Exalted

Seattle based rapper Nacho Picasso and Seattle based producers Black Sky Black Death have released their third mixtape of their inimitable brand of gothic thuggery. I am half way through to listening to this and just like with their two previous mixtapes/albums I am a fan of the latest one. The dark,slow-paced production from BDSD fits perfectly with Nacho Picasso's gritty vocals. This is not a typical hip-hop mixtape. If you are a fan of snail-paced,dark,gutter rap I highly recommend this, and their previous 2 releases. You can stream the whole thing or pay 5$,to help fund Nacho's lawyer fees and drug appetite, at his bandcamp page.

Er...

New Print from Banksy, available for free here.

Today's Track: Faded Off

New dope track by MΔRRI$.

Today's Track: Submerse - Cluster

A nicely relaxed track snippet for the long weekend. Contains hints of Robot Koch. Full release available here.

shots/fired

Here's some more of that home-grown we're releasing just days after fshstk's May Mix. This small mix is an ode to all producers out there making club music using gun shot sounds. While this type of production technique originally was/is found in hip-hop it is now becoming hugely prevalent in the bass scene thanks to the likes of producers such as Zomby, Hudson Mohawke and Rustie. Big up yourself and feel like a true G for twenty minutes.

tracklist:

leif - &Gomorrah 
three 6 mafia - stay fly (spoonz tittython remix) 
the mallrats - la paix (martin sauvage remix) 
nah like - boss (knc remix) 
ultrademon - just fine (subaquatic) 2.0 
kanye west - mercy (triple six sound clubs no mercy bottleg remix) 
xxyyxx - hard in da paint (remix) 
lolgurlz - pussy out the shower 
honey shain - hvad han far (drippin re-fuxxx)

Daily Dope: "Aerodynamic" (Daft Punk) on Google Moog Doodle by Brett Domino

Simply brilliant! Don't forget to look deep into his orbs of retinal witchcraft when he plays :)

LOLGurlʑ

Following MΔRRI$ on soundcloud I somehow managed to stumble upon these gurlz. There is not a lot of information on them, as they only have a soundcloud account, but the tracks that they have released are absolute bangers, especially their first release ≈ PUSSY OUT THE SHOWER HA ≈. Lets just hope they keep on releasing dope stuff.

GRANT

Here's a release by GRANT and XXYYXX (who has been featured here before). Both with their own interpretations of Wocka Flocka's "Hard in da Paint".

Which one do you prefer?

GRANT also has released an album which has 10 tracks that are free and worth the listen. Get busy.

Today's Track: Yeah Dats Me

I'm using a late pass on this one. Big K.R.I.T released another track from his upcoming album Live From the Underground.

Headshotboyz - Heartbaked EP

Here's a really fresh EP i've been listening to all evening. Headshotboyz are two guys repping Budapest, Hungary. The EP is free off their Bandcamp, although a small donation would be greatly appreciated and worth whatever you can give. They are self-proclaimed 'genre-haters' so let's not put them in a box. But if that's not enough for you, their sound is straight futuristic funk, something that sounds like it came from Project Mooncircle, but I will let you be the judge on that one.

Vehicles by Kevin Cyr

Really feeling this series by Canadian artist Kevin Cyr.

For any of our friends currently in New York, he is having a solo exhibition at the Jonathan Levine Gallery that will be displaying his works until the 16th of June.

Head over to his website to see more of the great work he has done.

Today's Track: TunK

Daily Dope: Boxing Lessons

With Eric Kelly.

Baauer - Harlem Shake EP

These past few days there's been a lot of talk about a new release on Jeffree's by Baauer. Described on their site as a "delectable fusion of future-crunk and leather," Harlem Shake sounds like dancehall's evil half-time twin. Free download HERE.

Today's Track: Paid In Full

This is really good. This is the fist time I heard of A.Chal and I can already tell that I am excited to hear his debut project.

May Mix

Summer's approaching, my fellow Northern-hemispherians. It's time to stow away those jackets and bust out the boombox. As befits the occasion, I've put together a mini-mix for May. The instructions for listening are as follows:

1. Acquire open-topped convertible;
2. Plug in the music playing iGadget of your choice;
3. Turn volume knob clockwise until maximum levels have been reached;
4. Nod head in rhythmic fashion.

