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DANGERDOOM - The Mouse and the Mask - 2006 - Album review

DOPE SHIT: Old School - Sofa King - Space Ho's
SOUNDBITE: It's just that I'm old school like that/ Roll that rap over soul loops like that
RATING: 4/5
I would say it's that time of the year for another MF Doom outing but the man's relentless - not so much prolific as suffering from creative diarrhoea - I can't keep track of all the stuff he puts out in six months, let alone any longer period. As a consequence I can't be bothered to check out everything he does but every so often I'll have a listen. Generally speaking, if I buy a hip-hop LP these days it's got to have a least one banger on it and a few other distinctive tracks. Often, though, while I find Doom's stuff is atmospheric and his flows highly competent, it can all wash over me without making a more lasting impression. This is tantamount to heresy in some corners of planet hip-hop but I can announce that this collaboration with DJ and producer Dangermouse (recently in the spotlight with Gnarls Barkley) is both remarkable and contains a massive club banger in the form of 'Old School' - which may even remind you of KMD a bit (depending on how long you've been into Doom). In fact it was this track that made me buy the LP with Dangermouse generously providing phat, multi-layered percussion, underpinning it with a rich bass line and topping it off with a fanfare of horns and tinkling piano loop. It would be rude of Doom and guest Talib Kweli not to take advantage of this and they don't disappoint with several minutes reflection on the simple pleasures of creating a beat and a rhyme. It's not just this track that has the solid beats and overall the production is slightly beefier and cleaner than other Doom efforts thanks to the presence of Dangermouse. It also seems that honours may have been fairly evenly split over choice of samples although there's still plenty of obscure TV and film references dug up by Doom. Check out the lazy Hammond organ, flute and whistling cowboy loops on 'Space Ho's' or the beautiful gipsy violin on 'Sofa King'. It's not all classic, but the stuff that isn't is competent, so if you haven't bought a Doom LP in a while and the rest of the Gnarls Barkley LP (apart from 'that track') didn't quite float your boat get this.

KEITH CHRISTMAS - Light of the Dawn - 2006 - Album review

KEITH CHRISTMAS - Light Of The Dawn - 2006 - Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: Light of the Dawn - Stone with a View - Let the Devil
SOUNDBITE: She came to me in a dream last night/ Face all staring ghostly white
RATING: 5/5
Who the f*ck is Keith Christmas? F*lk blues? Run for the hills surely - and then wonder why in b*ggery a folk blues album is getting reviewed on this blog. Firstly a confession - I work with this guy. Now it's not what you're thinking - for a start the tight b*stard made me pay for the CD. Secondly it's actually that good that I reckon people need to know about it. I'll be honest - my reference points for this genre are few and far between and often take the shape of memories of half heard music from smoky real ale West Country pubs where I'd ventured on ill-advised forays looking for a Sunday roast. The closest my own music collection gets to Keith's stuff is the occasional slide guitar offering from Ben Harper or Mark Lanegan (former Screaming Trees singer sometime Queens of the Stone age collaborator) especially his 'Field Songs' album. The first thing that pleasantly surprised me about this album was the fact that it didn't feature any accordions at all. Secondly it was close enough to Mark Lanegan for me not to feel completely out of my depth. Thirdly the quality of the tunes like 'Light of the Dawn'. The opening acoustic guitar chords of this reminded me of 'Alone Again Or' by Love on their 'Forever Changes' LP. In fact the guitar playing is pretty damn impressive throughout, especially on bluesy tracks like 'Heart, Soul, Body and Mind' and 'Let the Devil'. You can't knock the man's voice either - it wouldn't surprise me if he's smoked the odd cigarette, but he's got range and can more than carry a tune. The tempo of tracks varies a lot over the album from slide-blues stompers like the aforementioned 'Let the Devil' to the melancholy 'Stone With A View' and for anal guitar geeks, Keith's generously included the tuning AND the capo position for each song. All this and he produced it as well! I would go on for longer but I have to go and get some more tobacco for my pipe and my glass of Old Peculiar is nearly empty. Just kidding. Anyway - you don't have to take my word for it go and listen at:
www.keithchristmas.co.uk Check!

