This Is Book’s Music

Sade‘s long-awaited Soldier Of Love (Columbia) album will be released today, but if you want to have it on vinyl, you’ll have to wait two more weeks before you have it in your hands and on your turntables.

You can pre-order the LP from Amazon by clicking below. You will also get “digital code” so that you can download the album as MP3′s.

Meditative jazz comes in all forms, sometimes it’s too close to new age, while other times it could be the closest thing to an epiphany you’ve been looking for for most of your life. Roland P. Young‘s Istet Serenade (Em) is a bit closer to the latter.

Young plays the kind of jazz that sounds like it could have been an obscure soundtrack album from the late 60′s or early 70′s, imagine Pharoah Sanders teaming up with Vilayat Khan and you would enter the trippiness of the music found on this album. Its structure comes from it being abstract and tranquil, meditative because the listener has to allow themselves to simply float into the sounds that somehow feel distant through the thick wall of reverb and echo. If the first person you thought of was Paul Horn with his classic albums recorded in the Taj Mahaj, it’s a bit like that but instead of Horn looking to discover something, Young sounds like that thing has been found, and he is speaking with his inner consciousness, and together they have a dialogue. The sounds within are created with a saxophone, clarinets, kalimba, and various electronic ingredients, with the clarinet being played at times to where it might sound like a guitar. Young’s approach to the clarinet is not unlike Jeremiah Cymerman and his album In Memory Of The Labyrinth System (Tzadik), in that he plays it but it is not heard as you might expect.

What you can expect is to be taken places, mentally and if you’re in the right frame of mind, even physically. Albums like this move me because even though Young’s pieces sound very foreign, it’s as if you’ve been (t)here before. Istet Serenade is the sound of home, or the home you wish to end up in when your existence in this lifetime comes to a close. Moving.

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The buzz over the compact disc packaging of The Stimulus Package by Freeway & Jake One has been causing ripples on many hip-hop board and forums, making people realize that there’s still life in proper album packaging. I liked it, but of course being the vinyl junkie I am, I asked “HOW ABOUT THE LP VERSION?” Here’s the answer.

As you’ll see by the video, The Stimulus Package will be available as a 2-record set in a color gatefold cover, and the vinyl itself… aaah yeah. This will be a beaut.

Both the vinyl and CD versions of The Stimulus Package can be pre-ordered directly from Fifth Element, and if you order now, you’ll be automatically entered to win one of five 100 dollar cash prizes, and you’ll get a number of extra goodies too like free mixtapes, coupons, etc. Rhymesayers may be practicing quality packaging with their cash money, but they’re also giving away something in recession-conscious times. Now let’s see if the label helps stimulate the brain matter of other labels and artists to push their product in the same fashion.

I’ve been a fan of The Whitefield Brothers for awhile, and I love being able to zone out without having any images but the record spinning and the cover in front of me. But what happens when they happen to make a video? The visuals for “NTU/Safari Strut” looks like something Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow would put together, but sometimes the best videos have absolutely nothing to do with the music, and it works.

The song is from their Earthology album.

Sometimes I’ll listen to an album and go “what the hell were they thinking?” Lil’ Wayne has gigantic balls for being bold with doing a hard rock album full of auto-tune, but he also crosses the line between being an idiot and being a genius. I’m split over what crown he should be honored with.

I’ll give credit where credit is due, Rebirth (Cash Money/UniversalMotown) is a complete mess, but within that mess is Lil’ Wayne’s twisted idea of what works. Lil’ Wayne has become who has become in the last few years by understanding the limits, catering to his audiences, and twisting it by the sack because he can. It’s his version of hard rock, but more about the hard rock post-Nirvana than it is anything before. His attempt to be progressive works within the limits of his own world, taking hints of the eccentric talent of Andre 3000 but owing more to keeping Hollywood excited than Atlanta, or in his case New Orleans. It’s very far removed from anything Lil’ Wayne has done, but within the colostomy bag of sounds is someone who is cock sure of how to make these sounds work.

