NSW

Someone sent me a Noisettes track a few years ago, and I really loved it. At the time I had a hard time finding anything else to listen to online though. Really glad to see this post! I'm listening to them on Spotify now. "Scratch Your Name" is fab.

__________________
Hi.

Gavin B.

The cover of Richard Thompson's latest album, Electric

Richard Thompson Goes Electric (Again)

Back in his days with the groundbreaking British folk rock group, Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was an electric guitar player whose technical skills were frequently compared to other UK guitar gods like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page.

Like Clapton, during his Fairport years, Thompson played a vintage 1959 Fender Stratocaster to get a big fat blues sound. Stratocaster guitars were the choice of aspiring guitar gods of the late Sixties.

In his post-Fairport albums of the 70s & 80s, Richard began playing a baby blue customized guitar designed & built by Ferrington Guitars. The so-called Ferrigtoncaster mimicked the menacing sound of a vintage Stratocaster, but also had 3 different customized pick-ups that allowed Thompson to get an infinite variety of tones from his guitar.


Thompson with his custom designed Ferrington guitar

In the early 90s Thompson began writing and playing more songs intended to be played on acoustic guitar and played most of his songs on a Lowden L32C acoustic guitar. Those fans of Thompson's electric guitar playing yearned for the glory days when Thompson was a guitar god. In reality, Thompson was considered the greatest traditional folk guitarist in the UK, but mastery of the acoustic guitar is not enough to maintain one's status as a guitar god in the world of rock music.

After nearly two decades of mostly playing traditional Celtic folk music, to the delight of his fans, Thompson has returned with an album of songs that are played on electric guitar with a rock music band. There are a couple of ballads played on acoustic guitar, but for the most part Thompson has returned to the rip-roaring electric guitar playing of his Fairport Convention days on his new album, Electric.

Since Electric is a brand new album released on Feb. 11, I was only able to find one song from the album posted on YouTube, but it's a good one. The dark and cynical song Stuck on the Treadmill is a tour de force of Thompson's fiery electric guitar playing skills. The tonal range of his customized Farrington electric guitar is breathtaking.

Gavin B.

The Go-Betweens: Arguably Australia's greatest pop band

AMG writes: I have to confess that I missed most of the Go-Betweens greatest moments in the early and mid Eighties while I was covering reggae music as a journalist and spending large amounts of time in Jamaica. Despite my focus on reggae music, I managed to purchase their masterpiece of pop classicism 16 Lovers Lane when it was released in 1988. 11 years later, I purchased their anthology Bella Vista Terrace which was a good representative sampling of their six pre-Beggar's Banquet albums recorded between 1981 & 1988. Those six Go-Between albums are frequently out of issue in the United States.

Even with with the purchase of those two albums, I remained largely ignorant of the full scope of the Go-Between's talents. Nearly every album they recorded over their 15 year association was a jewel. They made every song on every album count and recorded very few sub-par album filler tracks.

Each Go-Betweens album was a cycle of songs threaded together by a common thematic link. We used to call them "concept albums", back in the days when the album format was elevated as a new musical art form.

Following the punk revolution of 1976, concept albums fell out of grace. A new guard of music critics belittled concept albums as pretentious artifacts from the Mesozoic Age of Rock, recorded by self indulgent arena bands. Ironically, two of the greatest albums of the punk era, Never Mind the Bullocks: Here's the Sex Pistols & London Calling by the Clash, were both concept albums heralding the new world order of the punk rock insurgency.

Last fall I came across a flawless set of six of those early groundbreaking Go-Between albums in the vinyl bin of a local flea market & have spent most of this winter getting acquainted with the wonders of the Go-Betweens' musical legacy. The six albums were priced at $6 apiece, but the dealer sold me the entire set of six for $25, blissfully unaware of the each one of those mint condition Go-Betweens albums had a value of $25 apiece in the vinyl music collecting marketplace. Forgive me for boasting about the musical treasures I've found hidden in plain sight at flea markets.

