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 […]
A fifth anniversary entry from the Turntable Radio podcast features Japanese figures DJ Baku, Exsample (Ken-One, Naoki and Shige) and Miyajima. Like the best abstract turntablism, the work captured during a Shibuya-district session emphasizes texture as much as it does beat-matching, with cut-up vocal samples, droney underlying melodic patterns, and dynanic counterpoint (MP3). The Turntable […]
The estimable left-field hip-hop label Stones Throw’s latest podcast entry is a contribution by prolific producer Madlib. Recorded live at the Hella International event at last year’s Miami Winter Music Conference, it’s a short live set that emphasizes the rudiments — not just killswitch edits but simple, almost elemental musical elements, from a downtempo reggae […]
A selection of recent freely viewable videos of note:
Spoken Word: Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee interviewed (vimeo.com, via createdigitalmusic.com). … Minimal techno figure Robert Henke (aka Monolake) presentation (video.google.com, via createdigitalmusic.com). … Laptop-enabled guitarist Christopher Willits lecture on his process (xlr8r.com). … Soundtrack composer Tyler Bates on the film Doomsday (soundtrack.net). … Alex Ross, author […]
Quick News, Links, Bits, Reads: The avant-garde rises to the surface in Internet sales of classical music, reports Justin Davidson, guest-blogging for Alex Ross at therestisnoise.com. He’s discussing the charts at emusic.com:
No. 2 is Gavin Bryars‘ The Sinking of the Titanic, a minimalist portrayal of slow-motion calamity that caused one Floridian subscriber’s spouse to ask: […]
The turntable crew called the X-ecutioners were the Mills Brothers of hip-hop and the Harlem Globetrotters of hip-hop, all wrapped up in one multi-LP ensemble of intensely calisthenic musicality. Key among them was member Rob Swift, who has surfaced with a new group effort, a trio named Ill Insanity, which teams him with two other […]
With its sing-songy beats and layers of simple sampled percussion, “Easily Distracted” by DJ Mayonnaise (aka Chris Greer), off his Still Alive collection from last year, is a perfect example of the space where instrumental hip-hop and bedroom electronica meet up and make beautiful lullabyes together. The tone is all early Aphex Twin, thanks to […]
From an interview with Autechre’s Rob Brown at pitchforkmedia.com on the occasion of the new album Quaristice:
But there is a kind of yearning for a big musical movement to blow everything else away, and I guess r&b is kind of holding everything back in that regard. The only developments you get are like Timbaland might […]
The seven-song EP Senses Overloaded, from the instrumental hip-hop DJ team of Lamont and 2tall, opens with the exotic: a slinky track that uses as its base a romantic bit of koto, the string instrument of Asian antiquity. The cut is titled “Perpetual Patterns” (MP3) and it’s one of the few here to include a […]
This is what I’ve been most focused on, listening-wise, this past week:
(1) If it’s possible to imagine a merging of Charles Mingus’s muddy, deeply felt jazz and Morton Feldman’s proto-ambient classical arrangements, this may be it: The track “Itsuki no Komoriuta” off the Fujin Raijin album by the Sakoto Fujii Min-Yoh Ensemble (Les Disques Victo, […]