So Bones

So That Was That

2009-12-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

As promised SO BONES is not dead and buried, rotting somewhere in a diamond encrusted casket underneath the bones of so many defunct, DOA crunk&b girl groups. I just needed to mull things over and wait for this generally terrible year to pass me by. Well I guess we only have a few days left until we enter into the "XXs", and I would have held out if it hadn't been for Usher's new song totally rattling my brain in the best possible way. My feelings towards Usher have always been conflicted. On the one hand his pinched vocal delivery and smug as fuck "playa in need of redemption" schtick have often proven to be less than appealing, but on the other hand, he's had a undeniably decent track record for managing to bag the kind of productions that make jaws involuntarily drop. "Yeah!", "Dat Girl Right There", "You Don't Have to Call", and "Love in This Club" are some of the decades finest examples of aggressive R&B invention, and as we enter into a new decade he's pulled it off once again hooking up with his old sparring partner Polow Da Don to come up with "Little Freak", which I'm happy to report is genuinely something quite different. Usher is in familiar cocksure swagger mode and the song has all the hallmarks of a Polow production what with the hollow, dead-thud drums, and the luxurious synth melodrama, but in "Little Freak" both figures push themselves into stranger, darker territories. Don't let the carnal numbskullery of the lyrics fool you.

Putting "buzz" single "Papers" aside, it's certainly an interesting way to kick off a campaign for a record, which following the breakdown of his marriage, we've been led to believe will be a return to Usher's XX friendly, bleeding heart throb "Confessions" days. Instead of weepy domesticity "Little Freak" positively oozes with Caligula style excess, Usher, sounding old and jaded, assuming his role as the cold hearted emperor of clubland, demanding to be brought "freaks at the bar who like fucking with a star", as if he hasn't a clue how sad and shallow his existence appears to almost everyone outside of the court, a certain atmosphere of nihilistic entitlement offset by a sample of Stevie Wonder's - Living in the City which is transformed into something overarching and sickly decadent. It's almost on the same level as Britney's seminal dead eyed stripper jam "Get Naked (I Got A Plan)" in being a sex song that takes on a whole other dimension in being entirely devoid of sexiness. Everyone says their having fun, but no one's smiling.

For those who care the following, in no particular order, are my favourite R&B/hip hop songs of the year. Excluding "Blame It" and "Diva" (kinda) it's a shame none of these songs were hits (the ones that were at least released)...they deserved better. Anywho, let's not dwell on such things.

The Dream - Fancy (Prod by The Dream & Tricky Stewart)

Jamie Foxx - Blame It feat T-Pain (Prod by Christopher "Deep" Henderson)

Christina Milian - Chameleon (Prod by The Dream & Tricky Stewart)

Electrik Red - Drink In My Cup / Bed Talk (Prod by The Dream & Tricky Stewart)

Young Money - New Shit (Prod by Chase N. Cashe & B.Carr)

Tay Dizm - Beam Me Up feat T-Pain & Rick Ross (Prod by Bangladesh)

Trish - Bump (Prod by Major Music)

Vistoso Bosses - Delirious (Prod by Mr Collipark)

Lil' B - I'm God (Prod by ?)

DJ Quik & Kurupt - 9 x Outta 10 (Prod by DJ Quik)

Sean Garrett - I Wanna Get Up In Your Heart (Prod by Bangladesh)

Cassie - What She Don't Know Wont Hurt Her (Prod by Darkchild) / Must Be Love (Mario Winans & Bryan Michael Cox)

Rich Girl - He Aint Wit Me Now (Tho) (Prod by Rich Harrison)

Rich Boy - Drop (Prod by Polow Da Don)

Lil' Wayne - Yes feat Pharrell (Produced by The Neptunes)

Amerie - Why R U? (Prod by The Buchanans)

Dudley - Hot Car (Prod by The Underdogs)

Lloyd - Day N' Night (Prod by Jim Jonsin)

Keke Palmer - Superjerkin' (Prod by ?)

Ashe Watson - Shallow (Prod by Battery 8)

Gucci Mane - Weird (Prod by Zaytoven) / Lemonade (Prod by Bangladesh)

Beyonce - Diva (Prod by Bangladesh)

Jennifer Lopez - Fresh Out the Oven (Produced by The Neptunes)

Omarion - I Get It In (Prod by Tank)

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If you want to know what else I liked this year check out more of my ramblings at 20 Jazz Funk Greats, where right now we're hosting some pretty great mixes made exclusively for the site, namely the Darkstar mix which is beyond brilliant. N-Joy.

Something Gnawed my Fingers Off

2009-11-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

Well, not really, but they might as well have been chewed off considering the shocking lack of So Bones activity over the last few months. I'll come clean and say this much. While it's no lie I've had an insanely busy time of late (with something very, very exciting coming up), I have to be honest and admit that not that much new material has really excited me and consequently I haven't felt compelled to hark on about anything in particular. Of course it could just be that I've subconsciously been in a sulk over the non appearance of "Electro Love/ Connecticut Fever/ This Record Aint Never Gonna Happen." Whatever the reasons, enough is enough.

I'm going to collect my thoughts...

Shivers

2009-09-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

The thunderbitch has emerged to show all those demi-divas floating aimlessly outside the palace of B how to do things. I'm talking about Kelis, one of this generation's most sorely underrated pop stars, the girl who came out spitting blood and bile in a kaleidoscopic frenzy of rainbow colours and blistering sexual rage, and who went on to effortlessly vamp over some of the strangest avant R&B bangers ever made. Having recently turned up on the UK funky flavoured "Scars" with Meleka and Chipmunk, we now have "No Security" which was produced by Crookers, who before now I could have cared less about. Unlike the blunt electro by numbers I've become accustomed to associating them with, on this dubstep laced clubcrusher they create for the "mighty one" a skittering latice work of code red beats and giant cinematic drum poundings that whip Kelis up into something bordering on frenzied. Revellers should volunteer their heads for the block, because frankly this slays. Welcome back.

What with the fuzzed out noisy dissonance, the drugged vocal delivery and the spooked deathbed oboe sound that wouldn't have seemed out of place emerging from the forests of Wonderland when Alice fins herself surrounded by an assortment of fantastical bird like creatures with hammers for heads and mirrored faces, "Bump" would be weird enough as a stand alone song, but add to that a seriously lo-fi video which transcends it's low budget circumstances through looking like a thug fascist snuff movie directed by Rubber Johnny phase Chris Cunningham and you've got probably one of the wonkiest, most brilliantly uncomfortable club songs of the year.

In2 Ether

2009-08-19T23:24:00.000-07:00

Apologies for disappearing into the mists, but things have been crazy of late. Anyway I'm here now.

I recently wrote an article for FACT magazine in which I attempted to try and breakdown some of my favourite Danja productions which you can check out here. Here's an excerpt from the piece about Britney Spear's horror stripshow masterpiece, "Get Naked (I Got A Plan)".