As a point of reference, the Go-Betweens' primary songwriters Robert Forster & Grant McLennon were influenced by the sparse minimalist pop music of the Velvet Underground, the lyrical and enigmatic love songs of Leonard Cohen, as well the music of some of their contemporary music peers in the UK post punk scene of the early Eighties like the Cure, the Smiths, & Echo & the Bunnymen.

The Go-Betweens officially disbanded in 1989, but reunited in the post-millennium decade to record three additional well received albums. Here is the discography of the Go-Betweens' nine studio albums from 1981 until 2005. I've also added the AMG's rating of each album based on their 5 star ranking system. Additionally I've added my own favorite recommended songs from each of the eight Go-Between albums I've purchased and listened to over the winter.


1981- Send Me a Lullybye (rated 2.5 stars out of 5 stars)
Recommended Songs: None, I've been unable to find a copy of this album.


1983- Before Hollywood (rated 4.5 stars out of 5)
Recommended Songs: Dusty in Here; Cattle and Cane; That Way.


1984- Spring Hill Fair (rated 4 stars out 5)
Recommended Songs: Bachelor Kisses; Part Company; Draining the Pool for You.


1986- Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express (rated 4.5 stars out of 5)
Recommended Songs: Spring Rain; Head Full of Steam, Apology Accepted.


1987- Tallulah (rated 3.5 stars out of 5)
Recommended Songs: Right Here; The House that Jack Kerouac Built; Bye Bye Pride.


1988- 16 Lover's Lane (rated 5 stars out 5)
Recommended Songs: Love Goes On!; Quiet Heart; Streets of Your Town.


2000- The Friends of Rachel Worth (rated 3.5 stars out of 5)
Recommended Songs: Spirit ; Going Blind; He Lives My Life.


2003- Bright Yellow Bright Orange (rated 4 stars out of 5)
Recommended Songs: Caroline and I; Crooked Lines; Old Mexico.


[FONT="Garamond"]2005- Oceans Apart (rated 4 stars out of 5)
Recommended Songs: Here Comes a City; The Statue; Lavender; No Reason to Cry.

Gavin B.

Neo-traditionalist Jolie Holland in concert performance

Jolie Holland was born and raised in Houston Texas who taught herself to play piano, guitar, accordion & violin. By her mid-teens, she left home and began working as a travelling musician. She eventually landed in San Francisco in the mid-Nineties where she became a popular performer in music clubs & cafes.

Around 2000, Holland moved to Vancouver British Columbia & formed the all female neo-traditionalist folk band the Be Good Tanyas with three promising Canadian musicians, Samantha Parton, Frazey Ford & Trish Klein.

Soon after the release of their 2001 debut album, Blue Horse, Holland once again got the urge to travel. She left the Be Good Tanyas before the ink on the rave reviews for Blue Horse had dried and she moved back to San Francisco where she produced a series of stark minimalist low-fi demo recordings that made the rounds & eventually caught the ear of the legendary Tom Waits who signed her on his own Anti record label and Waits became her career mentor & adviser.

Jolie Holland's music is a skillful blend of blues, jazz, folk, gospel, Tex-Mex border music & popular standards. Her approach is from a minimalist, post modernist perspective using low-fi production techniques. Many of her songs sound like they were recorded using a vintage two track analog high-fidelity tape deck, the kind of equipment by Smithsonian Folkways label used to make field recordings of rediscovered delta blues artists in the late 50s and early 60s.

Jolie Holland's biggest musical asset is her smoky voice and her innate gift for vocal phrasing which is reminiscent of the languid phrasing of the great jazz songbird, Billie Holiday. Like Billie Holiday, Jolie Holland's singing phrases often linger behind the tempo of the song to make her singing sound intimate and conversational.

Like Billie Holiday, Jolie Holland doesn't have the range of many modern day pop music divas, but her strength as a singers rests on the flawless timing of her vocal phrasing. As Sinatra once put it, "A singer with a four octave range is still a singer, but a singer with a two octave range who has mastered the art of phrasing is a vocal stylist."

Her vocal rendition of Sasha on her 2004 album Escondida is a good example of Jolie Holland's talent for vocal phrasing.



