Man Of The Year 2006 - Li'l Wayne

I'm sure that any of you who dabble in hip-hop press are long since tired of hearing about how much of a terrible year it's been for hip-hop in general. Whilst Clipse, Ghostface, Trae, Suga Free and maybe even Murs were there for the number of us who actually look in to the critically acclaimed but not very high-selling rap albums, the big names didn't fair as well and you all know who they are so listing them seems pretty redundant. Plus there was that god-awful skateboard rap album by Lupe Fiasco that everyone except me seems to see something in.

However there was one rapper who was consistently on the ball and if the huge picture and his name being in this entries title didn't give it all away, that man was Li'l Wayne. He has spent the entire year flexing his vocal chords almost constantly and has in the process come out with two fantastic mixtapes as well as an official album with his "adopted father" Birdman. To add to that, despite "Idlewild" easily being Outkast's worst album to date, Li'l Wayne turned up on one of the albums decent tracks and completely stole the show right out from under Boi and Andre. He constantly kept the critics happy whilst being one of few artists this year to be throwing some decent hip-hop in to the mainstream.

However where Wayne has really brought himself to the front this year is through his constant Hurricane Katrina commentary. Being a New Orleans native, last years hurricane would obviously be a strong issue to the man. You could even say he sounded like a man who's childhood home had been destroyed and many old friends left homeless. Whilst Wayne did go for the obvious target of G.W (whilst probably justified), the real heart of this chain of music came from his clearly genuine, bleak and almost upsetting portrayal of the event and aftermath:

"We're from a town where everybody drowned"
"The hurricane took my Louisiana home/and all I got in return was a darn country song"

Obviously the written lyrics aren't as compelling without the delivery so grab the tracks below.

Birdman & Li'l Wayne - Stuntin' Like My Daddy
Outkast ft Li'l Wayne - Hollywood Divorce
Li'l Wayne - Georgia... Bush

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Into My Arms

Well since 'tis the season and such, you can take this as my official Christmas post. I'm sure anyone who reads a large number of mp3 blogs is more than sick of hearing a bunch of well known indy favorites cover "Jingle Bells" or whatever. So for the Christmas post, instead of a song that actually has anything to do with Christmas, I thought I'd go with one of my all time favorite love songs. When he's not beating journalists shitless for declaring him "lord of the goths" or writing sick songs about cowboys, Nick Cave is known for using his deep and harsh voice to give us all that warm dash of loving sentiment that we all enjoy so much. "Into My Arms" is the opener from his album "The Boatman's Call" and it's a lovely tale about his feelings for a religious woman of some variety.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Into My Arms

X - Under The Big Black Sun

It must be said, I absolutely adore X in their early 80s more country driven form and "Under The Big Black Sun" is the all singing all dancing transformation record. Their previous output sounded exactly like what it was, enjoyable LA punk made by a group of people with previous musical experience and thus finding the punk limitations something they could easily dominate but would become tired with over time. The year prior to "Under The Big Black Sun" being released, The Gun Club had released their seminal "The Fire Of Love" and had shown that punk bands could happily incorporate blues and country elements in to their sound and not have to deal with hundreds of prats with mohawks calling them all manner of unpleasant things (actually, chances are some of them still did). What came from the transition was the best anyone could have hoped for, "cow-punk" at it's very finest. Enjoyably melodic and tuneful whilst being fast and pissed off enough to stop the whole thing from becoming a really lame punk band playing Robert Johnson styled affair. My favorite two songs from the album you can find below. Still yousendit, I'm afraid.

X - Under The Big Black Sun
X - Blue Spark

A lovely bonus
It surprised me when I realized that I've never used this blog as grounds for declaring how fantastic The Starvations were before they split last year. So, in keeping with this posts punk-meets-country topic, here's a track from last years "Gravity's A Bitch."

The Starvations - Lost At Sea

First of all: I'm very sorry about the fact that every mp3 Kieran, Alice or I ever posted is now not working. I won't bore you with technical details so lets just say that our file host decided it didn't really want to be a file host anymore. Thus why all the files below are yousendit. Now, whilst it does piss me off that all the tracks I spent hours uploading suddenly disappeared, I'll thank you kindly to stop e-mailing me about putting mp3s back up. I'm sorry, I just don't have the time.

Speaking of which, I guess I should apologize for my absence, or at least I would if I thought anyone besides about five people cared about this blog updating. I want to tell you about what's been going on in my life recently about as much as you want to hear about it, but to put it simply, I just haven't had the time to mingle with the dynamic world of music blogging. As far as I can tell, neither have any of this blogs former writers. Anyway, here are some records I really like. Usual drill, if you like the song, buy the album etc.

KMD - Black Bastards

KMD - What A Nigga Know










Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot

Sparklehorse - Homecoming Queen


Ciccone Youth - The Whitey Album

Ciccone Youth - Macbeth








Fog - 10th Avenue Freakout

Fog - We're Winning








I'll be back before the year is out for the expected "best of 2006" post, unless I decide to post something before then.

