ChoiceCuts

Quantic DJ Set

Murphy — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:28:14 +0000

“He’s at the forefront of a new global sound.”- Gilles Peterson, BBC Radio 1

Quantic is an umbrella name for UK-born, Will Holland: acclaimed Producer, Musician and DJ for over 15 years evolving and involving styles like Funk & Jazz to Electronic & Folk music through to Latin, Reggae, Dub & Cumbia. Holland has released over ten full-length albums internationally through the label, Tru Thoughts, …across six different projects ranging from his DJ/Producer/Remixer moniker that has packed dance floors from Bulgaria to Buenos Aires, Quantic, to his Latin-tinged, reggae and dub exploration, Flowering Inferno, to a full-out soul band, The Quantic Soul Orchestra.

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Based in the musical epicenter of Cali, Colombia since 2007, Holland has been exploring cumbias, salsa and Afro-Colombian music through his particular beat-focused, electronic and funk lens. His latest live band project, Quantic y Su Combo Barbaro, a carefully assembled international cast of musical creators including virtuosic salsa pianist Alfredo Linares and Pacific folklore singer Nidia Gongora, is a bold snapshot of an ever-evolving musical landscape in the Americas. Holland also works and exchanges with a cross-section of artists and producers innovatively shaping contemporary music from Latin America as we speak.

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His is an on-going story of musical inspiration guided by a curiosity which aims to not only honor and collaborate with excellent artists, but to share and compose new music in a way that is organic, vibrant and relevant. As Holland explains, “I try to make music that encourages people to explore beyond their usual listening circles and check scenes and genres they may otherwise never be exposed to.”

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Ebo Taylor

Murphy — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:09:32 +0000

Following the wartime big band highlife pioneers like E.T. Mensah, Taylor became a major figure in Ghanaian highlife during the 1950s and ’60s as highlife exploded. Cutting his teeth with leading big bands like Stargazers and Broadway Dance Band, Ebo Taylor quickly rose through the ranks and became a prolific composer and frontman. Taylor moved to London in 1962 to study. “I had the Black Star Highlife Band sponsored by the Ghanaian High Commission, mainly comprising music students. We tried to incorporate jazz into highlife and progressed through talking and through jam sessions, trying to develop our skills and ideas.”

Back in Ghana, Taylor became an in-house arranger and producer for labels like Essiebons, working with other leading Ghanaian stars including C.K. Mann and Pat Thomas. “I was paid to write for them and we made some great records. People were trying new things – I always loved C.K. Mann’s ‘Funky Highlife’. It was fresh.” Through the mid-’70s and into the ’80s, Taylor then recorded a number of solo projects, exploring unique fusions and borrowing elements from traditional Ghanaian sounds, Fela’s Afrobeat, jazz, soul and funk. Tracks like ‘Heaven’ now stand as among the best Ghanaian Afrobeat of the era.

Now 74 years-old, Ebo Taylor’s music has become increasingly in-demand in recent years with a series of Ghanaian compilations on Soundway Records and Analog Africa and an unexpected sample as Usher lifted a riff from ‘Heaven’ for his hit with Ludacris, ‘She Don’t Know’. A new Ebo Taylor album was a natural progression. “For the new album, I wanted to advance the cause of Afrobeat music. Fela started it and we shouldn’t just abandon it. We should push it so it is a standard form of music.” The result is a firing new set backed by Afrobeat Academy, a Berlin-based collective featuring members of Poets Of Rhythm, Kabu Kabu (Jimi Tenor collaborators) and Ghanaian legends Marijata. Tracks include new versions of Taylor classics ‘Victory’ and ‘Love And Death’ and a selection of new compositions including ‘Kwame’, celebrating Ghana’s late, lamented leader Kwame Nkrumah.

Jose James

Murphy — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:41:49 +0000

http://www.choicecuts.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=10896&action=edit&message=10

No Beginning No End sums up how I feel about music right now,” says José James of his Blue Note Records debut. “I don’t want to be confined to any particular style. I decided I didn’t want to be considered a jazz singer anymore and that was really freeing. Once I realized that jazz singing is just something that I do and it’s just a label, it freed me as an artist to just write without any boundaries.”

