Recently, I'm really enjoying cramming as much music into my ears as I can without just utterly scrambling my puny little brain.
That's the cover of the Kid Cudi album that just came out and that I "bought" with Tower Records points. The only point card I ever remember to carry around; imagine if I'd stored up points for the hundreds and hundreds of pounds I spent at the supermarkets near my house in the last two years! Then again, I often think that the money off I would have reaped would never have made up for the fact that I would have had to carry around a bunch of fucking points cards.
Anyway, the Kid Cudi album (cover painted by comic book legend Bill Sienkiewicz, fact fans!) is very good, although slightly absurd. Kudi is one of Kanye's current proteges, and the album is executive produced by Yeezy and bears something of a resemblance to 808's and Heartbreak, probably because Cudi helped Kanye make that little slice of Yeezy's world. There's a sticker with a quote from Kanye on the front of this record saying: "Cudi is a combination of constant inspiration, struggle, reality and dreams put to melody!" which makes me want to write Kanye-esque sandwich descriptions like "It's a combination of hard work, tuna, adversity and mayonaise put on rye bread!"
Everyone hates Kanye at the moment right? Eh, they'll get over it, he's a genius.
The biggest similarity would have to be the subtle-as-a-brick, heart-on-sleeve introspective soul searching aspect of the album. Man on the Moon: The End of Day (its... frankly terrible title) is a concept album and a half: divided into different parts, with narration guiding you between each suite of three songs and orchestral interludes. And like most concept albums it has epic sweep, and like most hip-hop albums it has unbelievable self convidence and bravado. But with Man on the Moon, this scale and drama is applied to the story of a guy that feels frustrated in his life one night, gets depressed, gets stoned, and in the morning feels much more positive about things.
It's not an amazing album, and not entirely successful in its aims, but it's incredibly interesting and its shortcomings add a lot to its charm. It's also surprisingly downbeat and minimal for a hyped hip-hop artist's debut, and a real grower - every time I listen to it I like it a little more, which is a great sign. I'm interested if this Kanye West-led macho, spill-your-guts kind of mainstream hip-hop can really take off, but I for one am enjoying the disconnect between a guy one minute saying "Why must it feel so wrong when I try to do right?" and the next coming out with "But man, ol' girl got a phat ol' ass / Yeah the type to make you tell a bitch just dance."
Hmmm, I was going to write about other music I've been listening too as well, but this'll do for now. Just know that I've been really impressed at how Kool Keith can make "You and me drinking tea by the fireplace," into the start of such a crude, filthy couplet.
His production still sounds like I believe regular hip-hop will sound in twenty years time and when he's dropping lines like the one in the title of this here post he's pretty much unstoppable. Fantastic video too. I wanna go back in time to 2007 and slot it into my best of the year list.
More hip-hop I've been listening to this week: Eyedea and Abilities. Now that I'm using Media Monkey to listen to stuff I keep digging up old rekkerds that I haven't listened to in forever, and one of them was their self titled second album. When I got it I was hooked in by Now (it's streaming on their myspace, check it out), which is just by far the best track on a pretty solid album that didn't really blow me away. There's too much posturing, and it's really hard to put my finger on why that doesn't work for me there, I mean, posturing is in no way a bad thing in hip-hop terms. I think it's maybe something to do with the fact that they most certainly have the skills to pay the bills, but being a champion battle rapper and champion scratch artist, it's like they set out to make an album that played to their strengths, that maximised their potential and... maybe they could'a just made a better album if they relaxed a bit and not locked themselves in a classic, but limited, hip-hop paint box. Anyway, after five years or whatever off doing a million different things they're back, and the press release says back to the battle rapping and scratching, which is entirely misleading because they've made a much more interesting album than that.
