June 18th, 2009
Information on Smahila and the S.B.’s is D.B. Cooper-scarce. Save for a few entries on Discogs.com, and a paragraph or two gleaned elsewhere, my knowledge about the group is essentially limited to: they’re a Nigerian afro-beat band with a Fela Kuti fixation, who released the sublime African Movement/Natural Points in 1977, on British imprint, RAS (Rogers All Stars (Nigeria) Ltd.).
Few groups managed to appropriate Fela with such funk or fidelity–this might be the best 18-minutes of movement ever to not involve Ya Kid K.
Download:
MP3: Smahila & The S.B.’s-”African Movement” (Left-Click)
Posted in African Music | 1 Comment »
June 18th, 2009
Last night, in the midst of Joker’s absolutely brilliant set at the awkwardly named Dubstep at the Roxy, Scion House Party, somewhere between a screwed-up, gonzo version of “I’m So Hood” and kinetic eardrums pop permutations of “Do It” and “Digidesign,” he let loose a wild rendering of Nero’s remix of The Streets’ “Blinded by the Lights.”I recommend that you stop fiddling, and download it immediately (it being the original but still excellent remix.)
Hopefully, by the year 2043, this blog will solely consist of bad jokes about Roman emperors. Septimius Severus, protect your neck.
Download:
MP3: The Streets-”Blinded by the Lights (Nero Remix)“
ZIP: Joker-Purple Wow Sound Mix (Left-Click)
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | No Comments »
June 18th, 2009
Sach O doesn’t think you should be impressed by the use of the word marvelous.
The year is 1999: Cash Money has just knocked Master P out the box and Def Jam is ruling the airwaves with blockbuster releases by Ja Rule, Jay-Z and DMX. The underground rap scene is tentatively moving from the 12’’ single format to full on album releases while Stones Throw and Def Jux, labels that would revolutionize the indie scene during the next decade are dropping their first projects. Though the Hip-Hop landscape is increasingly fragmented, every set has its heroes and for the Rawkus/Okayplayer contingent no emcee shines brighter at the end of the millennium than the Mighty Mos Def. Dropping the acclaimed Black on Both Sides, Mos embodies the promise of the post-Tribe era combining Q-Tip’s vocal style and topical reach with a harder edged flow and an aggressive BK attitude. The album becomes one of Rawkus’ greatest successes, going gold and setting the stage for Mos to become one of the decade’s most prominent emcees.
Then things fall apart. (No Roots)
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Posted in Reviews, Sach O | 8 Comments »
June 17th, 2009
Regardless of whether or not you think Dilla was the decade’s best beatmaker (my vote goes to Otis Jackson Jr.), it’s difficult to argue that he hasn’t been the most influential. After all, Myspace is stained by thousands of fisher kings sampling 128 KBS MP3’s of The Sylvers, thinking they got souulll. Paul White is not one of them.
Along with fellow Londonite and One Handed Music labelmate, Bullion (post coming eventually), White creates woozy, psychedelic post-Dilla instrumental hip-hop. All amorphous signifiers, sure, but with music this ethereal and gauzy, it’s difficult to go much further than that. It’s gorgeous, stoned, head phone music. I could listen to this stuff all day, but it would get too expensive.
Stream The Strange Dreams of Paul White
Download:
MP3: Paul White-”Cheese Special and a Draw”
ZIP: Paul White-Dazed and Confused Beat Tape (Left-Click)
ZIP: Paul White-15 Minute Mixon M.A. Hobbs (BBC)
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 1 Comment »
June 17th, 2009
Douglas Martin picks Cherries in Yakima, boxes with shadows, and managed to leave “In the Garage” off this mix–presumably as punishment for “Beverly Hills.”
You’re out of school for the next two-and-a-half months. You don’t have a job, and your parents won’t lift a finger to help you get a car until you get one. You just checked the weather report, and it’s supposed to be Hot as Hell Degrees. So, what do you do? You call up your boys (and/or/preferably girls/at least one girl) to see if they want to sweat their balls (or, in the case of the girls/at least one girl, hopefully not) off in your garage and crank out some jams, duuuuuude!
If we music fans can agree on anything, it’s that garage-punk bands aren’t made during the winter months. Very few souls are dedicated enough to hit their practice spaces in parkas and goose downs with the army jacket lining (unless you’ve just formed The Pixies, but they’ve always been the gold standard). Most bands worth their weight in amplifiers are born out of sweat and sun; out of making sure their neighbors never mow their grass without earplugs. I mean, it’s always nice to hit the beach or cruise around for chicks in daisy dukes and bikini tops, but this summer, we ain’t leaving the garage.
