Here’s a really quick one I submitted to whosampled.com recently:
In 2002 American lounge/triphop-duo Thievery Corporation released their album The Richest Man in Babylon. On it is the instrumental track Resolution. Around the same time another American triphop band named Etro Anime is making a small name for itself, though their effort seems to mainly spark interest in the Netherlands. One of its members, Liset Alea (who doesn’t even have a wiki-page), left the group to go solo.
When finally she releases an album in 2005, it’s on the Dutch branch of EMI music. It’s titled No Sleep after the title track and first single No Sleep. It’s produced by Yoad Nova, who also did work for the likes of the Sugababes (among others involved on Freak Like Me, which has been mentioned here before), Bryan Adams and Sophe Ellis-Bextor. Right from the beginning of the song, what do we hear? Thievery Corperation – Resolution:
Halfway through the Seventies, Gary Numan formed the band Tubeway Army, which would later change its name to simply Gary Numan. In 1979 a track they released as a single would become a massive hit: Are Friends Electric? As a result, the track has later been covered by countless bands who were inspired by the synhtpop track, such as Republica (which features Gary Numan’s vocals), Moloko, Information Society and even Weezer. There is however also a track that takes its cues from the original in a rather bizarre history. To track that back we need to jump back a bit.
In 1995 Adina Howard released the song Freak Like Me. That song itself is almost worth an entry since it leans heavily on Bootsy Collins 1976 song I’d Rather Be With You, without actually directly sampling it. What the Adina Howard song did sample was a drumloop from Sly and the Family Stone’s 1968 song Sing A Simple Song.
In the early years of the 21st century, producer/remixer Richard X made a mashup of Are Friends Electric by Tubeway Army and Freak Like Me by Adina Howard. The song circled the underground bootleg scene for a while. At some point either cause Richard X wanted to release the song officially but couldn’t get the sample from Adina Howard cleared or cause Island Records requested it (history is not clear on this one), Richard X got involved in something that can only be described as a mashup-sample-cover-remix. Richard X produced a song for the Sugababes in 2002. The then popular girl-group recorded the vocals of Freak Like Me, but on top of a remix with samples of Are Friends Electric. The result is amazing: Sugababes – Freak Like Me.