Perhaps inspired in equal parts by a thirst to prove himself as a producer capable of functioning without Timbaland - and by the unique craziness that surrounded the recording of a monument to Britney's public meltdown - Blackout was the record that really unleashed Danja’s extreme, avant-garde pop sensibilities on his own terms. Producing seven tracks for the album overall, including the black glitter, electro throb of 'Gimme More', the song that was made notorious by “that” performance, chances are that Danja will never create anything as bizarre and uncomfortably dark-hearted as the standout on Britney’s mecha-nihilist masterpiece: 'Get Naked (I’ve Got A Plan)'. What seems on the surface to be the most vapid of sex-jams, seemingly designed to keep strippers happy and hanging off their poles, is in fact a queasy, creeped-out psychosexual masterpiece of levitating space-dream beats, zombified drums, and unbalanced horrorshow synths that positively wreak of doom and sound forever on the verge of falling apart - as they lurch forwards and compete to envelop Britney and Danja’s greek chorus of masterfully manipulated chants and exhalations. The quiet violence that’s often been threatened in that serpentine slither of a vocal is here coaxed right to the fore.

'Get Naked (I’ve Got A Plan)' is significant in Danja’s canon for also being one of the very few occasions when he’s stepped out from behind the board and entered the booth himself. Unlike Timbaland - who has always maintained a vocal presence on his tracks, more so as his career has gone on, much to the detriment of the music - Danja has tended to shy away from self-exposure, but 'Get Naked (I’ve Got A Plan)' is a rare exception to the rule. Recorded almost as a duet between Britney and himself, his presence on the track, which drips with backwater voodoo menace as his voice is screwed and reconfigured into a frightening rotting creak in one instance and in another an intoxicated vampiric slur that should come with a warning sign for impressionable young girls, is as intrinsic to the song’s success as the alien-sex sonics and Britney’s own disturbingly dead-eyed performance - a performance dotted with effecting, fleeting moments of sudden, tardy comprehension of a situation that she knows has already dragged her way too far down the rabbit hole.

Of course knowing all that we think we know about Ms Spears - the rumours of crystal meth addiction, a deteriorating family unit, suicide attempts, the witch-hunt level persecution and severe mental instability - adds an extra dimension to this already plenty disorienting song. There’s certainly something potently tragic about observing an individual seemingly retreat into their own fabricated world as Rome burns all around them, and so as it is on 'Get Naked (I’ve Got A Plan)'. While her life falls apart, Britney appears to be concerned with nothing but the discussion of cold, hard fucking devoid of any sense of love or intimacy. Add to that the fact that Blackout is a masterclass exercise in autotuning that subjects Britney’s voice to a series of quite brutal sonic violations, until it’s stripped almost entirely of its humanity, and your left with the sad and yet horribly thrilling sound of a woman who seems to have checked out of reality and given herself up to grinding mechanics - which in return assimilate and transform her into a ghost in her own machine. Even detached from the horror-flick storyboard that Britney Spear’s life had by this point evolved into, 'Get Naked' loses none of its impact.

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So the reason why I've been so busy has been because of my recent reacquaintance with life in NYC. This week I'm djing at a few things you should come to and shake bones.

Tonight is SHAME, an anything goes kind of affair that will involve myself and my psrtner in crime, Lauren Chillhard, playing whatever we like, free of shame or regret. This will entail Madonna's "Erotica" album, 90s house, that new Shakira song about being a sex wolf, creeped out coldwave, and of course, lots and lots of SO BONES jamzzz! Its at Lulu's in Greenpoint. It will be a chilled affair.

On Friday, in collaboration with True Panther, its SOCIETY, a night of amazing, horrible, disgusting noise. Tanlines, Teengirl Fantasy, Sewn Leather, MNDR and Angels in America will be playing live, while Dean from True Panther, and myself will be playing African tekno, homo-haus, and plenty of Todd Edwards remixes. Lets smoke. Its at Monster Island Basement in Williamsburg.

So Close I Can Feel Your Breath

2009-07-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

Cassie; really, what can I say that I haven't said already? One of the most misunderstood, unnecessarily maligned vocalists of the decade? The always beautiful ice cold still in a storm of groaning machines and coral coloured beats. Electro Love HAS to be released this year, but in the meantime another song has leaked, this time with Darkchild on production duties providing Cassie with a rare, straight up, dancefloor killa. Channeling her inner Janet Jackson when Ms. Jackson was only concerned with making hi-tech brittle funk, Cassie effortlessly taunts and teases over a juddering electro beat continually tripping over itself and a series of tron laser whooshes. If it's not as nuanced as something like the minimal, future girl doo-wop genius of "Summer Charm" it's still a damn sight better than the Red One attrocity I'm choosing to ignore forever.

I would never confess to being any kind of expert, and I'm still in the process of navigating my way through the chaff and the wheat, but after some initial confusion between niche, wonky, bassline, etc, I've slowly embraced the fresh new sounds of Funky (still an appalling name) on the grounds that it's combination of feminine energy, heavyhitting frenetic percussion and a strange sense of awkward tension that seems to haunt over so many of the scene's best songs, happens to tick all the right boxes. That's also not to mention the fact that a 2 hour mix Marcus Nasty made for 1Xtra has continued to blow my mind with it's sheer restless noisiness and the way in which the scene in general has really started to impress in producing some seriously strong tracks that could easily contend with the best of 2-steps digi-diva heartbreakers. "Go" is another slice of "you did me wrong, get out of my sight" angst R&B, but Crazy Cousinz with their ever faithful piano staccato stabs and rumbling drums inject some urgency and frenzy into a track that should rule the airwaves if there was ever any justice in the world.

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It's been a very busy week so I haven't had a chance to say thanks to everyone who came out last week for SO BONES and to Alex who DJed an amazing set! So....THANKS! "R.P.M." and "Drink In My Cup" absolutely killed! It was amazing! Goodbye London. Hello NYC.

Sex Is Creepy

2009-07-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

"Break Up" has been perplexing me for a long time now. A few months ago I kind of dismissed it when commenting in relation to a new Mike Jones song, on how many "A Milli" copycats had been born since that monumental masterpiece of drunk gamelan atmospherics entered into our lives. Something about Mario's oddly balanced admission for being a bad boyfriend, who even so is incapable of hiding his shock at the notion that someone would ever want to break up with him made me feel uneasy, not to mention the way in which sonically, absolutely nothing seemed to make much sense at all.

Then sometime this week I came to my senses and remembered how much I love uneasy music, and now I wonder why I ever questioned this lecherous Bangladesh banger in slo-mo which feels as if multiple, monotone drunk loverboys are slurring robotically into your ears at the end of a heavy night, while a nagging Fisher Price melody skips across the distinctly weird jumble of low bass drops and repeating snare hits. It shouldn't be addictive, but it is. And horribly so.

Look out for my Essential Guide to... Danja article which is going to be appearing in FACT magazine very soon, where I dork out over ten of the man's best and brightest robo-funk demons. One song I seriously considered musing about, but that was narrowly edged out of things, was this unreleased Danja produced bliss pop gem from newly signed NYC duo, Pen Up Girls, which opens up with the atonal chugging noise of an obnoxious, fuzzy synthline encrusted in grime which is suddenly submerged and swept up into a seriously dreamy milkshake tsunami of surging bubble beats and super soft cloud cruising electronic tics.

