Various Artists - For The People

Source: YouTube

'For The Poeple' is an album, and it is a charity project as well. It is a compilation of the essential German hiphop producers' unreleased insturmentals. All of the artists are tested beat makers, you will know these kind of tunes: chilly sounds while the drums are full of heavy kicks, using great samples, chops, voice themes. For you to know, this compilation is Brenk Sinatra's idea, and if you buy this album, they will give all the money to refugees from Iraq and Syria. More background from their bandcamp site:

"My old friend Aras asked me one day if I could perform at the charity event he organizes for the refugees in the Kurdistan Region for the people who are on the run from IS fighters in Iraq ans Syria. [...] As I realized that performing there wouldn't be possible because of me being on tour with the Betty Ford Boys, I wanted to find another way to support this project with something bigger than just a performance. I started calling the homies and everybody was immediately down to support "FOR THE PEOPLE" with an unreleased instrumental." - Brenk Sinatra

I ordered this record and unfortunately it hasn't arrived yet, but I couldn't wait for the post to share this awesomeness with you. Listen in peace!

Some thoughts about some tracks:

• Dexter: Voyage - smokey living room with a big sofa
• Dramadigs: SaltLampCity - voice sample from The Warriors, can you dig it at the end?
• Shuko: So Hard Why You Wanna Love - using sample from T.I.'s Why You Wanna
• Fid Mella: Space Apes - a call for dub and reggae
• Ghanaian Stallion: Something With Soul - very strong Gramatik influence
• Suff Daddy: Dog Days - unmistakable tune from the Darth Vader of German beats
• Brenk Sinatra: Moon Balloon - do you hear that tunes similar to Jean Jacques Perrey's E.V.A
• Saiko: Ybab & Farhot: My Brothers - old school boombaps
• IAMNOBODI: Intermissions for Syria - this is something different from IAMNOBODI but it is still very great.
• Torky Tork: Orakel - it could be the OST of Utopia

Jefe

Phil Weeks

Phil fuckin' Weeks comes to Budapest this weekend: Lava Lava guys made a big shot. Max Graef was the only one whom I waited more than Phil Weeks. So, better get ready for something special this Friday at Corvintető. Phil Weeks is a real talent in electronic music. He mixes the disco side of house music with the love of sampling from the hiphop culture (hail to the Akai MPC 3000). So here is this guy from France who makes music for dancefloors, pumping the beats in your vein and you can't deny you enjoy all the tunes you hear. Monsieur Weeks owns a record label called RobSoul. I don't want to write more superlatives about his works. Simple amazing. I embed some of their stuff from various sources (YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud).



First of all here comes some beat sampling videos - for the advanced listeners:

If you are still here, you can have some easier stuff to enjoy:

Aaaand if these made you like Phil Weeks, go and listen his latest beats:

Last, if you prefer sets than separated tracks, I recommend this:



Follow Phil Weeks on Soundcloud, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube.


Jefe

DJ Slow - State of high (2015)

DJ Slow in one the most influential hiphop producers in Hungary. His essential beats made Akkezdet Phiai vocals unforgettable for a generation of mine and this May he just put another cool work on the table. This monster album called State of high has 27 tracks, and if you are familiar with beatmakers you know you can get full length - ca. 3 minutes long - tracks and a lot of awesome one-minute-long sample tracks. Of course I won't write of the tracks one by one, I just highlight my favs.

You can listen to fat beats with some Hungarian folk music samples in the first track Worldizmine. Then Pastone part2 is myterious. Biolin is a crazy mix of beats & classical violin (it is a well-known piece, but I'm sorry I don't know who conducted this sample). Go to Juan and you'll get a lobby music of a hotel in Florida from the 80s - nice guitars. :) Fullaza is a high class beat with a groovy bass guitar, while Sand brings you to the sea shore and it can remind you Gramatik's Portoroz in July.

Slow is on the same side in the hiphop area like Suff Daddy and other German hiphop producers at Melting Pot Music. If you liked my blog post about Beat Power or Souleance, you will definetely love this material as well. Unfortunately vinyl edition has not been released... soon I hope fine records will be pressed with some of these tracks because it would really deserve that format. You can download the album for free, or you can buy on cassette too (again, back to the contemporary German hiphop culture! :) )

Jefe

Asagaya - Light of the Dawn

I listened to Asagaya at the first time in a Jakarta compilation album. Track called Washy P is still one the best tune on this list (besides Ta-ku). So, according to the LP cover of Light Of The Dawn, Asagaya is a Japanese man convinced to be the heir of a cherokee chief and the album tells his story, his travels - his music is chamanism and chaos. Great intro, for me it has too much mannerism but it is okay. We understand that this is very important for the artist - but you'll also get this from his music.

This album was produced by Guts, and it sounds crazy. Something in the way could be a great intro - but it is an outro. It doesn't matter, I will defineteley use this track as an intro in my sets. The album has a lot of great vocals. E.g. awesome and catchy hiphop beats like Suncat, Washy P, Penguin Beach and Women The lyrics are easy to remember - they are not difficult - and it needs some time to make you like them. There are more soulful, funky stuff with trumpets and female vocal: Elusive Delusive, The Nature Creature. Redneck Parade has very intense RJD2 impressions. Armenian Princess is like a western OST, a call for Ennio Morricone fans. In the Mountain of Bliss is a great shaman blues ballade, somewhere next to Captain Beeefheart and Katie Melua.

