If you happen to be in San Diego you may have caught Monky doing his thing over the weekend already but he's not done with the West Coast of the USA just yet. He will be playing out above Paradise Lounge in San Francisco tomorrow (Wednesday 9th)and The Airliner in LA on Saturday 12th. It's his first trip out there to DJ so if you're any place close make sure you reach out and show him some love.
In true exchange student fashion, back here in Chrome Mansions we've been listening to two of our favourite West Coast amigos. Bassnectar and Troublemaker (or rather his crew King Fantastic and their new album which is....erm... fantastic).
With less wobble but just as much weight as his club destroyers, Lorin from Bassnectar hit us up with his new remix for Sleigh Bells that carries off a summer floaty vibe but with a rather menacing undercurrent.
You'll have to wait a few more days before you can get your hands on the full album from King Fantastic(June 15th to be precise) but here one of their tracks gets the full HavocNdeeD treatment, flipping their 'Westcoastsynthesizerbeachbumgangstermusic' into Stompindubstepbutstillgangstermusic
Finally a special treat as the two forces combine for this King Fantastic remix of Bass Head by Bassnectar. Killer Reese One's West Coast gangster rhymin' style suits the stank as hell beat just perfectly.
Also, whilst Monky has been off trapsing the States, Stagga has been making his way round the other side of the world and will be finishing off in Melbourne on Saturday. Here's the flyer with the info...
Despite these travels, everyone will be making it back to the UK for a full Chrome Kids line up at Glastonbury this year. Friday night 1am at the Bassline Dome in Shangri La.
Troublemaker gets his hands on another legend courtesy of EA as he remixes up one of the greatest songs ever, Feeling Good by Nina Simone for their new game The Saboteur. Thankfully he keeps it respectfully close to the original... not that he's ever done us wrong yet mind. Actually come to think of it, no song is out of bounds any more any way. Gone are the days of getting shirty cos someone's screwed with a classic Bob Marley tune or similar. We're up for f**king with everything out there.
Our favourite smokey soulster Pete Lawrie received some more blog loving for the Cousin Cole remix of his track All That We Keep last month but we just copped an exclusive from our Hollyrock homeboy Troublemaker that adds extra stomp whomping Hulk Hop heaviness to the track Black & Blue eating other remixes for breakfast, lunch and high tea. Check it out.
We're coming at you BIG for this Monday Mixtape session, no hiding out in the VIP section or in the Basement this is strictly main room madness. Still that's not to say we're munching on cheese sandwiches, there's more than a fair flood of filth in each mix and what really shines through is the marriage, or at least firm f**k buddying, of Dubstep and Hip-hop that is getting more and more incestuous by the minute. It's also good to see Stagga cropping up in each of these. We kick off with two of our solid favourite phat track flingers and end with some new blood. Look out for a Monday Mixtape special next week from.... us.
Firstly Troublemaker shows off his finely tuned party startin' skills with some neck snapping favourites mixed up with exclusive acapellas and guest appearances from a slew of emcees, such as Adam Tensta, Hollywood Holt, Micah James, Naptron and The 87 Stick Up Kids; secondly, not only has George Lenton proved to be one of our favourite producers of the past few months but he could well prove to be one of our favourite DJs to, with an excellent new journey through the dirty world of bass. Lastly we have a relative newcomer to the blog, LDFD kicks off with relentlessly big productions before easing your eardrums and opening your braincells ready for the week ahead. Not quite as slick as the other two but some fine selections nonethless.
