Rapper Big Pooh "Sleepers" (6 Hole Records)

Little Brother are proving themselves to be one of the underground's great success stories. I'm not talking necessarily about record sales or the fact that they leveraged the overwhelmingly strong reception for The Listening into a major label deal with Atlantic (we'll see how that actually turns out in reality - the transition from underground to major label for indie stars - think Common, Talib Kweli, Mystic etc - is a topic for an essay in itself), but more about the consistent quality of their output. Oftentimes the 'underground' and its stars are celebrated by default more for what it isn't (i.e. not mainstream) than what it is (in reality, sometimes inconsistent, of uneven quality and disorganized). But Little Brother’s The Listening was rightly hailed for its distinct, if not groundbreaking sound (which placed 9th Wonder on many an artist’s wish list, mainstream and indie alike) and the lyrical abilities of its MCs. Not content to stop there, each member has proven himself individually (something Wu-Tang and others failed miserably at) as well. Phonte’s collaboration with producer Nicolay on the Foreign Exchange album Connected was near flawless and word is that 9th Wonder’s album will follow suit.

Sleepers presents more of what you liked about Little Brother, without coming off as a lesser imitation. The production style, which is handled for the most part by 9th Wonder and Khrysis, maintains a similarly soulful and melodic boom-bap sound. But what Big Pooh brings to Sleepers is a more intimate look inside his mind and life that gives the album lasting appeal. He indulges in some braggadocio “I Don’t Care” but also lets us know he is one of the hardest working MCS around. On “Every Block” (also featuring Phonte) he states: “if you see me in the lab with a pen and a pad, I’m tryin to write a verse that’s doper than my last…Some niggas think about sex, I think about checks…So if you see me in the streets and my eyes look red is probably cos I ain’t been able to sleep..” He acknowledges the grind and the hardships of life throughout the album, but on tracks like “Scars” and “Live Life” he ultimately comes off as optimistic and determined to succeed. His words hold weight as he outlines his own trials and tribulations that fuel his drive to overcome: “this world is a fucked up place so we can watch it from behind iron bars or under the stars…..live life to the fullest, whoever you are, wherever you are.” He mixes up the subject material by addressing matters of the heart in his typically matter-of-fact style on “Friends” and “Between The Lines.”

Despite its release early in the ‘05, Sleepers is bound to be a contender for the ‘best of’ year-end lists. It provides a compelling listen musically and lyrically, helped in no small part by Pooh’s abundant charisma. When any crew member does a solo project, the (often valid) concern is that he’ll show himself to be an under developed artist in his own right. Sleepers makes such worries irrelevant as Big Pooh demonstrates all the depth and maturity needed to make a fulfilling solo album.

www.6hole.com

Record Breakin'

so i just got turned on to a new radio show that you can check out online. It's called Eavesdrop with my boy DJ Junior manning the decks and dropping a mixture of funk, breaks, hip-hop and other musical goodness. The show is broadcast from WKDU 91.7FM in Philadelphia every Friday 6-9pm EST. You can catch it live online via the website www.wkdu.org
I checked it out this past Friday for the first time and the guests were Taj and James from the very cool Dork Mag website. They were hilarious, and also dropped a couple of fresh dj sets. Forthcoming shows promise to be worth checking out - Junior has a nice lineup:
04/01 - the soulful band Heavy will be guests
04/08 - the wonderful GB will be on

Check out www.RecordBreakin.com for more info, reviews, worthy links and musical knowledge.

Mark Farina "Mushroom Jazz 5" (Om Records)

Oh hell yeah, funky white boy Mark Farina is back in the mix and he’s feeling mellow once again. Its been over 2 years since the last installment of the cultishly followed Mushroom Jazz series, and let’s face it, heads have waited long enough.
Mushroom Jazz began back in Chicago when Farina was still playing in the small rooms of clubs and decided to go for the chill vibe instead of competing with the big boom of the main room. He then started laying down his sound on mixtapes locally which became increasingly popular and hence the beginnings of the Mushroom Jazz phenomenon began.
Musically, Farina draws heavily on the most blunted of hip hop beats, looking, this time, to producers such as Pete Rock, Sound Providers, Foreign Exchange and other soul and jazz influenced folk from which to select head nodding instrumentals and blending them into a magical soundscape. Vocals and crafty knob-twiddling (the finer points of which are somewhat lost on non-twiddlers like myself, but damn don’t it sound nice?) are utilized where appropriate to maintain interest. Other highlights from this particular installment include Shortie No Mas’ You Like My Style, Zion I’s Flow(instrumental), Red Astaire’s Come Down and numerous others mellifluous head-nodders.
Although downtempo compilations are all over the place these days, nobody really does it quite like Farina. Mushroom Jazz is still the must-have soundtrack for the more reclined moments in your life.

