to 2006, otan ksekinisa na thn psaxnw me tetoies mousikes, kapoios, mou proteine anamesa allwn diskwn, opws dial m for monkey, ton amongst strangers tou cooper
The popular British trip-hop group is back with their 7th studio album and first to feature original vocalist Skye Edwards since 2002′s Charango. The group are continuing their migration away from a trip-hop orientated sound towards more of a acoustic pop sound with the typical downbeat trip-hop drum beat underneath. Despite their departure from a pure trip-hop sound, elements of older Morcheeba are still present in the songs and fans of Skye Edward’s will be happy to have her back with the rest of the band.
The biggest problem with Blood Like Lemonade is that it doesn’t sound like a real Morcheeba album, it sounds like one of Skye Edward’s solo albums. “Cut to the Chase” is the only song that features much of an electronic sound to it and it goes on for two minutes more than it needs to. Occasionally there will be a record scratch or sample used in the other songs, but not enough to recapture the sounds found on albums like Big Calm and Who You Can Trust?
On that note though, bands change their sound all the time and you don’t want bands continually releasing the same stuff for the mindless masses to buy (ahem ACDC). Blood Like Lemonade sounds like a continuation of the laid back, chilling, and poppy sounds from 2002′s Charango, which to some is an insult, and others a compliment. Charango was definitely the album that lost a lot of fans as their sound became more polished and less electronic based, however it also picked up a lot of fans who wanted something poppy and upbeat to throw on in the background. Blood Like Lemonade certainly fills that requirement, and if that’s what you’re after then it’s hard to go wrong.
Some songs are stronger than others, and with two instrumental filler pieces, you’re left with 8 original pieces. The album starts out strong with lounge-ish downbeat “Crimson”, which rings heavily with influences from Portishead’s debut album Dummy. Chords ring out, the drumbeat pounds out with Skye’s beautiful clean vocals restrained during the versus, before being unleashed in full force during the chorus’. The follow up song “Even Though” (and subsequently the first single) is easily the best song off the album, with a catchy drum beat, nice acoustic guitar riff, and slightly haunting melodic vocals singing about holding out hope in times of great despair. The song is uplifting, relaxing, and captivating, all at once, grabbing your attention, massaging your brain, and instilling a sense of hope that it’s not too late to make changes. The follow up titular song “Blood Like Lemonade” is just as catchy as the previous song and can get lodged in your head after a few listens. It’s unfortunate that from here on the song quality begins to diminish from great to mediocre. None of the other songs are bad in any sense, but they all kind of blur together into pure muzak.
Overall the album is a nice, if rather bland album that doesn’t make the most of the other members besides Skye Edwards. Paul and Ross Godfrey sound restricted, going through the motions to create the sound, but without the electronic layer, the instrumentation is confined to a limited sound. While it’s still a great album to throw on after a hard day’s work, when you just want to sit back and crack a beer (or some other substance, this is Morcheeba) then it does the job well, just don’t expect to get as sucked into the music as you would with their earlier albums.
They may not be household names in the UK, but in Europe thousands have heard of Danish Hip Hop group Outlandish. Making award-winning music since 1997, the handsome posse is made up of Waqas Ali Qadri, Isam Bachiri and Lenny Martinez. Having already produced two genre-defining albums in Outland's Official and Bread and Barrels Of Water, the trio continue on their journey of 'life music' with their third. An inspirational collection of 15 songs, it's a prime example of how music can be both entertaining and meaningful.
Born in Denmark but hailing from Moroccan, Pakistani and Honduran backgrounds (Isam and Waqas are Muslims and Lenny is Catholic), religion and politics have an important influence on Outlandish. Themes about Islam and contemporary issues facing young Muslims in the west are often included in their music. Take for example, Look Into My Eyes, which is based on a poem by a teenage Palestinian that expresses the plight of those suffering from America's foreign policy. The song flows without sounding preachy. Similarly, tracks such as Just Me and Una Palabra give a rare insight into life in today's Europe as seen through the eyes of a second generation immigrant. Nothing Left To Do boldly tackles the taboo issue of a young Muslim man catching HIV.
