Tunng is a band from the UK. The first song I heard was the excellent 'Pioneers' which got me hooked; I rushed out and got all their releases. Just today I found out that it's a cover of a song by Bloc Party, who I neither like nor listen to. If you already like Tunng, don't bother listening to the original; if you've only heard the original, go and get the Tunng version. Simple.

I love Tunng's music. They are all over the place--in a good way--and their songs filled with details and sounds that I sometimes forget are there until I listen to the song again.

This is from their first album, 'Mother's Daughter And Other Songs', from 2005.

Tunng - Mother's Daughter
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Brigitte Fontaine is a french singer whose career started in the 60s, and has recently collaborated with Stereolab and Sonic Youth. Both her music and lyrics are somewhat weird, especially the english versions of her songs (the lyrics usually make little or no sense), but her songs are incredibly beautiful. I prefer her first albums from the late 60s and 70s.

She has released all kinds of songs: spoken word, poetry, jazz, poppish, rockish...whatever.

This song is from her album, 'Brigitte Fontaine', probably released in 1972.

Brigitte Fontaine - Brigitte
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David Zed really really wants to be a man.

This is written and arranged by the brilliant Claudio Simonetti, who was a member of the amazing band Goblin who wrote and performed a few soundtracks for Dario Argento, and also 'Dawn of the Dead'. Later, Simonetti produced songs by Kasso and Easy Going, who released one of my favorite songs, 'Fear'. (I'll post that later).

Ooh I like
all the fashionable things
I'm very stylish
they're lubricating me
I am a robot
but I'll change into a man

I f'in love this song and you can't really go wrong with emo-poetry like that. Funky disco with bleeps and dramatic singing, and a chorus which goes 'I'm a funky robot...I'm a funky robot...'

There are two versions of the song, in English and Italian.

Here's the Italian (vocoder sweetness):

Here's the English one:

David Zed - I Am A Robot
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The songs I'm posting are from 1980, but recently a 'Mister Zed' has been appearing as a comedian all over the world (including Jay Leno, Cathy & Regis and other US shows, and a bunch of UK, Japanese and Italian shows). I don't know whether this Mister Zed guy is the original dude from the video, or if it's his spawn. And I'm not sure what he is...a robot comedian butler?

Here's his website (it's weird stuff).