This Is Book's Music

The last time I heard from El-P was with his Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3 project (my review of which was posted at Skyscraper Zine), but he has never been out of mind or hearing range. Or at least when it comes to El-P, his music has always been around in a sense, whether it’s a remix, a quick cameo or… again, it seems he’s always around musically but when news surfaces of a brand new album, people want to hear it. I want to hear it.

I was ready to post my review last week, but was told not to, I had to wait until the release day. I don’t understand why, I was ready to be one of a small handful to spark the buzz. I was not going to post the actual music, in fact, fans could already go to a number of places to hear a full stream of the album, so I asked myself: would my review hurt the potential of El-P’s album selling? Fuck no. I thought it was dumb, but I complied and waited. I don’t like to wait.

Cancer For Cure (Fat Possum)… well, look at the title first. Does this mean that things have changed, that the game (wahtever the game means to you) has flipped? Instead of us looking for a cure for a disease, we have to be diseased in order to come to some sense of better? Are we so deep in the muck that it’s going to take a lot of things dying off in order for us to realize what we didn’t know what we had until it’s gone? Next paragraph.

People know that El-P is always on some next level shit, and there was a time when a lot of rappers were celebrated for being “next level”, and that meant they were making music that felt good now, would sound great in five to ten years, but sounds like someone in an advanced world would create. Beyond present tense. El-P has basically decided to create music as if this was indeed the future, acknowledgment of the past, but it’s music being made for a dying world. A lot of things will be said about this album so I’ll try not to repeat what I think others might say. What I like about this is that the music sounds as twisted as music by Gangrene, Madlib, and Atmosphere, yet within the observation of that “next level”, El-P is also going back to the original ground level influences. You have that swagger, the attitude, the whole “I am articulate, I speak street slang, and I’ll be able to say something to you that you’re not going to be able to comprehend until you heard this song four times over.” This is an authentic hip-hop album that works on so many levels, from the lunacy of the sounds that for the most part sound unfamiliar (and if they are familiar, they’re simply making their presence known) to the verses, lines, and lyrics that you are visualizing as deeply as the music, both working together to create some twisted brain scenes.

Within all of the chaotic funkiness of Cancer For Cure is someone who makes an attempt to sing, or at least do some harmonizing that he is not fearful of doing, not unlike what Blueprint has done in the last few years. Someone will hear this and wonder if El-P is trying to to claim that Bieber “Baby” money for himself but in this context, it works. El-P has always strived to be himself, and in his own comfort zone, there is no shame with what he’s going, especially when it sounds really good.

When an album is made with an equal passion and devotion for lyrical and musical intensity, I’m feeling its beginnings, its middles, and squeezing its ends. Cancer For Cure may sound apocalyptic from the outside, but enter the album and you’re going to hear a unique sense of twisted beauty that has always been one of El-P’s trademarks.

California soul, right? It’s the place you oughta be, right? Well, if Playa Rae and Trey C had anything to do with it… nah, they are doing something with it, they made this song and now a video. Want to know what it’s like to be them? Never heard of these guys but you read this far into this entry and want to know what they’re about? They have put you in their bag and you’re going along for their ride. Buckle up.

Tom Kitty Oliver is a one-man project from Andrew Hamlet, who put together this 7-song cassette EP over the course of a year. Life On Loop is a title that could easily represent the cassette/analog-culture lifestyle, or perhaps a way to say that our lives can sometimes feel like a neverending tape loop, and it is our goal to break out of those loops every now and then, so that we do not simply exist within a vicious circle.

The first three songs are very lo-fi and sound like it was just recorded on a cassette deck, in a basement or closet, and whatever sounds Tom Kitty Oliver wanted to create, it went on tape, no questions asked. Just as things reach a level of murkiness, the midway point is celebrated with a nice burst of clarity with the nice sounding “Rowan Oak”, which sounds like him playing keyboards and an acoustic guitar with some maracas over a drum machine. Then as if by magic, it sounds like he has moved his instruments and microphone into the kitchen for a bit of morning glory.

The description for Life On Loop calls this music “the transcendence he seeks through the interplay of ritual and novelty”, and one can easily interpret it that way. It’s novel in that he sounds like he’s having fun creating these sounds, but the way Tom Kitty Oliver does it shows that this is not just a random assembly of sounds (although for all I know, one or two songs may have been done with the spirit of “fuck it, let’s see what happens”.) For Hamlet, his fans who know him for his work with Pressed And may find this a bit more “out there”, but my hope is that those who appreciate them for also being “out there” at times with their electronic trips will like Tom Kitty Oliver for his own trips too.

(The cassette for Life On Loop can be pre-ordered directly from Bandcamp, where you are also able to stream and listen to it in full, or buy the EP digitally.)

