The Audiozine

After yet another long dormant period, the Audiozine Listening Series shudders back to life. Two aural delights this time:

1) Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move
Yes, this track has been out for a while. In fact, the full album leak’s been out for a while. That doesn’t change the fact that this song is a hugely auspicious sign that Bitte Orca, the latest offering from the Dirty Projectors, will be among the year’s better collections. Two notable points about “Stillness…”: a) it features a killer vocal that, for once, utilizes melisma, vibrato, and other elements that seem directly pulled from modern R&B; b) the track’s combination of huge drums, synthesized bass, spidery and spare guitar licks, and pop-friendly vocal strike me as being a delightfully warped take on the spare nursery rhyme-like quality of the last few years of hip-hop and R&B. A grayer shade of white, maybe?

2) Wintry Mix 2008-2009
Since last fall I’ve been playing around in my spare time with some really barebones free DJ software, mostly blending hip-hop and other danceable genres. Last winter, I decided to blend some songs outside of the dance music world in an attempt to catch the feeling of the season. From a mixing standpoint, there’s really nothing notable going on. But when I dug the mix up earlier this week, it seemed like something people might enjoy. Runtime is approx 30 minutes.
Tracklist:
D. Lissvik -- Track 6
Arthur Russell -- You and Me Both
Autechre -- Altibizz
Flying Lotus (orig. Kanye West) -- Love Lockdown Remix
Erykah Badu -- My People
Jaylib -- Starz
Slum Village -- Fall In Love
Jape -- Floating
No Age -- Keechie
Portishead -- Hunter

For starters, an apology: in 2007 there were no new posts to the Audiozine Listening Series. Two reasons: A) I was super busy with school and B) I am a huge procrastinator and it made more sense to procrastinate on this blog than on my schoolwork.

That said, here's a short and sweet set of posts to music I meant to post throughout 2007. May they make yr summer 2008 merry:

1) Spoon -- The Underdog (Demo)
Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga came out in summer '07 and became my number one jam of the sunny season. Ga... is their most accomplished album, managing to sound terse and tense, but replacing the minimalism of earlier LP's with a new lushness. This demo version of lead single "The Underdog" comes from a limited 7" that came with the album if you bought it at an independent record store. Which I did.

2) Spoon -- It Took A Rumor To Make Me Wonder, Now I'm Convinced I'm Going Under
The B-side to aforementioned 7". This is a quirky little electro-disco-dub workout.

3) Radiohead -- The Gloaming (DJ Shadow Remix)
Remember the Bush era? When nobody could so much as question anything without being labeled Al-Q-whatever? Well, back then Radiohead set the standard for political rock -- namely, they (and TV On The Radio, who had some politically charged moments on "Return to Cookie Mountain") expressed our sense of frustration and powerlessness. Too bad they couldn't transcend it with their music and offer reasons to take action, get informed, or at least stay hopeful. Well, whatever, here's a track from Hail to the Thief, remixed by DJ Shadow and released as a limited vinyl single. Couldn't find a cleaner version than this rip from the radio, but the graininess kind of lends some grit. P.S. these electronic squiggles, blips, and clangs really jarred listeners who expected downtempo instrumental hip-hop from DJ Shadow.

4) Jaylib -- The Message
Ok, I lied. The other soundtrack to my Endless Summer '07 was the reissue of Jaylib's Champion Sound. Jaylib = J Dilla + Madlib, two of my fav producers. The album is comprised of nasty lo-fi hip-hop, with lots of vinyl noise, static, and rhythmic disjunctions. "The Message" is not one of the album's tracks, instead coming from a white label released by Stones Throw. It refers obliquely to an early Grandmaster Flash + The Furious Five single.

5) Child Rebel Soldiers aka Kanye West + Pharrell Williams + Lupe Fiasco -- US Placers
Oh geez. There have been super-vague rumors of an album-length collaboration between these three giants under the name Child Rebel Soldiers. This track comes from one of Kanye's mixtapes and contains a beat that rips from Thom Yorke's solo album The Eraser. So in the year that brought us In Rainbows, we also got our first Radiohead-hip-hop-crossover.

RIGHT CLICK + SAVE AS + ENJOY!

Hey all,

Well, today is the 2nd anniversary of the Audiozine.

