Was up until 4:00am via a combination of watching the events unfold in Boston and working on fixing a major glitching of the FAR WEST forums thanks to spammers, but here we are again with another weekly installment of the Mixtape of Teh Interwebz.
The lovely young lady at left is Etta Bond, a UK singer/performer who describes her style as “soul, with a bit of weird.” This track, which she recently posted to her Soundcloud page, is described as “posh rap”, and is a jazzy spoken-word piece over glitchy electronica. Very cool, with some great lines: Etta Bond – “Inside My Head.”
Another bit of weird: A poppy, summery tune about the murdered girl in Twin Peaks. This is a track from UK alternative band Bastille — but I’m posting a remix by RAC (the Remix Artist Collective, a group of three DJs spread between Portugal, NYC and Portland, Oregon) which I like much, much more. RAC took the song, pitch-shifting the vocals and adding a much more 80s-pop sound replacing the original track’s Coldplay-esque bombast. I played it for my wife Laura, and she described it as sounding like a “tribute to Laura Palmer’s last great summer.” Bastille – “Laura Palmer (RAC Mix).”
The FX TV show The Americans is really quite good, telling the story of deep-cover Soviet agents in early 80s America. It’s somewhat disconcerting to see an era that I clearly remember being handled as a “period piece.” Makes me feel old — but one of the things that the show has gotten very right is the music. This track (from one of my favorite bands) was featured in a nightclub scene in this week’s episode: Squeeze – “Slap and Tickle.”
While I’m on the subject of feeling old, nothing perhaps makes me feel older than realizing that the Wu-Tang Clan’s debut album, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is twenty goddamn years old. Yikes. Hip-hop with soul samples and dialog cuts from old kung fu movies? It was almost like it was genetically engineered specifically to make me a fan. So here’s a bit of NSFW lyrical madness that’s almost old enough to drink: Wu-Tang Clan – “Bring Da Ruckus.”
Sample-based music, turntablism — I love all of that stuff. Caught a show on VH1 late night this week called “Master of the Mix”, which is a competition show for DJs, which is cool for folks like me who dig that. One of the guest judges was Cut Chemist (aka Lucas MacFadden, who has DJed for Jurassic 5 and Ozomatli in addition to solo stuff), which reminded me of this track, one of my favorite bits of turntablism: Nat King Cole – “Day In, Day Out (Cut Chemist Mix).”
Lastly, all of the news out of Boston has had this song going through my head — a mocking paean to the city by a California garage band, which the city took and said “Nah, fuck you. We’re keeping this.” — and turned it into an actual anthem. That’s pretty much Boston in a nutshell. The Standells – “Dirty Water.”
There ya go, kids. Enjoy.