No Beginning No End is a seamless musical experience that moves between different styles with remarkable fluidity, bound together by James’ transcendent voice. It marks a new chapter in the artistic journey of the 33-year-old singer/songwriter. Conceived, recorded and produced independently without any recording contract, the album is his most personal statement yet.

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Along the way, he recruited a mighty team of collaborators that include noted producer/bassist Pino Palladino; pianist/composer and fellow Blue Note artist Robert Glasper; R&B singer/songwriter/guitarist Emily King; international French-Moroccan singing star Hindi Zahra; and the 2011 Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition winner Kris Bowers. “I feel like this is my first album as an artist,” James says, “This is the first time in which there were no label, no A&R – nothing but myself and my relationship and history with my music.”

James has already established himself as a trailblazer for his intoxicating blend of jazz, hip-hop, R&B and electronica from his previous three albums. His 2008 debut The Dreamer and its 2010 follow-up, BlackMagic – both produced by the world-renowned DJ Gilles Peterson – transformed the Minneapolis-born, New York-based singer into an underground sensation in both the modern jazz and DJ culture scenes. His musical path follows its own rhyme and reason. James is a musical omnivore, an artist that resists being pigeonholed, equally at ease on stage with jazz legend McCoy Tyner as he is in the studio with rapper Oh No or electronica pioneer Flying Lotus.

Ben Ratliff described James’ musical magic in a February 2012 edition of The New York Times: “He’s a romantic baritone with a deep-funk band, stretching out songs, evoking both the ’70s of Roberta Flack and Gil Scott-Heron and the ’90s and oughts of J Dilla,” then making smart comparisons to R&B superstar D’Angelo but distinguishing James as “a very different kind of singer than D’Angelo. He’s a little more acoustic singer-songwriter, a little more delicate.”

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On No Beginning No End, James shows an even deeper regard for pop song structures while retaining the “element of surprise” associated with jazz. Much of the music draws upon James’ love for the softer sounds of late-‘60s and ’70s R&B, particularly the music of Flack, Donny Hathaway and Marvin Gaye. In fact, it was meeting Gaye’s legendary collaborator Leon Ware, who produced Gaye’s seminal 1976 LP I Want You, that inspired James to write the lamenting “Bird of Space.” “Leon really brought me back to a place that inspired my music, just when I was learning about how artists really worked together,” James says. “’Bird of Space’ goes back to The Dreamer with a very intimate, sensual atmosphere and with the musical cycle looping. That’s probably my most personal song in terms of lyrics.”

Like “Bird of Space,” the gospel-flavored “Do You Feel” is another composition in which James composed both the music and lyrics. It features a soulful Ray Charles-inspired piano solo from Bowers. “I just sat at the piano and that song came out,” James recalls, “When I did the bridge, it got really interesting. I love songs that are simple on the outside then go somewhere very unexpected on the inside.”

In addition to Ware, another major catalyst for the new project was Palladino. While James was living in London, Palladino invited him over for a writing session. The bassist had a series of chords that he wanted to share. Within 20 minutes, the two came up with the snapping “Make It Right,” which also features some of James’ longtime band mates – drummer Richard Spaven, keyboardist Grant Windsor, trombonist Corey King, trumpeter Takuya Kuroda, and guitarist Jeremy Most.

James says that Palladino was so excited about the results of “Make It Right” that he enlisted himself as a producer of the forthcoming album. As some of the sessions began to unfold at The Magic Shop studios in New York City, James met Brian Bender, who eventually became another co-producer on the album. “Both had really different roles. Pino’s role really dealt with the quality of the musicianship. That quality went way up in comparison to my other works,” James explains, “Brian really helped me with the mixing; he created a great sonic world in which an artist can step into.”

With Palladino, James also wrote the sleek album opener, “It’s All Over Your Body” with its voodoo horn jabs and the bewitching title-track, which displays James’ gift of crooning ballads at crawling tempos. James refers to “No Beginning No End” as the “baby-maker” song on the album. It features him at his most sensual. “I wanted it to sound like an internal conversation,” James explains, “The song really deals with the struggles of being away from your loved one on the road, while at the same time, being so close to something that you love, which is the music. That lifestyle is not for everyone, but there is a lot of curious poetry in that life, a lot of loneliness too.”

