Category: mp3 (Page 71 of 78)

Downtempo, drum’n’bass and some hip hop. Hot summer heat generally makes me want to play slow music. I mean, I usually like it a bit slower than most, but add a bit of heat, and it’s on; molasses here we come. I was having flashbacks of Arrested Development‘s show(s) at this year’s Calgary folk fest… so good.

Photo by David Kenney.

I’ve also been experimenting for the last little while on how to coherently string together some of the new hip hop/downtempo/experimental stuff that’s coming out of the LA area (think Flying Lotus, Gaslamp Killer) and from like-minded producers (Lone, MonoPoly). I don’t think I’ve quite figured it out yet to my liking… but I’m getting there, and I appreciate your patience while I get there.

Anyways, here’s the show.

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Taking a break from hip hop on this show, we started out with some nice broken beat from yesteryear before moving on through breaks, baltimore, dubstep and ending with some drum’n’bass. I’m not yet convinced that dubstep really translates to radio. Because it’s all about the bass, i find it doesn’t translate so well outside of a club setting, unless you can turn up the bass on your system to stomach rattling levels. Hopefully a few listeners out there have a booming system which does the music justice, because once it’s broadcast over FM or translated to mp3, it can kind of get a bit tinny.

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Pre-Rock the Bells edition of the show tonight, playing some funk and soul and then highlighting some of the artists playing at this year’s Rock the Bells (though some of the artists won’t actually be at the Calgary date itself… my bad…).

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Rock the Bells ended up being a pretty enjoyable show, despite the sweltering heat, Rza pretty much not showing up, and the annoying lack of in-and-out priveleges at the site. Personal highlights for me were Talib and the headlining combo of Nas and Damian Marley. I’ll be looking forward to their new collaborative album, ‘Distant Relatives’.

This week, the lovely Esthero (blog, label site, twitter, myspace) along with her travelling companion Oboe dropped by to talk about what’s been going on in her life ahead of her appearance at this year’s Calgary Folk Festival. Well, Oboe didn’t do much talking, actually.

I absolutely loved her debut Breath From Another (as did many, it seems, who were present at her folk fest show), but wasn’t as hot on Original Bitch and consequently totally slept on 2006’s Wikked Lil’ Grrrls. My bad. Listening to it ahead of this show straightened me out pretty good. More recently Esthero’s been keeping busy recording songs for her new album, as well as collaboration with Kanye West and Brandy among others, just in case you missed those.

Esthero was a pleasure to talk to, despite the teasing near the end. The next day’s show at the Folk Fest was a lot of fun as well, with the acoustic arrangements really highlighting her voice. Sadly, the group dynamic didn’t quite gel all that well during the workshop on Saturday with Emily Wells, Chad Van Gaalen and Kid Koala. Luckily, if you were at the Folk Fest, there were a heck of a lot of other interesting things going on during the weekend (including Kid Koala’s killer solo set late Saturday afternoon).

At any rate, here be the interview:
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Mostly hip hop this week as we feature some upcoming shows and keep paying our respects to mj.

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No large intro this time, just the show… hip hop, and stuff.

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Seems sort of fitting that while I made small get-yer-drink-on set in this show in semi-honour to the much-loathed and loved Stampede, last night, I had my own mini anti-stampede club crawl going on, with major stops at the Keys’n’Krates show at the mercury and the Flying Lotus show at the Hifi. Flying Lotus (who I’ve played on the show many times previously and written about in beatroute) totally wrecked shop. It was eye-opening to see so many cats coming out to what was essentially a glitch-hop (for lack of a better term) show. I didn’t know Calgary was ready. I do now, though. Dude was clearly enjoying himself as well, grinning like the Cheshire Cat for most of the show. It’s also nice to see Calgary getting a bit of a rep as a good city for audiences vs our rep from 5-6yrs ago.

Anyways, back to the radio show: a mixed back; downtempo, d’n’b, soul & funk, and some hip hop at the end.

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The news of MJ’s passing sure made the rounds of the internets damn fast yesterday. I was amazed at how quickly word started getting out and how people tried to come to terms with the news. I was surprised, although I shouldn’t have been, at just how much of a pop culture touchstone he remains to this day, even with those younger than us 80s babies who didn’t necessarily come up with him as we did. I thought about penning a large ode, but let’s face it, I’m way too lazy. I will say that I’m feeling a lot less cynical about the man today than I was a while ago when Joe, Frank and I talked about it a few years back. I think slate.com’s Jody Rosen sums up my feelings pretty well when he writes, “If there is a silver lining to Jackson’s untimely death, at age 50, it’s how we’ve been snapped out of our fixation on Jackson’s lurid life to concentrate again on his art.”

Part of that silver lining has been re-listening to a lot of MJ’s post-Thriller output and being able to seperate the artist from his work, and just enjoying some good songs in their own right while not having to judge them as not living up to the Thriller standard.

Anyways, as is customary with the passing of important musical figures, we start out the show with a small Michael Jackson set. Then we get back into the normal rhythm of things, and then a summer drive or riding set, before rolling to a different drum with some ragga jungle.

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Spring again, and I'm feelin fine
Pass me an ice-cold glass of wine
So I can get mellow
Lay back, and let my girl play the cello
Hello!

Snatched those lyrics off of ohhla.com. They’re off of Nice ‘n Smooth‘s Funky for You, right after the ‘stick up kids is out to tax’ line, the line so nice i had to play it thrice… Well, I actually played it way more than that if you count all the times it’s scratched in on Gang Starr’s Just to Get a Rep. Whatever Nice ‘n Smooth, you had me at cello. Greg Nice and Smooth B just ooze summer on their self-titled debut. I mean, geez, the video for Early to Rise even has a pool party scene (and of course, matching silk pajama sets… younguns don’t know, but silk used to be big in rapper wardrobes in the early 90s. See Big Daddy Kane. Too damn smooth, indeed). And with this warm weather, and electrical storms and such, well, I guess I’m just feeling summery. Don’t blink. It won’t last.

And don’t sleep on Tanya Morgan or Tiye Phoenix, either. I’m really feelin’ Brooklynati, the former’s latest offering (watch a video of them talking about it, or peep the related, if somewhat obtuse site). And I’ve been feeling the Tiye Phoenix stuff since the minute I heard it. There’s a short clip buried in the middle of this video where tiye phoenix talks about the concept behind Too Late for Us, which I’ve been bumping for the last while as well.

K. ’nuff videos ‘n stuff. Here’s the show:

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This week, Ricca Razor Sharp drops by the studio along with Mantrakid to talk about his sophomore album, Causeways and C-Trains. The two of them are in the middle of a cross-Canada tour which touches down in Calgary on June 12th at the Palomino.

It’s always lots of fun having the audible intelligence folks in the studio, and this time was no different. I kinda messed up the levels on Ricca’s freestyle, but the 2nd half comes through ok… (d’oh!). If you’re not familiar with the Calgary-by-way-of-Cape-Sable-Island-MC, get a late pass by reading the article in this month’s beatroute.

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