SOARING LIQUID! Big plump beats from our favourite Russians. SECRET WEAPON.
An essential new Tectonic drops here, the fourth in their ten inch plate series, and with barely weeks until their crucial Tectonic plates 2cd lands, pressures are mounting. Hijak shows that the label’s roots are like family, for Hijak is in fact none other than Skream’s elder brother of Inta Natty fame - an original junglist crew which also featured Bailey and Grooverider! Mister Fleming is evidently comfy with the break, lovely round drums spooked by the necessarily nightmareish strings, with awesome bass dragged through the dirt. Huge tune. Flip for Armour, an adoptive guise for Roly from Vex’d showing if it were possible, that bristolians are becoming even darker in their predilections. Increasingly drawn to the chaotic drone spaces and dark corners, “iron man” hoves into view gradually, like the enormous ocean liner siren which will initially shred your head in a dance situation.
Impeccably effective Mosca moves on Numbers, his debut for the label, and - it’s hard to believe - only his 2nd solo single to date! It’s now nearly two years since the London-based producer kick-started the Night Slugs label with his ‘Square One’ ace, and in the meantime he’s continued to establish a reputation as one of the capital’s finest selectors, running everything from Bashment to Techno in his beloved DJ sets while notching up celebrated remixes of Four Tet and T. Williams, among others. For this outing he’s in lean and mean 4/4 mode, finding his crux betwixt Bassline Garage and loved-up ’90s House vibes for ‘Done Me Wrong’, and again with the deft skip ‘n parry of ‘Bax’ and its rudeboy East London warehouse flavours.
Due to ridiculous demand from a ravenous dubstep audience, Hyperdub finally do the right thing and issue 3 of the best tracks from the now legendary Burial album, with the added bonus of a hot bashment remix of ‘distant lights’ from label head Kode 9. The remix of ‘distant lights’ morphs the original’s blissed melodrama into a usefully squelchy hot stepper, optimized for maximum club effect, rectifying a common gripe for many lesser skilled DJs that Burial’s material just isn’t mixable (practice mate!). The real good stuff comes with the original mix of ‘distant lights’, the instantly recognisable opener to many heads soundtrack to the summer, cruising into sight with a bilious bassline, pregnant with rarified mood altering substance only found in the most particular compositions. The vinyl cut here only adding to its towering majesty, each crackle and snare bite amplified for full effect. The same applies to the much needed vinyl cut of ‘pirates’ on the flip, whose initial bass drop hits twice as deep as the CD version, precipitating the irresistably swung steppers rhythm writhing about sacred spaces populated with spectral MCs and bassbin emissions of raves gone by. Taking us to his final resting place, ‘gutted’ emotes a mournful sentiment, perhaps best spun at a wake when all the dancers can muster is a heads down shuffle in honour of the dearly departed. In lieu of any new Burial material in the near future, this will have to satiate your appetite for now, but needless to say, this should leave you feeling fat as f*ck.
The title cut here is an immense underground tune, mercury bass styles, quicksilver minimal rimshots - a tempo redolent of a possessed drive out of the city. Weakhearts may find it just a little too dark - we’re just simply blown away by the exhilaration this music provides, a whole new dimension of dub. “Southern Comfort” again has an almost liquid feel, but wields an enhanced and brutal bass presence, the hi-hats are choppier, messier and this lends a disorientating feel to the delayed pyrotechnics taking place somehwere above and inside your head. ‘Broken home’ is perhaps closest to the half-speed mesmeria of ‘Sign of the Dub’ from the first ten inch, a delightful lick of dancehall vocal, more for melodic purposes than anything else, and a heavily muted trumpet sounding for all the world like miles. The most other-worldy tune ushers in a percussive shaker with chasm deep breakdowns ‘Nite Train’ is tougher then you ever expect - providing a great counterpoint to the female vocal and echoing mayhem of effects.
Title track from Gangrene’s upcoming album “Vodka & Ayahuasca” dropping January 24th.
Red hot future Techno from BNJMN, backed with an outstanding Andy Stott remix. A-side, his original ‘Nightvision’ is a real dancefloor weapon, mixing malleable, warped Garage bass with mechanised House rhythms at a heads-down Techno tilt, kinda like some Si Begg or Cristian Vogel ace updated with a deadly 2011 flex. On the flip, Andy Stott does his throttling, squashed and heaving overhaul, smacking the tempo down below 100bpm and submerging the whole thing in refracted dub chords and a mad bass-blurred patina evoking the most lost-in-it 5am moments. Unmissable, really.
Han är nykomlingen som branschen satte klorna i innan han hann släppa detta mixtape. Han skrev på ett kontrakt värt 3 miljoner dollar med bolaget RCA Music Group efter att bara ha släppt två låtar från skivan, och när tredje låten släpptes ingick han samarbetsavtal med stora namn som Drake och Jim Jones.
Nu när mixtapet är ute börjar man ana varför. ASAP Rocky är prototypen av ett hiphopbarn av vår tid. Hans uttryck och musik är rätt i tiden, lagom progressiv med tillräckligt många referenser till hiphopens rötter.
ASAP Rocky är både nervkittlande och en nostalgitripp. Hans oansträngda Harlem-rap blandad med ett mer melodiöst Houston-sound är lika sjabbig och rännsten som fräscht, och framförs lika ofta i helsvarta luvtröjor som i kläder med inslag av gälla neonfärger. Det är lika oldschool som nyskapande med lika många blinkningar till den klassiska sydstatshiphopen som till M.I.A.:s alternativa elektroniska toner. Det här är mörk och magnetisk “drug music” som tillfredsställer både hiphopskallar och hipsters.
