turning me on, turning you on

I got that Death release that came out, over here we didn't see it till 2010- indeed a great sound, prescient of Bad Brains (minus the reggae touch). And while I reviewed it for the magazine I work for, I haven't seen this getting any lip at all in any press.

Great idea for a thread too, so I'll offer a random selection of two cents, in wildly diverging genres. Please note that I'm in Europe, so my perception of these two artists and their success my be somewhat different from yours in the States.

(1) YOB: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCKjkmjDGGk (since the songs never get under ten minutes, this is an incomplete track)

The doom metal genre is largely an acquired taste, going for characteristics (slow and monotonous) that you're either prepared to get with, or won't bother. While I dabble in the genre (since I write about drone & psych), it takes a band with that little extra to make me sit up & pay attention.
YOB has a huge, humongous, Lovecraftian extra that pulls you up, and makes you pay attention to YOUR FACIAL FLESH GETTING FUCKING RIPPED FROM YOUR SKULL. That youtube you're gonna give a listen up there? That's like reading about Cthulhu from the page. Experiencing the band live is like opening your front door & having his tentacles wrapped around your limbs, pulling you into another dimension. You might notice the imagery I'm using here, but that's exactly the vibe YOB is going for, and for me they succeed. Yes it's slow and chugging, but when you pay attention you notice the riffs and breaks subtly transforming with an almost mathematical precision. But the other thing the band have going for 'em, is the groove. The name Kyuss gets thrown around a lot in metal circles, but YOB definitely has that sensibility without turning into a parody like a lot of stoner bands.
Now for the underplayed part: they're from Eugene, OR are going at it for about ten years now, and only this year they finally made it to Europe so I could catch 'em at the Roadburn festival. They got quite a few good write-ups in the press last year (including this one in the New York Times, which is simply gushing with praise) but I don't see them getting noticed the way Mastodon and Pelican are, and they really should. They really transcend their genre.
I urge any lover of not just doom, but simply great metal to go see them live. It's a physical experience to match a Sunn 0))) gig, plus you get great Sabbathian riffage and spaced out soloing on top of that.

(2) EDAN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AadTqq01B8

Psychedelica is slowly making its way into leftfield hiphop nowadays, mainly through the LA posse behind Flying Lotus. But this guy has been doing it for a while now, and is in a league of his own. Not content with just ripping loops from old psych records, he actually infuses his whole sound with psych production technique. So you get massive reverb and delay on the vocals, impossibly warped beats, and a thick purple haze that seems to waft from every groove- just listen to it, you'll know what I mean. On top of that, he's one of the most out-there lyricists I've heard in a while, but somehow finds a way to make it sound rough & real. His Beauty & The Beat album from 2005 may well be my favourite hiphop album from the past decade. And yet, apart from a few people here and there, I rarely meet any hiphop head who has even heard of him.

This the idea, Ryan?

That Yob track...first I was disappointed that there were vocals, then, as the singer changed up his style as the song went on, I begrudgingly started to dig 'em. Gonna have to give that album a listen.

Never heard of YOB, but I'm going to check out more of that for sure. Much love for Edan. I was thinking about making one of his albums one of my next "Album of the month" picks.

Through the anime show Samurai Champloo I came across a hip-hop DJ called Nujabes (Jun Seba) who contributed alot of his music to the series. I later found a website which had all of his albums. His mixtape 'Ristorante' is an epic mix of of styles and sounds. He released 2 albums 'Metaphorical Music and Modal Soul. He tragically died this year.

On another messageboard, there was a thread dedicated to Japanese music, someone posted a link to a music video by a singer called Bird and I fell in love, I searched all over for her albums and came up with nada until I found a website which had all her albums (same website which I got Nujabes album's from and sadly no longer exists) her music is like Jamiroquai, great Japanese pop-funk, she branched into other styles like Rock, Jazz and Reggae, well worth listening to.

To be honest, the albums are a bit hit&miss at times, and the one this track comes from (Great Cessation) isn't their strongest. I prefer 'The Unreal Never Lived' overall. I understand the vocals can put you off at first, but he nicely switches up the doom grunts with other styles as well (including an Ozzy sneer), which makes it more palatable than a lot of other bands in this genre.

But like I said, live is where their forte lies. After some searching I found a clip from the gig @ Roadburn I was at, with decent sound quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es-ypnnMuKk

btw: if you ever can spare a flying ticket to Holland & are in the mood for some psychedelic music, you can't do better than go to the Roadburn festival.
Three days of stoned mayhem, with every year an incredibly varied line-up of stoner, doom & death metal, but also psych folk, prog, even some forays into jazzrock & 60s/70s throwbacks. Line-up for next year up till now has Pentagram, Woven Hand, SWANS, Candlemass, and one day program hosted by Sunn O))): http://www.roadburn.com/roadburn-2011/

Nice. Didn't care much for the rapper on that first track, but that whole Modal Soul album sounds worth checking out. Has a very nineties hiphop feel to it, which has been largely abandoned by American producers for the last ten years.

I prefer Modal Soul overall, Metaphorical Music is still has some decent tracks though like F.I.L.O.