Word The Cat

Happy New Year. Avoid Sleet. Be Clean. Be Tidy.

Word The Cat - January 2006 mix 25.2mb

Tracklist:
Ryuichi Sakamoto - Break With
Faction - Cutter’s Way
Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Orchestra - A-Shi-Ta
Mitchell Akiyama - Through Fall and Flicker
Oval - Aero Deck
AGF/Delay - Still Eatin’
Lydia Lunch - What is It?
The Lappetites - Funeral
Dntel - Fear of Corners
Kongorzul and Baterdene - The River Herlen
Ame - Sun Sugar
Ennio Morricone - Postludio alla Terza Mogile
Son of Scientist - Solution (dutty church rinse)
Deng Bai Ying - Shuang Shuang Yan

Notes:
Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer best known for his soundtrack work. this track is from his 2004 LP ‘Chasm’.
Faction are based in Tel Aviv. This record came out in 2004.
Otomo Yoshihide is a turntablist and composer. This is from the Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Orchestra LP. The vocal is by Mariko Hamada
Mitchell Akiyama lives in Montreal. This piece is from 2005.
Oval are from Darmstadt, Germany. This piece came out in 1994 on Berlin’s Mille Plateaux records.
Lydia Lunch is a New York based singer and performer. This track came via Ubuweb.
AGF is Antye Greie-Fuchs. Delay is Helsinki-based Vladislav Delay. This is their joint website. There’s a fine post with tracks from both here (via Radio Babylon).
Antye Greie-Fuchs is part of the Lappetites, an international group of laptop composers. There’s a post on them back here.
Dntel is based in LA and releases on Plug Research records.
Kongorzul and Baterdene are musicians from Mongolia. Kongorzul is the vocalist. This track is from this Folkways collection.
Ame are a production duo from Germany. This track was released via Sonar Kollektiv.
Ennio Morricone is an Italian film composer. This is from the recent Crime and Dissonance collection of reissues.
Son of Scientist is IG Culture, West London based producer. His records can be found via Goya and he has a residency at Co-op.
Deng Bai Ying appears on the soundtrack to Wong Kar Wai’s ‘In the Mood For Love’. Little information on the singer is available in English but I think she’s from Hong Kong (either that or Shanghai).

Enjoy

This is my track of the year, well remix of the year at least. Probably because of its scarscity. Never released (this mp3 is a radio rip), dubplates like goldust, tore up carnival (the co-op stage at least).

Lady Sovereign - Random (IG Culture Remix) 6.7mb

Lady Sovereign has had a busy year doing countless hostile NME shows for bemused indie scenesters. Still she’s had a chance to develop her banter which should stand her in good stead as her label tries to carry her westward past New York on a tsunami of hype, US indie scenesters aside. IG Culture’s been plugging away all year too with New Sector Movements and People records. This remix is the bashiest thing I’ve heard him do.

Random got a bassy remix from Brucker & Sinden too (you can find that in this mix).
Thing about Lady Sovereign is the remixes are much better than the originals - in fact I don’t think many people have even heard the originals. I find them pretty sugary in any case. Mizz Beats ups the gain and gets a load of other MCs in on this remix of ‘Hoodie’.

Lady Sovereign, Skepta, JME, Ears, Jammer & Baby Blue - Adidas Hoodie (Mizz Beats Remix) 5.7mb

Hoodies have got subaltern cred in London nowadays, even Gilbert and George are on it:

Coming next year: aslyum seekers in hoodies and the women they loved, soon followed by the rise in the ’swarthy’ look on the streets of Hoxton.

Rupture ups a fantastic track by Various Productions, who are according to hype being chased by Warp, Planet Mu and Leaf. The track is a (post?) grimey dirge with a english folk style vocal over the top. Info and buyability here, Various productions site here.

Graeme informs me that that the BBC have done a programme on the band Dengue Fever and the Cambodian rock and roll scene. The article’s here. Have to confess that I’ve never heard Dengue Fever, but for some original cambodiana check this past post.

Move out my fucking way boy, You’re gonna get sliced/I seek revenge upon the earth like Christ…

…DJ Spooky f/Killah Priest - Catechism 2 (Runaways Ward 29 Vocal Mix) 4.4 mb

Also feel free to check out Samurai FM. Reckon I’m a bit behind on this one, seems to be run by some Japanese folk based in London - Rhythm Incursions have a show as well. I’ve been liking the Max de Wardener mix, findable here.

