Archive for the 'genres' CategoryPage 24 of 25

Music Builds Bridges

published
on October 29, 2007
by
ACtual
in concert reviews, genres, and music
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Over here, we like it when things are thrown together and stirred around for a new outcome. And nothing says “mix and match” like the annual Bridge School Benefit held every year at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. Started by Neil Young as a fundraiser for the Bridge School, a school focusing on the education of children with very specific needs, the benefit is always one of the highlights of the concert season. Because of several of the basic principles of the Bridge School and the benefit, the event always turns into a sharing and communal concert celebrating life, happiness and the pursuit of education.

As for the mixing and matching…take multiple well-known and wealthy musical artists. Sprinkle in some lesser known artists that deserve some spotlight. The resulting line-up always covers an incredible spectrum of genres, and as a result, brings in one of the most diverse and eclectic concert going crowds you might ever see. Then, you make all of the artists, even those known for rocking hard, switch to acoustic for the event. Finally, you have all of these musicians and music fans coming together to support and donate to children that, for the most part, they could never imagine being in the shoes of.

So just how diverse are the musicians? This year’s show featured Regina Spektor, Tegan and Sara, My Morning Jacket, John Mayer, Tom Waits with the Kronos Quartet, Neil Young, Jerry Lee Lewis and Metallica. Yes, Metallica, at an acoustic show.

I missed Regina Spektor’s set.

But we’re there in time for Tegan and Sara, which was one of the groups I was interested in seeing. Virtual nobodies before and now starting to bud on the national music scene, Tegan and Sara is one of those groups that got sprinkled into the Bridge School Benefit of 2000, which is where I first heard of them. Scared little children on a stage, they still put on a duo acoustic set that prompted me to download their music and get into them. Now, 7 years later, here we both were at completely different parts in our lives. I’m in the middle of telling some people, “I saw them for the first time when they played Bridge School,” when they tell the crowd, “the first time we came here, it was for Bridge School and we were 19.” It was nice to see them make their Bridge School return, now quite a bit more mature, with a band backing them, and a second cd to draw music from. They bicker on stage a bit, but I believe they do this to entertain the audience, although, sometimes it’s a bit embarrassing as you end up feeling that you’ve walked into a private family meeting. The highlights of their set are “I was 19,” “Like O, Like H,” and “Back In Your Head.”

Eddie Vedder and Flea were supposed to play after Tegan and Sara, but due to personal problems of Vedder’s, they had to cancel and were replaced by My Morning Jacket. I have never heard of this group before, and if the set they put together yesterday was any indication, I never want to again.

John Mayer, at least in my personal opinion, falls into that annoying category of singer/songwriters that succeed due to mass marketing, cheesy songs, romantic expectations and a sound simple enough that the general public goes, “oooh, this is really good!” Someone tried to compare Mayer with Dave Matthews at one point, and I almost threw that someone off a balcony. The lyrical depth isn’t even close. The guy that sings the “Had a Bad Day” song, John Mayer and Jack Johnson should get together to form a pop sensation super band in which all 102 songs of their catalogue sound vaguely similar and they go quadruple platinum because of how easily digestible their music is to the public. But hey…that’s just my opinion, right?

For the set, it’s Mayer and two other guitarists. Mayer comes out trying to act very relaxed and nonchalant, sits down on a stool, gives a raspy “How you doing out there?” to his female admirers, and proceeds with a set that sounds like a frat boy playing guitar in the middle of campus hoping to get noticed, if not laid. He pulls out the same raspy voice on the majority of his vocals, I can’t tell the difference between the songs other than slight tempo changes, and while they try to disguise it with tricky camera work, every guitar solo of even remote musical complexity is done not by Mayer, but by one of the other two guys on the stage with him. I’m about to give up the set as a complete washout when he closes it by covering “Free Fallin.” It’s a nice touch, but he comes dangerously close to screwing this hallowed classic up by failing to sing the chorus with anything remotely resembling Petty’s range and energy. If you ever want to listen to John Mayer, I suggest going down to your local campus and looking for a guy playing guitar…he may not be as well known, but hey, he could be the next John Mayer, and if not, he’s certainly more affordable to see in concert.

