I told you when I last did a post about this crew it wouldn’t be the last. I’m not quite sure what the hell they are talking about, but I’m sure it’s tripped out and full of swag per usual. “#BEEST” as a video takes a journey into the typical morning of the men behind those SweetTeam masks that we know and love. It’s also the newest installment in the musical journey from #TeamPanini.
“Got Damn” is far more hype including dubstep and grime elements to smack your eardrums with that swag straight from Antwerp, Belgium. Go rep #TeamPanini on twitter and follow the mastermind behind it allhimself, #SWEK!
After two years, a fame increase of about 1000%, a few false starts, a few million dollars, some controversy, some investigative journalism, profiles in the nations largest publications, feuds with his mother, conspiracy theories, twitter campaigns and more, the mysterious Earl Sweatshirt appears to have finally emerged from Samoan Boarding School (or wherever he was) and is ready to start rapping again. In fact, he’s already started.
Starting with the video above and followed quickly by Twitter and tumblr pages, Earl announced his return to the world. Sure looks like him in the video, and definitely sounds like him in the song playing behind it, “Home.” Speaking of which, Earl promised to release the track when he got 50,000 followers. Quickly jumping well above that, he dropped the predictably lyrically dense track here. New Earl Sweatshirt song! For real! Tyler recently specifically announced, seemingly out of nowhere, that Earl would not be on the new OF tape, which especially now probably means that he is. So there you have it. 2 years of trying to #FreeEarl, finally over. Yay us.
Hans-Peter Lindstrøm’s last album was a collaboration with Christabelle unlike anything he had done before. It led him to explore a brand new realm of music making: there were vocals, and the songs had to be short. His usual 15 to 20 minute running times just were not suitable for the pop ambitions of Real Life Is No Cool. And I think that Lindstrøm learned a lot from that experience. Shorter lengths do not necessarily mean less creative space (as the actress said to the bishop) and on Six Cups of Rebel he made each song on this album a movement to what could really be considered a 53 minute song which begins and ends with organ arpeggios.
He also decided to add some vocal parts – his own vocals. So the changes are fundamentally fundamental. But this is the same Lindstrøm who has been steady delivering space oddisseys in the last few years. This one is not just an epic, it’s an opera. Flowing through disco to funk to prog to acid house through fields of drum meteors and into the deep deep dark corners of the Church of the Hypnotoad. Who knew that Sun Ra and Robert Fripp had a secret Norwegian dancehall lovechild? By the time you reach the end of ‘Call me Anytime’ (arguably the weirdest track on this album) that lovechild might as well be a reality.
The result is pretty convincing if you ask me. It’s groovy but not crass, with an extraordinary new-age vibe that would be off-putting in any other situation. But he makes it work with just a touch of psychedelic tribalism – but again, tasteful. It actually seems to me like the vocals pull their tracks out of any hypothetical abysmal ditch. They’re treated just like throwback disco vox: not always sensible or audible, but definitely adding relief and lifting the mood. That’s something else which is striking in this album by the way: for all the dancey-ness and glitter, the atmosphere is not all smiles – even rather oppressive sometimes. Track two repeats “can’t get no relief” over and over again; track four “all I want is a quiest place to live”, over and over again as if these were an ode to depression in a cartoon directed by Werner Herzog.
There are many moments on this album that make you think: is this a synth or a guitar? is this a beat or a tweaked out snare? Is that a clavi or a bandoneon on Magik? And what kind of magik do YOU do? How many people are on this album exactly? Just one. It’s one fair skinned man and his machines, in a studio that probably doubles as a bedroom. And so I ask: what kind of audience will this appeal to? Besides Lindstrøm himself that is. Not that his audience was very wide already, but he won’t gain very many fans from this one. Also: did he just invent chamber disco? (Google says no, somebody else used the term already. But they should give it up). The music is not fit for much else besides the bedroom. It would probably be great for an intergalactic diner, or some kind of VIP lounge in a hoverboarding skate park. Whoever is making that Jetsons’ movie NEEDs to license some of this. I find the album lovely, but it will probably not be everybody’s cup of tea. Short attention spans and optimists will be puzzled. Their loss.
Presenting the new video for G-Side‘s “Gettin It” off their album Island. Yung Clova, of course, had the ill verse on Babe Rainbow‘s ”Greed”, and since we did the remix EP G-Side has been on repeat hard. Plus y’all know Stalley, who’s gone from Lincoln Way Nightsto Maybach Music Group like a boss. Pretty dope.
