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.)
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"According to the law of primogeniture
this moon-cheese is mine. The UN? Ha!
I spit on the UN!" [Pokey the Penguin]
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