Music - new releases

MOS DEF - THE ESTATIC CD
SPEECH DEBELLE - SPEECH THERAPY CD - UK MC on Big Dadda featuring production from PLUTONIC LAB & LOTEK
NINE HIGH - SELF TITLED CD
DJ SKAE - DJ SKAE'S GUESTLIST CD - compilation from Sydney.

ELEFANT TRAX - restock action

we got mad respect for our fam at Elefant Trax.
Here's a little restock action from their catalog...


ASTRONOMY CLASS - EXIT STRATEGY CD 2LP
HERMITUDE - TALES OF THE DRIFT CD
URTHBOY - COME AROUND 12"
MISTA SAVONA - MELBOURNE MEETS KINGSTON CD 2LP
HERMITUDE - THREADS CD 2LP
PASOBIONIC - EMPTY BEATS FOR LONELY RAPPERS CD
V/A - TRAMPLED CD EP
THE TONGUE - SHOCK AND AWE CD
HORRORSHOW - THE GREY SPACE CD
ASTRONOMY CLASS - PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS CD

Wax Poetics Issue 35

Issue 35 cover artists Roger Troutman and Booker T. Jones were both innovative musicians of extraodinary vision. Each is known for a career defined in part by an instrument. While Troutman took the talk box to the people, Booker T. ruled the Hammond B-3. Also: Mahavishnu Orchestra, Def Jef, E.Z. Mike Simpson, and Ralph Macdonald.

Lyman Woodard - Saturday Night Special (2LP)

Although Detroit is best known for fostering the musical talents of countless Motown artists, the Motor City always played host to a wide spectrum of scenes. As the Jackson 5’s “Dancing Machine” was incinerating dance floors nationwide in 1975, an accomplished organist named Lyman Woodard was putting the finishing touches on Saturday Night Special, a funky collection of working-class jazz that, to this day, stands as a testament to the amazing relics of artistic expression born from this industrious place and time in American music.

Unfortunately, Woodard’s label, the proletariat resource Strata Records, lacked the funds and distribution required to match the record’s musical propulsion. The rich layers of sound, befit for a double LP, were confined to one piece of vinyl, compressing the recording’s sonic brilliance to fit the more economical format.

The release of this long-overdue reissue gives the album the treatment and loving attention it has always rightfully deserved. Saturday Night Special, the fifth release by Wax Poetics Records, comes in the wake of Lyman Woodard’s recent and untimely passing at the youthful age of sixty-six.

To commemorate his magnum opus, Wax Poetics Records releases Saturday Night Special as a 180-gram double LP, limited to 1,500 numbered copies and featuring original liner notes by John Sinclair, new interviews, never-before-seen photos, and a replica of the original promotional poster.

The iconic cover photograph, “The Equalizers” taken by Detroit’s Leni Sinclair, has been presented in its original form. More a rerelease than a reissue, this is the way that the world was supposed to experience Saturday Night Special. The result is an album masterfully restored in the utmost respect for a true Detroit jazz and funk icon.

DJ D*Phy & The Igloo Present: THE RUFF CRAFT MIXTAPE

This just came in this morining and won't be around for long.

The Ruff Craft Mixtape is available in a limited edition release of 100 hand-numbered audiocassette tapes, staying true to the definition of a 'mix tape' as well as representing the work ethic and analogue preferences of J Dilla’s production techniques and grimy sounds. The A side features all the tracks mixed and blended together over 45 minutes, with all the instrumentals left to shine for themselves on the B side.

During early 2008 whilst listening to J Dilla’s Ruff Draft LP in a haze of lingering smoke and half-drained longnecks, the idea for a concept mixtape dedicated to the life and works of the late great J Dilla began to formulate over the remaining hours of the evening.

Now almost a year later, Sydneysiders The Igloo and DJ D*Phy have teamed up to create The Ruff Craft Mixtape, a concept release doubling as a tribute and ode to one of the worlds most talented and respected hip hop producers hailing from Detroit; the late great James Dewitt Yancey, AKA Jay Dilla. Often dubbed as “your favourite producers favourite producer”, Jay Dee has crafted beats for the likes of A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde, Common, Busta Rhymes, De La Soul and Slum Village to name a few, along with countless remixes, solo productions and unreleased beat tapes.

The Ruff Craft Mixtape is comprised entirely of the finest Dilla instrumentals from start to finish, with The Igloo handling mic duties and cuts interlaced by D*Phy over seamless beat mixes. Both artists aim to deliver originality and diversity over Jay Dee’s smooth sound scapes, paying tribute in tracks such as ‘Ode to Dilla’ and to the city of Sydney in ‘Celebrations’.

All through the mixtape there is plenty of mentions of keeping an art form pure and staying true to the roots of the music. “Some fucking rappers only kick what’s real/ life’s cheap/ I don’t need to sell out Dill” is a statement of keeping projects like The Ruff Craft Mixtape to an acclaimed underground audience as much as possible.

BURN - caps, hood & zip hood

BURN are keeping it simple and straight to the point this winter.

LOGO HOODZIP HOOD

"TAG" CAP