I was recently played a Kanye produced track on which Lil’ Wayne spits the lyrics “My ice is so albino white/ I hope your vagina tight”, and while it would perhaps be a slight to actual victims of sexual abuse to say that I felt like I had been raped, I did feel a small piece of me die. To be clear, I have no problem with the sexual nature of the comment, or with risqué content in general (I myself once told a joke so vulgar that a girl threw up in her mouth a bit), no, I felt violated by what I took as symbolic of the long and cruel death of nuance in modern r&b.
And while I did feel like assuming the fetal position in the shower until the water ran cold, I instead cleansed my soul with this easy ballad by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. Harold obviously knew something Lil’ Wayne never could, that the only truth in song lyrics comes by way of a well-told lie. It doesn’t take a genius to decipher the sexuality behind “You Know How to Make Me Feel So Good”, though it perhaps takes a certain caliber of woman to understand that the girls who went home with Harold after a show probably had a much better time than the ones who go home with Wayne.
While the radio royalties from “Careless Whisper” have kept George Michael and Andrew Ridgley in skimpy running shorts for the past couple of decades, “Everything She Wants” remains their crowning achievement as a duo. Released during the winter of 1985, the single’s impact was muted by the inclusion of “Last Christmas” on the flipside, which became the seasonal choice for disc jockeys and music television programmers. This unforgiving schedule also put them against supergroup Band Aid’s chart-topper “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, leaving Wham! with the dubious honor of having the biggest selling single to never reach number one.
A deep bass line and rich synths underscore the trials of man barely able to support his materialistic partner, eventually finding out that she is pregnant to boot; a convincing take on a situation the singer himself has almost certainly never experienced first hand.
An invitation to a house party presents an exhilarating dilemma. On one hand, you run the risk of entering what has been misdiagnosed as a house party but is actually a “gathering” which, like attempting to occupy a hostile Middle-Eastern country, can be uncommonly grueling and difficult to leave. Alternatively, there are those blessed nights when a perfect storm of people and substances gratefully consumes all in its path.
Beyond being an occasion to see Asian girls vomit offline, the house party is also a time honored way for cash strapped cats to keep the wolf from the door. The rent party’s that emerged in Harlem during the depression became a Petri-dish for the forthcoming “jazz age”, and a hotbed for social change. And well before that, an upstart profit named Jesus Christ would pack many a room with his ability to turn talcum powder into ketamine, which gained him an attentive audience that was willing to excuse his tendency to fly off the handle whenever someone knocked the decks, and for his constantly checking the bedrooms to make sure people weren’t fucking.
Like violence, innovation, and the inclination to laugh at the sight of someone else falling down, our party predilection remains a common link to our ancestors, forged by an inherent desire to witness the exquisite sight of girls dancing in the kitchen.
AFTA-1 – Love Suite 2 (Sit Still) Private – My Secret Lover (Diplo Remix) The Knife – You Make Me Like Charity The Orb – DDD (Original Mix) Sa Ra – Hollywood Playa – Ms. Parker Wu Tang Clan – It’s Yours (Instrumental) Audio Two – Top Billin’ (Instrumental) Manuel Tur feat Alexander East – Will Be Mine Owusu & Hannibal – What It’s About (DJ Tom Thump Extended) Woolfy vs. Projections – Absynth Lovelock – Don’t Turn Away (From My Love) Touch Sensitive – Body Stop The Kindness – Swinging Party Montell Jordan – Let’s Get It On Tonight Mewzic Monsterz – Champ The Heavy – How You Like Me Now? (Joker Remix) Riskotheque – Def Disco The Cool Kids feat Jahda – The Last Stretch Eagger & Stunn Gunn – Morder Dem (JSL Remix) DJ Assault – She Was X-Osborne – Our Definition of a Breakdown Hardrive – Deep Inside (Mr V Sole Channel Remix) 20 Fingers featuring Gillete – Short Dick Man Sagat – Funk Dat Dapayk Solo – Didn’t I Siopis – I’m On Miami Lee Curtiss – South Aphrika Ame Strong – Tout Est Bleu (Francois Kevorkian Remix) Ost & Kjex feat. Mung – Dirty Mind Felix Da Housecat – We All Wanna Be Prince Prince – Partyup Daft Punk – Teachers The Phenomenal Handclap Band – 15 to 20 Architecture In Helsinki – Do The Whirlwind (Yacht Remix) ESG – Insane (Tambourine Mix) Matias Aguayo – Rollerskate (Solomon Edit) Run, Stop, Restore & Click Box – Magic Juice Altz – Olympia Rocks Beastie Boys – Something’s Got to Give (Live in Sidney) Beastie Boys – Something’s Got to Give (Album Version) Chromeo – Night By Night (Skream Remix) 2000F & J Kamata – You Don’t Know What Love Is Burial – Fostercare Mount Kimbie – 50 Mile View
Finding ourselves in the last days of a decade that made its entrance with an exhilarating, if not somewhat misguided, electro resurgence, it can be disheartening to realize that much of the music has aged as unmercifully as the haircuts. Among the precious few that still hold their own is this standout single from Swayzak’s 2002 LP, Dirty Dancing.