Today's Track: VWLS

Stewiwonda, one of ours, has just made this available via his soundcloud. It's dope, I've been vibing to it in the past few days and I highly recommend you download this. If you liked his previous stuff I am sure you are going to dig this. Enjoy.

The Night We Saw Sinjin Hawke

A story re-told using the help of photographs and the blurry minds of four individuals.

It started off as what was a pretty ordinary day for the four of us. Nursing our hangovers from what we at the time thought would be the highlight of the weekend: a full blown line-up that included acts such as Lapalux, Ikonika and Dauwd. Who the fuck would have thought what sort of shit would be going down on the Saturday.

As I sat on my couch, slowly regaining my strength and a clear frame of mind I recalled sensing the distant vibration of a phone as it clattered against the brown mahogany kitchen table. A NOTIFICATION. Multiple notifications in fact, as they seem to have accumulated while I dazed in and out of naps throughout the course of the afternoon. The balls were thrown in my court while I was asleep. The plan of attack for the night was as follows:

1. A house party was happening somewhere in town. The plan was simple: infiltrate the party. Crash, mingle, hydrate and move on.
2. Rendezvous with the family at a Viennese coffee house for a more intimate vibe. I was grabbing a flight the next day so it would be good to catch-up.

Pretty standard so far, until Sofie threw the curve-ball:

3. SinjinHawke at Sexy Deutsch III. WHAT THE, WHO THE, I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW. While I am no longer a full Viennese resident, my scanners are pretty good on the parties anywhere I go. I’ll throw in the excuse of bad promo for the event overall. But who cares at this point, Sinjin Hawke is playing Vienna and we are all going. I remember my reply being somewhere along the lines of ‘he is such a boss’ or something like that (ALL CAPS of course). Pretty fucking ecstatic at the moment. Cherry on top of the cherry if you know what I mean. One more time, #YOLO till the sun comes up, take no prisoners kind of mentality.

At this point the night started in different ways for each one of us, but I can tell you how mine started. Father comes up to me before dinner. Stern look on his face; serious talk coming up in 3, 2, 1: "I’ve got this bottle of Clicquot lying around that we need to open and finish over dinner as it has been racking up dust and it may have gone off." Now if that wasn’t a good omen, I wouldn’t know better if you slapped me across the face with one. Please refer to Exhibit A. The photo sucks, so you know I'm not lying to you:

Exhibit (A):

What happened next was good re-con from the scouts I had on my payroll. House party mentioned prior to this was pretty much D.O.A. No point in dropping by, they had moved-on. Casualties were spared. Objective two wasn’t looking too good either. We missed our table reservation at the café as we were all running late.

I ended up meeting fshstk in an Italian café. Nothing against Italian cafés but when you are in Vienna you do not go to an Italian café. End of. We’ll ignore that for now. The dude was running late because he was giving an interview to a Master’s student who was writing her thesis on "third-culture kids." (This has nothing to do with the Third Reich, you dumb-ass.) Pretty intellectual stuff. I weighed in on a couple of socio-economic factors to stir up the conversation but I digress.

JUST LVZE joined me as the interview was coming to a close. Just in time. From this point onward I will calculate time by drink intake. This is not to brag about drinking abilities or such, but that’s just the best way for me to calculate my voyage through space and time when partying, as I am a responsible adult who needs to know when and where to moderate.(editor's note: lol) Keeping a vague tally helps. So Sofie finally joined one beer down. It turns out she actually went to the real café we were supposed to meet at. Oops. It was after the revelation that Sofie was carrying concealed weaponry in her handbag (a bottle of Johnnie Walker, Black Label) that we decided to find a place to destroy the evidence after finishing our Long Island Ice Teas.

We gave the boy Stewiwonda one last try. Rendered unfit for battle from the night before along with his natural tendencies to encapsulate himself in his studio to make beats, we obviously had to go out and pull him into action. We got into a few difficulties in getting a cab there but eventually reached our destination after having to recite a few laws to various greedy cab drivers who seem to have forgotten their duties to take us on as passengers. Unfortunately, this story will not include Stewiwonda, although his pad served us suitably to go H.A.M. on that bottle of Black Label. Has anybody ever had Black Label? It was my first time, and man does that go down smooth. With the bottle down, we faced the dark, cold Vienna night, next up: Sinjin Hawke.

