Sounds of typewriters in music

the typewriter is an essential element to the overall ambience of the track if i recall. has been a while and they are long those versions .. but i am sure there is a lot of typewriter action within ..

m.e

there's is a song on Position Normal's second album Goodly Time that not only has typewriter sounds in it all the way through but is about a guy with a typewriter-fetish --it's got this sweaty-palmed voice-over talking about how the clang of the carriage return gets him horny, that kind of thing. but i forget the title.

there's one on here, but i forget which. whatever it's called, it's amazing.

x-post. OMG "Olivetti Twist", that song must be about me!

And there's supposedly a vintage one on that one solo album by that one guy in Mars Volta from last year (he supposedly collects old typewriters!)

(an awesome track from those out sounds Chusid comps from a couple years back, Songs In The Key of Z.)

Wenn ich dich sehe KOMMA
Denke ich DOPPELPUNKT
Der Junge macht mir Kummer
Ich möchte PUNKT PUNKT PUNKT
Dass er mir sagt GÄNSEFÜSSCHEN
Bitte komm mit zu mir
Ja, wann denn FRAGEZEICHEN
Heute um PUNKT vier

Oh oh AUSRUFEZEICHEN, es wäre so schön..."

(And there's a French translation of it as well!)

hang on, is it GE or is it "telegraph"? it might be the latter, although in that case i've no idea what noise he thinks he's doing. hmmm.

the clip's on the iMac at home: home is somewhere i wish i was, but shan't be for ages. at some point this week, gerard, i shall YSI you the clip (and post the link here too. why not? rock and roll).

that and REM were the first things I thought of

the way i remember this video clip, MC is definitely rattling away at a typewriter: there's a fairly good shot of it. but i'm becoming more addled and confused by the second (i'm at work, trying to do ten things at once, and i'm still hungover from the weekend).

anyway: yes, whatever it is, it's awesome all the same :)

(x-post: heheheh, having gone to the trouble of typing all that, i'm not deleting it now!)

shame they stopped short of doing the expanded remastered thingys before Dazzle Ships, I was really looking forward to it. But I have the lovely finyl version with the color coded time zone map inner sleeve picture

grimly, do you know if they're ver going to continue with the remasters? i'm assuming they didn't sell too well which is why they stopped.

i have the original vinyl too. i used to have it on CD (and before that on tape!) but when i was going through my obsessive OMD completist phase in the early nineties i sold all the CDs and picked up the vinyl from record fairs instead. i would love a remastered CD: i've MP3d the vinyl, but a completely crackle-free version would be bliss itself.

it's probably worth hassling andy mcluskey via www.omd.uk.com: i haven't looked at the site for ages, but i think he's quite good at answering people's questions etc. and although it didn't sell well at the time, surely it's been reclaimed as a classic; the most experimental pop album of the eighties, etc etc. i'd have thought there'd be a few bob for virgin if they released a remaster.

well: about 18 quid if you and i each buy a copy, at least.

Is that the one that has really fast violin playing during each phrase, punctuated by a loud and emphatic "DING!" at the end of each line? I seem to remember Max Miller or Spike Milligan or someone acting this out.

the typewriter action is in "genetic engineering" and is indeed the chucka-chucka-chucka sound i thought (although paul does, er, "play" a telegraph switch in "telegraph" too). for most of the song, martin (stage right, green shirt) plays a keyboard; right at the end (after the slightly embarrassing bit with the notepads), he turns to his left and plays a typewriter. there's a close-up in the last few seconds if you want to zoom there straight away.

i just spent five minutes hunting through some of my vinyl for "dazzle ships" so i can check the instrument list to see if it mentions a typewriter: i can't find it (seriously: it would take me the best part of an hour to search all the records) so if anyone else can check, that'd be appreciated. IIRC they listed *everything* they used on the record, so i'd have thought a typewriter would be on there if they'd used it.

Grimly, the typewriter is indeed listed on the instrumentlist on Dazzle Ships! I've found several sites who mention this in their review, in such similar words that it's probably out of a bio (Lotsofgifts.co.uk: "Any album that lists among the instruments used on it a Sanyo short wave radio,a typewriter and a Texas Instruments "Speak and Spell" machine has to be something different").
Unfortunately, I can't seem to save the video-files you linked to ("forbidden"), but found the album on slsk, which in itself made my home a happier place tonight, hearing after such a long time.

fuck. two minutes.

Sibsi, I most definately should, but it looks like a real hard one to find on the net, let alone a copy of the cd. I don't suppose you can help me out? :-)

Sibsi: Done!

Really though I usually loathe the sound of typewriters in songs

"Gonna Type A Letter" - Billy Fury

Cornelius - Typerite Lesson

Brutum Fulmen has a lot of recordings which use typewriters as the sound source. Search the "Flesh of the Moon" album.

Eurythmnics - She's Invisible Now

Eurythmics*

(... could hardly be more different) Swell Maps, "Mining Villages"

(... in a similar vein) Ernst Schultz, "10 Finger Blind".

Stewart Copeland's soundtrack to Rumblefish (don't know where the typewriter is in the music, but he's supposedly using one as percussion)

Most modern death metal

The Prodigy, "Intro"

Computer keyboards in Roger Sanchez's Computabank and M.I.A.'s The Message

I’ve no evidence but the rhythm track in Seefeel’s “Faults” sounds typewritery to me, it’s a great hook.

The Stewart Copeland track is called hostile bridge to benny's, the typing at the start is very much in the style of his drumming.

Boy oh boy do I have the band for this thread. The Boston Typewriter Orchestra. Really fun group to see live.

https://bostontypewriterorchestra.bandcamp.com/album/workstation-to-workstation

hang around for the last 37 seconds of this one https://foreverstark.bandcamp.com/track/blood-of-a-poet

ne-yo - champagne life

joe - claptrap

(^ might aswell bump the castanets thread with that)

joe - claptrap

(^ might aswell bump the castanets thread with that)

oops

First thing I thought of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEhuX-4OUaQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzLUE56-8Vg

Almost swear I read in a recent Kathleen Hanna book that she used one at some point in some songs, can't recall if it was with Julie Ruin or Tigre or Bikini, I'll see if I can find it

This track by Kid Koala & Money Mark is from the 1998 Ninja Tune comp titled Funkungfusion. The song is called Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, but I’m pretty sure it does not appear on Kid Koala’s album of that name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_G8e6n2dRs