the sweptaways - let my shoes lead me forward

this one peeped my interest after i was checking some info on the hybris site for a track by montt mardie, it's essentially a choirstyle acapella cover of jenny wilson. i love the original and i heard it and was like, ye, this is really nice, the best part is where the girls emulate the pitchbent syntsound.

hybris site or download directly

ayumi hamasaki - duty

titletrack off her 3rd album, this opens majesticly with big strings, indian rhythms and spanish guitars. during my otakudays where i listened extensivly to hamasaki ayumi, the 'duty' album wasn't really on rotation that much, i went for 'i am...' and 'loveppears' instead. anyhow, this gets some rotation nowadays, it's a good track and i really like the drumpattern.

youtube

busta rhymes - arab money

really i shouldn't like this, it's so typical of the modern synthdriven hiphop that is plaguing the popcharts. but being of middleeastern roots i tend to notice anything that uses the rhythms or grooves of arab music. this one, produced by ron brownz has a hook which is basicly iraqi/khaleeji style gibberish. or ron is actually trying to pronounce something in arabic but it's completely lost due to the autotunevocoder (another thing that is plaguing modern hiphop). anyhow, it has a good groove but the best part is not the song, it's busta's really retarded dance, as displayed when he went on westwood's radioshow a few weeks ago.

youtube

and also found this, busta doing the dance in the streets of new york

youtube

swell session vs. mr scruff - no no

it's weird to see scruff doing a straight up house track but on this one the two minds sort out one seriously funky piece of music. it's booming beat and big rides serves a killer bedrock for this juggernaut of a track. there is a good clip on youtube where scruff and saag (swell session) working on this one.

youtube

ol' dirty bastard - got your money

ever since rza unleashed russell jones onto the world he delivered just pure madness. key line is defo 'i don't have a problem with you fucking me, i do have a problem with you not fucking me', that just says it all. i think this the first cut i heard by the neptunes and had that really clean funky style that pharrell & chad hugo would be known for. the bassline alone is infectious to the bone.

youtube

paul keeley - slick & slim (dennis desantis remix)

used to be all about the original version until one day i had a gander on this remix and i really wondered, why was i ignoring this? it's really good, uses the saxamaphone a bit better than keeley's original and has a chunkier bass. amazing stuff, shame that thinner removed this from their archive. can still be found among the collectors on the intarweb.

bioground - smooth summer nights

big ups to dj atak for introducing me to bioground via a set he did in 2005. he played affinity and this wonderful cut. silky smooth house with an amazing drop with chants and killer pads. people slept on this until luke fair put it his balance mixcd, big shame but ye.

imeem

petter - det går bra nu (remix feat. fabolous)

the original beat is much better but i quite like this one too, but it's mostly worth listen because they got fabo to say 'det går bra nu'.

g3rst - bloom to me

probably the best mashup i've heard this year, i love both sources and this is just genius. the fusion of kurt on koop's sculpted 20's jazz beats is perfection.

can be found at g3rst's page