Avid readers of the aQ list have no doubt noticed out new found obsession with 'jukin' and 'footwork', and the music that is the soundtrack to this new style of dance battling. We reviewed collections by DJ Nate and DJ Roc, both big names in a scene that most folks had never even heard of until recently, and masters of a sound that is equal parts twisted genius, and maddeningly repetitive insanity. It's easy to imagine this being the perfect music to get out there and dance your ass off, the manic music matching the speed of the frantically moving bodies, or vice versa, but removed from the dancefloor or street corner, the sound takes on a life of its own and has proven to very divisive. Most of us can't get enough, the looped repetition, the ridiculously relentless skitter and stutter, but some folks are driven totally batty after a matter of minute. But frankly, we just don't know what the heck is wrong with those folks. This stuff is totally brilliant, baffling, confusional, and weirdly funky and freaky and WAY far out.
This collection gathers up jams from the better known names in Footwork music, DJ Roc and Nate are both represented, but so are a whole legion of others, who take the sound of dance music and twist it all up, the formula being super intricate 808 beats, chopped and spliced and layered, into intricate mathy patterns, while snippets of soul songs are sped up and repeated over and over and over, bits of rapping, or fragments of a vocal line are also lifted, chopped and then looped, a variant of ghetto tech, the sound is so intense, and groovy, and funky, and in its own way psychedelic too.
From the weird low end synth stutter of DJ Rashad's "Teknitian", with its warbly sci-fi melodies and skeletal skitter, to Tha Pope's "Jungle Juke", which takes "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and speeds it up, loops it, and transforms it into a hiccupping avant soul groove, to DJ Spinn's "2020", which does sound strangely futuristic, and to these ears approximates Majeure or Zombi making Footwork music, to DJ Yung Tellum's creepy soundtracky "Freddy Vs. Jason", all the songs here rule, and are totally mesmerizing, and hypnotic, and weirdly impossibly addictive, and odds are you won't be able to resist either.
Here's the second volume in Planet Mu's Bangs & Works series of compilations focusing on Jukin' and footwork and the infuriatingly genius music that serves as the soundtrack to those new strains of dance battling. As we mentioned in the first volume, this stuff is maddeningly repetitive, so much so that when we play it in the store, it's usually another employee that ends up taking it off, but somehow, it always gets played, cuz most of us can't get enough.
The sound is loosely hip hop, but imagine hip hop if the initial loop was just repeated endlessly, the melody constantly recycling, all over a jittery skittery rhythm, while some snippet, sung, spoken or sampled, is also repeated, it's mesmerizing and trancelike, and its easy to just get lost and zone out completely, that is if you're not one of the people pulling their hair out.
But odds are if you're anything like (some of) us, this might just hit the spot, super minimal, hyper cyclical, circular electronica, that is dubby and housey, skittery and stuttery, groovy and funky, and yeah, crazily OCD. Check out the opener RP, Boo's "Heavy Heat", which takes the loop from Pharoahe Monch's "Simon Says"(which was sampled from Akira Ifukube's "Godzilla's Resurrection"), clips it and loops it and sets it on endless repeat. Under that loop there's a skeletal skitter, there's a weird samples bit of soundtrack, a soul vocal loop, and a couple other vocal snippets, but it's that awesomely maddening main loop that will get lodged in your brain FOREVER. Check out the sample, all it will take is a minute or two to figure out if it's your cup of maniacally repetitive tea or not. It's most definitely ours!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Believe it or not, there's now a tiny pub somewhere in Osaka where you can enjoy a beer and listen to nothing but noise music. They even have live shows every Sunday (when the neighboring establishments are closed). This cd collects a bunch of those performances for those of us who can afford a beer but not the flight to Osaka. It's mostly young, unknown (yet) noise artists, who have yet to make the pages of "Bananafish", such as New Mexico, Mutant, and Anglers - although the more notorious Solmania closes the disc with a fine, twelve minute guitar feedback contribution, and also Kevin Sharp of New York's Brutal Truth stops in for some screaming...
Continuing in Lo's series of today's electronic artist's selections of "classic" unheard music (the first being Luke Vibert's Nuggets), Add N to (X)'s Barry 7 scours the libraries of Chappell, Southern and PIL for some rare gems screaming to be heard. For
For those who devoured the first delightful volume of Barry 7's Connectors: Rare Italian Library Tracks, here's an entire second volume! A cornucopia of sonic frolics very much in the same spirit as Luke Vibert's Nuggets and many of the Crippled Dick Hot Wax compilations. Unfamiliar with any of those? Well then, strap on your seatbelt 'cause you're in for a treat! Over the top Euro kitsch, melodrama and campiness! So perfect if you're on the lookout for a diverse array of rather flamboyant theatrical music 'cause these tracks - originally catalogued for '60s and '70s television and radio production backing use - are overflowing with bontempi-esque organs, analog synthesizers, choral singers, and flutes! And four of them come from a gent named Ennio Morricone (very much of the delirously wonderful Danger Diabolik period). Curious who this Mr. Barry 7 is who wants you to hear the unheard music? Why, he's one third of that analog synth jammin' UK group Add N To (X) who clearly have drawn much inspiration from these works. Splendid!
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This is a Brazilian garage comp of 1960's 45's. It has covers of the classics that we know so well, if not a bit too well (My Generation, Paint It Black, Time wont let me, Daytripper, I Cant Get No Satisfaction), for the most part sung in Portuguese. In addition to the well known garage/rock n' roll hits, there are some songs I've never heard that were great. I liked them best. Brazilian garage, how rad is that. Oh and the boys on the back cover are foxes.
Basic Channel had a short existence, but was incredibly influential on the future of techno. Between 1993 and 1995, Basic Channel released 9 singles that infused the jack hammering acid tracks of Detroit Techno with the ghostly hiss that accumulated on Lee Perry's dub productions in the '70s. However, this was not the electronic dub of Pole or Kit Clayton, although both were obviously huge fans of Basic Channel. Rather, Basic Channel offered an hyper-abstract vision of techno that never sacrificed the integrity of the rhythm. Amidst the aersolized sounds, gray modulations, and purposefully murky timbres, the Basic Channel producers Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus (who would later go on to form Rhythm And Sound) always centered their work along the skeleton of a propulsive techno beat.