Organized Konfusion - Stress (The Extinction Agenda)

I'm going to spare you the usual pretence of my having any idea of what I'm talking about, mainly because A) I have no idea how familiar most of you are with this album and I don't want to come off as patronizing and B) I really don't feel like writing three paragraphs just so safari can crash and lose everything I've written (you wouldn't believe how many posts haven't appeared because my internet crashed right at the end and I subsequently through a little fit and gave up). So I'll just say I've been playing this album in my trusty walkman and in my friend's respective cars (much to their bewilderment). In terms of production, it's one of the darkest and nastiest hip-hop records I've heard (more than the average person but less than people who write about them for a living) which is ofcourse helped by both rappers present, including the ever fantastic Pharaohe Monch, doing their best b-movie villan voices. Both the ever annoying backpack crew and equally as annoying "fuck backpackers" crew seem to love this record. So something for everyone then? No. Just people who like dark, brooding, semi-primal hip-hop.

Organized Konfusion - Stress
Organized Konfusion - Black Sunday

Keep It Heavy

I am one of the people who has basically decided that there are two types of metal (mainly due to my inability to take the genre particuarly seriously). There's embarrassing shit where people run around in skin tight leotards (emphasis on the 'tard) and squeeze their nuts that little bit tighter to get out every annoying yelp possible. Try to tell me you didn't get on that "The Darkness are here to save rock 'n' roll" bandwagon. Yeah, I did too and I still haven't forgiven myself. Then there's the simple, cool heavy stuff that Metallica used to make and Slayer seem to be unable to do anything but. There's also the area of bizarre mutant metal bands that I also have a soft spot for, but I have a hard time thinking of them as just straight-up metal. Slayer released a new record about two months ago and I just picked it up the other day. They are pretty much the only band that manages consistently please me by just releasing the same record over and over. What else was I expecting? Slayer goes techno? No, I was expecting Slayer to put their heads to their shoes and just let rip as they do every time they decide to make a record. Fuck Norma Jean, Job For A Cowboy and all that trite secretly revivalism crap. You might think ripping off Botch is a cool thing to do, but I beg to differ. Slayer are going on senile and they're still melting faces.

Slayer - Jihad
Slayer - Skeleton Christ

P.S. I saw the movie "Hard Candy" a few weeks back and thought it was one of the most terrible movies I've ever seen. Almost as bad as The Passion. Never have I seen a castration scene where I've actually had the urge to yell "for fuck's sake, cut his balls off already". The characters were far from believable, and for a movie which is almost completely dependent on the dialogue, this is not a good thing. Plus directors should have figured out by now that casting 19 year olds as 14 year olds doesn't cut it for anyone with a vague understanding of the visual concept of age. Why am I telling you this? Well basically I want my money back. I only managed to get as far as the directors agents. If someone could get me the directors e-mail, I'd be very appreciative. The way I see it, I've got £8 coming to me.

The Be Good Tanyas - Blue Horse

Since I too am guilty of not updating in far too long, I am going to give everyone a "pleasant treat for the ears" as my friend Imi would say. I am also aware that I am very guilty of posting far too much folk stuff on here, but I think it is my duty (especially since it is Summer and this is very much Summer music) to share this with people.

I have been lucky enough to catch The Be Good Tanyas live about 4 times, the most recent being aproximately 40 hours ago at the Larmer Tree Festival, sitting in the scalding hot Dorset sunshine with a cider in my hand. How could anybody complain about that? The only real disappointment about their set was that they played almost entirely new material, with just three of their famous tracks tagged on at the end in some attempt to please the fans in the audience who were shouting out requests throughout their set - one track of which is a cover of the traditional folk song 'Rain And Snow'. However, it's hard to dispute the fact that the Tanyas have a hypnotic quality to their performances, however much they look like they might burst into tears at any second and quietly hum into their mics with apparent unenthusiasm. This Canadian band's more recent material seems to be even more gentle and lilting than ever, but seems to have retained that certain charm to it.

Regardless of their more recent changes in direction, it is their debut that seems to have had the most lasting power. According to their official site, this album was recorded in a window-less running-water-less wooden shack on the outskirts of Vancouver in late Summer 2000. It seems an unlikely story, or at least an unlikely place to record an album, until you actually listen to the album in full. Similarly to Gillian Welch's spine-chilling lyrics, the band occasionally dip into haunting imagery but generally they are a much softer and lighter alternative to Welch's world of swamps and coal-mines. Having said that ,amongst their very traditional covers, including the well-known Californian gold-rush anthem Oh Susannah by Stephen Foster, they also cover Lakes Of Pontchartrain which dates back almost 200 years, and talks about the notoriously deadly New Orleans swamps, alligators and all.

Yet generally this is a very relaxing and extremely Summery album. In other words: a must for this heat-wave that appears to have descended upon us.

