Producer and founder of the famed Turntables on the Hudson party Nickodemus releases his second solo album, Sun Children today, on which he fuses house, hip-hop, funk, and, here, some sitar-drenched influences from the East.
Finnish DJ/production/remix collective Top Billin showed its versatile tastes last year, with a mix that rounded up tracks by everyone from Jesse Rose to Sharkslayer. The crew is soon to roll out Tales from Top Billin Vol. 3, the third and final episode in this particular trilogy, and another fine collection of original tracks and remixes, including this take on Scottie B’s B-more club sound. Grab the full release here.
With Beacons of Ancestorship ready to drop on June 23, Chicago’s finest post-rock crew Tortoise is planning a round of performances for the summer. Beacons… marks the first full-length for the band in over five years, and we received a taste of the album’s freeform, jazzed-out mayhem on the record earlier this spring. Now, catch the tracks in the live setting at one of these dates:
07/11 Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
07/13 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
07/15 Austin, TX – The Mohawk
07/17 Chicago, IL – Pitchfork Music Festival
07/19 Washington, DC – Black Cat
07/20 Philadelphia, PA – Sanctuary at First Unitarian Church
07/21 New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge
07/24 Tokyo, Japan – Fuji Rock Festival
08/14 St. Malo, France – La Route Du Rock
08/22 Hasselt, Belgium – Pukkelpop
09/29 St. Louis, MO – Firebird
09/30 Kansas City, MO – Beaumont Club
10/01 Omaha, NE – Waiting Room
10/02 Minneapolis, MN – Cedar Cultural Center
10/03 Dubuque, IA – Voices Warehouse Gallery
Photo by Jim Newberry.
One lone producer from New Jersey recently joined his two personalities—Memory Cassette and Weird Tapes—to form Memory Tapes. If this track is anything to go by, the result is rather impressive. The melodic, haunted, and somewhat paranoid track “Bicycle,” an amalgamation of guitar chords, synth-laden basslines, cowbells, choruses, and a host of other sounds, is the first single off the forthcoming Memory Tapes album.
Michigan-based trio Salem recently made a mix for MP3 blog 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and in the words of those kids, it’s “a disarming patchwork of haunted juke hall malevolence, cave crunk atmospherics, rain breaking tekno noise, and crackling transmissions from a childhood spent floating down beautiful starlit rivers in the constant glare of hidden monsters.”
Download it here for free.
Salem:
01 Pearl – “Pearl’s Dream”
02 Neophyte – “I Will Have That Power”
03 DJ Nate – “I’m a Burn”
04 DJ Nate – “Ghostmix”
05 Young Cream – “Angie Juke”
06 Aids 3D – “Back Once Again (Forever)”
0 Tha Pope – “Track 41”
08 Unknown – “Track 20 Chicago Juke”
09 Neophyte – “Catastrophe”
10 Threat Misses – “Juke that Girl”
Baile funk, Baltimore club, fidget house, kuduro, M.I.A., Santigold…these are just some of the sounds and artists that Diplo and Switch have championed in recent years. While the two super-producers certainly haven’t acted alone, they are the de facto leaders of the “global bass” movement. On Guns Don’t Kill People, the duo has teamed up to tackle yet another third-world sound—dancehall. Recorded in Jamaica with a slew of a-list MCs, the album is an up-and-down affair that sounds like, well, Diplo and Switch making dancehall. While pot anthem “Mary Jane” is a juvenile misfire, digital bangers like “When You Hear the Bassline” and especially “Pon De Floor” (feat. Vybz Kartel) properly rave up the proceedings. The dulcet tones of Mr. Vegas and Jovi Rockwell sweetly color the chilled reggae of “Can’t Stop Now,” and the riddim fashioned from an AutoTuned crying infant on “Baby” is pretty undeniable.
Montreal’s master beat-maker plays pretty for Quebec.
Musicians and artists have it good in Montreal, as we found out when we spent a day with Ghislain Poirier. Not only do 70-year-old women sip wine in cafes and nod their heads as you and Face-T play your latest murder-lyric soca jam, but the police are totally chill when you set up an illegal 1,200 person party under an overpass! Definitely worth braving -20 degree Celsius winters for.
By most hip-hop labels’ standards, this would be an adventurous album—but this is Anticon, where boundary pushing is the norm. Bike for Three! is a long-distance collaboration between Toronto-based rapper Buck 65 and Belgian beatmaker Joëlle Phuong Minh Lê (a.k.a. Greetings From Tuscan), an unlikely pairing who never actually met while making More Heart Than Brains. There’s a strong melodic element here, marked by a lush romantic undercurrent, which suits Buck 65’s narrative lyrics. “Always I Will Miss You. Always You” stings beautifully. Unfortunately, many of the tracks here never quite gel, with too many ultimately feeling facile and predictable, leaving the project more academically interesting than musically so. It’s all perfectly pleasant, but somehow it feels like it could have been much more.
In just a couple weeks, renowned house producer Alan Abrahams will release another album under his Bodycode moniker. You may have already heard the release’s first single while reading up on the other details of the Ghostly producer’s album. Now we have the track in downloadable, iPod-ready format here.
Immune is out June 22.
