The last two times I wrote about Buddy Peace were 2007’s pod­cast Obit­u­ary Med­i­cine and his immense 2006 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Carlo, Com­mon­wealth Kids. His lat­est mix mas­ter­piece is released by 2600 Record­ings, and it’s prob­a­bly the best con­glom­er­a­tion of those two pre­vi­ous mixes as pos­si­ble, with quite a bit of the feel­ing of his older solo mix effort, A Crew Called Self. The name of the game here is hip-hop and indie rock, but not exactly what Joe Beats did on his Indie Rock Blues album. Buddy instead uses indie rock tracks as the sam­ple basis for hip-hop acapel­las. It gives the mix a com­pletely unique feel. The thing that strikes me the most is the sound of the drums. Most hip-hop tracks are based on syn­thetic drum sounds, or most fre­quently, funk drums. It’s a refresh­ing change of pace that Buddy uti­lizes the thin, stark, some­what cheap feel of indie drums to pro­duce insanely hot pro­duc­tions for great acapel­las from Lewis Parker, Mobb Deep, MF Doom, etc. The places where he lets the indie vocals seep through work beau­ti­fully, such as the MF Doom vocal­ized track 7. Through­out it all, Buddy flexes his mus­cle as the hip-hop Stock­hausen with the incred­i­ble found vocal sounds that pep­per his mixes as only he can. Nowhere is this more appar­ent than the 5–10 minute musique con­crete outro of var­ied bits and pieces of sound. Not only is Buddy the nicest net per­son­al­ity you’ll ever meet, he con­tin­ues to demon­strate that he is the undis­puted cur­rent mas­ter of this mix­tape shit. Lim­ited to 300 copies, so get it quick at Boomkat (UK), HipHopVinyl (Ger­many), Acces­sHipHop (USA), Wenod (Japan).
Buddy Peace — Antler God — Wolf Diesel Moun­tain Min­imix (mp3)
Buddy Peace — Deer Blood Falls (Megau­pload — Sources Mix)

Hi. Yeah… so, sorry about the lack of updates recently. Partly it’s been because of a lack of enthu­si­asm for much music that has come out late 07/early 08, partly it’s because work is very busy dur­ing that period, but, in all hon­esty, it’s because of a cer­tain game.

How­ever, just in the past week, 2 or 3 posts have been form­ing in my mind about some pretty cool recent shit, so I’m com­ing back. I’m also itch­ing to do a follow-up to Like A Sci­en­tist and have a note­book filled with tracks and stuff to include.

Just so I’m not leav­ing you with noth­ing, check out these bril­liant free mixes:

DJ Cheeba — The Case of the Miss­ing Records (mp3)
Spec­tac­u­larly com­pli­cated and fun mix done for Ninja Tune’s Solid Steel radio show. Art­work, Track­list and notes at this link.

Weaponshouse/Six Vicious — Tank Thong (Megau­pload — mp3)
Sixtoo’s alter-ego puts out a sim­ply ridicu­lous glitch-hop mashup mix in the grand tra­di­tion of Glitch Mob/Ooah/Edit, etc. Track­list and seizure-visuals at this link.

Frank — Psy­che­delic Afro Shop (mp3)
Frank farewell mix of Afro-funk gems as he pre­pared to leave Africa and relo­cate to NYC. Crate-diggers every­where mourn this event, but I’m sure that we won’t be hear­ing the last of Frank’s astound­ing finds from Africa. Check his blog for other recent mixes and pre­pare to hold out a bucket for your face as it melts…Track­list and notes from Frank. Speak­ing of Frank, one can only hope that this sees the light of day:

Ok, that’s it for now, but I promise to be back soon!