The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Due to holidays and absences and associated business I haven't had time to put a music post together. This time I want to bring to your attention two long-form listens that I haven't done in a while and talk about some new things as well. Plus there's the return of two long-absent voices you absolutely should hear.

http://www.djsteveboy.com/groovetime.html
I used to blog DJ Steveboy's sets regularly, then stopped for a variety of reasons. With any long-form set there are many chances to dislike it and I've felt that his sets haven't held together completely. There are good tracks and bad tracks and often I found myself stopping or skipping. Not this time. This is deep house done to perfection. The set is called "Roll Program" and among other things it's a tribute to the late Neil Armstrong, featuring samples of NASA audio and giving you that feeling of deep expanses of space, without drifting into annoying spaciness or irrelevance. I found this set immensely comforting for the moods I've been in.

http://audioporncentral.com/2012/09/featurecast-run-for-cover-full-album.html
Featurecast (http://soundcloud.com/featurecast) are offering a free stream of their first album and it's funkalicious! It's also got a wide mix of styles (electro jump around anyone?) and a lot of good featured performers. One of the best things about this album is that its variety exists not just for the sake of difference, but to promote the different styles. Within each style, though, there's solid funk and soul groundings and rapid-fire vocal expressions that tie the whole thing together. I'm only on my third listen-through and it's really hard to pick out a favorite track - they're all good.

http://audioporncentral.com/2012/08/reset-wind-up.html
Reset (http://www.wearereset.com/about/) are a five-man Italian music collective that nevertheless manage to give us an absolutely splendid fast-paced reggaeton track. My only complaint is that the version rendered for the video is too short and sort of broken up. It could easily stand to be a 4:30- or 5-minute track.

http://audioporncentral.com/2012/09/ruinmytune-dedication-to-my-boys-and-girls.html
Ruinmytune has been doing a number of mash-ups lately that I haven't been all that impressed by - he hasn't seemed to be adding anything to his excellent starting tracks. This, however, is a hot exception and worth a listen. I admit to a personal weakness, as I really like the Blur tune he's working from ("Boys and Girls" - does anyone NOT like this one?). The mix is four main tunes plus samples and it's got depth and you can hear the main tracks all the way through. Really a nice mash.

http://audioporncentral.com/2012/09/dead-can-dance-opium.html
What do you do when one of your favorite acts goes on hiatus for 12 years? You move on, of course, but you also remember how the music affected you and changed you back then. I remember in 1987 when their third album came out and a friend brought it over - they were hard to get in the US back then. When he found out I'd never heard of them he sat me down and had me listen all the way through the first three. It was intense and he never quite understood why I loved Lisa Gerrard's singing and really just tolerated Brendan Perry. If I'd heard this track, which is classic-style Perry at his best ever, I might have had a different opinion. The music is also classic DCD, with sweeping orchestral themes and tribal percussion, intensely layered and richly produced.

http://rcrdlbl.com/2012/08/08/stream_bob_mould_the_descent
Bob Mould is another one that lots of people haven't heard of and that's really a shame. Husker Du were one of the first bands to evolve a punk sound (which I didn't like) into an alternative approach (which I adored). They never lost the thrash and drive of that early music but they stopped being afraid of melody and harmony and Mould's voice grew to equal his guitar chops. His project, Sugar, first hit the air 20 years ago (man, I'm old) and in my opinion there aren't any hardcore alternative albums as good as Copper Blue. This is the first single off Silver Age, a new album that's said to be in the old style. Yeah, Mould still has it, despite the balding and the gray beard and the glasses.