This Basic Channel compilation is now in its third pressing; the original came out in 1995 in a fittingly non-descript cardboard sleeve and later in the metal tin designs that were used for their later Chain Reaction series. This compiled the more ambient and abstract cuts on those singles. If you're looking for the heavier tracks from Chain Reaction on cd, the mix found on "Scion Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks" is unrelentingly good, but if you just want to bliss out and drift off and be narcoticized by throbbing pulses and fuzzy grit, you can't do much better than this.
Basic Channel began in 1993 and produced nine 12" singles of hyperminimal techno, with very little information on the labels, very little of what information there was being easily legible, and no real marketing campaign to speak of. If anything, the Basic Channel duo of Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald seemed to propagate the mystery of anonymity behind their project, aggravating rumors that Basic Channel productions were based out of Detroit (and possibly by Mad Mike of Underground Resistance) rather than their native Berlin. By 1993, both Berlin and Detroit had formed an unusual axis through their mutual appreciation for the other's techno sound, so such a claim wasn't impossible; but over time, Ernestus and Von Oswald had to fess up to authoring these singles. Between then and now, Basic Channel (the label) re-emerged as Chain Reaction which released works outside of the Ernestus / Von Oswald collaboration; and Basic Channel (the ensemble) transformed into Rhythm & Sound for an equally hypnotic form of hyper-minimal dub. As such, Basic Channel became something of a godhead with the techno mythology. They promoted an aesthetic that always worked on the dancefloor but never dated, and always sounded adventurous without being too weird. In other words, Basic Channel made perfect techno.
In 1995, the duo released their first cd, consisting of exclusive edits and remixes from a handful of those 12" singles, mostly highlighting their abstracted ambience highjacking the 808 rhythmic underpinnings. Some 13 years later, Basic Channel has finally unleashed a collection of complete tracks from those nine singles! Despite the full 80 minutes of music you get on this disc, there are only 6 tracks (each track well over 10 minutes); hopefully leaving the door open for future compendiums. But the chosen tracks are all corkers. Throbbing techno 4/4 beats cut through the clouds of accumulated metallic hiss, reverb, and delay which have all been processed in accordance with the percolated patterns of acid house electricity. Often times, Ernestus and Von Oswald set their electronics in cruise control, just letting a small squiggling refrain and walloping beat run before they tweak their arsenal of filter banks or slide in a high-hat in the mix. It's breathtakingly hypnotic and endlessly propulsive.
Along with the Gas 4cd box, this Basic Channel compilation is an absolutely essential techno album.
Oooh. A great dub/reggae comp always brightens our day. This one had us smiling all week. As the title indicates, it comes to us from Basic Replay, the reggae reissue subsidiary of Germany's Basic Channel techno label (shared with another great imprint, Honest Jon's of the UK), who are dedicated to bringing back crucial Jamaican jams (both hits and obscurities) that align with Basic Channel's dubby aesthetic, whether in the raw dub or digital dancehall genres... Over the past few years, they've brought out a bunch of great recordings from the '70s, '80s and '90s, and this is essentially an essential sampler of the label's releases, featuring 16 killer tracks from 13 artists, all of it (except for the White Mice and Keith Hudson cuts) on compact disc for the first time, as most of Basic Replay's releases have been 12" vinyl only. So now the turntable-impaired can get in on the action - or those who simply missed the 12"s. We should have been listing them all along, but didn't, though we have stocked a few in the store. This cd provides a convenient way to get with the program.
Straight out the gate, Basic Replay proves how fierce this can get with the machine gun mayhem of Ackie's catchy "Call Me Rambo". Tough indeed. The rest of the disc's sixteen tracks are put on notice, and rise to the occasion. It's all such solid stuff, ranging from uptempo bangers like Professor Grizzly's even catchier "Fight The Professor", to mellowed out, slinky soulful cuts like Ijahman Levi's "I Am A Levi" (parts 1 and 2)... There's laidback instrumentals with echoing percussive dub effects exploding like depth-charge distortion detonations (Tenastelin's "Burial Tonight Version") and blissed-out Spaghetti Western stylings with melodious vocals (keyboard king Jackie Mittoo's "Ayatollah") and tick-tock electronic Geiger counter beatscapes (Prince Jazzbo's "Replay Version") and all sorts of other treats that fans of dub and reggae (and probably dubstep too, even though that's not what's on here) ought to swoon over.
The other names on the comp we haven't yet mentioned: Chuck Turner, King Culture, Courtney Melody, Gregory Isaacs, Andrew Bees. We're not expert enough to explain how and why all these artists fit together historically and/or stylistically, maybe they don't, but the selections on this cd flow so nicely together. Superb, recommended!
Another new collection on the Latitude label (Locust's new international sublabel) takes us this time to the Chiapas region of Mexico. The tracks here were recorded between 1971 and 1974 by Richard Alderson (legendary sound engineer involved in recording Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, et al in the late sixties). Alderson, who had emigrated to Mexico, devoted his time to documenting the music of the Indians in the region. Along with beautiful trios of harp, guitar and violin there are intense, dare I say, rocking numbers with drums are horns, exploding fireworks (that sound like canons being fired) and some truly bizarre acappella vocal counterpoint. The guitars and harps here are particularly cool sounding. Most of them produce strange overtones such that they almost sound like electric instruments and on some songs, when there's an orchestra of the things playing at once, it's like as impressive as any wall of sound. The tunes here will have you alternately weeping in their beauty and gritting your teeth with their intensity. Originally released by Smithsonian Folkways in the seventies, all the tracks here have here been restored and digitally remastered by Alderson. Highly recommended!
Oh yeah! With so many great collections of golden-era soul/funk coming out in the last couple years chronicling the wonderful sounds that came out of scenes in different parts of the country and abroad it makes perfect sense that there should be some collections detailing the amazing soul & funk that came out of our very own backyard, right here in San Francisco and throughout the bay-area during the '60s and '70s. Like their great collection of soul & funk from Michigan on the Searching For Soul comp, Luv N' Haight have once again hit solid gold with a totally stellar collection of should have been big time hits that mostly slipped under the radar on a more national scale. From the heartbroken soul of Mary Love, the always reliable Sugar Pie DeSanto, the tripped out funk of San Francisco T.K.O.'s, the charismatic hip shaking sounds of Little Denise Stevenson and the gut wrenchingly gritty funk of Primevil, this collection is pretty much super solid from start to finish. We can't get enough of the raw good stuff, from a time when Soul & Funk was done so totally right. Fans of the Eccentric Soul series and of all vintage soul & funk, this is a definite must have!
