EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: The Bug - Flying
London producer The Bug (born Kevin Martin and fka GOD and Techno Animal) makes trippy, rotund bass tracks, songs that bend and sway like the late DJ Screw making dubstep beats. His new album London Zoo is a bruising headphone masterpiece, flipping from high-energy dancehall bombs to slower sample-heavy jams that sound like the soundtrack to a slo-mo shootout scene in a neo-noir flick. Today we have “Flying” an EXCLUSIVE unreleased track that wears its dub on its sleeve—sampled downtempo hits echoing around and an tenuous but optimistic reggae vocal (“My music makes people smile”). I don't know about smiling, but there is some serious head-nodding going on here right now. And while The Bug’s tunes might find acceptance amongst the Rizzla-rolling youths of Brixton, this is still music for everyone, even those without a hoodie in the closet.
Sounds like: Flying Lotus, 77Klash, Lee "Scratch" Perry
DOWNLOAD: Sean Bones - Easy Street
Canvas shorts and reggae music sound like summer spent by the water being lazy. Sean Bones is not lazy. Aside from holding down bass duties in indie sons Sam Champion, he designs and runs S/S Friends, Ltd.--a line of limited edition canvas shorts, zines, and vinyl based in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn--and cuts old-school reggae tracks under his own name. "Easy Street" is basically a classic pop joint with some give, all swelling B3 stabs, doo-wop harmonies, and Sean's wandering drawl over it all. For those that think Vampire Weekend too obviously cop African sounds, scope this track's perfect marriage of reggae rhythms and pop structure, the chord change on the chorus really pushes it next level.
Sounds like: Vampire Weekend, Toots & The Maytals, Jimmy Cliff
Download: Sean Bones - Easy Street
Download: Sam Champion - Your Party Was Yesterday?
Download: Sam Champion - So Good To Me
Download: Sam Champion - Uncle Drums
EXCLUSIVE STREAM: Lee "Scratch" Perry - Pum Pum
I don't know about you, but there's no price I wouldn't pay to take an hour-long tour of the botanical gardens in Lee "Scratch" Perry's brain. Because as many glimpses as his music gives us, I'd really like to see how gnarly the world looks through those heavy eyeballs you see in the photo above. Now in his 70s, the dub pioneer is about to release a new, Andrew W.K. co-produced full-length (out 8/19 on Narnack) and because many different cosmos aligned recently, RCRD LBL has the pleasure of premiering the very first single: "Pum Pum." If I told you that the track might be as they say, NFSW, you could probably venture a fairly accurate guess as to what the all too elusive "Pum Pum" might be. You've probably even got all kinds of personal experience chasing after it or guarding it at all costs. No clue, none of my beeswax -- I just really wish I would have heard this song YEARS ago.
Come back to the ye olde RCRD LBL in 48 hours and you'll be blessed not with any large quantity of pum pum (wrong on many levels, though we still apologize), but with something slightly less worthwhile depending on your priorities: a conversation with Andrew W.K. all about his adventures with Lee in the studio and elsewhere.
FEATURED: Awesome music at the FADER blog
The guys over at The FADER have been in hyperdrive lately with the whole “posting awesome free music” thing. Today alone they unveiled a version of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” by Swedish space rockers Tiedye, as well as the UK dance club Fabric’s podcast with punk/reggae legend Don Letts. So sick!
FEATURED: 77Klash And Dj Rupture @ The New Museum
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Where are we going to be tonight? The only place where art, culture and reggae will be symbiolitically intertwined for one night: The New Museum in the Lower East side. Unless you've been living under a digital rock, you know we're huge fans of 77Klash, the Jamaican hip-hop reggae master.....along with all Brookylnites-who-can-dance. So tonight, we are honored to groove like wild monkeys to 77klash and DJ Rupture....in the rainbow-happy The New Museum.
Plus it's one of the last few days of Paul Chan's "The 7 Lights" exhibit at The New Museum (closing June 29th), which is worth a check-out. The display hosts floating reflections of birds, houses & Baroque painting and greek mythology references- refracted off the white walls by a light projector. The result is ethereal and hypnotic- and way better than any finger-puppetry you've attempted in front of the projector at the movie theater.
So be there or be square. (And see you at Santo's Partyhouse for Moby and Juan Maclean afterwards. Geez. )
SOUNDS LIKE: Jah Dan, Dutty Artz, Ghislain Poirier
Download: Ray Darwin - Take You Home Skallawa Riddim (Ray Darwin Remix)
DOWNLOAD: Grand Analog - Around This Town
From Chromeo to Arcade Fire to The New Pornographers to Feist- Canada's high levels of musical standards has come close to convinced us to emigrate to the maple-leaf state. Well, it's time to add one more notch on the Canadian indie music totem pole: The Grand Analog Project, fronted by Odario G. Williams, crafts soul, ska, dub, hip hop 'Ghettotech" music. Yeah, you may have to listen to get my description. Below, the track "Around the Town" features Williams rapping, over a swaying dub-reggae beats and whistling flute. Check it and raise that Canadian flag, ey.
Download: Grand Analog - Around This Town
DOWNLOAD: 77Klash - Code For The Steets + More
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Damn, we just can't enough of Brooklyn-by-way-of-Kingston-Jamaica's 77Klash these days. His beats are to us what donuts and coffee are to cops. Precious and yet imperative to get us through the day. (ok maybe it's too early in the AM for analogies).
This time, we're giving you a grand tour of 77Klash's Klashcity Record label- with 3 tracks displaying his indie label's mad diversity. The title track to his latest CD, "Code For the Streets," bares more of a hip-hop edge than the Reggae-intense "Mad Again" track we posted a while back, but damn does that guy know how to carve a beat. Plus, we've got a Noble Society remix by DJ Theory that's got a down-tempo electro and a R & B smooth remix by Ray Darwin of Take You Home Skallawa Riddim. Bon Appetit.
SOUNDS LIKE: Jah Dan, Dutty Artz, Ghislain Poirier
Download: Ray Darwin - Take You Home Skallawa Riddim (Ray Darwin Remix)
FEATURED: Popjustice interviews Santogold
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Our favorite pop blog ever, Popjustice.com, just posted an awesome interview with our girl Santogold where they discuss, amongst other things, her work on the Ashlee Simpson album, how Santogold can be categorized as “indie rock”, and that pesky horse that made her sick on the set of the “L.E.S. Artistes” video.
Santogold interview at Popjustice
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: Santogold - Your Voice
What Santi White, a.k.a. Santogold, is becoming famous for is good vibes. Unlike a lot of acts at the moment, tracks like her adored “L.E.S. Artistes” and incredible “Creator” are met with an immediate urge to party—inhibitions be damned, these need to be danced to. Right now.
Today Santogold gives us yet another reason to dance: an exclusive and unreleased track from the Santogold Sessions called "Your Voice." It's about as light and frothy as a reggae milkshake, and it shows a softer side of the party machine we all know and love. Needless to say, Santogold has done it again. We give you the soundtrack to your summer, "Your Voice."
Sounds like: Lady Saw, The Specials, MIA
Exclusive Download: Santogold - Your Voice
Check out these Santogold streams as well:
Stream: Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes
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