OMNI TRIO – “Step Off”

OMNI TRIO – “Step Off”

I’ve been in a time warp for the past week. Yes, this year has been brilliant, Ludicrus is mighty, Missy knocked out the box, Kelly Rowland’s solo single is mint, The Clipse are excellent, blah blah blah blah; I’ve spent the past two days at work going off my nut to the “Mystic Stepper” EP and remembering those grand college days when my main requirements for music were a storming breakbeat and sine-wave synth lines mixed in with chipmunk samples and big thumping fuck-off bass lines. I really wanted tracks like this to take over the world; screw melody, screw harmonic structure, just give me some bangin’ thematic sections sequenced together based on a “maximize-the-boogie” algorithm, supported by a stuttering, syncopated beat chopped up and shredded until it’s barely recognizable. Big beat started us down this road, but forgot its roots and got all melodic and songy. Where is the legacy promised by Omni Trio, Acen, early Prodigy, Altern8, Sonz of a Loop da Loop Era, D’Cruze, Boogie Times Tribe, Austin, Blame, 2 Bad Mice, early 4 Hero, Cloud 9, Hyper-On Experience, Yolk, Krome and Time, The House Crew, and all those other greats? Who’s got the tempos to go with the bleeps to go with the riddims? I must be officially old because I want my golden age back.

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UNDERWORLD – “Two Months Off”

UNDERWORLD – “Two Months Off”

Darren Emerson may not be in Underworld anymore, but he’s certainly left his mark. At the beginning, a moody up-tempo shuffle beat swings its way underneath a sampled monlogue of a woman talking some nonsense about things a lovesick schoolgirl has scrawled onto the back of a notebook. This leads into some uplifting warm synth stabs, all mixed in with ethereal swirls and chanted uplifting lyrics about bringing light into the dark places. At the end of the day this is enough for me, but when the cowbell kicks in it just becomes the best song ever. I’ve spent several days dancing in my chair at work to this. It’s even better than “Kittens”!

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TRUTH HURTS feat. RAKIM – “Addictive”

TRUTH HURTS feat. RAKIM – “Addictive”

I’ve tried to write this entry three times now without success. I can’t figure out why this song is so alluring to me. Part of it may be DJ Quik’s beat; yeah, it’s the logical extension of “Oochie Wally”, but the way the singer’s voice supports the flute riffs makes it so much more. Truth herself sounds a lot like Mary J. Blige before the drugs and alcohol left a mark on her voice. The chorus is irresistable. (“He’s so contagious/He turns my pages”; how can you deny that?) Rakim’s rap is butter. The overall GROOVE is just massive. I was listening to this on the radio in the car today and I just wanted to roll down the windows, bump the Indian funk and nod my head like a madman.

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Michelle Golberg, I hate you

Michelle Golberg, I hate you: Thank you so much for taking a perfectly harmless album and making it sound like distilled aural anathema for anyone who’s paid attention to dance music for the past ten years. You get bonus hate points for the most willful misreading of Massive Attack ever committed to print.

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MICHEL’LE – “No More Lies”

MICHEL’LE – “No More Lies”

I was flipping channels this morning while getting ready for work and stumbled across this 80s gem on MTV Jams. Suddenly, I was 16 years old again, dancing in the family room with dad’s stereo turned all the way up with my friends. I’d never actually seen Michel’le before; all I knew of her was that her singing voice was lower than her speaking voice (think Miss Stush on helium). Man, she was FOINE! Baby ought to thank her mama for a butt like that. (wait, that’s a different song…)

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Eminem threatens fans who upload his music onto Internet