On another song from Escondida, Holland commits an act of musical blasphemy... She subversively transforms the revered Christian fundamentalist gospel anthem Give Me That Old Time Religion into a New Orleans jazz funeral dirge praising the wonders of that old fashioned opiate pain-killer morphine.



Since 2003, Jolie Holland has produced five studio albums & in 2008 she relocated to New Orleans where she cobbled together a home studio.

In January 2013, Jolie spent every Sunday evening woodshedding new material for an new album before audiences in a small club in Brooklyn. The songs are largely improvised and she's backed by a seven piece jazz ensemble, the largest band she's ever worked with.

Jolie will be returning to the West Coast in late February to perform in a trio with with Carey Lamprecht and Keith Cary. Jolie emailed me a copy of her concert schedule for her West Coast tour.

Jolie Holland Tour Schedule February/March 2013
[FONT="Garamond"]2/21 Davis, CA – Odd Fellows Hall
2/22 Sebastopol, CA – Hopmonk Tavern
2/23 Oakland, CA – The New Parish
2/24 San Fran – Swedish American Hall (NoisePop 2012)
2/26 Santa Cruz, CA – The Crepe Place
2/27 Seaside, CA – Alternative Cafe
3/4 LA, CA – Bootleg Theater

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

Coming tomorrow: The Atlantic Records Story

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

History of Soul Series

The Atlantic Records Story

Many lovers of 60s soul music believe the big rivalry in R&B music recording & production were Motown Records in Detroit Michigan & Stax Records in Memphis Tennessee.

But the biggest fish in the soul music pond was Atlantic/Atco Records based in New York City. Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler began signing R&B black artists in 1952 and it was Wexler himself who coined the term "rhythm & blues." Among the earliest Atlantic recording artists were Solomon Burke, The Coasters, The Drifters & Big Joe Turner.

Atlantic records had a reputation for treating their artists, studio musicians, sound engineers and even the front office switchboard operator with respect and paying every employee a fair wage. In an era when recording artists most commonly complained about little or no royalty payments, Atlantic artists were given a fair cut of their royalty payments in a timely manner. "Atlantic even instituted an affirmative action program in 1952, in an era where Jim Crow was the law of the land and the only jobs for black folks in most corporate offices were sweeping the floors & cleaning the toilets.

From 1961 until 1968 Alantic/Atco & Stax records were in a business partnership, and the was some movement of artists from Atlantic to Stax & vice versa.

Otis Redding actually recorded most of his albums on the Volt Records label which was a subsidiary of Stax. Volt was created as a result of the newly formed partnership with Atlantic/Atco. Volt Records was created primarily to accommodate Stax's biggest star, Otis Redding. At the time, the strict rules on payola only allowed a radio station to have two songs in their play rotation by any one given label, so Volt was created as a subsidiary label so the prolific Mr. Redding always had a song in rotation at the radio stations. Atlantic Records created Atco Records for the same purpose.


Atlantic Records was founded in 1947 in New York City by Ahmet Ertegun. Ahmet was the son of Turkish immigrants and a fanatical fan of American jazz and rhytym & blues. In 1944 Ahmet's parents moved back to Turket but Ahmet remained in the USA doing graduate studies at Georgetown University but in reality Entegun was spending most of his time following his musical passion and attempting to form a startup label to record black music artists he idolized.


A dapper looking Ahmet Ertegun posed for this 1950 photo

According to Ertegun biographers Dorothy Wade & Justine Picardie, The label's original office in the Ritz Hotel, Manhattan proved too expensive so they relocated to an $85 per month room in the Hotel Jefferson. In the early fifties Atlantic moved from the Hotel Jefferson to offices at 301 West 54th St and then to its best-known home at 356 West 56th St.

At first Atlantic was primarily devoted to recording modern jazz musicians like John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Pepper & James Moody but with the growing influence of producer Jerry Wexler & sound engineer Tom Dowd, Atlantic became the first label to market black rhythm & blues music to a white audience. Prior to WWII black musicians were ghettoized on race labels which marketed 78 rpm singles of jazz and blues music almost exclusively to black audiences. [/FONT]


For most of the '60s & '70s Aretha Franklin & Ray Charles were Atlantic Records reigning superstars.

Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin were Atlantic Records premier R&B artists. Ray Charles' crossed over to a large white audience of mostly jazz and blues fans in the early Sixties but Aretha was the first Atlantic R&B artist to break through to large white cross-over audience when her single Respect became a million selling #1 hit. It was three years after the Supremes became the first Motown group to cross over to a large white audience when their 1964 single Where Did Our Love Go. Most think it took Aretha longer to capture a large cross-over audience because it took whites a few years to acclimate their ears to the raw power of her gospel trained singing voice.

Roster of Atlantic/Atco Soul Music Artists

Aretha Franklin

Recommended Recordings


I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You (1967)


Lady Soul (1968)


Aretha Today (1968)


The Definitive Soul Collection (2007)

Aretha was such a prolific artist that it's impossible to the evaluate the depth of her music with single anthology collection. The trilogy of 1967-1968 albums listed above are her most critically acclaimed, but only a small three of the 29 albums she made up until the rising popularity of disco music put her recording career into a tailspin. The Definitive Soul Collection, a double cd collection of her career spanning hits is the best buy for a collection of her music.


Ray Charles

Recommended Recordings:


The Genius of Ray Charles (1959)


The Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music Vol I & II (1962)


Genius The Ultimate Ray Charles Collection (2009)

Like Aretha, the long span of Ray Charles' career can't be summarized by single anthology or a couple of his best album. The 1959 album The Genius of Ray Charles show how deeply Ray's music is rooted in jazz, blues, and gospel, in addition to R&B.

Ray's most critically acclaimed album was (believe or not) a collection of country & western standards. Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music was recorded in one session a first volume was released early in 1962 and the second volume came out later in the year. (Double albums were unheard of in pop music until the Dylan released Blonde on Blonde in June of 1966). The high quality sound fidelity on 19 songs on the Genius anthology simply floored me. In the mid 70's while still in my teens, one of the first albums I bought was titled Ray Charles' Greatest Hits on 8-track. It was the state of the art sound back then, but the pristine sound on the 2009 Genius anthology is light years away from that earlier 8 track collection.


Wilson Pickett

Recommended Recording:


The Definitive Soul Collection (2006)

Wilson Pickett was frequently compared to Otis Redding during his career and both men and both men sang a rawer Southern form of soul music of the kind played in Georgia, Mississippi & Alabama. Wilson also recorded his music at the Stax recording studio by special arrangement, so Wilson was working with the same group of Stax musicians on his sessions as Otis used. At the pinnacle of his career between 1965 and 1968, Wilson Pickett was keeping up with Aretha's non stop run of top ten singles. The 30 songs of Rhino's remastered Definitive Soul Collection an excellent anthology of Pickett's glory years at Atlantic.

=================

COMING TOMORROW! I'll finish up the Atlantic Records Story but posting album recommendation for many Atlantic's 2nd tier soul artists like The Drifters, The Coasters, Don Covay, and Sam & Dave."]

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

The Atlantic Story (continued)

Roster of 2nd Tier Atlantic Records Artists


Solomon Burke

Recommended Recording


The Definitive Soul Collection (2006)

Solomon Burke recorded 32 singles with Atlantic in the early Sixties. Burke didn't have a large white crossover audience like Aretha or Ray Charles but his steady string of hits between 1965 and 1966 reportedly kept Atlantic Records financially solvent after Ray Charles signed on with ABC and prior to Aretha's breakthrough in 1967. The Definitive Soul collection cover most of those early '60s singles on Atlantic by Burke.

