Sanguine Sunday - (Recession Soul) - ep. 2

Ya' it's that time of the year, one brisk San Francisco morning after winter solstice, the days are just about to get longer but not much brighter. In tune for the Holiday season in the midst of thin wallets and heavy eyelids, Sanguine Sunday mixes up some of what we like to call recession soul. Bringing you that uplifting flavor from the hustle to the bounce, some of those I need monay type of jams, and even the more contemplative what the hell is goin' on with our economy ballads--recession soul covers all it takes to overcome the despair of dusty pockets.

In the spirit of such hard times, Aisha interviews Rayan on the grind, a struggling San Francisco renter and resident of Moss Street about the merits and craft of couch surfing. Meanwhile Zeno mangles 2 for 40 dollar buttered up lobster dinners. Keep on listening for a surprise battle between man and crusty sea beast; shit is sinister.

And Happy Holidays everyone! Moss Street's Sanguine Sunday will see you again in 2009!

LISTEN

Intro
Souls of Mischief - 93 Til' Infinity (inst.)

DJ Zeno
Slum Village - Reunion
Black Milk - Bounce
James Brown - Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing (remix)
Pilooski - Can't There be Love
De La Soul - Say No Go
James Pants - We're Through
Jesse Johnson - Can You Help Me
Brothers Johnson - Ain't We Funkin' Now
Slave - Slide
Bernard Wright - Spinnin'
Con Funk Shun - Got to be Enough
DJ Quik - Tear it Off
Roland Appel - Dark Soldier

Honey Knuckles
(Talk) Eddie Kendricks - My People...Hold On
The O'Jays - For The Love of Money
Laura Lee - Crumbs off the Table
Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd St Band - What Can You Bring Me?
Joseph Henry - I've Never Found a Girl
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?
Sound Experience - Devil With the Bust
Breakstra - Getcho Soul Togetha (Part 2)
Brick - Dazz
Carl Carlton - She's a Bad Mama Jama
Lyn Collins - Mama Feelgood
Fatback Band - Backstrokin'
Lakeside - Fantastic Voyage
Jackson Sisters - I Believe in Miracles
Earth Wind and Fire - Brazilian Rhyme
Patrice Rushen - Forget Me Nots
Herbie Hancock - Wiggle Waggle
Johnny Pate - Shaft in Africa
(Talk) Barry White - I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little Bit More Baby
(Talk) Gary Bartz - I've Known Rivers
(Lobster Dinner Freestyle Battle) Edan - Sing it Shitface Instrmental

Endnote: Zeno AKA Krimpnasty is looking for a stable moniker. Suggestions appreciated.

Sanguine Sundays

What up blog world. I have been taken a hiatus to get my soul together, but I just felt a pinpoint abyss in my swelling heart without updating this little virtual grab bag of my life. And all the personalities that fit into that, big ups Granny Wesson and Cyrus the Humble. Oh ya, Granny's been holding it down on her new music blog teamed up with Def1, the keskejecoute headmasta. It's on the come up.

Anyway, in the past few months a new persona by the name of Zeno AKA Krimpnasty has been added on to the mix of my schizophrenic psyche. The dynamics of this antogonistic sideplate has not been synthesized in any harmonious way yet. Big ups to D-Rock AKA the illustrious Honey Knuckles, that smooth operator, I have been translating my music interests into the chopped and screwed ways of djing.

So we developed this little concept of an online radio show, eventually a podcast, and perhaps on the distant horizon something more ambitious. We call it Sanguine Sundays--props to Aisha for that sinster double S moniker--and we hope to introduce you to the music we are listening to, the way we listen to it, and the way we scrape it all up each and every Sunday afternoon. Expect the deep monster funk, word power Hiphop, soulclap breaks, fuzzed out psych, throw back soul, new wave, boogie, electro, sprinkled with some rock and let's call everything else incognito.

The first episode is blazingly titled Moss Street Meats. Enjoy.

12-14-08 - As we approach the end of 2008, the Moss Street family decides to do a little bit of winter cleaning of the freezer. Items included a bag labeled "meat", kosher chicken that was once resurrected from the trash can, and mystery Filipino meat from our early 2008 excursion to Manilla Oriental Market. Memorable quote of the evening: "Does this meat have cheese in it?" "No."

playlist :

Intro
Talkin' All That Jazz (remix)

Honey Knucks
Cutie Pie - One Way
Paperboy - Ditty
Soul 2 Soul - Back to Life
Salt N' Peppa - Shoop
Jamiroquai - Virtual Insanity
Black Street - No Diggity
Paula Abdul - Straight Up
David Banner - Play
Santogold - You'll Find a Way (Switch remix)
Marshena Shaw - California Soul (Mad Decent edit)
Latyrx - Lady Don't Tek No
Eric B. & Rakim - Paid in Full
Tribe Called Quest - Scenario
Beastie Boys - Shadrach
Dizzee Rascal - Fix Up Look Sharp
Red Astaire - Love to Angie
Sir Joe Quartermain And Free Soul - So Much Trouble
Bar-Kays - Soulfinger
James Brown - Get Up

James Brown - Honky Tonk Popcorn Part II (talk over)
James Brown - Funky Drummer (edit)

