µ-Ziq Vs The Auteurs

In his memoir "Bad Vibes", singer Luke Haines claimed this album to be his version of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music - claiming that it was deliberately unlistenable and mocking the critics who gave it great reviews.

I love you Haines but you can be a right lying cock sometimes.

Hang on, not "but", "because".

Goddam this is a lovely record. "Daughter of a Child" especially.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFaz89ijXJg

It's been years since I last listened to this, but I remember the first tune was very good, the other ones a bit less impressive. The Auteurs were an indie band, right? Can't hear much indie rock on the album, I think µ-Ziq just took a few snippets of sound from them and made 95% of the sounds himself.

How do you know the names of the tunes, my copy of the album has no tracklisting? Also, my copy is titled "The Auteurs Vs µ-Ziq" and not "µ-Ziq Vs The Auteurs", are there like two different versions of this?

I don't think there's two versions, it does seem to get called both on the net. My copy doesn't have track titles either I don't think, but Spotify and other web programmes identify them. Plus if you know the original Auteurs songs you can recognise the samples. "Daughter of a Child" is track 2. It's not the greatest album ever but I'm really loving this early 90s dubby Orb/µ-Ziq/System 7 kinda sound at the moment.

I don't think the record was made deliberately unlistenable, but IIRC the story around the time was that µ-Ziq didn't really care for The Auteurs' music, this album was merely a job his label hired him to do, so he pretty much scrapped the idea of conventional remixes and did whatever he felt like doing with the music.

I checked discogs.com, there does seem to be two different versions of this, "The Auteurs Vs µ-Ziq" was the original European release, and it was retitled "µ-Ziq Vs The Auteurs" when released in the US. So I guess µ-Ziq was more popular in America than The Auteurs were?

The Auteurs weren't that popular anywhere. But a fantastic band anyway. All these stories about nobody being into it don't make a lot of sense, after the fact. It's a lovely set of remixes that obviously acknowledge their source material but are clearly µ-Ziq's thing. Better in fact than a few of his own records.

I can't seem to find my copy anywhere, btw, but it might have the track titles on the disc itself now I think of it.

x-post -- More or less, yes. (Both had a fairly miniscule profile but µ-Ziq had a higher one, on balance.)

Calling this album unlistenable is pretty funny, because it actually has a more relaxed/trippy vibe than µ-Ziq's own albums of that time. So if The Auteurs thought this was unlistenable, apparently they hadn't listened to anything else the man did.

I mean, there are some µ-Ziq tune from the mid-90s that even I find unlistenable ("Mr. Angry", for example), but none of them are on this album.

Luke Haines of the Auteurs is a noted bullshitter and bone-dry comic genius, tho, so who knows?

Don't really rate this overall, was never a huge u-ziq fan anyway. The last track is pretty damn gorgeous though, slow burning and heavy with the pathos.

it had track titles when i googled it. (i opened this thread expecting a completely arbitrary poll, actually.) like the one embedded above more than i like lenny valentino proper, i think

that clip is misnamed, it's lenny valentino 3. 2 is the epic last track.

It's the only 1 I could find on Youtube, I wanted to embed the whole album if poss.

http://open.spotify.com/album/12lEeGVPdLR9HmvgtzE2Cg