All posts by Kevin

hip-hop

Busdriver’s RoadKillOvercoat out today

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A reminder that RoadKillOvercoat, the new release from the quick-lipped Busdriver, is out today. Rarely do I drop these sorts of annoying notes, but I’m just that into this record.

You can stream RoadKillOvercoat in its entirety at Busdriver’s MySpace page. I copped it at eMusic this morning.

MP3s via Epitaph.

Related:
Busdriver: Kill Your Employer (Daedelus remix)
Pigeon John/Busdriver, Chaser’s, 10/8/06
New Busdriver: Kill Your Employer

general

Urbs: Toujours Le Meme Film

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Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting If my Googling skills are up to snuff, the title of the 2006 debut album from Urbs (aka Paul Nawrata) translates roughly – or, possibly, exactly – to “the same old film.” It makes sense, if I’m correct, given Nawrata’s cinematic approach to this G-Stone Recordings release.

A longtime DJ in Austria, Nawrata has pulled together both the dramatic and downtempo for an instrumental soundtrack that will leave you grasping for the RJD2 comparisons. If we’re to assume this is the soundtrack to Nawrata’s life, then he does a wonderful job of coaxing emotion and moods out of a (mostly) word-less space. Much like the cover of the album, you’ll feel like you’re transported into some sepia-toned foreign film surrounded by beautiful French-speaking women, fancy cigarettes and fancier cars.

This is downtempo/trip-hop that isn’t served its due as background music. (Also, Nawrata’s take on Duran Duran’s The Chauffeur is excellent.)

  • Urbs | Tu Moi Aussi?
hip-hop

Clipse tour dates

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Clipse is hittin’ the road in support of Hell Hath No Fury, a year-end favorite of many bloggers. It probably would have been one of mine if it weren’t released so late in the year.

Nevertheless, the tour includes a March 18 stop in Phoenix/Tempe at the Clubhouse that happens to coincide with another great show that same night: Jonah Matranga, Joshua English and Frank Turner at Modified.

UPDATE: Tour dates have been revised and no Phoenix date is included; now that’s more like it. Sigh.

All Clipse dates after the jump:

Continue reading Clipse tour dates →

hip-hop

Q-Tip on MySpace?

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Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting Went out last night with our peeps Jay and Carrie, who promises she’s going to draw me some day soon. (She’s got mad artist skillz.) Anyway, Jay alerted me to the possibility of a MySpace page for Q-Tip, formerly of A Tribe Called Quest. We questioned its legitimacy, as fake MySpace pages are all too easy to create.

I tried to come up with reasons to believe it’s real and reasons to believe it’s fake.

It’s real:

+ A streaming track, Move, which I’ve never heard.
+ Listed under top 8 friends on Tribe’s MySpace page (along with Michael Rapaport, who actually is not on The White Rapper Show).
+ Linked from a Q-Tip Web site, www.qtiponline.com, which is found on Tribe’s MySpace page. That site also includes a stream of a track, For the Nasty (feat. Busta Rhymes) that was on the NBA Live ’06 soundtrack; see below.
+ Tribe reunited for a tour last fall, so Tip could be back in the game.
+ Linked from Q-Tip’s Wikipedia page.

It’s bogus:

+ MySpace layout – blinking stars and what not – is garish and reeks of poor taste.
+ Links to www.q-tip.com, which is “coming soon.” Why not link to the aforementioned and somewhat functional www.qtiponline.com?
+ Not listed in former Tribe cohort Phife Dawg’s top 8 on his MySpace page even though there is room for one more. Ouch.
+ A corny-ass Bonita Applebum MySpace contest; Q-Tip really wouldn’t sell out one of Tribe’s greatest tracks like that, would he?
+ No pictures other than the artwork I swiped above.
+ Linked from Q-Tip’s Wikipedia page.

Sooooo, what to believe? I’m leaning toward thinking it’s legit, but I dunno. If not, I just wasted a lot of cyberink on a fraud. Lemme hear your thoughts.

