The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Apparently lots of people at New Job pick Friday as their WFH day. I didn't this week and likely won't for another week or two because I am still getting my feet settled and I need to learn the patterns so I can fit comfortably into them. Anyway, this is an attempt not to let music tabs pile up so here we go.

https://soundcloud.com/griz/sets/ride-waves
I got this from a promo email for an upcoming GRiZ show and normally I'd be all over that but with this EP I'm not sure. There's some great stuff, like "Bustin' Out". I mean, who can object to tracks that feature phat horns and Bootsy Collins? But there's other stuff that goes all glitchy and wub and I'm not sure I want to see a show that bounces between these extremes. I mean I'm pretty sure neither Bootsy nor Snoop, who is also on a couple of these tracks, is going to show up and play...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eHaPaxw1ks
https://hypem.com/track/2ty46
Next up a twofer from The Funk Hunters. The first one, "Soul City," is indeed a heavily soul-influenced opener pushed through a heavy wub filter by K+Lab. I'm not entirely in love with it - the wub and I are still warily circling one another - but its classic funk and soul elements carry the track well enough for at least a couple listens.

Then there's Fort Knox Five redoing the Funk Hunters' "Revolution". Fort Knox Five are kind of the grandmasters of this style and they make the entire track flow and sing with hip-hop and straight-up hard drums mixed into classic funk beats and solid horns.

https://soundcloud.com/futuregenerationofficial/reaubeau-loris-cimino-louder-ft-twan-ray
"Louder" is intended to be played that way. It's a rock/EDM power anthem that puts together motivational lyrics with strong chords and an insistent bass. To be honest, most of these kinds of tracks are a little cheesy and this is no exception. It's also a well-done track that hits its target.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlhMJFdUUHY
To close out this set, have a classic (funny to use that word for a style that's only a decade old but you get my gist) mash-up from DJs from Mars. It's based around "Con Calma" from Daddy Yankee (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwj_FRntp8). The original is an interesting track in its own right, being a Puerto Rican-styled reggaeton track. It also includes rapper Snow, and takes many of its core elements from Snow's "Informer" which is itself now 25+ years old. (*checks* yeah, it came out in 1992.) The DJs do their usual speed-it-up-and-EDM-it tricks giving the mash a very different feel from the original. I like both and hope you will, too.

I realize my frequency of posting these has dropped off dramatically. I'm... not sure what's up. I still listen to music though mostly sets from people I like and those are harder to blog, not least because I want to listen to the set at least twice for comment purposes. I have a few tracks I'll put down here first, then try to do a series of sets. Some of these individual tracks come from the aforementioned set - when I can pull out favored tracks I do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaS93WMRQQ&feature=youtu.be
Start with this - a cover of "Zombies" from Bad Wolves. Apparently, this is the track Dolores O'Riordan was going to the studio to do when she died. Bad Wolves did the vocals themselves and released the cover in her memory. It's... brilliant. Covers can be better or worse, and this is certainly the best cover I've heard in a year or more. It's a heavy metal cover and it transposes the song exactly right into that genre, from the opening solo piano to the full crashing chorus, to the gentle drop-outs behind the emotional lyrics and the screaming guitar solo. To respect the original and build something great on top of it is fine artistry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZbeQKnmjok
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz2DZC_yPSU
That cover set me looking for others I might have missed and I turned this up. First is Lika Morgan covering "Relax", a track that gets a lot of covers. This version is from 2015 and it has a very nu-disco feel, while keeping some of the key elements of the original and adding some modern EDM tropes.

The second cover from Ms Morgan is Eurythmic's "Sweet Dreams" and also from 2015. This one feels like it's trying too hard - the same sort of nu-disco+EDM messes with the vocals a little more than I'd like. Yes, you've got the same rhythm and chord progressions, but Annie Lennox's voice does some amazing things in the original - it's one of the reasons the song was so popular - and this remix doesn't have that. (Amusing sidenote: while researching this, I discovered Lennox was awarded an OBE - neat!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMq2rFzoE3s
So, this is a thing. KAAZE featuring Elle Vee "Opera". It's a pretty standard tech-house track but with Vee rendering the kind of soaring vocals you typically get with European-style vocal trance. If you search her stuff on, say, Soundcloud, you get a selection of things she's fronted in the last year or two. They range from this "Come A Little Closer" (https://soundcloud.com/djsepofficial/sep-ft-elle-vee-come-a-little-closer-original-mix) which is a little darker, little deeper house to "Wild Ones" (https://soundcloud.com/codeblackmedia/code-black-feat-elle-vee-wild-ones) that is a completely frenetic stomp-hard track. Seems like someone worth following.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WOwRVTKJUw
Despite the age of this track I think I've never blogged it before, despite it being one of my favorite AvB numbers. "Feels So Good" is a standard dance song, not the usual trance style van Buuren is best known for. But it's just such a fun and bouncy track I keep coming back to it.