Short and sweet reminder:

Audiozine Volume 01 -- Collaborative Sound Collage
Audiozine Listening Series 01 -- Animal Collective
Audiozine Listening Series 02 -- Nas, Ghostface, Talib Kweli/Madlib, Miles Davis
Audiozine Listening Series 03 -- Ricardo Villalobos + Portishead
Clarence Thomas Mixtape -- Justice, Blind Willie Johnson, Madvillain, Michael Jackson, Charles Mingus, AMM
Clarence Thomas Action-Adventure Unit Live at The Bridge PAI, 04/05/08

Thanks for listening + reading. Listening Series 04 will arrive within a week. And there is nascent work on at least two more Audiozine sound collage collaborations. 2008/2009, busy times.

After an achingly long period of dormancy, the Audiozine is back in action. It's been over a year since I posted to the Listening Series, but today's posts should be a nice return to form. Check it:

1) Portishead -- "Machine Gun"
This is the new single from the upcoming (and 10-years-in-the-waiting) new Portishead album, Third. "Machine Gun" represents a significant change of pace, with a stuttering electro beat replacing the pitched down R&B samples of yesteryear. This bodes extremely well.

2) Ricardo Villalobos -- "Enfants (Chants)"
After hearing about Villalobos for a long time, I picked up his Fabric36 Mix many months ago and it quickly became one of my favorite albums of 2007. He has a knack for sculpting really clean, round sounds and placing them into really intricate rhythmic structures. The tracks are minimalist dance music through and through, but when I played the mix for non-fans of electronic music it resonated with them too; his attention to detail, the seamlessness of his mixology, the snappy treble and elastic bass sounds, and strange leftfield turns (taiko drummers?!?!?!) invite outside listeners in, even as they confound dancefloor conventions. "Enfants (Chants)" is a 17 minute epic that Villalobos made the day before his first child was born. The track is deliberately minimal because he meant for a handful of his DJ friends to use it as a scaffold for mixing with other tracks. As his small coterie of friends started spinning this jam, it created a sensation that culminated in its release as a somewhat limited release EP and tons of blogohype. Rather hard to find for a while but now proliferating on the interweb, enjoy this slab of digital hotness!

Hey hey hey folks! Things have been quiet here at the Audiozine for a while now due to exams and the holiday season. So it's time to start off 2007 the right way, with lots of great stuff for yr listening enjoyment. Click the links below to download these songs.

1) Miles Davis - A Night in Tunisia and Stablemates

I recently snagged an out-of-print vinyl double LP by Miles Davis called "Green Haze". It's from fairly early in his career, well before he was considered a living legend. Most of the songs are jazz standards being played in Miles's elliptical cool jazz style of the time. "Stablemates" features a young John Coltrane on saxophone.

2) Ghostface Killah - Charlie Brown

Ghostface had a great 2006 with the release of his "Fishscale" and "More Fish" discs (even if the sales didn't match the critical response). "Charlie Brown" is an outtake from Ghost's recent albums; it didn't make the cut due to sample clearance issues, but it was leaked to various mp3 blogs. The beat is produced by MF Doom and liberally samples a tropicalia era song by Caetano Veloso.

3) Nas - Where Y'all At

This track was leaked to Prefix months before Nas's "Hip-Hop is Dead" was released. However, the track didn't make the final cut. Peep the hazy beat, in which upright bass keeps time while the drums play in a more suggestive, dubby style.

4) Talib Kweli and Madlib - Funny Money

Kweli and Madlib's collabo album, "Liberation", was available as a free download last week on the Stones Throw Records website. They have since taken it down. Here's my favorite track.

5) Finally, there's been a big buzz about a recently unearthed acetate featuring alternate takes and mixes from the Velvet Underground and Nico sessions. It may be the only surviving copy of these takes and it was found at some random record sale for 75 cents! The good folks at FM Shades have posted all of the songs here. Get it while it lasts!

Hallo Hallo -- Welcome to the first post in the Audiozine Listening Series: a very rare Animal Collective self-released vinyl single. The A side is an alternate version of "Purple Bottle" from their Feels album. The B side is a cover of "Polly" by Nirvana. Download via the following links:

1) Animal Collective - Purple Bottle (Stevie Wonder Version)

2) Animal Collective - Polly (Nirvana Cover)

Buy Feels by Animal Collective at Amazon.