93 Darkside/Jungle

This one goes into the category of 'Heard it but never knew what the fuck it was and jeez it's a hardcore bewdy!' More dark 93 bizniz, this time on a funky jungle tip.



This is from the same EP. Melodic rhythms, bleepedelia and trippy kindness, you know what I mean. Lovely but it also gets a bit dark (I always wondered where the Omni Trio acolytes were).



Not so lovely, this one. Fantastic euphoric gloom.  Get on a bad trip and send your brain down the gurgler. This one will make you see spiders on the wall,

The Hip Hop In 2017

A REALLY DEEP ANALYSIS OF RAP FROM A FAN LOSING INTEREST

I finally got the urge to play some rap for the first time this year. I had five albums waiting in the wings - Thugger, Migos, RJ and two from Future. After an initial listen to Thugger Girls I thought 'Hmmm.....I dunno....I think listening to Future's 2014 mixtape Monster sounds like a much better idea'. It was a great idea because it seems even better than it did three years ago. Monster was the first place Fuck Up Some Commas appeared and contains the two below classics.





I guess it's pretty easy to get overlooked if you're from LA as Kendrick is so ubiquitous, has anybody got any room for another LA rapper? Last year however there were two excellent LA albums Schoolboy Q's Blank Face and Still Brazy from YG. This year we've got RJ's proper debut album. He has made guest appearances on DJ Mustard's Ketchup (2013) & 10 Summers: The Mixtape (2015). RJ's done a handful of mixtapes but his best album so far is the collaboration he recorded with Choice Rich off Mackin. The new record MrLA, on initial listens, doesn't seem as effortless as that collab with Choice but it's better than anything that K Lamar has done since Good Kid...

Two hours plus of Future was a hell of a lot to take in. His two albums are the best of this bunch though. HNDRXX seems much stronger than than the self-titled effort....

Culture from Migos seemed ok, much better than Beautiful Thugger Girls anyway....

I dunno I guess I have to give all these albums more of a listen. Then there's Drake, Young MA, DJ Quik & Problem, Kehlani etc..... can I be bothered though?

Maybe if I still had an hour and half commute daily or drove a car I'd be more in the mood to be digging this stuff.

93 'ardcore/Darkside.....

I'd heard Megadrive's Takin Control EP which contained the tune Demon from '92. I thought I'd come across Mega 2 before but perhaps I haven't. Classic hardcore into darkness/92 into 93 bizniz.



God I thought A1 was good but hold your little horses check out A2. That mental liquid bass frequency drop at 0.53 is astounding then the keyboard/bass/whatever the fuck it is riff comes in at 1.20 like it's straight from an Iration Steppas track. Mind and ears blown. Rewind!



The cheap and cheerful, made in 10 minutes style doesn't always work for everybody but fuck this works. What a ruff diamond. So Tight is pretty odd. The vocal science here is psychedelic and creepy. At the 3.36 mark it's crazy/weird time as the hoovers enter and the beats go off the charts. Never even heard of this until tonight = v happy.



This like So Tight is from The Man With No Name's '93 Follow The Leader EP. I guess there are a bunch of darkside tunes similar to this like Boogie Times Tribe's The Dark Stranger. You know, with a repeated sample of film dialogue, dark synthy strings and atmospheric lulls. It's a great formula joined here with some choice choppage and mentastic smears. The Painted Man sounds like a really scary horror monster of a thing but according to youtube it's a sample from Peter Pan (?)!



I've just figured out how I ended up back in 'ardcore/darkside zones. On the weekend we went to the pictures and saw IT which was pretty good. Anyway I couldn't get that bit of dialogue from the 90s tv mini series of IT out of my head and had to come home and play it. I didn't always like Neuromancer's Pennywise but the song has featured in several of my favourite darkside dj mixes. Over the years that demented "They all float down here" refrain has wormed its way into my brain (whoops....this one is from '92).