Zeno

Nas - Queens Get the Money
Big Beat - Billy Squier
Slum Village - Do You
Del tha Funky Homosapien - Dr. Bombay
Ultramagnetic MCs - Ease Back
The Jaz - To Your Soul
Divine Styler - Ain't Sayin' Nothin'
Bar-Kays - Hit and Run
De La Soul - Me Myself and I
Jungle Brothers - Doin' our own Dang' (JB's mix)
Main Source - He Got So Much Soul
Marie Franklin - Bad Woman
Big Daddy Kane - Warm it Up Kane
Coldcut - Fat (Party and Bullshit)
Notorious B.I.G. - Party and Bullshit
Madvillain - Monkey Suite
Outkast - Wheelz of Steel

Outro
J Dilla - Donuts

Art Corridors Part 2: Balmy Alley

Granny Wesson's last angry brilliant post on Bluxome Alley got me thinking about the history of public art in San Francisco. In asking myself where it all began I posed a question demanding more research than I ever imagined. So, I specified the question a tiny bit, where and when did the alleys decorated top to bottom with murals originate?


And that takes me to the Mission District's infamous Balmy Alley. Intricately decorated and broadly diverse, the murals reflect the numerous perspectives that make up the neighborhood's rich Latino heritage and new contingency. However, the images do not always find easy peace with each other. Paintings often bleed into contiguous murals, blurring the lines where one ends and another begins, and even confronting one another. Look carefully and you might find remnants of murals from the past -- disappearing ever so slowly with a fight -- flitting in the corners of walls or under chipped wood fences.

The humble origins of Balmy Alley date back to the early 70's, coinciding with the same period that graffiti began to take over New York's subway lines. The first mural was organized by Mia Gonzalez under the tutelage of Susan Cervantes and Carlos Loarca. Youth from the "24th Street Place" program designed the mural, and together with people from the community, painted it during the Mission's first mural painting community event.


In the 1980's Balmy Alley evolved under the direction of Ray Patlan and Patricia Rodriguez. Hoping to call attention to the atrocities and injustices in Central America, Patlan and In 84, Rodriguez helped organized the painting of over 26 murals informed by the theme of "Peace in Central America". Balmy Alley thereby took on a particular political flavor. The walls were coated with direct political messages, expressions of rage, hopeful calls for unity, and personal narratives. It was during this period that Balmy Alley gained worldwide fame (and to this day, you might notice a lot of tourists cruising though the corridor.)


Ever changing and shifting with the community's own development, Balmy Alley now possesses a soothing but vibrant character. New murals appear as weather rains down on garage doors and old wooden posts crumble away piece by piece. The many flower bushes and trees that align the Alley's winding red brick road marks the corridor off from other alleys situated in warehouse districts or along hard cement pavement. It's rare to see mural art in an alley juxtaposed with the greenery, or that nature so well integrated into a somewhat unforgiving urban environment. But Balmy Alleys offers just those anomalies and surprises, if you take the time to look.








Flickr archive coming at the end of the month!!

Art Corridors Part 1: Bluxome Alley

What beats standing in line for an hour at the SFMOMA to see an incredible collection of works by Frida Kahlo - and then waiting in another line that winds up the four levels of stairs before you can view any of the paintings?


And then squirming through a cluster jam of dribbling faced, snot-nose drenched denizens and gawking tourists who pinball bump their way around because they're listening to a guide tour that soundblasts their ears so they can't hear you, and they already weren't looking because they're walking all over the place with their eyes, and that damn audio guide filters their aesthetic experience with average facts about exceptional things, and it just makes you a little depressed and somewhat angry and horribly frustrated with the idiotic experience of moving about through a museum that makes such a fuss about trying to be a dry, sacred place? But then you forget about all that because good god James Brown, those paintings are fucking amazing.

Anyway, what beats it? Well it's probably worth it, but for a change of viewing pace, how about walking through one of the many mural alleys that serve as public art corridors through sun or moon, rain or shine, broken glass or sewage waste? San Francisco has a long history of mural art dating further back than Diego Rivera's famous paintings in the 1930's, and many official muralists or wraith-like graffiti artists continue the legacy to this day.

While many city dwellers are familiar with the Mission art corridors--the likes of Clarion Alley's vibrant path negotiating Mission streetlife and Valencia boutique etiquette, or nearby Balmy Alley's themes on indigenous self-determination and revolution--the SOMA district boasts its own public graffiti wall in the form of a two part Bluxome Alley.

The walls, warehouse windows, pipes, poles, air ducts, staircase banisters, and all other unidentified objects of industrial infrastructure act as canvases for Bluxome's alleys graffiti art. Colorful names stretch across a dingy background wall space of pale tan tone. The letters form complex geometric shapes and sometimes integrate faces into its composition; winding, swiveling, screeching, and bubbling into the third dimension.

Bluxome St. lies within the developer dream neighborhood, Mission Bay, parallel to Townsend and passing through 6th and 5th streets. The tiny two part alleys cross perpendicular to 125 and 145 Bluxome. Enjoy a pleasant day admiring the rising of catastrophic condominium buildings aligning the highway entrance and the concrete lined corridor of beautiful image poems (you know, graffiti). Bask in the absurd clashing of contemporary urban lifestyles right in the thick of it! The threshold lingers on.

And before you let those markers loose, peep the rules, son. However you want to take them.






View the entire flickr set here.

