omg the f-ing craziest thing happened to me

man, whut a fuckin memorial day weakend my boy has dis private jet so we all chillin in flight, on r way 2 da florida keys we got the music box bumpin you know what it is but all a sudden da stewardess comes up (she look just like 1 of those coco girlz) screamin n shit and then a pilot gets on da speakers causing mass hysteria 2, sayin we gonna die, we got no engine, i'm like whut?? we like 53,000 feet in da muthafuckin air i ain't no going down over sum gator infested swamp with no fuckin mosquito. i look over at my boy and he's mad spaced out, and i'm like yo do sumthin and he looks at me sez like man yo eyes are mad red u been smokin 2 much and that's when it hit me i wuz just reel high n it was all just a mirage so i ordered 1 of doze tropicall drinks wit da lil umbrella in em n we had a holiday on ice u know we had 2 take it to the streets! it wuz such a great time shout outz 2 my doggs archigram, buffalo bunch, knight club and play paul 4 being so dope i even shed a tear or 2 n when i got home i crydamoure.

humix after all: part two

this is a part two. scroll down to the previous post or click here to update your brain matter, cuz one day it may matter.

so i've given remix after all the old college try about cinco o seis times, and combined with the fact that i'm like pavlov's dog when it comes to the punk of daft i think i can fill everybody with my two sense. of course my opinion is liable to change in the future, so i guess these are really first impressions. i've divided the tracks up into categories, like so:

the mehhhh........

Human After All (The Disco Villains Remix)

too much distortion layered on compression layered on top of distortion layered on.... etc. it sounded like they took the original track, chained it to the back of their pick up truck and went off-roading through a briar patch. not in a good way. i would start the whole 'i'm so sick of every remix sounding like justice' schtick, but it was used later in mixes i liked. cute little 'disco villains' drop at the 4:00 mark though.

On/Off (The Noizy Kidz Daft Zapping Remix)

of course this is the obvious hard track to do because all you have to work with is 19 seconds of someone flipping through channels; you've pretty much have to create something from scratch. i wish the noizy kidz would have thought about what on/off means to the original album, because this mix doesn't fit in with the idea of the project, and it just ends up sounding like rehashes of other daft punk remixes (diplo's work it and soulwax's oh yeah come to mind). incorporating various dp samples is a good idea (even if i wish robot rock weren't one of them), but maybe they could have broken them up as if the listeners were scrolling through radio stations or something relevant to the album.

the okay:

Robot Rock (Immuzikation Remix)

pretty straightforward remix. sounds like 90% of the other ones that have been done. cutting up the vocal sample underneath the main power chords was a good idea, as was whatever that 80s sample was before the 2:00 mark. i wish someone would do a mix that wasn't an offering to the gods of distorted guitars.

Make Love (Chew Fu & Substantial Small Room Sax Fix)

everytime i listen to this it just reminds me of a mixtape track some rapper would put out. i warmed up to substantial's voice a little bit after listening to it a couple times, but i feel like his vocals are way too far up in the mix; it's very disconnecting. and while somebody might say oh he's got a nice flow, have you listened to how generic his lyrics are?? i do really love the saxophone addition, but what's with that weird blowing sound it sounds like whoever was playing the instrument was using a reed that had just been put through a coffee grinder haha.

Television Rules The Nation (Dirty Disco Youth Remix)

i'm digging this one. the jangling drums work really well here, and i think it was a good choice to seque the motorcyle revving synths into that ubiquitious monster riff. fairly basic mix, but effective.

the better:

Technologic (Kids At The Bar Remix)

the first thing i said when i heard the opening was 'crank that!' haha but this got pretty good. i felt like the synth sounds they were using were fairly run of the mill, but they did a good job with them.

Emotion (Werewolf by Night Remix)

okay, ya think dude was obsessing over ryan leslie when he made this???? please listen to valentine and then listen to the beginning of emotion. then everyone that hates on ryan leslie but digs this song can read my blog post about what a great producer ryan leslie is and they can thank me for putting them on to him haha. the vocals were really low in this mix, anybody else think? i liked this one alot though, almost made the last category.

the cream of the crop:

The Prime Time Of Your Life (Tits & Clits Remix)

what a great name. it must be something about prime time, because that para one remix off the japan bonus disc was straight fire, and so is this one. i think having this right next to the disco villains mix shows that you can bite major elements of justice's remix style (slappa da bass mon), but one sounds like crap and one sounds really dope. the two faux fadeouts were killer duuuuude.

Steam Machine (The Company Kang Remix)

this one is fantastic, mostly because that keyboard line, but also because i think the song utilizes and expands upon the original's fortes, a point i made in my previous posts, turning the song into a slow burning dancefloor anthem. that chord progression is siiick.

