You better stay aloof when the troops move/ the suicide booths soothe/ the who's who of looters shoot, the bullets go 'zoom, zoom'...
Holy shit there is new El-P music, from his forthcoming LP Cancer for Cure on Fat Possum.
This has the same tangible of event as when he previewed the unmixed "Tasmanian Pain Coaster" from ISWYD on Gilles Peterson's Radio 1 show, and "Drones Over BKLYN" lives up to expectations. Beat and rhymes alike are so damn tough, instantly recognisable but still stylistically progressing from his past work. On this evidence, the album should be another massive one.
Fuck, i'm not gonna describe it, just click "play" below and see for yourself. i think i'm on my tenth or eleventh play of the day so far.
i alluded to Song(s) of the Year in my Jacques Greene post the other day, and this is another of my definite contenders. i keep returning to "Intruder" over and over.
Apart from just being a great record, part of what's so fun about "Intruder" is just how many layers of détournement have gone into making it what it is. In case anyone doesn't know the provenance of the music in this song, here's a brief memeology.
First there was Antoine Dodson, who went viral in July last year after a shit-talking interview with his local TV station in which he warned his sister Kelly's attempted rapist what was coming to him.
Then The Gregory Brothers, apparently a country/soul group but pretty much known for their novelty "Auto-Tune the News" series of YouTube videos, caught wind of the musical cadences of Antoine's voice (and what Wikipedia calls his "flamboyant delivery") and autotuned parts of his and his Kelly's interview and exposition from the news anchor, into an R&B song, "Bed Intruder Song".
This went even more viral, getting to number 89 in the Billboard charts on iTunes downloads alone and racking up, so far, 86 million YouTube hits. Détourne 1: from bad news story to pop smash.1 Then other performers started to do their own versions, 2,500 of them by this time last year, ranging from rubbish (the singer out of Paramore and someone from kiddy-punks New Found Glory; the human sigh that is Dane Cook) to ace (Afua's bass-based snippet; the shamisen arrangement). Then there's this brilliant version by the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Marching Band. Détourne 2: from pop smash to parade-ground anthem.
It was probably inevitable that there'd end up being a rap interpolation of the theme, but we're lucky that it was done by someone with the skills of Isaiah Toothtaker and Wavves drummer Jacob Safari, who produced "Intruder", and that they recognised that the marching band's huge, powerful version was the best (to sample, or otherwise), and furthermore that all the song lacked was a tonne of skittering drum machines and an MC as charismatic as he is casually menacing.
Toothtaker's repurposing of the song as a snitches-get-stitches warning is détourne 3, from light-hearted YouTube meme (albeit excellently done) back to urgent street-level threat. This is only emphasised by an excellent split-screen video, in which Toothtaker's performance to camera is mixed with a creepy animation of a clenching and unclenching hand, and scenes of shootouts, car accidents, fist fights and bits of Mark Hejnar's 1996 film Affliction2 (particularly Turbo Tom's eye-gouging, and hilariously unhinged gun nut Full Force Frank) edited together by experimental filmmaker Walter Gross. And the cycle is complete, with the salvaging of something concretely decent from a shifting sea of memetics. It'd be interesting to know if Antoine Dodson, who was able to move his family out of the projects from his share of the "Bed Intruder Song" proceeds, has heard this, and if so what he made of it.
1 Although the questionable power relations of affluent white New York hipsters bolstering their rep off the back of the sincere anger of a wronged black housing project resident didn't go unnoticed. NYU music professor Jason King told NPR, "It has a really good hook, but it's problematic, too. There's a way in which the aesthetics of black poverty—the way they talk and they speak and they look — sort of becomes this fodder for humor without any interest in the context of the conditions in which people actually live", while comedian/Onion web editor Baratunde Thurston elaborated that "As the remix took off, I became increasingly uncomfortable with its separation from the underlying situation. A woman was sexually assaulted and her brother was rightfully upset. People online seemed to be laughing at him and not with him (because he wasn't laughing), as Dodson fulfilled multiple stereotypes in one short news segment. Watching the wider Web jump on this meme, all but forgetting why Dodson was upset, seemed like a form of ‘class tourism.’ Folks with no exposure to the projects could dip their toes into YouTube and get a taste." 2 Worth a watch if you're into mental underground/transgressive culture, but probably only once.
Been meaning to do a post about Xrin Arms (pron. "You're in Arms" or i guess "Urine Arms", if you like) for ages now, and the release of a new video for "Xr World", the first track to be released off his long-awaited Human Hallucinogen album, seems like a good time.
