Space Trackin'

Jamiroquai

A Funk Odyssey

2001

Ripped @ a spacey 320
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Review by MacKenzie Wilson

After the jarring reception of 1999's Synkronized, Jamiroquai constructed A Funk Odyssey, something more polished and slick inside the band's own brand of funky disco-rock. Jason Kay and keyboardist/songwriter Toby Smith perfected a maturation that was left keyed in Travelling Without Moving but left open-ended on Synkronized for a wide scope of musical delight. A Funk Odyssey taps into various illustrious grooves of the Latin world, classic rock, and mainstream club culture, and Jamiroquai is tight and eager to make everyone shake their groove thing in their own light. The first single, "Little L," beams with Kajagoogoo-like synths while warping into a funk-driven hue of orchestral whirlpools, but Jamiroquai allows the band's extroverted and unattached personality to shine on the worldbeat-tinged "Corner of the Earth." Kay strips aside all disco humor and grandeur for something personally inviting, something that's heartfelt too. A Funk Odyssey sparks classic enthusiasm, and it feels good. Dance music is not just a design, it's something far more tangible, and Jamiroquai surely captures a fierce desire to make it more emotional on the band's own level.

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Tracklist:

  1 Feel So Good 
  2 Little L 
  3 You Give Me Something 
  4 Corner of the Earth 
  5 Love Foolosophy 
  6 Stop Don't Panic 
  7 Black Crow 
  8 Main Vein 
  9 Twenty Zero One 

  10 Picture of My Life

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Get it HERE

Hey, Is That Neu?

Neu

Neu

1991

@ 160

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Biography by Jason Ankeny

While little known and relatively unheralded during its brief existence, the Krautrock duo Neu! cast a large shadow over later generations of musicians and served as a major influence on artists as diverse as David Bowie, Sonic Youth, Pere Ubu, Julian Cope, and Stereolab. Neu! formed in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1971 after multi-instrumentalists Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger both split from Kraftwerk. Recorded in the space of four days with Can producer Conrad Plank, the duo's self-titled debut appeared early in 1972 and quickly established their affection for minimalist melodies and lock-groove rhythms. While virtually ignored throughout the rest of the world, the album sold extremely well in West Germany, resulting in a tour with support from Guru Guru's Uli Trepte and Eberhard Krahnemann.

Rother and Dinger returned to the studio in 1973 for Neu! 2, but a shortfall of cash allowed the duo to complete only two songs, "Super" and "Neuschnee," which they subsequently remixed at varying and disorienting speeds in order to flesh out a full-length album. After the record's release, Rother joined Dieter Moebius and Joachim Roedelius of Cluster to form Harmonia, but Neu! officially reunited in 1975 to record Neu! 75. After its release, they again disbanded; Rother continued on as a solo performer, while Dinger and drummer Hans Lampe formed La Dusseldorf. In the mid-'80s, Rother and Dinger re-formed yet again, although the recording sessions, titled Neu! 4, did not officially surface until 1996.

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Review by Thom Jurek

Fresh after leaving Kraftwerk in the fall of 1971 for what they perceived to be a lack of vision, guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger formed their own unit and changed the face of German rock forever -- eventually influencing their former employer, Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk. The 1974 album Autobahn was a genteel reconsideration of the music played here. Neu! created a sound that was literally made for cruising in an automobile. While here in the States people were flipping out over "Radar Love" by Golden Earring, if they'd known about this first Neu! disc, they would never have bothered. Dinger's mechanical, cut time drumming and Rother's two-note bass runs adorned with cleverly manipulated and dreamy guitar riffs and fills were the hallmarks of the "motorik" sound that would become the band's trademark. On "Hallogallo", which opens the disc, the listener encounters a timeless rock & roll sound world. The driving guitar playing one chord in different cadences and rhythmic patters, the four-snare to the floor pulse with a high hat and bass drum for ballast, and a bassline that is used more for keeping the drummer on time than as a rhythm instrument in its own right. These are draped in Rother's liquidy, cascading single note drones and runs, so even as the tune's momentum propels the listener into a movement oriented robotic dance, the guitar's lyrical economy brings an aesthetic beauty into the mix that opens the space up from inside. The tense ambient soundscape of "Sonderangebot" balances things a bit before the slower-than-Neil Young "Weissensee" opens with a subtle industrial clamor and opens up into a lyrical exploration of distorted slide guitar aesthetics with an uncharacteristic drum elegance that keeps the guitar in check. "Im Glück" tracks a restrained, droning path through the textural palette of the guitar, treated with whispering distortion and echo. All hell breaks loose again on Dinger's "Negativland" as an industrial soundscape eventually gives way to a bass and guitar squall as darkly enticing as anything on Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures. It's really obvious now how the JD's sound was influenced by this simply and darkly delicious brew of noise, bass throb, percussive hypnosis, and an oddly placed, strangely under-mixed, guitar. Rother's style had as much to do with not playing as it did with virtuosity, and his fills of open chords, stuttered cadences, and broken syntax provided a much needed diversion for the metronymic regularity of the rhythm section. Rother didn't riff; he painted a mix with whatever was necessary to get the point across. His mannerisms here are not to draw attention to himself, but rather to that numbing, incessant rhythm provided wondrously by Dinger. Neu!'s debut album was driving music for the apocalypse in 1971. These official CD reissues, remastered by Neu! with Herbert Gronmeyer, are the first official ones. Their sound is phenomenal and the strange dropouts and fades are intentional. They are worthy packages. Oddly enough, after a millennial change and a constant stream of samples being taken from it, and its influence saturating both the rock and electronica scenes, it still sounds ahead of its time.

