Jackie Ransom – Final Exposure
Miami might be best known for cocaine, vice, Miami Bass and sunshine, but what you might NOT be aware of is that there is some seriously dark and experimental wave music coming out of Miami. Probably the best known, is Staccato Du Mal — he had several tracks on each of the Wierd LPs, as well as a handful of great independently released 7″s and CDRs under various aliases and collaborations (including a beautiful 7″ with vocals by Liz Wendelbo of Xeno & Oaklander) on his own label SDM.
Another member of this lesser known Miami underground is Miss Jackie Ransom. Like Staccato Du Mal, Jackie shares a certain punk aesthetic to her music — using exclusively analogue instruments, including cheap synthesizers, lofi drummachines and guitar, all played live: one-take recordings of every track, often improvising with vocals and synth riffs as the track is coming along, making for a raw and unique sound.
Final Exposure is from Jackie’s upcoming album Cell Death. Featuring 8* (the vocalist from Flesh Græy Display) credited for vocals, guitar and mistake — yes you read that correctly. A duet of haunting vocals between Jackie and 8*, with dark and poetic lyrics with maybe just a slight nod to Joy Division.
The video clip was also made by Ms. Ransom herself, a disturbing collage of old archive video footage of hypnotism, psychology and sight, edited into a horrifying film noir nightmare. Once again that punk DIY aesthetic and imagination shines through, saying fuck to the million dollar video clips we are assaulted with any time we switch on a TV.
I have a split 7″ on the way with Miss Ransom, featuring her track Killer Inside (which will also appear on Cell Death and the upcoming Doom & Glamour album on Zerohour) and my track Eternal, with vocals from Beta Evers. Two great songs if I may say so myself, and it also features some beautiful artwork by the ever-amazing Caitlin Shearer. It will be released shortly on Zerohour so stay tuned baby!
Ms. Ransom also plays in electronic improv rock project Mascara Scare with 8* and Jackie Soir — check them out.
Got some sad news today that Chilly B, from New York old school rap crew Newcleus died yesterday of a stroke, at only age 47. It’s sad news for all electro funk and old school hip hop fans, Newcleus had some really huge hits in the early 80s…classic old tracks like Jam On It, and Jam On Revenge, I Wanna Be a B-Boy, Computer Age and I Am Not a Robot.
I’ve picked one of their lesser known tracks, from their first album Jam On Revenge, released in 1984. It’s much deeper and darker than most of the electro of its time, with live bass guitar (played by Chilly B), beautiful dark strings and arpeggio synth lines over a heavy drum track. It’s atmospheric and a little melancholy, and really I think it sounds more like the electro being produced in the last few years as opposed to something that’s nearly 30 years old now. A real future jam.
RIP Chilly B, my thoughts to your family and the rest of Newcleus.
For a better look at the history of Newcleus (and one of their classic party jams to listen to) check out this article over at Cold Crush: Chilly B of Newcleus: A Tribute
Yo, I’m going to be spinning some chilled out funk and disco records these coming Friday and Saturday nights at Blanco Bar & Restaurant in Kings Cross. The place is open till 12 so come by for a few drinks and some good tunes. Ladies — $10 2006 Cava Rosé Bellinis if you mention the flyer at the bar.
And for a little taste of what to expect, enjoy this spaced out French disco track from 1977. Space were a 3 piece disco band from Marseilles, and this track Magic Fly is from their first LP of the same name..
The address:
Blanco Bar & Restaurant
5-9 Roslyn Street Kings Cross
Xeno & Oaklander – Blue Flower (Live at Wierd)
Minimal wave, or minimal synth music has been around since the late 70s and early 80s, but until finding a revival over the last few years was a very obscure and underground genre. While there were some LP releases at the time, it was more common for minimal wave artists to go the punk/DIY ethic – self-pressed and distributed 7″s and especially releases on cassette tape, meaning that as you can imagine digging up these old treasures can be next to impossible now over 30 years later, and it’s safe to say that there is probably a whole wealth of music out there that might never see the light of day again.
Thanks to labels like New York based Minimal Wave, run by Veronica Vasicka who is dedicated to digging up these old treasures and remastering and re-releasing them on vinyl and as digital downloads (with artists permission of course) the minimal sound has been really making waves — pun possibly intended — in the underground electronic scene and it’s not hard to see why. With it’s punk ethic, lo-fi drummachine rhythms, romantic analogue synthesizer melodies – often played as live instruments instead of being sequenced (midi is a rarity, and even shunned by many as being too rigid), deep lyrics and passionate but often cold and distant vocals, it makes for beautiful listening though being in Sydney I don’t have the pleasure to see this stuff being played live or played at clubs.
