tumblinerb: Mellowhype f/ Bass Drum Of Death - “64” (Some TV...

By :Anwar Washington 0 comments

Mellowhype f/ Bass Drum Of Death - “64” (Some TV Show, 2011)

Mellowhype on some network I’ve never heard of performing alongside some band I’ve never heard of. The song is titled “64” but we people of the internet had been calling it “Surveillance.” When they performed this song - to a beat played off a laptop - in Philly it tore down the whole room and probably the entire planet. I sincerely cannot remember the last time I was so instantly impressed by a live premiere of a rap song. But here, backed by drum and guitar duo Bass Drum Of Dearth, it feels a lot less monumental. Hodgy’s comes off but the instrumental does no justice to his raps or the original studio production. Mere humans cannot recreate Left Brain’s finely synthetic laptop beats. This has long been my complaint about most live band rap - A bass guitar doesn’t bang like a synth bassline, a real life kick drum will never be an 808 kick. This impossibility of translation is especially noticeable when bands interpret sparser rap productions like this one (or when The Roots tackled “Sandwitches” on Fallon) The function of empty space is altered when wrapped around different timbres. If a live band is going to cover a synth rap beat they can’t just replay it note for note, they need to adjust the arrangement accordingly. Here is an amateur punk reimagining of Tyler’s “Tina” that manages to do a significantly better job of translating Odd Future’s energy, even though it basically sucks by all other empirical standards.

Noodle limp (nhjic) drums or not, it’s nice to finally have a full length, audible clip of “64.” I can now stop rewinding the last 30 seconds of that one Youtube clip where Left Brain steals an Arizona.

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