In The Aeroplane Oslo The Sea
I stumbled across this interesting tribute album a few weeks ago, and thought it worth sharing. It's a collection of Norwegian musicians who all participated in the message boards at www.vg.no, which are definitely not in English. Evidently, they all shared a love of Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, and instead of doing what the rest of the album's fans did, (start a music blog,) they each recorded one of the tracks and pieced together a tribute album, appropriately called "Each Song A Little More Than We Could Dare To Try".
This is not a standard tribute piece, like the abomination to Sly Stone this years Grammy's. Artis of the caliber of Korn, Carlos Santana and Norah Jones are nowhere to be found. Instead, you've got a bunch of unknown Norwegians interpretting the songs in various different styles. Some are obviously using higher fidelity recording setups than the others, you've got male and female singers, and a few of the songs with words are now rendered into instrumentals.
Many people may balk at this idea, but I think it's a really interesting little piece of outsider art. The songs obviously aren't intended as replacements for the originals, and I'm sure that these Norwegians probably didn't think I would ever be posting their MP3s half the world away. What these versions really do for me is illustrate the overall strength of Jeff Mangum's original work. That songs with such simple structure and such dense subject matter could prove themselves enjoyable when interpretted by such a diverse crew of obscure musicians, it really speaks to the songs greatness. The songs that I believe work best here are "The King of Carrot Flowers, pt.1" by Motor Kiss, which features an awesome mid-song guitar solo, and a quieter, more reserved duet of "Holland, 1945" by Spilk/Mortasam. You also get "Communist Daughter" by Skeletal Basketball Shoe, which, while not an improvement on the original, is a fantastic name for a band. It reads like one of those shirts in Thailand where they apparently stick English words together just because they like the look of them.
Download the MP3s below. It's defintely worth a shot for any fan of the original:
1. Motor Kiss - The King Of Carrot Flowers pt 1
2. Orgone Accumulator - The King Of Carrot Flowers pt 2-3
3. Apples & Milk - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
4. Subsqueeze - Two-Headed Boy
5. Jørund Almås/ Mr Kronskij - The Fool
6. Spilk / Mortasam - Holland, 1945
7. Skeletal Basketball Shoe - Communist Daughter
8. Proskirt Massiva - Oh Comely
9. Rockette - Ghost
10. Rockette - Untitled
11. Captain Democracy - Two-Headed Boy pt 2
Comments
Thanks for posting the tracks. Linked to from (((withoutsound)))
Can't wait until National High Five Day.
Posted by: Seamus | March 25, 2006 10:06 AM