Chromeo, Boys Noize and Crystal Castles will be playing Freaky Deaky Halloween this Friday at the Congress theater. I hope everyone see the possibility of this being a truly great dance party. If you haven't you need to check Boys Noize's Essential Mix on the BBC pretty great stuff. Here is a couple great remixes of Chromeo's new track "Night by Night" in preparation for tomorrow.
Gift of Gab is one of my favorite emcees. For those that might not know Gab is the 2nd half of Blackalicious along with Chief Xcel. His new record Escape 2 Mars is due out November 3rd. Gab is on tour now with a bunch of top notch hip hop talent on the Deadliest Catch tour featuring Charli 2na, Mr. Lif and Lyrics Born. Check out a track off his upcoming record.
Buy: Get the record here.
Amazing album art by the way.
New music from romanian born and Brooklyn based producer, DJ Center. Great deep beat-driven track, with equal parts down-tempo soul, roots and dub reggae. Center's 2006 mix CD, Feel What I'm Feelin, garnered critical praise and URB called it an, "expertly blended, lovingly conceived..." mix record. It really is one of the best jazz podcasts I have heard.
This first song from Center's upcoming Summer 2009 EP release, Everything In Time, features the sweet vocals of the Tunisian-French singer, Ms. Samia Farah, whose incredible self-titled debut (Sony Music France, 1999) was a hypnotic blend of soul, dub and reggae.
Buy: Get the whole EP with remixes from the acclaimed Waajeed here (iTunes).
photo of Brooklyn graffiti by toddwshaffer
On the heels of the successful Friends of Friends series releases (Vol 1. Daedelus and Jogger, and Vol. 2 Larytta and Bauchamp), FoF Music is gearing up for their first full-length release, Been Meaning to Tell You by AG friend/artist/blog re-designer Ernest Gonzales. In anticipation of the release, they are releasing an EP, Self Awakening, by Gonzales.
The EP features the title track in addition to two alternate versions, a remix by Faunts and a cover by Take. The EP also includes "We Can Live in the Forest," another Gonzales original, as well as covers by Cyne, Mexicans with Guns, and Yppah. Check out the remix by Florida based hip hop group Cyne below.
If you have been reading you know AG is a big fan of Jason Chung aka Nosaj Thing, a 24-year-old producer from California with loose ties to Flying Lotus and the L.A. glitch-hop scene. Been loving his record Drift since it came out and am looking forward to seeing him next month at the House of Blues playing in support of Bassnecter. Video is by yourstru.ly check it out.
Buy: Get some Nosaj Thing stuff here.
Analog Giant has just surpassed 1,000,000 (aka F4240 if you are into hexadecimal) page views. Something that is pretty amazing for me thinking that I started an electronic-hip hop-political blog from what was essentially an attic apartment in Montpelier Vermont. Yeah sure I know Perez Hilton gets a million views a day but I never thought I would be able to get such a large audience.
I am glad there are more people out there that love the music I do and support this blog.
Thanks to all that stop by the site and I hope you keep coming back. Peace!
Link: Get more music from DatA here.
New record from Doom (aka MF Doom, Daniel Dumile, Viktor Vaughn, King Geedorah). Personally I find Doom's work by whatever moniker he has chosen is hit or miss for me. Some of his tracks I totally love and then there are others that I really just don't get into. Anyway, Unexpected Guests is a compilation of old Doom tracks that the Gold Dust imprint has gathered up an thrown on a single record. The record is due out this month.
"DOOM also has a thick catalog of guest appearances, remixes, non-album tracks, & vinyl only singles. For the first time, Unexpected Guest presents many of these hard to find tracks as a mix CD, executed and overseen by the Super Villain himself."
Guests include Talib Kweli, Ghostface & GZA as well as underground heroes Vast Aire, CountBass D and Kurius. Check out a promo track with an annoying sample showing up periodically throughout the track:
Get the record here.
Duck Sauce, the collaboration between DJs A-Trak and Armand Van Helden, have released a video for dancefloor filling single "aNYway." Probably the best house single of 2009, Track has been receiving heavy daytime airplay on Radio 1's A list. Check out the video.
The Best of the Black President comes out on 10/27 and the nationwide schedule for Felabrations is out now. Tonight is the Chicago event, Listen:Up presents Felabration! with DJ Ron Trent and DJ Spinna at The Shrine tonight.
The interesting thing here is that the original "Felabrations" which date back to the early 1970s when Fela Kuti and his band took over the courtyard of the Empire Hotel in Lagos, Nigeria, and performed several nights a week to thousands of fans. The courtyard was called “The Shrine,” and became a very popular nightspot attended by a range of people from the kids of Lagos to professors, civil servants, government officials and even soldiers.
Mp3: Fela Kuti - "Zombie"
For more information head over here.
His birthday was yesterday. He would have been 71.
James Yancey might be more mainstream in death than he ever was in life. His mainstream certainly has nothing to do with his talent. One of the most gifted and influential hip hop producers of all time and largely unrecognized until his tragic death in 2006. Several posthumous albums have already been released and others are planned, the massive amounts of unreleased recordings by the producer remain at this point are still undetermined and Yancey's estate has also been controverted. Rapster has been releasing a series called Dillanthology. Consisting of three volumes the latest one came out this month.
