Botongdjungelboken (the Concrete Jungle Book)

Listen (4.11 Mb)

Background:

During the autumn of 1999 we accidentally stumbled on a web site, on which a Swedish hiphop label announced a so called remix contest. You could download an a cappella version of the then popular "Betongdjungelboken" by Swedish ghetto rapper Ayo, add your own "phat beatz" and send it back. Naturally we rose to the challenge and started working, under pressing time conditions. Pretty soon we realized that the melody (originally a minor-key, gloomy thing) really was a variation of "The bare necessities", as sung by Baloo the bear in the Jungle Book. This had cleverly been mutated to its parallel minor key. At this point, our musical path was clear.

Our contribution was sent in an unmarked envelope with a note saying "Yo Yo Yo. Swedish Hotsynth Quintet representing the Jazz" and a hotmail address. Our fear of retaliation was considerable. However, someone with humor must have been in the jury, because we managed to go the "finals" along with twenty or so other remixes. By this, we achieved our goal, because this meant Ayo himself had to listen to our version! When the contest finally was finished (noone won), our entry wasn't mentioned at all. It was probably simply too good.

Note: Since you are reading this page, we must assume you don't know Swedish. Since a major part of the song is Swedish rap by Ayo, this may make the song less enjoyable for you. It's basically an allegory, where the elements of the original Jungle Book have their counterparts in the "Concrete Jungle", i.e. the poor excuses for Ghettos offered by Stockholms suburbs. Since you cannot understand the lyrics anyway, we recommend some synth spotting (don't cheat and look at the list below!).

Vokalister:

Rap and Vocals : Ayo

Support Rap: Ingemar (concatenation speech synthesis)

Choir: Ingemar's Posse

Shoutouts: Trinoids, Whisper (Mac Speech)

Master of Ceremonies: Ralph (Mac Speech)

Sound Sources:

Roland SH-101 (jungle animals, bass sequence, 80's arpeggio, the cat, tuba, dixie clarinet, etc.)

Clavia Nord Lead (jungle animals, tablas, dist sitar, 80's sequence and power bass, brushes, noise drums, dixie trombone, etc.)

GEM S2 (latin bop drums, western piano, etc.)

Kawai K1-II (digital artefact bird, 80's power kit, dixie trumpet, etc.)

Casio MT-31 (Hahti Brass)

Technosaurus Microcon (part of "Bear Roar")

SFX-sound files (car crash, speedway, pistol shot)

Doom II (skeleton punch)

Other Equipment:

Cubase VST 4.1 Mac

Zoom Studio 1201 effect processor

Interesting Facts:

We are very proud of the "Bear Roar" in the second verse. It consists of simultanously played roaring sounds from Nord Lead, SH-101, Microcon and K1, treate with distortion and played once again through the filter of the SH-101.

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