01. Phonat - Set Me Free (High Rankin Remix) 02. Nero - Act Like You Know feat. Naptron 03. The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition (Doorly Remix) 04. Jay-Z - D.O.A. (Chase and Status Remix) 05. Joker - Digidesign feat. Micah James 06. Calvin Harris - Not Alone (Doorly Remix) feat. Hollywood Holt 07. Si Begg - Pete Fucking Tong 08. Major Lazer - Pon de Floor feat. Vybz Kartel and The 87 Stick Up Kids 09. Basement Jaxx - Raindrops (Joker and Ginz Remix) 10. Lil Wayne - Lollipop (Nasty Ways Remix) 11. T.I. - Whatever You Like (DiscoTech Remix) feat. Adam Tensta and Eboi 12. Stagga - Sick As Sin 13. HavocNdeeD - Bass Fo Ya Face feat. Phoenix Orion 14. Bassnectar - Cozza Frenzy (Bassnectar Remix) 15. Mastodon - Oblivion (Troublemaker Remix) 16. Mujava - Township Funk (Diplo Remix) 17. Bat for Lashes - Daniel (Duke Dumont Remix) 18. La Roux - In for the Kill (Skream Remix)
01 Intro 02 George Lenton - Troll 03 Daft Punk - One More Time (George Lenton Remix ) 04 Boy Crisis - Dressed To Digress (Nero Remix ) 05 Stagga - Sick As Sin 06 16 Bit - Can You Show Me What Head Is 07 Little Boots - Remedy (Rusko Remix) 08 Diplo & Blaqstarr - Get off (Jack Beats Remix) 09 Diplo & Blaqstarr - Hey (Foamo Remix) 10 Boy 8 Bit - Bulbs Burn Out 11 Evil Nine - They Live 12 udachi - Jellyroll 13 Evol Intent - 8 Bit Bitch (Spor Remix ) 14 Jay Z - D.O.A (Chase & Status Remix) 15 VENT - Crystalite 16 Spor - Aztec 17 All blue ; Sigma 18 Commix - Be True 19 Sub Focus - Rock It 20 Dirtyphonics - Vandals 21 Patrick Wolf - Hard times (Jack Beats Remix) 22 Joker - Snake Eater 23 Reso - Beasts In The Basement 24 The Qemists - Dem Na Like Me (Subscape Dub ) 25 George Lenton - Cold Rocker 26 George Lenton - Beware
The 87 Stick Up Kids have blessed many a Troublemaker remix and always make it their own. They work so well together that it's actually quite a suprise that this is the first official collaboration between the LA natives. Taking every era of Hip-hop firmly into the future this could probably fit back to back into any selection of classic bangers.
This track from the new Filewile EP on Mouthwatering Records is a blend of crisp and light rhymes, electronic beeps and bouncing bass. Solid in a dreamy sort of way.
Only just found out that Jack Beats is actually Plus One from Scratch Perverts and Beni G from Mixologists, two of the best DJs out there during my Hip-hop days and now by the strength of their forthcoming UFO EP, two of the best dance music producers of the moment too. This is the kind of dirt that we're craving for the dancefloor right now and so we're grateful to Dizz & Draz for dropping us this bootleg of new Jack Beats track Labyrinth and the Beat Assassins remix of Tittsworth's WTF. Fire!
We've also been sent a whole load of new Bassnectar tracks which are so big I'm not sure how to keep any of them out of our next chart. Why there isn't the love that is due to Bassnectarin the Dubstep world over here is beyond me, definitely a firm favourite. Unfortunately for you guys we can't share any of those but we do have a bootleg they knocked up on more of a laid back Hip-hop tip with a couple of their unreleased tracks and a Lupe Fiasco track. This isn't the club destroyer that the rest are but if the bass in your car stereo is weighty enough then give yourself a few minutes to go cruising round the block with this one cranked up loadly.
Dubstep seems to be how Troublemakersatisfies his dark side. One moment his tracks are Electro floor fillers and bass heavy Hip-hop hands in the air head nodders, then out of nowhere he'll drop some moody nastiness like this. The quality still remains constant throughout though so we're certainly nor complaining.
Speaking of dark and moody Dubstep, here's a sinister flex from Stagga featuring his Dead Residents badmate and general UK Hip-hop legend Junior Disprol, that still does the damage on the dancefloor.
Nobody seems to know where this tune appeared from or have any information on it at all. A scan of our inbox reveals nothing. Whoever it was though deserves a major big up though because Kids In Tracksuitsprovide some gnarly as hell Hip-hop beats that give Mr Lif a new lease of life. Guessing this is a new track and it's good to see the Kids back on fine form, much as we love the Lone solo stuff this kind of toughness can be rather more satisfying at times.
Just before coming to bless us with some phat tuneage here in Wales, Troublemaker hit Nairobi, Kenya with HOPE (Helping Other People Everywhere) for 'the experience of a lifetime'. There to share artistic abilities and knowledge with the locals, he taught kids about DJing and how to use Serato, deejayed at the Sawa Sawa Festival, and recorded with Kenya's biggest Hip hop emcee.
As something of a follow up to his work there, he is offering an advance download from his upcoming album, The Maestro (out in July), to benefit the HOPE Campaign. The track is the punchy as hell Work It Out featuring Naptron and Phoenix Orion and you can grab it via the link below.
