The fight for diverse and conscious voices

I have a bunch of tabs that were set aside for me to write last week's "Alien Invasion" post. In case you're not one of those that reads comments (and why should you?) I wanted to start off by reposting a Burning Man set posted there by rednikki:

https://soundcloud.com/chrnik/chrnik-charlie-the-unicorn-burning-man-2015
CHRNIK's set has a lot of fun tracks in it, drawing heavily on 70s and 80s pop tunes that you will recognize. I'd love to get a setlist for this so I could find some of the individual tracks. It's generally light dance-house-pop mash style with no great highlights, but playing "spot the sample" is fun because really some of those bits are all but burned into my neural pathways. I suggest you listen all the way through at some point, if only to get to the updated "Poppa Was A Rolling Stone", which is hands-down my favorite Temptations track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gITEyN005qw&feature=youtu.be
Speaking of favorite tracks, I think I've already mentioned that I really like the new Abney Park (which landed early this month - you should order a copy). This here is their take on "Minnie the Moocher", a Cab Calloway classic. Back in the day I was deeply indebted to John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd for bringing Cab back to the screen to do this track in Blue's Brothers. Nowadays you can find restored versions of original performances on YouTube and I recommend you do so. Abney Park doesn't have the scat vocals or Cab's voice but they do a decent job, particularly with the horn parts. It was written as a big band tune and that sound is hard to get with modern smaller groups.

https://soundcloud.com/pieeyedpiper/one-more-telephone-lady-gaga-vs-maroon-5
Returning to mash-up land, we have someone going as The PieEyedPiper doing a standard but fun A|B mash between Gaga's "Telephone" and Maroon 5's "One More Night." I am reasonably fond of both source tracks and I think the mash improves on both in a couple ways, which is what I look for in most A|B's.

https://soundcloud.com/hotelgarudamusic/kiiara-feels-hotel-garuda-remix-1
https://soundcloud.com/kiiaraonline/feels
Hotel Garuda brings us their mix of kiiara's "Feels". I had not noticed the original though now that I've listened to it I'm pretty sure I've heard it sampled here and there in the past couple months. kiiara's voice is ideally suited to this kind of gentle in-your-ear sound. She's half-singing, half-rapping about emotion and the melancholy of her voice covers a lot. Unfortunately the track is pretty highly produced - an acoustic of this would be amazing. There are a ton of mixes out there you can listen to; I picked the Garuda version in part because of the way it strips down and downplays the dense production sound of the original and lets her voice carry more of the track. Where the remix falls down, imo, is in the middle where there's a lot of excess electronica shoved in. It feels forced and it's a relief when that drops out for the second half.

https://soundcloud.com/ghettofunk/megan-hamilton-the-bermudas-revolution
https://ghettofunk.bandcamp.com/album/ghetto-funk-presents-megan-hamilton-the-bermudas-gfpd22
It's been a bit since I posted some funk for your enjoyment so here let's start with "Revolution" from Megan Hamilton & The Bermudas. This one is a lovely throwback to 60's and 70's styles but updated and sped up to modern club speeds. I have to mention that if you go to the second link you can get the entire EP at whatever price you want to pay, which is just an absolute steal. I love the fast-rapping vocals and the phat horns and I hope you will, too.

https://soundcloud.com/bodyheatmusic/msystem-workout
Msystem returns with another extremely electro-funky tech-house track. "Workout" is definitely pitched at the high-BPM crowd, which is just fine if you want to get up and move, or do a little (ok a lot of) chair dancing. As with so many of these things my biggest complaint is that the track is too short.

Oh holy cow have I got music for you. I'll break it up into more consumable chunks. Some new things from known names, and I've been unpacking the Dzeko & Torres EDM mega-sampler I linked to a few weeks ago. Let's start with the new and the unusual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6V_jP0sX04&feature=youtu.be
It's been a while since I linked to anything from steampunk music idols Abney Park. The band has gone through a couple of minor line-up changes and their material has wandered through sea shanties and more circus styling both of which were OK but I didn't think they were really noteworthy. They've started releasing singles from their latest CD, titled "Nomad" and I think this is my favorite. It's got some of the good dark energy that got me into their music years ago and whoever did the production here really knows how to make Captain Robert's voice sound its best.

