The last time I threw up was Jan 25th 1995.... so that decade long run came to an end Tuesday when I spent much of the night in the bathroom. I'm glad I finally got round to fixing the toilet in the master bedroom bathroom, since being sick in any other bathroom would have been messier. I think I'm mostly better, but still dead tired and my stomach is sensitive.
On top of this the rain just keeps coming, no telescope nights for me, and they've postposned the opening Sunset party once again.
On Sunday a new law goes into effect in Scotland which brings California style anti smoking laws into effect in Scotland. I never had a problem while I lived there, but now I'm happy to see this happening. Scotland for a long time has had awful health problems between everyone smoking, drinking and deep frying everything.
On another Scottish note - tomorrow marks the 700th anniversary of the coronation of Robert The Bruce as king of Scotland in 1306.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_I_of_Scotland
Roger Sanchez - AKA the S-Man is one of the most revered house DJ's in the world, he's the proud owner of Stealth records and has steadfastly stuck with the house sound even when it played second fiddle to the latest flash in the pan sub genres. While his production work has tended to favour remixes he did find time to release a full length album in 1991, "First Contact" had everything you'd expect from the S-Man and even featured Sharlene Spiteri on one track.
However, this was the big record, building the hook around a Toto sample and cloning Daft Punk's heavily compressed filter disco & vocoders sound. It also has one of the most memorable videos in house music, but lets face it, it doesn't take much to rise above the standards set by most house music videos.
It's WMC time again, so time for some big Miami tunes...
Ok this one is a cheat, Scottish producer Mylo had a huge record with 'Drop The Pressure' which mixed funky synthed up beats with prolific cursing and vocoders, this potent mix promptly earned him the tag of 'next big thing'. One way to make it even bigger was to mash it up with Miami Sound Machine's 80's hit 'Dr Beat' - Mylo had already shown a healthy obsession with 80's music, namechecking scores of artists in 'Destroy Rock and Roll' while other tracks had sampled Kim Carnes, Boy Meets Girl and Prince.
So not stricly a Miami tune, but you know there will be DJ's playing it.
LCD Soundsystem is a side project of producer James Murphy, co-founder of DFA Records. This first single sounds like the rambling boasts of an aging music geek to a minimal electronic beat. The record is all about the vocals, the one time I played it out I realised that nobody can appreciate the record in a club. Actually I think there's two sets of vocals overlaid, which is a common technique to make vocals sound richer, the only thing is that the lyrics vary between the two vocal tracks so it producers an interesting effect.
If you're something of a music trainspotter you'll enjoy the namechecks liberally sprinkled throughout the song, and for those of you who don't know all the names - there's a wikipedia page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_My_Edge that helpfully cross references all the artists with the relevant pages.
Mashing up vocals from Eminem, Samples from Norman Cook and a DnB track from Aphrodite this is one of the best white label mash ups to never be officially released. Eminem writes some great lyrics, but usually I find the production to be lacking, this fills in nicely.
Faith No More's biggest hit in the UK was a cover version of this, but it's not a patch on this original.
I was a huge fan of these guys in the early 90's and I have fond memories of their gig at the Glasgow Barrowlands where I managed to lose a shoe while fending off the front row crush. They were a world apart from the metal bands of the era, in some ways anticipating the nu-metal sound of the late 90's with rap style vocals over Jim Martin's crushing guitar sounds. They split up in 1998 just in time for the kids to start copying their sound.
With a lead singer called Ninja and two drummers you know this outfit has to be something special.
Jan bought me a vinyl copy of the album last weekend, so I've been playing this to Skye. This was like a breath of fresh air in the pop world - the track has an unusual phrasing, instead of the usual 8 measures of 4/4 it has 3x4/4, 1x 2/4 and then 2 more 4/4 making 22 notes.
