Milky Edwards & The Chamberlings

In the 1970s did a gospel soul band called Milky Edwards & The Chamberlings record an album of cover versions of all the songs on David Bowie's Starman? Apparently not. However, on YouTube you can find three videos of someone playing songs from this non-existent album on a record player.






The videos were uploaded over a year and a half ago (and there's an accompanying, minimalist website — milkyedwards.com), but they've only started to attract attention recently. And now people are wondering who created these videos and why? Because whoever created them, did them very well. The recordings don't sound like the work of an amateur.

The Guardian reviews what people have uncovered so far about this mystery. First, the album cover that can be seen behind the record player is definitely not from the 1970s because it uses a modern font, Mojo Standard, that is "squished and pulled" (as graphic designer Brian Borrows puts it) in a way that can only be easily done on a computer.


Second, although the singer sounds like Tom Jones, it's not him, according to Jones's management.

Beyond that, nothing more is currently known. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays out.

Music

Posted on Sun Sep 29, 2013



Comments

Awesome hoax!
Posted by Dana  on  Sun Sep 29, 2013  at  04:00 PM
Wow! Bowie and soul! Two of my favourite musical elements combined. I would so get this album if it were real. Moonage Daydream was terrific!
Posted by Triv  on  Sun Sep 29, 2013  at  11:10 PM
Has no one else noticed that the cover painting appears to be, from left to right, Lionel Richie, Paul Winfield, Carl Weathers, and Fred Williamson?
Posted by Mr. Dark  on  Mon Sep 30, 2013  at  10:58 AM
Mr Dark said "Has no one else noticed that the cover painting appears to be, from left to right, Lionel Richie, Paul Winfield, Carl Weathers, and Fred Williamson?"

I didn't, no. But I've listened to them about five times now, and love them. It's tragic that these three songs are probably the only ones from the album they've really recorded. Damn, I'd so buy that album!
Posted by Triv  on  Mon Sep 30, 2013  at  12:08 PM
A search on google reveals the site: http://milkyedwards.com/ , however a whois lookup only reveals a privately owned registration. The site appears to have existed sometime around Aug 19th. The site's image file was also stripped of any useful meta tag info.. though you can email them on the site; this felt to direct to be interesting to me Lol =)
Posted by Tim  on  Mon Sep 30, 2013  at  11:34 PM
As for the cover, Mojo was designed in 1960 (quote: <http //www.identifont.com/find?f>), so it could easily have been used in 1973.
Then, while stretching a font like that is only easy to do for an amateur using a computer, any typographer worth his salt would've been able to do so even in the 1970 - in fact, many did do so over half a century before, as part of Art Nouveau. The simplest, although perhaps not the most time-effective, trick I can think of to manage this is to print the letters normally over a regular grid (cheaper with those plastic applique letters so popular in the seventies); draw a transformed grid on the object surface; and then transfer the letters, point by point and line by line, from the straight grid to the stretched one. Laborious, but effective.

None of which proves that this is a 1970s work, of course. But it could easily have been.
Posted by Richard Bos  on  Tue Oct 01, 2013  at  03:35 AM
I think it's interesting that many thought this might be Bowie, himself. There are some nuances to Milky' s voice that seem to support that thought. I wonder if you speed up these tracks, (so as to pull up the voice pitch), if Bowie' s voice would emerge?!
Posted by Toni  on  Wed Oct 02, 2013  at  03:06 PM
And as for the Album Cover... try this one on for size and then tell me that you would have had to manipulate it with a computer:



(also @ )

Posted by oppiejoe  on  Sun Oct 06, 2013  at  09:47 PM
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