Tasty Instrumental Hip-Hop MP3 from Illstylus

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Over at the hip-hop production discussion boards at cratekings.com/forum, one of the best recent tracks is “hhkeys1” by Illstylus (MP3, zshare.net). It was introduced with the header “A touch o soul…,” and that’s a fair if understated estimation of its qualities. While the old-school flavor of the track is very much at home in the Crate Kings forums — a place where musicians regularly plumb 1970s blaxploitation soundtracks and otherwise creaky old vinyl for beats — Illstylus is the rare producer there to let the soulful material speak for itself. There are no hard rhythms bolted on, no unnecessary frills like backing vocals or canned, atmospheric synths.

It opens with a bit of piano (hence the “keys” in the utilitarian, production-draft title), a reminder of all the recent Nina Simone samples on FM radio, but enjoyable on its own, for a certain boxy, clanky quality. Illstylus then drops in some well-orchestrated horns, a little riff with a dubby echo and some more plaintive slow passages that give the track a chamber-jazz elegance. At two and a half minutes, “hhkeys1” is a solid song, and deserves additional kudos for achieving what few Crate Kings demos do: a proper, well-constructed ending.

Read the thread where the MP3 first appeared at cratekings.com. More on Illsylus at myspace.com/illstylus.

Image of the Week: Networked Bonnets

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Bonnets from “Finally, We Hear One Another” by Kelly Jaclynn Andres in collaboration Mixed Reality Lab. The piece is part of the juried ISEA 2008 exhibition  in Signapore. The ISEA website describes the piece as follows: “In this artwork, pairs of visitors are equipped with a wearable series of small microphones and speakers that use wireless technology to transmit the sound of one person to the earphones of the other” (isea2008singapore.org).

The photo is by Priscilla Bracks (priscillabracks.com), who included it as part of her extensive writeup of the ISEA show for we-make-money-not-art.com. More on Andres at kellyandres.com.

Quote of the Week: Ballardian Times

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

From a piece today by Simon Sellars on the manner in which dystopian bard J.G. Ballard‘s worldview is suffused into contemporary sound (ballardian.com):

In recent times, Ballard’s influence on music seems to have waned although there is convergence with a cadre of sound artists who have magnified and critiqued the sonic footprint of the world’s cities and conurbations. Interact with any aspect of the Big City today, virtual or actual, and you will be enveloped with noise. When you pick up the handle of a petrol pump, an ad jingle plays.

Sellars even produced a “muxtape,” featuring Noel Coward, Foetus, Kode9 and the Spaceape, and a rendition of “Teddy Bear’s Picnic”: ballardian.muxtape.com. Me being American, I find the latter creepier than Sellars does, because I only really know it from its association with Dennis Potter‘s TV mini-series The Singing Detective.

Batman’s Listening Cave?

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Holy new-media installation, Batman — is Christopher Nolan, director of the recent film The Dark Knight, a fan of artists Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin?

Without going into too much detail about The Dark Knight, there’s a sequence toward the climax (well, the most lengthy of its several climaxes — this is a summer blockbuster) that features a room-spanning grid of small screens that will be familiar to anyone who has ever experienced Hansen and Rubin’s work titled “Listening Post” (I’ve mentioned it on several occasions here at disquiet.com).

The following description of “Listening Post” will certainly sound familiar to anyone who’s seen The Dark Knight. The Hansen/Rubin work is a matrix of small rectangular screens, connected to each other by a two-dimensional matrix of small wires to form a wall, or skrim, of choreographed data. That data is all pulled from the Internet and filtered through various algorithms, such as searching for four-letter words or for phrases that begin with the words “I am” or “I love.” Here’s a picture, courtesy of Rubin’s Earstudio (earstudio.com):

In The Dark Knight, Batman employs a similar if hyper-realized version, several times the size of the Hansen/Rubin contraption and tapped into a narrower but more data-intensive realm of realtime information. (I’d say more, but might spoil the movie, and Dark Knight is really worth seeing, even if its truest act of super-heroism is to threaten Titanic‘s record for highest-grossing motion picture.)

It’s especially surprising that Manhola Dargis of the New York Times didn’t mention this information-overload similarity in her movie review, since Rubin and Hansen devised a “Listening Post”-like installation, titled “Moveable Type,” for the lobby of the newspaper’s building in midtown Manhattan (more at disquiet.com). Also, just a handful of days before Dark Knight debuted, the Times ran a story by Mia Fineman about awkward resemblances between advertising and contemporary art, including an Apple ad that looks a lot like a Christian Marclay piece (nytimes.com). Director Nolan is certainly not shy about homage; he’s told entertainment reporters that the opening sequence to The Dark Knight is a conscious nod to Michael Mann‘s Heat.

As for the Dark Knight/”Listening Post” comparison, I’m not the first to ask: mikearauz.com, joshspear.com, flickr.com/photos/fenchurch, subjunctive.net.

Fisk Industries Remix MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A Highpoint Lowlife EP released earlier this year collected three mixes by two artists of work by Fisk Industries. The one by Brassica (“Blood,” MP3) is thuddy and tautly wired, though the chirping electronics and undanceable dance beats sound at time a bit too much like Warp records of days gone by. Worth focusing on are the pair by Yard, two versions of Fisk’s “Crowley.” A dub version (MP3) achieves exactly that, stretching the original as if atop a frame drum and letting it reverberate for close to eight minutes; it’s a delectably sedate affair. The other Yard edit (MP3) starts off even more quietly, just whisps of rarified noise — so much so that when the club beats do kick in, close to two minutes into the mix, it’s almost a disappointment, the sort of generic rhythms heard emanating from bars in any mid-size city on a Friday night; but listen closely — there’s more at work here than just weekend background music. Yard threads ghostly shadows through the mix, in a manner that undercuts the chunka-chunka vibe and, in effect, brings into the foreground the sort of slight sounds with which the cut opens. More info at highpointlowlife.com.