Oh hells yes, Phuturelabs, by far one of the finest blogs / netlabels around drops this cheeky slice of awesome from the unstoppable force that is Profisee. Featuring intellectual, spiritual flows backed by production from Poirer, Scharkz, Process Rebel and S-Type, this is five tracks of seriously high-quality hip-hop. Despite his popularity with dubstep acts like Akira Kiteshi, DFRNT and Starkey, there's a breadth of production styles that offer something for everyone, from grime to dancehall, via dubstep and crunk, showcasing Profisee's refusal to be pigeonholed by any genre.
As with other collabs, such as Dam Mantle's Magical, Profisee tends not to spit in recognisable 16s, circling back on rhymes, returning to refrains and losing himself in a whirlwind of repetition and reference. Despite this abstract, loose style, Prof still delivers powerful messages of self-belief, enlightenment and spirituality, referencing archaic mythology, apocalyptic imagery and pure kitchen sink realism. It's seriously good work from one of Scotland's finest MCs, with a collective of producers that ticks all the right boxes. Download the full file here PL004 - Profisee - Logans Run EP (wavs) - free download by Phuturelabs
New on monokrak, Ehn presents two tracks of minimal, warpy, screwed up techno that nods to the motor city, Sheffield and Berlin. Get these on the download right away.
Top Edinburgh download label Black Lantern Music is one year old this month, so to mark the occassion (and to plug their birthday party-cum-gig on Sunday) we sent founder Bram Gleiben, aka Texture, ten very special questions to get his gob around.
What?
The first birthday party for Black Lantern Music (www.blacklanternmusic.com), Edinburgh's premier netlabel and home of underground hip-hop, dubstep, electronica and experimental music. Who?
Fresh from destroying T-in-the-Park and supporting Sage Francis, special guests Stanley Odd (Circular Records) join the Black Lantern family for a riotous evening of homegrown hip-hop, bass music and electronica. We've got Morphamish, delivering a body-shaking set of live dubstep. We've got Eaters, one of Edinburgh's longest running and best-loved hip-hop bands, performing material from the acclaimed album 'Shouting At The Wind'. There's head-nodding, fat-as-fuck electro from Krowne, plus the explosive live debut of Asthmatic Astronaut and Harlequinade's new hip-hop / electro project, Church Of When The Shit Hits The Fan. The event is hosted by Chemical Poets spoken-word-burglars Tickle and Texture.
When?
Sunday 3rd October Two Thousand and Ten. We kick off at 7pm, and finish at 1am.
Where?
Henry's Cellar Bar, Morrison Street, Edinburgh. Which, incidentally, is the ancestral seat of Edinburgh hip-hop - the legendary basement bar where Penpushers, The Pesky Varmints, Scotland Yard Emcees, Finely Quaye and a whole host of classic Scottish hip-hop acts used to gig, back in the day... Yep, we're going back to the roots of this shit!
Why?
Well for a start, it's free before 11pm! I mean, you'd have to be a pretty boring bastard to turn down a free gig with six bands on a Sunday night, right? Also, it's our birthday! We're celebrating twelve months of Black Lantern Music, and 24 top-quality albums / EPs unleashed for you, the beautiful downloading public, absolutely free of charge!
How?
To quote George, "Free your mind, and your ass will follow."
Which?
Which band? Which style? Which beat? That's the beauty of it - you don't have to pick one! With so many top quality acts playing live, there will literally be something for everyone.
Could?
Could... you bring some friends? Absolutely! The more the merrier.
Would?
Yes, Black Lantern Music: We Are One will most definitely give you wood. Should?
Twin Lizard V.4 - Silent Britain EP Combining two of my favourite things, hip-hop and net audio, Twin Lizard have been honing their craft and reinventing themselves for more than a decade, emerging as an ever-changing and angrily political hydra-headed beast. Their current incarnation takes the leftfield UK style of Braintax, Mud Fam, Lowlife etal and splices it with hefty guitars, and to-the-point boom-bap. It's not reinventing the wheel or heralding a new dawn for MCing, but Twin Lizard spit intelligent and witty flows over faultless beats... Awesome.