We finally got to the place. I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty packed, despite not hearing about the event until hours before it started. The crowd: various species of dickhead in all its magnificent forms. Sinjin Hawke was playing when we got there. And man, that little dude went hard. He was playing the finest selection of tracks that I had on my iPod. See audio example A, B and C below:

This is where the memory is blurry. I cannot fully vouch that exactly these tracks were played but you get the point, it helps to set the scene. Not to belittle Vienna, but I was surprised and very pleased to see that this type of music was getting validation. Who would have thought, a little community of trap-a-holics and music enthusiasts existed in this city. Nevertheless, I got asked for ID a few times. Found that pretty amusing as this always makes me think of the Boiler Room chatroom. Please refer to exhibit B, C and D for the man Sinjin Hawke below:

Exhibit (B):

Exhibit (C):

Exhibit (D):

During the time we were walking with Johnnie earlier that night, I somehow managed to obtain a German flag and took this to the party with me. The moment I pulled this out, it was evident that there were a few people from the smaller lesser-known country Bordering Austria. This entertained the crowd for a good minute until it made itself to the ‘stage’. The guys backstage proceeded to hang our flag up. We just totally Iwo-Jima’d the party. Please refer to exhibit E and F below:

Exhibit (E):

Exhibit (F):

The Serbs eventually announced their presence (The other DJ’s that night were from Serbia) by adding their mark on our flag. Always the friendly type, I caught up with one of the girls who was on tour with the DJ’s whom I exchanged stories of the legendary Happy Novi Sad stage at the EXIT festival with. She thought I designed the t-shirt I was wearing at the time, so I told her where she would be able to cop the ones I actually designed. RIGHT HERE. (See how I just casually inserted that plug right there?)

Now to get a few things off my conscience. To the bar: you need a better system in capturing sales. I must have UNINTENTIONALLY gotten away with about three free beers as the bar tender didn’t bother in adding up how many she had poured. ALSO: You undercharged me for long drinks multiple times. I managed to pay one round at the actual intended price from the 3, maybe 4 rounds I bought that night. These unfortunate errors on your behalf probably made the night better. So thank you, next round is on me.

After Sinjin Hawke’s set, we managed to meet him outside the club. A real cool dude. He told us how he just recently moved to Barcelona to set up base. We actually thought that would be the end of it as he was done so we grabbed our stuff ready to bounce.

Sinjin Hawke eventually went back down to tear it up one more time. THANK YOU. WHO DOES THAT?! We have this little inside-thing between us around the Juicy J track ‘Who Da Neighbors,’ and the short-story is that, that shit got dropped that night. Any DJ that plays that gets an instant plus in our books. 100 society points for you, Sinjin Hawke. See audio example D below:

What followed was banger after banger and vodka shots with Sinjin Hawke whilst playing. Once again, WHO DOES THAT?! Another 100 society points to Sinjin Hawke. At the end of it all, we gave him a well deserved KONY ISLAND tee we designed. Hopefully it fit. If you need a different size get in touch with us man.

The verdict: One hell of a way to say goodbye to Vienna. Until next time.

Bonus Material:

Be sure to check out:

• SexyDeutsch (For a good party next time you are in Vienna)
• SinjinHawke’s EP (For your dose of top tunes)
• Some other pictures I took

Today's Track: Whats in Your Head

 New sexy track from Disclosure.

On the Streets in Vienna

Inoperable gallery got Shida do their next show.If you are in Vienna make sure to check this out at Burggasse 24 1070.
via.

Shida X Shutterland

Photo of the Day

RIP MCA

A Brief History of Dubstep

The story begins in 2005. The scene is London (and before very long, Bristol). UK Garage, at least as known in tracks like Sweet like Chocolate by Shanks and Bigfoot and Do You Really Like It by DJ Pied Piper, is very much gone from the clubs...

...they're playing deeper, darker, bassier shit now.

