Sanguine Soul: Transformations

I'm happy to announce that our radio program is no longer limited to the signifier of a day of the week. Sanguine Sunday has transformed into Sanguine Soul. We got a new web page in the works, and Honey Knucks has been working on a logo for 9 months now, so we'll see where that's going. Until then, enjoy our slightly confusing wordpress, we still got some mad decent content. We push the "transformations" episode in a time of political upheavel (Iran, Honduras), en memorium of the king of pop, and in the midst of all that, a more exacted conceptual orientation for our show, and a conversation with Khingz's about his debut solo LP, quite of the transformative variety, "From Spaceships to Slaveships."

Fresh Artistry: Karriem Riggins Expands Jazz, Informs Hip-hop

On Wednesday I dropped by the historic Oakland Yoshi's venue for the first time to peep Karriem Riggins introduce his new quintet and blend some mad decent jazzified hiphop with Pete Rock. A veritable young lion in the jazz world and a much sought after beat conductor on the rise in the hiphop world, Riggins is displaying some impressive talent and unique skill for crossing the two monstrous genres.

If you want to get some background, I wrote a brief article on Riggins for the SFBG. Rachel Swan at the East Bay Express layed down some more details about his life and work.

I recommend peeping his Hella International mix. Madlib, J-Rocc, and seemingly Riggins as well have been pushing a style of looping jazz beats, cutting them in and out in a fragmented blunted funk aesthetic.

Listen: Karriem Riggins Live at Hella International - Stones Throw

You can also cop his fresh, and ridiculously impressive mix-tape, featuring original production, remixes, and jazz loops, Kaleidoscope. Expect a debut CD soon, whether it will be the Karriem Riggins Quintet or a full length of the Jahari Massamba Unit, we'll have to wait and see.

Album Review: Nickodemus' Sun People

My editor at the Guardian just passed me the new Nickodemus record, Sun People, for a review. I'm usually hesitant of world music despite my absolute love for all sorts of outernational sounds, from Mulatu Atstatke to Turkish psych and Brazillian bossa nova. You just never know whether the producer will pull off a uniquely multiculturally inspired sound, or just reap the benefits of marketing to the crassly cultured NPR audience who fiend for the next opportunity to bust stagnant salsa moves on the next fundraiser galla dance floor. Nickodemus is far beyond this cheese. Dude makes an excellent brand of uplifting, groove heavy music.

Live Review: Erykah Badu Gets Out of Her Mind

In anticipation of releasing her brilliant sound odyssey, New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War (Universal Motown, 2008), Erykah Badu, a.k.a. “Analogue Girl in A Digital World,” a.k.a. “Fat Belly Bella,” a.k.a. “Low Down Loretta Brown,” clarified her artistic objectives on an Okayplayer form. Posting as analoguegirl, Badu affirmed, “As much as I would love to be just a recording artist, I am not. There’s a difference. I am a performance artist first; there’s a difference.” Having the chance to see Badu perform live at the Warfield June 6, I could not agree more with her distinction.

Erykah Badu performs at L.A.'s Club Nokia June 5, 2009, the night before her San Francisco gig. Photo by Beth Stirnaman via LA Record.

Dressed in a mystical mauve kimono, golden skull cap, and gem encrusted space goggles, Badu strutted onstage in profile, tracing her steps forward like a celestial, hieroglyph narrative. A cinematic whirling rainstorm of bleeps and lasers and synth bubbling keys reverberated in the background, aspiring to transport the audience to the far reaches. This intergalactic resonance would remain the most consistent frequency throughout the performance; each transition of song and style marked by its cosmic joy of noise. Badu’s enigmatic presence recalled Sun Ra’s theatrical myth making, framed by an open ended aesthetic in Egyptology and a surreal space age, radicalized belief in the power of music to free the soul from its rusty, earthly shackles.

But this outlandish and historically rooted ethos did not restrain Badu’s emphasis on the contemporary. The high priestess of hip-hop soul incorporated the gods of our musical past into the urgency of the now. The tensions of old and new styles and sounds continuously pressed against each other throughout the remarkable performance.

