Mondrian Loop - LAP​[​WW] (2015)

I really wouldn't know a damned thing about hip hop at all if it wasn't for my brother. He doesn't know about much of it to be honest either, but he does love instrumental hip hops, beats and the more experimental side the whole business. Over the years it's become something we know we can both handle hearing without driving one of us up the wall. Much preferable to him needling me with Fleetwood Mac songs. Therefore, I was very willing to throw on some rose-tinted glasses as I hear Mondrian Loop, but I don't think I needed them.

I was sent literally nothing more than a hyperlink to this bandcamp page, so everything else is pieced together from there. Seems this producer(s) is from Florida and makes stripped down instrumental hip hop. By stripped down I mean that the tracks are not very complex nor long, but rather have a rawness to them that's appealing. It really reminds me of much of the newer forms of lo-fi electronic music usually eager to write-up such glo-fi, vaporwave and so on. One could even throw it one of those 'genres' if you so fancied. Regardless of what you call it, LAP​[​WW] is a spacey, looping affair that makes for excellent late night listening.

To be had here:
Mondrian Loop - LAP​[​WW]

Paavoharju - Joko sinä tulet tänne alas tai minä nousen sinne (2014)

I've long held a theory that my musical tastes are cyclical and that I loop back around to things I recall ever so fondly from months or years ago start digging around in a genre, scene or even a particular artist's discography. While, I have been remembering my affinity for Finnish experimental music. It can be hard to describe with a mess of adjectives, but what's for certain is that it's unique to Finland, rather like the Finnish language itself. As these returning obsessions burn rather strong I will doubtlessly share several of my favorites that have new material out, in fact it was already begun my Finnish campaign with mentioned Joose Keskitalo (a member of Paavoharju that has wonderful solo albums) in the Ellis Swan post and sharing Lasten Hautausmaa (a labelmate also on Svart Records) in the last Grab Bag. As such, each were preludes to the album I share today, Paavoharju's third album and the first full-length release since 2008's Laulu Laakson Kukista, the even longer-titled and mind-blogging to pronounce, Joko sinä tulet tänne alas tai minä nousen sinne.

For those that are familiar with the prior output of both Paavoharju and Joose Keskitalo this will have recognizable traits, but it is overlain with one of the more drastic of changes in style I can recall a band undertaking. Essentially, they kept their ethereal, psychedelic folk instrumentation, even retaining the Finnish chanting that made the previous albums so mesmerizing, and laid hip-hop on top. The hip-hop is in Finnish, which is something I've never experienced and can't compare to anything I've ever heard before. It isn't everywhere, they've classily spread it throughout the album and not made it the sole focus, though you will most certainly notice it. At first I was bewildered, but as I kept listening I found myself digging what Paavoharju was up to. It's a ballsy move, and it is rather well executed. It is undeniably a fine example of the Finnish avant-garde to which I am so deeply endeared, and different enough that it has achieved what good avant-garde should, making the listener re-assess their preferences and expand their palate.

To be had here:

Paavoharju - Joko sinä tulet tänne alas tai minä nousen sinne

Fela Soul - Amerigo Gazaway (2011)

A little late to the game with this one. Apparently it was an internet sensation? I use the internet extensively everyday and I'd never heard of this until now (and no, not exclusively for porn, you cheeky shits). I do almost all of my blogging for Spacerockmountain from work. I'm at work right now, in fact.

God, I can't wait till I have a job I give a shit about.

ANYWAY, if it wasn't already clear from the title, this is a mash-up record of Fela Kuti and De La Soul material. The DJ is a fellow from Nashville named Amerigo Gazaway, and since this record "blew up" he's gone on to make other mash-up records to similar of not more acclaim (check out his Mos Def and Marvin Gaye mash-ups). That one is actually more my jam, but since Fela Kuti has been a recent point of discussion on the podcast, and since De La is one of the greatest hip hop acts to ever exist, it seemed to me it would be a good post.

Besides we need some feel good, hot weather weekend jams. Especially out here in PDX, where today marks the beginning of a 5 day heat wave. Time to hit the river and dodge human poops.

9 tracks, name your price.

