This song is an old favorite of mine, partly because of the unique artist name. When I open my media player, those colons in the name place it near the top of the list alphabetically, so it naturally gets more attention. In addition, it fits all the criteria I have for sharing: it's a cool track, there's a free download, and you probably haven't heard it before. The only hitch is that it's several years old (in fact, it was released the day before I started this blog). The song holds some meaning for me because that was a time when I was still fresh to the world of music blogs, and I was still trying to figure out what 'dubstep' was. I know now that the drops in this track don't exactly qualify as face melting, but they were and are an unexpectedly pleasing twist.
My fondness runs deeper given that ::M∆DE::IN:HEIGHTS:: is a side project of DJ Sabzi, the production half of Blue Scholars. His beats coupled with the lovely lilting voice of Kelsey Bulkin posed another challenge to my perception of what a hip-hop producer can do.
The reason I'm dredging it up now is that I've just recently learned some interesting facts relating to "Skylark Interabang?!".
Perhaps I was too enthralled with the instrumental, but I never gave a thought as to what the title meant. A skylark is a bird (among other things) but it turns out that the rest is redundant. "Interabang" or "interrobang" is the name of the punctuation mark which signifies an excited inquiry; it's a combination question mark and exclamation point. The word literally means "?!".
Perhaps I was not enthralled enough with the instrumental, because I shamefully missed which song it samples. Skylark Interabang Interabang borrows heavily from Sufjan Stevens's "Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" from his acclaimed Illinois album. It's a pleasant piano line, but I posit that this sample was pulled with a plan in mind. In that particular chapter, Sufjan recounts a real incident "where several persons reported seeing a large triangular object with three lights flying at night". Suddenly, I'm drawn again to what has kept me listening to this song all these years, the strangely stylized name. The song's artwork seems to perfectly portray a reference to the sample's lyrical content and the group that so cleverly used it. How about that?!?!
My fondness runs deeper given that ::M∆DE::IN:HEIGHTS:: is a side project of DJ Sabzi, the production half of Blue Scholars. His beats coupled with the lovely lilting voice of Kelsey Bulkin posed another challenge to my perception of what a hip-hop producer can do.
The reason I'm dredging it up now is that I've just recently learned some interesting facts relating to "Skylark Interabang?!".
Perhaps I was too enthralled with the instrumental, but I never gave a thought as to what the title meant. A skylark is a bird (among other things) but it turns out that the rest is redundant. "Interabang" or "interrobang" is the name of the punctuation mark which signifies an excited inquiry; it's a combination question mark and exclamation point. The word literally means "?!".
Perhaps I was not enthralled enough with the instrumental, because I shamefully missed which song it samples. Skylark Interabang Interabang borrows heavily from Sufjan Stevens's "Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" from his acclaimed Illinois album. It's a pleasant piano line, but I posit that this sample was pulled with a plan in mind. In that particular chapter, Sufjan recounts a real incident "where several persons reported seeing a large triangular object with three lights flying at night". Suddenly, I'm drawn again to what has kept me listening to this song all these years, the strangely stylized name. The song's artwork seems to perfectly portray a reference to the sample's lyrical content and the group that so cleverly used it. How about that?!?!
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