It's not that much of a surprise that Graham Nash's first solo record Songs For Beginners is one of the influential touchstones on much of the latter day indie-folk scene. We said as much in our lengthy review of the original album a few years back, one of our favorite politically conscious folk-pop records from back when (it came out in '71). Recorded after the Hollies called it a day and CSN&Y were on hiatus, it's a perfect blend of soulsearching songwriting and brilliant pop songcraft while lashing out at the frustrating state of then current events, a state that sadly mirrors our own current political situation.
This tribute spearheaded by Graham Nash's daughter, Nile (who btw, also co-runs a cool shop called Gravel & Gold just around the corner from us), and the (((folkYEAH!))) folks who book all the cool shows and festivals in Big Sur, is a nice and loving gesture to the man's music, but doesn't move too far outside of the box in terms of stylistic interpretation or political urgency. Filled with interpretations by all the usual suspects of today's folk-pop scene: Papercuts, Vetiver, Alela Diane, Mariee Sioux, and The Moore Brothers among a few others, the biggest wildcards stylistically are Bonnie "Prince" Billy's Spanish take on "Simple Man" and Sleepy Sun's slightly heavier take on "Chicago". But it will take more than just a thoughtful tribute, no matter how well-intentioned, to equivocate a modern call to individual action against the powers of authority that the original record represented, and we need that more than ever right now.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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The Beta Bodega collective has issued this confusingly entitled compilation, officially called "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare" but our daft policy of qualifying titles as the biggest words on a cover will call this "Beans & Rice." Confusing titles and political agendas aside, this experimental electronica compilation features Jake Mandell, Takeshi Muto (Schematic), Datathief (Skam, V/VM), Goem, :leekon (Musik Aus Strom), and more taking on Cristian Vogel / Supercollider stylings of mutant house, dark UR / Skam electro grooviness, and microsonic squiggly laptoppery.
Latest musician curated compilation on Arthur Magazine's Bastet imprint. Curated this time around by Ethan Miller of Comets on Fire, it of course features songs from both CoF and Comets off-shoots Colossal Yes, Six Organs of Admittance, and August Born. But there is also lots of other new and old noisy and folky weirdness from Albert Ayler, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, Michael Yonkers, Ghost, and Brother JT among others. One of the most interesting tracks is by the mysterious Shit Spangled Banner, a band we couldn't find much information on because the page in the booklet is oddly missing (although a few AQ'ers have some old SSB tapes!). Beard, Bread & Bear's Prayers is of course equal parts noisy and folky, soft and harsh, given the penchants of Miller's musical dichotomy with Comet's noisy psych and seventies west coast rock. Sweet!
Like the freak circus entertainments of a bygone era, so too does this new B-Music compilation mine the fringe of far-flung female folk from the recent past and immediate present. Starting where the Folk Is A Four Letter Word comps left off, Bearded Ladies features many of the same B-music 'vixens' such as Wendy and Bonnie, Turid, Susan Christie, Selda, Heather Jones and Brigitte Fontaine joined by their more contemporary equivalents, Speck Mountain, Misty Dixon (Jane Weaver), Lights, Lispector, Emma Tricca, and Magpahi amongst others. Not as "Old Tymey" as the cover would suggest, Bearded Ladies excavates the rare individual artistry from pigeon-holed genre conventions as the contemporary artists are just as unfettered and original as the older artists, and not merely new retreads of folk motifs made popular in the last few years by Joanna Newsom and Cat Power. Another winner for B-Music. Ladyfolk lives!
Achtung! Remember a little while ago we were digging a various artists collection entitled Funky Frauleins? Which showcased the swinging female pop stars of Germany (East and West) circa 1968-1978, a super delightful go-go disco dance party platter auf Deutsch all right. Now, here's the sequel - or rather, the prequel, 'cause while Funky Frauleins contained a lot of '70s kitsch, this one goes back to the mid '60s, "when pop culture entered the innocent world of German popular chart music", giving this its "Beat meets Schlager!" tagline. 19 tracks dating from 1964-'68, by an assortment of artists that haven't been part of our education previously, including Brigitt, Joy and the Hit Kids, Marion, Inga, Dorthe, Conny Froboess, Pitty und ihre Beatchicks, and a dozen more.
They do dreamy orchestral pop, teenybop anthems, garagey groove, popsyke, and soul. There's a few German-language covers of familiar hits, including a wonderful interpretation of The Hollies' "Bus Stop", done here as "Er sah mich im Regen" by Monique and the Lions. Meanwhile the Jacob Sisters' "Was hab ich dir getan" you'll recognize as a Teutonic take on "Stop In the Name Of Love" by the Supremes!
Super fun stuff, that's been getting a lot of play here at AQ ever since it showed up. In the compilations competition, this one proves that while France had their "ye-ye girls", and Spain their "chicas", Germany's "beat frauleins" were also pretty darn groovy. But, being German, even at their most hip shaking, these ladies can still somehow sound kinda stern, which only adds to our enjoyment...
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
One of two amazing new compilations from Mississippi, along with the Sticks Over My Shoulder blues com found elsewhere on this week's list, there's Bed Of Pain, an amazing collection of Rembetika and Greek folk music, all culled from 78's (and never reissued on lp before) and representing a broad swath of Greek music, including tunes from before and after the 'golden age' of music making in Greece, as well as a handful of tracks from the Greek diaspora in the U.S., all linked by common themes, of hardship, escape and the quest for a better life.
It's hard to know how exactly to describe this stuff, other than to say we love it. Gorgeous male and female vocals, acoustic guitars and buzzing bouzouki melodies, bluesy ballads and wild gypsy folk jams, dances and marches, some mournful and moving, others dramatic and moody, and still others wild and celebratory. Even for folks not that well versed in Greek music, this is a treat, and will no doubt have you hunting for more.
