Thank god for Mod­e­se­lek­tor. If it wasn’t for BPitch Control’s duo from Ger­many, I’m not sure I’d really pay atten­tion to “dance” music in any way. But there’s some­thing about the way they cross gen­res and make every­thing I like about elec­tronic music shine in it’s purest form. With­out the the obvi­ous fat. Maybe it’s the strong glitch pres­ence in every­thing, or the para­mount hip-hop flour­ishes through­out their pro­duc­tions or selec­tions. I don’t know. What­ever it is, it works, whether on their first releases like Death Med­ley EP or first mix CD for Boomkat Selected Mix­tapes, or their crown­ing achieve­ment Hello Mom!, they put all this stuff next to each other and make it bump and shake and per­co­late like mad­men. Their lat­est, a mix CD for BPitch’s Boogy Bytes series (Vol. 03) is, frankly, ridicu­lous. Start­ing with a hilar­i­ous, but still funky intro by The Panacea, and trav­el­ing through Fly­ing Lotus, Appa­rat remix­ing Nathan Fake, Error­smith, Spank Rock, Bur­ial, TTC, Mr. Oizo, and end­ing up at the end with every elec­tronic fan’s wet­dream song “Idioteque” by Radio­head, the boys hit all the funk to be had within all gen­res under the sun, all mashed and manip­u­lated with their par­tic­u­lar love for the glitch. This is the way mixes are sup­posed to be done, and they do it with ease. WORD read­ers who enjoyed the Ooah and Chris De Luca vs. Phon.o posts will enjoy this mix to no end, rest assured. Also, you don’t know what laughs you are miss­ing if you haven’t seen the cover art to this baby.
Bonus link: Live PA@Kontrol, SF, May 20, 2006 (mp3)

I love the Life­savas’ Spirit In Stone album, one of those often over­looked Quan­num Records gems. Bril­liant and fun lyrics, incred­i­ble and fresh pro­duc­tion, these are the sta­ples of the Life­savas. Although when I heard that the next album would be a con­cept album, I was a lit­tle skep­ti­cal. Con­cept albums are a tricky nee­dle to thread, and hip hop con­cept albums dou­bly so. How­ever, Gut­ter­fly is here and it’s bril­liant. The boys very smartly tell their story through the use of sparse nar­ra­tion and the group’s con­sid­er­able nat­ural sto­ry­telling abil­i­ties. The main gist of is a sound­track to a fic­tional “lost” blax­ploita­tion flick, which might seem like a generic go-to for hip hop acts, but in the Life­savas’ hands, it’s a com­plete vibe and world to live in. Razor­blade City is brought to life through one song in par­tic­u­lar, “Night Out.” Nar­rated by the grav­elly voice of George Clin­ton, Life­savas MC genius Vur­satyl tells a story of police harass­ment and close calls over typ­i­cally bril­liant Jumbo pro­duc­tion. While “Gut­ter­fly,” with Camp Lo, is the man­i­festo for the album, “A Serpent’s Love” is the true cen­ter­piece of the album for me. Jumbo hooks up a slinky groove, while he and Vurs, with Ish (with a bril­liant cameo), tell us all about the venge­ful life and loves of Razor­blade City. Speak­ing of pro­duc­tion, while Oh No, Vit­a­min D, and Jake One turn in some good pro­duc­tions, it’s Jumbo The Garbage­men who really excels here as usual. I would have loved to hear more of his hard choppy “preg­nant drums” style, but every­thing here is per­fect for the mood and vision they are try to get across. Check out “The Warn­ing” for a ridicu­lously tight track. The drums bounce through­out, they have a great Meth sam­ple on the cuts (why hasn’t any­one used that par­tic­u­lar “Tical” line before?), and the mal­ice comes through on this crime tale. Lis­ten­ing right now while I type, “Free­dom Walk” is blow­ing my mind… the funky piano, the relent­less beat, and the ever great sound­ing Dead Prez make this song an epic. Oh, and did I men­tion Ver­non eff­ing Reid on lead gui­tar??? Check out more tracks at their myspace and buy the album pretty much every­where! Wel­come to Razor­blade City and get down with the Gut­ter­fly.

Hello beauty! Not sure when this was actu­ally released, but I just got my hands on a copy and it’s def­i­nitely for the lovers of Type, Mias­mah, Lampse, etc. Kind of like a hap­pier and brighter The Dead Sea, I really admire how detailed and tex­tured each of the 11 com­po­si­tions are, not too much how var­ied. Piano is most preva­lent, ben­e­fit­ting the title, but gui­tar, field record­ings, and heav­ily manip­u­lated found sounds all are used in dif­fer­ent ways through­out the album. It seems to travel an arc, from “Sumu“‘s min­i­mal and glacial begin­nings all the way to “Junassa” and it’s inter­est­ing use of per­cus­sion. “Metsä” uses an ambi­ent bed of effected sounds to float on, while title track “Worms In My Piano” starts to bring in the per­cus­sion on this album that is used so spar­ingly and with a heavy feel for jazz. This song and oth­ers have another stand­out fea­ture of the album, a feel­ing of crate-digging for sounds, just like hip-hop pro­duc­ers. The way instru­ments are recorded, effected and used has this feel of dusty nos­tal­gia all over them, mak­ing the album feel more time­less, warm, and fami­lar to the lis­tener. John Carpenter’s influ­ence can be felt on the slow crawl of “Suruista Suurin,” and the influ­ence of some­thing more clas­si­cal and stately can be heard witht the harpischord melody of “Win­ter Song.” Per­haps the best is saved for last with the glo­ri­ously uplift­ing closer “Junassa.” Acoustic gui­tar, sparse and sharp per­cus­sion, glock­en­spiels and effected and archaic string lines all com­bine to bring this album to a really spe­cial cli­max and fin­ish. Very rec­om­mended. Out on Osaka Records. Lis­ten to more at the label’s myspace.