Record date : 1976-79
Album style : roots, dub
Playlist :
Ethiopian Version
Leaving Babylon Dub
Dub The Right Way
Salty Dub
Seaview Corner Rocking
Dub Of Righteousness
Great Stone
Empty Vessel Dub
Israelite Children Dub
East Avenue Skank
Tinson Pen Dub
King Tubby’s Key
Jah Is Coming In Dub
Confusing Dub
Top Line Special
Mixing Engineer : King Tubby
Producer : Bertram Brown
Backing Band : The Soul Syndicate
Drums : Max Asher & Santa Davis
Bass : Fully Fullwood
Lead Guitar : Chinna & Tony Chin
Keyboards : Keith Sterling & Gladdy & Richard Johnson
Saxophone : Deadly Headly
Percussions : Skully
Studios :
Recording : Channel One (Kingston, JA) & Randy’s (Kingston, JA)
Mixing : King Tubby’s (Kingston, JA)
It has become a forced issue to have a requisite anthem that caters to ladies, just to be considered as a diverse enterprise. Carefree Californians, TiRon and his ever-reliable consort, Ayomari, are doing the game one better with A Sucker For Pumps, a crisp, melodious glance through a relationship looking glass that was made for women, but strong enough to keep men in tune. Not only do they establish themselves to be unique in their thinking, they piece together an incredible album in the process.
Comparatively speaking, A Sucker for Pumps falls in line with releases such as 808s & Heartbreak and The Love Below with all the honesty of relationship exploits and none of the sap. The pair find no qualms in promoting chivalry on “Her Theme Song” and “Perfect,” just like there’s no fault in waking up “The Neighbors” thanks to the conformity of the missionary position. Avoiding the usual dimensions of “he say, she say,” TiRon & Ayomari exfoliate the surface area and go deep as heard on “No Wonder,” a cut dedicated to self-blame of the male ego, where TiRon admits to “going back to the same ‘ol a-hole role” after surviving a pregnancy scare. [via Smokingsection]
Travel At Your Own Pace” could be the perfect title for the debut by Y Society, as group members Insight and Damu the Fudgemunk are simply traveling at their own pace throughout the course of this album. They go their own way in terms of beats and lyrics, thus offering something unique and unexpected to the listener, and the result is good hip-hop that challenges the genre’s norms and expectations.
Y Society seems to have a lot of fun creating their music. This can be seen in almost every track of “Travel At Your Own Pace,” in which Insight’s lyrics and Damu’s production work off of each other to create a feel good album. Tracks like This Is Anintroduction, Good Communication, Scientists and Dizzy are just fun to listen to, and provide great platforms for the two artists to display their respective skills on the microphone and turntables. Such tracks show Y Society’s ability to inject hip-hop with a much-needed sense of positive energy and fun.
Other parts of the album allow Insight and Damu to demonstrate their collaborative skills by communicating back and forth with lyrics and cuts. In Command, Setting The Example, and At My Own Pace are skillful songs that create a back and forth effect between emcee and deejay. Insight creates dialogue by speaking with his rhymes, and Damu seems to respond by speaking with his hands in a musical communication technique mastered by very few in hip-hop today.
Common is back with his 9th studio album, The Dreamer, The Believer. The Chi town emcee has been dropping records since ’92 and in that time the landscape of rap has drastically changed.
But on The Dreamer Common takes us back to the basics of classic hip hop; bumping beats and lyrical wizardry.
Production is handled masterfully by long time collaborator No I.D. Whether it’s loops from vintage soul cuts or 90s era boom beats, the Godfather of Chicago rap doesn’t fail to deliver.
Features are few and far between. John Legend pops up on The Believer to drop a gospel hook and Nas lays down a verse on Ghetto Dreams, making the track an instant classic with one of the dopest combinations in hip hop.
But Common has enough to say to not need an album jammed with cameos. On Lovin’ I Lost he spits about lost love with a maturity and experience that young rappers just don’t have, and No I.D. takes it to the next level with a Curtis Mayfield sample.
Common still has the sexy/sensitive side nailed down, particularly on Cloth and Windows.
On The Dreamer he brings a message of positivity that fans of Common’s back catalogue will be familiar with, and sums the whole album up in one line, ‘Maybe I’m a hopeless Hip Hop romantic / Maybe I’m a dreamer.’
Poet and author Maya Angelou recites an original poem at the end of the song, reliving Lonnie’s conscious rap days.
Hot on the heels of his lovely 12” for MoM, Synkro serves three tracks of lush ambient Techno electronics for Styrax. ‘Presence’ suffuses the A-side with a blissed-out 4/4 roller buoyed by convective Reese bass and kissed by convective, effervescent atmospheres to sooth yer bonce. Flipside, the beatless ‘Question’ appears shades away from the 4th world cyber-jungle ambience of the recent Oneohtrix Point Never album, swooning to the sounds of simulated fauna and beautiful, widescreen synth pads. ‘Memory’ completes the set with with a tantalising 2-step reduction, all flickering, mercurial syncopation and plangent keys reminding of John Beltran.
D&B superhero delivers his latest opus. ‘Condition’ is concerned with achieving a “more light hearted approach” but he couldn’t stop “making the deeper material” so you get thirteen tracks of deep-but-light emosh D&B. Highlights have to be the darting ruffige of ‘Garbage Man’, his gruff, stubbly hardstepper ‘Schlager’, and the contemplative, hand-on-chin keys and strings of ‘Windows’, or the Amit styled halfstep rollers ‘Blackhole Dub’ and ‘No More’.
Brand new music from ST Files, if you haven’t heard of him before check out some of the stuff he’s done with Marcus Intalex under the alias MIST especially a song called ‘Midnight’. This ones forthcoming on a new label started by ST Files himself called Grey Audio and will be the flip to a tune called ‘Falling Down’ featuring the talents of Calibre.
