sleepinginmyhead

vocoder madness

The vocoder is becoming quite the toy in mainstream hip hop land. Once the realm of Cher, it's now being used by many of today's rappers to cover up for their poor singing ability (snoop excluded). The following video made me smile and the 'butternut reduction' sealed the deal.

T-Bone Walker with JTP

I don't profess to be an expert on jazz or the blues, but i know a little about both. Being stuck in a hotel with no english TV makes you search out new content, and last night i went on a little musical odyssey. Below is a really sweet clip from 1966, when T-Bone Walker made a surprise appearance on stage with a stellar jazz lineup. This clip is of the two songs he played, the first being the best in my opinion, not only for T-Bone's amazingly relaxed style, but for Clark Terry's mouthpiece solo. Incredible. It's easy to see why T-Bone is considered to be the father of the modern guitar.

genre busting

As Wylie said 'Wot u call it?'. I recently listened to the new 'Pose it up' mix from the ever excellent Kimarr, and finally decided to investigate some of the tracks he played a bit further. It's obvious to everyone that in parallel to the populist revival of 'guitar music' there is a swelling and inventive electronic music scene. There is also the new hybrid (nu rave etc.) market of course, but that's not for here. I grew up on electronic music, and am still excited by the new stuff which pops up from time to time. Problem is, there are so many genres that we're running out of names. Take the track above, which is 'Some Polyphony' by Petter. I love it. I mean i really love it (the dancing at 1.30 is enough, but the rest is great too). I have no idea how to describe it though. Some people are calling it 'nu-techno', 'art-rave', 'minmal', but they're all rubbish names. It's like the first time i heard Vitalic, and i think it's characterised by a particularly swelling, gnarly bassline, but there's bits of Mr. Oizo, bits of Justice, bits of Dave Clarke, i dunno, maybe we don't need names. Any ideas anyone?

who would have thought...

i found out a piece of fascinating music trivia this weekend.

Most of you (and forgive me if i'm being patronising) won't have heard of Labi Siffre, but i guess you'll have heard at least a snippet of his work. His song 'I got the...' was sampled perhaps most famously by Dr. Dre. for Eminem's 'My name is', you'll know the bassline, an instant attention grabber. Well that song was also sampled by The Wu Tang Clan and Jay-Z on different tracks. Labi siffre was openly gay, so that's a bit ironic given the aformentioned rappers opinions on homosexuality, but that's not my point. More amazingly is that the instrumental break was actually perfomed by Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock, whilst they were session musicians. That's right, CHAS AND DAVE! The cockney barrow boys. Who would have thought...

conchords

Bit of a guilty pleasure this. I have recently gotten seriously into 'Flight of the Conchords'. Really strange idea, it's basically a sitcom, about two Kiwi musicians trying to make it in New York, but that doesn't really matter. What makes it so good is the songs, that's right, the songs. I hate musicals, but this is great. Breaking up the narrative with humorous songs works so well for a 30 minute show, and it looks like it's working for them. The show airs in the UK, but was originally a HBO production, so big things await. The star for me has to be the slightly dopey Jemaine ?Clement, who also stars in Eagle vs Shark. Try it, you might like it, if you don't, then don't blame me.

Here's a song from the show...

and here's a song performed live...

Beastie Blog

Hey, the Beastie Boys have just relaunched their website, and it's supergood. Lots of goodies on there, and hurrah, they now have a blog! One particularly good thing is the video for a track which i assume is off their forthcoming album, and it sounds great. Nice to know that they're still going strong in their forties.

new beasties album!

TOOT TOOT! Did i get a great email this morning or what?!
There's a new Beastie Boys album on the way, yay!
It's a fully instrumental one this time. Some of you might say 'hey fosta, what about 'The in sound from way out', that was an instrumental album wasn't it?'. Well you'd be right, but that was a compilation of instrumental tunes from previous albums, this one's all new!

Album art and tracklisting below.

1. B For My Name
2. 14th St. Break
3. Suco De Tangerina
4. The Gala Event
5. Electric Worm
6. Freaky Hijiki
7. Off The Grid
8. The Rat Cage
9. The Melee
10. Dramastically Different
11. The Cousin Of Death
12. The Kangaroo Rat

common as muck

Mike Skinner (of the Streets) has a lot to answer for. His vocal content has led to a boom in what i can only describe as 'ordinary' lyrics. By ordinary lyrics, i mean singing about chip shops, wotsits, townies, bus tickets, that sort of thing. To name a few: arctic monkeys, lily allen, Milburn, jamie T, and now Kate Nash.

Below is the video for kate's latest song 'Caroline's a Victim' which i'm sure loads of you will hate, but for some reason it really strikes a chord with me. It's a little Nathan Barley in it's tone, which isn't a bad thing, but what's really odd is how different it is to the rest of her work, which is very melodic and folksy, nothing wrong with a breadth of skills, but still odd. Here for example is a live version of 'Caroline's a victim'. Oh, and she reminds me of Sally Phillips. So SIMH readers, what do we make of Kate Nash?