Mixtape Fridays is going to be a new series of mine, in which I share with you my favorite mixtapes of the week, and one historically favorite mixtape of mine, in the odd chance I go about making more of them I will also share them.
Matt Berry
For this week I share with you, a mixtape from Solid Steel by Matt Berry, and in case you are wondering, yes that Matt Berry the one who’s the second boss in the IT crowd. He surprisingly has quite a few albums of music of his own, sort of folk pop jazz like music all on Acid Jazz records.
It’s an album full of tasteful reworks and layered texturing that I had worked on over that previous year. Starting off with the ambient but ever so jazzy Rhodes in Tripcrop to samplings of the Prophet VS on Waves of the Prophet. To pumping house and dark workout tunes such as Sup-Er-Kappa (the bonus track on bandcamp is a remix and a vocaloid rework of Sup-Er-Kappa (Track 5)) and expect a separate preview of that track to release on soundcloud in the upcoming week available here.
The alternative side of the album leading with Double Roads, which A Problem Like Maria did an amazing job singing over her version of the track she listed it as featuring Rekapper, (which I’ll also share for a later post :), although I really like my distorted extended ending too, eventually Ill add that to Maria’s vocal version with her vocals on top, or maybe work in some Vocaloid stuff in too. Then you have Fantastic Plastic Machine styling The 花火 Leap, with the depressing ending of the evening similar to the experience of every afternoon in Seattle. Trouble takes the wheels as being one of the few remaining themes of drum and bass to my music over the jazz breakbeat, as I would love to do more uptempo music, but electronic free jazz has sort of taken over it’s place as of recent anyhow much like you hear in Eh Break. All Is’well rounds out the album much in the stylings of my favorite ambient artists, in the sense of overlying too many texture, but if only I could play guitar it would have been for sure a key element to the track too. Overall I thoroughly enjoy my own album, and I’m sure a lot of you fans out there can find something on there or maybe something on my previous releases that you have enjoyed.
PS: I do have to admit I find it funny the play counts of Ahahahahaha always have been higher then other tracks, which I find quite funny myself.
All of these tracks like MF Doom’s Hoe Cakes and Camp Lo’s Luchini have for sure been stuck in my head recently and I figuring starting up a throwback series with short comments would be interesting, while I am working on another The Hai artist’s album.
MF Doom – Hoe Cakes
Quite the throwback factoring that the spitty beatboxing beat over the top of the intro to Anita Baker’s famous Sweet Love. And MF Doom, the Madvillain showcasing his Super, or so his excellency of rapping even in the monotone lulls, is just a straight continuous flow of finding odd perfect rhythmic rhyming. The piano parts help fill out the background to this beat, and this track is for sure going in the next Rekapper mixtape.
MF DOOM – 3.214
Factoring that Doom’s Great Times was an instant classic for acapella rapping flows, but the beat was very lacking on the original Madvillain release of it. Blame the great producer Madlib for figuring out that Matthew Larkin Cassell’s – Heaven would fit in perfectly just slightly speed up, which equally is part of the lofi niceness of the track, sure the Confucius saying on the next track also makes it feel like a joke track but this track maybe the ultimate start your day up track or wind down track. All of his reference lines are perfectly lined up and timed out into the flow whether that was helped by the audio production or MF Doom alone, “Last wish: I wish I had two more wishes. And I wish they fixed the door to the matrix, there’s mad glitches”.
Camp Lo – Luchini
Blame the famous Adventures In The Land Of Music – Dynasty glorious horn lines for that sample that fills out the background of this Camp Lo track. And the horn stylings are very much similar to what you would find on an old Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass LP, with that sound signature.
He’s the guy who’s sort of the leader with Uyama Hiroto for Roph Recordings, but he was also the one of the main behind the scenes guys for Hydeout Productions often playing DJ sets prior to Nujabes set. It’s an awesome mix of jazz loungy chillout music.
I must apologize as it has been over a month since my last update. I’ll blame it this time on my full course load at CWU but equally on the fact that most of my work recently has been mastering music and even short indie films for various composers and artists. My aim for this year is to release another EP by October, which I have not started on yet, but the first work in progress should be arriving soon as I’ve finally broken out of my usual writers block with ironically the help of Taylor McFerrin’s new album Early Riser, pretty cool jazzy EDM album:
On the note of new releases Ill have a review later today about New Motive Power’s latest release an awesome power rock metal album from the Brazilian duo.
And I also have hopes for another new The Hai compilation album either themed or not, maybe even a new unnecessary remix album within the next two or three months. Hopefully I can motivate the rest of them on releasing some works together :)