Crime's on the rise in crummy boroughs like Hackney and Croydon, and it turns out living there are a few young 20-somethings that own computers and some budget pro-grade audio equipment. They live in depressing grey tower blocks, hold down shit jobs and are bessies with misfits and drug dealers. Thankfully, policing of weed in London is some of the laxest it's ever been - marijuana's just been made class C - so everybody in the council flats is getting fucking blazed and chilling out to dub music.¹ Out of all this come the young grandfathers of the scene:

• Skream
• Benga
• Digital Mystikz
• N-Type
• Cotti
• Hatcha
• Scuba
• Ramadanman
• Kromestar

And a plethora of others. Their music has two critical characteristics:

• Loud, deep sub-basslines
• A half-time snare

Though their approaches vary - Skream opts for tetchy, evolving percussion arrangements and a spacey sound, Scuba (as his name suggests) puts you underwater with nautically-themed bass textures and aquatic fx - they all have these two features in common.² They're also defining characteristics of dub music - so now you know where the genre got its name. Ketamine also got very popular around this time - I knew a lot of people who liked nothing better than to consume varying amounts of k and forget their worries in front a very big subwoofer in the dark somewhere.³

Every pirate station DJ worth his salt is playing the heck out of Skream's Midnight Request Line, along with loads of other cuts, on the B-sides of breaks records or being released by Tempa Records, the first home of dubstep. On the internet, a few radio stations dedicated to underground London dance music like sub.fm kick off, becoming very popular and, in my opinion, one of the main reasons we're not only just hearing about the genre in 2012. Myspace music pages and demo tracks sent by AIM are the main communications channels of the scene. If you were particularly big, you might have a few uploads on YouTube, but it was far from the common thing it is today (remember learning about adding "&fmt=18" to the end of the URL? Good times).

2006, now - Skream has released his seminal album, Skream!; Soul Jazz has released the imaginatively-named Box of Dub (1 and 2). Dubstep is, somehow, starting to leave the squat raves and seedy house parties in Wandsworth, and starting to appear in adverts, the BBC is starting to run stories on it, all that shit. Colour me slightly surprised - I thought it was going to be Arctic Monkeys and The Arcade Fire on the radio until the fucking extinction of the human race.

Jumping ahead to 2008, it's about the time that tracks like Murda Sound by Bar9 start coming out - that subtle bass texture that was getting used more and more between 2006-2008 in tracks like Iron Dread by Kromestar are getting exaggerated and blown up until they become growling, buzzing freakshows, helped along by the arrival of jump-up drum and bass in the clubs, like the seminal Machete by DJ Hazard.

The crown jewel of this little turn is Caspa's remix of Where's My Money, which, as I recall, was dropped several times at any respectable night for a period of a few months (to my slight chagrin - come on, guys, it's not that great, jeez). This kind of stuff was tentatively called 'bassweight' for a little while, a label which never stuck. I liked 'wubdub', myself.

Not long after, Nero came along and shook things up, really bringing the gnarly, extremely rich bass texture to the fore. A good example of this is one of their later tracks before they lost relevance, Innocence. I note that this was remixed by Skrillex, and is probably round about where he started getting noticed - he followed that up neatly by getting Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites remixed by Noisia, which is when I first heard of him.

Various stuff happens between then and now - I went to university, for one, meaning I couldn't put as much time as I would have liked into music, and consequently I can't comment very much on the scene at the time - but I do know that artists like Cookie Monsta and especially Borgore (with the hit which launched him, Nympho) started appearing and being more popular than the old hands like Skream, and any and every goddamn track you could think of was getting remixed into dubstep.

The big, buzzy bass sound that everyone knows and loves(!) about dubstep today had become, apparently, the entire point of the music. Producer friends in my classes were purposefully doing dubstep remixes of stuff just for pageviews, hoping to go viral. It was round about then I knew that dubstep was going to diverge - pointless crap for the mouthbreathers, with the old guard still doing their thing and innovating like since the beginning. Benga and the like are still playing sellout shows around the world, so there's hope yet. In terms of good new directions in dub these days, there's the future dub thing that's been going on since Hyperdub started up in 2004 that got all mixed up with the Planet Mu crowd, and extremely pleasing vibes have been coming from their direction - plenty of stuff of that nature is making itself known on Boomkat.

An important note: there's a hell of a lot I've left out here. I've kind of made out that the only influences on dubstep were dub and garage, and mentioned nothing about the absolutely huge selection of influences on the genre - a byproduct of half growing up in London and half on the internet. Apart from what I've mentioned, it got mixed up with bassline, glitch, jungle, house, techno, electro, grime, nu-rave, and a million other things ranging from serialist breakcore to ethnic African music. All of them were appropriate styles.