Housed in a thick old school style tip on sleeve, with a printed set of liner notes inside, written by Ian Nagoski, who has curated some of our favorite comps: Black Mirror, Brass Pins & Match Heads, String Of Pearls, among others.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Been Here All My Days, the latest in Mississippi's incredible series of compilations, another blues comp, but in the hands of the curators at Mississippi, this is anything BUT just another blues comp.
We sometimes joke, that running a record store, and doing our weekly New Arrivals list is a lot like making mixtapes for a living, digging up cool sounds, and compiling them and then sharing them. We like to think we're pretty dang good at it by now, but the guys at Mississippi, they actually DO make mixtapes for a living, the only difference is that they dig through blues archives and old 78's, and then press their mixtape onto vinyl, much to our delight, and the delight of pretty much everyone we know. Which makes sense considering how great these mixes/compilations are. The perfect mix of long time favorites and total unknowns, of classic tracks and utter obscurities, but beyond that, Mississippi comps flow, one song into the next, whole sides, in some ways, after a few listens, it's hard to imagine these tracks came from other records, they sound so organic and perfect nestled there on that slab of wax.
As we mentioned above, Been Here All My Days is a compilation of old timey blues, and features a whole bunch of names you'll no doubt find familiar: Fred McDowell, Robert Johnson, Furry Lewis, Jesse Mae Hemphill, but a bunch you probably don't, Green Paschal, Precious Bryant, John Lee Ziegler...
All culled from an incredible collection of field recordings compiled by George Mitchell, a fan and field recordist, who travelled throughout the rural South, just like the Lomax's and a bevy of others, meeting folks, buying records, recording musicians on their porches, in their parlors, and as is stated in the liner notes. for Mitchell, it was all about the love of the music, not an expert in any way, his recordings are rough and raw, made on inferior equipment sure, but infused with warmth and life and vitality, due in no small part to the fact that Mitchell was a regular guy, and ended up befriending folks as much as chronicling their lives and sounds.
The basic sound here will no doubt be familiar to blues fans, but as always, it's the nuances and the characters that make the music here special, especially some of the lesser knowns, who totally impress and like with all great mix tapes, whose songs will have you hankering for and hunting down more more more.
The one thing we've noticed with the recent spate of Mississippi releases, is that finally they've seemed to abandon their mysterious barebones approach. Older releases had little in the way of liner notes, just a track listing and nothing else, but on Been Here All My Days, there are multiple inserts, a huge essay on George Martin, his life and history, as well as pages of notes on each of the tracks, and the artists, featuring notes from both the compilers and Mitchell himself. Fantastic stuff. And as always, WAY recommended!
This actually came out a few months ago, but the majority of the pressing was defective, so we've been waiting for the repressed vinyl to show up, and now it finally has!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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At "Beer Frame" editor Paul Lukas' behest, five indie-rock bands celebrate the wonders of the products near and dear to them...Men & Volts get to sing about the Brannock Device, Vehicle Flips provides an ode to the Honeywell Round Thermostat, and Nothing Painted Blue gives Miracle Thaw its musical due. Also, tracks by The Mountain Goats and The Scene Is Now...
Another fantastically curated collection of magical and mysterious and mostly unheard songs from Honest Jon's, these vintage recordings from East Africa, recorded between the years 1938 and 1957, and categorized as 'native records', in that this was music that was intended for sale to native Africans, not the white colonialists or various traders or laborers, and these recordings helped capture and preserve popular music, the various styles popular before the influence of imported sounds from abroad and various immigrants. These sounds were specific to various villages and represented many different languages and styles. The other cool thing about these performances, is that they were specifically by non professionals, since earning a living making music was nearly impossible, instead these were regular folks, who were often called upon to entertain, at weddings or parties, at markets or for various rituals. The liner notes, like all Honest Jon's liner notes, go into incredible detail, about the various styles of music, the difficulties in translating the languages, the musicians, the performances, the recording processes, it reads like a primer on East African music, and like it should be part of a college course, in fact, we often think smart schools would be snapping these guys up to teach courses in world music, but beyond the background, it's the sounds that count, and the sounds here are incredible, so strange and lovely and mysterious and at once warm and intimate and emotional and totally alien and fantastical.
The first track is the perfect example, a super hypnotic stretch of relentless vocalizing over a barely audible string melody, the sound distorted, the vocals more like testifying, it's not until the very end of the track where the vocals drop out that you can hear how strangely frantic the string playing really is. And from there on out, there's never a moment that's less that totally wonderfully lovely, whether the sound is super melodic and folky, or minimal and rhythmic, buzzy and droney, moody and emotional, we lack the vocabulary to truly describe these sounds, other to say that they move us, and that they're so absolutely beautiful, sometimes haunting and mournful, other times effusive and celebratory, always breathtaking.
The cd comes in a beautiful hardcover style book, with a massive booklet inside, filled with extensive liner notes and vintage photos. The vinyl version is spread out over two double lps, the first with the same title as the double cd contains all the music from the first disc, while the second, containing the music from the second disc, is titled Bellyachers, Listen!
Collection of dub tracks originally released on the Wordsound label. Those who are already familiar with Wordsound and the "Crooklyn" dub sound probably have most of the tracks found here, but this make an excellent introduction to the unique world of Wordsound. Includes tracks from Spectre, Slotek, The Weakener (Mick Harris), Bill Laswell, Dubadelic and much more.
The Tompkins Square Label focuses its spotlight locally on the next generation of Northern California acoustic guitarists -- Sean Smith, Matt Baldwin and Adam Snider. Hailing from Berkeley, where John Fahey's label Takoma was (as well as where Windham Hill first began to blossom), these three young and very talented players have been playing in local clubs and cafes for a few years now. Sean Smith, whose stunning debut on Isota we reviewed a few list back and was also featured on the second Imaginational Anthem compilation, is the "elder" of the group, while Baldwin and Snider have their recording debuts here. Lovely and melancholy with beautiful cover art by John Baizley of Baroness (which looks remarkably Pushead-like), this is a great introduction to the local acoustic guitar scene.
