DJ Krush has two new releases out only in Japan at the moment. They are both under the col­lec­tive title Step­ping Stones, but sep­a­rately sub­ti­tled Sound­scapes and Lyri­cism. To add to the titling, they also say “The Self Remixed Best.” Adding all this up tells me a story, parts of which I am imag­in­ing and fill­ing in for color. The way I see the ori­gin of these two curi­ous releases is that some Sony Music Japan guy was like “Krush, after 8 albums, it’s time for you to do a Best Of com­pi­la­tion! We had bet­ter do two, in fact: one to appeal to the fans of your work with vocals, and one to appeal to the blunted old ‘trip hop’ fans of your instru­men­tal tracks! Plus, more money for us!” And Krush, being the for­mer Yakuza fuck­ing gang­ster that he is was like “Fuck that, you cor­po­rate whore! I’m gonna do your Best Of com­pi­la­tions, but I’m going to remix all the picks and give my fans all new music for their trou­ble!” I’m see­ing this evolve into a car chase, and end­ing in a decap­i­ta­tion for the cor­po­rate whore (hey, Krush said it, not me!).

Ahem. Krush has been get­ting fur­ther and fur­ther away from his dusty and organic sam­ple ori­gins, and it’s inter­est­ing to hear some of these songs given the more cur­rent computer-centric tone that Krush has now. Some­times the remixes are fan­tas­tic, and some­times they change the vibe of the orig­i­nal to some­thing I’m not feel­ing. And in the case of the “Dual­ity” remix, it turns out to be a waste of 8 min­utes, as he doesn’t change much at all about the song. The one all the long time fans will want to hear is his new update of “Kemuri,” the Holy Grail of DJ Krush’s discog­ra­phy. It starts out sound­ing fairly untouched (it’s even called The Untouch­able Mix), but some­where around the mid­dle, it goes all wonky and Krush pro­ceeds to chop up the drums and even flips the melody into new and, dare I say, more inter­est­ing direc­tions. The Lyri­cism disc is where you really hear the dif­fer­ence in styles, with Krush mak­ing El-P’s “Vision of Art” upbeat and prac­ti­cally club friendly! I really dis­like what he did with “Only The Strong Sur­vive,” which is maybe a tes­ta­ment to how well con­structed the orig­i­nal is. How­ever, I have to say that the major­ity of the remixes are thor­oughly inter­est­ing and do what remixes should do: throw the orig­i­nal in com­pletely dif­fer­ent con­text. Both discs con­tain two new tracks each, which show­case the hec­tic drums Krush has become obsessed with lately, it seems. Good stuff all around, with only a few moments of “I can’t believe he did this to my childhood!”

I’m a big fan of the Life­savas and Rev. Shines is their DJ and some­time pro­ducer. Con­se­quently I bought this new mix CD of his right away. It does not dis­ap­point. I tell you, DJs are really going nuts on these mix CDs these days. Between David Castillo, Fuse One, and now Shines, I’ve had mixes on repeat more than albums these days! Shines’ offer­ing is a soul laden mas­ter­piece, giv­ing us rare gems from his exten­sive vaults. You’ll hear the stuff that Madlib and Dilla mined for their cre­ations over the years. Shines even offers up a 6 minute Dilla trib­ute, where some of his best melody and beat sources are laid bare. I picked a track from ran­dom some­what, but it will give you a good idea of what to expect. You can buy it from Super­Hap­py­Wax online.

Madlib released the first vol­ume of his Beat Kon­ducta series on Stones Throw awhile back. It was vinyl only, and con­sisted of about 16 1-2minute beat stud­ies. Con­cur­rently with the vinyl only Vol. 2, Stones Throw is col­lect­ing both on CD. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing lis­ten, as he envi­sions it some­thing like a library record, with each of the 35 total tracks labeled with poten­tial moods to back movie scenes (Movie Scenes is the sub­ti­tle for the release). It works best as a whole, though, much like his late fel­low label­mate Dilla’s Donuts album. There is a wide vari­ety of sounds here, but they all have a strong soul cur­rent run­ning through them. It’s ultra lo-fi, as well, Madlib let­ting the vinyl source really shine through. “The Rock” is an exam­ple of Madlib’s mad chop­ping skills. Begin­ning with a sam­ple rec­og­niz­able to Rjd2 fans, the drums on this come on like the sec­ond com­ing of Bonham.

I’ve been hav­ing a sort of resur­gence of inter­est in the turntablist/scratch sub­set. Per­haps this came about from my extreme enthu­si­asm for hear­ing 2tall’s Shift­ing Tides (I think one of my top 5 favorite albums ever). From there, I’ve been lis­ten­ing to more and more stuff like Mike Boo and Ricci Rucker’s albums. These were a bit more on the strictly musi­cal side of things. This, Eclec­tic Breaks’ Cuts of Cul­ture com­pi­la­tion def­i­nitely gets closer to the bat­tle side of things. The com­po­si­tions on this record are cer­tainly full of more tricks and bent more to the trunk rat­tlin’ than the albums I men­tioned above. Think Return of the DJ style stuff. The tal­ent here is top notch, though…and it’s heart­en­ing to know that turntab­lism has evolved since my last major sub­mer­sion into it. From Noisy Sty­lus’ epic “Sum­mer­time” ensem­ble track and C2C’s booty shakin’ team effort “Feel Good” to the thor­oughly hard as hell anthem from A-Trak and Dipset, “Don’t Fool,” and 2tall’s clos­ing 11 per­son strong “Oper­a­tion Inter­fer­ence,” this com­pi­la­tion shows a great sur­vey of the cur­rent state of this music. One of my favorites is Mista Ed’s “Unfin­ished Busi­ness,” because besides hav­ing a great jazzy upswing track, I’m a sucker for any­thing that sam­ples Big­gie. If you like your beats tough and your DJs out front, def­i­nitely pick this up.

