Bands/records with non-human musicians

There's a metal band with a parrot as its vocalist, right?

What? Where can I hear them?!??!?!??

Best thread ever.

http://www.myspace.com/beak666

Grindcore band with two pitbulls on vocals

It's possible these are just made up but I don't want to let the dream die just yet.

There's that Pink Floyd with the dog on vocals... no, I don't mean Roger Waters

Yeah, saw some of that documentary.

Saw the syd bits, the next couple albums seem interesting enough, but that dog was "OK, I have something else to do now, prob, right?" time.

I knew they had problems replacing Syd but...

yeah, but seamus was right on the note for the "whoooooooo" bits of "Astronomy Domine"

I've just been informed the parrot metal band is called Hatebeak. I am listening to them right now. It is err... interesting.

(xp) Marvellous how he was able to reproduce Syd's guitar parts in such a short space of time, still none of the songs he submitted as singles were up to Syd's standards... better than Roger Waters' songs of course

http://www.shoutmouth.com/index.php/images/der/L3Zhci93d3cvc2l0ZXMvbWVkaWEuc2hvdXRtb3V0aC5jb20vaHRtbC9kZXJpdnMvNmQyNTliYjM4MzY4MjlhODIyYWM2NTIzYzA2YzliNjQtNDAzODQ4Yjc2NGNiY2JkZDVjMGNkZmIzNmM0NTljMDEuanBn.jpg

Isn't that a Judas Priest album in the background?

Trayce, the link I pasted upthread is for Hatebeak's Myspace page.

Oops sorry T, didn't spot that.

That's no parrot

The guys from Satisfact had a side-project where his backing musicians were programmed robots... I am struggling to remember the name. It was pretty cool.

There's that guy who uses plants to make music, Michael Prime? Must away and google...

Alright, Hatebeak needs to become ILM's official band RIGHT NOW. Somebody lease write a desert island blurb on Beak of Putrefaction

There's also this (a band called "Captured by Robots"), but that's not the band I was thinking of:

New York Times piece on CAPTURED BY ROBOTS

Waldo the parrot says, "All false metal beware."

Actually, I'm sure I read that something suggesting that Waldo was dead. RIP.

Finally figured it out!

They were called OCTANT, and it was Matt Steinke from Satisfact with a robot drummer. Their album, "shock-no-par," had a bunch of videos on it - it looked pretty cool.

http://psychevanhetfolk.homestead.com/files/elephant.jpg

http://psychevanhetfolk.homestead.com/files/elephonic_rhapsodies.jpg

Hatebeak actually did a split 7" with Caninus (the metal band fronted by two pitbulls)

Of course, I've just now realized I ignored part of the thread; these *are* all programmed machines :(

or are they?

http://psychevanhetfolk.homestead.com/files/animalmusic.jpg

There was a great ILM post about albums featuring instruments played by the wind. Aeolian harps, Alan Lamb and his telegraph cable recordings and some dude who put 50 guitars standing on some dune in southern Spain, great stuff.

Has anyone ever tried to teach chimpanzees to play musical instruments? If they can learn sign language, surely they can be taught to play the chords for "Blitzkrieg Bop"?

There's that album with an Elephant with a beatle wig on. Can't find it, so far...

Why do people always think Ramones songs have few chords? Wrong! (xp)

I suspect some non-humans have provided harmonies on 'Trout Mask Replica'

Beefheart: "John Coltrane hasn't done anything because no man can play the scales like the armadillo."

You mean this one?

http://www.showandtellmusic.com/images/galleries/gallery%20a/whatsnext.jpg

I doubt those elephants actually play on the album though.

(xxx-post)

This thread is amazing.

Do Gorillaz count?

That's no parrot
-- Tom D

Oh c'mon Tom, no need to turn all so John Cleese on us !

Anyhows, there was also that dog'rchestra that barked an albumful of mad Beatles covers at us... Wot were they called again?

Yeah, there's a bunch of those discs (like "Jinglecats") where somebody sampled a cat's meow and then plugged it into a Casio SK-1 to play Xmas Carols. They go from faintly amusing to make-you-want-to-claw-your-ears-off within about 8 seconds.

Chris Watson's field recordings are fascinating, somebody on here or more likely noize board dropped this track a couple of years ago which he made by mic-ing up the inside of a zebra carcass and then recording the vultures eating it.

Should've warned those of you at work that that link is quite noisy.

The Beatle Barkers.

Q: "What do you call a dog with Wings?"
A: "Linda McCartney"

... I once saw a guy from Moody Blues tell this joke as an example of how badly Linda McCartney was treated by the music business

... sorry, free-associating there

Yeah, there's a bunch of those discs (like "Jinglecats") where somebody sampled a cat's meow and then plugged it into a Casio SK-1 to play Xmas Carols. They go from faintly amusing to make-you-want-to-claw-your-ears-off within about 8 seconds.