The Spotless Mind Raps of Jay Electronica

If you take a minute to cruise the hiphoposphere, in all its virtual glory, or on the concrete streets, in your favorite dusty record store, or all up in the ink spilled magazines, then you might have heard about this new, Jay Electronica. And I'm not just posting abut him because I can't stop talking about musicians influenced by movies.


There is no doubt that Jay Electronica is breaking down barriers. Trying to define his style leads to a refreshing enigma. He came up in New Orleans but lived all over the country and lost the accent. He flows supremely over clashing Dilla beats but sounds at the top of his game on his own melodic production void of any drum breaks. He spits slick rhymes concocting mystical images of spiritual understanding and at the same time rips bubble gum rappers into atoms without effort.

If you don't believe me, before copping the mixtape which will introduce you to the music--What the F*ck is a Jay Electronica--just listen to "the Pledge." Jay loops the lulling melody that pervades Michel Gondry's widely influential film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), to construct an awe inspiring song. The lack of percussion sounds immediately fresh in a music game ridden with computer generated drum snares and overly produced rhythms. The imaginatively brooding melody repeats nervously in the distance infusing Jay's meditative reflections with a cutting potency. The song generates a feeling of uneasiness and fascination, a dangerous balancing act between hope and desolation.


In the longer version of the song Jay interslices the track with sample vocal cuts from other films, primarily the classic Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, directed by Mel Stuart in 1971. The sonic samples from the film draw the listener in through a nostalgiac attraction to a film that partially shaped the imagination of many American childhoods and a novel wonder produced by the strange context we're hearing it in. The vocals also act as chapter marks in a largely epic song taking on the length of about eight minutes, giving the listener a much needed moment to reflect.

If you're going to Rock the Bells then you will also be seeing Jay Electronica. Give me the word on it! A full length album is due out by the end of the year.

The Sound Image: Quasimoto's "Come on Feet"

Despite my pathologic habit of initiating a concept series and then never following up with a single successive post, the idea of the sound-image is too irresistible. So, a second post is in order, and what better candidate than Madlib's helium voiced alter-ego, Quasimoto, represented cordially by a florescent green puppet animal--slightly resembling a hideous faced possum--in the seminal underground release "Come on Feet". Madlib, born Otis Jackson Jr., dropped the single in 2000 on the original Quas album, "The Unseen", simultaneously rejuvenating and making a cemented name for Stonesthrow Records.

Saturated thoroughly with weed smoke and toad slimed mushrooms, Los Angeles' beat konducta par excellence Madlib ventures into the astrolands of the Hiphoposphere in his psychedelic exploration of the basic anatomical apparatus that keeps us moving around; our two feet.

Before we get to the acid trip puppet show video, let's break down some of the historical elements shaping the track's spacey quality. Giving "Come On Feet" a clamoring, other worldly feel, the running hypnotic melody cut from Alain Goraguer's psych-jazz soundtrack of Laloux's La Planete Sauvage shapes a dissonant, multi-textured soundscape. That's fitting considering Fantastic Planet is an animated epic story of a revolutionary battle between sensitive human and rational alien produced in 1973 but taking place in a temporal dimension far outside of our own. Madlib reaps crackling effects of stumbling footsteps and shadowy figures to construct a nocuous sound array that threatens to stir the most guarded corners of the listener's paranoia.

The vocal edits and samplings take their influence from another film of a more local, but equally mind bending, variety. Distorted clips chopped from Melvin Van Peeble's original 1971 blaxploitation film, Sweetback's Badasssss Song, surround Quas' raps dedicated to the prowess of his running legs. "Come on feet / cruise for me / ... Come on feet / Come on run." The listener is quickly gripped by the wrenching terror that overwhelms a fugitive escaping the authorities.

Surely inspired by the cinematic coherence between La Planete Sauvage's sound and image as well as Sweetback's song and visual landscape, Madlib pieces together the spacey liftedness with the terrestrial density of the urban jungle.

The unusual puppet animation employed (by some unknown art director) for the video of "Come on Feet" synthesizes the brooding sense of unfamiliarity and estrangement--consisting in both its airy and earthy forms--that permeates the sampled films. Sound and image lock together to produce deranged effects in the audience, most likely seated or standing still, interpolating monstrous feet as they loiter.



Just entertain your feet for a couple moments. Wiggle the toes. Slip your consciousness into the outer appendages. Imagine the inner motors of your mind beamed outwards from each protruding appendage. How monstrous and unsettling are they?


Question: Does anyone know the art director for the "Come on Feet" video?

Side note: "Feet" is a standard biblical euphemism for genitalia. Take, for example, Saint Jerome's description of a prostitute as "the harlot who opens her feet to everyone who passes by".

Pie in the Sky: Dreaming of Electric Shoes

In cities across the world electricity lines lace intricate black lined patterns across the sky, connecting disparate individuals and communities into the the global village.

Long ago, somewhere in America's city streets, some young person stared up at the electric wires, and feeling a little bit alienated, a tad curious, and overwhelmingly anxious to make a mark on the city, the starry-eyed American child tied up some dirty shoelaces and swung them over the lines.

After fifteen attempts, the laces looped over and over in a balancing act between the two weights, and the shoes finally locked in. The youngin's footprints settled into the electric pathways to gingerly sway in the summer zephyrs next to perched birds taking a moment of rest from the long days of hustling for food in the garbage packed gutters.