MR LIF - Mo Mega - 2006 - Album review

MR LIF - Mo Mega - 2006 - Album review
RATING: 3/5
HIGHLIGHTS: Murs Iz My Manager (hip hop track of the year so far!)
Lif's collaboration project Perceptionists released a solid LP last year but this is his first solo outing since 2002's quality 'I Phantom' and - er - it's not quite as good. Now I realise I may be going against the prevailing wind of opinion there - but that's in my nature. Anyway - there's no need to get too disappointed- I'd have bought this for the track 'Murs iz My Manager' alone which is classic funky sh*t, the likes of which Gang Starr and Del used to churn out by the bucketload, only better. This particular track is as old school as it gets without actually travelling back in time to say, 1992, with Lif and Murs trading rhymes about how Murs has 'got Lif's back' in the murky world of the music business over a bassline so funky it'll make you dance like you've just acquired crabs. Meanwhile stabs of funk soul horns battle it out with Coldcut style phone bell samples. The problem with Lif, for me, is that he always feels compelled to offer you an LP (or EP) of two halves. On the one hand superb old school offerings like 'Murs iz..', on the other new school cut and paste beats some more turgid and heavy than others in the El-P/ Cannibal Ox vein. Always politically conscious, Lif's scathing lyrics are always better if, like KRS - 1 they're accompanied by upbeat breaks and samples (which also seem to encourage his sense of humour) rather than the laboured grindings of what people have come to associate with the Def Jux label. Don't get me wrong - if anyone can make the Def Jux template groovy it'll be Lif. It's just that when he junks the 'Jux style and just grooves he's a lot better and with this LP there's more of the slow heavy stuff on offer here. So it's just as well he's also thrown on his funkiest ever track too.

DONOVAN FRANKENREITER - Move By Yourself - 2006

DONOVAN FRANKENREITER - Move By Yourself - 2006 - Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: Fool - That's too bad - Girl Like You
RATING: 2/5
Initially I thought about taking this back to the shop and wanted to give Frankenreiter, Johnson and co. a flea in their collective ear for churning out over-produced ballad-lite sh*te. I mean, it's not like I was expecting Donovan to go all drum and bass but it did at first seem that this was written and produced so that Radio 1 Djs and their posse of gimps could fawn over the 'new Jack Johnson' and slot in any track off the album between James Blunt and Sandi f*cking Thom and then play all 3 tracks on a constant loop while reflecting on how they've really bought into the soul surfer lifestyle just because they once puked up behind the stage at a gig on Fistral Beach. But despite the fact that the over-production would have tossers like Phil Collins reaching for the phone to ask where they could get their own work to sound so clinical and although the tunes are slightly less accessible than the last CD, this has grown on me. Don has obviously realised that unless he took radical musical action he would have lost all sense of a separate musical identity as the Jack Johnson juggernaut rolled over him and absorbed him into some mighty balladeering snowball that releases albums that sound identical every year in a bizarre musical groundhog day. Mind you, when I say 'radical' I mean for Donovan. You do get a sense that's he's been listening to slightly more seventies west coast folk funk and folk rock and he manages to bung in hammond organs, harder guitars, a selection of strings and a couple of female session singers. And G Love. Again. Not that there's anything wrong with G but I find it hard to get rid of an image of kids Jack and Don living in a cartoon beach shack making music on the verandah while doting parents Ben Harper and G Love watch admiringly from hammocks.