That's not even one of the better songs on the new album By the Throat, which is a blast. It's short, punchy, it obeys no formulas, it's not in any box (well, kinda the modern indie hip-hop playpen I guess) and it sounds like a record made by people with inspiration rather than people toiling to make the most of their gifts within the genre in which they're expected to perform. Everything's messier and noisier, nothing fades out and songs are cut off before their natural end point, there are lots of fuzzy guitar noises that never lapse into actual rock riffs (barring a couple of shaky straight-punk sections) and great beats and good lines and most importantly of all they get the most out of every track and then they kill it. The previous album, like many, many rock and hip-hop records works with the assumption that a track should be yay-long, regardless whether the song is good enough to keep the attention for that long. This is one of my biggest personal bugbears in pop music - the so-so chorus that still gets repeated four times at the end of a four minute song in the hope that momentum might give it extra mass; the third or fourth verse in a song where the point's been made in the first, filled out in the second and there's nowhere else for it to go. Christ I wish people would think about what structure would make the song better, rather than dragging the song out to fit some trad-skeleton. By The Throat is execptional in that way. There's a track about gun control and he makes his point in the first verse and that's it. Done in one verse. One minute forty four seconds, and it's as complete as every other song on the record. Awesome.
Heh, white guys rapping. Now for rock, Pitchfork, god bless it's little cotton socks turned me onto Health, and their second album Get Color is very good. This is the best song though, and the video is exceptional:
So it might be slightly downhill after that. Apparently they used to be accused of jumping on some noise-rock bandwagon (oh man, they must've smelt the billions in gold bullion you can make from noise-rock these days!) but while you can see their influences, I think the sound they've carved out for themselves here is pretty unique. Despite sounding like a car-plant trying to romance a circular saw and play the dums at the same time the record flows really, really well. They keep up the same sonics almost all the way through and there's a great balance of focus and freedom.
Wow, I had a good music week. I also got the Beta Satan album (you can buy it easily, not just through itunes! off their myspace there) which is fantastic. Some of Beta Satan used to be Tiger Tunes, who made Denmark awesome with their electronic indie music, and Beta Satan are just like Tiger Tunes except ROCK and with a lot of swearing and a hilariously surly attitude. Their NSFW video is:
I mean, I saw NSFW, but as always it depends where you "W" and whether you care what people think of you. They have a song called Maths and Chemistry with a repeated refrain of "Politics Politics" that I find incredibly amusing for no reason I can consciously fathom.
Pitchfork (and some guy on a message board) also told me to get XX by The XX but in this case I can't be all that enthusiastic about it. I mean, it's a good downbeat electro pop album, and I'll certainly listen to it for background music when I'm trying to do something else (oh! backhanded dis! I don't mean that as bitchily as it came out), but it really, really sounds like The Blow to me. Except it's more downbeat and it's really trying to be classy and aloof and touching and down to earth at the same time, and The Blow are much more carefree and, frankly, much better. Hmmm, I wonder how much of it comes down to the fact that the girl who sings for The XX sounds exactly like Khaela Maricich of The Blow? Maybe my senses are being misled by that. It is funny that on a couple of duets the slightly affected vocals of the boy from The XX make him sound exactly like Har Mar Superstar. So, essentially, if I hadn't known what I was listening to when that track came on then I would've sworn on my pirate ancestor's grave that it was an old Blow song with guest vocals from Har Mar Superstar.
Oh man, that's a lot of writing about music! It was fun though. See you around!
I made more 8tracks mixes that you can listen to. With your ears! Quit trying that finger-tip, vibrational sensation shit, you're not fooling anyone. You're not Matt Murdock and you're no kind of vigilante.
Here's mostly indie hip-hop from America:
And, if time permits, I'd like to say a few words, you can work out how they relate to things later. So Amanda Blank!? I didn't even know her solo album came out until I saw it in HMV last week, and I'm approaching it with no little trepidation. Everything I've heard from her so far was fierce and dirty hip-hop and she sounds awesome on every track, but the solo album cover looks like a low rent Lady Gaga, or an early Gossip record, or something just tossed off in ten minutes by a designer who thinks he's really captured the Zeitgeist. But that style is so associated in my head now with massively overrated bands (like the Gossip) and hype and nonsense that it turned me off straight away. And the sticker dude on the case says it's not just hip-hop but electro and pop... I'm gonna check that out for sure, but I'm not holding my breath anymore. A few years ago I was really digging the music coming out of Anticon's ant-cave (or wherever it is that they live) and they got into some pathetic little underground spat with El-P and at the time I was digging Anticon more so I was kinda on their side, but since then Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein has stomped into my top ten favourite albums of all time, and now I realise that most things El-P's done have been bostin' so my heart is now open to both camps. And MF Doom, his Viktor Vaughn album is so good you don't even know. And considering the amount of music he put out that year, it's no small thing.