Xrin is the one-man project/alias of Anthony Vincent, originally from California but more often found spreading his caffeinated gospel all over the States on tour. He's also found the time to release over a dozen albums in the last few years, whether solo as Xrin Arms and Goldz Field, together with frequent collaborator p.Wrecks, or part of the group Heavy Barrelz with Wrecks and Guttah Face.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of XA for the uninitiated is his wildly contrasting musical styles: basically, you're either going to get swaggering, gritty hip-hop or ferocious, balls-out, electronic-inflected grindcore/digital rock, both of them topped off with Anthony's unmistakeable self-harmonising singing style. (i'm sure i've seen him explain the seemingly unusual mix of styles by saying it's like having two kids and loving them both equally, but i've forgotten where i saw this.)
Anyway, if "Xr World" is anything to go by, Human Hallucinogen seems like it's going to be great. An inscrutably beshaded Xrin drops rhymes to camera over a claustrophobic beat as slow and heavy as a hijacked steamroller. The accompanying p.Wrecks-edited video has unsettling images of desert skulls, cockfights, grainy porn slivers, crosses, sinister clowns and vomiting, which i think you'll agree is all you really need from a music video.
This is that proverbial "real shit" we're always hearing about.
Here, across two packed, intricate verses, Detroit native Invincibleshouts out everyone from dead homies Dilla and D12's Proof to "Strange Fruit" writer Abel Meeropol and murdered Black Panther deputy chair Fred Hampton, paraphrases a Frantz Fanon line, and claims to actually be Peter Gabriel at least a year or two before Lil B was running the "women want to sleep with me because i look like [prominent, unlikely public figure]" meme squarely into the ground.
Sorry if everybody else already knows about Invincible (who i really should have heard of before now; tho i suspect most people probably don't), and thanks to Dan Sonorous/Omnific Beats from 30KB for putting me onto her.
Ben Black outta Delusionists is in the running to get on a remix of Baby Blue's DaVinche-produced "Paper Haters", with a bit of luck and enough votes.
There's already a version with J2K, Ghetts and Scru Fizzer and a third will be out at the end of the month, with the MCs determined by number of votes. Delusionists say:
If he wins, it'll give us a huge opportunity to get our music to a wider audience (Baby Blue has worked with big names like Estelle, Sway and man-of-the-moment Wretch 32) so we'd really appreciate your support. All you have to do is go to the competition page and hit the big green vote button.
Oh, and you might want to watch the video too while you're there! You can vote once a day up until the 25th, and there's a share button on the page so you can encourage your mates to vote too. Not that we really, really want to win or anything... Whatever you can do, your support would be massively appreciated.
For ease of reference, here's Ben's verse. Frankly, i feel like it aces the competition just on the basis of the gleefully subversive fourth-wall-breaking pay-off "and the kids they love this sound, you're flippin' right i dumbed this down cuz... [i want the papers]", but there's like 14 more really good lines as well. Go vote.
i've heard it said a lot recently that with the impending demise of the traditional music industry, artists are having to think of ever more canny and inventive ways to market themselves, but this takes the biscuit.
He dials 999 before rapping to operators at Greater Manchester Police - who are not allowed to cut him off.
Despite officers blocking more than 60 SIM cards, the man has plagued them since January 2009.
Police said the man "has made thousands of calls where he chants, sings, raps, preaches and plays loud music to call handlers".
In the past three months he has made 700 calls, lasting between three and five minutes, slowing down the call handlers' response to other calls.
[...]
During many of the calls, the operator answers the phone to be met with a barrage of music and rants.
His rapping is difficult to decipher but during one call he started shouting about his citizen's rights.
"Not allowed to cut him off"? Genius! Maybe not the most receptive audience, emergency call handlers, but you never know. Probably beats setting up another MySpace, anyway.
Diss1 (me) and Dastardly from 30KB chatting some thoughts on flags, anthems, nationalism, etc. over "The Anthem" by ace Parisian beatmaker Onra.
"The Anthem", incidentally, was also remade to feature in a Coca-Cola ad for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, though their vision of global unity seems mainly to involve Yao Ming and LeBron James guiding a load of national stereotypes in a really half-arsed battle before toasting each other with soft drinks. Also, the version of the track they used is much inferior, because Onra hadn't cleared the samples from the original and thus they had a musicologist replay everything (by the end, nothing Onra actually did was left on the track). It just doesn't have the right bounce or swagger to it.
