• 10. Das Racist – Sit Down, ManAt first, I couldn’t take Das Racist seriously.  I still don’t take them too seriously. That’s part of the fun. Yes,  they could be considered “joke-rap”. But this is joke-rap done well. A few great guest features helps. At a time where I’m overwhelmed by free hip-hop mixtape downloads, this one was very refreshing. They also won me over pretty easily with the Dwight Schrute reference.
• 9. Squarepusher – Shobaleader One: d’DemonstratorAs soon as this album was announced, it was released. I didn’t have much time to anticipate it. Suddenly Jenkinson has a band wearing Daft Punk-style helmets and releasing music on Ed Banger. I wasn’t sure what to expect. But the album is oddly addictive. I could play “Abstract Lover” on repeat for hours. It will be interesting to see what he follows this up with.
• 8. Project Dolphin – SilvergunA few months ago I noticed some amazing music being played in the background of a Street Fighter combo video. It was like jazz-fusion pulled from a racing game circa 1996. Thankfully, the Youtuber gave credit. I  immediately bought their EP,  inspired by Japanese jazz-fusion and video game soundtracks. Their covers are great, but their own compositions show even more potential.
• 7. Four Tet – There Is Love In YouThis album was released very early in the year but it managed to stick with me throughout. “Focused” is the word that comes to mind when I listen to this. No filler. No gimmicks. Just great Four Tet tracks. It’s too solid not to make my top 10.
• 6. The Roots – How I Got Over / Dilla Joints / Late Night With The Roots / LNJF SandwichesIt’s another great Roots album. Not very surprising. I don’t have much else to say about How I Got Over, but I will say that I appreciate all the free music The Roots put out this year. Dilla Joints was so good that I would have paid money for it if I had to. But no! It was free! The Roots covering Dilla beats. What could be better? Well…
• 5. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark FantasyI wasn’t going to buy this album. My girlfriend gave it to me as a gift. I wanted to avoid all the hype, drama, hilarious Illuminati rumors, etc. After listening to it, it’s hard to ignore. For all the hate Kanye gets, I think he really puts a lot of heart and effort into his music. No matter how arrogant he seems, on this album he comes off as imperfect and fragile. He knows he’s a jerk. That’s why I like this album.
• 4. Dimlite – Prismic TopsI discovered Dimlite through Prefuse 73 years ago, downloading a few tracks but never seriously digging into his catalog. I’m glad Now-Again released Prismic Tops so I could give him a second chance. Now that I have, I hold him at about the same level as Flying Lotus in terms of beatmakers, and that’s saying a lot. The album is amazing. Hopefully he’ll put out a new full album soon. I also heavily recommend Runbox Weathers and This Is Embracing.
• 3. Shigeto – Full Circle / What We Hold On To / Semi CircleI first heard Shigeto on one of ISO50’s free MP3 EPs. His remix of Astrud Gilberto’s “Berimbau” was amazing. His Semi-Circle EP was amazing. His (free!) What We Hold On To EP was amazing. His album Full Circle is really amazing. Even his proposal to his wife was cool. All of that adds up to Shigeto being one of my favorite artists this year.
• 2. Miguel-Atwood Ferguson – Timeless: Suite For Ma DukesLast year’s Suite For Ma Dukes EP was beautiful, but it’s length only made me want more. Mochilla fixed that by releasing the Timeless box set and including MP3 downloads of each concert. Arthur Verocai and Mulatu Asatke’s performances were fantastic, but Miguel-Atwood Ferguson’s was the highlight. It’s amazing how well he translated Dilla’s beats into emotional orchestral compositions. The follow-up live performances with the likes of Flying Lotus and Bilal are also very impressive.
• 1. Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma Do I really have to explain this one? I had been waiting to hear this album since I heard Los Angeles. This album has set the bar very high for the current electronic beat scene and Flying Lotus is probably the only person who can top it. Like my top album last year (Shafiq Husayn’s Shafiq En’ A Free Ka) Cosmogramma is a collaborative effort between FlyLo and several other great aritists, including Miguel-Atwood Ferguson, Thundercat, Dorian Concept, Laura Darlington… Even Radiohead’s Thom Yorke showed up for the party. It’s all brain-meltingly good. I’ll be listening to this album for a long time… At least until his next album.

