This one's coming straight from the heart. No gimmicks. When I look back at my life immediately following college, I'll remember the trials, the paychecks that didn't come, the uninsurance, the sleeping on the office couch - but I'll be remiss to put a soundtrack to it all. Blame it on whatever's convenient: for a little more than a year, I lived well outside the influence of music. I listened to little and discovered less. I went through a computer reformat that lasted me nearly a year without ever installing my iPod transfer software. Fuck, I don't think [...]
40 Winks hail from Antwerp, Belguim and are made up of Padmo and Weedy. They produce 'hip hop with a twist' and they are coming to you as the first installment of a three part Under The Influence series from the excellent new lablel Little-D . Cubik note: I love these guys; beats & musical treats for sure. Check out one of their tunes below. Cheers ****************************** ****************************** ****************************** ****************************** **** Under the Influcence with...Padmo from 40 Winks [...]

I had a horrible day today. The kind of horrible day where everything starts going wrong the minute you walk out the door. In truth, my troubles really did start then, because when I closed the door and left this morning is when I locked myself out of my apartment. That was just the beginning, but I won't bore you with the details. The one good thing about today, though, is that it gives me the perfect excuse to post a song that I've wanted to write about for awhile. DJ Shadow: "Six Days" [...]
Notice that we have two different lists going on here. Indie Mom has a "Best of 2006" list, and I have my Favorites of 2006 . Her list is super-organized and numbered. I'm just kind of throwing mine out there in no particular order as I feel like it. I really admire her format, though. It looks great. The rules: a) All songs must have been released during the 2006 year (duh) in the US. This may be duh , but it is causing me problems. One problem is the [...]

( Garrison Reid created this fine artwork.) About a week ago, Gorilla vs. Bear tried to help the hip-hop impaired (specifically, Skatterbrain ) with a "How Can You Not Like Hip-Hop?" mix. It's a great idea and it got me thinking about ways I can continue to educate on hip-hop. Apropos of nothing, the first idea I thought of was a mix featuring Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, only my (and whole lots other peoples') favorite hip-hop group. Back in the [...]

MLK and the Dreamers A bunch of young white kids from Omaha are in London this week competing with other finalists in the BBC's " The Next Big Thing " competition. The BBC event has as its lofty goal nothing less than crowning, after a global search, "the world's best young, unsigned band." The competition draws off more than 1,000 artists, all 18 or younger, from 36 countries. The Omaha band, MLK and the Dreamers , are among the seven " Next Big [...]
Nov 21, 2006, 6:30pm
FPSA

run, turkey run It's time to stuff myself silly. But it's not like they're just gonna let me stuff myself with stuffing... at least not without a fight. We're heading up to Hartford, Connecticut for Thanksgiving with Sharon's good college friends. They have this annual 5-mile turkey run called the Manchester Road Race every Thanksgiving morning. So we'll work up an appetite and I won't feel guilty about eating roughly a small human child in turkey and fixin's - well that mental image isn't very appetizing. Music:Run DJ [...]
It's Friday. Thankfully! Finally the end to a week that seemed to drag it's heels to this concluding point. So now it's time to kick off the stress, break free of work shackles, let your hair down and party like there's no Monday morning. And what better way to do it than with three mashup tracks that are so skilled and well matched, that it's hard to believe they weren't originally written this way. Check out [...]
This is the other side of my Big Headphone Beats coin. A warm bath to relax in, a hammock to dream in, a dark shadowed corner to hide in. These are the beats I love most, the bass lines that live in my skin, all attached to memory: -flying down pch by myself at midnight, racing [...]

I haven't listened to DJ Shadow's The Outsider enough to form any sort of opinion on it. It's not that I don't own it, because I do. It's sitting here, kinda staring at me. If I'm honest with myself, I'd say some of the lukewarm reviews have me a little tentative to dig in. There seem to be two distinct camps of Shadow fans: those pining for another Endtroducing and those embracing his exploration of the Bay's hyphy scene. I'm somewhere in the middle. For now. Regardless, the ever-resourceful [...]