There's something beautifully addictive about this remix of the French Pop rockers Phoenix from Troublemaker & Tatelarock. It's got that warm rain shower feel to it, kind of comfortingly melancholy if that makes sense. Can imagine it at the end of the night as a last tune to drunkenly sway to.
The latest podcast from seminal Bass, Glitch and Beats show Electronic Explorationshas one of our current favourite crews in for a guest mix and it is HUGE. With all the (deserved) hype surrounding Glasgow - Akira Kiteshi are holding it down for the Scottish capital of Edinburgh with some of the phattest and most phucked up tracks around. Their mix includes some of their own exclusives plus sounds from the likes of Rustie, Starkey and Bassnectar... Get the full track listing and live stream here.
New York rapper Elucid just leaked us a dangerous Kode 9 remix from his forthcoming Sub Bass Diet E.P. Just picked up some killer tracks off his Myspace page too so gonna post some choice cuts up once we've given them a proper rinsing.
Also out of New York, Sub Swara set the scene for their forthcoming Sub City Sessions at Le Poisson Rouge on April 24th (w/ The Glitch Mob, Lazer Sword, Sub Swara & Ana Sia) with the latest edition of the Sub Swara Podcast on iTunes. Definitely worth subscribing if you haven't already.
Loving the new Gouseion EP on Run Riot but nobody does their releases verbal justice more than the label themselves...
"Gouseion back on the missile-test range with More Friends For The Fire, a razors-open titanium jigsaw puzzle EP. Applying more pressure to the squared off rhythms of RRR avantclub, MFFTF takes the compressions of modern electro saws and the dizzy, sweeping drops of hyphy into physically treacherous arenas."
Mary Anne Hobbs didn't make it in to do her show this week as she got stuck on a broken down train, but it did give a great opportunity to catch up on some of the mixes we've missed in the past from: Nosaj Thing, Mono/Poly; Hyetal; Ras G; Ben Klock and Appleblim @ Bloc. Can still listen again on the BBC iPlayerfor the next few days.
Regular readers to the blog should know about Troublemaker by now, but the first time we caught him was on a remix of Camp Lo's Luchini alongside fellow Hollyrock co-hort Tatelarock, know they bring double trouble once more to De La Soul's classic Oooh, a timewarping fusion of Hip-hop eras that takes the focus off the floor and turns it into a subtle Electro stepper.
Also taking it back whilst keeping that future flavour is this track from JDP, which has a similar feel to fellow Chi-TownitesThe Cool Kids. Guest vocals come from Swedish rapper Adam Tensta, who also featured on the Troublemaker remix of Nothing To Worry About which we posted up the other day (see the linkage working here).
First up the fantastic new tune from those those swinging SwedesPeter, Bjorn & John gets the Troublemaker golden re-touch with rhymes courtesy of Adam Tensta,U-N-I and The 87 Stick Up Kids. The original track lends itself to Hip-hop so well that after a few listens you'd swear it was always like this.
There's some heavyweight Little Boots remixes about at the moment but think this one from Old Money might be our favourite so far. It's fairly faithful to the uptempo swing of the original but is less Bashie and more Hip-hop Jive-stepper. We've been playing the Ebola Dubstepish remix of this a fair bit too. Not sure if we've put it up already but here it is again just in case.
That 'devilishly' good Dutch producer Don Diablo utilises the same Funkadelic sample as the suggested classic De La Soul track for this dirtified Discofest.
After already dropping some of our most heavily rotated mixtapes in the shape of No Wine, Just Women and Your Face, Hollyrock hot stepper Troublemaker shows off his party startin' skills once again on his latest installment, simply titled 4. Classics meet crazy underground dance floor destroyers as Hip-hop, Electro and House get worked into a whole Troublesome mélange that let you know why he's been rockin' spots from the Manifest Hope party at Barack Obama's inauguration celebrations to Governor Schwarzenegger’s birthday party. If you're on the West Coast you can catch Troublemaker at his residencies: Wasted Space in the Hard Rock Hotel (Las Vegas); and Benders (Denver, CO and San Diego).
As Barack Obama jumps on the train from Philladelphia and makes the journey to Washington DC for his Inauguration ceremony on Tuesday. There's alot of excitement and anticipation for what the next few years might bring. Somebody recently on the BBC Introducing in Wales seemed to think this meant all the world's problems were solved and everything was going to be alright for a while. No matter how misinformed some of it might be, there's one thing that can be said for Barack Obama, he's brought alot of people (including me) one thing...
