The candidate

[imomus]

It's my endorsement of Obama...



The Candidate (stereo mp3 file, 5mins 11secs, 4.8MB)

...it's the best song David Bowie didn't release in the 70s, and it's a preview of the covers set I'll deliver next week at MUDAM in Luxembourg.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

is that hisae on backing vox or your own voice up an octave

[cutup.livejournal.com]

Nice! Your version sounds darker and more 1984 than the original. Will you record your set next week and post it?

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

you.never.cease.to.amaze.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

The original is one my favorite songs EVER. This is great.

[anglerfish96.livejournal.com]

Lovely understated delivery. Good job. :)

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

i dig it

Where's the mountain?

[mattfishbeck.livejournal.com]

N,
I love you and I Love the original ('been driving around Berkeley, glade of the polit grave, listening to -- what? -- THIS, for weeks), but this seems a tone flatline... too much Yiko & Hiro & Not Enuf & Sonny & Cher?
xo,
MF

Re: Where's the mountain?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Fishbeck! When are you coming to Berlin?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's some electronic jiggery pokery on the main lead voice.

You've got a brylcream queen

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

"it's the best song David Bowie didn't release in the 70s"

You're not wrong. I love Dodo, too.

Mr. Wu (whom you met) will love this. I'm going to send him the link.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

God fucking damnit. Another fucking Obamawife.

I am this close to kicking all the Americans off my flist I SWEAR. As if our own elections weren't boring and frustrating enough.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Nice song though, I've always liked Candidate. Shame I won't be able to see you in Luxembourg.

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

Great version, something ominous, even inimical in your take.
It perhaps suits an endorsement of a Democrat candidate - one's leaning toward the Democratic Party is largely a default/lesser of two evils tactical consideration rather than anything more.

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno, I get the feeling that most Democrats are under the impression that Obama is going to save the world.

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

Well...yes, I tend to agree but really what are the viable alternatives - the Republicans in power or a ruthless career politician like Clinton (we've already witnessed the endgame of creating political dynasties in US politics).
I do quite like Obama but I also like to maintain a healthy skepticism about party politics.

[(Anonymous)]

It's no " In the heat of the morning" but I like how you plunder the original. What other covers you doing?

[akabe.livejournal.com]

lovely

recording tools?

[ajkandy.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Nick, at the risk of getting all Sound on Sound here, have you ever discussed your recording setup? As a very mobile musician I expect you have something laptop-based; do you have any preferences in terms of software, real and virtual instruments, mics, etc? I'm sure you must have, at the very least, a dozen different travel AC adapters and plug converters...or do you just rely on being able to find friends with good home studios etc? I think too many people get obsessed with having their own personal armory of tools, when (keeping with the post-materialist theme) it seems easier and cheaper to rent when you need it, or share tools with friends (splitting costs etc.)

[eclipsedeyes.livejournal.com]

I really love this track, it's quite haunting and whenever I stop playing it I have the urge to play it again. And I'll have to be honest and say I haven't really listened repeatedly to any of your other music.

Also I am astounded at people who jump on others for the terrible crime of showing any hope at all in the political system or politicians. I stopped taking seriously the suggestion that left and right have become identical options the moment Kevin Rudd came to power in Australia. It may seem that way, but there is a very fundamental difference in values behind the seemingly interchangeable policy positions, and hope has always been the only way out of this mess.

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this.
I honestly have never heard the original before.
I feel like hanging up my third eye.

Why am I thinking of Mouldy Old Dough (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bFGfIAJRvo)?

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

NO! EVEN THOUGH I SUPPORT HIM TALKING ABOUT HIM IN MY LJ WOULD BE SO FUCKING BORING, NOT ALL AMERICANS ARE ALIKE ;______________;

Obamarama

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

Well, I like it better than the original! (It makes me feel more than a little queasy/uneasy, much like the American electoral process itself.) If only Obama could use it as his campaign theme... Perhaps a cover of Alice Cooper's "Elected" is coming next?

By the way, I'm wondering if Momus might be interested in a Tenori-on in his mobile recording studio:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/04/tenori-on-the-n.html#more

murder

[(Anonymous)]

why don't you post the original candidate demo whose drums you took for this toss so that people can see just how murderous your version is? and why do you sound like you're lying in a hospital bed doing an impression of neil tennant in a hospital bed?

jeremy

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

Good stuff.

now, as an encore, how about a cover of 'the laughing gnome' ;-) ?!

Re: murder

[imomus.livejournal.com]

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Re: murder or change

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

Nic's anemia completely changes the originals feelings of imminent nostalgia.
It's a sweet thing!

[http://p3r.net/nf/ (from livejournal.com)]

Great recording Momus. It starts to remind a bit of Gainsbourg when the lower growly voice comes in - a good thing! Very catchy.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Obama is the new Chuck Norris.

[dignified-devil.livejournal.com]

I actually like your version better, it's funny having not really listened to Bowie in years, hearing this it reminds that he has so much to mine. When I was a music journalist I got to the point where I received so much emo it caused me to break out in hives (and bad reviews), but the melancholy of your rendition does capture that peculair sensation of being stuck with two parties and little way out. That feeling of being subjected to a political system with little choice and choices that have a tendency to bear more relation to the prisoner's dilema than desire. BTW your intellectual subjects in your prolific journalistic output has exceeded the confines of my little world by a large shot. Ahh... well maybe when that new Bruno Latour edited book on democrary comes to me...

Regarding Obama:

“If the left were ‘reasonable’ it would be satisfied with vulgarizing economic and finacial mechanisms… Instead, they keep talking about ‘ideology.’ Ideology has no importance here: what matters is the organization of power, i.e. the way in which desire is already in the economic, the way libido invests the economic, haunts the economic and fosters the political form of repression.”

“[Ideology] It’s a perfect way to ignore how desire works on the infrastructure, invests it, belongs to it, and how desire thereby organizes power: it organizes the system of repression… We’re saying: there is no ideology, the concept itself is an illusion.”
-Delueze, Desert Islands

I'm a little more optimistic, Mr. Obama at least knows the structure of the power in the U.S., and his idealism makes his desire run counter-clockwise to it, but if he will prevail? Who knows. At the very least taken the fact that the U.S. currently exists in a near perfect creation of the chicago school of economics, he might be able to ya know... get the fed to pay for some social programs etc.

[dignified-devil.livejournal.com]

I love posting these things and then realizing all the grammatical errors I just made. =)

-
A

[(Anonymous)]

[jemly.livejournal.com]

yes, one of my favorite songs ......

[jemly.livejournal.com]

this is why we are 'friends'.

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

just declare peace

Great!

[(Anonymous)]

Great!
really great! Cowbells and children!

Over and Over and Over Again

[stjamesdawson.livejournal.com]

Absolutely addictive; I must have listened to this 10 times in a row. And that's after taking 10 minutes waiting for the thing to load. (Some of us still have dial-up service.)

[(Anonymous)]

Understated nice one