Another key theme is love and respect between men and women, highlighted on Any Given Time and Calling U. Both modern love songs, their seductive lyrics and melodies are enhanced by Isam's velvet vocals. Soft and sensously sung, it's easy to see why Outlandish's lead singer is so popular.
While most American hip hop outfits may rap about gangs, guns and girls, these brothers prefer to be morally-minded with their lyrics. Flitting comfortably between English, Danish, Spanish, Urdu and Punjabi, songs like Komigen also allow Waqas and Lenny to show off their multilingual skills. I've Seen, featuring popular British Muslim musician Sami Yusuf deomonstrates another feather in Outlandish's bow – their interest in collaborating with other Islamic artists.
Proving that music can be open-minded and overtly religious, with Closer Than Veins Outlandish have created a cross-cultural gem.
Recently endorsed by Madonna, the holy grail for vacuous metropolitan trend-surfers everywhere, Manchester's premier badly drawn animator-turned-DJ is re-releasing this jazzy big beat bustle after it was used to soundtrack adverts in France and North America. It's a cute little studio trifle, superior Hoxton bar background muzak, the sort of sketchy sweet nothing that Fatboy Slim would have bashed out in an afternoon before dreary maturity hobbled his muse. The added bonus is rumbling squelchcore rarity 'Ug', thrown in to top up the offbeat kool quotient.
Hope & Sorrow is the sophomore effort from France’s Wax Tailor (also known as DJ and producer JC le Saout), the follow up to the acclaimed Tales of The Forgotten Melodies, a stunning debut that topped charts worldwide. Wax Tailor has proven to be a master of sampling, which is an art form in and of itself. Layering and arranging samples expertly is often difficult to pull off on just one track, but Hope & Sorrow keeps that skill in high gear from beginning to end. There are going to be the inevitable descriptions of this being a cinematic venture, which is absolutely true here, just as it was in the previous album.
With the help of a large cast, including Voice, The Others, and spoken word goddess Ursula Rucker, the story of Hope & Sorrow rolls out over several distinct movements, and you won’t find any shortage of excellent selections. The album opens with "Once Upon A Past", a track with stumbling beats and a showdown aura. Next, Sharon Jones paints soulful cabaret melodies over "The Way We Lived." "Beyond Words" combines down-tempo jazz aesthetic with a classic lounge air. "To Dry Up" has a mischievous beginning that inches forward, carrying Charlotte Savary’s honeyed voice throughout this orchestral track. But the standout for me is "Sometimes," a show-stopping interlude flavored with plenty of jazz form, circling funk beats, and haunting flute accents. Despite the often eerie feel of the vintage samples, optimism rides on each of these melodic tracks.
The spectral vocal samples, brass, and strings mix perfectly with the juggled beats, taking you all across the globe, from one era to the next. All of these blend together to create a masterpiece of an album that is sure to set Wax Tailor up as a turntable icon.
In 1992, the unlikely locale of Davis, CA, gave rise to Solesides, a record label and musical collective that brought together a group of like-minded hip-hop fanatics. During their first six years together, members DJ Shadow, Gift of Gab, Chief Xcel, Lateef, and Lyrics Born released a series of singles and EPs which promised a virtual reinvention of rap music. By 1998, on the brink of new projects and wider recognition, the group adopted the Quannum banner. Solesides Greatest Bumps is a fond look back at their formative years, gathering all of the groups finest moments.
It begins where Solesides began, with their first sessions at Dan the Automator's Glue Factory. Already, their unique fire is present in the eyes of Lyrics Born on "Asia's Verse," a performance oozing with cool confidence. In a genre built on self-aggrandizement, the Solesides MCs managed to come up with ever inventive ways to declare superiority on the mic. This reached its apex on "The Wreckoning." Over a haunting DJ Shadow backing, Lateef mercilessly destroys his opponent with his "lesson of perfection." He then proceeds to take the tale beyond your wildest imagination, detailing the death and decomposition of his challenger with true crime realism. As half of Latyrx, Lateef would play the hyper-intelligent older sibling to Lyrics Born's sly, more unruly misfit. The concept of "Latyrx" (the song from which the duo took their name) is baffling. On this a cappella excerpt, the two MCs rap like they inhabit separate, yet parallel, realities. Though cut from a more conventional hip-hop cloth, Gab and Xcel (Blackalicious) were a sure-fire rhyme-and-beat team that contributed Solesides' minor hit "Swan Lake" from their stellar Melodica EP.