The critics of my romantic account might tell a more violent story about the birth of the electric shoes phenomenon. It might very well be true that young David Schulim raced hurriedly home to his Lower East Side brick behemoth home in some nasty galoshes (that original gangsta' 1910's style), where he got heisted by the neighborhood hoodlums.

It started hailing real hard, and the kids bred on American ingenuity and battle techniques, quickly churned the idea to make poor little Davey crawl through the muddy snow in his socks, forever remembering his beat downs on the way to school, as the weather torn relic of defeat dangled sadly over the block.

Urban legend and myth abound circling the meaning of the shoes that jostle just underneath the electricity lines. What does it all mean?

Seasoned historians of gangsterism reading this must be growing real upset, pointing vindictive fingers at the all too cliche stories I'm telling about the origin of electric shoes. Surely, they yell while gesticulating wildly, the first appearance of clinking kicks in the sky mark the territory of a nearby drug house. "You didn't know?!" they say with a contemptuous smirk of the lips.

The shoes hang from the wisping wires like a secret code in the hood, understood only by the locals rummaging around for the goods. When one pair rises, others tag along jealously, as the pushermen business grows and reaches a critical mass, billowing into an all out war for territory and money.


My electric shoe fanatics, I assure you that all the stories equally possess the kernel of truth, as we trace along the genealogy of the phenomenon in American history, let us remember that the beginning, no matter what it may be, never ultimately limits the haphazard development of some strange cultural practice.

No story completely holds the end all essence of electric shoes, and in fact, the meanings continue to disperse themselves into the streets. New sagas are being told by elusive neighborhood characters who play with the numerous urban signifiers that constitute our public space. Just look up occasionally and enjoy the stories being told...




1) Woodcut Bird - numerous sightings noticed in Los Angeles around 2006, slowly becoming extinct in the concrete environment. Artist: unknown.

2) Money Bags - recently spotted in Los Angeles. Quite exciting progression of the art form--maybe some motivated electric shoe artist will throw up some pie in the sky soon! Artist: unknown.

3) Above Arrows - Ubiquitous street artist, Above, became infamous a couple years back for his lyrical wordplay painted onto two sides of a woodcut arrow, often making a game of the signs and words of the urban landscape.

4) Converse Shoes - The most direct homage to electric shoes, these colorful woodcuts littered artist friendly neighborhoods throughout California several years ago. Took this photo in Balmy Alley off 24th in the Mission in 2004. Artist: unknown.

Do any of my three loyal readers know these artists? Anyone know some local contributions in Frisc Town to this growing tradition?

And then, there's this.

The Vortex Room Brings Back Cinema

While cruisin' the boulevard in my smelly kicks I sometimes indulge in that surging impulse to peer through the ubiquitous store windows that candy coat the streets, showcasing all their little treats categorically prepared just for tempting my wallet to shovel out its guts. Store after store pass, the same endless routine of clothing, furniture, liquor and food, the four basic elements of modern urban existence all fused together by the common driving force of entertainment.

My eyes jet elsewhere, flipping to the florescent signs, shifting higher towards the rooftop cornices and spiraling back down the iron fire escape that winds gently between box cut windows offering, behind drawn curtains, a scant glimpse into a lived world -- dirty dishes piled in the sink, a humming television, floating bodies moving in and out -- all in hopes of locking my eyes upon any object not for sale, concrete enough to stabilize my thoughts.

I sometimes imagine streets filled with a different kind of business, a more intimate and hospitable kind of market where purchases fade into the background of things and connections with people rise to the forefront. Alas, my dreams of purposeful capitalism driven by a little more soul aren't so ridiculous, because I assure you my readers, that I have glimpsed such possibilities!

A hidden speakeasy in the heart of the SOMA sector speaks directly to my cravings. A plain warehouse facade, once perhaps the exterior of a humble print shop, disguises the portal into a supergalactic experience within! Upon entry, the human being walks through a tiny corridor and emerges into a spiraling realm of film reel vertigo and brooding light fixtures cyphering on the walls.

Welcome to the Vortex Room, a classic speakeasy lined with black leather couches, a bar stocked with fine whiskeys, and a projector shooting the most obscure mm prints onto a screen just big enough to envelop your entire visual landscape.


The Vortex Room is managed by Cosmic Hex, an internet based preservation resource of discarded or neglected film gems, organized for member download at quite the reasonable price. These folks are the crate digging archivists of the film world, with a knack for seeking out acid trip psychedelic soundtracks, the most twisted horror plots, and the untimely cult films (C-Films) that we could baptize as a-classic.

The otherworldly atmosphere of the Vortex Room serves as a catalyst for the viewer to imaginatively fall into a full cinematic experience that glides into another dimension of sound and color.

The cinema used to be a focal point in communities from an era not so long ago, serving as a social hub for entertainment, news and education, or even spiritual restoration and elevation. The French would convert palaces into extravagant cinemas while Italians viewed them as more important than the Church (I point to Cinema Paradiso).

The Vortex Room harks back to just this sort of era where the cinematic experience inflicted a resounding sense of awe into people. Once again we journey on spaceships throughout the universe of human emotion and thought, landing on Earth again once the lights turn back on, feeling replenished and joyous with life.

Many might accuse me of absurd nostalgia or idiotic romanticism for a cinematic milieu of simpler days, but the Vortex Room agrees that a futuristic intimacy with film and people is still possible while staring wondrously at the glowing moving image.