A few weeks back, we listed the CD & DVD set of Berlin Super 80 with the caveat that the set was strictly limited, with a second edition of the DVD to be made available shortly. Well, now there's a double LP set, which will be the only way to get the musical program from that aforementioned CD & DVD set. Of course vinyl goes out of print pretty quickly too... Here's what we wrote earlier:
In the late '70s and early '80s, Berlin developed a caustic community of avant-punk musicians, filmmakers, artists, and hangers-on, whose aesthetics of alienation, angst, bewildered ecstacy, terminal revulsion, etc. were certainly impacted by the wall that seperated their city. Einsturzende Neubauten is clearly the most respected export from this community; but it could be argued that Neubauten (or any of the original members from that once close-knit community, for that matter) haven't quite the compulsion to make the magnificently explosive music as they did when the Berlin Wall was still standing. While likeminded bands such as Malaria!, Die Todliche Doris, and Sprung Aus Den Wolken have been served well by recent reissues of their work from that time period, much of the accompanying visual ephemera (film, performance, painting, photography, etc.) has rarely been seen outside of its original context, barring a few exhibitions in art-spaces and festivals.
Fortunately, Berlin Super 80 offers an extraordinary glimpse into the community of existential expressionists who erupted in Berlin during the late '70s and early '80s. Neubauten, Doris, Malaria, and Sprung Aus Den Wolken offer some of their quintessentially great pieces. YThe discovery of previously unknown (although not unreleased) tracks from Mona Mur, Mono/45 UPM, Kosmonautentraum, and Flucht nach Vorn with their propulsive death-disco grooves and skeletal synthesizes make Berlin Super 80 well worth the price of admission.
Be warned, the 2LP is LIMITED to only 1000 copies!
In the late '70s and early '80s, Berlin developed a caustic community of avant-punk musicians, filmmakers, artists, and hangers-on, whose aesthetics of alienation, angst, bewildered ecstacy, terminal revulsion, etc. were certainly impacted by the wall that seperated their city. Einsturzende Neubauten is clearly the most respected export from this community; but it could be argued that Neubauten (or any of the original members from that once close-knit community, for that matter) haven't quite the compulsion to make the magnificently explosive music as they did when the Berlin Wall was still standing. While likeminded bands such as Malaria!, Die Todliche Doris, and Sprung Aus Den Wolken have been served well by recent reissues of their work from that time period, much of the accompanying visual ephemera (film, performance, painting, photography, etc.) has rarely been seen outside of its original context, barring a few exhibitions in art-spaces and festivals.
Fortunately, the Berlin Super 80 DVD & CD set offers an extraordinary glimpse into the community of existential expressionists who erupted in Berlin during the late '70s and early '80s. While many of the same themes work themselves out in both the films and music of Berlin Super 80, there is a greater emphasis on absurdist play and humor in the flickering Super 8 films than in the bleak screams against the sky of Blixa Bargeld and Gudrun Gut. George Marioth's un-planned set of accidents and anti-craftsmans approach to editting is amazingly clever, while Jorg Buttkereit (who later went on to infamy with his Nekromantic series of necrophliac splatter films) offers a sinister biopic of his father. Other film gems include Christoph Doring's cinema verite of his job as taxi driver in Berlin, Wolkenstein & Markgraf's hilarious jumping video, and the casutic montages from Notorische Reflexe.
As for the musical program, Neubauten, Doris, Malaria, and Sprung Aus Den Wolken offer some of their quintessentially great pieces. Yet like the DVD, the discovery of previously unknown (although not unreleased) tracks from Mona Mur, Mono/45 UPM, Kosmonautentraum, and Flucht nach Vorn with their propulsive death-disco grooves and skeletal synthesizes make Berlin Super 80 well worth the price tag.
Be warned, this version is LIMITED, as only the first batch comes with the book and the cd, the second edition is DVD only!
It's crass and laughably simple; but when done well, it's damn good. This is, of course, the current 'bootleg' phenomenon of plunderphonics which drops a hip-hop / top-40 club a capella track on top of a vastly different (but instantly recognizable) instrumental track, all the while perfectly matching both tracks' rhythms and sometimes harmonies. The origin of these culture jamming pisstakes can be traced back to the Evolutionary Control Committee's infamous "Whipped Cream Mixes" in which the a capella tracks from Public Enemy merge perfectly with the swingin' horn-y grooves of Herb Albert. The success of the ECC (aka Mark Gunderson) was principally based upon the lack of hi-tech gear, just two turntables and a mixer.
This import compilation - released on the anonymous No Label - features the current onslaught from likeminded DJs and MP3 wranglers lacing the vocals of one track with the instrumentals of another. While not all of the tracks on "The Best Bootlegs In The World Ever" live up to the compilation's name, about half of them do. The tracks that work best are the ones that manage to not only have the same rhythm, but also match chord progressions. The aforementioned ECC "Whipped Cream Mix" that spots PE's "Rebel Without A Pause" with the Tijuana Brass Band is simply perfect and is prominently featured on "The Best Bootlegs." Other gems include the Christina Aguilera / Strokes mix by Freelance Hellraiser, the Dead Kennedys / Destiny's Child mix by DJ French Bloke, the Girls On Top mix of TLC and Human League, the amazing fusion between The Cure's "Lovecats" and Missy Elliott's "One Minute Man" by Kurtis Rush, and the Sigur Ros / Celine Dion mix that justifies Aquarius' belief that Sigur Ros is nothing but Muzak fodder. Aside from a few duds and a couple more "Funk Soul Brothers" than were ever needed to sampled, this record is brilliant.
These have been really hard for us to track down, due to its odd popularity and its willfully underground distribution. So, when we run out of this... please don't be mad, we'll try to get more.
Smooth and mellow, crowd-pleasing electronica on Howie B's label.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
16 tracks from the soundtracks to the various Shaft movies, some material otherwise not easily available on cd. Isaac Hayes (with his classic theme of course), The Four Tops, Bernard Purdie & Johnny Pate all contribute.
Twist-A-Rama was a '60s teen talent show which broadcast in upstate New York. This compilation subtitled "Crude 1965 Garage Sounds From The Mohawk Valley: New York Garage Bands Vol. 1", is certainly packed full of the raw garage and surf sounds of the time, but is far from crude. Quite an impressive array of original songs from cleancut teen bands such as The Toffs, The Brix, and The Galaxies. Note: this cd was mastered from a mint copy of the LP which was released 35 years ago, and includes all the original liner notes... and surface noise. Yay!
