Hello again – I thought I would give you all a selection of nice house tunes to keep your Saturday night pulsating. This is A Derogatory House – not to be confused with A Derogatory playlist. Throw the below songs into a playlist and put it on shuffle, no order needed – the more chaos the better, let it surprise you anytime of the day or night. That is the great thing about house music it seems to morph into your surroundings, deep and dark at night yet drifty and dreaming during the day.
Anyway let this post not be about words and let it be about the music, after all the music is what keeps A Derogatory’s heart beating. So close your eyes and prey for the return of Adso the Derogatory Incubator.
Why hello everybody – I hope you have all had a good start to the year. My musical tastes are just getting deeper and more electronic as I glide forward into the realm of unreality.
I would like to make my return with a mix I have just completed which showcases some new and some old tracks I have been listening to lately.
This is a mix which took many different directions as it evolved over time. It started as an idea to put together a selection of personal classics, so Tiga’s disco drama remix of E Talking was the seamless beginning I was hoping for. After mixing and editing the track I decided I wanted a really heavy mix to create a connection to the dance floor. This idea was swiftly extinguished as a selection of disco, deep and tech house I was listening to at the time crept in. However I stayed true to the idea and brought the noise back for the last half of the set creating differing levels and experiences.
Few interesting edits, bootlegs and samples which bring it all together. The vision was to create a wave of beats to progressively stab at your consciousness and subsequently raise your arms.
Thundercat is the stage name for Californian bass player extraordinaire Stephen Bruner, whose father played with legendary funk band The Temptations and brother is a Grammy award winning drummer. Impressive loins indeed. Thundercat is only a recent incarnation for Bruner as he picked up his guitar at the tender age of 4 and has been playing in various bands since he was 16, including stints with heavyweights like Snoop Dogg and Erykah Badu! He also counts LA producer Flying Lotus as a good buddy and collaborated on his acclaimed 2010 LP Cosmogramma, which no doubt resulted in him taking on production duties for this album.
It ranges from slow jam R’n'B to jazz freak-out and then back to somewhere in the middle, but despite this, his debut album The Golden Age Of Apocalypse sounds very cohesive. This makes it really easy to listen to from start to finish without the songs feeling like they are repeating themselves. My favourite song from it is For Love (I Come Your Friend), mainly because it reminds me of Outkast‘s classic slow burner Prototype. Another highlight, Is It Love? showcases Bruner’s soulful vocals, and with flourishes of horns, piano and a bass guitar solo, wouldn’t sound out of place on a compilation next to the likes of Al Green. The last track I’ll share with you is the electro strutter Walkin’, which sounds like a classier version of something Breakbot would make.
Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen – hope you have all enjoyed Adso’s regular posts – he is really keeping the Blog alive!! I would like to get straight back into things with an update on what has been tickling my senses over the last few months. It has been 5 main groups that have dominated my ear space as well as a mix which I have been working on over that time – o and of course Radiosoulwax!
I gave myself the deadline of today to finish the mix as it has been dragging on for at least 3 months now and I am sure I could work on it for another 3 – so it might not be as perfect as I hoped but I do hope you enjoy.
I would describe it as a Deep Disco Lyrical Dive into Dance Music and really highlights my music taste over the last few months and features many of the artists I will blog about below.
Soul Clap – Lonely C/Gold Panda – Same Dream China
Noze – Love Affair
When Saints Go Machine – Fail Forever (Nicolas Jaar Remix)
Who Made Who – Every Minute Alone (Tale of Us Remix)
The Weeknd – Glass Tables
Nirvana – Breed
Metallica – Enter Sandman/Midnight Juggernauts – This New Technology (Emperor Machine Remix)
Ost & Kjex – Mosambique Travelplan
Locussolus – Tan Sedan
10. Art Department – Without You
11. Azari & III – Hungry for the Power (Art Department Remix)/Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – In Motion (Jimps Hungry for the Social Network Edit)
12. DoP – No More Daddy (AME Remix)
13. Metronomy – The Bay (Erol Alkan Rework)
14. Noze – Marabout
15. In Flagranti – Brash & Vulgar (Jimps End Of Set Edit)
16. Charles B – Lack Of Love
Noze
I have just recently being introduced to Gypsy Deep House kings Noze from France. They already have 4 very solid albums behind them that have helped define their own genre and give life to dOP. I have got 3 of the 4 albums and the evolution of their sound is remarkable.
How To Dance is their 2nd album from 2006 and is an awesome example of how the husky and almost ridiculous lyrical content paired with deep progressive groves can produce tracks you will instantly enjoy (although you will be thinking you shouldn’t).