Sometimes the antagonisms felt dramatically sharp. To introduce the set before Badu entered stage, her solid boogie funk outfit played a couple of the original tracks sampled in the production of 4th World War. The tribute to these musical foundations was contrasted by the DJ dropping Lil Wayne’s gutter poetry banger, “A Milli,” a wild song that encapsulates the sonic zeitgeist of the youngest generation of hip-hop heads. At other times Badu chose -- in a smoother fashion -- to synthesize contrasting musical elements with her own highly original, personal touch. Armed with a vigorous back catalog, Badu redefined some of classic soul grooves like “On and On” and “Didn’t Cha’ Know” in accordance to 4th World War’s coarsely textured and somewhat dissonant sonic landscape. While crooning her smoked-out throwback joint, “Back in the Day”, Badu cut in and out of the song to channel her muses, tracing the aggressive and playful soundscapes of Ice Cube and Slick Rick to feel good soul jams and real old school bluesy ballads. At one moment Badu reinvigorated her moniker, jazz scatting to sing the cosmic electronic keys in Afrika Bambaata’s “Looking For The Perfect Beat” all while reproducing the unforgettable bass line on the drum machine. To arrange such a complex performance -- seamlessly referencing and remixing musical history in a compellingly contemporary style -- Badu succeeded in translating and expanding the formal aesthetic of the hip-hop DJ into the art of the composer-singer. I’m not even overstating it.

While unraveling the many historical layers behind her sound, Badu slowly unburdened herself of wardrobe layers. Each shedding of an item enabled one of the many schizophrenic characters which make up the complicated being of Erykah Badu to manifest. The initial, arkestral space creature transformed into a golden headed free flowing being, and for the second act, Badu changed garb completely into a simple red summer dress. She whisked around the stage like a funkified ballerina, singing from her younger-aged repertoire of intimate coming-of-age joints. Shining the spotlight on her own personal struggles, Badu showed us the conflicted trajectory which led her to the apotheosis of her new mythological project articulated most transparently in “Healer,” the cyphered song marking the opening and closure of the first act. In “Healer,” Badu refines her musical vision, declaring a mysteriously therapeutic and transcendental power of hip-hop as more expansive than religious or governmental entities. The meaning behind this notion of spiritualized hip-hop is left vague, but there might be a clue in Badu’s closing actions. The sorceress sips her tea and implores the crowd, “Get out of your mind!” Badu is certainly out of her own.

This article was co-published on SFBG.

Sanguine Sunday - Global Rhythms

Last Fall I traveled through Eastern Europe and made it to the frontier of the Occidental world in the great city of Istanbul. The city is actually built partially on the European continent and partially on Asia; the Bosporous bridges actually bridge the two continents. Istanbul once was Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine / Eastern Roman empire, and before that served as cross sectioned portal between the eastern and western worlds.

What very few people over here in California know is that Istanbul has an extremely rich musical history, informed by a global sensibility just as much as the people and city are. What emerges from this heritage is a uniquely provocative and cosmopolitan sound, blending many soulful and bass heavy styles from around the world with a backbone in Sufi mysticism and Turkish percussion. I found a great record label during my stay by the name of Doublemoon Records. They do an excellent job detailing their musical objectives.

Over the past 10 years, in synergy with three sister companies, Doublemoon has succeeded in nurturing a roster of promising talent into internationally recognized artists. Ranging from Sufi-electronica to groove alla turca, from jazz to gypsy funk, from oriental hip hop to Anatolian blues the musical gems that emerge from recording sessions are documented and recorded by Doublemoon. As such, Doublemoon Records is the sole platform for musicians with an amorphous ethnic identity to come together to create, collaborate, and communicate through the universal language of music.

Listen to a taste of this sound in our Sanguine Sunday Radio "Global Rhythms" set. Also, we're putting up a poll to vote for a new name on Wednesday, so please give us your input!

Party Crimes : Pilooski's Black Hole Drums

Did you miss the Donuts Party last Saturday night featuring the dirty disco edit wizard Pilooski? The French based deejay made his only West Coast appearance--clouded in the spring fog of San Francisco and smoke machines of 103 Harriet's handsome basement gutter--for a night of cosmic travelin and blapping disco percussion. So if you did sleep on dude on the local tip, then unless you travel to / live in Europe, it might be a minute til he drops in on our wavelength again. My solution: go comb through the internet waves to enjoy some of them flipped inside out, baring the internal flesh like a dog's stanky horse food tooth, jams.

Pilooski gained fitting acclaim on the blogosphere and in underground jams the world over for his grainy cosmic edits of disco classics and surprising choices from the ranks of Elvis and Franki Valli. After releasing Dirty Space Disco in 2007, the beat conducta released a series of 12 inches off the deep crate digging label, Dirty Sound System. The collective just finished sifting through the nebulous depths of France's psychedelic grooves for a new volume of dank mind expansion.

If you're unfamiliar with Pilooski, I wrote a Sound Lesson on him a year ago. There might be some free shit still linked to it.

On a side note: I was more impressed with opener Derrick Love's galactic gamma-ray picks. Lucky enough for us locals, he spins the far out disco jams that give the genre a bold ass name at the monthly shaker Gemini Disco.