Post #900 or "I'm too old for this shit?"

So yeah, welcome to post 900 here that the Tonegents Musical Corner and Discount Tire Mart. And this post is a day late because I needed yesterday to recover from the most amazing musical weekend I've had in quite some time. You definitely want to have been me from last Friday to Sunday...

It all started Friday night when the beautiful Mrs. Tonegent and I got the invite to go to a very small (there were maybe 60 peeps there) private party that took place at an office in a little office park in Marina Del Rey... a party that was being DJ'ed by PHIL FREAKIN' HARTNOLL OF ORBITAL!. And yes, that's the only picture I got, even though I actually talked with him for like 20 minutes... because I am a moron. But Phil and his wife were absolutely nice as hell and it was a pretty big thrill to meet him. He took my gushing like a pro, but he had tossed back a few and was feeling the love in general, so there's that. Also, I must mention that he was rocking a moustache that made him look like an old gay biker. A pervy one. No matter, he played a killer set off Ableton Live with some obscure Orbital remixes because OF COURSE HE DID! But yeah, I met Phil Hartnoll and it was cool...

After a pretty much wasted Saturday, Sunday brought what I originally thought was going to be the highlight of the weekend (sorry, but meeting Orbital trumps just about everything) as we rolled to the Hollywood Bowl. First up, "the only successful Arab/Jewish partnership since the dawn of human culture", Chromeo...



If you hate Chromeo, you hate fun... there's really no two ways about it. They played a super-tight little opening set and sounded great (although with opening act sound, if you know what I mean). Personally though, having seen them in both this setting and the intimate club setting... they're better suited a smaller, sweatier venue. It's just more their vibe. But again, they were excellent. The new record's coming out in a couple of weeks, but I haven't been able to get my grubby little paws on it yet so here's one from their first, one they played Sunday...

Chromeo - You're So Gangsta (ysi)

And now that I have me one of those nifty little Flip cams, here's some very unprofessional quality video of them doing "Needy Girl"...



And the of course, came the The Chemical Brothers...



And holy shit. Just holy shit. They destroyed the place. Left it in ruins. There is no question the Brothers still got it. First your tune (the bonus track from the new record Further) and then the evidence...

The Chemical Brothers - Don't Think (ysi)

Now, The Chemical Brothers are made for this type of setting. They played an absolutely epic set that started out intense and did not fucking let up for one second. They put forth a huger, fuller sound than I have ever heard in the Bowl, with huge widescreen graphics (holy shit with the dancing light robot in the encore) of the kind we've come to expect. Sorry for the lack of eloquence but that's what happens when your brain is turned into a delicious frothy mush. Brothers done worked that shit out. Here's your taste...



Imagine that for an hour and a half and crystal clear sound and LOUD and you get the idea. Plus wine and friends. Those things are good, too. Helluva weekend. Toodles...

House-ish Music Friday

House-ish because we are rocking a Disco re-edit today, and because it's a blog post title I haven't used yet...



I have been getting out of hand with the collecting of the Disco re-edits lately. Just the latest musical obsession, and sure to be soon replaced by another one (funky Psyche Rock, I'm glancing furtively in your direction) at some point in the future. But yeah, it seems that the relative dearth of new Deep House that's not minimal bollocks is driving me to look for the sexy elsewhere. And disco had nothing if not the sexy (and the large amounts of cocaine). Plus when they beef the old jawns up with some tough House-y beats, like Social Disco Club does to Instant Funk's "Bodyshine" (Salsoul, 1979 and not a cheap piece of vinyl) here, the old is new... and fonkay...

Social Disco Club - Wild Bitch (ysi)

Have a great weekend, all. Monday's post will be #900 on Tonegents, and will include some special exclusive shits. Get ready...

Caught half steppin' 'cuz she got a peg leg...

That's a pretty good line, eh? Well, here's where it came from. File under: You can't judge a rap album by it's cover...



