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Sampledelica

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One of the pleasures I get from music is a well-placed sample in a song. On the 80s soundrack thread, I posted Primal Scream did this with a quote from Paris, Texas at the end of their woozy, saxy ‘I’m Comin’ Down’ (they also sampled plenty for their ‘Vanishing Point’ album). fentonsteve added a Paul McGann-quoting Ride track.

Some of my favourites used to do this regularly – JAMMs/KLF, Chumbawamba, PWEI, BAD. Below I’ll post a track from one of my favourite sampledelic albums – Heart of Darkness by Hoodlum Priest, which helps itself generously to Bladerunner, Dune and Robocop quotes.

There’s probably plenty of this sort of thing elsewhere (Negativland rings a bell), not least in hiphop.

Any favourites you want to share?

I’m thinking mainly of quotes not from other music sources, but I can’t hold you back if that’s where you want to go. Points removed for posting ‘Set Adrift on Memory Bliss’…

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Comments

  2. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, obvs.

    I’m a fan of Holger Czukay’s Movies album, which came out a couple of years before the above. I think Eno might have heard it, the cheeky scamp. Here’s Cool In The Pool:

  3. A More Perfect Union by Titus Andronicus.

    Begins with a reading of Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum address. Ends with another spoken-word segment, taken from an article written by William Lloyd Garrison in the first issue of The Liberator, published in 1831. More songs should do this sort of thing.

    My favourite samples record is Field Manual by Bomb 20. It’s very industrial sounding and built almost entirely of movie snippets, deployed at fast pace.

    Also, a number of mid 90s Drum & Bass tracks sampled Ferris Bueller’s “Life moves pretty fast…”. Always a pleasure to hear.

    • Thanks, Bingo – good to get historical. with the first, and with the second – is it sampling bullet fire? That robot looks like it is going to stamp on Shakespeare’s Globe.

      Which reminds me of the ultimate sample song – the ‘lyrics’ entirely made up from samples – instantly and eternally impressive. ‘The Motorcade Sped On’, here rather nicely matched with appropriate video samples

  4. The Monkees’ Head and Spirit’s Future Games are chock full of them – also seem to be among the first acts to attempt this sort of thing

    BAD is another act that uses samples to great effect

    Heads up also to Marty Feldman who pioneered the now familiar technique of mixing footage from old B/W films into a modern scenes in 1977’s Last Remake of Beau Geste.

    This was several years before Carl Reiner and Steve Martin did it on Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and Hoffmester did it with those Griff Rees Jones TVCs a a few years later

    • Oh yes! Wimbish, LeBlanc and McDonald – the beating heart of On-U . I hadn’t heard that before, but McDonald’s buzz guitar is instantly recognizable. Where is the Tackhead of these times?

        • That reminds me in turn of the whole Barmy Army ‘English Disease’ album – for a while, listening to those tracks sampling crowd chants and stadium cheers, I could almost understand the power of the beautiful game.

          Leblanc wasn’t in this Adrian Sherwood incarnation, so I guess that outfit could reform, but in my earlier comment, I was wondering who is the equivalent of Tackhead now – with powerfully and overtly political dance music?

  6. Saint Etienne’s Fox Base Alpha and So Tough are packed with esoteric samples from early 60s kitchen sink dramas to 80s hip hop beats. This is a typically eccentric example – a sample from Michael Powell’s creepy 1960 film ‘Peeping Tom’ kicking off a loose, skanky dub groove.

  7. John Hurt from 1984:

    The Manics have a bit of form with this – a number of tracks on The Holy Bible have clips on them.

    Also – the “they would rather switchhhhhhhh than fight” sample at the start of Fight the Power by Public Enemy springs to mind.

  9. From when it was ok to like M*******y, this has dialogue from a late 50s documentary ‘We Are The Lambeth Boys’, referencing the Derek Bentley ‘Let Him Have It’ case. It’s very atmospheric.

  10. Hot Doggie by Colourbox

    As a teenage horror fan, to have my kind of movies in a cracking song to lead off a 4AD compilation was a joy. Came for Throwing Muses and left with this.

    In there is 2000 Maniacs, CHUD, The Evil Dead, Lifeforce and The Last Starfighter. And a well-timed chainsaw rev courtesy of The Evil Dead.

