Months ago, Bob and I knocked up this rather messy cover of MJ’s ‘Beat it’ in 6/8 time. We’re considering reworking it for our Cornbury set in light of recent events, though I do wonder how many other people will do the same. Still…it’s nice to drag out the demos now and again.
EDIT
This is us performing the song live at Cornbury 2009
Fuck cynicism, this is tragic. This morning my wife asked me why when I felt nothing when Heath Ledger died, I felt sad on discovering that Michael Jackson had. Simply because I grew up with Jacko’s music and it meant something to me.
I didn’t mean to predict his death a few months ago, and I don’t know if the two are related. I don’t want to know the details of how, why or watch the ensuing media nightmare that is about to unfold.
I’ll forever remember childhood memories of listening to the Jackson 5 on a compilation tape, singing along to ‘Ben’; staying up to watch the ‘Thriller’ video; the ‘Moonwalk’ movie and even Slash‘s appearance on the ‘Dangerous’ album. The ‘freakshow’ should, indeed, be footnote to the legend.
Reading Twitter today, there’s jokes galore and no doubt many more on site at Glastonbury and all over the internet. Well, I don’t care for them.
Michael Jackson, one of the very first African-American artists to find fame on MTV, has died aged 50: it’s a sad day.
Tags: 2009
Thanks to @Martin_Carr for the splendid example of Radio 4 weather reporter corpsing during his accurate Glastonbury report.
Belfast’s Jet Project take on dubby house works to mixed effect. Eschewing typical house structures, the duo choose to envelope their echo-laden tracks with bongo breaks and ambient ‘tribal’ vocals (alongside the occasional delayed word as spoken by a Jamaican fella). When the formula works, as it does on ‘Let’s do it’, the result is blissful yet cleverly offset by jarring, off-key, curling notes that lend the songs energy.
Heads in the Clouds progresses with minimal changes to the underlying blueprint: kick drums are altered to sound more like a ‘woof’ than a thud, and the signal to the ethereal realm becomes stronger with a song like ‘The Chant’ sounding like a remixed Sacred Spirit track.
An occasionally interesting album, though heavily toploaded, the unvarying nature of the music renders a majority of the content here a requiem for dub-house.
Heads in the Clouds is released on June 29th (Darkroom Dubs)
According to first track of this debut album under real name Martin Carr, Martin was born in the ‘Dead of Winter’. This birth was probably accompanied by a band with country leanings intent on recapturing the spirit of ’90s hit-makers The Boo Radleys (of which Martin was the lead songwriter). Though filled with vocal harmonies sweeter than a Krispy Kreme, the pumping crescendo topped off with horns and juxtaposed by discordant electric guitars is an attractive beginning and one that should sustain through much of the record with Martin’s determined pop balladeering setting the pace throughout; but this is not always the case.
Possibly recorded on a limited budget, the production can waver from heady to clumsy. Vocal harmonies are layered thick and exact on ‘Goldrush ’49′ climaxing with dense distorted guitars and a memorable chorus, yet on subsequent ‘Orpheus Lament’ the strong vocal lines are allowed to quiver distracting from their ultimate target. Employing a reverb effect similar to one that John Lennon would have used, ‘Running’ also manages to squeeze in a Kinks styled chromatic run-down with ghoulish feedback howls adding texture to the song.
It is at moments like this when Martin is at his best – fiddling around in the background, noodling – playing. ‘Tired and broke and black and blue’ is a great example of this: driven by an arpeggiated acoustic guitar, its instrumental outro includes an especially well-placed seventh chord giving the song a necessary blues tinge while sliding and bent notes float in stereo space during the verse.
Ultimately this boisterous album is not so mottled by mediocrity as it is elevated by a musing individual attempting to return to a popular music mountain he has already conquered. Look out for the forthcoming release of electronic side project The Black Serpent Choir.
Since first listening to this album, I have become unable to effectively focus my ear on anything else. The hum of traffic, screams of children and gusting wind make no impact on me when Imidiwan plays. Instead, I am in another place, another time, another life where I am oblivious to consequence. Tinariwen‘s fourth album is a weighty intoxicating treat.
Aside from translated song titles, the average listener will have no other method to gauge lyrical content as the entirety of the album is sung in the languages of the Toureg (Tamashek and French) with natural spiritual undertones.
The warm greetings of ‘Imidiwan Afrik Tendam’ (My friends from all over Africa), feature the myriad elements fundamental to the band while second track ‘Lulla’ cranks the pace with offbeat hypnotic rhythms and pulsating vocals.
With an ability to comfortably accommodate musical diversity, pigeonhole Tinariwen at your peril. Though Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni‘s rolling, blues guitar trills ride on in tracks like ‘Tenhert’ (The Doe) and the psychedelic ‘Tahuly In’ (My Salutation) they practically vanish on the meditative ‘Chegret’ (The Thread) and are patiently tempered on the entrancing, droning ‘Kel Tamashek‘ (The Tamashek People).
To try to effectively capture the depths this exquisitely produced record plumbs, the non-Malian can only guess at its cultural richness. Forgoing any wish to patronise Imidiwan, the thick flavours it supplies are smoky, enduring and mildly hallucinogenic.
A band with a proud heritage, this album spits in the face of compromise and the morally ambiguous business of music that ostensibly demands it: we are richer for its existence, if only temporarily.
Imidiwan is released on June 29th (Independiente)
“Dilla. He wasn’t just a producer, he was the best producer.” Busta Rhymes (2007).
Volume 2 from much missed hip-hop producer, J Dilla, is comprised of little-known remixes by the artist who sadly passed away in 2006. With an innate ability to manipulate beats, this relaxed selection of 11 tracks sees Jay Dee messing with artists such as Busta Rhymes, The Pharcyde, De La Soul and DJ Cam rendering them practically unrecognisable from the originals.
