DESCRIPTION:
Pretty Beuys is the pop / sound art collaboration of Robert Bolton aka Arowbe Arowbe Arowbe (vocals) and Andrew Zealley aka PSBEUYS (music). Their first release, an EP appropriately titled Five Covers is a series of impressions—riffing on a variety of sonic wellsprings ranging from Joni Mitchell to Elvis Presley to post-punk outfit Magazine. In the latter of these, Mr. Bolton admits to recording the vocals without having heard the original song. "Just Google and sing," he says about the process of improvising melodies from imagination and memory. "For more familiar songs likes Lou Reed's 'Walk on the Wild Side,' I'd converse with them, respond to the original text." In reproducing the music for such cover songs, Mr. Zealley would take a "snapshot" approach, listening just once to a thirty-second iTunes sample of the song, grabbing a reference point and developing the track from that glimpse. "In each instance, language and vocal performance dictated the musical direction over and above actual references to original melodies or rhythmic gestures," says Mr. Zealley.

The style, while earnest in it's salute to the referenced recordings, quickly turns urgent and unsentimental. The lyrics function in a cloud rather than their original linear form—they're left open for rearrangement, mutation, and variant paths. Says Mr. Bolton, "the approach of these covers is cubist in it's collaging and refracting of dimensions, but more transcendent, like the ghosty information age."

credits
PRETTY BEUYS: WIN (COVER BEUYS MIX)
original version appears on David Bowie: Young Americans (RCA Records, 1975)
music & lyrics by David Bowie

PRETTY BEUYS: FIVE COVERS
produced by PSBEUYS
release: vernal equinox 20 March 2011

WIN by David Bowie (1975)
PERMAFROST by Howard Devoto (1979)
CALIFORNIA by Joni Mitchell (1971)
CALIFORNIA by Tupac Shakur (1995)
SUSPICIOUS MINDS by Mark James (1968)
WALK ON THE WIDE SIDE by Lou Reed (1972)

no permission, no nothing
"public image ltd would like to thank absolutely no body, thank you"

http://prettybeuys.bandcamp.com
www.robertbolton.net
www.andrewzealley.com