The Politicians feat.McKinley Jackson – The World We Live In

3rd June, 2008 | 86 views

Filed under: 1970s, funk @ 11:42 am

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Music can be such a personal thing, alot of the time your impressions are formed within the first few moments as the sounds cut through the noisy detritus of life to arrest your attention. Other times the subtlety of some tracks need repeated listens before, having initially been dismissed, you appreciate them; this is one of the former. I got handed a mixtape one night back in ’99 when running the bar in Thailand as I used play mixes using my walkman (remember those?) and was dead impressed by it. It mixed psychedelic rock with funk, mostly stuff from the 60s/70s if I recall correctly, excellent transitions between the tracks considering the material. I’m sure I’ve still got it (the guy who gave it to me in Thailand never came back to collect it; I remember when I first put it on, seeing him nodding sagely to it whilst sipping a beer.) but it will be in storage, I’ll definitely put it up on TipTop once retrieved.

It wasn’t until I saw and bought this re-release of the album that it’s from that I found out that it was played at 45rpm and pitched right down on the mixtape! Played at the correct speed it just sounds way too slow and just wrong – my impression was formed from listening to it on the mixtape and I have to listen to it now the same way. I’ve put both versions up here, the first is the original track and the second one was recorded at 45rpm but pitched down 8%; what do you think? Sped up, the bass almost sounds acidic, when I first heard this I thought it was until the track was id’ed, reminds me a little of Jean-Jacques Perrey’s track, “E.V.A.“. There must be whole websites devoted to highlighting tracks that sound either as good or better played the wrong speed and I also recall a compilation album years ago using this as it’s theme. Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of music.