I've always thought Braintax's most enduring line was "it's one for the treble, two for the floor, I'm Yorkshire to the bone, I don't copy New York", because it's a perfect statement of intent - a self-declaration that beats any big dick / car / gun bragging hands down. Twin Lizard do showboat, especially on opening track Statement of Intent, with Canadian counterpoint Daddy Lizard spitting that he's "decapitating hip-hop heads who don't believe / resuscitating breathless spirits who don't grieve / you motherfucking ringtone rappers need to leave", but for the most part, any braggadocios flows are handled with humour and intelligence. Like Lowlife's crew, TL spit in Lincoln accents about British subject matter and British politics, raging about the failings of British government on polemics like Introducing... Citizen Tat and Single Motherland. It's fiery, tight and maturely observed hip-hop that manages to suck you up into the production without losing sight of the message, or lapsing into pure linguistic trickery. This is some of the most impressive UK hip-hop I've heard in a while.
Twitter trawling yields netlabels. Here are some of my new favourites. Solida Netlabel.
Techno / house with funky stuff. 'Nuff Said.
Zymogen I've been listening to Nicholas Bergier and Simon Trottier's single-track EP The Market Fresh, which evolves at an almost tortuously slow pace - 20 minutes long and brimming with reverb and echo-work, it explores the density and beauty of every single sound, from rich sax tones, to the discordant string scrapes. It has a lot in common with the Radiation Line's doomscapes - seemingly Eno-esque "Wallpaper music", turn it off suddenly, and you realise how wrapped up in it you've become. Awesome stuff. Zymogen's remit covers indie, electronica, ambient and the associated fields, varying from putting out extended jams, to releasing more succinct song structures. It takes a little time to unlock all the beauties this label has to offer, as each release demands time, patience and attention, but the three releases I've been studying so far are pretty awesome. Dig.
AstorBell Right up my street: 15 releases in now, and I've only just picked up on what they do. Minimal, dark, experimental, and techno. Roughly summed up - it's twisty weird shit with wonky vocals, done in as many ways as you can imagine. I'm really enjoying Socket Science's Ephedra EP at the moment - just enough bounce and melody to grab you, but a playful feel for experimentation that makes up for nine minute wander-pieces. Def Leppard by DonnyKarson is great too - industrial, pseudo-Berghainisms collide with a far more misanthropic technoid mindstate. We are not the sleek chrome robots of the future, we are the lurching, clanking throwbacks dreaming of electric wolves in sheep's clothing. Monokrak Dub techno. Very dubby. Big spring-reverb wring-outs that shudder and return, minimal clicks and pops. Bass. The predilection for space and reverb has me hooked, as does the blurb on the site: "For those who are out of the music business, just because they are not a “good product”, there is another chance : netlabels. No more money in the affair, just music. The feeling to be free and to produce what or who you want is now a reality."
Broken Drum Records I've only listened to the Glidepath EP so far from this netlabel, but enjoy the fusion of two-step, Garage and Broken beat. Kung Fu Magic contains two of my favourite things - wobble bass and dubious chop-socky samples, whilst the title track kicks in with one of those euphoric string sections that should be cheesy, but backed by distorted snares and droney synths is actually pretty awesome. Plus, there's an obvious Shackleton / Muslimguaze influence in the use of poly-rhythmic ethnic percussion and instrumentation - it manages to pull this off without sounding worthy or dubiously middle-class. Will find more and get it up.
There you go, five new and gorgeous netlabels putting out great content for free. Use that magic button that computers have to receive a continual stream of music straight to your inbox. Support the CC cause.
Paul Reset's free dowload arm of Nerve continues to be a basshead's wet dream. Boy done good and dug out a free download from Kryptic Minds, who's stuff for Tectonic was pretty sweet, and who's album on Swamp 81 was damn fine too, Right click to download. This one's a dark beast, all slithery snares and sub-bass grinding through your system. It's quite niche, and demands a certain attitude to bass music, but it's hitting all my buttons. Dig it.
Man with a Mission, Chrissy Murderbot is aiming to make one mixtape a week for a year - he's at week 38, and has covered such niche genres as Classic Ragga Jungle, Bobby O, Booty Bass and Steppa's Reggae. Currently, he's going through Chicago House.
Each mixtape's preceded by a brief chat about the genre / style he's covering, The Ghettotech mixtape is particularly good.
Currently also enjoying free downloads from H.W. - A Year's Worth of Worry (right click) Lyrical, poetic, introspective hip-hop from Boston. Seems to be popular across the blogosphere / music sharing culture. Looking into his label Delusional at the moment, so expect a full review shortly.
