A quick fol­low up to my Mix­tape Roundup last week. Mr Trick has put up a free mix to help pro­mote the Up The Anti mix I reviewed in that post. Check this mon­ster out, and if you like it, you are guar­an­teed to dig Up The Anti even more (buy that sucker!). Check out the details here.
Mr Trick — “Hella Flossy” mix (mp3 — full mix download)

Since I became an avid music fan (some­thing I would say really started in high school), I’ve advo­cated fol­low­ing and trust­ing labels as much as the artists them­selves. Peo­ple ask me how I find out about new music. Aside from a few mag­a­zines and web­sites, I always say “I fol­low record labels” as one of my pri­mary meth­ods of hear­ing new music. You can’t really do that with the majors, but with smaller labels that have a strongly defined aes­thetic, you are rarely dis­ap­pointed. An early exam­ple of this for me would be Mo’Wax, who never really steered me wrong. A cou­ple years ago it was Morr Music, but as my tastes have changed over the last cou­ple years, I’ve been fol­low­ing Bully Records, Needle­work, Stones Throw, and the one that’s not like the oth­ers, Type Records. Type is run by Xela, an artist I’ve admired for a num­ber of years, and the label shows his wide-ranging and impec­ca­ble taste through­out. I’ve been on an auto­matic buy rou­tine with the label for the past year, and haven’t been dis­ap­pointed yet. With this the­ory of fol­low­ing labels, some­times one puts you onto some­thing that isn’t like the rest of the out­put, and is almost com­pletely in a type of music you are sur­prised to be buy­ing. From the descrip­tion, I wasn’t sure what Night of the Ankou would be like, but I bought it any­way on the strength of the label’s prior, and espe­cially recent, out­put. To be con­fronted with a quiet, somber ambi­ent drone with traces of eth­nic sounds was some­what shock­ing, but I lis­tened to the album 3 times the day I bought it, 3 times since then, and this was only 2 days ago. The North Sea & Rame­ses III is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between one group (Rame­ses III) and one artist (The North Sea aka Dig­i­talis), and as such com­bines two related but dis­parate worlds. Con­sist­ing of two long pieces plus one remix by Xela, Night of the Ankou uses elec­tron­ics and live instru­ments to cre­ate a very atmos­pheric and calm­ing world. Com­bined with the gor­geous pho­tog­ra­phy on the pack­ag­ing, you see in your mind’s eye a night­time walk through a grassy plain unen­cum­bered by the city, some­where untouched and mag­nif­i­cent. As you look up at the stars and breathe the air, a light gui­tar strums in the dis­tance, and you keep walk­ing, know­ing that there is a nat­ural magic around you… I’m link­ing to the mp3 excerpts that Type Records pro­vides on their web­site. I encour­age you to check this album out. You can pur­chase through their web­site, or at Bent Crayon and Boomkat. Enjoy.
“Death of the Ankou” | “Night Blos­soms Writ­ten In San­skrit” | “Return of the Ankou (Xela Remix)” (mp3 excerpts)

Trick + Wax­fac­tor present Up The Anti (Needle­work)
Mr Trick and Wax­fac­tor are the pre­sen­ters of the Res­o­nance FM radio show Rhythm Incur­sions. For the past year or so, they have been work­ing on a mag­num opus mix that rep­re­sents the R.I. aes­thetic. It’s finally here, and it’s a mon­ster to be sure. We start off with the sounds of war, and slowly get lead into Waxfactor’s incred­i­bly funky “Reg­gae­nomics (Luna Landa Remix),” as the kick off track. From there, we travel all over the spec­trum of beat and sample-based music. A track­list­ing would be impos­si­ble, as they basi­cally con­struct new music out of lots of bits and phrases from their favorite music…all edited and mixed and mashed into a swirling vor­tex of good­ness. Start­ing with some hip hop and instru­men­tal type stuff, it moves into more elec­tron­i­cally mashed stuff, segue­ing into some jump-up drum ‘n’ bass, and ulti­mately wind­ing up with a sequence of tuff dance­hall, result­ing in pos­si­bly the funki­est seg­ment fea­tur­ing 2tall on the cuts. Right before the jump-up, we are treated to an extended re-edit of edIT’s heav­enly dev­as­tat­ing remix of Daedelus’ “Dumb­found,” mashed up with some Prince Po, and other bits I don’t even know. They’ve taken one of my favorite tracks of ’05, and pro­pelled it into even head­ier areas. Highly rec­om­mended, this will be on lots of best of lists come Jan­u­ary. Get it at Bent Crayon, or Under­ground­hiphop­Dot­Com.

