I’ve posted about Bullion before, but only recently did I find this remixtape he made laying his beats on top of the The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Given the relatively recent surge in popularity of The Beach Boys (due in no small part to the success of artists such as Noah Lennox, whose vocal style is indebted to Brian Wilson’s genius harmonies) it is interesting to see a much different contemporary take on The Beach Boys influential sound. “In The Key of Dee” is an obvious reference to pioneering hip hop producer J.Dilla, and Bullion takes his cue by cutting up delicious vocal samples from both Pet Sounds and the outtakes from the recording sessions. J.Dilla’s work was groundbreaking for two reasons: the beauty and eclecticism of his source material, and the skill with which he manipulated it. Here, Bullion matches his skill with some endlessly creative and inspiring source material, and creates some pretty jaw-dropping tracks. Equal parts lounge and summer cruisin’, this is like a soundtrack to the coolest beach party you’ve never been to.

Best tracks: I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, God Only Knows, Wouldn’t It Be Nice

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These people are from Brooklyn (where else) and make hipster crunk (what else). It’s fun for all your shameless, filthy dance parties. Enjoy.

Check them out with Major Lazer and Rusko in Philly on April 2nd!

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New Years Eve, 2009. As always happens around the end of one year/start of another, I begin to sift through the leftover albums that I once loaded on my iPod but never got a chance to thoroughly experience.

Sometimes you need comedown music. Around five thirty, most of us had burned out and were ready to crash, and someone in the house put Level Live Wires on repeat. This was the perfect end to a seemingly endless night of surprising adventures and sleepless social encounters. The music recalls the soft ambiance of early Broken Social Scene (Feel Good Lost era) and warm textural sounds from Kiln. Throw in some slow, monotonous rapping and breakbeat or two for good measure and you’ve got something close to Daedalus on downers. Walking around listening to this on my headphones, I couldn’t help but think that no album has ever made me feel so cool to be listening to music alone in a cold dark city. This dude has worked on the indie hip-hop label anticon and has remixed the likes of Boards of Canada, Notwist, and Nosaj Thing.

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Mos Def is already incredible, but when you combine production by Madlib, Oh No, and J Dilla, you get one of the best albums of the year. This album sounds equally personal and political, but Mos Def’s talents collapse the distinction between the two. Every track on this album is great. (Guess which track is Dilla’s - if you get it I’ll give you a hug.)

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Why haven’t I posted this before? Four or five of my absolute top artists over the past few months are not up here, so with this, I shall start to change that. This is Bibio, who was originally discovered by Boards of Canada members, intrigued by his inventively pastoral electronic music composed of intricate webs of guitar string samples. Well for this album, and his move to Warp (home to BoC), he shook things up a bit and threw a hip-hop style a la Prefuse 73, but it’s more downtempo with thick beats and so much better. The title for the album is pretty indicative of his sound, and maybe how he sees his position in his career, although this is certainly a strong statement, whether he had anticipated it or not. I’m sure it will make it onto some Best Of lists this year. You just have to listen and hear for yourself; it’s hard to resist.

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WOOOOOO 100th post! Happy 4.20 everybody! Classic stoner jams on this one, but throw in some of your choices for best 4.20 album in the comments!

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Many thanks to my friend at Optimistic Underground who turned me onto this (and a lot of the best music in my life, to be honest). Bullion is a young DJ/producer from London who follows in the vein of recent instrumental and experimental hip-hop pioneers such as J Dilla, Dabrye, Prefuse 73, Daedelus, and Flying Lotus with these two releases.

He’s acclaimed by artists and producers such as Busy P, Mary-Anne Hobbes, and my all-time favorite Osborne, so with such star support I decided to check him out. Sure enough, the music’s good as gold. Opener Young Heartache weaves seamlessly between old romantic pop samples and the dreamy syncopated beats that scatter around it to create a timeless hip-hop composition that J Dilla would be proud of. These old-timey pop samples continue to crop up amongst chuggy, layered beat instrumentation that dispenses with the spacey ambiance of Flying Lotus, instead recalling a jazzier, more densely introspective J Dilla. This guy is gonna be huge soon, I can tell.

Favorite tracks: Rude Effort, Young Heartache, Time For Us All To Love, Are You The One?

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This is a masterpiece of sample-driven instrumental hip-hop. From a DJ and producer named Exile, who is known for his work with up-and-coming emcee Blu on their album Below The Heavens from 2007. Here, Exile crafts an astonishingly complex work (a concept album, apparently) entirely out of samples from the radio. It’s easy to listen to the album once and hear hints of Daedelus, Prefuse 73, Flying Lotus, and even J Dilla. Most songs close with a disturbing montage of radio clips from political and news shows, exposing a dialectic between the similar samples which form such an organic body of music and the assaulting progression of technology, media, and culture which continues to erode our humyn liberties and existence. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, as several of the political references are a little old (PATRIOT Act? how 2003), but I do think that the album itself has much to offer stylistically to other producers in the same vein - his beats sound classically composed, but not in a predictable way. The pop culture soundbites self-reference the milieu of the project in a way which stitches each track together to form a cohesive whole, and thus complement the smooth, loungey hip hop beats that layer over each thick synth loop. This guy Exile knows what he’s doing, and the album as a whole feels very much like a classic.

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My friend Gaff sent me this one. It’s a group of female MCs from Brooklyn aged 12 to 14. Their songs are about sticking true to the game against problems with boys, problems in the industry, and problems on the tough streets. Plus, the album’s produced by Nathan Corbin aka ZEBRABLOOD aka one of the guys from that mad-creepy/out-of-their-minds bands Excepter, so you’ve got preteen rap backed by sinister beatz, static-y tones.

Ch-ch-czech it out, yall

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Link down per request of label-like people. Sorry for the late response, y’all (forgot we had an email account)

This is pretty great instrumental electronic hip-hop, a la Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, Samiyam, and others, from a guy called Mark Pritchard from somewhere in the world (us, i think). It has some pretty thick synthcopated beats to it, and a dubstep sound in parts, which is great, but means it’s perhaps a bit more assaulting (in a good way) than other instrumental hip hop artists such as FlyLo or Dabrye. Still, really thick squishy synths, and it’s from Warp (like Hudson Mohawke and Flying Lotus), which I guess is trying to make itself the spot for this new musical subgenrestyleshit as well (whatever, as long as they release a new Aphex album in the next year or so I’m fine). I’ve included his first EP as well, EP1, which if anything is a little more bounceable than the full-length, which has a profoundly darker, dirtier and dubsteppier influence.

he knows what he’s doing - you just have to go along for the ride..it gets better and better, just let it take you.

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