Lastly, I know that commercial success doesn't necessarily equate creative accomplishment, but it's hard to feel good about the fact that so many SO BONES heroes have lately been floundering in the charts, if they've even managed to get close enough to tip their toes into such heavily polluted waters. Electrik Red, Rich Girl, Cassie, and even to an extent, Ciara, have all had their recent material fall upon a mass of deaf ears. "Delirious" by Vistoso Bosses is another beautifully crafted gem that has failed to catch on in the wider world and it's really a crying shame. Produced by Mr Collipark, taking a break from extolling the virtues of ringtone rap and seemingly retired from helping to make sex sound like the creepiest possible thing a person could engage in, "Delirious" is a sweet and breezy piece of candyfloss R&B floating on an updraft of pastel flute and haunted by the dew eyed freestyle balladeers of yesterday, the kind of thing Cassie and Nina Sky sing on their bittersweet bambi days. It deserved so much more.

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FINALLY...SO BONES is happening tonight at Catch in Shoreditch. It's going to be last SO BONES to take place in London for the foreseeable future, what with me swanning back off to NYC, where there will definitely be some SO BONES activity taking place very soon.

If you wanna shake out some joint muscles to the sounds of everything you read about on here (no fucking Akon) then make sure you come down! Alex Macpherson is guest DJ for the night, and Isa GT will be doing her thing downstairs!

Obligatory Facebook thing

Plus check out what The Metro had to say.

My kindred (Diamond) in mid Scherzinger rapture...all that we can aspire too for tonight.

I Can Be A Lion...

2009-07-17T00:33:00.000-07:00

The headfucker of the year has arrived and Christina Milian has her name all over it. The woman, whose album I'm most surprised to be looking forward too this year, has been working exclusively with The Dream and Tricky Stewart, hence why I'm anticipating her stuff so much, and on the basis of "Chameleon" it could very well be some next level stuff. One thing needs to be said about this track right from the outset; it WILL screw with people's brains. Some will love it and understand the genius that goes into making something as sonically extreme as a song that almost entirely dispences of the sonics all together, whilst others will scratch their heads, dumbfounded by something so minimal and odd, and loathe it with a consuming kind of passion.

"Chameleon" is virtually an acapella, sung so closely you can't help but feel an intense creepiness wash over you, Milian whispering left of centre lyrics throughout, her voice occassionally breaking out under the pressure of trying to maintain such a quiet register and creating vocal tic moments that could have almost the same power as the finger cymbal moments in Milkshake. While Milian's serpentine voice takes on the heavy lifting, a hypnotic phantom tabla full of mysterious voodoo charm plays over an unmovable low bass growl that ominously rumbles throughout. And that's it! Honestly listening to this I feel like a spider trapped in a web, the reverberations of the skeletal soundframe just another terrifying pluck of the silk. But seriously at a time when most R&B sounds so maximalist it's as if malfunctioning robot armies are running through minefields, "Chameleon" feels intoxicatingly fresh. Elope indeed!

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Don't forget that next week SO BONES bids farewell to London once again and heads on over to NYC, so come to Catch on Thursday 23rd July for a dance party of Electrik Red and vintage Darkchild!!!!

Obligatory Facebook thing

Thrills Spill

2009-07-07T01:51:00.000-07:00

If this isn't one of the most inventive club bangers of the year, then 2009 will have been a golden year indeed. Based on the leaks, Clipse look all but destined to stumble over the remnants of their previous classics with their upcoming album Til The Casket Drops, but miraculously, and almost from out of nowhere veterans of the scene Quik and Kurupt have emerged out of the mists to deliver the kind of crushing minimalist genius we've usually come to expect of the Virginia duo.

Emamanting from the speakers with tooth cracking verocity "9 x Outta 10" attacks the eardrums like a tighter wound version of "Grindin" that continues to slither and mutate from beginning to end, a diced up, semi-operatic, mournful vocal line fluttering in suspension throughout, barely managing to hold itself above the violently, hollow drums that penetrate the empty spaces in the song, while the sounds of gathering storm clouds hover and threaten to engulf everything beneath them. Seriously, by the end of the year few things will have probably rattled as viscerally as this future classic.

It's interesting and fascinating how music can unexpectedly transport your mind to places you never expected it to take you, especially if you happen to have a ridiculously overactive imagination which tends to lead you down strange pathways. When I listened to the hyphy madness of "Jacka No Hoe", equal parts industrial mood, drunk goof, I never anticipated that it might remind me of the classic 1980's ghost film "The Changeling", but it did and that's almost entirely down to the four note echoing bang that brings the track to life, a sound eerily similar to the supernatural noise that haunts the unfortunate soul terrorized in his cavernous mansion by a phantom child. Add to that a whining plastic violin, the kind of which might be heard drifting from under cracks in the doors to the locked rooms of cheap, phantasm B-movies, and a sparse, chattering synth line that drifts and vibrates in the air, and you've got one of the more bizarre bangers of recent.

After a few weeks of sun, thunder and lightning here on the island of castles and ghosts, I shall be returning to NYC very soon, and in excited anticipation I've been listening to a lot of Ricky Blaze, more so than usual. Last time I was in Brooklyn the trancehall strains of assorted hyperactive Blaze productions seemed to drift through the dry air for an eternity (as well as "Turnin Me On") which made me feel if I closed my eyes I could imagine I was wondering the streets of some pixelated sub-tropic jungle. This cut from Young AK is one of my favourites. I'm just a total sucker for those midi-epic, trance synth arpeggios that wash over you as various sized electronic bubbles make their way to the surface. Roll on Supercore.

Superjerk in the House of Mouse

2009-07-03T03:15:00.000-07:00

I wasn't expecting this. Keke Palmer is one of those Disney poppets that I like to imagine are being produced Queen Alien style in the murky bowels of the Magic Kingdom hidden away beneath the Cinderella Palace, with such speed more and more of them emerging from their pods with terrifying, world conquering white grins. Anyway her debut album kinda came and went despite containing some surprisingly interesting moments like the almost indecipherable, video game rainforest lolita-pop of "Game Song". "Superjerkin", which may feature on her upcoming album is a shockingly decent nod to the L.A. Jerk sound I wrote about a while back, another dance crazed influenced sub genre that sounds like a combination of snap and hyphy. The song itself is built on a skeletal framework of fingersnaps, sparse Atari beats, machine claps, and dive-bomb bass which is intermittently shattered by blunt blocks of electro dread and the robotic gabbering of an evil T-Pain chipmunk, all coming together to create a seriously addictive, dark, disco killer. Dancing on glass.

Love Vs Money has only been out for a few months, and will probably end up being the R&B album of the year, but The Dream is already gearing up to release a new album by the end of the year called Love King. "Hit It On The Road", which will probably end up on the new record, sees The Dream operating in ominous, creep crunk mode working with the sound he perfected on Drink In My Cup and High Price, pounding beats and 808 violence, not to mention a hypnotic droning chorus that whirls around inside your head til you feel like you're eyes might roll into the back of your skull. The man can do no wrong. Bring on the Milian LP now.

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Don't forget about tomorrow. SO BONES will be playing a set at IAC, as will MJ Cole and Zomby. I don't need to explain how good this will be.

And in a few weeks SO BONES bids farewell to London and heads on over to NYC, but not before throwing a party at Catch on July 23rd. COME!!!!

