J.Nicely

Fun conceptual site filled with never ending interactive gradients.
http://www.intotime.com/

Looks like A-Mafia is finally out of jail. He’s definitely repping some solid New York hip hop with this track (song starts at 1:24 mark). A few years back A-Mafia had some solid outings on DipSet mixtapes, then he dropped off the scene due to his legal troubles. Hope he gets his chance to shine because he’s consistently thorough. Here’s one of his songs from a few years back.

Last night around 2:30am I lay in my bed falling asleep listening to 90.7 KPFK’s Breakbeats and Rhymes. They played an amazing mix of classic Pharcyde songs, including rare B-sides and remixes. The sound was so reminiscent that it made my heart ache a little bit. But the music was so good.

If you missed it, fear not, as the good news is that they posted the broadcast as a podcast for you to download.

The Pharcyde mix starts at about 25 minutes and goes to just around the hour mark.

2009 is over and Skillz is here with his yearly Rap Up.

Recommended Listening

Click here to Download Aaron Shinn’s Edge of No Control mix

tape #8: Edge of No Control

Without any clear organization, a new sound has been bubbling up from locations as disparate as Los Angeles, London, Amsterdam and Glasgow. It’s not completely coherent, it’s not a genre, and it doesn’t have a geographic locus, but producers and fans are gelling into a kind of scene. Yes, I’m talking about the music described as ‘wonky’.

According to producer Zomby, ‚ÄúAt first the term was used loosely as it was a playful in-joke for producers working in disharmonic structure or notation.‚Äù But in its short life, wonky has already become a dirty word. The term has appeared in some fairly mainstream publications (including the Guardian’s blog http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/mar/05/wonky-ketamine-dubstep-zomby), and it’s gaining ground as a genre in record store inventories (http://boomkat.com/genres/139/bestsellers). Despite these shows of support, many artists, journalists and fans have been loath to accept the word.

I’m uncomfortable with the term. It doesn’t describe much. The pejorative quality takes one too easily to ‘bad music’. But perhaps the true meaning of the word, or a new word altogether have yet to come into being. It’s early days for this music.¬†

Despite my issues with the word, we need something to describe this music so it’ll have to do for now. I’d have to argue that Zomby has offered a very concise description of the common qualities of this music, but I’d like to go farther. It’s not just disharmony, it’s like a rip in the fabric of space-time. This music brings a radical skepticism to the texture, rhythm and sonics of dance music. What I hear in this music is a celebration of sonic instability. Beats slide out of place, everything shimmers, and the familiar becomes new again.

And this discontinuous quality is reflected strongly in this mix. There are almost 40 tracks crammed together here in a kind of sideways, ADD-crazed survey of new, old and unreleased music (although there’s only a couple tracks produced before 2006). This might hurt at first. But like anything new, it’s bound to sound ugly until you acclimate.

There’s something beautiful about an aesthetic that promises to be permanently in flux.

-Aaron Shinn
December 21, 2009

AaronShinn.com

Just in time for the holidays. As recommended by Stephen Greco, Executive Editor of ClassicalTV.com.

Make sure you check out Mr. Greco’s new book, The Culling. Here’s a description:

Is it better to improve the life of just one homeless person than donate millions to the arts? This is the question puzzling Selwyn Stanfield, a billionaire media mogul who has grown tired of life in New York’s fast lane and talks about retiring to Katmandu. After years of philanthropy fueled by his success in developing global markets, Selwyn decides to befriend – and then employ – a panhandler named John, whom the mogul has ignored guiltily for months at the door of the local ATM. But John turns out to be the wrong choice. Fast paced, with dark, dry humor, The Culling tell of John’s transformation from Salvation Army to Prada. At first John appears to fit into the bold-face lifestyle enjoyed by Selwyn and his wife, MaryAnn, a well-connected art dealer. The former panhandler charms ladies and gentlemen alike, and demonstrates street savvy that serves him well in Selwyn’s business. But then, after befriending Selwyn’s business partners and seducing MaryAnn, John’s past catches up with him – a grim past of drugs, family violence, and the inner sanctum at Studio 54. By the end of the story Selwyn is missing and may or may not have gone to the life of an ascetic in Katmandu. Blending narrative subtlety with self-reflexive irony, The Culling works on two levels. First, it is the drama of one human being trying to help another. On another level, the novel is a commentary on the ability of good – and good business – to propagate itself in the modern world. Like anti-heroes from Balzac and Highsmith, John seduces the reader into empathizing with him even as his actions defy moral standards.

I might be late to the game on this one, but I just noticed this track the last few days. I had to track it down to find out the deal. It’s from “the man without the machine” known as Gangsta Red,  a homeless beatboxer that was discovered fresh off the streets of LA by folks at HVW8 Gallery.  HVW8 teamed him up with LA G-Gunk proprietor Dam Funk, to drop this funked out remix, which is what they were playing on KCRW the other night… (glad I figured that one out)

Single and Remixes Available on Itunes

While mainstream press is speculating that the display in the sky was caused by a failed Russian missile test-fire:

Speculation was increasing today that the display was the result of an embarrassing failed test launch of a jinxed new Russian missile.

The Bulava missile was test-fired from the Dmitry Donskoi submarine in the White Sea early on Wednesday but failed at the third stage, say newspapers in Moscow today.

via DailyMail.co.uk

The possible demonstration, on the literal eve of Obama’s arrival in Oslo, of a blatantly public “Hyperdimensional/Torsion Physics technology” … somehow, also connected to President’s Obama’s imminent acceptance of his Nobel Prize–

Is it another “coincidence” that, just over the hill from Tromso, lies a high-tech Norwegian “HAARP antenna farm” — the EISCAT Ramfjordmoen facility (below) — specifically designed to broadcast powerful beams of microwave energy high into space … thereby also creating blatant HD/torsion side-effects in the Earth’s highly-electrified upper “plasma” atmosphere (ionosphere)? The facility is officially supported by Norway, Sweden, Finland, Japan … China … the United Kingdom … and Germany.

Check out EnterpriseMission.com for more info.