macedonia (FMA Admin)

I first came across the work of Graphiqs Groove last year via Mevio's Music Alley.  Six months later, I still don't know that much about them, except that they hail from Japan and describe themselves as a sound creator, drummer, and graphic designer.  Graphiqs places the emphasis squarely on the Groove for their selections, crafting machine-driven and rhythmically complex house, techno, and drum and bass.  The song titles are all different colors such as "Reed Gray" and "Deep Sky Blue."  Different moods and textures accompany each shade, their common thread being a jazzy aesthetic that shapes each arrangement.

It's good to see these pieces as part of the Free Music Archive.  Hardcore gamers out there may get some Sega Genesis flashbacks listening to some of these songs: they wouldn't be out of place as part of the sound test for your favorite racing game.  For today's featured track, take "Sea Green" out for a test drive...

It's always wonderful to stop by the Archive and find some new soul or R&B that hadn't been there before.  It's even better still when it's a live recording from one of the great radio stations serving as curators for the FMA.  Today, let's get to know Choklate, Seattle-based singer and songwriter.  Her voice is Godiva sweet and equally as smooth, stirring the listener's emotions and causing them to reflect upon the ups and downs within their own lives.

While not a widely known name within mainstream circles, her 2006 self-titled debut was the toast of soul music's underground.  Her latest album, To Whom It May Concern, was released last year and many of her fans and peers agree that it avoids the sophomore slump.  I encourage you to check her interview with Fave of the Friday Favecast to learn more about this talented songstress.  In the meantime, here's a selection from her debut album recorded last October in the live studios of KEXP...

It's not like happy days weren't already here at the FMA, but you gotta stand up and take notice when the forward-thinking heads over at Percussion Lab come through on some curator status.  If you've been to their website, you already know that electronic music is in trustworthy and loving hands just by sampling a few of their DJ and live sets.  Our Lady of Clicks, Cuts, Bleeps, and Bloops has blessed the Archive something serious with their generosity.  They have already uploaded fantastic live recordings from the likes of Daedelus, Caural, Machinedrum, Ezekiel Honig, and Percussion Lab head honcho Praveen, just to name a few.

For the purposes of this entry, I'm going to shed light on a DJ set that remains a favorite of mine.  Letherette first dropped this gem of a mix over a year ago and it remains as engaging and hypnotic as the day it first hit the Web.  It is a collection of beat sketches and unfinished instrumental thoughts, fragmented sentences that run into each other and suggest moments of poignancy, paranoia, and the butterflies that sit in your stomach when you're around that special someone.  It's a head-nodding good time and I've been fiending for their debut release ever since, which has yet to drop. 

(Praveen, seriously, I know you've got connections.  Tell them Letherette boys to quit holdin' out on that heat.  Two thousand ten is their year...)

At 36 years of age, I find myself growing more restless by the day.  There are times that I feel twice my age, destined to become the ranting old coot that throws stuff from his front porch at passersby just because I can.  I resent the fact that my waking hours are spent at a place doing duties I could care less about and then having to steal back time and fight off sleep to do what I'm passionate about.  I resent a lot of sh*t, actually.

With that being said, it's nice to look upon the youth and see boundless potential, to know that there are heads coming up behind me that are light years ahead in possibilities.  Consider the young lord out of Hollywood, Florida named Black Ant, beatmaker in training.   Judging from his Free Beats Sel. 3 collection, he is well on his way to being a pad-punching, knob-twiddling Jedi.  Joints like the horn-drenched "government funded weed" and the head nod-inducing "Underdog" make me smile, plus they have me excited about what this hip-hop wunderkind will be creating in the next five years.

Sit back, relax, and take a minute and change to achieve bliss with the spaced-out selection "Oh K."  And once it's over, remind yourself that the brother's still in high school...

I've been absent from posting since my year-end mix, so this will mark my first for 2010.  And if there's any group that people should consider getting to know this year, I will suggest one name more than any other:  Phantogram.

Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel are a pair of upstate New York kids (Saratoga Springs, to be exact) who made good in 2009, releasing their debut album Eyelid Movies on BBE Music.  Equal parts shoegaze, electronic, hip-hop, rock, and pop, it was a bit of a departure for the label, but a risk that proved impossible to ignore.  It quickly became my favorite album of 2009 and judging from the customer reviews in iTunes and Amazon, they are amazing live.  In fact, people have said that Phantogram (as the opening act) was better than the band they actually paid to see.  TEN TIMES OUT OF TEN.  I fully agree with an iTunes customer suggesting that "this is what music will sound like in 2010."

One of the musical highlights of 2009 for me was seeing the Free Music Archive come to fruition: getting here, playing around, discovering new music and netlabels, and interacting with other users as well.  While it is virtually impossible to pick just a handful of absolute favorites from the almost 15,000 tracks hosted here, I did manage to find some memorable cuts from Year One of the FMA.

Big shouts to KBOO and KEXP for keeping me engaged with some great live recordings, as evidenced by the included pieces from Os Mutantes, Thavius Beck, and Pezzner.  Real and surreal forms of hip-hop weigh in heavily throughout this mix, whether it's the contemplative feel of Just Plain Ant, the beat-centric brilliance of the Custodian of Records, or the out there spaceiness of DJ Ilya Monosov or Anti-Pop Consortium.  Space is saved for Nikki Giovanni to wax poetic on the Reverend Dr. King, and time is allowed for our beloved DJ Donna Summer and his laptop to digitally carve up the "Chicken Dance" (does anyone else miss his Advanced D&D radio show as much as I do?).  And don't sleep on the Error Broadcast netlabel, one of my absolute favorites of 2009.  Shlohmo holds it down for them, closing out the mix in fine form.

