In 1968, pioneering minimalist composer Terry Riley remixed The Harvey Averne Dozen's soul tune "You're No Good" into a 20-minute tape machine and Moog composition of sampled, looped, and cut-up sounds moving in and out of phase. Strange and beautiful.
Compare with the original below, which was sampled in House of Pain's "Jump Around" (1992). At the AV Club, Sean O'Neal writes:
…When the owner of a Philadelphia disco—clearly still addled from watching Riley perform an all-night concert of alto-sax feedback—commissioned him to compose a “theme” for his nightclub, Riley took the opportunity to apply that process to something a little more club-friendly that he could totally fuck with.
Riley’s victim was “You’re No Good,” a just-released R&B cut from vibraphonist and minor Latin soul sensation Harvey Averne, with vocals by Little Anthony And The Imperials’ Kenny Seymour. On its own, “You’re No Good” is a solid little tune, with Seymour engaged in a catchy call-and-response with a finger-wagging female chorus over his cheatin’ ways. But in Riley’s hands, it becomes a true exercise in delirium. Beginning with nearly three full minutes of synth drone that suddenly breaks, in media res, into the song’s funky verse, it only gets more disorienting from there.
"Terry Riley turns an R&B ditty into 20 minutes of madness" (AV Club)
