Friday, April 13, 2007

Person Pitched

Panda Bear's recent record Person Pitch has earned rave reviews around the country. In an interview (which I can't find), he talked about approaching the record in the way that a DJ would approach a live set. When he moved to Lisbon he left most of his Animal Collective instruments in the states, taking only two BOSS Dr. Sample 303s, and thus all of Person Pitch is sample-based. The AC message board has been trying to determine what samples were used.

Many of the songs are based on loops from Joe Meek-produced Tornados songs. Two are listed below: "Red Roses and a Sky of Blue" contains the main riff from "Bros," and the opening of "Popeye Twist" is the basis for the second half of "Take Pills." "Red Roses and a Sky of Blue"'s opening riff was also used in the song "What I Do" from Animal Collective's 2005 BBC appearance. The loop from "Red Roses" is a personal favorite. All in all, the Tornados were a pretty average band, but Noah found these two strange transitional measures where the guitars chimed and intonated. It's a small bit of awesome in a pretty okay song. The first half of the aforementioned "Take Pills" comes from Scott Walker's "Always Coming Back to You". Elsewhere, a portion from a Cat Stevens song serves as the main driving guitar part in the second half of "Bros." There has been debate over whether the main theme of "Comfy in Nautica" was taken from the Akira soundtrack, though the choral hits used in the film don't match up entirely.

Finally, the ending of "Carrots" is taken from Kraftwerk's "Ananas Symphony" from their 1973 album Ralf und Florian, which is notable in their ouvre for being the first appearance of a vocoder. The sample begins at :29 and continues for fifteen or so seconds. Obviously, there are a number of unidentified samples.

Much props to the folks at rerz.net for their tireless research.

Tornados -- Red Roses and a Sky of Blue
Animal Collective -- What I Do (BBC)
Scott Walker -- Always Coming Back to You
Cat Stevens -- I Found A Love
Tornados -- Popeye Twist
Kraftwerk -- Ananas Symphony