HorseVision 11 (2025)
In an interview with nina protocol, the Swedish duo HorseVision declare themselves to be “too vanilla” to be part of the experimental genre, but when you listen to them, their playful attitude towards making music quickly becomes apparent. In tune with that playfulness, “11”, like many of their songs, features a sampled track: “We [...] use sampling as a way to showcase our inspirations, to pay homage,” the duo explains to nina protocol.
Sampling, as laid out in a previous newsletter edition, goes way back: At the very latest, it became a fixture in popular music when the underlying technique of musique concrète was taken up by the Beatles in their song "Tomorrow Never Knows" in 1966.
Ever since then, the practice of sampling and referencing other artists’ creations has remained hugely popular, resulting in a wonderfully connected web of the Who’s Who across genres and decades. So, in the spirit of this notion, let’s see where we end up when playfully (wink wink) connecting artists through the practice of sampling if we start with HorseVision:
Our featured track "11" samples M.I.A.'s "Bad Girl”. Just like HorseVision and the other artists in this chain, M.I.A. of course offers a variety of paths to go down, considering all the music she’s sampled in her discography—but let’s stick with her hit track "Paper Planes", which samples The Clash ("Straight to Hell"). The Clash, naturally, has also woven quite a few web strands: On their debut album, for example, they cover "Police and Thieves" by legendary reggae singer Junior Murvin, but alter the song to include a reference to the Ramones (“Blitzkrieg Bop”), who themselves sampled "I'm Henry the VIII, I am" by Herman's Hermits. And Herman’s Hermits, founded in the 1960s, offer a wonderful note to end this on (pun intended): One of their songs samples "Taxman" by the Beatles, released on the same album as Tomorrow Never Knows.
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