Trap Door II: An Inter­na­tional Mys­tery Mix (Dis-Joint)
Psy­che Rock has become a big and pop­u­lar trend in crate-digging over the past few years. It seems that every week there is a new com­pi­la­tion or mix of for­got­ten psy­che gems. This Inter­na­tional Mys­tery Mix is prob­a­bly going to go down as one of the most noto­ri­ous and favorite mixes. You can already read the Soul­Strut­ters fawn­ing affec­tion for it here. And those dudes are hard to impress. Sim­ple pack­ag­ing, no track­list­ing make this a truly aural expe­ri­ence, and it’s one heck of a jour­ney. The funk, soul, and out­right acid-y haze of this mix is superb. As a long time fan of Can, this kind of stuff really hits the spot when done right, and Dis-Joint have really nailed it. Avail­able on CD and Vinyl. Get it at Turntable­lab.

Dr. Delay — Psy­crunk (Funk Weapons)
Also a Soul­Strut favorite, as well as rid­ing the psy­che wave to superb heights is this novel meld­ing of psy­che rock and crunk hip-hop. Dr. Delay really put some care into mak­ing these two insanely dif­fer­ent gen­res of music work together. You’ll hear some Lil Jon, Young Jeezy, Three Six Mafia, and all the usual cul­prits, over top and mixed in with lots of rare and not so rare psy­che rock bands. It’s all done extremely well and inven­tive, the way Delay re-edits some of the music to fit the scat­ter­shot style of the vocals. It’s hard to say much about this, but if the two gen­res sep­a­rately are cool to you, chances are you’ll be want­ing this. Get it at Turntable­Lab.

Six­too — Yo, It’s The Mind­fuck! Sit Yo Ass Down. (Bully Records)
This 20 minute mix can best be described as an extended trailer for Sixtoo’s next album (forth­com­ing on Ninja Tune some day). Part mix, part com­pi­la­tion, part orig­i­nal mate­r­ial, you really get a sense of where his head is at right now. Library records, psy­che, and basic frac­tured beats. With hilar­i­ously deli­cious pack­ag­ing, this is another excel­lent out­ing from Big Six. Get it at Bent Crayon or Ninja Tune’s Shop

DJ Gold­enchyld — Ear Infec­tions (Fin­ger­bangerz)
Orig­i­nal­lly released on CD, I never got around to buy­ing this mix, even though I’d heard great things about it. Now the man has posted the full thing up on his Myspace for free down­load, and I implore you to grab it quick-like. It’s the damn bomb for sure. What­ever that crazy ass hard beat is at the begin­ning leads into the cra­zi­est meld­ing of Smash­ing Pump­kins and UNKLE. And the treats don’t stop, you get it all.…original beats, more than a few moments of Bjork, mash-ups, jug­gles, expert cuts all over the place, and over­all relent­lessly enjoy­able ride. Get on it now.
DJ Gold­enchyld — Ear Infec­tions (mp3 — full mixtape)