Almost everything on Solesides Greatest Bumps is now out of print and highly collectable. As Quannum, the collective have taken a subtle shift away from the more organic beats and jazz samples of Solesides toward a sort of electro-soul sound. On later recordings like "Lady Don't Tek No" and "Blue Flames," the rapping was becoming similarly diluted. Consequently, listeners never hear the likes of Solesides again. ~ Nathan Bush, All Music Guide
...Nowadays, the Ninja Tune label has become a household name in Montreal, at least in the trendy Plateau, largely due to the efforts of Philippa Klein and Jeff Waye who, seven years ago, opened the North American headquarters for the London-based label here. Prior to the arrival of said duo, the U.S. and Canadian markets had been receiving butchered, defiled versions of the originals, repackaged and represented by U.S. label Instinct/Shadow.
Waye recalls these violations with difficulty. "Show us on the doll where they touched you," he begins.
"Basically, at the time they [Instinct/Shadow] had this weird stance that they had to Americanize
everything and cater to what they thought would make an easier sell over here. They changed artwork, they re-sequenced records, and the most extreme example was that they refused to believe that an artist called DJ Food could be sold, so they made some lame compilation of DJ Food's Jazz Brakes 4 & 5 and marketed it as an artist called Hedfunk. They took Ninja Cuts Vol.1 & 2 and turned them into some series called Earthrise and put some shit ambient-looking covers on them."...
Prosoxh: o diskos DEN einai trip-hop, apla to teleutaio kommati einai arketa konta gia mena, kai... einai kalo
On Saul Williams’ eponymous album of 2004, the New York poet-cum-rapper talks of the stagnation of MC skills: “we should not have encouraged them to use cordless microphones, for they have walked too far from the source and are emitting a lesser frequency”. The same can be said of Faithless, who’ve released records to ever-quieter choruses of appreciation since their debut, 1996’s Reverence. If they put out another collection of house-hued electro-pop but nobody’s around to hear it, have they released anything at all?
The Dance – album proper number six – isn’t exactly forward in announcing its arrival, with physical copies available only through Tesco (other shops are available, though this won’t be in them) for the time being, and digital sales exclusive to iTunes (likewise). From a cynical perspective, limiting outlets can be read one of two ways: the band has made two great deals to tide them over ‘til the fantastic fees of festival season, or they’re worried about standing out amongst contemporary dance artists, hopeful instead of spontaneous point-of-sale purchases.
Sadly, it seems (sounds) that the latter reasoning was behind this commercial move taken by Rollo, Sister Bliss and Maxi Jazz – or, more likely, their management, keen to guard against in-store comparisons with more innovative artists vying for the same coinage. Though never revolutionary of design, Faithless’ best material has nonetheless stood the test of time, placing them beside fellow 90s hit-makers Underworld and The Chemical Brothers as well-weathered perennials of the UK dance scene. Unlike said acts, though, Faithless have been unable to significantly expand their palette, excursions beyond a tested dynamic resulting in critical indifference. Reviews of their comparatively downbeat set of 2004, No Roots, weren’t exactly ecstatic, and 2006’s To All New Arrivals fared little better.
So it’s unsurprising that The Dance largely plays to expectations, limited though they are through experience. Diversions from mid-paced fare that fades too easily into the background are rare, but appreciated: Comin Round sounds like Yeasayer given a make-over by Hot Chip, Crazy Bal’Heads dubs itself into a delightful spin, and Flyin Hi’s gentle washes of sound are chill-out perfection. Dido’s turn on Feelin Good is also a highlight, the vocalist sounding better than ever. But too many token gestures ensure any lasting impression is extremely brief. Should they plan another long-player, Faithless would do well to return to their own source in search of the spark that first fired their career into life.