The video for “Gettin It” has some really interesting symbolism used to illustrate the lyrics as they spit. Their braggadocios, effortless rhyme style is a great example of what the Dirty South sounds like now. I suggest paying close attention to their lyrical content, as they have some interesting, intelligent metaphors and content. Intelligent Trunk Music as Stalley coins it.
Yarrow Slaps is a hustler for sure. He’s been blessin me with plenty links lately, and the more I peep the more I like. Dude is just a guy alive in life makin raps. He paints pictures, like with paint. Although I don’t have much qualification to speak on visual art, I’d say much like his raps, his paintings lean towards impressionism. Most rap is impressionist. It gives you a vibe to experience. Of course details and stories are peppered throughout, but I’d say one of the most common types of rap to find is probably impressionist rap. But it’s not like there’s a reason to call it that. It makes more sense to just call it rap.
So call it rap we do. And it feels like right now there is a new rap album coming out every three days, and I find out about at least one new group or artist a week. It’s a great time for music in the United States, and one result of this wild proliferation is an incredible diversification. It’s great to look around and see so many different kinds of artists putting out incredibly developed work, and understanding how to present themselves. Or, understanding how not to present themselves. That certainly seems more accurate. It feels like a new sound emerges at every turn. And it’s not just some halfway facade that unfolds into a trite and predictable album beyond cursory listening. With the proliferation of the tools, and the demystification of the means of distribution, music is revealing itself to be intertwined with the lives we live as young Americans. And not intertwined in the ways we previously understood it to be. In fact intertwined is not so accurate. Interwoven would me more accurate because you cannot create the fabric of our reality without the fibers of music. Be it music that we create, or music that we listen to, our generation’s relationship to music is much deeper than we’ve yet recognized.
We know that Rap is one of the chief dialects, but all of the sudden we have found ways to understand rap dialects at a much smaller and more personal level. All of the sudden rappers don’t have to speak in pre-ordained dialects. They’re free to reveal their own. In the midst of rappers speaking freely, these dudes Dior Sentai from Orlando hit me up. Oddly enough I wasn’t surprised by what I heard on their debut Raw Cartoons, but it was on no account of the music. Their sound is an odd amalgam of anime soundtracks, post-OF (kinda nuts that this is aready happening) malevolence, and tumblr distilled Three 6 Mafia. That wasn’t the expected part, that was the unexpected part. They really own the sound, and while they’ve definitely got some work to do they’re off to a great start. The expected part of Dior Sentai actually came on account of geography, and not the music itself.
Orlando was where I went to college, and where I started rapping. I was fortunate to be in a vibrant scene that actually was not too dissimilar from what’s happening at a national scale on the internet. And as soon as I turned on Dior Sentai I could hear all the same things I used to experience at weeklies, and shows, and cyphers. It reminded me of all the time I spent not just recording, or playing shows, but living amongst a community of amazing artists. I’m grateful that the internet has given a lot of that to me in new ways, but some of it just can’t happen over computers. So on that note, next Monday is going to be the first installment of Slap City, a weekly hip hop party at SOM in SF. There will be more info to come shortly, but for now just know that the Wave is about to hit the Bay, and you should too!
Last Friday night we partied hearty at Santos Party House with Bad Rabbits, Party Supplies, and World’s Fair. Where you there? Aw, you weren’t. Unlucky duck you. Don’t worry. We captured that shit for perpetuity. Or at least some other people did. We were too busy dancing and imbibing and generally making merriment.
Shouts to Forthethrill for the photos, the rest of which you can see on there site here. As you can see, everyone had a great time and Action Bronson was there and rapping happened and then some funk n stuff too. For more rapping, check out a video of World’s Fair performing their track “Float” as captured by Brook Bobbins. Thanks everyone for a great time!