Because by looking at this cover here (starring the super-creepy little person Beetlejuice from Howard Stern's show), you wouldn't guess that it's time for a WHITE RAPPER ALERT! But sure enough, Smut Peddlers were this guy and this guy. Also, you would probably not expect that the beats are NYC boom-bap or that the album really isn't nearly as dirty as all that. Only by looking a little deeper and finding that this was a Rawkus release would you realize that this might actually not be shit. And this song here is not at all what you would expect considering the name, either...

Smut Peddlers - Diseases (ysi)

... and Kool Keith's on the record, too. Wouldn't expect that, would ya? Point being... like when picking up a Filipino hooker on Sunset, you gotta look under the hood to see what's really up sometimes...

Let's have a quickie!

Busy today so I'll make this quick...



Una Mas Trio are, it seems, a pair of German dudes who make Brazilian/Latin beats because that is, apparently, what German dudes do. (If you want an in-depth explanation on that, just ask Rainer Truby). Not the ruffest stuff, but not Acid Jazz pap either... but hey, they had me at vocals by Bajka... I loves me some Bajka...

Una Mas Trio - Clear As Water (ft. Bajka) (ysi)

And that's that... see? Quick like shit through a goose!

Dangerously Hippie-Adjacent

Don't hate me too much for this one...



Now, before you go accusing me of posting dirty, dirty hippie music, just hear me out here... because I was a fan of Ben Harper way before he became so beloved by the Bonaroo set. Nope, he was just a kid from the Inland Empire with a debut record with some soul whom I saw one evening at the House of Blues on Sunset, wondering why the hell the legendary Roots crew was opening for this guy I never heard of. And I left that night quite impressed with Mr. Harper. Not as impressed as Laura Dern, but impressed nonetheless. I stopped following him after about three records as my tastes migrated more and more towards Electronica, but here's one of the songs that made me take notice that night, and hey... it's still good stuff, so suck it...

Ben Harper - Like A King (ysi)

Now how exactly did that whole Laura Dern thing happen anyway?

Girl, I'll Aus You

House Music Friday is here today to welcome a new record label into the circle of trust...



Being the crusty old codger that I am, I've lamented more than once in this space on how so many of the great Deep House labels of the '90s-early '00s have gone the way of the dinosaur. (Cries a single tear) So it's nice to find the new labels that are ready to take their place as official "marks of quality". And the latest to grab my attention is Aus Music from (no surprise) the UK. And yes, I do believe the pun is intended... after all their Myspace slogan is "Aus music all night long". Kudos on that one. Your taste comes courtesy of Mr. Lee Jones, whom you may have heard of in one of his many other guises such as My My and Hefner with New Zealand's own Recloose, a name to know, as the remixifier... Funky...

Lee Jones - As You Like It (Recloose Remix) (ysi)

Aus has also put out records by Tonegents-approved acts such as Joy Orbison and Ramadanman, so go get you some. And have a stellar weekend, y'all...

Who's responsible for this?

That's what people wanna know about today's artist...



DJ Shadow? Cut Chemist? Madlib? Shawn Lee? Those are just some of the theories out there as to the real identity of the mysterious figure known as Clutchy Hopkins. The only thing we can be sure of is that it is almost definitely not the beardy dude on the album covers... although it would be pretty cool if it was. But whomever is responsible, these lo-fi beats are high quality. See what I did there?

Clutchy Hopkins - 3:14 (ysi)

And of course, the mystery has been helped by some clever viral marketing. To wit...



Tomorrow... something else!

Blowing through the something of my miiiiind...

Here's one of my summer jams of 2010 right here...



If you would have told me that the first song I ever blogged two different cover versions of would be Seals & Croft's '70s Soft Rock jawn "Summer Breeze", I would have thought it an odd choice, but here we are. This one is by renegade Dubstep crew Dub & Run, who specialize in this sort of thing. And let me tell you, and I know this is so typical for Dubstep, but it's the banjo that really makes this one sing...

