...at least he's relaxed.
LCD Soundsystem: "North American Scum"
"I know you wouldn't touch us with a ten foot pole."
Yea, that dirty.
dw|tb
Monday, December 20, 2010
Now Until Sin: 12.20.10
Day 2 of the countdown: maybe not your traditional bump and grind but...I just feel a little dirty when I listen to this cut from Sound of Silver. The chunk of muted guitars and that subterranean bass line can drive you crazy, man.
...at least he's relaxed.
LCD Soundsystem: "North American Scum"
"I know you wouldn't touch us with a ten foot pole."
Yea, that dirty.
dw|tb
...at least he's relaxed.
LCD Soundsystem: "North American Scum"
"I know you wouldn't touch us with a ten foot pole."
Yea, that dirty.
dw|tb
Return to the airwaves
Video unrelated.
For all of our loyal listeners, the wait is almost over. MuzjiksFM live from WALT studios in Davidson, NC, will be back on air beginning in January, so start carving out an hour of your life every Thursday at 10 PM so that you can spend it with us. And, as always, we will be offering a podcast and, this go around, Soundcloud uploads of every episode for your continued pleasure. As the date grows closer, check back here for the streaming link and more information. Until then, we suggest you subscribe to our podcast (click that big purple icon on the right sidebar) right now and enjoy your time here on the blog.
Oh, and here's some dubstep, foo'...
Slugs that go bump in the Night
Perhaps this is the label's biggest compliment, however: if you played me twenty dubstep tracks and asked me to pick out the Night Slugs releases, I probably could do it. Not because my ear is stellar or because I'm all-knowing or anything like that, but rather because there's a certain sheen to everything NS puts out. From the Day-Glo color palette employed in the album art to the meticulous mastering that ensures precise kicks and delightful sound separation, Night Slugs makes it perfectly clear that they mean business and aren't going anywhere any time soon.
Endgame + Velour + Girl Unit + Kingdom=
http://nightslugs.net/
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Now Until Sin: 12.19.10
Every day from here to 2011, we will be featuring a unique party track. This is a way for me to both get my head screwed on straight for a special NYE/NYD trip and to possibly create the mix of all mixes. This will be meticulously curated and I hope you have the time to appreciate our selections. We are going to start with a pretty dusty record from MC Breed.
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MC Breed: "Well Alright"
dw|tb
MC Breed: "Well Alright"
dw|tb
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Prog Hop + Eggnog
So the acclaim for MBDTF has spiraled out of control. The amount of praise of Kanye West's latest album has become a national epidemic for which there is nor will be a vaccine (check Muzjiks in the coming days for more on that). What hasn't been mentioned enough, in my opinion, is the structural formation of some of these album tracks and tracks included in Yeezy's "Good Friday" series. I have personally never seen anything like this. These are hip-hop jazz epics. The man has collected what he has dubbed the best in his genre at the given time (or what he has access to) and allowed them to take free reign over a melodic idea. Please listen to John Coltrane's "Moment's Notice" and note the melody that begins at :39. This is the nugget that drives the piece, but John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Chris Fuller (trombone), Lee Morgan (trumpet), Paul Chambers (D Bass), and Kenny Drew (keys) all get their hacks before the whole thing is bookended by the piece's outro.Listen to "Monster" and "So Appalled" and tell me you don't feel the same thing. Kanye grabs a melodic idea, flushes it out, and lets his friends shit all over it. Listen to "Christian Dior Denim Flow" and the new single, "Christmas in Harlem" and dismiss them as b-sides; I dare you. Now you have no excuse, the latter two are featured below in down-loadable MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 format.
Enjoy yourselves, now you can say you listen to jazz.
Kanye West: "Christmas in Harlem"
Kanye West: "Christian Dior Denim Flow"
dw|tb
Twitter Live Report: Dub the Halls
A break from grind gives the both of us time to reimmerse ourselves in the blogosphere. Within the hour, I will make the arduous journey down to Atlanta for The Masquerade's Dub the Halls show, braving the snow and sleet for this meeting of the dub gods on our side of the pond. Throughout the gig, I will be tweeting pictures and updates @muzjikssteven.
SWiNE
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Young Canuck
So the site is a little rusty. Everyone is done with finals, I have two arms to work with and I figure we should start throwing up some music. Dream pop baby--picked this up from the G vs. B November mix and just cannot stop spinning. Young Galaxy is signed to Arts&Crafts (good for them, they seem to know what they're doing). I hope you enjoy the song. Look for more soon. We loooove you.
Young Galaxy: "Peripheral Visionaries"
dw|tb
Young Galaxy: "Peripheral Visionaries"
dw|tb
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Trippin' at the Shule
Not Daniel Goldstein.