The Brainwasher (Melee Beats Remix)

it's funny, because steam machine and brainwasher were probably my least favorite tracks off human after all. i've never heard of company kang and melee beats before, but i've got to tip my hat off to them, because they've constructed great dancefloor material. the great thing about brainwasher is how the producer flips the guitar riff in the original into a funky little piano lick.

those are my thoughts. as far as nitpicking goes, there are a couple of times where the transition between songs is abrubtly jarring; adding another beat of silence here and there would have worked together towards making a more cohesive listening of the album.

i have to say though, this is such a cool idea. i hope no one reading this takes my critique as a diss towards the project. rather, it's a compliment (not to mention i'm a little envious that i know i'm not yet good enough to be a part of the remixing) that i'm enamored enough with the idea to really give it my full attention, something i hope the rest of the internet does. it'd be cool if this got substantial attention, i haven't seen it (yet) on any of the major sites. i read something about somebody suggesting tackling discovery next, but i'm not sure i'd be so keen about that. you do too much of a cool thing and it just becomes generic and expected. plus the quality of the remixes is going to decrease as the demand for more albums increases. human after all is such a perfect album for a project like this; discovery most definitely is not. take your time and really think about another album that would be worthy/benefit from this kind of treatment.

click here to download Remix After All

click here to visit The Lemur Blog, where you can get more info on the project and links to the other blog sites

also, for anyone noticing, the remix cd is almost exactly a minute longer than the original. eerie coincidence?

humix after all: part one

i'm ashamed to say i was a little late on this really fucking cool project that's been slowly molding into blogosphere fruition. thank god i figured everything out last night, because it came out a couple of hours ago. any later in updating you and it would have been mortifying.

so a couple (10) blogs out there got together and decided, being the great middlemen they are, to produce (in the traditional sense) a recreation of daft's punk third opus, human after all, which to many people fell a teeny bit short of expectations, and the accompanying remix disc, which many people felt plummeted to its death.

granted, they set the bar pretty high with the one-two punch of homework and discovery, especially since they just went and coverted a bunch of top 40 listeners with one more time. they then, as one review put it, "hit the self-destruct button," releasing nine new songs and one channel-surfing interlude that were minimal to the point of demo-quality, and sounded like disco samples filtered through the garbage disposal in your kitchen sink.

while that last sentence might incline you to believe i'm not a huge fan of the album, don't be mistaken. of course i, probably like most every other daft punk fan out there, wrestled with an inner tantrum for a while, feeling like i was somehow the butt of a very inside joke. but over time i eventually accepted the album for what it is, and came to enjoy (maybe the right word is appreciate) it very much, despite the fact that it is NOT the lot of things that everyone wanted it to be.

what the alive 2007 tour illustrated was how strong the album's ideas were. mashed-up against cresendolls and sped up a bit, television rules the nation is pure stadium status. throw the rollin & scratchin drums under prime time of your life, and watch out cuz your face might melt off. steam machine literally drips sweat globules down your face when around the world is filtered up underneath it.

but it took a little while for a lot of us to understand those dynamics, and the remix disc daft punk included with the japan release of the album didn't help. there were a few solid tracks, like erol arlkan's take on the brainwasher and parts of the digitalism (ironically the ones that didn't feature any part of the original song) remix were really dope. and daft punk themselves were so pleased with para one's reimagining of prime time that they incorporated it into the encore for their tour. but only the latter really utilized the strengths of the original recording, and with an album as (dare i say) misunderstood as human after all, you would hope that a remix album would leave the listener wanting to go back and give the original album another spin. also, someone really should have been shot for including that peaches track.

anyways, now that i'm done ranting, back to my original point, which is that 10 blogs out there each chose a track off human after all, and then contracted the track out to (presumably) one of the production acts that the blog has had a big hand in breaking. the result is remix after all, and i was originally going to throw in my two cents on the results, but i've already written quite a bit and have therefore decided to turn this post into a two-parter. if you simply can't wait until tomorrow, google will surely point you in the right direction and you can make up your own mind.

some highlights from the original remix album:

Daft Punk - The Prime Time of Your Life (Para One Remix)

Daft Punk - The Brainwasher (Erol Arlkan's Horrorhouse Dub)

Daft Punk - Technologic (Digitalism's Highway to Paris Remix)

"alright you little sexpot"

that's what elise just told as i was grooving to the tunes i've picked for tonight's post; it must mean i'm on to something good.

sorry about the last couple posts skimping on the text and such. the gf suggested to me a week or so ago that i should do a post with my top ten songs of all time. i'm not sure if i'm ready to make a commitment like that (narrowing my favorites down is just such a daunting task!) but a "top ten of ____ greats" sounds like it would be something right up my alley.

so, without further ado, here are TEN SONGS WITH SOME HELLA HARD DRUMMIN, homie.