  12. Fabulous song from one of the 1980’s hidden gems. Samples liberally from Westworld to wonderful dramatic effect. “The lusty decadent delights of imperial Pompeii..” Should have been massive etc.

    Colourbox – Just Give ’em Whiskey

    • Westwood, 2001, The Prisoner, The Andromeda Strain and Queen of Outer Space, apparently. I love it!

      Colourbox took the rest of the 4AD stable by storm with their ‘Hot Doggie’ that was like a DJ set in the icy cathedral choir of Cocteaus, Dif Juz, Dead Can Dance and This Mortal Coil that es the rest of ‘Lonely Is An Eyesore. I loved them for it, though it was many years until I heard the whole album.

      Let’s hear some music!!

  13. Both vocal and musical samples in this one. Origin of samples unknown (to me).
    Twitch/Marathon Men “Blow Your Blues Away”.
    The track had to be withdrawn from sale after one of the samples was identified and lawyers set upon them.
    First heard this on one of the late Charlie Gillett’s radio shows, back around 2002.

    • 2×45 is a beautifully ugly record. I remember buying it in a Brussels record shop in 1986 because of the band name the black cover and the very minimal text, taking it back to my room, and being blown away by the music. I still find it amazingly absorbing today.

      I always mishear the text as ’70 brilliant people’

  17. Back to the OP, here’s one I haven’t thought about for 35 years… PWEI sampling the Twilight Zone, amongst others. At least in the video, Clint keeps ‘Little Clint’ in his trousers, unlike almost every time I saw them live.

    • I always enjoyed this album, possibly second of all after their debut, which it seems more naturally to follow (on reflection now) than Architecture & Morality in its austere industrial age aesthetic beauty. It also goes along with Big Science (Laurie Anderson) – im sure there’s a micro genre just waiting to emerge on Spotify. Is it music concrète?

  19. Cool idea for a thread – US mellow indie rockers Pinback sampled lots of dialog from John Carpenter’s movie Dark star over their 5 CD career, takihng their name from a character in the film. Always amusing to hear him pipe up in the middle of their laid back tunes.

    One of my favourite samples is 1998’s UNKLE Richard Ashcroft – Lonely Souls which sampled the movie Jacob’s Ladder. The quote in question “If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.” Apparently this tune also sampled Apocalypse Now but I’ve never found a concrete source that says what was used exactly.

    If I had to pick one it’d be David Baerwald’s extraordinary examining of the American conspiracy theory mindset. The LP came out in 1993 just post Waco and many songs allude to the unease in the culture at the time with AIDS and Armageddon (or “I’m a geddin’ AIDS” as the lyric says) to name one on the nose track.

    But he chose to incorporate the insane ranting of Jim Jones, he of the famous kool-aid mass suicide, using actual audio footage of Jones & Bush the Elder into a whole, disturbing woozy concoction with lullaby-like balladry. The tune “The Postman”.

    Much like those conspiracy nuts of the 90s , which seemed to have muiltipIied exponentially in the TwitterBook era, I have been obsessed with this album since discovering it 6 months ago, and it seemed to foretell and immsense amount of what we have been suffering through with ineffectual leaders and an unruly global situation in the past years.

    EDIT – I misremembered it’s UNKLE Thom Yorke’s Rabbit in the headlights, a song I confess I’ve found difficult to love, that has the Jacob’s Ladder quote – per google.

    • Thanks for the considered comment, Matt – a lot of sources to check out. That Jim Jones quote is liberally spread across Mao Tse Tung said.. by that brilliant band Alabama 3, which I am sure is familiar to many AWers. For that, there’s an interesting article from a US research site
      https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=64818

      I do like UNKLE – very good, dark music. I hadn’t seen the video for the Thom Yorke-vocal song before. Quite disturbing.

  20. One of the more listenable efforts from hard-to-love, po-faced, woke-before-their-time right-on rappers Consolidated…

    I’ve an idea that the opening sample is from The Forbidden Planet. A guess.

    • I have a terrible confession, which I have shared here before, but I am one of those dreadfully earnest student -types in the audience heard talking to the band on one the tracks (but I am not the angry Dutch guy)

      “I feel triggered”! as they say.

      • Wow @pessoa that’s a confession indeed. I haven’t listened to the album in a very long time. I might have to dig it out now to refresh my memory. Having seen them live, I’d imagine conversing with them was like answering your door to Mormon missionaries.

