Popcorn Double Feature...

Gershon Kingsley - Popcorn

Caustic Window - Popcorn

With the imminent attack on the charts from that little green bugger Crazy Frog again, this time with a teenie bopper club mix by numbers version of Popcorn I thought I'd get a post I'd been thinking of doing for a while out of the way... before I'm completely sick to death of hearing the melody with some naked tiny willied frog riding round on an invisible bike.... but at least he kept Coldplay off number one for a while, so he can't be all that bad eh!... can he?

The first track is the original version from 1971 that was more famously covered the following year by the one hit wonder Stan Free who was more commonly known as Hot Butter.

Gershon Kingsley first started mucking about with electronic instruments and tape splicing in the mid 60's with his main collaborator being the strange genius that is Jean Jacques Perrey and together they released their first album The In Sound from Way Out in 1966.
For the recording of their second album they drafted in a certain Robert Moog who they got to build a couple of instruments for them... and hey presto, the first ever record to feature a Moog keyboard - Spotlight on the Moog.
Then there was a bit of argy bargy (not really) and they stopped working together going their separate ways... Perrey going further out and more experimental, and Kingsley ended up playing Carnegie Hall with a Moog Orchestra... which Popcorn was written for.
It's quite a bit different from the Hot Butter Version... and if someone can tell me what the hell the guitarist is playing in the left speaker I'd be eternally grateful...
Kind of.


Now, if I was still DJ'ing and someone came up and asked for "that mix of Popcorn thing" then the Caustic Window version is the one I would play....
Caustic Window is of course yet another in a very long line of aliases that Richard D. James (better known as Aphex Twin) has used over the years.
This version can be found on the Joyrex J4 EP released back in 1992, and good luck finding it as is with so many of his releases this was deleted after a short run and you'll have to sell your uncles plastic hip, pacemaker and vintage Mercedes to afford it nowadays.

This track is not quite as mad as you'd expect from our Richard, in fact I reckon it would have taken him about 5 minutes to do... the beats are pretty normal, just a little more shuffly than the Hot Butter version he uses, and the only other thing that stands out is all the EQing sweeps, but it's still a million times better than that bloody frog.


Buy - Perrey, Kingsley - The Out Sound from Way In! The Complete Vanguard Recordings
Buy - Gershon Kingsley - Music to Moog By
Buy - Hot Butter - Popcorn (best of)
Buy - Caustic Window - Compilation
Visit - Gershon Kingsley
Visit - Jean Jacques Perrey
Visit - Aphex Twin @ Wikipedia

Simon
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