Dub & Run - Summer Breeze (ysi)

Now here's the men... and their AWESOME '70s facial hair... themselves...



So maybe I was wrong about the banjo thing. Maybe it was a mandolin. Wouldn't be the first time I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about...

It's a (Communist) party over here!

If there's one thing I've noticed in my years of blogeration, it's that this site receives the most hits, generally, on days that I post the exact same shit every other blog in the world is posting... I could be a titan of the Hype Machine if I put nothing but the Arcade Fire and Animal Collective on here (the Indie kids might not admit it, but they're led around by the nose by marketing just as much as fans of chart pop are, just to different bands). But where's the fun in that? Besides, we're here to talk about good music. So, the point of that being... here comes another post sure to be read by almost no one...



I guess there are some advantages to living in Cuba other than the stellar health care. For instance, a young musician doesn't have to worry about which label they should sign with... because there's only record label in Cuba and it's run by Fidel Simmons. The label is called EGREM, which stands for Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales, which is Spanish for Musical Recording And Publishing Company... because Communist regimes are nothing if not wildly creative when naming shit. Anyhoo, back a few years ago when Buena Vista Social Club blew up, somebody got the wild idea to put together a big fat box set because after all, the government owns the rights to every song ever recorded in Cuba so why the hell don't we make some money off those white people in Santa Monica, too? The result was this 6-disc behemoth, and quite frankly it's pretty awesome. Here's a track by some dudes...

Orquestra Ritmo Oriental - Yo Bailo De Todo (ysi)

And here are those dudes live on stage in 1978... a stage that's not quiiiiite big enough if you ask me...



I'm not even sure that all of those guys were even doing anything... but I imagine the Indie kids probably think Arcade Fire invented the concept of having too many people in your band, too...

Do I have to think up a pithy post title every freaking day?

Seriously... but enough of my kvetching... here's some mellowness for your Monday...



Futique is an alias of one Taylor Deupree, who's one of those dudes that does all sorts of stuff... music, photography, art, runs a label... yeah, one of those guys. Fuckin' overachiever. Bet he doesn't have a blog! Who am I kiddin', he's probably got 3. I first became a fan through his Ambient stuff on the Spekk label... like really, really ambient. Like whooshes and then there's a click and then some more whooshes and then the amplified sound of a stove burner then field recordings of frogs having sex and shit. That kind of Ambient. Which I love, don't get me wrong. This one is from a while back, however, and has a beat...

Futique - Beamship (ysi)

Go check out homie's photography website, too... I'm really diggin' it...

House Music Friday The 13th

... but I promise you nothing but good luck if you play this jam out...



I seem to be getting hung up on names this week... and we have another one today that's not great. Lovebirds is a, and let's just be honest about it, pretty gay moniker of one Mr. Sebastian Döring, a dude about which there is very little info out there. Which is odd, because his Discogs resume looks pretty strong, with a good number of releases on some high quality labels. Maybe he wants to be all mysterious and shit. But really... being mysterious only works if anyone cares, so just get a Myspace or something, dude. It'll still be kind of mysterious.... no one ever looks at Myspace any more, anyway. Anyhoo, this one's out on Fred Everything's Lazy Days Recordings and is chock full of deep deepy deepness...

Lovebirds - N2Deep (ysi)

And just to be all on-the-nose about it...



Have a great weekend... IF YOU LIVE!!!!!

Learning to properly misspell

What's in a (rap) name?



