Neil Cicierega

Has there ever been an online semi-celebrity more ubiquitous than this guy? The man's the creator of a good half-dozen big-time internet memes, none of which have anything to do with each other (so it's not like he's just repeating prior successes over and over). Maybe I'm overstating this, but his animutations (which he quit at the age of 15!) paved the way for Tim and Eric (who are a decade older) to do the things they do, and it even feels like some of the more out-there modern advertising takes a cue or two from Neil. He did the whole 80's and 90's nostalgia thing before everyone else did (see: "Ultimate Showdown" or that real creepy Rugrats video). He wound up with TWO songs on Rock Band for totally different reasons. His BRODYQUEST video gets played on G4 from time to time. He made the awesomely bizarre "Windows 95 Tips" tumblr (http://windows95tips.com/) that I see people linking to all over the place. He was responsible for "Potter Puppet Pals", which I recall at one time being the 10th most viewed video on Youtube. He runs a highly entertaining tumblr for himself and tweets a bunch too. Plus he's released like 10 albums worth of his own music; maybe he's not a great musician, but his songwriting is surprisingly solid. So which is it? Multitalented phenom with a keen eye for going viral, or just another weird kid that got some momentum??

i've never heard of this person tbh

LEMON DEMON

Not to mention my personal favorite, "What's Dylan Grillin'?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UivcJ2VdhfA

He's like a Phil Spector figure-- he's behind the curtains

tbh I'm surprised that some ad company hasn't snapped him up for a stupidly high dollar amount (didn't Tim and Eric make a bunch of cash this way?); he seems to have his finger on the pulse of whatever it is that make people want to watch things over and over. its like if all the stuff that comes out of 4chan or SomethingAwful came from one dude

I dig Lemon Demon too - I don't really listen to the albums but each one of them has 3 or 4 songs that I'll just loop endlessly

haha I didn't know this guy did the windows 95 tips thing.

Neil's "Mouth Sounds" is probably the best mash-up album I've ever heard (at least, the funniest), everyone should download this now

http://www.neilcic.com/mouthsounds/

kind of a low bar but this is one of the first I've wanted to listen to more than once

and now there is a follow up "Mouth Silence" and it's even more brilliant

http://www.neilcic.com/mouthsilence/

if you're between the ages of say 22-35 you will probably geek out hard on this

mixing "Closer" by NIN with "Love Rollercoaster" is so freakin' brilliant. I hope he just does this shit forever

also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4cGqu2_GQQ

Mouth Sounds is probably my straight-up album of the year for 2014; I love it SO much. Mouth Silence isn't quite as fun, but Crocodile Chop may be his single best production ever (although the "Float On"/"All-Star" thing at the beginning of Mouth Sounds is a close second).

I would seriously put Mouth Sounds on the same level as Gimix or Night Ripper or any of the Radio Soulwax mixes. it's seriously as good a long-form example of the mashup phenomenon as anyone's ever likely to do.

Soulwax maybe, IMO this stuff is way more enjoyable than Girl Talk, it's busier, funnier, a little sharper, and tbh I'm kind of sick of "classic rock instrumental + modern edgy hip-hop vocal". I agree that "Crocodile Chop" is one of the best, along with "Smooth Flow" - like on paper these are horrible ideas that should never do but they combine to make something totally awesome and strange that hits an area you would never hear outside of a mashup. "Float On" and "All-Star" is less surprising but I'm still in awe of how great it works. In fact I can't even remember what the actual backing music of "All Star" sounds like anymore.

also I kinda disagree that Mouth Sounds is more fun - it's definitely funnier but Mouth Silence is a lot crazier and more original (I'm pretty sure there's some original synth stuff in there), plus a lot of the mixes are really busy. I'm on my fourth listen and I'm finding tons of new things every time. Also I really dig the subtle nod to "All Star" in the cover art

Love Shack + Bernard Herrmann is incredible

wow at orgonon gurlz

(also the Bowie numbers station)

i can't even listen to this at work, it makes me laugh too hard. "Scuse me, while I kiss this *fox*"

I think I've listened to Mouth Silence a dozen times now and I keep discovering new things to love about it, not only is it a great mix but there are so many really, really funny moments in it

The "Low Rider" bit has been stuck in my head forever. Man oh man is this great.