https://soundcloud.com/francesca-belmonte-music/francesca-belmonte-stole
Francesca Belmonte's first solo single is gorgeous. Those who recognize the production style will go "wait, doesn't she sound like..." and the answer is "yes." Belmonte has been collaborating with Tricky and he's helping produce this, her first solo effort. It's an interesting mix of minimalist sound and harmonies with a kind of chop-cut style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUHxJI7ve1M
https://soundcloud.com/benny-benassi/dance-the-pain-away-feat-john-legend-eelke-klejin-remix
Benny Benassi is another artist I haven't talked about in a while and I sort of backed into this one by accident, when I was looking for more Eelke Kleijn music after noting his track in the Bootie end-of-year best. So, back in 2013 Benassi did a track with Grammy-winning American John Legend. It's an interesting mix of Legend's powered vocals (listen for the two-octave jumps) and Benassi's signature nu disco-influenced Italian beats. Then in 2014 Eelke Kleijn picked up the baton and produced the remix at the second link. It downplays Legend's vocals in favor of a more electronica style. I'm hard-pressed to say one is better than the other; both are interesting interpretations of the material.

https://soundcloud.com/fissunix/grace-downfall
Fissunix's mixes are notable for having clever, non-standard elements. At least the ones I choose to blog. Here he's taken Placebo's breathy and minor-key cover of the Kate Bush anthem "Runnin' Up That Hill" and woven in some of the best of London Grammar's "Hey Now" vocals. If this doesn't give you chills then you might be reading the wrong music blog entries. It's like part of the score for a post-apocalyptic love story.

https://soundcloud.com/djschmollimusic/revolution
https://soundcloud.com/mashupgermany/top-of-the-pops-2014-days-and-nights
I want to close out this entry with two excellent big mash-ups from two of the best: DJ Schmolli and Mashup Germany. The Schmolli entry is a nine (or 10 if you allow for the vocal segments)-way mix promoting love and revolution. There are some of Schmolli's trademark metal accents but the track mostly rides on the rock energy of P.O.D's "Youth of the Nation".

Mashup Germany continued his reign in 2014 of being the best and most underrated masher I know. This track is his top-of-the-pops for 2014, touching 70 different hits from the past year. It's a virtuoso effort, not simply a layering of a lot of sounds over a standard dance beat. The track weaves from orchestral to dance to electronic to pop.

There's been a sudden influx of good stuff into my stream, so you all get an early edition this week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRNPT72z7Yg
Gigamesh's (http://soundcloud.com/gigamesh) Sunlight Remix of Theophilus London's "I stand Alone". This is smooth and beautiful, with Theophilus's vocals featuring over an electro-disco beat mix that is just understated enough. It's actually not that different from the original (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WRuDAasz-8&ob=av2e), just less rap/hip-hop and a little more ethereal. Gigamesh has a very light hand here.

http://www.abneypark.com/I'veBeenWrongBefore-AbneyPark.mp3
Abney Park released three new tracks from their forthcoming album to their mailing list and the world. I confess I've been less enchanted by their current sounds than I was in the stuff I heard from them originally, but this one is not bad. It's kind of bouncy and has more traditional rock-n-roll drums and guitars for backing than you might expect, but Captain Robert's vocals are still front-and-center. Plus the lyrics amuse the hell out of me - give it a listen with headphones on so you can follow along.

http://viprhealthcare.typepad.com/files/3lau---all-night-long-felguk-feat.-darth-vader-vs.-lmfao-vs.-ellie-goulding-vs.-mann.mp3
Courtesy of mashuptown.com this is one of four 3LAU mixes they featured. It's built around Ellie Goulding so I'm already favorably disposed to it and I like the way 3LAU shifts from Goulding to LMFAO and back again. It's a classic A|B mix but the source material is great and the result holds up well to repeated listening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuKZJmxpp_w&feature=player_embedded
Kap Slap put together an awesome four-way mix. Party banger mixes, of which this is definitely one, risk being too formulaic, but this avoids most of those traps. The video also looks like enormous fun. The primary components of the mix are Pumped Up Kicks' "Foster The People" and Martin Solveig's "Hello", both of which are getting a lot of use in remixes these days. Still, this one stands out and I'm going to have to check out what else Kap Slap has done that might be worth blogging.

http://www.musicstop.org/nero-promises-lyrics-with-video
I was listening to a remix that included this track - "Promises" by Nero (http://www.myspace.com/nerouk) - and decided I needed to find the original. I had sort of peripherally heard of Nero a while ago, but they were (then) known mostly for d&b, of which I'm not a fan. This track, however, is straight up vocal electronica with Alana Watson providing the sound that stopped me in mid-mash and sent me looking for the original. You can hear more of her work on the tracks at their MySpace page. She's reminding me of someone else but I can't think of who just this moment.

http://audioporncentral.com/2011/10/totally-enormous-extinct-dinosaurs-4play.html
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs is a kid in a home-made dinosaur costume mixing on stage. This eleven-minute short film shows him on stage doing his thing and also sitting around talking about what it's like to be a live dance music producer trying to do his own thing and not be overly confined by labels or genres or other words that might limit who would listen to his music. I sympathize with him and I like his style.