back to the monastery of sound
Well I guess we can all chalk 2006 down as "The Year That Ate Moe Rex" as it seems the one constant with me lately is my being very, very spotty and inconsistent, and even downright missing in action a lot of the time. Oh well. Here I am again. Let's see how long it takes people to figure out I've put up something new....
Grails "Black Tar Frequencies" - I figured what better song for my return from the dark ether than this awesomely eldritch broadcast by Grails, a Portland foursome who specialize in a weird sort of instrumentally supercerebal folk-damaged psych-rock. It sounds literally like something you might faintly hear bubbling up out of sewer drains well after midnight in Dead Town, a sound that, if you were to set off on an expedition to track it back to its source, would lead you on a long descent: through rat-infested storm drains, down slick and dripping access tunnels, past long-forgotten subway annexes, and across cursed Indian graveyards. In the end, you'll uncover Grails' vast subterranean concert hall, where--lit by the pale fire of phosphorescent algae and bioluminescent bats--a shadowy four-piece band plays to a huge audience of enraptured cellar-dwelling weirdlings. And before you know it, before you can put up even a pretense of resistance, you're down on the concert floor with them, swaying in unison to Grails' deep, deep rhythm forevermore. Goodbye, blue skies. Hello, black tar.
If you're not interested in physically taking this doomed one-way trip to the netherworld, you can buy Grails' latest LP, Black Tar Prophecies vol's 1, 2, and 3--a collection of previously-released and generally quite rare European 12-inches, plus two new tracks--and just tell people you did, but somehow lived to return and tell the tale. [Buy it at Forced Exposure (US) or Boomkat (UK).]
Radiq (feat. Paul St. Hilaire) "The Grass Roots (Radiq's Babylon Dub Mix)" - Damn, I burned through my entire ration of subterranean imagery on that last track, and here we are with this wonderfully heavy chunk of dubwise electronica from Yoshihiro Hanno (aka Radiq). Oh well, just going to have to do the best I can. This comes direct from a 12-inch EP featuring remixes of "The Grass Roots," a track from Tomorrow's Quest, Radiq's recent full-length release. The EP also features excellent remixes by Afuken and Dimbiman, but Radiq's own version of the track was the one I liked best--it takes a somewhat traditional deep-bass dub sound and arcwelds a crazed and fractal grillwork of experimental electronic percussion around its perimeters. About two-thirds of the way in, a string orchestra glides in out of nowhere and sort of smooths the track out momentarily before it explodes in a penultimate frenzy of beats and infinite echo. Vocals are provided by the always-awesome Paul St. Hilaire (formerly Tikiman), best known for his varying collaborations with German dubmasters Rhythm & Sound. [Buy it at Boomkat (UK); also available in mp3 form via Bleep.]
San Quinn "Holdin' Back These Years" - This is a track I've been wanting to share for a few months now, ever since San Quinn's The Rock: Pressure Makes Diamonds dropped earlier this year. For those of you who don't follow the Bay Area hip-hop scene, San Quinn is a San Francisco-based rapper whose projected profile tends to be that of the quintessential gangsta, tougher than adamantium and meaner than a rabid, three-headed pitbull. So as you might expect, The Rock is made up of one steroidal slap after another, tracks packed with enough corner king braggadocio and tough talk tall tale-spinning to hold you over for weeks. Which is why this joint, which comes along fairly deep into the album, really threw me for a loop when it first turned up on my stereo. Because who would expect a harder-than-hard, more macho-than-macho G like San Quinn to turn around and put out a wistful hard-luck-life reverie based entirely around a song by...Simply Red? It's the sort of thing that makes you stop in your tracks the moment you first hear it (lucky I didn't, though, because I was driving on a freeway at the time).
Despite the fact that I'm growing a bit weary of the gangsta aspect of the hyphy scene, now that it's become evermore apparent that as hyphy rises in prominence, so too does the Bay Area body count,* I have to say I heart this track enormously, especially the manner in which Quinn's flow occasionally plays call and response with Mick Hucknall's sampled vocals. It's a slow burner, but it's got real heart, and if you play it in a crowded room, people will listen, guaranteed. [Yo, keepin' it real is a habit, man. Buy it at Amazon.]
Jay-R "My Other Car Is A Beatle" - I know that a handful of folks out there amongst the mp3 blogscene have pushed this track at one point or another over the summer, but I figure there have got to be a few more pairs of ears out there that have yet to pick up on it. If those left-out ears happen to be yours, well you're in for a tasty treat, for this is a turbocharged nitroburning funnycar bastard pop romp that features Gary Numan's "Cars," L'Trim's "The Cars That Go Boom," Armand Van Helden, and a bit of The Beatles' "Drive My Car." It's unbelievably good, as far as this sort of thing goes, and one of the highlights of The Best Mashups In The World Ever Come From San Francisco 2, a compilation CD that you should be able to find at various Bay Area and Los Angeles record stores while supplies last (and probably other places 'round the country as well, keep yr peepers peeped). This compilation, like its predecessor was put together by a lot of the same people who are also behind Bootie, the long-running San Francisco-based club night that celebrates everything bastardly and poppy and mush-mashed up real good. [UK folks, don't feel left out, you can get it at Juno!]
*I can't say there's a direct connection, but all the same I get a bit twitchy when it comes to promoting artists whose music celebrates the same culture of violence that gets kids shot dead in real life. I feel like I might as well sing the praises of Hezbollah marching songs, White Power oi jams, or the playlist on George Bush's iPod.
((((^_^))))
All I have to say down here is yikes, where did the summer go? And yikes, where did I go? I'm still trying to figure it all out. Well, keep yr fingers crossed for a relatively timely entry to follow this one. I'm making no promises...have learned my lesson on that score the hard way.
My non-musical link of the day: Olbermann's response to Rumsfeld's speech, in which Rumsfeld basically equated criticism of the Iraq war and Bush administration foreign policy with appeasement of Nazis. About time someone in the cable news media started talking like this. More, much more, please.
And now...off to Wisconsin, for a short little family get-together over the Labor Day weekend. Hope all's well for you and yours, wherever you are.