"Life can be a challenge. It's never easy when there's so much on the line. But you and I can make a difference. Just look inside, and you will find the Pokemon"

By the way, here's some neat "Mouth Silence" trivia:

All the songs "created by" dates are the day that "All Star" came out
The Bowie "numbers station" track spells out "SMASH MOUTH" in unicode
The ID3 tags in each track have a single letter in the notes which form a hidden message when you sort the tracks alphabetically - "SOMUCH2DOSOMUCH2SEE"
Halfway through "Piss" there is some morse code which spells out "Somebody once told me"
And the coup de grace - speed up the album by 1999% (the year of "All Star") and you get this:
https://soundcloud.com/saxonxvi/hey-now

I'm sure there's more; there's probably something in "Numbers" and a bit of "Love Psych" that sounds like it might form something on the spectrogram?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjS3hxPiEts

I cannot believe how much stuff is snuck into this. The scene where they go into the video game Nick Arcade style is pretty freakin amazing

Very good. I especially like all of the gag cabinet art, e.g. "Mel Gibson: The Game".

This new Lemon Demon album is like a much more fun Ariel Pink. I actually love this on first listen. Will have to check out solo stuff.

yeah it's awesome

mouth silence is tremendous, anyone know how he manages to get all of these isolated tracks? is it a piece of software? is there a massive popular songs stem library i don't know about?

he said he got a lot of things from guitar hero iirc

the name cicierega is a secret you might hear a snatch of whistling through the internet. I had no idea there was one guy behind so many things I had been smitten with for years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdyU_gW6WE

^^^^ man I sent that to EVERYONE last Halloween. so damn good

I sent this one around a lot too (as it's so damn relevant) without knowing it was him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOqb_UzJSUQ

and yeah - almost all his mashup stuff is from Guitar Hero or Rock Band which I guess you can get in a massive torrent somewhere. I do remember him talking about some trick where if you have the instrumental version of a song you can do some kind of negative on it against the original and isolate the vocal somewhat, I know he made some stuff that way a while back.

Just listened to his two mashup albums. They're exceptional. 'Born to Cat' had me in hysterics :D

"cuze me, while I kiss this fox"

I'm Ronald Reagan, baby

where the hell have I been re: this dude

lmao @ "Brodyquest 2.0" (live!!!)

https://youtu.be/bYntxw5wRuc?t=2510

I love his gothy Carpenters/Soundgarden mashup. It's such a perfect combination, you could almost imagine it being an original song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzKDmS0zAPo

Spirit Phone is all I want to listen to lately. Previous LD albums had a few tunes that knocked it out of the park but here it's like...every single song.

Yar

You probably started this thread on the wrong board btw. Actually it should be on about 5 simultaneous boards. Like Kasparov

oh yeah definitely. not sure why I started this on ILM. oh well.

but yeah listening to this over and over I am definitely hearing more Sparks than anything. like outside of Kimono My House I can't think of another album at the moment that's just one insanely catchy song after another like this. I guess for most people it'll be a total overload but this is the kind of thing I've been waiting a long time for.

Happy 30th, btw! Disgusting amount of achievement in his teens and 20s. What's next?

kind of a low key tune on the album but this is my favorite song of the year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E280s6NpdYg

it's crazy how the songs you overlook at first end up just being the best things

'man-made object' is pretty much my favourite thing on this now, except they all are really

http://neilcic.com/mouthmoods/

back at it again with a 3rd mashup album

I'm only a third of the way through and already "Floor Corn", "AC/VC", and "Revolution #5" had me laughing like an idiot (though the last one is like, the dumbest joke ever)

In fact I'll say thus far it's even better than the first two. which is saying something.

The rule with this guy seems to be that if he's kinda quiet for any period of time, he's up to something

omg

I don't want to spoil anything but a particular mashup pretty early on has made my day

i am so thrilled

he loves to work!

him&his wife ming doyle also work hard at being an aggressively cute couple

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/reyW1WPJm04/maxresdefault.jpg

sorry i'm totally blanking right now and it's driving me crazy - what is the source of the piano backing track on AC/VC?

vanessa carlton "a thousand miles"

ahhhhhhhhhhh that's it

gotta say I do appreciate how he doesn't use the opportunity to show off his taste and his music collection like so many other mash-up artists do. if 90% of this stuff wasn't instantly recognizable it wouldn't work.

