electric eye by david bowie/homogenized terrestrials

4/23/2018

6 Comments

Frank

4/23/2018 05:00:11

Nicely done! I enjoy your takes very much.

Phillip Klampe

4/23/2018 19:08:39

Thanks Frank! I enjoyed putting it together. It kind of took on a life of it's own.

C. Goff III link

4/23/2018 15:04:57

Mr. Terrestrials!

A unique and interesting homage to the Thin White Duke you offer here. The song selection itself says something about your familiarity with Bowie's recording history and your tastes as well. I am big fan of people who do covers with the intent of "making them their own," and you definitely veer into Homogenized Terrestrial terrritory with your offerings. The pieces are all very well produced and show that you put considerable work into achieving your visions. Naturally, I have a few questions...

The vocal arrangements are all clearly brought into the forefront of these pieces. Did you have access to Bowie's raw vocal tracks for these songs, or did you isolate them from the album versions?

I can't tell if any of the accompaniment instrumental portions of these pieces were taken from Bowie's own music and re-designed by you, or if you supplied original accompaniments of your own, or both. Which is it?

I have many Bowie stories of my own, and there is a bit of Bowie presence in the Taped Rugs catalog as well. I'm guessing that there's a few other souls wandering around in the old E. Cottage who are carrying similar baggage. Perhaps your post will flush some of that out? I'm willing to share, but to "share" means that others will have to do the same, ha!

Thanks to YOU, Phil, for sharing this great album!

Phillip Klampe

4/23/2018 19:06:49

Thanks Charles! I appreciate your comments. For the most part all of the sounds except vocals were done by me. I think Lady Stardust has a tambourine that is from the original recording. One other track has some bass guitar at a really low level. The vocal track from Thursday's Child has a little bleed through from the rest of the original mix. I believe these are all taken from 5.1 mixes that have been released. I did my best to create the illusion of having Bowie in the studio with me.

I didn't set out to do something like this. A few months back I ran across some examples of people creating their own "mixes" of some of these tracks. I realized that there were isolated vocal tracks for a bunch of songs. It seemed like a fun idea to try to redo a song. I didn't have any intention of doing an album. After working on Starman, it kind of snowballed.

The biggest challenge was separating the singing from what I was so used to hearing in the original versions. How do you hear something like Space Oddity differently than the way it was originally recorded? Since I decided not to cut up the vocals that made it even more difficult. I wanted the songs to be different and have my signature in them as well. At the same time I wanted Bowie's voice to be front and center.

I did several versions of some of these songs before settling on what I liked best. Others seemed to come together very quickly. I guess that's no different than when I'm working on my own material. At a certain point I decided I wanted the collection to seem like an actual album, not just a collection of remixed tracks thrown together.

The whole experience was a lot of fun. I had to approach things a little differently and learned a few new things in the process. Bowie would probably consider it unique even if he didn't like it. Now I can say I collaborated with David Bowie on an album. I might leave out the part about him not being aware of it.

I look forward to hearing some of your Bowie stories.

C. Goff III link

4/24/2018 23:44:41

Thanks for the detailed response, Phil. This sort of art and information exchange shows the potential that Electronic Cottage really has as a forum.
(so... thanks to Hal too, of course.)

Some day, Phil, you should release those out take versions on a limited edition of some sort -- I know I'd be curious to hear them myself.

I saw Mr. B. on five different tours between 1977 and 1997 -- all quite different experiences, all very entertaining.

Last year I did an album which compared Orwell's 1984 to the real world of 2017. One piece I did for the album was a unique interpretation of Bowie's BIG BROTHER. If curious, you can hear it here:
https://archive.org/details/Untopia

Yellow link

4/14/2019 10:08:07

Fan page about him: If David was still alive...
https://live-counter.com/david-bowie-money/

You are in heaven, your music will be preserved for a long time to come!

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electric eye by david bowie/homogenized terrestrials

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