One Song

I saw Linafornia blow the fucking stage up! She was all whipping hair and head bangs. She was a whirring goddess of emotion, deep and soulful, jazzy fingers banging drum buttons with a purpose of a master maestra instructing us dummies on WHAT THE FUCK IS UP!... and then pause. Then slam back in that way only a true beatsmith on some teach shit knows how. Her set made me want to vibrate out myself and leave my pale skin sac in a crumbled mess on the bar's sticky floor while my spirit soared.  GIVE ME MORE!  Linafornia is from LA, the mecca of Leimert Park to be more precise. I feel like I owe it to her to be precise, because precision is Linafornia's forte. She's prodigiously making her way to the tip top of beat peeps with Beat Cinema,...

Say what you want about our little blog here, but our fearless (pssst, he's totes afraid of condiments bro) founder Alaska is fucking balls. With his latest drop we see Alaska side by side, neck to neck, arm in arm, man flesh to man flesh with SYFFAL favorite Elsphinx, and not only do their voices meld deliciously together, but they're a perfect demonstration of super old guy rapping super dope and super young guy on his way to being super old and super dope. YES, I just called Alaska old, but I also mentioned the dopeness of the dude. If you don't hear that, you're a dickknuckle in need of some serious fondling. While I've been best friends with Tim for almost ten years, I've never heard him sit back in a track like on...

Sometimes I shimmy. Normally my shimmying is quite energetic. People get out of the way when they see bro shimmying all energentically bro. But when the bro Jimerlis sent over the new new from whoeverthefuckfuck Future Elevators are, BRO, MY SHIMMIES, THEY WENT ALL SLOWBRO.  "Modern World" sounds like I just made us martinis bro. I'm crossing the threshold from the wetbar area of my bachelor pad onto the patio and I'm wearing a kimono my friend Bruce Bruce bought for me on his travels while he was abroad in French Lick. Indiana. Not only is this martini sporting a deliciously ripe blue cheese stuffed olive, I tossed in a spurtzle of fennel and a dash of black pepper. YOUR TASTE BOODS, THEY BELONGS TO MOI! WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN? IT MEANS THIS FUCKING SONG IS...

Life lesson: When it comes to new music recommendations always give your coworkers the benefit of the doubt. Generally they all mean well and deserve your ear’s attention. Except for that one ahole that insists on doing multiple stop-n-chats in your office when you're clearly busy and asks you to play Train during meetings. They deserve nothing but extreme disdain. Get bent, Gina! Serenity now! Where was I? Oh yeah, I mention all of this because I’ve been mesmerized by a co-worker’s recommendation for a little while now. BTW Did I say a little while? I lied. Sin Fin released their debut EP, Volver, way back in January, which in internet time is just about 500 years, but I needed all that time to myself. Del time is very important. I had to come...

In case you need some updating, Diane Coffee is Shaun Flemming and Shaun Flemming is also the drummer in Foxygen. And as I'm fact checking my info on Wikipedia I'm learning that he was also a former Disney voice actor (Kim Possible) and a didgeridoo crafter????? I'd normally call bullshit on those tidbits, but it's Wikipedia and Wikipedia is the ultimate authority on facts.  Anyhoo, I wrote about Diane Coffee a couple of years ago because his song "Green" made my grundle as moist as an under-baked cookie dipped in milk...it was so doo-woppy and strange and retro. Even when I hear that song today I still get full of the swoonz and need to drop a Dramamine.  This may explain the overwhelming joy I felt this...

This is exactly what I needed to hear on repeat today. Nothing musically jarring, but completely fucking socially stabbing; Guante and Katrah-Quey are calmly delivering the message so many fucking people who I share a skin color with need to hear, repeatedly.  Dear musicians of 2015: Please keep this sort of delivery in your arsenal. Not only is it slow enough for the non-rap fans to process, it's non-confrontational while putting the fucking mirror up, and while I'd love to incite some confrontation with a few people I share bloodlines with, this method of dialogue seems the least likely to cause white people to cry and run away.Thank you Guante for doing this, like this, because this is more than needed.  Play this for your inlaws. Here...

I hit play and then walked away.  Fuck. Twenty minutes later I've listened to the song four times and I'm onto my fifth. This sounds like There Will Be Fireworks meets Leo Wyndham (Palace) and it's unreal. I have no idea who this is, what dude's other shit sounds like, or what the rest of the day's feels will feel like after this song sinks into my psyche, alls I know is this shit is gorgeous. Gorgeous in this innocently introverted manner that's both disarming and disturbing, but completely fucking appreciated. I hope Calan Mai understands how important the patience in his songwriting is, because the gentle build that "Black Box" demonstrates is absolutely fucking huge, and I'm in fucking lust.  Join me in stalking this dude immediately.

Thanks to Joel we seem to have a lot of Ben Howard fans lurking around here these days. You'll notice them from the mascara stains and I (heart) Dr. McDreamy shirts.  And yes...I make fun, but every now and then I too need a skim frappacino to catch the tears when I'm listening to an emotionally moving song. I don't judge.  That said, let me introduce all you Ben Howard fans to Luke Sital-Singh. 'Still' is a track off of his new EP The Breakneck Speed Of Tomorrow that is available to stream digitally now on Soundcloud.  This shit is so weepy and beautiful.  Five bucks Joel would weep tequila tears to this song while being rode bareback.

Hey do you jerks remember when I used to bang out mixtapes every two weeks? Yeah, it has been a minute hasn't it?! Back then the impetus to the Track Marks project was that I'd fairly regularly hear a song on Soundcloud that would rock my world so succinctly that it compelled me to try to spread it to as many people as far and wide as possible. Streaming was good and all, but when an earworm digs into you the world's wifi and 3g restrainsts just won't cut it. I had to give the people something more, tangible...or as tangable a zip file of mp3s can be. I'm rambling here but the point is that another song has kicked me in the balls and made me decide that I need to spend some quality time this weekend curating a new mixtape. That song of course is from SYFFAL sweetheart, Kotomi...

When I've played a song for every single person that has come into my life in the span of a week, it has been decreed that I need adopt said song into my life like a dog from the pound. "Hashu" feat. Stév from Emancipator's Loci Records signee D.V.S* has me laid out on the hood of my car stargazing with girls I barely know. It's like we're hiking and the forest clears for misty cliffs and oceanic horizons. It's like I'm spinning… and not the kind of spinning that has one leg off the bed trying to find the floor and one hand pressed desperately against the wall in an attempt to make it stop. I mean the good kind. The child-like kind of spinning where you're smiling and on somebody's lawn on a Saturday. Maybe there are sprinklers, but I...