some tunes from today’s fat planet. next week’s show celebrates ONE YEAR ON AIR [!], in tandem with FBi 94.5FM’s FIRST BIRTHDAY BASH.
DOKAKA [JAPAN]
rolling head three mp3
right now i’m listening to the new bjork album and it’s confounded my expectations. i’ll come clean right away and tell you i’m a huge admirer of her work (arguably to the point of obsession). ‘vespertine’ is undoubtedly a beautiful album, her most cohesive to date, although in that cohesion i felt it lost some of the excitement of her previous albums which veered radically in style from track to track – you were never quite sure where you would be taken next. when i heard that the new album would be mainly vocal with few – if any – instruments being used, i thought we’d be in the same waters, with a single tone or style dragged across the whole set. thankfully it’s not the case – ‘medulla’ puts us back in the territory where we’re bewildered and amazed at every turn. yes, the soaring tracks of the previous set are here (‘oceania’ being a great case in point), and while ‘who is it’ references much earlier beat-driven work, it’s the closing track ‘triumph of a heart’ that throws the challenge to any pretenders. with it’s insane beatbox stylings, i guarantee you’ll hear nothing like this all year. and the man behind some of those freestyle mouthcapades is japanese beatbox artist dokaka. his download page features a huge range of tracks – some fascinating, others just downright annoying. the above mp3 is one of the more listenable tracks, but his cover of ‘smells like teen spirit’ may well test your patience to the limit!
BEBEL GILBERTO [BRAZIL]
simplesmente mp3
[re-post] today i played back an interview i did with bebel recently – it was a bad phone connection which didn’t do us any favours in terms of the flow of the conversation. still, we muddled through, although you can’t really get a great deal of depth in a ten-minute interview interview. the above track is taken from bebel’s new self-titled second album which eschews electronica in favour of a more acoustic sound.
DISHTONE [CROATIA]
grand piano mp3
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GHETTO BOOTIES [CROATIA]
tominockers mp3
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NO NAME NO FAME [CROATIA]
winter poem for lost souls mp3
every week i play a ‘stopover’ section where i grab three songs from one country and play them back-to-back. the threesome this week all came from the same source – the egoboobits label, first drawn to my attention by no name no fame‘s mladen djikic. dishtone is a repost from last week, however the two other tracks are new to the blog. ghetto booties(above) are a female duo from zagreb who mix hard electro pop with gender politics, coming out in a zone not dissimilar to chicks on speed, although posessing a harder kick. they generally perform with laptops and are part of the gnu girl power lounge collective whose manifesto is based on the ‘equal sharing of work, clothes, cables, perfumes, lipstick, and open-source politics’ [site]. the no name no fame track is more downtempo than the previously posted ‘beuna vista fight club’ and is, once more, a stunning piece of work.
LADY SOVEREIGN [ENGLAND]
chi-ching (cheque 1,2) register for download
nme.com is giving you the chance to download this little beauty – you just need to register to grab it, but this will grant you access to more free mp3s from the site too. this is a great slice of uk garage, rammed full of disses, from an mc who clocks in at the ripe old age of 18. mike skinner (aka the streets) has apparently ‘made some beats’ for her.
WAYNE & WAX [US: MASSACHUSETS]
a it dat (dj c it dat) mp3
there plenty of information and free music to download on wayneandwax’s site. this track is taken from the album ‘boston jerk’ – music he wrote, apparently, to accompany a dissertation entitled ‘routes, rap, reggae: hearing the histories of reggae and hip-hop together’. don’t be fooled by the academic reference – ‘boston jerk’ is full of humour and is a smart north american take on the contemporary jamaican sound. this is being released through mashit – a label i only recently discovered and i felt very sorry that i hadn’t got there sooner! a mainstay of the label is boston’s dj c, purveryor of some damn fine breakcore. on his own site there is a huge collection of mp3s to download – i’ll be posting some of my favourites from this catalogue in the next week or so.
DNTEL [US: CALIFORNIA]
(this is) the dream of evan and chan (safety scissors spilled my drink mix) mp3
played a new track from dntel today – ‘don’t get your hopes up’ – which samples an old depeche mode song. i think the song is ‘but not tonight’ – the b-side to ‘stripped’. let’s hope that comes up on ‘who wants to be a millionaire’ for you very soon. the above track is a remix from 2001 and complements a previous post where i linked to a lali puna mix of the same track. life goes on in cycles…