Smoking O.P.'s
I don't normally listen to other people's mixes much but lately I've been on a tear. Blame procrastination, curiosity and yardwork. I've heard some really good stuff in the process.
My friend DJ Anonymous just relaunched his excellent DJ's Delight blog with a redesign and a new mix, the fifth installment of his Disco (formerly "Disco to Get Drunk to") series. The set is very eclectic-- frosty Brit-funk rubs up against Salsoul oddities, cuts from people you wouldn't expect to see in the disco (hey, Carly Simon! Dave Grusin!) and excellent UK-only obscurities from ESG and Prince-- but it's beautifully mixed and flows nicely. Stream or download here.
Vancouver producer/DJ U-Tern's Summer '10 is an excellent and eclectic mix of things that shouldn't work together but do-- The-Dream, albino rock, Serge Gainsbourg, disco and house-- particularly the way U-Tern ties them together with summer-y sound effect washes and artful mixing. Stream here, download here.
I'm at best a casual listener to dance rock but I really enjoyed DJ Steve1der's An Introduction to the Twelves. I'd been curious about the Brazilian production duo since hearing their remix of the Black Kids' "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" a couple years back. Since then, I tend to check for everything they remix but this still contains a lot of things that slipped by me. And it jams. Stream or download here.
I feel like I'm constantly recommending episodes of Chairman Mao's monthly Spine podcast, but I seem to mainly do it just before or after they disappear from Spine's website. His latest installment features the homie Dave Tompkins, who went uptown to Mao's house to play and talk about an hour of vocoder oddities that don't appear in the his Monk One-assisted vocoder mega-mix that I mentioned a few months ago. Mao handles the mixing; Dave deciphers and reciphers the mix here. Stream or download (while it's still available) here.
My friend O-Dub recently prepared a secular music-inspired gospel set for Aquarium Drunkard. It's not really a mix so much as a compilation, but his selections are great and incorporate a lot of funk and deep soul. Many of the songs had previously been featured on Soul-Sides over the past few months but are no longer available there, so you've got a second chance. Download here.
BBE is about to release a new compilation/mix from DJ Spinna that's a sequel to his endlessly smooth 2001 set, Strange Games and Things. On first listen, this one's a little choppier-- there are some great selections if not quite the same end-to-end groove. Still, I admire Spinna's ear for slightly below-the-radar gems and underplayed classics. Stream here.
People mourning Fat Beats should also check out Spinna's recent Underground Forever mix, which is an excellent survey of the kind of NYC 90s indie hip hop releases the Fat Beats store and distribution network were built on.
I might be late in noticing, but DJ Spinna also has a podcast. I grabbed a bunch of shows and all were good but I was especially glad for his Marvin Gaye mix, which put me on to a different version of one of my favorites:
Marvin Gaye: "Time to Get It Together" (Alternate version) (Motown, 1978/2007)
This version is from the 2007 double-disc reissue of Here, My Dear. It's rougher, looser and way longer but it grooves like crazy and it's cool to hear elements that got abandoned in the final version (which, come to think of it, is kind of sloppy and murky in its own right).
The chorus has to be about the most gangster lyric of its era: "blowing coke all up my nose/getting in and out my clothes/fooling 'round with midnight hoes/but that chapter of my life's closed." It was basically made to be remade by Three 6 Mafia, or at least their protégé Kingpin Skinny Pimp:
Kingpin Skinny Pimp: "Midnight Hoes" (Prophet Entertainment, 1996)
I kind of wish DJ Paul & Juicy J had taken more than the chorus but their track is pretty nice in its own right.
My friend DJ Anonymous just relaunched his excellent DJ's Delight blog with a redesign and a new mix, the fifth installment of his Disco (formerly "Disco to Get Drunk to") series. The set is very eclectic-- frosty Brit-funk rubs up against Salsoul oddities, cuts from people you wouldn't expect to see in the disco (hey, Carly Simon! Dave Grusin!) and excellent UK-only obscurities from ESG and Prince-- but it's beautifully mixed and flows nicely. Stream or download here.
Vancouver producer/DJ U-Tern's Summer '10 is an excellent and eclectic mix of things that shouldn't work together but do-- The-Dream, albino rock, Serge Gainsbourg, disco and house-- particularly the way U-Tern ties them together with summer-y sound effect washes and artful mixing. Stream here, download here.
