SOUNDTRACK: CARRTOONS, KAELIN ELLIS, KIEFER AND THE KOUNT-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #229 (June 28, 2021).
This is one of the more unusual Tiny Desk Concerts that I’ve seen. Essentially the NPR team asked these musicians to make remixes of NPR theme music. I haven’t heard of any of the musicians before, but I gather they are well known and regarded.
Over the past year and some change, beatmakers Carrtoons, Kaelin Ellis, Kiefer, and The Kount took to social media individually and often collaboratively to cook up productions, often resulting in viral moments and never-seen-before glimpses into their creative process. As we continue to celebrate 50 years of NPR, Tiny Desk was determined to take part. To honor the iconic themes from our news programs, we asked these four producers to come up with their own spin on the All Things Considered theme (written by Don Voegeli) the Morning Edition theme and the theme for Weekend Edition (both written by B.J. Leiderman).
The blurb describes them as beatmakers. I don’t know what that means exactly (in my mind it has nothing to do with instruments), but for this set, each guy plays an instrument or two. Clockwise from the bottom left Kaelin Ellis: drums, The Kount: percussion, Kiefer: piano, keyboards and Carrtoons: bass.
Most of the themes are under 30 seconds, so it’s interesting to hear them stretched out. It’s also interesting that they didn’t simply play the theme and them jam it. each one uses a part of the theme, but the songs go in very different directions. The addition of bass and drums certainly changes the sound, as does their new jazzier feel.
“All Things Considered (Remix by Carrtoons)” Kiefer plays a variant of the original (quite similar) and then plays a kind of staccato piano like the news urgency music. I like the way those original eight notes keep returning. This new song is all of 1 minute long.
“Morning Edition (Remix by Kaelin Ellis)” This one sounds really different with an intro (lots of bass and drums). It’s not until the middle that the jazzy chords reveal themselves as the Morning Edition melody. I feel like you can’t hear all that much percussion on these tracks although the bongos are audible here. and I like the little cymbals near the end. This song is about two minutes,
“Weekend Edition (Remix by Kiefer)” I like that this one opens with that iconic ascending melody, but dissipates smoothly. It’s also interesting that the middle melody is still there, only stretched out. Kaelin’s drums are pretty great on this track and Carrtoons’ bass is pivotal throughout.
[READ: June 1, 2021] The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone
S. read book three in this series, not realizing it was book 3. She then read the books in reverse order, ending with this one.
Well, I decided to read them in the correct order. And while I haven’t read 2 or 3 yet, book 1 was fantastic. I loved everything about this book–the plot, the illustrations and especially the writing style
Jaclyn Moriarty has created a hilarious and thoughtful young narrator and the ways in which she has to deal with adults makes for some very funny scenes indeed.
The premise is that Bronte Mettlestone is ten years old and has just found out that her parents were killed by pirates. She’s not really that upset though because she never knew them. They abandoned her at the doorstep of an aunt when she was just a baby. They were adventurers and couldn’t be tied down by a child.
The humor comes right away, with the announcement that Bronte’s parents were killed. They receive a telegram which says that they were “taken out by cannon fire.” Aunt Isabelle is furious about that phrase. Could they not have chosen a less flippant turn of phrase?
So Bronte was raised by her aunt Isabelle with help from The Butler. They see that her parents will says that Bronte must take a series of trips, by herself to visit all of her other aunts and give them each a present (the present is included with the will). The details of the trip are spelled out in very specific detail–how long she is to stay with each Aunt and how to get from one to the next. To make things worse, the will has been sealed wit faery stitching, which means if she doesn’t do what the will says, there will be terrible consequences. Essentially Bronte must follow these rules exactly or OR PEOPLE COULD DIE!
So obviously this is world where magic exists, although Bronte herself has had little exposure to magic. She says the only thing she knows about magic comes from the book The History of the Kingdoms and Empires.
There are two types of magic that are worked by thread. There was bright thread which was used by True Mages like Faeries and elves and water sprites. Then there was shadow thread used by dark Mages like witches and Sterling Silver Foxes. The third kind was binding thread which Spellbinders used to stop Shadow Magic from doing its work. Initially the thread was real, but now they can do their magic with imaginary thread. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 