all the things that we thought we were losing

this'll be brief, i promise.

first, childish gambino's camp drops momentarily, and i'm pretty excited. you can stream it over at npr, so if the darling glover piques your interest in the slightest, do check it out. 'heartbeat' has my ear at the moment, though if the rest of his work is any indication, i'll jump from favourite to favourite over the next little while.

second - drake's latest album/mixtape/whatever it is, take care, just arrived to much fanfare.

i couldn't be angrier.

i love love loved jamie xx and gil scott-heron's collaboration, and drake's take on the title track of his new creation... disgusts me. the man has a production team that's second to none, and yet his version of 'original' music is to take a gorgeous song, let rihanna (retch) repeat the lead vocals and then throw two verses over literally the exact same song with a drum beat added. no modification, no sampling, no musicality - hell, no original thought - just his ill-thought out words over somebody else's music. it's like the man is doing it solely for the attention.

oh.

music is commerce, and i'm familiar with the notion that some treat it as more commercial than others. but there is a solid line between respectful use of a legendary (and recently deceased) artist's work, and the sheer pillage of said work for profit. and toronto's finest just trampled right the fuck over that line.

so get back in the studio. write something. create something.

be an artist.

a special tribute

o hai there.

terribly sorry i didn't notice you; i was just moving to another country and such.

my love for jamie xx is far from a secret at this point; on several occasions i have expressed my considerable enjoyment of his remix work and his groundbreaking collaboration with the late gil scott-heron, and the xx is and shall remain one of my favourite low-key albums in the whole universe. like any good producer, his releases are few and far between - he seems to have mastered the art of pacing, and i feel like i've had a chance to thoroughly process almost everything he's put out there, as opposed to gobbling it up too fast or losing interest, as i am prone to do with artists who go AWOL.

while i wait eagerly for whatever it is that he has to offer next, this BBC essential mix is just lovely - a full hour plus of carefully selected and tailored tracks that do to my ears almost what his original work is capable of. pro tip - if you really want it, it is certainly possible to find a downloadable copy of this online, should you look carefully enough.

jamie xx - BBC essential mix (august 27, 2011)
Jamie xx Essential Mix by Young Turks

islands and cities i have looked

the xx were one of my favourite iTunes additions from 2010; their muted, low-key sound filled a gap in my auditory library, and i found myself letting the album play on loop for inordinate amounts of time, just to enjoy having it around. for the longest time i couldn't quite put a finger on what made their sound what it is, but over time i think the answer's pretty clear - jamie xx. while a lot of the hype around the band has focused on drummer baria qureshi's departure, and the intoxicating lead vocals of romy madley croft (for the record, deservedly so), it's pretty clear that jamie's the source of the band's unique mix. since the release of xx, he's been somewhat all over the place - working on a collaboration album with gil scott-heron and contributing to drake's upcoming sophomore release, to name a few projects - but has found the time to lend his genius to a few remixed tracks, and they're all gold. deceptively simple, these songs contain multitudes; sometime i catch an influence only to get lost when the next verse hits (that off-step snare sounds very hip-hop... but the bassline sounds almost dubstep-y?). they're coyly addictive, giving you just enough to keep listening, and leaving you wanting for more when it's over.

eliza doolittle - money box (jamie xx remix)


there's something very meta about remixing a song on which you were responsible for the original mix, but i'm just not up to the task of diving that far into it.

the xx - islands (jamie xx remix)