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Tracklist:

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  1 Hallogallo 
  2 Sonderangerbot 
  3 Weissensee  
  4 Im Glück  
  5 Negativland 
  6 Lieber Honig

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Get it HERE

What's Your Weapon Of Choice

FatBoy Slim

Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars

2000

Review by John Bush
The cover of Norman Cook's breakout Fatboy Slim album, You've Come a Long Way, Baby, was a good clue to the contents, picturing as it did thousands of LPs straining the racks in Cook's record room — undoubtedly just a small portion of his massive collection of sampling material. Inside, Cook unfolded a party record for the ages, long on fun (though understandably short on staying power), chock full of samples pillaged from all manner of obscure soul shouters and old-school rap crews, triggered and tweaked ad nauseam. With his third LP, Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, Cook pulls away slightly from the notoriously fickle pop charts and crossover kids courted on his last record. Instead, he makes a conscious attempt to inject some real hedonism back into the world of dance — he is a DJ, after all — and sure enough, the cover matches those aims: it's a long shot on a beach (Ibiza or some other far-flung shore), with the sun shining out of someone's behind. The intro even pokes gentle fun at the loved-up R&B tradition with an extended sample from some bygone soul artist waxing overly poetic about his girlfriend. From there, Cook tears into an acid-techno rampage named "Star 69," a track that takes few prisoners and sounds closer to Plastikman than Propellerheads, though it does include the Fatboy Slim trademark — a rather blue vocal sample repeated continually for nigh on a minute (funnily enough, the track was entirely removed from the clean version of the album).
Despite the torrid pace set early on, there's still quite a bit of the used-bin scavenger left in Cook; the most patented big-beat anthems here, "Ya Mama" and "Mad Flava," include all the expected displays of crowd-moving hip-hop calls, unhinged beatbox funk, continual drum breakdowns, and plenty of rawk riffs. The first single "Sunset (Bird of Prey)" is another potential crossover move, featuring what is easily the album's most recognizable sample source — Jim Morrison from the Doors. Borrowing from Morrison's posthumous LP of poetry An American Prayer, the "collaboration" works better than could be expected, with Morrison's pseudo-mystical, surreal vocal — "Bird of prey, flying high/In the summer sky, gently passing by" — floating over some comparatively atmospheric breakbeat funk by the Fatboy.
Sniffy electronica purism aside though, Cook remains, if not the best overall producer in the dance world, certainly in its top rank, with an excellent ear for infectious hooks, tight beats, and irresistible grooves. On advice from friends the Chemical Brothers, Cook recruited collaborators for the first time — nu-soul diva Macy Gray, funk legend Bootsy Collins, fellow superstar DJ/producer Roger Sanchez — and the two tracks with Gray, "Love Life" and "Demons," are arguably the highlights of the entire album. In a similar fashion to David Holmes, Cook's ample production talents are served best with a vocalist lending focus, and "Love Life" is a seven-minute ride veering from dirty, warped funk to noise-heavy hip-hop breakdowns while Gray scats, growls, and purrs with clearly audible glee. After Bootsy's joint (the surprisingly bland "Weapon of Choice") and a hackneyed social-message track ("Drop the Hate"), Gray returns to save the album with another unbelievable performance on the half-resigned, half-hopeful gospel soul of "Demons." The closer, "Song for Shelter," is a masterful stroke of sun-splashed house recorded with help from Roger Sanchez and an ecstatic serenade to the dance music experience by Roland Clark (interpolated from his single "I Get Deep"). In all, Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars is possibly Norman Cook's best possible statement after being — nearly simultaneously — picked up by a multitude of notoriously fickle pop consumers and thrown away by his previously rock-solid dance fan base. The hooks are unmissable and there's plenty of big-beat techno from a master of the form, but there's also a good amount of mature material that would undeniably appeal to many listeners in the dance world if they ever condescended to give it an objective listen.

1 Talking Bout My Baby

2 Star 69

3 Sunset (Bird of Prey)

4 Love Life

5 Ya Mama

6 Mad Flava

7 Retox

8 Weapon of Choice

9 Drop the Hate

10 Demons

11 Song for Shelter

http://rapidshare.com/files/213521326/FatBoy_Slim_-_Between_The_Gutter_And_The_Stars.rar