The Week's Music

As with all these selections you must have serious bass and turn up the volume. All-time classic from The Ill Saint's second LP. Long live Wordsound.

Spectre feat. Sensational - Pillars of Smoke (The Second Coming, Wordsound Recordings, 1998)

Advice to Recording Artists

Quote of the day from recordingmag.com:

Spend a lot of time listening. I listen all the time; I don’t have a TV or a Sega or all that stuff. And respect the players that did it all.
- Ishmael Butler

La Musique de la Semaine

Please excuse the redecoration work. Nice mixtape of Lazaro's tracks past and present by Electric Adolescence called "The Many Moons of Digable Planets". Don't read the tracklisting, just press PLAY > and enjoy the sounds while creating.

Essay from Sound on the Sound

Dear readers,

I present you with the first lengthy rumination on SP I've come across, hopefully the first of many. I agree with everything that Sound on the Sound's Josh writes, although I would say he over-emphasises SP's 'anti-System' stance, giving the impression of it being somewhat laboured and reactionary. I prefer to view them as simply being who they are, making the music they want to make, and only incidentally slaying all these false gods. He writes,

"Cognizant that rap has lost its way, Shabazz Palaces seem to have surfaced especially to remind us, and particularly those within the hip hop community itself, that the future isn’t buying pre-made beats to rhyme over between sips of cough syrup."

It's beautiful that people feel that SP has surfaced to remind the pop rap circus, but I doubt the musicians themselves think of it like that, or even particularly care for the pop side. Rather, an artist makes music simply because he can't help but do it, and an artist (particularly a poet, historically) also presents society with truth messages in a uniquely devastating way, but not as part of an overly-conscious plan. So SP does achieve all the things the article says they achieve, but that's just how they do their thing:

Survival.
With style.

Q: But your position is no stronger, and suggests that the music is not the result of labour, vision, and calculation but merely a happy by-product of intuition.
A: Yes, that is the weakness of my argument. Of course it's all conceived, planned and every beat and word is there for a reason. But if it's 'calculation' then it's a kind of 'instinctive calculation'. Ultimately that's someting personal to each artist, and not being a very artistic person myself I would like to hear what poetic people themselves have to say about this aspect of the creative process.

(Photograph by Renee McMahon)

The Weekly Music

Handed in my dissertation: 14,000 words on Islamic Revivalism in British India in the bag. Just one exam to go (22nd June) and then... freedom. Shabazz Palaces' Sasquatch appearance had everyone raving: help me find some footage someone.

Fell in love with this the first time I heard it on the radio and after much searching, located the correct slice of wax.

Los Hermanos - Quetzal (Original Mix), (Los Hermanos, 2002)