A tribute to the Shaggs, what a weird idea. When I heard about this release I wondered if the bands on it were going to attempt to emulate the musical ineptness that was what made the Shaggs who they were, and if so, then why bother. Or would they turn the crazy songs by the Shaggs into their own style, which could be interesting. Thankfully it is the latter for the most part. Ida does a pretty, soft Ida-like version of "Philosophy Of The World". The Thinking Fellers do a great ethereal version of "Who Are Parents" and the best part is that they enunciate each word so the rad crazy lyrics are quite clear. I must admit there were some songs that bugged me like crazy, songs that were wacky and essentially just bad versions of bad songs, but without the demented innocence that made the Shaggs the Shaggs. But you know anything that reminds us how great and pure the Shaggs were is worthwhile in my book.
Specially priced cd sampler of three different Balinese music genres - Gamelan Jegog, Gamelan Semar Pegulingan, and Gender Wayang. Jegog is the relatively recently developed bamboo gamelan found mostly in West Bali. Absolutely stunning and LOUD, the aesthetic of Jegog is an attempt to recreate the tone and volume of gongs and metallophones with bamboo. Semar Pegulingan (so named after Semar, the god of love) is the gamelan that traditionally played outside the king's chamber in the afternoons and evenings while the king slept with the queen (think of it as make out music) back before the Dutch got their dirty paws all over Bali. Gender Wayang is the music which accompanies Balinese shadow puppet plays (Wayang Kulit.) Consisting of four gender - metallophones, each with ten flat bronze keys suspended over bamboo resonators - Gender Wayang is considered the most complex and technically difficult music in Bali.
Sometimes you just have to know when to say "No Corky!" and lift the needle from the record or press 'eject'. This compilation is one of those times. Hate to say it, but it seems ol' Crippled Dick have let us down this time with Between Or Beyond The Northern Lights. A shame considering how we've applauded and eagerly anticipated their ecclectic array of artists and compilations (including the super groovy, kitschful Pop-Shopping and Shake Sauvage collections as well as releases from Oxbow and Peter Thomas). Subtitled "Rare Fusion From Scandinavia 1967 -1978, this sort of sounds like the bland jazz you'd hear seeping out of the cocktail lounge of a '70s hotel. A bevy of poodling saxophones and muted trumpets, an occasional burp of analog synth, omnipresent tik-teeek-tik hihats, and tootily flute... you get the idea! Eck.
From the masters of dredging up obscure euro-pop and jazz, Crippled Dick Hot Wax takes you on a time warp behind the iron curtain to listen to late 60's & mid 70's jazz grooves -- mostly tracks from Poland and Czechoslovakia are represented here, though there
"Between Two Points" is yet another compilation of electronic glitches and lowercase music. Disc one is more rhythmic in its nature with morse code bleeps and rhythmic sine wave modulations from Noto, Taylor Deupree, Sogar, Mikael Stavostrand, Komet, Dan Abrams, Kim Cascone, and Vend. Disc two is barely there with Bernhard Gunter providing the most activity of sound amongst the
Please will somebody issue a moratorium on compilations as predictable as this one? I'll give you 20 bucks if you make it happen. Well, maybe just 10. But it's gotta happen.
While only one of us here has actually been to Turkey (that would be Allan, the lucky bastard), we'll all pretty obsessed with Turkish psych/prog/folk music for quite a while now, as is evidenced by the fact that we review pretty much everything we can get our hands on. Edip Akbayram, Erkin Koray, 3 Hur-El, Mogollar, Bulent, Selda as well as comps galore, Love Peace And Poetry, Turkish Delights, Hava Narghile, we just can't get enough. The one aspect of Turkish music we haven't really explored is 'club' music. Could be that we generally don't even like American club music, as none of us are or ever were really what you might consider clubkids. Or it could be that there was never any really comprehensive collection of Turkish club music. Probably a little of both.
But leave it to Germany's mighty Trikont label to set us straight. With such a big Turkish population in Germany, the Istanbul music scene has a following there too, and Trikont asked popular DJ Ipek Ipekcioglu to put this collection together. Underground Grooves Of Turkey covers a wide expanse of Turkish sounds, from straight up dance floor pop, to weird guitar heavy grooves, to dub and hip hop, and pretty much every stop in between. While the sound veers dramatically all over the sonic map, there are definitely aspects that seem to be present in most, if not all of these tracks. We hear LOTS of Bollywood music stylings. The more playful upbeat tracks, the ones with big beats, wild rhythms and strings all over the place, it's hard not to imagine huge big budget dance scenes, dancers twirling, epic and massive and WILD. The more low key, laid back tracks alternately remind us of Muslimgauze, Dead Can Dance, and Jaz Coleman and Anne Dudley's Middle Eastern themed Songs From The Victorious City released several years back. As well as obviously all of the vintage Turkish music we have been digging.
Every single one of these songs is totally unique in its own way, and distinctly Turkish, incorporating all manner of other sounds while managing to sound fresh and original. The first track on the comp, The Night Session's "La Mirage" had us at hello. Imagine 50 Cent's "In Da Club" with its loping laid back swagger, mashed up with haunting minor key, Eastern tinged strings, fluttering flutes and soaring Arabesque vocals. Pretty kick ass. Could definitely be a club hit here. Surprised this track hasn't already been snapped up by that whole Sounds Of The Asian underground scene. With a comp this varied, probably the best way to approach it is track by track. Worth it for the opening song alone, but the rest of the disc is dense and dizzyingly wonderful as well:
-- A soundscape of dense swirls of playful, festive Bollywood exuberance, with amazing vocals from Sivan Perwer, one of the most famous Kurdish vocalists, now living in Germany.
-- Cay Taylan from Vienna, doing a more modern take, a downtempo triphopped version of a traditional Turkish dance, with lots of strings, Eastern percussion, lots of spacey FX and some groovy dubbed out rhythms.