Datura Records - doin' big thangs

Time to shine the light on Datura Records - a small, but progressive label based out of Kansas City of all places. First coming to attention with the release of Approach's funk-fuelled hip-hop outing "Ultra Proteus", they are now gaining attention with other quality releases such as Deep Thinkers' "Necks Move" (beatlife review coming soon), and their organic, grassroots approach to marketing their label. Check out this enlightening article from Lawrence.com for a closer look at their philosophy. Indie artists should take note and inspiration from these guys.
The Datura crew is definitely not shy about giving away music for promotional purposes. They have a fully downloadable mixtape available HERE, appropriately titled "The Independent Success Story." Not only that, but the next installment of Datload is also available for download HERE and it features tracks from Opio, Tajai, Approach and many others.

Here's the official word from the label:
Datload III has finally arrived!!!

This newest installment of FREE hip-hop influenced goodness features exclusives, album cuts, b sides, and collaborations and features tracks from Souls of Mischief members Tajai, Opio, and A Plus, along with Approach, Brother of Moses, Leonard D. Stroy, Mac Lethal, Sound Defects, Mayday ft. production by Plex, Caural, Miles Bonny, Joe Good and many many more.

The Datload series is serving it's purpose of providing the public with a free glimpse at what's going on in the hip-hop and beat experimentation underground. If you like what you hear...download it, burn it, tell your friends, and spread the word of good art and music as far and wide as you can.

All songs on Datload series compilations are available for BOTH streaming and downloading. There is no risk of copyright infringement and all songs have been approved for usage on this compilation by the artists involved.

LONG LIVE FREE MUSIC FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES!!!

-- word --
for more on datura: http://www.daturarecords.com and www.myspace.com/daturamusic

Eliot Lipp Bio

It rains for about half the year in Eliot’s hometown, Tacoma, Washington. Los Angeles is lucky if it gets a tenth of that. With friends and family on his mind, Eliot recorded during the blazing Los Angeles summer. Laying down a bedrock of notorious breakbeats under his signature Sequential Circuits and Korg MS-20 leads, Eliot has created an impeccable beat record that also serves as an autobiographical chronicle of love, longing and a soulful testament to the love for his hometown. Eliot’s instrumentals pour forth more emotion than most modern-day crooners, and his beats are on par with today’s best producers. Listening to his record automatically transports you to a crowded California freeway, with the wheels pointed north. It begins with dry desert leanings, and before long the rain starts to drip on the windshield, giving way to a full on finger-snapping downpour.

As someone whose creativity is directly aligned with his environment, the California climate proved a fickle muse for Eliot. “Tacoma just rains all year round,” he said. But a blistering summer alone in his apartment enabled him to see his home in a different light. Tacoma took on new meanings, as the attitudes of a small working-class city slammed up against the expensive ennui of Los Angeles. With images of home tucked into the back of his mind, the album took on a life of its own.

He moved to Los Angeles in 2004 and brought the cats and dogs with him. A usually barren city, the winter of 2005 would go down in history as one of the wettest winters on record, helping to bridge memories of Tacoma with his new experiences in LA. Eliot hunkered himself down in the studio and even when it was time to rest, he cuddled up to a temporary bed made of bubble wrap and cardboard that once housed his gear. “But it doesn’t feel like a sob story,” Eliot jokes. “I moved here to do music full time and I knew I just had to do it, make it work.” New Year’s Eve he resolved to quit his coffeehouse job, devoting himself full-time to music. Already an energetic self-promoter and disciplined producer, Eliot wanted to act on his day job daydreaming.
“For me, Los Angeles is a temporary place. This is where I am physically, but emotionally, my mind isn’t here,” he says of his current home. He sees LA as a place of opportunity, and his previous homes of Chicago and Tacoma were bubbles. “I didn’t want to get trapped in a local scene with a false sense of popularity.” The irony is that Eliot never received recognition in Chicago until he moved away. “Now they’re willing to take me seriously, because I’m not always around.”

