I just found out Cloud Nothings had released a full length (barely though, with its 29 min runtime) LP at the start of this year, which is annoying as I have spent months wondering when he would get round to releasing his debut. I came across Cloud Nothings last year when the EP 'Turning On' showed Dylan Baldi, the brains behind the operation, to be one of the most promising 18 year olds making music today. Turning On, recorded into his laptop by himself, playing all the instruments one at a time, sounded so ridiculously lo-fi it was pretty easy to miss the inspired and deceptively deep songwriting behind each track, clearly demonstrating that Dylan had spent many hours in that basement paying close attention to his favourite bands (probably the Buzzcocks, Blink 182 and Nirvana). So after Turning On turned into a minor internet sensation he dropped out of college, recruited a bass player and a drummer so he could go out touring and released his second EP 'Leave You Forever', following the same blueprint but with one major difference: He scrubbed away any signs of that teen-ridden lo-fi fuzz and released a record which sounded as clean and crisp as a whistle. That second EP didnt sit quite as well with me as the first (the rawness had been one its biggest charms imo), at least upon first impressions, but with time I gave it a second listen and succomned to its charms. For months both EP's had regular playtime on my ipod, in fact they still do, but I stumbled across a review the other day for their self titled debut LP, and without even reading it went straight to the relevant website COUGH *mediafire* COUGH, and downloaded it to see what he had come up with this time. If you wanted to be harsh you could say he played it safe. If you want to encourage him you could say he is edging closer to perfecting the type of music he loves. Essentially what I'm saying is, once again, he follows a very similar path to one he roamed before, but he does it so well, can you really blame him? Sounding like a long lost American cousin to the Buzzcocks, only with big dose of American punk-rock (I refuse to call it punk) and pop thrown in the mix, he melds hook after hook after hook into a big ball of energy which is on a mission to get stuck in your head. And its more than welcome. Something I will say though, I hear people mention that he has matured as a songwriter since Turning On. Really? To me it sounds like he is going back in time, with this LP being a (loud and noisy) meditation on adolescence, kind of summing up the decade he's just finished. But I'm probably just over analysing a fun fast and happy debut from a talent to watch.
Who doesn't like De La Soul? Well, if their discography is anything to go by, De La Soul apparently. After releasing one of the most groundbreaking debuts in history, blending comedy with rap with amazing production and sampling, giving hip hop a real positive vibe, they didnt know how to follow it. With an image based on love and peace, its hardly surprising that it didnt take very long for the tables to turn on De La Soul, and the whole mindstate which bought them fame took it away again, because in the age of gangsta rap at least, peace and love weren't the places to be. So, their follow up to their debut 3 Feet High And Rising, with all its happiness and daisy age mentality, was in stark contrast: a dark and bitter sophmore named De La Soul Is Dead. And while I might get round to writing about it at some point (its a very different but unjustly overlooked LP) for now I'm going to stick with 3 Feet High and Rising. Released in 1989, in the golden age of Gangsta rap, a playful positive rap album sampling everyone from Johnnie Cash, Steely Dan, LL Cool J to Led Zeplin, and telling tales with morals based on helping each other was one of the last things people expected to fly to number 1 in the hip hop charts. Hailed by critics everywhere as being a stroke of genius, people who heard it all over the world thought that it was the begining of a new era for rap music. And it could of been, had the pressure of following up such an adored album not proven to much for the group. They enjoyed new found riches and fame, but by the time they released their follow up, a hell of a lot had changed. Remember the brightly coloured front cover for 3 Feet with all the doodled flowers and peace symbles? Now their cover featured dying wilted flowers in a smashed plant pot against a white background. They grew tired of, amongst other things, being labeled as hippies, and decided to toughen their act up which did not sit well with fans or critics and the album bombed. But now with hindsight, despite the obvious contradictions, which only make it a more fascinating listen, its clear that its not that bad. Its still more creative and fueled by more imagination than most other rap albums out there. It was just such a radical departure from a style which had been embraced by people everywhere, most people didnt know what to make of it. But anywho, 3 Feet High is still regarded as one of the greatest rap albums put to vinyl, it has to be listened to from start to finish without interruptions to be fully appreciated as a whole, but when that happens, its such a fascinating look into 3 crazy dudes minds, you will have a very hard time pushing the stop button.