Also, if anyone has a lead on the album Q-Tip recorded under the moniker Kamaal the Abstract that was shelved, I’d love to hear it. A box of cookies will be paid for your generosity.

  • Q-Tip (feat. Busta Rhymes) | For the Nasty
general, vinyl

The Long Winters: Clouds (home demo)

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Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting Indie labels are making it so that buying vinyl is more enticing than ever. Whether it’s a download coupon for mp3s of an album or adding bonus tracks, they seem to be hedging their bets that maybe, just maybe, fans will be lured by owning a tangible piece of music.

The fine folks at Barsuk drew me in when I saw the Long Winters catalog available on vinyl at Stinkweeds in Phoenix. Not only is John Roderick’s 2005 Ultimatum EP released on beautiful 140-gram vinyl, it also includes five bonus tracks. The record also comes covered in a thick paper cover with lyrics printed on it.

The four bonus tracks: Fire Island, AK (susitna demo); (It’s a) Departure (version 1.0); Clouds (home demo); Seven (litho demo).

One day, if I move and have to pack and lug records around, I may regret my growing vinyl collection, if only for a short while (or when I throw out my back lifting it all). But music as rich as Roderick’s deserves the 33 1/3 treatment. And I’m telling you, this 140-gram vinyl is so sturdy you could eat a steak off it.

And these demos are especially fulfilling because I’ve been still wholly absorbed in Putting the Days to Bed, so it’s neat to hear more skeleton versions of the polished tracks.

Buy Ultimatum EP on vinyl for $15. Check out the entire catalog for the Long Winters.

  • The Long Winters | Clouds (home demo)
arizona, general

Tonight: sourceVictoria and Rob Dickinson

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(Look out, two posts in one day!)

I’m excited for tonight, when we’ll see ex-Catherine Wheel frontman Rob Dickinson, exactly a year to the day we saw him last, at Anderson’s in Scottsdale. I’ve gone on at length about Dickinson before, so I won’t do it here again.

Also, local favorite sourceVictoria is opening with an acoustic/piano set. The band recently was featured in the weekly paper Get Out. You might have read about them on this very site, too.

If you’re in town, come on out.

  • sourceVictoria | Heartless Boy
  • sourceVictoria | Opportunistic
hip-hop

New Brother Ali: Truth Is

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Oh Word‘s Sacha Orenstein didn’t mince words in heaping praise on Brother Ali’s new album The Undisputed Truth (due out April 10 on Rhymesayers).

” … Ali has filled every single requirement that I’d laid down for a good rap album this year and he’s done it in a way that seems so natural and effortless that it’s hard not to stand in awe and wonder how the hell it happened.”

Pretty convincing stuff. I’d been sitting on the first single, Truth Is, for a few days, so now seemed as good a time as any to share. After all, I have been watching The White Rapper Show, too. (Read Tom Breihan’s breakdown for more on “The Best Thing on TV.”)

While you’re listening, you may wanna check The Passion of the Weiss’ post on The 10 Best White Rappers of All Time, of which Brother Ali (the whitest of them all; he’s an albino, for crying out loud) is omitted. (EDIT: Read the comments.) But I have a hard time arguing with the No. 1 selection of El-P.

  • Brother Ali | Truth Is
hip-hop

The RZA Presents: Afro Samurai the Soundtrack

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Photobucket - Video and Image HostingI have yet to watch Afro Samurai, a new animated series on Spike (television for men! … boobs, blood, bullets, hundreds of CSI reruns a day!), but I can’t imagine a more perfect musician to oversee/produce a soundtrack for it than RZA, he of Wu-Tang Clan fame.

Afro Samurai, per the Anime News Network (yeah, I know), is “the tale of a black samurai futuristic, yet feudal Japan who is on a mission to avenge the wrongful death of his father.” Naturally, Samuel L. Jackson – executive producer/Jedi – voices Afro, the title character. His samurai sword is the one that says bad motherfucker on it.

