scissorkick

Being that they are relatively unknown, you get this straight from the Sound Imperium Web site:
Sound Imperium evolved from a series of bands playing around Minneapolis during the early 1990s. In an effort to take some of these bands' tunes beyond the then defunct groups, we took to the studios at Radio K in 1997. The initial line-up was Paul Harding, Dave Park and Aaron Bellamy.  Then we found 270 miles between us. The recording developed slowly and eventually moved to our own studios. After writing more songs and finding additional collaborators in Madison and Minneapolis, we finally finished Pre-Emptive Dub Attack! in 2004. This is some tight, political US dub perfect for the upcoming week. Like Redbud Records or Antibalas you'll find elements of rock steady, up-rock, punk and reggae blended together with diligent musicality and the urgency of a nation on the cusp of a historic change of direction. All week scissorkick will be posting political tracks from new and old artists so please check us out.

Posted by Steve at 10/28/2004 11:07:56 AM | Permalink | Comments   

New stuff posted today by a downtempo dreamteam of sorts featuring Baby Mammoth's Burdy and Sofa Surfer's I-Wolf. Both producers have made names for themselves both individually and as part of a production team and have managed to keep their output crisp without the heavy gloss of a bullshit wine-bar soundtrack. I-Wolf and Burdy's new Meet the Babylonians out on Germany's Klein Records, follows in the footsteps of recent releases by Funkstorung and Mouse on Mars by featuring vocal tracks from a handful of contributors including G.Rizo and Danny Rankin, Joice Muniz, DJ Collage, Aladin Sani and wow, an appearance from ex-Happy Monday Shaun Rider. Burdy's Pork-flavored dubs and I-Wolf's Teutonic electro sensibility mix nicely to produce some truly inspiring moments of head-nodding eclecticism.

Posted by Steve at 10/25/2004 01:44:11 PM | Permalink | Comments   

Aaron just got back from Puerto Rico with a nice mix CD he put together for scissorkick of some of the best sounds of last weekend's Candela Festival. These tracks below come from the island's own Local 12, the bomba/plena/rumba fusion band who mix traditional afro-caribbean rhythms with programmed beats layered over bomba drums. This shit is undoubtedly better experienced live and reminds me of an unforgettable night in Barcelona where we stumbled into a Cuban-style dance hall with a 20-piece Spanish orchestra jamming with a turntablist. A little old, a little new and channeling the best of the surprisingly progressive PR beat community. If anyone out there knows the titles to these tracks, please let me know.

Posted by Steve at 10/21/2004 07:14:32 PM | Permalink | Comments   

Here you go. Been out for the count with a cold and simply too much baseball. But back with a massive attack brought to you by Daddy G who contributes the newest edition of the essential DJ Kicks series put out regularly by the !K7 crew. Grant Marshall, a.k.a. Daddy G was one of the founders of the Wild Bunch Sound System, out of which later Massive Attack emerged and has put together a fantastic comp, one of the finer DJ Kicks to come about in some time. Mixing classic reggae and soul (Willie Williams, Barrington Levy, Meters) wit a host of his own related tracks like Massive Attack collaborations and remixes, Daddy G sets loose a downtempo set with an 100% approval rating -- you have to work too hard not to be feeling this. I included the Paul Oakenfold remix of "Unfinished Sympathy" because I think he shows a great deal of restraint and subtlety with his rework of one of the most important tracks of the short-lived Bristol sound. Plus, it reminds me of the time I lived in London and that's always a good thing. The other MP3 is a great French cover of the Studio One/Dawn Penn reggae classic "No, No, No" by Melaaz.

Posted by Steve at 10/20/2004 06:28:16 PM | Permalink | Comments   

Haven't really come across Mos Def's little brother DCQ in quite some time, probably not since the "Crosstown Beef" record blew up the entirety of 1999. But Medina Green is back and Mos and his bro are gladly welcomed back (the same can't be said for your boy Mase of course). While you can easily go over to Cocaine Blunts, Soul Sides, Sam Chennault and some other fantastic hip-hop blogs linked in the sidebar to get unmatched hip-hop knowledge, it seems the downtempo gods (or someone at Studio Distribution) hooked me up with an advanced copy of the newest Medina Green release U Know the Flex Mix Tape Vol.1. The mix has some previously released stuff like the aformentioned "Crosstown Beef" and "Niggas Know" from Mos Def's "Summertime" 12" so I decided to post 2 other tracks. "Beef" features Mos Def freestyling his intepretation of the ambiguously defined term while "Slow and Tender" keeps the steak theme going with a nice sustained Fender Rhodes melody under a DCQ's tightly wound verses.

Posted by Steve at 10/14/2004 04:53:37 PM | Permalink | Comments   

So we finally got everything figured out over here and I am ready to start diving into the crates and posting some new vinyl for you all. Today's post comes from San Francisco's Dis-Joint Records who have catapulted onto the domestic downtempo scene with superb releases like their first label comp, 10 Heavy Duty Sure Shot Selections; a 12" from the Connoisseurs (featuring P.E.A.C.E of Freestyle Fellowship); and a couple of singles from Dub Diablo, the cut-and-paste project from DJs Diabolic and Scottomatic. The tracks are reminscent of early Coldcut or Steinski in that they are meticulously edited, totally sample-based and geared for an eclectic dance floor open to huge party-centric breakbeats. Honestly, these two singles are can't-miss additions and essential for DJs into similarly styled instrumental hip-hop. The Dis-Joint Web site has posted samples of just about every track, so head on over and check it out.