Now let's see what the hip-hoppers from Japan have to say:
I heard so much random stuff about Tha Blue Herb, who come from my town Sapporo, that I'm ashamed I only listened to them properly last week. They're really good arty, downbeat hip-hop though - so downbeat that I'm not surprised a bunch of my friends didn't dig them at Rising Sun last year. Hip-hop without a hook has to survive on the flow and the beats alone, and when it does it's top-grade beef. I wish I'd checked them out then, but I can at least see their DJ and Producer spin this weekend at Magical Camp. Kreva put a couple of... underwhelming singles out recently. He's always been J-pop-hip-hop but man, when he's fired up he's so good. It's a shame he's doing the r&b thing so much. Teriyaki Boyz are, yes, the bape house band, here featuring US all-stars and a super-model, so it ain't all that humble. I like it though. I've only heard a little M-Flo, and again when they're courting the pop market I can't say I'm that interested, but this bastard-awesome production from Towa Tei and sci-fi bender from their second album is incredible.
So, this is probably not the same kind of hip-hop as Shuren the Fire, but I actually quite like the design here. They work in the Norbessa ferris wheel nicely.
And there's no crazy names on there of the calibre that Andy found in Fukuoka. MC Wob and Ace Cock for example. But this guy works a few nice word plays in there:
AK-69? What does that involve? I imagine it's less than classy.
Shuren the Fire is a rapper from Sapporo who, from what I can tell, is a good example of the jazzy laid-back hip-hop that the city is kinda known for. I mean, I see posters for ridiculous faux-gangster club nights all the time, but the famous hip-hop group from here are Tha Blue Herb, and Shuren the Fire was on their label and certainly stands alongside them. I read that book Hip-Hop Japan by Ian Condry (that far more people have read than I expected) and he'll back me up on this I'm pretty sure.
Anyway for some wonderful reason someone on youtube decided to set his music to some old video clips... frankly I don't really get it, and they don't fit perfectly, but I love it anyway.
I was in a used clothing shop in Sapporo one day with Yuki, and this Japanese hip-hop was playing with really nice beats and suddenly he was giving shout outs to towns in Hokkaido. We both wanted to know who it was but someone (Yuki) wouldn't ask the clerk so I had to stumble up and ask um... what is this music? And that's how I found Shuren the Fire. Seriously, the beats on the whole album are great, really nicely underplayed and effective without being seriously mixed and bass-boosted. His rough delivery is fun too but I have a feeling that his strong accent when he throws down in English will put a lot of people off. Anyway it looks like he ain't all that productive anymore, but I really like the one full album he made.
In other events tonight a waiter told me I look like Orlando Bloom, which is just... yes, well. I am caucasian.
that just came out and that I "bought" with Tower Records points. The only point card I ever remember to carry around; imagine if I'd stored up points for the hundreds and hundreds of pounds I spent at the supermarkets near my house in the last two years! Then again, I often think that the money off I would have reaped would never have made up for the fact that I would have had to carry around a bunch of fucking points cards.
, which is a blast. It's short, punchy, it obeys no formulas, it's not in any box (well, kinda the modern indie hip-hop playpen I guess) and it sounds like a record made by people with inspiration rather than people toiling to make the most of their gifts within the genre in which they're expected to perform. Everything's messier and noisier, nothing fades out and songs are cut off before their natural end point, there are lots of fuzzy guitar noises that never lapse into actual rock riffs (barring a couple of shaky straight-punk sections) and great beats and good lines and 
is very good. This is the best song though, and the video is exceptional:
