For Brit-hop duo Dirty Diggers, those weekends at the flea market, flicking “Past Lionel and Cher/To find a grimy snare,” have all paid off in the form of The Pleasure Is All Mine. The pieces sound familiar: grime’s East London accent and signature flow; The Streets’ self-deprecating ordinariness; sample-heavy production à la People Under the Stairs. But the result is fresh-proof that underground U.K. hip-hop has a lot more than videogame basslines and East End gun boasts going for it.
Fans have come to expect a particular brand of strange from Carey Mercer and his fellow Frogs. So the disjointed pop songs and lunatic rock suites on Tears of the Valedictorian aren’t as much red-faced surprises as comforting reassurances that last year’s arty teaser EP, The Future Is Inter-Disciplinary or Not at All, was an aberration. Here, Mercer is still the straitjacketed poet, the manic preacher in the pulpit, and sprawling tracks like “Bushels” are still nine glorious minutes of caterwauling reverb and stiff-armed drumming.
Listening to Evidence’s solo debut, The Weatherman, is almost like discovering this L.A. hip-hop vet for the first time. After dropping backpacker-friendly jams with the Dilated Peoples for over a decade, we have come to know much about Ev the MC and producer, but not much about Ev the man. With candor, Evidence reveals how his mom’s passing left him in a daze (“I Still Love You”) and, with Atmosphere’s Slug, vents about the danger of fame-chasing friends (“Line of Scrimmage”). But as much as we learn about the rapping producer’s life, this album isn’t entirely comprised of weighty introspection. The booming, synth-heavy single “Mr. Slow Flow,” for one, plays out like an anything-goes freestyle, ready to be bumped in the whip. With assistance from producers The Alchemist, Joey Chavez, and others, Evidence successfully steps out for a revelatory solo mission without losing sight of his roots.
Type & JB are Bristol’s latest future-soul prodigies. The vocalists are between 16 and 18 years old, so they were not even born when The Wild Bunch, Massive Attack, and Smith & Mighty were releasing music! Tough drums, sung vocals, raps, and dirty basslines… what more could you want? Also check their first single, “The PL,” for a slept-on classic.
The history of the Black Panther Party is filled with the bold-faced names of key leaders, martyrs, and political prisoners. But as Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas (hardcover; Rizzoli, $35) demonstrates, those images of raising fists and black berets wouldn’t have become such iconic images of black pride without the benefit of Douglas’ bold graphic design and communication savvy.
From 1967, when he laid out the second issue of the Black Panther newspaper, to 1979, when the paper folded, Douglas was the Panther’s official Revolutionary Artist, working mainly in posters and newsprint to spread the party’s beliefs. His rich body of work created a recognizable revolutionary “brand.” His raw, almost Orwellian caricatures of cops as dirty swine, with clouds of flies buzzing around them, helped popularize the term “pigs,” but Douglas was much more multi-faceted. He illustrated powerful political statements; one striking poster shows Bobby Seale strapped to an electric chair with a salivating vulture, representing the government, hovering overhead. Douglas was able to communicate the Panthers’ struggle against poverty and inequality beautifully, creating stunning images of dignified people, fighting injustice with rifles in hand.
Containing a wealth of images, along with interviews with key figures like Kathleen Cleaver and Amiri Baraka, this first-ever compilation of Douglas’ work documents the relationship of art and propaganda to party doctrine and history, while linking the images to the art of related Third World independence struggles. While comparisons between Douglas’ work and that of his 1960s American contemporaries would have been welcome, this volume makes a convincing case that Douglas’ art “provoked a new consciousness.”
Most know him as one member of Animal Collective, but Noah Lennox has been creating his own brand of psychedelic revival tunes under the Panda Bear moniker for some years, as well as cultivating his fanaticism for animals. On the video for his track “Bros,” he combines both elements to make a video fit for an LSD trip, but just as good to watch while sober.
See “Bros” now, at XLR8R‘s Video Section.
If there seems to be a funky soul-reggae revival taking place in the dance music scene, your instincts are right-on, man. Although groups like Sharon Jonesand the Dap Kings, Breakestra, and El Michels Affair have been doing the neo-‘60s-‘70s funk thing for a while, they’ve been joined in recent years and months by the likes of Los Angeles’s The Lions, The Rebirth, and Australia’s The Bamboos. But perhaps even more under the radar are the soul-reggae revivalists emanating from the land of Daft Punk and Air: Paris, France. To get you up to speed, you’ve got ta’ see The Pusher.
The Pusher is not some hot new artist, but a Paris, France based distributor ruled by Pascal Rioux (DJ, producer, and the man behind Rotax, Big Single, and Favorite Recordings). Rioux has scoured Europe for the best new soul, funk, rare groove, afro, jazz, nu-jazz, hip hop, Latin, Jamaican, and house sounds, and now DJs on both sides of the Atlantic are rushing to chart and play their offerings.
Pusher Distribution circulates hard to find vinyl and CD releases from labels like Comet (Doctor L, Tony Allen, Art Konik), Q-Tape (Smoke, Pathworks), BMG (Gil Scott Heron, Chocolate Milk, Weldon Irvine), and Early Recordings (The Afro-Jazz Pioneers). But Pusher’s upcoming releases may blow even more wigs, as a spate of club classics get funk, Latin, and reggae reworks.
On a forthcoming 7” 45, French rocksteady-soul group The Dynamics take on Gwen McCray’s “90 Percent” and the Rolling Stones’ “Miss U,” transforming them into vintage-1970s Kingston rockers. Another Dynamics scorcher, a cover of Madonnna’s “Music,” turns the original into a reggae-disco floorfiller into something along the lines of the Third World’s “Now That We Found Love.”
But Pusher Distro artists aren’t one trick pony’s, as evidenced by house artist Patchworks and Mr. Day’s tasty Latin-jazz reword of the Al Green soul classic “Love & Happiness.” Meanwhile, Mr. President is the closest thing to hearing James Brown’s band The JB’s in their Pass The Pea era. Check Pres’s hot single “Gimme Some Time,” backed with “From South To North” on Favorite Recordings. Lastly, there’s dub master Grant Phabao’s “Fever,” featuring classic Jamaican toaster Lone Ranger and his cover of The Specials’ “(A Message To You) Rudie (Extended Version)” Once again, Paris is burning!
Taking the name of a computer language isn’t the only tip-off that Miami electro producer Shad T. Scott is first and foremost a programmer: Scott’s synth-heavy, analog-punctuated sound is clean and listenable, but most of the cuts on Watchers From the Black Universe sound crafted for mixing through a set, and less notable for their own individual ebb and flow. Scott-who co-piloted Miami’s first electro-tech imprint, Isophlux-permits himself a healthy dash of campy fun on Watchers: “The Rain Comes Down” comes peppered with a grainy, old-school robotic overlay that affectionately recalls Knight Rider.
While most people would prefer a new Gang Starr record, Guru has instead returned with another installment of his Jazzmatazz project, this time with Solar (who produced Guru’s recent Version 7.0) at the boards. Unfortunately Vol. 4 is concerned with reviving the Jazzmatazz name, not necessarily with preserving the legacy and feel of the classic first installment. There’s a lack of collaborations with actual jazz artists, and the ones that do appear seem kind of haphazard: Instead of Roy Ayers we get David Sanborn. While there are some great tracks here, the point appears to be somewhat missed.
