Here’s a classic mashup from way back. Bents ”Always” and Whitney Houstons ”I Wanna Dance With Somebody”. I don’t know who did it, and I haven’t been able to find it in better quality. Do you know anything about this? Let me know!

More mashups from the old Bent forums comes from (defunct?) Radio Earwax: Act of Dogs ”Always The Sun” which mixes ”Always” with The Beloved’s ”The Sun Rising”, and Phil n’ Dogs ”Falling into the waters deep”, mashing up ”The Waters Deep” with Julee Cruises ”Falling”. Available in normal and beatless versions.

Here are two of my own terrible mashups: ”Sweet Chime O’ Mine” mixes ”Sunchime” (from the ”Comin’ Back” single) with Flatpacks cover of ”Sweet Child O’ Mine” with Katty Heath on vocals. Kind of meta. The second one is just a simple music + rap acapella: ”Invisible Pedestrian” with Roots Manuvas ”Witness (One Hope)”.

Do you know of any other Bent mashups? Let me know!

I’m working hard (*giggle*) at finishing all these MP3 clips which needs to be added – over 80 of them! – and while you wait, why not have a listen to a song which was used in the intro of Bents ”Cylons In Love”? I don’t know why not. Fun fact: The first editions of ”Programmed To Love” had ”Cylons In Love” played faster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI5Z9B7dki4

Here’s some info on some of the tunes on the From The Vaults release. It was taken from places like Simon Mills old Tumblr page, and various other places such as directly from the boys themselves. Regarding tunes like these, Simon says:

”We actually have a ton of material. My vault says I have about 300 Bent tracks in it, running up to a day in solid listening time. Some of it is extremely daft, some we would regard as pretty bad. There’s early versions of tracks, instrumentals, sketches, remixes that were never accepted/finished and more… but collectively, it really gives a massive indication of where Nail and I were coming from, and on that basis alone we thought it would be great for people to hear even more from our little universe; we thought it was about time that we let listeners into our laundry basket to have a good rummage to hear the full true Bent!”

18/30 Holiday was the second Bent track ever, made in 1998. Which was the first? I don’t know.

Did Your Heart Break?, with Zoë Johnston singing, is a tune that I got to hear back in 2003, I think, and has been one of my absolute Bent favourites since. I’m so happy that I can share this tune with you all – ten years later!

Sweet Dreams was made for The Everlasting Blink, but was not chosen to go on it in the end.

Your Secret Lie features the singing of Katty Heath, and was recorded before The Everlasting Blink was made.

Racing Car is another tune I heard ten years ago, and where does that vocal come from? Here.

Translator features the vocals of Simon Lord, and was recorded for Intercept! but was left out. It’s a shame, because I think it’s my favourite Lord song.

Blank was written in 1998.

My Daughter the Asteroid, well… here’s Simons words: ”This one harks back to us trying to complete our “difficult second album”, and although in some ways it has all the generic calling cards of a chill out tune – something we never purposefully aimed at creating – it does have a very cheery vibe that reflected our states of mind at that point… new babies, new albums, new synthesizers… And you’ll even hear us messing around at the end, since we went through a phase of recording us pissing around in the room while we were recording… happy days…”

Doo Doo, says Simon, ”for me it sums up Bent massively… well at least the daft-sampling side of us”. The ”doo doo” sample would later also appear in their remix of Morcheeba’s ”World Looking In”.

Pipe Cleaners is another one I heard a long time ago, and has been found online sometimes bearing the name Gameshow.

We Watch the Stars features Jon Marsh, who also sang on Beautiful Otherness.

Broken features the vocals of one Cathy Davey, whose own music also is great by the way. I’m particularly fond of her tune ”Sing for your supper”. Check her out at cathydavey.ie! This song was recorded to go on Intercept! but, Simon says, ”we wanted the overall BPM of the album to be a bit higher….so it came off”. It was also meant for an EP supposedly called ”AHRR funk”. There was a contest on the Bent site to win this EP, but it never actually was made. You could hear this tune on their MySpace page for a while though, as well as later on Simons Tumblr site.

The Joy of Bowling is apparently dedicated to Simons bowling ball Susan.

British Summertime is from ”about 2000”, and at about 3:10 you find a whistled melody which would later also appear in their remix of Matthew Jay’s ”Please don’t send me away”.

More later….!

Ran across this image of the back cover for The Vaults. Have a look and rejoice, for it is soon upon us.