Here are three videos from some beat-oriented favorites of mine. All found around YouTube, all existing well outside the extremely dullzo realm of mainstream hip-hop, all completely different from one another, and all well worth your investigation. Especially if you're cut from the "don't care for the rap music" cloth.
On the left, we have the apocalyptic Wordsound Records duo of Spectre and Sensational, the men who by my ears espouse the best of the broken beat/perplexing rhyme philosophies. You can find more great collaborative work by them here. This song ("Pillars of Smoke") is available on the Retrospectre CD.
At centerstage, all the way from Australia, is the mighty Curse (ov) Dialect. My love affair with fringey Australian music dates back to first hearing the Celibate Rifles on college radio in the mid 80s. From that launchpad, I worked backwards and discovered bands like Radio Birdman, while simultaneously looking ahead to the mutant hip-hop of Macromantics and Curse (ov) Dialect. This song is from their fantastic recent album Wooden Tongues. Get the full skinny on the band here.
Finally, the extreme right gives us a video by Dalek, the Newark/Brooklyn phenomenon that's responsible for some of the most forward-thinking hip-hop records of the last decade. It's not your everyday producer and MC combo that's recorded with Faust and gets invited to participate in the Bang on a Can marathon alongside JG Thirwell, Brian Eno, and Alvin Lucier. This track is called "Ever Somber" and is from the band's brilliant Absence LP. It has been regularly referred to (by me) as one of the best songs of the last ten years. Have at it. You can see more Dalek vids on YouTube with this link, buy their music from Ipecac Records over here, and read up still further here.
Wow, Curse (ov) Dialect is sampling Comus! Never heard any hip-hop band doing that before.
Posted by: Lukas | May 30, 2007 at 08:04 PM