BOYS NOIZE SET TO LET THE DOG BLOOD OUT WITH SKRILLEX ON NEW YEAR’S
Posted on Dec 31st 2012 4:00PM by Jesse Ship
Snoop Dogg might be responsible for Boys Noize‘ retirement.
“I used to joke with my friends saying I could quit music if I made a song with Snoop Dogg. Then suddenly I see myself with him in the studio, hanging out at his house and making music. It was really important for me to make something really cool with him,” Alex Ridha, a.k.a. Berlin’s Boys Noize, tells Spinner. Boys Noize features the smoky canine rapper on his new album, Out of the Black.
“He’s so chill. What’s great is that he still has a kid in him. He was super-open to the old Chicago house and quirky old Dancemania tracks I played him — stuff with lots of swearing and booty house. He was laughing a lot about it, but don’t think it was really his scene.”
Mr. Ridha typically works to foster emerging artists on his musical imprint BNR (Boys Noize Records) but lately he’s been taking a turn in a bit more star-driven direction, releasing Peaches‘ “Burst” (“I was a huge fan of Peaches. She’s one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met.”) and Mixhell‘s “Exit Wound” featuring Greg Puciato of theDillinger Escape Plan.
Then there’s his ongoing live tour.
The left-handed, unibrow sporting, skull-loving electro producer has been plowing across the planet in a stage-sized cranium vessel, playing an hour and a half of set of his past three albums, synched with psychedelic visuals.
“I’ve seen this kind of thing at Kraftwerk shows,” he says. “Like you play a sound that is translated into something visual that fits the aesthetic and style. I wanted to make this because there are always these huge LED walls at the clubs I play at. I wanted to give it the right taste and make it fit my music, and have it look good.”
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GI Joe Closing Credits
I never noticed how ridiculously funky GI Joe’s closing credits were until I discovered the original Season 2 on Netflix! It’s a legit disco remix even, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were released on a b-side somewhere. I can’t even imagine what the musical team’s creative process was like, but I imagine subversion was in the air….
Dim Sum Guyyyy
Notorious S.A.N.T.A. aka Ready for Xmas
Hopefully at least a few of these will replace Christmas in Hollis. Not that I don’t love me some Run DMC but Cookin’ Soul and DJ Whookid have brought some serious finesse (and good tidings too?) with this mashup of classic Biggie joints and classic Christmas ditties. Also features soundbites from skits by Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby and even a little bit of Home Alone fun.
Lick Click here to download www.cookinsoulbiz.com/READYFORXMAS.zip
“Another classic remixtape blending acapellas from Brooklyns finest Notorious B.I.G. with some Xmas-inspired instrumentals sampling classics such as “Home Alone” or “This Christmas”. Happy holidays & best wishes!
All tracks produced, remixed & mastered by Cookin Soul
In memory of Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997)”
Afrika Bambaata – Toronto Dec 21 @ Revival
Imagine Hip Hop never grew old and we were stuck in a world of motherships, cowboys, aliens, and the Dr. Funkensteins that Afrika Bambaata emerged from. Would there still be the gun play, anger, bitches, and hos? It’s hard to say…
The December 2012 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine listed Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” as 3rd Greatest Hip-Hop song of all time. They credit the song for starting break-dancing and introducing the Roland 808 beats to Hip Hop along with developing the sonic language of electro, Detroit Techno, Freestyle R&B, Miami Bass and most of modern Dance Music.
Along with DJs Grandmaster Flash and Kool Herc (known in the 70’s as Hip-Hop’s Tri-Force) Bambaataa also developed “Turntablism” and were some of the first “Crate Diggers”, scouring vinyl records around the world for unique & funky drums breaks they could turn into songs of the own. The Tri-Force’s New York City block parties is where the foundation of Hip-Hop developed with the help of MCs who used percussive, chanting street language poetry style over the sampling of funky breakbeats. It was at this time that Afrika Bambaata labeled the new music “Hip-Hop” in an article in the Village Voice in 1982, in reference to the use of the word in Sugar Hill Gang’s track Rapper Delight and LoveBug Starski’s track Positive Life.
A former gang warlord of the Black Spades, Bambaataa vowed to use Hip-Hop to draw angry kids out of gangs and formed the Universal Zulu Nation whose values are Peace, Love, Unity and Having Fun. Now almost 40 years later the Zulu Nation is an international organization with autonomous branches in Japan, France, the UK, Australia, South Korea and South Africa. Inspired by his own world view shift when he won a essay contest to visit Africa as a young man, Bambaataa tours all over the world as an ambassador of Hip-hop and brings young at-risk youth from NYC along with him to give them a global experience.