https://soundcloud.com/fortknoxfive/give-it-a-minute-ft-bcap-stickybuds-remix
And what would a music post from me be without at least SOME funk. This is Stickybuds' remix of "Give It A Minute" from Fort Knox Five. I'm sure I found FKF through Groovelectric originally, but I can't recall where I found this track - the tab has been open for a month or two. This is some killin' electro-funk with neat little scratch-dub bits thrown in.

I keep accumulating music tabs as I'm trying to get work done between the multitude of meetings this week. Let me try to close a few here since I have no idea when I'll get time to do another music post. Five entries, five different music styles, GO.

https://soundcloud.com/fortknoxfive/cinco-to-the-brinco-feat-empresarios-basement-freaks-remix
I found Fort Knox Five originally through DJ Steveboy who uses their stuff a lot in his sets. Here they're bringing a "Latin Funk" track, a concept that I had no idea existed and am immediately in love with. "Cinco to the Brinco" bounces back and forth between Spanish and English and across a variety of musical styles - there's obvious Latin and funk and some glitch and some electro thrown in. Nice bass, nice horn bits, very much my kind of thing.

https://soundcloud.com/machetehacks/wake-up-machete-cut
Rage Against the Machine takes me back to a period of my musical past when I was listening to a lot of harder-edged stuff. RAtM, Rammstein, Godsmack, etc. This is a modern electro-fuzz remix of "Wake Up" done by someone calling themselves Machete. Like a lot of modern reworks it doesn't quite seem to know what to do with the vocals which is a shame, I think because although the intense drums and screaming guitars are key features of this genre so are the intense vocals. RAtM were particularly known for anti-establishment lyrics and you can't just ignore that.

https://soundcloud.com/gwen-stefani/make-me-like-you-rac-mix
https://soundcloud.com/panicatthedisco/panic-at-the-disco-victorious-rac-remix
For contrast, here's a doube-shot of RAC. First up, a remix of Gwen Stefani's "Make Me Like You". The music in this one is almost disposable pop - what matters are Stefani's vocals and they're front-and-center in the remix. For contrast here's the original - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uljUDtv1Kw - and I think the remix is significantly better. The original has a tamped-down pop beat bouncing around; the remix has more of a dance beat and it's layered underneath the vocals rather than mixed side-by-side with them. Second is RAC's take on "Victorious" from Panic! at the Disco (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUChk0lxF44). Again, it's fundamentally pop, and the remix doesn't change that, but it does separate and amp up the vocals, giving it a dance slant.

https://soundcloud.com/freethepandas/dirty-ducks-luca-rezza-kanuri-original-mix-master-mp3
I had to investigate something with the label "panda funk" and I'm not convinced it was a good idea or a good label. There's a pandafunk.com that appears to be the label behind this, but the track is less funk and more electro-bounce. If that's your thing, Dirty Ducks & Luca Rezza have a stomp-inducing example of the genre for you right here. I'm still on the fence about this one.

https://soundcloud.com/djsfrommars/djs-from-mars-varanasi-ghats-original-club-mix-5
I've been meaning to post this since I first heard it a couple months ago and it kept getting pushed off. So let's close out this set with an awesome track from DJs from Mars. "Varanasi Ghats" takes its name from the stairs (ghat) constructed specifically so people can go down to holy rivers. This track steals liberally from Indian celebratory music both in the beats and the sampled vocals. These elements are assembled with the DJs traditional stompy style and the result is awesome. There's an invitation to remix that comes along with a purchase of the track but I'd be surprised to see someone outdo the original.