Following Mayer we have Neil Young. First off, you can’t say anything negative about his set because he puts on the event, his songs are as old as the Amphitheater itself, and he’s always Neil. You can’t say much positive though because bands have a tendency to lose their effect after multiple shows. Neil plays at every Bridge School, so I think I’ve probably seen him 8 or 9 times now. He’s solid, and you have to give him one thing…he’s extremely consistent. The only thing he didn’t break out last night was the big stand-up organ I’ve seen him use from time to time, but this is probably due to the fact that he usually closes the show and this time went in the middle of the sets. I don’t recognize any of the songs, but at the end he tells the crowd that it’s mostly new material and he doesn’t expect anyone to have recognized any of it.

Next up is one of the primary reasons I bought tickets for this Bridge School, and the performance of Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet delivers. For those of you who don’t know the Kronos Quartet, they’re the group that performed Clint Mansell’s arrangements for Darren Arronofsky’s movie Requiem for a Dream based on Hubert Selby’s book. But when you mix a legendary, eccentric and out there rocker like Tom Waits with an incredibly proficient and polished string quartet like Kronos, the outcome is something spectacular. I’d almost want to dub this Chamber Rock. They come out and open with the theme song from HBO’s The Wire, which is stellar. He also plays some old time blues songs with the Quartet behind him straying into some dark and menacing arrangements. He plays a variety of songs with completely different sounds. One sounds like a Gotan tango song laced with arsenic, and one takes on the style of a macabre show tune. There aren’t a whole lot of succinct words to describe this performance, but it was one of the more interesting musical collaborations I’ve seen and ranked right up there with last year’s Trent Reznor/string quartet performance (although Trent didn’t use Kronos, so he loses some points there). After Waits leaves, I feel like the energy in the place is knocked up a few notches, and I’m wondering if they can bring him out for another set.

Jerry Lee Lewis is one of the other main reasons I bought tickets for this show. He’s one of the few truly incredible icons and musical prodigies that I had yet to see in concert. He comes out with a slower walk, a pair of glasses, long hair slicked back off his forehead and sits down at the piano. Now, he’s older, so you can tell his fingers can’t take the speed and ferocity he used to be known for, but he’s still a master musician. He comes out playing old hits and most everyone in the audience is moving with him. He at points lapses into a deep Southern twang, and almost consistently refers to himself in songs as “Jerry Lee.” He can’t dance at the piano like he used to, but the voice in his songs and the way he attacks the piano give you a clear idea of who he used to be as a performer, and just how much, even this late in life, is still there for him. His set is remarkable, and in conjunction with Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet, the price of the ticket is well justified. The highlights of his set include “Roll Over Beethoven,” “You Win Again” (Hank Williams cover), “Your Cheating Heart,” “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.”

After Lewis finishes up, Metallica comes out to close the show. They, like Tegan and Sara, have made two Bridge School appearances, and I’ve been lucky enough to be at both. They came out and played 5 covers and 3 originals. Thanks to KFer (not KFed!) for the info…They started with “I Just Want to Celebrate” (ironically used in the final episode of 6 Feet Under, making this an evening where two tracks from HBO series were played) then played Nazareth’s “Please Don’t Judas Me.” Personally, I found it excellent and amazing when they covered Garbage’s “I’m Only Happy When It Rains,” right before Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms.” Following this, they went into “Disposable Heroes,” “All Within My Hands,” and Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” before closing their set and the show with “Nothing Else Matters.”

All in all, it wasn’t the most impressive Bridge line-up I’ve ever seen…My Morning Jacket and John Mayer could have definitely been left off the guest list. But seeing Metallica acoustically, Jerry Lee Lewis for the first time and the unreal performance of Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet made this a very successful, diverse and memorable Bridge School Benefit. See y’all next year.

