music of the month - October edition

here are my fav music purchases of the month. they weren't necessarily released in October just purchased.

5: Five Years of Hyperdub

Usually I wouldn’t consider making a compilation my album of the year, but it has to be said that this collection is easily one of the top releases of the year. There’s a million reviews, so I won’t go into too much detail except to say this:

• The selection of previously released songs on Disc 2 sound to me like a dance music label that is forward looking and continually pushing boundaries.
• The selection of new music on Disc 1 though is a different matter. To me these are the sound of a group of musicians who have gone beyond genres. This isn’t dubstep, hip-hop, blip-hop, whatever. This is straight future music. Absolutely brilliant

J. Tillman - Year in the Kingdom

his second release of the year after the excellent Vacilando Territory Blues. Best known nowadays for being the drummer in Fleet Foxes, J. Tilman has been releasing solo albums since late 2004. his style has always been stark and melancholy, but not necessarily introspective until now.
The sound is akin to Minor Works with a mix of solo and fuller arrangements, however this album is definitely his most polished/produced sounding yet which may or may not be related to his day job. The first half of the album has a 60s folk-psychedelia feel but as you reach the end of the album the arrangements become more stripped down and reminiscent of his earlier work.
Though not as strong as his previous albums, I would still take a J Tilman album over most anything our there.

Kid Cudi - Man on the Moon: The End of Day
I didn't even give this album a second glance until I heard a few songs on Sound Opinions a few weeks ago. Even then I wasn't sure that this was an album for me, but I previewed the entire thing and decided to take a chance and I am glad that I did. Though I have a few quibbles, this album is one of my favorites this year.

This album takes the retro-future r'n'b sound of 808s and Heartbreaks by Kanye and develops it into something really interesting and with a lot of promise.

as I mentioned, I do have a couple issues with the album though:

1. it's too long - needs to have at least three songs cut (ratatat productions, I'm looking at you)
2. the completely misogynistic track 12 "make her say" - out of character with rest of album. worthless
3. so I get that it is a concept album, but let people figure out the story. you don't need the narration song titles to tell you the story. Bat For Lashes was able to tell a similar story without all that. trust the storytelling in the songs to pull people along

Life Lessons from an Ad Man

In this great TED talk, the Vice Chairman from Ogilvy argues that a perceived change in value can be just as important as an actual change in value

add another one to the fire

uploaded the latest installment of to the DJ mixtape archive tonight

DRC - Androidgeny (pre-release) Feb 95

San Francisco Acid/Trance DJ DRC sent this pre-release version of her classic mixtape after we booked her for a MPLS rave in '95. slightly different from the official version and I always like this one better.

enjoy

what we gonna do here is go back

I've been promising/threatening to upload my old dj mixtape collection since I found a box of them in my mom's basement a few months ago.

I never seemed to find the time though, but once I found two more boxes of them this weekend, I knew that I absolutely had to upload them.

so with that in mind, the first two in what is looking to be a very long series have been uploaded and are ready to go. They are both tapes that were favorites of mine so the quality obviously is not the best in parts, but overall they don't sound too bad considering

to make it easier I am just loading them to a folder instead of linking to each individual file (hopefully this works out) - mixtape archive

DJ Earth - Volume 3

An early minneapolis DJ, this was one of, if not the first mixtape I ever bought. I was always fascinated by this mix becasue at the timeI didn't know what to make of the music. most of the DJs I was hearing were playing hardcore, techno, or more striaght up house and to me this sounded completely different. the first few minutes of side one are a little rough sound quality-wise but then it gets better.

Kikoman - Live at GR

Kikoman is from Grand Rapids, Michigan and I can't remember when exactly I picked this up (late 90s is as close as I can get), or why I did. I know it was labeled as tech-house and I think I saw his name on a detroit/michigan party flyer with Richie Hawtin, so I gave it a chance and always loved it. never got a chance to see him play, but turned a lot of people on to this mix.

so that's it for now. my goal is to upload 2-3 a month, so check back.

June Dubstep Mix - It Was Written

recorded this mix early June but finally had time to upload it to the interwebs.

it's a little shorter than normal so I was able to upload it at a higher bit rate making the sound a ton better.

Enjoy

It Was Written

Tracklist:

Little Dragon - Twice (16 Bit Refix) - White

2562 - Kontrol - Tectonic

Breakage - Rain - Digital Soundboy

Geiom & Appleblim - Shreds - Berkane Sol

Mala - Miracles - Deep Medi Musik

Pinch - Teleportation - Planet Mu

Kryptic Minds - Six Degrees - Swamp 81

Kito - What If - Disfigured Dubs

Skream - Trapped in a Dark Bubble - Tectonic

Seven - Conspiracy - Aquatic Labs

Skream - Backwards - Deep Medi Musik

Damian Marley - It Was Written (Chasing Shadows Refix) - White