Album of the Day: Jonti - Sine & Moon

The first 2012 release in my collection, free courtesy of Stones Throw. The album starts off with a nice, relaxing ukelele semi-instrumental, then moves on to the meat of the content from there. Immediately I was reminded of Strong Arm Steady mixed with the soundtrack to Portal 2, but this is another Stones Throw album, so that's not entirely surprising. To describe it in a word (or two): laid-back. The beats don't beat you over the head with their forcefulness, they, at least for me, are simply good head nodding music, which is by no means a negative description. Too often beat makers try too hard to incorporate a ton of moving parts into one piece, and the whole thing ends up being jumbled and incoherent at times (I have a certain artist in mind). I like that the focus is more on incorporating a few elements, especially nice ambient waves and strings that waft in and out of the music, and build from there, rather than throwing the whole kitchen sink at you all at once. I'm also not a huge fan of heavy bass, and the somewhat subdued low ends here shift the focus to some of the more interesting stuff on the other areas of the spectrum. This is particularly good because when the bass is used, such as in 'By This Shore,' it's noticeable and meaningful, and adds weight, which I believe is what the low end should be used for anyway, rather than as a means of creating a melody within itself. This is all genre-dependent, though, as in a lot of rap the bass is rightfully the backbone of the beat, although whether the lyrics they support are worth supporting is another issue entirely. In addition to the nice chillout beats, there are some that venture closer to rock territory, like 'Young Wildebeest,' and to a lesser extent 'Lost Machines,' the full-on electronic style of 'Sugar High,' to the almost tropical feeling of 'Lovers Stone (Alternate Passaros).' For under 40 minutes, there is a ton of content and variety packed in. 

Album of the Day: Massive Attack - Splitting the Atom

Extremely short, but very good. The title track is particularly good, but you can't really go wrong, especially considering that there are only 4 songs here. Pretty good for electronic music, a genre I'm only moderately well versed in.

Album of the Day: Peanut Butter Wolf - Peanut Butter Breaks

A very short (11 tracks, 22 minutes) set of breaks and beats. Nothing major or groundbreaking here, a la “Shades of Blue,” but definitely solid from start to finish. Everything here is very laid back, even by Peanut Butter Wolf standards, and the samples are kept to a minimum: if you need pure, solid chillout beats with the occasional jazzy infusion, look no further.

Album of the Day: Sir Menelik aka Cyclops 4000 - Space Cadillac (Single)

There are only two tracks here, along with a couple of instrumentals. Space Cadillac features Kool Keith, while Nightwork features El-P. Kool Keith flows through his normal crazy outer space rhymes over an old school futuristic beat, full of synth waves and chimes. Not a knock on the artist, but I actually like the instrumental better than the original track. Nightwork has a better feel to it, but I think this is mostly because El-P can absolutely kill any garage beat, especially back in 1999. Neither artist is even trying to do anything spectacular, but somehow both manage to just kill it.

Album of the Day: Cobra Starship - While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets

I'm not exactly a huge pop fan, but I figured I would give this one a go anyway, mostly because I was browsing and came across a couple of cool album covers. 'Send My Love to the Dancefloor, I'll See You in Hell (Hey Mister DJ)' is, if I am interpreting these incredibly dense lyrics correctly, about how dancing is pretty fun, only done, shockingly, in Top 40 pop-hits style. I like to think I'm relatively open minded about music (which probably means that I'm the complete opposite), but that one was pretty rough. If you've ever listened to Fallout Boy or Panic! At the Disco, both good groups that I personally don't happen to be into, you get an idea of what's going on here. It's not bad, it would do the album a disservice to say so, but it's not particularly good, either. Embarassingly, the only song here that I kind of enjoyed was 'Bring It (Snakes on a Plane)'. I will never, ever type that sentence again. While the themes are a bit overdone (pretty much all of the songs here are about partying dancing, and relationships - though I'm a fan of rap music, so I guess I can't really harp too much on that matter), at least the lyrics contain more than seven different words, a quality which I cannot emphasize enough. Even the shittiest song can be made decent with a little variety and though to the subject at hand. In addition, while I don't like much of the genre as a whole, I'm a huge fan of using live instrumentation (whether truly live or produced by a computer) over synthesized pop beats, and the music here is well done in that regard, providing a mix of the two, but skewed a little more toward the former rather than the latter. Lyrics aside (“You can put your hands up/I love girls with Brooklyn haircuts/I'll be you're fanclub/Step, step/You're too slow/Speed it up”? What is that? Or how about this one: “Diamond girl,/I wanna wrap you around the world/I'll never let you touch the ground/I'll be your Biggie, you'll be my Lil' Kim” It's like they're trying overly hard to incorporate deep-sounding lyrics at the expense of content), the music is just varied enough for me to tell when the track changes, but not enough to make them completely distinct from one another. This is great if it gets cut up into singles, but makes listening to an album from start to finish a bit of a pain, not to mention the creative issues involved. Despite all of the negativity, I didn't hate this album, but I didn't particularly like it, either. To rather cynically sum it up: it's hipster music that hipsters would reject. Interpret that how you will.