Putting Emerald City on the Map

published
on October 24, 2007
by
ACtual
in artist/album reviews, genres, and music
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Blue ScholarsThere’s garbage floating around out there. It’s in the bottled water, and people keep drinking it. Every once in a while, I understand a sip, but the massive thirst for this garbage water is becoming unbearable. Of course, it’s easy to become addicted to a certain type of water when you really don’t know any better, or perhaps don’t want any better. And when all the brands of water taste the same, what does it matter what bottle you drink from? And why wouldn’t you buy it?

Well, the bottled water companies here are the record labels and radio stations, obsessed with putting out a consistent product that keeps the masses drinking. In the process, musicians and artists are funneled into a series of water bottles, the shapes and sizes of which can vary, but the general taste of which remains the same. So, left with not much other choice, you keep flipping on the radio and drinking Pop. I don’t blame you…like I said, I take a sip sometimes too, it’s what we’ve been raised on, like fluoridated water, but it’s easy to forget that you can bypass the bottled water and get to the source sometimes.

Let’s be honest people, when a show like American Idol draws 30 million viewers a week in order to crown the next great radio star from a host of characters that couldn’t even launch the idea of a musical career without a free-for-all reality program catering to the masses, we have a problem as a music listening population. I’ve got an idea…let’s let everyone in the world, regardless of talent or skill, compete by singing copies of Pop radio songs, and the person who is the least offensive and most popular to the people that watch this show and listen to Pop 100 on the radio can launch a recording career, make more bad pop songs and sell records.

When I put it that way, doesn’t it insult your musical intelligence? Doesn’t it offend you that 90% of the music you hear out there all sounds the same and is mass market pumped to you through the iTunes collective? If it doesn’t, you can stop reading here and go back to sleep…MixMatch is about changing the way music is made and the way it sounds, not sitting idly by and buying the new “Single of the Day.” I’ve heard people say that they watch the show, but wouldn’t buy the album. This is like saying you don’t support the steps taken by our government to secure cheap oil while complaining about how much it costs to fill up your 2 miles to the gallon SUV. You might not be directly responsible for the problem, but you’re contributing to the means that lead to the end. We’re still overseas and you’ll still be hearing that artist on the radio for the next two months. So who shows more intelligence? The viewers that promote this kind of annual activity by spending their time and money on it, or the media moguls who have realized that no matter how many times you repackage the same thing, the majority of Americans raised on the radio are going to buy and buy and buy. And yet every season, new contestants arrive, millions tune in, and record companies make massive amounts of money funneling us a “new ” version of radio music we’ve heard 50,000 times in the past 10 years. But I digress…the point was Emerald City.

Because some of the most authentic and creative sources are so forgettable, we have to keep spreading the word and reminding ourselves that there are other drinking options out there. One of the premier out of bottle drinking experiences now and for the last 15 years has been the consistently overlooked, under-appreciated and sparsely marketed underground hip-hop scene. Sure, CDs and mp3s still float around, and there’s some consistent word of mouth when an underground artist rises to the surface, but all too often, incredible DJs and MCs stay underground, sometimes leaving us with less than we deserve.  For instance, one of the artists right now that exemplifies the fight against the mainstream record label, the need to speak honestly about the state of politics, the media and the record industry is Immortal Technique.  And yet, because labels are trying to tone down his message, he stays off them, and remains underground.

