Project 17: Army of Me
We decided that we’d pick one song that everyone would have to cover. So we submitted song suggestions, voted, and Army of Me by Bjork won. So each contributor created their own rendition of it and a range of cool idea emerged. Check it out below!
Tom Stromsodt
“Uff Da”
Hadley plays some violin.
Andrew Charon
This was an unusual song for me to cover. It’s not that I don’t like Bjork but I just never really been obsessed with her and haven’t spent much time with this song or with her in general. Many people who I’ve known have had some pretty bad experiences with Bjork in some way....in the capacity that when they think of her they think of this time of their life when things were a bit of a mess. Respectfully I didn’t want to bring up those emotions by listening to Bjork.
Initially, I was going to take the approach of “what would godHeadSilo” do? But the EMG pick-up in my bass needed a new 9-volt battery. I got a little impatient and changed my approach with the dueling distorted guitar tracks. The last track I did for “The Wall” was a nice experimentation with harmonics but I was going for a fuller sound. It’s been fun playing guitar and trying to do some sort of metal/Floyd type of approach.
It’s a bit of a challenge for me to play guitar. I’ve never felt like I’ve been all that great at it and it’s difficult for me to play live consistently without messing up. My mind wanders. So, GarageBand has been a nice solution for me to get creative with my recording. I like to think that it makes me sound like a better guitar player than I actually am. GarageBand is really quite nice for what I want to do. And, I record backwards in the sense that I record my guitar clean and apply effects after as it gives me a bit more flexibility and control.
Kelly Duclos
Have you ever heard "Perfect" by MJ Lenderman and Wednesday? It is fantastic. I heard it in my car on Radio K one day in late May and was able to Shazam it in time to find out who it was. It has that downstroke that you'll hear my man Lou B do on early Sebadoh stuff. That was the original inspiration for my Army of Me cover. I got the chords from a guitar tabs app and found them to be nothing close to what you hear on the original Bjork recording but I was happy with how they somehow worked with the downstroke approach. If I would have learned the song by ear only, I would have never arrived at these chords. I also took some long overdue days off from work and temporarily transplanted my gear to a tiny room not far away from home where I was able to make a ton of noise for the past couple weeks (see pic). Mixing and "mastering" were still done in the basement though ;) It is super fun to be a part of this project! Thanks, KD
Jeff Kearns
Almost didn't do this one but glad I did.
Looking forward to hearing everybody's version.
Cheers,
Jeff
Photo by Andrew Charon
Noah Warren
This endeavor sent me directly into pitch purgatory. I don't think I ever left. Yowza! I listened to Bjork's track a few times and then forgot about it, proceeding to make a series of accidents that I then shaped into what you are hearing now.
When I was in middle school I had a bus driver who used to play our local 90's alternative rock station (93.7 KEGE at the time? Don't quote me). There were many rides home where I'd hear The Violent Femmes' "Add It Up" radio edit where the F-word was replaced with the bray of a goat. Somehow that made the song more diabolical to me. In service of that 90's memory, I wanted some barn animals in this cover. I was working on an iPad so I randomly dumped in a bunch of animal noises and used my apple pencil to make a pretty picture with all of the various elements on the timeline. I broke up a loon call and looped it and then realized I'm dangerously treading into Soul Coughing territory without a map. Oh well, at least I'm keeping it 90's! It was a fun exercise.
Ian Royal
My cover is a pretty straight-forward, pop-rock version. Firstly, let it be known that I'm of the record-until-you-get-the-best-take-and-then-copy-that-take school of producing. I work with Ableton Live 10 and a Focusrite Saffire Pro interface. I programmed the drums (Urgitone Kvlt Drums II: Seattle 91) first. I then recorded the bassline (Charvel San Dimas PJIV, di-ed from Boss Katana Bass 110). Main guitar came next (Fender Mustang, also di-ed, but clean, from bass amp into Guitar Rig 5). I did one distorted track and one reverb-y. To add some extra texture, I did kind of a droney, panning thing with my Epiphone Les Paul. Guitar solo done the Mustang, but placed into the droney/panning track(Waves' Doppler), with a similar, albeit one octave lower, version on its own track). Then I used a stock woodblock and chord stab (+ wah guitar stab) for those parts. Vocals, done last, and never my strong point, especially when most of it is, like, "sing-talking". I used a pitch corrector(Graillon 2) in the song's Cm key and Waves' OVox for the second part of the chorus. Throw Live's Meaty Analog Master on the main and call it a day.
Keith Bohnen
well this is a thing. i did about two hours of icelandic language pronunciation lessons on youtube so im sure this wont pass for anything resembling native and theres bound to be a plethora of errors for anyone checking but bjork did it in english so i figured id give it a go in icelandic.
Bill Fricke
Almost didn’t get to participate as I was in the middle of moving and all my stuff was in disarray for a long time. I had ideas of doing this as my alter-ego Spjork!, which is a long story. I used to be in an online forum for the Current when it first started.
Along the way, there were a group of us who were very active and creative. Somehow, in all the stories and made up crap we did, we hit upon Spjork! We created a “Behind the Music” thread and his story was born. He was Icelandic, a shepherd, and had a varied musical career spanning Folk, Psychedelia, Punk, etc. Kind of like Walk Hard.
Some of his famous songs were “Even Cows Have Eyebrows”, “Nyquil Dreams”, and “I Wanna Be Your Picnic”.
There is a video for I Wanna Be Your Picnic and Gary Numan’s Metal on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHTKRs92V-I
Anyhoo, it didn’t pan out for this and Spjork! Was sidelined
So, I downloaded the “chords” for AoM from the webs and tried different things. I’m pretty sure they are not the right chords, but it was a good jumping off point. Eventually I decided to make it a happy sounding song, changing it from minor to major and make it poppy and shiny with a jaunty beat.
Photo by Andrew Charon
Tal Tahir
I doubled the time and rocked it up. Kept it lean and mean (emphasis on mean) with just drums, bass and vocals. Oh and a couple of the actual samples used in the song from Zero-G DATAFILE 3.
Shoutout to our very own Grant Eull for mastering help!
Photo by Andrew Charon
Grant Eull
It was decided by the collective that Army Of Me was the song and I realized soon after resistance was futile. In my early sound exploration stages I became frustrated with an exhausted search for Bjork like synth tones; never finding anything even close (but coming across TONS of other great sounds). I got distracted easily… I also realized that singing this one would be an issue as well.
I had to destroy myself and build a new version of me to accomplish this song using a new approach. As I said, resistance was futile so I embraced some cyborg creativity and got to work. With an arsenal of VST and hardware synths at my disposal and it was time to succumb to the dark side. The result is a much more distanced version from the original, but something my OMIEM cyborg alter ego finds favorable. Honored as always to be included in these challenges. Enjoy - human.
KC McKee
Just some production notes: this recording features drums, electric bass, electric guitar, piano, violin, viola, mellotron, bass synth, and vocals (which i recorded in roughly that order). All parts were recorded in a single *live* take and are otherwise unedited.
Neil Fasen
I had no idea what to do for this song. I was certainly outside of my wheelhouse. I just tried to mess with the original riff, slow it down, and mess with it to sound like a different mode. Not sure I succeeded, but it was fun to mess around with this one.
Photo by Andrew Charon