Mad History

Hey kids, we're kind of on summer hiatus here.

Okay, we admit it. We've closed the offices down in favor of an epic bender. Fine. We said it. Are you happy now?

While we're gone, you should make time to read Jeff Weiss' history of the album that made Stones Throw: Madvillainy by Madvillain. Don't know what we're talking about? Read Weiss' blow-by-blow of how it came about and you'll be sold. It's hyperbolic, but that's standard for Pitchfork. And really, if it's not filled with purposely frilly sentences, it wouldn't be music writing, would it?

And now: "Searching for Tomorrow: The Story of Madlib and DOOM's Madvillainy"



We're going back to sleep for now. See you soon!

Free Music: Interpretations & Trip-hop by Any Other Name

Let’s start this three-part offering of links to free music with the double-scoop ATCO: A Tribute from Xiomara, a musician from San Francisco.

Radical re-workings of rap are a dicey game, often producing novelty (which isn’t automatically bad) but usually cringe-inducing. But once in a while, the right performer picks the right material and does something genuinely interesting with a style of pop music not necessarily suited to cover treatment.

Xiomara spritzes Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” with a nearly a capella first verse to show off her Depression-era blues voice that, appropriately rides into a sort of gypsy-jazz breakdown at the end. The flipside puts a daydream drift across “Electric Relaxation” by A Tribe Called Quest. It’s a watery, soft and positively sensual reading of ATCQ’s already drowsy tune. The original is a request, Xiomara’s reading is pure promise keeping.

Get it, spin it, dig it.

***

Electric Wizard’s legend is mostly true. The English doom metal act has conjured a certain strain of creepy, occult-shaded metal sludge so filthy that listening to them can still feel transgressive. But turn off the amps and most classic metal, and a fair amount of doom, can sound like folk-blues that trades in murder-ballad imagery.

So what happens when a talented fan scrubs the druggy fuzz from Electric Wizard’s music? Acoustic Wizard answers that with some of the scariest campfire jams you’ll ever hear. The first two volumes, each with three tracks, are called Please Don’t Sue Me, which seems unlikely as we imagine the members of Electric Wizard would be all over this. It’s an act of pure love, with wonderfully gloomy results.

***

Electronic music site Earmilk calls Goldbloc’s Black Gold EP “one of the best slept on acts of our time." The term “slept on” seems to have lost its potency in this era of music consumption. After all, there’s so much new music that even dedicated genre fans are going to miss out on something. It’s just too hard to keep up. That said, Goldbloc really is a fantastic duo from Boston.

As our headline says, the four songs comprising Black Gold are trip-hop. Whether Goldbloc calls it that doesn’t matter. Don’t go in expecting the languorous, end-of-the century angst of Portishead, nor the jazz-lite chillout sound that made coffee houses seem cool in the late ‘90s. Seriously deep bass rolls with midnight menace beneath slightly glitchy treatment of vocals that recall the post-coital rasp of Elin Kastlander from jj. This is where soul music should be today.

You can download the EP for free by liking them on Facebook. We got a download error message, but that’s just Facebook being willfully difficult. You should be able to see the Dropbox link where you can grab the compressed zip file. Roll up.

NSFW

As a reward for all the reading we've made you do, here's a video that's rather filthy, but in a very funny way. It's probably best viewed in a non-work environment. Unless you work somewhere that doesn't mind cartoons that suggest trashy European softcore cinema from decades past.


Michel Homm from simon landrein on Vimeo.


You dirty monkey! You watched the whole thing, didn't you? Good. Now read this oral history of the creation of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" video and write a three-page report tonight as homework. Discuss the themes of the piece, alternate perspectives on feminine beauty, and the idea that rhythm has replaced melody in popular song.


[An artful wiggle to the NSFW site This Isn't Happiness and Vulture.]

What's Inside a Quas?

Mass Appeal just published an interview with Jeff Jank, the art director for music label Stones Throw.