And you deserve the underground of Seattle. Yes. I said Seattle. The City of Rain isn’t just for Starbucks (scary stuff people) addicts, Seahawk fans, or long-haired flannel wearing musicians with the urge to turn their brains into a Jackson Pollack painting anymore. The indie (not grunge, indie) scene is pulsing with new musicians interested in turning the surroundings into a musical tapestry of depression AND hope. I thought a band like Throw Me the Statue showcased Seattle music at its best. Hip-Hop? You can find that in the Bay Area, LA, various havens on the East Coast. But not Seattle, not since Sir Mix-A-Lot or outside of the Lifesavas anyway. Or so I thought. Always exposed to new things through the IndieFeed Hip-Hop collective, I was recently turned onto Blue Scholars, an underground twosome from the Northwest with two albums for you to sink your ears into.

As with most prolific and worthwhile underground artists, the personal stories of the artists play an enormous role in the music they make, and the Blue Scholars, a play on blue collar, let their history and surroundings saturate every beat and line of their two cds, the 2004 release Blue Scholars and this year’s Bayani. They’re the answer to that question you have long contemplated but maybe never thought to ask…What do you get when you mix a Filipino rapper and an “Iranian American jazz-trained pianist” turned DJ? The result is a large spectrum of beats ranging from melancholy drifters to jazzy car cruisers, and lyrics examining the social, economic, and political systems in existence here in the United States. But when not tackling the socioeconomic divide, they still have the time and the skill to put together laid back summer day tracks that you can imagine coming out of stereos in the streets or from passing car windows.

What’s interesting in discovering these two albums at the same time, produced three years apart, is noting some of the similarities while also being able to see how far the group has come in their personal and musical mission. On Blue Scholars, the group sounds like your fundamental backpack crew. The delivery of the lyrics is laid back and easy to follow without sacrificing complexity of subject matter or rhyme scheme. Even on the songs with less of a message to send carry a sense of urgency to be heard. The beats are of a lower production value, giving it the basement studio sound, but still contain musical hooks and phrases that you can’t stop listening to. In short, it’s your typical stellar yet underfunded debut album from an underground hip-hop group. The subject matter tackles their origins as a group, their personal connections to the working class and life for a Seattle transplant.

Bayani, on the other hand, shows what three years can do to the growth and development of a musical sound. They come out sounding more secure, more focused and more intent on being heard. If Blue Scholars is a whisper from the basement, Bayani is a shout from the rooftops. Some of the more typical hip-hop beats of the first album are abandoned here for more complicated beats incorporating jazz and world sounds. The beats by Sabzi here are of a much higher quality, creating a more perfect tapestry for Geographic’s tightened and more lyrically calculated flow. You see glimpses of what he’s capable of as a lyricist on the first album, but the second album shows off just how talented he is in mixing potent wordplay, social observations and governmental condemnations into complicated phrases that roll off his tongue.

Bayani also refuses to let its political message be ignored. While Blue Scholars carries some references to the war and bits and pieces speaking against our current government (which really hasn’t changed much since the album’s release), Bayani is infused with an anti-war, anti-establishment message that makes some sort of appearance in every song, most notably “Back Home” which tackles the need to bring American troops back from Iraq and “50 Thousand Strong” which looks at the riots and subsequent police action at the WTO meetings in 1999. At the same time, they don’t forget the need for tracks that you can sit back to, which they fill with “Ordinary Guys” and the homage song to their hometown, “North By Northwest.”

So if you’re looking for some solid underground hip-hop from an unusual geographic location, look no further. It’s only fitting that an MC named Geographic could help make the traditional locations of genres irrelevant. Remember, when we change the way music is produced and recorded, we can change how it is distributed, where it comes from, how it becomes profitable, and who takes home that profit. So put the water bottles down good friends, go find that fresh water and take a sip…if it’s slightly strange at first, don’t be alarmed, give it time…we’ve been drinking garbage for so long.

Genre Alert: Street Hop

published
on October 19, 2007
by
ACtual
in genres and music
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

We all know hip-hop. We also, for the most part, know that this type of genre, like almost every genre, has many sub-divisions to more clearly classify the type of music we’re listening to. But down the genre of hip-hop, there has been a traditional and deep divide between the backpackers and the street rappers or gangster rappers…a divide often accentuated by underground v. commercially signed artists, thought provoking lyrics v. lyrics about money, guns and women, and melodic relaxed beats v. club bangers.

