Without centuries of tribal mythology we would not have The Bible, without The Bible we would not have the great poetry of John Milton, without Milton we would not have creation myths and poetry of William Blake, without William Blake we would not have the revolutionary writings of Aldous Huxley, without Aldous Huxley we wouldn’t have The Doors, who took their name from Huxley’s essays ‘The Doors of Perception’ which in turn was a line from Blake etc. etc… And because nothing can be seen as creatively new or fresh or unique in any real pure way, sampling should only be seen as the natural extension of inspiration.
I would now like to turn your attention to the truly fantastic internet series ‘Everything is a Remix’, so far there have been three parts and it is a fascinating look into remixing’s place in art and music.
Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
All that I really have to say about remixing and sampling has sadly been expressed far better than I could manage in this video series, so I guess it is probably best for me to now show you some of my favourite examples of sampling in recent years.
Wait What- Notorious XX
This album has to be one of my favourite albums of recent years. Wait What masterfully samples The XX with Biggie Smalls. It adds a soul, a tenderness to the violence and anger in Biggie’s lyrics. No where is this better shown than in ‘Suicide Fantasy’, Biggie’s suicidal ramblings are enhanced by the slow dying notes of The XX’s ‘Fantasy’. It is a great example of remixing’s ability to create something completely new and fresh.
Danger Mouse- The Grey Album
When Jay-z released the masterful Black Album he also released an acapella version, specifically designed for DJs to sample and to create something new with. No one did it better than Danger Mouse who came up with the idea of remixing The Black Album with The Beatles’ The White Album. It is a pretty shaky premise for an entire album but Danger Mouse manages to create something great with it. A number of Jay-Z’s tracks are made far far better with danger Mouse’s Beatles beats, the stand-outs for me are ‘December 4th’ and ‘Moment of Clarity’. This was an unlicensed album which EMI, who held the rights to The Beatles, quickly tried to stop the distribution of. This led in turn to a gigantic online protests where hundreds of sites made the album available for free download. It has since become a highly regarded piece of work, ending up on many Top 100 albums of the decade lists. Below is the fantastic ‘Grey Video’ made in promotion for the album, a great example of video and music remixing put to wonderfully creative ends.
Mike Relm
Mike Relm calls himself a video DJ, he samples movies, commercials and music videos and turns them into fantastic new pieces of music. My favourite is easily his remix of ‘Threshold’ from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World with Ludacris’ ‘How Low Can You Go’.It is a kinetic and endlessly entertaining video.
Kanye West
No discussion about music sampling is really complete without a little mention Mr West. Music sampling is integral to hip-hop. Any modern concept or sampling, mixing and remixing stems from Hip-hop, its origins lie in the samplings of beats and melodies from old blues and jazz numbers, rappers in the early days were little more than hype-men, the real skill came from the DJs and producers. No one in Hip-Hop has taken the art of sampling in more interesting and unique directions than Kanye West, its a shame that he is such an insufferable cock.. oh well. First I’d like to show you a video, a compilation of every Kanye West sample, up until 2008 so his last two albums are missing.
I found the initial response to this video interesting. Many people claimed it showed the complete lack of talent or ingenuity in Kanye West’s work. I think it is far too easy to dismiss the skill and craft it takes to disassemble a songs and to reuse its components in an interesting way. This was best shown in Kanye West’s recent album ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’, a beautiful mix of genres and styles and easily one of the greatest albums of 2010. The album explores a number of unlikely yet powerful combinations of sounds and genre, the use of Bon Iver’s ‘Lost in the Woods’ stands out as a surprisingly powerful moment. Below is one very interesting track, ‘Who Will Survive in America’, as it doesn’t feature Kanye West at all. Instead it is a poem from the brilliant Gil Scott Heron, in the context of the album it is a powerful and moving track, amongst an otherwise self obsessed album Kanye West stands back and looks back, at the origins of his success, the origins of hip-hop and ultimately questions the American Dream which West is supposedly living.
What makes Kanye West different from the producers mentioned before is that he is not sampling the music without permission, he is not breaking copyrights, he is simply wealthy and powerful enough at this stage in his career to be able to use pretty much anything he likes from the past century of Western music. This does, however, often lead to some missteps. In his recent collaboration with Jay-Z, ‘Watch The Throne’ he often seems to sample certain sound bytes for no reason other than because he can. As The New York Times wrote: ‘It’s the state of being so rich you forgot where you put all your nice things, being so rich you lost sight of which stuff is actually nice and which stuff you bought just because you’re used to buying things’. Some of his samples carry meaning and poignancy, such as James Brown, others seem random and unfocused such as a quote from Will Ferrel in Blades of Glory.
So there you have it, my own little look into the world of remixes and sampling. We live in a world where very top 20 song is treated to numerous dubstep remixes, acoustic covers and mash-ups and to me I see this as a good thing. Art shouldn’t be split into creators and audience, everyone should be able to engage with it, be inspired by it and take it in new directions. And I’ll leave you with a fantastic video of every single homage in The Matrix.