Honerable Mentions

Bilal – Airtight’s Revenge
Big Boi – Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
Black Milk – Album of The Year
Bonobo – Black Sands
Caribou – Swim
Dela – The Robert Glasper Beat Tape
Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh)
Esperanza Spalding – Chamber Music Society
Gonjasufi – A Sufi & A Killer
Madlib – Madlib Medicine Show

Download: ♪ CoverCast #7: Kaiden

For my seventh CoverCast I wanted to do something for Halloween. 怪談 (Kaidan) essentially means “ghost story”, so I pulled together a few of the darkest music I had  along with clips from  horror films and tv shows. Play it at your Halloween party or something! There’s a few minutes that are actually danceable. People will love it, maybe. Warning, there is some strong language.

1. Haiku D’Etat – Westside Slip N’ Slide
2. Oscar McClure – Kitchen Scraps (Baths’ Otalgia Mix)
3. s.maharba – The Look
4. Gonjasufi – Untitled
5. Jneiro Jarel – Shadoze
6. Alain Goraguer – L’Oiseau
7. The Gaslamp Killer – Shattering Inner Journeys (Featuring Computer Jay & Mike Burnham)
8. Guilty Simpson – Coroner’s Music
9. Tony Williams – Once I Loved
10. Dem Hunger – Mosque Vibrations
11. Shining – Goretex Weather Report
12. Company Flow – Blind
13. JD & The Evil’s Dynamite Band – The Evil D’s
14. Broadcast & The Focus Group – A Seancing Song
15. James Pants – I Promise I Lied
16. Flying Lotus – I Feel Like Dying
17. Ras G – Discipline09-4
18. King Midas Sound – Miles & Miles
19. Jogger – Nephicide

This is the kind of news that makes my day! Warp Records is releasing a new EP by Flying Lotus in September called Pattern+Grid World, a collection of new tracks coming just months after his last full-length, Cosmogramma (probably my favorite album this year). If Reset is any indication, he is no slouch on his EPs so I’m really looking forward to this. Included with the album is a poster by Portland-based artist Theo Ellsworth (below).

I’m not familiar with Ellsworth, but he has a Flickr account packed with his work which is all pretty fantastic and surreal. A great match for Lotus’ sound, I think. Here’s another piece below that I liked, similar to the format of the poster, along with some amazing woodcut characters.

While I’m not sure what the rest of the album is going to sound like, I do know this (below) is the beat that Mike Bigga (aka Killer Mike) used for “Swimming” on Adult Swim’s recent Singles Program (also below). I want to hear more southern rappers over tracks like this.

Download: ♪ Mike Bigga – “Swimming”

Update: As Judge Mental from Vinyl Meltdown pointed out in the comments, Ellsworth also illustrated this great cover for Ramona Fall’s album Intuit.

Flying Lotus
Theo Ellsworth
Theo Ellsworth @ Flickr
Warp Records: New EP Pattern+Grid World – out 20/21 September 2010
Adult Swim Singles Program
Ramona Fall

The “Madlib Invazion” has been going on for a long time, but this year Madlib is working extra hard to get as much money from my wallet as possible. The Madlib Medicine Show is a monthly series of albums all by Madlib. Odd months are original material, even are mixes. July’s release, High Jazz, is a compilation of new and unreleased tracks from the Yesterdays Universe collective. And by collective, I mean imaginary musicians that Madlib uses as a mask, bringing some friends like Karriem Riggins and Ivan Conti along the way.