Obligatory Facebook thing

It's Here

2009-07-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

Song of the Summer. Last year it never truly materialised, unless you include the kosmiche-disney balladry of Jordin Sparks and our generation's Ike, which even if you do, wasn't really the same as previous year's tropic monsters; the icy Carpenter film-score minimalism of "Me & U", the skeletal riddim blues of "Uh Oh", and the all synths blazing juggernaut that was "Umbrella." I was a little concerned one wouldn't emerge this year either, but thankfully Nina Sky have shown up to own it (along with some friends.)

Appearing on the Major Lazer digi-dancehall record, "Keep It Goin Louder" also features trancehall star Ricky Blaze in full on autocroon mode, and is a galloping, dumb & fun paean to good times shrouded in enough Florida swamp mist to keep things interesting. The girls effortlessly weave around a framework of echoing kiddie calls and euphoric synths, before the whole thing bizarrely seems to transform into a riddim update on Olive's "You're Not Alone." If this and Chelley's "Took The Night" drown out everything else in the NYC air these coming months, I shall be content.

And while I'm talking about Nina Sky...where is the second album? If you think Cassie has had release problems, Nina Sky look professionally cursed considering The Musical was supposed to come out in 2006. What makes the pill all that more bitter is that so far all the leaks have been amazing in a bringing back freestyle kind of way. This Ryan Leslie produced track with it's metallic butterfly wing flutter synths and weeping machine beats has definitely been one of the best to have emerged so far. Fingers X for this year.

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Just a reminder, this Saturday SO BONES will be djing IAC 17 at Corsica Studios. UK garage legend MJ Cole, rave phantom Zomby and lots of other kool people are playing. Get your tickets now cause chances are you wont be able too on the night. Obligatory Facebook page!

When I Grow Up

2009-06-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

For a while now I've been bedridden and dying of disease. Henceforth I've crawled into a very comforting cocoon of vintage Timbaland productions, and while I've always loved the man's work over the last few days I feel like my heads been cracked open for the second time. I let things like the abominable Chris Cornell album blind me and I feel quite bad about it. I'm going to write something about the man's work very soon, but for now watch this and weep. Transcendental beauty is defined around about the 3.08 mark.

Missy Elliott feat. Timbaland - Hit'em Wit Da Hee VIDEO

Crunk Crystals Hanging Off My Broken Neck

2009-06-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

This is kind of a hopeful, nostalgia post for a strain of crunkmuzik I loved and had high hopes for, but that wilted and died before the sun even had a chance to shine on it. Crunk&b, bubblecrunk or we could be really subversive and just call it CRUNK! Whatever. I'm not talking about crunk accompanied by something like Lil' Jon's primeval lion roars, or The Ying Yang Twins sexy-like-a-spider-crawling-up-your-leg whispers, but the stuff that applied the bonehead synth and toxic fizz of crunk to butterfly soft R&B stylings; the roughhousing of sensuality.

Of course there was the sound's pioneer, Ciara, whose debut album was littered with strange, minimal techno tracks like "Goodies" and "Hotline" that were built purely on the sounds of electronic whistles, minimal drumpads, laser stabs, and an army of buzzing robotic bees. Then there was Usher yelping between the silences in the sound and contending with a four alarm, rave siren burn-up that took the burgeoning sound to the masses and bestowed upon Usher the prize of one of the weirdest, most avant garde number ones ever in "Yeah!".

And then nothing. Well not entirely, but basically the mutant sound that seemed so promising and exciting failed to maintain people's interest and subsequently songs were cranked out with ever diminishing returns. I want to celebrate some of those songs that in my mind signaled something great, but that now seem to represent something sadly lost in the fire.

Perhaps lost is the wrong word to use considering the reason why I've been triggered into pining so much for the sound of late has been because of some recent redux moments that have come in the form of Ciara's operatic tech-crunk mindblower "High Price", Electrik Red's Vanity 6 on a poison drip anthem "Drank In My Cup", and Sophia Fresh's Hooker-Assault on Precinct 13 novelty tune "Superbad." Therefore I'm going to opt to use the word "unfulfilled" and leave it at that. Sigh, etc.

"Girlfight" by Brooke Valentine was obviously Lil' Jon's attempt to blur the confrontational, aggression of straight crunk, the kind that makes you feel like some behemoth madman is repeatedly spitting in your face, with the slinky, melodic sass of female R&B, and it worked perfectly. So perfectly no one ever tried to make another song like it. Basically Brooke hollers and twists her neck over tense, horror crunk synths and metallic Streets of Rage guitar lines about how she wants to knock the gold teeth out of another girls head. Simple as that. Add Lil' Jon's trademark drunkpunk outbursts and a silly, seedy verse from Big Boi and "Girlfight" is as intense and in your face as mainstream R&B gets.

To my knowledge "OopDeeWopDee" was the only song girl group NSS16 ever released and you only need to watch the video to realise this was a real backwaters effort which probably adds to it's strange charms, the kind of thing that was always destined to disappear into the ether and leave a small handful of people obsessed with it for years to come. "OopDeeWopDee" featured none other than down south ambassador David Banner, which means if it weren't for the beat this would probably have been labeled crunk by association, but there's no need for that as the song's sinuous middle eastern rhythm that's been seemingly processed through a fax machine over and over until it sounds barely existent goes to show. What I adore most about the song is in fact the brittle, almost non existence of it all; the asthmatic, weakling beat, the vocals that sound like they're being heard from the other side of the wall. Listening to it makes me feel like I'm plucking at a frozen cobweb. The remix which incorporated the diwali riddim (that MASSIVE Lumidee song to most) only makes this lost gem sparkle just a little more intensely.

Bella make me want to well up. They were simply put, brilliant, but they never got so far as to release their debut album, so I have to make do with a mixtape of their songs that Dan Cannon put out a few years ago. "Never Be Me" preempted the crushing, monolithic crunk crush of Ciara's "High Price", except it was slower, ALOT slower, like swimming though molasses, and possessed a sound I can only say was slightly oppressive. Whenever I play it I'm still initially always struck by how ugly and off-putting it is, in the same way I'm still surprised by parts of Britney's Blackout album, but without fail before long I'm inevitably seduced and dragged into it's sonic tar pool. It's another fine example as to how different and out there this meshing of sounds has been and could still be. Bella Forever.

Check out Bella's Myspace for a stream of the song.

F.Y.I There's more of this stuff to ramble about. I might make a mix soon.

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It might be because I've been ill and delrious of late or it might have been because my XXJFG bruthas surprised me by admitting they're fans (and I'm easily led), but SO BONES is now on twitter. You know the drill. Add me and I'll bore the shit out of you by telling you what I just ate and what Christina Milian song I listened too whilst eating.

Tuna salad. "So Amazing."

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We also now have a 20 Jazz Funk Great twitter too! HERE!

Teencream & Idol Screams

2009-06-22T22:11:00.000-07:00

Lloyd, the boy who should be Prince (perhaps next in line after The Dream) can always be relied upon for delivering near perfect space-station serenades filled with pixeldust atmospherics and sleazy teen-cream come ons. This new Jim Jones produced cut has Lloyd roll into the room on the same diamond encrusted panther he's always been riding, but this time around with a distinctly darker glint in it's eyes, adopting a sinister, minimalist John Carpenter prowl, while Mr Polite falls into tried and trusted creep mode and half sings over gooey, doomy, undulating synthlines. If MTV commissioned a Carmen Hip Hopera style remake of Yuzna classic Society, this could very well be the perfect soundtrack to all that sexy shunting.