My favorite of their albums is Songs on The Rocks from 2008. The progression from How To Dance is clear and the electronic production shines through with long technical intro’s which develop into swinging pop songs. The lyrical content is similar to How to Dance – strange yet fits perfectly with the beats.
Their most recent album was just released a couple of months ago and is called Dring. This album is much more musical with hints of Jazz and Reggae but still a whole lot of house.
Art Department are a Canadian Duo who individually have already made marks in the dance music scene over man years but collectively are one of the hottest things to come out of the Deep House movement.
Each track is laced for slow dark dance floor groves and eyes closed imagination. The intelligent vocals on each track make them seem like they are sitting on the surface however the gloomy beats keep them cemented in the underground
Ost & KJex are a couple of very interesting guys from Norway who make deep disco house with pop hooks and soulful melodies. Cajun Lunch is their second album and was actually released last year. Their first album was released in 2004 so it has been long time between hits. The vocals are a definite stand out on the album with strong falsetto’s and backing from what sounds like a gospel choir.
As mentioned above Noze actually showed their fellow Frenchman dOP the scene – before deep house they were 3 struggling Jazz musicians. The sound is similar to Noze but probably not as outrageous in their music however more outrageous in their stage presence. Many of the tracks on the album are quite minimal with slow dark progressions. This is interesting music for the ones with good taste.
Locussoius is the product of DJ Harvey – a very well respected and renowned DJ from the UK. His album is really just a collection of releases from the past few years under Locussoius including some remixes. As I had not heard any of his productions before the fact that some of them were old did not bother me – the collection of the tracks on the album are amazing.
Fusing space disco with rock and techno the outcome is some of the most grinding disco tracks I have ever heard. Each track is an innovation of its own taking the listener on a journey through the realms of electronica with big bass lines and screaming guitar solo’s. Similar to Lindstrom & Prins Thomas who remix a track on the album Locussoius has taken the disco sound to all new levels of space and time – enjoy the ride.
One of the stranger French electronic music producers, Joakim is also one of the best electronic acts to see live. I had the privilege to see him in the setting sun after Junior Boys at Parklife two years ago and it was the perfect way to end the day and start the night. His warm synth textures and funky basslines set the mood so well by having one foot lounging in the grass and one foot stepping on the dance floor.
He has a new album coming out in September called Nothing Gold on his own label Tigersushi. The album has already leaked and I’ve given it a few listens over the last few days and am impressed with it so far. The first single Forever Young is an obvious highlight, which is partly due to its nostalgic lyrics, a sly bit of cowbell and a big bass lead that sounds a lot like LCD Soundsystem’s Someone Great. Another track which I keep finding myself tabbing back to my iTunes to find out the name of is In The Cave. For this track he uses the bass more traditionally – a bit further back in the mix – and it holds together the track really well even when the synths reach breaking point and explode all over the place like a swarm of robot bees would if their metal hive fell to the ground. The title track has probably the best vocal hook of all the tracks and kinda reminds of a Holy Ghost! or The Juan Maclean track that’s been slowed down 10 BPM (definitely a good thing!).
Thankfully, Joakim will be touring Australia in a couple of weeks to show us all a great party. Dates and downloads below. If you like what you hear, be sure to come along and support him live, he will not disappoint!
One of the albums I’ve been consistently playing over the last year has been Primal Scream’s 1991 release Screamadelica. It is a timeless piece of music that is widely acclaimed as one of the best albums of the 1990s, yet I’ve found that not very many people in and around Gen Y are familiar with it.
Its originality came from merging dub, gospel and experimental sounds with big house drums and rhythms. This often resulted in a very trippy, spaced-out sound, which was probably in no small part an affect of their heavy drug intake at the time. There’s an infamous tour-story about the bandmates arguing with one another over whether to get Vietnamese, Chinese or Indian: a journalist asked them if they’d settle for a burger and the band informed him, “It’s heroin we’re discussing, not food!”
Loaded is my favourite track and probably the best place to begin to get a feel for the album. Inner Flight would make a good soundtrack to a movie scene where a junkie feels the first affects of a heroin hit and Slip Inside This House is a more conventionally styled house track that is actually a cover of highly influential American psych-rock band 13th Floor Elevators from 1967.
I strongly recommend you get the album and listen to it from start to finish even if these tracks don’t grab you straight away.
Like Jimps said in the last post, my musical taste has broadened dramatically in the time since I last shared music with you all. Not only has it broadened, but it has shifted focus away from remixes and electronic productions and more so to guitars and psychedelia. But these aren’t mutually exclusive and often my favourite music exhibits a little from column A and a little from column B.