The minimal wave sound has also had a huge influence on the electro scene over the past few years, you only need to listen to songs like Novamen – Lies, or check out record labels like Le Syndicat Electronique’s new label Musamore, or German Das Drehmoment.
My own introduction to minimal synth was through French electro label Invasion Planéte. The Invasion Planéte sound was very electro for the first few releases but quickly started becoming more and more sparse and minimal. I’ve always been a huge fan of Beta Evers, who’s sound is heavily inspired by vintage German New Wave and EBM, as well as old 80s industrial like early Ministry and listening to Front 242, Nitzer Ebb etc so I guess I had already been warmed up to the sound, but by about halfway through it’s lifetime, Invasion Planéte was concentrating almost exclusively on minimal wave music, and as i’d been following closely the Invasion Planéte releases it first really caught my attention, hearing artists like Silent Signals (aka Echo West) and Bakterielle Infektion from Germany, and of course Le Syndicat Electronique’s own music along with fellow label mate Porn.Darsteller.
It was electro, but not like i’d ever heard it before…apart from the prominence of vocals, something about it was raw and different, and I had to hear more. Before long, I found labels like Enfant Terrible from Holland and Wierd from New York and from there things spiralled out as I discovered there was a whole scene to this minimal wave music, with artists both now and ranging back right to the 1970s.
Xeno & Oaklander are from Brooklyn, and just released their masterpiece first full length album Sentinelle on Wierd Records. Members Sean McBride; well known for his solo project Martial Canterel and visual artist/filmmaker/fashion photographer Liz Wendelbo, who has also collaborated with Miami based Staccato Du Mal and New York trio Three To Forgotten (Xeno & Oaklander with Epee Du Bois) have a strict set of rules for their music — exclusively analogue synthesizers (no soft-synths, no midi and no digital, a bold move in this day and age of click and drag producers and DJs that have never touched a turntable in their lives), and one take recordings played as live as possible.
Sentinelle is a deep and richly layered album, with lyrics from both Liz and Sean, paranoia and disaffection, tales of underwater cities, the industrial revolution and a world of shadow combined and seamlessly changing from English to French, sometimes in the same song. The music itself ranges from slow synth pop style tracks to tense high-BPM synth-punk and from deep and romantic to at times aggressive.
This song, Blue Flower is from Xeno & Oaklander’s first EP Vigils — a self released CDr on Martial Canterel’s label Xanten, and also appeared on the second Wierd Compilation from Wierd Records, though both versions are different from each other, and different again to this version, which was played and recorded live at a Wierd party in New York in 2008.
I really love the original version from Vigils and for me it’s hard to beat. Tender synth melodies and haunting vocals from Liz Wendelbo, from the first time I heard it I found it amazing. But this live version is beautiful. The long and atmospheric intro and added depth of Martial Canterel’s vocals add a whole new layer of tension which I find just incredible.
Keiran Hebden better known as Four Tet has had all types of labels thrown at his music — from post rock to future jazz, electronica and er, “folktronica” — whatever the fuck that means. But whatever the media want to call it, it’s dope. Raw, grimy beats with elements of cosmic jazz, progressive rock, trip hop and breakbeat thrown into the mix. But let me tell you, the dude knows his way around a sampler, plus it’s fairly to say he would have some of the dustiest fingers around — his sample selection is wild and obscure.
This track Aying was released on delicious 12″ vinyl in 1998, but I didn’t hear it until about ten years later when a friend burnt me a copy of his first album, Dialogue (released in 1999, where this track also appears). Needless to say, I tracked a second hand copy of the 12″ down PRONTO cos, this track is completely wild. Distorted horns and flutes, dark strings and sitar samples and fat breaks including a little Bollywood break. Shit is dope!
There is another track on the record called Fume, which is completely devestating…think breakcore from a parallel universe where it is just really fast jazz or something (with bonus cuts and a few bars of an electro beat for good measure). Badass. The album and 12″ are both long deleted, so you’re going to have to find them yourself, but they are worth tracking down.
The dude has also remixed for a pretty impressive array of cats including Aphex Twin, Madvillain, Nathan Fake and Black Sabbath which I think deserves a little street cred.