And alot of people are gonna need that as we enter into what could be "the worst recession in decades". Idealism isn't always realistic on a grand scale and although many of us like the direction his policies are going, there's nothing to say they'll work. Let's not forget that America became as powerful as it did using alot of the policies we would like to reject. Alot of people want what they feel is right but aren't willing to pay the price, so Obama could well be set to piss alot of the people off who are now singing his praises. I hope he manages to get through it relatively unscathed. I hope that history is kind to him and some of our ideals are fulfilled through his work, I hope he doesn't have to get assassinated to secure a good place in the books and I hope that eventually we can judge him on his merits and not our hopes.
And of course the musical tributes keep rolling in. The optimism can be summed up in part by the way many people have posted up this track by Busdriver and Flying Lotus. The track is called Will He but in most places you'll find it as He Will.
The next is from Troublemaker who will be heading down to Washington DC tomorrow to DJ and enjoy the festivities with the Manifest HOPE family.
His dark Dubstep stomper is more of a goodbye to the old president than praise for the new, or as he puts it, "the passing of my George Bush kidney stone."
Despite some strong artists and scenes all over the world, LA is still our favourite home for Electronic Bass artists approaching things from a Hip-hop mind set. One of the key players in our reasoning like this is Troublemaker, a man who surely knows where a computer's funk button sits.
We first came across him through his work with Tatelarock, and we've put up a few of his remixes over the past few months. However he's just uploaded a shed load of his killer remixes which gives a perfect chance to either remind you or introduce you to why we're feeling him so much. You can grab them all over at his MySpace pagebut here's a selection of our favourites.
This True Skool classic gets a phat and filthy redub which we have been rinsing hard in the clubs, even when it's not quite appropriate...
Here's a couple of his Mixtapes which give a good insight into what influences make their way into his remixes. If your DJ doesn't turn up to the party then whack these on and you'll be guaranteed a roof raiser.
After a fantastic slew of phat remixes, one of LA’s chief beat-scenesters Troublemaker finally announces his new album of original material The Maestro. The first single of which features rhyming from Baby Cashtrid, who lends the track an almost old skool Roxanne Shante flavor but with her feet planted firmly in the future.
I have to admit I don’t really know what to make of Bonde Do Role. There’s no denying they make some phat Baile Funk party tracks, and their choice of samples I find fun and quirky where they could easily venture into cheeseville. In fact, f**k it I’m a fan of their music for definite, so essentially I should be bubbling hard as they take to the stage at 10 Feet Tall in a drunken sexed up rampage of rhyme and rhythm, and I am… for a bit.
It’s possibly because I’m stuck in festival mode where no matter how good the artist I find it difficult to last more than 20 minutes of a set before I see something shiny that takes my attention away again, but I think it’s more than that, some how I feel slightly cheated. Now I’m pretty sure I’m not having a go at Bonde Do Role, they do what they want, they have fun with it and they do it well and that’s as it should be. But for some reason, seeing this bunch of geeky looking, well to do Brazillians in a nice little club like 10 Feet Tall had me crying out for a phat seedy warehouse with wall to wall speakers run by drug dealers in a favela someplace, maybe it’s just me.
There are all sorts of issues to do with authenticity in music, some are to do with race and social positioning. In Bonde Do Role I’m sure sits a whole bunch of these issues but to tell you the truth I don’t want to get into them, because I probably don’t agree with them. For some reason though, I can’t help but feel them tonight, and something just doesn’t quite sit right.
Still, despite their drunkenness they are tight and definitely lively on stage, although I have to say the grinding and breast rubbing going on is far from attractive… maybe it was that which caused me to wander off.
Downstairs, the pasty shop doors and windows are rattling. Probably just as well the sound man walked out before the band even got on stage, Bonde Do Role, definitely needed to be loud… and they were. I catch the murmur of the rest of their show from outside before going over to watch Death Set (who were delayed as they’d come over to see their friends BDR play) in Clwb Ifor Bach, they were pretty good too… for a bit.
In a perfectly timed delivery, LA DJ / Producer Troublemaker dropped me a copy of his new edit of SK87's remix of Bonde Do Role's 'Gasolina.' I heard more than a few complaints that Gasolina wasn't performed at 10 Feet Tall, so as a consolation here it is along with the Fake Blood Remix too.
Unless specified, any mp3s linked to on this blog are purely for promotional trial purposes only and should be deleted from a computer within 24 hours. If you like what you hear show respect to the person who made it and go buy the album.
If an artist or label spots material of theirs on this blog and is not pleased by this, contact me and I will remove it immediately.
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