Quality!
That's all I got to say!

Genius.  

Aquaboogie talking about the release:
 
http://www.additiverich.com/aquaboogie/archives/002100.html
 
[And I got the picture from my visit to Tallinn, Estonia, so there!]
 
---
 
I'm pleased to announce the release of Malty Media's 'Bracken Bed EP' on the net label Monotonik.
 
The tracks are the 'finest' from (what I call) the Finest Cheddar set that Michael and I played in Japan in February.
 
When we started working on a 'collaboration' the plan was to have a bit of a laugh, and so we started out trying to come up with ideas that would offend as much as inspire each other. Michael's first volley was a space disco rendition of the Battlestar Galactica theme. I came back with a house mix of the Country Calendar Theme, which fair sucked, until Andy suggested we try the beat (I hope I have this right) to Five Man Army. Suddenly, with the CC themed slowed down, it opened up the possibility of spacial excursions, and Michael set about filtering and fake tape delaying the mix in a way that suggests to me the rusted corrugated iron and flaking paint of an ancient woolshed.* Impressed by this I found the old Country Calendar 'farm music', and added some samples of someone 'playing' a fence to the aptly named 'breakdown'. I also added some Fred Dagg samples, which was fun, but even at the time struck me as a bit too obvious.
 
After we got back from Japan and we started to prepare these tracks for Monotonik, I had the idea to put a recording of Denis Glover reciting his poem the Magpies. The sound of Glover at his most tired and emotional was congenial to the dissociative state of the track, and certainly improved on the all too obvious Daggisms. Thus the first track of the EP, Bracken Bed.
 
The second track, Flakiest, brings to fruition a long held dream of mine: to do something with the 80s Flake ad (weirdly, this version has the visuals I remember from the 80s, while the former version has the audio I remember). The something I initially did was to slap a bad jungle beat on it. Michael made it a whole let better by doing the jungle thing, and making the track very silly indeed.
 
During the original set we thought we should have a slower, more reflective track to make things more interesting. Our first attempt was a weird amalgam of the Abel Tasmans, the jingle to the Breeze ('harbour city you're a friend of mine') and some Czech folk music. Sadly, this didn't really come together, so as an alternative Michael put together this sublime piece of washy ambience featuring occasional samples from the old Buck Rogers TV show. This track reminds me of the sensation (imagined, for alas I've yet to accomplish this in real life) of swimming in a pool full of Fanta. **
 
Finally, I had started working on a mix of the Goodnight Kiwi theme (well, to New Zealanders of a certain age it seemed an obvious way to end the set). All was a bit so so until I had the notion that Goodnight Kiwi seemed very astronomical to me (probably from the animation of the kiwi going to bed in the transmitter dish among the stars). Extrapolating from this I decided that what the track really needed was samples of the choral music by Ligeti that Kubrick used in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's incongruous, but I think it works quite well. Michael added his manic dubbisms, and everything squawks nicely into oblivion.
 
Basically, it was all great fun to put together. We neither of us could have done it without YouTube. Basically YouTube is the best source of low bitrate nostalgia anywhere. YouTube, we salute you!
 
Thanks also to Simon at Monotonik. He is surprisingly tolerant. The only question I have is where he got the photo of the surprisingly modernist house for EP, and indeed how he thought it might bear any relation to the music therein.
 
 
* Do farmers actually ever bother painting woolsheds?
** Though this probably wouldn't be very pleasant - sticky and perhaps a little too tingly on the nethers.

Up on Last.Fm
 
http://www.last.fm/music/Malty+Media/Bracken+Bed+EP