This. Shit. Cray.

Look, I'll be the first to admit that I'd never heard of Omar Souleyman until learning that my man Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet was producing his new record. I'm probably not alone in that, much like pretty much anyone who's not from Syria. All I know about Syria is that it's not on the top of my list of vacation destinations. I'm probably not alone in that either. But this seemingly bizarre team-up really brings the heat. Hebden doesn't make Souleyman's music a servant to his beats, but rather just gives the songs an oomph that makes you say "Yeah, this is pretty batshit crazy stuff, but you know what? I can get down." Record of the year contender...



And I've been told that Souleyman was the absolute highlight of this summer's FYF fest in LA. So that. Also, this:

Shuffleupagus Radio Ep. 04 by Shuffleupagus Radio on Mixcloud

It's your weekly love kebab. Don't miss out!

Tone's Ten Top of Ten - Part 4

Hey all! Wow, busy and sick (as in physically ill) first half of the week, but I'm back and never wack. And despite the raping the DMCA dickweeds gave my last post, I'm gonna continue on with my 2010 review with...

Part 4: International Men of Mystery



Now, I'm not gonna pretend to have anywhere near the kind of knowledge to give you any sort of meaningful overview of World music, but today we do have a couple of artists who are definitely World-y and worldly who threw down two of the really good albums of the year. The first are the masters of Tango-tronica, the always amazing Gotan Project. I'm pretty sure I remember this single first hitting my earholes on KCRW right before the World Cup started, and appropriately it has a great vocal sample from "the celebrated Argentine football commentator Victor Hugo Morales (who name-checks all the musicians featuring on the track before shouting GOOOOOOTAN instead of his trademark GOOOOOOOAL!!)" (quotes because I cut & pasted that shit, obviously)... I like how my boys are on da fuckin' nose like dat, yo...

Gotan Project - La Gloria (ysi)

Of course, that song did nothing to change the fact that soccer is gay and stupid and boring, but it's damn catchy, no?

A good way to tell if something is World-y and worldly is the use of wacky instruments, so now we move from accordions to vibramaphones and the legendary creator of Ethio-Jazz, Mr. Mulatu Astatke. The man has really come back strong in the last couple of years, culminating in his first original record since the '80s, and it's as if he never left...

Mulatu Astatke - The Way To Nice (ysi)

It sounds so much like his classic stuff... but in this case, that's a very good thing I think you'll agree. And if you don't, I will fight you...

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.

House Music Shukravar!

What if I told you that Acid House wasn't invented in Chicago or Manchester, but rather Bombay? What if I told you a dude in a turban was making acid tracks like 5 years before Phuture made "Acid Trax". You'd probably tell me I was out of my gourd, but get a load of this spicy tandoori...



Charanjit Singh was a Bollywood composer of not-exactly-much renown... but when them new-fangled synthamasizer things came out, he thought they were pretty cool so he got himself a couple. Namely a 303 and an 808. Then he thought it would be fun to record some Indian Classical music, the form known as the raga, on these new contraptions with this crazy new "disco" beat the kids were all going on about. He didn't really succeed as far as the Disco was concerned... you won't hear any string sections or horn stings here... but he did kind of, oh... accidentally invent Acid House and/or Techno while absolutely no one was noticing. To the point that upon this album's reissue, people thought it was some kind of joke being played on the public by that noted scallywag Aphex Twin or someone of that ilk. But nope. This is the real deal. 5 years before the first "Acid Track", this happened...

Charanjit Singh - Raga Kalavati (ysi)

By the way those synths were PLAYED LIVE. Talk about fancy fingers... keep your ladies away from Charanjit, fellas, if you know what I mean. He would give "The Shocker" some whole new twists... literally! Anyhoo, 1982 PEOPLE! THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE MIDI YET! Throw some bigger drums and filter plug-ins and you're at freakin' Moontribe! To be honest, though, it's not quite an album built for end-to-end listening, as it's kind of "variations on a theme", but still... wow. Light some Nag Champa, get you some Naan and Tikka Masala and take a weekend to digest it... and we'll see ya Monday...

Blog-achella X: Singh For Your Supper

Since I'm a little shaken up after barely surviving a run-in with Jay Leno's chin last night, I'll get right to it...

Talvin Singh



Who he is: The master of the tabla and sometime tech support person for Time Warner Cable... get it? I know. I suck.

What he sounds like: He was one of the founders of the whole Asian Underground movement in which traditional Indian sounds were mixed with electronica. Lots of Drum & Bass in his work, but not exclusively. To wit...