A band who I think exemplify the convergence of these two ideas and is also my favourite new band is Unknown Mortal Orchestra. While borrowing psychedelic sounds from the heydays of the late 60s and early 70s, UMO’s sound has still got something quirky and original enough to sound somewhat modern. Add to that that Ruban Nielson, the New Zealander behind the project, made most of the debut album in his bedroom and you have a sound distinctly rooted in the past but born through modern technology. Thought Ballune is my favourite of his songs, the guitar riff in it reminds me of something Jimi Hendrix would do. The other track I’ve posted, Little Blue House, is a bit poppier and loaded with vocal hooks.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Unknown Mortal Orchestra(Open in a new tab – I’m now going to post external download links where I can to the albums the tracks are on. I’ll try use Mediafire.com links whenever I can ’cause they are the easiest, but whenever it is another hosting site just look for the ‘slow’, ‘regular’ or ‘free’ download button and it should work. These links quite often get taken down so let me know if one’s down and I’ll have a look for another one for you.)
Suuns are another band who blur the line between psychedelic jamming and tight electronic arrangements. They are a relatively new band from Montreal who late last year released their debut album Zeroes QC on Secretly Canadian (also home of Yeasayer, jj and Antony and The Johnsons). Album opener Armed For Peace begins with just heavy drums and slowly builds until you’re just about to get bored with it and think a horrible dubstep wobble might burst out at you, but instead the lead guitar overpowers the drums and the track turns into more of a rock song than a ridiculous dubstep banger. PVC is a more traditionally structured track, but still has thick distorted guitar and bass
That’s it for the moment. I’ve got lots more different stuff I want to share with you soon, so be sure to ‘Like’ our Facebook page for updates and stay in touch!
A lot of great music came out in 2009 so this has been hard for me to narrow it down to just 15. It was a year that I and seemingly most of the music industry matured from the raw distortion and grind that ran rampant in electronic music through 2007 and 2008 (with a few exceptions – I’m looking at you Bloody Beetroots). A perfect example of this is the reaction to Bag Raiders’ Turbo Love EP. The titular single was given to radio stations and promoted heavily, but it was the much less intense yet more uplifting B-side Shooting Stars that became the real hit from the release. The emergence of the faux genre “chill-wave”, appropriately coined by the ingenious Carles of Hipster Runoff, further pushed listeners towards more melodic, laid-back musical stylings. Although this movement has definitely influenced me and my top 15, I would say the shifting in my tastes is more due to a lack of quality electro releases and an abundance of great indie-dance type releases. I’ve already spoken about most of these releases earlier in the year so I won’t say too much. Anyway, see what you think and I’d love to see your top whatever in the comments!
15. Kid Cudi – Man On The Moon: The End Of Day
The only hip hop release on my list, this album’s ambition and creativity made it an album that took you on a journey. Slick production and Cudi’s fun but often introspective rhymes make him stand out from the macho gangster rap that’s ubiquitous in music today.
Having only been introduced to Jamie T by a friend this year Kings & Queens was the first I’d heard from him and boy was I glad I listened. His cheery brand of indie-pop is perfect for just hanging out with mates on a sunny afternoon.
13. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
A lot of bloggers and music critics have placed this album as number one on their lists for obvious reasons, but it simply wasn’t my favourite so here it is. Deal with it.
1901 was the best pop song of the year. This was an amazing album and Phoenix deserve all the success they achieved as a result. Only thing wrong was that I found a got a little bored of the album if I tried to listen to it right through. Most of the songs are brilliant; I think they just needed to mix it up a bit more to keep the listener guessing.
Begone Dull Care is a perfectly crafted chill out album. I was lucky enough to spend some time on the islands of Hawaii and North Stradbroke and I remember having this album on repeat and enjoying every second of it. Coupled with an awesome live performance at the Parklife festival, Junior Boys climbed a few notches in my book this year.
Another band that moved up in my books was Arctic Monkeys. I recognise their talent but I had never been a big fan of their work until Humbug. This is probably because of their change in sound marked by the production style of rock god Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss, Eagles of Death Metal and Them Crooked Vultures). The monkeys were left with a much muddier, heavy sound than on previous albums and I loved the new direction.
I really loved this album – most of the songs made the hairs on my neck stand at their climaxes, especially the ones below. The only reason this isn’t much higher is that I thought the last few songs on the album really let it down.
If you read this blog much you’d know that we love Datarock here at A Derogatory Term. Their second album was a step up from their debut while still managing to keep all the elements we love about their music.
The main reason this album is so high is that I related to its concept of a big night out so much. I think they flawlessly captured the exciting feeling of the build up to the start of the night to the feeling of lying in bed the morning after with someone cool. Oh yeah and the last quarter of Lucid Dreams is insane!
