Left Hand Suzuki Method (Music Video Version)
"Art expresses man"
- Shinichi Suzuki
Of all the singles from Gorillaz debut album, "19/2000" contains the strangest b-sides. One of the two b-sides is "'Left Hand Suzuki Method". Originally titled "Exhumation", this track is one of the strangest and most "avant-garde" tracks in the Gorillaz library, experimenting with trip hop, no wave, dub, classical music and foreign language spoken word poetry. The song is also the first song where the character of Noodle (Miho Hatori) takes complete control over the vocals.
On your first listen, it's hard to exactly pin point what the track is going for. It starts with the sound of someone lighting and smoking a bong followed by eerie synths. Kid Koala plays one of his classic manipulated vocal samples ("feel the impact") and the song is off. The song is based off a drum sample of Muddy Waters' blues classic "Mannish Boy" which is doubled by drummer Jason Cox, this gives the song a breakbeat vibe similar to that of another Dan The Automator project, Handsome Boy Modeling School. The song is crowded by various sounds, Damon's electric guitar sneaks up on the downbeat and Junior Dan (nicknamed "Left Hand Dan", which is where part of this song's title comes from) provides a rhythmic basis with his bass guitar and various cartoon noises, ragtime pianos, synths and "orchestration" creep in and out of the track. The track even sometimes takes a moment to have a violin solo, courtesy of a sample of Thomas Haynes Bayly's "Long, Long Ago". The track seems to have been done in classic DJ style, meaning all the instrumentation was looped and Dan The Automator and Kid Koala pulled all the loops in and out of the track at various times to make a complete instrumental beat. The only constant throughout the 5 minute epic is Miho Hatori's vocals.
Miho Hatori talks over the first 3 minutes of the track, only taking a couple brief breaks for the track's violin solos. She goes from Japanese to English seemingly at will, however there is a structure to it. Miho is talking about the teachings of accomplished musician Sinchi Suzuki. Sinchi Suzuki taught that anyone could play music through listening to music and figuring out parts by ear without learning music theory or being able to read sheet music. This method was called the "Suzuki Method". Miho Hatori uses the song to sum up Suzuki's teachings, saying her lines in Japanese first then English. Not counting repeats, this is what she states throughout the song in little Noodle's broken English: "The most important is listening, the recording of the music. It makes them get, um, musical sense and, uh, that's the point of past progress. And also, everyday, every lesson, we have to make sure they learn about tonalization." After Noodle delivers her lecture, the song slowly builds from the drums and bass by themselves, to all of Damon's overdubs coming back. It's as if Dan The Automator is showing the listener how he built the track up, teaching through example.
"Left Hand Suzuki Method" was considered for inclusion on the band's first record, showing up on early unmastered mixes of the band's record. Being a track that was completely sung by another character in the band and not 2D probably played a lot in it's favor. However the track did not end up on the final version of the album, possibly because it was too strange and experimental along side the album's other tracks. The track eventually came out as a b side in a heavily edited 3 minute version which faded out before another violin solo, a repeat of Miho's vocals and Dan The Automator's outro. "Left Hand Suzuki Method" was eventually given a music video in 2006 called "Monk's Montage" which paired the song with various animations from the band's second album, "Demon Days". "Left Hand Suzuki Method" is one of the band's most daring tracks and is deserved of more recognition.
No comments:
Post a Comment