The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Had to leave work early on Friday to pick the kids up from camp. Thus, music today. Two fantastic long-form listens and a couple favorites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxgxWRKuFRk
Beats Antique are going on tour again. (This fall in Boston with Shpongle at House of Blues - I have my tickets, do you?) This is the first single from what I expect will be their new album and it's classic Beats. Strong percussive Middle Eastern-influenced dance sounds with a good dash of crunk thrown in for variety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrdFMYlB-kQ
Mashup Germany did this excellent complex mash about a year ago but I just found it. This one feels largely like a "Men at Work" mash even though the vocals are primarily P. Diddy/Skylar Gray's "Coming Home" (with a nice appearance from Sting). It's low-bpm and relaxed - feels like an end-of-summer thing to me.

https://soundcloud.com/katermukke/1-rey-kjavik-dirty-doering
https://soundcloud.com/katermukke/2-rey-kjavik-dirty-doering
Two very similar remixes by Rey & Kjavic of Katermukke tracks. Both are heavy electronica, with a slinky twang throughout. I like the "Black Cat" one better because the sound really reminds me of a black cat prowling. Yes, really, this is how my brain works.

https://soundcloud.com/bootie-dragon-con-mashups
OK, time to get your SERIOUS NERDGASM on. Here is a set of nerd-themed, nerd-inspired, geek-tastic remixes from DJ BC's Dragoncon set. It includes favorites DJs from Mars, Deadmau5, DJ Schmolli, G3RST, and Party Ben. Ben's "Dr Who on Holiday" is hilarious fun but for sheer nerdy goodness "We No Speak Cantina" from G3RST takes the prize. I also have to mention "Haunted Bela" by DJ Fnord because I love "Bella Lugosi's Dead" so much.

https://soundcloud.com/source-addiction/sets/djs-from-mars-bootzilla-2014
Saving the best for last, here is Bootzilla Volume Two from DJs from Mars. Nineteen tracks of absolutely fantastic electronic dance fun from the Martians and friends. I'm on my fourth listen through of this and I can't pick one favorite. The lead track is an AC/DC mashup that rocks SO HARD and it keeps on giving from there. I suspect people will like various tracks based on the source material; for example, I love the "Depeche Doors for Fears" (track 4) because I'm a big "Personal Jesus" lover - I've always thought that was a song about phone sex. Anyway, let it play and tell me what rocks your world.

(I've had a muttering or two that I post too much music stuff. I'm not likely to stop, but if people don't want to read this I don't feel compelled to post it or maybe I can make an opt-in music filter. Opinions welcome.)

First up this time, a trio of new-to-me voices that I think are worth keeping an eye on. Then a couple remixes and finally we'll close out with a long-form item of awesomeness.

http://www.reverbnation.com/monicarichards
Monica Richards has done front work for a number of indie and unknown bands. She was (is?) part of Faith and the Muse (http://www.myspace.com/faithandthemuse or http://www.mercyground.com/), a dark folk/goth rock duo that's been around for about 8 years now. Her solo stuff shares some of those influences, but has more rock stylings and some tribal steals, too. For example, "I Am Warrior" is a pretty straight-up goddess tribal piece, though it gets kind of audio-cluttered in the middle. Still, worth a listen.

http://www.myspace.com/elizabethharper
Class Actress is a trio fronted by Elizabeth Harper, a sultry deep-voiced nu-disco queen. She gets compared a lot to early Madonna, which is not musically apt, but conceptually I see the comparison. Remember early Madonna played heavily off sexual themes and musically stole quite a bit from disco? Yeah, that. But there the similarity ends. Harper is much more of a torch singa, as well as being more delicate and wistful than Madonna ever was. She's still early in, with one EP and one full LP just out. I love this line from her MySpace page: "Class Actress is [...] Depeche Mode meets early Madonna and Five Star as played on KTU Radio in the leather backseat of a cab".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n1wAzuXAKU
Lindstrøm's new "De Javu" is a high-energy fun dance piece off his upcoming album. There are some minor vocal bits, but mostly this is carried along by a wind-ey, bouncy combination of keyboards, rhythms, and some phat horns. Much liking.