Nancy Fortune – First Operation
Happy birthday et joyeax anniversaire Nancy Fortune!
For the unaware, Nancy is a French electro singer and producer, who happened to make my favourite record on The Hague electro/disco label Viewlexx; The Secret Life of Nancy Fortune. I paid a small fortune for the 12″, a few years before it was repressed along with several other rare Viewlexx records, and it’s not left my record box once since.
I don’t think there is a single bad record on Viewlexx, but this one particularly stands out to me…unusual (and heavy) drums and rhythm patterns with dark dark but hauntingly beautiful synthesizer-lines, with vocals to match — Nancy has a great voice but the vocals on this record are something else; they have a real other-wordly quality, strong female vocals but with a ghostly edge which i’ve often heard described as if they were recorded under water. But instead of sounding horrible and overproduced like it could have easily done, it compliments Nancy’s unique voice and music.
I always thought the music was written by I-F and the vocals by Nancy, the beats certainly have a bit of an I-F sound, but I found out later that the tracks are credited as being written and produced by Nancy herself, and engineered by S-Y-D from Clermont-Ferrand, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I-F did play at least some part in the production.
Since the 12″ was repressed, you can probably pick up a copy for a reasonable price, though it’s sold out over at Clone. They do however have available the record she recently did with my homeboy from The Hague Mr. Pauli, a classic industrial edged disco funk/track where Nancy did vocals back and forth with Fred Ventura. The other tracks are banging too, so check it out here: Mr. Pauli – Jap Fab.
First Operation also appeared on Nancy’s recent album Crystallised, which was originally meant to be an LP on Viewlexx sublabel Holographic, but was unfortunately released as digital download only for now (though i’m hoping that Viewlexx or Clone might press it to vinyl *cough* do it).
You can buy the album from iTunes, and definitely should — every track on it is amazing (My highlights would be the last track Walking which is just beautiful, it really blew my mind, along with Coeur Synthetique and another old favourite Holographic Voice with I-F).
Crustation – Purple (J Dilla Remix)
Ok ok ok…so after my last post i’m feeling a little like it looks that I was hating on J Dilla. That definitely wasn’t the case…the man Jay Dee had some seriously grimy beats going on, and his influence is VERY apparent in most of the hip hop beats of today (at least in the shit that is worth listening to).
So to make up for it, here is my personal favourite Dilla beat…we were going to post it on Cold Crush for our Genius of J Dilla post, but we opted with E=MC² since it used a dope classic Moroder instrumental.
This is actually a remix of a very famous trip hop track, Crustation’s Purple, and this remix keeps that trip hop edge but also adds that trademark J Dilla boom bap sound. The remix was originally credited to A Tribe Called Quest, probably since they were a much bigger name at the time, though it was technically produced by Ummah, an arabic word meaning ‘community’ or ‘nation’, and also the name of a production crew that Dilla was involved with in the mid to late 90s, along with Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest.
It’s a very dope track, with laid back but super fat beat, and Bronagh Slevin’s vocals are nothing short of soul soothing. Check out her album Bloom recorded with Crusation.
Ps, Dilla fans should check out my homeboys the Well Dressed Vandals — All proceeds from their Just Dilla tees goes to support Dilla’s mother, Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey.
With all the talk online lately about remembering the genius of J Dilla who died four years ago from February 10 last week, it’s made me wonder why there has been barely a murmur about the anniversary of the death of another of hip hop’s finest only 5 days later on the calendar: Big L.
Sure, Dilla’s beats were dope, and a lot of people consider him to be one of the best beatmakers (for me, that title goes to Dj Premier no doubt!) and I don’t mean this as any diss to Dilla, but the truth is that before he died, the majority people jocking his name now had probably never even heard of him. I guess a lot of it comes down to the difference in time – L was gunned to death on his own block in 1999. While the internet was still taking off and before it turned into the global hype machine it is today, and also before hip hop was bastardised into the trillion dollar, and as much as I hate to say it, mainstream industry that it has become.
As a huge Big L fan, I figured it was my duty to pay a little tribute of my own — to Harlem’s finest, to indisputably one of the finest freestylers hip hop has ever seen, and no doubt one of the slickest cats to ever rock a mic.
