Ghostface Killah and RZA (feat. Isaac Hayes) - I Can't Go To Sleep (2.43 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download) This surprisingly-affecting jam is from The Wu-Tang Clan's 2000 album "The W". Tune starts out you'd think nothing too much of its huuuge RZA beat and (approaching-) overwrought vocal calisthenics until the recognition of the blatant Isaac Hayes lift (Walk On; Hot-Buttered Soul; Issac Hayes and the Bar-Kays) hits home and then you realise its not so much of a sample as a mash-up, a collaboration even as Hayes floats in his mood-juxtapositional "stop all that crying and be a man" lines towards the end of the track. If the nobodysmiling.com video link gives you the shits, try YouTube.

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - Futility (0.96 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download) Ppl have been spazzing out about and awarding big kudos to Tori Kudo's latest avant folk creation; it's all deserved. It's his most soulful, compassionate work and at only 41 tracks, is considerably shorter than his previous legendary 83 song opus, "Return Visit To Rock Mass". Futility is so little, and yet it's so big. Does that make sense? I mean it only clocks in at a little over a minute, and it covers off all the emotional and compositional bases it could ever need to just so damn fine.....

Tim Hecker - Chimeras (2.14 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download) "Harmony in Ultraviolet" is Tim Hecker's sixth album, and Chimeras is the 4th track on side A of the album (I am fortunate enough to possess the limited-to-270-copies vinyl version released by Conspiracy Records, with the gorgeous silkscreen cover) (god that was an utterly shameless brag -- sorry.) and in its 3:17-ness of melancholic beauty sums up everything that is dear to me and that I aspire to achieve in music. That's heavy isnt it. I still reckon my New Zealand friend and collaborateur Nigel Wright is better than Tim Hecker, though, you just wait and see.

Shuggie Otis - Aht Uh Mi Hed (2.99 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download) I can't quite 'get' this song but what the hell... isn't it all about the simultaneous bliss and pain, the sometime confusion, of loving someone? "Out of my head cos I heard something said in a word from your voice did I hear only choice... dear... Out of my head for the time in the bed for a rhyme flashing back to your air and the good... there..." What the hell else could it be? Sheesh :) This blogger reckons that Shuggie Otis was invited to join the Rolling Stones after Mick Taylor left in '74.. dunno about that - he was a damn hot guitarist after all - but it makes a good story d'nnit.

Clarence 'Frogman' Henry - Ain't Got No Home (2.66 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download) Dunno much about this debut hit for New Orleans legend Clarence "Frogman" Henry except that it appeared on a cassette-tape labelled "The Roots of Rock'n'Roll" which my friend DJ Name picked up from the dump-shop the other day and which entertained us for about 40 minutes driving around yesterday in miserable blustery drizzle. And that the track was used for a time as the "Homeless Update" theme music on Republican broadcaster/fuckwit Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

blogpost :: by Stephen Clover   comments (2)

at 18 March, 2007 07:45,  brad rose said...

i will agree re: nigel wright vs. tim hecker.

i was secretly hoping that clarence 'frogman' henry song would be a cover of the woody guthrie song of the same name. so here's keijo playing it instead:

keijoooo  

at 18 March, 2007 15:58,  stephen said...

Oh baybee, thassss niiice...............  

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