The focus is on the creation of Quasimoto, the alter-ego of dj/producer/rapper Madlib. It won't change your life, but it's fun to hear Jank talk about how much the music influenced the design.

Sampling Ouroboros

The Typing Monkey un-ironically, well, and sometime fully ironically, grouses about the Web/internet all the time. But as a communication medium, it does many wonderful things.

Case in point: We listened to the song "Loose Booty" by Sly & the Family Stone this morning. Not because we're awesome, but because it was the subject of the most recent Hear This column at the AV Club.

Hear This can be a real treat when it does something like it did with the entry concerning "Loose Booty" -- that being, make the reader aware of a lesser-known song from an otherwise well-known artist. And in this case, it was in service of showing off something else that modern technology has enabled: Finding great music by sample-sourcing.

"Loose Booty" was used as the basis for The Beastie Boys' tune "Shadrach" from their sophomore album, Paul's Boutique, a real piñata of an album for sample-geeks. One read of the liner notes to that could start an expensive crate-digging habit.

We've always called that game "Spot the Sample" but the point is the same: You hear hip-hop music with samples, and you see if you can figure out what the source material for the sample is. Alternately you read the liner notes (or cheat via Who Sampled Who) and go find that music.

The result is, you pride yourself on your vast knowledge, and equally vast music collection, or you discover something new, and enjoy that new find. So shake your cane at those damn kids all you want, a portion of the hip-hop audience will always care enough to seek out the music that inspired or contributed to what they're listening to.

Which brings us to this:


If you haven't already seen this, or haven't already pressed play, it's a terrific and infectiously fun breakdown of another Paul's Boutique cut, "Shake Your Rump." One song, many samples, all of them neatly pointed out for you by a man who took the time to make this because he wants to turn you on to more good music.

And we wouldn't have seen this without a quick scan of the comments on the Hear This column, where a link to this video was posted by both Quirinus and D_Boons_Ghost, two people we'll likely never meet.

Let's crowd-source world peace, man.

Friday on a Tuesday

Please enjoy what was to be a "holiday weekend post" to send the reader off into a holiday weekend with a good feeling.

Now it's something to help you coast through a short work week.

First is a cut from the long-gestating third full-length recording by Quasimoto:



Our thinking is that greedy heads will eat this up and share it, as we have, because if not stupendous, at least it's something. But our untainted devotion to The Unseen and The Further Adventures of Lord Quas give us hope that there's much more to Yessir Whatever. Quas's latest comes out June 18 and yet, nobody has given us a copy. Curses.

And while you listen to that, you can look at this variant cover artwork by Kevin Wada. It's for the new X-Men comic book simply titled X-Men, which is a funny title on account of the team comprises women only. Go ladies! (For non-geeks the players are, from left to right: Rachel Summers, Shadowcat, Psylocke, Storm, Rogue and Jubilee.)

Despite the Fitzgerald-ish look of the mutants, the book does not take place during the 1920s in upstate New York. Oh well.

We'll be right back after these messages.

Stones Throw Records has always been about more than rap and hip-hop. Beats and rhymes are the taste-making label's bread and butter, but over the course of 17 years, label founder Chris Manak (aka Peanut Butter Wolf) has judiciously stretched beyond his backpacker music base, and not just via re-issued funk and soul sides.

To whit: Singer Anika just released her self-titled LP via Stones Throw. Anika sounds as if it could have been recorded by a German no-wave outfit in 1979. Chilly synths and thin drum machines sharpen the edges around Anika's disaffected voice, but instead of cutting, the music flickers and echoes like a weird daydream.

She proves what a great songsmith Ray Davies is [as if that needed proof beyond The Kinks -- ed.] by running his lonely waltz "I Go To Sleep" through the damp Berlin basement of her style, turning the lyrical ache into numb recitation while retaining the sweetness of the melody via snatches of barroom piano.



