This is something I meant to mention a while back too but forgot. I came across the excellent Monday Jazz radio show/podcast a little while back and haven’t looked back.

Every Monday these guys put out a new mix from worldwide producers and DJs, and their archive (already about 60 shows deep) is seriously heavy. I’m once more late to the party as these guys have featured people from the extended Rhythm Incursions family like Dday and Joey Beats, and 2tall pointed out to me that I was, well late to the party.

Seriously though I can’t recommend them enough, and if like me you didn’t know about it than the archive is a great place to start because there is a lot to get through from the likes of the aforementioned Dday One and Joey Beats as well as A La Fu, Circulations, Cinnaman, Fulgeance, 00Genesis, Jay Scarlett, and many more.

Don’t let the name fool you either, it’s not like a Jazz ting per se, it’s more like an open minded hip hop thing, from jazz to broken beat, soul to dub, funk to the new generation of beats I’ve been talking about extensively. I’ve now downloaded about 10 or 12 mixes, and I haven’t yet found one that wasn’t a thoroughly enjoyable listen from start to finish, and quite a few have provided me with trips down memory lane or pleasant surprises thanks to really eclectic selections.

Monday is about 3 hours away, and so when the blues hits you tomorrow morning just click through to the site and let the music sooth the pain. Considering the guys running this seemed to be based in Vilnius as well, it’s all the more impressive to see how they’ve brought together such a worldwide and eclectic selection of music selectors.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: download, hip hop, Monday Jazz, Music

Edited for late night typos like masterming

Quick run down of some new music related bits and some other stuff I’ve come across since being employed to sit in front of a computer again.

First up, I’ve just finished a new Rhythm Incursions podcast. Grab it here, play it loud. Mini feature this month is on French beat maker Onra, who’s been dropping some seriously interesting stuff since I first came across him earlier this year. The ‘Chinoiseries’ beat CD is a must listen for anyone into beats and flipping samples. Also looks like he has an album coming later this year. Elsewhere on the show there’s more French fonkery with Le n?ko and music from Nosaj Thing, Jamie Vex’d, Jahtari, Blockhead, Flying Lotus, Daddy Kev and more. Doing the R-I podcasts has been really good fun, and it’s made me realise just how much good music has been coming out in recent years, especially on the whole inspired by hip hop but taking it somewhere new tip.

Second down, there’s some new video podcasts up on Turntable Radio, the long awaited live show from D-Styles and Shortkut, to be followed this saturday by the interview I conducted with them last December. Yes late would definitely be a correct word for this podcast. But you know life has a habit of getting in the way.

If you ain’t subscribed to either, what the hell is you waiting for?

Elsewhere on the internets I’ve been finding more and more interesting blogs and sites (aka I have a job that involves me sitting at a computer all day long again) and stumbling across plenty of interesting bits in the process.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: DJ C, French hip hop, hip hop, JSmooth, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, M.I.A, Music, Onra, Paper Planes, rhythm-incursions, RZA, writing

Pictures paint a thousand words and all that. Links below to the Flickr sets of my Canadian adventure, which definitely proved to be full of surprises and interesting things to snap, wished there’d been more but I was too busy either eating or drunking or being careful not to take my camera everywhere in case I lost it, again.

I’d been wanting to go to Canada for a long time and it was definitely worth the wait. I’m about ready to do it again once the whole financial crisis thing what’s happening cools off and we can all go back to being money hungry capitalist pigs. word.

Vancouver - Flickr set

Montreal - Flickr set

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written by Laurent \\ tags: buildings, Canada, food, Montreal, people, pictures, Quebec, travelling, Vancouver

As I got on the plane and left Vancouver for Montreal in late July, I was wondering what to expect. Five days later as I left Montreal for New York, I had come to realise that, much as had happened with my visit to Hong Kong, Montreal was a whole lot more than I had planned for and imagined.

