Atmosphere’s latest EP, To All My Friends, Blood Makes The Blade Holy: The Atmosphere EP’s, is set to release Tuesday, the 4th of September. Just in time for their summer end tour.
Two songs have already been released off the EP, “To All My Friends” about two weeks ago and “Freefallin’” just today. The two have a similar vibe with a laid-back country, summer-daze and a smooth hittin’ beat. Slug lays some reflective lines on both, which, if not like always, seems to be a theme for the EP. Like his music, he seems to be maturing with age, bringing on a new style any fan will come to appreciate.
Alright, I’m off to the North Coast festival this weekend. Can’t wait to see Pretty Lights live for the first time! Maybe I’ll hit up Atmosphere’s Madison set on the 8th, the first stop on the tour… I wish.
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A couple weeks back I heard Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) was working with KanYe on his new album, Dark Twisted Fantasy, due out in mid-November. A collaboration with Vernon is just what KanYe needs, especially after hearing Vernon’s work on GAYNGS.
A preview of what’s to come was posted yesterday on KanYe’s blog. The new mix, “Monster” shows some promise for these two, especially when you throw Jay-Z into the mix. Unfortunately, the two others featured, Rick Ross & Nicki Minaj, aren’t as promising.
Not just 24 hours ago, I was listening to MTV – we all have our guilty pleasures at 4 am (usually infomercials for me) [...]
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I was gonna feature “Deja Vu” back in November of last year, but I thought I’d wait till the album was released. Well, I still haven’t listened to the album, so I thought I’d drop this before I do.
What hooked me to Analyrical – other than his Minnesota ties – was his style. Lately I’ve seen the majority of Minneapolis MC’s gear their style towards the lyrically driven East Coast. And as much love as I have for it, over the years I’ve gone Westward bound towards the more laid-back, soul/funk driven style.
Now, I wouldn’t say Analyrical has a West Coast style, just more west in his Midwest style. Give “Deja Vu” a listen and tell me what you think of it. I’m still trying to figure out the whole classification thing, though it’s becoming more & more obsolete these days.
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When I first heard Lifesavas around five, six years ago, I liked ‘em so much I had to find anything else like ‘em. That group was Libretto or so I thought. For all these years I thought Libretto was a group, but now that I researched a little, I find out the ‘group’ was actually just one person. I guess it just shows what I thought a group could do one man pulled off.
What he pulled off would be the funkalicious album, Ill-Oet: The Last Element, back in ’04. Libretto’s also releasing some new singles soon, but until we can get our hands on them we’ll stick with his first album.
Ill-Oet: The Last Element has the quality of a Lifesavas album with two exceptions. Lyrically, Libretto doesn’t stack up to what Vursatyl & Jumbo, the two MC’s of Lifesavas, can do. Libretto’s Ill-Oet: The Last Element also doesn’t have the consistency that each Lifesavas LP does. He may not have the amount of hits that Lifesavas does, but he does have a few. Check out the two best, “Last Drop” & “Volume” – the latter actually features Lifesavas, and see what impressed me so much by this one-man band.
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“To All My Friends” originally debuted at Soundset 2010, but was officially released today to kick off Atmosphere’s To All My Friends tour.
The song has a laid-back vibe reminiscent of the group’s latest album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. Leave it to Slug to lay down some sentimental goodness. He talks about his earlier years, wanting to be an artist: painting & drawing, but dropped it after he fell in love with the turntable. Somehow he’s stayed humble through it all and sure shows it through his lyrics.
The tour runs through September into October mostly covering the West and Midwest areas. Hopefully, I can hit up the Chicago set, there isn’t anything in Minnesota this time around (I guess we have it good enough).
On a side note, what do you all think of FELT? I can’t seem to get into ‘em like I do with Slug’s & Murs’s other projects…
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Sam Sparro’s “Black and Gold” was the theme song of my travels throughout the UK – “Area Codes” by Ludacris was a close second (inside story). So when I heard Wale was doing a remix of the song, I had to take a listen.
At first I was skeptical of a rap artist remixing an electro-R&B song (or whatever the hell genre it is). But after listening to it a couple times, it does a good job of taking the original and carrying its own, not just simply rapping over the same beat. It may not be as good as Sam Sparro’s, but it’s still worth mention.
As for the rest of the album, it’s got some decent tracks and I’m starting to dig Wale’s flow, but none of them stood out like “The Black N Gold”. Other than the remix of “Black & Gold”, the best thing about the album was its Seinfeld samples, fucking hilarious – check out the full album to catch these.
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Nuttin’ But Stringz was nuttin’ like I expected. About a year or two back, someone had posted up on a forum about a rap duo who played violins. I love when hip-hop brings on classic instrumentals; strings just sound so good with a baseline and an MC that can flow.
Unfortunately, the duo didn’t stack up as I had hoped. Their use of the violin is definitely their strong point, but anything past that just seemed second-rate. Fortunately, I managed to pull a song that’s good for a party mix, which I didn’t expect from a group that’s highlighted for their violin playing – let’s just say I expected more of a classical vibe.
The duo seems to be leaning towards pop – just saw them on Dancing with the Stars (on a YouTube clip) – but their talent for the strings will hopefully push them back into the art sometime in the future.
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