Xiu Xiu’s ten year anniversary release Always is a grand achievement of sonic destruction that sits wonderfully atop their highly prolific musical career. I still remember the first time I heard the classic track “Ian Curtis Wishlist” from 2003’s A Promise. The track feels as if it is compelling you to either weep or shake violently and this unique sensation is evident in almost all of their works such as the classic cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and the downright insane delivery of “I Broke Up.” Always comes right out of the gate with a bang of intense jagged shuddering sound. Jamie Stewart’s crackling voice and ultra-realism lyrics still resonate with the same intensity of that very first listen so many years ago. The first track “Hi” blasts out with a rattling wall of percussion bits (hats, tambourines) over a steady kick and unusual snare wrapped in synths and fuzz which erupts into choir samples on the chorus before returning to sickly detuning synths and subtle guitar chops. The track is a definitive cacophony of jarring sounds and gripping melodies.
The album somehow maintains a wonderful cohesion while still being extremely disjointed and abstractly dynamic. On “I Love Abortion” the spoken (screaming) word of J.S. takes over embedded in a noise bath that is at once harsh, vibrant, and brittle before descending into the beautiful piano melancholia of “The Oldness.” “Gul Mudin” is full of the most glitched guitar I’ve ever heard and “Born to Suffer” soars on a layer of sweet ‘80s strings and drum sounds soaked in verbed choir explosions. The album winds down to the epic ballad “Factory Girl” before finally ending in “Black Drum Machine” which walks you through a zen garden before unleashing (spoiler alert!) catastrophic distortion at bleeding ear levels.
I always found it amazing how Xiu Xiu seems to sound honestly lo-fi and hi-fi at the same time without falling into the trap of coming across gimmicky. They have the uncanny ability to just battle through with such an intense delivery as if the song or world is actually falling apart, but Mr. Jamie Stewart will somehow hold it together.
If Mux Mool’s debut full-length Skulltaste rounded up the familiar sounds of NES-generation suburban boredom, Planet High School channels its mid-20-something future self: The older brother a few years out of college, still enamored of all that frantic wackiness, sure, just slightly more even-keeled in expressing it. We’re not talking some major about-face here — Mux Mool’s still dealing in the same shades of chiptune, drum and bass, downtempo and hip-hop that defined Skulltaste — but there’s enough confidence and restraint about Planet High School to make you wonder if maybe, just maybe, Brian Lindgren’s beginning to chill out. You know, a little.
Because really, Planet High School shines brightest in its most relaxed moments. Lindgren’s production goes all buttery and smooth here, with tracks like “Ruin Everything” and the prancing two-step staccato of “Palice Chalice” building effortlessly into a labyrinth of beat and bass. There’s something almost Royksopp-ish about the way these harmonies weave through each other, even the harsher, bitcrushed arpeggios of “Raw Gore”; it’s that instant emotional connection of notes to nostalgia, a tough-to-define atmosphere shifting its mood with every measure.
‘Course, this being Mux Mool and all, that mood often shifts into sheer sonic overload. The back-and-forth breakbeats of “Live at 7-11”, that wicked wobble in “Get Yer Alphabets (Guns)”; this is where Planet High School sends your head spinning, goes vertiginous in all its ramped up excitement. It’s that iconic Skulltaste vibe, only here it’s treated as an accent to the album’s pacing rather than its heavy core. You might wonder how you got from point A to B, but rest assured: Planet High School always spins you back around to center. Just like a good older brother should.
This kid is only 15 years old? Smdh. I should just retire and find some fucking tweenager to bankroll my life with all the money/talent they are most likely getting/having. Remember when it was crazy that Prodigy was 19 on “Shook Ones Pt. II”? Motherfucker would be ancient in the rap game today! Infants out in the streets, rapping about mobiles and not being to put food in their mouths correctly.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Haleek Maul. This youngin outta Brooklyn is real fresh on the scene, and just dropped his first video for track “Fraulein”. This presumably troubled teen goes in hard n brooding (pause) on some dark themes, just like kids in the nineties. Which is how it should be. It’s pretty dope. Maul also has a freestyle over a Clams beat on his Soundcloud. Expect more good things from this kid soon.
Dieselboy has been touring over the planet since the mid nineties, and he’s still seen by many as the one of sickest drum ‘n bass DJ and Producers alive. On tap today, is a bonkers 84 minute mega mix featuring 87 different tracks, mixed to perfection.
My goal is to make the most intricate, layered, and amazing mix that’s ever been done. Period. I’m not trying to just put out a mix; I’m trying to put out a mix that other DJs will listen to and aspire TO do. I don’t fuck around. I want to be amazing.
I gots to agree with him on this one. This track will def stand up to the test of time. Download the mix here or stream it below.