And because Stones Throw seems to be in the spirit of '79, after the Anika video plays you may also enjoy The Lions' "Roll It Round" (authentic Two Tone-ish reggae with a dub wash) and Chrome Canyons' "Generations" (analog synth/library soundtrack) -- which should start up in the video player automatically. If not, check them here and here, respectively.

The Typing Monkey may not be up on Homeboy Sandman or Jonwayne, but it's not like Stones Throw isn't giving us anything else to love.

Wise to the Demise

Adam "MCA" Yauch is still our favorite Beastie Boy.

Tracing the influence of King Adrock and Mike D in terms of vocals is pretty easy. Rappers from Eminem to MC Paul Barman and beyond employ the nasal delivery of those two. And Adrock especially, whose punkish, puckish delivery defines the Beastie Boys for most listeners, despite Mike D's deadpan delivery of hilarious lines.

But few emulate or approach MCA's dry howl. Even as he's helping create a false origin story for the band in "Paul Revere" his voice has a the crispness of an elder statesman. He could get at both the winking comedy of early career Beasties -- drawling as if he'd been up all night pounding brewskis and bumming smokes from your girlfriend -- and the conscious rapping/positivity of the trio's later material.

He's gone, it sucks, and he'll be missed. We're not sure how long this eulogy will be up on the landing page of the Beastie Boys site, but you should read it. That's how you spend major label money and influence.

A Final Stop on the Hippest Trip

Don Cornelius died today, Feb 1 2012. All signs point to a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Per our usual policy, we'll point you toward The AV Club's obituary.

Whatever led Cornelius to alleged suicide, he leaves a terrific legacy as the man who not only brought soul, funk and awesome good times into millions of living rooms across the United States via Soul Train, but as a skilled promoter of hip, positive images of young black America.

Soul Train presented a great party on the surface, one any kid with access to a television could join, at least vicariously. Soul Train also functioned as a stealth form of cultural ambassadorship. Cornelius helped break new acts on the show, famously ignored the color barrier by hosting white performers including David Bowie, and even gritted his teeth to embrace rap despite not being a fan.

Most importantly, Soul Train was an undeniable success on its own terms, a feat unlikely in our modern niche-marketed and overly studied demographic entertainment landscape.

If you haven't seen VH1's 90-minute documentary on Don Cornelius and the impact of Soul Train, you can watch it online here. It's very much worth your time.

Things the Intertoobs Taught Us in 2011

Most media outlets publish carefully cultivated best-of lists for the end of the year. Some take it very seriously and that’s fine. Journalists and other media types generally like to argue and debate so making best-of lists feeds that urge.

The Typing Monkey is not immune to such impulses but we simply don’t consume enough new material to effectively create some sort of all-knowing inventory of things we think matter in music, film, television or whatever else.

Like the average jerks we are, we just mess around on the Web and document the things we find that entertain us. Some of those things make it to the blog.

In the spirit of year-end wrap ups and the critic’s inflated sense of influence, here is the first (and possibly last) "Things the Intertoobs Taught Us"

THE MUSIC
A. Dd+ – Dallas-based MCs Paris Pershun and Slim Gravy (!) slipped passed wider recognition. Too bad that, because they’re funny and smart, willing to lob lines such as “surprising everybody, reading a damn book” (“Likeamug”) in the midst of the kind of throwback boasting that workaday schmucks can actually visualize. On their March LP When Pigs Fly the duo was backed by wonderful soul-soaked production from Picnictyme. Grab the free download of their singles-collecting EP Loosies and thank A.Dd+ by paying for a copy of Pigs Fly.

CHRISTIAN MISTRESS – Given the TMI offices are in Seattle we must apologize to this Olympia, WA quintet for not discovering their classic blues-based metal until this year. Singer Christine Davis may have started smoking in the 3rd grade in order to get that voice (tremble men, you can’t handle her). The rhythm section knows when to boogie, when to boom, and the clean, dual guitar leads muscle in right next to the Saxon patch on your denim. Get on this already, they’ve been at it since 2009.

