A-Side = Justice - Phantom Suite

Phantom was a big single for Justice in a lead up to truly massive singles.  This one fell through the cracks for a lot of people mainly because it was so rough, and when all you know Justice for is an homage to Michael Jackson, rough might not be your cup of tea.  Well, here today your gonna get a double dose of rough, as I’ve stitched together Parts I & II of Phantom into one big long mess.  It kicks you in the teeth for nearly 8 minutes, no break.

B-Side = Midnight Juggernauts - Shadows

Another one of those electronic influenced Australian bands for the B-Side.  Midnight Juggernauts took me utterly by surprise with this one.  Shouldn’t have, their label puts out hot shit all the time.  But there I was, wondering what the shrieking was all about, when that bass line hit.  ooohooooh.  S’good no? The video is great too.  And that’s definitely the reason I put these two together: the bass line.  I gotta give the lads credit, they put together a great sounding mix on this record with, of course,  bass line front and center.  As it should be.

Download the fake 12” Here.

Organized Konfusion - Walk Into The Sun (Bill K Remix)

Organized Konfusion is maybe my favorite hip hop duo of all time, and its got mainly to do with their breadth.  Walk Into The Sun is a summer breeze of a joint and was a real breath of fresh air for a lead single, so to see them follow it up with a remix of this caliber was truly inspirational.  Classic samples abound in the original but the remix is a bit more bare-bones, which is precisely why I like it so much.  This has been a staple of my crate since the early days post-high school because it toes so many lines so gracefully; it’s warm, accessible, smart, and mixable.  In short, this shit works.  When did we loose all these sensibilities in hip-hop?  In the case of Organized Konfusion, we lost it the very next album with their uber-classic “Stress: The Extinction Agenda”.  And here we see their depth: it’s dark, claustrophobic, and confrontational, without being contrived or whiny.  In fact, it makes you like it almost in spite of itself.  How did two guys from queens manage to pull this leap between styles off?

A couple of clues are easily accessible even if you only know Pharoahe Monch from his Godzilla sampling days, or alternately from my last post.  His album on Rawkus, “Internal Affairs” is definitely one of the most cohesive disc from the label, and shows a real commitment to artistic breadth.  Many of the themes we see in OK’s first two LPs are intelligently employed and we begin to understand where the early successes may have stemmed from.  This is not to malign the other half of this landmark hip-hop group, Prince Po, as he continues to put out high quality work, most notably “The Slickness” on Warp subsidiary Lex (with gorgeous album artwork, as Lex always seems to).  This album seemed to pop up at a strange time in hip-hop and somewhat dove-tailed the ascendancy of production luminary Dangermouse, and accordingly was lost in shuffle by a majority of heads.  Tragically so; go check it out.

As to the question of who this Bill K is, I really have to plead ignorance.  The internet turns up little info on him that seems relevant, so I’m left wondering… wondering if he’s out there googling his name and still has the tapes from the session.  I would beat a donkey to death for the a cappella for this track.  Just sayin’.

N.E.R.D. - Maybe (Sa-Ra Remix)

This track may be relatively easy to find on the old interwebs these days, but damn if I didn’t have to work to get it initially.  That’s one reason this gets a Thursday post, I must have put about two solid weeks of work tracking down a copy.  I really don’t know why it was so hard to track down, but since I’ve never heard anyone else use it except Blu Jemz and Roger Yamaha I’ll continue to tout it as a secret weapon.

The other reason is that most people have never heard of Sa-Ra Creative Partners and couldn’t have cared less about a bi-coastal production trio before I played them this song.  For music heads these guys are well known as a forward-looking, much hyped trio, whose lazy (in a swinging, loose kind of way) productions have been lauded by other production heavy weights such as Pharrell (obviously) and Dr. Dre. But for all their production brilliance for others, their own compositions are getting traded between record companies like baseball cards.  Their full length debut is sometimes incorrectly credited as Second Time Around (2005) when in reality The Hollywood Recordings (2007) is their proper full length put out on Babygrande.  Babygrande?  No disrespect to the label, it’s got some good stuff, but these guys were rumored to be on Star Trak, G.O.O.D., and a major label at various points during their career.  Any one of those could have given them the push they needed to really hit.  They first flew into my radar through a 12” of one of my favorite MC’s, Pharoahe Monch’s horribly neglected Agent Orange.  Just try and tell me that beat isn’t the nastiest thing you’ve heard in a month, that’s a double dog dare.

As for the track itself, the production is BONKERS!  Kinda makes me like Pharrell’s vocals, no easy task.  Analog synths and tricky melody lines are a lock for me, so when the chorus kicks in and guitars mix in with everything else and the backup vocals come up in the mix, ooh I just can’t stand it.  My only response to it was to absolutely lose my shit to it when it breaks down two-thirds of the way through (2:36).  Is that an oboe?  I dunno but i wanna be smoking what they are!  That’s for sure.  Light up SA-RA, and pass some more new shit to me.  Please.

Note: Upon researching this i found out that they released something titled Nuclear Evolution: The Age of Love in November 2007 possibly as a Japan only release.  Other sites list it as coming out on Ubiquity (please say its so) but all info is sketchy at best.  Two questions: 1) Why hadn’t I even heard of this?  2) Why is Japan always getting the hottest shit as exclusives?