Opener ‘Stakes is high’ featuring Mos Def is an absolute treasure: hearing the MC now famed for average film appearances back in his glory days as the dapper rapper he really was is a nostalgic delight. Similarly ‘Whoo Ha’ has been stripped of its intensity and dropped into a fizzing bath of jazz where it comes out smelling fresher than ever. Listening to this compilation, the listener gets the impression that Dilla never let anything out of his hands until his upper body swelled rhythmically in and out of time to the beat.
Though this anthology won’t offer much to the dusty-fingered, crate-digging obsessives and whether or not label !K7 is guilty of exploiting the legend surrounding the man himself or not; this is an enigmatic slice of of hip-hop to play after a night out, hunkered down in a room with your favourite people.
Dillanthology 2 is released on June 22nd (Rapster Records)
I’ll admit to being thrilled when I heard that Joe Satriani, Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Chad Smith were getting together to make an album. That’s a heap of quality right there: Van Halen, Red Hot Chili Peppers and one of the best guitarists in the world (who just so happens to have recently filed for copyright infringement on Coldplay).
Ultimately Chickenfoot could easily follow on from Van Halen’s final album fronted by Hagar (Balance) though it is chock full of Satriani’s thick guitar sound and stylised riffing. Playing and production throughout is tight, mixed to perfection by Mike Fraser who recorded and mixed AC/DC‘s latest offering, Black Ice.
Though the album begins with the progressive ‘Avenida Revolution’, it doesn’t take long before the straight up rock n’ roll swing that the individual band members are amply known for begins to take hold and ‘Soap on a Rope’ even contains the harmonic squeals trademarked by Edward Van Halen all tethered by Satriani’s solid sense of boogie.
An album that is bred from a love of ’80s rock and roll, Chickenfoot is sadly hindered by Hagar’s refusal to wander far from his comfort zone, rendering most lyrical content asinine. The band are best summed up by his own lyric on ‘My Kinda Girl’: “Out of touch in a modern world, but she’s my kind of girl”.
If you had any love for the early ’90s hard rock scene that was quashed by Nirvana et al, Chickenfoot are ready to requite that lost love.
Chickenfoot is released on June 5th (earMUSIC)
The Scratch Perverts‘ latest mix strays somewhat from their more traditional hip-hop / rock offering. Though still content to wind up their set with drum n’ bass, the trio do so in an altogether more varied fashion, pulling in cuts from the dubstep, electro-house and bassline genres.
The mixing is as one would expect: exact with some scratches and skills thrown in on occasion. Sadly, there are no scratch routines which makes this more representative of a mix that you would hear the Perverts banging out in a club. After 13 years of mixing and scratching their way across the globe loaded down with old skool hip-hop joints and bags of vinyl, the group like many other DJs can now carry laptops loaded with tunes that don’t weigh a ton. This growing diversity is to be welcomed, and though the quality of the song selection throughout Beatdown is never in doubt, bass heavy tunes are the sole item on the menu.
But with thousands of free mixtapes floating around the internet, similarly spliced using the latest technology, what makes this mix individual? Well it’s not just some kid in Chepstow who’s put this together with his mate, and Dynamite MC pops up every so often to remind us just who it is we’re listening to, but that’s as far as the exclusivity goes.
I have no doubt that the DJs simply believe that they’re moving with the times, but in doing so, they’ve left a little of their originality behind and that’s not a good thing. Nonetheless, the Perverts have given us a powerful snapshot of club culture as it stands in 2009.
Beatdown is released on June 22nd (Fabric Records)
Tracklist
01. Caspa – Rat-A-Tat-Tat Ft. Dynamite MC
02. High Rankin – Money For Guns
03. Benga – Stop Watching
04. Skitz Ft. Buggsy – Born Inna System (DJ Prime Cuts Mix)
05. Digital Mystikz – Eyez
06. The Qemists – Dem Na Like Me (Subscape Dub)
07. Skream – Aggy Face
08. Joker – Do It
09. Foreign Beggars VS Rouge A Levres – Hit That Gash (DJ Prime Cuts Itchy Naan Re-Rub)
10. Chase & Status – Saxon
11. Kutz – Grit Your Teeth
12. The Others – Credit Crunch VIP
13. DJ Prime Cuts ft. Dynamite MC – Warning
14. Rusko – Jahova VIP
15. Flying Lotus – Roberta Flack (Martyn’s Heartbeat Mix)
16. Zomby – Rumours & Revalations
17. Buraka Som Sistema – Sound Of Kuduro ft. DJ Znobia, M.I.A., Saborosa & Puto Prata (DJ Mehdi’s Sound Of Terror Remix)
18. Feadz Ft. MC Wesley – Subiu, Desceu
19. Zombie Disco Squad – The Dance
20. Kissy Sell Out – This Kiss (Jack Beats Mix)
21. Laidback Luke and A-Trak – Shake It Down
22. AC Slater – Jack Got Jacked (Jack Beats Remix)
23. Mujava – Township Funk (Boy 8 Bit Remix)
24. Boy 8 Bit – Baltic Pine
25. Jesse Rose – Touch My Horn
26. Zinc – 128 Trek
27. Hervé Ft. Marina Gasolina – Who Da Champ?
28. Diplo & Laidback Luke – Hey
29. Jack Beats – U.F.O. (The K-Hole Bass Riddim)
30. Dirtyphonics – Vandals
31. Logistics – Jungle Music
32. Lomax – Faith Massive
33. Jakes – Warface [D*Minds Remix]
34. Spor – Aztec
35. DJ Fresh – Off World
36. Dirty Harry – Fools
37. Sigma – Paint It Black
Tags: 2009, Download, drum n bass, dubstep, hip-hop, LP, mixtape, music, review