I like very much this vinyl. It is diverse, hiphop, blues, shamanism, I guess there are more and more music that uses native American motives (e.g. see Romare).

If you like what you just heard, gon on here:



Jefe

iamyank - Lost Sounds & Adventures of Poco Eco

I wrote about a producer Professor Kliq nearly two years ago, who made video game music. Now I would like to recommend to you a mobile app game and its music too. So, go ahead let's face the Adventures of Poco Eco and adventures of iamyank, the Lost Sounds EP.

You may know iamyank who makes kind of soulful futuristic electronic music that can sometimes fit post rock too. (Sorry for labeling the music but it is for the industry, if you know what is the closest genre of it, you can get a hint if you want this or not. If you do, you can grab a copy and support the artist.) So, iamyank and his friends made a unique collaboration for his latest EP, Lost Sounds. I don't want to analyze and rate the game because these blog is not about games. I just put here some screenshots. I let you decide from the title and the pics, like we used to play games on Commodore64 when we were kids. You knew hardly anything about the game, there were no tutorials. Just loaded it and started to play. You discovered the whole game during you played with it, and that was awesome. So, go and download it: Play Store, iTunes.

And let's get back to Lost Sounds EP! The first track Lowlands completely reminds me of a German electronic duo - who are unfortunately not active -, Dadamnphreaknoizphunk. If you like the sounds of Lowlands, try the Germans' 1999 album, Electric Crate Digger. The Bird Tamer is post rock for me while of course it is not post rock. Put more guitars, cymbals, lower the drums and you'll get it. :) Marching Metronome is not as cold as you think from its title (during the game it was my fav level when this track was played). It has some serious tribe feeling, like you get some peyote and follow the saman - see, I told, this is my favourite! Okay, prepare because Lotus is the next. It is like Jean Michel Jarre and French electronic music from the golden 70-80s era. You got the tribe trip, now you get outer space! I want to have an extended version of it, 7-8 minutes of these topics could become an even better track. The Untold and beyond - it is interesting if there is a vocal, the music just get mainstream. Mainstream in a good way, I mean it is like a radio hit. Okay, I can't get out of this spiral. Listen to it and you'll see. I am very critical with female vocals. Dori's tone is not my famous one but listening to the track again and again, I am getting more than okay with it. Anyway she reminds me Sarah Blasko. During the game I felt that as I was heading to the end of the game, the music was just geting better and better. Maybe it is because of the game (you know you are going the climax, the peak) but it is also working with the tracks, Turbo and Pauza is a great grand finale!

Summa summarum: this is my first advice in the blog like that, but please don't download iamyank's Lost Sounds!
Download the game on Play Store or iTunes! 
Because in this way you can get the EP too. Of course, not everyone is a gamer, but don't think of this as a game. Think of it as an adventure, a discovery. Don't miss the chance of playing with Poco Eco. It is great, the music is awesome, you will have an incredible journey.



If you want to catch Yank, check his dates here.

Jefe

Adventures in hiphop #4 - Old School Mixtape (April 2015)

Adventures in hiphop #4 (April 2015) by Jefe on Mixcloud

Recently I have been making playlists on papers writing down the tunes of my vinyl records. I wanted to make an old school hiphop mixtape so long. So, this is it. This mixtape is the result of my second try, mixing is difficult with vinyl records without any digital help (e.g. looping). The quality of the tracks is different which you'll recognize easily, but the vibes are great maybe it can make you not to stick to the perfect (and sometimes cold) digital quality. This selection is still far from any excellence but I am very excited to share this with anyone who likes old school hiphop. In the mixtape you can listen to Afrika Bambataa, Naughty by Nature, House of Pain etc. Listen in peace!

You can also download this mixtape here: Jefe - Adventures in hiphop #4 (April 2015)

Jefe

Nils Frahm - Solo (Piano Day)

A post just came by on my Facebook stream - what a co-incidence - and this time it wasn't fully shit and advertisement. I checked Nils Frahm and I got some info about his project on Piano Day. So Nils made a great accoustic album full of piano works. You can download it for free (even in WAV) and you can support him to help making a dream come true: to build the Kalvins M450. If this sentence doesn't mean anything for you, don't worry, neither I have known anything about this project.

So, Nils Frahm played on a Klavins M370... a piano which is very unique in form and in sound. And the builder of this instrument, Mr Kalvins has a dream, to build a better, bigger piano, the Klavins M450. It sounds very great: the idea and the piano too. Read more about this project here: http://www.pianoday.org

I haven't known Nils Frahm, but he is one the most talented piano players who mixes his talent with electronic music. He is like Bonobo, Caribou.


If you like piano works, try his play on this monster Kalvins M370. Passionate, beautiful, compact, clear sounds, goose-bumps. It is worth it. It reminds me a more relaxed Yann Tiersen. Really. Listen in peace:



Also you can check Nils Frahm's live act on Boiler Room and follow him on SoundCloud or on Facebook.


Jefe