Paper Money | A Mixtape by Raphael Dixon

Raphael Dixon is a broadcaster on Sydney’s FBi Radio. His show follows mine, which means that I always get the chance to listen to his selections when I’m hanging around the studio or I’m on the drive home. When I first heard that Raph was ostensibly presenting a hip hop show, my heart sank a little. There’s already an upfront hip hop show on the station (the perennial Stolen Records), and I remember thinking to myself, “do we really more of the same?”. And that’s when Raph pretty much blew my mind. His curation of sounds from the outer fringes of hip hop, includes innovative beat work and often radical production methodologies, but his real skill also comes to the fore in his ability to map that with other sounds, to cross-pollinate and thus recontextualise our often misplaced notions of what hip hop means in 2009. I hope this mixtape helps to add some critical mileage to Raph’s ongoing mission. Stuart Buchanan

“The genre of Hip-hop has a certain stigma attached to it, often rightly so. Personally, I have always been fascinated by the hip-hop sound and indeed it is the hip-hop sound that this mixtape explores. I say ‘hip-hop’, but I’m sure that there would be a lot of hip-hop  fans who would not enjoy this mixtape, moreover, I’m sure many a ‘purest’ would go so far as to call it “not hip-hop” (an insult of sorts in the hip-hop world). This mixtape is predominately instrumental, ranging from sample based downtempo works, to bassy, electronic, club-influenced glitch-hop.  The drums loops are often slightly wonky or glitchy, the samples brutally chopped or the basslines fuzzy. The idea is to strip down hip-hop to its basic form and rebuild it in a re-contextualised manner that critiques its mother genre. As the experimental hip-hop netlabel Error-Broadcast awkwardly, yet acurately describes it, the wonks, quirks and distortion is  “…the glitch that interferes with crept over mainstream Hip Hop, the increment of postmodernism”.

“Many thanks to the artists, I hope you enjoy their work as much as I do” Raph

DOWNLOAD: Paper Money | A Mixtape by Raphael Dixon (110 MB)

1. Ilz – Paper Monies (Discontent Mixtape Exclusive) [4:31]
2. Shlohmo – Socks (Error Broadcast) [3:23]
3. Bentone – Casual Recurrance (Unsigned) [4:00]
4. Swede:art x A-rec x Fuer.steps – Wonky Carz (Error Broadcast) [3:05]
5. Look Mom No Plans – Falling Apart Ft Ted Faley (Unsigned) [3:44]
6. Freddy Todd – LoFi Fiction Blaster (Unsigned) [4:36]
7. Black Moth Super Rainbow – Sun Lips (Graveface) [3:16]
8. WD4D – Have U? (Unsigned) [2:44]
9. Akira Kiteshi – Ulysses (An-Ten-Nae Presents…) [3:43]
10. Fever Ray – When I Grow Up (Bassnectar Remix) (Amorphous Music/Child’s Play) [4:13]
11. Blunt Instrument – Smashing Plates (Unsigned) [4:39]
12. Nasty Nasty – No Names (Unsigned) [3:31]
13. Eskmo – From The Standpoint (Demo) (Planet Mu) [2:13]
14. Black Era – Just Left Hand Left (A Quiet Bump) [3:54]
15. Claviq – Osika (Amenorea) [2:34]

Raph’s Blog: thegetby.blogspot.com

img: Jade Cantwell