Tag: Familiar Sounds

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Familiar Sounds

Elastica vs. The Stranglers

I have an informal, constantly updated list of potential soundalikes that need to be covered. Experiencing an unplanned early morning wake up today, I made a cup of tea and put a record on. ’twasn’t long before my eyes went wide and I looked for the nearest hard surface to bonk my head against. HOW could I have missed including this? 

Um, yes, so – ‘Waking Up’ by Elastica aka ‘Story of My Life’ is more than slightly fond of ‘No More Heroes’ by The Stranglers – but perhaps you already knew this.

 

Listen, and have yourself a merry Britpop morning because I know I’m enjoying mine.
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Familiar Sounds

Oceansize vs. Pearl Jam

Perhaps Oceansize picked their name off a certain Pearl Jam song and perhaps they were worried no one would know this and so felt compelled to insert 45 seconds of  ‘Oceans’ into ‘Saturday Morning Breakfast Show’

 

If you don’t think so, you obviously haven’t pressed play yet.

 

Many, several thanks to my talented shoegaze soulmate Talha for sharing. Dig his MySpace, there are nice sounds on it.
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Familiar Sounds

Nirvana vs. The Front

This was a tricky one to put together – sift through weeks of Facebook feeds to find the name of the track, track down the track, have track refuse to cooperate with Audacity, Google for help, mess about with bitrate, samplerate and assorted other rates, finally get sounds and sound-editor to make friends, and finally – here you go:

A warm welcome to returning guests Nirvana who feature this time with the even more iconic ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Its similarity to the chorus of ‘U-Mass’ by the Pixies has been documented but I’m not getting into that. No, this is something I discovered thanks to a cluey friend on the book of faces. I had never heard of The Front before and I certainly had never heard ‘Sunshine Girl’. Or had I?

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Familiar Sounds

Spiritualized vs. Pachelbel

So Pachelbel‘s Canon in D Minor has a chord progression so standard it’s been used as the base for a million pop songs and one scathing stand-up sketch. By ‘it’ I mean the chord progression and not the canon itself. No, the canon itself has only been used as the base for one song (that I know of) and that one song is the sublime ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’. Give it up for Spiritualized. 

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Familiar Sounds

The Stone Roses vs. Primal Scream

a.k.a. the Battle of the Titans (or something substantially less cliche).

 

The brilliantly dark ‘Made of Stone’ off the frequently considered best album of the decade/century/ever – The Stone Roses – lifts its chorus from the jangly little C86 alumnus Primal Scream‘s ‘Velocity Girl’ 

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Familiar Sounds

The Voices vs. Neil Young

Many, many thanks to Jaguar over at Air Atlantic Radio for bringing this one to my attention. If you’re like me and dig Gazer Fare, you’ll dig this station – it knows its stuff.

 

The Voices are truly a great band. But hahaha, The Voices, did you think you’d be able to get away with sanding down Neil Young‘s ‘After The Gold Rush’ and painting it a shade of ‘Goodbye’?

 

You could, actually. Blasphemy alert: I prefer the newer song.

 

 

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Familiar Sounds

A Place To Bury Strangers vs. The Cure

They’re one of my very favourite bands, but I like how APTBS are the first repeat ‘offenders’ on here. Why? Because when you look at their, er, ‘sound graph’ on Audacity, all you see is one thick, steady blue line. It’s great. Anyway, thanks go out to Eric for making me aware of how much ‘Keep Slipping Away’ sounds like The Cure‘s ‘The Baby Screams.’ 

 

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Familiar Sounds

Monkey 3 vs. Stone In Egypt

I’m no metalhead, but fortunately other people are (thanks, other people!) and even more fortunately I am clever enough to recognise the over-extended similarity between Monkey 3‘s ‘Xub’ and Stone in Egypt‘s ‘Katmandu Dreampiece’. Makes me a fan of both bands, though – enjoy the sameness.
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Familiar Sounds

UNKLE vs. Erik Satie

Here’s a soothing one featuring M. Yorke once again. The video is spectacular, yes, but more to the point, UNKLE‘s ‘Rabbit in Your Headlights’ is carried by the same keys that form the basis of Erik Satie‘s ‘Gymnopédie No. 1’
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Familiar Sounds

Radiohead vs. Kula Shaker

Dear god, Radiohead, can you do nothing right? 

At the time of recording one of your albums – was it In Rainbows? – you claimed to have been so worried about it leaking that you disguised the master copies by naming them something you believed unstealable – you gave us an example: ‘Kula Shaker demos’, was it? (yes it was) 

Well this’d all be very well and good – characteristically pretentious and head-up-bum-like, but easily overlookable – if it wasn’t for one small thing. 

You sound just like them. 

So I suppose the answer to my initial question is no.

 

Here’s a snippet from ‘Faust Arp’ pitted against the close of ‘Hollow Man (part 2)’ – I had to insert a second of silence to keep them from blending into each other.