Wednesday, October 10, 2007

pandemonium

Well, it's been very quiet 'round these parts - work-life balance an' all that. And in our absence Radiohead have killed off the music industry. Ker-azy.

So let's party while Rome burns, dig?

Def Jef - Droppin' Rhymes on Drums


 

Def Jef - God Made Me Funky



The Pharcyde - Pandemonium



These tracks are the result of some recent crate digging, mostly involving digging through my brother's old stuff.

The Def Jef tracks were the source of much amusement to us back in the day. For a start, his name is DEF JEF. Then on the back of the 12" he gives a credit to his hairdresser, which passed into Johnny Domino legend as "Hair by Watusi". On going back to the source, I find that it's actually "Hair by Wasifu".

And there we were thinking his hairdresser had a silly name. Hush our collective mouths.

These hilarious observations aside, these are two pretty banging tracks. Jeffers can certainly flow and Etta James' vocals don't hurt matters. Of the two, "God Made Me Funky" probably has the edge for me - love it from 3.01 when Jeff clears his throat then censors himself ("I ain't effing around..."). Plus the playout from 3.34 will have you in serious danger of snapping yr head off.

Long-time friends of the Rally will now how much we love The Pharcyde (like so). "Pandemonium" is from the soundtrack album to Street Fighter, which Ox got from a clearout at an old McJob he had. I'd forgotten how much I loved this track, at a time when I was severely disappointed by Labcabincalifornia. Still sounds cool to these ears. And the stereo effect at 1.57 just scared the shit out of me.

Buy - Def Jef Droppin' Rhymes on Drums (vinyl)
Buy - Def Jef Just a Poet With Soul (has both tracks on it)
Buy - The Pharcyde Sold My Soul: the Remix and Rarity Collection (includes "Pandemonium")
Buy - Street Fighter OST... but I wouldn't advise it

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
In other news, I have to tell you that you should really, really consider getting the "All My Friends" EP by LCD Soundsystem. EMI aren't too keen on bloggers posting tracks (so I won't be) but this is the best thing I've heard in ages.

"All My Friends" wasn't my favourite track from Sounds Of Silver, but listening to the three versions here shows what a fantastic track it is. The John Cale version was always going to be interesting and not even Franz Ferdinand can hurt this song! And the LCD version of "No Love Lost" is frickin' brilliant.

I got it from iTunes (you can get it as iTunes Plus album, which means you can bang it on a CD), but you can get it on CD (minus Cale and "No Love Lost"!) here.