I know I haven’t posted much hip-hop (instru­men­tal or oth­er­wise) in a while… because, well, frankly noth­ing has been excit­ing me very much lately. How­ever, this new El-P is fuck­ing ridicu­lous. It’s the first straight-up hip-hop album I’ve been excited about since A Piece of Strange. I wasn’t totally sure about get­ting it until I heard some snip­pets on the Def Jux web­site while look­ing up some­thing else. I’ve tra­di­tion­ally been on the fence about El-P’s MC style. Some­times it’s fan­tas­tic, some­times it grates on me… but I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead has made me a believer. It’s the per­fect sonic bat­tle­ground for his voice and rhythm, prov­ing that he sounds best when mar­ried with his own pro­duc­tion. Speak­ing of pro­duc­tion, this is some next level shit. There is a seri­ous rock ele­ment to the entire album that doesn’t sound phoney, gim­micked or ‘mashed,’ as that kind of thing usu­ally does. It’s highly futur­is­tic in sound and con­tent. As you can see in the video for “Smithereens” at this NYT inter­view, it’s also bru­tally rel­e­vant and thought-provoking. “Tas­man­ian Pain Coaster” is the first epic on this album, and it’s sim­ply mind­blow­ing. It has at least 4 or 5 changes in it’s 6 min­utes, and each one ramps up the energy. Fea­tur­ing The Mars Volta, you barely know they are there, to be hon­est. This is El-P’s show all the way through. It tells the story of a blood­ied and prob­a­bly sui­ci­dal guy on the sub­way, pre­sent­ing a vignette of post 9/11 emo­tion. I’m a big fan of the next song, too, which is the first sin­gle, “Smithereens.” The muddy and gut­tural stratch­ing by Mr. Dibbs on this track really does it for me, texture-wise. Intensely auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, it’s a man­i­festo if I’ve ever heard one. Else­where, “Habeas Corpses (Dra­con­ian Love)” fea­tures El-P and Cage as prison guards in a THX1138-like future, with El falling for an inmate he even­tu­ally has to kill. The mechan­i­cal voiceover that repeats through­out the song as pris­on­ers are called for­ward by their num­bers is chill­ing. Each one of these songs enthralls and keeps me com­ing back for more and more. From the gal­lop­ing almost mil­i­tary beat on “Up All Night” and the gor­geous bass line on “The Overly Dra­matic Truth” to the heart­break­ing clos­ing track fea­tur­ing Cat Power giv­ing us an uplift­ing lament, I can’t get enough of this melt­ing pot. Oh, and I can’t for­get to men­tion that this album has some hooky as hell cho­ruses, some­thing I’ve never really appre­ci­ated before. “Up All Night,” “Tas­man­ian Pain Coaster,” “The Overly Dra­matic Truth,” “Habeas Corpses,” just try for­get­ting these hooks. Simul­ta­ne­ously retro, futur­is­tic, and intensely cur­rent, I think this is going to go down as one of the more impor­tant albums this year when the dust set­tles. It’s hip-hop through and through, but it’s fuck­ing rock and it’s fuck­ing blues, too. How does one do that with­out seem­ing like a gim­mick try­ing to be all things to all peo­ple for more cash? Hell if I know, but El-P does it effort­lessly here. Avail­able every­where, but if you are a dig­i­tal buyer, def­i­nitely go to the Def Jux dig­i­tal store and get the instru­men­tals as a bonus for free. Higher than fuck­ing highly rec­om­mended.
“Smithereens” (mp3)
“EMG” (mp3)

Ian Cho’s The Wak­ing Woods is an exper­i­ment in envi­ron­ment build­ing through sounds. While hav­ing a com­pletely syn­thethic sound, it attempts to, and suc­ceeds, in describ­ing a com­pletely organic, albeit strange, world. Each song gives you the sen­sa­tion of wan­der­ing through a vibrant scene, with life hap­pen­ing all around you. Equal parts Orb and Secret Fre­quency Crew, Ian Cho’s deep melodic sense sets him apart as a dif­fer­ent voice in elec­tron­ics. Lis­ten­ing to this now again in the head­phones, the detail comes alive, insects chirp, bird’s take flight, and the fish talk to us in their own way. “Time Stands Still For You” is a par­tic­u­larly suc­cess­ful song. Keep­ing the theme of organic life through syn­the­siz­ers, it also con­tains a hyp­notic melody. “Get Free!” is almost exactly like hear­ing a dance club from under water, a curi­ous sen­sa­tion. “Dragon” floats and soars with it’s dis­torted synths and treated and loop­ing gui­tars. A reward­ing album, I’d rec­om­mend it to any­one look­ing for a deep expe­ri­ence through music. Out on Tov­ian Records.
“The Fly­ing Fish (Radio Edit)” (mp3)
“The Fly­ing Fish (Seatraf­fic Mix)” (mp3)