I don't want to spoil anything but a particular mashup pretty early on has made my day

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's "Floor Corn"

when I saw this on Twitter someone commented on that particular mashup and I was like, "there's no way he can make that work"

"annoyed grunt" is a masterpiece

jesus christ @ the "what a fool believes"/"in the end" mashup

my only complaint is that he threw in "Bustin'" which is both old and one of my least faves

pfft imo bustin' makes me feel good

Let me tell ya somethin'

Sleepin' makes me feel good

i ain't scared of no bed

man im looking fwd to listening to this

this is alright but i liked it better when i accidentally had it playing off-sync in two different tabs at the same time

"T.I.M.E." is probably the only time a song has gone from "this is incredibly stupid" to making the hairs raise on the back of my neck

IT'S THE EYE OF THE TIGER IT'S THE THRILL OF THE TIGER RISING UP TO THE TIGER OF OUR TIGER

they're grrrrrreat!

I wish "T.I.M.E." had come out in time for tracks voting

All I wanna do is
d'oh! d'oh! d'oh! d'oh!
and a
yeah, baby!
and take your money

MIA and Mario Paint were made to go together.

lol this is now #1 for 2017 on the RYM chart

fuckin' right on

the 'Wonderwall' one starts off like something from Limmy's soundcloud page, which I mean in a positive way

never heard of this guy

oh, I bet you have

AC/VC is killing me

I'm impressed that most of the mashups make me laugh in the first ten seconds but he sees the concept all the way through rather than making into a pure punchline. AC/VC works surprisingly well, for example. Never heard his other albums

So many tigers, it happens to tigers

How do you explain Tim Allen?

Man, "Mysterious Ticking Noise" is almost ten years old.

The beginning of Wow Wow feels like the pinnacle of mashups

"wow wow" is an incredible jam

yeah I'm definitely slotting that, "Bustin", and "Shit" into my party playlist

just about killed myself laughing at ac/vc

Wallspin really does my head in. It's practically an aural illusion. Amazing that he managed to ruin this song twice.

Seriously. And both times amazingly

lol I just realized he changed "Jim West" to "Jim Dress" on "Wow Wow"

Would say btw - average quality maybe higher than Mouth Silence, jury out on whether he's bested Crocodile Chop or Born To Cat

i think ac/vc is my favourite ever neil cicieraga mashup, competing with crocodile chop and mullet with butterfly wings

JC/VC is all the more impressive for not seeming to need a ton of processing to make it work

er AC/VC

Someone tweeted him showing that that mash-up had already been done (probably not as well but)

i now think 'annoyed grunt' might have bested everything else

Man, "Mysterious Ticking Noise" is almost ten years old.

I remember watching "Hyakugojyuuichi" in middle school like fifteen yrs ago

yeah NC was in middle school too p much

He talks about his childhood here. Says that he basically spent all of homeschool making games and animations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB7fqT1uAII

I remember watching "Hyakugojyuuichi" in middle school like fifteen yrs ago

when I found out that this was the same guy who'd done brodyquest who was also the mash up guy it blew my mind

the interstitial stills on that powerpoint are amazing

I wanna
really really really really
really really really really
really really really really
really really really really
really really really wanna zig-a-zig-ah

This is fun

T.I.M.E. actually has some interesting comments on Youtube. The top thread is about the function of the All Star sample at the end. A commenter thinks it undercuts the emotion of the song, whereas Neil chimes in and says that it was meant to "return to the memeverse gently".

lol canyon.mid @ the end

Holy fuck @ T.I.M.E.

whoa, I totally forgot about the bonus tracks on Spirit Phone, some of these are incredible

This guy gives me the fucking creeps and everything of his that I've seen and heard is pervasively smug and/or deeply unfunny. I think the only reason I partially liked Spirit Phone for like a week was because it was a particularly dry spell for vaguely-Cardiacsy-pop-prog-whatever.

TIME is so good

And yeah, sorry to be 'that guy' but I had to get that off my chest.

I feel much better now, please continue!

Why does he give you the creeps?

they found so many scorpions inside his lungs
when he died

xp I don't even know, honestly, there's just something about this guy that makes me want to bolt; almost definitely has more to do with me than him but I stand by everything else.

sleek affectless preternaturally gifted internet machine. he is the uncanny valley, almost human but not quite

this is Hell

he's a freaky man baby

ok finally got around to listening to the rest of this and wow @ T.I.M.E.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh2NZWBvfWI

this is kind of the perfect Neil tune

it's good. interesting to hear him make a full dance-music workout

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hQkj2GXZS4

What is this tomfoolery?? I am here to watch The English Patient!!