Posted by Steve at 10/13/2004 01:04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments   

Gold shoes. Olympic medals. Rigid, upright sprinting style. Producer of obsessively-crafted, pastoral electronica? Well, no actually. This is a post for the other Michael Johnson, the one who helms the kit for Sub Pop's Holopaw and moonlights as a director of the traveling game show/staring competition Staremaster. Johnson has a full-length album out, Nonsense Goes Mudslide, on must!delicious records and you can check out a video from that album for "Nowhere (That Whore)" here. He dabbles in a handful of electronic styles, all the while forgoing the passivity of Holopaw in favor of the unexpected electronic jab. On the edge of collapse, Johnson's compositions are built with just enough stability to stand tall when the mudslide rolls in. Check them.

Posted by Steve at 10/08/2004 03:06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments   

So new I couldn't even find cover art (hence the picture of the random guy with a rainstick). November will see the Ninja Tune release of the first record from Rainstick Orchestra, The Floating Glass Key in the Sky. Occupying a few front-row seats in the Steve Reich/John Cage School of Minimalist Composition, the pair -- Baku Tsunoda and Naomichi Tanaka -- deliver seven meditative, looping instrumentals that sound the way a Haruki Murakami novel reads. This is polished electronic psychedelia for the day after -- happy, contemplative "systems music" incorporating guitars, piano, bass and sequencers. "Electric Counterpoint Fast" sits comfortably in the ether generated by a Steve Reich and Plaid chemical reaction, while "Waltz for a Little Bird" could easily be a plaintive, jazzy Sea & Cake track sans the breezy vocals of Sam Prekop (damn that would be a good combo). This will be available in November from Ninja Tune.

Posted by Steve at 10/06/2004 11:24:12 AM | Permalink | Comments   

While many people protest categorizing music by genre, I do belive that it is a necessity for navigating through the massive amount of music currently available to listeners in a seemingly endless variety of formats. One of the shortcomings of musical classification however, is that genres become appropriated by scenes. For instance, if I say "jam band" you inevitably think of nitrous balloons, open-toed Birkenstocks and bean burritos. Fortunately, not all jamming acts pine for the opening spot on the Ratdog bill or a second-stage slot on the Horde Tour, and so it becomes scissorkick's mission to bring these bands to you. So let me introduce Jet Black Crayon and its rotating roster of musicians including Tommy Guerrero, Monte Vallier, Gadget and others. The story goes that when Tommy Guerrero was asked to open for Isotope 217 on a short West Coast U.S. tour he opted out of the solo gig and decided to gather a group of musicians that he could do live collaborations with. Their releases on Function8 and Galaxia show a smooth fusion of West Coast downtempo and on-the-fly funk with the Chicago-bred tradition of open post-rock experimentation with enough cinematic flux to score a road trip between both points. The instrumental tracks capture all the live energy of a spirited jam session without any of the flashbacks and visuals. These two tracks are taken from the "Experiments in the Space Metal Time Signature" EP on Galaxia.

Posted by Steve at 10/05/2004 01:53:48 PM | Permalink | Comments   

My good friend Aaron, aka DRM of Bastard Jazz Recordings and the recently deceased new(ish) blog, will start posting on scissorkick in the coming weeks, and since he just got back from a productive UK trip (with plenty of vinyl) you can expect some really amazing new stuff in the days to come. Today's post, inspired by Aaron, is for Ed Royal, a new name on the production tip, who has relesead 3 singles on Germany's Innvision Records but is poised to do some really big things if these tracks are any indication. "Hey Brothers" brings the large, dancefloor funk ala The Fort Knox Five yet Royal is beholden to no particular genre, as evidenced by the second MP3 posted -- "Get Down" -- a midtempo barnstorming break with a decidedly electronic bent. Although we try and avoid excessive self-promotion here at scissorkick, we are excited that Ed Royal will be remixing a track for the next Bastard Jazz 12". Check back for more details. And I'd like to thank all of you who have stopped by, downloaded tracks and left comments. I don't generally talk much about the site itself in the postings but I'd like to point out some new links recently added for new MP3 sites that have supported scissorkick -- please check out 3Hive, Aurgasm, Dozer and our friends The Beathunters at The Naugahyde Life.

Posted by Steve at 10/04/2004 02:53:44 PM | Permalink | Comments   

For the seventh straight year I will be following my beloved Yankees into the post-season, and in celebration I give you a few tracks from Takahiro Chiba, aka Slowly Minute, a Japanese musician/producer who has recently dropped a new record on the ever-reliable Bubblecore imprint. Who better to lead the Yankees into the playoffs than center fielder Bernie Williams, a classically trained guitarist who has for over a decade been one of the most likeable players in MLB., and who better to bridge the last few weeks of electronic/breaks postings to the upcoming week of new rock than Mr. Chiba. Produced by Nobukaza Takemura, Tomorrow World sounds a little like a Gastr Del Sol instrumental produced by Richard D. James in a playful mood. It is the sonic equivalent of a broken stained glass window, stunning but incomplete, with fractured spots of light and color that at times requires the patience to imagine a more perfect beauty. Sort of like the majestic Bronx Bombers as they march into October the clear favorites to take the AL pennant with a wounded staff and a tired, veteran-filled roster. Note to Red Sox fans: the latin dwarf in the clubhouse won't help you. The comments button is now accepting hate mail.

Posted by Steve at 10/01/2004 03:19:23 PM | Permalink | Comments