Too Late to Sleep

Here's a track for your next narcoleptic dance party. It may be the only song in the world to feature both the Stylophone and the Violin-Uke.

This song (but not this recording, which is new and fresh) dates back a decade or more; I recorded an early version on 4-track cassette out at the farm. The drum track is actually from that cassette -- it's a drum machine, recorded on the flipside of the cassette and then flipped back and played backward (didn't we all feel so awesome when we discovered that trick?), and now sampled off the cassette and looped. It's actually in stereo, with one side offset by half the loop length, but it's a little hard to tell.

There's also piano (a real one! but, again, looped) and Autoharp, of course, run through a Gibson Skylark tremolo amp. The Violin-Uke (which is neither) shows up in the bridge and the Stylophone appears soon after.

Warm up some milk and enjoy.

(#3 in my "Clean My Plate 2008" project -- I continue to fall behind)

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by Karlos the Jackal (9 comments total)

I'd like to comment on this song but... I .. I'm getting ... drowsy ..

so .. very ...

drowsy ...

... zzzzzzzzzzzzz ... zzzzzzzzzzzzz .....

....
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:35 AM on July 28, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Man, that must have been a huge She Drives Me Crazy-type snare. This is really cool.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:38 AM on July 28, 2008

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the "record" is not a sample, it's an original recording. The "hypnotist" is a friend of mine.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 5:51 PM on July 28, 2008

Love those beats with the vinyl crackle. Nice production all around. The vocal melody is pretty and simple and great. Also, bonus points for the pseudo rhyme of "sun" from the singing and "one" from the hypno-voice. I really enjoyed that touch.
posted by edlundart at 8:23 PM on July 28, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Kudos. Seriously. This is hit-worthy. It's the soundtrack to a woozy montage of two club kids walking home from their subway stop at 5 am as the ecstasy slowly wears off. Michael Winterbottom is planning on using it in his next film--you just don't know it yet.

I love that the hypnotist was a friend of yours. He nailed the old hypnotism record speaking style. It really sounded like a sample.
posted by umbú at 6:22 AM on July 29, 2008

Wow, this sounds very well produced Karlos the Jackal. I fell for the hypnotist and was thinking "I can't believe he found a sample that said "you are so drowsy" and then I read it was your friend.

And the production overall sounds very clean and very well accomplished. - plus, stylophone? extra points!
posted by micayetoca at 2:30 PM on July 29, 2008

Very cool. The vocal melody is great, as edlundart mentioned. I think that's what really holds this together and keeps it from dissolving into just a slop of interesting noises. Sleepy themes aside, this is pretty catchy!

And I agree -- your friend did a great job with the hypnotist recording. Woulda fooled me.
posted by danb at 6:54 PM on July 29, 2008

As a dancing narcoleptic AND a partier, I thank you and applaud your efforts to serve a too-long marginalized community. Bless you and your song.
posted by February28 at 7:09 AM on July 31, 2008

I'll chime in and express my appreciation also. Very nice.
I love that it's a non-sample sample.

didn't we all feel so awesome when we discovered that trick?
And how. I thought I was the Beatles, doing backward guitar solos. Ugh. That and the pitch knob made for some gimmicky 80's recordings.
posted by chococat at 7:58 PM on August 3, 2008