The last volume contains some of the best tracks of the Stones Throw released Donuts and Rough Draft and some of Jay's best work with Madlib as Jaylib. For all intents and purposes one of the best tracks of all time in my opinion is on this record with "Nothing Like This." Check out a track. His production skill is really phenomenal.
I think that Yancey really illustrates how the music industry and what used to be "art" has evolved. You listen to his productions and they are so diverse so deep. Today no person is producing like this. Nobody is spending the time pushed by profits. As somebody said capitalism has killed art and music. There are few mainstream artists anymore. Just over produced fame and money hungry fronts for the label people. Sure there is stuff that is catchy but there really isn't much out there that is deep.
RIP James Yancey.
In November of last year, Mulatu recorded an new album with London psych jazz band, The Heliocentrics one of my favorite records of this year. Now, Strut ais releasing a definitive Mulatu career retrospective covering his landmark ‘60s and ‘70s recordings.
Mulatu is a true pioneer of African music. He was the first Ethiopian musician of his generation to travel extensively and to record abroad. He studied in the UK in Wales and at Trinity College Of Music in London, making a name for himself on the London jazz scene of the early ‘60s. He became the first African student to attend Harvard and he lived and recorded in New York, fusing jazz with traditional Ethiopian melodies. He returned to "Swinging Addis" during the late ’60s and became a pivotal figure, arranging for many of the country’s top vocalists and he continued to create music even in final years of Selassie’s reign and the mid-‘70s rule of the Derg Communist military junta. Mulatu worked with with many influential jazz artists such as Duke Ellington during this period.
The record gives great breadth to a novice like myself it traces the progression of his Ethio jazz experiments, Mulatu Astatke: New York-Addis-London is the really fantastic. It covers his first recordings in the UK during 1965, his fusions for the small Worthy label in NYC and his key ‘70s recordings back in Addis on Amha, Phillips and Axum, the album features comprehensive sleeve notes by Miles Cleret, head of Soundway Records, and rare, previously unseen photos from Mulatu’s personal archive. Certainly worth checking out for those that love his music.
Buy: The record is out October 27th on Strut. Get it here.
France's Wax Tailor just released his new album In The Mood for Life. The album is more of his already established sound of hip hop, jazz, soul, funk and even 60's pop blended into melancholic beats. He has been likened to DJ Shadow, RJD2, and the Avalanches. The new album is an evolution in production and song-writing for Tailor and the album is a great one.
Wax Tailor plays Chicago at the Schubas on Monday October 12th, taking his stage set-up to another level by incorporating more vocalists a cellist and flautist. I recommend you stop by and check it out.
New remix for the enjoyable Cousin Cole. Its an official remix of Pete Lawrie's "All That You Keep" from his album coming out next year. Cole also has some remixes out there one of note is a remix coming out for the late 70s post punk band Manicured Noise which they just put on their myspace.
This album just keeps churning out the singles. This is Q-Tip featuring Norah Jones- from the acclaimed album The Renaissance. Nice video and track. Get the record if you haven't yet.
4th part in the disco-funk-hip hop series from Dam-Funk. He calls it "modern funk" and if you read this blog you have already gotten tastes of the first three parts of this awesome set of music that Mr. Funk is putting together. His latest is a journey into another part of his life experiences, his neighborhood, the memories of late hazy afternoons. I recommend you check it out.
My wife just told me about an interesting development. Check this out according to NPR's Market Watch:
"The Federal Trade Commission has issued new guidelines that require bloggers to disclose when they receive cash or free stuff from companies and then write about their products."Is that some type of rule to assure journalist integrity? Impartial music reviews? What it accomplishes I am not sure. It is obviously aimed at weblogs much larger than mine but the fines are heavy. Beginning December 1, bloggers who are “endorsers” could be fined up to $11,000 per post, specifically from the FTC:
"The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service."I am interested in who they have to enforce these regulations and again concerning weblogs like this one its a non issue...more focused toward large commercial weblogs I am sure.
I am a bit late on this 22 year old DJ/producer and his dancefloor filling jams but I had to pass it along. Benjamin Vanguarde, is the kid behind Miami Horror. He had been a film student studing in Melbourne before moving to music. He has been busy for the last year or so working with and remixing the likes of Pnau, Datarock, Midnight Juggernauts and The Presets, all featured here before. Check out a track.
Buy: Get the his single here.
He is currently touring (nowhere close to the US). Check him out if you are in Australia. The rest of us will just have to wait.
He is currently touring (nowhere close to the US). Check him out if you are in Australia. The rest of us will just have to wait.
Japanese based hip-hop, jazz producer DJ Okawari has a great sound. I don't know much else about him to be honest. If I knew Japanese I might be able to decipher his website but at the moment I am at a loss. On his new album is Mirror the production is great and he does a fantastic job of mixing in some wonderful piano to is work. Beautiful stuff.
photo of Shizuoka Moonlight by /\ltus