Two films, or a series of shorts, stream every Thursday night around 9pm at 1082 Howard in between 7th and 6th. Entry for $5! Here's the calendar.

We Funk(ed) Up Frisco

I haven't been steady bloggin' lately, since the mobbin' of non-virtual life has caught me up in the hustle. Hopefully my three loyal readers don't mind too much, or else I'm just going to be writing for myself from now on.

Enough of the nonsense, let's get to the program.

While sliding through San Francisco's night life the past couple years I've become disappointed with the lack of a solid Hiphop - Funk - Soul scene that holds it down on a consistent week to week basis. Maybe I'm spoiled because Los Angeles pushes the movement hard. But most of the big name DJ's in Frisco -- you know, the ones who've apparently been in the game for a minute and paid all their dues -- seem to compromise their style by playing a stream of the jiggy club shit to an audience that shrinks in numbers each week.

While I got no problem with the bass heavy club bangers that rock the party, I'm looking for the balance in style and content that reflects the Bay's rich music history. In the end, the Hiphop heads ain't happy, the DJ's don't feel it, so what's going on?

Saturday night, Montreal's We Funk radio DJ's Professor Groove and Static proved that Baydestrians really do fiend for a nickel bag of The Funk. Packing Elbo Room's top floor like a sardine can, We Funk demonstrated the crowd pleasing legitimacy of their funky soul hustle. Static dropped the classic boom bap Hiphop leading smoothly into Professor Groove's crescendoing dirty diamond funk. They switched off every thirty minutes or so, letting the tempo rise and fall in thick cascading motions like a multi-layered sexual grind.


While spinning together for twelve years on the notorious internet radio station and doing their homework digging deep into the crates, the DJ duo developed a streamlined set of slamming jams that pulse with soul clapping percussion. The finely woven fabric of Apache-style breaks, In response, not only did the crowd soak in the music, the air conditioning rafters literally started sweating and dripped onto the dance floor's many writhing bodies. You can call that a make it rain remix.

Special shout out to ShredONE for making wefunk happen!

Be sure to scope out the We Funk radio archive of over 520 radio shows, updated bimonthly (about) with a couple new shows each time. Peep the interviews, dialogues, and mixes (with set lists) raising the peoples on Hiphop like the Wake Up Show used to. You can also listen to the weekly Friday night live streams at 2am (est).

Album Review: RZA Loses Focus w/ Digisnacks

Last winter, New York's seminal Wu-Tang Clan dropped the highly debated 8 Diagrams, marking the fifth and perhaps final chronicle in their kung fu Hiphop mythology. Powerhouse members of the Clan, primarily Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, met widespread criticism and poor album sales with fingers pointed at their musical director and spiritual leader, Robert Diggs, known to most simply as RZA.

Devoted Wu-Tang connoisseurs shrugged their shoulders at Digg's unworkable sonic explorations, hoping that a second coming of RZA's alter-ego, Bobby Digital, the futuristic street hustler sage, would vindicate the co-founder by proving the genius of his beatsmith experiments.

However, not only does Digi Snacks never venture into the unchartered psychedelic Hiphop territory of 8 Diagrams, it also fails to weave together the brooding cinematic coherency that typically marks RZA’s grime-soul production.

Digi Snacks fumbles endlessly for a sense of identity, jumping abruptly from introspective meditations on death in the slicing “Long Time Coming,” to the flailing club banger, “Straight up the Block,” that negotiates Digital’s slowed down clunking rhymes en français, hyper-speed Jay-Z vocals formed into the hook, and silly thug rants courtesy of David Banner.

The sonic environment parallels the schizophrenic lyrical content, steering wildly through spacey video game sound effects mismatched over crisp syncopated drums that only occasionally pull the flows back down to earth.

RZA pushes his idiosyncratic gritty-shaman style on a few singles, but the most notable joints lose their credibility when placed within the washed out context of the album as a whole. The hardest hitting joint on Digi Snacks, “You Can’t Stop me Now,” a soul powered epic devoted to the Wu-Tang legacy, made many (including myself) prematurely believe Diggs could rejuvenate the prowess of the Clan.

Featuring the ubiquitously sampled chant “No matter how hard you try / you can’t stop me now” from psych-soul group Whatnauts’ single, “Message From a Black Man,” RZA interweaves melodic chords of lingering bass plucks over crunchy percussive claps. Nonetheless, upon completion of listening to Digi Snacks, the championing flow of the song rings hollow, and might keep you second guessing whether it was just the sample that made Digital sound fresh in the first place.

We might give Diggs the credit that the personality disorder inflicted Bobby Digital reflects the ongoing internal battles that plague us in the digital age, as the album commences with a short introduction to the conflicted savior-gangster as a character “that struggles between the good and evil within himself.” But Digi Snacks glides on the boundaries of any spiritual synthesis, succeeding in providing the listener with only what the title offers, a haphazard assortment of decadent side dishes that not only feel gluttonous, but also leave the listener hungry for a fulfilling meal.

