Skittish: Music for Subways

Mood music for your morning commute. If you live in Boston, you might recognize the samples around the 6:40 mark. If you live in Beijing, you might relate. Samples from Piero Umiliani’s “Produzione.”

We Gonna Get Paid

Spaced-out bass sample from Eddie Harris’s “Get On Up and Dance.” 

Insomniacs

I sleep like shit most nights – been this way my whole life. Special shout out goes out to all the narcoleptics, graveyard shift zombies, nightcrawlers and insomniacs out there. What I lose in sleep I make up for in beats.

Piano sample is from “Chez le Photographe du Motel” off of Miles Davis’s soundtrack to the French film ‘Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud‘, along with samples from “Monkey Conquers the Demon.”

D.A.F. – Co Co Pina (JChan Jumbled Remix)

In high school and freshman year at Boston University I was big into industrial music – Ministry, Front 242, Wax Trax, Skinny Puppy and the like. I probably spent haf of my pocket money freshman year buying industrial-edged CDs at Nuggets and Tower Records – where I picked up a compilation of proto-industrial weirdness called Tyranny of the Beat put out by Mute records (founded by Daniel Miller of The Normal – best known for ‘Warm Leatherette’) and featuring tracks by groups like Throbbing Gristle, Can and Wire that were mostly recorded in the 70s and early 80s.

TheBeijinger: Birdy Nam Nam at Yugong Yishan Tomorrow Night

Here’s a post I penned for thebeijinger previewing French turntablist crew Birdy Nam Nam’s show in Beijing tomorrow night – good hip hop shows are few and far between in our fair city:

Birdy Namnam are no mere knob twiddlers – the four-man French DJ “band” take an instrumentalist’s approach to turntables and collaborate to create beat-laden compositions out of sampled sounds and instrumental parts pressed on vinyl.

Strummy (JChan Ege Bamyasi Mix)

Can’s “Vitamin C” and Miguel De Deus’s “Black Soul Brothers” for the beat; “Cacha Mechanica” (artist unknown) for the guitar sample and a piano loop from Krysztof Komeda’s soundtrack to Roman Polanski’s “Knife in the Water.”

The tight freak-out grooves on Krautrock pioneers Can’s Ege Bamyasi make it my favorite album in their wide-ranging discography. I really wanted to emulate that free-form sound in my band in grad school – but while the “free” part was do-able for us, the “form” didn’t work out so well due to my not-so-polished drum skills. Thank god for automatic beat-matching.

Trouble Ahead – Bruce Lee meets Tullio de Piscopo

This one is made of samples from Italian drum genius Tullio de Piscopo‘s “Dodiciottavi,” piano from United Future Organization member Toshiu Matsuura‘s version of Abdullah Ibrahim’s “Did You Hear That Sound” and a dope bassline from Kryzstof Komeda’s “Astigmatic,” with sonic flourishes from Mount Kimble‘s “Before I Move Off” and Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon.”

Naples-born Tullio de Piscopo has drummed for the likes of Gerry Mulligan, Astor Piazzolla and Manu Chao and he’s a beast on the skins – one of the all-time greats. One of his best known tracks is the monstrous “Medium Rock,” which DJ Shadow sampled on ‘Guns Blazing (Drums of Death Pt 1),’ his collaboration with Kool G Rap – hopefully you can hear its influence on my sound.

MF Doom meets Radiohead and Another Strung-Out Beat

Damn – they stole my idea – or rather they beat me to the punch. I love the piece “Proven Lands” on Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood’s soundtrack to There Will be Blood – if there were ever a beat to be flipped from music made for a string ensemble, this is it, and I’ve been struggling to find a way to remix it/mash it up. Now, it seems Radiohead and MF Doom (or DOOM, as he now prefers to be called) have done just that with “Retarded Fren“:

Daybreak

photo by Flickr user Fukagawa

Mood-music for a smoggy day: I made this beat with a guitar loop from Bohannon‘s “Save Their Souls” and the muzak version of “The Hills Are Alive.” 

The Tenant Remixes 3 – Unraveling

Part three of my Tenant Remixes series – this one is based on loops from Philippe Sarde’s ‘Apparirions’ off the soundtrack to Roman Polanski’s classic psychological thriller.