In a way I had expected Vancouver to be more interesting and entertaining than Montreal, and if I’m honest that’s definitely partly to do with my French upbringing, where the Quebecois are often a source of ridicule, complaints and jokes. And it’s also to do with my family’s comments that Montreal wasn’t all that and I probably wouldn’t enjoy it that much. My dad had said the same thing about Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, telling me that KL would be the more interesting of the two, yet it turned out HK was the much more entertaining and appealing city. As for Montreal, it was so good that I can honestly say it’s the only place of all those I visited in this entire trip that I would seriously consider moving to. On the other hand, I already had a feeling before leaving Vancouver that Montreal would probably be more interesting than I originally thought, as quite a lot of the people I met and hung out with in Vancouver told me that Montreal was amazing and had, in a way, a lot more to offer than Vancouver (aside from the nature that is).

I was lucky enough to have a friend (big up Lewis!) living in town who not only offered to put me up but also showed me the good spots. As luck would have it, there was another friend of his (big up Ben!) staying at the same time as me, so for the first time in nearly two months I actually had someone to hang around with everyday rather than doing the solo traveller tip. I arrived late on a tuesday, and after making it to the central bus station in downtown Montreal, I waited outside for Lewis and Ben to show up while taking in the surroundings - the city was pretty quiet, given it was nearly 2am, but one thing that struck me straight away, even though I couldn’t see too well, was the architecture and how diverse it was from other North American cities I’d been in so far. And the next thing to hit me was hearing people speak French, as a bunch of African cab drivers were standing outside the station chewing the fat, and speaking in a very strange, but fascinating and attractive, mix of Quebecois French and, from what I could gather, African patois. Within five minutes of being in town I could already feel that this was going to be a lot more interesting than what I’d thought, and I wasn’t wrong.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: architecture, bagels, buildings, Canada, culture, food, France, graffiti, history, Montreal, Quebec, society, summer, travelling

Some sad news today as my feeds updated to show that the excellent Blogariddims podcast series has come to an end after 50 near monthly episodes. For those that don’t know about Blogariddims, the archive of podcasts will live on in the innanets ether so get started not now but right now. Peep this link which brings nearly all the series under one blog post, as the rule has always been to post the audio on the feed and link to the author’s own blog for full tracklist and description.

For me, Blogariddims has been an incredible source of inspiration for my own mixes and work, and actually played a big part in inspiring the making of my Attention Deficit Disorder mix. And Zhao’s offering in episode 45 has also proven a source of inspiration for my forthcoming mix (which looking at my current state of hecticness will be done by 2012 at the earliest). Looking back on it though, the series is also a clear testament to the power of the internet in creating networks and facilitating collaborative works of unprecedented scope. Over 50 episodes, the Blogariddims crew have featured music from around the world with contributors from around the world, each adding to the project not just with music but also with often in-depth write ups of the music and inspiration behind the mix. Looking at all 50 episodes, they have left a very impressive musical print on the internet and I hope that it continues to spread even if it is over.

I first discovered blogariddims in late 06 I think, I can’t quite remember how but I do remember that for most of my first year in Japan the regular podcasts were an incredible breath of fresh air and addition to my adventure, allowing me to discover new music and, as I’ve said, giving me a lot of inspiration for my own work, both in writing and putting together mixes. And considering the guys have been getting something ridiculous like 220,000 downloads, I’m sure I’m far from the only one who feels that way.

The last episode, fittingly, is as impressive as the series itsef. Entitled ‘Terminus’, it features 11 mini mixes from some of the series most regular and ‘popular’ contributors, all weaved together into just over an hour of musical bliss. Better than that is the way in which it was put out, with a trail of posts across each contributors’ blog telling the story of the end of one of the most succesfull podcast series out there. Start reading here and don’t stop till the end, it’s very much worth it.

No 40s are handy for me to pour some in memory of this fine series, so instead it’s an e-pouring of tea and the hope that it comes back somehow, someway and that, in the meantime, more people find its treasure trove of musical goodness.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: blogariddims, download, Music, podcast