Telephoned

Telephoned was born one night in Brooklyn when DJ/producer Sammy Bananas and singer/party starter Maggie Horn decided to record their own version of T-Pain's "Can't Believe It." Their track was neither remix nor cover - instead, the duo fashioned a postmodern take on both, warping the original beat into a hypnotic club track and bringing out the dreamy qualities only hinted at in Pain's auto-tuned melodies. Sammy and Maggie's fresh "Can't Believe It" quickly became a DJ favorite - even making it into mix rotation on LA hip-hop station Power 106! - so they decided to keep recording as a team, cleverly named after the kids game of Telephone: no faithful copies, just a party line of unexpected twists. Over the past two years, the duo have expanded the concept as they continue to churn out instantly addictive and massively charming covers, create genre-bashing mixtapes and perform their non-stop whirlwind live show on stages across the world. To promote the release of their self titled EP on Fool's Gold in Winter '10, Telephoned compiled a mix modeled in the tradition of rap street tapes. On "Off The Hook" Bananas selects recognizable instrumentals from dance and hip-hop while Horn sings other songs on top of them, a combination the group christen the "cover-up". Telephoned's energetic, mixtape-dance-party of a live show got the attention of prestigious website Pitchfork, who called their performance in Austin,TX "the most fun thing at SXSW." Electro-revivalists Chromeo caught wind of the act, inviting the duo to join them on their "Business Casual" tour this August, making stops in over 20 cities while performing to packed venues across the US and Canada. Bananas and Horn released their second mixtape "Keep Their Heads Ringin" just before hitting the road, and reveled in handing CDs out for free to fans after performing each night. The pair are poised to further expand the scope of Telephoned with their forthcoming 7" and digital release on Scion A/V in late November. "Hold Me" is the first entirely original song born out of the collaboration, but their mission statement hasn't changed considering the fact they chose to cover themselves for the b-side of the record, "Telephoning" the original uptempo funky track into a smoothed out alt-country tune. Telephoned survives off of transforming and mutating songs through their own lens, and thats the only rule to play the game. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.