Songs that became famous because of a system glitch

I've listened to the X-cetra a few times now (here's the full album)... I'm typically skeptical of this kind of thing, but I gotta admit this is the "real deal."

Someone should email the producer guy and ask how it came together, etc.

yeah, couple more listens+i really like a few songs. album is short, but gets better as it goes along. fascinating!

So, if I write a song called "how swift was my Taylor?" and become pka "the 1989”, well...

xxp

looks like Achim Treu submitted some of it for the WFMU 365 Days project way back in 2003...

https://wfmu.org/365/2003/233.shtml

X-Cetra - Conversation/Idiotic/Wasn't There

X-Cetra is a group of sparkely-eyed young girls (very young - aged 10 to 12 at the time of this recording) from Northern California. Actually they had dreamed of becoming a girl group. Unfortunately the music they were given to work with was supplied from the archives of their avantgarde-music-loving hippy papa Don Campau. They tried their best to make catchy pop tunes out of this material, but the end results remain rather bizarre nonetheless. Dark, strange passages made oddly endearing by the sweetness of the girls' voices and the youth of their lyrics. I'm afraid they're never going to hit the Top 40, but maybe the Top 40 of musical oddities.

- Achim Treu"

That's interesting; I wonder what "backing tracks by Achim Treu" means, if he didn't "supply" the music...

Here's Don's site, someone should shoot him an email:https://doncampau.com/

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/x-cetra/stardust/

slioganach Jun 24 2020

i think the response that most of have upon learning about the existence of this album is generally something like "what in god's name is this and why does it sound like that?" i tend to fall into these kinds of rabbit holes pretty often, but they don't usually lead anywhere. this time, to my surprise, things turned out a bit differently.

the archive.org page which GenevieveGilliam links to unfortunately yields no answers about the strangeness of this title apart from one credit: the production responsibilities were apparently handled by someone named robin o'brien. i took it upon myself to trawl the web for musicians who went by this name and, after a bit of digging, was able to find someone whose profile fit the bill: lived in the right area, was around the appropriate age, had a background in music and was at least somewhat prominent in the local music scene. So I sent her an email.

to my surprise (and delight), she responded almost immediately and confirmed that she was in fact the person who produced the record! i explained that it's developed a bit of a cult following online and that people in certain pockets of the internet were simultaneously charmed and a little confused by it. i'm not going to provide any personal details as i feel that would be inappropriate, but here's what happened:

in 2000, ms. o'brien's daughters (ages nine and eleven) and two of their friends had begun to write songs and were interested in recording some of them. ms. o'brien is an experienced producer and, as such, decided to fulfill their wishes on her personal 4 track reel to reel. a friend of hers had coincidentally sent her a series of what she describes as trip-hop tracks, fully mixed, that she was free to do whatever she wanted with, and elected to use them as instrumentals. she said that she played with the tonality a bit and added some guitar work, but apart from that didn't put a ton of work into the project. the only quote from the email that i'll share word-for-word is her conclusion: "The girls gave their hearts to this guileless work. It was a joy to make."

so if you were listening to this thinking that it would have some kind of traumatic backstory, that some greedy man threw money at his children to make himself richer a la philosophy of the world, you were (thankfully!) wrong: in fact, the opposite seems to be the case. it's music written by children and realized by way of a particularly loving, creative parent.

That's a nice find, thx (funny how everyone keeps talking about the album sounding strange or bizarre... it really doesn't, to me at least)

yeah the shaggs is a bit of a misnomer, it's more like dam funk's "adolescent funk" or something like that. it's pretty sophisticated for some children with just a few flat notes and some shaggy dog melodies (the best bit imo).

i just think it's quite sweet and charming really. a bit like if the protagonists from PEN15 made an album for a school project (with their idm german exchange teacher)

i kind of want "matthew"-era kool keith to come do a guest verse on "idiotic" (panned hard-right)

xp Exactly - it's kind of remarkable they were so young; the lyrics & vox are fairly "accomplished."

(The 2000 date, and that CD-R cover, obv imbue it with a certain Y2K-nostalgia haze that makes for a great hook)

yeah that and especially the charlie's angels pose on their spotify artist photo is pretty period pitch-perfect

linee i was thinking, but didn't wanna say it out loud, "this sounds like dr dooom" on a couple of the beats!! that's where the confusion lies for me: one doesn't normally expect to hear earnestly harmonizing young girls accompanied by, at times, such menacing music.

and i mean, the polyrhythmic textures on the song i posted above are, like... uhh also not what i'd expect to hear on, well, most pop records tbh.

kudos for the info. i'll say it again: all music is folk music.

+re:shaggs comparison-
meant more like a descriptir of context, rather than sound: "obscure lofi girl group" and whatnot.

*descriptor

especially the charlie's angels pose on their spotify

Haha, I didn’t realize they had a Spotify profile (with pics and full bio)… after all this scouring of Discogs / YouTube comments, etc. The link to the Numero Group IG acct is promising

last week i got a paypal receipt for a payment to apple - i think for my monthly apple tv+ subscription - that contains this line:

Seller
Apple Services
http://itunes.com/bill

that url goes to a band from eastern europe called “bill” in the iTunes store, which i didn’t even think existed anymore

funny, i downloaded this from the 365 project back in 2004– hadn’t thought about it for years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6FVlmWaoQI

Katya Lel - Мой Мармеладный (Я Не Права)

that's a jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2DLrhb-078

фрози - bounce (i just wanna dance)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1V68qgiLIo

Tanin Jazz - Virtual Love