But recently, the Bay Area artist Planet Asia has decided that there’s not enough room in these two separate and narrow definitions for certain types of hip-hop, including his own brand, and he has therefore coined the term “Street Hop.” He introduces it on a track of the same name off his most recent album The Jewelry Box Sessions. The idea behind Street Hop is a genre that both the backpackers and the gangsters can enjoy…something that carries the lyrical intelligence and sound of underground over some of the heavier beats that will get the club going. Because there has traditionally not been much overlap between these two genres, the attempt to define and emulate it from Planet Asia should prove to be a launching point for others that don’t feel their songs quite fit one style over the other.

For those of you looking to add a little hip-hop to your life, I suggest searching for IndieFeed Hip-Hop on iTunes. You can download single serving hip-hop songs with brief descriptions of the artists and their albums. Of course, if you’re lazy, you can also just click here and go right to the site. If you’re looking specifically for the Planet Asia song Street Hop, you’re covered.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

published
on October 10, 2007
by
ACtual
in genres, music, and technology
. 5 Comments Tags: , , .

Ever cognizant of the growing and rapid change in the way we obtain and listen to music, I’ve been intently following the release of Radiohead‘s new album In Rainbows which was rumored to have a price tag left up to the buyer.

Five years ago, the idea of buying mp3s was still relatively new and left mainly to the Napsters and Limewires of the global net…Tower and Warehouse roamed the Earth and used CD bins were the place to be. But as Apple announced their plans to launch a wirelessly accessible iTunes store conjoined with the fact that in the last fiscal year, 31% of music has been released in digital format ONLY, a new horizon of music store frontiers looms in front of us. It appears that Radiohead is one of the first groups ready to take the plunge.

Known for bucking the mainstream and having extreme problems with the state of the establishment, Radiohead has been groundbreaking for years, mainly in their musical endeavors of OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief. Now, their new release In Rainbows, a mere (yes, I’m being sarcastic, this is longer than edIT and Felix) four years after Hail to the Thief, attempts to go even further in that it is being offered digitally only. While they say they have a box set ready for a few months from now, for now, the download only album speaks boldly of their lack of concern for traditional methods of distributing music, and their personal belief that their album will sell.

But Radiohead didn’t stop there. In the current world of .99 cent iTunes songs and 10 dollar albums, Radiohead has stepped up their opposition to the label war on the music consumer by giving their fans something different…you can actually decide what you think the album is worth. That’s right, you pick the price. You get to the checkout basket, and there’s a blank slot for the price that you fill in. There’s a ? link next to it, and when you click it it says, “you decide.” If you click it again, it says, “No, really, you decide.” It also allows you to fill in 0 if you want to download it for free. Talk about holding the artist’s livelihood in your hands! So check it out… www.inrainbows.com (if it’s not jammed full and busy at that point). Maybe a musical purchasing future like this is out there somewhere, where bluebirds fly.

For those of you interested…I paid 7.10L for my copy (roughly 15 dollars)…the .10 I put in there because for some reason Radiohead has centered around the number 10 for this album (released 10/10, 10 tracks, announced 10 days before release). I’ll also let you know that the first track has some…..Glitch!

Glitch Mobs and House Cats (New Music)

published
on October 8, 2007
by
ACtual
in artist/album reviews, genres, and music
. Closed

Two very long overdue albums managed to find store shelves recently…we’re graced with Felix da Housecat‘s Virgo Blaktro and the New Movie Disco (10/2/07 release date) and edIT‘s Certified Air Raid Material (9/18/07)

For Felix, it was his first non-mixtape style release since Devin Dazzle and the Neon Fever, which was only, oh, 3 years ago (5/25/04). For edIT, the wait was about the same. His lone solo album Crying Over Pros for No Reason came out two weeks earlier than Devin Dazzle in ’04, but was far more painful for his listeners (what handful of them there are) due to the fact that unlike Felix, he didn’t have multiple mix albums and guest appearances, but only a handful of remixes (such as his remix of Mos Def’s track Sunshine and contributions to the Baby Godzilla and Autonomous Addicts compilations) relegated to the basement of iTunes singles bought only by those actually looking for them.

