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.
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.
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....
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...)
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.
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".
"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.
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.
I've been doing a lot of music-based 'research' lately. By which I mean, I've been sitting on my lumpy and unforgiving couch, eating entirely too much cold pizza, sedating myself with anything and everything I can find, and listening to non-stop CBC Radio 3. Basically I'm trying to bring out my inner Brian Wilson, without really immersing myself in the whole 'being really good at music' thing. On a positive note, after having heard what seems like an infinite amount of new independent Canadian artists on CBC, I've found a couple I've really taken a shine too.
Dan Mangan, pictured above, while not busy sugaring random people's coffee, makes really good music, and recently became one such artist.
When I first heard his song "Sold", I thought he sounded like a sadder, lonelier Barenaked Ladies, if the Barenaked Ladies had spent their entire music careers chain-smoking, and shouting at things. That said, Dan Mangan isn't emo. Dan Mangan doesn't write cheesy songs about having a million dollars, and Dan Mangan totally prefers puppies with heads to puppies without heads.
Make sure to click on any of the above links, or this one*, to check out Dan's song "Sold".
Animal Nation: What is your favorite thing ever out of: Puppies Without Heads, Acid Rain, or Rainbows Made of Shades of Grey? Dan Mangan - Puppies without heads - because at one point, they were puppies WITH heads, and those are really cute.
AN: If you could be anyone, ever, for a day, out of the following people, whom would you be, and why? Rambo in the middle of fighting off 50 machine gun clad jungle warriors with no weapons other than your bare Rambo hands, The Terminator while he’s slowly being lowered into hot lava while giving a thumbs up to John Conner, or Vince from the ShamWow infomercials, before he got his tongue bit off my a hooker, but after he smoked too much crystal meth.
DM:Definitely the Terminator - because there was glory in his sacrifice to the Connor family - and because he was rad.
AN: Going to the hospital rules. It’s Universally loved. Out of the following, what is your favorite reason for being at the hospital: a) You’ve just had your pelvis run over and broken by a drunken police officer, and it was all his fault. You’re going to cash in huge, and the only downside is that your legs have been replaced by metal rods... above the penis. b) It’s abortion day at the old abortion mill, and they’re handing out dead fetuses, and the Food Bank is closed, and you’re hungry. or! c) You’ve got perfect health, and you’re driving a fancy car that totally attracts millions of ladies, but you’re going to visit your girlfriend, and she’s got AIDS, and somehow you don’t have it, but she’s definitely planning on forcing sex on you when you get there, and she’s got nice boobies, and you’re not going to be able to say ‘no’. DM: What kind of blog is this again?
AN: Captain Planet rules. He's our hero! He's going to take pollution down to zero! But what’s the deal with 'Heart'??! Q'est-ce que fuck? What would the 5th element be if it were up to Dan Mangan? Earth, fire, wind, water, and ___________? DM: Internet.
AN: Anything else you want to talk aboot?
DM: Nah, I'm good.
AN: Perfect, 'cause I've gotta take a dump.
*All links go to the same place, so don't bother trying anything tricky, wise-guy.
Yesterday I heard Moka Only, 90's-00's underground hip-hop pioneer and sensation, was stepping down from the hip-hop... 'thing'... to focus on other projects.
I sent him a message wishing him well, and asking him if this was true, and this was his reply.
Animal Nation:
" Moke! I heard you're quitting the hop... Congratulations! (I think..?) I just wanted to say thank you for being a huge inspiration! You made Swollen huge and famous, and you made those records so much more fun to listen to.. And thanks for letting us open that Whistler show for you 2 years ago at Crankworx! That was a huge honor.. Hope you're off to bigger and better things! Keep er easy, -Steige "
Moka replied:
"Thanks brother.. but don't beleeev it.. i will NEVER quit..no matter how crappy the industry gets.. i made a post sayin i quit hiphop but didnt mean quitting the music.. i meant im just not gonna be going throo the normal nettworks anymore.. hip hop promoters and all that.. all this rap shit.. man, its always a bunch of people rippin ya off and all that.. im fallin back in with my jazz doods and it works cus thats the kinda music i been doing all along.. dirty underground jazz hip hop.. but no, i wont stop.. you just gonna see me pop up in more unusual places."
Even though I haven't popped in "Lime Green" or "Codename: Scorpion" for a while, it's still kind of sad to hear that one of my major influences in the past is stepping down.
Here's hoping that Moka has nothing but great things coming his way. Thanks Moke.
The first time I heard this album I think it actually broke my mind.
Simply put, this album is RAW.
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.
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 
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".
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.
"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'."
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.
I've been doing a lot of music-based 'research' lately.
Yesterday I heard Moka Only, 90's-00's underground hip-hop pioneer and sensation, was stepping down from the hip-hop... 'thing'... to focus on other projects.
