Author: Pearsall

Boom! Happy Sunday!

Here’s some excellent new school jungle sounds from Brooklyn/Toronto label Liondub. This Street Series of releases really capture the essence of classic jungle while still remaining modern and not slavishly imitating the sounds of 20 years ago. Drum n’ bass has really had a renaissance over the last couple of years, and it’s great to hear so many producers drawing inspiration from the past in order to move the music forward.

Enjoy!

One thing I’ve been listening to a little bit on YouTube recently is quote-unquote drill music, Chicago’s take on the trap sound. Basically, it’s heavy 808 bass, moody atmospherics, crispy snares, and rapping about shooting people (i.e. the usual gangster rap staples). I’ve never been someone who cares about lyrics, so the ultra-violent lyrical content basically makes no impression on me (I mean, I hardly pay attention to it). Having said that, I’m obviously not the target audience for the music, being as I am from a very different background to the guys making this music.

Most of the commentary about the music that I’ve read talks about the lyrics, the rappers, and the connections to the very high crime rates on Chicago’s poorer South and West Sides (Chicago has some of the roughest neighborhoods in America). Which I guess is fair enough, that’s what a lot of musical journalism about – placing music in a socio-political context, exploring the urban reality, blah blah blah. But I’m not a music journalist, so for me what’s interesting about the music is not the lyrics, but the music, which BANGS. As a long-term fan of really bass-heavy electronic music, some of these productions are just fucking excellent (if sometimes sadly featuring the horrors of autotune).

One thing for me that’s interesting about this is that this is the first time I can think of that Chicago has become a major rap city – obviously it’s electronic music heritage is well-established, from house to acid to ghetto house and on to juke, but besides individual stars like Kanye West it’s not really been a major city for rap music in America. Something that has obviously changed now.

Anyways, some of these tunes are pretty cool. Here’s four I’ve picked out for you to check:

If you’ve been hanging around these parts for a while you’ll know that I love Metalheadz, particularly their mid-90’s golden age.

Although those days can’t ever be adequately recaptured, what’s cool is that they are still soldiering on all these years later and, in my humble opinion, have hit a real purple patch of quality music recently. This is that classic technical Metalheadz sound updated for a new era – pure machine music for dark sweaty rooms. So this edition of Sunday Sounds is all about celebrating the modern Metalheadz sound … here are five killer tracks from Dom & Roland, Om Unit, Jubei, Mikal, and Artificial Intelligence. Enjoy!

Happy Sunday!

Three bits of site news first, then some music. As of today I’ve decided to change the Sunday Sounds format to post newer stuff I dig, with Tuesday Time Machine reserved for older stuff.

1. I’ve updated my About Me page
2. I’ve updated the Top Mixes page
3. I’ve set up a Tumblr at sonicrampage.tumblr.com/ to post various tunes and whatnot. Tumblr is a strange place, full of lunatics, but I like the flexibility of the format, so I want to do some experimentation

Now that that’s out of the way, here are four deeper tunes from Om Unit, Kromestar & Jay 5ive, Actress, and Anton F for your Sunday. I’ve been listening to a lot of these sorts of tunes recently – I guess I’m getting old and a bit more relaxed, but they do make excellent commuting and working music.