We only jumpstarted our Sounds From The Astral Plane series a few weeks ago, but this edition will (unfortunately) most likely be the last of 2012. We do have a few nice features coming your way in the next couple of days so keep your eyes peeled. This week, we have two (!) Missy Elliot reworks, a quartet of amorphous mixes and more on-point Kid Smpl night bus vibes. Much love as always.
Last week, we wrote that Michael Graham aka Falcons’ sound can go one of two ways: post-Timbaland sex music or what amounts to moombahton with 808s. The latter isn’t the worst thing in the worl, but sexy Timbaland-esque productions carry more weight in my book. Anyways, Graham recently contributed to Djemba Djemba’s “I Just Go” single and completely upstaged fellow remixers Obey City, Philip Rabalais, Yung Satan and the unimaginatively named FootwoRk. It’s all somewhat derivative of Timbaland, but that really isn’t a bad thing and there isn’t much else out there I’d rather dance to at 3AM. The chunkier synths are offset by light-weight plink-y synths set in a perfectly seductive progression, allowed to ride out over some understated percussion. Stream/download below and grab the whole tape here.
I’m honestly not the biggest Death Grips fan. Can’t really get down with the ultra aggro yell rap unless it’s Gunplay or Flocka on the mic for some reason. Anyways, Djemba Djemba recently reworked Grips’ “Klink” on Team Supreme Vol. 28 and decided to extend the remix into a full track after the fact. The result is one of Djemba Djemba’s most out there tracks to date, manipulating MC Ride’s vocals into a cacophonous blend of synths and clattering percussion. It’s one of those remixes that really shouldn’t work, but melds disparate elements into a brilliantly engaging twerker. You ever twerked to Death Grips? Now you can. Stream and download below.
On November 6, Djemba Djemba and his cohorts at The Melt are bringing in C.Z., Lil Texas and (formerly Trap) Arnold of Boston’s M|O|D click to Los Globos. If you’re not familiar, M|O|D is the East Coast stylistic equivalent of TeamSupreme. They don’t do the whole beat cypher deal, but they are a sprawling collective of impressive beatsmiths working at the intersection of hip hop and electronic music. The Melt is made up entirely of TeamSupreme contributors so it only make sense that the two adjacent crews would come together for one mind melting night of beats. To celebrate, Djemba Djemba retwerked Lil Texas’ “I Need You” into something you could easily hear on the radio. Stream and download below and hit up The Melt M|O|D Takeover if you know what’s good for you.
That is, TeamSupreme put up edition 23 of the beat cypher series. This week’s sample offered more in the way of relaxed boom-bap than the past few and allowed acts like Two Fresh and Djemba Djemba to flex a more nuanced side to their production game. Michael Menert of Pretty Lights Music offers up a smooth bit of sample soul, but .anansi undoubtedly steals the show with his mix ending contribution. Grab Vol. 23 here, or stream the video below.
After a string of quality releases from the likes of Baauer, Branko and Lockah (should have gone Bwana for alliteration’s sake), Mad Decent’s Jeffree’s imprint has been on a little bit of a cold streak. We can have a debate over the merits of Three Loco some other time. Anyways, that all ended yesterday with LA-native Djemba Djemba’s “I Just Go / Oh Ok Yeah That’s Cool” single. Making a name for himself over the past few few months as one of the standout members of the TeamSupreme clique, this single should prove to be his breakout. Hitting both ends the spectrum, “I Just Go” is the laid back, almost UK inspired cut with billowing synths and inspired drum patterns while “Oh Ok Yeah That’s Cool” is more of a straight up tarp banger with some HudMo-influenced midi tuba thrown in for good measure. Like all Jeffree’s releases, you can grab the single for free below.
A beat cypher, what a novel idea. Could be interesting. Those were my first thoughts when a friend mentioned TeamSupreme to me. It sounded vaguely enticing, but an unrealistic novelty in reality. 12 producers using the same two samples and contributing one minute of beat action? No way that could work. If conducted by the wrong people, I figured it would be an utter disaster. Well what the fuck do I know? Directed by Dane (The Great Dane) and Preston (of Virtual Boy), TeamSupreme has been churning out their unique “cyphers” since April and have garnered respect from across the hip hop and electronic music spectrums. With a monthly spot at Los Angeles’ La Cita in place and a stable of producers ranging from (DJ) Nobody to Boreta of The Glitch Mob contributing to the weekly volumes. We wanted to find out more about the process behind TeamSupreme so we shot some emails back and forth with Dane and Preston. Here are the results. Can’t wait for Volume 3,000 to drop.
Dane: Me and Preston were hanging out and we decided to have a little unofficial project to make a beat in an hour at the same BPM with the same vocal sample, “My team supreme, stay clean” (a Biggie quote). After we finished up we put them back to back and thought it would be cool to try it on a bigger scale with more producers. That first little project turned into TeamSupreme Vol. 1.
Who all is involved with TeamSupreme at this point? Is everyone located in LA?
Dane: We started with just our close producer friends mostly in LA or Orange County, but now we have people sending in beats from NY, Colorado, Portland and more.
Preston: Our usual suspects consists of Papi, King Henry, Great Dane, Preston James, Djemba Djemba, Fuzz, Kloud, DJ Nobody, Dot, ELOS, Kenny Segal, Nalepa, Snorlax and Colta. We’ve also had many guests including Boreta of The Glitch Mob and Kendo of Two Fresh.
Hit the jump for the full interview…