Talvin Singh - Sway Of The Verses (ysi)

What I think: I loves me some tabla and I loves me some sitar and I loves me some Chicken Tikka Masala, you know I'm all over this. But strangely, Talvin Singh gets very little love on the YouTubes. Here's the only decent thing I could find... it's him with Eric Truffaz and Murcof doing some awesome shit...



... which is NOT what you will see at Coachella. But I bet what you will see will be as good...

Blog-achella 09: I used my good line for M.I.A. last year...

Technically going out of order today, which of course makes my Virgo molars grind, but hey... I uploaded the wrong song before I left Tonegent H.Q. this morning... sue me...

M.I.A.



Who she is: Amy Winehouse's replacement... pretty nice save by Goldenvoice, there.

What she sounds like: At this point, anyone who doesn't know what M.I.A. sounds like... after Pineapple Express, Slumdog Millionaire and the Grammys... has probably been living under a rock... and not a fancy rock with digital cable... just a plain old rock. Hope they didn't get a sub-prime mortgage on that sucker. Anyhoo, since pretty much every M.I.A. song in existence has been blogged to death, I'm not even gonna worry about coming up with something obscure for ya. So here's my tribute to Slumdog, one of the best movies of the decade. I was stoked that this mix was in the movie...

M.I.A. - Paper Planes (DFA Remix) (ysi)

What I think: I loves me some M.I.A., but who knows how this show will shake out? Her first appearance at the 'Chella some years ago was amazing, electric, legendary. Her show last year was by all accounts a hot mess, trainwreck, clusterfuck. So, let's hope for something in between?



We'll see how it pans out. We finish Saturday tomorrow... huzzah!

Blog-achella 09 - Kuduro Korner

As we go through this lineup, remember... some of these acts I'm glossing over are worth a listen. I'm doing it this way partially to save myself from the 3 to 4 posts a day madness of last year, which was quite frankly ridiculous. For instance, go check out this next guy...

Ryan Bingham. He's one of those Alt. Country artists... aka, Country that doesn't totally suck. If you're into that kind of thing at all, definitely worth a gander. He's better than any of the rock acts I've heard so far, so suck on that... but he doesn't get a full post. These guys do, though...

Buraka Som Sistema



Who they are: A bunch of crazy kids from Portugal. Ya know, Portugal seems like a pretty underrated country to me. I mean, everybody's always like blah blah blah France, blah blah Italy, but do you ever hear Portugal get any love? You don't! WTF?!?! Portugal is solid, yo! Don't sleep on Portugal, or you be missin' out!

(This message was paid for by the Portuguese Committee For Not Sleeping On Portugal, Yo! a.k.a. PCFNSOPY)

What they sound like: They are practitioners of Kuduro, a new-ish style of music that I went into my typical half-assed detail about just recently. Although I think I like this one better than that other one. There's even a couple of tracks without the shouty rapping on this record, and here's one now...

(MP3 REMOVED BY THE MAN)

What I think: I think it could get tired after a little while, but if you wanna spend a half hour dancing like a nutjob with something more to look at than a pasty, balding white dude spinning records (although it looks like they do in fact have one of those), here's your solution...



Yep, that looks like reasonably good times... and with this year's lineup as it is, that is a glowing recommendation... :P

Blog-achella 09: Join our (Tango) club

Who would have thought that the act I'm most interesting in seeing on Friday at Coachella has a serious connection to Brokeback Mountain?

Bajofondo



Who they are: A group of musicians from Argentina and Uruguay, led by two-time Oscar-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla... how's that for some street cred? Who you got who can roll like that, Animal Collective? Well? I'm waiting...

What they sound like: They actually sound quite a lot like Gotan Project, which is of course a good thing. It's the same basic mix of Tango and Electronica (Tango-tronica!), but if anything, these guys are a bit tougher with the beats than the Gotans...

Bajofondo - Infiltrado (ysi)

What I think: Easily my #1 pick of the entire Friday lineup. Miss this for some Indie Rock band and you have no soul. And probably haven't been laid in years. And probably spend way to much time on the Coachella message boards. I'm just sayin'...



See, told you I'd have a band with real musicians and instruments for ya. No laptop monkey, I!

Joi and Pain

Sorry I wasn't around yesterday... I was, uh... busy helping Congress set the terms of the auto industry bailout... yeah, that's where I was...



