Obvi­ously I’m a big fan of the good Rev. Shines first Today’s Good News mix­tape. Eas­ily one of my favorite soul and funk mixes, I def­i­nitely ref­er­enced it a cou­ple times last year. With impec­ca­ble taste, and really deep crates, Shines is one of the best DJs out there min­ing the past and deliv­er­ing us up some amaz­ing finds. The first vol­ume had a great Dilla trib­ute sec­tion, with lots of orig­i­nal Dilla sources. This sec­ond vol­ume is no dif­fer­ent in it’s obvi­ous love of Dilla’s works, with Donuts sources bet­tered through­out. Not only that but there is some Just Blaze, Primo, and assorted other pro­ducer sources on here for your enjoy­ment. Shines keeps the mix mov­ing quickly by pulling out the best, most essen­tial bits of these clas­sics and for­got­ten gems, all the while pep­per­ing it with sur­prises and deft mix­ing. Check out myspace page for sam­ples. Get it from 360vinyl.com and bump the hell out of it!

If you aren’t already a fan of Buddy Peace.…er, what’s the mat­ter with you? No, but seri­ously, if you don’t know Buddy, but if you are pos­si­bly a fan of Joe Beats’ Indie Rock Blues, Buddy and Rhythm Incur­sions radio have an extra spe­cial treat for you here. Recently aired as a takeover of the radio show, this is Buddy’s bril­liant mash through the indie rock world. Thanks to the the Rhythm Incur­sions crew for putting this up for down­load and mas­sive props to Buddy him­self. Track­list here.
Buddy Peace — Obit­u­ary Med­i­cine mix (full mix mp3)

PS. If you enjoy this, make sure you check out Com­mon­wealth Kids, Buddy’s labor of love mix with Carlo. Check out my review, check out the clips, and buy your­self a copy pronto before they are gone.

2006 has been an amaz­ing year for music, both on a per­sonal dis­cov­ery level, and on a wide­spread qual­ity level. This fall has espe­cially been fruitful…I’ve been mak­ing weekly stops at Bent Crayon to pick up at least 2 or 3 things pretty reg­u­larly since about August. Some of these newer pur­chases have made me re-examine the ear­lier part of the year, which started out just as amaz­ing. For me, all this music over­laps in a gor­geous, hap­haz­ard way. This year’s review will sort of reflect that, in a way that hope­fully doesn’t come off as com­pletely pre­ten­tious or embarass­ing. I’d like to dis­cuss all of this music in rela­tion to each other, point out where they com­ple­ment each other, com­pare and con­trast, and present a ‘whole music’ way of look­ing at music. Just cause you like beats doesn’t mean that beat­less con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal music has noth­ing of the same aes­thet­ics involved. The emo­tions and moods music cre­ate are a stronger bond to me than the stan­dard “if you like this, this sounds sim­i­lar.” I’ll start out with a stan­dard list of albums in as close an order of pref­er­ence as I can fathom. While the num­ber of albums might seem arbi­trary, I’ve always treated my end of year list as a list of music I think deserves spe­cial men­tion, not to ful­fill a stan­dard Top Ten type of quota. Longer lists in bet­ter years, short lists in dis­ap­point­ing years. I’ve reviewed most of these items thor­ough­out the year, so look back or use the search for more info if you are curi­ous. Most of the music I talk about here can be found at these fine record stores: Bent Crayon, Boomkat, Turntable­Lab or Bleep. Please let me know what you think, and write some com­ments with your own thoughts on 2006.

01. Manyfin­gers — Our Worn Shadow (Acuarela)
02. Cun­nin­Lyn­guists — A Piece of Strange (QN5)
03. Griz­zly Bear — Yel­low House (Warp Records) (mp3)
04. Xela — The Dead Sea (Type Records)
05. Wax­fac­tor — Sci-Fu (Needle­work Records) (mp3)
06. J Dilla — Donuts (Stones Throw)
07. The North Sea & Rame­ses III — Night of the Ankou (Type Records) (excerpts)
08. Dday One — Loop Exten­sions (Needle­work Records) (megamix mp3)
09. Var­i­ous Artists — Mama’s Got a Bag Of Her Own (State­side)
10. Cold­cut — Sound Mir­rors (Ninja Tune)
11. Svarte Gre­nier — Knive (Type Records)
12. Machine­fab­riek — Mar­ijn (Lampse) (mp3)
13. Clark — Body Rid­dle (Warp Records)
14. Rev. Shines — Today’s Good News (self released)
15. Carlo & Buddy Peace — Com­mon­wealth Kids (self released) (streams)
16. Mr Trick + Wax­fac­tor — Rhythm Incur­sions presents Up The Anti (Needle­work Records) (Hella Flossy promo mix mp3)
17. David Castillo — Do Your Thing (self released)
18. Mekalek — Live and Learn (Glow-In-The-Dark Records)
19. Tommy Guer­rero — From The Soil To The Soul (Quan­num)
20. Clint Mansell — The Foun­tain (None­such) (mp3)
21. Howard Shore — The Two Tow­ers: The Com­plete Record­ings (Reprise)
21. Encre — Plexus II (Mias­mah) (excerpt)
23. Dr Who Dat? — Beat Jour­ney (Lex Records) (mp3)
24. Gnarls Barkley — St. Else­where (Vir­gin)
25. Cau­ral — Mir­rors For Eyes (Mush)
26. Rame­ses III — Matanuska (Music Fel­low­ship) (mp3)
27. Greg Haines — Slum­ber Tides (Mias­mah)
28. Var­i­ous Artists — What It Is: Funky Soul and Rare Grooves (Rhino)
29. Thom Yorke — The Eraser (XL)
30. DJ Shadow — The Out­sider (Universal)

