Even though this blog has slowed in out­put, I’m still out there writ­ing about music and try­ing to raise aware­ness of some of the great stuff being pro­duced currently.

I’ve been reg­u­larly con­tribut­ing to Lit­tle White Ear­buds and you can find my reviews to date here. A review of Skream’s killer Out­side The Box went up today.

My inter­view with Jimmy Edgar went up at FACT Mag­a­zine and I hope to be doing some more stuff with them in the future.

Also, I’m con­stantly tweet­ing and retweet­ing about var­i­ous mixes, free music, and all that sort of stuff on my twit­ter so fol­low me for a good time.

Lastly, an over­haul of this site will be com­ing soon, as soon as I can teach myself The Loop.

PS. A cou­ple months ago I orga­nized a free EP for my friends at Retronyms called Outer Spaces feat. tracks by Eskmo, Exil­lon, Jneiro Jarel and Starkey. Fans of this blog should enjoy it. Did I men­tion it’s free?

I linked to a mix of Joker tunes in the recent Mix Roundup post, but this morn­ing I became obsessed with a track I heard in an Ikonika live mix. Googling the lyrics for an hour or so brought me noth­ing. I finally fig­ured it out, though. This lit­tle nugget of pur­ple pop was Joker’s remix of Simian Mobile Disco’s “Cruel Inten­tions.” It’s just too fun. Luck­ily those pur­vey­ors of sonic soul The Fader have it avail­able. Check this lit­tle party out.
Simian Mobile Disco — “Cruel Inten­tions (Joker Remix)” (mp3)

Another col­lec­tion of mixes found around the web lately. I’m a big fan of mix­tapes and mixes in gen­eral. It’s a won­der­ful for­mat, a chance for a DJ or music fan to pull together every­thing they love about music into one lis­ten­ing experience.

Dr. Who Dat? — Can I Dub Your Tape? No!!!
Fuck­ing sick sick sick sick! I’m kind of up and down on Jneiro Jarel’s var­i­ous out­put but this mix is incred­i­bly thick and dis­gust­ing.
Zshare | Track­list

Ter­ror Dan­jah — Glass­glow Mix­tape
Ahead of his Grem­linz instru­men­tal col­lec­tion for Planet Mu, the grime/beat mae­stro put together this sick mix for This Is Lucky Me, fea­tur­ing his own tunes plus like minded sounds.
Down­load mp3 | Track­list

Eskmo — The Ances­tor Mix
Com­ing with the smooth dub­step, Eskmo is push­ing ears in 2009. Keep yours peeled for more from him.
Down­load mp3 | Track­list

£10 Bag — Why Don’t You Like Me? — The Joker Mix
Joker is absolutely one of the most excit­ing pro­duc­ers out there right now, and £10 Bag has put together this mix of some of his out­stand­ing tracks, includ­ing dub­plates from the man him­self.
Down­load mp3 | Track­list

Hot­flush Record­ings — Pod­cast series
One of the great­est addi­tions to the pod­cast land­scape, this won­der­ful series started out unbe­liev­ably fresh with mixes from Sigha and Incyde, before label boss Scuba came on the scene with a huge and var­ied mix.
Sub­scribe (iTunes)

Rustie — FACT Mix 79
A com­plete party in about an hour, all over the place and fun as hell.
Down­load mp3 | Track­list

DFRNT — Mixes + Free Tracks
Very cin­e­matic and lush pro­duc­tions and mixes, a wealth of free music to grab. Get on it!
Link

Cookie Mon­sta — Two Mixes of Filth!
I kept see­ing a thread on Dub­step­fo­rum about a mix by this dude and the thread had got­ten to 17 pages. Not sure what kept me from down­load­ing it until recently but the elec­tronic dirt this guy is putting together is FILTHY.
Mary­land Choco­late Chip Mix | Send­space | Track­list
Where’s My Cookie! Mix | Send­pace | Track­list