I don't think stuff like this or the Medieval pig organ counts, because it's humans playing animals as instruments, not animals doing the music themselves.

Though of course the line of who is playing what is sometimes hard to draw.

No one has said Hongroe yet? Noodle vague is slipping!!

I think one of the guys from the metal band with the parrot is in Pig Destroyer now .

Jordi Valls (Vagina Dentata Organ) made his "Music For Hashishins" album in 1983 using the bark of rabid dogs. Tangentially related, "Un Chien Catalan" features the engine of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle ridden for an hour around Salvador Dali's estate in Cadaques.

Both terrible and a waste of vinyl

Is the motorbike rider the musician, though?

Also every time this thread happens I mention Mira Calix and her insecty-noise pieces which I like a lot.

Virtually any field recording features non-human musicians, in some sense.

Brian Eno's written computer hoonja-doonjas that write or play music, I'd be surprised if he was the first or only person to do it.

"what's that bird with Wings that can't sing?" etc

also Guiness Book of British Hit Singles used to have things like

"footnote 2: Ray Stevens does not appear as US male vocalist on this track but as a group of chickens"

Heh heh. I'd never heard that joke till that bloke from the Moody Blues helpfully pointed it out.

still waiting for Haile's debut album

http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~gilwein/Jamaa.jpg

PUPPETS are non-human. sort of. pinky & perky, zig & zag, that irish turkey. then there's the archies, gorillaz etc.

i guess this isn't where the thread should be going tho. eh?

Puppetmastaz!

Sorry to shatter your dreams, but the music on records by puppets or cartoons isn't really made by puppets or cartoons.

YOU LIE

what is this 'really' you speak of?

Amazing... Not as cool as any of the above, but there was also the "Joe Jones Tone Deaf Music Co" who I knew from their part on Yoko's "Fly". As a mild diversion I followed the Googletrail to HERE, then jumped to searching for audio evidence of the singing dog, which, much to my disappointment, is now classified as a hoax...

elephants (mentioned but not identified at top of thread):

http://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Orchestra-David-Soldier-Richard/dp/B00005B19H

dragonflies:

http://www.sublimefrequencies.com/item.asp?Item_id=15

Posted images of a coupla those elephant albums mid-thread

There are lots and lots and lots of field recording of animals (and weather, and so on) out there. Whether you want to call them music or not is really up to you.

I think the idea of non-human "musicians" raises interesting questions about the nature of music. To be, the most simplest definition of music has always been that music is a set of sounds organized to make an aesthetic impression. But what if the organization of sounds is (at least partially) "decided" by an animal, or the wind, or a random noise generator in a computer? The sounds produced this way can still make an aesthetic impression in someone (like the elephant record mentioned in the first post made in me before I knew it was made by elephants), but is this sound "music"?

In the elephant case you can at least argue that the instruments they play were built by humans to produce a certain type of sound, but what about sounds like birdsong? Are they music if they're put on record?

I guess the easiest solution would be to reverse the equation: if someone feels some set of sounds is music, then it is.

http://classweb.dctc.mnscu.edu/20053/VCOM268591/BLANCCHRI/animal.gif

Maxime De La Rochefoucauld - Automates Ki
"SEDENTARY OR NOMADIC? Canadian composer Maxime Rioux, aka Maxime De La Rochefoucauld, creates music with his mechanical orchestra of self-built automatons that is not so much polyrhythmic as polygravitational. With his mechanical orchestra of self-built automatons, he creates a theatrical performance/installation of soulful sound makers using ultra low frequency (inaudible) waves generated by an analogue synthesizer. The automatons are a whimsical mix of recognizable musical instruments and the booty of many garage sales: an assortment of bottles, thread spools, corks and bits of metal. www.maximerioux.com"

lolz hatebeak. I totally forgot about that band.

That Thai Elephant Orchestra (Elephonic Rhapsodies) is awesome up until the part where people start playing with them. Seemed kinda intrusive and really toppled the magic.

I guess the easiest solution would be to reverse the equation: if someone feels some set of sounds is music, then it is.

-- Tuomas, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 8:33 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

Pretty much a brief summary of how I feel. Of all the dumb and lazy criticisms spoken about music I've always thought that "this isn't even music" write-off was roughly the dumbest and laziest. And if this kinda thought was reserved only for the "out" spectrum of music I'd be a little less disappointed in a lot of people but amazingly that's not the case.

ohhh I've been awake for 26+ hours, I go awayyy now... x_X