(in no particular order)

Led Zeppelin - When the Levees Break

not even the beastie boys really did this break justice when they opened their first album, licensed to ill (originally to be titled 'don't be a faggot', i kid you not) with it. the great blues sliding riff is killer as well. these are some hella hard drums, homie.

Joe Cocker - Woman to Woman

i think josh homme of queens of the stone age was talking about this song being hella hard in some interview a couple years ago, and he mentioned that the drums here are pretty much the basis for dr. dre's drum programming career lately. i think dre borrowed a little more than the drums, but for the life of me i can't realize which song he sampled it for... hmm... 

The Cool Kids - What Up Man

i can't believe that this hadn't been done already (to my knowledge). old school hip hop drumming is always referred to as "boom bap", but it took a long time for someone to take that phrase quite literally. boom. clap. bass.

The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows

Ringo Starr always get a bum rep for being a shitty drummer that got really lucky. i always took that for gospel until i started really listening to the fab four. this doesn't exemplify anything techincally proficient or anything, but the song that launched the psychedelic phase of 'the greatest band there probably ever will be' probably wouldn't be half as great without ringo's little stutter number.

Air - Remember

this song hit me in the face when i first listened to moon safari, probably because the drumming alone turns the vocodorama into something completely different than any other song on their otherwise chill pill of a debut. wait for my eyes to roll when kid cudi or drake (or kanye for that matter) realizes this as well and snatches it for some mixtape. hella hard and smooth like silk at the same time.

Daft Punk - Rollin' & Scratchin'

i can't say enough good things about this track. when i first bought homework (we're talking back in high school) i couldn't stand this song. its just some annoying high pitched squeal that goes on for like eight minutes. it took a long time to realize it's absolute genius. without rollin and scratchin, there would be no justice, or electro-bangers or anything. i'd put this up against slayer for degrees of metal brutality any day of the week. the premise is incredibly simple, yet at the same time so perfectly executed. sure, the pitch-altered metallic synth growls and shrieks its way into climax heaven, but its the drums that turn the party level from 3 to an 11, and all that enters at that one point is a goddamn hi-hat. dp do fantastic things with this song live (obviously), but probably the best version i've found is off alive 1997 (it's a 45 minute single file, too long to post here), where they throw in some bass drum rolls to add a little swing to this beast's stomp. how can something so abrasive be so fucking danceable at the same time?

Schoolly-D - PSK

they say schooly-d invented gangsta rap. i guess psk stands for parkside killers, which sounds like a crew i wouldn't want to run into doing my jazzercise routines down the sidewalk late at night (sometimes there's no other time in my busy schedule). that doesn't impress me, but what does is the little bird who told me dude recorded this whole song in one take. that's vocals and beats, while operating the drum machine manually at the same time as kickin his little raps. oh yeah, and biggie does a great tribute to this on life after death's disc one.

The Honey Drippers - Impeach The President

i hadta include a classic break break in this list somewhere, and this is none more hella hard than impeach the president. it's the claussen pickle of old soul breaks: cold, crisp and delicious. and if you know me, you know claussen's the only brand i'll stand for.

Spoon - Paper Tiger

again, sometimes its not the level of difficulty or studio tomfoolery that makes or breaks a hella hard drum, but just a great idea done perfectly. the idea here is to waste nothing. every element has its role and adds something completely different to the mix: the reverb bass drum, the stuttering/phasedthephuckout tom tom, the steady rim shot. whoda thunk a couple dudes from austin even knew what hella hard meant?

Blur - Song 2

i had to include this one, mostly for personal reasons. growing up in the school band playing the lame ass (or so i thought at the time) trumpet, i was nearly salivating with envy at the drum section (who, for the most part, only played their stupid snares or bass, which made them even lamer than me). but this one kid would always sneak onto the little kit in the music room when our teacher wasn't looking, and he would always hammer out the opening drum pattern to song 2, which if you remember was like the end all be all for sixth graders in the mid to late 90s. and yeah, it still does kick groovy.

and before anyone mentions it (all because of that goddamn movie trailer), the drums at the end of 'in the air tonight' are too hard to include in this list, since they would undoubtedly put everyone else to shame. i think there should be some sort of musical drug testing committee, because phil had to have injected his snare drums with steroids or something. it's just not humanly possible otherwise.

six degrees of hear mars

everybody knows the 'six degrees of kevin bacon' game, but i bet no one reading this blog is nerdy enough to have wiki-ed it. it's really fascinating stuff: the highest finite Bacon Number (the number of degrees of separation between bacon and an actor or actress) is 8, and only 12% of actors or actress, dead or alive, cannot be linked to him at all.

