Tag: Cut Chemist

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366 Songs 191: The Real Thing

And here’s to reworking/detourning advertising jingles. DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist’s Product Placement is a really enjoyable album, fucking around with found material created to sell you things and turning it into something that’s as much commentary on that as it is music in its own right. From that, “The Real Thing” is likely my favorite track; it’s actually one of the more straightforward mash-ups on the album, just two different versions of “It’s The Real Thing,” the most famous one by the New Seekers and the genuinely amazing Ivor Raymonde Orchestra one from the early 1970s. For the most part, the Raymonde Orchestra version carries the whole thing, and you can understand why when you listen to the original:

Seriously, how great is that? Cheesy, yes, but just awesome. Listen to that drum break at 2:16!

For completeness, here’re the New Seekers:

That has a charm in itself, doesn’t it…? With those ingredients, how could any musical cake fail to be delicious? Much tastier than Coke, that’s for sure.

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366 Songs 190: The Number Song

For some reason, I remember this being the soundtrack of the year of my Masters degree, or at the least the end thereof. I’m not sure if history actually agrees with me on that; I suspect it may have been released after that year of weirdness and discomfort was over, but I don’t want to ruin things with reality by checking. DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… was a frustrating album for me, in large part because it didn’t have the ADD kineticism and intensity of this song all the way through – Although part of me wonders how listenable an album it would’ve been if it had – but this remains the one DJ Shadow track that will forever justify his entire career for me. I adore this track, with its single-minded purpose to make you want to shake your butt and the off-kilter way it goes around making sure that happens.

Also spectacular: Cut Chemist’s remix, which adds more old-school R&B (especially those horns):