May
06

Batdance: Phantom of the Paradise

Batdance is a new column combining cult films and the soundtracks who love them. It is written by Sean McTiernan, who owns several purple suits. So there’s a particular strain of 70s camp movie set trippin’ that’s been transpiring for a while. As you know, Rocky Horror is an egregiously-camp 70s musical and cult classic… Continue reading »

May
05

Beards, Blazers & Bass: Thom Yorke & Flying Lotus @ The Low End Theory

Photo via David Bartholow of Gorilla Vs. Bear Right now, my brain feels like washed up kelp. So it goes when you’re up till 4:00 a.m. scrawling reviews about Thom Yorke and Flying Lotus doing a surprise set together at your favorite spot. Thanks to the Head Radio, the Low End has been vouchsafed  as… Continue reading »

May
05

Sach O: Jamie Woon – Mirrorwriting

Sach O is waiting on the Dusbtep Happy Mondays. James Blake was too precious, Katy B too inessential – will Jamie Woon be just right in the great Bass crossover sweepstakes? Not quite, but with Mirrorwriting he delivers just as strong an effort as his fellow BRIT school peers, distilling his influences into a smart,… Continue reading »

May
04

Pistol McFly – Bong Rips and B.A.R.S.

Bong Rips and B.A.R.S. Like ice cream sandwiches and cornbread (kept separate), there is nothing wrong with that. We’ve heard it a hundred times. Rapper likes weed, rapper has swag, rapper is from Mars. These cliches are as calcified as coal. As someone who has incinerated enough smoke to acquire an ineradicable weirdness, even I… Continue reading »

May
04

Video: debruit – Mezde

Beyond songwriting, debruit ranks at the forefront of the contemporary bass junkies because of his chimerical sense of imagination and color. He heists records from Haiti, Nigeria, and Iran, and melts them into arabesque patterns. Most of his peers aspire to vaporous nostalgia or 23rd Century futurism, but debruit sounds wholly modern. The kind of… Continue reading »

May
04

Dam Funk & Ariel Pink’s “Fright Night”

E-Mail from Douglas Martin at 6:22 a.m: “Dam-Funk + Ariel Pink, our worlds have never collided this thoroughly before.” Assume the obvious. This union could only get the gas face if Ariel Pink sang through a gas mask and Los Angeles’ funkiest man decided to play keytar one-handed and blind folded. “Fright Night” is too… Continue reading »

May
04

Matthews On Mathers: The Marshall Mathers LP

Aaron Matthews doesn’t want to sit next to Carson Daly or Fred Durst. On his second go-around, Eminem wanted to get personal, balancing the Slim Shady persona with Marshall Mathers. Putting himself under the microscope, he weighs influence and impact, evaluating and manipulating his own image of the media. It established the template for the… Continue reading »

May
03

A Cooked Yam is What We Want

So says the Yoruba proverb that inspires “E Ma S’eka” by Bola Johnson & The Easy Life Top Beats. The phrase is a prayer for good luck — a votive aspiring for existence to be bountiful and yamtastic, an ideal that even Kanye couldn’t disapprove of. And indeed, Nigerian music at the dawn of the… Continue reading »

May
03

Video: Raekwon – Butter Knives

Raekwon – Butter Knives from LRG on Vimeo. Parkhill & Stapleton, the Dodge City and Tombstone of the Wu-Tang clan mythos — twin landmarks enclosing an enormous civilization. Though they might as well have been ancient Assyrian, for the way the Clan depicted them as crumbling but still-vibrant ruins. Stairwells smelling like piss, gunpowder and… Continue reading »

May
03

Nas and the Partial Return of Escobar Season

Evan Nabavian stabbed Un and made you take the blame. Nas has officially returned from his Damian Marley-guided African pilgrimage with two new guest verses. Fortunately, all that spirituality hasn’t left Nas so high-minded (or high) that he can’t make songs called “Dog Shit” and “So Fresh.” You can’t really hail these two as the… Continue reading »

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