You don't hear about a lot of musicians from sunny Bangladesh, but I have a couple for you today, the brothers with funny names that made up Joi. They were in the group of Ethnic/Electronic acts that brought the term Asian Underground to the world (along with folks like Talvin Singh and Karsh Kale), signed to Peter Gabriel's Real World label... and then unfortunately one of the brothers died out of nowhere from a sudden heart attack. And since there isn't much comedy in that, I'll go straight to the tune...

Joi - Asian Vibes (ysi)

So since that's kind of a downer, here's something ridiculously cute to make up for it...


"Come and get some, Chica!"

"Now why'd you have to go and type that for, Tone? That's not even his--" I know, I know. I'll just go now...

Hard Butt Music

No really, that's the literal translation of the name for this style...



If you're like me, the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word Angola is that time when a member of their Olympic Basketball team met the business end of Charles Barkley's elbow. But I'm here to tell you there's more to this proud African country than that... I mean, there's gotta be, right? It's a whole big country and stuff. Wait, I know one! They have music! Bet ya didn't see that one coming! Angolans have an interesting form of Hip-Hop called Kuduro, which is very similar to Brazilian Baile Funk or South African Kwaito or even Reggaeton. And as often happens with this kind of thing, it took a dirty furriner to introduce it to the rest of the world... in this case, that furriner was Frenchy Frederic Galliano. The record is called Kuduro Sound System and the system sounds kinda like this...

Kuduro Sound System - Isto E Kuduro (ysi)

Diggin' the beats a lot, but I have to say the shouty rapping (in Portuguese!) wears on you after you get a few songs into it. But here at Tonegents we are committed to presenting the worldwide music um... thing... in all it's many... things... or something...

Just take a break already... sheesh...

I guess you would call today's blog subject an unknown legend of music. I like the way that sounds... unknown legend... of course, it's a total oxymoron, but then again so am I...




Anyhoo, I'm talking about Bill Laswell, a guy who's been smashing together different kinds of music for years, and definitely was doing so way before it was cool. Ambient, World Music, Dub, Techno, blah, blah, blah all the way to Heavy Metal. Dude produced "Rockit", yo! And he's also ridiculously prolific... I believe he has released something like 80 million albums, I shit you not... and if you don't believe me, check the discography. Now, I certainly would not claim to know about even a fraction of those releases, but I do have several Laswell joints in my collection, and here are tracks from two of my favorites... the first is sort of a Dub Techno thing, and the other is a Middle Eastern Trip-Hop thing...

Divination - Agrippa (ysi)

Material - Mantra (ysi)

Yep, you could do a whole blog on this guy and not run out of material for years, no pun intended... explore...

Also, allow me to quickly mention a new project I'm involved with. It's called the Fuzzy Tube, brought to you by the great folks at Totally Fuzzy, and eventually it will be the greatest place to watch music videos on the entire Interwebnets. I'm one of the selectors, and I'm bringin' nothin' but heat, folks... go check it out...

A serious musician, and I'm making a serious face as I type this...

Obama like a mofo, yo! You know, Barry is so cool that I bet he owns this album...



British/Indian producer/composer Nitin Sawhney is not just your average knob-twiddler. Nope, he's one of those serious music dudes. You know the type... the guys who in addition to putting out records and DJ mixes and whatnot also compose for the symphony and films and receive honorary degrees and props from Paul McCartney and get booked on chat shows to talk about important cultural shit. His records span all sorts of musical genres, from Drum 'n' Bass to Neo Soul that wouldn't sound out of place on an Erykah Badu album to more straight-up World music, like this one here...

Nitin Sawhney - Homelands (ysi)

... and bro's got 7 records out there for you to pick up, so you can just put off paying that cable bill for a while there, Sparky. TV makes you dumb anyway...

Blog-achella 08: I'm having an Arulpragasam

To start off your T.G.I.F., it's a return appearance from the artist responsible for one of my favorite Coachella sets of all time...

M.I.A.



Who she is: She is one hot Sri Lankan chick who you do NOT want to fuck with.

What she sounds like: Man, it would be really hard to try to explain what M.I.A. sounds like to someone who's never heard her... let's just say it's kinda like a party in your ears, and everyone's invited...

M.I.A. - Paper Planes (ysi)

What I think: As I said, M.I.A.'s performance at the big show in 2005 was absolutely sick, one of those special Coachella sets where everyone there is so into it and the artist brings the goods and the tent almost gets ripped from it's poles. Here's a clip, which includes bonus footage of a hot chick in a bikini at the beginning, which is always nice...



Miss this one at your own peril, bitchez!

Blog-achella 08: Wacky Brazilians shouting

Now back to Blog-achella, and some people who (as far as I know) do not celebrate St. Patrick's Day. But then again, they're from Brazil, so they don't really need to manufacture ways to get drunk and have fun... they just do!