The album is in much the same spirit as Yesterdays Universe, which I wrote about back in 2007. Each track is supposedly taken from rare records in Madlib’s giant collection, going as far as having Jeff Jank create covers for each, same as he did for Yesterdays Universe. The Blue Note/Reid Miles influence on the front cover is obvious. The other covers may be less so.

As with all odd month Medicine Shows (like #1), a 3 LP limited edition vinyl version (above) with covers screen-printed by the Hit + Run Crew was released. Of course it’s sold out now, but it looked very attractive. I also wanted to share what will soon be the cover of the next album in the series, Advanced Jazz. See how many jazz musicians you can identify crossing the Hudson.

Download: ♪ Generation Match – “Electronic Dimension”

Madlib
Jeff Jank
Hit + Run Crew

DeviantART has a reputation of being a bottomless pit of amateur anime doodles and lazy photography. But really, there are a lot of great artists there (Jasinski, for example), though you may have to dig for them. One of those artists is ~trance-orange, aka Lala aka Lauren Albert. As soon as I came across her profile I was amazed by the colorful, distorted, twisted, at times multi-limbed/eyed figures that occupy her work.

She recently posted the piece up top, a cover for experimental pop artist Jihae’s single “Succubus”. This is actually a variant of what was actually used for the cover, which has a warmer orange and green color scheme. Above are two similar pieces from her portfolio. Also, an animation! Featuring music by The Knife.

Lala
~trance-orange @ DeviantART
Jihae
The Knife

To accompany The Cover Up’s new home, I’ve also begun migrating posts from my other album cover blog, The Cover Down, into a Tumblr page. After I’ve finished moving the old posts I’ll start scanning new covers from my collection. Yes, this is a Blogger exodus.

The internet never fails at providing me with new illustrators’ portfolios to stare at enviously. One of those portfolios belongs to Iain Macarthur, a “fanatic of art since eight” based in Swindon, England. Honsetly, his list of influence reads like it could have been pulled from my own bio, including the likes of Gustav Klimt, Alphonse Mucha, James Jean, Ashley Wood, Sergio Toppi and others.

His muses serve him well, as much of his work combines fantastic line-work on abstract design elements surrounding tightly rendered portraits. I especially like these two portraits above of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, as well as the ornately detailed boombox below. It seems most of his newest work is on his Behance account, so be sure to check there.

Iain Macarthur
Iain Macarthur @ Behance

I’ve finally finished migrating The Cover Up from Blogger to WordPress. Along the way I’ve made some improvements. A tighter designer, a working search, related posts in the sidebar, a giant tag cloud, Lightbox on all posts, improved audio embeds and some other additions. Eventually I’ll also import The Cover Down. Flip through the site and let me know what you think! New posts coming very soon…

I haven’t posted much here for a month or so. I’ve been busy. But I did have a chance to put this relaxed mix together, featuring a few recent favorites. Take note of the track from Dela’s Robert Glasper beat tape and The Roots track from their Dilla covers compilation. Also, rest in peace Nujabes and Steve Reid, both great artists. Oh, and props to the Freer & Sackler Galleries for their “In The Realm of the Buddha” exhibit. I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to take photos… I’ll be putting together some more mixes soon.

Download: ♪ CoverCast #6: Spiritwalk

1. Erykah Badu – Agitation
2. Bonobo – Eyesdown
3. Dela / Robert Glasper – Dizzy
4. José James – Love Conversation (Featuring Jordana de Lovely)
5. The Roots – Hall & Oates
6. Daedelus – Order of the Golden Dawn (Featuring Laura Darling)
7. Nujabes – Moon Strut
8. Dimlite – In Groups To The Hydrando (Album Edit)
9. James Pants – Thin Moon
10. Gonjasufi – Sheep
11. Whitefield Brothers – Chich
12. Jaga Jazzist – Toccata
13. Four Tet – Plastic People
14. Steve Reid – Lugano