Clipse have a new album coming out this year and I don't think things are looking good. None of the leaks have convinced me that anything on the record is going to come close to touching the super-blunt, alien boom bap beats that rang through the vast hallways of the giant ice strip-palaces they erected with The Neptunes somewhere hidden away in the Tundra a few years ago. "Eyez On Me" with Keri Hilson, who seems to grate on me more and more with every passing week, is probably the best of the new bunch and is pretty decent, equipped with an addictive cokeclub claptrack and and an arsenal of ravey Baltimore flavored synth stabs that should sound immense echoing around cavernous dancehall somewhere.

Everyone and the Sun and Moon now knows about the death of Michael Jackson. While I can't say I was a committed fan, at least not once I'd turned 13 and put down my double cassette HIS-tory album, I have to acknowledge the man was a legend and the reason why so many of the artists I love do what they do. I offer to you all a fittingly sombre, screwed version of "Billie Jean", which as is the way with the purple Houston sound, manages to bring the true, depressing darkness of the track to the forefront. R.I.P you fabulous lunatic.

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean (Screwed)

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Saturday July 4th I shall be playing an array of metal machine jams, autotune fantasias and ENCOM valley robo-pop bangers for the 17th International Amalgamation of Champions, which as ever is being hosted by the Real Gold guys at Corsica in Elephant & Castle. No doubt headliners Zomby and MJ Cole(!!!) will have dancers breaking limbs with ecstatic, sweaty enthusiasm. You can buy tickets in advance here. This one is going to be RAMMMMED(stein.)

I'm Gonna Let You Starve

2009-06-17T06:28:00.000-07:00

After everything that has happened if anyone out there still thought Mariah Carey might have been in possession of some slight shred of sanity...

"You a mom & pop, I'm a corporation / I'm the press conference, you a conversation."

"He's all up in my George Foreman."

"Got you all fired up with your Napoleon complex / See right thru you like you're bathin' in windex."

Yes, she sings these lines in her new hook up with The Dream and Tricky Stewart, which comes on like a more playful, carnivalesque version of "Side Effects", less horrorshow g-funk synth melodrama, more animatronic drag queen, bitchfest. Oh...and to the disgust of some, Mariah has embraced the autotune and added a surprisingly nice digitised feel to her astral siren calls. Bonus points for Gucci.

obsessed - mariah carey

I rediscovered my Shawty Redd playlist today and it got me wondering where in the world his much delayed solo album "Jekyll/Hyde", had gotten too. Shawty is one of the most insanely inventive, underrated producers out there, the man responsible for taking Snoop for a sail down pastel coloured, Florida cream rivers on a gold plated mega-yacht populated with assorted Armani swimsuit attired fem-bots in Sexual Eruption, and who has consistently provided Jeezy with his spookiest, creep house psychedelics created by an orchestra of wheezing, deathly machines. For his debut solo outing from what I can gather Shawty seems to be on a mission to make the ultimate cyber-lullaby sleaze fest, immersing himself in autotune fantasias built from pillowy, weeping Prince synthlines and melancholy stargazer atmospherics.

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SO BONES III is taking place tomorrow night, upstairs at Catch. It's free entry too! Electrik Red will be flowing, as will the usual space-jams. COME!

Epiphanies

2009-06-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

Cassie and Ciara. The eternally still ice princess and the amazonian robo-diva. Two of So Bones most beloved spirits.

"Must Be Love" and "Go Girl." Two of their worst ever singles. Well that's what I'd thought anyway until only just last week when for unknown wonderful reasons everything clicked and I've since come to the conclusion that they're both fine specimens of flawed brilliance.

The T-Pain produced Go Girl has been all but written out of Fantasy Ride's difficult history since it failed to do much of anything, but the topsy turvy electronics, plastic fanfare and insanely catchy chorus have well and truly won me over and I'm firmly obsessed, ESPECIALLY with the video mix which includes a histrionic exploding motorcycle breakdown and lots of stuuter effects elevating the neck-snap track rhythms into the epic.

Diddy's inane stale champagne babblings are never necessary, in fact they should be outlawed for destroying so many good songs in the past. "Must Be Love" is no exception and the central reason why it came as such a crushing blow when I learned "Must Be Love" was to be Cassie's "comeback" single was primarily because it had been announced that the dreaded one was going to be all over it. Never has a song needed a rap free version more.

Until that MC ridden moment arrives I close my eyes and plug my ears up, let the moment pass and proceed with listening to Cassie, the queen of r&b minimalism coo and sigh in that unnervingly serene way of hers over a deceptively simplistic, crackling latino loop infused with more than a hint of gritty summer sweat and a ghost tropic kind of vibe, the kind of thing Rza might have thought was pretty damn romantic in the 90s.

Electro Love really couldn't come sooner. Really.

Check out Cassie's myspace for a stream of the song.

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I recently asked fellow lost souls Salem if they would make XXJFG a mix and with some light in the cave, they did so. What with the inclusion of some brain breaking tech-gabba and a disorientating fragment of a psychotic's dream lullaby, while the mix isn't entirely So Bones, there's still a good deal of creepy, sparse ghost juke to prick up ears and make spines rattle.

Whitney Houston has never sounded so drugged. Even when she's been drugged.

Tracklisting:::
1-PEARL - Pearl's Dream
2-NEOPHYTE - I will have that power
3-DJ NATE - I'm a Burn
4-DJ NATE - Ghostmix
5-YOUNG CREAM - Angie Juke
6-AiDS 3D - Back Once Again (Forever)
7-THA POPE - Track 41
8-UNKNOWN - Track 20 Chicago Juke
9-NEOPHYTE - Catastrophe
10-THREAT MISSES - Juke that Girl

Salem XXJFG Mix

Beginnings & Endings

2009-06-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

The end is nigh for the robot voiced ones, at least according to Jay-Z if we're to believe he's being totally serious with his new single "D.O.A. (Death of Autotune), which considering Kanye West co-produced it and the vocoder king T-Pain has seemingly given his blessing, is probably far more about grabbing some attention than it is about actually leading a charge against what has, in my mind, been one of the more interesting hip hop trends to emerge over the last few years.

Shit eating grins aside, "D.O.A." is proof if anything that Jay really has transformed into the Eric Clapton of hip hop. If killing off the Hawkings effect means being subjected to this anodyne, real muso crap than I'll take a futuristic fantasia like "Blame It" any day and pray Cherzilla takes her vengeance soon. F.Y.I. Jamie Foxx never had more heart til someone wrapped it up in wires.

Oh, and...

Off with his head.

Since it crawled in under just about everybodies skin last summer, A Milli is still the tune to emulate, the gremlin to pour water on after midnight in the hopes something as equally twisted might spring forth. Beyonce, Rich Boy, and Mario have all made their tries with varying degrees of success, and now, like a blast from the past, Mike Jones has got one on his new album. Fittingly for a Swishahouse associate, the talking in tongues is slowed down to a swampy crawl and the blunt drums pound with a more doom laden impact creating a potently claustrophobic banger perfect for having fun with while slowly drowning in a tar pool. It's no Drop, but it's good enough.