The thing I keep com­ing back to about Michael Jackson’s death is his danc­ing. The pri­mary moti­va­tion of Jackson’s music can be found in this won­der­ful nugget from Quincy Jones about “Bil­lie Jean”: “I said, ‘Michael we’ve got to cut that intro.’ He said, ‘But that’s the jelly!’…‘That’s what makes me want to dance’. And when Michael Jack­son tells you, ‘That’s what makes me want to dance’, well, the rest of us just have to shut up.” And if there was ever a song made for danc­ing, it’s “Bil­lie Jean.” There is no per­former in the world who can stand up to Jack­son in pure unique­ness when it comes to this par­tic­u­lar aspect of pop­u­lar music. Michael Jack­son was a dancer, per­haps one of the best there ever was. We all know “Thriller,” of course, and I’ll wager we know it mostly from the epic video and it’s legion of zom­bies get­ting down. I won’t lie and say I’m a dyed in the wool Michael Jack­son fan but Thriller and Bad were a huge part of my child­hood and I’ve always put Jack­son down in the “Respected” cat­e­gory of music. How­ever, I do remem­ber watch­ing a Jack­son spe­cial that re-aired the debut of the moon­walk dur­ing is per­for­mance of “Bil­lie Jean” at the Motown 25th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion. I do remem­ber falling out of my chair at his rou­tine and gig­gling like a school girl at the sheer auda­cious­ness and pre­ci­sion of it. And I’ve always had the “Smooth Crim­i­nal” video on my list of top videos that resides some­where in my head. I think moreso than any other rou­tine, it’s “Smooth Crim­i­nal” that cements Michael Jack­son as a Dancer. RIP.

I was a big fan of Cage’s pre­vi­ous Hell’s Win­ter album. I hadn’t known his music before­hand but I picked up the album on the strength of some of the pro­duc­ers involved (DJ Shadow, Block­head, Rjd2). I was com­pletely blown away by the nar­ra­tive and per­sonal lyrics of the album right along with the gor­geous pro­duc­tion. Of course, it also made me take notice for the first time the pro­duc­tion of El-P, some­thing which would com­pletely change my world when I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead made it’s way to the unsus­pect­ing world. His follow-up, Depart From Me is com­ing out soon and his label, Defin­i­tive Jux, has been offer­ing some free stuff (2 sin­gle tracks and this new EP). It’s all pretty great. Check out the links below for direct down­loads and links. You can also get these items at Defin­i­tive Jux’s Free Shit Store.

I Never Knew You (link to page with direct mp3 down­loads)
“Look At What You Did” (mp3)
“Noth­ing Left To Say” (mp3)

Give two pro­duc­ers 40 bucks and an after­noon to craft a track for debut the same night. What do you get? When it’s Jel and Odd Nos­dam, it’s no sur­prise it’s great.

Down­load the fin­ished track here.

Dap­tone Records got busted into recently and a ton of their equip­ment was stolen. Dap­tone is the label of Sharon Jones + The Dap-Kings and Budos Band, among oth­ers, a label keep­ing the old sound still thriv­ing on ana­log record­ing. The Dap-Kings have played with/for Amy Wine­house and Kanye West. This is a real shame and they are ask­ing for peo­ple to keep an eye out for their equip­ment show­ing up for sale or trade. Hope­fully some­one catches the bas­tards that did this.

Check out this amaz­ing look at the Dap­tone stu­dio from MTV’s visit there to under­stand the value of what has been taken from them and from the music com­mu­nity as a whole.

“Friends and associates,

As you may have heard through the grapevine by now, Dap­tone was bro­ken into last night. Unfor­tu­nately, there was a lot of equip­ment (mics, pre-amps, mon­i­tors, turnta­bles, gui­tars, amps, com­put­ers, etc.) stolen and dam­aged. It is going to take us a while to go through every­thing and take full stock of what was stolen, and we are not sup­posed to touch any­thing until the cops come back to col­lect fin­ger­prints so we can only guess what’s miss­ing from some mic draw­ers and cab­i­nets.
And, no, we did not have insur­ance. We had been shop­ping around with dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies ear­lier this month but had not signed a check, so noth­ing was insured. We are work­ing on replac­ing the gate in front, installing an alarm sys­tem, and get­ting insur­ance, but it is President’s day so it’s not going as quickly as we would have liked.
Nydia’s com­puter was stolen (which wasn’t backed up) and the modems/ phone sys­tem was ripped out, so we’ll be rel­a­tively out of com­mis­sion for a few days.

I would like to ask for everyone’s help first in keep­ing an eye out for all of our stuff show­ing up on ebay/craigslist/local music shops, and sec­ondly (and more real­is­ti­cally) keep­ing an eye out for good deals on head­phones, mics, pre-amps, etc. I could really use a heads up on any kind of stu­dio pack­age for sale or stu­dio equip­ment to be pos­si­bly bought or bor­rowed as soon as pos­si­ble. We have a ses­sion sched­uled for Fri­day to lay down some music for (I know this sounds
sur­real) Rod Stew­art, and I’m going to have to get the stu­dio run­ning by then. I know I’m going to need to find head­phones, cables, mics, and pre-amps by then. I’m not sure what else yet.

