Blog Rocking Beats

Songs for a Heatwave #2: Skip&Die - La Cumbia Dictadura

London continues to swelter, and with temperatures of nearly 40C reported on the tube (incidentally, rather higher than the maximum temperature for transporting cattle...), I think most of us are sick of it.

Any rate, another opportunity to post a Song for a Heatwave, this one inspired by a great club night at Notting Hill Arts Club put on by Movimientos.

Songs for a Heatwave #1: Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

There's a heatwave in London, the mercury is touching over 30C for the first time this year, and the city is sweltering under a clear blue sky and an unrelenting sun.

The physical pace of life always seems to slow down when it's this hot, and musically, days like this are captured by long, looping rhythms and an epic guitar solo to match. Funkadelic's effort is got to be up there in the greats of epic guitar solos, if only because it's ten minutes long and was improvised while the guitarist was high on acid.

Das geht ab, alter! German Hip Hop...

While recommending playlists to a friend new to Spotify earlier today, I got around to putting together a playlist of German Hip Hop, and I'd forgotten how cool it can be.

German Hip Hop is fairly old school by US/British standards, with a lot of emphasis on rhyming, story-telling and, frankly, profanity that's got things in common with 90's American Gangster rap.

The genre also comes with a dose of comic relief, with artists who are almost Goldie Looking Chain like in their subject matter and style. The track in the video above is a classic of the trailblazers of mainstream German Hip Hop - Die Fantastischen View - who are rapping about the tendency of Germans to turn everything in to acronyms:

ARD, ZDF, C&A BRD, DDR und USA BSE, HIV und DRK GbR, GmbH - ihr könnt mich mal (In English: "You can do one!")

As well as the spotify playlist, which you can check out here, here are three of my favourites on YouTube:

Samy Deluxe - Poesie Album

Samy Deluxe is one of the best rhymers out there.

Sido - Meine Jordans

Over the top of a cracking instrumental, Sido raps about his Jordan trainers

They're impregnated and freshly polished

Directly imported from the USA, my Jordans

Kool Savas - Aura

Major Lazer - Get Free ft. Amber Coffman (What So Not Remix)

I bought Get Free on vinyl the other week, and it came with this 'exclusive' remix of Get Free which I've been loving ever since. Andy C's well-known remix of this great track used his brand of melodic DnB to great effect, and What So Not effort does the same with some of the trap elements you might expect from one of Major Lazer's own tracks.

At first, he just puts some more layers on the brilliant hook and Amber Coffman's great vocals. But wait for the drop at around 1:15.

Daft Punk ft. Pharrell - Get Lucky

DJ Spoko - Azange

As you know if you've seen some of my other posts, I love world music. World music sometimes suffers from the assumption that it's a load of ancient traditional tribal dances, indian classical sitars or arabic flutes.

DJ Spoko from South Africa will cure anyone who holds that assumption quite handily. On this track from his first EP to be released in the West [Spotify Link] (called 'Ghost Town' after the township outside Pretoria he spent his teenage years) you can hear the influences from traditional drums, the unusual tuning of guitars in African music and South African female vocal groups like the Mahotella Queens. But it's also an edgy, modern dance track, akin to some of the trap and moombahtron coming out of the caribbean and America.

Postal Service at Coachella

Bit of a frustrating week this week, with both of the albums I had marked down as ones to watch having their release dates pushed back. But hey, it's Friday and the weekend is here. This week, tracks for every part of the weekend.

Friday night: Odesza - IPlayYouListen

There's just something really chilled out and upbeat about this track. It's exactly how you feel on a Friday night when you walk out of the office, into the twilight after a long week, no idea what the weekend will bring, but safe in the knowledge that the next 60 hours are yours, to be used as you will.

Saturday morning: Coves - Wicked Game (Chris Isaak Cover)

This is one my favourite, most melancholy Chris Isaak tracks (although let's face it, Chris Isaak's back catalogue is hardly free of melancholy numbers). Coves, a great new band from Leamington that I've had the pleasure of seeing live a couple of times have covered in a pretty cool way - a bit Lana del Rey, but bringing enough of their own freshness to the arrangement to lift it beyond mere vocals. Perfect for Saturday morning in bed if the freedom of Friday night went to your head a bit.

Saturday night: Dash Berlin (feat. Emma Hewitt) - Like Spinning Plates

Because occasionally, you just need some classic trance. This Radiohead cover seems to span the whole genre in it's six and a half minutes, from Italo pianos to Tiesto-esque frenetic beats to synth cords and Emma Hewitt's vocals. It's Saturday night - enjoy yourself!

