The Bran Flakes are a Canadian-American

indie pop Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indiepop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with DIY ethic in opposition to the style and tone of mainstream pop music. It originated from British post-punk in the late 1970s and sub ...

group formed in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

in 1992. The group, whose line-up comprises Otis Fodder from Montreal, Quebec, and Mildred Pitt from Seattle, Washington, specializes in creating

sound collage In music, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where newly branded sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage. This is often done throug ...

s from pre-existing sources. Until 1997, they recorded on 4-track in bedrooms and did not play any shows, putting out hand dubbed cassette tapes and distributing tapes through direct mail-order, zines and indie catalogs.

Career

The Bran Flakes make extensive use of sampling, recontextualizing the samples into new works, often resulting in ironic statements about modern pop and media culture. The group scours

thrift shop Thrift may refer to: * Frugality * A savings and loan association in the United States * Apache Thrift, a remote procedure call (RPC) framework * Thrift (plant), a plant in the genus ''Armeria'' * Syd Thrift (1929–2006), American baseball execut ...

s for obscure and quirky LPs; some of their songs also make use of recognizably famous basslines, television shows, and soundtracks from

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s. The unauthorized nature of such sampling has prevented much of the band's work from official commercial release. However, they did contribute six tracks to the fully authorized ''Raymond Scott Rewired'', an album of Scott

remix A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...

es (including tracks by

The Evolution Control Committee The Evolution Control Committee (The ECC) is an experimental music band based in Columbus, Ohio. The ECC was founded by Mark Gunderson (a.k.a. TradeMark G.) in Columbus, in 1986. They create music that falls within the borders of the sound col ...

and

Go Home Productions Go Home Productions (also known as GHP) is the alter ego of Mark Vidler, a producer/remixer/DJ based in Northampton (and formerly Watford), England. GHP has produced well over 200 mash-ups since May 2002, many of which have been played on both n ...

) which was released in February 2014 on the Basta label. Following the 1998 release of ''I Remember When I Break Down'' on Ovenguard Music, on which Otis Fodder was sole writer, the group's first album as a duo (Otis Fodder and Mildred Pitt) was in 1999, with ''Hey Won't Somebody Come and Play'' on Ovenguard Music. ''I Don't Have a Friend'' was released in 2001 on Lomo Records. Their 2002 album ''Bounces!'' was released on the band's own Happi Tyme Records, and contained one of their most popular songs; "Good Times a Goo Goo", which sampled extensively from

Kermit the Frog Kermit the Frog is a Muppet character created and originally performed by Jim Henson. Introduced in 1955, Kermit serves as the everyman protagonist of numerous Muppet productions, most notably ''Sesame Street'' and ''The Muppet Show'', as well ...

and

Fozzie Bear Fozzie Bear is a Muppet character best known as the insecure and comedically fruitless stand-up comic on ''The Muppet Show.'' Fozzie is an orange-brown bear who often wears a brown pork pie hat and a pink and white polka dot necktie. The charac ...

's performance of "Moving Right Along" from ''

The Muppet Movie ''The Muppet Movie'' is a 1979 American musical road comedy film directed by James Frawley, produced by Jim Henson, and the first theatrical film featuring the Muppets. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, the film w ...

''. In 2008 the band signed with the label

Illegal Art Illegal Art is a sampling record label that was started in 1998. The label gained immediate notoriety from legal threats surrounding '' Deconstructing Beck'', a compilation made exclusively from sampling Beck's music. This was followed by two ot ...

, known for such acts as Girl Talk and

Steinski Double Dee and Steinski is a duo of hip hop producers, composed of Doug "Double Dee" DiFranco and Steven "Steinski" Stein. They achieved notoriety in the early 1980s for a series of underground hip-hop sample-based collages known as the "Less ...

Personnel

Principal members * Otis Fodder (1992–present) * Mildred Pitt (1999–present) Live show members * Courtney Barnebey (1998–2012) * Peter Lynch (1998–2012) * Julie Alpert (1998–2012) * Joanna Barnebey (1998–2012) * Pam Landinez (1998–2012)

Discography

The Bran Flakes have a discography consisting of seven

studio albums An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records co ...

, one

remix album A remix album is an album consisting of remixes or rerecorded versions of an artist's earlier released material. The first act who employed the format was American singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson (''Aerial Pandemonium Ballet'', 1971). As of 2007 ...

, one

compilation album A compilation album comprises Album#Tracks, tracks, which may be previously released or unreleased, usually from several separate recordings by either one or several Performing arts#Performers, performers. If by one artist, then generally the tr ...

and two

singles Singles are people not in a committed relationship. Singles may also refer to: Film and television * ''Singles'' (miniseries), a 1984 Australian television series * ''Singles'' (1992 film), written and directed by Cameron Crowe * ''Singles'' ...

Studio albums

Remix albums

Compilation albums

Singles

Live performances

1998 * Omnimedia V0.3 (January 24) * Church of the Subgenius Devival (March 14–15) * Coffee Messiah (May 2) * Omnimedia V0.5 (October 17–18) 1999 * Meet the Sonicabal (February 20) * Electromuse2 Festival (May 14–21) * Art's Edge Festival (June 27) 2000 * Sonicabal 2 Showcase (September 23) * Halloween Fright Night (October 31) 2001 * ''I Don't Have a Friend'' Release Party (May 24) * 7th Annual Olympia Experimental Music Festival (June 16) * Nova Nights Freak Out Party (October 25) 2002 * ''Bounces!'' Release Party (November 6) * Sonarchy (November 16) 2003 * Nerd Rock (February 3) 2004 * I.D.E.A.L. Festival (March 6) 2005 * Brides of Frankenstein (August 6) 2009 * Sepomana Festival (April 18) 2011 * Convergence Festival (September 4) 2012 * ONN/OF Festival (January 28)

References

External links

The Bran Flakes

The Bran Flakes websiteIllegal Art

Band members

Otis Fodder's websiteMildred Pitt's website

Interviews

The Some Assembly Required Interview with The Bran Flakes. {{Authority control Bran Flakes, The