Seams like since the Knitting factory got turned into a european grocery store, El Rey has been hosting all the prominent instrumental hip hop acts/ beatmakers. I already dropped the RJD2 news in a previous post. This post is dedicated to Bonobo, a sick beatmaker that i have yet to see live. Not only is he coming to the el rey with fellow ninjatuner Yppah on Thursday April 22nd, but look out for 'Black Sands' dropping march 29th.
This is a video for flutter off the new record.
One more thing, there's a remix contest where you upload a track, and Bonobo remixes the winner! I entered 'Underwater Tax Invasion' a track from my upcoming album.
finally there's an afordable reissue of 'siamese dream' by you-know-who. here's a couple more new releases that sparked my interest from lesser know artists.
Ok Go have a new video. It's the sort of thing you can make after you've got a couple successful records under your belt. It also helps when one of the worlds largest insurance companies fronts the bill.
One day I'll run the sort of blog where people send me their music before it's releases. Or maybe one day I'll be one of those people that trolls the torrents for leaks. Until then I'll just drop some info on a couple soon to be released records, and tell you how they are after I've dug up the paper to pick up the vinyl.
Flying Lotus 'Cosmogramma'
(Warp)
available 4th May 2010
- LIMITED FIRST EDITION PRINT CD W/ FOIL BLOCK SLIPCASE - 14.99 - 2 x LP DOUBLE GATEFOLD VINYL WITH VELUM INNER SLEEVES - 22.99
01. Clock Catcher 02. Pickled!
03. Nose Art
04. Intro//A Cosmic Drama
05. Zodiac Shit
06. Computer Face//Pure Being
07. ..And The World Laughs With You ft. Thom Yorke
08. Arkestry
09. Mmmhmm ft.Thundercat
10. Do The Astral Plane
11. Satelllliiiiiteee
12. German Haircut
13. Recoiled
14. Dance Of The Pseudo Nymph\
15. Drips//Auntie's Harp
16. Table Tennis ft. Laura Darlington
17. Galaxy In Janaki
I'm a flylo fan. I drop his tracks all the time, just check out the 5signs podcast.
With releases by dabrye, this is hardly ghostly's first forray in the modern world of beatz, but check out that album cover, and tell me this muxmool isnt smoking the same stuff the brainfeeder crew. You can download death 9000, and check out snippits of the record on the ghostly site.
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Lusine 'Lucky Numbers'
(ghostly)
available MARCH 16, 2010
1. Push
2. Haze
3. Slapback
4. Excess
5. Inside/Out
6. Sunset
7. These Things
8. Keep Me Fading
9. Near Sight
10. Weaver
11. Emerald
12. Rubberbands
13. Two Dots (Reverse Engineered)
14. Twilight (Elliptical Mix)
15. Crowded Room (Type A)
16. John Doe [Unreleased 2005 Version]
17. Rubberbands (Dirty Mix)
I have a really good Lusine record called 'a certain distance'. chill downtempo stuff, very cinematic, quite beautiful melodies with understated electronics.
you can check out a sufi and a killer over at clashmusic.com. I've got Gonjasufi's first couple seven inches, and i've heard his work with flying lotus. I'm looking forward to this record, but tentatively. I wasn't a big fan of 'ancestors', and i'm still trying to work out whether i'm a fan of GassLamp killer. That being said, the first seven inch was amazing.
Gonja is playing a dj set at the echoplex. I bet the record will be available for sale for $20 which makes the eight dollar ticket price more than worth it. go to ticketweb for Details about the show with GLK and mainframe (producers from a sufi and a killer.)
Hey Los Angeles RJD2 is coming to town! I read an interview where rj explains this is the most intricate and rehearsed tour he's ever put on. I saw RJD2 a number of years ago, and the guy is an amazing musician, not just a dope producer, and the live show really exemplifies this. I fell off the rjd2 bandwagon after the third handed shift, but the interview had me re-thinking the twenty dollar ticket price. If you wanna go, i would recommend buying tickets at the el rey box office, but if you like to spend an additional %40 on your tickets, you can do so online at the El Rey website.
Also fresh off the presses ATOMS FOR PEACE ft.THOM YORKE + FLYING LOTUS micro tour.
Tickets go on sale tomorrow at waste.uk.com though for the life of me i can't figure out when. If you can't get a waste ticket, (usually impossible, but free from terrorizing fees) then the tickets can be purchased starting march 6th.
If you get tickets to the santa barbara show, you wont see flying lotus, cause he'll be "performing" at coachella, but oakland isn't really that far away.
brits: you can listen to the full album here. yankees: you can listen to the full album here.
I'm in America, so I tuned in via the NPR link. I wrote while I listened and here's what happened. A track by track review of the third Gorillaz full length 'Plastic Beach'
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We begin with a fitting Orchestral Intro that seamlessly leads to the jump off track Welcome to the World of Plastic Beach, featuring Snoop dog, a clickly little vocoder piece. The sped up funk, treble heavy with Miami Vice style synth swells, says neither Dan the Automator nor danger mouse, this is the newness from the Gorillaz.