Bonde Do Role



Who they are: As I mentioned, they are a band from Brazil... one that was "discovered" by Diplo, the official white-boy champion of Baile Funk.

What they sound like: Ah yes, the Baile Funk. It's kind of like booty-bass music on happy pills. And with lots of yelling in a language I do not understand a word of. In one word... wacky...

Bonde Do Role - Office Boy (ysi)

What I think: Well, the other word I can use to describe the sound is "fun". This is straight up party music and you'd have to be a bit dead inside to not enjoy it in at least small amounts... that amount, of course, being based on just how much shouting in a language you don't understand a word of you can take. I'll be checkin' 'em out, fo sho.

I vill suck your blood!

Boo! Scare ya? Didn't think so. Anyhoo, it's October 31, so it must be time for the obligatory (somewhat) Halloween-related song selection...



So I got up this morning and turned the TV on to some special about the true origins of Dracula on The History Channel, and found my Halloween inspiration. Turns out Vikram the Vampire is Dracula's Hindu cousin, and he works at the 7-11 on Centinela and Venice. Ba-dump-bump! Seriously, though, it is an actual story, and the full text of it can be found here, if you're into that whole "reading" thing that the kids are all doing these days. I'd never heard of it before, but it must be popular, because British/Indian tabla-tronica master (and frequent Bjork-poker) Talvin Singh even wrote a song about it... a SCARY song...

Talvin Singh - Vikram The Vampire (ysi)

Muahahahahaha! Ah, never mind. Good track though. Have fun trick or treating tonight... but don't take any candy from the weird couple on the corner. It's full of rat poison... or was it nougat... either way, yuck.

Teh Sexay!

Hey all... like the sexay new look?

Back to the iTunes on shuffle today, and we get this...



Well, he certainly has a lot to live up to, what with his dad being a musical legend/borderline nutbag and all, but Femi Kuti has done all right for himself, putting out some very good albums. And he's got a couple things his dad didn't have, a Myspace page and a bangin' remix album! (Have there been any Fela remix albums? I can't say I've seen one... but Fela's music is pretty un-fuckwiddable, so it's probably no great loss) Shoki Remixed featured some heavy hitters on the versions (Ashley Beedle, Nuyorican Soul and Joe Clausell to name a few), but I think this downtempo rework by Francois K. may take the cake...

Femi Kuti - Sorry Sorry (Francois K's Old School Afro Dub)

That's almost as sexay as my new design, innit? And yes, I think I may have just torn a rotator cuff patting myself on the back. I'm like that.

Blog-achella '07 - The Good, The Bad & The Queen (Sat.) / Gotan Project (Sat.)

Hey, so the Oscars were last night... but since I yet again wasn't honored, I won't get too much into it, except I gotta mention the "Dreamgirls" musical number. Good God Almighty, I've never heard such caterwauling in my life! You had three chicks out there whose only purpose was to sing louder, higher, and with more notes per second than the other two, kinda like the female equivalent of three guys throwin' their junk down on the table to see whose is biggest. Your word of the day is cacophony! Can the histrionics and just sing the damn song, 'cause that shit was making me wanna scoop out my eardrums with a melon baller, ladies. Brutal!

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The Good, The Bad & The Queen

Who they are: Once again Damon Albarn goes out and collects a seemingly random group of blokes for a new project... this time he got Paul Simenon (bassist from The Clash), Simon Tong (guitar player from The Verve) and Tony Allen (drummer from Fela Kuti's bands), all with Danger Mouse producing. So yeah, a supergroup of sorts.

What they sound like: It's a pretty mellow, moody affair, definitely calling to mind the many gloomy days in London it's songs are about.

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Nature Springs

What I think: For a guy who I used to pretty much only associate with the "Woo-Hoo!" song, I gotta say, Damon Albarn has become the Man! Woo-hoo indeed, sir. Woo-hoo indeed...

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Gotan Project

Who they are: No introduction should be necessary to the folks reading this page... your trivia - one is French, one is Argentine, one is Swiss and all are obviously quite dapper.

What they sound like: Tango-tronica!

Gotan Project - Una Musica Brutal

What I think: If it wasn't so good, it would probably suck, ya know. Few groups are able to do this kind of mix of traditional and modern and not come off cheesy, but as we all know, Gotan Project is ace. It will, however, be pretty hard to tango on the litter-strewn grounds of Coachella, but dangit, you owe it to yourself to try!!!!