From Jeff Pitrman Sent Tue, Apr 20th 1999, 17:53
From Jeff Pitrman Sent Tue, Apr 20th 1999, 17:53
So, I was at this music store in Long Beach and I traded in a bunch of old grubby cds from the back of my closet for a few new shiny ones. What I got: Bjork, _Alarm Call pt.3,_ One Little Indian God DAMNIT. This is why I hate buying music when I can't listen to it first. I had no idea who was doing these remixes, but I figured that the "Gangsta" remix had to be good. Bjork and some ghetto hip-hop beat. Simple, good, right? Wrong, every song on here is the dregs of club music. This is why Bjork is always such a hit-and-miss proposition. The whole club music thing will never end. The last cd of hers I got was the funkstorung remixes, and I liked it. Now I can see that my trust has been abused. Abused by Mark Bell and his shitty club music. The most annoying thing is I paid $9 in my credit for this, so that's $3 a song. What a gyp. If I were going to give this a score, it would be zero out of whatever. ugh. Tim van Leijden, _Like-a-Tim remixes Bochum Welt / Cylob / DMX Krew,_ Rephlex Sweet. This was $3 in the used bin. This sort of makes up for the Bjork club booty diva fiasco. My friend Gil has slowly made me like electro by repeatedly exposing me to it. So, I actually got to listen to this first, and it rocked. Pretty straight up electro. It makes me want to watch Tron and make breakdancing games in BASIC on an Apple IIe. There's two remixes of Cylob's "Diof '97," two remixes of Bochum Welt's "Greenwich," and two remixes of DMX Krew's "You Can't Hide Your Love." The last two are the only two I don't really like, and it's only because of the woman singing "Boy, look into my eyes," and whatnot. The actual beats, synths, vocodey voices, and whatnot, are all nice. I can't hang with that woman though. But anyway, the cylob mixes are cool (although the second is a very short arrangement of noises, not really a song) and the bochum welt remixes are probably my faves. I think I want more electro like this. How is Cylob normally? I've heard a few bochum welt 12"s but I don't remember liking them much. DJ Vadim, _USSR Repetoire,_ Ninja Tune Damn, b-boys walkin' in their sleep and shit. I fail to see why the press and fans and many of my friends all gush over DJ Shadow's stilted, artificial, terminally boring 4-tracky hip hop lameness. Just my opinion, admittedly, but I think he blows. I like DJ Cam as a DJ, but most of his own music bores me too. Something about the jazzy pianos and the 8 minutes of middle eastern randomness in each song kept his _Mad Blunted Jazz_ from making my day. Mixmaster Mike's cd was okay, but the whole time I heard it, I was thinking to myself that I'd have preferred it if it were a mixtape. All of which is leading up to this DJ Vadim cd which is the first 'turntable person doing a cd' thing I've ever liked. Instead of being a faux-piklz sort of Everything And The Kitchen Sink Being Scratched At Once, this cd is very minimal, very slow, and pretty quiet. Flow comes in very discrete chunks, regularly broken up by silence. I know you don't believe me when I say that this is a DJ cd that appreciates the value of silence. I wouldn't believe it without hearing it either. But it's true. There's a lot of strange noises, bits of tasteful scratching, lots and lots of slowed down MCs with reverb, and sparse breaks. Between beats you'll find collages of trumpets mutated beyond belief and people MCing over the phone. So, this one gets my big recommendation. It's not necessarily mind-blowingly experimental, but it's just good. Good hip hop is a nice thing. It's not jazzy enough that Spin magazine would call it 'the perfect late-night beats cd for sipping on a martini' or something, but just jazzy enough here and there. It's just good. Werd. (p.s. Quote from the Vadim liner notes: "We must break, at all cost, the restrictive circle of pure sound & conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds." Luiji russolo, 1913.) ---- "According to the law of primogeniture this moon-cheese is mine. The UN? Ha! I spit on the UN!" [Pokey the Penguin] 5678>> http://www.pobox.com/~jpitrman/