Eliot previously spent three years in Chicago, where he cut his teeth in the club scene and was schooled in electronic music. Diving headlong into the culture, he started work on a record. He was fortunate enough to get his material into the hands of Scott Herren, also known as Prefuse 73 (Warp Records) and Savath+Savalas (Hefty Records). Scott flipped for it and it was pressed verbatim on the Eastern Developments label in November of 2004. Prior to its official release, Eliot was selling it over eBay and pushing it on kids after small club dates. Recorded in his tiny Chicago apartment while Eliot was still searching for his musical identity, the eponymous LP was his first step toward what would become his signature sound on Tacoma Mockingbird.

The music has elements of electro, soul, disco, funk, hip-hop and a myriad of other influences. “The lead single, ‘Rap Tight,’ is like a rock song,” says Eliot. “I wrote the first half really quickly, in about half an hour. Then I went back to it, adding the electro beat so there’s a lot more going on.”
"The People" has a nice bounce to it, and the beat on "Spit Rap" is incredible. The drums fill the room, opening up with a nasty ‘70s snare before boiling over into synth madness. Eliot covers a lot of ground while sticking to the same atmosphere, which is nice. The record rewards the listener with new sounds each time, creating a deep, fulfilling experience. Eliot wanted to create a record that sounds great in the car, in the home, in headphones and blasting over the PA.

His search for new sounds ultimately led him to old ones, with familiar favorites of the hip-hop world. “I’m part of the younger generation, meaning I don’t dig for breaks,” he says. “So many producers have already done the work, and there’s still plenty of life left in these breaks.” Instead of spending hours sifting through record stacks with dusty fingers and cramped knees, Eliot chose some of the most well-known breaks around. His challenge was to bring them new life and context. “I wanted to get rid of the connotations associated with each sample.” Adding in layers of synth and the occasional MPC sample stab, Eliot created his own sound. Very few of the synthesizer lines were sequenced, as Eliot played each piece live. The resulting unique sound blends live energy with soulful breaks – a sound that has become Eliot Lipp’s fingerprint.
“This record has much more character. It has my personality,” he says, adding that he worked hard to create a classic electro sound. But rather than make it all track suits, breakdancing, and camp, he brought it into the twenty-first century. “I gave myself an assignment,” he says. “I wanted to see how much I could get out of just synth and breaks. I’d get sick of the sounds and give up sometimes, but I had so much on my mind it was impossible to ignore. With all these feelings about missing home, my girlfriend back in Chicago, my friends back in Tacoma, I just returned to the music. The moods I ended up creating remind me of how I felt at the time.”

On Tacoma Mockingbird, Eliot constantly wrestles with idea of home. “Tacoma is like the Oakland of the Pacific Northwest,” he says. “People openly talk shit about it. It’s small, with a different personality of any other city. It’s made up of working class regular folk, and while it’s always refreshing when you hang out up there, I couldn’t have done music if I stayed in Tacoma. It’s a nice place to visit but a bad place to be a musician.”

“Growing up, I couldn’t wait to leave, and moved to San Francisco the minute I turned 18. There wasn’t shit to do in Tacoma except get into trouble. I knew that other things had to be going on outside. Lots of people get trapped there, and the suicide rate is depressingly high. But on the other hand, the folks there talk more openly about deeper issues. They’re much more used to dealing with feelings out in the open, and there’s nothing superficial about it.”

Eliot wanted to translate that honesty and emotion into his record, keeping the feelings out in the open. And while he was confident with the new material, Eliot battled with ego versus modesty while recording, eventually finding a perfect balance. “This record is just so much more me. The first record had me playing by the rules and giving nods to those who came before. Tacoma Mockingbird is my record.”

It took him one full year to record Tacoma Mockingbird, with the album finally mastered in late summer in Arizona. Ever the perfectionist, Eliot was still tweaking the mix on the way out to the desert until he was convinced it was done. Still residing in Los Angeles, and playing live as often as possible, Eliot is still settling into his home. With the release of Tacoma Mockingbird, Eliot is anxious about the new adventures the will bring forth. Here comes the rain.

BACK TO ALBUM PREVIEW

WMC Updates

URB Village: check out the video trailer HERE
Be at the URB Village @ Remix Hotel 7- 11 pm nightly for VIP parties sponsored by Sauza. URB will also be filming their Next 100 documentary each night.
event lineup and info at URB Village site

Fusicology Events @ WMC

4 nights and 4 great events from Fusicology featuring King
Britt, Aya, Vikter Duplaix, Jazzy Jeff, ?uestlove and more....