  22. Barry Adamson and David Holmes spring to mind. Moss Side Story and How Down To The Exit Sign being their masterpieces imv. Holmes recorded loads of “street people” in New York to distribute across Let’s Get Killed.

    • I was thinking about “Voice of America”-era Cabs (and the spooky French intro to “Silent Command”) but did not know where the samples come from.

  29. Bonzo Goes To Washington – 5 Minutes

    .
    Some time in 1984, Ronald Reagan made a joke speech at a private function, unaware that he was being recorded. The audio of it was leaked.
    Within a matter of days, Jerry Harrison and Bootsy Collins had taken a sample of it and constructed a track around it.

  30. Released in 1984, ‘Creuza de mä’ by Fabrizio de Andre is my favourite ever Italian album. (One of David Byrne’s favourites too.) The track Sidún samples short speeches by Ronald Reagan and Ariel Sharon in the intro.

  32. This clears the room at parties, but if we want spoken-word sampling then the vile Diana Mosely made to sound like a witch by 23 Skidoo is an anti-fascist tactic.


  35. Gavin Bryars – Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet

    Bryars said about this:
    “In 1971, when I lived in London, I was working with a friend, Alan Power, on a film about people living rough in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station. In the course of being filmed, some people broke into drunken song – sometimes bits of opera, sometimes sentimental ballads – and one, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”. This was not ultimately used in the film and I was given all the unused sections of tape, including this one.
    When I played it at home, I found that his singing was in tune with my piano, and I improvised a simple accompaniment. I noticed, too, that the first section of the song – 13 bars in length – formed an effective loop which repeated in a slightly unpredictable way*.
    I took the tape loop to Leicester, where I was working in the Fine Art Department, and copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping.
    I was puzzled until I realised that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man’s singing. This convinced me of the emotional power of the music and of the possibilities offered by adding a simple, though gradually evolving, orchestral accompaniment that respected the homeless man’s nobility and simple faith. Although he died before he could hear what I had done with his singing, the piece remains as an eloquent, but understated testimony to his spirit and optimism.”

    * In the notes for the 1993 recording on Point, Bryars wrote that while the singer’s pitch was quite accurate, his sense of tempo was irregular.

    Note that this is not the horrible truncated version with Tom Waits hobnailing all over it. What were they thinking? I can only wonder.

  36. DJ Shadow used spoken word really effectively, and yes I know his music is entirely made from samples. I love his use of an interview with a drummer (can’t remember his name) as sort of lyric interludes on Building Steam With a Grain of Salt; “the music’s coming through me…” and so on.

    Endtroducing is a great record.

    • “What were the skies like when you were…”

      This melodious ripple of a sample became another instrument in Patterson & Youth’s musical toolkit – liberally brought out whenever they wanted a sigh of recognition and a surge from their audiences. Lovely and Pavlovian.

  38. Does this count……

    I believe that’s the real Ronnie Reagan that’s sampled at the beginning 🙂

    Plus – given the recent love in for Phil Collins on another thread, it only seemed right to post.

  39. The Howlin’ Wolf sample in the Alabama 3’s “Woke up this morning” is genius. Makes the track. Apparently they didn’t even really notice it had been picked up for the Sopranos initially.

  40. I don’t think anyone has mentioned Public Service Broadcasting. Sampling and creating spoken-word soundscapes is their raison-d’être.
    There are so many examples to choose from, but this, from The Race For Space, is particularly evocative:

    • The nostalgic mutism of Generation X in full expression.

      Sorry, that’s just my cynical response to something that should really ‘work’ for me, tick boxes, and I’m happy that others enjoy them, but they give me hives, they are so dull.

  41. As this thread heads off in the direction of obscurity (does anyone dig up old posts much?), a big thanks to all the contributors – lots of interesting music, much that is new to me, which is always good.

  42. Last night, at a sort-of hybrid jazz gig*, I discovered the origin of a sample that was used by Groove Armada in their trip-hop recording “At The River”.
    Patti Page – Old Cape Cod.

    The band played it as an encore, after finishing with a version of Earl King (via Jimi Hendrix)’s (Come On) Let The Good Times Roll.

    *Female cellist/vocalist Natalie Rozario with saxophonist Julian Costello, guitarist Patrick Naylor and drummer Tom Hooper, who does not feature in this second clip.

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