Case in point: “Ground Zero”, the third song on the album. With his hard rock backdrop he raps, and to me this works great. It’s not Mike Shinoda by any means, but he’s at his best when he’s rhyming while under the influence of who knows what he’s taking. For him though, what he rhymes/raps about can be turned into song, so he’s not afraid to talk about biting panties, metaphorically munching on female abdomen, or offering a middle finger to anyone who dares step up to him as he’s metaphorically munching on female abdomen. I don’t know if he’s serious or if this is the 21st century update of Bill Cosby‘s Hooray For The Salvation Army Band.

Musically and lyrically, it sounds like all of the cliches much of 90′s rock and hard rock has become, especially all of the metal/hip-hop hybrid bands that came out in the last 15 years. This isn’t to say that Lil’ Wayne can’t do it, because I think if he worked with the right people and made some decent songs, he would be viewed differently. Maybe he’s playing on that, he could care less about what rock, metal, or hip-hop critics think. This is the hybrid music Justin Timberlake warned us about. If Lil’ Wayne is having a laugh with this, it’s funny to listen to it from that perspective. If he’s serious… no, he can’t be. If he’s making music that he knows will be discussed, talked about, mocked, bashed, and in the end bought, he has done it again.

With Mary J. Blige covering Led Zeppelin for her forthcoming album, and this being Lil’ Wayne’s *first* (which to me means he promises more) hard rock album, all I can say is that The Roots need to save the day with their announced cover of Frank Zappa‘s “Peaches En Regalia” for their forthcoming LP, fast.

If you watched yesterday’s Super Bowl XLIV, you may have caught a commercial featuring The Who‘s “My Generation” but heard in a different fashion. The co-vocals in that mix was done by none other than will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. What you may not have known was that the song also featured guitarist Slash. While the new version is sure to upset purists, it was not bad at all.

The new mix, created by will.i.am with approval from The Who themselves, has now been released as an MP3. All proceeds will be going to the Oxfam America’s Haiti Earthquake Response Fund, a charity selected by will.i.am himself.

Joan Jett was “a part of the gang: in the early days of MTV, becoming a staple for the fledgling cable network to the point where Weird Al Yankovic would parody her with “I Love Rocky Road”. You loved her passion for the music, that aggression and attitude, and maybe you felt that was sexy. I still remember back when “world premiere videos” were an event, I wanted to see the video for “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)”. I dozed off, but when I woke up she flashed me. WHOA!

Anyway, one can easily have similar flashbacks or memories with her music, and with a new biopic about her and her time with The Runaways, people are realizing how much her music still holds up. She has compiled a greatest hits album with all of her great songs, including “I Love Rock’N'Roll”, “Crimson & Clover”, “Bad Reputation”, “I Hate Myself For Loving You”, “Light Of Day”, and three updated versions of Runaways songs, including “School Days”, “You Drive Me Wild”, and “Love Is Pain”. With luck, this greatest hits collection and the biopic will inspire a younger generation of girls and young women to pick up a guitar and become maybe not the next Joan Jett, but the next movement of ladies who will share an inspiration to rock out for the fuck of it.

Her Greatest Hits album will be released as a single CD and of course be made available through the digital networks, but you can now pre-order it as a 2-record set from Amazon.

While Germany’s Jazzanova gained a lot of attention for their combination of jazz, funk, soul, disco, and incredible production combining real instrumentation and samples. a group from Norway were turning heads with their brand of intense jazz with a so-called post-modern touch. They are Jaga Jazzist, and while their shared love of jazz and the letter J may be some of the few things they have in common, their sounds are very different from one another. Jaga Jazzist have become underground favorites for those who have discovered their music, but those in Norway know they weren’t always underground, since they were once signed with the Norwegian division of WEA/Warner Bros. Records. Their discography has been very healthy, with no plans as of yet to stop creating.

Now finding comfort with the good people at Ninja Tune, they’re ready to turn people inside out again with their first full-length album in five years, One Armed Bandit. It was released on January 25th, with a North American release set for February 23rd. Vinyl junkies will be proud to know that the album will be out as a 2-record set later this month, which you can pre-order through Insound (click link for details.)

The group are doing shows throughout Europe this year, no word yet on any shows outside of the continent but if and when there will be, I’ll let you know.

I’ve been a fan of hers since she was Isis within the X-Clan crew, and she’s still doing her thing years later, letting people know what she’s still about and what everyone has been missing on. This video has been out for about a month, so if you haven’t heard or forgot, get (re)acquainted.