Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Better Than Ezra, "Je Ne M'en Souviens Pas"

Well, to start things off, the title doesn't really matter, there is very little vocals and is in English and has nothing to do with anything French.

The song begins with the introduction which has a drum beat exclusively on the snare drum with some voice effect that almost sounds like it's being played on pots with a synthesizer single line melody.

After a few measures of the drum beat kicks in with an extremely funky with lots of hi hat open hits and active syncopated snare drum. The synthesizer part is the only part that establishes chords with a line that has an eighth rest followed by five dotted eighth notes on do-re-mi-fa-sol of each chord and some light bass in the beginnings of measures that are extremely hard to hear. Then a vocal line gets added over it, but the voices are so distorted that I can't tell what it is being said. I can tell it's the same words every other measure with a measure of no voices inbetween. maybe it's the title french phrase. The next voice added to the texture is the flute. The flute lies low in this part just outlining some chords in the begginning part.

The vocals then change to a distorted talking voice, something about the singers girlfriend of something. The drums stay the same, and this and the bass part is all that remains. The rest of the texture comes back in with the talking distorted voice with a little singing with the original vocal line. Then the vocals go out and there is actual "rap" part with clear lyrics. It mentions Paris so I guess that is the title. After this the vocals become distorted again and the texture falls to just the bass line and this eventually dies away.

The drums then come back like they did in the beginning with a much more active bass. Then comes the vibe solo, which is cool. It is very sparse but provides good melodic movement and becomes more involved and interacts well with the original vocal line that comes back. The vibe line takes the background and a new vocal line is added with a new singing line that is distorted with one of those distortions that makes it sound alike another really high voice singing.

The drums fall away again but all of the other parts keep going. There is a constant feel of time but no pure steadiness of rhythm which gives a really cool sound. The flute solo at this part becomes really active too. And to end the song, the voice is distorted in a way it sounds like an insect and dies away.

It is quite weird and all that, but has a really good beat and some good combinations of musical timbres.

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