Oh that comment? Don’t mind that, it’s just bitterness at iTunes overselling and hyping of already popular and well known artists through featured artists and free singles of the day. It’s almost like giving you a free coffee sample to get you to come back and buy triple non-fat no foam no whip pumpkin spice lattes everyday. Like an addiction of caffeine and pop music forced down your throat and into your ears until you can’t do anything but feed the monkey while listening to the new Nickleback single on your Starbucks iTunes hooked up iPod. It’s like an evil empire. Starbucks and Apple should team up and try to control the minds of the masses. Oh. Wait. That’s right, they have. Keep your wits about you, people. The only safe triple non-fat no foam no whip pumpkin spice latte is a triple decaf non-fat no foam no whip pumpkin spice latte. Or maybe it’s a half double decaf half caf with a twist of lemon? And the only safe new single from Souljah Boy is the one you don’t download. Really people…superman dat ho? After how many years of rap and hip-hop, that’s the best we can do? With the rap songs on the radio, my song with the chorus, “that’s the way my dick likes to fuck” is getting more and more likely to be a bona fide radio smash.

But, credit where credit is due…iTunes also allows us to avoid buying full albums containing songs we don’t really need or want (depending on your taste of course), thereby making the job of reviewing the albums much easier. Of course, with smaller artists, it unfortunately doesn’t go without saying now that you have to support and buy the full album. This has been a public service announcement from a music lover.

First up, edIT. Not enough people know about this guy and I don’t want y’all to read about big bad Felix and then leave before edIT gets his due. I first heard this guy from another DJ that worked at KSCR who had a show called Robot Music. For those that like to genrefy music (i.e. MMMers, iPod junkies, radio disc jockies) he holds elements of IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), folktronica, experimental in one sense of the word (computer music) but, in my personal estimation, he’s mostly Glitch. Of course his styles can be pieces of all of these…but if I have to give someone on the street one of them, I’ll go with Glitch. Of course, this is the label edIT himself prefers as he associates himself with the Glitch Mob, a group of performers in LA.

This album pretty much bangs from start to finish. For those that know Crying Over Pros for No Reason, this one is a major change in tempo and motif. Gone are the melodic, drifting pieces that can inspire both dancing and melancholy reflection all at once. Here he has moved away from pieces that you would almost want to call introspective from his first album, to be replaced with club tracks and glitch-hop pieces that take the mastery over sound that edIT has crafted in his music and shoot it up forcefully with steroids. The result is a grouping of cuts that you could imagine pounding in any club, but manage to sound very different from the Top Pop 40 Radio dance cuts we’ve gotten all too used to. He also brings in The Grouch for a few cuts.

He starts the album off with an intro that calls into question the very answer of genre I was attempting to provide above. When asked how he would describe his music to people on the street, there is no answer, just a quick cut to the opening track “Battling Go-Go Yubari in Downtown LA” which thumps with a stop and pop beat laced with blips and glitches. When it hits the bridge and he mixes in a snippet of Japanese, the cut returns deeper and with an extra vocal sample. The “Artsy Remix” with the Grouch can be a tad grating at times, though it still retains a bounce and swagger that make it more original than In Da Club or Smack That. The title track, “Certified Air Raid Material” backs off the momentum a bit, but keeps you moving in a forward direction with stop and go moments that greatly accentuate the glitch beauty edIT employs. “Night Shift” is a bit too pedestrian for my tastes, sounding too close to a Prefuse 73 remix or a slightly out there radio cut.