93 Darkside

Wow. Loving this. I don't think I've heard it before. Maybe it's in an old mix but I've never ID'd it before. I tried to listen to some current music today (rap and even some 2017 drum'n'bass) but I ended up here in 1993 darkside zones soon after. There's a good reason for that, which is that this music is so much better than anything from the here and now. This was the future and there was more future to be heard the next day....blah blah. I'm still discovering stuff from this era so it's not all a sad nostalgia trip. Uncovering unheard gold from '93 is still exhilarating.

Many rate Skanna's Night Stalker EP as one of the classics of 93 darkside. I'm not about to disagree with that!



Now I know my ears have never come across this one because that steppy bass drop at 3.38 is totally unfuckingforgettable. These records are now going for absurd prices on discogs. I missed the boat collecting these. I should have started six or seven years back when I got back into 'ardcore/darkside/jungle. The prices weren't so obscene then, I mean they were still high but...

ZANOV - Green Ray

Green Ray is another recently discovered killer space jam from France, sure it was on my radar but I'd never bothered to check it out. I'm starting to think maybe the French released even more cosmic synth LPs than the Germans did. I don't love them all, some are just good like Oliver Roy's Pochette Surprise and Cristal by Phillipe Guerre but I guess those two incorporate romantic classical aspects into their progressive electronic sound. Zanov's Green Ray (1976) is all pulsating drones and swirling analogue synthesisers. Strap yourself in for close up encounters with space weather then set the controls for an ominous metagalactic chase through the asteroid belt.

RIP Holger Czukay

The man behind Can.

RIP Walter Becker

Six years ago I finally succumbed to the genius of The Dan. I could have posted their entire first 4 LPs and Aja. So much pleasure, so many levels. Thank you Mr Becker.

Didier Bocquet - Eclipse

Another space synth jam that was unknown to me until I discovered it on the youtubes. It's another bewdy, this time from 70s France. Eclipse's tone is one of robotic gloom and dark solitude which becomes unforgivingly frosty. This might be the best of the recent interstellar discoveries on the blog which have included Anna Sjalv Tredje's Tussilago Fanfara and the previous post Hingus from Sven Grunberg. Get in your obsolete spacecraft to traverse the infinite void and disappear into Didier Bocquet's intense deep space trance.

Didier puts on his space hair before the voyage.

Sven Grünberg - Hingus

Been on a cosmic synth bender listening to a bunch of stuff Ive never checked out before despite these acts being on the peripheries of my cosmic radar like Clearlight, Automat, Dominique Guiot and Czeslaw Niemen (Thanks Hardly Baked). In the midst of this retro-futuristic space rabbit hole I came across Hingus, a 1981 LP from Estonia. I'd never heard of it before but this is a little classic of the aforementioned genre. It's great to know there's still a few things out there left to surprise and delight us all. Check out this epic space jam from Sven Grunberg.



This is the final track of the album which had me in intergalactic astonishment. Wow man.

Lanark Artefax

Gotta say I was very sceptical about this recently released tune. Thought it was a 90s IDM throwback....which it is really. By the end of the track though, a pleasantness creeps into the stark beats which had me transfixed.

I heard somewhere a while back that there was an IDM revival happening. Did it ever really go away? Anyway these guys must be a part of that. Whether or not they can get beyond Tri Repetae or LP5 I guess only time will tell.

Suburban Lawns

Their one great moment. If only all their stuff was this good.

The nostalgia for ye olde sharity blogs continues. I found the debut Suburban Lawns LP 10 years ago on a blog I used to frequent often but can't remember the name of now, I'm sure you can probably track down an mp3 or maybe it's been reissued since then.

Singer Su Tissue is an enigma with quite a fanboy following on the interweb. The discussions usually entail whether she is autistic or just an art school hipster and speculation as to what she is doing doing now. Her online presence is nil so this all adds to the mystery.

Ariel Pink - Feels Like Heaven

This washed away all the dark and negative vibes in my life today. Like when you loved a pop song when you were little. It's all about the 3 and a half minutes of bliss. Then you can play it again. The verses are a bit Morrissey-esque doncha think?