Upon first glance we are def­i­nitely miss­ing:
Fender Super Gui­tar Amp in case
Fender Deluxe Gui­tar Amp
A whole bunch of head­phones and wires
Nydia’s HP lap­top com­puter
One Desk­top Mac­In­tosh Com­puter
One Pur­ple Audio API style lunch­box with
four Pur­ple Audio Biz mic pre-amps
2 Yamaha NS10 mon­i­tors
Vin­tage Har­mony Rocket Gui­tar
One steel string acoustic gui­tar
Mar­tin Tenor sax in a gig bag
Tech­nics 1200 turntable
Ion USB turntable
Teac Receiver/stereo amp
Sony dual deck CD burner/player
All of our modem/phone sys­tem stuff was ripped out and taken.
A whole bunch of con­den­sor and dynamic micro­phones (I still need to
fig­ure out exactly what’s miss­ing)
The power sup­ply for my Tri­dent con­sole was tossed and the board was
moved (prob­a­bly not gen­tly) so the sta­tus of that is still ques­tion­able.
A bald­win organ was tossed and is prob­a­bly bro­ken.
Lacie Exter­nal hard drive

Over the next few days, as we sort out the rub­ble, we are going to
fig­ure out what else we lost.

We are putting in a roll down front gate, alarm sys­tem, and finally
get­ting our insur­ance hap­pen­ing this week. We are also going to hire
a secu­rity guard to watch the house for tonight as the cops and alarm
guy seemed pretty con­fi­dent that they will be back with a truck now
that they’ve seen what’s in here.

Thanks for keep­ing eyes open for us. AND PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE
ALONG TO ANYONE YOU THINK MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP US.

Thank­fully, we all still have our health, ambi­tion, tape machines, and
sense of humor in tact. You can slow us down, but you can’t stop
us. Sleep well know­ing we here at Dap­tone will con­tinue to…

Keep putting Soul up,

Gabriel Roth

P.S. On a lighter note, it seems like the bur­glars did drop a few
items in order to lift Alex’s old safe out of here, which was VERY
heavy, VERY unwieldy, and also VERY EMPTY!”

Con­tact Dap­tone.

So WORD got hacked a month or so ago. Pretty annoy­ing crap. Took me a few days and some amaz­ing help from my host to sort it out. I haven’t got all the design back in place… mostly because I’ve been decid­ing what to do now. My posts have been very infre­quent as of late. 2008 was a bit weird. There were some good releases, but wasn’t get­ting the sense often of “must post on this now!” that I pre­vi­ously would get. How­ever, towards the end of the year there were some great things out there. I was get­ting ready to write those when WORD went down. I’m going to try to get those writ­ten up soon and prob­a­bly work on a new design for the site. Hope­fully I’ll be back soon but here are some mixes and what­not I’ve been lis­ten­ing to lately:

DJ Snatchatec — Indigo (mp3) | Track­list

V/A — Twist­ing The Frame (Release Page)

Glitch Mob — The Crush Mode (mp3)

Frank — Ghana Nige­ria Con­nec­tion (mp3)

DJ Mekalek — Mek’s Party Mix (mp3)

–EDIT FOR AWESOME–
2tall — The Space Race (mp3) | Track­list

Hi. Yeah… so, sorry about the lack of updates recently. Partly it’s been because of a lack of enthu­si­asm for much music that has come out late 07/early 08, partly it’s because work is very busy dur­ing that period, but, in all hon­esty, it’s because of a cer­tain game.

How­ever, just in the past week, 2 or 3 posts have been form­ing in my mind about some pretty cool recent shit, so I’m com­ing back. I’m also itch­ing to do a follow-up to Like A Sci­en­tist and have a note­book filled with tracks and stuff to include.

Just so I’m not leav­ing you with noth­ing, check out these bril­liant free mixes:

DJ Cheeba — The Case of the Miss­ing Records (mp3)
Spec­tac­u­larly com­pli­cated and fun mix done for Ninja Tune’s Solid Steel radio show. Art­work, Track­list and notes at this link.

Weaponshouse/Six Vicious — Tank Thong (Megau­pload — mp3)
Sixtoo’s alter-ego puts out a sim­ply ridicu­lous glitch-hop mashup mix in the grand tra­di­tion of Glitch Mob/Ooah/Edit, etc. Track­list and seizure-visuals at this link.

Frank — Psy­che­delic Afro Shop (mp3)
Frank farewell mix of Afro-funk gems as he pre­pared to leave Africa and relo­cate to NYC. Crate-diggers every­where mourn this event, but I’m sure that we won’t be hear­ing the last of Frank’s astound­ing finds from Africa. Check his blog for other recent mixes and pre­pare to hold out a bucket for your face as it melts…Track­list and notes from Frank. Speak­ing of Frank, one can only hope that this sees the light of day:

Ok, that’s it for now, but I promise to be back soon!