You may have noticed the "plus one" within the title of this entry.  That's just me coming up with a good excuse to throw you a bonus track from Just Plain Ant, who is hands down my favorite producer within the Creative Commons realm, a true ambassador of hip-hop's  production and potential.  His Just Plain Sounds netlabel is an unquestionable favorite of mine, bringing the heat with every release.  The attached track below is a 10-minute sampler from a JPS release entitled The New Black, which includes over 30 of Ant's fabulous instrumentals.  Here's hoping that you enjoy the sampler as well as the mix, which you can find after the jump.  The archive is host to a ton of hidden gems, so please feel free to leave comments and let me know what your FMA favorites are...

It was about a week ago when I saw a message on Twitter from one of the Error Broadcast netlabel members (Sven Swift, was that you?), pointing towards Dorian Concept as a reason not to sleep on Vienna.  As one who's been keeping tabs on Austria off and on ever since Kruder & Dorfmeister first hit the scene with their G-Stoned E.P., I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment.  Lately I've been singing the praises of another Austrian artist, The Clonious, whose Between The Dots full-length on Ubiquity is one of my favorite albums of 2009.  Dorian has remixed The Clonious and they seem to run within the same beat circles.  The attribute they share is an undying spirit of jazz improvisation that runs rampant throughout their music.  Even with the punches of pads, the twiddling of knobs, and the sliding of faders, there's a freedom to their work that never allows the elements to become locked for long.

Listening to Dorian Concept can be a jaw-dropping experience.  His work is wildly liberating while also being a prime example of the beauty of controlled chaos.  Something tells me that he's holding back on his full capabilities at times and, quite frankly, he's wise to do so.  I just get the feeling if he opened the floodgates to everything he's capable of, I'm not sure that we could take it.  Case and point:  the Seek When Is Her E.P. on the Earstroke label.  While "You See Less" is in step with the present-day head nodders he creates on the regular, let me direct your attention to "Water Thank You."  This is jazz overtaken by drill and bass unpredictabilities (think Squarepusher during his Feed Me Weird Things or Hard Normal Daddy periods) and it's killing me that this is originally from 2006.  You may be hearing something from the recent past, but it still sounds like it's light years ahead of us...

When I fired up my computer yesterday and made my way over to the Free Music Archive, I almost fell off my chair upon seeing a tune by the one and only Raphael Saadiq amongst the new arrivals.  Singer, songwriter, and producer best known for his work with Tony! Toni! Toné! and Lucy Pearl, he has been a torchbearer for quality soul and R&B since the mid-1990s.  His 2008 album The Way I See It has garnered loads of critical acclaim for its immersion in classic soul production and composition.

"Big Easy" is a selection from that album, written for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  Like New Orleans itself, it's a bittersweet mixture of instrumental joy and lyrical sadness, heightened several times over in this version captured live in Seattle.  Serious thanks and gratitude to the good people at KEXP for sharing this gem with us.  Allow Brother Saadiq and company a few minutes to take you to Bourbon Street...

"So far ahead we're behind you..."

If memory serves me correctly, that phrase pops up on Anti-Pop Consortium's first album, Tragic Epilogue.  That's the takeaway phrase that has always stayed with me whenever I think about them and how to describe their music to people who don't know their work.  I can still remember the first time I listened to that album nine years ago and how I thought that nothing else in hip-hop sounded like them.  Beans, High Priest, M. Sayyid, and Earl Blaize created sounds that were experimental yet unquestionably bangin' at the same time.  Their wordplay seemed wrapped in Dadaist thought while posturing on NYC street corners.  I wanted everything that Anti-Pop touched, from their collaboration with producers like DJs Krush, Vadim, and Spooky That Subliminal Kid to their full-length conversations with Matthew Shipp (their interview with DJ /rupture on his Mudd Up show hinted at another project with Shipp in the works).

Their signing with Warp Records was a brilliant move, one that would usher in other left-of-center hip-hop artists after them.  Their 2002 release Arrthythmia hinted at the greatness to come and was their best effort to date.  And then the unthinkable happened:  APC disbanded.  Believe me when I tell you that no one, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, was more pissed off about that than I was.  Beans would go on to record solo while Priest and Sayyid formed Airborn Audio.  While it was good to see them all active, it wasn't the same as when they were together.

All would become right with the world soon enough, however.  Talks of APC getting back together and recording new material began to circulate.  Their reformation resulted in new performances and a new album:  Fluorescent Black.  Even with the rhythmic advances that have occurred since their hiatus (the subwoofer-destroying bass of dubstep and the new school beat concoctions of producers like Hudson Mohawke), these guys sound hungry and very inspired.  Their live set at All Tomorrow's Parties features them firing on all cylinders.  You can hear a number of selections from their set after the jump or check the full streaming archive here. 

Don't forget about the remix contest for the album version of APC's "Reflections" (live version is attached below).  The deadline for entries is December 20th, so you have some time to download the raw audio and put your own spin on Anti-Pop...

If you have been following this year's output from Ubiquity Records, then I don't need to tell you that it's been another banner year for them so far.  Ann Arbor, Michigan's NOMO is included in their superior roster, releasing the Invisible Cities album back in May.  Almost a year after their Ghost Rock album and recorded during those same sessions, NOMO carves a path through jazz, afrobeat, rock, and electronica.  Large enough to be a jam band, their discipline gives them the flexibility to be tight yet loose.  They can wail with the best of them and remain open to those moments of improvisation where magical things happen.

It's a world party whenever NOMO is on the scene, as evidenced by this live performance in the KEXP studios shortly after Invisible Cities dropped.  Dig the title track below...