Wednesday, May 20, 2009

In an effort to tame the untameable, I’m working on creating a regular template for my column here on Side One: Track One.  This week I’m taking a look at three samples from brand new or upcoming releases and one from an old school group you might have forgotten.  Hopefully this approach will make for easier reading on your part and, as always, provide some indelible hip hop tunes for you to chew on until my next column!  As always, any feedback is appreciated.

New Jams:

:Ancient Astronauts - Oblivion (Featuring Azeem And DJ Zeph):  The Ancient Astronauts may be, according to their PR, "coy about their beginnings," but the heady mix of old school and new age beats lends credence to their name.  Two DJs, Kabanjak and Dogu, ostensibly from Germany, have mixed tracks for Zion I and Digable Planets and others before, but We Are to Answer is their first full-length release; the album features cameos by The Pharcyde, Azeem & DJ Zeph, Rashaan Ahmad and many more. This track, with great MC and slam poet Azeem, had me at "witches and wizards," and the ambient jungle sounds don’t hurt.

:K-Murdock - Home (Featuring Wes Felton And K'Alyn):  It wouldn’t be tough to argue that Panacea is one of the best groups to emerge from the Washington, D.C. hip hop scene, and the album Memories of M.A.W.S.L.O.T. makes position even less difficult.  A collection of rare tracks from K-Murdock, the producer part of Panacea, M.A.W.S.L.O.T. comes from his old pseudonym and his work in the early oughts, mostly with MC Wes Felton, nu-jazzer Bilal Salaam (of Crossrhodes), and Malcolm Marshall (soulful Bay area DJ).  On Home, Wes Felton sure knows how to wax poetic over the D.C. scene and even be self-deprecating in a calm and measured delivery.

:Jazz Liberatorz - Music Makes The World Go Round (Featuring Declaime):  There was a time when everyone thought the only direction in which hip hop could grow was into some kind of jazz-rap fusion.  Luckily the genre wasn’t strangled into that mold, which can often get tired.  However, listening to the new Jazz Liberatorz album, I come close to bemoaning that alternate universe - if all jazzy rap were produced this well I might not complain too much in that parallel existence.  The new Jazz Lib album, Fruit of the Past, is a great album to pick up because it features a lot of early vinyl-only releases and remixes.  Here’s a track from a vinyl-only 12" pressed in their homeland of France

FLASHBACK PICK:

:Audio Two - Top Billin':  This week’s old school flashback is the Brooklyn duo Audio Two, made up of Milk Dee and Gizmo.  My absolute favorite part about this group is that the two members are brothers, and even better: they are in fact the two older brothers of the far more famous MC Lyte.  True, they’re not the most positive of rappers regarding women or homosexuals, but this ’88 classic is relatively tame, and is one of the most used samples in hip hop that isn’t James Brown.

- Leah Manners -



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