Check out some previously unreleased Elliott Smith songs
Hey, sadbro. Are you about to hit the clubs hard but don't want to stop listening to Either/Or? You're in luck. Check out these previously unreleased dance tracks recorded by Elliott Smith as part of Mike Doughty's UUL project.
Doughty had referred to the recordings in an earlier interview with Pitchfork:
"He was in L.A. for some reason. He said, "Oh, I'm doing this thing for this movie." That's what he said and it was Good Will Hunting... He downplayed it. He was kind of like, "Ehh, I can't believe I'm doing this thing." But I think he was just cool kids-ing it. You know, because he thought I'd be like, "Oh, that's so lame, dude. It's a fucking movie." But I wouldn't have said anything like that ever.
But anyway, so I just wanted to do something with him. I didn't wanna do something- you know, a rock collaboration would always end up just somebody doing a backing vocal and you'd be like, "Yeah, well, if you listen really closely, you can hear J Mascis." Whereas in hip-hop music- first of all, I have to say, we don't claim that we were running in hip-hop circles; it was just my obsession- someone would come in and do a verse. They would have their own part of the song.
So I was trying to figure out how to do this and what we ended up doing was he just came down to the studio and sat in front of a binaural head. A binaural head- I don't know if they look different now, but in the late 90s they were grey foam sculptures of a human head with a bone structure and a brow and a nose on it for facial features, with two specialized microphones in each earhole, and when you would listen back to it, it would just be an incredibly realistic stereo effect. really like if you record a street scene and if you close your eyes and have headphones on, you would seem submerged in the street scene. So we sat in down in front of this ludicrous device and he sang two songs, and the idea was I was gonna figure something to do over it and I didn't have anything good, but I have these a cappella versions. I wish I knew where I put them...
Check out the strange dance tracks below:
It's like "Let's Dance To Joy Division" without being insufferable.