Suzanne Kraft aka Diego Herrera gives us another wonderful taste of the upcoming Horoscope 12″, dropping next Tuesday (September 25th) on Young Adults. This is house music for boat montages. A much needed reprieve from the hyper-speed stylings of juke, club, etc.. Stream “No Worries” below and pre-order the 12″ here.
First off, props to Bondax for sharing Big Voyage with the world. The UK duo, via their own Justus label and their various social media apparatus’, have proven themselves as more than proficient tastemakers. Big Voyage aka Elias Ravin is a Brooklyn resident and a sculptor of the type of bass-heavy, R&B sampling joints that have been in vogue as of late. He has an EP out on This Way Down/ Cue Recordings, but his recent Soundcloud activity is where the action is really at. “He Doesn’t” is hectic without falling into disorder, with a sound reminiscent of Flume’s remix work. Stream “He Doesn’t” below and keep an eye on Ravin’s Soundcloud for new material.
On October 9th, Astral Plane favorite Little People aka Laurent Clerc will release his first album, the awesomely titled We Are But Hunks Of Wood, since 2006’s Mickey Mouse Operation. To stoke excitement for the album, Clerc enlisted Master of Shapes to devise a video for the sprawling orchestral cut “Aldagate Patterns”. The video follows a faceless nomad’s travels through a Star Wars-esque desert. The track itself sees Little People at his absolute finest, weaving together beatific instrumentation with an absolutely perfect vocal sample. It envelopes the listener in a sticky web of anticipation for the entirety of its almost eight minute runtime. You can grab “Aldagate Patterns” for free over at Little People’s Soundcloud and be sure to grab We Are But Hunks Of Wood as soon as it becomes available.
It’s not easy to distinguish oneself from the crowd of beatsmiths who make up Los Angeles’ famed Beat scene. With Low End Theory as Mecca and bastions like dublab, TeamSupreme and Brainfeeder filling out the rest of the Holy Land, young producers from all over the nation (and world) flock to the City of Angels. Clearly it’s a good thing to have such a massive talent-base although wading through the unquantized fuckery can get frustrating. TeamSuprme contributor and general badman Colta is on the cusp of breaking out of the fuckery and making it to the Promised Land. All religious metaphors aside, this rising young producer is making huge strides every week in his solo work and in his contributions to the TeamSupreme tapes. His latest effort is a flip on Jeremih’s sensual “Fuck You All The Time”. Stream the remix below and download it while you still can (only 14 left).
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.
What happens when perennially slept on globetrotting MC Azizi Gibson and equally slept on Dallas producer LDFD get together on a track? “The Jeffrey”. “Weird” rap is quite in vogue at the moment, especially in the City of Angels, what with everyone speculating on who Captain Murphy is, and Kendrick Lamar spitting like an alien on his first label single. The LA transplant Gibson might just be doing it better than anyone else though. “The Jeffrey” is an ode to everyone’s favorite narcotics potpourri, with Gibson chanting “I wish I could just say we smoke some marijuana”. LDFD comes through with a dense, but deceptively funky backing, like a West Coast version of Spaceghostpurrp. Stream “The Jeffrey” below.
Remix albums generally follow a pretty standard formula: enlist like-minded producers (and maybe one or two odd balls) to riff off of concepts devised on the original EP. Alex Ruder and Kid Smpl take a different approach on the newly released Dope Pac SE, the second release on Ruder’s Hush Hush Records. Grabbing talent from literally across the globe, the EP is an across the spectrum exhibition in exercising the Night Bus sound. Bay Area native 88:88 flips “Relief” into a club track, properly suited for some dank underground dancefloor filled with paranoiacs. Seattle’s own DJAO (of Dropping Gems) also takes on “Relief”, first mutating it into his own version of Night Bus, that is until the percussion mounts into one of AO’s most captivating rhythms yet. The tape is a look into the multiple ways that Kid Smpl’s music can be mutated into different forms by producer’s that align themselves with Hush Hush and Night Bus (Anthony Elect has a release on Hush Hush coming out late 2012/early 2013), as well as producers who come from entirely different spheres of influence. The EP is free so you have no excuse not to grab it.
First off, White Ring sound (and look) a lot like Salem. A lot of people fucking despise Salem. If you’re going to reflexively hate on this because of that association, stop reading now. I wouldn’t blame you. You’d be missing out on one of the best Flocka flips this side Shlohmo though. The New York duo avoid taking “Murder” into that extraordinarily obnoxious reverb-y/goth range, instead simmering it in a gauzy synths and machinegun 808’s. It really shouldn’t work, but it does. Unfortunately free downloads have run out so you only have the streaming option
Ryan Hemsworth’s work to this date has covered much of the ground where hip hop and dance music meet, often extrapolating into unknown territories. This willingness to experiment with new sounds has allowed Hemsworth to effortlessly traipse across the electronic music landscape, mastering sounds as divergent as soul-based house to straight up wavy hip hop. As both his best and most complete product, the Last Words EP (out now on Wedidit) stands as a signifier of the hard work Hemsworth has put in over the past several years. Of course, Hemsworth isn’t going to stop experimenting and progressing. His latest remix is of label-mate Groundislava’s Bath-assisted “Suicide Mission” and sees Hemsworth trying his hand at juke. Taking the original’s sanguine rhythms and warping them into hyper-speed, Hemsworth creates a sort of distended dance track, not really fit for a club, but also a little too hyperactive for normal headphone listening. It’s like if you ingested a bunch of cough syrup and dexedrine at the same time. Or something like that (not that I would know). Anyways, the remix is presumably part of an upcoming single, which will hopefully include other Wedidit members. Stream below.
There are few bands in the contemporary music landscape that completely defy description. In the internet era, just about every band, album, song and bar can be attributed a descriptor. Unfortunately, this isn’t due to music critics’ vastly improved vocabularies. Instead, there is a need to assign genre names and other descriptors to everyone and everything. Enter Black Moth Super Rainbow. Just try and define the Pittsburgh group, I dare you. Wikipedia calls them “neo-psychedelia” for fucks sake. Most people fall back on the “____ on LSD” cliche, but BMSR don’t fall into the confines of any hallucinogen, at least not one known to man. Anyways, if you weren’t already squealing in anticipation for BMSR’s upcoming Cobra Juicy (looking at an October 9 release), then the Windshield Smasher EP/Maxi-Single might just make your eyes bug out and your stomach do a few somersaults. Featuring remixes from a cohort of screwballs including Odd Nosdam and Zackey Force Funk, the package is an exhibition in off-kilter rhythms, lead by Nosdam’s draped up and dripped out submission. All centered around Tobacco’s vocoder mastery of course. BMSR continue to make the weirdest pop music around, evoking technicolor patterns more than coherent emotions. Stream Windshield Smasher below and ready yourself for Cobra Juicy.
The Astral Plane 