For an album with quite sombre subject matter it was extremely uplifting for me. The lead singer’s voice is just so powerful and well suited to the music that I often got caught singing along very loudly in the car.
This was the undisputed down tempo album of the year and obviously one of my overall favourites too. I loved how their sound is very minimalistic without feeling empty or hollow, which is a very difficult thing to do especially in pop music.
This album probably got the most plays out of any other album and Sweet Disposition is in my top 10 most played songs ever. Saw them live at Sunset Sounds and they were all really polished performers especially the singer, whose voice sounded just as spectacular on stage as it does on the cd.
My love for Kasabian is no secret, having professed my love for their exciting brand of rock to you all way back herewhen West Ryder first came out. They were always going to make the top 3 but they probably weren’t going to be number 1 until I saw them at Big Day Out on the Gold Coast and they blew me away. They were far and away the highlight of the day and gave exactly the standard of performance I hoped for.
I would love to hear some of you guys’ favourite albums of the year so don’t be afraid to share in the comments or on the facebook page. I’ve been listening to some killer new dance music lately so I should be back soon to post that for you people. ‘Til then,
UPDATE: Thanks to a very special reader I now have the House Of House track at the bottom of this post for everyone in full 320kbps quality!
FINALLY, my internet is fixed! Let us never speak of this again. I promise to post more regular new music from now on. But I will keep doing the ‘Auntie Gertrude Takes A Trip’ posts about classic old music if you guys don’t think it’s waste of time? Please let me know what you think in the comments or on the Facebook page. While you’re there become a member of the group, if you’re not already, to get updates on when the blog is err… updated.
Here are some new tunes while I finish off my Top Albums of 2009 list. The newie from Palermo Disko Machine (AKA Jence from Digitalism) is some pretty cool electro. It sounds similar to Digitalism in that you can tell he’s using the same instruments, but other than that it’s on the darker, more chilled-out, side of what they’re known for, but I think fans will still enjoy this track. The track doesn’t really start until 2:30 so fast forward there if you have a short attention span. Jence also made an EP under this moniker last year which was lighter and poppier than Theme Of Palermo Disko Machine. It included a really catchy track which I loved called Pump, so grab that as well if you don’t have it.
I have been searching for this track for years! I heard it on the infamous As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 mix years ago and have wanted the full unmixed song ever since. Now that it has finally become available on iTunes Australia I have it to share with you all. Since there is no band on the internet called ‘Firebirds,’ the name ‘Firebirds’ is a derivative of the lyrics in the original song and the Dewaele brothers use the track in the aforementioned mix – not to mention the production sounds like them and their quality – I’m going to assume this is an actual Soulwax remix hidden under one of their many obscure monikers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I’m right, how was that for some detective work!
This next track by House of House, which comprises half of Still Going Liv Spencer and vocalist Saheer Umar, has had some ridiculous hype placed upon it. This vinyl-only release is so sort-after that, legend has it, people paid upwards of €100 on eBay when it sold out in record shops. Also, it’s very well worded press release is anything but modest, “Instantly coveted and championed by cutting edge DJ’s, record collectors and cultural connoisseurs, “Rushing to Paradise” quickly moved up into the upper echelon of “years best” lists, even before the records official release date.” After listening to it a couple of times I recognise the quality of the track, but I don’t really see why it’s been put on such a pedestal. I think it’s probably more to do with the fact that you can’t get it which makes people want it that much more. All in all it is a good house track, I just wish they kept the section from 3:30 – 4:23 going and kept the vocal out of it. Oh yeah, sorry but I could only get it in 128kbps, damn vinyl elitists!
Good day everyone. Sorry about the absence of late, my internet has been fucked for the last two months and there is no resolution in sight. In the mean time, I am hijacking my work computer just for you. Since I’ve had very limited internet access lately, I’ve delved into the vast array of ‘classic’ old music that has largely been sitting dormant on my computer – music I’ve heard is good that I’ve acquired in my hopeless attempt to have “every good song ever made by anybody,” and that I hadn’t really listened to yet. So I’ll be posting some old music that isn’t flogged on golden oldies radio stations, but would be in a perfect world. I plan for this to be a recurring theme so I will dub these posts “Auntie Gertrude Takes A Trip.”
I’d like to start with the original chameleon and coolest cat in the universe – David Bowie. My favourite song of his and one of my all-time faves is Ashes To Ashes. The production on this is so slick and layered that you can listen to it over and over and keep finding new sounds.
Finally, two covers/tributes that are just too good not to include. The Heroes cover is a rolling electronic beast while the Conchords tribute to Space Oddity and Let’s Dance is humorous and listenable at the same time.