What I like about this video is that Hopie wants to share how she is inspired to write and create a song. She’s in bed rhyming and hoping to come up with some goods, but gets frustrated when she doesn’t. She might be driving in a car but they’ll have pen and paper nearby. Anyone who writes on a regular basis can relate to this, and what I like about this to is that it tends to break a few stereotypes in hip-hop, especially when it comes to women who rap. The song is great as is, it will definitely be something worth checking out that the clubs but is also work putting into rotation by supportive radio DJ’s. Place it in your ears and let the music take you higher.

Rob Zombie is the name of a forthcoming free album by Isaiah Toothtaker and Rapewolf, and what a way to make an impression with it: this video. “The Difference” is what, exactly? Compared to everyone else, a big difference.

On top of that, the lo-fi video was directed and edited by Isaiah Toothtaker himself. It’s very laid back visually but the song is on a nice mid-tempo groove. Consumption of substances before viewing this is optional.

Jurassic 5, DJ, turntablist, and fans of giggling who have been waiting for when DJ Nu-Mark would be dropping an album under his own name: the wait is almost over as Broken Sunlight will be making itself known very soon. This is a smack of what’s to come, a track featuring J-Live, M3 and Erica Dee and like much of what Nu-Mark has done over the years, this isn’t a bad thing at all.

To make it interesting, the album will be released on vinyl as a series of seven different, 2-song 10″ records, for a total of 14 songs. When all of the EP’s have been released, the album will then be made available on CD and digitally. For hard copy fanatics, the album will be released along with an instrumental companion, and a DVD that documents the making of the album along with live footage.

Teen Daze? He is a man from Vancouver, British Columbia, creating delicate pop music with electronics.

Music? All Of Us, Together (Lefse) is his debut album, which comes after years of releasing songs here and there, and now you are able to hear him go for the full length sounds.

Influences? The video is said to be taken from two different documentary films from the 1960′s, so that might be an indication. That might sound like someone who enjoys a lot of “inside time”, but he will be outside a lot this summer when you’ll see him live at a number of locales:

June 3 – San Diego, CA – Soda Bar ^
June 5 – Los Angeles, CA – The Virgil (ALBUM RELEASE SHOW) ^
June 6 – San Francisco, CA – The Rickshaw Stop ^
June 13 – Edmonton, AB – Wunderbar
June 14 – Saskatoon, SK – MoSo Fest
June 20 – Winnipeg, MB – The Lo Pub
June 22-23 – Calgary, AB – Sled Island Festival
July 3 – Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie #
July 4 – New Haven, CT – BAR Nightclub #
July 6 – Cambridge, MA – TT the Bears #
July 7 – Montreal, QC – Il Motore #
July 8 – Toronto, ON – Drake Hotel #
July 10 – Pittsburgh, PA – Billobox #
July 11 – Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop #
July 12 – Chicago, IL – Schuba’s Tavern #
July 13 – Detroit, MI – Majestic Café #
July 14 – Milwaukee, WI – The Cactus Club #
July 15 – Minneapolis. MN – 7th Street Entry #
July 17 – Denver, CO – The Hi-Dive #
July 18 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court #
July 19 – Boise, ID – Reef Boise #
July 22 – Vancouver, BC – Media Club #

^ = w/ The One AM Radio and Giraffage
# = w/ White Arrows and Beat Connection

The album will be released on June 5th. For vinyl and compact disc advocates, All Of Us, Together is available for pre-order from here, or you can pre-order them from Amazon with the boxes below.

For some American fans, this release may come as a bit of a shock, especially since Propaganda‘s music was not heavily pushed/promoted here. After the release of their debut album, A Secret Wish, Zang Toom Toom Records decided to put together what worked as a greatest hits EP consisting of the hit singles that had come from the album, put in a few album tracks, but created brand new music of everything so that even if you bought the 45, the 12″, and the cassette singles, there would still be something unique upon listening to it. The album was (perhaps) aptly called Wishful Thinking, as if the label was perhaps aware of what they were doing, but despite the marketing plan, the album did work on its own merits. It allowed Propaganda fans to hear their favorite song in a new way, and the production work made it possible to dig deeper into the mechanics of the machine. While the album was released in the U.S. in the late 1990′s, it was a bit after the fact and did not get much attention, if at all.

Over 25 years after its original release, ZTT have remastered it and are releasing it as a deluxe edition, complete with liner notes about the album along with previously unreleased material, as the ZTT vaultmasters continue to find delightful goodies.

Here is the official track listing for the deluxe edition of Wishful Thinking:
1. Abuse
2. Machined
3. Laughed
4. Loving
5. Jewelled
6. Loved
7. Abuse
8. Thought
9. Strength to Dream (Outtake 04.02.84)
10. p:Machinery (The Beta Wraparound)
11. The Murder of Love (Murderous Instrumental)
12. Dr Mabuse (Outtake 24.04.85)
13. Frozen Faces ( A Secret Sense of Rhythm)
14. p:Machinery (The Voiceless Beta Wraparound Edit)

The original album consisted of tracks 1-8 (with the instrumental “Thought” being a personal favorite), so even if you have the original CD pressing, you have some extra goodies to dive into. This deluxe edition will be released on June 12th.