Dilla School of Music, Eng­land Cam­pus. Full Marks. Com­par­ing one person’s music to another is always a tricky deci­sion to make for me. On the one hand, it’s a quick way to describe music to some­one in words. On the other, it has the unfor­tu­nate effect of putting some­one in another’s shadow. For Lukid, I can only hope he is flat­tered when I say that Onan­don is most cer­tainly a post-Dilla album. It’s meant to be a com­pli­ment. Dilla has many “stu­dents,” and Lukid def­i­nitely fits into the pack with Dabrye, Fly­ing Lotus, Jneiro Jarel, and the like. The off kil­ter beats, organic synths, and those bass drums! I love this dude’s bass drums here. Putting a very English-electronic spin on Dilla beat­mak­ing, this music has traces of Boards of Canada in the melodies and atmos­pheres. Com­bin­ing those two together with Lukid’s spe­cial per­spec­tive makes Onan­don an incred­i­bly impres­sive debut album. From the con­tem­pla­tive and jazzy “Piano Nono” and “West­ern Swing” to the synth bass and tuff drum work­out of “Onan­don,” this album alter­nately bangs hard and sits back, some­times in the same song. Check Lukid’s Myspace for more sam­ples. Onan­don is out on Werk now. Check it out!

I’ve been play­ing the hell out of a few mixes I found on the inter­net and felt like it was time to share them with what­ever read­ers this blog has. These mixes are all done by an out­stand­ing record col­lec­tor and DJ named Frank (aka Soul­pusher), who I believe is Ger­man. He moved to Guinea in West Africa in the recent past and has been buy­ing up the area’s deep funk records. I found these on Soul Strut, where he posts reg­u­larly, but he also set up a blog called Voodoo Funk where he talks about his lately har­row­ing adven­tures liv­ing in a dicey part of the world. Please check it out and give the man some of your time. I’m not sure how to describe why the funk music being made in West Africa in the 60s and 70s is so astound­ing and com­pelling, but they’ve been in con­stant rota­tion at WORD HQ for a cou­ple months now. Also, of note, is a new-old com­pi­la­tion from Sound­way Records called Afro Baby, which focuses on Nige­ria specif­i­cally, but which is an extremely well done CD, com­plete with infor­ma­tive liner notes. Very rec­om­mended if you like the mixes I’m link­ing below. Make sure to let Frank know how much you like these so he will keep treat­ing us with the sweet sounds.
Frank’s Afro Mix 1 (mp3 — full mix) — Track­list
Frank’s Afro Mix 2 (mp3 — full mix) — Track­list
Frank’s Afro Mix 3 (mp3 — full mix) — Track­list
Frank’s Syli­phone Mix (mp3 — full mix) — Track­list

