An Interview with Abdominal

Abdominal is your favorite MC's favorite MC. He's so good technically, lyrically, and word-playically that it's amazing hes not a thousand times more known than he already is.

Check out what he has to say about pizza, Satan, and trying to impress his lady-friend.

But first, head on over to his CBC radio 3 page and tune into one of his jams.

Animal Nation: Do you have any cats?

Abdominal: No...1 dog.

AN: How many cats does someone have to have before they're considered "a crazy cat person"?

Abs: 1

AN: Listen: It's December, 2012. The conspiracy theorists were right. There's a huge meteor the size of Canada headed straight for Canada. The Four Horsemen have arrived and they're hungover as heck and totally not looking to party. Satan shows up in your backyard, ready to destroy our planet and everything we've ever known, but he's willing to turn it all around if you can impress him with one of your songs. He's only interested in your music, and he's only got 3 minutes and 34 seconds of free time. Which Abdominal track are you going to use to blow Satan's mind?

Abs: "Heaven's Demon", which is a track off my last album ("Escape From the Pigeon Hole") that's, coincidentally enough, about me being a mercenary sent by God to destroy Satan. He probably wouldn't be too impressed but he might be scared enough to reconsider his dastardly plan.

AN: What is your favorite non-pizza pizza topping? I mean, what might we find on your favorite fantasy pizza that we might not normally discover on a Dominoes Deep Dish? (ie-perogies, Kraft Dinner, a skyfish...)

Abs: A second, slightly smaller pizza.

AN: That's amazing. What's been the strangest / most stand out recording or performing session you've experienced?

Abs: Playing in front of 10, 000 people at the Glastonbury festival in the UK was pretty stand-out.

AN: This question comes straight from our guest host and international superstar rapper extraordinaire, Ma$e...

Abs: Wuttup Ma$e.

Ma$e: If you had twenty-four hours to live just think
Where would you go?

Abs: My girlfriend's place (she might be reading this).

M: What would you do?

Abs: Make sweet, sweet love to my girlfriend.

M: Who would you screw?

Abs: See above (again, there's a 0.5% chance she might be reading this).

M: And who would you wanna notify?

Abs: Nobody really...sure they'd figure it out eventually.

M: Or would yo [sic] ass deny that yo [sic] ass about to die?

Abs: You ask some weird questions Ma$e.

AN: Seriously, Ma$e... I thought you were a preacher or some shit.... Anyway, anything else you want to mention?

Abs: Buy my new album, "Sitting Music", as soon as it drops...which will be some time before 2050. Thanks for reading... peace, Abs.

AN: No, sir. I thank you for the lack of grammatical errors in your reply!

If you enjoyed this make sure to check out our Interview with fellow Canadian hip-hopper Josh Martinez, as well as our Interview with Mike "Armadillo Slim" Armitage.

Albums of Influence - Radiohead's "In Rainbows"

I was never really a big fan of Radiohead.
I was always under the impression that they were the type of band that made these huge sonic albums on computers, and then would be forced to play a completely stripped down version of the same song on stage.
That being said, it wasn't really the record "In Rainbows" that made me fall in love with Radiohead. It was the accompanying videoed studio sessions in which the band performed each song from their new album live. All of them. Live. And they sounded amazing. Even the songs with weird ambience, or a really glitchy Roland 707 (see video below).

After watching Radiohead make all of these amazing computer-like sounds live I couldn't help but be in awe of them.

Radiohead was also the very first group to release an album as a "Pay What You Want" download, much like we did with our album "Understanding More About Nothing Than Anybody Ever Thought Impossible or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Music".

Download the entire album for free HERE, or check out the entire "Scotch Mist" video HERE, then run out and check out a Radiohead show, as they put on probably the most amazing live show you'll ever see.






Other amazing Radiohead albums include: The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A.

Albums of Influence - 13 and God (Self Titled)

The first time I heard this album I think it actually broke my mind.

Track 5 - "Afterclap" is just about one of the best songs I've ever heard. Especially considering the "Smash TV" samples they used in it.

Download the entire album for free here. (Needs WinRar to unzip.)
And then wait patiently for the New 13 & God album, or check out both bands from the 13 & God supergroup, Themselves, and The NoTwist.