Fela Soul - Amerigo Gazaway

Czar Rose - Death Honey (2014)

Trip hop is a genre that emerged out of Bristol's graffiti and breakdance scene in the early 1990s. Many credit a group called The Wild Bunch, which was a conglomerate of DJs and vocalists, with creating the genre, which would peak in it's popularity thanks to one of The Wild Bunch's original contributors, a sinister alien-voiced rapper by the name of Tricky. Other notable members of the group include all 3 original members of Massive Attack (probably most well known in the States for writing the song used in the opening credits of House), and Nellee Hooper, a former member of of one hit wonder RnB group Soul II Soul and current big time producer who has worked with the likes of U2 and Madonna.

While Tricky and Massive Attack still make records (and are reportedly collaborating on an upcoming release), it's not everyday you come across new contributors to the genre of trip hop, which seems to almost not exist anymore. But if there's one city in the United States that resembles the cold, grey, economically struggling city that was Bristol in the early 1990s, it's .... Los Angeles?

Czar Rose, a duo that hails from the sunny city of angels, harnesses the sound of Mezzanine-era Massive Attack pretty damn well. Slick hip hop beats slowed from 120 to 80 BPM, marauding baselines with lush arrangements over top, this is music for rainy, city nights. They manage to put their own swing on the sound, adding occasional guitar to the mix and, at least on the last song and album namesake "Death Honey", a mega-compressed beat reminiscent of another LA-based artist of recent repute, Flying Lotus.

Overall the vocal delivery feels slightly derivative of Robert Del Naja's airy, cigarette-scorched voice. Also in the last song, the vocalist (can't tell if it's a different vocalist or the same with a voice-deepening effect) sounds incredibly similar to the foreboding croon of other Massive Attack vocalist, Daddy G. Can I hold this against Czar Rose? Fuck no. Massive Attack were a favorite band of mine for years and to head sic a true-to-form contribution nearly 20 years later, it's a valid homage (even if they didn't mean it to be).

I applaud Czar Rose for this solid contribution to a genre that's ripe for return.

7 songs, pay what you want.

マクロスMACROSS 82-99 - A Million Miles Away

The new Macross album is fantastic, it's as simple as that. I imagine some readers of this blog have been following macross for a while now, so you already know what to expect from macross--he does not disappoint. The quality is on point as per usual, samples are phenomenally arranged and manipulated, and the mood Macross evokes with his music brings to mind the renderings of 90s anime--cities full of neon lights, people dancing and sweating, futurist motorcycle gangs cruising through a techno-dystopia, that oh so fashionable dystopian chic pervasive to much cyberpunk anime. These phenomena culminate into a nostalgic fever pitch which interpellates and fetishizes japanese culture through an unabashedly glossy musical lens.

Clearly this hauntological approach interpellates the musical listener as a nostalgic subject, and thus solicits more perverse and extreme nostalgic longings for cultures and time periods that hold no memory within the subject. But instead of condemning the current state of music for being 'stuck in the past', 'musical pastiche' or 'manufacturing nostalgia'; suspension of time (atemporality) should be seen as a positive creative force of the present. If we conceptualize time as a linear sequence of events (ie the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, etc etc etc.) we allow ourselves to dissect the present into a 'present past' and a 'present future' that both meet at a 'present now' which is more or less the quilting point between the two. We need to expand our 'present now' beyond this particular moment--allow it to be seen as still alive and at work within some sort of "zeitgeist." There have been no revivals, there is no surf or garage or synth pop revival, just mining the musical terrain and language which is in a constant state of becoming, something that doesn't end every 10 years. Using musical genres (punk being but one example) as a form of human identity facilities the discourse of subjectivity that plauges and transforms creativity as discreet scenes that have a time and place, a memory which is the private possession of those who "were there." These are some things to ponder and maybe flesh out. Either way, the new Macross achieves something far greater than contemplating about it, it is music of the now age, it is pop, it will make you want to dance, it will make you want to watch cartoons, it will allow you to "be there." This post suffers from no actual musical criticism//this dude likes 7th chords//better

Favorite songs: Horsey, Night In Tokyo Pt.II, 82.99 FM (first sample is Marlene - ESP), and Lovers

for free here, but missing 82.99

bandcamp for $1


KEATS//COLLECTIVE Vol. 5 released today and free as of right now