Get My Bleep On

Bay Area purveyors of quaalude disco, berlin bangers, & wacky crunk rejoice! One of my current favorite artists (and most frequently blarged about) is playing this Saturday at 222 Club in San Francisco -- Matt Edwards aka Radio Slave aka Rekid aka 1/2 of Quiet Village Project. As you might have guessed his DJ sets are as varied as his production work, as evinced by the link below (courtesy of Fact Magazine). There will be local support from Monty Luke & TK Disko. 222 Club is at 222 Hyde St @ Turk.

Stream Rekid's mix for Fact Magazine here

PAP INDOLGENCE

Timbaland's forthcoming artist album, Shock Value, has been mainly disappointing in my cursory listen today. Particularly the entire last 2/3 of it stinks (cringe-worthy duets with Fall Out Boy & She Wants Revenge especially). But there are a few moments early on worth hearing. Among them are lead single, "Give It To Me" with Justin Timberlake & Nelly Furtado -- the only real radio-play receiving banger I've been feelin' in the past few months -- and another only-in-the- Timbaland-production-book number, "Way I Are".

Think of it as "My Love" redux. The same gigantic trance-rays of death make an appearance, combined with cold exotic synths and an eminently mixable house beat. Kinda like the type of dark club music The Knife would make if they grew up in Miami instead of the icy Nordic. Here, if we could only replace the sorely predictable phrasing of R&B nobody Keri Hilson and "baybee-gurl" -isms of D.O.E. with Karin Dreijer and um... somebody hotter?!? then we'd all be in pop heaven. If I can find a instrumental, I will post it stat - you just get your producer friends ready to do some major surgery and resurrect this potential banger with an acapella worth the beat. In the mean time we can all eagerly await to hear what he does with Bjork...

Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson & D.O.E. - Way I Are


Also worth posting is another of Timbaland's recent productions from Young Jeezy's Thug Motivation 102, brilliantly showcasing both his continuing a) fascination with mouth percussion, and b) irreverence for using regular hi-hat sounds as predictable placards of time.

Young Jeezy feat. Timbaland - 3 A.M.

My Friday Crack

Helium-soul dubstep!!!

This track is a huge leap forward (or sidestep, depending on your take) for the restless versatile music of dubstep. No more sulking about in dank urban dens or catching the last tube to Elephant & Castle, this tune is aiming for the top of the pops comparatively from what the rest of the scene is producing. Love to hear where the vocal bit is sampled from. Bet if I was more familiar with British pop I'd already know. It sounds like it could be late 90's garage/two-step, or earlier from that same decade American r&b? Regardless, it challenges the whole eerie, off-kilter vibe that is becoming de rigeur in dubstep, and although it will probably be a one-off track leaving the general path unchanged, it is fucking beautiful for right now.

D1 - Mind & Soul


Another potential melding point/ breakthrough track is Burial's in-progress remix of "Wayfaring Stranger" by Jamie Woon.

Available on Burial's myspace

I was tipped off to this ditty (and indeed a good deal many others) by Kiran Sande's Fact Magazine column, The Contemporary Fix. Otherwise known as Mr. Soft, he runs an excellent blog by the name of TAPE, where if you have never been, I'd recommend staying away from there, it will make your tunes feel irrelevant.

Waited forever to hear this track, and finally it's here. It seems like you would need to start your own weekly newsletter to cover all of Carl Craig's activites as of late, but how can we complain? The C2 renanaissance has given us some uniformly superb remix work (except for maybe the choice of keeping the vocal bits for his take on X-Press 2's "Kill 100"?) and unlike some other top producers, never seems to depend on rehashing the same formula again and again. In the last few months he's put out stellar versions of tracks by Faze Action, Amp Fiddler, Japanese Synchro System, Lazy Fat People, and let's not forget to mention an unparalleded 2006. This one is no exception... oh, and the source material is no slouch either.

Junior Boys - Like A Child (Carl Craig Remix)

I've been out of the loop for a while, but after finally getting my hands on a Nintendo Wii such can be expected. Since school work is at a standstill, this week will hopefully be a return to shifting through the staggering amount of new music being released in these early months of what is looking to be a promising year. Until I get a grip on that, we will be digging back a few years for this next track, to a time just before Mr. Schwarz started getting his much deserved mad props and bloggers were jumping all over every single thing he touched.

Alex Smoke - Don't See The Point (Henrik Schwarz Vocal Mix) (2005)

And then going even further back, a leftfield disco oddity from pop reggae superstar Eddy Grant. My vinyl version comes on the b-Side to his biggest hit "Electric Avenue". When you hear this one I am sure you will agree it is near unbelievable that these two tracks are packaged together. This is the same guy who wrote "Walking On Sunshine"? It has an incredible cosmic feel to it without indulging in any of the familiar contrivances we are getting accustomed to from the buttload of disco neuvo and re-edits as of late. Listening to it now, the memorable vocal snippet surely influenced Metro Area's "Miura".

The Coach House Rhythm Section - Time Warp (1982)