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Dummy Magazine recently asked me to make a So Bones mix, bruises and all, so with the help and patience of a beloved Dreamburger I spent the weekend listening to Britney vomit over a forest floor of twitching stripper limbs. It also comes with the first non-drunk interview I've given in a good while. Check it out.

Robots Don't Cry (In Public)

2009-06-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

Electrik Red flopped. Ciara kinda flopped. Flo-Rida is still clogging up the airwaves and dragging Wynter Gordon down with him. Eminem is continuing to prove people are generally really dumb. And it looks like for the second year in a row there wont be a big "Uh Oh/Umbrella/Goodies" type Summer jam unless people pounce on Chelley quick! Good skullcrushing times indeed. Thankfully like a sunbeam through thick waves of smog, there's been quite a bit of Danja activity recently, so I'm not ready to jump into the fire just yet.

Laying all cards on the table right from the outset, Nic Rage is a relatively dreadful no-mark rapper, but "The Life I Lead" is testament to how good Danja can be because it's probably one of my most played songs in recent months mostly down to the fact it's a perfect example of the man's hypnotic downer inclinations which are responsible for contributing that very distinct melancholy malaise that tends to form a soft blue fuzz around his synthetic orchestrations often making them sound like crushed metal laments for all the broken cyborgs prematurely thrown on the funeral pyre. There's been the wonky haunted stripclub atmospherics of Danity Kane's "Striptease" (which I've found to be an interesting accompaniment to this classic clip), the coral coloured, tear drop etherealness of Cassie's "Official Girl" and the weeping computer trance wash of B5's "Teardrops." "The Life I Lead" inhabits a hopeless Terminator style apocalyptic wasteland of broken circuit boards and broken bones, gliding along on a ringtone Vangelis vibe, a tinny epic of wavering semi-operatic wailing and elongated waves of chrome coloured synth-work.

A trademark wheezing sine wave kicks off Esmee Denter's "Casanova" before giving way to some weird, distant downbeat bird calls in the chorus, in a new song which is of significance for actually being one of Danja's very few pure pop efforts of late. Despite not reaching the ludacrous, lunatic highs his previous forays into robo-pop have created "Casanova" is still quite a nice sad-eyed-girl-trapped-in-her-pink-palace/prison piece of fluff that also happens to feature Justin Timberlake in the slightly creepy, unconvincing role of "big brother."

Skull & XBones

2009-05-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

WOW! A post deletion. I guess I'm really earning my stripes now. A recap will follow soon.*

In the meantime...

This will never leave my heart.

* (SEE BELOW!)

Golden Amazons Redux

2009-05-18T08:20:00.000-07:00

Back by no demand at all...the offending post from last week minus the offense.

Rich Harrison, the man behind "Crazy In Love" and the best Usher song Usher never released may have seemed a bit quiet of late, but he has in fact been busy toiling away in his factory crafting some very nice things for his in-house harem, Richgirl, another group who alongside The Dream's Vanity 6 fantasy incarnate, Electrik Red and the T-Pain affiliated Sophia Fresh are making me feel pretty good about girl groups this year.

Following on from Bun-B assisted "24", one of the great singles that never was in 2008, and the glitch-snap fire of "Honeycomb", their new cut "He Aint Wit Me Now Tho" is probably their finest effort yet, Harrison continuing to prove he's far more than a one trick pony as he moves further and further away from the digital go-go sound he perfected so many years ago. Singing with the kind of high register urgency we haven't heard done this well since Natasha and Darkchild created their "So Sick" masterpiece (La Roux take note, and fuck off), deranged piano banging and Valkyrie war strings buzz-saw back and forth giving way to sporadic bursts of 90s R&B goo while the girls all holler like Beyonce fem-bots. All this wealth of girl group goodness just makes me miss Bella all the more which is a little bittersweet really. Gone, but not forgotten.

From one girl band to a lady who against the odds managed to survive one, LeToya Luckett is gearing up to release her second solo album Lady Love after a surprisingly successful debut which featured the old skool cream of "Torn", a tune which officially made for one of the best chopped and screwed Fuck Action reinterpretations ever. It was all about those ancient sounding never-ending moans. Coming back with a far more up-tempo sound, "She Aint Got Shit On Me" finds producer Darkchild in the big synth zone he always operates best in, pummeling the euroclub keys over some elasticated spacejam beats and clockwork drumwork, whilst Ms Luckett whips herself into a green eyed frenzy.

She Aint Got Shit On Me - LeToya

Dubs Up

2009-05-07T08:05:00.001-07:00

Apologies for the lack of updates, but technology (i.e. laptops) will inevitably always fail us. Anywho, I'm back.

Snoop Dogg is a rapper I can take or leave, but my God, when his songs hit they hit hard like your on a collision course with a wall of charging titanium rhinos. Since the vocoderised Florida cream of "Sexual Eruption" things have been a tad quiet, a situation his new song "Millionaire" rectifies in significantly abrupt style. Following on from Lil' Wayne's twisted experimentations with dubstep on last year's supremely weird "Yes", "Millionaire" sees the Dogg go straight to the source and team up with British dubstep duo Chase & Status to create a claustrophobic, monolithic beast of a banger that drags a Bollywood influenced vocal underwater and then proceeds to bury and crush it's sinewy grooves under dense waves of reverbing bass distortion whilst Snoop groans and bellows like the uprising of Mecha-Jeezy the destructor. In fact after this and "Yes" the only thing that would make things better would be if Jeezy jumped on one of these dubstep styled tracks. Just imagine...

Snoop Dogg Millionaire - Snoop Dogg Feat. Tanvi Shah

Another season, another localised hip hop mutation. This time coming straight out of L.A., jerkin. Based around a dance movement, of course, kids harking back to the 80s skate and graffiti culture that was once so intrinsic to hip hop wear colourful t shirts and skinny jeans and "jerk" to the minimal sounds of the slightly slowed down hyphy tracks being made by a small group of Cali artists, all fidgeting beats and finger snaps and endearingly bad tin-can vocal recordings. It's deceptively simple, but addictive like jitter bugs under the skin.

This is the anthem...

New Boyz - You're A Jerk (Rapidshare Link)

And these girls should hook up with Electrik Red immediately and become this millennium's En Vogue/Salt N' Pepa feist-fest.

Pink Dollaz - Never Hungry (Rapidshare Link)

"it's lady power, girl power on crack!"

2009-04-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

This post's title is a quote found on the Amazon page for the debut LP (How to be A Lady, Vol.1) from Electrik Red, The-Dream's version of Vanity 6, a collection of sass-factories who could all be underwear models/catwalk panthers if they weren't so good at being airbrushed animatronic robo-harbingers of the r&bleep apocalypse melded with the whores of Babylon (if Babylon was a nail-salon made of liquid metal in Queens). Not sure on the "Lady" label though, just check out the "lady-like" behaviour on show here:

Electrik Red - Drink In My Cup from c mack on Vimeo.