Big L was discovered by Lord Finesse – maybe discovered is the wrong word. Lord Finesse was selling mixtapes at a joint called Rockin’ Wills on 125th Street in Harlem. When L heard he was going to be there, he showed up bragging about his rhyme skills and wanting a deal. Fin was about to brush L off when he started busting out some rhymes – and Fin was so impressed that he took him in on the spot and offered to try and get him a record deal.
After that, he put L on the phone and let him rhyme to AG, and things took off from there. His first appearance on a record was as a guest on a Finesse track, the Yes, You May remix.
Around this time, he formed Harlem hip hop crew Children of the Corn, with Murder Mase, Killa Cam (better known as Cam’ron) and Bloodshed, with Darrell “Digga” Branch on production. Their sound was violent and hardcore street rap, but the crew split up before they signed a record deal due to the death of Bloodshed in a car crash. Years later some of their tracks were released an Children of the Corn: The Collector’s Edition.
In ‘93, Big L signed with Columbia Records and released the single Devil’s Son – again with a brutally violent edge to the lyrics that L liked to call horror rap. “That demo was bananas” said Lord Finesse, “everyone was like, ‘Who is this kid?’ Of course, we already knew he was dope“.
His solo album Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous was released in 1995 and heavily featured production by Lord Finesse, as well as guest appearances from Kid Capri, Lord Finesse, as well as the, then unknown Cam’ron and Jay-Z. Despite both of the singles which were released from the album – Put It On and M.V.P reaching the top 25 of Billboard’s Hot Rap Tracks, and the album itself reaching the Billboard 200, the album was not considered a commercial success and Columbia dropped L from the label.
He started his own label – Flamboyant Entertainment, and started work on his second album in 1997, in ‘98 Flamboyant released the first single, probably his biggest and most well-known hit: Ebonics. Ebonics is straight dope – an insight into slang on the streets of Harlem world. The same year he joined, in my opinion, New York’s dopest hip hop crew, Bronx based Diggin’ In The Crates (D.I.T.C) and appeared on their first single Dignified Soldiers as well as several other tracks on their self titled album. But sadly, Big L never survived to see the release of his second album.
February 15 1999, Big L was shot 9 times in the face and chest on his own block, 139 and Lennox. L himself became a victim of the mean streets so often the subject of his rhymes — “139 nigger, the Dangerzone…we quick to put a bullet in a stranger’s dome“.
It was suspected that L was shot over a beef with his brother Big Lee who was in prison at the time, but despite an arrest being made a few months later, the suspect — a childhood friend of L’s, was released a while later and the case was never solved.
The Big Picture 1974-1999 was released after L’s death, in a collaboration between L’s mother Gilda Terry, Dj Premier and L’s partner in Flamboyant, Rich King. Made up from a mix of finished tracks and unused acapellas, and featuring guest appearances by some of the finest names in underground rap including Gang Starr’s Guru, OC, AG and Fat Joe repping D.I.T.C, Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Sadat X and Stan Spit amongst others and production by some of the best beatsmiths in hip hop including Lord Finesse, Pete Rock, Dj Premier, OC and Buckwild.
The Big Picture went gold within a month of it’s release, and is indisputably one of the greatest hip hop albums ever released. Big L had a dope flow and an unrivaled storytelling style, whether rapping about pulling heists — and women, rolling suckers for their ice or rolling dice in the streets of Harlem, and to this day many consider L to still be untouchable on the mic.
Gang Starr paid tribute in their track Full Clip, and L’s crew D.I.T.C’s own Tribute is probably one of the most melancholy and emotionally charged hip hop tracks I’ve ever heard. The track i’ve picked is from D.I.T.C’s self titled album, the Primo remix of L’s biggest hit Ebonics. The original track and beat were perfect, yet somehow Primo managed to come up with a dope remix that complimented the original track perfectly, totally changing the flow of the track but without detracting from L’s slick rhyming.
To quote the man himself — What’s this motherfucking rap game without L? Yo that’s like jewels without ice, that’s like China without rice, or the holy bible without Christ
RIP Big L.
Yo! Welcome to RETALI8 STILL KILLS THE OLD WAY.
You might have read some of my articles over at Cold Crush by now, where I write about electro funk & old school rap music, and graffiti.
This is my new personal blog where I will write about music that doesn’t fit in with the Cold Crush sound – from minimal wave, electro and ebm to hip hop, rock, new wave and even classical. As you will soon discover my musical tastes are broad and usually pretty obscure. Not to mention more on graffiti, design, fashion photography, beer, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
Enjoy!
RETALI8 MF ONE
