Plunderphonics Explained

Okay, this, I think, is pretty amazing.  What we have above is a pleasant-enough sounding pop song and an accompanying video that is surprisingly poignant and has some pretty good dancing.  I would like all of this even if that was all there was to it.  Watch the video above and take in the story, but then read on to get to the amazing part.

This song is by Australia's The Avalanches, who construct their songs entirely out of samples and clips of other music and play no actual instruments of their own.  There is not a note in Since I Left You, or any Avalanche's song for that matter, that hadn't already appeared in another recording.  That little guitar picking at the very beginning of the song?  That's from Anema E Core by American jazz guitarist Tony Mottola.

The flute sounds heard in the song are sampled from Mottola's cover of Glen Campbell's By The Time I Get To Phoenix.  The main vocal samples are a mash-up of the backing vocals from The Dupree's 1968 doo-wop single The Sky's The Limit beneath the lead vocals of The Main Attraction's 1967 Everyday. 

To be sure, the vocal tracks have been chopped and screwed and rearranged to fit the new composition, sped up or slowed down as necessary to keep the beat, but that's the artistry of The Avalanches and what makes Since I Left You an original composition and not just a mere re-release of oldie recordings.

But wait, there's more:  those funky beats during the dance sequences?  They're appropriately enough from Let's Do The Latin Hustle by the wonderfully named Klaus Wunderlich and His New Pop Organ Sound.

Many of the drum samples are from Take Off Your Makeup by Lamont Dozier of the Holland–Dozier–Holland songwriting and production team responsible for much of the Motown sound and numerous hit records by artists such as Martha and the Vandellas, The Supremes, The Four Tops, and The Isley Brothers. 

So if you have the time and the patience, and a taste for late 60s-early 70s soul and R&B, listen to all of these source recordings and then re-listen to The Avalanches' Since I Left You, and then appreciate how all of it came together for the bittersweet video about how sewer worker Arthur found his true calling in life, and how his buddy, although excluded from this wonder-world by his apparent inability (or unwillingness) to dance, is still happy for his friend.

Post-Script: A few years ago, I was at a performance by Seattle experimental hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces at Atlanta's Terminal West, when some older white guy (not me, honest) started just bugging out, rushing the stage with "thumbs down" hand gestures and yelling something like "Learn to play your own instruments and stop copying others."  His rude actions not only reflected poorly on his manners and sense of decorum, but are emblematic of the ignorance by some of a certain generation and ethnicity that for some artists, the recordings of others are their instruments and if you care to listen, they're doing some pretty amazing things with those instruments.

Post-Post-Script: "Some of a certain generation and ethnicity" . . . . Full disclosure - this song (Since I Left You) was released in 2000, so it's now officially 17 years old.  If like me, you're just now beginning to catch up to and appreciate this, congratulations, we've finally arrived at the end of the Clinton presidency.