I'm also digging the lazy slurtronica of Kember Norton, slow, meandering, unfinished pieces of ambience that gradually build emotional potency; something like Oren Ambarachi or Mum if they'd been raised on cider in the west country. Lovely dreamscape stuff. Direct download.
And there's more from DFRNT over at his website. Can this guy do no wrong? There's an awesome remix of Origin Unknown just gone up recently.
Cult-as-all-hell scottish D'n'B label Nerve recordings, headed by the mighty Paul Reset, also run a free download wing entitled Nerve Breaks. It is rather awesome. Most recent release, Ronin's The BattleDrums EP, is four wicked tracks of grand scale, genre-splicing turntablism that I've been running on repeat ever since I downloaded. Opener Quarantine, weaves back and forth between laid-back hip-hop and double-time drum and bass, managing to maintain smoked-out atmospherics, even when the percussion gets hectic. If You Fear Dying similarly balances between widescreen melodies and frenetic beats, sampling Zach DeLa Rocha to great effect. For all it's breaksy elements and double-timed percussion, Ronin's keen to state that it's as much a hip-hop record as his previous turntablist foray Best Laid Plans; "99% of it is still MPC work, filters & turntablism, its just used to different effect in parts." His ability to sample, dissasemble and rework is what gives the EP it's unique flavour - Ronin doesn't just play nine different varients on the amen break; he picks music from his roots (RATM / Deftones / Thom Yorke), and recontextualises them with modern sensibilities. Admittedly, if you didn't "get" My Own Summer the first time round, Ronin's retake will probably leave you cold, but for those who grew up screaming along to Chino Marino, it's bloody awesome.
Get it in yer boombox, and turn the monitors up full. Download here.
Happy Birthday Fresh Poulp! Five years they've been going, and good on them. Nice guys that they are, they've got the third in their Octopus series for free download. Dub, hip-hop and latin / folk influenced weird shit. Little Rock loves Fresh Poulp - Five more years!
It's fair to say that we rather like Black Lantern Music, the new 'net label launched by Harlequinade, Texture and Morphamish, not least for namechecking Little Rock as an influence. Nice one.
Brand new stuff from Tickle, Asthmatic Astronaut, Texture, all the Edinburgh hip-hop crew. Highly recommend the Asthmatic Astronaut/ Lifeshows EP Inbetween; right click to download I came across Asthmatic Astronaut on a Dejine Records compilation back in the Skinny days, and I've always been impressed by his productions.
Coming on like the bastard child of Boom Bip and Beat Butcher, it's wonky and weird. Nice.
I'm getting really into this guy's stuff. An Edinburgh-based producer who's debut album Metafiction dropped a couple of weeks back. Buy it here. We love his productions, and his dark, liquid style of tripped out electronic music, which might be deemed dubstep. He's got plenty of freebies over at dfrt.com, and on his soundcloud. This one's a remix of Steve Foulds' Gentle Seduction. Nice. Steve Foulds - Gentle Seduction (DFRNT Remix) by DFRNT
Scuba and N-type are just some of the names backing him, and you can check an exclusive album preview over on our relaunch show on radiomagnetic.com. DFRNT for Little Rock, streaming.
Dr. NoJoke, aka Bogdan has been due a write-up for quite some time. The guy's great chat, very wise about the politics and economics of music, the music industry, and business in general. As well as helping to organise the festival, he's been involved in converting an old squat in the Friedrichshain area of Berlin into a functioning housing project, supported by a real give-a-fuck attitude. It's given people the responsibility for their own home, freed from all the hoops we're forced to jump through by market laws, and it actually works. We stayed there two nights. We would return.
Unsurprisingly, late night blether lead onto music - he likes Monolake, and Pole, and has pretty much the entire ~scape back catalogue. You can see why I clicked with him. A nice man named Proeff has made a mix entirely of his tunes, and you can check it out here; All Dr Nojoke, all the time - think Vladislav Delay, Monolake, Marcel Dettman...
He also collaborates with J-Lab and Servando Bareirro under the guise TRIoon; an entirely improvised soundscape act. We've mention them before. Awesome. TRIoon jam sun041009-I by Dr.Nojoke
He put together an instillation for Berlin Net Audio called Berlin Wall of Sound, which was a digital map of the city, with triggerable field recordings from across former wall locations. High art, casual entertainment, and pretty damn cool. A lot of it appears in TRIoon.
Profisee - Logan's Run EP (Phuturelabs)