I can under­stand Scott Herren’s want­ing to burn down the Prefuse 73 moniker and start afresh. It’s been obvi­ous for awhile that he has tired of the cult of per­son­al­ity sur­round­ing this alias of his, and that his inter­ests have grown beyond what is expected of “Prefuse 73.” When Sur­rounded By Silence was released, he took a lot of crit­i­cism for it’s guest and vocal heavy com­po­si­tions. But what can you expect? For years he has been the “guy that cuts up rap vocals,” why not show the world that he is a heavy weight music com­poser and pro­ducer. The album suf­fered a lit­tle from it’s lack of focus, but with Savath & Savalas and Piano Over­lord on his mind and plate, it can be expected. How­ever, some of the tracks on that album are cer­tainly his most melod­i­cally com­plex pro­duc­tions to date. The pre­vi­ous album, One Word Extin­guisher is still my favorite album of his, but Sur­rounded… was noth­ing but epic and showed he was about more than the chopped vocals. His most recent release, Secu­rity Screen­ings, was com­posed dur­ing and after the tour for Sur­rounded…, and inspired by the fre­quent air­port secu­rity holdups (an admit­tedly scruffy, tired guy walk­ing around with a ton of instru­ments and strange look­ing audio equip­ment?). The sense of frus­tra­tion at the has­sle and claus­tro­pho­bia of being prod­ded brought on by this expe­ri­ence is appar­ent through­out the “mini-not-an-album.” Some­times abra­sive, some­times gor­geous, it is thor­oughly dense and feels truly like some­thing “new.” Her­ren is an artist that deserves increas­ingly closer looks as he grows as an artist.

DJ Fuse One is a mind­blow­ing turntab­list out of Cal­i­for­nia. I missed out on his first mix CD, Meta­mor­pho­sis, but I snapped up his tasty new one, irREG­U­LAR i as soon as I started read­ing the reviews. A dark instru­men­tal tour de force from a guy in the same cir­cles as Mike Boo and Ricci Rucker? Hell yes, gimme. And it doesn’t dis­ap­point. I rec­og­nize some of the mate­r­ial rep­re­sented on this mix, but most of it is warped and manip­u­lated to such a degree as to com­pletely recon­tex­tu­al­ize it. Sprin­kled through­out are short spo­ken word ker­nals of wis­dom from some of the best thinkers of the mod­ern ear. When I reviewed the David Castillo mix CD below, I men­tioned that it’s more a “mix album” and this is another one of those mon­u­men­tal efforts, not sim­ply a col­lec­tion of blends and scratches, this goes that extra level to form a wholly new work from it’s parts. Guest-starring Mike Boo, Excess, D-Styles, Ricci Rucker and oth­ers, this is one of the impor­tant mixes to own. Pick it up from the Asis­pho­n­ics home­page or other fine music purveyors.

Man, I wish the entire album was as solid as this track. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this pair­ing. I’ve always loved Aceyalone’s voice, and I’m a big big fan of both of Rj’s albums. But their pair­ing on Mag­nif­i­cent City seemed odd, as Acey seems a lit­tle more suited to a slower, more jazzy pace. This album is filled with bright lights funk of a decid­edly quicker club­land tempo. Some­times it works great, like on “Dis­con­nected” and “Supa­hero” and some­times it doesn’t. I don’t think I could coun­sel any­one against buy­ing it, as it cer­tainly has some gems, but it didn’t blow me away. That said, I’m offer­ing up “Dis­con­nected” as one of the god­damn songs to beat this year. This is the dry drums and funk pro­duc­tion I love from Rj, and Acey’s cho­rus shows why he as one of the coolest deliv­er­ies in the business.

Jel is one of my favorite pro­duc­ers. Whether his work for Them­selves with Doseone, or 13&God with Notwist, he is an incred­i­bly gifted music crafts­man, build­ing beats that hit hard, cou­pling them with often lovely melodies. His first album was 10 Sec­onds and it was an ode to his drum machine sam­pler, the SP1200, which only has 10 sec­onds of sam­pling time. What he does with that lim­i­ta­tion is incred­i­ble. There are also two vol­umes of his DIY Green­ball series that col­lect instru­men­tals, unre­leased beats, and other odds and ends that really show off his mas­tery of the sam­ple beat cul­ture he works in. His new album, Soft Money, is the most fleshed out and com­plete release of his to date, fea­tur­ing some of the most intri­cate drum pro­gram­ming out there, gor­geous and sub­tle melodies, split between pure instru­men­tals and vocal con­tri­bu­tions from Steffi Bohm of Ms. John Soda, Wise Intel­li­gent of Poor Right­eous Teach­ers, and Jel him­self, with his silky smooth and rare appear­ances on the mic. The track that has been doing the rounds is “WMD” and is one of the best polit­i­cal MC tracks out there at the moment, huge ideas and huge drums. Steffi Bohm’s con­tri­bu­tions can be felt on two lovely tracks, the first of which is “All Around.”