Building on the subject of perfection, I had a funny exchange with DJ Shidoshi after tonight’s show. He was listening to CJSW for a few minutes while driving between a few uptown watering holes and happen to catch the one mix I flubbed hard during this week’s show (that O’Jays track can be a bitch… Like many pre- click track funk songs, the tempo definitely wanders on you). How embarrassing! Having one of my DJ buddies, who almost never listens to my show, happen to catch me with my pants down… Ah well, such is life.
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I strive for (technical) perfection in my mixes and my shows. It’s a high bar to set for myself, which I seldom, if ever, achieve. Take this week’s show for example. I managed to flub at least three mixes throughout the night. Nevertheless, I had a blast putting it together. Hope you enjoy!
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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.
Technical diffiulties once again prevent me from posting the show, but here’s the playlist… I’ll try and post a few different mixes over the next couple of days to make up for it.
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.
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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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.