I guess I'll round out with some of my favourites from down the ages:

• Skream - Dutch Flowerz
  My favourite from Skream!.
• King Soly - Tamil Dub
  "Marijuana is harmless..."
• Kromestar - Rainy Dayz
  If you want to hear the dub roots of dubstep, just put on any Kromestar track.
• The Others - Africa
  Just about as tasty as wub ever got.
• Excision - Do it Now
  Pleasantly deep, and then grotty.
• Ed Solo & Skool of Thought - Sludge
  Fun! Off a slightly rebellious "more profits for artists" album that never received as much attention as it ought to have, in my opinion.

---

1. It's that kind of time when you can head to a drum and bass night and, at around 2am, rely on catching that overpowering tang of dry ice and ganja smoke in the top of your nose. You poor fellas in the states.
2. A note on Burial here. He started in 2006 with a beautiful self-titled debut album, full of street lights flickering in alleyways and pregnant teens hiding their faces at McDonalds. Despite the allegations to the contrary, I can't identify any way, shape or form in which it constitutes dubstep. Just about the closest he ever got was his track Archangel, which had a regular bassline and a 2-step rhythm. However, if you tried playing that in a club, now or ever, people would just get confused - it hasn't got anything even remotely resembling impact. That track, like many of his, are what I'd call ambient breakbeat.
3. Maybe I'm making out the connection between early dubstep and depressant drug consumption to be too strong. If nothing else, they do at least go well together. I'm not sure it was ever formally shown there was a link between an area's ecstasy and cocaine saturation and drum and bass/breakcore nights, but that makes sense, too.

---

This excellent article comes to us from Will Berg (aka DJ Niceberg on SoundCloud).
Make sure to check out some of his tunes!

Kitty Pride - OKAY CUPID

There has been a lot of internet buzz about this 16 year old. I can't tell if she is serious with the whole rapping or if she is just a teenage girl having fun with her Macbook mic, but I did find myself re-clicking the play button on YouTube, so I guess I am enjoying it. She is not the greatest lyricist out there, what's different about her is that her songs are honest, as if we are reading a teenage girls diary. And she just sounds good on the beat, produced by Beautiful Lou.
 She doesn't have a lot of songs out but if she keeps on making tracks like this one she will be big in the blogosphere. If you want to know more about her check out her interview with Mishka or check out her bandcamp for more tracks from her.

Today's Track - Bugg'n

It's official now. TNGHT is a project by Hudson Mohawke and Lunice and they will be releasing their debut EP on 23rd of July. This might just be the soundtrack of this summer.

Who is Bozo Texino?

Read More here: http://www.billdaniel.net/who_is_bozo_texino/ 

Who is Bozo Texino? by Bill Daniel 

56 min. 

black and white, experimental/documentary 

Who is Bozo Texino? chronicles the search for the source of a ubiquitous and mythic rail graffiti-- a simple sketch of a character with an infinity-shaped hat and the scrawled moniker, "Bozo Texino"-- a drawing seen on railcars for over 80 years. Daniel's gritty black and white film uncovers a secret society and it's underground universe of hobo and railworker graffiti, and includes interviews with legendary boxcar artists, Coaltrain, Herby, Colossus of Roads, and The Rambler. Shooting over a 16-year period, Daniel rode freights across the West carrying a Super-8 sound camera and a 16mm Bolex. During his quest he discovered the roots of a folkloric tradition that has gone mostly unnoticed for a century. Taking inspiration from Beat artists Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac, the film functions as both a sub-cultural documentary and a stylized fable on wanderlust and outsider identity. "I was drawn to the subject by the universal graffiti impulse and the classic, corny notion of freight train blues escape." - BD

Blek Le Rat: Stencil Pioneer

Insightful 30-min documentary on the life of one of the earliest and most influential stencil street artists, Blek le Rat from Paris. Enjoy.

Daily Dope: Doin' It In The Park

"You can play high school or college for four years. You can play Pro for a decade. You can play pick-up ... for life."

Somewhere in Katowice

Roa's new work for Katowice Street Art Festival. Make sure to check out all the works done for this festival at their facebook page.

Daily Dope: "The End Is Purple"