New Remix Action

I just wrapped up production and mixing for Millions of Brazilians, a real up-and-coming Detroit band and a fine bunch of idiots. My so-called production consisted of shitting synthesizer over their rock tracks and then editing and mixing in as much of it as they would let me. On "Happy Dagger," though, they put a stop to it and told me I had gone to far. "Fine," I said, "then I'm doing a remix." And so I did.

Millions of Brazilians - "Happy Dagger (The Clapp Remix)

John Legend: Butterboy

Note: Blogspot took down this John Legend entry a few days ago. There was no discussion, no requests to remove offending content or to stream my mp3s instead of hosting them. They just sent me an email saying: "Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog infringes upon the copyrights of others." I went to look at my post and see about altering it, but it was just gone. Which bummed me out because I spent the time to write something very favorable about Legend's record, which was released yesterday, and host a few of the tracks I was talking about. Thankfully, my girlfriend still had the page up on her screen and was able to salvage my text. I am reposting it, with streams instead of downloads for the tracks. I am also changing my policy on this blog to stream-only for tracks that are currently being promoted. So, if it's in a year of its release, I won't make the download available, and hopefully if you like it you will go buy it. This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and now seems like a good reason to make the switch.


There's an over-smoothness to John Legend that has been broken through to produce his best music. This has also meant, for me at least, ignoring the schmaltz that has cluttered his past records to find the 2 or 3 vital tracks that have real soul and sandpaper (the Raphael Saadiq-produced "Let's Get Lifted Again" from Get Lifted is what I'm talking about).

Evolver seems to be more of a "producers" record, in the sense that it has more of a diversity of sound and collaboration than Legend's previous two albums. And there is an evolution of style, as well - less retro, more buzz and bump. As singles go, "Green Light," which was produced by Andre 3000, is perfection, completely charismatic and fresh. Other tracks featuring collaborations with Kanye, Brandy and Estelle are no slouches either, but I find myself drawn to the sharper corners like "Satisfaction" - a kind of soul-meets-scandinavian-electro that is half retro/half bubbly apocalypse - and "I Love, You Love," which is matches Legend's croon with stuttering kick drum samples, snaky electric guitars and atmospherics.

John Legend - "Green Light (Feat. Andre 3000)"


John Legend - "I Love, You Love"


John Legend - "Satisfaction"


John Legend - "Let's Get Lifted Again" [From Get Lifted]

Lo and Behold

I thought there was something familiar about "I Will Not Apologize" from the new The Roots album Rising Down. And then I had it: it reminded me of Camp Lo. These guest spots by Porn and Dice Raw have that staccato, machine-gun-in-slo-mo rhythmic approach that I love so much about Camp Lo's Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede. Camp Lo's Uptown Saturday Night is one of the few rap albums I will listen to all the way through. It's got a timeless sound and doesn't sound today at all like a 11-year-old urban record. They have a unique delivery style where they go on and off the beat, rapping straight on the high-hats but lazy at the same time. It's super musical and just interesting to me, as a drummer.

Wiki says Camp Lo signed to Universal this year and are putting a new record out with a name alteration to just The Lo.

The Roots "I Will Not Apologize (Feat. Porn and Dice Raw)" [From Rising Down]

Camp Lo "Park Joint" [From Uptown Saturday Night]

Camp Lo "Luchini (This is It)" [From Uptown Saturday Night]

The Walkmen, Sculpted Again

There are a lot of reasons why I failed to listen to You & Me, the new album by The Walkmen, when it was released this summer. Most of those had nothing to do with The Walkmen at all and everything to do with the fact that I've drowned myself in a hot sea of black music. But to be frank, I had also lost a lot of the love I once had for the handsome New York-based quintet, its preppy clothes, its dylanesque post-punk.

I had become a fan from the first thing they ever put out, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone (2002). This album worked on all the band's levels. The secret to The Walkmen's success is their chemistry as players and performers and on Everyone all of the sprawled paint of their animalistic live show is framed neatly in their minimal arrangements, which are intended to overpower with simplicity (...let's see how much effect we can get out bringing the bass in and out...). But what really made Everyone so special was that it was a studio album. It sounded tinkered with and sprinkled in crude ambient textures and hard-panned piano doodles. It was a one-of-a-kind sound, and maybe that's why the band figured it didn't need replicating. Fair enough.

But then they they became a touring beast, wrote a thunderous and fast song called The Rat which sounded like a man begging for his soul and which became the kind of song everybody wanted The Walkmen to be, and completely turned their backs on the studio-as-instrument, choosing instead to go for a band-in-a-room aesthetic that relied on natural room reverbs and tape saturation for character. The problem was that these recordings sounded increasingly unfussed over - but not in a good way. Bows + Arrows felt merely unloved, but A Hundred Miles Off sounded like it was recorded and mastered with a, well, Walkman.