Album of the Day: Raekwon - Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang

Rawness. 'Nuff said.

Album of the Day: Mad Professor - Mad Professor Captures Pato Banton

This is another one of those albums that I came into having pretty much no knowledge of the artist. It's sort of a hybrid between electronic and reggae, only I don't know if I can call it reggae, since I can understand more than every fifth word. My experience with reggae is admittedly limited, being just a Madlib album, the occasional Bob Marley song, and that one dude from Grand Theft Auto IV. With that in mind, I can't say whether or not this is good in the context of the genre as a whole, but as as it's own work, I definitely enjoy it, particularly the storytelling elements by Pato Banton, particularly in 'Gwarn,' and the live instrument feel (even if they are made with a computer) presented by the Professor. To me, the best remix albums are those that don't wholly change the original content, but add tweaks and minor alterations, more like Shades of Blue rather than [insert any one of the myriad of Jay-Z remix albums]. That's done here, for the most part, retaining the reggae feel while still incorporating the mixer's own interpretation of the music, sort of the way you can (or at least I do) mess around with the beats to different songs in your head as you listen. It is a short album, but it feels twice as long, simply because every track is excellent. The best track of the album, by a distant long shot, is 'My Opinion.' It just oozes raw feeling, as he waxes poetic about England, politics, and religion. It's always great to hear an artist or style that I'd never heard before. 

Album of the Day: Mr. Lif - Enters the Colossus

Man, I miss the heyday of Def Jux, one of the best lineups I can think of in my admittedly limited experience. Mr. Lif is just relentless here: no hooks, no breaks, just wall-to-wall flow that beats you over the head. It's got that Def Jux feel, with very limited sampling, electronic beats (reminiscent of El-P, surely not a coincidence), in-house features, and lyrics that swing back and forth between cryptic and filled with inside jokes that necessitate a second or third listen (“The government strives to be omnipotent/but when I came through on some MC shit, the C's split/since they fear my potency has been kept a secret for years/renegotiated over beers”) and straightforward, to-the-point rhymes (“And if you've ever seen me rhyme, you know/I'll drop a cool flow then flip like Cujo”). It doesn't necessarily feel dated, but you can definitely tell that this was released in 2000. This album is short, at 7 tracks running a half hour (inflated by a nearly 11 minute final track, which features a hidden track, which I won't bother ranting about again), but it's packed with content, as one would expect from a Mr. Lif release.

Hidden Tracks

I'm talking about the final track of an album, where there is an extra track included after a long section of silence. Does anyone still fall for these anymore? I can see maybe ten or fifteen years ago, when people weren't using digital formats, but even then, with a decent CD player, you would know that there were still 4 or 5 minutes left in the song when it “ends.” What's the point of doing that now, when all tracks are time-stamped and the length is usually staring right back at you for the duration of the song? Why not just cut it into a separate track, as I sometimes end up doing myself? If there is that one person in the world who exists who doesn't bother looking at the time remaining on a song, wouldn't that person just end it when it gets to silence and miss the extra content anyway? I can see the purpose when a live track, raw cut, or outtakes of some sort were included, but often there is just an entire song thrown onto the end of another, for seemingly no reason. Perhaps it is an issue of cost, where the artist wants the song to be released but studio costs are too high to make anything more than one or two takes, with some rough editing, although this is clearly not the case with the vast majority of hidden tracks that I've heard, which again makes me wonder, what is the point? It's perplexing.

Album of the Day: K-Nock - Escape From Quad City

I don't have much to write, but I can't remember the last time I heard a female rapper, especially one who doesn't try too hard to exert her masculinity with over-the-top sexual lyrics. Pretty awesome, regardless of gender. Picture the Pharcyde crossed with Dr. Dre's “The Chronic.” Pump Pump [Explicit]

Album of the Day: Kimba - Digital Underground

A relatively short EP that, like most other music I get, I just happened to stumble across one day while looking for other stuff. I like that a lot of newer rap lately, especially Eps and mixtapes, has been deviating from the usual money-women-murder tropes without overtly pandering to the “underground” crowd with needlessly complex beats and purposefully cryptic lyrics. That is evidenced here, as everything he rhymes about seems genuine, with positive, feel-good lyrics (“We shoot for the stars and though we may miss/we leave an imprint that's sketched with intent”; the majority stay positive about women, no less, a rarity) R & B hooks and beats that make me think of sitting outside on a summer day. This reminds me a lot of some of the tracks on the Elevated Soul LP by Magnificent Ruffians, that similar laid-back style that still manages to be fraught with intention and passion. The strongest track here, in my opinion, is 'Dancing Tables,' which pushes the beat back a bit and lets the rhymes take center stage, with a flow that is completely adverse to the rest of the EP. The final track, 'The Secret Recipe' features him rapping over a series of rapid-fire beats, ranging from old-school early 90s stuff to newer Madlib and Atmosphere beats. This one just clicks, and I'll be getting more of his music in the future. 