With Scott Jacoby, James penned “Trouble,” an infectious mid-tempo jam, noted for its initial bass line reminiscent of Bill Withers before the song morphs into a strutting Sly Stone vibe. James says that the prowling lyrics and menacing vibe connects him to R&B legends such as Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye and Al Green – noteworthy “troubled” soul men. “I think we really underestimate how much of emotional trailblazers they were,” James says. “They opened up channels of male vulnerability and sensitivity within black music.”

Several other songs on No Beginning No End are the result of collaborations with different artists. As the title hints, the fetching “Vanguard” was written at the famed Village Vanguard with Glasper. “We sat down at that famous piano and he gave me those chords. It was a real blessing to work with him in that particular way,” James recalls. In addition to showcasing Glasper’s hypnotic Fender Rhodes on the track, Glasper’s Experiment band drummer Chris Dave gives the song his signature rhythmic spark.

The gentle ballads “Come to My Door” and “Heaven on the Ground” were both written by the singer/songwriter/guitarist Emily King, a frequent collaborator of James’. The former tune was actually written for King’s Grammy-nominated 2006 debut, East Side Story, but it didn’t make the final cut. “It’s such a beautiful and simple song. I really wanted to express something very plainly. Previously, I’ve been really interested in abstraction and writing lyrics that could be multi-dimensional but ‘Come to My Door’ is a straight-up pop song.” The latter is a duet with King that she wrote specifically for James.

The mesmerizing “Sword + Gun” with its North African-flavored percussion and Fela-esque bass line is another great duet – this time with French-Moroccan singer Hindi Zahra. Here, James ventured farthest from his comfort zone. “That was me going into Hindi’s world,” James explains, “Culturally it was very interesting because we were dealing with the Gnawa music from Morocco, where they play all this indigenous percussion. It was very communal. We wanted to write a song that was beyond both of us.”

The album concludes with the stunning ballad “Tomorrow” featuring accompaniment by Bowers on piano and a string section arranged by Jules Buckley. James accredits famed R&B/funk keyboardist/singer Amp Fiddler as the music’s composer. When James initially collaborated in the studio with Fiddler, he recorded Fiddler improvising rhapsodically at the piano. Later James had Bowers render that piano part as the basis of “Tomorrow.” “Lyrically the song is about transformation and acknowledging the pain that one feels when you lose someone and wanting to transcend that pain,” James says. “I was also listening to a lot of Nick Drake and decided to add a string quartet to give it joy.”

NO BEGINNING NO END available 1/22/2013

Mulatu Astatke & His Band

Murphy — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:32:18 +0000

Mulatu Astatke is an Ethiopian musician (piano, organ, vibraphone, percussion), composer, and arranger. He is known as the father of Ethio-jazz, a unique blend of pop, modern jazz, traditional Ethiopian music, Latin rhythms, Caribbean reggae, and Afro-funk. Born in 1943, Astatke was musically trained in London, New York City, and Boston, where he was the first African student at Berklee College of Music. He went on to work with Duke Ellington and other acclaimed jazz artists, found a music school, and open his own club. Astatke’s work shepherded in a golden age in Ethiopia’s pop and jazz circles from 1968 to 1974.

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In 2004, he began collaborating with Either/Orchestra, and in 2009, he released an album with the London-based collective the Heliocentrics. Since 2010, Mulatu and his band have toured regularly behind Mulatu Steps Ahead, his latest release on Strut Records.

Mulatu’s music crosses borders, The ‘Ethiopiques’ CD series has opened a new audience to his ‘Ethio-jazz’ experiments, but it wasn’t until Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Broken Flowers’ film featuring his music heavily that momentum started to gather and a young generation of urban artists started sampling his music. The greatest example being Nas & Damian Marley’s sample of ‘Yegelle Tezeta’.