Upper Astral - Crystal Cave - Back To Atlantis

 

Here's some more Upper Astral. This is the A-side and fucking amazement, even my dog loves it! and he hates most new age usually because it has rain or thunder in it. Weirdly, this track occasionally dips into a little bit of darkness. So it's not all euphoric vistas that we think of as new age today. These were the early days of new age though. Skybirds and Journey To The Edge Of The Universe are the other two Upper Astral tapes that I would highly recommend. I'm sure I first heard those due to the Crystal Vibrations blog. New Age was never a bad word in my world though, I was introduced to this stuff when I was in my teens. There used to be a new age shop in every second Melbourne suburb in the early 90s as I recall. It was usually a creepy vibe in those shops. I hated all the other shit apart from the music though. Now I think I wish I'd bought some of the art, really? no not really. Maybe there are still some of these shops out there? I wouldn't know, I live in the middle of nowhere these days.

Anna Själv Tredje - Tussilago Fanfara

Discovered this vintage cosmic synth LP from Swedish duo Anna Sjalv Tredje the other day. Here it is in full on youtube. Tussilago Fanfara was released in 1977 on Silence, the legendary Swedish label. Berlin school electronics for the most part. The second track is tres spooky with its sinister whispers, foreboding washes of sound and black night tones of gloom. The final tune changes it up a bit with a Cluster/Ashra style jam. An underrated gem.

sleeve!

new age

This is the only part of Channel For The Light on the youtubes and the best bit isn't on it!

I've discovered a few new age related things on the interwebs since that post where I mentioned the Crystal Vibrations blog. Hidden Valley has been keeping the scented candle burning for old new age tapes on the blogosphere since CV became inactive in 2012. This dude is obsessed with the legendary Californian label Valley Of The Sun. Many of that label's classic catalogue of 80s tapes have been posted there, a couple of which i've not heard.

For those who need more there's a whole bunch of new agey stuff at the Sounds Of The Dawn blog too.





Upper Astral had an incredible run of tapes from 1981-1983.

Twin Peaks: The Songs So Far...

So nearly every episode of the new season of Twin Peaks has featured a song played live in the Bang Bang bar for the final credits sequence. Chromatics paid ethereal homage to Julee Cruise at the end of the first or second episode. The only other time I've heard this group was on the Drive soundtrack a couple of years ago. The tune in that film was pretty ordinary but Shadow's got a perfect vibe for Twin Peaks. When that synth swells up it gets very very lovely.



I've skipped ahead to episode 4 because the band at the end of episode 3 were fucking awful - the music and their hair! Anyway at the end of the 4th episode were Au Revoir Simone with Lark, which I really enjoyed. Is this the worst band name in the history? This group's been around for like 15 years. Can't quite put my finger on what is magic about this tune, just a beautiful classic melody I suppose. The keyboard player on the right is the star of the band with her Addicted To Love schtick.



I would never bother listening to Sharon Van Etten but Lynch made me sit through this slowcore country folk tune and I gotta say it was the best thing about episode six. That might not be saying much though as this instalment was the fucking pits and made me stop watching the new season for a month. I was later advised to keep checking out the new episodes which I eventually did.



A second appearance for this badly named synth trio. Like if 80s indie pop was informed by Stereolab and Broadcast. Backwards not possible pop.  Another lovely tune.



This is the lady who sang a Spanish a cappella version of Crying in Mulholland Drive which was amazing. This is a good vocal performance too if not quite as mind-blowing. Moby, who once sampled the original Twin Peaks soundtrack on his smash hit Go, is playing guitar with Rebekah Del Rio here at the end of tonight's episode.

*I've left out a couple of performances ie. NIN, Hudson Mowhawke etc. as they were underwhelming.

Great LP Covers II - Scientist

These first 3 got my vote as I actually own the albums but the bottom 3, which I've just discovered at discogs, are also the fabulous. There are some other great Scientist records like the Dub Landing series but those covers are not so great.

This put me in mind of an old comic from Britain Tiger & Scorcher. My older brother used to read it in the 70s. I remember it had motor racing, stunt men, wrestling, soccer and maybe it had boxing too. Cricket? Dunno...if only they'd invent a machine where I could instantly research such things.

This one might actually be the best of the lot. I wish I was at that contest! Just quietly I reckon Scientist would have won.

*Great LP Covers Part I