Brian Wilson Invented Chillwave...42 Years Ago

Close your eyes, press play. Forget that this song was recorded four decades ago, by the Beach Boys on an album that sold poorly and briefly went out of print. If you didn't know better, you'd think this song is by a current, Pitchfork -hyped west coast indie musician produced in his basement with a laptop. Negative; this is the Beach Boys "All I Wanna Do" off the album Sunflower, released in 1970.

About That "OTIS" Video

Jay-Z and Kanye walk towards a Mercedes S-Class, one carrying a metal cutting power-saw, the other a blow torch. Ok, this is intriguing. As the car is being cut up, you realize it’s a MAYBACH, a $500,000 vehicle. That’s when everything changes.

The rest of the video is just Jay-Z and Kanye West rapping in a parking lot. I’m guessing all the budget was blown on the car. By destroying a half million dollar luxury car and turning it into an urban dune-buggy, Spike Jones may have just created the Most Expensive Low Budget Music Video of All Time. Although, it looks as though everyone involved in the video had a wild time, especially the models loaded into the back seat (see above)

I’ve heard a lot of mixed reactions from people concerning both the video and the song itself. Both are great –what’s wrong with you people? Jay-Z alone is worth over $450 million, and you know what –who wouldn’t want to covert an ultra-luxury car into a Mad Max death trap and fuck around in a parking lot with a bunch of models for an afternoon? What makes the video so great is that it seems genuine and effortless, completely divorced from the world around it. And when you’re on top of the world, you kinda are.

The song heavily samples Otis Reddings’ 1966 hit “Try a Little Tenderness.” Below is a great live rendition:

THE VAULT: JAMES BROWN Shows You How to Motherfuckin' DANCE

It's a well known fact that Michael Jackson learnt how to dance from watching the Soul Brother #1/Mr. Dynamite himself Mr. James Brown. Watch and Learn.

советский винил! (SOVIET VINYL)

I had no idea what this was when I bought it at a thrift store in south Vancouver. The quality of the vinyl itself is poor (probably all the good vinyl went into building tanks) but it’s no worse than the awful Dynaflex vinyl produced en masse in the 1970s. All I knew was that it was from 1982 (Brezhnev-era vinyl –sweet!) and that it sounded like Christmas music. The weird Pink Floyd-esque album cover didn't help clarify things either. Eventually I learnt the album is called Dudarik, and there are no religious themes whatsoever.

I enlisted the help of DJ Alibi, a Moscow-born, Toronto based hip-hop producer. After reading the back of the album sleeve, Alibi told me the choir was made up of children from across the Soviet Union, brought together in a Communist summer camp (one word: FUN) The sleeve listed the group’s musicial influences ranged from “Negro Spirituals, Ukrainian folk and European classical music.” The album’s write-up puts a lot of stress on love for the Motherland as the driving force behind this group. Song titles like “Eternal Revolutionary” leave no doubt.

I asked Alibi to summarize Soviet records in general. He stated Soviet music overall has a rigid and unimaginative style. The production values on many popular Soviet hits are usually “over the top and bloated --string and horn sections backing up rock bands” (think symphonic KISS, but all the time). Due to the rigid control of the music industry back then, genuine improvisation/experimentation was non-existent. Oddly enough, Alibi usually finds the actual song writing and melodies of Soviet songs to be top-notch.

DJ Alibi prefers Soviet records as source of sampling since most LP markets have been heavily mined, sometimes to death (think the “Amen Break “by the Winstons –or everything by James Brown). In contrast, Soviet material is virtually unknown by North American producers, hence providing a vast, untapped source for original sampling. -L.M.Harrison

Below is DJ Alibi’s “Let’s Ride” off his 2007 album One Day, which uses a Polish sample:

UPRISING: Ben's Imaginary Band

Ben’s Imaginary Band second full length album Trust drops this week. Trust is the culmination of eight years gigging under the Imaginary Band moniker, picking up where the band’s 2008 debut Nocturnal Fables and Illusions left off. Ben’s Imaginary Band's sole member –the Budapest born, Canadian raised, and current Victoria BC resident Ben Romvari wrote, arranged and played all the instruments on Trust’s thirteen tracks. A reflective, and at times -melancholy- record, the treatment of songs on Truth immediately draws comparisons to inverted songwriters like Elliot Smith and Nick Drake. The laid-back trumpets on “Connectiveness” invoke Sloan’s “All the Things You’ve Done Wrong” while the fleeting instrumental “Beautiful Dreamer” harkens to Elliot Smith’s piano solo “Bye.” On record, Romvari keeps his vocals within a limited range, which at times sounds like Thom Yorke in his more reclusive moments. Postal Service-esque instrumental flourishes bring colour to Romvari’s sombre musical canvas. A previously-released BIB track below:

J Dilla: DONUTS

Three days after the release of Donuts, J Dilla was dead. Suffering from a rare blood disease, J Dilla spent the last year of his life battling the illness, losing weight and having to perform in a wheelchair during a European tour in 2005. You wouldn’t know J Dilla (aka Jay Dee) was fighting for his life from listening to Donuts –an album crafted with the precision expected from a producer of J Dilla’s calibre and acclaim. A decade into his career J Dilla had produced everyone from Ghostface Killah, Janet Jackson, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, Common, Raphael Saadiq and collaborated with fellow hip hop producer Malib on Welcome 2 Detroit.

A total of 31 tracks (the longest “song” is 2:57 –most tracks are just over a minute in length). The pace of the album is as varied as the artists J Dilla samples: Frank Zappa, The Beastie Boys, Malcolm McLaren (?), Dionne Warwick, the standard James Brown, et al. “Geek Down” invokes a doom essence reminiscent of RJD2’s “The Horror” while “Time: The Donuts of the Heart” is pure sexy time. [Warning from the US Surgeon General: listening to “Time: Donuts of the Heart” may cause some women to become pregnant]. –L.M Harrison

Serge Gainsbourg: Histoire de Melody Nelson

Album’s premise: A middle-aged man accidently hits a 15-year old named Melody Nelson with his Rolls-Royce. He takes her back to a hotel and seduces her, only for her to die in a plane crash soon after.

Serge Gainsbourg is French; so this kind of risqué story is accepted and expected in a French concept album. In fact, Serge Gainsbourg built his career as a seductive poet manwhore. His song “Je t’aime...Moi Non Plus” released in 1969 had co-singer Jane Birkin (girl on the cover Melody Nelson) faking an orgasm for the last minute of the song. “Je t’aime” was banned across Europe, went #1 in the UK and was aggressively denounced by the Vatican.

Gainsbourg had a long and fruitful career in his native France and across Europe. However his daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, is much better known in the English-speaking world (actress in AntiChrist, The Science of Sleep and her critically album IRM, written and produced by Beck) than her father who died in 1991.

But Histoire de Melody Nelson, originally released in 1971, is one of those few albums that are perfectly crafted from start to finish. Every backing vocal, the funk guitar, bassline, drumbeat, the strings –everything is where it should be at all times. I tend to see this vinyl a lot in hip-hop orientated music shops and it’s easy to see why; the slick production values of Jean-Claude Vannier provide ample opportunities for sampling.

The instrumentals are like stained-glass in a medieval cathedral. Stained-glass was used to tell the stories of the Bible to the illiterate peasant masses. And like the stained-glass, the instrumental flourishes and female choir in Melody Nelson move the story along for Anglophone ears, making it more accessible.

It's still an odd album though; I can't imagine listening to this while driving in your car or hanging out with friends. -L.M Harrison

The official video for the opening track "Melody":


Serge Gainsbourg - Melody by challenges-auto

Below: The closing track "Cargo Culte." [Disclaimer: I did not make the video].