“I’m In Your Church At Night” by ACTIVE CHILD – Pat Grossi, the man behind the name, has released plenty of good music over the past year. This single came out in November 2010 but we didn’t find it until February of 2011 so we’re including it here because nothing else he’s done moves quite like this majestic, crystalline work of weirdo pop. Dig the video and it will all make odd, wintry sense – just lovely.

BELL WITCH – A drum/bass duo from Seattle (again, where were we?) whose funeral-doom rumbles come with uncharacteristic peals of bright, cleansing light in the form of madrigal-like harmonies. The match makes perfect sense and the band gives the six-string bass guitar a home. Four dollars gets you their demo and that’s four bucks well-spent.

NYEMIAH $UPREME -- A Queens rapper whose mixtape Bad will probably draw comparisons to more mainstream/current peers but sounds more to us as if she's standing on the shoulders of MC Lyte and high-fiving Fannypack on her way up. There's a day-in-the-life narrative to Bad that actually works amid the sketches of beats, bass and police-procedural keyboards. Bad could come off as typical "because I'm worth it" aphorisms wrapped in party music. A deeper listen reveals an independent woman a little pissed off that too many men around her are there because they think they're worth it, and more, that she should agree.

“Mountaineer” by WHITE SEA – The video for this single gets the teens-being-teens aspect right but missed an opportunity to craft the John Hughes homage that the song embodies. Soaring, tragic, self-aware, Morgan Kibby sings the lyric “it’s a teen dream” as if she’s trying to reassure a teary heroine, and the whole affair has you running back to give that sensitive rich kid another chance because maybe you two can make something of this after all. “Mountaineer” is pure Kate Bush-style drama with all the synthesizers and crashing drums to realize its grand ambitions.

Worth Following – We doubled up our coverage of SP-33 and XII Boar since we discovered both their free EPs on the same day. The former is Chicagoan Ezra Funkhouse, whose Escape the Carter smeared Lil Wayne vocals onto bleak synth grime from John Carpenter's soundtrack to Escape from New York. The latter is a stoner-metal quartet from England who managed to graft some hardcore fury and pumelling doom onto their resin-stained melodies.

Since then SP-33 has put out a woozy ambient mix and an original single titled "These Moments" both of which show Funkhouse deliberately branching out. Meanwhile, XII Boar promises a new release in 2012 and continue to play around the UK and the continent.

Reference material: We wouldn't know about three of these bands without regularly visiting the essential Cosmic Hearse blog. The Typing Monkey staff also spends a fair amount of time at RCRDLBL, Ill Roots, and enjoy mining for great rewards at Cover Me.

SUPER HAPPY BONUS FUN TIME!

Summertime is Dub Time

Friends, it's a scientific fact that dub reggae makes summer more fun. Heck it makes winter more fun.

Because The Typing Monkey is spiritually, morally and contractually bound to mention dub producer, musician and sound-manipulator Scientist whenever possible, we would like to clue you in, or remind you as the case may be, of the existence of Max Tannone's mash-up album Mos Dub.

You may have heard it, or heard of it, when Mr. Tannone made it available as a free download in April 2010. If not, or if you made a note and forgot to follow up, now is your chance to correct that error.

What you'll get are Mos Def vocals pasted onto various dub cuts, many of which were culled from Scientist's sublime Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires. It's fun and sounds great when the sky is blue, the air is humid and the temperature demands that you sit back and relax with a beverage.

And if you want, dig around Max Tannone's Website to see what else he's got cooking, because he's cooking plenty ... as in, his just-released Ghostfunk mash-up. See?

Free Music: XII Boar and SP-33

Music distribution has changed, just in case anybody here hasn't been paying attention. Giving away singles, EPs and sometimes full albums is often the method emerging artists use to get attention in a crowded marketplace.

The viability of that model is and has been discussed ad naseum -- it's all speculation and only time and failure will reveal the best path. By then we'll have already reached a destination.

Meanwhile, three dudes from the U.K., with a deep and abiding love of Motorhead, doom/stoner metal and other heavy sounds, decided to form a band last year. They're called XII Boar and they're giving away a four-song EP titled XII.