Of course if these so called ladies landed in the club when we were there, we would be grovelling at their canary-yellow heels because for all the sharp visuals, sassy eyes at the camera and well choreographed cubicle break dancing, Electrik Red actually possess songs that swan dive into the sea of crystal brilliance, lighting the nite sky with a million disco balls that yo-yo in unison back and forth to a low slung bpm groove:

Freaky Freaky 90 Sec Snippet - Electrik Red

"Drink in My Cup" is the scarlet laser-guided minimal synth ode to born-bad bitches, hump-dancing amid torrents of dry ice, vicious schematic hi-hat formations and brazen acts of phone theft, and "Freaky Freaky" boils all that down to a white hot pneumatic icicle of a synth stab that fires through endless walls of glass with Electrik Red floating in on a cloud of pure white peacock feathers, winding to the stutter-drums and brooding bass, delivering an aching love-saturated vocal.

While we're on the subject of faux operatic ENCOM-sponsored divas, Ciara is finally bringing "Fantasy Ride" to the masses after various incarnations have flooded messageboards via RapidShare URLs for months. This can only be a good thing, but So Bones is as unsure of the apparent exclusion of the track "One Favor" as much as we are the batshit Venom vs cornrows cover art - are there not enough pictures of her with big hair looking like a robotic Amazonian Louis Vuitton demon-slayer they could of used?

On "One Favor", Ciara is as much the alien ice queen as she is on the effortlessly overwrought and perfectly ridiculous "High Price", stalking the urban wastelands like a 50ft porcelain opera diva with LED eyes and ray guns for fingers, but this time instead of comedy gigolo-ganster Ludacris bouncing around like a cyborg werewolf, her partner is a rhythmic whiplash syndrum wrapped up in gold plated psycho killer strings.

One Favor.MP3 - Ciara

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WE HAVE A MYSPACE - CLICK HERE AND MAKE FRIENDS WITH US!

Sweet Sick

2009-04-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

I don't watch TV much, but lately whenever I do it seems as if I cannot for the life of me avoid the video for that irrevocably naff Pussycat Dolls feat Nicole Scherzinger(!?) and A.R. Rahman song, which somehow has something to do with Slumdog Millionaire. Anyway all this Pussycat Dolls feat Nicole Scherzinger business has made me suspect the one who sings may be attempting to give her botched solo project another go at some point this year which I'm all in favour of if she can produce another song as mindblowingly good as her 2007 mega-flop, horror-jam "Whatever You Like." Polow Da Don has a habit of recycling his beats and this is a perfect example of him doing just that having already palmed this beat off on Kelis for the equally blackhearted sexfest "Blindfold Me" and Chilli's unreleased "Straight Jack." In this incarnation though that hardly matters at all as Polow fleshes out the beats and perfects that ominously seductive, "poison on the lips" sound that suggests a tender caress to the left, and a crystal dagger through the heart to the right. While Scherzinger sings like a woman possessed trademark voodoo death drums and incessant, state-of-emergency rave sirens are overshadowed by an arching, dread-soaked synth line straight out of an 80s monster movie, the kind that gives you that frozen spinal fluid feeling as if slowly something horrible is about to rise up above you from behind. My advice; Don't look, just dance.

Whatever You Like - Nicole Scherzinger

I'm not usually too sold on mash-ups or whatever the fuck they're called these days, but this sonic collision of Salem's cave-crunk atmospherics and Busta Rhyme's typically barking delivery which comes to us courtesy of NYC resident J-Stor is actually pretty decent. The middle eastern T-Pain vibes that slither across the atomic sandstorm of noise which erupts over Heather's hook girl from Hell vocals only confirm in my mind that the sooner DJ Paul & Juicy J come to their senses and hook up with Salem, the better.

J-Stor - Jayshiki (Rapidshare link)

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Just to say for those of you dwelling in NYC, make sure you go and check out the quite awesome guys behind Tanlines do their ringtone tropicalia thing at Glasslands (between Kent and South 2nd, Brooklyn) this Thursday. It will obviously be much fun.

RΔDIO DIZNΣY

2009-04-20T06:54:00.001-07:00

"Dont Talk" isn't particularly new, but I feel the need to write about it mostly out of recent rediscovery and because aside from being a sonically impressive update on the beloved freestyle sound, it's also fascinatingly horrid. Vanessa Hudgens is the Disney mannequin most famously known for prancing around in high school musicals and having a fetish for Santa Clause, and who somehow over two albums has managed to get some pretty ohK songs out of her producers. Don't Talk though is something quite special indeed. The Sunglasses At Night synths weaving through a series of increasingly frenetic Miami machine claps are all in place and very nice too, but lyrically this song is beaming in from a whole other universe, miles away from the plastic cuteness we would usually associate with Radio Disney. Just imagine if all those tinny aspirational hymnals about making it in the world with a little help from your friends and staying true to yourself had been replaced with poison pumped, spite anthems about selfish sexual voraciousness and cold hearted elitism, themes taken directly from the bible of Kimberly Joyce.

I'd go as far as to say "Don't Talk" is a kind of pop equivalent of the Japanese shocker Audition in the sense that just as that film starts out like a Meg Ryan fluff-fest, it quickly descends into something altogether nightmarish, akin to expecting a beautiful butterfly to emerge from a chrysalis only to witness something altogether nastier uncoil from within. I'm not suggesting the extremities of Audition are mirrored in "Don't Talk", but the unnerving double bluff formula certainly is as Hudgens initially begins to wax lyrical, sweetly and politely enough about "shooting stars" and her seemingly innocent hopes for the future of a potential relationship, only to turn distinctly sour with the chorus in which she implores to her suitor...

"Don't talk, don't tell your friends about us.

Don't talk or this song will end, I promise.

Be quiet, be quiet, or I will just deny it.

Be quiet, don't talk, keep it between us."

Sounding entirely joyless and calculating, the archetypal American teen sweetheart becomes a dead-eyed, black hearted terror who isn't interested in real love at all, but only in self serving motives. When she whispers "keep your mouth closed" a bit later on in the song, you're inclined to believe that in her own universe this girl is indeed a destructor of sorts.

Vanessa Hudgens - Dont Talk - Vanessa Hudgens

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Following on from the first one which was all kinds of fun, another SO BONES party is happening very soon. Friday May 1st, if you happen to be in London and you wanna shunt and sweat with us come upstairs to Catch.

This time around the usual XXJFG DJs will be in the awesome company of the Notorious V.I.C. and Bumps (aka Dom & Eka.)

Disclaimer: No fucking Akon. Or Flo-Rida.

Facebook Event

I C U

2009-04-19T04:16:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to feel like "the Britney guy." Last Friday one of the first things Daniel from Mi Ami said to me was "so I hear you like Britney Spears", and then just the other day Guillaume from Blog Digger asked me the exact same question. I probably shouldn't be too surprised when I do things like drunkenly slur into a fellow XXJFG brother's ear about how Gimme More is sooo Lynchian, or explain to bemused friends how I've been in the process of writing an essay relating Blackout with the Japanese man and machine epic, Tetsuo. Anyway I'll be the first to admit Circus as an album wasn't exactly up to scratch; badly sequenced, a ballad about her babies, and way too much back peddling. What the album mostly missed was Danja's diminished presence in Britney's music. Danja was of course the man who transformed Britney into a malfunctioning renegade robot, clipping, pitchshifting and stretching her serpentine purple-funk croak with such extremism it often felt as if he was trying to make the American teen version of Medulla.