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Next up is White Flag, the intro of which is used on all those little plastic beach vignettes that appeared on the Gorillaz home page a month back. This track puts you in the middle of a video game, and really conveys the vibe of those first few Gorillaz tracks, where the 4th wall was still firmly in place, and it was almost believable that a group of cartoons wrote an album. Then Kano comes on the mic, and shatters the video game vibe for a couple verses alongside a type writer high hat, and marching style snare, it feels more like a Kano track than Gorillaz, a bit more like the second album now, where tracks seriously flipped the style on verse and chorus.
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Rhinestone Eyes comes on with Damon Albarn (aka 2d) ridding high-a-top a simple slow beat. Damon sings about the plastic beach, and already four tracks in, this album is mild cohesive. When some high-faluting synths and a background chat come through, it feels like a drunk Albarn singing karaoke to his favorite eighties jam.
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Stylo is next, and it's the single for obvious reasons. It's supper dancy, with a synth hook that repeats through out the lofty Albarn vocals, into the disappointingly short contribution from Mos Def near the end, Womack definitely kills it though, making Stylo one of the stand out tracks.
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Stylo is followed by a little commercial and a big breakbeat rhymed by Gruff Rhys and de la soul. The track, Superfast Jellyfish, has the famed Gorrillaz swagger dancing with the tongue in cheek humor that really defines the project. Remarkably, while sounding the most Gorillaz of the tracks so fall, it's also a little different than anything I’ve heard from them, and also the least 80's sounding.
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Empire Ants is next and is the first track featuring not a vocalist, but a band! And not just any band, but one of the best new bands: Little Dragon. The song is sweet and lovely, even though as they sing, 'the world is falling down.' If I close my eyes, I’m floating on a cloud listening to this pretty little melody as I float along. Unfortunately, it doesn't really showcase the amazingness that is little dragon, and half way through, sounds more like a Ryoksopp song than Gorillaz or Little Dragon, but then Yukimi Nagano voice comes through and melts my face, she is amazing. And now I know what it sounds like when the new kids (Little Dragon) get the rock star production treatment.
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Glitter Freeze (Gorillaz homage to dubstep) has that sick wobbly, the crunchy clap and sci-fi synths that have taken over the electronic world. But you can't escape that Gorillaz funk any more than you can escape plastic beach's proclivity for gigantic breakdown and massive builds.
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One final synth stab drops us into Some Kind of Nature ft. Lou Reed. Lou sort of talks his way through the track, as he does. The drum beat is simple and straight forward. This track is kind of amazing. Albarns experience with the Good the Bad and the Queen really shines through. He's got a knack for making these older recording artists sound really modern and contemporary.
(((((10)))))
On Melancholy Hill starts out sounding like a rather weak daft punk track, and then gets a bit emo. Perhaps the most blur sounding so far, with the synths swells and thick English accent the song could just as easily have been recorded by Supergrass. Much more new wave than the bands previous hip hop core, I can imagine girls with massive eyeliner crying in their beds listening to this track right after they caught their teenage boyfriends kissing another girl. I might have left it off the album.
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A half assed apology come in the way of Broken (at least beat wise). A track that puts Albarn on top of a Dr Dre style track. I'm curious why they didn't try and put snoop on this one, where he would have been quite at home. Instead Albarn kind of whines his way through, with vocals way up in the track, which seams fairly consistent through out, the quest vocals are buried in the instrument, but Albarn is perched high on top.
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Mos Def has a real opportunity to do his thing on Sweepstakes, as he sort of falls through the track, which is actually sort of a difficult rhythmically, and kudos to Mos Def for rockin' it. It's a cool little track and one of my favorites on the album.
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PlasticBeach, the title track, has the whinny Albarn perfectly placed with an arpeggiating keyboard, a quick clicky beat and a healthy layer of electronic quirkiness. That goofy synth is talking to me, telling the story of Plastic Beach in a delightfully unknown computer language.
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Little Dragon are no quite as effective on their second appearance To Binge. Albarn and Nagano duet, and again Nagano is mixed way lower than Albarn. Also the track, while quintessentially Gorillaz, just isn't big enough for the talent of Nagano. For Albarn's third Gorillaz project, it's one of the most successful in terms of the projects aesthetics, sound and color, but I can't help being a bit blue balled as the song basically sounds like an extended intermission. There's very little departure from the beat or melody, a little bit of a build, but rather a sleepy track in general.
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Cloud to Unknowing brings back bobby, but flips the style crazy like. This is the only really effective slowish track on the album, it sounds neither Gorillaz or plastic beach, and yet fits perfectly in the record where other tracks fail to support the concept and groove. There's no beat, no hook, just some strings drenched like a London downpour.
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And finally Private Jet, the little banger that almost could. A fat beat under some tasty synth stabage, Albarn nailing a perfect cadence, reminiscent of other really successful Gorillaz track. The synth lead is a bit hot, and sort of detracts from the stellar groove. The track slowly rolls along, somewhat haunting, a little silly, and in my opinion far to short, but I guess that’s the idea of a closings track, you have to leave the listener wanting more.
Overall impression: After only one listen, it's not my favorite of the three Gorillaz records, but plastic beach is a good record non-the-less, and fans of the band will not be disappointed. Below is my bootleg remix of Stylo. Enjoy.
note: the spell check in Google chrome is a piece of shit. also, the album preview is the best thing to come to the net since illegally downloads.