Albums of Influence - The Rolling Stones' "Beggar's Banquet"

Simply put, this album is RAW.
This album goes to show that you don't really have to be the best musicians in the world (or that you can be too high on heroin to care?), to come out with an amazing, whiskey-soaked, blues album.
The guitars are off beat and all over the place, and their lead guitarist, Brian Jones, didn't even show up to half of the recording sessions, and yet, the raw emotion that comes out of this album, even on jokey songs like "Dear Doctor", is incredible.

This album was also one of the first records I heard that had epic 6 minute songs without any key changes. Key changes are hard. Key changes in hip-hop, where just about everything is sample based, are nearly impossible. This record helped show me how to keep songs moving, or how to change what you're playing without changing the notes...

Download the entire album for free here... and then go buy the other 21 albums, 50 some odd bootlegs, five hundred t-shirts, and official Rolling Stones Metal Detector.



Other great Stones albums include: Aftermath, Sticky Fingers, and Let it Bleed.

Albums of Influence - Eminem's "The Slim Shady LP"

This record was the reason my first two solo albums had "LP" attached to the backs of their titles. In fact, this record was the reason that I had two solo LPs in the first place.

This could very well be the most influential album (for me) that I've ever come upon.

Before hearing this album I'd had the Biggies, and the Naughty by Natures, but I'd also had the President's of the United States of Americas, and the Empire Records' soundtracks.
I'd always liked hip-hop, but it wasn't until I heard some nasally-voiced punk rapping about giving a girl too many mushrooms that it became the only genre of music I was interested in.
After hearing Eminem rap, I can honestly say I didn't listen to any other kind of music for a solid 4 years.

This album definitely wasn't as good as his follow-up, "The Marshall Mathers LP", but this one came first, shocked more, and packed one hell of an unsuspecting punch.


You can find this album for free on google. I can't tell you how or the RIAA will take down my site again, but it's there....






Other great Eminem albums include: The Marshall Mathers LP (!!), and The Eminem Show (sort of).

Albums of Influence - Deltron's 3030

After the intro, this album kicks off with its title track "3030". Though this 8 minute track is clearly the highlight of the album, the rest of the songs still stack up pretty very well, and do a great job of telling the story that is "Deltron 3030". The concept album premise is that Del Tha Funky Homosapien finds himself 1000 years in the future, trying to navigate his way though evil government run cities and over-powerful corporations, while also battling to be the Galactic Rhyme Federation Champion.

Besides the whole "concept album" thing going on here, the most influential part of the album goes back to that same first track. "3030" is one of the only hip-hop songs I've ever heard that has real dynamic to it. The song changes and progresses as different samples and layers are added and taken away. This track manages to not get boring, not even for a second, throughout its 8 minute entirety.

I also just read the fantastic news that all three original members, Dan the Automator, Del, and Kid Koala, are making a sequel to Deltron 3030, entitled "Deltron 3030: Event II".

Download the album for free here, then anticipate the new one like crazy.





Other awesome albums by Del or Dan the Automator include Both Sides of the Brain, and the first Gorillaz album... although pretty much anything these guys do is amazing. (See Handsome Boy Modeling School, Hieroglyphics, Kool Keith's Doctor Octagonecologyst, etc...)

Albums of Influence - The Beatles' "Abbey Road"

The Beatles - Abbey Road

Everyone's heard of the Beatles before. I'm sure everyone's heard the Beatles as well. I think the first time I heard the Beatles was in Elementary school, when the entire class learned to sing "Yellow Submarine".
Abbey Road, however, was the first time I can remember that I actually listened to the Beatles.

I remember the first time I put it on, that first bass note and flanged vocals on "Come Together" were so magnetizing that I couldn't help but be sucked in to whatever else the album had to offer.

The most influential part of this album for me however, came after the flip. Nearly the entire second half of the album was blended together to create an epic 15 minute medley. This was the first time I had ever heard multiple songs, that all sound completely different, flow together seamlessly as if they had all been recorded in one take.

I've never been a huge Paul McCartney fan, but for the fact that he spent hours and days and weeks literally cutting up tape, and splicing it back together, completely without the assistance of Pro Tools, you've gotta give him props.
That, and he also invented sampling.


Download the entire album for free here.
Then make sure to head out and buy buy buy all the Beatles memorabilia you can possibly get your hands on.








Other great Beatles albums include Revolver, The White Album, and select songs from Sgt. Peppers.