The Drifters

Recommended Recording


The Definitive Soul Collection (2009)

The Drifters were one of the earliest Atlantic R&B groups and it was R&B artist Clyde McPhatter who originally signed on. Amhet Ertegun was a fan of McPhatter and sought him out in 1952. McPhatter agreed to sign with Atlantic on the condition that he be allowed to form his own vocal group. McPhatter recruited a group of singers he knew from the Mount Lebanon gospel singers and dubbed them the Drifters. The Drifters weren't strictly a soul group. Many of their hits were written by some of the legendary Brill Building song writing teams like Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Carol King & Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, and Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman. The broad appeal of such songs pop oriented songs as On Broadway, Up on The Roof, and Under the Boardwalk built a solid white crossover audience in an era when most black R&B artists only received airplay on black operated radio stations.

Joe Tex

Recommended Recording


Joe Tex 25 All Time Greatest Hits (2000)

Joe Tex was mostly unknown to white audiences for most of the '60s, but his record sales on the R&B charts equaled James Brown & Otis Redding. His real name was Joseph Arrington but picked up the "Joe Tex" nickname because his Texas origins.

Tex began as an artist on King Records where a lifelong rivalry between him and King Records label mate James Brown began. The feud began when Tex opened for James Brown at a show in Brown's hometown of Macon Georgia in 1963. Tex was a bit of clown with an offbeat sense of humor. In his final song, Tex parodied James Brown's finale routine by rolling around on the floor of the stage in a tattered cape screaming "Somebody help me get outta this cape." JB wasn't laughing. Brown retaliated by seeking out Tex at an after-hours party and shooting up the nightclub with a gun.

Throughout his entire career Tex accused Brown of stealing his song material, his dance moves and his microphone tricks. Indeed both singers had similar stage moves and similar raw bombastic funk driven musical sound. In 1968 Tex even challenged Brown to a singing contest for the title of Soul Brother #1. Brown declined the throw-down in a polite & dignified press released which enraged Tex even more.

Frustrated with living in the shadow of James Brown at King Records, Tex moved to Atlantic Records but he never broke through to a large white crossover audience, unlike his nemesis, James Brown.

The Coasters

Recommended Recording


There's A Riot Going On

The Brill Building songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller took The Coasters under their wing in the mid-'50s and produced their first album on their own small indy label, Spark Records. The record was popular enough that Atlantic Records offered Leiber and Stoller an independent production contract to produce and record the Coasters for Atco Records an Atlantic subsidiary label. The Coasters biggest career asset was having Leiber & Stoller as their songwriters, producers & patrons. The team wrote six top ten hits for Elvis Presley including Jailhouse Rock & Loving You & also wrote several hit singles for producer Phil Specter's stable of girl groups at Philles Records. The Coasters' involvement with Leiber & Stoller provided a path for the Coasters to get crossover airplay on Top 40 radio.

Some of the Coasters' most popular songs like Charlie Brown & Yakety -Yak and Little Egypt had comic/novelty themes, but others like Poison Ivy and Bad Blood had more conventional themes. Some may find the four CD collection There's a Riot Going On to be a bigger dose of the Coasters than they can handle. For the more squeamish I recommend the single disc 2011 anthology Baby That Is Rock 'n' Roll. Baby That Is Rock 'n' Roll is mastered in the monaural format but the fidelity of the sound is outstanding.

Recommended Recordings by Other Significant Altantic/Atco Recording Artists

Sam & Dave

Soul Men (1967)

Ben E. King

The Very Best of Ben E. King (1996)

Don Covay

Mercy/See-Saw (2000)

William Bell

Soul of A Bell (1966)

LaVern Baker

Soul On Fire The Best of LaVern Baker (1991)

Clarence Carter

This Is Clarence Carter (1968)


=======================

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

Title: April March and Aquaserge
Artist: April Smith, Aquaserge
Release Date: May 13, 2013

One of the unexpected musical delights among the new releases in May is April March and Aquaserge, musical collaboration between the idiosyncratic indie pop vocalist April March & the electronica group Aquaserge. The membership of Aquaserge includes former Stereolab member Julien Gasc, Tame Impala drummer Julien Barbagallo, and Melody's Echo Chamber collaborator Benjamin Gilbert. Aquaserge, like Stereolab is a loosely formed collective of musicians with rotating cast of secondary players.


