Raw. Fat. Menacing. Funky. Put all these adjectives in “front of beats” to describe Jack Dangers’s first Meat Beat Manifesto LP, 1989’s Storm the Studio. They also describe this remix compilation, starting off with a versus between Dangers and longtime Tino Corp pal Ben Stokes called “Cease to Exist.” The monster hip-hop break that populated the first three MBM albums gets run through a spatial expander; the thing’s as wide as a Mac truck, roaring with digitized vocals and little else. Oh yeah, the rest: Eight Frozen Modules pistol-whips “God O.D.” with a fully-loaded laptop, while Twilight Circus Sound System, Jonah Sharp, DJ Swamp and The Opus also make fine contributions. One non-sequitur selection, microsound experimentalist Frank Bretschneider, works surprisingly well on “Reanimix.” Not to be missed.
Various In House We Trust 3
The worst thing about this two-disc set is listening to it when all the clubs are closed-this is music meant to shake your ass. Mixed by Luke Fair, the first CD is built for endurance, the bpms at the perfect speed to keep a dancer going all night. The second disc, mixed by Desyn Masiello, is speedier still, with its programming focused on slightly more driving house in contrast to the first CDs intense, but laid-back sound. Both are low on vocals, high on quality. Where’s my crowbar? It’s time to break into a warehouse.
Various Da Minimal Funk Vol. 3
In his quest for a funkier version of minimal tech-house, Poker Flat founder and globally respected DJ/producer Steve Bug has assembled two CD mixes, one aimed at the dancefloor and the other at the lounge. Bug’s uptempo CD falls surprisingly flat: despite selecting work from globally respected talent (Freaks, Château Flight, John Tejada and DJ Sneak), Bug’s presentation (using digital mixing program Final Scratch) is somewhat monotonous-it’s hard to get a sense of his mixing skills. In fact, Gillieron & McArthur’s “Now It’s Dark” and Bug’s “That Kid” provide two of the livelier moments on this otherwise ho-hum display. The downtempo CD is better, with Eerik’s “Shimmer” and Antonelli Electr’s “Waiting For You” offering the loveliest interludes.
John Arnold Neighborhood Science
From the slamming sci-funk of “I Can Be” to the smoothly clicking broken house of “Get Yourself Together,” Arnold absolutely kills it on this debut long-player. Calling on the bounty of talent from around the block in Detroit, he enlists Ayro, Amp Fiddler and others to help out on an album that reveals the potential of true fusion, not mere lip-service pastiche. While there’s plenty of busted beat programming (check the shifting stutter-stop of “Broken”), it never sinks into a contrarian exercise, always keeping a tight focus on a flowing musicality that unites the entire project. Truly brilliant!
David Morales Mix The Vibe
No surprises here: just two and a half hours of pure, classy NY/NJ house culled from producers like DJ Pierre and Blaze, featuring plenty of vocals from Kenny Bobien, Jocelyn Brown, and more. Long, seamless mixes focus the attention on the songs, letting Morales’s programming skills shine, particularly when he gets more Afrocentric on the second disc with cuts from Mateo & Matos and Kerri Chandler. On a mix celebrating 10 years of King Street’ would have enjoyed some earlier songs like 95 North’s “Hold On,” but it’s hard to complain about what’s here.
Maspyke Blackout
I’m unphased by J-Zone’s semen jokes and Lil’ Kim’s garrulous sexuality. But Maspyke’s lyrics give me pause-maybe because they treat raps as political screeds rather than filthy speech forums. Ergo, Maspyke’s rhymes pound harder than other rappers’. As stalwarts of the Nation of Islam, Maspyke have a penchant for contrarian politics and spiritual homilies-like Wu-Tang Clan, they’re prone to cavalierly diss queer folks (“Lost in Belief”), flout the get-money ethos of their hip-hop peers (every song on the album), and impart rap sermons about the laws of Allah (“54th Regiment”). Consistently headnodic, Blackout is, nonetheless, intellectually rigorous.
Various We Came From Beyond Volume 2
KXLU DJ Mike Nardone’s latest compilation includes most of the hot rappers du jour in West Coast college radio: an ever-triumphant Planet Asia, the comical duo of People Under the Stairs, and J-Zone-who is, arguably, the underground’s resident Archie Bunker. For all its fanfare, We Came From Beyond falls short of tremendous, but the tracks meet standard criteria for dope lyrics and phat beats. Among the highlights: Lifesavas flaunt their prole creds (“Government Cheese”), The Black Love Crew keenly compares life’s vicissitudes to the naps in their fros (“Afro Joint”), and Aesop Rock deftly out-rhymes his cohort Slug (“Miss By a Mile”). “
Prefuse 73 Extinguished Outtakes
Let’s say you have to write a libretto for Terry Gilliam’s Brazil using chunky machine sounds instead of human language. If you’re solid, the result would be something like Prefuse 73’s Extinguished: Outtakes: alien, slightly boggy, sonically addled. Unlike his wax-slinging brethren, Prefuse is more interested in creating atmosphere than making pastiche for its own sake-so you get the tailored soundscapes without the “check out this sample” bravado. Though the album’s one-drop beats get laborious, Prefuse switches it up in the fizzling “Dubs That Don’t Match,” and the cinematic “Whisper in My Ear to Tell Me You Hate Me.”
Sisters Of the Underground Global
Whether Neb Love, Bahamadia, and Spontaneous are the hardest rappers since Eazy caught the virus is a point of contention, but they definitely roll deep. On “Global,” the three gravelly voiced emcees rollerskate over a skronky, spacey beat. The song’s deliciously nerve-rattling discord almost compensates for its pedestrian lyrics.
Azeem Five Ooh
The neo-hooligan rhymesmith who unleashed Craft Classic in 2001 returns this year with more car-quaking beats and curveball lyrics. As always, Azeem rhymes about whatever pops into his sideways mind-Five Ooh” is about rappers who confess to crimes in their songs and get indicted for them. Weird, but trenchant.