Here's the track list. The last song is ill (so, listen to tracks 2, 3, and 16)

01: Digi Snacks (feat. Understanding)
02: Long Time Coming (feat. Danny Keyz)
03: You Can't Stop Me Now (feat. Inspectah Deck)
04: Straight Up the Block (feat. David Banner, Beretta 9 & Monk)
05: Booby Trap (feat. Dexter Wiggles)
06: Try Ya Ya Ya (feat. Monk & Thea)
07: Good Night (feat. Reverend William Burke, Thea & Crisis)
08: No Regrets
09: Money Don't Own Me (feat. Monk, Christbearer & Stone Mecca)
10: Creep (feat. Black Knights, Christbearer & Thea)
11: Drama (feat. Monk & Thea)
12: Up Again (feat. Beretta 9, Reverend William Burke, George Clinton & El DeBarge)
13: Put Your Guns Down (feat. Startel)
14: Love is Digi Pt. II (feat. Beretta 9, Crisis & Thea)
15: O Day
16: Don't Be Afraid

Waste your time and download it.
Waste your money and buy it off koch records.

E40 Hyphifies the Apple Store

Peeped the director of traffic himself, E-Fonzarelli, causing dread shaking madness at the apple store off Powell station. While most of the Financial District soaked in happy hour by drinking dirty martinis after a hard day of work at internet start-ups gmailing their friends all day, the more intense side show baydestrians got stupid doo doo dumb in one of the world's finest technology boutiques. Weird.

The line grew a couple blocks up 4th St., making shopping bag burdened tourists from the Midwest gaze in awe and wonder for a second, but soon enough their focus returned to the thrill of buying things and so they kept on walking.


E40 Water's dexterous street hustle flow, straight outta' Vallejo while reppin' East Oakland to the fullest, filled up the sonic airwaves vibrating around pristine mac books and bouncing off white washed walls. A pummeling "Ooooooooh," the legendary bass heavy noise developed by E-40 himself, sonic boomed an elderly man down to the ground while the call and response "Baaay Areaaaaaa" reached decibel levels so high, my sources tell me, that it could be heard echoing throughout the subway tunnels.


On the real though, the environment was absurd enough for the hyphy legend to spit a somewhat lackluster twenty minute performance and still sound super nice on the mic. What does it matter when you're E-40 and you got three hundred cats making thizz faces at each other reflected so exquisitely off little shiny Ipod screens?




Be on the look for E-40's new album, The Ball Street Journal, dropping this Fall at a blog near you.

4onephonics Unleashes Boogie with Dam Funk

Over the last few years living in the Bay Area seeking out Hiphop and its multitudinous offspring, I became quickly familiar with the innovative triathlon skills of the DJ collective, 4onefunk, paying dues in the scratching, battling, and mixtape circuits. Taking their steez to the next level in 2005, DJs Teeko and Max Kane established the 4onephonics band with drummer Austin Bohlman and keyboardist Colin Brown from the Mononphonics seven piece jam band.

The group utilizes two turntables as instruments, operated by mix wizards Teeko and Max Kane, to manipulate prerecorded elements as well as synthesize spontaneous sounds with the drum machine. Bohlman carries the groove forward with a heavily syncopated percussion that soaks in the break beats while Brown's cascading keys jazz up a groovy melody. Occasionally the horns of Monophonics join forces to stretch the capabilities of the group's organic swaying music even further. The final product is a powerhouse funk group informed just as much by the heavy grooves of Tower of Power as Herbie Hancock and the Scratch Pickles.


However, last night at the Elbo Room I witnessed 4onephonics like never before. Opening a set for the newly signed Stonesthrow records breakthrough, Dam Funk, 4onephonics unleashed a side developing project that blew the roof off the sucka'. Hooked up fully with deep boogie vinyl, spacey synth heavy keys, a sliding bass thump, and even a vocoder, 4onephonics constructed a sticky, grinding atmospheric noise that filled up Elbo Room's top floor with head nodding awe and sweaty writhing.

I must have been sleepin' on it for awhile, because sure enough, 4onephonics' myspace page showcases a couple tastes of their new boogie inspired joints. The low rider anthem, "Gfunkin on the C1," cruises steady with a clapping boom bap that lets the gurgling synth pop keys sink their chords thickly into your skin. Moving towards the spacier tip, "Controller ONE take ONE" totes a pummeling drum lick, whinnied along by scratching that transforms the prerecorded vinyl into a chopped up cosmic melody that sounds almost like a futuristic saxophone that secretes sex.

There's also a touch of the live shit, where you can really hear how Teeko and Max Kane cut up unchartered tuntablist territory, making previously unheard patterns of sounds.

4onephonics opening attuned my ears to a higher boogie refinement to get down with Dam Funk. Dropping joint after joint of boogie funk bangers, Dam Funk schooled the crowd on the names of each song in the most generous way possible, sharing the love by calling out names without any sense of elitism.


Dam Funk just released his first 12'' on Stones Throw called "Burgundy City," and plans to release a full length album by the end of the year. He grounds his music on the heritage of boogie but calls his own production, "future funk", keeping the music organic by using analog machines and special chords that avoid some of the synth pop soulless robotism that ravages much of disco.


Since I'm still learning about these the history of boogie funk I found the interview with Dam Funk in the last issue of Wax Poetics to be real informative. He drops the knowledge on the rock bottom foundation that everyone who loves this music needs to know.

As far as boogie, early Slave and Cameo are examples of popular boogie. That was the second wave of funk music. James Brown and Sly Stone created the first generation. Boogie is the sound of slap bass, loud claps, melodic chords, and synthesizers. Boogie followed the last gasp of disco.