XII Boar spew high-density sludge with moody curls of smoke filling up the spaces in between the blasts. They have a good feel for dynamics and at least one of them digs hardcore ("Train Wreck").

The EP's closer, "Skol" follows a sparse percussion break with a tonal shift in which the band does a quick variation on Blue Cheer's "Summertime Blues" trick by letting each member of the trio take two quick measures to hammer down a short solo and step back to make room for the next guy in line.

Find multiple download links for XII here. [And an enthusiastic goat's head to Angry Chairs.]
 
***
 
The Typing Monkey knows nothing of the DJ/producer/musician known as SP-33. Statistics favor a dude in his mid-to-late 20s behind the moniker but for all anyone knows SP-33 is two teenage girls. What we do know is that we've been playing SP-33's Escape from Tha Carter a couple times a day since we downloaded the free LP a week ago.
 

SP-33 chopped up John Carpenter's soundtrack from Escape from New York and spliced it with equally shredded vocals from Lil Wayne's Tha Carter discs. (Mostly from Tha Carter III.) It's standing on the shoulders of Dangermouse's Grey Album in order to reach past mash-up status and into collage territory.
 
Escape retains the desolate tone of Carpenter's compositions and often grinds up Weezy's vocals -- already treading into drain-cleaner territory -- into a coarse paste that blends well with the music's zombie-Vangelis sound.
 
Get the download here or if you want to save bandwidth play it on Soundcloud. [Wink & a nod to XLR8R.]

Need a Ride?

The Typing Monkey would never tell you what to do. However, we have no qualms with nudging you in the right direction, just like a sitcom dad, and trust that you’ll make a good decision.

Now then. There’s a gentleman named Aesop Dekker* who runs a music blog called Cosmic Hearse. If you’re going to run a music blog, this is the way to do it. Straight from his site:

"It's about sharing hard to find and special recordings. It's not about taking anything away from the artists themselves. Of course if something is in print and you like it, buy it. If you have legitimate claim to something posted here and want it removed, just write me and I'll do so."

That's an invitation to LOVE -- the love of getting your brain-junk kicked repeatedly by music you didn't kow you needed in your life.

And what is that music? It’s metal of many varieties (black, death, doom, thrash, ‘70s, NWOBHM, et al.); rock of multiple stripes (hard, psych, classic, prog, Eastern bloc, etc.); some punk and hip-hop; and plenty of just plain weird stuff that you won’t find easily unless you spend too much time (and money) scouring record bins.

Aside from the bounty of amazing music at Cosmic Hearse, Dekker writes thoughtful and genuinely funny summaries, criticism and reality checks about the content. His enthusiasm for the music and his blog has pushed The Typing Monkey staff to investigate music we might have otherwise passed by anywhere else.

So quit hanging around this dump and get over to Cosmic Hearse. [Scruffs your hair and smiles] Now go on, champ.


[A belated tip of the hat to Dr. Fred.]


*Dekker also plays drums in the San Francisco black metal band Ludicra. Their album The Tenant is out now. Do check it out.

Funny 'Cause It's True

Rap probably has a higher incidence of novelty hits than any other pop music. The earliest rap hit, The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", is pure novelty. And some of the biggest hits of the form were comedic takes ("Parents Just Don't Understand" "The Humpty Dance" and, oh let's go with "Stronger").

We could debate whether these clowns of the mic cheapen the medium for MCs with more serious rhymes, but anyone who feels that way isn't going to be dissuaded by anything written here. And plenty of high-minded, well-intentioned rappers commit accidental comedy simply by taking their work far too seriously. [The same goes for movie stars who call acting "their craft" and rock stars who think what they do is important.]

With that, take this:
Russ Mason
"Prep Rap"

[courtesy CrewElectro]

How many DJs and hip-hop producers would be brave enough to admit that the sample of classical music in this single broadened their view of what qualifies as a break?