In 1990 he was named by LIFE Magazine as one of the MOST IMPORTANT Americans of the 20th Century. In 2006, Bam was honored for his incredible achievements by VH1 at the annual ‘Hip Hip Honors’ show. In 2007, he was nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “Planet Rock” has become arguably the most sampled song in music history, having been remixed and sampled by the likes of Paul Oakenfold, Westbam, George Acosta, LL Cool J and countless others.
Still extremely active, Bam continues to record, tour and educate, maintaining his status as a living legend and forefather of the art. In 2012, Cornell University announced the appointment of DJ Afrika Bambaataa as a visiting scholar for a three year term where he will discuss the origins of hip-hop and the cultural relevance and race-related aspects of the American artistic movement.
The Godfather of Hip-Hop, Afrika Bambaataa, the man who defined Hip-Hop Culture (MCing, DJing, B-boying and graffiti writing) performs in Toronto on Friday December 21st at Revival Bar.
Nils Frahm / Ghostpoet / Hyelim Kim – BBC Radio 3 Late Junction Session (Trailer)
This episode of Late Junction airs on Thursday 20th December. It will be available to listen back to here after that date .
One of these things is not like the other…..
JAM? Really? Are you kidding me? Who the hell puts jam on waffles? Not even the makers of Magic Meal Food Chopper apparently. I’ve never seen jam drizzle like that, looks more like some kind of fruit syrup. (UPDATE: To further their preposterousness, I’ve been alerted that jam must first be canned and boiled in sugar, I’m not sure how the chopper doodadalabob solves any of those problems.)
Easily in the top 10 worst as-seen-on-TV cooking products.
Back 2 The Future – CBC Edition – PAID IN FULL
Right place, right time, that’s what it’s all about. This was caught at King & Bathurst on my way to meet some friends at Spirit House coming from the Digital Dreams 2012 documentary media screening at a club in Liberty Village. I think it was called Money, or something terrible like that, ok, no wait, it was Cinema. From what I understand, the motorcyclist suffered some burns but was mostly ok. Cause of the burnout was undetermined, but it left an epic trail of fire across King St, creating a Ghostrider meets Back 2 The Future effect.
I really didn’t think anything to come of it, but CP24 retweeted my photos. Apparently the trick to getting mainstream media’s attention is to put BREAKING BREAKING in front of your tweets. Try it out sometime, you’ll be surprised. Anyway, apparently the CBC trolls CP24’s feeds, because they contacted me about the pix as well, which ended up in an all out network bidding war because I had video footage as well. CTV offered me an exclusive for an incredibly low rate, and then CBC upped the ante, telling me they didn’t care if I sold to the other network, as long as they got the footage as well.
I’m not all that surprised, I’ve experienced this kind of skullduggery first hand when City-TV outright scooped my Happy 7 rats story which had the restaurant shut down (and later reopen as King Lobster) after I submitted my pics to both BlogTO and Torontoist, claiming that THEY WERE THERE FIRST! and used the ratty shots in their sizzle reel. Of all the nerve….. (those pics, and the video, ended up being bought by the National Post and The Sun, so I’m not all that sore, but come onnnn, do you really have to outright rip off the little guy?)
Anyway, to make a long story, I renegged on the CTV exclusive and what you see here is what we got, prime time footage on CBC’s local 6 o’clock news. They say the CBC doesn’t pay, but this little adventure proved them wrong.
Alex Clare: Microsoft-Endorsed Singer-Songwriter Uses Major Lazer to Make Something Different
Alex Clare Facebook
British singer-songwriter Alex Clare has already experienced just about all the highs and lows the music business can throw at him.
Clare, who briefly dated Amy Winehouse in 2006, put out his debut album The Lateness of the Hour in July 2011 and he’s already been dropped and resigned by his record label.
The initial release of the Major Lazer-produced album on Island Universal was panned by the British radio industry, a deathblow to an emerging artist on a major label. According to Clare, he was ahead of the curve with his sound.
“The industry is ruled by a small group of people and there weren’t a lot of people [with my sound] at that point,” Clare tells Spinner. “But six months after my record came out, everyone was doing it!”
But when his song “Too Close” went viral after it was picked by Microsoft for their Internet Explorer 9 ad campaign suddenly Universal Republic, another arm of Universal Music, quickly welcomed him back in the fold.
Not being allowed to play certain shows on weekends for religious reasons — traditionally a working musician’s busiest days — hasn’t made Clare’s upward climb any easier either.
As an Orthodox Jew, Clare adheres to laws that prohibit work on the Sabbath from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. As much of an obstacle as that is, he also uses it as a spiritual lesson to get him through.