Flamethrower, sung here by Chris Brown (music unrelated comments are now too obvious and dull) is actually a demo that was intended for Circus and gives us a glimpse into how that record might have sounded if Danja had been given more free reign. Gothic Lolita crunk atmospherics and percussion that sounds like multiple animatronic steeds galloping and clattering across glowing ENCOM landcsapes fuse with the man's trademark woozy, creeping synth work which manage to infect the proceedings with a mildly nauseating, "it's time to face Bowser" plastic dread. Alas...what could have been.

Flame Thrower - Chris Brown

Earlier I mentioned Blog Digger, a collective of super nice guys who throw super swell parties in super beautiful Paris which is where I was on Friday night playing some records with my brethren Juan. Amongst all the italo and Chicago jack-house noise I managed to slip in what's probably one of my favourite records of the year so far. Took The Night by Chelley is basically the sound of Nina Sky's floating, disembodied heads forever spinning with Uncanny Alliance through a complex riddim matrix. Last year it was quite sad when no "Uh Oh" or "Pon De Replay" emerged, so it's very nice to have this kind of record back in time for Summer. Plus "hate, hate, hate, hate, hate" is the line of 2009. Period.

One last thought. What the fuck happened to this beat? From 2.57. Some serious monolithic tekno stuff going on!

P.S. Ciara dances for art.

Chris Brown - Ciara (live)
Uploaded by foxysoul

We Will Mention Cassie in Every Post

2009-04-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

Due to the gargantuan nature of her greatness, she will be referenced in every post (probably). On the other hand, if she carries on working with Akon and P.Diddy then our interests will wane, and so too should yours. Its The Underdogs/The Dream/Tricky Stewart all the way for "Electro Love", an album long in gestation, short on any actual release dates but generous in the amount of leakages.

Take this renegade from the rings of Saturn, "Keep On Lovin' Me", a track that may appear on an LP sometime in the future. As Robin points out, this has similarities to "Millionaire" by Kelis & Andre, but this version is less sultry and instead just plain zingin' pop, sugar coated and harmonic, set in shades of pink and baby blues.

Keep On Lovin Me (Prod. By Tricky Stewart) - Cassie feat. The-Dream

Another staple of this blog will surely be the soot-and-glitter-flecked hellish souls, SALEM, a group of spectres that may be a hard pill to swallow for any strictly Rn'B-only fan, but their black hearts shine through the mire of the slowly disintegrating synthesizers and they drag with oily fingers the thumping soul of thug rap and the jittery Juke beast into their forest cave, melting the two together to create something sleekly vicious. If Portishead re-recorded "Machine Gun" with a lost in the k-hole Savage on guest vocals, it would go like this:

SALEM - Sip It Cup (feat. DJ Sippycup) (Rapidshare link)

Merok 7" now, new Japanese 7" soon.

Dizzee's Dirtee Stank Records is shaping up to be a sweet selection of knife stabs straight outta Dalston. Dizzee's last album didn't really work for the most part, what with the Lily Allen collab and the confusing lack of actual grime, but he seemed to be circling around that most amazing debut album sound with "Maths + English" bonus track, "Drivin'". There's none of the feral gats-at-dawn & teen pregnancy capers of "I Luv U", but the screw face bile of "Vexed" is removed and replaced by stoned drawls over a similar spider web synthline - a downer twin of So Soild's "Ride Wid Us".

Dizzee Rascal - Drivin' (Rapidshare link)

Download from Juno.

Forever Is A Long Time...

2009-04-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

So the week I decide to set So Bones up I go awol. Score! Anyway in all fairness it's been a slow week although I did learn probably for the tenth time in my life that drinking a bottle of vodka and a bucket of beer doesn't combat a cold, Heidi Montag records slide quite nicely into DJ sets that mostly consist of Salem and Chicago house records (please see below), and Cassie continues to be the shit not only for almost single handedly continuing to keep the spirit of freestyle alive but for going all Alice Dellal on us...

The last few days I've been mostly caning a new Underdogs production I've come across. Apparently a demo for Usher which makes sense considering it's actually pretty good, and Usher very rarely actually records or releases any of his good stuff, James Fauntleroy continues to impress me with that distinctly melancholic falsetto of his, but as is becoming typical of an Underdogs production it's mostly all about the beats. Having produced three of my favourite songs in 2008 I think it's safe to say I have a lot of time for the work of The Underdogs. I might even go as far as to say they could be the best production team functioning at this moment in time. There was the digitized Wuthering Heights melodrama of My House that captured Cassie inside a cavernous castle constructed out of haunted synthesizers groaning atop the ashes of a thousand Prince femme-protégés, the epic Radio Disney R&B kosmiche of No Air which quietly became song of the year once everyone had gotten over the fact that the song of the year was an incredibly overblown rococo ballad sung by a nondescript American Idol winner, and of course the sonic batshit that was Mannequin, which even after a couple hundred listens still makes not a lick of sense. Seriously someone find these guys a girl they can mould and have their way with. Or better yet get them on board to produce Telepathe's next record.

Just to say, Friday night I had the pleasure of DJing at Mi Ami's London show. Needless to say aside from being beyond excellent, they requested all kinds of good stuff (mostly Kylie Minogue and Britney records.) From what I can recall this is what I played for anyone who cares. Probably not that girl who got pissy cause I said I didn't want to play The Cure

MI AMI (The Lexington) 10th April 2009
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Chandra - Kate
Panda Bear - Bros
Telepathe - Devil's Trident (PTR Remix)
HEALTH - Die Slow
Photonz - Shaboo (Andy's Edit)
Leif - Black Magic
Dharma - Plastic Doll (Club Mix)
Kylie Minogue - I Believe In You
Inner City - Ahnongay
Parallels - Ultralight
Madonna - Words
Azari & III - Hungry For The Power
Hounds Of Hate - I Like Triangles
Britney Spears - Womanizer
Salem - Tent
Sakura Night - Sky Ferreira
Heidi Montag - Fashion
T.I. - Whats Yo Name
Beautiful Swimmers - O Yea
Telepathe - So Fine
Brandy - I Wanna Be Down (Matt Pendergast Remix)
Britney Spears - Breathe On Me
Salem - Skullcrush
Dreamburger - Destiny Is My Child
Xeno & Oaklander - Blue Flower

And the wires penetrated my skin...

2009-04-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

For a while now I've been musing along with my fellow 20 Jazz Funk Great brethren about things like Armani italo cyborgs lost inside inpenetrable disco vortexes, Arthur Machen analogue lullabies, and mind-melting tribal jams created by feral, spazzy kids banging on blocks of wood with bones lost amongst the trees. While I still love all these things with a heart fit to explode, I wanted to set up this page to muse about another love of mine. I'm talking about the sounds that emanate from the packs of girls forever fixed to the backs of buses, and out of the speakers of radios eternally locked on Kiss F.M. and that have haunted my every move since Brandy got all up in Monica's face, or vice versa.

I will always maintain that Liar's "Drums Not Dead" and Britney's "Blackout" are two of the most important records of the last decade. This is basically what So Bones is about.

This music is special. I want you to think it's special too.

h.e.l.l.o.

2009-04-06T17:41:00.001-07:00