I Am the Fun Blame Monster!

http://tinysong.com/ipNL
Listen instantly to "The Late Great Libido"
from Menomena's I Am the Fun Blame Monster

I Am the Fun Blame Monster was Menomena's first release (the title is an anagram for "The First Menomena Album"), self-released in the summer of 2003. Originally, with the release came a hand-assembled 80-page flipbook, designed and created by band member Danny Seim. I very much wish I had one of these in my possession so I could make a gif animation for you. But I don't, soooo instead I MS Painted my own awesome artistic rendering of the fun blame monster.

The song linked above is a laid-back yet still captivating song from the band's debut. Much of it is saxophone-driven with a rhythm section behind it which is somehow both calming and frantic. While recording this album, they realized that their looping software, programmed by band member Brent Knopf, acted more effectively as a songwriting/recording tool than a live tool. This song offers a pretty good illustration of the cut-and-paste composition technique the band uses. Give it to me straight, TapeOp.com:

There are ten mono tracks, each of which can play or record four phrases. So
when one of the band members feels particularly inspired, he will plug in
and start by playing his instrument along with the click track. It's always
improvised. That person will play four variations (A, B, C and D) of a
phrase, in groups of four measures, although the software can be set for a
different number of measures. Then another person will go back and overdub
four variations of another part, based on the previous person's work. So
each track will record four loops, which the band will choose from later. As
you can see, this creates many separate but intertwining loops, with the
opportunity for many variations. This is how they create most, but not all,
of their songs.

To view Todd Bayles's full, in-depth article/interview about the band's recording/composing process, click here for the .pdf