This is Laidback and Large OK. Worst mix name ever.
I scored a tape deck for xmas and have been digging through my cassettes. I found this mix and it was titled 'Laidback and Large'. I think it's from around 2003 but sounds like about 1998.
Downtempo hiphop in a Ninja Tune style, DJ Krush and a few others.
It's taken me extensive research to compile the tracklist.
Interestingly it starts with a Paul Barman track that I discovered uses a sample of Yma Sumac from a track that apparently appeared on The Big Lebowski soundtrack. Enjoy.
(There is one train wreck.) 00.00 - MC Paul Barman - How Hard is That? 04.10 - DJ Vadim - Conquest of the Irrational 06.08 - Jeru Tha Damaja - Come Clean 10.19 - Bad Balance - Басы Хопа 13.17 - Tony D Feat. Chubby Grooves - It’s Time Two 16.03 - Koolism - Run the Place Hot (May have a different track title) 19.07 - DJ Krush - On The Dub-Ble 22.27 - Gripper - Fame 24.56 - The Herbaliser - A Mother (For Your Mind)
[I eventually decided the last post did require further explanation... So, here it is.]
Next to
“what sort of music do you like this is the most difficult and
unthoughtful question you can ask. Among music fans neither question
is likely to have an answer; most people would probably have about
five of each and those answers would probably change according to
mood, the time in their life and a million other factors.
Having
said that, I have a favourite track, it's Kemuri by DJ Krush.
Ever since I first heard it, that's been it. To explain why is a much
more difficult question. I'll try.
Even
though I find increasingly less hiphop albums to love (Heems NehruJackets the most recent and most loved from the past couple of years), hiphop
is the base for my love of music. If you love hiphop, you love music.
Hiphop more than anything is about a love of all music... at least
for me.
Hiphop
is the reason I started listening to Sonic Youth; Sonic Youth are the
reason I started listening to John Coltrane and jazz in earnest.
Actually, Sonic Youth are the reason I started listening to anything
non-indie/punk rock.
But
it's also been noise I love. From the brutal yet relentlessly
rhythmical noise of Public Enemy's Don't Believe The Hype,
to the squalling guitars of Sonic Youth through to everything from
the ambient DJ Olive works such as Sleep,
musique concrète,
even to (some) Merzbow. And then the sounds of techno and
electronica, particularly minimal techno and Pan Sonic.
Kemuri
combines all of this. A heavy, crisp hitting rhythm with kicks and
snares only Krush could produce.
Space
in an ambient, minimal techno sense. I once read an interview where
Krush referred to this sense of space in his music as 'ma', a
Japanese word that can only be poorly translated but probably best
described with the analogy of a rock garden where it's not just the
space between the rocks that matter but also the space they inhabit
and the distance between that assumes both space and a place between
which only exists as a result, in contradiction to space. (Or maybe I
didn't get that right!)
That
noise that might almost be a melody in any other world that sounds
like a fucked up version of a train horn from the earliest musique
concrète.
Background
sounds that, whilst not having a key, are notes, albeit slowed and
hastened by a turntable.
And
that bass. Detached yet funky and full of feeling. Like the most soulful bassline
ever heard through a DMT hallucination. And deep.
It's
like all the music to which I listen, past, present and future, and has
proven itself to be.
And
what's my favourite album? Well, that's a much harder question.
Nonetheless I have an answer to that too... Well, sort of. There's
probably two and one isn't an album, it's a box set; so I'll start
with that.
John
Coltrane's Live at
the Vanguard
four CD set. This is an Impulse release encompassing the four nights
in 1961. The original release is great. The box set, released in 1997
changed my life. In the four part documentary, jazz is described as
existence music. The four nights over which this box set was recorded
is a document of a moment where the members of Coltrane's band appear
to have discovered the reason for their existence.
Despite
mixing up the sequence of the nights over the four CDs, the
progression from the first night to the last is eye openeing, to say
the least. Good jazz tracks metamorphose into a musical treatise on
humanity, love, passion and existence. The best greatest piece of
philosophy endowed upon any person prepared to listen.
It
changed the way I chose to look at life (even if it took until now,
and probably longer) to start living those changes.
Put
simply, this is the most beautiful piece of music ever made. It's one
thing I can't describe. It perfectly defines spiritual – something
I'm not. If you could remove the music you'd still have 99% of what
you hear.
So,
that's it. Maybe people are lying when they say they don't have a
favourite track or song. I understand the impossibility of having one
but sometimes I wonder whether it might resemble the deep-down
feeling that you like one of your own children more than the other so
people refuse to answer even though there's a guilty truth there.
