Download Duck Sauce - Barbra Streisand

Armand Van Helden and A-Track collaborate on another lighthearted tribute to New York.  The awesomely titled duo—Duck Sauce—shout out Barbra Streisand on this catchy dance floor track.  While Streisand may seem an unlikely recipient of such praises, as any vinyl enthusiasts can attest, her records are a staple of used record stores all around the city.  Whether that is a testament to how good or bad her actual music is seems irrelevant.  Her records have become a constant reminder of old New York in an era when DJs mine those times for modern cultural relevance.

The video—an endlessly silly take on the New York party scene—features more talented artists than I care to name, but will anyway: ?uestlove, Todd Terry, Santigold, Biz Markie, Smif n Wessun, Fafi, Just Blaze, Dj Mehdi, Buckshot, DJPremier, Ezra Koenig, Kanye West, Pharrell William, Diplo, DJ Premier.

Its always nice to see DJs make music just because its so goddam fun to do.

Download the track here.

Four Tet - Nothing to See

Ever since Four Tet grew out of his bedroom studio's polite, jazzy explorations and got all techno on our asses, I've had precious little quality music of his to hold on to.  For a while it was unclear why he ditched the sound he helped create (and was clearly so good at making) in favor of more club centric music.

It seemed he had been making his older music in the vacuum of his apartment, and when he finally looked and up realized that his fan-base was largely made up of electronic music fans, decided to explore their world a little further.  His first few steps haven't been stellar—this years lukewarm There is Love in You, along with a string of underwhelming remixes—but Kieran Hebden seems to have grown into his own as a club music producer.

Off a fairly recent release with fellow producer Mala, the track Nothing to See finds Four Tet bridging the gap between his older productions and his new ones.  Whereas his newer material has been clean and minimalist in approach, this track hearkens back to his earlier days of messy jazzy abandon.  However not without updates.  Nothing to See is undoubtedly jazzy, but not free-form—Hebden's time as DJ has taught him to focus his impulses and tailor them to the dance floor.

The result sounds like Theo Parish's Falling Up meeting the Junior Boys at Pantha Du Princes house for dinner, or, er, something.  Cheers all around.

Lil B is a Dangerous Mind

Every so often something comes along that throws into question everything you've been listening to for a while.  Funny how I had convinced myself that Drake and Co. represented some kind of resurgence of quality rap.  This track by Lil B is a quantum leap for rap music.  Its new and unusual but undoubtedly organic.  Its futuristic only insofar as its pretty much unprecedented.  None of the stark futurism or intellectual posturing that characterized the underground hip-hop of the turn of the century can be found here.  Its as though that phase in rap music was the necessary evil that broke down conventions so that a track like this could come in a rebuild them anew. 

I haven't heard rap music this unselfconsciously vulnerable since an 18 year old Dizzee Rascal released Boy in Da Corner.  This isn't vulnerability in the vein of Kanye West.  Kanye's troubles are simplistic and uncomfortably juinor-high.  Today's squeamish, contrived, R&B-drama inflected "confessional" (think Kid Cudi) finds no audience in this track.

Lil B's stream of conscious flow is lyrically dense and stylistically fresh, hopping from topic to topic with ease. The first 30 seconds are spent waiting for the beat to kick in, and by the time the fifth minutes passed your happy it hasn't.

Machinedrum does The World Famous Show Mixtape

Machinedrum continues his acrobatic genre shifts on his new mix for LuckyMe. More than any other artist out now, Machinedrum represents a chameleon-like approach to production.  Where other artists attempt to don 20 different hats within one song—often sounding messy or stylistically awkward—Machinedrum keeps things streamlined per track, exploring an entire genre via one well executed track.  His tracks are varied and schizophrenic when compared to one another while remaining internally coherent.

This mix starts with an emphasis old school Hip Hop, laying down tracks that have been sampled until infinity.  If these tracks are familiar to you because of Nas and Maria Carey then you need to get up on your Hip Hop game, and this is the perfect opportunity.  This isn’t tongue in check or nostalgia driven.  Machinedrum knows the deal and he sounds eager to share with the public an era that has proven endlessly influential to the producers of the 1990s and DJs of the post-2000 electronic music explosion.

Download the mix here

Also, check out Machinedrum rehearsing for a live show on a kitchen counter in Brooklyn.


Machinedrum RAW from machinedrum on Vimeo.

Creating Black City

Matthew Dear's landmark new album Black City, the twisted piece of pop genius that it is, has yielded its first video.  Less a music video by the numbers, and more a making of, the video explores an artist crafting the cold shapes that made up the album's art work.  The song Monkey blares in the background as the artist meticulously casts the pieces.  As the track gets more and more unhinged, the sharp metallic pieces come into their own.  The "I can be your monkey" refrain repeats itself as the synths become increasingly insistent in their maniacally childish manner and then all we are left with is Matthew Dear's name on black.


Matthew Dear - MDBC Totem from Ghostly International on Vimeo.

Big Boi: "You Ain't No DJ" [ft. Yelawolf]

The continually slept on Big Boi album, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, has yielded another single.  Criminally underrated and largely overlooked, this album has already bestowed upon us three huge singles.  Will this be the one to blow up? Probably not.  Looks like that ship has sailed. 

Oh well.  For your viewing pleasure:

Chemical Brothers

For the last 15 years, the Chemical Brothers have been some of the most uncompromisingly true-to-self producers out there.  Rarely have they adjusted their sound to fit current trends.  Instead they've always just stuck to what they do best, sure that the rest of us would like it.

And that's pretty much always been the case. Even when their albums weren't spectacular they've always had at least a few tracks that reafirmed their brand of Big-Room electronica as relevant and oddly current.

Their latest album seems no different.  They are still working with the same sound palette that made them famous in the 1990s (Hey Boy Hey Girl).  Yet the song sounds fresh.  Corney names aside, Escape Velocity is a pretty solid dance floor track.  It sounds like Blinded by the Light updated for 2010.

The music video is equally solid.  Where some of their old videos were high minded, big budgeted exercises in psychedelia, this one is as simple as laying back on a sunny day and soaking in the simple joys of getting high and staring at the sun.

Escape Velocity from Victor Hugo Mafra on Vimeo.

Lukid - Hair Of The Dog

Werk Discs wunderkind Lukid released this awesome clip for his track Hair of the Dog a few months ago.  The title is supposedly an English (British) term for drinking alcohol to get over a hangover.  Sounds good to me.

Lukid works with the same blunted, humid textures that make Actress's releases so goddamn funky. Hair of the Dog is a more solemn affair though.  The clip is vintage in aesthetic and morbid in theme.  Watch it till the end to get the full effect.