There comes a time in every young rapper's career, very early on, when they must make a decision that they will have to live with forever... perhaps the most important decision they will ever make. No, it's not whether to stay indie or go major... it's not whether to pick up the bong or put it down... it's not even whether or not to bang the hootchie with the peg leg and three kids who looks good anyway because you just slammed 3 bottles of overpriced Cognac. It is, of course, the choosing of one's rapper name. Brooklyn MC/Producer Milton Campbell did it right when he came up with Ohmega Watts. That's shit's catchy. That shit's got levels, yo! Then you get the dude who joins him on the track (from his excellent 2nd album on Ubiquity), who goes by Genahral Victor. Dude you can't just spell a word wrong for the hell of it. Spelling "general" like that does not make it cooler. It makes you look retarded. And don't get me wrong... I'm not the kind of white person that's going to make fun of misspelled rap words just to be white. I see how "grillz" is far superior to "grills". I think Ludacris is a great rapper name. Shit, I don't even know how to spell that properly. What's my point? Oh, right. "Genahral" is fucking stupid...

Ohmega Watts - Memory Lane (ft. Genahral Victor) (ysi)

What, you were expecting me to talk about the music? What are you, new?

The Passion Of The Pete

Today the shuffle finally brought me around to something I'm quite frankly shocked that I've never blogged upon. FOR SHAME!



Say what you want about Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation Of Christ... and it's a hard movie to figure out - upon first viewing I thought it was genius (because I was in college at the time so OF COURSE I did) but watching it more recently I found it hard to stop cracking myself up imagining Harvey Keitel to suddenly morphing into The Wolf and dropping F-bombs all over the place. "Jesus, what the fuck are you doing alive? You need to do what I say and get the fuck back up there before I tell Marcellus of your little change of plans and you end up with a few more holes in ya, understand?" And don't get me started on Willem Dafoe. If Jesus had really been that creepy, I doubt the whole Christianity thing would have been such a big hit. But regardless, there's no debate that Peter Gabriel's score is one of the best in the history of film, and if you disagree with that, I will fight you. Amazing North African/Middle Eastern sounds with just the right amount of synth textures = one of my desert island discs...

Peter Gabriel - The Feeling Begins (ysi)

As far as I can tell, ol' Pete never toured this music live, which is quite unfortunate. However, whilst navigating the Tubes of You, I did stumble across this Italian ensemble who went ahead and did it themselves...



Nailed it. But just FYI, I went to this guy Francesco's home page and it prominently features his other project, a Genesis cover band, so A) now I get it and B) NOPE.

Hey, remember this?

Well, do ya?



Remember Beth Orton? She was pretty cool, right? She started her career by boinking William Orbit, which led to appearances on a couple of his Strange Cargo albums and work with The Chemical Brothers, which made her the hip folk-tronica girl of the late '90s... and then she followed that up with a string of albums that maybe we're quite as electronic as you'd hoped but were still some nice acoustic singer/songwriter stuff with a little bit of synthy goodness. Nice husky voice, too. Remember her? Here's one she first did on the Strange Cargo Hinterland album, then came out with this stripped down version on her own debut record...

(DMCA'd? Really? F to the O.)

Remember that one? Huh?

Wish I had a better running joke for today's post? (You don't have to answer that one, I think we all know what you'll say...)

House Music Yaum al-Jumu'ah!

Got a very interesting tune for you on this, another House Music Friday...



Okay, so what we have here is, courtesy of Frenchies Alexkid and Rodriguez Jr. is basically Arabic drones over a dirty, dirty house beat. It's kinda odd but it's also kinda fucking mesmerizing and under the right circumstances this would absolutely KILL a floor, in a good way. Under the wrong circumstances, it would probably kill it in a bad way, too. I've been a little too much of a pussy to play it out my last couple of gigs, but I personally am fuckin' into it. Give it a minute or three though, because this one takes its sweet damn time to get going...

Alexkid & Rodriguez Jr. - Jeri Call (ysi)

That bass is the kind that makes your teeth vibrate, innit? And I'll leave you with this rather amusing video of Rodriguez Jr. trying his hardest to keep a live outdoor set going in the rain...



I get by with a little help from my friends, true dat. Have a great weekend...

We like new girls and we cannot lie.

