Creative notes of Calico Pastry Sunshine from Dave posted on The Muse In Music

"The main idea for these tracks was to use samples of sung vocals. I had done stuff with spoken vocals before, and I really wanted to try to come up with some settings for sung parts. The other idea was to use sounds that I associated with early psychedelic music.

So the first thing I did was comb through all the vocal samples at ccmixter.org, a site where people upload samples for remixing. One of the ones I really liked was “the heartless bastard thought” which is by a woman named CiggiBurns. She has a cool accent, and an acerbic style, and that line really appealed to me. So I pulled that line, which, of course, completely robbed it of its context, but for my purposes that was a good thing.

Once I had the sample I put a really simple kick-snare beat under it. I had the sequencer set to 140 beats per minute, and I was using common time, and the line really didn’t lay well over those setting. So I moved the pitch of the line up a whole step, which also increased its tempo a hair, and then it actually fit pretty well, and I was able to start fleshing it out. I subbed a djembe sample for the kick and the snare, and put little guitar hits on the second and fourth beats, and that gave it a little reggae flavor, and from that point on all pretense of getting an early psychedelic sound pretty much vanished."...

here

Review: Recent music heroes: Cagey House - Calico Pastry Sunshine (2011)

/Psychedelic, Art-pop, Plunderphonics, Film noir, Cut and paste, Avant-garde, Experimental electronica, Space age pop, Hauntology/

Firstly, Dave Keifer aka Cagey House hides behind himself a peculiar phenomenon where the music of him seems to be sounded outside of the recent era, mostly back to the 60`s and 70`s, yet, it is strictly future music on its own. Secondly, as he is used to manipulate with samples and sounds, he is able to evoke lots of good memories and direct it upon the listeners as well. In the recent case, however, psychedelic electronica meets space age pop meets hauntology, all of which is wrapped up in the concept of plunderphonic/sampledelic music as Keifer has practised during more than 10 albums so far. Still, it is greatly funny and even some art-rock-ish tunes can be heardable over a long stretch of time. By the way, the coverprints of Keifer`s albums are still used to be great ones.

Review: NetMusic Life: [BP062] Cagey House - "Calico Pastry Sunshine"

Cagey House (Dave Keifer), è uno degli artisti più singolari dell'attuale scena musicale contemporanea.

Prolifico, bizzarro, originale, Dave ha iniziato a comporre musica dal 1999, suonando svariati strumenti (armonica, batteria, pianoforte, chitarra) fino alla scoperta del computer e delle sue potenzialità. Nella prima decade del 2000 Cagey House ha prodotto molti album (non sono riuscito a trovare una discografia completa ed affidabile, ma credo che questo dovrebbe essere il quindicesimo circa) appoggiandosi a svariate netlabels mondiali (ha collaborato con Nishi, Boom Foot, Dog Eared Records etc.) Nel nuovo "Calico Pastry Sunshine" Dave collabora con ByPass, netlabel cinese (Pechino) fondata da ZhangJW nel 2008. Come specifica Dave in un'approfondita intervista ritrovata su The muse in music, il suo metodo di comporre è inconsciamente disordinato ("il modo più rapido di produrre musica mediocre è di procedere in modo ordinato", afferma simpaticamente Dave). Un enorme libreria di sample volutamente disorganizzata e un gran numero di virtual instruments. Il risultato è una musica che può avvicinarsi alle dinamiche di un cartoon di Hanna & Barbera, o in altri momenti ai vari passaggi di livello di un videogame. Centinaia di elementi che si succedono cavalcando innumerevoli stati d'animo e situazioni creando una musica che non è assolutamente un pasticcio sonoro ma una valanga di idee, fervida creatività, sfrontata e audace. Se ci si mette a cercare si trova qualsiasi cosa...come pescare a caso dentro ad uno scatolone pieno di figurine dei musicisti e dei generi dell'ultimo secolo. Zappa, Zorn, Beatles, Joe Jackson, musica classica contemporanea, fusion anni 80/90, la lista potrebbe procedere per pagine e pagine. Abbandonarsi alla musica di Cagey House è un'esperienza formidabile. La noia si nasconde in qualche altra galassia, certamente non qua.