Blog: Tonegents

It seems that every year there is one electronic act at Coachella with an audio/visual experience that tries to top anything done before. We'll get to this year's in a second. But first... GIRLS is, to start, a band of two dudes, so eyes rolling already... I mean, can a couple of dudes who call themselves GIRLS even possibly be any good? (The answer is no.) Jimmy Cliff I got no problem with... but since when did Tim Armstrong become the go-to White [...]

Gotta start this post with four simple words that equal excellence: New. York. Football. Giants! Another great win and another amazing game. I bet Tom Brady went home and cried himself to sleep on his supermodel... See, that's why I hate that guy. EVEN WHEN HE LOSES, HE WINS! Fuckin' prick. I hope Welker moustache rapes him. Anyhoo, in celebration here's a NY band. How's THAT for on-the-nose? The Rapture Who they are: [...]

I mean, as if kids aren't annoying enough without being infinitely more talented than you. Little bastards. More on that in a sec... ... but today we start with Marlon Brando's favorite band, The Horrors . GET IT?!?! I KILL ME! But seriously, folks, these guys kinda have a bit of an Echo & The Bunnymen thing going on (shocking) which is sometimes better than others. I do quite like one of their tunes, and you kind find that on the Facebook page ... Also, we [...]

Mucho bummed about the passing of my man Don Cornelius, but more on that later perhaps. In the meantime, here's an artist that could definitely rock Soul Train ... Frank Ocean Who he is: The crooner in the Odd Future posse. I'm not really sold on their whole thing, but this guy's the exception. What he sounds like: It's that new, moody R&B that's been growing on me lately. Not [...]

Today it's time for a '90s flashback... and the fact that you can now actually HAVE a '90s flashback means I am fucking old... I'm gonna start out with some good comedy here... ready? Yuck is a band that actually lives up to it's name. HEY-YOOOOOOOOOOO! I'll be here all night. Tip your waitresses, they're workin' hard, people! Datsik is the reason people hate Bro-step, personified. If I said earlier that some of the Dubstep sounds like it was made on iPhone apps, this sounds [...]

Today we will land on a band I was supposed to see a couple of months ago... but I missed it. How's THAT for a story? I'm told British band WU LYF's name stands for "World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation" which makes absolutely zero sense, but it's got "Lucifer" in it so they MUST be cool, right? The Devil is so RAWK. But nah. They actually manage to be shouty & shoegazy at the same time, which is approximately as awful as it sounds... This Death Grips [...]

You're gonna think one of two things here... either A) I'm some crabby old curmudgeon who don't like anything or B) the undercard of this year's lineup sucks. I'd vote for the latter, because as you all know, I am full of nothing but love. Most of the time... But I got no love for this gal EMA , a chick who may have listened to a little bit too much Kate Bush and My Bloody Valentine in her day because her music sounds like a bit of a cross between those two. [...]

Etta James - Baby What You Want Me To Do (Live) (ysi)

So that whole Internet blackout thing was pretty successful yesterday, sounds like . I'm pretty happy about that... 'cuz I don't want my shit shut down, yo! I'M PROVIDING A PUBLIC SERVICE HERE, DAMMIT! Making the world a better place and shit. You're welcome, humanity. Now back to the show, and I don't even have to skip anyone today... Ximena Sariñana Who she is: A successful Mexican singer/songwriter (I'd call Grammy nominations successful, no matter what [...]

THE PUBLIC HAS SPOKEN! Okay, it was a very, very small percentage of the public, but still... they want some Blog-achella and who am I to deny them? Of course, my statement of how I was so very likely to actually go to Coachella this year was shot down in approximately four hours (the time it took both weekends to sell out, holy shitballs), but as they say in my business, THE SHOW MUST GO ON! (You know, actually I've been in "show business" for almost COUGH years now and I've [...]