Today, I'm going to start off by giving the official Tonegents Stamp Of Approval to the new kid on the blog, Sheblogsaboutmusic. This good friend of mine knows her stuff and specializes in music you won't generally find here... music with geetars and whatnot. Pop on over, dig the crunchy grooves, bookmark, RSS, follow and love... I'll wait...

...

...

Okay, good. You've done the right thing. And as a reward, here's a special pre-release sneak peek from the mighty Ninja Tune...



... and I think it might be one of, if not the first, female vocalist to have a full-length released on the label, which I think is a pretty fair achievement considering Ninja Tune's storied history. And no, I'm not going to look that up. Get me an intern if you want this shit fact-checked. Anyhoo, the name is Andreya Triana, she first appeared on Bonobo's latest record (which you need) and get used to her... because if you like Morcheeba, Corinne Bailey Rae and other such goodness, you've just met your new favorite singer...

(DMCA'd. I will, of course, also remove the link to buy, because two can play the fuck you game.)

Hells yeah, I am diggin' that smokey voice. And the tunes, in an incredible coincidence... were produced by Bonobo. It pays to keep good company. Here she is singing with them...



So pissed I missed that show when it rolled into L.A. just after Coachella. Grrrr...

I pity da foo that don't like this record

All I need is a snappy opening sentence for today's post and I'll be ready to go...



There's not a ton of information out there about sax man/jazz flute playa Rudolph Johnson... he released two records on the esteemed Black Jazz label and that seems to be it. Don't know why there were only two considering the quality of the tunes, because they are Soul Jazz hotness... I like to think that shortly after recording the second one he left the music business to pursue a career as a crocodile wrestler, because that would be pretty damn badass, don't you think?

Rudolph Johnson - The Highest Pleasure (ysi)

Go ahead on over to the newly re-animated Black Jazz website to buy this and pretty much everything else you see. Foo! (Sorry, watched some A-Team re-runs this weekend...)

Put some jerk on the barbie

Now that it's August and hot as fuck (well, it's not at my house... I live at the beach. If the marine layer had a dick, I would glady suck it... I am that gay for moderate temperatures and cooling breezes.), thoughts turn to barbecue music, which for me always includes some Jah...



... therefore, here's some smooth roots Reggae from The Travellers, who were what they call a "harmony group", which isn't that difficult to understand. They sing harmonies and shit. Like the '60s Soul groups. I love the idea of a Reggae harmony group, though. I can see it now. Dude in front and three in back. All wearing the matching suits but with three-foot dreads. And their mic stands are all shaped like giant bongs. That's what they looked like, right? Because that's what they should have looked like... and if they didn't, I don't wanna know about it...

The Travellers - Know Yourself (ysi)

And that's pretty much all I have to say about that...

Of Jell-O and Junos

Went on what ended up being a 30-mile bike ride yesterday as part of a friend's birthday festivities, and today... well let's just say that my legs are so Jell-O-like that Bill Cosby just tried to take a bite out of them. HEYOOOO! But seriously, I learned an important lesson yesterday... just because you are not morbidly obese, it does not mean you are in shape. It's a fine yet important distinction. But hey, it was fun. As soon as I can walk again, I'll consider giving it another go. Next, in music...



... I have an underdog entry for the Best Of 2010 (So Far) List, and that comes courtesy of L.A. producer Tom Wilson, aka Take. There's this whole scene of really esoteric, cerebral downtempo coming out of Los Angeles these days (a scene more famously known for Flying Lotus, Nosaj Thing, Ras G, etc.) and this might be my favorite record so far from said scene. That got you interested? Check it...

Take - Incredibright (ysi)

Nice, huh? And yes, I am aware that a couple of sentences back I used the word "cerebral" and "Los Angeles" in the same sentence which is quite the oxymoron... hope that didn't confuse you too much... but if that didn't, this might. WARNING: GEAR NERD TALK...



I'm pretty glad I was able to avoid developing a serious gear habit... I'm broke enough as it is...