-- A super pop gem from Nil Karaibrahimgil. A mix of drum and bass and hip hop, a childlike rhyme about the weaknesses of men, a sort of Eastern version of the Spice Girls or M.I.A., kind of sassy, and playful, fun, and funky,
-- Baba Zula mixes traditional jazz with Eastern psychedelia, a heady swirl of dreamlike vocals, traditional percussion and melodies, and plenty of late night jazzy shuffle. Some of his past recordings were produced by Mad Professor!
-- Orient Expressions are from Istanbul and carry on the musical tradition of Alevites, a religious minority of Turkish Islam, with a track based on a Kurdish folk song, taking traditional religious music and giving it a dubby electronic makeover, with washed out atmospheres, lilting vocals and super laid back beats, almost like a much more Eastern Enigma or Dead Can Dance
-- Ayhan Sicimoglu is the first Latin musician in the Turkish music scene and offers up a bad ass dancehall jam, a stuttery funky beat over a buzzing kazoo-like melody played on a Zurna, a traditional Turkish folk instrument with just a hint of the dreaded Reggaeton sound (which sounds KILLER here)!
-- dZihan & Kamien are a Swiss / Bosnian duo from Vienna, who craft epic trip hop dubscapes of shuffling slithering rhythms, minor key strings, strange vocal snippets, all wrapped into super catchy laid back grooves.
-- Ceza is one of the biggest names in the still developing Turkish rap scene. He gets compared to Eminem all the time, cuz of his rapid fire flow and whiney voice, and that's not far off the mark. If you can imagine Eminem rapping IN TURKISH over a killer bed of swooping Bollywood strings, fuzzy bass, and skittery almost dancehall rhythms... Wow!
-- The music of Burhan Ocal is really hard to describe, VERY Bollywood sounding, epic and dense, lots of funky rhythms, strings soaring and stirring, elements of Turkish traditional folk music, and some really strange female vocals from Emal Sayin, "the dame of Turkish art-music". She has a strangely strangled sounding mewl that goes from guttural growl to throaty croon, all over super dense and complex string parts and skittery electronic drums. Cool!
-- Baba Cay unfurls a groovy laid back ambient chillout groove, a sort of blissed out R+B, a little hint of new age swoosh, and plenty of Turkish filigree BUT it's not sung in Turkish, instead he sings in a made up language a la Magma or the Ruins.
-- The band with the very un-Turkish sounding name of Brooklyn Funk Essentials are all about super festive party music, equal parts USA and Turkey, with elements of Klezmer, ska, acid jazz, funk and hip hop, a wild block party groove, with loads of horns, that go from ska bounce to dizzying Klezmer swirl in the blink of an eye. Almost like a Turkish / Klezmer version of Jurassic 5!
-- Burhan Ocal is a famous Turkish percussionist, who weaves an intricate percussive backdrop over which traditional instruments like saz and oud buzz and swirl, a droning gorgeous rhythmic ritual, simultaneously ancient and modern, near the end a drum kit kicks in and then it sounds like some modernized Zakir Hussein jam. So good. Very reminiscent of Muslimgauze.
-- Goksel is a modern Turkish pop singer, with a breathy passionate voice, very melodramatic, performing here some sort of displaced modern American pop ballad, filtered through a distinctly Eastern vibe, reverbed guitars and traditional percussion mixed into soft focus Turkish moody pop, with a slight Western (as in country and western) twang. Her voice actually sounds remarkably like Nina Persson from the Cardigans!
-- Replikas are a guitar heavy underground rock band, who have been written up in the Wire and have even worked with Sonic Youth (and downtown NY) producer Wharton Tiers. Big distorted guitars, pounding drums, driving rhythms, sprinkled with distinctly Turkish bits here and there, soaring vocal melodies, moody strings, all makes for a gorgeous and strangely affecting track...
Not sure how this fits in with the rest of these "underground grooves" but pretty cool nonetheless.
-- Finally, the last track comes from Taner Demiralp, a young conductor / composer who delivers an almost liturgical sounding piece based on a traditional poem, praising the sultans, composed in the style of court music from the Ottoman Empire, including the lyrics and vocals, which are sung and composed in a traditional style no longer in use. Gorgeous crooned melodies over mournful minor key strings, all over a shuffling stuttering electronic beat. creepy and quite beautiful.
Absolutely essential for fans of Turkish music, and anyone who loved any of the Turkish psych compilations we've listed in the past. And all you folks who dig stuff like Kruder And Dorfmeister, Tosca, Peace Orchestra, Kid Loco and the like and just might be open to something a little more exotic, might really dig this stuff.
Like all Trikont releases, Beyond Istanbul is packaged in a full color digipak, and includes a massive set of liner notes, with a history of modern Turkish music, notes on each song and artist, as well as lots of photos!
We know with the flood of calls and questions we got that lots of you have been really excited for this proto-hip-hop collection to finally arrive. While the recent New York Noise comps did a great job of taking us back to the heyday of the NY post-punk/noise scene, Big Apple Rappin' takes us to that same era in NYC but this time its the early exciting years of hip-hop culture that gets the oh so nice elaborate, thoughtful and tasty Soul Jazz treatment. It had been so hard to get hands on tracks by pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, T Ski Valley. The Jamaica Girls, etc. These are the sounds that would soon influence the next generation of hip-hop like Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Eric B & Rakim. Something so wonderful about how these sounds really do evoke such good feelings. Every time we play this in the store we notice how customers start tapping feet, then we see their necks start to move back and forth and next thing you know they are pretty much full on dancing. We've even caught some booty's shaking in the metal and experimental sections. So much of the early NYC Hip-Hop scene had such a great sense of freedom, you can hear a much more feminine touch in lots of these songs that would later be a little more scarce to find in the hip-hop scene. You can feel the influence that gay disco and the entire melting pot of NYC had on this exciting era of hip-hop as well. Wax collectors check this out on vinyl as the contents of the double cd can be had on two slabs of double vinyl split into two volumes.
