FACT Magazine Kanye West calls for end to ‘beef’ between Apple and Tidal @ Musique Non Stop |
- Kanye West calls for end to ‘beef’ between Apple and Tidal
- Hear ‘Preach’, the latest song from Alt-J drummer Thom Sonny Green’s debut solo LP
- Listen back to the BBC’s David Bowie Prom and ‘Starman’ audio documentary
- The land before grime: 10 tracks that accidentally predicted East London’s signature sound
|
Posted: 30 Jul 2016 10:34 AM PDT
Will someone please think of the children?
Kanye West fired off a series of tweet today calling for an end to the ‘beef’ between Apple Music and Tidal and pleading to the “let the kids have the music.” He also called for Apple to just “give Jay his check”.
The rant follows from recent news that Apple may be considering a purchase of Jay-Z’s Tidal streaming service. There have been no further rumours or news since the story appeared in the Wall Street Journal on June 30. Tidal, branded as an artist-driven streaming platform, has exclusive rights to works by Beyonce, Prince’s catalogue, and Kanye West. Apple Music for its parts claims Taylor Swift and Drake and was also home to Chance The Rapper’s latest album for a few weeks before its wider release. The post Kanye West calls for end to ‘beef’ between Apple and Tidal appeared first on FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music..  |
|
Hear ‘Preach’, the latest song from Alt-J drummer Thom Sonny Green’s debut solo LP
Posted: 30 Jul 2016 08:08 AM PDT
Thom Sonny Green showcases his taste for the more cerebral side of electronic music with album of instrumental compositions.
Alt-J drummer Thom Sonny Green invokes the classic sounds of 90s electronic instrumentals in the latest song from his debut album, High Anxiety, which is scheduled for release on August 19 via his own Sudden Records label. ‘Preach’ is a delicate synth-led piece that brings to mind the work of Boards of Canada. The track follows from previous album extracts ‘Vienna’, ‘Palms’, and ‘Phoenix’ which you can hear below. High Anxiety was recorded over the course of two years by Green while on the road with Alt-J. Green has cited Clams Casino (with whom he has spent time in the studio), Arca, Deftones and Radiohead as influences on the record. A statement announcing the album said: “unlike the raw physicality of alt-J performances, Thom explores a more cerebral side with this project demonstrating his complete artistry as songwriter, producer, and visual artist.” Each of the 21 tracks on the album will come with a video created by Nichola Farnan, a Dalston-based artist. The first of these is for ‘Palms’. Early support for the album has come from Miley Cyrus, who congratulated Green on Instagram. High Anxiety tracklist: 1. Vienna 2. 40 Beers 3. Market 4. System 5. Blew 6. Arizona 7. Oslo 8. Ping 9. Cologne 10. Houston 11. Oakland 12. VVVV 13. Phoenix 14. Large 15. Palms 16. Beach 17. Grounds 18. Preach 19. Christ 20. Meh 21. Neon Blue The post Hear ‘Preach’, the latest song from Alt-J drummer Thom Sonny Green’s debut solo LP appeared first on FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music..  |
|
Posted: 30 Jul 2016 07:30 AM PDT
Celebrations of Bowie’s life and career continue.
The late David Bowie was at the centre of a special live performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London last night, with André de Ridder leading a cast of singers and Bowie collaborators for a two-hour twist on Bowie’s work. The show featured renditions of ‘Warszawa’ by s t a r g a z e, ‘Life On Mars’ by Anna Meredith and Marc Almond, and Anna Calvi, Amanda Palmer and Jherek Bischoff taking on ‘Heroes’ and ‘Blackstar’. You can listen back to the performance on the BBC 6 Music site. Alongside the Prom performance the BBC aired a couple of special shows dedicated to Bowie. First was Iggy Pop selecting two hours of his favourite Bowie songs. In between songs, The Stooges’ vocalist reminisced about his relationship with Bowie. Listen back to the show here. The second was a re-broadcast of The People’s Songs dedicated to ‘Starman’, which takes a look at the 1972 performance of the song on Top of The Pops and how it helped usher in a new era of glamour and androgyny in British pop. Read Next: Space Oddities: David Bowie's 15 best deep cuts The post Listen back to the BBC’s David Bowie Prom and ‘Starman’ audio documentary appeared first on FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music..  |
|
Posted: 30 Jul 2016 06:23 AM PDT
Earlier this week, SBTV unearthed a piece of music from Wolverine: Adamantium Rage, a platform game from 1994. The track, by producer Dylan Beale, was released eight years before Musical Mob’s ‘Pulse X’, but sounds so much like grime that SirPixalot created his own dub from it featuring a vocal from J-Wing. Son Raw investigates the story further to find a litany of other “accidental grime” tracks.
