R: [Rumori] Thrift store recordings

Nicola Battista djbatman at olografix.org
Fri Feb 18 13:57:52 PST 2005


Squier:
>I've been wondering--has anyone known something like
>this to have actually happened? I'm certainly aware
>that there have been plenty of artists (music, film,
>etc) who have seen their material turn up in others'
>work but can anyone relate a story of someone
...

hmm... I think I only know of artist-related stories, in a way...
I have a couple of examples in electronic music; and another involving
literature, a movie by Dario Argento's daughter... and my sister.

1) in 1997 I was looking for tracks for a compilation by a label called
1997 Now! ...the label wasted two years of my life without releasing the
disc :/ ...by the way one of the artists I was in contact with for this
comp was a dutch guy called Moonchild, who used to make synthetic
instrumentals/new age stuff with spacey sounds. The guy was very scared
about sending demos around... and at a certain point he told me this was
because he had sent some of his tracks to a label, and someone at a
certain point released this music under different titles and artist. 

2) still during that period, I got a vinyl promo from Swedish artists
Gizmo. At a certain point I even acquired all copies of a UK release for
the same tracks, since their UK label had printed them already but then
had stored them in a warehouse and cancelled the release. This also
happened in 1997-98. In the following years that promo was sent to
different places, and at a certain point 1997 Now! Sent it to Soul
Trade, which was a potential music publisher to work with. Nothing was
ever signed with Soul Trade, but in the meantime they had sent a promo
to some agency working with tv commercials. 4 years later or so I think
I heard a bit of that music in a Lysoform commercial. One of my friends
also recognized the music. 1997 Now had disbanded and Soul Trade never
got anything from that... and so the artists. Nobody knows how that
music ended up in that commercial.

3) my sister (www.annabattista.net) is a writer, translator, literary
agent; she once wrote a few stories centred about rave music, drugs,
hallucinations/visions and stuff like that. One of these won a literary
prize, mentioned Ketamine (Special K) i.e. a drug used for horses (or by
people who really wanna get stoned bad...) and ended up with a mystic
vision. A few years ago Asia Argento (actress/director and daughter or
director Dario Argento) made a movie about an actress who fell in love
with a singer (this is partially based on her true life) that mentioned
drugs (particularly Ketamine at a certain point) and ended up also with
a mystic vision. Now this would of course mean nothing to you, but the
absurd bit was that the main character in the movie is named Anna
Battista like my sister, and this combination of name and surname is not
so frequent in Italy.

Of course the Negativland in a Coke commercial (or better: a sample they
took from a record actually STOLEN from a church) are a well known story
in here. 

I don't remember if it was anyone from this list who, years ago, posted
that a small bit from one of his tracks had surfaced in an officially
released remix of a U2 track... without permission.

Nicola DjB




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