Angry Songs About Food Vol. 4: Cereal - OnCue (prod. by CJ Luzi)

Whenever I hear this song I picture a group of really huge dudes eating bowls of Berry Berry Kix and nodding their heads in time. If I made the music video it would include multiple slow motion shots of spoons coming out bowls, milk dripping off the utensil sensually, before a tongue flicks into frame and tosses a single piece of cereal soaring up in the air and down into a mouth guarded by grill plastered teeth.

The track is a preview from Brooklyn based rapper OnCue's upcoming album Angry Young Man, and boy has that become even more of one to watch out for after this CJ Luzi produced explosion. To indulge your own sexy cereal fantasies (or you know, nod your head in personal sacrificial solidarity and resonance as that's really more what the song is about) you can grab a download of the song for free off of OnCue's Soundcloud here.

Photo courtesy of Karli Bonnie Photography

Chiptune Chuesday: Endboss - Marteria & The Krauts

So ever since I wrote about Peter Fox I've become hooked on production group The Krauts, a trio of German born DJs who pride themselves on combining retro-electro warmth with modern instrumentation. I decided to check out their most recent producing effort the album Zum Gluck in die Zukunft (Fortunately in the Future) for German rapper Marteria. And to my pleasant surprise the first song is (sort of) a chiptune number!

First track Endboss samples what sounds to me like both the soundtrack and sound effects of Sega classic Streets of Rage. Alongside this are Mario bleeps, arcade era voice sampling, and a smattering of geek culture references. All the best ingredients for a chip-hop beat.

I love the late night-club-lights-booming inside of an arcade cabinet mood of the track, and absolutely must share the final line (translated natch) 'The game is over, the last drink is for free, but there's a trick I'm gonna tell it to you, become a Buddhist and then you can restart it.' As a gamer this line makes me happier than it probably should.

Also! The video! Did you SEE that video? Chun Li needs to be in more rap videos. As do tetrominos.

Happy Chuesday!

Sample Showdown: Alles Neu vs. iLL Manors

The Sample: Symphony No. 7 In C Major, Op. 60 'Leningrad' Allegro Non Tropo - Dmitri 'Shosty-K' Shostakovich

In The Red Corner: Alles Neu - Peter Fox

In The Blue Corner: Ill Manors - Plan B

SO! What do we think? Shostakovich sampled by Peter Fox who in turn is sampled by Plan B sampling Shostakovich. An ouroborian (it's a word now, I've decided) trio of songs.

Alles Neu

Peter Fox is a German born rapper/dancehall artist. He's in the band Seeed (Germany's most popular reggae group). And half his face is paralysed.

In 2008 he put out his primate-centric album Stadtaffe (City Ape) lead by the Bundesvision 2009 winning and explosively Shosty-k sampling single Alles Neu.

HOW'S THE SAMPLE: It's intensely awesome. A thunderously electronic circus military march. Spiking violins having a tarantella fist fight with the Cold Steel Drumline. The strings underpin Fox's delivery in the verses perfectly. The sample works a little less well in the auto-tune-sung sections of the chorus, but then that's the weakest section of the song generally. 

The lyrics. As a non German speaker I  had no idea what was going on in this song. This wasn't helped (or perhaps made massively better) by a video involving millions of monkey musicians, violent omelette making, groove busting washer women and clothing catapult trash cans. Even having looked up a translation it still doesn't make an enormous amount of sense, but it works as a string of self aggrandising non-sequiturs. For example the first two lines of the song: 'I burn my studio, snort ash like coke. I slay my goldfish, bury him in the courtyard.' 

Yes. Just- Yes.

iLL Manors

Acousti-grime rapper and soul singer Plan B has sampled Alles Neu for his latest single iLL Manors.

iLL Manors is the song sharpened tip of the socially conscious spear Plan B is aiming to bring down upon Britain. The…shaft? Let's go with shaft. The shaft of said spear being his film also titled iLL Manors.

HOW'S THE SAMPLE: It's intensely awesome. A thunderously electronic circus military march. Spiking violins… Wait. Sorry, forgot which song I was listening to for a moment. The Shosty-K sample sounds great, but I can't help but feel that's because Alles Neu sounds great. The drum beats have been swapped out for slightly dubbier models, but in the scheme of things you'd be forgiven for thinking this was the English speaking remake of Alles Neu.