“It definitely bolsters you in hard times,” he says. “There’s the expression of ‘betochen,’ which means, trust or, or what ever happens, happens for the right reason — that’s a fundamental part of Judaism.
“No matter how bad things can seem, it’s just the way it has to be at that time. When you realize that, you take that understanding upon yourself. It becomes a lot easier to deal with the blows of life.”
Then there’s the whole thing about trying to figure out his place in the musical landscape. Nominally a “singer-songwriter,” Clare is maybe a bit too bass-heavy for the Starbucks scene typecasting that goes with that label. Getting people like Skream and Nadastrom to remix versions of “Too Close” doesn’t do anything to make his place any less blurry.
“Well I think that most people that write and play their own music are [singer-songwriters],” Clare says practically, before adding a cheeky jab. “You just have to open your paradigm a little bit. Some people assume that its just you up there with your guitar… and you might be wearing tweed.”
In fact, the album has as much to do with Clare’s childhood jazz and soul influence and a bit of a reggae vibe that you just can’t escape when recording it in Jamaica.
“I spent a lot of time with my dad listening to jazz records and going to jazz concerts,” he says. “For an English person, I think I have a weird vocal tone because I learned to sing through blues and soul records.”
Additionally, Clare would suggest his music’s anti-Brit-pop, a genre he was never a fan of.
“I didn’t like the tonality or the lyrical content,” he says. “I felt it was wasted in the Brit-pop music of the ’90s. It could have been a lot better. A lot of it sounded the same to me. If I wasn’t listening to soul, it was something rave-y or underground.”
Moskito – Club Review – BlogTO
by Jesse Ship / DECEMBER 18, 2012
Just a few months after Plaza Flamingo shut down, the building has already gone through one identity change. The Rochester, whose name derived from the building’s original 1900s storage house identity, quickly fell flat on its face, and has now been reformed as Moskito + Bite; Moskito being the upper dance space, with Bite as a restaurant tapas lounge that also hosts various live music events.
So far, Moskito has been creating an old school, all-nighter, booming stereo party space for international and local artists that has not been seen since the days of Industry and other spots that vanished around the turn of the century. The owners (local restaurateurs with a few neighboring shisha and tapas bars in their portoflio) are doing a good job of creating a go-to spot for a quality night out with no pretensions, and a well-mannered security team.
The space is quite vast with a massive sunken dance floor surrounded by bars on its perimeter, and the DJ booth 3/4s of the way to the back, backed by what could be used as a VIP section if the organizers choose to make it so. What might need to be tweaked is their exit system, which has party-goers leave through the downstairs Bite lounge.
Decor has a laissez-faire feel to it, with the odd ping-pong-playing geisha wall print, and ceilings have exposed bulk heads with ventilation pipes that snake around the club. The gray stuccoed back corner bar area is actually a service area, so don’t wait around there expecting to be served! The bars have anonymous tip jars for you to dump your change into rather than leaving coins on soaked and sticky counter surface. What might also take you back to the old school party vibe are the water prices, with bottles clocking in at $5.00. Beers run at typical price–Heineken for $7, and Stiegel tall can for $8–and standard bar rail comes in at $6.
With a number of top techno and house promoters and bookers on board like The Gerbz, Platform, Embrace, Mansion, Bassmentality, and Provoke, Moskito is bound to keep the dance scene alive, but it seems they might have to re-evaluate their crowd control strategy. If you’re arriving at 1 a.m. to see an act like Art Department, you might as well forget about it, or wait a good hour in line before the crowd dies down. However, not all big acts will draw such a crowd. I was there for Mark Farina a week before, and was let in quickly and efficiently. You can also catch bands playing downstairs at Bite, like Toronto’s most up-and-coming funk and rare groove band, the Soul Motivators.
With its friendly staff, punishing sound system and convenient location, it would be nice (albeit a bit selfish) to keep this place a secret for those in the know. If Moskito keeps up with its already growing crop of bookings, it could be the next big thing in Toronto’s club scene. The next major shows coming up include their in-house selection for the Dirty Cycles New Years Eve party.
Additional Details
- BEERS ON TAP:
- None
- SIGNATURE DRINK:
- None
- BAR SNACKS:
- Downstairs at Bite
- PATIO:
- No
- MUSIC/GENRE:
- No strict guidelines but mostly electronic music such as house, techno, electro, dubstep
- LIVE MUSIC:
- Yes
- WHO GOES THERE:
- Club heads, dance music lovers, EDM lovers
- HOURS:
- 10 pm – 5 am
