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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Pretty Beastie!!!












The Beastie Boys are back! The immortal rapper/rockers are hard at working finishing up their eighth studio album . Front-man Adam Yauch(aka MCA) tells Rollingstone magazine,"It's a pretty weird record," promising that it will feature a lot of a combination of rhyming, sampling, and playing."We still have a g
ood time working together. It's fun to be able to reinvent yourself every time," he said. Beyond that, details are scarce, but Yauch hints that the venerable trio has been experimenting with new sounds(no surprise here). Rumors suggest titles for the new album includes "Tad Lock's Glasses", a reference to a former tour bus driver's distinctive eye wear. For all the Beastie Boys lovers out there, the album is due out in either the summer or fall.
And now check out one of my favorite videos from the boys, Sabotaaage!!!



Beastie Boys- Sabotage -

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist

As you all know, I've recently decided to let people guest-star in this blog to talk about their favorite music. This week's guest will be my friend Tadeu over from the award winning blog for randomness Lifetimes 09 which can be found on my favorites blog list. He in turn decided to copy my ingenious idea of guest-bloggers, so he forced(actually threatened) me to contribute to his blog(or else*_*, what can I say, he's a big man!lol), so heres my post for him. http://lifetimes2009.blogspot.com/2009/02/water-polo.html
Anyways, to get to the point, thanks to Tadeu for his contribution, so here's his amazing post, Enjoy:


Oh hello there! How are you? Before you answer, I'd just like to let you know that I can't hear you answering what you read on the internet, and to be completely honest, you're weird for doing that. No, seriously, stop it. Its not like I'd care if you were talking directly to me, I wouldn't.

Um... Anyways, I'm not here to make chit-chat (unless you're a fairly good looking female, then I have ALLLLLL the time in the world, really). I'm here to talk about my favorite contemporary artist, DJ Shadow, and along with him, Cut Chemist. Now, who are these people? They're DJs, you'd think this is fairly obvious... and why are you still asking questions? Do you follow me around blogs, or are you a voice in my head I make up to add voice to my writing? Moving on...

(I'd like to add these videos are copyrights of their respective artists etc etc blah blah blah... you know the
drill)
This, is DJ Shadow. Watch. Listen. Be amazed.
This, is Cut Chemist. By now I'm assuming your brains have already melted, so why are you ever READING this?


Now some background on these men:

DJ Shadow was an up and coming artist in the early 90s, widely considered to be the father of Trip-Hop, the best sampler around, and regarded as one of the strongest influences in hip-hop when hip-hop still had MCs (and therefore were not total produced crap like nowdays).
His debut album, called Endtroducing... (elipsis included) Was a remarkable piece of art criticized as one of the best albums ever made, making the list of 1001 albums you have to hear before you die. From Endtroducing we get songs such as Midnight in a Perfect World and The Number Song, which although admitedly not famous, are incredibly deep and meaningful... Ok The Number song is just plain fun, but most of the songs in the Album were eerie and intricate, with samples coming from all corners of the music world in a show of eclecticism not displayed ever before in an album.

DJ Shadow also contributed to U.N.K.L.E, which is a music outfit intended to get famous artists to contribute, and make amazing, Avant Guarde music. Thom Yorke, with whom DJ Shadow worked with while producing the debut album from UNKLE, co-wrote a song with him called Rabbit In your Headlights, which in it self is a very dark and eerie song, and coupled with the video gives you an expierience that, personally, surpasses, simply put, simple music.

Cut Chemist was the MC for the Hip-Hop group Jurassic 5. From early on, when you start listening to J5, it is obvious there is a Cut Chemist influence. His amazing scratch is one of his trademark sounds, as well as his also very eclectic taste in music, making J5 stand out from the crowd of Hip-Hop sameness going on around that time.

With his original sounds and mixes, Cut Chemist made J5 stand out of the crowd. However he decided to move on to a solo career to concentrate more on his own music, instead of being background for the rap supergroup. His first full-lenght solo album, the Audience is Listening, features a song that can be viewed in the 2g Ipod commercial released by Apple.
This album also features The Garden, one of my personal favorites, which uses the track of a Bossa Nova song by Astrud Gilberto, Berimbau (which is a capoeira instrument, look it up).
He also appears as the Chemestry Professor in the Indie movie, Juno.

In 2008, Cut Chemist got together with DJ Shadow for a world tour, which promoted their new mix, "The Hard Sell." A DVD of the live concert has been released, and to be frank, it's quite awesome.

I know, I know, you're saying this is not rock, therefore it must suck. But you know what? There's plenty of rock that sucks so bad its not worth the time. That's why I found my friend Jose's blog to be significant, it never fails to show the true meaning of rock. I invite you guys now to share my passion, relax, unplug your headphones, put on the speakers, and listen to some relaxing Trip-Hop, transcedental Six Days by DJ Shadow on his second album, the private press?