Sometimes you find the funk in the most unlikely places... like Alexandria, Virginia... As you all know, I'm not one to cut and paste shit from other sources unless I am feeling particularly lazy or unless said other source really nails it. Well, whoever wrote this on the All Good Funk Alliance Facebook page pretty much nailed it... "All Good Funk Alliance are to funky Breaks what Inland Knights are to funky House. The kinda-under-the-radar guys who are both prolific and consistently awesome. Like the Knights, [...]

So the Coachella lineup is out and looking adequately un-shitty , which raises a bit of a dilemma for moi. Do I press on with the Blog-achella tradition or just let it go softly into that good night? I ask because it became pretty obvious last year that I don't have time to do it properly... is Half-Assa-Blog-achella good enough for you, fine reader? Let me know, because the ironic thing is that I'm more likely to go this year than I have been in a long time. Stars aligning and whatnot... so it is in [...]

That's some old sailor jargon, from what my dad tells me. Tonegents = edutainment at it's finest! We return once again to the L.A. beat scene today, this time with Mr. Ras G , one of the more out-there producers of the whole deal. This dude is on some Sun Ra shit in case you couldn't guess from the title of the record. It's a very weird listen, this record... but it makes more sense with some huge bowls of super sticky dank bud small, [...]

That's some old sailor jargon, from what my dad tells me. Tonegents = edutainment at it's finest! We return once again to the L.A. beat scene today, this time with Mr. Ras G , one of the more out-there producers of the whole deal. This dude is on some Sun Ra shit in case you couldn't guess from the title of the record. It's a very weird listen, this record... but it makes more sense with some huge bowls of super sticky dank bud small, [...]

Well folks, 2011 has come and gone and good fucking riddance. Worst. Year. Ever. And not just because Kim Kardashian's marriage didn't last. I joke, but I'm crying on the inside... anyhoo... I'm not going to bother trying to do a "Best of 2011" series of posts this year, as last year that project became a big DMCA clusterfuck. So fuck that shit. That said, here's a track from one of my fave records of the last quarter of '11... and it's probably a [...]

We're only a couple days away, so just in case you missed it the first time... here is the only Christmas mix 100% GUARANTEED to make your relatives all like "WTF?!?!?" when you put it on. And you know you wanna see that. So once again... enjoy! And here's a sneak preview posted for no other reason than to get this post on Hype Machine... although you'll enjoy having this separately for your own future mixtape purposes, no doubt... Shawn Lee - I'll Be F**king You This Christmas (ysi) [...]

If I have any readers left after the ass-wiping revelations discussed in my last post, this one's for you... This might just be one of the best early morning House records I've heard in a good long minute... and I have (for what it's worth) heard a lot of House records in the early morning. It comes German producer Gabor Schablitzki who, luckily for us, decided to go by the far-easier-to-spell handle Robag Wruhme . As you can tell I meant that sarcastically. Germans and their stupid [...]

So it's been pretty hard getting blog posts done the last couple of weeks... since I squashed the middle finger of my left hand in my car door like a damn idiot. Now, don't call off work or anything... I'm okay. But it's been pretty wild seeing just how hard it is getting by on just one hand. You don't even realize what you do with a certain hand until you can't, ya dig? What I'm trying to get at, and what I only share here because I know no one reads this is this... the [...]

Ho Ho Ho, Pimps and Hoes! Hey, is that reindeer shit on the ground? It is? Well then, it must be that time of the year... time for the quasi-annual Happy Holiday Hullabaloo, the most popular Christmas mix series since "Conrad Murray's Merry Mixtapes". NOT for the kiddies... Hullabaloo 3: Toys For You/Coal For Me by Tonegent on Mixcloud [...]

Just in case you missed it, be sure and check out the brand new holiday mix before you read on. Go ahead, I'll wait... ... ... That shit is merry as fuck, ain't it? Damn skippy! Anyhoo, moving on... So what happens to a Jazz standard when it falls into the hands of a Free Jazz lunatic? I'd imagine that in some cases results aren't pretty... that the tune is roofied, taken behind the shed and [...]