Let’s start with two releases that just stopped me cold. I had no idea what to expect with Manyfin­gers’ Our Worn Shadow and was even more unpre­pared for The North Sea & Rame­ses III’s Night of the Ankou. At first glance, these are two very dif­fer­ent albums. Our Worn Shadow, a post-post-rock instru­men­tal vir­tu­oso album with strong hip-hop ten­den­cies; Night of the Ankou, an extremely sub­tle and quiet album of field record­ings, gen­tle elec­tron­ics, and drift­ing gui­tars. But the pen­sive, hot tea on a cold win­ter day feel­ing of both is what pulled me into their spe­cial charms. Obvi­ously, Rame­ses III’s album Matanuska rides a sim­i­lar avenue. Mov­ing into more of Ankou’s ter­ri­tory is Xela’s won­der­ful and haunt­ing third album, The Dead Sea. Its sim­i­lar­ity to another Type Records album, Svarte Grenier’s Knive, is per­fectly obvi­ous, but you can’t dis­count the ways in which The Dead Sea shock­ingly feels kin to Griz­zly Bear’s astound­ing Yel­low House album, with its mix­ture of movie scale com­po­si­tion and slightly out-of-the-ordinary instru­men­ta­tion. While the for­mer is a story of a sail­ing voy­age gone hor­ri­bly wrong and the lat­ter is a very nos­tal­gic and per­sonal album, the won­der in each is appar­ent, although at odds. It’s not a stretch to see the con­nec­tions between Svarte Grenier’s Knive and the third, glo­ri­ous album by (Chris) Clark, Body Rid­dle. Svarte’s “Final Sleep” and Clark’s “Matthew Unbur­dened” could eas­ily be next to each on an album, even com­ing from two dif­fer­ent places. Body Rid­dle is the kind of album that WORD is all about, some­thing that tran­scends genre even while wear­ing its influ­ences on its sleeve.

It’s kind of odd, but when I was think­ing about the year, all my favorite mix­tapes rated in the same area on my chart. I kept look­ing at them and try­ing to decide if they should go some­where else and mix in more, but it made more sense for them to be a group. I love this new breed of mix­tapes, and I think it’s because they are half tra­di­tional mixes, half pro­duced albums, basi­cally. Per­haps that why they all fit into the mid­dle of this chart. Not quite a full on album, but rat­ing higher than some full albums. Any­way, there is one album that could eas­ily fit into this part of the dis­cus­sion, and I think it’s illu­mi­nat­ing to dis­cuss it that way: J Dilla’s Donuts, which I’ve put pretty close to the top. In many ways, this was the year of Dilla… it seemed that a lot of beat-based releases were put next to the Donuts mea­sur­ing stick. Is it because he lit­er­ally died mak­ing it, or sim­ply because it came at pre­cisely the right time in the musi­cal land­scape? The new breed of mix­tape I men­tioned really started within the last cou­ple years, and they have been becom­ing more and more pro­duced. Donuts is for all intents and pur­poses the zenith of that idea, some­thing more pro­duced than mixed, but with the feel of a mix­tape. Which isn’t to say that every­thing else that came out this year isn’t wor­thy. A late year release, Com­mon­wealth Kids is mind­blow­ingly com­plex and as a com­plete a mix­tape expe­ri­ence as you are gonna get. The mighty Rhythm Incur­sions crew pulled out all the stops for Up The Anti, a huge mon­ster of a heavly beat work­out mix. David Castillo’s Do Your Thing was an early favorite of mine, with it’s lovely mix­ture of rock, soul, funk, hip-hop and odd bits in between (“Police Woman!”). I can’t for­get to men­tion Rev. Shines’ Today’s Good News — for my money, the best soul + funk mix this year. His selec­tion is impec­ca­ble and his mix­ing pre­cise and inven­tive. Down at the end of my list is another album that it would be help­ful to dis­cuss in the con­text of mix­tapes: DJ Shadow’s flawed but com­pelling The Out­sider. I did a long write up of this album and dis­cussed it’s many short­com­ings, but it still makes my list for pre­sent­ing a thor­oughly mod­ern and eclec­tic album…exceedingly bold but also some­how appro­pri­ate for these times. It’s a full on album, but has the A-Z sound of a mix­tape like Com­mon­wealth Kids.…seri­ously, put those two releases next to each other and you can find ana­logues for every­thing. What does this say about each? Well, for one, Com­mon­wealth Kids is a lot more suc­cess­ful for being more cohe­sive and tak­ing a “whole world” approach, while The Out­sider suf­fers from sep­a­rat­ing all the styles into lit­tle sections.

