Hipper music bloggers than you're likely to ever find here have been freaking out over surrealist hip hop duo Das Racist for a while now, ever since the Pineapple Express rap tune "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" came out earlier this year. Even beyond being an ode to the brilliantly efficient fast-food convergence in the first place and implicitly legitimizing the alarming concept of the pepperoni burrito, it actually consists entirely of the lines "I'm at the Pizza Hut/I'm at the Taco Bell/I'm at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell," repeated ad nauseam. It's the most bizarre lead single I've heard in a very long time, and I'm still not sure whether it's for real -- every time I hit the play button on YouTube I half expect Sacha Baron Cohen to pop out of an enchilada or something. You will regret clicking on this: Death And Taxes found 'em early and called it a "meditation on consumer identity in corporate America;" elsewhere, "Harold and Kumar existentialism". Either might still be giving too much credit to two dudes who got just got blazed one night and hit "record" a little too soon. Nobody's really sure. That's the big joke. Maybe. But then along come LA DJ duo Wallpaper. (their punctuation, not ours) with the remix, which the Fork dorks promptly knighted Best New Music, approximately equivalent to an Oprah Book Club endorsement in the indie rock world. Having now listened many more times than you'll ever get me to cop to, I'm pretty sure they did not mean it ironically, but of course you never really know with those guys. The thing that stands out most about all this, I think, is the redemption of a thoroughly useless tune via remixing with loops and samples. One version is musically competent, while the other spectacularly (if deliberately) flops in that regard and makes me want to claw my eyes out so I can get to my brain and punch it. Consider the frequency with which the artists you've recorded have expected you to work miracles with ass-awful source material; this is as close to a success story as I've ever heard when it comes to fixing epic stupidity with production. So keep at it, Ableton rats and Fruityloopers -- if pop continues on its current intellectual trajectory, you're going to be in high demand.
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Mr. Oliver Has Left the Building: Vaughan Oliver / 1957-2019
by Geoff Stanfield
by John Baccigaluppi It may not be obvious, but as this magazine’s graphic designer, the recently passed Vaughan Oliver was a major influence on the look of Tape Op Magazine. Being someone who’s not involved with social media, and as...
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Rick Allen and Lauren Monroe visit PantyLine Press!
by Larry Crane
So my wife runs the fabulous PantyLine Press, and she scored a sweet interview with Rick Allen (of Def Leppard) and his partner Lauren Monroe to talk about the music they are working on and all sorts of other stuff. She posted a shorter version on...
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Tape Op Editor Larry Crane will give a Chicago AES appearance/lecture June 8
by Larry Crane
AES Chicago Section June 2011 Meeting Notice Please forward this notice to interested friends and colleagues. Members and nonmembers are welcome. Not a member of the AES? For information about joining. The next meeting of the Chicago Section...
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Larry was in a band? The Wackness?
by Larry Crane
Yup. From 1985 to 1993 I was in a band with the polite name of Vomit Launch. One of our songs, "Exit Lines" is in a movie called "The Wackness", in theaters now. A pretty damn good movie, and our song fits the scene too well! Most of our back catalog...
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You Have a Credit Problem
by Anu Kirk
Your magazine was not the first place I'd seen Count's "I Have a Credit Problem" essay [Tape Op #89], but I feel compelled to respond. I agree with his general ideas - credits should be shown, and the current "album experience" in the digital...
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Gurf Morlix and a tribute to a friend
by Larry Crane
Gurf Morlix (Tape Op # 76) recently released a 15 song collection of songs written by his longtime friend and runnin' buddy, Blaze Foley - Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream. The CD has been released in conjunction with the...
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The Telephono Recording Project
by Larry Crane
From reader David Matysiak: "I would love to talk to you about audio experiment that I've been working on. It's a project called Telephono. Based on the children's game where you whisper a message and it gets around a circle of people, then sounds...
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Gear Update: Standard Audio Stretch
by Geoff Stanfield
Since putting a pair of these modules in the rack it is has been a struggle to choose whether or not they go on the vocal or the mix. The vocal ususally wins, but it's a tough call. It doesn't take much to give your lead or bgv's that special...