I think this Cicierega-inspired mashup is actually an improvement on "ACVC"

He made a pretty cool Twitter account

https://twitter.com/EndlessJeopardy

http://neilcic.com/mouthmisc/

some outtakes from the mashup albums. a lot of it is unfinished and/or doesn't really work, but there's still some entertaining stuff here. "Sit on You" particularly

'Don't' is the jewel in that crown imo

(and 'Avril', yes obv)

couldn't tell if "Don't" was brilliant or one of the worst things ever made honestly

XTC reference in "Avril" made me laugh a lot

"Who" is pretty fun too

Mouth Dreams out in a few hours. BEST!

definitely saving this one for Friday night. I'm afraid the track titles themselves will be spoilers

yes!!!

I needed this

we all needed this

lol nice to see all the comments on RYM and Soundcloud so far are AHHH FUCK WHAT

yahooooooooooo

yahoooooooooooooooooooooo

there's one near the end that is beyond all things

each of these is ruining my life in a different way

neil and demi are the only good things on the internet, so glad they both returned with gifts this month

and i *do* wanna miss a thing

i don't want to spoil much more of this for others but my brain absolutely split in half during one of the tracks in the latter half of this, guess which one

as usual these are getting progressively more illegal

"10,000 spoons" is a hit

tbh extending the riff on my own worst enemy is the thing that made me laugh the hardest on the whole record

can't believe I'm watching the Milwaukee Brewers instead of listening to this rn

well, that and "bells"

"Just a Baby", fuuuuuck

"bells" otm

this is so fucking good lol

it's going in my eoy ballot

ewok nookie works better than it should

omfg @ "ribs"

this is destroying me

SLEEPING WITH THE GLOVES ONNNNNN

lmao this fucking guy

holy fucking shit at whatever the track 29 minutes in is called

"10,000 spoons" is a hit

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Thursday, 1 October 2020 02:55 (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is the one i was talking about

Hmm not sure I'll be able to listen to my favorite-ever song again without thinking about the gd Chili's song

inspector gadget
payless shoes
death

is it just me or are the sample sources more obscure on average than before

bells

This Fine Young Cannibals/THX sound mix is genuinely beautiful

Ribs almost killed me

yes i was amazed that he was capable of making another "t.i.m.e." xp

I lost my shit when I realized it was Fine Young Cannibals

10,000 Spoons is absolute fire. Album is EOY material for sure.

I don't know if I like this as much as Mouth Moods - maybe it's just my sense that there are more tracks that are just two songs mashed up as opposed to 5 or more. When it comes to Cicieraga I crave madness as much as I crave cleverness and I detect slightly less madness this time. (it's still great, obviously.)

When Closer started I thought 'oh yes!' and when the vocals came in I thought 'oh no ;_;' - two listens and it may have ruined the original for me already. two thumbs up for the rest of it though.

What's the backing track for Folsom Prison Blues?

The illustrious Hoobastank

oooooh shit.

Now I'm stuck in baby prison

I need to listen to the Alanis/Knight Rider one again

oh my god

SPONGEBOB
SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

I am not ready for this

I just got to "Fredhammer" and I REALLY am not ready for this

hah probably gonna go through this today or tomorrow now that the Milwaukee Brewers have been eliminated

bells

I don't want to leave spoilers on the thread but holy shit @ "Closerflies"

that's the one that split my brain in half

one half of which was crying for death and the other half of which was like "hahahaha yesss an abomination unto the earth is born"

I'm hyperventilating at "Whitehouse"

this starts out so strong, I can't believe it gets STRONGER as it goes

I have decided that I really need to befriend Neil Cicierega

bells

okay gonna throw this on in a bit should I liveblog y/n

holy fuck this is WRONG

ok "Sleepin'" nearly made me choke with laughter

can we forget about the CLOTHES I had when I was SLEEP
I didn't mean to SLEEP WITH MY CLOTHES ON

look into these eyes
then you'll see the size
of these eyes

the fukin Seinfeld! !! what the fuc!!