80,000 years in the mak­ing, Lucas Mac­Fad­den finally deliv­ers his dense and clear labor of love, The Audience’s Lis­ten­ing, on a major label (Warner) no less. It seems that ever since the mighty “Les­son 6″ made it’s debut on the first Deep Con­cen­tra­tion com­pi­la­tion to the joy of DJ fans every­where, Cut has been work­ing on a mys­te­ri­ous album. The solo tracks came out in trib­bles, and most of the time, all we heard from him was his blind­ing pro­duc­tion for Juras­sic 5 as a full time mem­ber. Seems like he had to leave the group to get this album done. I got the leak of this the day before it came out, and my first impres­sion was a lit­tle guarded. The first track truly sounds like a retread of ’96, the library spo­ken word type of nar­ra­tion… It was like “Les­son 12,” and that col­ored my per­cep­tion a bit…but on sec­ond or third lis­ten, I got stuck into the sheer lunacy and fun of “(My 1st) Big Break,” def­i­nitely my favorite track. The big kicks, the sam­ples, and the energy are just infec­tious. Else­where, “The Gar­den” is gor­geous latin-tinged fantastic-ness, with a beau­ti­ful gui­tar and vocal sam­ple over some tough-ass drums (LOVE these drums!). I’m per­son­ally not a big fan of the two MC tracks. That said, Hym­nal on “What’s the Alti­tude” keeps the mood of the album flow­ing. “Storm” is more dif­fi­cult, because, try as I might, I sim­ply don’t get Edan. How­ever, the music is pretty wild, and the sec­ond MC on the track, Mr. Lif, shows up with a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally strong out­ing. I wish I liked Mr. Lif’s albums more, as every­time I hear him on a guest spot, he kills it. Sec­ond favorite track is def­i­nitely “Spoon,” a slow epic at the tail end of the album, with some lovely string sam­ples and drum pro­gram­ming. Taken as whole expe­ri­ence, this album def­i­nitely deliv­ers, even while not break­ing any boundaries…something I think the album will suf­fer from in the expec­ta­tion game. I admit to falling into that trap myself on first lis­ten. How­ever, I com­pletely have changed my mind and think’s super fan and well worth check­ing out imme­di­ately. Cut is a con­sum­mate dig­ger and an excep­tional pro­ducer. Recommended!

Some­times I’m totally behind the times. I know! Shock­ing! I had no idea this album was even out, but it’s been avail­able since Octo­ber 2005. Damn, I’ve been totally miss­ing out. If you’re like me and point to The X-ecutioner’s sem­i­nal and ground-breaking X-pressions as one of the most impor­tant turntable and sam­ple based albums to come out of the heady early days of turntab­lism, this is the suc­ces­sor you’ve been wait­ing for. Birdy Nam Nam are a four man turntable crew out of France, doing that X thing of per­form­ing orig­i­nal songs fully as a band, each mem­ber on a dif­fer­ent instru­ment sound. I’ve always felt like this was the truest pro­gres­sion of the scratch phe­nom­e­non, but was con­tin­u­ally dis­ap­pointed with each of the X-ecutioner’s follow-up albums. Birdy Nam Nam have picked up the torch to make a soul­ful but hard-hitting album. Tracks like “Kind of Laid Back,” “Escape,” “Engi­neer Fear,” and “Abbesses” show this group syn­ergy off to fan­tas­tic degrees. Check out a video for “Abbesses” here, which shows the guys get­ting busy as one cohe­sive and well-tuned machine. I first heard them on Laurent’s TurntableRa­dio pod­cast with the track “Engi­neer Fear” and was imme­di­ately blown away by the tightly inte­grated skills of this crew. The album comes with a bonus DVD of live footage, doc­u­men­taries, and other good­ies. You can get it through Undergroundhiphop.com.

Type Records con­tinue to release gor­geous release after gor­geous release, and this new album by Helios is no excep­tion. A mix of elec­tron­ics and live instru­ments, Keith Ken­niff has crafted a sum­mery album for peo­ple who enjoy a lazy after­noon read­ing a book by sun­light. The cover illus­tra­tion of a cou­ple hold­ing hands look­ing out on a land­scape per­fectly describes the mood of the music here. Full of hope and beauty, with an eye towards the future. With more than a touch of Xela’s Tan­gled Wool, I would say that this album goes much deeper into melody and song struc­ture, employ­ing an even more live feel over­all. Songs like opener “Bless This Morn­ing Year” and “Drag­on­fly Across The Sky” are lilt­ing elec­tronic com­po­si­tions, while tracks like “Paper Tiger” and “For Years and Years” seem to employ much more of struc­tured song idea. Highly recommended!