AWWW yes the genius Alan Singley's brings us his 2nd album proceeding Oh Salad Days. Filled with nostalgic words of pain and remembrance, Singley draws out on canvas what feelings are pure and natural with sweet sounds of warm guitars, big casio beats and quarky synth tones. Singley commemorates the good ole times, the bad break ups, the hard luck in long distance relationships and bugs. Melancholy and smiley, Singley shows the dichotomy of life's innocent quarks and love.

-dj tan't

artist:
alan singley
album:
audio bicyclette
label:
lucky madison
release:
2005
rating:
*******

Good ole' Kiren Hebden is back with one of the years most provocative albums to come. Generated ensembles of serene folk samples mixed with huge groove hip hop beats is enough to make you cry, dance, & make love simultaneously. Following his previous full length "pause", "rounds" pushes its way through the bleakness of laptop extraordinares. Who knew cats straight out of the london scene could rip my guts out then calmly put them back into place.

-dj tan't

artist:
four tet
album:
rounds
label:
domino
release:
2003
rating:
*****

Heres an onry dogg that likes to howl when the moon is waning. Portlands own Onry Ozzborn of the Oldominion camp goes solo and starts to chop brains with his dark, sharp voice. Alone draws the attention toward broken lyrics of gothic literature and phat sliced beats...enough to give you the energy to fight conan the barbarian and challenge bobby fischer at a game of scrabble. teamed with other musical whores such as doseone, onry stirs up the graves of all yo mammas

-dj tan't

artist:
onry osborne
album:
alone
label:
bsi-records
release:
2003
rating:
*****

Digitally destroyed psych-samples stutter across punchy hiphop beats. Weathered sounds reinvent themselves, protest chants via war analysis begrudgingly ooze down the outside of your hifi, and the simply stated basement beatmaster applies his retroactive touch to his growing instrum-hop canon. Better known as the life-force behind Themselves, bay-area brute Jel continues to tread upon the path of treasure-chest lootin' beatpaster harnessing distrusting political rants with the know-how of "the feel". Sample rates on minimal megabytes manifest audible alliteration that makes your stereo bump reminiscent of jacked mp3's two-stepping through huddles of baggypantzd head bobbers. At first listen, I became zombified by the LP label "OIL" spinning around in defiance of the Newsweek magazine that somehow spontaneously combusted and also torched my pro-Gdubya book collection. What does it all mean?

-kevitup

artist:
jel
album:
the meat & oil ep
label:
anticon
release:
2003
rating:
*****