If you like what you hear, check our fellow lantzman's Soundcloud.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
MuzjiksRx (10.14): Mashups for the Meatheads
Unrelated.
Nu-Jazz: A Microcosmogrammatical Examination
If you're not familiar with the microgenre of nu-jazz, please allow me to explain: Imagine an alternate planetary system somewhere way out in the cosmic unknown. Let's say that at the center of this system is a sun, and this sun happens to be called Jazz. Like all suns, Jazz has a gravitational pull that causes other celestial objects to orbit around it. Now, envision Nu-Jazz on the very outskirts of Jazz’s pull—the Pluto of this musical solar system, as it were. Fittingly enough, some might argue that Nu-Jazz isn't even part is this solar system, and these folks have a valid case. After all, even though Nu-Jazz is still within Jazz’s field, it wobbles on its axis in a most peculiar way and revolves ever so off-kilter, threatening to hurdle off into space at any moment—perhaps to the neighboring Hip Hop galaxy or maybe to the Electronic sector or perchance to the Funk nebula. It may be grounded in the tenets of traditional jazz—what with its jittering syncopations and intricate polyrhythms—but the ancestry of nu-jazz ultimately sums to a sound wholly unique from its parts.
Now, please follow me back to Earth and join me in Winnetka, California. A small town outside of Los Angeles, Winnetka is to nu-jazz as Columbia, SC, is to chillwave and Manchester was to post-punk in the late ‘70s; that is, it is the birthplace, the evolutionary nexus, and for all intents and purposes, the headquarters of the genre. Specifically, the HQ is located at Brainfeeder Records, the label started by nu-jazz giant Steven Ellison, the man behind the Flying Lotus moniker. A nu-jazz all-star lineup, Brainfeeder is also home to fellow genre bigwigs Daedelus, Samiyam, and The Gaslamp Killer. I’m not sure one abstruse, name-dropping example will help clarify another, but it might help to think of Brainfeeder as the nu-jazz equivalent of witch house’s Disaro Records, which lays claim to oOoOO, White Ring, and host of other esoterically renowned musicians…
On second thought, like the often abrupt harmonic shifts in nu-jazz music, allow me to abandon my admittedly futile attempts at explaining music through obscure analogy and convoluted imagery, and let’s let the music do the explaining—specifically Flying Lotus’s magnum opus, Cosmogramma. Sure, the LP came out this past May, but if there was ever such a thing as an instant classic, this is it. A surprisingly tightly conceived concept album, the record builds in warm, ethereal, yet altogether epileptic samples that let the listener know that he’s in nu-jazz’s nerve center, as it were. This pre-liftoff procedure continues until track six, “Computer Face/Pure Being,” where FlyLo introduces the first out-and-out melody in the form of a massive synth line, and the engines start revving.
Then, Flying Lotus at ground control sends Major Thom Yorke to outer space on “…And the World Laughs with You.” And it is here, I’d say, where Ellison’s true genius is exhibited: instead of putting Yorke’s vocals front and center in the mix, he opts to utilize the Brit’s wavering wail as an instrument. This is ballsy. After landing perhaps the biggest and most respected name in modern music in the Radiohead frontman, Steven Ellison buries Yorke’s voice beneath a load of reverb and dizzying synthesizers and even chops it up—just to feed it back to us in sampled splices.
These moments of genius are by no means scarce events, mind you; rather, they’re hidden and are only revealed through repeat listens. For example, in the sensual “MmmHmm,” you’d have yourself a radio-worthy R&B hook and melody if the frantic bass line and overdriven percussion were silenced. Then, in “Do the Astral Plane,” FlyLo plays with the listener at 3:32, dropping out the Kanye-esque lilting strings and club-ready electro synths so that only the claps remain. It is here, in the negative space, that the listener realizes how much controlled chaos Flying Lotus is managing at one time.
And when we get to “Table Tennis,” we find nu-jazz’s answer to Enrique Iglesias’s “Do You Know.” But unlike its pop counterpart, the intervallically irregular ping-pong in “Table Tennis” is in no way danceable or immediately poppy; instead, it brings us full circle. That is, “Table Tennis”—perhaps the anthem of the nu-jazz microgenre—features guest vocalist Laura Darlington singing of gravity and motion and energy and elasticity, reminding us of the abstract lineage of this music. In a way, this penultimate song of Cosmogramma brings us back to a certain aural Great Unknown. We once again find ourselves traveling through the acoustic cosmos, steadily learning the arcane musical grammar of nu-jazz with each listen with Flying Lotus as our guide.
