The Art of Sample Appropriation: ft Giorgio Moroder, DJ Shadow, Madonna and John Grant

It was the summer of 1997, and I was sweeping the floor I the kitchen of my broke ass university apartment while my best friend was playing DJ Shadow’s seminal Endtroducing… on the stereo. I had never heard the album before, but was enjoying what I was passively listening to in the background.

Then this short but funked up breakbeat tracks with a hell of a organ riff came on. It was the track Organ Donor, and while brief, became my favorite track off the album.

I knew Endtroducing.. was a sample collage album but it wasn’t a decade later till I found where the original sample came from, and I was totally shocked. It was from one of my biggest musical heroes Giorgio Moroder! But it sounded nothing like his signature disco/hi-nrg style he would later pioneer.
It was one of Moroder’s earliest records, simply going under the name “Giorgio”. More psychedelic rock influenced than his signature future disco, it features the signature organ riff then joined by a female vox singing in unison. The song stacks up with strings, distorted guitar, as the pace quickens till the song melts down in fuzz.

Fast forward to 2006 and Madonna's Confessions Tour. The intro to Live to Tell (aka Confession’s interlude), you notice anything familiar at the 1,27s mark? It’s our favorite organ riff! But what did Stuart Price and Madonna have in mind? DJ Shadow or Moroder’s original?

Now its 2011, and its Andrew Haigh’s landmark gay themed movie, Weekend. The closing song of the film is beautiful and sung by artist John Grant, called “(I Wanna To Go To) Marz”
Here we have a significantly modified version of our melody, but it’s roots

What’s amazing is how each of these artist can take a sample, (or inspiration/replay/interpolation/diversion) into something very different from how others used it in the past. Friend and music producer Gavin Bradley says it’s a very Bach like fugue melody and would be hard to copyright, but who cares right? (except a record company). That’s the beauty of sampling and reappropriation folks.



But at the very end of the day, it’s not even Mr. Moroder’s original idea at all! From 1963….