At its inception, grime was revolutionary on two fronts. First, it provided a voice to one of London's marginalized communities at a time when the popular view of British music was lads with guitars or geezers on pills, but also, it sounded incredibly futuristic. Birthed from cheap DAWs like Fruity Loops and cutting-edge workstations like the Korg Triton, known for its bright, digital sound, grime's alien syncopation and glassy textures captured the imagination of music fans who may not have related to the MCs’ bars, but knew a paradigm shift when they heard it. Grime felt beamed in from the future in 2002, so hearing the sound on a 16-bit cartridge circa 1994 feels almost distressing, and at the very least uncanny. And yet Wolverine: Adamantium Rage isn't even the first track to unintentionally foreshadow grime's angular rhythms and alien sonics. Over the course of the past year, through a number of running conversations with DJs and producers, I've collected a series of tracks whose ideas and structures mirror grime in various ways, be it through shared sounds, rhythms or general vibe. Like the Adamantium Rage soundtrack, these selections aren't "grime" proper: beyond shared musical signifiers, grime was forged by a specific community, and any music divorced from it will naturally arrive at a different place. Nevertheless, it's thrilling to hear musicians ranging from Japanese synth-pop mavericks to Jamaican dancehall producers to grime's own forefathers accidentally land on ideas that young Londoners would expand into a fully formed movement. Special thanks to Finn, Mumdance, SirPixalot, Robin Carolan and NTS Radio’s Bokeh Edwards for various submissions, as well as everyone else involved in the running dialogue collecting these tracks. David Sylvian & Ryuichi Sakamoto ‘Bamboo Houses’ (Virgin, 1982) Yellow Magic Orchestra veteran Ryuichi Sakamoto's early '80s work with former Japan vocalist David Sylvian led to some of England's most forward-thinking pop music, including 'Forbiden Colours' a brilliant vocal take on the pentatonic theme to Japanese New Wave filmmaker Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. B-side ‘Bamboo Houses’ stands as the earliest example of proto-grime, and lands startlingly close to the genre it predates. The elements are all there: gleaming synth lead, syncopated drumming and the type of vaguely Asian motif that would go on to define much of Wiley and Jammer's early work (later dubbed ‘sino-grime’). Accordingly, ‘Bamboo Houses’ has popped up in Kode9’s DJ sets and Boxed founder Slackk has even remixed it. It’s become a grime touchstone after the fact. ‘Bamboo Houses’ isn't Sylvian's only contribution to the hardcore continuum either: Japan's ‘Ghosts’ was heavily sampled by jungle originators Rufige Kru in 1994's 'Ghosts of My Life', with original continuum chronicler (and FACT contributor) Mark Fisher (aka K-Punk) exploring the sample's impact in his book of the same name. Ippu-Do ‘Sorrow’ (Epic, 1983) Crashing glass? Check. Square wave lead? Check. Aquatic sound effects? Double check. Japanese synth-pop trio Ippu-Do's 'Sorrow' has all the makings of a weightless Boxed classic. Subtract the mid-song acoustic guitar riff (nobody’s perfect) and it's easy to imagine it opening a Logos set. The track was rediscovered by Mumdance and Tri Angle's Robin Carolan during an RBMA chat, which is worth a listen for Mumdance's reaction alone. Interestingly, group leader Masami Tsushiya appeared on stage with David Sylvian’s Japan as a guitarist during the group's final tour in 1983, suggesting a sharing of ideas between two groups whose experiments would both lead to some of the earliest accidental grime. Timmy T ‘Time after Time’ (Jam City, 1989) Latin freestyle – a subgenre that's in dire need of re-appraisal – can occasionally sound like a distant, Hispanic cousin to 2-step. Its fusion of broken electro rhythms, rap and R&B hits many of the same notes, and just like 2-step, it was forged by a community underrepresented in mainstream pop. Fresno, California singer Timmy T's 'Time after Time' pushes this similarity into uncanny valley territory however, thanks to an eerie similarity with Musical Mob's ‘Pulse X’. The vocal is butter-soft, but those distorted 808s? Straight out of the Youngstar playbook, but 13 years earlier. Dread & Fred ‘Zulu Skank’ (Jah Shaka Music, 1991) Based in East London and coming from the same Caribbean background as many of grime’s innovators, sound system pioneer Jah Shaka's contributions to the proto-grime canon shouldn't seem too surprising in comparison to synth-pop stars and Japanese experimentalists. His Dread & Fred