We know with the flood of calls and questions we got that lots of you have been really excited for this proto-hip-hop collection to finally arrive. While the recent New York Noise comps did a great job of taking us back to the heyday of the NY post-punk/noise scene, Big Apple Rappin' takes us to that same era in NYC but this time its the early exciting years of hip-hop culture that gets the oh so nice elaborate, thoughtful and tasty Soul Jazz treatment. It had been so hard to get hands on tracks by pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, T Ski Valley. The Jamaica Girls, etc. These are the sounds that would soon influence the next generation of hip-hop like Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Eric B & Rakim. Something so wonderful about how these sounds really do evoke such good feelings. Every time we play this in the store we notice how customers start tapping feet, then we see their necks start to move back and forth and next thing you know they are pretty much full on dancing. We've even caught some booty's shaking in the metal and experimental sections. So much of the early NYC Hip-Hop scene had such a great sense of freedom, you can hear a much more feminine touch in lots of these songs that would later be a little more scarce to find in the hip-hop scene. You can feel the influence that gay disco and the entire melting pot of NYC had on this exciting era of hip-hop as well. Wax collectors check this out on vinyl as the contents of the double cd can be had on two slabs of double vinyl split into two volumes.
We know with the flood of calls and questions we got that lots of you have been really excited for this proto-hip-hop collection to finally arrive. While the recent New York Noise comps did a great job of taking us back to the heyday of the NY post-punk/noise scene, Big Apple Rappin' takes us to that same era in NYC but this time its the early exciting years of hip-hop culture that gets the oh so nice elaborate, thoughtful and tasty Soul Jazz treatment. It had been so hard to get hands on tracks by pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, T Ski Valley. The Jamaica Girls, etc. These are the sounds that would soon influence the next generation of hip-hop like Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Eric B & Rakim. Something so wonderful about how these sounds really do evoke such good feelings. Every time we play this in the store we notice how customers start tapping feet, then we see their necks start to move back and forth and next thing you know they are pretty much full on dancing. We've even caught some booty's shaking in the metal and experimental sections. So much of the early NYC Hip-Hop scene had such a great sense of freedom, you can hear a much more feminine touch in lots of these songs that would later be a little more scarce to find in the hip-hop scene. You can feel the influence that gay disco and the entire melting pot of NYC had on this exciting era of hip-hop as well. Wax collectors check this out on vinyl as the contents of the double cd can be had on two slabs of double vinyl split into two volumes.
Contemporary bluegrass star mandolinist Ricky Skaggs put together this tribute to Bill Monroe, the universally acknowledged father of bluegrass. While this record shouldn't substitute for a Monroe record in your collection, there are nonetheless several standout tracks worth the price of the disc, including Dolly Parton's verison of Cry, Cry Darlin' and songs sung by the Dixie Chicks (uh huh) and Charlie Daniels. Also appearing: Dwight Yoakam, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Travis Tritt, Patty Loveless, Bruce Hornsby. And Skaggs plays mandolin on every track!
Good old Greensleeves comes through with a brand new series of collections. Along with their Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems of 1999, 2000 & 2001, they've rolled back the tape 13 years to throw together a double disc (or two part double LP if that's your preference) of their top picks of chart topping dancehall tracks from the birth of the genre in 1979 to 1982. 40 tracks in all from some of the original heavyweights of the genre like Barrington Levy, Johnny Osbourne, Yellowman, Eek-A-Mouse, Michigan & Smiley, Dennis Brown, (old timer) John Holt, Don Carlos and much more. Being on the cusp of the advent of full-fledged digital studio dominance of the Jamaican recording industry, there's lots of steam roller bass lines, phasey-chorused guitars and the occaisional synth percussion hit.
We can't let this one go without a word about the cover. We're used to seeing dancehall collections with cheesy covers consisting of chicks in thongs, so we were kind of disappointed that Greensleeves backed out of an otherwise excellent cover photo for this one. A vintage snapshot of a stud posing in front of his Mercedes would be perfect save for Greensleeves' decision to plaster his body from neck to manhood with the album's title. Small grief we concede, but it had to be mentioned.
Good old Greensleeves comes through with a brand new series of collections. Along with their Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems of 1999, 2000 & 2001, they've rolled back the tape 13 years to throw together a double disc (or two part double LP if that's your preference) of their top picks of chart topping dancehall tracks from the birth of the genre in 1979 to 1982. 40 tracks in all from some of the original heavyweights of the genre like Barrington Levy, Johnny Osbourne, Yellowman, Eek-A-Mouse, Michigan & Smiley, Dennis Brown, (old timer) John Holt, Don Carlos and much more. Being on the cusp of the advent of full-fledged digital studio dominance of the Jamaican recording industry, there's lots of steam roller bass lines, phasey-chorused guitars and the occaisional synth percussion hit.
We can't let this one go without a word about the cover. We're used to seeing dancehall collections with cheesy covers consisting of chicks in thongs, so we were kind of disappointed that Greensleeves backed out of an otherwise excellent cover photo for this one. A vintage snapshot of a stud posing in front of his Mercedes would be perfect save for Greensleeves' decision to plaster his body from neck to manhood with the album's title. Small grief we concede, but it had to be mentioned.
Good old Greensleeves comes through with a brand new series of collections. Along with their Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems of 1999, 2000 & 2001, they've rolled back the tape 13 years to throw together a double disc (or two part double LP if that's your preference) of their top picks of chart topping dancehall tracks from the birth of the genre in 1979 to 1982. 40 tracks in all from some of the original heavyweights of the genre like Barrington Levy, Johnny Osbourne, Yellowman, Eek-A-Mouse, Michigan & Smiley, Dennis Brown, (old timer) John Holt, Don Carlos and much more. Being on the cusp of the advent of full-fledged digital studio dominance of the Jamaican recording industry, there's lots of steam roller bass lines, phasey-chorused guitars and the occaisional synth percussion hit.
We can't let this one go without a word about the cover. We're used to seeing dancehall collections with cheesy covers consisting of chicks in thongs, so we were kind of disappointed that Greensleeves backed out of an otherwise excellent cover photo for this one. A vintage snapshot of a stud posing in front of his Mercedes would be perfect save for Greensleeves' decision to plaster his body from neck to manhood with the album's title. Small grief we concede, but it had to be mentioned.
Budget minded double disc dancehall collections from Greensleeves which feature the label's top picks for the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. What with 40 tracks on each one, they're a bit of a mixed bag. But with contributions from the likes of Capleton, Ward 21, Elephant Man, Sizzla, Lexxus, Barrington Levy, Mr. Vegas, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Merciless and more, there's something for everyone here.