big deal kevin bacon. inspired by a recent email from a devoted follower of this hear blog (which among other things pointed out that the ending of the vid i made for under the bridge was cliche) i am declaring myself more 'in the know' than bacon-n-bits.

examples?

my friend jelly's mom almost went on a date with tom petty when she was 13.

tom petty's Hear Mars Number: 3

i went to high school with the son of Foreigner's bassist

degrees separating me from being cold as ice: 3

my english amigo becs' friend is cousins with 'one of those guys from daft punk'

one of those guy's from daft punk (please let it be thomas!)'s HMN: 3

i went ice skating on the same rink as kevin bacon when i was in elementary school

bacon, the ball's in your court you smug bastard

additional note: went to five guys burgers and fries today. every other fast food chain in the universe, your move.

damn my life on rural mars!

i don't usually post more than once per day, or post recycled news that just about every blog on the planet is writing about, but this is breaking news, people.

thomas bangalter, considered at near-deity status here on the red planet, half of masked duo daft punk, oh just showed up at ex-manager busy p's birthday party to spin three songs behind the wheels of steel. no big deal. actually, i'm squealing like a little girl that just met the backstreet boys over here.

oh yeah and he's wearing a fresh nike sleeveless (when was the last time i called a sleeveless tee fresh?????) and what looks a lot a lot like the sunglasses i recently purchased, which have mysteriously gone missing..... he played some songs i've never heard of, something called rollin' and scratchin' (ahhh like my like FAV dp track), signature (!!!!!!!!!!!!) and a prince ditty, raspberry beret (!!.... well okay its not the prince song i'm most aquainted with but it certainly has wtf factor... how did he possibly mix signature into that?).

and of course the videos documenting this have been removed at the assumed request of busy p. before i had a chance to watch them. thomas, if you're reading this, i want my shades back.

i've got this really hard to reach itch on my back...

it really doesn't get any more fantastic than this. if there was ever a fool-proof case for the artistic use of someone else's music, you're looking at it. or listening to it.

the sample is nestled in george benson's jazz number the world is a ghetto. the audio clip bangalter (the half of daft punk with a better grasp of english) cuts up can't be more than two seconds long, tops.

which makes the entire song an exercise in creativity. based on the two seconds of music he has to work with, i've counted 10 distinct melodies and countless minor variations and fills. not to mention the fact that one melody can sound completely different depending on the drum pattern on top of it.

sampling guitar licks is really hard for me. they all end up sounding really flat and generically twangy, and i'm not sure i've ever put something together that had a guitar in it (and wasn't a lazy sunday 12 second straight loop) that was anything less than cringe-worthy.

spinal scratch is really nerd heaven. square's paradise. a little nugget of ambrosia for those socially inept enough to actually listen to the whole song counting each melody change.

on the sixth day thomas bangalter created spinal scratch. and on the seventh he rested.

Thomas Bangalter - Spinal Scratch

George Benson - The World Is a Ghetto

some shit to chew on, not literally

firstly, my sincere apologizes for yesterday's post. from the picture to the mp3, it really just wasn't up to snuff, and this blog's standards committee should have never let that one slip between the five hole.

so since i'm working on new music currently (that's right, something i actually like, since in the last month i've abandoned work on another love lockdown remix and a remix of boom boom pow, which is a great acapella and a pretty shitty song), i'm going to try something different out. i want to try to stay away from just posting whatever music is brand new; every other music blog on the planet does that and it's a little too much like whoring yourself out for site traffic for my tastes.

2000F & J Kamata - You Don't Know What Love Is

this is fairly new, and like everyone else on the internet i owe diplo credit for putting me onto this. it sounds like a hybrid between southern hip hop, a cheap horror movie soundtrack, what's love got to do with it and anything by zapp & roger. but good lord what a terrible name.

The Notorious B.I.G. - I Got a Story to Tell

there are so many totally tubular (tmnt!) songs on life after death it would be pretty hard to play favorites, but this has got to one of them. in the history of music, what other song tells the exact same story twice, in a row, and you still have to listen to it the second time?

"musta been rained out or something" lol

Thomas Bangalter - Club Soda

this has to be the ultimate french touch track. the first song i'm going to play when i have my first real dj gig (yo kids doesn't count) is this with the in da club acapella over it. while i haven't actually tested it out yet, i mean, come on. you'd dance.

oh yeah, new sweatshirt, check it ouuuttt. (not in these colors)

the washboard

this is a track i did maybe a year and a half ago. somebody told me it reminded them of crydamoure. guy-man, check out the filter! hit me up!!!

this time i remembered the sample. got it from ultimate breaks and beats vol. 1. sometimes when i'm lookin for tracks to load into recycle i skip the really well-known samples, but i bet nobody thought to flip indiscreet like this.

the sample:

D.C. LaRue - Indiscreet

what i did with it:

Hear Mars - The Washboard