Photo: Indie pop chanteuse April March

April March (born Elinore Blake) is an American singer who has been fixated on the classic '60s style French pop. She has released seven albums over almost two decades and she sings (often in the French language) in the sultry seductive style of a " yé-yé" girl protegee of the iconic French pop songwriter & producer Serge Gainsbourg during the heyday of French pop.

April March began her adult career as an animation artist who worked in the animation department for the television show Pee Wee's Playhouse. She graduated to doing animation for pop music videos including Madonna's Who's That Girl . In the late '80s March founded the post-punk girl group the Pussywillows. March's short lived all girl trio recorded one album, Spring Fever, in 1988.

In the early '90s she left the Pussywillow and relocated from New York to L.A. to work as an animator on The Ren & Stimpy Show. In 1995, she released her debut album under the name of April March, Chick Habit which became cult favorite because of April March's campy French pop style. March's vocals were an ironic take on former French pop vocalist France Gall and her repertoire was nearly all French pop standards associated with '60s era French pop icons like Gall, Françoise Hardy & Serge Gainsbourg.

Over the years March has released a string of albums at the leisurely rate of around one every three years to positive critical reviews. April March and Aquaserge is the album most unlike all of her previous releases but the music on Aquaserge touches on nearly every element of April March's trademark musical style on her earlier albums. The reason why Aquaserge is so different is that April March has a lot more musical talent to work with than on her previous albums.

The fingerprints of one time Stereolab member, the multi-instrumentalist Julien Gasc are all over this collaboration. Gasc also played most of the instruments and did vocal arrangements for Stereolab singer Laetitia Sadier's two solo albums. The French/British musical collective, Stereolab is generally acknowledged as one of the most influential bands of the modern day electronic music genre.


Photo: April March and Aquaserge

April March is adroit at adapting her vocals to fit the sharp turns and the woozy off-tempo electronic beats of Aquaserge. Gasc's talent for arranging highly textured electronic music combined with his skill for arranging intricate choral parts add a lush dimension to March's normally minimalist album productions. The album's opening song, Black Bars almost sounds like an outtake from the recording sessions for Stereolab's 1994 album Mars Audiac Quartet.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

Title: The Shocking Miss Emerald
Artist: Caro Emerald
Release Date: May 6, 2013

Caro Emerald is a Dutch born jazz singer who reminds me a bit of '50s era lounge torch singer Julie London. Her first single Back It Up unexpectedly became a European club hit when several deejays did drum 'n' bass remixes of the song. Her first album, Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor became a best seller in Europe, prompting AllMusic.com to dub her as "one of the most exciting new artists to emerge from the Netherlands in some time." With her second album, The Shocking Miss Emerald Emerald continues to play the same sort of crossover jazz that has become her trademark style.



Most of Emerald's music sounds like lounge jazz from the '50s era heyday of vocalese, but her stylistic approach to the material has a post modern twist that appeals to a young audience. Emerald writes most of her own material in collaboration with French Canadian club deejay, producer & composer Vincent de Giorgio. The embedded YouTube video is a May 4th live performance of Caro Emerald performing Liquid Lunch in Montreal.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

Two Recent Releases


Title: Trouble Will Find Me
Artist: The National
Release Date: May 21, 2013

Fans of the National will find plenty to like on the NYC based band's new album release, Trouble Will Find Me even if the sum of it's parts don't add up to the visceral power of previous three albums. Beginning with 2005's Alligator, to Boxer in 2007 and finally with High Violet in 2010, each new album followed a path to a higher evolutionary plateau in the National's musical development. Trouble Will Find Me places the band in a holding pattern and following the same highly successful musical template they used High Violet.

Trouble Will Find Me sounds like it could have been the bonus c.d. in a deluxe edition of High Violet, even so, I couldn't find a single weak song among the 13 tracks on Trouble Will Find Me. I rarely like half the songs on any given album release. With most artists, I cherry-pick the best three or four tracks on a new album because I know I'll never listen to remaining 6 to 8 tracks.