Fruitman – Mati Klarwein Exhibition Mix

Loughlin — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 19:15:10 +0000

As a follow up to our Mati Klarwein exhibition from a few months back, Fruitman comes correct once again with a mix of cosmic jazz befitting the legendary painter’s style…

As part of our Beck’s Vier Rhythm Weekender which ran from the 18th – 22nd October 2012 in Meeting House Square in Temple Bar we exhibited the amazing artwork of the late Mati Klarwein.

Mati’s art featured on the covers of some of the most important jazz recordings of the twentieth century (Miles’ Bitches Brew to name but one).

Fruitman was our guest DJ at the opening night and here’s an hour long snippet of the records he played that night which we feel is a fitting tribute to Mati’s work and its vibe.

Special shout out to all the people who funded the event via our fundit.ie campaign (check it out here)

TRACKLISTING
Intro
Leon Thomas – The Creator Has A Master Plan (Peace)
Wayne Shorter – Ponta De Areia
McCoy Tyner – For Tomorrow
Doug Carn – Acknowledgement
MaseQua Myers & Jami Ayinde – Black Land Of The Nile
Bobby Cole – Perfect Day
Air – Baby I Dont Know Where Love
Seawind – Free
Michael White – The Blessing Song
Gary Bartz – I’ve Known Rivers
Lyold Miller Quartet – Dig Where That’s At
Stanley Clarke – Vulcan Princess
Leon Thomas – China Doll
Dorothy Ashby – The Moving Finger
The New Tony Williams Lifetime – Wildlife
Nole Pointer – Night Song
Greg Foat Group – Dark Is The Sun
Billy Bang Sextet – Rainbow Gladiator
Earth Wind & Fire – Power

Rza breaking down verses!

Darren — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 10:25:46 +0000

Love him or hate him, this is really cool – Rza breaking down and decoding verses and slang from”Proteck Ya Neck”& “Unspoken Word”. Digi without doubt possess the gift of gab…Enjoy!

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New! Dirty Dubsters feat. Mystro – Fire It Up

Loughlin — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 15:36:12 +0000

Dirty Dubsters Team up with UK’s Natural born spittah MC MYSTRO for the first single off their debut album also titled ‘Fire it up’.

Fire it up they do as Mystro waxes Lyrical on a tongue in cheek ‘Free the Weed’ vibe to bring you 2013′s first Ganja tune. Here’s the official Video shot in Dublin recently:

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Check out Mystro and Saxman Anton cosy up to both the Gardaí and Enda Kenny no less resulting in a hazy smoke-filled day in Dublin. Fair play to the lads for this one, hilarious video and a great track.

Shuggie Otis Friday 30th November

Murphy — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:36:09 +0000

Time was, they reserved the vision thing for the scant few artists who truly envisioned panoramic music – Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, John Coltrane. Today they hand out the “visionary” tags as freely as they dispense the gold records, like party favors out of a cardboard box.

Shuggie Otis truly had the vision thing. Compared at the wispy age of 15 with Hendrix and the great Kings of blues guitar (B.B., Albert, Freddie), the young phenom went on to make two expansive, genre-defying, deeply curious albums, 1971’s “Freedom Flight” and 1974’s “Inspiration Information.” The records, essentially crafted as a one- man band, floored Sly Stone, gave the Brothers Johnson their most enduring hit (“Strawberry Letter 23″) and predated the stylistic synthesist Prince by half a decade.

Otis, son of the rhythm and blues bandleader Johnny Otis, was a guitar prodigy, but he didn’t stop there. An exceptional drummer and vibraphone player, he immersed himself in drum-machine technology in its earliest incarnation. He played piano and organ, and he arranged for horns and strings; friends say he was at least as good a bass player as he was a guitarist.

Johnny Otis says that his son was as natural a musician as they come. When the senior Otis urged his teenage guitarist to pursue his interest in film scoring by signing up for composing lessons, they didn’t last long. After a few days, he remembers, the tutor came to the father and begged off: “He already knows this shit!”

After showcasing with his father’s band, Shuggie cut sessions with Frank Zappa and Al Kooper, then set out on his own. “Freedom Flight” combined his innate fluency in the blues with a budding interest in exploratory, style-fusing soundscapes.