The first half of the album ends with “Straight Heat” a cut that reminds one of the closing track from Def Jam Poetry. It feels like there should be some vocals here, but the cut is a heavy hitting instrumental. In the second half, the Grouch featuring “Back Up Off the Floor, pt 2” keeps the tempo of the album heavy and provides a great backdrop for the grimy start and stop of Grouch’s flow. “Fire Riddim” sees edIT attempting to infuse some slight world flavor into the predominately glitch-hop based beats of the album. The album wraps up with “If You Crump Stand Up” a track that leaves you unsure whether you want to dance or just sit there and bob your head. Following that, the album concludes with “Crunk de Gaulle” an interesting piece that mixes parts of the peaceful and cut up rifts that made Cry Me a River popular for Timberlake and Timbaland with parts similar to the Jay-Z/Linkin Park mash-ups and has both English and French vocalists on it.

As edIT explains in the outro, the name of the album comes from the idea that war and bombing in our current global situation has grown out of control. “We don’t need any more bombs. Period. What we need is more bombs out on the dance floor.” The album was created to help people jam out on the dance floor and find their release there. I believe it succeeds.

To be honest, the Felix cd, after waiting three years for it, is a tad disappointing. Out of the 16 tracks on the album, I bought 7 of them. This of course excludes the 4 tracks that are intros or interludes and clock in under a minute. The songs I didn’t buy included: Radio, Sweetfrosti, I Seem 2b The1, Lookin’ My Best, and Tweak. For Felix, this album marks a definitive step away from the rock and electroclash fueled dance songs of previous albums and attempts to walk closer to the 80s electronic pop sound and certainly 70s discolounge.

“Future Calls the Dawn” is a pretty standard Felix cut that walks the line between laid back 2 am sidewalk fare that will keep you moving and the dancehall you just left from. It’s main downfall is that at 6 and a half minutes, it gets a bit repetitive. Felix again falls back on his standard practice of mixing in synthesized vocals, but not many people know how to do it better, so he saves himself a bit there. “NightTripperz” is a beat best suited for a late car ride or late night lounge session. The song is a mix of the memories of 80s cuts such as those slipped into Scarface and the Vice City video game and a slow Felix. Half dancepop, half dreamscape. “It’s Your Move” brings some distinct synthesized guitar licks over an upbeat and decidedly disco beat, complete with back up female vocals to augment the once again synthesized main voice. One begins to wonder where he samples or creates these from, and whether or not he ever uses his own voice.

“Monkey Cage” brings back a very familiar Felix sound in a slower tempo with alternating blips and beeps over a sparse background. It’s most reminiscent of Runaway Dreamer, but moves slower and doesn’t have the verses to break up the almost monotonous sound. “It’s Been a Long Time” ups the tempo of Monkey Cage a bit, and one can almost see it as a club track if a DJ upped the tempo a few notches more. It goes gracefully into a brief instrumental section that fades back into the chorus to end the song. But at 2:24, it certainly feels like he could have done more with the skeleton of this song. “Like Something For Porno” is the most upbeat track on the cd, using a quick tempo mixed with hand claps and a lead female vocalist. It moves with an urgency that Monkey Cage and It’s Been a Long Time lack to a certain extent, but the chorus, again, is a bit too repetitive, even for someone like Felix that makes a habit of repetitive choruses. But the background melodies laced over the steady beat keep this one alive, though it almost falters when the background singers come in with some chants that could have been left in the leisure suit days. Finally, “MovieDisco” is a slow plodder with heavy and deep synthesizers and bass lines. This one brings to mind certain elements of Tangerine Dream of the 80s and their work for the Risky Business soundtrack. All in all, these tracks are good additions to the Felix collection, but they don’t particularly strive forward to break any new ground for the artist, nor do they harness the raw emotional dance appeal of “Madame Hollywood” “Silver Screen Shower Scene” or the oddly haunting melodies of “Marine Mood.”