Album of the Day: Maroons - Ambush

I wouldn't even have known this existed if I hadn't stumbled across it in a store one day. A collaboration between Lateef and Chief Xcel, basically Blackalicious without the Gift of Gab, though he does show up in 'Best of Me' and 'Beautiful You'. Both the positives and negatives of that statement are clear: the signature funk-and-bass beats ripped straight out of the late eighties are here in full effect, and Lateef is an awesome MC, but I can't help but feel that something is missing. Don't get me wrong, I think Lateef has a vastly underrated flow (best shown here in 'Lester Hayes' and 'Best of Me'), behind only perhaps Percee P and the Gift of Gab, but it's weird hearing him carry an entire album. That being said, I feel like this is almost a precursor to “Droppin' Science Fiction” by the Mighty Underdogs, as it has that same feel and the same styles throughout. The lyrics oscillate between the usual, “my rhymes are better than yours and here are a series of metaphors that explain why,” and the more conscious (“and if power and greed didn't tempt it/maybe our leaders would be positive and productive/instead of conniving, deceitful, and corrupted/caught up by the love of dollars so seductive”). Soul samples, thoughtful rhymes (and positive to boot; negative, pessimistic rhymes about how hard life is are alright, but get old after a while; see 'If'), and feel-good beats make this admittedly short album (under 40 minutes) a great listen. 

Album of the Day: Madlib – Madlib Medicine Show No. 12: Raw Medicine: Madlib Remixes

It's taking me forever to collect all of the Medicine Show albums (it's been over a year but I still have two or three to go – this one was a Christmas gift), but each one so far has been worth it. “Raw” is definitely the key word here, as this functions just like those old mixtapes everybody used to make by recording off the radio onto blank tapes, complete with Madlib's signature hisses, pops, vinyl static, and the occasional B-movie style add thrown into the end of songs. There are full songs, single verses, a ton of interludes, and a couple of mashups in this 37 track set that still manages to be only an hour long. The interlude in track 15 might be one of my favorite spoken word skits. My only complaint is the problem I have with the vast majority of Madlib's albums: the tracks are so short, just when you happen across a really good beat (which happens often), it's over and he's moved on to something completely different, often within the same song. You never get the chance to really get into any one section, as you are constantly being shifted left and right to beat after beat. The longest track here runs 3:56 (and there are two or three different songs within it), and the majority are under two minutes. 'Cross Bronx Expressway' gets it right, maintaining a beat for almost the entire length of the track and featuring multiple verses. I suppose that, being a mixtape rather than a fully-fledged album, it should be chopped up the way it is, but it can still be frustrating at times, simply because there are so many good beats and verses. Still, everything here is put together beautifully, and the artists featured here run the gamut, from Royce the 5'9 to DOOM to Q-Tip to Musiq Soulchild (!), and there are so many different styles spread out that I can hardly keep track. I just wish it wasn't so short.

Album of the Day: Massive Attack - Mezzanine

Do you ever make beats in your head as you listen to music? This album feels like a collection of those, only refined and not made by an idiot. The CD was already tagged 'Trip Hop,' and while that doesn't quite describe it, I can't think of anything better to change it to, other than the generic 'Electronic.' Usually with beat-focused albums, any presence of singing or other vocals serve to diminish everything else, but here the vocals work as their own instrument, creating a sound that goes beyond what the lyrics attempt to convey. By the way, the theme song to 'House' is on here – how did I not know about that? I had no idea that there was a singer. You can tell that someone just went crazy with a drum machine on every song, particularly 'Inertia Creeps,' my favorite song of the album, where it provides the backbone of the entire song. 'Exchange' feels a bit like if someone built a time machine, went back to the 70's, and sent a bass player from an R&B group into the future. I think that's pretty self explanatory. 'Dissolved Girl' starts off slowly and smoothly, with female vocals over a soft beat, then ratchets the tempo up with a shredding synth guitar. Overall, I'm shocked at how well they were able to incorporate vocals so well into such a seemingly-instrumental album.