project's ‘Zulu Skank’ could easily pass as a Spooky refix – had it not dropped all the way back in 1991, at which point he'd been making music for over 20 years. Let that sink in as you listen to the ‘Pulse X’ bass, skippy high hats and high-speed tempo. We expect to start hearing this one in Radar Radio sets soon. Forgemasters ‘Conga’ (Hubba Hubba, 1992) Sheffield's Forgemasters kickstarted the early bleep techno movement when they released 'Track with No Name', Warp Records’ first ever release and a stone-cold techno classic. They were also responsible for ‘Conga’, which not only predates grime's robotic deep freeze through its mechanical drums and otherworldly bass pulses, but also UK funky's Afro-Caribbean-influenced syncopation through its liberal use of offbeat snares. If you beamed Formula Records' Champion back in time 25 years and gave him access to then-cutting edge kit, we're pretty sure this is what the results would sound like. Dylan Beale ‘Tri-fusion’ (1994) The Wolverine: Adamantium Rage soundtrack’s almost ridiculous resemblance to grime has now reached viral status among fans, and it turns out that producer Dylan Beale was part of a jungle duo called Rude & Deadly, which explains a lot. That said, it doesn't make it any less mind-blowing. Grime and video games have always gone hand in hand, but 'Tri-Fusion' takes the genre's drama, futurism and rhythmic aggression and lands on the formula a whole eight years before anyone else ever considered it. Dylan Beale, take a bow mate: you were ahead of your time. DJ Assault ‘Blow Your House Down’ (1996) There's a cross-Atlantic story to this one. Originally produced by Manchester legend A Guy Called Gerald, 'Blow Your House Down' in its ordinary form doesn't deviate much from the standard 1988 house template. ‘Voodoo Ray’, Gerald's acid anthem from the same EP, is far more notable. But in 1996 the track was remixed by Detroit ghettotech forerunner DJ Assault, and the result stands as yet another example of how Pulse X's 808 blasts were popping up in scenes left and right before finding a home with London’s young producers. Like Latin freestyle, ghettotech feeds off the same energy as grime: hip-hop, and dance music at its most mechanical, broken and alien. Madd Dawgz ‘Virus Riddim’ (Greensleeves, 2000) Grime owes as much to ragga and dancehall as it does to garage and jungle, and concepts like the pull-up, MC chat and the riddim are tied to Jamaican musical traditions. Surprisingly, though, not much grime actually sounds like dancehall, and few Jamaican riddims share grime's hectic tempos or sheer frostiness. On the surface, Madd Dawgz's 'Virus Riddim' fits this template and doesn't sound overly grimy, but listen closer: you can clearly make out the "bagoo" sound, heard on DJ Wonder’s 'What', Wiley’s 'Morgue' and Skepta’s 'That's Not Me', lurking in the background. The beat even gets a mention in Kode9's book Sonic Warfare. Lil J ‘Right Here Right Now’ (Corporate Thugz Entertainment, 2001) Millennial hip-hop was a huge influence on grime, so we avoided mentioning a few obvious antecedents as a part of this list. Ludacris' 'What's Your Fantasy', Jay-Z's 'Is That Yo Chick' and Three 6 Mafia's 'Sippin On Some Syrup' might have had an influence on London musicians at the time, but they were still American hip-hop through and through. But check out 'Right Here Right Now' by Lil J, soon to be known as Young Jeezy – it’s an accent swap away from belonging in E3. Everything from the one-line flows to the hook that's practically Southside Allstars' ‘Southside Riddim’ screams grime. Hey Jeezy: it’s time to bring this style back. Keak Da Sneak ‘Freakalistic’ (2003) OK, we're cheating here. Keak’s track dropped after ‘Pulse X’, but it’s interesting to see how the Bay Area hyphy movement was playing with the same cards as London at a time when the wider hip-hop world couldn't wrap its head around either region's sonic innovations. Despite their shared emphasis on bass, digital samples and repurposed '80s drum machines, I doubt there was much mutual awareness or exchange between Oakland and London (though I’m open to being corrected), but this track shares a suspicious amount of DNA with grime at its most minimal. It's high time hyphy got the same second look that grime is currently experiencing. Read next: The 20 best grime records ever made Read next: How will grime’s next generation stay in the spotlight? Read next: 11 grime producers to watch The post The land before grime: 10 tracks that accidentally predicted East London’s signature sound appeared first on FACT Magazine: Music News, New Music..  |
No comments:
Post a Comment