Chili's segment was the highlight for me

are you fucking kidding with this

I listened to Sounds & Silence maybe once each back in the day, had a laugh and that was it, forget about them soon after and wasn't aware of Moods. Have been listening to them all again and god damn there's so much here. Part of the appeal is the sheer variety of effect - there's bad jokes (Monty Python/Bon Jovi), good jokes (Ghostbusters), sound collages, 'how the hell did he get away with that' moments (Oasis/Dead or Alive), car crashes you can't look away from (REM/Billy Joel), insane things that shouldn't work as well as they do (Love Psych), classic mashups where the instrumentals or vocals or both are transformed and elevated (too many to mention) and moments of pure transcendence (T.I.M.E.)

I think that does Silence a disservice, but his pure mixing skills and ambition have definitely deepened with each album. Sounds is quite clearly the worst one at any rate.

Excited for everyone discovering him! Hopefully they'll all end up checking out Spirit Phone too...

btw if you thought that I wasn't voting for 10,000 Spoons in the EOYs, you thought wrong

idk if this is the best one yet but it's definitely the funniest. the way he rearranges the lyrics on so many of these songs just kills me. idk of any other mashup artist who makes it sound this seamless

also wanna say parts of this album are absolutely CURSED

"wah" to the ending is pure gold. well, "brithoven" is just a goof, but everything else, gold.

yeah "Wah" made me lose my mind

at the end I was thinking "I hope this transitions into Feel Good Inc" and my man delivered

The genre is listed as "Dream."

lmao at this comment

Pee Wee Inc is what you'd think Insane Clown Posse would sound like if you'd never heard of Insane Clown Posse

oh lmao I just got the joke on "Ribs"

ohhhh

is it about the marilyn manson story?

marilyn manson had several ribs removed so he could smell his own knees

Bands you keep trying to like but can't get into

have tried a lot this week, but the fact is, i prefer Girl Talk over this fella.
guess i just hate jokes.

Girl Talk? I haven't heard that name in years

this isn't as good as the last one imo

still v good tho

I think Girl Talk & Neil Cicierega are aiming for totally different things

i.e. NC is about the jokes that i just don't care enough about to get ?

or, am i missing another level to NC ?

(i have never enjoyed joke filled/humorous music - so this is not specific to NC)

idk, either you think this is funny or you don't
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdyU_gW6WE

but that's just an overly aggressive edit as opposed to a proper bootleg !?
and no, not a single chuckle throughout.
guess i really am a humourless f#cker.
hey ho.

but that's just an overly aggressive edit as opposed to a proper bootleg !?

but?

sleepin' makes me feel good

this intricate edit is an intricate edit, I call shenanigans

guess i just hate jokes.

― mark e,

this game is not over.
i will continue this pursuit of enjoyment another time.

I think the funniest thing on this album is 1:38 on "Fredhammer" that final pitched-down "yeah" idk why but that kind of shit always makes me crack up

I don't think you need to worry about forcing yourself to like it if it's not your thing. I've always had an affinity for slapstick humor that takes the air out of self-serious cultural touchstones — Looney Tunes, Weird Al, etc. Obviously you might like those things and not like Neil Cicierega, but that's just what I get out of it personally.

yeah I'm terrible at explaining why anything is funny much less something like "if you're all alone...let me sleep in your bed"

I'm just in awe of his editing skills. Like, "Yahoo" is legit great to listen to.

freaky ghost bed

Yeah his editing skills are legitimately amazing. He has a track called “Don’t” which didn’t make any of the albums, an incredibly cursed mashup of “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Homies” by ICP. At the end he has a bit where it sounds like Steve Perry is singing “Homies! Homies!” to the Don’t Stop Believing hook...I have no clue how he managed to do that. Like even with Mouth Sounds it wasn’t so much “put All Star in everything” as much as it was him making brand new tunes out of it. Idk anyone else who does it like he does.

He has a track called “Don’t” which didn’t make any of the albums, an incredibly cursed mashup of “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Homies” by ICP

i had somehow missed this

my life is now complete

yeah that one is something

this guy has completely ruined the song "Wonderwall"

I remember once meeting Neil C. at a Harry Potter convention, and he was so happy to have someone not talk his ear off about Potter Puppet Pals, but instead about Lemon Demon (or more specifically, the opening riff to "Action Movie Hero Boy").

I followed this guy religiously when I was in high school, not only do I own multiple Lemon Demon CDs I also guest wrote a comic for Farchie Archie. and yet it somehow snuck under my radar that he had made one of the top 10 most viewed YouTube videos of all time (at least it was top 10 when I found it...I assume it's been demolished by two dozen Justin Bieber videos since)