Boogie includes releases on labels like Prelude, Sam Records, late Waste End Records, late Brunswick, and U.K. labels like Elite. Boogie-ologists will mainly tell you it's from the '80s, and it encompasses Italo disco as well.

You can cop some dope mixes by Dam Funk on Stones Throw's podcast #28 and the recently dropped One Day Later set. I have yet to find any of his original production to download, so if you wanna' hook us all up, the comment section is open.

Final Notes: Be on the look out for 4onefunktion events monthly at the Elbo Room (including guest appearances at Free Funk Friday each second Friday).

AND: 4onefunk reconstructed a Dilla track. Amazing. Dilla's influence is unstoppable.

The Bayview Graffiti Warehouse: The Bombers' Temple

In the weary streets of the Bayview district, slabbed down against the gooey Bay waters of the Central Waterfront, nestled in between the funneling lines of the colossal highway buzzing with destination and a shiny skate park clanking with consecration, lies a behemoth brick and cement structure, abandoned by those in charge of the means of production, opening up the space for its artistic renovation.


Seek and ye' shall find the foreboding gateway to a land few and far between in these modern days of urban gloss overs. Jump the weeded blocks, scale the seaweed clad fence, rusted by the hands of bronzed clams, and fiddling through clunking sewage waters, just a hopscotch distance from brittle tire isles, a punctured tin opening calls to you, my wide eyed urban explorer.

The solid tin lining of the gateway reach towards the heavens like a Romanesque Church's ribbed vaults. Paralleling the hierarchal scaling of Church murals that divides the secular and the sacred, the graffiti elevates in accordance with risks indulged and craftsmanship mastered. The ambitious bomber seeks the highest point to make a mark that leaves a legacy.

And just like the sweeping windows of a thick walled basilica, the white sunlight washes the towering gateway in a luminescent glow, spotlighting stylized letters of the English language, bathing wooden planks and haloing swirling lines in a celestial splendor.

Oh, let us baptize this behemoth the Bombers' Temple by dunking its goliath skull into a vat of bubbling aerosol. I walk softly on my toes in your gateway with head cocked upwards so as to respect the gods and their idols that leave behind their earthly spirits to linger naturally according to the toils of time!

But higher than all fly the nomadic pigeons, who dive through the broken plexiglass and swoop across the rectangular arches, finding refuge in the heights that encourage an avian paradise for feces dropping and psychotic wing flapping. Tarred feathers stick to the muddied grayish black soil that mars the gateway floors, making the city slicked explorer trudge deep through even more shit to pass through the portal.


Slide through the portal, and cross the brightly lit basilica that stretches further into the outlands, supported by cigar shaped drum columns, each colored with vibrant geometrical designs overlapping one another in a fresco frenzy. A coating of sandpapered wood chips graces the floor, fooling the visitor in a disturbing trompe l'oiel, as if the ground was the natural soil of the Earth, and not the desolated erosion of human junk.


I know not of the machinery that still straddles the many rooms of this behemoth warehouse. Perhaps ships used to be stationed in the stalls, like horses waiting for the necessary cycles of grooming and sleeping, or perhaps even a changing of parts, hanging on tightly to the same definitive form, but gradually becoming a whole new structure over the course of many physical replacements of parts.

At what point may we call the abandoned warehouse an urban museum, glorifying the works of hundreds of participating community artists, and free to the public viewing for appreciation, cognitive development, and cultural criticism?





View the entire flickr set here.

The Sound Image: Nick Uff's Vision of Portishead

Growing up in the 90's I never cared much for the MTV style music videos replaying like clockwork on the daily. The predictable narrative structure of a bunch of musicians singing to a camera that sporadically zipped through fifteen angles within a few seconds failed to add anything substantial to the music itself. I found it all pretty boring.

My stubborn distaste led me to some experimentations of my own with image and sound. I learned pretty quickly that smoking some herb and relaxing my back to twisted post-apocalyptic animation, while playing grinding spacey beats, could elevate the music listening experience to a subliminal state of wonder and transplant my body fully into a surreal absorption in the imagery. The audible and vision became one.

Since then I've trained myself to be able to reach that state of awe without any indulgence in drugs (although hallucinatory inspiration can't hurt). Many other experimenters in the sound image must be on the same page, because since then, I've noticed a lot of artists cultivating delicate skills to create films that explore the relationship between what is seen and what is heard.


I'd like to dedicate a new series in this crazy little blog to the videos that seamlessly intertwine music and image to produce the captivating inter-sensorial experience that as of yet lacks a codified description. Unfortunately, my linguistic baptizing skills escape me at the moment, so the preliminary concept shall be simply called the Sound Image. (suggestions anyone?)

We can start off this series with a couple relatively new films produced by Nick Uff for Portishead's groundbreaking third album after a ten year hiatus, fittingly titled Third. Mr. Uff's animation style harks back to the more traditional cartoonist method of hand drawing each frame. The jagged and looping lines of Uff's pencil sketches gives birth to his characters and landscapes while informing the scenery with a resonating sense of the artist's own emotional input.

Mr. Uff further adds to the raw texture that permeates the animation by shooting the frames entirely on 16mm. A buzzing choppiness scratches the surface, intensifying the movement of the camera's perspective that whizzes deeper and deeper into the ephemeral world that manifests itself.

