Friday 3 October 2014

A Dead Horse (#Cassetteboy)

Just to prove how far ahead I am, here's an article I did for The List last year about this week's trending magicians...

And I owned The Parker Tapes long before anyone else. 

The plunderphonic approach to composition – the process of making tracks purely from edited samples – questions the authority of copyright, reconstructs familiar sounds to reveal hidden meanings, and shares an aesthetic with the anarchist appropriation of logos as a form of protest against capitalism.

From Cassetteboy’s first release, The Parker Tapes, this serious tradition was subverted by crude mockery of UK TV celebrities, toilet humour and snatches of absurdist comedy. Latterly, they have become minor YouTube stars, hacking up political speeches – or Sir Alan Sugar’s pompous lectures from The Apprentice – into darkly satirical mash-ups.

The duo remain anonymous, possibly for legal reasons. ‘We don’t use our real names or show our faces. We’ll appear in public but you won’t know who we are, or even if it is really us. We’ve done gigs with other people in the masks.’ And although their mixture of sardonic humour, anarchic fun and bouts of skilled mixology ought to be ideal for the Fringe, they have taken their time. ‘We have wanted to do it for years, but until recently we felt we didn’t have a show that would work,’ they say. ‘But in the last year or so we have developed a disco show: we play pop hits and mash them up with clips off the TV.’

The show includes old ally DJ Rubbish – a UK rapper who enjoys a healthy rant – and Cassetteboy promise ‘something you can laugh and dance and drink at – all at the same time’. Having already pilloried Jamie Oliver, Jeremy Clarkson and ‘taking on the ultimate challenge, making The Crazy Frog worse’, they are ready to go beyond their bursts of two minute mash-up genius to invent the performance art disco comedy show.



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