PS// Because blogs are also advertising agencies, check the new Loefah 12 out on DMZ here

Here’s Cancer Cloud:

He came out of an oil depot fire in Hemel Hempstead, north of London at the weekend and now he’s coming to town. People are scared of cancer cloud. That makes him sad. No-one wants to come out of their houses to play with him. He feels rejected. They pulled him out of the ground when he was oil and took him a long way from home and put him in a refinery next to the M1. All he wanted to do was fuel some stock broker’s 4×4. Now the same stock brokers shake their fists at him and say “keep away from my family!” He is doomed to wander the atmosphere alone, until one day when he will wreak a terrible revenge, contributing to the reversal of the gulf stream and giving London the same climate as Vladivastock.
If cancer cloud was an animated series this would be the title music:

Afrirampo - Matane 1.7mb

Afrirampo are from Osaka and they’re really good. Here’s their website. This record was produced by John Zorn. He’s an all purpose NYC-based saxophonist and general musical hub (here’s his label’s site). This is a track from the avant-klezmer group he’s in with Bill Frisell.

Masada live in NYC April 1996 8.4mb

John Zorn also made an album of Ennio Morricone covers in 1984. Ennio Morricone is an Italian film soundtrack composer, he’s most famous outside Italy for the soundtracks to Sergio Leone’s westerns. The first of these tracks is a cover of theme music for ‘Once Upon a Time in America’. The other’s a version of the theme for Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 anticolonial film ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (incidently this film was later used to train CIA operatives to recognise bombers in disguise).

John Zorn - Poverty (Once Upon a Time in America) 4.4mb

John Zorn - Battle Of Algiers 4.4mb

Back to Cancer Cloud, this would be the closing theme music:

Keiji Haino & Boris wonder what colour would be suitable for the dwelling 2.1 mb

A couple of months ago The Wire did a primer on the avant-garde scene in Shinjuku, Tokyo at the late ’60s/ early ’70s. They’re streaming a couple of tracks here courtesy of Psf records. Here they are:

Masayuki Takayanagi & New Directions - Extraction

Kaoru Abe - 1972.1.21 alto 2.

Also, here’s my offering. A 10 minute section from Koji Wakamatsu’s 1972 film ‘Tenshi no kôkotsu (Ecstasy of the Angels)’. The film’s about a group of leftist militants in Tokyo. In the late 60s in Japan there was a very active student movement, the most famous revolutionary group to emerge out of it was the Red Army, subject of Wakamatsu’s film of the previous year, ‘Sekigun-PFLP: Sekai senso sengen (The Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War )’. There’s a great piece on film and theatre context, Koji Wakamatsu and leftist media interventions in Japan at this time via Midnight Eye, over here
This section of the film consists of a brief discussion of political tactics then a hectic montage of bombs being set off and pianist Yosuke Yamashita’s group.

Ecstasy of the Angels (excerpt) (DivX avi 36.2mb)

————
On the same theme as last week, here are some superior jazz remixes from the plague of remix albums that continues to spread….

From last year’s Blue Note Revisited, Matthew Herbert has a crack at Michel Petrucciani’s version of ‘Caravan’. Remix conducted according to the rules of PCCOM, however, which means there is none of the original track in there.

Michel Petrucciani - Caravan (Matthew Herbert Remix) 6.2mb

Elsewhere, via Amsterdam’s Kindred Spirits Records, comes Madlib covering Sun Ra’s ‘Nuclear War’ as Yesterday’s New Quintet along with Dudley Perkins.

Yesterday’s New Quintet - Nuclear War 5.4mb

Finally, Phil Ranelin whose 1976 LP ‘Vibes From the Tribe’ was re-issued and the back catalogue remixed in 2001 by Chicago’s Hefty Records. Ranelin is currently playing in Carlos Nino’s LA-based group Build an Ark. This Telefon Tev Aviv remix keeps the bassline intact but gets ethereal & hard on it.

Phil Ranelin - Time is Running Out 6.8mb

Phil Ranelin - Time is Running Out (Telefon Tel Aviv Remix) 3.5mb