The aspiring hip-hop producers who populate the forums at cratekings.com work together for mutual musical benefit — and not only by commenting on each other’s work and pushing the collective to tweak each sample, hone each beat, and better craft each instrumental track that they post. They also collaborate, as on the 14-track compilation of […]
Indie hip-hop figure Oh No has provided an album-length podcast for the Stones Throw label (stonesthrow.com/jukebox), in which he mixes up various afro-jazz tracks from the group Oneness of Juju, led by prolific saxophonist Plunky Branch. It’s a rough mix, with occasional gaps between tracks, and noticeable delay in some of the beatmatching, but Dr. […]
What I’ve been most focused on, listening-wise, this past week:
(1) A Late Winter: First Snow, the Guy Pearce film, came out about a year ago, but Cliff Martinez’s score only saw release last week, at least according to iTunes, which lists the release date as June 10, 2008. The score’s 20 tracks of intimate […]
In hip-hop, nothing sounds as contemporary these days as old school. It’s remarkable how much excellent beatmaking has resulted, of late, from the combination of a slightly dusty vocal sample, tweaked just so, and an automated beat. It’s a style perhaps most closely associated with A-list producer Kanye West, but everyone from Just Blaze to […]
Danger Mouse and his partner in Gnarls Barkley, Cee-Lo Green, spoke on Thursday, May 29, with NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross about the construction of their new album, The Odd Couple. Asked by Gross about how the prevalence of sampling in hip-hop may have influenced the way Danger Mouse thinks about music, he replied:
I […]
The Type label supplements its regular releases with a series of podcasts. That’s not unusual for a record label. What distinguishes Type’s series, as exemplified by a new mix by Aeioux (aka one of Type’s two founders, Stefan Lewandowski), is how a typical podcast may mix upcoming music from the label amid other recordings, like […]
From the title track of the brand new Roots album, Rising Down:
Look at technology they call it downloading
I call it downsizing somebody follow me
Does a computer chip have an astrology?
And when it fuck up could it give you an apology
The most accomplished rap act that consists of a traditional rock band lineup, the Roots […]
The leader of Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor, announced this week the release of a new NIN album, and it’s available entirely for free. He did so with a simple statement: “Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years — this one’s on me.” The album, titled The Slip, contains 10 tracks, […]
The latest podcast from tablist.net — that’s “tablist” as in “turntablism” — collects about 20 tracks by the unsung home-studio strivers who are regulars on the tablist.net website, alongside some accomplished beatmaker players. The contents range from rhythm-heavy studio production to rap-ready instrumental hip-hop to goofy scratch-happy hijinks, leavened with the inevitable jokey soundbites.
As the […]
Chat rooms have a bad rap. They’ve gained a touch of the aura that used to hover around the word “hacker.” Though today it means something closer to “entrepreneur,” hacker used to be equivalent to “dangerous anti-social malcontent.” Chat rooms are social by definition, so they can’t be truly anti-social; but they still are saddled […]