No Love

The creepiest, dirtiest and down right most uninviting genre of music to crawl up the basement stairs in the past few years has to be dubstep. We’re a world at war and this is the sound of the battlefield one day after the smoke has cleared. Its empty space, and air that’s almost too still to breath. You feel the bombs in the distance almost more than you hear them. There’s no reason to duck and cover because the violence has passed but there’s danger over the hills and you know one day its coming back around. Dubstep is a warning: leave before it’s too late.

This first dubstep omens came from the darkest corners of UK 2-step around 2001. As Garage made its way up the charts through sunny Craig David vocal numbers the Forward sound retreated as far from the light as possible, turning DnB and 2-Step in on themselves until new twisted hybrids like grime and dubstep were born. Today within its admittedly limited range of sounds producers like Digital Mystikz, Hatcha and Kode9 have pushed the genre into an ever more distinct and dub-ified direction with only minimal attempts at smoothing out the sound for the masses. One of the first attempts at accessible “dinner party” dubstep came last year from a team of producers with the most misleading name possible, Various. Their album The World Is Gone marries vocals with dubstep’s half-step lurch, crafting sub bass funeral dirgs that will blow out your speakers in mourning. The video below for their song “Hater” is on some 3AM MTV Amped Shit. A ball of nothing floating through space explodes into different objects. You don't need a Kanye sized video budget to back up a song like this, following the bouncing ball is more than enough.

Various- "Hater"

Everyone Is Trying to Bum Me Out

Rain, sleet, hail, or snow I tend to walk around with a smile on my face. At first glance you'd think I was either the happiest guy in the world or touched. Truth is neither could be further from the truth. I'm in fairly good control of all my faculties and as a rule I don't like things. Seriously, most things I could do without: Cars, work, people etc. Given the choice I'd take a pass of the majority of life. Problem is I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future so I figure the path of least resistance is my best chance for skating by till something better than the here and now comes along. I have no intention of checking out before my reservation is up but I don't really feel like fighting while I'm here. This machine is broken. We gummed up the works a long time ago so now its completely out of whack. Some people don't see anything wrong with how the ball bounces so they play along in blissful ignorance. Those people bug me. Other people see that things are FUBAR and rage out loud with righteous indignation. Those people bug me. There's lots of gray in between these two extremes and there's folks clear across the spectrum at every point. However, at some point or another I can guarantee you of one thing: they will bug me.

I'm not saying I've got it all figured out over here, I'm just saying I don't pretend to either. If I had to write some sort of credo it would read like this:

CHAS
Que Sera Sera
It Is What It Is
Everything Is Everything
Whatever...I'm Tired

So on those days when my apathetic prick quotient is at its highest I turn to a little song by the Eels called "Flower". Its off their '96 album Beautiful Freak, the same album that gave them their only real radio hit "Novocaine For The Soul". The Eels are a band but really its just an outlet for lead singer/songerwriter/multi-instrumentalist E to wax misanthropic on record. "Flower" is melancholia on a sunny day. E lets you know that he's none too thrilled with the world but the whole song rests on a choir harmony that lets a sliver of inspiration peer through. He's pretty bummed out, but not really...either way.

Eels- "Flower"

Mellow Yellow

Korean born, Queens bred Cool Calm Pete first put me at ease on the Babbletron album Mechanical Royalty. Along with Jay Manila and DJ Pre, they hot wired beats built like hoopty spaceships falling to pieces and rebuilt with junkyard parts. The sound was held together with string but half the fun of a jalopy is the fact that you can drive it into the ground without being afraid. Babbletron took full advantage, whipping through the galaxy without an ounce of fear driving their music like they stole it.

On his first solo album Lost, Pete pulls out of the space race but I wouldn't say he's got both feet planted on the ground either. This afternoon he's hanging in his hammock three feet above the Earth, swaying back and forth in the wind with his journal, some lemonade and a near faded outline of the last smoke ring he blew. He's been around the block before, but today he sees all he needs to from the comfort of his own backyard. Tomorrow he might have something to prove but for now he's just trying to live up to his name. The kind of inner comfort that you can only gain from seeing truth first hand has left him sure of the world and his place in it. No need to brag, no need to boast, just do what you came here to do and keep it movin. He sets the mood for this self-assured day dream with loose limbed soul samples from the 60's & 70's. Easy like Sunday morning, these are screen door beats. They keep the bugs out but let the breeze blow through. The track for download "Tune In" cools things down just like Pete intended. Instead of flexing to support his claim at manhood he lets the truth stand on its own and, as always, reality is strong enough to prop itself up. "Black Friday", the video below, is a song produced by RJ-D2 and was added as a bonus track to the album when it was reissued by the Def-Jux label. The track is more gamma-ray funk than the rest of the album but the interplay between the iconography and lyrics is whip smart.

Cool Calm Pete- "Tune In"

Cool Calm Pete- "Black Friday"