HI SHANGHAI, ADIEU SHINJUKU ZULU
I like conflating differing eras, deejaying time, visually and sonically. With music, every song you hear with samples makes you experience two or more different times simultaneously — say the 1920s in the 2020’s (like my tracks “Hi Shanghai” and “Timbuktu, Adieu”) — a hundred years in three minutes. On an album like Boomhitech Alittlebitwreck that uses multiple ‘samples’ (real or generated), across songs, you can really become ‘unstuck in time’ (that’s a sci-fi novel reference, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”).
But also in collage songs, you can physically travel, across cultures and continents. You can experience different geographical locations within the same song. (And local space too, with the use of different room reverbs in the same song, i.e. a small closet and then on the chorus later cathedral echoes, or even both at the same time. Bilocation.)
I don't like to cut/paste sample -- I’d rather write something that sounds as if it’s been sampled, generate rather than recreate. But I came across some wax cylinders from a private collection, which were 90 or a 100 years old. I’ve been interested in Ragtime era songs, and these were in the zone. I used the ones that mentioned different global locations — Shanghai, and Tombouctou — because other songs of mine already name-checked them, and after cleaning up some (but not too many) of the noisy pops and crackles, I put the samples each in their own electronic micro-song, almost like sonic parentheses for the other songs on the release.
Both songs then, contemplate that our lives are more than just one event sequentially following another.
"Tombouctou Adieu" features vocals by Billy Murray, and "Hi Shanghai" features vocals by Arthur Collins.
NFT:
Music/visual, and lyric/t NFT Here
ON ALBUMS:
- Boomhitech Alittlebitwreck
- Various Chimeras
CREDITS:
Lyrics: unknown
Music: Kirby Ian Andersen
Vox: Arthur Collins
Performed by: Shinjuku Zulu
HEAR IT ON:
Apple
Spotify
Amazon
Tidal
LYRICS
Hi Shanghai
I’ll soon be there
In a bamboo chair
For I’ve got my fare
From here to Shanghai
I’ll soon be there!
Timbuktu, Adieu
Let’s two-step and dance in old Havana style
Just act like you were made of rubber child
Shake your feet with all your might
Everybody two-step right
Slide along the floor, slide your feet a little bit
(I’ll bestow my love for you in Timbuktu)
Everybody two-step, and grab a girly girl,
Everybody two-step, and do the twirly-twirl
Everybody two-step now!