Once again, upcom­ing new label 2600 Record­ings hits us with a free mix… this and the Tempa mix that I linked to a cou­ple months ago are a per­fect way to spread the word of a new label. Mp3 mixes are such an impor­tant part of the under­ground music scene these days, some­thing like this can make peo­ple remem­ber a label when their releases start com­ing out. This time around, Mr Cooper (Who I’ve reviewed before as well) takes the wheel(z) for a mix of “Sam­ples, Beats and Tracks.” Tak­ing in a heavy amount of selec­tions from Amongst Strangers plus some new tracks, the entire mix floats on a bed of odd sound­track snip­pets, some jazz, some rock… it’s an odd mix­ture that works to show how Mr Cooper’s music evolves from and melds his tastes. By the way, when I orig­i­nally reviewed Mr Cooper’s Amongst Strangers album, it was only avail­able in Japan or from the man him­self in the UK. It’s since been given a wider release and should be avail­able fairly uni­ver­sally now.
Mr Cooper — Sam­ples, Beats and Tracks (mp3 — full mix)

RIP Funkstorung. Long Live Chris de Luca Vs. Phon.o! Holy crap. Chris de Luca & Peabird’s Deadly Wiz Da Disko is one of my all time favorite albums. A glitched out hip-hop tour de force, that album just wows me to no end. I’ve really been hop­ing there would be a follow-up. It sounds like there won’t be, but with the recent demise of Funkstorung, de Luca has been rock­ing shows with another artist named Phon.o. This shit is like Deadly Wiz Da Disko on steroids. Bass, big giant flanged beats, a notice­able bump in tempo, with more of a focus on mak­ing the club go crazy. Funkstorung meets Tim­ba­land meets TTC meets Man­nie Fresh meets Smaze meets speak­ers blown the fuck up. Check the web­site for news, tour dates, sound­clips of the week, ring­tones, and other good­ness. Also, mixes and livesets, which I’m link­ing up right hurrr:
Chris de Luca vs. Phon.o@Audiopixel Live Set (mp3)
Chris de Luca Main Streamed Mix (mp3)
Phon.o Cross­faded and Turned Tabled Mix (mp3)
Chris de Luca Glitch Mix (mp3)
Phon.o Bad­room Mix (mp3)

My god. I’m not sure how much good this post will do, given that the release in ques­tion is lim­ited to 200 copies world­wide, but music this gor­geous and sea­son­ally appro­pri­ate demands to be talked about. Dag Rosen­qvist is Jasper TX and Rut­ger Zuy­dervelt is Machine­fab­riek, both of whom have albums on Lampse at the moment. Rut­ger has been self-releasing 3″ CDs for years now, and I’m glad that they upped it to a full album for this col­lab­o­ra­tion, as it gives the music expan­sive room to enve­lope the lis­tener in waves, crack­les, and melodies of win­ter bliss. As I’m typ­ing this, it’s insanely cold here in Ohio and I’m cur­rently fight­ing my leaky win­dows for some sem­blance of warmth. Does this music cure that? No, but it makes it just a lit­tle eas­ier to deal with. Instead of being about the cold and harsh aspects of win­ter, this music is about the beauty of it, the gusts of wind that kick up the snow in swirling pat­terns, the way that spaces seem more open and full of pos­si­bil­ity, the con­tem­pla­tive nights watch­ing the blue-yellow glow that per­me­ates every­thing. The lib­eral use of gui­tars lends a very tra­di­tional and folky atmos­phere to this. I can imag­ine this music being played while a man hud­dles by the coal stove for warmth in his long cabin a cen­tury ago. The elec­tron­ics sound like steps on snow, the nat­ural instru­ments like bells call­ing in the night. Not sur­pris­ingly, this is very Scan­di­na­vian music, moun­tains and twi­light per­vade the music. Most highly rec­om­mended. Try and get it as fast as you can from Dag him­self (who posted it insanely quick from Swe­den), Nor­man Records, or Aquar­ius Records.
“Gras Som Bryts Och Gar Av” (mp3)

I’m not sure when this came out, mostly because it com­pletely escaped my atten­tion when it did. I’m not sure it even got my pro­mo­tion from Ninja Tune. It prob­a­bly did, but for some rea­son I never saw it. Yppah appears to some­one from the scratch/turntablist cir­cles, and here turns in an extremely lovely and breakbeat-heavy album. At times, I’m reminded of the big beat days, but with a matu­rity not nor­mally found in that genre and time period. With pro­lific use of gui­tars, such as on “I’ll Hit The Breaks,” Yppah def­i­nitely focuses on the melodic side of instru­men­tal hip-hop stuff. This isn’t just some guy hook­ing up a loop lifted from an old record. Each of these songs moves for­ward with pur­pose and often­times pro­gresses into MBV style crescen­dos (“Again With The Sub­ti­tles,” “End­ing With You,” and “Good Like That”). This is sort of the record that I wish Elliot Lipp had made instead of Tacoma Mock­ing­bird. It has that same sort of feel, but there is some­thing harder and more glo­ri­ous. “We Aim” veers into some glitchy IDM ter­ri­tory, but the anchor­ing gui­tar gives it an oth­er­worldy depth that reminds me of Xela’s Tan­gled Wool in some ways. “It’s Not The Same” would be wel­come by any fan of Bully Records type instru­men­tal hip-hop, with it’s crash­ing drums and smooth bass. This is def­i­nitely a release worth your time. Check it out.