The Walkmen were chasing a frustrating, elusive rock alchemy. The problem with music groups making band-in-a-room recordings is that they are usually self-defeating exercises. It's a condtradiction in terms. The process of studio recording itself - the clinical nature of it, the closeness of the walls and the lack of sweating bodies to bounce frequencies off of, not to mention the general abscene of white noise, generally results in recordings that don't faithfully replicate what the band sounds like live, or even in their practice space. But The Walkmen are a phenomenon in concert, and this deserves documentation and so, unfortunately, the alternative - a studio-manipulated album like Everyone - doesn't really seal the deal either.

I'm finally settling down with You & Me and I feel that this album is the best of both worlds. The recording quality is beautiful, with just enough additional instrumentation (the horn work, in particular is gorgeous) to make it sound "produced." But you would not be betrayed by seeing these numbers performed live - the album arrangements leave all the space of their live sets intact. The tempos are slow, but the band feels more comfortable in them. To me The Walkmen sound a bit forced as agro rockers and more natural playing expansive, ambient Americana; much of You & Me is the sound of tugboats, muddy southern rivers, fireflies and lemonade at dusk.

The Walkmen - "In The New Year" [From You & Me]

The Walkmen - "On the Water" [From You & Me]

The Walkmen "New Country" [From You & Me]

The Walkmen "Roll Down The Line" [From Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone]

The Walkmen "Stop Talking" [From Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone]

The Walkmen "What's In It For Me" [From Bows + Arrows]

The Walkmen "My Old Man" [From Bows + Arrows]

The Walkmen "No Christmas While I'm Talking" [From Bows + Arrows]

The Walkmen "All Hands and the Cook" [From 100 Miles Off]

Simone Pace

Simone Pace is one of my favorite drummers of all time and is also sickeningly cool.

"This video joins Simone Pace, best known as one-third of Blonde Redhead, on one of his vintage Italian motorcycles, from an East Village garage, across the Brooklyn bridge, to the band's recording studio. Simone shares some of the design elements that make him a fan of Motoguzzis, offers some insight on Blonde Redhead's music and tells the story of the first time he played drums."

Molly McGuire and the Bleary Roar of Kansas City Hardcore

I'm going to take a break for a moment from all of the R&B and old Soul I've been writing about and focus on the white man's music for a sec. I've been wanting to do a post for a while about Kansas City hardcore, a scene and a brand of sound that was way ahead of its time and that was a huge influence on me at one point. But trying to get all musical-historian on this topic is probably out of my reach, and besides I can't find half of the CDs I would need to do it proper. However since, upon my request, a friend recently mailed me a copy of Molly McGuire's last album Lime, on Epic Records, I can use posting a few of those tracks as a chance to reminisce a little.

I was a student from 94-98 in Springfield, MO, which was a few hours drive from either St. Louis or Kansas City. Since Springfield had no fewer than four universities it was actually a decent market for touring national acts, and we were spoiled musically, considering the size of the city. We also became part of the circuit for regional bands, who could pop in and do a weekend set every month or so and then get back home. When I showed up in '94, the Kansas City hardcore sound had already solidified: gutwrenching epic, a mix of melody and scream, the most dissonant guitar intervals possible, and, in general, just a darker, sadder, and angrier take on post-punk than anything grunge had offered. Fragile Porcelain Mice and Dirtnap were local favorites, since they seemed to hit Springfield the most. But Shiner, Season to Risk and Molly McGuire all had a bigger profile nationally and, of these, Molly McGuire actually signed to a major label (You probably won't be surprised to find out that they never made another record and broke up after their first major label release, Lime).

Listening back to Lime, I'm shocked at how a few of these tracks still hold up to today's sounds and styles. They were so ahead of their time. The Kansas City sound was essentially what would become emo and then post-emo, and even part of the sound of bands like Failure and Queens of the Stoneage. Besides Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary, there were few groups in the mid '90s making anything like it. Fugazi and the Jesus Lizard had the angry math and post-rock thing going, but the difference was in scope. The KC sound was a symphonic smear, and the arrangements and drumming were built to lay back and open up, almost like English shoegazer groups, but harder and more angular. The Kansas City bands also usually had more of an ear for melody and their dissonant roar often masked more traditional songs than their D.C. counterparts. But what really set them apart, to my ears, was the kind of melodies they wrote: their hooks were atonal (i.e. not in the key). If you were to analyze the melodies in the two Lime tracks I've posted below, you'd see that, harmonically, they are pushing and rubbing against the key pretty hard, and yet, they stick. That's the genius of it, and a rare one at that. Today, the only music I'm hearing that comes close to replicating the use of atonal hooks is some of the forward-thinking pop and hip hop like M.I.A., Missy Elliott, and Santigold.

Listening now, these tracks I'm posting might seem safe or even out of style. But that's mostly because their sound was absorbed and then replicated to death. I remember hearing the Deftones White Pony in 2000 and thinking, this is no different than the Kansas City hardcore I was geeking out on six years ago. Weird that it's on the radio now.

Molly McGuire - "Love Two By Four"

Molly McGuire - "Humansville"