The fight for diverse and conscious voices

I realized starting New Year's Eve that I was out of the December funk and on an upswing. Even going back to work today wasn't bad. Give it a week.

Meanwhile, let's listen to some music.

https://soundcloud.com/westwoodrecordings/sets/the-best-of-westwood-2018
Westwood Recordings' selection of the 20 best tracks they produced in the past year. It's fun and funky and it has Chali 2na ("Change the World") with some incredible flow. There's a bit more wub and electronica nonsense in it than I'd like but that's the way of things the past year. I keep hoping it'll get better, and honestly any collection that's 80% excellent is good enough for at least a blog mention.

https://soundcloud.com/westwoodrecordings/hands-up-raise-your-fist
I thought for sure I'd blogged this but I can't find it and it's good enough you should listen to it again anyway. Funk Hunters doing "Hands Up (Raise Your Fist)" is so very apropos of our social/political moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OnN8zGsJCg
I think the Leo Napier who guests on the previous track is this Leo Napier. "Can't Change Crazy" - ain't that the truth. The lyrics are... something else.

https://woxow.bandcamp.com/track/woxow-chaos-k-lab-remix-feat-ken-boothe-akil-from-j5-blurum13
Look, I promise I do listen to things other than funk. I just don't think most of it is that good or worth listening to more than once. I did sign up for Spotify so maybe I'll figure out how to find new music on there but for now this is what Soundcloud is giving me and so it's what I have for you.

I look at OMG music tabs and then realize it's been 10 days since my last post. We'll start with three long-form pieces that I can write up pretty quickly to get things rolling then put more stuff into a separate post.

http://dancingastronaut.com/2016/11/beastie-boys-remix-album-daft-punk/
I've seen this posted a couple places but maybe you haven't. This guy did an entire album (8 tracks) of Beastie Boys remixes built out of the original vocals and a bajillion samples from Daft Punk. This is not an entirely whacky notion, but it does lead to a lot of what I think of as train-wreck mixes. It's not a style of mash-up I particularly prefer; I like it when the mixer finds clever ways to meld the source tracks. But other people might like this style better so here you go.

https://soundcloud.com/innerstateradio/ummet-ozcan-presents-innerstate-ep-112
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcicRZ6QAB4
https://soundcloud.com/edm-demonz/this-girl-ummet-ozcan-bootleg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGY0gDBMmgc
For some reason a whole stack of Innerstate episodes appeared on Soundcloud more or less at the same time. Normally they release a week or so apart. I'm blogging this one because it largely had a different feel than the typical sets and because of several things in it that caught my ear. The set has an overall more pop, upbeat, and feel-good tone than I'd expected, which makes for a nice change.

The first is Jay Hardway's remix of "Runaways". The original (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDyuZ0_mWPI) is an undeniably summer-pop confection with a cute teen-love video. The remix is less saccharine and sped up a little more for dance club feel but very true to the original.

The second is a nice dance banger by Ozcan himself, "This Girl". It features a fast build and a lot of electro-horns. The released version is very short and feels like the intro for a bigger piece I haven't had time to track down.

And finally we have "Magic", an instrumental upbeat house banger from Mr. Black. I picked this one out on my second listen-through and I'm still not entirely sure what it is that grabs me about this. It's got some interesting rhythm changes, a little more electronic woop than I like, and yet I think the whole hangs together very nicely for a few minutes of chair-dancing.

https://soundcloud.com/thefunkhunters/sets/illectric-ep
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I had marked more Funk Hunters to share and here's some of it. A six-track EP from Funk Hunters and Chali 2na. This is their first studio release after a lot of touring and playing together and it's all original tracks. Right now my favorite is the second "Get Involved" because it has Defunk and it's got some smooth political lyrics along with soulful brass and backing vocals.