Enough of the show; I’m more interested in this soundtrack, which features Q-Tip (you all know I’m a fan of his), Talib Kweli, GZA and Big Daddy Kane (on the same track!) and more. As the de facto head of Wu-Tang, which always has played with loose analogies of its crew to kung-fu warriors, RZA was made for this project, just as he was the Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai soundtrack.

The Afro Samurai soundtrack is a combination of vocal and instrumental cuts. RZA’s theatrical leanings always make for intriguing choices, and this is no different. It’s cohesive, and like many Wu-Tang projects, it incorporates dialogue from the show for a little dramatic effect.

The soundtrack comes out Tuesday on Koch Records.

  • RZA feat. Q-Tip, Free Murder | Just a Lil Dude (Who Dat Ovah There)
  • RZA | Ninjaman (instrumental)
hip-hop, i used to love h.e.r.

I Used to Love H.E.R.: Jonah Matranga

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The contributions have been coming fast and furious of late, and I’m more than pleased to offer up the ninth installment of I Used to Love H.E.R., a series in which artists/bloggers/writers discuss their most essential or favorite hip-hop albums (read intro). Jonah Matranga (ex-Far, New End Original, Gratitude, aka Onelinedrawing) takes a stream-of-consciousness approach in discussing two seminal hip-hop groups, the type of entry I love about doing this series because of the freedom contributors have to shape their thoughts.

(Note: Jonah will appear March 18 at Modified in Phoenix with Joshua English and Frank Turner.)

Jonah Matranga
On Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions

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PE, BDP, Youth Speaks — San Francisco, late-night, 15Jan2007

“I put this together to…”

Not sure what was holding, resistance is quiet sometimes, just digs in and somewhere you just stop wishing, but tonight at YouthSpeaks all different melanin counts surrounded resistance and took it down.

My favorite remains the girl in the ‘Philippines’ shirt, humility without affectation, the first person to speak before she spoke, and be more reforming than performance. There was, though, someone I missed half of, and an older guy that actually reminded me of KRS, which is as good a place to jump as any, though we’ll come back to this thing that got me coming back to this, this ode to PE and BDP, these people that keep reminding me of that great place between chaos and too slick, between boring practiced licks and bricks through windows for no better reason than cos you miss someone.

Chuck did really sound like Martin in the best way (Luther King, the reason for the thing tonight that got me thinking), and in the last poem by the host, she spoke so eloquently about King’s humanity and taking the shackles of archetype off — just like Johnny Appleseed in The Botany Of Desire, these wires running through our very nervous systems — but Martin Luther King was that huge and beyond and the duality is inevitable, the myth-making and immature disappointment when the people we drape our dreams on turn out to be people.

Continue reading I Used to Love H.E.R.: Jonah Matranga →

general

Satchel: EDC

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Photobucket - Video and Image HostingInspired a bit by Idolator’s Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda feature, in which they rummage into albums of yore, I’m going back to (gasp!) 1994 for today’s post. (Kudos to Idolator for the Rival Schools post yesterday.)

Satchel existed in a strange, and ultimately thankless, place: a couple degrees of separation from Pearl Jam, whose guitarist, Stone Gossard, formed the side band Brad with drummer Regan Hagar. With Gossard off on his Pearl Jam duties, Hagar and singer Shawn Smith formed Satchel.

The band’s debut, EDC, carries a loose concept around Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs; there are songs named after characters (Mr. Brown, Mr. Pink, Mr. Blue) and clips of the film are interspersed between tracks. “Take the satchel of diamonds and scram. I’m right about that, right? That’s correct? That’s your story?” (Ahhh, we have a band name!)

I remember wearing out the track Mr. Pink when the album originally came out. But it’s odd that maybe I don’t have a full appreciation of the album until 13 years later. Big guitars and piano-heavy ballads helped carry me out of the grunge years and into a sound more spacious and compelling, though my 16-year-old head – more into A Tribe Called Quest and Digable Planets at the time – struggled to wrap itself around it. Gotta say now that EDC never sounded better.

  • Satchel | Mr. Pink
  • Satchel | Suffering