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Birdy Nam Nam

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I've been listening to the Birdy Nam Nam album (by the group of the same name).

The music is perhaps best described as being part of the sub-genre of Hip-Hop called Turntablism and, though I had heard of people composing basically "original" pieces of music that had little to do with the vinyl being played using several turntables, this is the first time that I've seen it.

So far, I'm not nearly as blown away with the audio as the videos that I saw, simply because the music is good enough and meshes well enough that it sounds like electronic music produced in any other way. Part of the joy of watching videos of them is seeing what they're physically doing with the records. But after getting over my disappointment of not being able to see them perform the tracks, the music is quite good. Some tracks are kind of reminiscent of Nightmares On Wax.

You'll notice a white mark on their records -- that allows them to cue the record to a particular spot quickly without having to listen on their headphones. The slider that they're twiddling with their other hand is a fader, which would usually be used to fade between two turntables. Since they each only have one turntable, the slider is being used here as a volume control.

A live recording of a track called Absesses (track 15 on the album):

A more "studio" version, which I like less, but makes it easier to see what they're doing

I'd be really interested to hear what the original records sounded like, to see how different (if at all) they were from the final performance.

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