This album is the studio effort of Krantz McCrant, Ella Irwin, and Halwick Diebenthorn. Its title comes from the fact that, on the day of recording, this trio, being in need of a metronome and having saved just enough for an hour and fifteen minutes worth of studio time, made a historic decision: to use the audio of a World Championship Ping Pong Tournament as its metronome, which also helped stretch the total track time to eighty-five minutes of delight.
You will thrill to every kerplunck, swash-slat, foouuoot-chan, and verplinck on this sound-crafted disc. Be sure to check out "Ella's Magical Sax" and "Glottal Stop Clicks and Drum Thumps," both wonderful environmental mixes. Plus, there's the harmonious whistling of the trio in "Good Paddle, Good Paddle, Bad," a treat for the entire family.
And vocals? Yes, there are vocals. Actual songs as the album title suggests? Yes. Be sure to give a listen to "1, 2, 3, Hammer Down" and "Spin It." Here's a bit of my favorite tune on the album, "Egg Timer," which features the round-robin singing of the chorus "Ding ding ding, wind it" infused with mouth-harp, table saw, "kerplunck kerplunck swish," audio from a swim tournament, and the lyrics I love: "I caught you in the parking lot and made you go back to work, ker-plinck."
The "Gong Pong Ping" trilogy, except for its sound-byte overlays and the soft and hard underlay of kerplunking, might give some sort of fulfillment to environmental purists, but truly, this trilogy is a gong-a-licious favorite. Turn it up to hear the hard wave of "ker-bong, ker-bong" interspersed with the softer "kerchan, kerplinck."
And if you didn't get it already, the "song" in the album title concerns the singing of the ping pong, not lyrics, not vocals. Excuse me for glottal clicking.
Got a bootleg & a 5 inch of the demo up on ebay of "Paddle Backs Glottal Plosive," which includes some B side stuff. Me and my friend dig the mouth harp and his brother is really into sample CDs. Wasn't long before we got so into Irwin, who does all the mouth harp stuff and really came up with basically all the songs and the idea and stuff. She's the genius behind the album and never gets the cred for it. Thx for putting this on the list. Really cool that you give the weird stuff the props.
ReplyDeleteHello. "Glottal Stop Clicks and Drum Thumps" played at my best friend's wedding while she puked on the groom's shoes. Her violently loud and sporadic wretching was the perfect complement to the goat-throated trio's perfectly rhythmic (non)vocals. Immensely memorable. Just thought I'd share.
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