Laura Kerry
In the art of collage, we tend to direct our focus on the process more than on the end result that it yields. We talk about it in terms of the materials incorporated—chair caning or a newspaper in Picasso, images from magazine advertisements in pop art—and the steps taken to put them together. In music, collage has come to be more seamlessly incorporated into the final representation. Known by another name, it is called sampling, and it’s a practice that has made its way into the mainstream, largely unrecognized unless the sample is widely known.
What happens, though, when a song is all collage? In the new track, “Dead Dog Head,” Daniel Trudeau’s project Pregnant shows us. Comprised entirely of stitched-together soul and funk samples, the song dances between different sounds, resembling its constituent parts but also forming something entirely new. It feels like walking down a psychedelic hallway and overhearing different conversations as you pass—a horn section, a banjo, a soulful round of the phrase, “I’ll be a real dead dog head.”
But the the collage is so cleverly crafted that none of these fragments feels too shocking, and you’re always compelled to keep walking forward. Off of Pregnant’s new LP, Duct Tape, (out 6/30 via Golden Brown, Copper Mouth Records, and Plastic Response Records), “Dead Dog Head” previews Pregnant’s experimental expedition—bringing the methodologies of collage back to the foreground. Strangely, though, even in a song that is all sample, the seams disappear, and we’re left with a strange pop orchestra to follow and a beat to tap our feet to.