Nearly three years in the making, the deeply personal “Inspiration Information” was the culmination of Shuggie’s intense self-imposed apprenticeship, a genuinely visionary song cycle that featured primitive but soulful drum-machine meditations (“Aht uh Mi Hed,” “XL-30″), satiny pop orchestration backing shrewd jazz guitar (“Rainy Day”) and suitelike funky dance music that glides from a roots-reggae backbeat to swirling Love Unlimited-style strings (“Not Available”). Insatiable as it was, the album foretold several pop music developments to come: soulful auteurism, D.I.Y.-style recording, organic computer music.

Musicians were his biggest fans. “I’ve always been in love with his stuff from “Inspiration Information,” says George Johnson of the Brothers Johnson. “That album was right up there for me with (Sly’s) “There’s a Riot Going On.”

But the album proved too futuristic, too stubbornly unique for the rock marketplace of 1974. By the time of its release, Otis had squandered whatever momentum he had earned as a rising star at the turn of the decade. The album met with commercial indifference, and it turned out to be Shuggie’s swan song.

Now 58, Otis makes the occasional recording session, the odd live gig. But health issues have kept him from sustaining his musical career with any consistency. And he isn’t exactly eager to talk about the past. Strangely, no one who was around at the time can recall just what Shuggie was up to in the studio. Johnny Otis, credited as the album’s executive producer, says he called sessions for strings and horns at Shuggie’s request. That’s about all he remembers.

“I executive produced it,” he says, “but he was the creator.”
Steven Paley was Shuggie’s A&R man at Epic during the “Inspiration” years. “He was signed to me, but I had very little to do with him,” says Paley, who was also Sly Stone’s A&R man. “I had absolutely nothing to do with the record other than, “Hi, how are you?”

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that a gaping lack of information now surrounds the record. In the original liner notes to “Inspiration Information,” the writer proclaimed that the former adolescent guitar prodigy “is a man and an artist now. He is creating in the seventies, time whose conflicts are being shaped by information – and the lack of it.”

Few may recall how the masterpiece was realized, but they all remember how boundless Shuggie’s potential seemed at the time. Larry Cohn, producer of the groundbreaking Robert Johnson boxed set and the man who first signed Otis to Epic Records, equates Shuggie’s unfulfilled talent with Johnson’s.

Cohn offers another lofty comparison, this one reflecting Otis’ mastery of so many instruments. The jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke, dead at 28, was known as Louis Armstrong’s match on the cornet, but he was equally gifted on the piano. “In his [Bix’s] piano playing you can hear Bartok, Debussy,” Cohn says. “That’s probably the avenue Shuggie would’ve traveled, to my mind.”

Among the classical composers of the rock ‘n’ roll era – the electronic artists, DJs and post-rock musicians – the ones who have been turned on to Shuggie agree. “’Inspiration Information’ is almost like a new style of music that could’ve developed but never did,” marvels Tim Gane of the group Stereolab. “That’s the problem. It never developed past this record.”

Around the time of “Inspiration”’s release, the Rolling Stones offered Mick Taylor’s newly vacated guitar spot to Shuggie. When Billy Preston called with the proposal, Otis politely declined.

“I had my own group, my own label deal,” he said years later. “I just wanted to do what I want to do. I had my own identity.” More than that, he knew where to find the inspiration.

Shuggie has a new album scheduled for 2013 release with remastered unreleased music and classics from his back catalogue…watch this space for more

J Rocc

Murphy — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 17:32:12 +0000

We will be giving out his new mix “Back to the Boom Bap” on the night also for those who aint copped it already

J-Rocc (Beat Junkies, Stones Throw, California)

One of the original turntablists, J. Rocc founded the Beat Junkies in 1992 with Melo-D and Rhettmatic, but has done just as much on his own as in a group setting. He began DJing in the mid-’80s with a California group named PSK. Soon after forming, the Beat Junkies became a seminal force in the rise of instrumental hip-hop, including core member Babu plus future stars Shortkut and D-Styles.