Broken Telephone
Lakes Of Pontchartrain

Order this album from Amazon

Holy shit, it's a zombie

Back? Yeah, it looks like it. However, if you read this page with anything that resembles regularity, here are the changes. 1)I don't think Kieran posts here anymore 2)I have these amazing things known as a "job" and "social life" now and perhaps soon an "academic obligation" so I'm just going to update whenever I feel like it. None of this daily stuff, it's too much of a pain. 3) I'm not focusing on new music anymore. There's like 5,000,000 blogs out there that already do that and whilst most of them are boring as hell, the few that are worth reading are far better at that stuff than I'd ever even attempt to be.

Plan B
Plan B is a UK resident who's music is a combination of acoustic guitar and rapping. Already I can feel a strong groan coming out of you all and usually I'd be with you. But damn is this guy vicious. The acoustic does a good enough impression of a set of decks to help you overlook the fact that it's a white guy carefully illustrating to us how much of a cunt he is. Keep in mind that rapping in hip-hop was created so that people could voice how they live or at least how they want us to think they live. Usually it's dark, it's self glorifying and unless you're taking a Goodie Mob styled unification approach, rapping tells us in great detail just how isolated yet willing to fight the MC is. Acoustic guitar or none, Plan B does manage to completely depict how unpleasant the lifestyle a number of teenagers in this country have chosen is. Whether "Kidz" is supposed to be semi-biographical or a "Kids" (the movie) like look in to a child as young as fourteen's mentality is anyone's guess given how little I know about this guy. Either way, it's dark yet rather enjoyable.

Plan B - Kidz
Plan B - Sick 2 Def

Here's his site. I think there are more tracks to download there, I'm not really sure.

Gillian Welch - Hell Among The Yearlings

While I am here, bored, and desperately trying to avoid doing any of my very important college work and exam revision, I figured I may as well use the time to add to Big Static since it has been so quietly recently.

I have seen Gillian Welch perform multiple times, and I think it was the last time we saw her that my dad proclaimed that it was "one of the closest things to perfection" that he had ever witnessed, which is a powerful statement when it comes from the mouth of Mr John Ralph, believe me. I just went through my Microsoft Word thesaurus to find a word that could describe Gillian's music but the most accurate adjective I could find is "haunting". Her music is dark, chilling, archaic but still relevant to our times. There are the occasional more modern twists in this album, Honey Now for example, but apart from these brief breaks of the more traditional style, you could easily be forgiven for mistaking this music as genuine 1920s Appalachia. The lyrics play disturbingly with images of rape, whiskey, the devil, death, coal-mines, murder, bleak biblical imagery:

"In the black dust towns of east Tennessee
All the work's about the same...
Now there's something good in a worried song
For the trouble in your soul..."

Yet despite the chilling images that Welch throws around, the music is often gentle and possibly what Cat Power would sound like if Chan Marshall had grown up in a swamp-shack in Tennessee in 1920 and was one tenth of the musician that Gillian Welch is. Just Gillian's obvious talent alone is mind-blowing, but the magical way she has taken very traditional American folk music and sculpted it into something extremely beautiful is worth more praise than I could ever award her. In short, this is a stunning album and a sparkling example of traditional Appalachia still being as powerful today as it was generations ago.

Caleb Meyer
Honey Now

Buy this album on Amazon

A Silver Mt Zion - Horses In The Sky

I feel terribly guilty for not having pulled my weight in Big Static for a while, but once again my excuse comes with a suitable update - last week I was lucky enough to see A Silver Mt Zion (or "Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band" if you prefer the technical terminology) at The Bierkeller in Bristol. I would give the history of this band but most of you probably know it already, and it is largely irrelevant as they have become such an accomplished band in their own right. They actually opened with this song, also playing 2 other tracks from their latest release, Horses In The Sky. I was led to believe beforehand that the venue was "a church" but my informant turned out to be a liar and it was in fact a large Wedgewood Rooms styled affair, only with less fairy lights and more beer barrels and long banquet-style tables. But that didn't matter because in fact it turned out that this band in a sticky-floored beer den are still every bit as numinous as standing in St Peter's Basilica while angel's play post-rock to you from the firmament, or something equally as poetic.

I have seen many many shows in my life but I could probably count, in all honesty, on two hands the number of bands I have seen who have truly put shivers up and down my spine. A Silver Mt Zion are most definitely up there at the top of my list. Their records do not do justice to this band's energy and electricity at all - they have unbelievable presence onstage and obviously a very connected understanding of one another; instinctively following one another through elaborate 20-minute soundscapes and grinning at eachother over their violins or drumkits. Speaking of which - I never noticed the drumming when I listened to A Silver Mt Zion in the past, but the drummer actually deserves more attention as one of the finest rhythm sections I have ever seen in action. In fact, the entire band were one of the finest group of musicians I have seen full stop, and I can honestly say that their live show will stick with me forever.

Like I said, this is the track they opened with - but I still say that if any of you ever get a chance to see this band play live then make it your utmost priority to do so, because you could listen to their records a thousand times over but it won't stick in your mind like their live show does.

God Bless Our Dead Marines

Buy Horses In The Sky on Amazon