Albums of Influence - Bike For Three's "More Heart Than Brain"

Bike for Three's "More Heart Than Brains"

I've always thought Buck 65 is creative and unique, but I was never really a fan(atic) of his work. I'd heard this song or that song, seen him play live (2nd best hip-hop show I've ever been to, falling right behind Wu-Tang's Raekwon), and had plenty a friend recommend one of his many albums to me, but I'd also always had a hard time getting deep into his work.

That all changed the moment I heard Bike for Three, a collaborative album between Belgium electro artist "Greetings From Tuskan", and Canada's own hip-hop (?) artist "Buck 65".

Buck has never been more emotionally raw, nor has his off-kilter rap style fit any piece of music more perfectly than it does on this electronic, yet fabulously musical, 15 track album.

With lines like "The homes we chose vs. the one that we imagined," there's almost more to what Buck isn't saying than what he is, lending your own mind back through a series of unchosen long-ago-possibilities of what could have been.

This album is exactly what hip-hop, a genre that's been churning out the same radio-friendly auto-tuned hit for the past 5 years, needs so badly. Bike for Three shows what hip hop could be if producers still cared about the music they were making, if rappers weren't solely driven by their desire for fame and fortune, and if consumers, my self included, dug past hip-hop's bland sludgy exterior that is mainstream rap more often.

Here's to hoping that this album gets all sorts of recognition, and wins every hip-hop award available this year, including any of the awards that our cash-in-hand-bribes and dark-alley-car-washings may have got us nominated for ourselves.
It's true. This album is amazing.

Download it for free here. Then rush out and catch Buck 65 live.






If you liked this album, make sure to buy Buck 65's "Situation".

Albums of Influence - Modest Mouse's "The Moon and Antarctica"

Modest Mouse's "The Moon and Antarctica"

"You can't have a favourite song on Dark Side of the Moon. You've got to accept it as a whole. You've got to listen to it in its entirety as a 'listening experience'."
I've heard more than one person, stoned out of their minds, say this about Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon".

That could just as easily be said about the Modest Mouse sonic masterpiece that is "The Moon and Antarctica". Although all of the songs do work on their own, the album works so well as a whole that it feels like you're doing it injustice to only listen to one or two songs at a time.

For a band that (at the time) only had 3 people in it, there are an amazing amount of layers on this record.
This was one of the first records I ever heard that made me think of combining multiple vocal takes onto one track. Or double-tracking guitars, while putting warm and heavy effects on one channel, while leaving the other raw and cold. This was the first record I ever heard that made me start experimenting sonically.

And with lyrics like:
"Well a 3rd had just been made, and we were swimming in the water/
Didn't know then, was it a son, was it a daughter?/
When it occurred to me that the animals are swimming/
Around in the water in the oceans in our bodies/
And another had been found, another ocean on the planet/
Given that our blood is just like the Atlantic/
And how"
It's hard to not start thinking about how our entire universe as we know it could be contained within a single cell of a single creature living in an infinitely larger universe. Or even that the blood in our bodies could just as easily be a whole other type of universe in itself millions of other creatures, infinitely smaller than yourself.

All this from a couple indie-punk-rockers from the mid-NorthWest.
And how.



Download the entire album for free here. If you dig it, buy their 'Moon' follow up album "Good News For People That Love Bad News". As well as a t-shirt. And a hat.



Other Modest Mouse album honourable mentions include, but are not limited to: Good News for People Who Like Bad News, The Lonesome Crowded West, and Building Nothing out of Something.

Albums of Influence - Atmosphere's "Lucy Ford"

This album was such a huge influence on me when I first heard it that it literally and completely changed the music I listened to, the people I hung out with, and the way I lived my life.
This album taught me that you don't need a "dope whip" or "bling"to meet girls, and that 50 Cent, despite having been shot 9 times, isn't really that cool.
This album is like the "Velvet Underground" of hip hop. It's so basic, and yet so captivating at the same time. It was the first record I ever heard that made me think "You know, I bet I could do this too..."


You can download the entire album for free here.
If you dig it, make sure to buy their next album, check out a show, or buy some Atmosphere merch.
Slug needs a new pool.

Here's Slug (the vocal half of Atmosphere) turning a threat into one of the best love songs ever written.


Other Atmosphere album honourable mentions include: Seven's Travels, Sad Clown Bad Dub II, and When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold.