Attic Beats

Attic Beats 016 - Recorded November 23, 2005

This week’s theme is Hip-Hop That Samples Sesame Street. While some of the samples are pretty blatant (like either of the KMD/MF Doom tracks), others are buried deeper (like the “5″ on Jurassic 5’s “Monkey Bars”). There’s also a gem of a major label obscurity here to kick off the show.

And no, Smart E’s “Sesame’s Treet” is not included… that’s techno, sucka!

Happy Thanksgiving to listeners in the US. Happy Thursday to everyone else.

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Attic Beats 015 - Recorded November 11, 2005

Back in week 3, I did an episode titled “Stuff I Bought at the Library Book Sale.” The total cost of the music played that episode was somewhere in the range of 50 cents. This time around, it’s a little more expensive, coming in at $14, but the music is no less esoteric or crazy funky dope. Definitely some gems this week.

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Attic Beats 014 - Recorded October 27, 2005

This week’s episode demonstrates three things:

1. How major labels were totally clueless when it comes to trying to market hip-hop in the early-90s
2. What a lunatic can do with a toy xylophone
3. What the heck a Korean tape with a red pepper driving a teacup has to do with anything

Enjoy these painful tunes.

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Attic Beats 013 - Recorded October 20, 2005

Sorry for the delay in getting the corrected version of this episode back on the site!

Hip-hop has been my life for over 20 years now and I have fond memories of first discovering it at my cousin’s house in the mid-80s. This week’s show takes a look at some of my most formative favorites as well as a couple of incredibly random rarities that I can guarantee no one else in the world has.

Shouts out to members of DMO, wherever you may be. Just for fun, here’s a picture of Ebby punching a kid in the nads while Junior P holds one of those one-speaker boomboxes, looking on.

Also this week: the debut of a new feature.

Lastly, a correction to this week’s podcast: Ugly Duckling’s previous album was titled Taste the Secret, not Taste the Flavor. Woops.

Click through for this week’s set list.

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Attic Beats 012 - Recorded October 13, 2005

This week we take a listen to the music of Vietnam. A number of traditional folk tunes are featured as well as some fusion and pop tunes. I also share a field recording I made of a Cao Dai service I attended in Tay Ninh in 1998.

And while the last tune will leave you begging for mercy, thank God that I didn’t feature the English/Vietnamese hybrid version of “Lady in Red” that played eight times in a row during a recent visit to a favorite Vietnamese restaurant.

(No, there’s no Vietnamese hip-hop this week, though it does exist.)

Click through for this week’s set.

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Attic Beats 011 - Recorded October 5, 2005

If you were to bring up musicial obsessions, I have about a dozen names I’ll rattle off to you. Some of those artists I’ve already featured on Attic Beats. But when it comes to jazz, there’s no one that I obsess over more than saxophonist Archie Shepp.

Shepp, born in 1937, came to prominence in the 1960s by helping to shape the free/avant-garde jazz movement. His intense, fiery style was fiercely anti-establishment and pro-black in tone. There are few who played with as much heart as Shepp and it’s fully appropriate that his most widely recognized album is titled Fire Music.

Today, Shepp teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He’s still recording and his output in the late 90s and early 2000s is significantly better than what he released in the 1980s. Shepp’s catalog is extensive and there’s still an awful lot I have yet to explore.

This week’s episode focuses on some of Shepp’s best music from the 1960s. Since many of his songs are quite long, we only hit five tracks this week and three of them are segments.

Click through for this week’s set.

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We’ve lost a good one… Paul Pena passed away last Saturday at age 55 from complications of diabetes and pancreatitis.

Pena was featured on Attic Beats 008. He was the blind blues singer who taught himself how to throat-sing like the Tuvans. His story was well-documented in the movie Genghis Blues.

You’ll be missed, Earthquake.

Attic Beats 010 - Recorded September 29, 2005

It’s the MONUMENTAL TENTH EPISODE!

OK, so maybe it’s not really monumental, but hey, I haven’t missed a week yet. That’s something, right?

This week we return to a theme from one of the more popular episodes early on, instrumental hip-hop. There’s some nice beats for your head this time around.

Also beginning this week, I’ll be bringing back one show from the archives. As you know, only the last five shows are available at any given time, but now each week, one old show will be dug up and made available again. This week, it made sense to bring back episode 004, the first instrumental hip-hop show. Now you can combine the two and have an hour of instrumental insanity. All shows are now linked up on the left sidebar as well, for easy access.

Lastly, take a second and vote for your favorite Attic Beats episode to this point. I’m curious and stuff.

Click through for this week’s playlist.

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I’m a little late with this week’s podcast. Hang tight… it should be up by tomorrow.

Attic Beats 009 - Recorded September 21, 2005

This week’s theme is Italian horror movie soundtracks from the 1970s and 1980s.

I’ve had a special place in my heart for Italian horror from the moment I saw the eye-splinter scene in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (aka Zombi 2… I explain that confusing bit in the show). I even have fond memories of crapfests like Hell of the Living Dead and City of the Walking Dead, having seen them a half-dozen times each, even though they’re terrible. Like spaghetti westerns preceding them, Italian splatter films took a popular American formula and gave it a special slant. Generally, Italian horror from this time period was derivative in terms of plot but much more advanced and risk-taking in terms of gory special effects, music, and cinematography. Likewise, Italian giallos were like amped up American mystery films.

The music that backed these fine films of frequenly questionable taste was of most varied style. Progressive rock band Goblin had the atmospheric, spooky sound down while Fabio Frizzi could jump from funk to upbeat, synth-heavy island rhythms at the drop of a dime. Ennio Morricone, perhaps the world’s most respected soundtrack composer, made the transition well from spaghetti westerns to Italian horror with his sweeping, cinematic sound.

This week’s episode features a nice introductory taste of this surprisingly deep genre. Most of the films featured were directed by Lucio Fulci, but Dario Argento and Jorge Grau’s are featured as well.

Click through for the playlist.

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