This remix of their original collaboration by production duo Headgear (currently working separately as Circlesquare and Konrad Black captures the unselfconscious fun of the heyday of the electro years, while avoiding the excessive irony that permeated the scene by employing the same depth and restraint that propels each of the artists’ current work.
The song’s long running time is used effectively- an affected vocal set against a synth that would make Annie Lennox blush, sectioned off by a series deep and swaggering breakdowns. I once played this in a friend’s car, and the airbags deployed.
Noise rockers The Liars transplanted to Berlin to record their wonderfully complicated 2004 concept album Drum’s Not Dead, a move that no doubt accounts the gothic sentiment and krautrock flourishes that sets the piece apart from their earlier work. Starting with a set of songs conceived for an album that had since been abandoned, the band masterfully redrafted the work under a cryptic theme of moral duality, wistfully represented by two characters “Drum” and “Mr. Heart Attack”, allowing one to imagine an alternative universe where Dostoevsky wrote the Mr. Men series of children’s books.
On the curiously titled “It Fit When I Was a Kid”, calamitous drums accompany a falsetto narration of someone stalking, killing, and eventually burying someone once close to them. There are two kinds of mixtapes you can make for a woman, depending on the flavor of your desperation- one kind might feature acts like Marvin Gaye and Phoenix, perhaps with something touching written within the liner notes, this song is for the other kind.
Riffing over a beat by Ricardo Villalobos (who, for the uninitiated, is to the minimal scene what Tom Cruise is to the scientology scene), Spanish oddballs Los Updates offer what I assume to be the first and only techno song to address the current financial crisis, namely the consolidation of influence by investment banks and stock traders.
The economic thesis itself is little more than a pedestrian collage of the garden variety conspiracy theories widely held by YouTube journalists, yoga instructors, and people who live in New Hampshire, but one has to forgive that of a dance track, particularly when the diatribe is delivered with a cool drawl and broken English.
Ricardo Villalobos and Los Updates – Bank Brotherhood8:29 mins/ 320 kbps/ 18.9 MB
While the vocal style might give away the era, the production on this largely overlooked eighties soul swinger sounds astonishingly current. The husband and wife duo really knocked it out of the park with this one, and if they aren’t a household name it’s only because the rest of their catalogue is basically unlistenable, falling into the same trap as many an early eighties soul act by taking the wrong influences from the days of disco. If only they had just taken this as their formula- a deep bass synth set against lush vocal pads, they would have laid an even greater claim on a sound that prevails today.
Rene and Angela – I’ll Be Good7:26 mins/ 192 kbps/ 10.2 MB
Not to be mistaken with the American indie band of the same name, minimal house producer Le Loup uses his Parisian compatriot Pepe Bradock’s classic “Deep Burnt” as the basis for a backing track, upon which he pontificates on secrets like same-sex dreams, girls with crushes, and murderous thoughts. His secrets, we are told, keep him up at night, and make him secretly smile.
American Analog Set front man Andrew Kenny’s new project “The Wooden Birds” might lack the versatility of the band’s past work, but if the songs on the recently released Magnolia album do follow a formula, the result is still easy on the ears. The lowest points on the album are still very listenable, the highest points are well represented here.
According to some music historians, there was a point in our cultural history when “pop music” wasn’t a derogatory term, but rather a description of a music that, with a short running time and melodic hooks, had an engaging, if not universal, appeal. In the original spirit of the term, Aaron and Maria is a great pop song.
The people that work at Banana Republic like this as much as the ones that work at American Apparel. The hot girl you used to date who only owns OK Computer and The Mis-Education of Lauryn Hill likes this song as much as the less-hot girl you dated who has all those great Pixies outtakes on cassette. This song is not an acquired taste; it is chocolate ice cream, sunny days, and unrequited love.
American Analog Set – Aaron and Maria3:10 mins/ 192 kbps/4.36 MB
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