When I was in high school, my musi­cal hero was Justin K. Broad­rick, the singer/guitarist of God­flesh. At the time, I was fully immersed in indus­trial music, and Broadrick’s name was plas­tered over every­thing I liked. It was pretty soon that I was track­ing down every obscure release I could find that he was involved in. From the Sweet Tooth album that took me a few years to find to every sin­gle release by God, the free jazz super­group run by Kevin Mar­tin. I even have the 2 bru­tal remixes that Broad­rick did of Pan­tera — a holy grail if there ever was one back in those days. At last count, I have 36 CDs with Broadrick’s involve­ment some­where on them. His long ambi­ent feed­back pieces like the one on Pure, the first Techno-Animal album Ghosts, and his solo work as Final were lovely, patient, and rid­ing a fine line between gen­res. After time, I fell out of love with fol­low­ing his music for var­i­ous rea­sons. But I still love the stuff he did from that time period, and so it’s really odd for me to sud­denly be lis­ten­ing to new music from Broad­rick. When Jesu burst on the scene last year or so, I was imme­di­ately intrigued, but sim­ply never got around to hear­ing it. About a month ago, though, I heard a track from this new album, Con­queror, and it astounded me. So much so that I ran out to get the self-titled debut album and the ridicu­lously beau­ti­ful Sil­ver EP. It’s just really odd to be a Broad­rick fan 10 years later. This is def­i­nitely the end result of his Godflesh’s lat­ter years (when JKB started singing instead of shout­ing) and his solo work as Final. An empha­sis on envelop­ing melancholy/beauty, still with the big gui­tars and crush­ing drums, but the com­po­si­tions evolve and expand, inter­twin­ing the doom with hope and rev­er­ence. They are much more pure, if pos­si­ble. Broad­rick is singing his heart out here, and push­ing all the emo­tion out through the feed­back and dis­tor­tion. If Sil­ver was start­ing to bring some MBV ten­den­cies into the mix, Con­queror builds on that, mak­ing each song an epic and out­reach­ing sym­phony. The lilt­ing open­ing vocal sounds on “Con­queror” echo the crash­ing beat and give you an indi­ca­tion of the par­tic­u­lar sub­ject mat­ter of this music: gut­tural emo­tion, awk­ward­ness, pen­sive­ness. The heav­ily effected gui­tars lend a science-fiction feel to this, fur­ther­ing the majesty and feel­ings of being alone in wide open spaces. It’s gor­geous. This is deep and pur­pose­ful music.
“Con­queror” (mp3)

Holy Hell. Last Decem­ber, word started spread­ing about this album, which had been released in label Bed­room Community’s home base of Ice­land. Ben Frost had had a few small releases, and a major spot remix­ing Björk, but the ini­tial feed­back on The­ory of Machines was describ­ing some­thing extra­or­di­nary. Of course, WORD was chomp­ing at the bit to hear this. Its finally hit a world­wide release, and, my god, it’s astound­ing. The open­ing title track is hands down my favorite of the set. The heav­ily effected gui­tar starts things off in a slightly Machine­fab­riek way, then the dirty sub­tle bass line makes it way in, before finally expand­ing to drums…the song fol­lows an arc of quiet restrained beauty to crash­ing chaos by the end. “Stomp” could be viewed as grat­ing, as it incor­po­rates an evolv­ing gui­tar sam­ple (of Michael Gira from Swans…more on that later) and per­cus­sive plod, but it’s par­tic­u­lar brand of build­ing and main­tain­ing ten­sion is what makes it end­lessly lis­ten­able. Like­wise, with “We Love You Michael Gira,” Frost’s ode to Swans, which is anchored by the inces­sant beep­ing of either a truck in reverse or an EKG, both of which pro­vide the song with a relent­less and sus­pense­ful arc. And that arc gets more and more lay­ered and dis­torted as time goes on…the beep­ing turn­ing into a heavy back­beat for the gui­tars and elec­tron­ics as they careen more and more out of con­trol. Just when it reaches the point of pure insan­ity, the song sub­sides… only to be fol­lowed up by the 90 sec­ond track “Coda,” a full-on noise-rock jam, a strange bridge between the first 3 tracks, and the final elec­tronic sym­phony of “For­get­ting You Is Like Breath­ing Water.” A sub­tle piece, it nonethe­less has just enough grit to it to make it less than pretty, and more melan­choly, with esca­lat­ing fre­quen­cies, and a bed of synths that don’t so much try to repli­cate strings, but serve as an elec­tronic answer to strings. The exten­sive liner notes by Daniel John­ston give the lis­tener added insight to the music, with con­ver­sa­tions with Frost and unset­tlingly pho­tog­ra­phy of the artist in var­i­ous states through­out a cold and spooky doctor’s office. I’d be highly sur­prised if this album didn’t make many a year-end list come Decem­ber. Rec­om­mended. Get it at Bent Crayon, Boomkat, or Bleep.

You can hear 4 of the album’s 5 songs at Ben Frost’s Myspace. I encour­age you to brave the Myspace music player to check this music out. Also, Industrial.org is offi­cially host­ing a song from Frost’s School of Emo­tional Engi­neer­ing project, an album I’d really like to get my hands on, based on this ridicu­lously good track:
School of Emo­tional Engi­neer­ing — “Slic­ing The Skin Between My Toes”