The one portion of the track which has really changed is the chorus, but it hasn't been handled gracefully. A dragging drum roll leads into the new section to cover the transition but it still sounds like two songs have been sello-taped together. That being said the sample sounds fucking excellent, it just doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from the song which came before it.

iLL Manors is being hailed as one of the all time great protest songs (which must in part be due to the fact that mainstream acts rarely, if ever, sing protest songs anymore). I'm not sure it's one for the history books, but I don't dislike it either. The song works, has an excellent swagger, and (though I think a few too many layers need to be peeled back to get to it) an important social message. Where I run into trouble is the video.

Plan B is critical of the media portrayal of the London riots and more broadly the portrayal of working class youth culture. This is fine. Hell, this is right. I agree with him. We are in agreement. He does this by satirising and critiquing the image which has been created by the media in the lyrics of iLL Manors.

The video however is gorging itself on it's own cake. It fetishizes the images it's supposed to be satirising. I don't feel a sense of grim horror and didactic edification (which sounds so endlessly lame in this context but stay with me), I just think damn that's a snappy and cool video. Imeanohmygawd did you see that bit where the molotov blows up the car and they all dance around its flaming husk? Who the hell DOESN'T want to do that? It muddies the waters for me as to what Plan B is trying to say. I get his intent, but the execution is all wrong.

So who's the winner? I'm going to give the nod to Alles Neu largely because it used the sample brilliantly the first time round and iLL Manors hasn't built upon it. Both songs sound great, and in the scheme of things iLL Manors will likely prove to be the more Important-with-a-capital-I-song. But only one of them contains rhymes about killing goldfish over a classical music sample. In my heart of hearts, I know which one I need to hear again right now.

Chiptune Chuesday: Koopa - Alec Friend

Milwaukee based chip-hop-tronica artist Alec Friend has put out an albums worth of Mario inspired material titled Koopa (the title track of which should be blasting out of your speakers right now on this most excellent Chiptune Chuesday).

'Koopa' bends and morphs the iconic Mario jump sound into a layered bass heavy and harmony rich song which is BEGGING for someone to rap over it. Literally. It is giving you the eye right now just in the vague hopes you'll spit some lyrics in its general direction. That being said the song does stand on its own, the chiming melody lilting somewhere between high sea adventure and digital leaves on the breeze.

Koopa can be had for the low low price of whatever you like over on Alec's Bandcamp page. Give it  a listen and see if you need some more Mario inspired clubbing in your life (the answer to that question is always yes by the way).

From the Corner to the Block - Galactic ft. Juvenile and The Soul Rebels Brass Band

New Orleans jazz/rock/funk (or, as I am now officially calling it, jonk) fusion meets hip-hop meets brass band. It will blow your mind while blowing it's horns.

From the Corner to the Block is the title track from New Orleans based fusion group Galalctic's (originally named Galactic Prophylactic) fifth album. The track features fellow New Orleans natives Juvenile and The Soul Rebels Brass Band- though it's the latter presence that really elevates it to such heights. It's a funked up car crash of time lines, genres, and a sousaphone.

More of this please.

Mowgli - The Historian Himself

Click Here To Listen To Mowgli

The Historian Himself (a.k.a. Brian Engh) is awesome. This dinosaur enthused artist/musician/monsterologist has given the world an entire concept album of prehistoric themed hip-hop FOR FREE. Called Earth Beasts Awaken, it's seventeen tracks of dinosaur groove. Get it from his site. Now.

Our personal favorite slice of the album is a little track called Mowgli.

Mowgli is a chilling piece of music. With winding organs and echoing plucked strings (sampled from animated short Slim Pickings) the song wrenches out the spine of Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli and sews it into a hypnotically terrifying allegory of the unstoppable force of nature.

The lyrics are equal parts measured scientific terminology and the fever dream ranting of a paleontologist caught in the apocalypse. Anyone who can pull off the word 'chromatophoric' and not only make it sound cool but kind of scary as well deserves a medal.

It's great, it's unusual, it's dinosaurs. You have no excuse.

Here's that download link again.

The Historian Himself Main Site

Slim Pickings directed by Anthony Lucas, music composed by Chris Copping.