Nineteen tasty tracks built from snatches of melodrama and semi-forgotten pop make up For Corners, a new album from San Antonio, Texas-based Diego Bernal. This is truly old-school hip-hop, with loops shorter than a goldfish’s memory, and beats as taut as a piano wire. Much of it is crowd-pleasing party music, like the reconstituted disco of “Velcro Flow” (MP3) and the cop-show braggadocio of “Bring It On Home” (MP3).
But there’s plenty of subtlety here, like the swelling soul of “Fat Sal” (MP3), which brings to mind Luke Vibert’s Throbbing Pouch (recorded as Wagon Christ), and the ’80s b-boy celebration that is “MC Rakim Cool Kane and the DJ Furious Boyz Crew” (MP3), the title for which suggests much of the source material. Get the full set at antipop.net. More on Bernal at myspace.com/diegobernalmusic.
“Bring It On Home” was released earlier as a single, featuring a giddy virtual B-side remix by Mexicans With Guns, and available for free download (via a nifty Flash-based interface) at exponential.bandcamp.com.
PS: I’m testing a little audio plugin (see below), which allows for playing the MP3 files within a given post. Many readers have requested such a thing over the years, and this is an attempt to do it somewhat elegantly. It isn’t a perfect solution, as the plugin only works with MP3s, and I occasionally link to WAV files, to FLACs, etc. If you have any thoughts on the implementation, lemme know at [email protected]. I’m going to leave the MP3s links in the articles, because I’m more of a “downloader” than I am a “streamer,” though I do appreciate the opportunity to read and listen at the same time.
There are many songs and compositions and full-length recordings that serve as major precursors to electronic music’s full flowering in recent decades, and strong among them is “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel. Its thick yet restrained synth chords, super-minimal beat, and futurist lyrics stood out in 1980, when it appeared on Gabriel’s third solo album, for their technological rigor, and in retrospect suggest themselves easily for later remixing. That is now not only possible, but encouraged, as Gabriel has provided 36 individual parts, from guitar intros to Kate Bush‘s backing vocal to the whistling bridge to the wombling bass line, as part of Real World Remixed, which opens up the archives of Gabriel’s Real World studios for amateur noodling. As with past such projects, like the one Brian Eno (who worked on Gabriel’s final album as a member of Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) and David Byrne did for the anniversary of their My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the parts are often just as listenable as the whole, especially the Africa-tinged rhythm, and a special remixed drum track by Lord Jamar that was put together for a recent X Games promotion. Participants can upload their renditions as part of a competition.