sidewinder

I LOVE vocal samples in music. It's one of the things that attracted me to the industrial/industrial rock scene in the early 90s, as well as the electronic scene. Skinny Puppy, Meat Beat Manifesto, Ministry, Thrill Kill Kult, KMFDM, and pretty much all bands in the genre. In the past decade it's been more about instrumental hip-hop and glitch-hop, like Prefuse 73, Wax Tailor, Blockhead, etc. who pretty much all use vocal samples here and there. I just love the ever living shit out of vocal samples. It's a bit less common in rock music but here are a few I can think of:

Dillinger Four (excellent example)
Mr. Bungle (first two albums at least)

Ok now I'm drawing a blank, might think of more later.

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I'd love to see your signature/links too, but the huge and obnoxious ones have caused me to block all signatures.

Janszoon

Yeah, same here. I love it when I'm watching an old movie and suddenly recognize something that was a sample in some song I like.

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sidewinder

Definitely, it's a great feeling.

On the flip side, one day during my teens I came home and my dad was watching a movie on TV, and I heard Skinny Puppy's "Who's Laughing Now" playing in a club scene. Turns out the movie was Bad Influence, which I keep meaning to watch. The song itself uses about 4 samples from Evil Dead II.

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I'd love to see your signature/links too, but the huge and obnoxious ones have caused me to block all signatures.

Janszoon

Skinny Puppy is great in the sample department, though I think my favorite band for it is My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. They always seem to pull from such interesting sources.

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Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

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VEGANGELICA

That's interesting, because I absolutely DESPISE vocal samples in music. Using vocal samples feels like cheating. I don't want to hear some regurgitated stuff. It feels unoriginal to me.

I tried listening to Dillinger Four's "Gainsville" and "A Jingle for the Product," and a couple others, and I DO like the songs...just not the vocal samples. Vocal samples feel like plagiarizing to me. If a song were a paper, I'd say, "Don't just quote someone else. Put the idea in your own words."

However, I would say that Dillinger Four uses the vocal samples in a fairly subtle manner. Except, ee-gads, they seem to start practically EVERY SINGLE SONG with a vocal sample!

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Violent & Funky

How is using some random movie quote sample at the beginning of your song like plagiarizing? Isn't it more like opening a school paper with a quote, which is a really common and respected practice?

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sometimes I don't thrill you
sometimes I think I'll kill you
just don't let me fuck up will you
'cause when I need a friend it's still you

VEGANGELICA

True, I don't appreciate cut & paste techniques in music or in studio arts, really. I agree it can, perhaps, add some ironic humor and the technique may be clever. But ripping the material from someone else seems like a cop-out: you couldn't figure out how to make your point on your own, so you rely on someone else to do it.

I don't mind so much "found" items being used, though, like machine sounds. I mostly just get irked by songs that use clips of other people speaking.

Also, sometimes when I hear songs with clips in them, I don't know where the original stuff and the regurgitated stuff begin and end. It feels as if they are trying to pass someone else's work off as their own. I assume professional musicians give credit where due, but most non-professional nu-break type songs I've heard just steal stuff from here and there and plunk them in the song.

When you start a paper with a quote, you provide the source of the quote in the paper, so that is not plagiarizing.

When you lift some part of some random TV show and smack it down in a song to make a point, a listener may not know the source, since it isn't stated within the song. So, that is like plagiarizing.

I prefer songs to be direct. If the musician has something to say, just say it; don't rely on someone else to say it for you. Plus, most of the clips I've heard used seem to be from crappy movies anyway, so I don't see the value in using the clips in the first place.

And usually the songs work just as well without the clips: the clips are not necessary. And if they *are* necessary for the song to make sense...if the whole song is some random instrumental piece that is meaningless without that clip...then I just think the song isn't very good.

Take that "Handbuilt by Perverts" song Jackhammer posted. It goes on about human remains a bit in a clip and then some other random stuff, has a bunch of drumming and repetitive guitar chords thrown in, and the sound of an engine dying at the end. The point? I feel the song would be just as good, or bad, given the unintelligible mumbling and screams, without the human remains clip.

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Violent & Funky

What would you have them do? Stop the song and recite the APA citation?

(Sometimes they are cited in the liner notes, sometimes they aren't. I agree that its better when they are.)

I just don't think you are destined to like the kind of music that bands who use samples perform...

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http://www.last.fm/user/ohio0808

sometimes I don't thrill you
sometimes I think I'll kill you
just don't let me fuck up will you
'cause when I need a friend it's still you

sidewinder

To be honest I think you are completely missing the point of how these artists are using vocal samples. There's something about a recognizeable sample from an old source (whether I recognize it or not). If you were to sing that quote yourself, there's really no connection to the movie. And it's not that this can work with just any type of music. I can't see some singer-songwriter douche using a movie clip in the middle of one of his songs and it sounding good. He's turn that quote into poetry or something, and sing and make the girls cry with love. But for certain genres of music, a sound byte is just awesome.

I beg to differ, and that doesn't make a song less good for relying on samples. If a band incorporates samples from other sources, that's part of their style. Removing the samples could make their music sound like another somewhat similar band. What would be the point in that? If one doesn't like the sound, they can listen to other bands that don't use vocal samples. But for me it adds character and sometimes shows the artists' influences for their music. That's not the say that the music wouldn't sound good without the samples, but it could completely change the sound too.

Again I just think you're missing the point and this type of music isn't for you.

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last.fm | my collection on RYM | vinyl instagram @allthatyouseeandhear
I'd love to see your signature/links too, but the huge and obnoxious ones have caused me to block all signatures.

Janszoon

Exactly. The connection that's made by the sample is the whole point. With a band like, say, Skinny Puppy sampling is part of a postmodern aesthetic that's evokes a sense of mass media detritus recombining into something new. Taking that away would be removing something very essential in making the music great art.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

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