by Miné Salkin | Mar 26, 2009 | live action
Second video is up! Check it out:
the old prince still lives...
Born in London, Ontario, Shad Kabango is one of the hottest Canadian rappers today. SPINearth reporter Amanda Ash and I caught up with him in Kerrisdale, Vancouver, where he currently resides.
Shad moved to Canada at the tender age of 1 from Kenya in the early 1980’s, just as hip hop and rap were surfacing from the underground to the mainstream music scene. Originally of Rwandan descent, his family constantly moved around Africa as refugees before they settled to the east coast. Growing up with a balanced diet of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, MTV then MuchMusic, Shad uses his worldview and unique perspective as you can hear for yourself in his latest album The Old Prince. These days, he’s playing in Austin, Texas at SXSW, and in June he’s taking off with Vans Warped Tour.
His smooth style, realistic outlook, and lyrical sensitivity make Shad’s music stand out, and his creative honesty will get you hooked on his tunes. If his words of wisdom about music make you want to hear more, check out Shad’s new blog.
by Miné Salkin | Mar 20, 2009 | albums
Barzin
Notes to an Absent Lover
Monotreme Records
it'll break your heart
It would seem that Beck’s 2002 album Sea Change can step down as the reigning break-up album. Barzin’s much anticipated third full-length album is analgesic, narcoleptic, and offers the warmest kind of apathy for those with broken hearts and tattered emotions. Filled with mellow, downtempo folk-pop with a hint of country, Notes to an Absent Lover is essential listening. While Barzin keeps the overall sound simple and minimalist, the album has many textures as he diffuses vibraphone, cello and viola throughout the work. Caught somewhere between the poetic sensitivity of Lou Reed and the downtrodden voice of Wilco, Barzin sings about what love looks like “when it falls apart.” While most of the lyrics and themes are tied to the vulnerability of an individual who has failed in love, it gets a little aggressive and doubtful in “Look What Love Has Turned Us Into,” where he painfully howls “we’re strangers/ and we’re ugly/ ’cause we’ve lost so very much.” Barzin compares love to a dream song, music in Queen’s street, and words “tangled in blue,” showing the complexity of raw emotion mingling with regret, loss, and everlasting frustration.
by Miné Salkin | Mar 19, 2009 | Uncategorized
Meet Jon
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jon is thoughtful
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jon is timeless
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jon is tender
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jon is omnipotent
That’s right. Jon Blay-Amar. He might have a hyphenated name, but he doesn’t let that slow him down. Not even when it comes to administrative matters. He’s also known as Solomon Giles, or DJON.
Urban DJ, pioneer computer programmer, and a flouter of social conventions, Jon is a renaissance man. He is a master of CSS, html, and countless other computing languages, not to mention that he is a modicum of design that’s both stylish and highly intuitive. In fact, he fixed this website when I had lost all hope. Not only hope, but I had lost my sidebar widgets, including my category cloud. And for that I am eternally grateful.
by Miné Salkin | Mar 18, 2009 | albums
Looking back to 1999, Zombie Nation’s single “Kernkraft 400” set the standard as one of the most innovative dance songs to date, maybe of all time. Luckily for us, Munich-based DJ Florian Senfter, a.k.a. John Starlight has done it again. The highly-anticipated fourth album Zombielicious is an intoxicating adventure through bass thumping, heart pounding surreal electronic dance soundscapes. If you merged the quirky weirdness of early Chemical Brothers, the rhythmic complexity of Justice, and peppered in sounds from the 1970’s, this is what you would get. The album kicks off with “Mas De Todo,” a highly energetic and almost cerebral voyage through trance-like passages that draw out the most visceral and fierce kind of dancing. The track “Get It” uses a spiky double-amped bass drum that brings to mind the cocky strut of an oversexed, urban kid who “wants it/ and gets it all the time.” The album even takes a detour into a 1970’s horror-style genre with “Supercake 53,” complete with computerized tambourines and razor-sharp synthesizers. Although Senfter samples from myriads of different sounds and styles, such as the funk-tech vibes of tracks like “Worth It pts. 1&2,” the overall sound is still strikingly organic and natural.
ZN: made to make your mouth water
You release your music on both CD and vinyl. At the end of the day, do you prefer the razor sharpness of digital music, or the warm clubby feel of analog sound?
There can be only one answer: Vinyl! My production is based on analogue hardware instruments because I want to create a warm atmosphere. I feel that this is the most pleasant sound to the human ear. Most people now enjoy music as MP3s on laptop speakers. That is the real tragedy, because producers make music that sounds good on laptop speakers now. So you get squeaky, distorted melodies instead of dynamics and bass.
On the new album, you have a song with My Robot Friend, one of the hottest electronica acts out of NYC. What was it like working with Howard Robot?
We’ve been good friends for years now. The last time I played in NYC the last time he joined me spontaneously me to perform “The Cut”, which we collaborated on for my last album Black Toys. People went crazy when he came out in his costume that was made of hundreds of LEDs and lights. He worked so hard on that costume.
Is there a difference between electronic dance music in Europe compared to the United States, or anywhere else in the world you’ve been to? I think the main difference between Europe and the US is that in Europe there is more a scene of regular electronic clubs and parties, while in the US the shows have more one off concert character. Let’s say half of the audience comes to see the specific artist, and the other half is there because they know the party is always good. (UKW Records).
by Miné Salkin | Mar 16, 2009 | albums
for EXCLAIM! Frequencies
Various Artists
Rauschgold-Alec Empire Plays Staubgold
Eat Your Heart Out Records (www.alec-empire.com)
Rauschgold, Alec Empire’s second installation of DJ mix projects, is a much like a lesson in German cultural theory. For the most part, Empire samples across the gambit of dance, dirty scratchy beats and even downtempo stuff from all over the country, quickly bringing one up to speed about how innovative and quirky the Germans can be. For example, a song by Die Welttraumforscher (loosely translated meaning “the world’s greatest researchers) called “Liebe Lilli” sounds like a awkward, but charming admonition of love. Also, “Ice Bertolt Brecht” by Schwabinggrad Ballett is an eerily haunting two and a half minute chant, titled after a famous pseudo-existentialist German playwright who wrote of absurdity and alienation. Backed by a strong base lead and something that sounds like an atom bomb about to explode, this song and many others on the album find a delicate balance between cacophony and charm. Rauschgold is an experiment in electronic distortion and psychedelia that should come with a seizure warning label.