Now THIS is a fucking amazing 3 LP set. I remember my mum playing these records over and over when I was growing up, which might account for why I love them so, and on top of being probably the greatest compilation of Jamaican music I can think of (The above Frontlines, the Tighten Up series and the Story of Jamaican Music also spring to mind) it comes with a massive helping of nostalgia, for me at least. First issued in the 70's, then rereleased in the 80's, both with painfully limited runs, this (and vol 2) built up reputations amongst hardcore dread-heads for being an essential acquisition. The name of the LP The Trojan Story was misleading, as it featured songs not on their label, instead the album works as a kind of overview of the nations music between the 50's and 60's, covering ska, rocksteady and reggae, featuring debatedly the first ever reggae and rocksteady songs put to wax (Do the Reggay by the Maytals and Rock Steady by Alton Ellis respectively). It features a wonderful mix of well known and obscure artists all playing great music (see The Great Wuga Wuga by Sir Lord Comic, One-Eyed Giant by Baba Brooks and his Band and Dreader Than Dread by Honeyboy Martin) and if you have even the slightest interest in the genres, look it up.
Dubstep. I'm really in two minds when it comes to dubstep. When I first got properly introduced to the genre, a few months before I came over to England a friend of mine showed me Chase and Status, I liked it. It was over the top, strangely danceable, I liked the idea of extending dub, mixing in a bit of drum n bass, and it didn't take itself too seriously. But I realise now that I misunderstood. The whole over the top crazy dirty bass, which I thought was meant to be jokey, was actually completely straight faced. On a whole, people didn't like because of its crazy creativeness. They liked it because they thought it was badman music. And its not. It's really not. Have you been to a dubstep rave? The people who make the music are more often than not 25 - 45 year old middleclass balding white guys. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that’s very badass. So I fell out with the genre. I really didn’t follow it very closely at all for a couple of years, dancing to it when its on at a squat party somewhere, but not taking the time to actually look into the genre in any depth. Over these two years it rose up, like an underdog I must say, to become a mainstream chart topping genre, with songs appearing on TV and adverts everywhere. Usually in my eyes, simply because of the general shitty taste people have on a whole when it comes to music, this signifies the death of a genre for me. But exposure led to something great happening, something I should have seen coming. Someone tried to make dubstep a bit more individual then all the other samey stuff being released, and since it hit the mainstream it had been falling deeper and deeper into the rinse, repeat cycle.
Now, I'm not saying this guy was the first to go shamelessly balls out experimental in the genre, from what I understand its been around since the late 90's so its obviously been tinkered with for years, but he has to be one of the first to do it well enough to get a bit of recognition from outside the die-hard dubstep community. I'm talking about that annoying semi-hipsterish looking middleclass (see?) white boy from norf London, James Blake. Already from the get-go to me he stands out: James Blake? And he makes dubstepy music? Well at least he understands where he came from, I suppose. Quite clearly someone who was raised listening to pirate radio from a young age, but also a brilliantly skilled pianist thanks to classical lessons from a very young age, he understands this contradiction, and it reflects on his strange genre clashing music. The first song of his I heard was the title track from his debut EP Air and Lack Thereof, and I knew that if he carried on the way he was headed, he was going to go on to make some good tunes. Mixing dubstep with soul, but making it too psychedelic to be either, I was impressed by his creativity and boldness, and when I got home, I was in Manchester at the time, I looked him up and was pleasantly surprised to see that since that first EP he had done nothing but evolve his sound and try new things.
As a result, that first EP is by far the closet to dubstep then any of his following records, and like the Animal Collective (and you what I'm like when it comes to those lot), his music now almost defies genres. This isn't helped by the fact he has switched up the sounds and influences with each record, going from strange dance music made entirely with samples from early 2000's garage, to gaining enough confidence to start sampling his own voice, playing with it to the point of being almost unrecognisable, and layering it on top much more abstract crazyness with more of a focus on piano, eventually releasing his debut LP, which was something new again, more approachable, but still miles away from anything 'normal'. Against all odds this LP ended up getting nominated for the Mercury Prize (it was too weird to win, but a nomination was nice), and from what I understand he even set off on a tour of the States, hoping to tap into their new found passion for dubstep. I know usually I focus a paragraph on an album, but this guy has impressed me so much I couldn't choose just one, plus, each release is different from the last so its worth hearing it all to get an understanding of how he has progressed.
Something else worth mentioning, which I think is just ridiculous, aparently he gets a lot of hate on him from dubstep fans for trying to make the genre comercial. Bitches please, nowadays there’s not a whole lot that’s more mainstream than dubstep (unless you start going into Saturdays or Rhianna territory), if anything the shit he makes is way more avant-garde than say, the dubstep critics darling, Joker. And if you want to have a go for trying new things and not sticking the standard dubstep blueprint, than fair enough, I suppose ignorance is bliss for some people. Tracks worth hearing.
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