In this digital age where the MP3 single has become the standard currency of exchange, the National is among that rare breed of bands capable using the album format to make a compelling artistic statement. It's really worth your time and money to purchase the entire album with a band like the National because every song stands on it's own merits.

The embedded song Fireproof is a selection from the latest the National album Trouble Will Find Me.



===========================================




Title: Some Say I So I Say Light
Artist: Ghostpoet
Release Date: May 6, 2013

After being an early fan of rap music, I lost interest in the genre when the most talented and visionary hip hop artists were shouted down the growing army of self indulgent rappers who were devoted to boasting about their sexual prowess, dissing homosexuals, spewing out profane misogynist epithets, glorifying the thug life & expressing self hatred in manner similar to that of a histrionic juvenile offender with a borderline personality disorder. All of these malignant attitudes were expressed to the dubious cause of the rapper's artistic duty to "tell it like it is." Really?

By the mid-'90s most of first generation hip hop artist like Grandmaster Flash, the Furious Five, Run DMC, Funky 4 + 1 and the Sugarhill Gang had fallen out of fashion. The most innovative crossover rap groups of the early '90s like A Tribe Called Quest, Arrested Development, P.M. Dawn, and the Digable Planets were drowned in the tidal wave of hate spewin' gangsta rappers. Leading the charge to mediocrity was the self hating poseur Marshall Mathers. The Beastie Boys managed to survive because they built a large and loyal crossover audience early on and earned the creative license to expand their musical vision. For his part, white boy wigger Marshall Mathers led a generation of black rappers into becoming minstrel show parodies of themselves. Is it any wonder that Elijah Mohammed referred to white men as "blue eyed devils?"

In 2005, the debut album the London based Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. rekindled my interest in hip hop music. The UK hip hop scene hip hop scene had it's own unique path of development & it's most creative artists like Neneh Cherry, Tricky & Dizzee Rascal had emerged from a diverse U.K. hothouse of musical styles like trip hop, reggae and uniquely British club music scene. Some of the early British hip hop artist were even influenced by the music of the '77 punk rebellion in the UK.


Nenah Cherry- First UK hip hop star & patron of the early trip hop scene

Neneh Cherry is the Swedish born daughter of renowned jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. While still in her teens Cherry moved from Stockholm to London where she joined the final lineup of punk music's original riot grrrl Rastafarians, the Slits. After the breakup of the Slits, Cherry drifted into the newly emerging early '80s hip hop scene in London. After a couple of career setbacks, Cherry became the first international hip hop star from the UK with her 1989 debut album, Raw Like Sushi. In the early '90s Cherry met the Bristol based group Massive Attack through Geoff Barrow and she became the principal financial backer of the band's efforts record their first album, Blue Lines. In the process, Cherry supplied the venture capital for Barrow to record the debut album of his own band Portishead. The unique symbiotic relationship among the punk, the reggae, world-beat, and electronic music communities in the UK created a uniquely British hip hop community that was highly experimental and infused with a rich blend of musical styles.


Obaro Ejimiwe a.k.a. Ghostpoet

Ghostpoet is one of the emerging stars from the eclectic & pluralistic British hip hop scene. His sophomore effort, Some Say I So I Say Light consolidates the artistic vision he showed on his 2011 debut album Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam. Ghostpoet's music exudes the same kind of stoned out, sleepy anxiety as fellow rap innovator Tricky. His message is that of a visionary paranoid who managed to get his facts straight.

Ghostpoet raps in a languid and sonorous baritone reminiscent of the great jazz rap innovator Gil Scott Heron. Ghostpoet's music has a minimalist framework but he uses woozy off beat rhythms, dub trickery and dazzling array of ambient electronic effects in the production sound-mix. Some his sound production techniques are associated with dubstep artists like Ikonika & Burial; and many knowledgeable folks might even place Ghostpoet's music within the dubstep genre.

Ghostpoet isn't for everyone, but if you like trip hop, downtempo electronica or dub reggae, he's certainly worth checking out. Embedded below is Plastic Bag Brain, a selection from Some Say I So I Say Light.



===========================================

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt