New Releases
The Very Hush Hush
Clay and I had this ritual in college where we’d turn down the lights, lay flat on our backs, and play certain songs over and over again. It served as a catharsis for us, often following a botched exam or “I like you…as a friend.” Our playlist included a variety of music, though most of it fell under the so-called “slowcore” and “shoegazer” categories. But not just any band with bad posture, pale skin, and walls of distorted guitars or mumbled vocals would do… You gotta have dynamics to pull me out of a funk. Build, crash, rebuild. Like waves, like Legos. The Very Hush Hush seem to have that dynamics thing figured out (could be their classical music training). Each of these tracks, if taken in one- or two-minute intervals, may seem shy or sullen, but taken as a whole will lift you up to where you can see more than just your shoes.
Clue to Kalo
You know that expression “the cobbler’s children have no shoes”? That’s kinda been the story of my household on the digital music front…until yesterday, when the Bose Sound Dock and my wife’s silver iPod Mini showed up on our doorstep. I don’t know who was more excited, her or me, but let’s just say I already had a 125-song playlist ready to for the occasion. The pulsing strains of Clue to Kalo’s “Empty Save the Oxygen” were the first to emerge from the Sound Dock. Velia’s jaw dropped as she turned to me and said, “This sounds amazing.” I’m sure she was talking about the speakers but she was right on both counts.
Hooray for Insound’s Back to School Sale
Eavesdropping via RSS
Run DMC
Almost three years ago, Run DMC lost their “one-man band” Jam Master Jay to a fatal shooting in Queens. In his memory, I’m posting one of the remixes available on the recently reissued Run DMC catalog and sharing my first memory of Run DMC… It all began in Mr. Beasley’s music class, sixth grade. Realizing that we weren’t about to get our song books out and sing “Kookaburra” anymore, Mr. Beasley started taping “MV-60,” an early MTV-like music video show, and playing it in class. Among the other videos that left an impression — Yaz’s “Don’t Go,” Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” Art of Noise’s “Close to the Edit” — was Run DMC’s “Rock Box.” Mr. B also let students bring in their own records once a week, which is how I heard that first DMC record. It was so raw and real from end to end. By contrast, Sugarhill Gang was disco and Run DMC was rap. Thanks to Run DMC, my ears we ready for Big Daddy Kane, Eric B and Rakim, Public Enemy, among others. Come to think of it, thanks to Mr. Beasley as well: you were a good music teacher.
Podcasts Are Go!
Build Buildings
Sometimes I can only explain my bias for a certain artist at a certain moment by blaming the weather. Build Buildings to me is autumnesque in its flickering warmth. Tape glitches and synth chirps swirl around you like cool fog on a country road, with moments of bright melody and humanity bursting through the periphery like orange, red, and yellow leaves. Whether or not you buy the meteorological analogy, you have to admit Ben Tweel’s open-structured compositions are mature beyond the age of his laptop.
Cypress Hill
Cypress…Cypress Hill! So massively appealing, like the gangstas you’d take home to meet mom, yet there ain’t no love songs up in here (unless you count “I Love You Mary Jane”). What’s their secret? Those hypnotic DJ Muggs loops don’t hurt, but I think it’s all in B Real’s delivery. His nasal, sing-song flow allows for the possibility that maybe he’s just funnin’…about “comin’ to gat ya,†at least. All I know is, back in college, whenever I dropped “Hand on the Pump” for a party full of mostly white, mostly middle-class, mostly Mormon undergrads, the room went bananas. So yeah, I’ve included just a handful of the 100+ MP3s of remixes, side projects, collabos, and rarities B Real has made available for free on his personal site (now here is something Sony can’t understand…). Bless him. Bless us, every one. (Especially you, Tofu Hut!)