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - Stadium Arcadium - 2006 - Album review

HIGHLIGHTS: Desecration Smile - Storm In A Teacup - Dani California
RATING: 3/5
Red Hot Chili Peppers? Red Hot Pipe And Slippers more like - but in the fondest possible way. I reckon it must have been the release of 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik' that saw the last time the Chili Peppers released a decent funk rock tune, then they seemed to get lost in the wilderness for a while, a bit like exiled funky prophets and rustled up their worst album 'One Hot Minute' from parched ingredients before coming up trumps with 'Californication'. Despite being riddled with some crap funk rock tunes it also developed their softer side notably with the track 'Scar Tissue'. Then they realised they were quite good at doing tunes that weren't funk rock and knocked out the corking 'By The Way' sometimes criticised by long time Chili Peppers fans as sell-out and mellow, when in actual fact it was a successful reinvention of themselves and the best thing they'd done in ten years. Clearly followers of the adage 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' the Chili Peppers now present us (in classic 'rock folly' tradition) with a double album that is as 'mellow' as 'By the Way' in content but with a sound that seems less raw than that album and reminds me more of 'Californication'. As Chili Peppers albums go it's not the worst and if you like their softer more tuneful side you'll dig it. Man. Basically it's business as usual since they changed their style of business - in fact if there's a surprise at all it is that a rock band have managed to release a double album without any terrible tracks on it at all (apart from Kiedis's lyrics that is) - I've tried to stop picking out the words since 'Emit Remmus' on 'Californication' - "The California animal is a bear, angeleno but the devil may care..." indeed!

UGLY DUCKLING - Bang for the Buck - 2006 - Album review

UGLY DUCKLING - Bang For The Buck - 2006 - Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: Breakdown - Smack - Andy vs. Dizzy - Slow The Flow
SOUNDBITE: /You better watch out it might get ugly /Cuz you my friend are beginning to bug me /
RATING: 5/5
'Bang for the Buck' is the classic UD recipe of brass and wah-wah loops over phat breaks and soul-funk basslines but they've avoided the skit-heavy content of previous LP 'Taste the Secret' and kept it similarly uptempo - as opposed to the slower grooves of the first EP or 'Journey to Anywhere' LP. They often get dismissed in hip-hop circles as 'retro-old-school'. Retro stuff is sh*t if it's a pale imitation, if it stands up alongside the classics (and this album does) it can't be sh*t. Maybe it should be described as 'traditional' rather than retro. Whatever - the beats, loops and rhymes here are quality and the subversive UD humour is in full effect all the way through ripping into A&R men who are blind to UD's talents despite an obvious groundswell of public support /they said this sound won't make it today/ they don't want to hear what we're trying to say/ - and you have to admit they've got a point. A&R execs do seem to have a double standard about 'retro' between hip-hop and other genres of music - The White Stripes and The Strokes are even more retro than UD and they get promoted to the hilt. Not that UD care that much, they're having too much fun making the music they want to make, rocking dance floors and taking the p*ss out of the overblown posturing of certain rappers, record execs and er... each other, as Einstein comments (when asked to adjudicate over who was the better rapper) in a bored voice at the end of the 'Andy vs Dizzy' 'battle',- /Er - i dunno - wasn't listening/. A meteoric rise to fame was never going to happen for UD but this LP will gain them many new fans and lose them none. Buy it. Trust me on this - you can apologise for doubting me later.

LET'S BOOGALOO VOL. 3 - Various - 2006 - (Vinyl) Album review

Oh bee-hive!