Happy Halloween! If you need some music to listen to while handing out mini Snickers to the evil neighbor kids, Show Me Music can hook you up. I put together some songs that have something to do with Halloween, Monsters, and Ghosts (oh my!). Enjoy. [MP3] The Automatic - Monster [MP3] Band of Horses - Monsters [MP3] DangerDoom - The Mask [MP3] DJ Shadow - Giving Up the [...]
Since the heated debate about DJ Shadow's new album The Outsider has subsided and the album has been released, it's time to give my thoughts on it. What struck me on the first few listens was the lack of cohesion throughout. It's like he deliberately set out to confuse not just fans but first time listeners. The album starts with a ridiculous quasi-menacing spoken work intro, then moves through soul, hyphy , alternative-rock, new-age mysticism and back to hip hop again. Honestly, I'm impressed by the guy's bravado in putting together [...]
Annie Mac's Minimix*Krafty Kuts & A-Skillz[DAB]7:55 9.1mbDLTrntblism Annie Mac's Minimix*Dj Yoda[DAB] 4:595.8mbDLTrntblism Catskills Show*Guest Coldcut1:11:14 97.9mb DL Funk/Headz Breezblock Show*Dj Shadow 29:38 40.8mb Hip-Hop Worldwide Show*Koop Live in Session & Lubi mix[DAB] 1:59:52 164.7mbDLWorldwide Mind Fusion*Madlib Part.3 57:49 62.6mbSoul/Jazz Breezblock Show*Money Mark 28:24 26.1mbOld School/Funk Essential Mix*Scratch Perverts 2:00:01 160.4mbVarious Solid Steel PROMO Show No. 8*mixed by DK 57:46 79.4mbDL Headz/New Jazz Tru Thoughts Show*King Of Diggin Guest Mix by Kon1:55:20 158.4mbDL Headz/Funk Worldwide Show Giant Step Special*The Herbaliser Mixtape1:59:58164.8mbDLVarious
Sep 26, 2006, 3:01pm
WORD

Man, Shadow flips me out. Seriously. He produces what is probably the best debut album of the last 20 years in Endtroducing... , follows that up with the ridiculously good and prescient UNKLE album Psyence Fiction . His follow-up solo album, the difficult The Private Press , is much better than it's detractors have held it to be. Then he goes and releases the ultimate tour live CD/DVD set with In Tune and On Time . After this, we were treated to his various remixes and production work, some of which never saw the light of [...]
I worked in college radio when Shadow's first CD (Entroducing...) came out. The guy who ran the Sunday School (our day of pure hip-hop programming) said it was one of the best CDs he had ever heard. I was shocked...how could a DJ make a good CD, isn't he just mixing up other people's music? The programmer looked at me and said, "Exactly!" Well, I didn't get it until I listened. DJ Shadow was
I worked in college radio when Shadow's first CD (Entroducing...) came out. The guy who ran the Sunday School (our day of pure hip-hop programming) said it was one of the best CDs he had ever heard. I was shocked...how could a DJ make a good CD, isn't he just mixing up other people's music? The programmer looked at me and said, "Exactly!" Well, I didn't get it until I listened. DJ Shadow
Funky Friday Fourpack I'm pressed for time so the funky four pack can speak for itself today. If I have time I'll try and write some blurbs later... Scissor Sisters - The Other Side DJ Shadow - This Time (I'm Gonna Try It My Way) Los Amigos Invisibles - Super Pop Venezuela Janet Jackson - So Excited (feat. Khia)

it's the end of the week. i'm tired. you're tired. we've all been counting down the seconds to friday night since the crack of dawn on monday. at some point, we're probably all going to need a nap. but then what? how do we wake up and face this weekend that we've been looking forward to? well, i will always stand by music as being the answer to all your needs. why these songs? no real reason (although in the case of the sonic youth track, i dare you to try and stay in bed if that's the song you're [...]

Fear my crappy photoshop skills I think compiling The Daily Graboid every week is probably my favorite thing to do on this blog. Every week I usually manage to always find a couple of albums from artists I had no previous knowledge of. If there's one thing I try to do here, it's that i'm always looking for something new and this is just one of the many ways I come in contact with a lot of new music outside of reading blogs, websites and such. Like I [...]

The ruins of the city of Galveston, TX after the Hurricane of 1900 , the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States. The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. - Thomas Jefferson Kelis ft. Too $hort - " Bossy " (SebastiAn Remix) * Freeform Five - " Eeeeaaoow " (Stanton Warriors Remix) Fatboy Slim [...]