Name that tune (for the umpteenth time, kthx)

September 28, 2009 9:02 PM

Please help identify this song: ethereal, moody music; female vocals, either multiple voices or a single voice multitracked; about 15 minutes in length. Snatches of lyrics include "... to the land of Oz ...", "... scraping tin cups ...", "... opening our sense to embrace the breath of ...", "... drink to your insane ..." something something something.

On Sunday night, Jersey City was in a blackout, which meant that beloved radio station WFMU was off the air. Well, not entirely off the air. 'FMU has a back-up playlist that they can switch on at the transmitter when the radio station proper can't transmit. Around 8 p.m. on Sunday night, this was played as one of those back-up songs. It is not archived or playlisted at the main WFMU web site. Does anybody have an idea what and/or who this could be?

posted by Joey Bagels to media & arts (8 comments total)

If you couldn't understand the lyrics, it might've been Cocteau Twins.
posted by Mikey-San at 9:49 PM on September 28

Cocteau Twins or This Mortal Coil would be my first thoughts.
posted by Jairus at 9:54 PM on September 28

Sounds kind of "Faith and the muse"-ish
posted by Iron Rat at 10:58 PM on September 28

Faith and the Muse is a good guess -- some of their stuff, and some Monica Richards solo material, has a similar sound. But I couldn't find anything approaching the epic length of this song. It really seemed to go on forever. I'll investigate This Mortal Coil a little further. I really don't think it was Cocteau Twins.

To clarify, it was not especially poppy/dancy. If anything, it had more of a loping beat, a little like (god help me) Enigma or something along those lines. Pretty highly produced, with vocals buried far enough in the mix that it was hard to pick out more than a few words at a time. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a live recording, a remix, or anything obscure like that.

What got me is that a Google search for "scraping tin cups" didn't return any lyrics. I'd imagine everything Cocteau Twins has done (and maybe This Mortal Coil, too) would have had its words punched into a lyrics search engine by now.
posted by Joey Bagels at 5:00 AM on September 29

Could you email the radio station and ask them to send you their backup playlist?
posted by pised at 6:13 AM on September 29

The first thought I had was it sounds like something by Delerium.
posted by NikitaNikita at 6:16 AM on September 29

At 15 minutes long, it was not the Cocteau Twins. The various remixes (which to my recollection are all techno-beat atrocities) are available on the fan server, if you want to check them out, but it is pay to play.

Probably was not This Mortal Coil, either. I think TMC's longest song clocks in at 10 minutes: Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust (Modern English Cover, Liz Fraser and Gordon Sharp doing vocals) and its dominant lyrics consist of a lot of lalalalala and "the pressure's on; no time to lose" There is a lyric "inspiring dreams all shattered and torn away" which is close.

Maybe look into one of the Katherine Blake projects, although she tends away from ethereal into the chaotic.
posted by crush-onastick at 7:19 AM on September 29

I really wanted to query the hive mind on this because AskMefi has such a terrific (and fast!) track record on these things, but I guess this was pretty obscure. Fortunately, the folks at WFMU responded very quickly to an email query this morning. They say the track is "Ding" by Cerberus Shoal from the album The Vim and Vigour of Alvarius B and Cerberus Shoal, but based on the sound samples at All Music Guide, I think it's actually "The Real Ding" from the same album.

If you're interested in hearing the whole thing, and if for some reason you still have RealPlayer installed on your machine, you can listen to a stream of the song from WFMU here. (I found it in one of Station Manager Ken's old shows.)

Thanks for the thoughts/suggestions/recommendations, folks!
posted by Joey Bagels at 8:47 AM on September 29 [1 favorite]