"Sounds for the Space-Set" (RIAA)

I mentioned RIAA's Sounds for the Space-Set, a free, downloadable 22-song album, in my earlier post on mashups--at which time I'd heard only one song from it, "Intergalactic Centerfold."

I've listened to it all now.
20 times or so.
Wowie Kazowie.
This is brilliant, brilliant stuff.

Those mashups I mentioned earlier were songs. The tracks on Sounds for the Space-Set are songs, social commentary, stand-up routines (their musical sense of humor ranks up there with early Ween, TMBG, and the Flaming Lips), and more. If music and pop culture have any sacred cows left, RIAA's grinding them up into half-beef, half-Moog patties. Witness:

*The somber vocal from "Space Oddity" over the bouncy music from "Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)"

*Music from Cosmos mashed with the Star Trek theme and Ella Fitzgerald singing "Out of Nowhere"

*The vocal to the original "Why Does the Sun Shine?" ("The sun is a mass of incandescent gas...") mashed with Earth, Wind & Fire's "Shining Star"

*Sinatra's "Fly Me To The Moon" with Portishead's lead singer plaintively bursting in at intervals with "Wandering Star"

*The instrumental to "Walking in Space" from Hair mashed with Eric B. and Rakim's "Follow the Leader" and something identified as "old-time radio" called "Planet Man"

*Additional bits from Serge Gainsbourg, Justin Timberlake, Vangelis, Celine Dion, Fatboy Slim, Kraftwerk, J-Kwon, Sun Ra, and a man obsessively, repeatedly asking, "What if the robots are SPIES?"

Highly, highly recommended. RIAA has a whole page of free albums I've yet to thoroughly listen to. Two non-Space-Set songs I've loved so far are Guantanelievable (#6)--"Guantanamera" with EMF's "Unbelievable"--and "Johnny SKAsh" (same link, #12): Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" with, I kid you not, Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk." Heaven on a stick.