If you like the beat, try his 2007 album Chinoiseries, which is all made from sampled Vietnamese and Chinese records (Onra himself is of Vietnamese descent). This is probably the best track on it to these ears, although that's not to say the rest are slacking by any means.
If you like our group, you can check us at Bandcamp, Facebook, MySpace, etc. (Bandcamp is best for listening).
On a personal level, i have a great deal of affection for this one. Not sure why, particularly. The recurring presence of John Prescott is probably something to do with it.
["John Prescott"] *I can't help it, I'm a ladies' man. Now, who wants a punch?*
[diss1] We smash a silent prism. Rhythm fill up the schism. They got a warrant on this recidivist lyricism. i'm feeling sorta hyper. Somebody pass a lighter. i filter flowing through a tetrahydro- sorta cypher. Step to the stage, we *punch* like John Prescott. See for yourself just how much better the best got. Just try and keep the beat. Hold on to your receipt. Murder mystery weekend silencer, guest shot. [AcheZen Pains] A cool belated structure from disjunction as a tool, refuse it. Life lesson and rule: stop, look and listen to music. Cut the wacky sample, as a result you forfeit and lose this. Old school like pterodactyl, prehistoric tune abusers. We bring the new ish, the first thing on your wishlist. The last door to break the knocking hand of the last Jehovah's Witness. Picking the seams for indifference, it's gotta be somebody's business. A hobby tree of commodity, as ugly as you are ambitious. Will this mocking stop? Nah, it's gonna last forever. Spit a nasty fluid, evil like I got a mad vendetta. But you've got to get better because nobody likes your flows. Attack and make your lungs collapse through panic. That's the way it goes. When sober, drunk or stoned, grip tight to microphone, sniff the stuff I'm smoking will leave you with a bleeding nose. Don't get me wrong though, in case misunderstood: I am an artist, but I won't draw blood.
We take the stage and we soar
30,000 rise-to-the-occasions for the problems of keeping it raw
Careful with that thing when you're passin'... *Who's the microphone assassin?*
[AZP] Our lilt's a little lighter, Slim Pickens riding bombs. Flow like a "Beatslope" biter, warm-up phenomenon. Now what the hell's he on? We struck a light chord. For years we take from tears until it appears unclear what we fight for. I write more, that's lesson one from ampheta-metatron. Stomp cities like I'm Megalon, pity what I'm stepping on. The weapon's on, the weapon's aimed and with that grows the guessing game. Solutions for some second fame, we're shooting for a better day. [diss1] 30K is sort of like the new H5N1. Smartest guys in the room, more so than Enron, cuz when a plan go wrong it's not our names on the paper. Already ducked out the back door saying "see ya later!" Second-rate caterers savour lame shit, we on some future tip like "get these motherfucking snakes off my spaceship!" Eject 'em out the airlock. In space, nobody can hear you hiss... ultimate Dolby noise reduc for those who diss [*one!*] Tranquility shattered down to splinters. Style with the bile to turn your nuclear fams to nuclear winters, and when Chernobyl savages hunter/gather the wilderness for dinner i'll claim squatter's rights on the podium of the winner. Check it: back to the city's lights sober. In the overpass, spirits linger in the air like an odour of cheap perfume, piss and chip fat. And this town... is coming like Pripyat.
This one was a song-of-the-day last month, and now Delusionists have only gone and made a video for it! i also have a complete set of lyrics so you can peep the sheer amount of smart blog/website references in them while Ben, DBF and Slim Pickens guide you around the track in moody/arty black'n'white.
This rap shit Beats Laying About, so I had to take a minute dedicated a shout,
To every Hip Hop Connection Digital direction providers
Who act like a Sensei and guide us.
Through these Hip Hop Chronicles of Riddick like Vin Diesel U-Music buffs must have been puffing them Cocaine Blunts (just a quick toke), Hip Hop Isn’t Dead, nah it just eloped to the Big Smoke.
Believe the Hip Hop Hype Dog,
If you ain’t heard of us you ain’t checking for the right blog. Oh Word? You never heard the fly chatter
Of a Bonafide nutter on a Certified Banger?
My Style43 times nanger than most,
To redefine The Meaning of Dope rhyme patterns and quotes. The Underground Strikes Back from the great depression
With Bare Beats in them Basement Sessions.
You might hear one or 2DopeBoyz
No Airs N Graces and prone to make noise
Like “mate what you want!?!” Stay Blatantly Blunt
Pushing UKHH straight to the front (that’s us!).
