ATP I'll Be Your Mirror, reviewed

Firstly, here’s three reasons ATP-run festivals are better than other festivals.

1. No more tents. Getting lashed and watching cool music is fun. Going back to a campsite after the bands have finished, probably in the dark and with the ground churned into five different kinds of crap by bad weather and foot traffic, and sleeping inside essentially an oversized Pac-a-Mac, probably with large rocks digging into your back, most likely surrounded by loud idiots, and running the risk of having your stuff stolen, or having someone even more wasted than you are piss on your tent in the night, fall into it and demolish it, or even set it on fire (all of these things I have seen at festivals)? Well, that’s not so much my idea of fun. ATP neatly sidesteps these problems by setting most of its festivals in Butlins, with chalets and microwaves and showers and proper beds. No longer do I have to live like an unenthusiastic Duke of Edinburgh participant for three days to watch some cool bands...

My review of ATP's recent I'll Be Your Mirror fest:

1. Features Company Flow, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Alan Moore and Stephen O'Malley, Foot Village, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Acoustic Ladyland, PJ Harvey, (MF) DOOM, and Portishead;
2. Begins with one of the most ridiculous run-on sentences i've ever written;
3. Is now up in two parts at Never Enough Notes. (part 1, part 2)

Pleasingly, Foot Village have already expressed their approval!

Hip Hop Hypedog compilation Vol. 1 out now

Repost from HHHD.

DOWNLOAD:
SENDSPACE // RAPIDSHARE

HIP HOP HYPE DOG COMPILATION - Volume 1
Release: 15th October 2009
Graphics: Sam Wightwick

After four successful months here at Hip Hop Hype Dog we wanted to celebrate the music surrounding the art form, so getting in touch with a few rappers/producers, we've created a compilation you can download for free.

This exists to showcase the artists and to give the public a musical taster of what we've been publishing on the blog, and what's happening now. The Compilation features 28 tracks, mostly British and a small seasoning of American, that we feel represent the positive direction that Hip Hop music is heading at the moment.

Send this round to your friends and spread the vibe, bump it in your car, drop it at your house party, pass around the word of Hype Dog. Come check the site for daily updates on all spheres in Hip Hop, and keep informed on the ever growing world of www.hiphophypedog.blogspot.com

Feel free to click its sibling site www.ukhiphopmixtapes.blogspot.com, a huge up and coming resource for sharing UK mix tapes.

New Sugababes: now with 100% less Sugababes!

So Keisha, the last remaining original Sugababe, has been sacked, leaving only Disproportionately Large Head Girl, Anonymous Session Singer #1 and Anonymous Session Singer #2 and effectively rendering them the Frankenstein of girl bands, a reanimated corpse stitched together from leftover body parts.

("They're like Sugababes FC", comments my 30KB co-conspirator J, correctly.)


Maybe, like someone on The Social Network for Short Attention Spans said (sorry, can't remember who), this is as good an opportunity as any for Keisha, Mutya and Siobhan to reform and tour as The Original Sugababes.

(edit > ah, actually, it was Simon Price.)


i can't stomach the thought of putting up Sugababes music on here no matter how relevant, so here's some vaguely thematically-connected material from the Juno soundtrack, Boris with Merzbow and DOOM instead.

mp3: Michael Cera/Ellen Page — "Anyone Else But You"
mp3: Boris with Merzbow — "Farewell"
mp3: DOOM — "That's That"

LJB April mixtape (Def Jux special)

Partly to celebrate the looong-awaited remastered reissue of one of the greatest rap albums ever, Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus, this month's mixtape is a slightly-less-than-CD-size compendium showcasing the musical brilliance of the Definitive Jux label, firm favourite of rap backpackers everywhere and this blog alike.

i primarily made it for my friend D. Frith, who isn't really familiar with Jux as his main preferences musically are nosebleed drum'n'bass and similar associated styles, but he was curious to get a flavour of The Jux Sound. If you're already familiar with their stuff then it's just a good selection of amateurishly-crossfaded DJX classics to bump in the car.¹

1. Company Flow - Simian Drugs (Feeling Ignorant) feat. Ill Bill
2. Cannibal Ox - Iron Galaxy
3. Aesop Rock - Battery
4. Breezely Brewin, Q-Unique, Godfather Don, J-Treds & MF DOOM - Fondle 'em Fossils (El-P remix)
5. El-P - Stepfather Factory
6. Camu Tao - Hold the Floor
7. Mr. Lif - Heavy Artillery
8. RJD2 - Bus Stop Biddies
9. Mr. Lif - Success feat. Aesop Rock
10. S.A. Smash - The Harvest
11. C-Rayz Walz - Elephant Guns
12. Despot - Homesickness
13. MURS - Walk Like a Man
14. Hangar 18 - Beatslope (Blockhead remix)
15. The Perceptionists - Memorial Day
16. Central Services - Jukie Skate Rock
17. Aesop Rock - Food, Clothes, Medicine
18. Cage - Good Morning NY feat. El-P, Matt Sweeney & James McNew of Yo La Tengo
19. Slow Suicide Stimulus - Say Cheese feat. Yak Ballz
20. Rob Sonic - The Over Under
21. El-P - No Kings

LISTEN/DOWNLOAD

Previously:

[january]|[february]|[march]²

¹ Full disclosure: i seem to have mislaid my copies of both DJXP3 and S.A Smash's Smashy Trashy. So the versions of "Homesickness" by Despot and Smash's "The Harvest" here are excerpted from other mixes by, respectively, DJ Big Wiz and DJ Shortrock.
² March just sort of went west, really.