The Blackfoot - The Foot Steps


More incredible Zambian rock from the 70's.  This record is has some traces of traditional zambian drumming and guitar work, but it plays like an afropop Creedence.  Straight forward, all heart, all fuzz.
Blackfoot - When I Needed You

Download the whole record here
Stream the new Beautiful Swimmers 12" over at Rush Hour right now.  I put an insta-classic Beautiful Swimmers track on a Friday Finds way back and I've been waiting patiently for them to drop anything new.  I don't normally feel this way about most of the new dance music coming out, especially anything even resembling chillwave, but there's something special going on with D.C.'s Future Times; I can't find anything wrong with anything they've put out.  Listen especially to "Big Coast", smart, lean, reggae dipped dance is the way of the future.  Pre-orders only for now, and good luck finding this anywhere online, though if you do, please let me know.
Hey, so Friday Finds 15 got busted up for some reason by the DMCA, so here's a couple nice ones.  One's from this krauty synth band Growing which in all likelihood will get remixed by Neon Indian in the next week.  Also this new cut "Shutterbug" off Big Boi's forthcoming.  How does he stay so fucking relevant?  Blending these Juno stabs from glofi, pitched off vocals from the cracked out crunk of Hudmo and the like, and even a guitar part that could have come straight from a surf track.  Somehow he still keeps to his roots.

Growing - Camera 84

Big Boi - Shutterbug

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Cold Electronics


I've put together a mix of various minimal and cold wave, synth punk, some old some new, a lot of which has been covered endlessly by 20JFG.  Regardless, in keeping the current revivalist spirit this type of anemic, eastern blockist, psuedo-fascist dance music is sounding hyper fresh, at least for the next coupla months.  It's a very specific sound, with an unforgiving, axiomatic stance that can get old quick.  But it's also a type of wild posturing whose freedom lies in it's restrictions.  Frowns welcome.


Download zipped mix here

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Débruit - Spatio Temporel EP



At his worst, Paris based Debruit has way too much style for his own good.  Like so many other would be hip hop producers lacking an MC who's brave enough to take chances on anything other than played out R&B samples or club music, Debruit is forced to make lemomade out of pure sugar.  This inevitably means his tracks play out much shorter than their actual length and seem to always end with a whimper, but more importantly they just feel too big for their britches, working a bit too hard to impress.  Debruit's stuff rings in just slightly under the post-Dilla radar for instrumental hip-hop derived electronica which is odd because he quite elegantly combines many of the style traits in vogue at the moment.   Dropping about as many third worldisms as the next man, laying heavy on the P-Funk and wonky off kilter stuff, but with an real ear for the sparsity and robo pop of a neptunes era track, Debruit has a knack for crisp, modish collage.  This is reflected straight down to the album art; a smart, urban update on Picasso.  But there's something more than style here that seems aching to get let out, Debruit wants an audience but he's gotta say something first.  Part of it is just completing his tracks, when your track sounds like it's winding down at 2 minutes, don't make it last for 4 unless you've got some good ideas.  But also, there's something inherently dangerous about flirting so closely with the music of Nigeria, of Persia, of Kingston, of the Congo.  It's not merely a practice of exoticization that today's hip hop finds itself so interested in African and Middle Eastern party music, it's a sub-literal yen for that untraceable element of a culture momentarily unbridled, and in certain cases revolutionarily transfigured through a musical conduit.  In the "West", it all seems like candy: clubs, culture mongering, fashion, dialectic - we consume these as if they were both useless and the only currency available.  Debruit knows how to make a track sufficiently useless, and I mean that in the best sense, but he hasn't been convincing enough in how to make that uselessness matter.

Débruit - K.O. Debout

Débruit - Persian Funk

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