In addition to numerous mixtapes and his own production for Stones Throw releases, J. Rocc has been the DJ for Madlib’s live shows since the early 2000′s, was the 3rd member of Jaylib (Madlib & J Dilla) during the group’s live events, and collaborated with Madlib on Beat Konducta Vol. 5-6: A Tribute to J Dilla.

J. Rocc just released in Spring 2011 his first LP titled, Some Cold Rock Stuff to critical acclaim. Time and time again he is referenced by fellow DJs and music fans the world over as probably the best club deejay in the world.

Handsome Paddy used to be known as DJ Fonetik until he realised that Handsome Paddy is an infinitely better name. He has been DJing outside of his bedroom since 2003, along the way playing support to De La Soul, MF Doom, Scratch Perverts, Ali Shaheed Muhammed, Edan, Souls of Mischief, Wajeed, Beardyman, Digable Planets, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Zed Bias and DJ Food to name but a few.
He has an old-school hip-hop aesthetic when it comes to DJing and his genre-hopping sets are built around tight, quick mixing with elements of turntablism.

Check his new mix Back to the Boombap

Handsome Paddy – Back To The Boom Bap

Loughlin — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 11:05:24 +0000

Handsome Paddy drops another of his trademark hiphop mixes. Back To The Boom Bap is just that … check the tracklisting!

Handsome Paddy, long time ChoiceCuts collaborator and friend, has just dropped his latest mixtape ‘Back To The Boom Bap’. It’s great to get a gold old 1s and 2s hiphop mix coming through so fair play to Paddy for hooking us up with this great mix.

Check the track-listing below and full 320Kbps download via Soundcloud is here:

Back To The Boom Bap Tracklisting
Intro – A Tribe Called Quest,Brand Nubian,Lord Finesse,Das EFX,The Beatnuts,Black Sheep,All City
Return of the Funky Man – Lord Finesse
Catchin’ Wreck – Showbiz & A.G
Saturday Nite Live (L.A Jay Remix) – Masta Ace
Pass Da Tek – Tragedy
Off & On (Album Mix) – Trends of Culture
Off & On (Freestylin’ Mix) Trends of Culture
It’z Like Dat (Album Version) – Das EFX
Shiftee (Instrumental) – Onyx
Mansion & a Yacht (Merchantz Mix) – Kurious ft. Mike G & Sadat X
Wild Child (Dub Version) – Da Youngstas
Halftime (LP Instrumental) – Nasty Nas
Halftime (Butcher Instrumental) – Nasty Nas
You Can’t Stop the Prophet – Jeru Tha Damaja
Revenge of the Prophet - Jeru Tha Damaja
The Bomb – Akinyele
Psycho Dwarf (Fuck, Drink Beer & Smoke Some Shit!) – The Beatnuts
U Da Man – Black Moon ft Havoc, Dru Ha, Smif-N-Wessun
Lost in Thought – Funkdoobiest
Ill St Blues (Acapella) – Kool G Rap & DJ Polo
The Shit is Real (DJ Premier Remix) – Fat Joe
The Actual – All City
The Yearn (Instrumental) – Pete Rock ft the Lost Boyz
C.R.E.A.M (Acapella) – Wu-Tang Clan
Fat Pockets (Radio Remix) – Showbiz & A.G
Boomin’ in Ya Jeep (Dub Mix) – Kenny Dope ft Screechy Dan
Boomin’ in Ya Jeep (LP Mix) – Kenny Dope ft Screechy Dan
Do You Wanna Hear It? – Nubian Crackers ft Artifacts
Jazzy Old School Dub – Nubian Crackers
Not Gonna Be Able To Do It – Double XX Posse
No Endz, No Skinz – Big L
Fudge Pudge (Remix Instrumental) – Organized Konfusion
Fudge Pudge (Remix Acapella) – Organized Konfusion
Just Asking (Clubstramental Mix) – Catch 22
Rakin’ In The Dough (Headboppers Mix) – Zhigge
Rakin’ In The Dough (Uptown Bounce Mix) – Zhigge
Good Life (Group Home Mix) – Pete Rock & C.L Smooth
Let it All Hang Out (Pete Rock Mix) – A.D.O.R