LET'S BOOGALOO VOL.3
HIGHLIGHTS: Ain't Gonna tell No One (Stoned Soul Picnic) - Don't Let This Happen To Us (Fred Hughes) - Getting Down (Brand New Rhythm) - Oh My! (The Dansettes)
RATING4/5
Blimey how did Volumes 1 and 2 slip under my radar if Volume 3 is this good? Let me ask you some questions? Do you like funk and soul? Do you like Hammond organs, wah wah guitar and brass horns? Did you think that there could be no more soul funk gems to unearth? Did you think you knew all about the new 'old-sounding' funk (e.g. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings)? If you're answering yes to some (or all) of the above then you're in the position I was in before hearing this. Basically some people at an obscure Italian label with a massive soul/funk fixation (and let's face it, probably a propensity for riding unsilenced Lambrettas at four a.m. while you're trying to get to sleep because, like, the Europeans don't even go out for their early evening pre-club drink until gone midnight) have compiled a selection of funky grooves made up of genuine sixties rare classics and new stuff that sounds like it must have been produced between '67 and '71. Remember 'acid jazz' from the 90s? Yeah? Crap wasn't it? This is nothing like that dreary b*ll*cks. Buy it and see people struggle to stop moving.

WOLFMOTHER - Wolfmother - 2006 - Album review

WOLFMOTHER - Wolfmother - 2006 - Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: White Unicorn - The Joker And The Thief - Vagabond
SOUNDBITE: I had a vision/ Of festive days/ She's like an eagle/ In the misted haze..
RATING: A hairy, sweaty 5/5
I can't for the life of me understand why this lot's album didn't get released over here sooner. If a band was described to you as sounding like Ozzy was singing, the b*st*rd love children of Led Zeppelin and Queens of the Stone Age were playing the instruments and furthermore that they looked like Cream around the time 'Disraeli Gears' was released you'd a) dismiss me as being a even more of a gushing tw*t than anyone who starts screaming with hysterical excitement about the latest non-event in the Big Brother house and b) that no band could possibly live up to that sort of hype. And you'd be wrong. This sounds wicked and I don't care who hears me say it. If you buy one rock album this year buy this one. Then play it loud wherever you go so that everyone else can hear it and never mind immature little tw*ts who are worried their favourite band will become 'too mainstream' and 'sell-out'. In fact do it purposely to p*ss them off.

BEN HARPER - Both Sides of the Gun - 2006 - Album review

BEN HARPER - Both Sides Of The Gun - 2006 - Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: Better Way - Both Sides Of The Gun - Black Rain
SOUNDBITE: /You don't fight for us but expect us to fight for you/
RATING: 2/5 or 3/5 (see below)
This is a double album. I'll just let that sink in as it does tend to conjure a sense of superstar egos giving painful birth to hideous rock odysseys. Basically what Ben's done is put all the rocky, funky, tracks and two less rocky/funky tracks which are still basically upbeat on one CD and all the tedious rock-bore (Yes! I did used to be a session musician) noodlings and meanderings plus two tracks that are alright on the other. I thought that after 'Diamonds on the Inside' Ben had finally sussed what it took to make a decent album - after all there was only one really sh*t track on the entire thing. Indeed, as a teenager wise beyond his years remarked to me on hearing that particular track - 'that's what happens when people get let in a studio with too much money'. Unfortunately for this album the funds are obviously still plentiful at Harper mansions and he seems to have been given the actual keys to a studio now too. My advice to you is make your mp3 playlist up of all the tracks on the rocky/funky CD and 'Picture In a Frame' and chilled instrumental 'Sweet Nothing Serenade' off the boring CD. This is what any half-decent band manager and record company should have insisted on in the first place. That way you'll end up with 40.3 minutes (according to my ITunes) of a fairly decent new Ben Harper album. These tracks are more like those off 'Diamonds on The Inside' than other previous outings and are relatively heavy on the funky clavinet (a good thing in my book). Also if you find at least two of the tracks recalling the Rolling Stones 'Brown Sugar' era - I don't suppose you'll be alone. In summary there's a normal length album's worth of good music here and it's not like you'll be paying much more than for a standard CD so it is worth getting (especially if you're a Ben fan) and had Ben's manager, record company or conscience done the decent thing and curtailed the more whimsical excesses I'd have given this a 3/5 or possibly 4/5 as Ben does rip into the U.S. government quite heavily on 'Black Rain'. As it is, you only need one side of the gun.