New voices out of the way, let's take on a couple remixes...

http://audioporncentral.com/2011/11/dj-shadow-ft-little-dragon-scale-it-back-party-ben-remix.html
Party Ben (http://www.partyben.com/) does a fine, low-key job of remixing "Scale it Back" by DJ Shadow. The original, which has a fun video (http://www.okayplayer.com/news/video-premiere-dj-shadow-x-little-dragon-scale-it-back.html) is a light and wistful piece with jazz riffs and lovely harmonies and is not at all a dance piece. So Party Ben speeds it up, gives it a disco beat line, and does some vocal clip-mixing. By the time he's done it's almost a wholly new piece, which is a fine kind of remix.

http://audioporncentral.com/2011/11/illegal-sunday-dj-y-alias-jy-another-one-bites-this-way.html
DJ Y alias JY (http://www.checkdissout.de/) takes three classic rock tunes and mashes them up

Finally, your awesomeness of the day...

http://audioporncentral.com/2011/11/illegal-sunday-amerigo-gazaway-fela-soul.html
Amerigo Gazaway has put together a 9-track remix album under the name "Felasoul" that combines work from pioneers Fela Kuti and De La Soul. Kuti was an influence on De La Soul, just as he influenced pretty much every hip-hop act ever and it's beautiful to hear his pioneering jazzy horn- and soul-filled works combined with the complex and smart rap items from De La Soul. If you only have time for a couple, I recommend "Breakadawn" and "Ooh". The latter, done originally with Redman, was one of De La Soul's few crossover hits later in their career; the former was one of their early hits and gets props for being one of the first "jazz-hop" tracks. Gazaway lovingly picks up the best elements and builds his tracks around them, with bonus vocal samplings mixed in.

Holy exploding life-mines, Batman! The rain of debris from the past week or so is going to take a while to settle. (My life? Mostly OK. Bombs dropping all around me on people I care about? Not OK.) Here are some pleasant, almost mellow, listening suggestions.

http://www.partyben.com/downloads/
http://www.partyben.com/PartyBen-AnotherSleeplessNightAlone.mp3

I've been lost for several days in the Party Ben mixes. I totally blame mrf_arch; he started it. Party Ben has been a featured artist at Bootie parties for at least the last five years and lots of his mixes do the fun thing of taking a modern tune and mixing it over an old favorite, usually from the 80s. Sadly, even his talents can't make Lady Gaga interesting again, so skip that. He shines when he pulls even older favorites; for example, I really liked "Hella Dare You to Smoke" which mashes Gorillaz and No Doubt against Deep Purple.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about his (currently) second-newest item, "Another Sleepless Night Alone". One of the things I like about remixers is that I get to hear things from them I wouldn't normally encounter, but it has been quite a while since I had a new discovery this way. This mash from Ben uses Bat For Lashes (http://www.batforlashes.com/) and her new tune "Sleep Alone" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1vtr9fXdg8) which is beautiful and haunting. Bat For Lashes is Natasha Khan, a Pakistani-Brit with a voice like Loreena McKennitt and inspirations like Siouxsie Sioux. *melt*

Ben mashes against the ambient electronica of Egostero (http://www.egostereo.com/ - warning, starts playing on load) which is not bad. I don't mind the samples on their page, but you get a much better sense of their sound by playing the stream on their MySpace page - http://www.myspace.com/egostereo. So that's two new finds in one mix. Win!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikoNdWageFo
DJ Purple sent me this pointer, to Just Jack's "Snowflakes". This is a tune that has had actual pop airplay, including use in high fashion shows. It's a rap done over The Cure's "Lullaby" instrumental track and it holds very true to the dreamy goth-ness that underlies the best Cure tracks.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/02/booka-shade-regenerate.html
Booka Shade (http://www.bookashade.com/) gets listed as "German electro-house" but this track from them is much more mellow and almost ambient electronica.