Attic Beats

You can now find Attic Beats on Odeo, the mighty-nifty podcasting service/listening thingie.

My Odeo Channel (odeo/f2cb776e23121c3d)

I’ve been screwing around with the RSS feed today, moving it over to Feedburner, so if you notice any funkiness, that’s why.

Attic Beats 008 - Recorded September 13, 2005

This week we take a listen to the wonderful world of Tuvan throat singing. Though throat singing can be heard in Tibet, Kazakhstan, and even Canada, Tuvan throat singing is perhaps the most pure and amazing. Essentially, these are singers with the ability to produce multiple tones simultaneously.

There are three main styles of Tuvan throat singing: khoomei (mid-tone), sygyt (very high tone, whistlelike), and kargryaa (thundering, gutteral low tones). The folk masters like Kongar Ol-Ondar and modern artists that fuse Tuvan folk with western rock, like Albert Kuvezin, will astound you with their sound.

Also featured on this episode is blues singer Paul Pena, who taught himself how to throat sing. His kargryaa skills earned him the nickname of “Earthquake.” Genghis Blues is an excellent documentary about Pena and his first trip to Tuva to meet the masters of the music he taught himself.

Enjoy this week’s show. In the meantime, I’m on the lookout for the world’s first human beatbox that can also throat sing.

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Attic Beats 007 - Recorded September 8, 2005

First thing’s first: if you’re easily offended, you’ll want to breeze right by this episode. Normally I don’t worry about the goofy “warnings” about naughty words, but since the show has been relatively clean to this point, it’s worth mentioning here. Not only does this show feature a track with more instances of the F word than any other song I can think of, but it contains some seriously mysogonistic, offensive, violent lyrics. And that’s exactly why I loved this stuff in high school!

This week’s theme is Houston hip-hop from the early-to-mid 90’s released on the Rap-A-Lot label. Rap-A-Lot is a profoundly influential label, bringing the world the likes of the Geto Boys (and each of their respective solo careers), Devin the Dude, and long-forgotten artists that have since passed away like Seagram and Big Mello. The Houston sound was as gritty as it got. No holds were ever barred, from interlabel beef to necrophiliac fantasies by a one-eyed dwarf to shit-talking female emcees that held their own against the men.

As I put this nearly hour-long show together, I realized how much I was missing, so a follow-up will be necessary down the road a bit. Keep in mind this is not meant to be a complete look at the Houston scene at the time and I left out some absolutely critical tunes (”My Mind’s Playing Tricks On Me”). Rather, it’s meant to give some insight into a piece of hip-hop history from an area of the country that’s often overlooked, even today when southern rappers are getting more attention than ever.

Lots of song notes are included on the click-through.

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Last night’s blues episode is dedicated to the memory of R.L. Burnside, who passed away this morning. R.L. was one of the last few old school bluesmen who could still tear the house down. I saw him first at college about ten years ago when he played to a very small crowd with T-Model Ford. Burnside’s albums are great, many of them among of the best blues records released in the last 15 years.

RIP, R.L. and thanks for sharing some of your fire with us.

Attic Beats 006 - Recorded August 31, 2005

This week we return stateside with the most American of music: the blues.

Included in this episode are tracks from the almost unknown Juke Boy Bonner, performing at a Texas music festival just ten days before he died. We also hear the incredibly soulful acapella version of “John the Revelator” from the mighty, mighty prince of the Delta, Son House and from my favorite of all time, Chicago bluesman Magic Sam. Eric Clapton inspiration Blind Willie Johnson is also featured with his gruff and gravelly voice on “Soul of a Man,” a lesser-known tune than “Dark Was the Night,” but arguably just as strong. We close the episode out with a few raunchy blues tunes from the 1930s that would make Kool G Rap blush.

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Attic Beats 005 - Recorded August 24, 2005

This week we check out the music of Poland, polka-free.

A few years ago I stumbled upon a cheap copy of an Eastern European music compilation. One of the tracks, “Sonda Jungle”, was by a group named Robotobibok representing Poland. The song grabbed my ear and I quickly hunted down whatever information I could about them. Since then, I’ve delved much deeper into the Polish music scene and even got invited to stay with one of the bandmembers of Robotobibok when I visit Poland.

I think you’ll be really amazed at some of the great sounds on this week’s show, from Robotobibok’s crazy jungle-electro-acoustic-jazz-avant-garde-fusion blend to Praktik’s ATCQ-like beats to Kapela ze wsi Warszawa’s nearly unclassifiable music that CD Roots refers to as “traditional singing ‘upon scream’” to Starzy Sida’s reminder of what punk is supposed to sound like.

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Attic Beats 004 - Recorded August 17-18, 2005

For this episode, I serve up strictly beats… instrumental hip-hop covering the last 15 years. Let this be your background music for weekend activities. Dig dig dig.

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Attic Beats 003 - Recorded August 9, 2005

This week’s show is a short one, but was a surprisingly tricky one to produce. After all, how do you segue from French funk to a marching band? What theme would pull together those two disparate musical selections, you ask? “Stuff I Bought At the Library Book Sale,” of course.

I love library book sales. They’ve been a source of not only out-of-print religious texts and Choose Your Own Adventures, but a source of excellent records. Now, you’re not going to find rare hip-hop 12″s that you can sell to DJ Ivory, but you will often come across jazz gems and long-forgotten international folk records. This week’s show features some of the finds I stumbled on this year, paying only 8 cents for each.

(To the right is the artwork for an album that I picked up solely for the cover itself. As you’ll hear, the music contained therein is just as outstanding.)

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Attic Beats 002 - Recorded August 2, 2005

This week the theme of the show is roots reggae. I’m what one would call a late-comer to reggae, only getting into it in 1991 when I saw a Shabba video on Yo! MTV Raps. But since then, I’ve gotten much more deeply into the genre, even writting for a national reggae magazine at one point. These days, I’m not much of a Shabba fan and tend to prefer classic roots or more current conscious DJs.

This episode features some heavy dubs, familiar classics, and overlooked gems with all but one track from vinyl. Enjoy.

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