I'm at best a casual listener to dance rock but I really enjoyed DJ Steve1der's An Introduction to the Twelves. I'd been curious about the Brazilian production duo since hearing their remix of the Black Kids' "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" a couple years back. Since then, I tend to check for everything they remix but this still contains a lot of things that slipped by me. And it jams. Stream or download here.
I feel like I'm constantly recommending episodes of Chairman Mao's monthly Spine podcast, but I seem to mainly do it just before or after they disappear from Spine's website. His latest installment features the homie Dave Tompkins, who went uptown to Mao's house to play and talk about an hour of vocoder oddities that don't appear in the his Monk One-assisted vocoder mega-mix that I mentioned a few months ago. Mao handles the mixing; Dave deciphers and reciphers the mix here. Stream or download (while it's still available) here.
My friend O-Dub recently prepared a secular music-inspired gospel set for Aquarium Drunkard. It's not really a mix so much as a compilation, but his selections are great and incorporate a lot of funk and deep soul. Many of the songs had previously been featured on Soul-Sides over the past few months but are no longer available there, so you've got a second chance. Download here.
BBE is about to release a new compilation/mix from DJ Spinna that's a sequel to his endlessly smooth 2001 set, Strange Games and Things. On first listen, this one's a little choppier-- there are some great selections if not quite the same end-to-end groove. Still, I admire Spinna's ear for slightly below-the-radar gems and underplayed classics. Stream here.
People mourning Fat Beats should also check out Spinna's recent Underground Forever mix, which is an excellent survey of the kind of NYC 90s indie hip hop releases the Fat Beats store and distribution network were built on.
I might be late in noticing, but DJ Spinna also has a podcast. I grabbed a bunch of shows and all were good but I was especially glad for his Marvin Gaye mix, which put me on to a different version of one of my favorites:
Marvin Gaye: "Time to Get It Together" (Alternate version) (Motown, 1978/2007)
This version is from the 2007 double-disc reissue of Here, My Dear. It's rougher, looser and way longer but it grooves like crazy and it's cool to hear elements that got abandoned in the final version (which, come to think of it, is kind of sloppy and murky in its own right).
The chorus has to be about the most gangster lyric of its era: "blowing coke all up my nose/getting in and out my clothes/fooling 'round with midnight hoes/but that chapter of my life's closed." It was basically made to be remade by Three 6 Mafia, or at least their protégé Kingpin Skinny Pimp:
Kingpin Skinny Pimp: "Midnight Hoes" (Prophet Entertainment, 1996)
I kind of wish DJ Paul & Juicy J had taken more than the chorus but their track is pretty nice in its own right.
posted by Matthew at
10:19 PM
3 Comments:
Great suggestions. Had already checked out the Steve 1der and Anonymous but will definitely check out the rest. And glad to hear you located Spinna's podcast. He doesn't seem to post all that regularly, but that Marvin Gaye mix is (like his Quincy Jones mix) classic, classic, classic. But - I could be wrong here - isn't that version of TTGIT a re-working of unused session material by DJ Smash? I just don't think those rhodes-sounding keys were ever recorded by Marvin. Either way, it's amazing.
I haven't seen the liner notes or heard any of the other outtakes in the reissue but based on the other reissues Motown did around that time I had assumed it was just a take of a different session that might have gotten cleaned up or spliced a little. I could be way wrong, though, and I look forward to finding out! And yeah, either way it is amazing.
Yeah, I was initially disappointed that contrary to the excellent deluxe reissues Motown/Universal did for MG's What's Going On, Let's Get it On, Here My Dear and In Our Lifetime/Love Man (Hey, where's that "Trouble Man" deluxe anyway?), they decided to forego the inclusion of alternate takes/demo versions, unreleased tracks and the like, opting instead to include a disc's worth of remixes and re-workings made from existing/but supposedly unissued album sessions.
But while I still wish they'd stayed with the formula on those other releases, these new versions aren't actually a bad thing, as a lot of care seems to have gone into selecting the producers involved. Smash's "Time to Get it Together", ?eustlove's "Sparrow" and Salaam Remi's "Falling in Love Again" may not be a patch on Marvin's originals, but they're pretty great nonetheless.
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