SONG: “Bathysphere” (cover) (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant. Originally by SMOG, although I first heard the cover by Cat Power (scroll down for mp3s of both).
SOURCE: This is another penitential cover version – penance for a late original song. It’s not specifically sourced to any new discoveries, although it does kind of follow the theme of the late song, “Mesonychoteuthis Hamiltonii”.
ABSTRACT:
I love this song, in part because when I was seven, I, too, wanted to live in a bathysphere. My father never actually told me I couldn’t swim, and this site is pretty much a testament to the fact that I very nearly became a marine biologist. If it wasn’t for figuring out that damn DNA replication….
Anyway, this is a fine lo-fi song. I recorded it with the usual host of unusual instruments – the first thing you hear is a loop of a ukulele being played like a percussion instrument with a wooden flute that happened to be lying around (a hammered uke? whatever.). Then there’s electric guitar and sampled drums from Led Zeppelin. And behind the choruses, a hulusi (surprisingly clarinet-like) and a touchtone phone dropped two octaves. It’s playing the number 5.