I’m in a minimal wave mood this week. Enjoy the mix!
About The Author
Don Durito
Left of center and lover of photography, music, pop culture, and life. Favorite quote - "There are no innocents. There are, however, different degrees of responsibility" (Lisbeth Salander, from Stieg Larsson's original Millennium Trilogy).
And there is plenty of beer on tap.
Yeah, this music works. I’ll putter about this evening with this playing straight through.
A friend of mine has been doing these mixes for a while. For a long time was on Soundcloud. Lately seems to be migrating to YouTube.
My son has really gotten into making “beats”, by which he means repetitive background music for rap. He’s gotten pretty good at it (he tends to be good at art) to the point that nearly a dozen other boys troop into our house to rap over his tracks. I wish their lyrics were better, though – it’s all your typically faux-gang violent misogynous garbage. It’s so bad I sometimes crack up listening because it’s just so ridiculous. Only one of the many wannabe rappers has a girlfriend – who’d have thunk it?
I can appreciate creating and mixing good beats. Some turntablists I started listening to about 15-20 years ago are still part of my regular playlist (DJ Spooky comes to mind, but others certainly deserve mention). Madlib’s work (especially under the name Yesterday’s New Quintet) is well worth checking out. Rap can be very thought provoking, although I really haven’t kept up since about 15 or so years ago. Some underground rappers and rap combos were solid (Antipop Consortium, Jurassic 5, etc.). Some of the acts from the 1980s and early 1990s were solid (A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, etc.). I never could feel the gangsta vibe. Thanks to the miracles of snapchat and one of my offspring who shares my sense of humor, I have been treated to some very bad gangsta-inspired rapping. It is hilarious.
Here’s some of my favorite sampling/mixing/rapping:
I like this music, but I LOVE the staging: