Christian Marclay - interview & video

A couple of days ago, while peeking around on slsk for some musique concrète badness, I accidentally stumbled upon this fella who was sharing a bunch of articles from Leonardo Music Journal. Never heard of it before, but some of the titles sounded quite intriguing and so I proceeded to nick 'em. Among the bunch was this interesting interview with soundartist/turntablist Christian Marclay. If you don't know what the guy is on about or just want to see him in action, here's a nice mini-doc I found on youtube:

B-Boys Inna Dancehall

Hip-hop's relatively flimsy relationship with reggae is a bit curious, considering that early pioneers like DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash were of Caribbean descent and that hip-hop probably wouldn't even exist without the influence of Jamaica's soundsystem culture (as you can read here and here). Anyway, here's some favourite reggae-fied hip-hop tunes and remixes of dancehall tracks from the early and mid nineties, when that kind of crossover sound was briefly fashionable. Booyaka!

Get it here.

Cutty Ranks - A Who Seh Me Dun (Dynamic Duo Remix)
Born Jamericans - Boom Shak-A-Tak (Dancehall Remix)
Smiff-N-Wessun - Sound Bwoy Buriell
Da Bush Babees - We Run Things (It's Like Dat)
Poor Righteous Teachers - Easy Star
Naughty By Nature - Wickedest Man Alive
Fu-Schnickens - Ring The Alarm
Cutty Ranks - Limb By Limb (Hip-Hop Remix)
Supercat - Ghetto Red Hot (Hip Hop Mix)
Das Efx - Mic Checka
Kenny Dope feat. Screechy Dan - Boomin' In Ya Jeep
Shabba Ranks and KRS-One - The Jam

Africa 100 - The Afrobeat Boxset

Head on over to the excellent What's In My iPod to get this massive 7 cd set of intense, dark, raw, virtuosic and resolutely life-affirming music. It's an unofficial compilation to accompany this feature on Pitchfork by Joe Tangari and - if I understand this right - it was put together and uploaded to BitTorrent sites by the author himself. Now, I don't know too much about Afrobeat, but to me this looks as comprehensive a genre overview as you're ever likely to get. Plus it will have you shuffling those feet and wiggling those buns all summer long.

Juno - Soul Thunder (Vocal Mix)

(Click on the picture to download.)

Here's a tiny contribution to all the bleepy bassiness (see previous post). R'n'B-ish vocals over ominous sci-fi synths and a heavy sub-bassline: not quite as great as the better known and more stripped down Drillers Mix that's featured on Warp's 10+1 compilation, but still a fine piece of eerie techno-soul.

Bleep & Bass

Talk about coincidence: Just as this write-up and this wicked mix sent me back to listening to LFO's first album, Nightmare On Wax's Aftermath lp and the Warp 10+2 compilation, I discovered that It's Coming Out Of Your Speaker posted the whole Aftermath EP series by Nightmares On Wax plus a couple more early Warp 12inches. Nice!