Blog: Tonegents

So, the second half of 2012 starts kinda like this... This may come as some surprise, but I have a very deep weakness for Spanish guitar-type virtuosity. Love that shit. It will totally get you into my panties. NOT THAT I'M WEARING ANY WINK-WINK RAWR! But yeah, love that stuff. So here's some from Brazilian string-strummer Bola Sete , whom I am to understand is one of the best... and Dizzy Gillespie, Vince Guaraldi and Carlos Santana all agreed. Or they just worked with [...]

Some of you, probably not very many, may be aware that I have a Soundcloud page , upon which I have posted various dodgy original tunes from time to time. As you may imagine, this page is sparsely visited and rightly so... except for this tune here, which for some reason has well over a thousand listens. Obviously, someone posted it somewhere... but I have no idea how to find out where. Anyone got any tips on that? Is that some info I have to pay for? 'Cuz that ain't happenin'. Google searches [...]

• Tonegent - Dirty Talk

On vacation for a couple of weeks... Deal with the pain by "liking" the Tonegents Facebook page . Things that do not suck will be posted there over the hiatus. Giggity.

Because House music is supposed to make you feel funny in your pants parts... As someone who fully got into House during the late '90s/early Aughts, I like my shit deep and sexay. But with the rise of the minimal lately, that's become a lot harder to find. Everything's all techy and precise and crispy.... which isn't a bad thing necessarily... but things have tipped far too heavily in that direction. Where would Naked Music rate today? I fear not as highly, which is a fucking travesty. [...]

• Maceo Plex - Essential Mix aired 17

Why don't British rappers get more play in the US? I mean, they speak better English than the American rappers do. Discuss... Is it perhaps a bit cheeky to call your debut album Greatest Hits ? Perhaps, but I'd worry less about people thinking I'm cheeky and more about making sure that title didn't come true and everything I recorded from that point on didn't suck. "His first album was in fact his "Greatest Hits", because every other song he ever recorded was shit." Not [...]

Tonegents is about to teach you up on some geography, fool... Anybody ever heard of Mauritius ? No, it's not the first name of an NBA draft pick, it's a tiny island country in the Indian Ocean somewhere in the vicinity of Madagascar. Actually it looks like a pretty fucking fabulous place to visit if you check out their website. That's not even a joke. And it's also the country, thanks to one of it's residents having sex with someone a few years back, that brings [...]

Hey hey hey! Let's start the day by me telling you that yet another classic Tonegents DJ mix has been uploaded to the Mixcloud , this one full of summer jams. Go get you some... I'm not sure what folks think about William Orbit anymore... but in the early '90s, homeboy was on fire. And the hottest part of that was the Strange Cargo series of albums, of which this was the last. Even though those records weren't huge commercial hits, they [...]

Today, a dude that I would say has a plethora of side projects if A) he had an actual main project and B) I knew what "plethora" meant... Yohimbe Brothers was a project teaming up Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid , a guy who seemingly never met a one-off collaboration he wouldn't fuck, and Philly's DJ Logic , a fine turntablist who has unfortunately become a fixture on the jam band circuit as of late... so he seemingly has never meant a mushroom-gobbling white girl with hairy ampits that [...]

Keeping it international for the third straight post, we are heading due south... ... to New Zealand, where there is apparently there are people there who do things other than work on Peter Jackson films. I had no idea. But I kid. Because although it seems that not that many Kiwi acts get noticed internationally, the ones that do tend to be pretty fucking good. Case in point... Electric Wire Hustle and their amazing Future Soul vibes. This one features eccentric earth mama [...]

Busy-ass week. Not to be confused with a busy ass week. That's something maybe Kim Kardashian has (that and the herpes). The hyphen makes all the difference, you see? Anyhoo, we pick back up on the international vibe with this... As we've discussed before, no one does batshit crazy quite as well as the Japanese, and today's record is no exception to that rule. There's not a whole lot of info out there (not in English anyway) on drummer Takeshi Inomata, so I'll just let this [...]

Seems to me like the last few posts have been pretty similar in vibe, so let's change it up a bit, shall we? So here's what I know about Autour De Lucie ... they're a French guitar Pop band from the '90s, I probably first heard them on Morning Becomes Eclectic , I probably bought this for 99 cents at a parking lot sale and I probably haven't listened to this record in 10 years. That's what I know. Oh, and the song title translates as "What [...]

So this popped up in the shuffle this morning and I have no problem with that... ... because seriously, who doesn't love Snoop ? Well, Republicans probably don't, but they're a bunch of fucking assholes anyway. Too political? Too bad! I have freedoms! This is Amercia , dammit! Snoop Dogg - Doggy Dogg World (ysi) [...]

Since I'm not the type of DJ who feels the need to keep his secret weapons to himself (I'm looking in your direction, Dewey Chan), I'm gonna drop one of mine on you today... Sir Joe Quarterman was a little known D.C. Funk man who put out only this one full-length album (and a few 45s) in his career and then went on to become an architect. Different. But I'll bet when he went to all his architect parties and put this song on for his new [...]

Here's one for the hipsters... Or not... as Buckshot LeFonque was a band put together by saxamaphonist Branford Marsalis which was basically an (cringing as he says it) Acid Jazz project. I mean, I'm sure Branford himself, being a serious musician who plays serious jazz music seriously might not use that term, but let's call it what it is. Acid MF'in Jazz. Yep, not gonna get a whole lotta love from the Animal Collective on this one, but then again... fuck the Animal Collective massive. [...]

Here's some more proof that I know exactly jack shit... For whatever reason, I was under the impression that DJ Nature was a new guy, but I haven't been more wrong about anything since I decided to spend my life savings of Facebook stock. Ouch. But yeah, turns out that this is just another alias of DJ Milo, one of the O.G. members of The Wild Bunch , the legendary Bristol crew that spawned Massive Attack, Tricky, Soul II Soul and basically the beast known as [...]

It's always pretty exciting when one of the artists I post about actually drops by and leaves a comment on the site. Bassnectar was super-stoked that I posted his tune. Bigga Bush and Tim "Love" Lee were both chuffed that someone was still bangin' some of their old classics, etc... but here I have a first for you, as a couple of guys I have massive respect for actually hit me with some (relatively) exclusive, unreleased tunes! Big day, people. Big day... The Cutler are [...]

Donna Summer - Bad Girls (ysi)

Now what do you call that type of music again? You know, like this one here... whaddaya call that? Rephrase is the nom-de-funke of Sydney-based producer Jamie Olsen and the music he makes falls into the same subgenre as recent post subject Pure P ... a subgenre of sample-heavy, break-riddled, bass-driven funkiness that didn't really have a name for me until I came across this amazing website dedicated to it called Ghetto Funk . White people just love thinking they're ghetto, don't they... [...]

It's been a hot minute since I posted some straight-up Jazz. Let's remedy that, shall we? Piano man Andrew Hill certainly isn't one of the most famous members of the Blue Note stable, but I've got about a half-dozen of his records now and they are all solid steez. This nice mellow jam, as an added bonus, features a healthy dose of Bobby Hutcherson... which 9 out of 10 doctors recommend as a part of your daily nutritional requirements... Andrew Hill [...]

Sure it's not all gold, but you never know where you'll find a nugget... Today I got a cut from the new solo album by Ray Lugo , the leader of NYC Afrobeat combo Kokolo . The album as a whole... I'm not gonna lie to ya, it's just okay. It's got your usual elements of Funk, Latin, Afro, etc... it's not going to be used as a drink coaster, but it's not gonna get worn out from use either. What I really do like is [...]