Modern English - Mesh And Lace
7 minutes ago
Sunday, 5 June 2011
RonHogan Ron Hogan
What's the name of that YA novel where the two girls get their father drunk & have sex with him? Oh, wait, that was Genesis 19.
The Beach Boys vs J Dilla - Pet Sounds: In the Key of Dee
1. Pet Sounds
2. Sloop Jay D
3. Let's Go Away For a While
4. I Just Wasn't Made For These Times
5. Here Today
6. Caroline, No
7. God Only Knows
8. You Still Believe in Dee
9. I Know There's an Answer
10. Wouldn't it Be Nice
11. That's Not Dee
12. I'm Waiting For the Day
13. Don't Talk (Close Your Eyes)
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The Roots - Dilla Joints
J Dilla: the Mozart of hip-hop
'His music is full of subtle things' … J Dilla. Photograph: Johnny Tergo/AP
The classically trained virtuoso Miguel Atwood-Ferguson grew up listening to Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin. He started playing the violin when he was four, began composing orchestral music at 10 and took up the viola at 12. The first musician he truly loved was Bach, but Atwood-Ferguson knows precisely what drew him to the music of James Yancey, aka Jay Dee, aka J Dilla."Dilla is a modern genius," he says. "Everyone has genius within them, but not everyone, for whatever reason, manifests it. But Dilla did. He stood for taking a great risk on different levels, for continuous hard work and for courage. He is a modern genius because he captured and represented the spirit of a particular time. What he did was so deep that he has influenced a huge amount of modern music. In an age when many of his peers are still more interested in vanity, Dilla was more interested in exploration through music. And that is why he is a modern genius."
Born in 1973, James Yancey grew up in the Conant Gardens neighbourhood of Detroit and began making beats at home when he was just 11 years old. His mother was a singer and his father, Beverly, played piano and bass; together they had an a capella jazz group, and there would always be singing at home. By the time he was in his early 20s Dilla's music – full of rich, utterly unique drum sounds, warm, muzzy instrumentation and endlessly inventive melodies – was so popular he was getting called at home by A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Busta Rhymes. In 1996, Tribe were Grammy-nominated for their Dilla-produced album Beats, Rhymes and Life – but he had to be strongly persuaded to even attend the ceremony. "He didn't really want to fuck with none of that," Tribe rapper Q-Tip told Vibe magazine a few years later. "And I don't blame him."
Dilla died from a lupus-related illness nearly five years ago in February 2006. In 2007, on what would have been Dilla's 33rd birthday, Atwood-Ferguson and independent hip-hop champion and producer Carlos Niño released their brass, strings and woodwind version of Dilla and Common's Nag Champa for free download. They created the track in Niño's LA apartment with just one microphone, recording one instrument at a time. An EP that featured more of Dilla's works – Antiquity, Nag Champa, his old group Slum Village's Fall in Love and A Tribe Called Quest's Find a Way – followed a few months later.
In February last year, Atwood-Ferguson put a 60-piece orchestra together to play a special tribute concert for Dilla at an arts centre in LA. Dilla's mother, Maureen, was a special guest and the night, Suite for Ma Dukes, was named in her honour. The CD and DVD recorded that night show Dilla's music to be, by turns, fantastically complex and head-noddingly simple, while Atwood-Ferguson's orchestrations are overpoweringly alive with the possibilities of where this brilliant musician, someone who made startling records with De La Soul, Janet Jackson, Erykah Badu and Common, among a wealth of others, could have gone next.
"There is a depth and honesty in his music, in the way his beats meld together," Atwood-Ferguson says. "His music is full of subtle things that most people aren't aware of – and they shouldn't have to be. People should just enjoy it..."
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Sun Ra: Viscosity And Thermonuclear Breakdown...
When I first heard the universal truth of Sun Ra's message, I was a very young man in attendance at the Ann Arbor Jazz and Blues Festival, an interplanetary landing strip where the Sun Ra Mythic Science Arkestra touched down late one night to became a frequent and welcomed return visitor. I myself was a reluctant product of the times, but I nevertheless became enthralled with the far reaching tones that emanated from the stage --- sounds and circumstances that seemingly originated from somewhere far away in another galaxy. I also enjoyed the rush and surprise of untold stories from deepest space. But as my jazz education continued to flourish, my focus then began to shift more towards Sun Ra's earlier (and dare I say, more conventional) dispatches that reflected his admiration for the Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson big bands that once roamed the hiways of this planet. Obviously before his arrival from Saturn, Ra had studied our ways and our musical pioneers in preparation for sharing his own knowledge and sounds with us earthly beings who happen to occupy this third stone from the sun. It was then that I became convinced that the Ra and his Arkestra were among the finest (and most swinging) of dance bands in the entire solar system...
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The Last Poets - Jazzoetry
DJ Hudson presents Wild Bunch Sound – Massive Attack Samples (1988-98)
“This is a collection of records sampled or covered by Massive Attack from their first three LPs and the singles of that time. Shout out to Tony Hosey who used to bring all the Massive Attack records round to my house way back when.” – DJ Hudson
You Know, You Know – Mahvishnu Orchestra (One Love – Blue Lines)
Isaac Hayes – Ike’s Mood I (One Love – Blue Lines)
So Glad You’re Mine – Al Green (FIve Man Army – Blue Lines)
Five Man Army Dub (Five Man Army – Blue Lines)
Les McCann – Sometimes I Cry (Teardrop – Mezzanine)
James Brown – Never Can Say Goodbye (Better Things – Protection)
En Melody – Serge Gainsbourg (Karmacoma [Portishead Experience])
Funkadelic – Good Old Music (Safe From Harm – Blue Lines)
Led Zeppelin – When The Levee Breaks (Man Next Door – Mezzanine)
Quincy Jones – Summer In The City (Exchange – Mezzanine)
Man Next Door – John Holt (Man Next Door – Mezzanine)
Lowrell – Mellow Mellow (Lately – Blue Lines)
Pieces of a Dream (Weather Storm – Protection)
Isaac Hayes – Joy (Lately – Blue Lines)
Billy Cobham – Stratus (Safe From Harm – Blue Lines)
James Brown – The Payback (Protection)
Be Thankful (Be Thankful – Blue Lines)
Sade – Siempre Hay Esperanza (Be Thankful – Blue Lines)
Mambo – Wally Badarou (Daydreaming – Blue Lines)
Tom Scott – Sneakin In The Back (Blue Lines)
Do the Funky Penguin – Rufus Thomas (Any Love)
Blind Alley – The Emotions (Any Love Remix)
Funk You Up – The Sequence (Any Love)
Daisy Lady (Any Love)
Planetary Citizen – Mahvishnu Orchestra (Unfinished Sympathy – Blue Lines)
Rock Creek Park – The Blackbyrds (Blue Lines)
JJ Johnson – Parade Strutt (Unfinished Sympathy – Blue Lines)
Young-Holt Unlimited – Light My Fire (Light My Fire – Protection)
Isaac Hayes – Our Day Will Come (Exchange – Mezzanine)
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