Two worthy highlights of a week in the innanets…
First is a bit of a FAIL combined with facepalm on the part of Simon Reynolds, in a recent post on the Guardian Music blog about a ‘tenuous’ link between ketamine (the animal tranquilizer cum party drug) and wonky. Read it here.
While his use of wonky (the facepalm music term of the year surely) seems to relate more to the dubstep end of things (Zomby, Joker et al) than the hip hop side, he still manages to slip in a strange shot at Hud Mo and other hip hop affliates towards the end. Extra fail points for mentioning trip-hop and failing to see past the poor J Dilla imitations. Also I remember Ketamine becoming a drug of choice on the free party scene in London back in 97-98, and while his discussion around the links between drugs and music scenes is what I enjoyed the most in his article, he does seem to have missed the fact that Ketamine hasn’t really been biding its time, it’s been there for a while, just not on the same level of popularity as say E or coke and unlikely to ever reach these or become an ‘It’ drug, considering how it renders its users.
Looks like 09 may well be the year that Wonky is fought off. I wonder what would have happened on the blogosphere and music blogs if Sasha Frere-Jones’ Lazer Bass had stuck more than Wonky… at least there was humour and understanding in the ‘creation’ of that term. Well for me anyways.
Which brings us nicely to part deux, an internet ‘standing ovation’ (quoting Sasha Frere-Jones here) for Kutiman. Who is Kutiman you say? He’s the man responsible for the unbelievably awesome thru-you website.
The site seems to be down again, though it was up last night. You can see all the vids on youtube though (irony truly is a bitch), see embeds above and below. So what’s the fuss about? Well basically Kutiman has done a DJ Shadow on youtube music vids, mashing up a varied selection of available music videos into new songs and videos. It’s deep, it’s incredibly well done and it works on so many levels. The Shadow references have been cropping up a bit, though for me less than ‘Entroducing’ it made me think first and foremost of Shadow’s video/audio show which was first demo-ed during his Private Press tour in 04/05 (I forget the year, must be all that ketamine).
Anyways all you need to know is that it’s the best thing on the internet right now. And possibly for a good while. As SFJ points out in his post, the man got the gold and by a long, long stretch.