The two com­pi­la­tions I have included in this list are par­tic­u­larly strong col­lec­tions from the golden era of soul and funk. Late 60s/early 70s soul and funk has been a big part of my year. I’ve always been a fan of Otis and Mar­vin and the well-known stuff, but 2006 found me div­ing in a lot deeper. I got to know this period and style of music a lot more. It started out from hear­ing things like Today’s Good News and the desire to dig for some of these gems. Blogs like Funky 16 Cor­ners have been instru­men­tal in this learn­ing expe­ri­ence. What I can say about Mama’s Got a Bag of Her Own and the mam­moth What It Is is that this music still has rel­e­vance and deserves to be stud­ied by the col­lec­tors and crate-diggers who spend their time on it. There would be no Donuts with­out this music, cer­tainly, but just as much, there would be no St. Else­where, no “Crazy,” arguably the year’s biggest sin­gle piece of music. An album like Tommy Guerrero’s From the Soil to the Soul is 100% informed by soul music. The sounds, struc­tures, melodies of that album are pure late 60s. Like­wise, Dr. Who Dat’s Beat Jour­ney is influ­enced by this music to a large degree, with a heavy heavy help­ing of the more Latin side of soul, jazz, and funk. There is no doubt that Mekalek’s Live and Learn could not exist with­out that par­tic­u­lar brand of funky pop found through­out these compilations.

Look­ing at my list, it’s cer­tainly heavy in two pre­dom­i­nant types of music: hip-hop and what could loosely be termed as con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal. Find­ing the con­nec­tions between this music might be stretch­ing believ­abil­ity, but I don’t think it’s dif­fi­cult for a fan of Dday One’s chunky, dusty, relent­less Loop Exten­sions to get that same atmos­phere from Howard Shore’s The Two Tow­ers score or Greg Haines debut exer­cise in atmos­pheric melan­choly, Slum­ber Tides. Just like the whip crack­ingly sharp beats from Waxfactor’s Sci Fu put it in the same genre as the phe­nom­e­nal A Piece of Strange from Cun­nin­Lyn­guists, the strongly nar­ra­tive and…wait for it, cin­e­matic struc­ture of these albums, put them right at home with The Two Tow­ers and The Foun­tain soundtracks.

The albums I prob­a­bly haven’t men­tioned are eas­ily the most exper­i­men­tal ones, all thor­oughly dis­tinct light­ning bolts of unique­ness. Cer­tainly Thom Yorke’s The Eraser came out of left field…being exactly what I expected and at the same time shock­ing for it’s effort­less strad­dling of gen­res. Going beyond Radiohead’s exper­i­men­tal moments, it feels more at home with elec­tronic noise work­outs like Machinefabriek’s blind­ing Mar­ijn. The expertly com­posed and pro­duced Sound Mir­rors by Cold­cut is one of the most sub­tle albums, being simul­ta­ne­ously sev­eral albums at once, even while being tightly cohe­sive. Encre’s Plexus II is a hyp­notic and extremely abstract work, grounded by it’s nat­ural sounds and tra­di­tional instru­men­ta­tion. I’ve been a fan of Cau­ral for awhile, and his lat­est, Mir­rors for Eyes really impressed me. Psy­che­del­ica, gor­geously com­posed, with thick drums and inter­est­ing guest appear­ances, it was one of those albums that still make me inter­ested to go record shop­ping every week, look­ing for some­thing fresh and exciting.

So 2006 was eas­ily one of my most var­ied years, I think, and it’s given me great joy to be able to say this com­pletes WORD’s first full year of blog­ging on music. Hope­fully, it’s opened some minds to dif­fer­ent music and brought you some insight…I’m con­stantly being exposed to new stuff, con­stantly amazed at the wealth of tal­ent out there. Look­ing for­ward to 2007’s riches: Six­too, Sage Fran­cis, Ben Frost, Alias, Life­savas, Joe Beats, Bully 7“s, Type Records, and tons of things I don’t even know about yet.

Happy New Year!