Dip Your Bowl Into the Cosmic Cauldron

We don't know a whole lot about the blog The Ghost of the Weed Garden, and we like it that way.

The person or people behind it go by an owlish tag that looks like this: {{{{o\/o}}}}

As you might imagine, that anonymity delights us.

On the site are music mixes  you can stream or download, scanned artwork from the covers of horror, fantasy and science fiction paperbacks, as well as covers from cryptic, sometimes self-published looking books on magick, philosophy and other occult oddities.

Honestly, it's the sort of stuff that would have made a much younger Typing Monkey freak out and think about church.

The most recent music mix posted on Weed Garden is titled "Cosmic Cauldron." And as the site itself says, it's packed top to bottom with "Psychedelic, Acid Folk, Kosmische, Electronic, Occult, [and] Haunted VHS."

We spun it today and it fit the sunny autumn afternoon just right. As the evening brought chilling fog, "Cosmic Cauldron" swirled with creepy acid folk, devilish weirdness and a few good dabs of resin-smeared psych.

Have fun.

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.

Kung Fu and Other Delights

We confess we knew little of the athlete-turned-film-star Jim Kelly before he died and the obituaries began to appear.

The Typing Monkey has never seen Black Belt Jones, despite being a fan of the dub tune by Lee "Scratch" Perry. We knew the title only, and had not carved out time to watch what sounds like a crackerjack good time, combining action of the chop-sockey and Blaxploitation varieties.

It's hot out, and summer laziness has put a few writing projects on hold, so please enjoy first, this YouTube clip of the theme song from Black Belt Jones by Dennis Coffey and Luchi De Jesus:


[courtesy of funkybrezhoneg]

Then spin this playlist of nearly every cut from dub legend Lee "Scratch" Perry's 1975 LP Kung Fu Meets the Dragon, a record clearly inspired not just by Jim Kelly's black man of action, but martial arts movies in general.

Note the only cut that's been pulled from the playlist is "Black Belt Jones", possibly the best tune on the record. Despite that, this is a fun listen, so get yourself a glass of limeade or something and have a relax.


[courtesy of sqezyplus]

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.]

[Turn toward camera with gun drawn & cue brass section]

It's not breaking news that composer John Barry is dead. Most know him from his work writing theme music and scores for the James Bond films. And no, he didn't write the Bond theme, but it was his arrangement that everybody knows.

The Typing Monkey encourages readers to celebrate Barry's music by watching the 1960 film Beat Girl, aka Wild for Kicks. Barry wrote or co-wrote nearly every song in this tale of teen delinquency and his agility with various genres -- sugary Your Hit Parade pop, beach-nik (sic) rockabilly, greasy rhythm & blues and noir-ish jazz, among others -- always impresses us no matter how often we see the film.

If you buy the soundtrack reissue from él Records it won't disappoint and you'll be able to stage your own (implied) cannabis-fueled teenage layabout shindig as you dance to the incomparable "It's Legal" as sung by Shirley Anne Field.

In a film dominated by Adam Faith and Gillian Hills vocals -- neither of them too shabby -- it's Field's syncopated ode to all the things teens can do without breaking the law that steals the show. Something tells us she's in danger of ignoring her own message.

There's a full stream of Beat Girl on Youtube, or you can watch it in nine installments, which unfortunately breaks Field's one vocal number right in half. ["It's Legal" begins around the 9:15 mark in this link. It picks up again here.]

Adieu, John Barry, and thanks for all the music.

Tangent obituary: Esoteric electronic music composer Milton Babbitt also died. The AV Club has an educational and compelling summary of his career and influence.