The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Lots of work means lots of backed-up music tabs. Still trying to close out some of the older stuff to make way for newer...

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/03/tanita-tikaram-twist-in-my-sobriety-alf-tumble-re-dress.html
Tanita Tikaram was a 19-year-old insta-hit in the late 1980s who had one commercially successful album, a couple of popular tracks, and then *poof* vanished. I confess I'd quite forgotten about "Twist in My Sobriety" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJdgSRzv8wE) until this remix popped up on APC. Alf Tumble is a Swedish producer who has produced an updating of this 1988 hit. It still has Tikaram's sultry voice but the spare musical accompaniment is redone as an uptempo disco-ey track.

http://audioporncentral.com/2009/11/illegal-sunday-dj-fac-time-is-releasing-me.html
Muse are generally too emo for my tastes. Here DJ Fac puts their "Time is Running Out" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TntXy36euYQ) under modern Swedish hip-hop/R&B diva Agnes Carlsson's "Release Me" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSb6e3grdL8) - itself a nice danceable track. The mix is pretty simple, taking the heavier drums and guitars from Muse and letting Agnes' vocals run above them. The result is a lot more heavy metal than you'd expect and really wouldn't it be cool if some heavy metal bands would get hot R&B singers to front for them?

http://www.mikedoughty.com/music
Via MizA via Wil Wheaton I've been made aware that Mike Doughty has a new album out. Doughty's solo stuff has been very hit-or-miss for me, in part because he hasn't returned to the soaring spoken-word style he used with Soul Coughing (http://www.last.fm/music/Soul+Coughing). Doughty's solo stuff is very simple guitar lines with minimal drum beats and sometimes low-end electronics. And the lyrics can be anywhere from straightforward to enigmatic to just plain whacky. Check out the video for "(You Should Be) Doubly (Gratified)" to get a good sense of what I mean.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Echo_and_the_Bunnymen/track/Proxy
If you need me to explain who Echo and the Bunnymen (http://myspace.com/thebunnymen) are then I probably can't help you. Still, I didn't realize they had released a new studio album last year. Judging by the two tracks featured here they've moved much closer to standard pop and much farther away from the punk sound I associate with them from listening to them in heavy rotation in the early 80s.

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Lady_Chann/track/Sticky_Situation_Toddla_T_Remix
And if that was too much pop for you, this is probably too much rap or too much reggae. Lady Chann (http://www.myspace.com/ladychann) tends to do heavy vocal riddim-rap stuff on her own. This track, off what is to be her first studio album, has a scratch-cut, high-BPM style that she still manages to carry off with good lyrical stylings, but without a lot of the 'girly' sound I hear in her other stuff.