Le Garage: http://www.mediafire.com/?nhwjc1zmnn1
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Posted in Fresh Cherries From Yakima, Summer Jamz | 7 Comments »
June 16th, 2009
Andrew Casillas is a former contributor to Stylus Magazine, who currently puts in work at Club Fonograma. Dan Weiss is also a Stylus alum, who contributes to The Village Voice and Pitchfork. This is the only time that Manischewitz and Margaritas will ever mix well.
The year is 2109. Accordions are banned. This is because 100 years ago, two rogue, outlaw music critics made a mixtape so important, so inspiring, so…fucking amazing that all bandwidth worldwide swallowed itself and left all civilization in darkness for over 5 years. After President Obama restored electricity to the northeastern states, the newly formed Republi-Whig party, which controlled both houses of Congress, the British Parliament, and 3/4 of the Legion of Doom, passed the accordion ban of 2016, to prevent such awesomeness from ever coalescing and concentrating this violently ever again. As for the two music writers who created the mixtape, after the passage of the accordion ban, they were sent to an undisclosed location somewhere north of Helsinki, where they were placed in a highly experimental procedure conducted by Greg Gillis and Kanye West to see if the very essence of a human being could be sampled on record and auto-tuned (turns out, yes it could). The following is the notation of their original mixtape…
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NMMCFLVL
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Posted in Summer Jamz | 2 Comments »
June 15th, 2009
The real hyperbole will rain down closer to the June 23rd release date. In the meantime, the Henry Choi-created video for The 5 0′ Clock Shadowboxers project from Zilla and Douglas Martin stands sturdier than any faulty gastrointestinal tract. If this doesn’t make you take these guys seriously, then I’m not sure what will. Strippers? Scones? The Sasquatch? Listen to the lyrics: don’t sleep (or eat) on a weak stomach.
Also, be sure to scoop “Stay Clean” from 2 Dope Boyz, and stay tuned next week–The Slow Twilight is rapidly approaching.
Download:
MP3: 5 0′ Clock Shadowboxers-”Weak Stomach”
Posted in Videos | 1 Comment »
June 15th, 2009
In what’s certain to be yet another in a string of half-baked ideas that fizzle out after one post, Unskippable Songs is dedicated to the songs that you can’t skip whenever they randomly come on shuffle. Last night, while waiting in line at the completely middling Hangover (Zack G. was great, but sorry, a movie built on a sub-Apatow foundation of ass jokes and inane “Chopsticks and Flied Lice” Asian stereotypes, does not a classic make), The Beatnuts’ ode to hail mary prayer gladly blocked out the din of hipsters using the phrase “mise en scene” with a straight face.
Ju-Ju is high on the list of most criminally unsung beatmakers. I mean, he did lace Starks with “One.” Also, The Lakers. This is the most civic pride I’ve felt since Mark Madsen invented jerkin.’
Download:
MP3: Beatnuts-”Do You Believe”
Posted in Unskippable Songs | 3 Comments »
June 15th, 2009
Sach O rides like a Samurai
Fuck a cliché–Marseillais rapper, Shurik’n’s 1998 solo release, “Ou Je Vis” (Translation: Where I live), is poetic autobiography. While that’s like describing rap as “the hood CNN”, Shu’s rhymes about French rap’s second city actually fulfil their aspirations. Marrying an investigative scope to vivid descriptions of personal struggle and a metaphorical exploration of eastern culture, “Ou Je Vis” stands as one of the most uncompromising albums ever recorded.
As a member of the country’s single greatest rap crew IAM, Shurik’n grew from the group’s Phife into an emcee rivaling group leader Akhenaton, playing a major role in the group’s ascent to mega-stardom with 1997’s “L’Ecole du Micro D’Argent”, an album still regarded as the most successful in French history. However, when his solo debut was released the following year, few were ready for the stark collection of pessimistic musings delivered over minimalistic self production. “Ou Je Vis” wasn’t the expected follow up to a blockbuster, rather it was 32 years of frustration put on wax; a personal album preserving man’s struggle and society’s failings for posterity.
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Posted in Diggin' in the Digital Crates, Sach O | 3 Comments »
June 14th, 2009
A few years back, when Stylus stalked the land of the living, a small core of our writers banded around Souvenir’s brilliant, 64–a Stereolab meets Fujiya & Miyagi, meets Annie amalgam of surf guitars, chromatic keyboards, and sultry vocals. Or Little Boots, before Victoria Hesketh was a gleam in Atlantic Records’ coffers. The ever-discerning Dom Passantino, even wrote a Stylus Recommends review of the record, which finished in my 2007 top 20.
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Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 1 Comment »