Eminem threatens fans who upload his music onto Internet: I was going to let one of the more regular writers comment on this, but no one seems interested in doing so. I’m somewhat conflicted on this. On the one hand, he certainly has a point: fans who are using the Internet to get their hands on a copy so that they won’t have to pay for it are stealing something off of Em’s bottom line. However, how many of the people who have downloaded the album intend to buy it? How many of them would borrow a friend’s copy and listen to that before buying it? How many of them would copy their friend’s CD, either onto a tape or a CD-R? How can execs in the music industry point to online piracy as the number one culprit for declining CD sales when the cost of a new CD has steadily risen to $19? Eminem’s ranting, while certainly in keeping with his public persona, strikes me (Ha, “strikes me”. Marshall’s gonna get pretty tired if he actually tries to punch every fan who has uploaded/downloaded his album. ICP should put up a high bandwidth feed on their site) as remarkably short-sighted and ultimately harmful. In the long run, his attitudes are more beneficial to the record labels than they are the artists.

(Okay, I will ‘fess up: the entire purpose of this post was to link Insane Clown Posse on NYLPM.)

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Party of one:

Party of one: Word on the street is that a new album is in the pipeline from everyone’s favorite singer, Jennifer Love-Hewitt.

Yes, you read that right; J-Lo-Hew is droppin’ some phat beats sometime later this year, according to this list of upcoming 2002 releases. Produced by noted auter Meredith Brooks (!!!), this is going be an album to remember. (NOTE: In this particular case, “to remember” should be read as “to run from, screaming, ‘In the name of all that is holy, MAKE HER STOP!!!!’”.)

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MOS DEF & MASSIVE ATTACK – “I Against I”

MOS DEF & MASSIVE ATTACK – “I Against I”

Let’s get the obvious part of this out of the way; I love this record. It has enchanted and ensnared me in its flanged hi-hat charms. If this record was a woman, I would be helpless at its feet, lovingly feeding it grapes off the vine and buying it fur coats, Fendi bags and diamond rings in a vain hope that showering it with bling-bling would prevent it from finding a suitor more worthy of its sultry charms. If I saw this record across a crowded airport terminal pulling out a pack of Virginia Slims, I would push a nun out of the way for a chance to offer it a light. I think it’s stunning piece of work. The odd thing is that I can’t really pinpoint why.

I’ve thought about this from several angles. At first I thought it was just the idea of a collaboration between Mos Def and Massive Attack that I found so appealing, but I really don’t own anything with Mos Def on it and, while the beat is alluring, it isn’t the best thing Massive Attack has ever written. I thought for a moment that it was the “Blade II” connection, but I bought the soundtrack before I saw the movie and was in love with this track from the first moment I heard it, unlike the rest of the soundtrack (which mostly works, but isn’t really anything that you haven’t heard before). It has taken several listens to realize that the thing that makes me nod my head when I play this song (like I am AT THIS VERY MOMENT) is the arrangement. The beat is sparse but layered, the synth fills have a very metallic-sounding filter put on them, Mos Def’s delivery manages to encapsulate urgency and languidness simultaneously and that breakdown in the middle is just genius. If this track isn’t used to promote the movie, the New Line Cinema PR department should lose their jobs.

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Zombie Taps Corgan for Ramone CD

Zombie Taps Corgan for Ramone CD: Okay, so now we can add Billy Corgan to the roster of the Ramones tribute album along with Marylin Manson, Static-X, Motorhead, The Offspring, Green Day, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rob Zombie and Eddie Vedder. Zombie is still awaiting confirmation from Bruce Springsteen, Joe Strummer and U2.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I think that my aural equivalent of pure, unadulterated hell is just on the verge of realization!

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A*Teens and Alice Cooper in year’s most unlikely collaboration

A*Teens and Alice Cooper in year’s most unlikely collaboration: Tom wants the rest of us to contribute more? Fine. I decided to view the NME website for the first time in months and saw this bizarre headline staring me in the face. My mind boggled as I read the article; what could this possibly sound like? Alice Cooper’s threatening-for-the-70s guitar-rock combined with shiny Abba-pop isn’t a concept I find easy to grasp. I wonder if the video will feature a sexily sadistic nurse chopping off the A*Teens’ heads with a guillotine while Cooper does a fully-choreographed dance number (complete with dancers and neat, jittery camera angles) in the background.

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