Fun Stuff > BAND
The "wink wink" Thread 2010: This Time It's Personal
tau534:
--- Quote from: Zombiedude on 21 Apr 2010, 16:29 ---That's getting redundant.
--- Quote from: tau534 on 21 Apr 2010, 12:11 ---Track seven on the Son Of Aurelius - The Farthest Reaches is corrupt.
--- End quote ---
--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?ej5innmmdmz
--- End code ---
--- End quote ---
Thanks.
pat101:
My link to High Violet is down, the web sheriff asked nicely so I complied. :angel:
KvP:
Starkey - Ear Drums and Black Holes
--- Quote ---I've gotten into the habit of making mixes of things I've been listening to for my friends on the first of every month, and sure enough over the last few months I've noticed certain patterns in my selections. I had always thought of myself as someone who had gravitated inexorably towards UK dance music, the IDM scene in particular, as though it was a concrete, distinct thing. But lately all I ever seem to be playing is abstract hip hop and UK techno. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that abstract hip hop is "in" on both sides of the Atlantic and thus I'm being met with a deluge of it. As for the techno, acts like Subeena and Actress seem to be ushering in an apparently new class of the UK variant which I am digging to some degree. But at the heart of it I'm finding out that the music that I had always loved was, for the most part, the union of those two disparate genres. Autechre's DJ sets are nothing but legitimate hip hop, despite that group's avant-garde techno leanings. Luke Vibert reportedly only listens to hip hop. Once the Plaid guys exited The Black Dog it ceased to be an IDM entity and started being relatively straightforward techno, but I didn't even notice until it was pointed out to me. A lot of what I would call IDM seems to be "acid synths + hip hop beats".
So the diversification of my taste has been a lot easier than I thought it would have been, and it's liberating, more than anything - I don't have to wait for the 2 or 3 really notable IDM albums (if that) to come down the pipeline every year. At this pace there's an average of at least one album a week that I can take a shining to. It's overwhelming at times, but it almost becomes a lifestyle - there's never a time when I don't have new things to listen to.
With the blurring of the line between legit hip hop DJs and electronic composers (pioneered in many ways by the jazz and experimental dalliances of many DJs on the Stones Throw label, namely the dearly departed J Dilla) I've been finding myself listening to acts I would normally have written off. One of these acts is Starkey, who I've written about before. Prior to this point, he was more or less exclusively an instrumental hip hop DJ, but Ear Drums And Black Holes is an album that features some pretty significant use of vox.
For the most part, this takes the form of Starkey's own (at least, I think it's his) voice subjected to the widely-praised wonders of autotune. It's pretty gaudy, as it tends to be - autotune has become a signifier of the "more is better" school of pop R&B production in the States. But it actually works when Starkey uses it, as he does on "Spacecraft", "Club Games" and "Alienstyles". His music has a size and shine that sets it apart from more abstracted DJ sensibilities. As I said last month, it makes more sense to call Starkey a hip hop artist than an electronica artist. Unlike most of the stuff I listen to it's not difficult to imagine most of the tracks on Ear Drums and Black Holes on a mainstream radio station.
The two straight-up rap tracks, "Club Games" and "Murderous Words", also happen to be the album's weakest tracks - southern-style club songs just don't sit with me. Which isn't to say that Starkey's production skills can't be served by a vocalist - Grime MC P-Money contributes his spry Grime delivery to what I believe is the album's strongest track, "Numb", and Anneka brings a lighter-than-air pop feel to "Stars", the lead single. Later on, Kiki Hitomi's singing (in Japanese) graces the almost Jamiroquai-esque ballad "New Cities".
This is the sort of music that makes me wish my car had a better sound system - especially with all the overt hip hop influences, Ear Drums and Black Holes practically demands to be played loudly and openly (they don't call it "Street Bass" for nothing). Starkey continues to display a natural affinity for infectious rave / disco melodies to go along with his wheezing / booming / skittering basslines. Tracks like "Multidial" and "Fourth Dimension" (which revisits the seemingly random bass sequencing of Ephemeral Exhibit's "Creatures") show a definite rave influence, like Raffertie, but a little less goofy. and the album as a whole is rife with dramatic bombast. A scant few tracks, such as "11th Hour", don't really go places, but Starkey's good enough at what he does to keep things interesting and at least mostly consistent.
This particular style of music - extroverted, aggressive dancefloor-oriented hip hop - seems to be the new established style for Planet Mu, with other proprietors of the style such as Slugabed and Raffertie signing on to the label. I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet, but Ear Drums and Black Holes, at the very least, shows that it might be better suited to the long-player format than other variants of dubstep.
--- End quote ---
--- Code: ---http://www.mediafire.com/?g2nj2zgvtoc
--- End code ---
Hyetal - Gold or Soul
--- Quote ---One of the many distinctive scenes to propagate after the dubstep explosion began to settle has come out of Bristol, where DJs like Joker and Gemmy have etched out a sound that's more distinctively melodic than the gritty, morose, often spooky sort of sound that had come to typify the movement. This "Purple Wave", as they call it (one of the few things I regret about living where I do is the feeling that I might be embarrassing myself repping stuff being made halfway around the world) takes a few cues from 8-bit and electro-funk, but not to the hardcore extent of, say, the all-analog Skweee scene. It's got as much R&B in it as hard funk.
Among the clutch of artists at the fore of Purple Wave is Hyetal (ne David Corney), who has released a few 12"s over the last year or two and an incredible cut for Mary Anne Hobbes' latest compilation, Wild Angels. Gold or Soul was one of those singles, and for my money it's probably the best thing he's done that isn't on Wild Angels. The thing that I notice about Hyetal's best tracks is the subtlety with which he uses his synths - on "Gold or Soul" the leads feature a heavy wobble and great use of fade and velocity - It sounds like just one synth, but it's doing enough to add a lot of texture and flavor to the track by itself. The beat's nothing to sniff at either. The second track, "Neon Speech", seems vaguely familiar to me - I'll have to check, but I think it was featured toward the mid-point of a Subeena mix I have. Booming bass and gated synth squelches propel the song along nicely below a slightly cloying arpeggiated synth chime (I just don't like that sound). In a nice turnaround, the song shifts gears around the 3 minute mark, adding a second gated synth and a great organ line.
The Purple Wave guys have all put out a lot of great work (though Joker seems to be getting all the buzz), but it's Hyetal's particular way with synths that makes him my favorite of the scene. I'm looking forward to plenty of great singles in this vein as we move farther into 2010.
--- End quote ---
--- Code: ---http://www.mediafire.com/?vjytx4izmvm
--- End code ---
bahhhhh:
GAYNGS - Relayted
Tracklist:
The Gaudy Side of Town
The Walker
Cry
No Sweat
False Bottom
The Beatdown
Crystal Rope
Spanish Platinum
Faded High
Ride
The Last Prom on Earth
--- Code: ---http://www.myspace.com/gayngs
http://www.mediaf!re.com/?mnxymzyaono
--- End code ---
David_Dovey:
--- Quote from: E. Spaceman on 22 Apr 2010, 05:37 ---The Juan Maclean
--- End quote ---
Oh man does he actually have a MIDI knuckle tattoo
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version