Sunday afternoon: Vieux Farka Toure - Fafa

Petula Clark - Cut Copy Me

So the Major Lazer takeover train is stopped in it's tracks. Concerned by the lack of buzz about the fact that Free The Universe was supposed to be released tomorrow, I did some googling. And buried in a Billboard article about the upcoming world tour was the bad news:

Old But Good - Major Lazer & La Roux - Lazerproof

If this were Radio 1, I'd bill this week as 'Major Lazer' takeover as part of some sort of tie-in campaign to the new album release, but as it's not, I won't even pretend I'm not just massively excited by the new album coming out.

Anyway, yesterday evening, Oli Q pointed me in the direction of this mixtape that Major Lazer and La Roux had put out some time in 2010, and I'd somehow managed to miss.

I've come to the conclusion that La Roux's voice is amazing, but it doesn't really shine on her own material. Whenever you hear her collaborating or remixed by somebody else, it's much better than her own stuff. For validation of this theory look no further than Foamo's remix of Bulletproof, or Skream's absolutely seminal remix of In For the Kill. Outside the dubstep genre, this mixtape continues to provide proof positive that when La Roux's vocals are added to somebody else's music, magic can ensue.

The mixtape opens with two of it's strongest tracks, starting with Nacey's remix of Bulletproof, followed by a mashup of La Roux's Colourless with the Ken Boothe's roots reggae classic Artibella, which shows off Elly Jackson's ability to do something other than belt out heavily-produced pop-dance numbers.

And while In 4 The Kill Pon De Skream, which you would imagine to be the centrepiece (comprising as it does both groups breakout hits) falls flat, there are other good tracks on the mixtape, including Independent Kill, Keep It Fascinating and I Said It which features Opal, one of the best female dancehall vocalists about.

Major Lazer album out TUESDAY

This excites me immensely. Add to which the fact that I haven't yet posted about 'Get Free', possibly my favourite song of 2012 (I was saving the best for last on the never-completed 12 Songs for 2012 series over the Holidays), and I thought what better excuse to post this video?

New from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Jubilee Street

I mentioned in my post the other day that Nick Cave, as well as providing another shanty for Johnny Depp's second collection of sea songs, has a new album out next week.

There's a few 'early listens' around on the internet, and I've enjoyed this slower song. It's still got the sardonic, caustic tone that Nick Cave lends to proceedings, but possibly not quite the same madness of his Grinderman projects.

Caseno - Sebastian (Soundcloud Link)

I've been on a bit of a punt about the internet for new music (as you'll have noticed from the flurry of posts over the last few days), and in the farther reaches of an antipodean blog, I came across Caseno. At first listen, it didn't grab me - primarily because of the somewhat incipient, 80's/90's vibe of the vocals, but on repeating, it struck me that this has the makings of a classic summer tune. 

Strange to think in the midst of February, with the snow still on the ground, but there's something about this track that just makes me think of Barbecues, Magners, Pimms and sunshine. May they not be long delayed!

The XX - I Miss You (Beyoncé cover)

4 for the Weekend: Something Old, Something New, Something Weird, Something Cool

Each Friday, I’m going to try to deliver you four tracks for the weekend. Tracks to party to, tracks to after-party to, tracks to be hungover to, tracks to woo her, tracks to wake up next to her, tracks to eat, drink and be merry to, tracks for Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Something Old: Orchestra Baobab – Mouhamadou Bamba (YouTube Link)

Expect the Baobabs to feature quite often in these – as with this track, their swirling, languorous grooves just seem to suit the weekend.

Something New: Sibot – Magnet Jam (Soundcloud Link)

After the mention of Baauer the other day, I followed up on Oli Q’s suggestion to check out Jeffrees Mad Decent blog, and this crackingly bizarre track really epitomises the freshness of a genre I’m desperately trying not to call ‘moombahtron’.

Something Weird: Nick Cave – Fire Down Below (YouTube Link)

Rogue’s Gallery, Johnny Depp’s first effort at bringing together a whole bevy of rock staples to sing sea shanties was great, if totally weird. To celebrate the release of the followup, entitled 'Son of Rogue’s Gallery' (NPR listen now link) this coming Tuesday, here’s a classic from the first album. In this track, Nick Cave (who himself has a new album out on Monday) is singing an old sailor’s song about catching the clap from the parson's daughter.

Something Cool: Bastien Keb – Pork Belly (Soundcloud Link)

I went to see Bastien Keb on Christmas Eve in a basement wine bar. It was a pretty immense technical undertaking, as all the various parts on the tracks are usually played by one guy. They were great, and this smooth, trumpet-driven number has Sunday morning written all over it.

New from The Strokes - All The Time (SoundCloud link)

Now, this new Strokes song isn't up there with Last Nite or Someday in the pantheon of indie tracks I'm going to dance my tits off in a sweaty club after too many Red Stripes, but then again, I've only listened to it a couple of times.