Repping UK All Day,
Be careful ‘cause Life Just Bounces away
When you play with Vocal Swords that slaughter chumps,
Better Wake Your Daughter Up, if that bitch is sleeping.
Had to switch to a Different Kitchen,
‘Cause the raw Unkut left the kitchen reeking.
With something different to these drug-obsessed amateurs
And only push dope via Suspect Packages.
(Yeah) And the beat plays on
And we don’t stop rocking ‘til the DJ Gone (gone).
God willing we can make Top Billin’ Above Ground
Without dumbing down to a club sound. Strictly Independant, my brothers and me
And you can hit the button marked RWD
And you’ll agree that it’s wack, Nah Right, shit’s Fat Lace lyrics with links just to give love back
To all the digital connects.
Oh, and not only that, but should you fancy copping the album after hearing this (totally worth it i'd say), you can get 25% off the download of our album by using the code DIGIFAM at http://music.delusionists.co.uk.
Wherein AZP delivers incisive, meaningful lyrics about animal rights extremists, and i chat shit about breakfast foods for 16 bars. Contrary to popular belief, the misspelling in the title is deliberate, although no-one can really remember why.
[chorus: both plus Boron Tabernacle Choir]
30,000 Bastards...
[AcheZen Pains] Hold up! A prime cut from these 30,000 nuts. If you're allergic, watch us work your open mouth until it has to shut. Drinking from the cup with Super Saiyan spontaneity. In sync with linguistics, heaven sent like call me deity. May I? ["OUI!"] You can call us monastic: word play's the religion against the merit of rigid scholastics. Take Vs without asking on some premier robber tricks. Don't grasp what we giving? Go sit on the hat of Obelix. Now he's rocking it, it's ALL animal tested. i'm Pro-Test and PETA should have their bones dug up and sequestered. Direct the vets to the exits. Lack of a logic protecting this. Some of the scariest things in the world are the anti-vivisectionists. Now he's wrecking it! But all for medicinal purposes. Nurture this, unleash the worth as it dissipates from surfaces. A discourteous earful of self-destructive skirmishes. Playground thoughts and tactics with an abundance of worthlessness.
[chorus]
[diss1]Le passé est passé. Le présent est présent. L'avenir est à venir. And so we have another year to let the beat dangle off the precipice. i got to pay attention to my head and like that druid, get a fix. Don't bother trynna flavour porridge with them sweetener sticks, you'll just end up with a mess like waiting too long for Weetabix. Meet is what i like to eet yo, i want bacon by the rasher, black pudding and pork sausages after. Most important meal of the day: i leave space to eat rappers for afters with metaphors by the platter and apple sauce relish in my side dish. It's a delicacy. Don't believe me? Ask the chef: he'll say ["OUI!"]. i made the beat, and i'll make a meal too. The top of the food chain, enjoying the view. It's the feeding of the 30K, superfly catering. It's all art, no artificial flavouring.
[AcheZen Pains] Under the rock, a man snaps his own arm off with the precedent to end the gruel. Under the hammer, our ex-prime minister-slash-president plays the fool. What we've got here is a new reign of old fear, the irony of tyranny. It's all too cruel. Forget latter headlines with some imagery. Oh, you missed it? Go check YouTube. Too rude to tell me what to think, if you missed it click on another link to the brink of a meme over cryptic. Politics a trick and the voters went and missed it. Our death clocks reading 20:11, no time for dissatisfaction. Hands behind backs still holding a weapon, ejecting the world while nobody's strapped in. No joke delivered, here today and gone tomorrow when this country's built on smoke and mirrors and the crowd go "oh! the horror!" The media gets greedier, inbreeding facts mislead the mass until we cannot face the fact that we're the warhead-onists. Trick the readers to agree with gracious interveners - a theme of stopping screams, a clever twist for the supremacists. Making us believe that news writers aren't the terrorists. No distinction from the fact and fiction - are we getting this?
[chorus: either or both]
A kingdom full of doubting cuz it's not our vote they're counting
and now it's all over bar the shouting. ("Where's the exit?")
('Way before the metal detectors and barbed wire')
Can't see the trees for the forest fire ("What we left with?")
[diss1] Neat how the best fall. Peet lace the beat like Pulp Fiction adrenaline shot directly through the chest wall. This twisted little personal Hallelujah Chorus got us blowing up the road like driving Fallujah tourbus. Land of the barbed wire, car bomb and grenade, where they tear down the statues for the ticker-tape parade and you can die whether you're a hero or coward, and if the vote changed anything they wouldn't allow it. i subjected them to tests and found them lacking and some see it as just evolution's function. Tho as always, it depends on who you're asking. Dunno if Darwin was counting on mass destruction. When the beast beneath the surface came bursting through the cervix the John Hurt Alien nation discovered purpose, and it can only lead to an impending disaster. i'm in the carnival of horrors with demented ringmaster.
[chorus]
[AZP] As another channel changes with the banging of a different drum, commercial bursts of focus work on where we get our wisdom from. Lurking with the hopeless, working till it chokes us, difficult when the rhetorician brokers with the expositional. [d1] This track is like Runaway Mine Train freak decapitation, too bloody for your radio station. Beats make crowds frenzy like the crack of a whip. We can outstrip anything that you're travelling with. [AZP] Beauty's in the ear of the beholder and my ears, they burn volition. Listen to the deceit from the older cheap seats, Britain... truth is, duty's only skin deep, and these politicians got a skin condition when their sin speaks... [d1] ...when their sin speaks volumes like audiobooks. Tell stories with hooks, could leave your day spoiled like too many cooks. A 7% solution: instant brain intrusion. The track's fusion, hip-hop ain't noise pollution.
Cowboy anthem. Featuring Living Larceny who now goes by a different name and is a proper group member. Produced by Artikal-10 who goes by the same name and is also a proper member.
[diss1] 30K flow on some Wild North West script - more of a mystic tip than a Will Smith flick. Future mil sellers, never box office poison. When Artikal drops the beat, we bring the noise in. Cop siren synth make me wanna smoke up some George Lucas. The badlands are wired with computers. Mad losers lost to the thuggery. This is wild NW shit, the good, bad and ugg-er-ly. [Living Larceny] Oh! Heaven forbid we should try and live positive. Cuz north-west got me sick with its politics. No optimist, this is one you should miss off your tourbook. 30KB with that raw hook. Bad luck to see a place so desecrated. Addiction, most of the Wirral eradicated by Merseyside's finest. Rhymes full of metaphors, knowledge and the odd one-liners.
[chorus: all] Cuz this is how we do it in the North Wild West
Spitting raw shit till our very last breath
Beats by our side in case you haven't guessed
Streets of the blessed, just check the address
[AcheZen Pains] Rap this sipping on the juice of a cactus. North where your horse probably hasn't got a tax disc. Back in the throne of the brand of the underneath, cone in the hand full of high grade tumbleweed. Cowboys wanna kick off? Try and embarrass me. Warcry "HIP-HOP", scalping guaranteed. Savagery the stander of a wrangler attackin 'em. North wild west, mate - this mohawk ain't an accident. [LL] Larceny speaks diction with an outlaw mindframe. 23 years to my name, dope like John Wayne. El Mariachi! North-west Wirral apache, gingerbredraaan but you can't catch me. I'm way ahead of my time, way ahead of your crew (still at the starting line). Aren't even worth putting on my roster. North-western, that's why i keep my weed in my holster.
[chorus: all]
[d1] Heaven forbid we should try and live more than this. Call me Kowalski on some break-for-the-border shit. Cuz while some of these kids follow cosy trails, others carry more heat than Josey Wales. (It goes...) Once upon a time on the edge of a country, they nurtured a movement and called it funky, and when haters started hating when that shit took off, they said "this town ain't big enough for the both, so fuck off." [AZP] Unbidden I get vocal from my fear, yo. Many fiddling to a burning Rome like they Nero. Thirty thousand focal pointing at this local hero. Keep that ear low to the floor - I challenge you all to a draw. You can find me through the saloon door. Chop the bow and arrows with significant force and then try spitting some more. It's the magnificent four. It's not a wild guess, you know the wild west from the north.
The number refers to the fact that there was an earlier, demo, version. Give or take a few songs Jake (AcheZen) and East (producer Article 10) recorded together, this is pretty much the first thing we ever did.
[AcheZen Pains/Adbuster Keaton]A dedication to no one - an open letter to the broken we're stepping on. Smoke in my eye too close to the melting pot.Think some trouble bubbling, our weapon men are selling shots. Hell in box high blows. John Wayne syndrome with G.I. Joes. Think this action figure's lost, battling with eyes closed. Triggers cost written off less about the Toy Story, more than war upon our witness box, shocking awe and glory. Civil text next sold views faux origins. ("This is the news!") What headlines are we following? Borrowing horror themes no one should be honouring, no hovering. Our culture colour's Neopolitan. So why you looking bothered? We all share the same origins. Optimum humanist, new to this, offering objection. Don't tell us who's a risk without us asking any questions. Ride the insurrection with inner city bickering. Button's been pushed: countdown imminent. Crushed in the panic, bust warning light flickering. Burn up in the heated words, burnt because of bickering. A harsh realm rising, who are we to hide it? The subtleties of stating in debate we're undecided. Vitriol inside turns to people you're despising; blinding hate makes this toleracist island. i'm finding the blinkers blurring out such atrophy. It's raining on our cardboard canopy. Fuck the start war anywhere, any time attitude - that's not sanity.
[diss1]*{cheaper global warming now!}*
*{tax the ozone, not the motorist!}*
*{free dead Iraqi with every tank!}*
[AZP]{d1} No force unstoppable, topple down the core of it. When war's so profitable we're gonna see much more of it. Bored of them distorting it, swayed on bait assumptions. Everybody's talking, only few are saying something. Some reporting on reporting but we just keep walking. Placating easy targets that they think is rewarding. Resorting to a message like the rest to be bought out when they're only gonna say the words that they haven't thought out. A warcloud, thunder storm approaching, provoking, ignoring what's important when the record's broken. No choking (it's gone two bars). And while it's out, it's time to re-examine our scars. Vernacular, and reality beckons. Bite it in the bud and put the needle on the record. A wrecking to put the voices in check. How can any cause such damage while demanding the respect? Without our civil liberties there's nothing to protect. Is this on? {Direct.} Can you see me? {Yep.} Coming live from a time that we'll never forget.
[d1]{AZP}The toleracist is a term we apply to anyone who witnesses but turns a blind eye to the smear campaign waged daily by those with their fingers on the buttons of the media controls. Play to the gallery, establish a consensus. Take care you only ever prey on the defenceless. Afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted?{Is there a moral there somewhere?} - Know what? i think we missed it. Take the heat off themselves, so they rock a blame-shift to the people with no mouthpiece to clear their name with - refugees, Muslims, people on benefits. Credit where it's due, the scheme is one of rare elegance. It takes intelligence and a finely-honed bullshit detector to see past the lies they fed ya. Toleracist standard: deify Tony Martin, leave Satpal Ram to rot behind bars, no pardon. What's the problem, is Asian self-defence worse than a half-mad cracker with a shotgun? Laughable sentence thanks to expensive lawyers' word skill, then the press treat this dick like the new Churchill. Seems you've only got to kill someone to get glory... so let's flip the coin for the tail of the story. Sunday night, Satpal's in the curry house, trying to sit back, chill, eat some food, drive the worry out. Group of pissed white thugs wanna start shit - "six of us, one of you. Safe lads, easy target!" Braindead drunk fuckheads try and act manly, six on one with the brain in the fist. Rip shirts like "you won't like me when i'm angry!" Half a dozen of 'em make it hard to resist. Satpal's in his pocket, now he's packing a Stanley from the job that he took to provide for his family. Comes in handy: two cuts to the neck puts the pisshead off his balance, lays him down on the deck. Now the ambulance here, take 'em both to A&E. Attacker demonstrates again what a dick he can be: Satpal gets stitched up, goes home free; this guy abuses the staff and oulls out his IV like "i'm not getting treated by a female!" Fact that she was keeping him alive was the overlooked detail. System gave up when he went into shock like "i'm afraid we've lost him..." Now it's Ram in the dock, and it's self-defence on a charge of murder. A voice in the wilderness (nobody heard ya). Witness statements 'lost in translation'. Judge overseer run a tight plantation. Lack of patience from the same red tops run by white-collar criminals paying bent cops, cruising in their fly yachts round Hawai'ian sunspots. (*Richard Desmond* - preach morals, profit offa cumshots). Murdoch: your papers promote division to divert focus from your Stalinist revision. This isn't cynicism (so where's the WMD?) You tell me - they look cooked up previously Blue Peter style, anthrax and sticky-back plastic. Stick on the front page ("that's fantastic!") So the bovine masses swallow beef willingly. Lack of thought rots grey matter worse than BSE. But some of us are still not so easy to mislead... still don't believe everything that you read.
[AZP]Only fools and forces waste their times on opinions that save them the strength and expense of thinking. Enough is enough. Disruptive reluctance, take that giftwrapped bomb and admit it's destructive. Much of a much, corruption disgusts this Adbuster Keaton. Come hell or high water, i sense it's just a little bit of history repeating.
On the day an Indian court sentenced eight executives to rather pitiful sentences for the 1984 Bhopal Disaster, it seems relevant to air B. Dolan's calling-out of Union Carbide's CEO Warren Anderson, which even provides several addresses for Anderson should anyone wants to write to him and ask him what the fuck he's playing at.
The gas leak at Bhopal killed 2,259 people immediately, with the death toll ultimately rising to 3,787. Some estimate up to 25,000 have died as a result to date, and estimates for total exposure are up to 500,00.
Because of the time delay in bringing convictions, the maximum penalty for the seven living executives that were convicted1 is two years' imprisonment and a fine of about £1,500. Warren Anderson, meanwhile, fled India in 1984 after his initial arrest, and has therefore got away scot free with his part in history's worst industrial accident by just deciding he's not all that interested in being prosecuted. Which must be lovely for him. i'm sure Tony Hayward has already erected a small shrine to his chutzpah.
Thanks to the homieBuddy Peace, who mixed this track's parent CD, for the track hook-up.
1 The other one conveniently gets to serve his sentence in the afterlife.
High time i put up some more lyrics from the first 30KB album. This one's fairly self-explanatory really.
[diss1] This is not a haiku. i don't need elaborate rhyme schemes to say i don't like you.1 And this is not a protest song, just a chance to answer back to those who hate and deliberately get us wrong. Purposeful misinterpretation shows we got 'em so nervous they must devise lies and slanders to obscure our true purpose. But verses shatter curses: the sword's still less mighty than the mic. Cypher frenzy read the final rites to biter-friendly psyche. Stick that on your front page. Fight me? i might let you if you ask me nicely. Defiant bratty gladiator on some Karate Kid/kung fu death trip shit. That's my 'fuck you' prerequisite. Human Newton's third on some gross exaggeration station making haters wish their disses were retractable: that's laughable. Really thought they could step to us and not get smoked? I say:
[AcheZen Pains] This is not a tanka. i don't think i need five lines and 31 syllables just to call you a... *ahem* Taking the time to trample the lines and run 'em right into your face. Dancing the beat like Kelly, taking you out before you've said Grace. A tender heart, broke, ripped apart and rendered ruthless, fruitless juices, easy bruises take offence. i see your brain is useless and then we get off and leave you for dead. See, that's our destination. [ssssshhhhhhhhh] It's gone right over their head! Fun is made to poke with cheeky motive if it's easy to provoke it. Fuck 'em if they can take a joke. And did anyone here even notice the river they drank from is dry? My name is Intelligent Thought, you killed my father, prepare to die. DIY style, like my name is Inigo Montoya. Turn me into 3D, i'll still be Doctor Claw's destroyer. Like some cartoon bloke.
*{"Fuck 'em... if they can't take a joke"}*
[sample parade]
[d1] Round three! We leave the water parted when we sail through. Don't expect a reprieve because your sense of humour's failed you. When the beat kicks in you can't offend me. Already tap-danced straight past you like Fred Astaire crack frenzy. [AZ] Smoke green with envy, joker friendly, black and blue repainters. The jury have come to a verdict: *everybody hates yer!*... A confiding, just for your information... [d1] The house that you reside in's built on sand foundation. Big Bad Wolf, takedown. Never met a rule i didn't like (to break). If somebody says 'no' it usually shows you which way to take. [AZ] So we make and shake the brake and broke you all intentionally. Think this sample's out of time? It's – meant – to – be. Concede each day you're at a loss so mark it as a fixture. [d1] We strike twice before you can hit us once - cuz we predict yer. Now you caught a fierce diss and wanna come and try and suck up, well here's my word of advice to you, yeh?
Does the Australian guy at 1:38 really say "cuz I'm sat on the bench, trying to jizz in my booze"?
If not, what does he actually say?
If so, how does he then rhyme that with "I'm very big down under but my wife disagrees"?
Sage Francis has a new album, Li(f)e. The first single, "The Best of Times", has excitingly and improbably been playlisted by Radio 1 and made single of the week by Kiwi overenthusiast Zane Lowe, as well as gaining approving airplay from the hopefully-to-be-reprieved 6 Music and the like.
It's a magnificent, swooning song, with the hallmark tuned percussion and strings of composer Yann Tiersen (Amélie, Good Bye Lenin!) underscoring Francis' crushingly sincere tales of mortifying youthful awkwardness and ineptitude. At 2:41 it gives way to Tiersen's more forthright rock style and then keeps building up to almost impossibly climactic heights as SF seemingly lays bare all the embarrassments of his youth, at the same time reassuring the listener to essentially get through it, that it's much worse when you're there. i could have done with a lot more songs like that in my early teens.
And i'm not even meant to be writing about that track.
The focus today is actually album opener "Little Houdini", the story of Christopher Gay, career criminal and escape artist. Gay decided that prison would not stop him from visiting his dying parents for the last time, repeatedly breaking out and making his way home in a selection of stolen vehicles, including a Wal-Mart truck and Crystal Gayle's tourbus. (His third escape seems to have been just for the hell of it).
Francis relates that he first heard of Gay's escapology career in 2006, and decided to follow the story in the hope of writing something about him at some future point.
There wasn’t much press about this story at all. Nothing national at least, which I still find strange. I put together what details I could and used a few lines from the actual news stories. The original article said, “This is what country songs are made of.” I thought to myself, “Sure…but this is also what a rap song can be made of.”
Fittingly, "Little Houdini" (after the nickname Gay received from the media) ends up somewhere between the two genres, Francis' lyrics continuing the long storytelling traditions and outlaw focus of both ("I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"; "the cop got scared, the kid, he starts to figure,/ "I'll do years if I pull this trigger...""). The music, a collaboration with former Grandaddy man Jason Lytle, backs up the point, with lazily strummed guitar, droning violin/organ and a plaintive, distant sung vocal evoking the open road of the third verse, before it breaks into a propulsive 6/8 gallop of a rap.
The song celebrates Gay's spirit rather than excusing his crimes ("he knows what he done was wrong / but he knows his father don't got long"), but Francis mainly reserves his scorn for the armchair moralists who would condemn him: "y'all can turn up your noise / and suck on your teeth and wag your finger like 'tsk, tsk!' / but he had to take the risk".
And why not? Our mythology needs romantic anti-heroes, and personally i'd rather watch, e.g., Escape Artist: The Christopher Gay Story than Ridley Scott & Russell Crowe rehashing Robin Hood for the 35th time but with a boring new PoMo conceit.1
1 Having said which, i'd quite like to see Robin and the 7 Hoods, "a musical film set in 1930s gangster Chicago, with Frank Sinatra as "Robbo"."
Here's the Song of the Day for today, and most probably for the rest of the week too! Delusionists dropped a new album this Monday, Prolusion Plus, which as you can maybe gather is a boosted version of their previous smart 7-tracker The Prolusion.
Now with additional tracks, the odd alternate version and a couple of remixes, the EP has swelled to twelve tracks of UK dopeness. A proper review may well follow, but in the meantime check the awesome "Digital Connects", one of the aforementioned new tracks. Over a banger of a beat by Jon Phonics, Ben Black wordplays for dear life on the topic of the hottest spots to hang out online (hence the title, ya dig?) When i first heard it, i immediately thought "Tommy ain't my motherfuckin' boy...", not because i was having a multiple-personality crisis of confidence, but because the concept reminded me of the way GZA flipped the names of record labels on, erm, "Labels".
Two other awesome things about this track: firstly, the outro features a scratched sample of a yet-unreleased 30KB track which Mr. Black drops his fire on; and for seconds, this very blog is one of the ones namechecked in the song, rather awesomely ("be careful, cuz Life Just Bounces away..."). Apart from being a dope honour for yr humble writer, it also means i am finally succeeding (albeit indirectly) in my ambition of getting rappers to reference The Mighty Fall!
You can buy Prolusion Plus from Bandcamp for a paltry four quid, or a super-decent six for a real-life hactual CD. (The latter also had a cool-looking sticker, which has now been given pride of place on my newly-refurbished laptop.)
A song of the day is hardly an original blogging idea (especially when it's not quite daily), but i think it's still a pretty good one. This incarnation of this feature i have pretty much stolen from Everett True. i figure he'll either understand or he won't care or, more likely, he'll never see this anyway. The music taste is still mine, however.
Right then, a great place to kick off the feature is with a smart collision of worlds, noise meeting commerical hip-hop uptown in the shape of Aurist's remix of "RPM" by Shawnna featuring Ludacris and Twista, in which the noise musician and "all-round internet" basically puts the entire track in a massive blender and brutally interrupts it with what sounds like a vacuum cleaner sucking up a bag of rocks every few seconds.
It's quite ridiculously funny, and makes me think pop-rap/noise is a crossover with a very large potential. (i can't decide whose verse is funniest, though i think it might well be Luda). There should totally be full albums of this stuff.
The original is provided for comparison by way of YouTube video:
Holy shit there is new El-P music, from his forthcoming LP Cancer for Cure on Fat Possum.
