Arling & Cameron
Encyclopedia
Arling & Cameron are a Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

 duo, composed of Gerry Arling and Richard Cameron.

Their music draws from French pop, spy movie themes, lounge
Lounge music
Lounge music is a retrospective description of music popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a type of mood music meant to evoke in the listeners the feeling of being in a place — a jungle, an island paradise, outer space, et cetera — other than where they are listening to it...

, '70s light rock, Japanese Shibuya-kei
Shibuya-kei
is a sub-genre of Japanese pop music which originated in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. It is best described as a mix between jazz, pop, and electropop.- Overview :...

 and other music genres that are often associated with kitsch
Kitsch
Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...

. Their beat-driven pop collages might recall Pizzicato Five
Pizzicato Five
Pizzicato Five was a Japanese pop group best known to audiences in the West in their later incarnation as a duo of Maki Nomiya and Yasuharu Konishi...

 or Cornelius
Cornelius
Cornelius is a Roman family name and a masculine given name. It could be derived from Latin cornu "horn". People, places and things named Cornelius include:-Surname:...

.

Their musical partnership began in 1994, inspired by the Shibuya-kei kitsch-pop deconstructionists that had emerged in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 several years earlier. They held "Easy Tune" parties around Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 that year; from those performances they culled singles which they released under a variety of pseudonyms (16 in all, including "Popcorn" and "Aloha Sisters") on Cameron's Drive-In/Easy Tune label. Collaborations with Pizzicato Five, Fantastic Plastic Machine
Fantastic Plastic Machine
Fantastic Plastic Machine can mean one of four things:* Fantastic Plastic Machine , the stage name of Japanese musician Tomoyuki Tanaka** The Fantastic Plastic Machine , the 1997 debut album of the above artist...

, and Bebel Gilberto
Bebel Gilberto
Bebel Gilberto is a Brazilian popular singer often associated with bossa nova. She is the daughter of João Gilberto and singer Miúcha. Her uncle is singer/composer Chico Buarque...

 followed soon after. In 1998 label Emperor Norton released their Voulez Vous EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 as well as their debut album, All-In, in 1999.

In 2000, Arling & Cameron released Music for Imaginary Films, a collection of theme songs for nonexistent movies and TV shows. A year later, they released their third album, We Are A&C, a dance-pop
Dance-pop
Dance-pop is dance-oriented pop music that originated in the early 1980s. Developing from post-disco, it is generally up-tempo music intended for clubs with the intention of being danceable or merely dancey...

 record drawing stylistically from smooth R&B, psych
Psych
Psych is an American detective comedy-drama television series created by Steve Franks and broadcast on USA Network. It stars James Roday as Shawn Spencer, a young crime consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department whose "heightened observational skills" and impressive detective instincts...

, Krautrock
Krautrock
Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scenes that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain. The term is a result of the English-speaking world's reception of the music at the time and not a reference to any one...

 and tropicalia-tinged lounge.

Discography

  • Sound Shopping (1998)
  • All-In (1999)
  • Music For Imaginary Films (February 2000)
  • We are A & C (August 2001)
  • Hi-Fi Underground (September 2006)
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