The camera consistently falls into the eyes of a character, serving as the gateway into a new dimension of contour and filling that itself eventually dissipates into another world or spirals back to one previously seen but thereupon under the guise of a richer context. This collage strategy draws the viewer into an overlapping sphere of visual movement and vibration, concretely paralleling the formal structure of Portishead's music.

Mr. Uff describes his own creative process as consisting in a simple evolution of his first pencil stroke. An image comes to mind or the hand moves on the piece of paper, and the world begins to develop from the founding conception. "I don't storyboard my ideas, but let the films go where they take themselves. There's all sorts of ideas in there - things that have happened, a bit of social comment - like a stream of consciousness you could say."

In "The Rip", Beth Gibbons sings haunting stories of white horses rescuing her from the despair of lost love. The soft guitar matched by resounding keyboard melodies darkens Gibbons' introspective mood. Uff's animation brings out the horrific quality that emanates from Gibbons' voice through imagery of grotesque figures overwhelmed by the decadence of ghostly cityscapes.

Uff also plays with the ambiguous depiction of figures falling blindly to their deaths or flying joyously in the sky, ending abruptly with the song nearly suffocating on its tension. This embrace of the ambiguity by aggravating the tension seems to imply that artistic creation may sometimes lead to release and restoration, but at other times, it may intensify the feelings of suffering and loss that inspire it.



Portishead evokes a more desperate sentiment in the alarming synths of "We Carry On." The track increasingly builds towards a bass plucking tension that, once again, never gives. Uff's animation elaborates on just this tension by shifting violently between a broken love narrative, jungle-like urban landscapes that grow rampantly, and our disturbed voyeurism of shadow demons taking possession of humans.

The broken collage and focus on abundant decadence bring to mind the cutting geometrical structures and monocled prostitutes that give German Expressionist paintings a powerful sense of alienation and loss. Hope lingers slyly in the depths, but that pulsating tension constantly keeps us wondering; are we rising up or rising down?

Red Astaire doin' James

A couple weeks back I hesitantly scoped out Frisco's newly promoted Hiphop / Soul / Funk "Money Shot" weekly in an Irish bar on Polk St. suffering more identity problems than a biracial child adopted by a troubled lesbian couple. Actually, my scoping out of the event was limited to five feet away from the door where I peered through two bouncers asking my lint filled wallet for ten dollars.

I must admit that the title "Money Shot," referring to a cum splatted Benjamin visage (or was it just a black eye), on top of the ridiculously overdrawn "Saints and Sinners" anthem of s O' Reilly's Holy Grail Irish Pub did not really, let's say, motivate me to do anything but get the hell outta' there.

Last night my feel for "Money Shot" took solace in the integrity of Massive Selector's promotion, bringing to the Bay such huge successes as the Stevie Wonder party and last week's "Happy Feet" featuring Bobbito and Rich Medina (who didn't show but Bobbito and Hakobo held down the cuts like nobody's business).

A James Brown tribute headlining Sweden's remixing production wizard, Red Astaire, AKA any child's nightmare wonder, Freddie Crugar, (he also goes by the birth certificate name Fredrik Lager) at an Irish pub, aligned with murals of a haloed Rick James sandwiched in-between Richard Pryor and Kurt Cobain, all illuminated by Byzantine stained glass portraits? Now I'm fucking inspired. That's when identity trouble gives birth to the transformer genius of some cultural amalgamation.

Here's the low down on Mr. Lager. Red Astaire gets the big ups from the breakers, the club junkies, and the DJ nerds world wide who are drawn into his smooth beat conducting techniques that whirl your feet oh so naturally into nu-jazz popcorn.

Schooled in the 80s by the diverse dusty grooves he listened to while working at Space, a legendary record import shop in Stokholm, Red Astaire cultivated an intense taste for funk, Hiphop, disco, Latin, and electro. He cemented his wave twisting production style together with a Hiphop sensibility for dirty break beats balanced by the soulful lyricism that gets the party crackin' in the three feet high and risin' way.

Around '94, Astaire joined the Raw Fusion Records label, an influential Swedish label created by Mad Mats, and would release consistent limited edition EPs, 12 inches, and singles throughout the decade. Astaire didn't get much love on the international circuit until his "Follow Me" single, a jazzy liberation joint sliced with clashing percussion propelling melodic chimes, and a powerful impact verse from Method and Redman, released on G.A.M.M. records in 2003. Ubiquity then released his full length album, Soul Search, in 2006 to widespread success in Canada and the US.


I got my hands on 2007's Nuggets for the Needy, which includes a couple break beat nu-soul club bangers on top of "Follow Me." A definite nugget is Astaire's edit of Angie Stone's 2002 hit "I Wish I Didn't Miss You", entitled in ode form to the singer, "Love to Angie." I agree completely with Oliver Wang that this joint is sure to get someone in the crowd to poplock instantaneously, those drums are too irresistible.

In the spirit of James Brown tributes, I also couldn't stop playing "The Wildstyle," an Apache style bongo driven rhythm that cuts up Brown's flustering "Soulpower" lyricism with some grandmaster technique scratching straight outta' Flash's S. Bronx bedroom. The rebirth of the wildstyle? I'm ready.

Snatch Red Astaire's Nugget's for the Needy (2006) G.A.M.M. records.

If the download hits the spot, don't forget to support the artist.