thirdform

pass the sick bucket
99) Ultramagnetic mcs - critical beatdown (title track)

music for the people by the people. universal hip hop. best hip hop album of all time. this one's got it all, gangsta boasts, risque taunts, afrofuturism/nerd talk, black struggle. all whilst keeping it minimal. no overcomplicated 'watch my vocabulary' theatrics. simplicity and complexity rolled into one. an elegant body. just like this list. Kool Keith's finest moment. Nas? Do one son. rap got too slow in the 90s, if we're being honest. too much weed not good for the psyche. See my entry on Kool G for my views on the later trajectory of UHH.

 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
100) Sote - Atomic Hypocrisy

What you are hearing is the impossible. the sound of dimensions and frontiers yet to be explored. the underbelly of western Asia. sounds so 5 dimensional they accelerate all psychedelic experiences and condense them into one hyper-real mindfuck. the separation between reality and artificiality no longer matters. it's an irrelevant proposition.

Future classic that will be slept on and only played at cafe Oto shows. But it's 2019 hardcore rave. let's hope this modest contribution to the rerouting of the cannon will have a ripple effect somewhere and facilitate new modes of sonic exploration and cognitive consciousness. a consciousness not predicated on the white supremacy of the 60s counter-culture. communists have no constitutions to propose, only those to obliterate.

 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket

honourable mentions that i really wanted to include but had to leave out.

Q Bass - Funky Hardcore (dj hype remix)
DJ Hype - The Chopper
Frank Low + Rashied Ali - Duo exchange. post-funk freeform free jazz groove masterpiece.
Alan Silva - Lunar Surface. If you wanna hear 29 minutes of Leeroy Jenkins and others screaming away into the ether this is the one.
Lightning Bolt - Dead Cowboy (thought about including this after Paris but then decided against it.)
Chrome - Slip It To the Android, psych post-punk futurism.
The Beat Club - Security. More body popping electro.
E.Z Rollers - Rolled Into One (jazz jungle heaven.)
Justice - Soothe My Soul 94 Blame remix (jungle goes garage, was itching to put this in after smf but had to opt for Gerald really.)
King Louie - Bars, chicago drill with wiley type beat. had to go for something from back for the dead II though, madder.
Harlem Spartans - Call Me a Spartan. I dunno, seemed pretty pointless to try and justify it as some sonic masterpiece when Barty is much more of an expert on this stuff.
Ash Ra Tempel - Amboss, heavy, thugged out German psychedelia summoning the demons from Egyptian pyramids, again too long, didn't want to overcrowd the list with too many 15 minute+ epics.
Zafer Dilek - Kazanci Oyun Havasi. Junglistic kanun Turkish funk groove from 1977, wanted to focus more on vocals at that point in time as I'd already posted omar khorshid.
Xenakis compositions, too long apart from concrete-ph.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The last 10 alone gave me chills and tingles all over. I threw out half my CDs as this 100 unfolded.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Anderai
Current Activity:
Viewing Thread Thirdform's List!

spooky. Is this the heralded second coming of the byzantines? bliss bloggers alter ego telling me how I've got it all wrong and how hardcore's foundation is really The Police?
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
The first 10 tracks act as a great prologue to the list, touching on a number of its major themes:

The list starts with steam punk rnb. Rube Goldberg Machine music. It is, along with the next few tracks, a playful stepping stone onto one of Third’s major music preoccupations; hyper-atomization. Sonic division of labour. Dem 2’s ‘Da Keep’ is the apex of this.

Tracks 5 & 6 introduce another major infatuation of his; 303 bass lines. ‘Sit on the Face’ sees Robock begin to rear his head. Lyrics portraying the sexual domination of the audience. The fecal connotations of the flatulent bass line. A hint at the kind of physical and psychological self-immolation we bear witness to later on in the list.

Ice T’s ‘Ya Don’t Quit’ is the first of the many rap-as-heavy metal tracks on the list. A very different notion of rap than the one he would have grown up with (assuming he’s in his mid-20’s).

The title ‘Mohameds Mind’ encapsulates two major themes of the list; Islam and mental health. The first, but certainly not the last, portrayal of phrenia on the list.

Track 10 of several attempts on the list to shift our collective focus away from the Anglo-Jamaican-American musical triumvirate. A surprisingly sunny innocence portrayed here, given Third’s temperament.



The next 10 adds a couple of extra territories the list repeatedly delves into:

Track 16 kicks off the gay diva salvation strand of the thread.

It’s followed by a number of crunchy tracks. People missing distorted guitars after the death of rock and attainting them through other, more techno-oriented means. Full Robocock.



As far as my personal opinion goes:

Track 42 really reminds me of in the back of a humid cab driving along the Mediterranean at night and it feeling all magical and romanticized. So, maybe rather annoyingly for Third, it evokes in me fond memories of my middle-class summer holidays.

44’s very nice.

The time signature on 45 of course appeals to my rhythm nerdery. But even beyond that it really has a sixties triumphant optimism to it, like ‘California Dreaming’, ‘If You’re Going To San Francisco’, etc.

That Horsepower Production one is a strange one. I could be detached and point to all sorts of things I think are naff about it and all sorts of cultural connotations that I disapprove of, but I have to admit I do find it gorgeous. I think it’s that Basic Chanel Jetstream rippling thing in the background.

Elephant Man’s ‘Shizzle My Nizzle’ doesn’t have your normal dancehall drums, but rather has the same snare pattern as the majority of jungle tracks. Very much speaking to the unified field theory of tresillo.

The Keef one’s interesting. We’ve inadvertently established a Migos vs Keef axis on the forum and to me this is a great example of why I situate myself firmly in the former’s camp. The instrumental’s great, it has so much potential, but Keef’s rhythmic conservatism here completely suffocates it. It tethers it to earth. Like a teacher making sure all the rambunctious kids don’t get too out of control. Imagine if you have 2017-era Migos on top of that beat, it would have been one of the great statements of the 2010’s.

A lot of it is very much behind the time barrier for me; the 303’s, the golden age rap, to a lesser extent the dancehall. So that’s compelling given how close me and third are in age.

Anyway third, it’s a really great list. I really enjoyed it. A whole other world and worldview to mull over and explore.

Mashallah
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Not that much time to board atm but can't wait to listen to all of this. List looks bonkers. Seeing Critical Beatdown and the review melted my heart. 'Nas? Do one son' hell yes. Keith deserves Nas' position in the hip-hop hierarchy.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
thanks barty. really appreciate that mate, and i say that genuinely, despite all our ribbing, love having you as an internet friend, hopefully in real life one day.

More later, but re the keef thing. don't you think that if he channeled 2017 era migos with that sort of instrumental it would end up sounding a bit... humm. like a 70s sci-fi porn film? Isn't the discipline part of which gives its attack? Granted this could be being raised in an islamic conservative community where the standards for what counts as true subversion to me are (perhaps counter-intuitively) higher, in the sense that tranquility and lack of friction are the status quo, and hence funk/anti-funk and friction are rhythmically the clanging bell telling the lightweight to flee rather than fight as the headstrong would. human resource dominator joey beltram remix. if you can't handle it, don't swim with the sharks. this of course can be interpreted as an exaltation of the masculine, but there is an adult-teenybopper masculinity, the sophisticated masculinity you alluded to earlier in the thread.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Not that much time to board atm but can't wait to listen to all of this. List looks bonkers. Seeing Critical Beatdown and the review melted my heart. 'Nas? Do one son' hell yes. Keith deserves Nas' position in the hip-hop hierarchy.

That was kind of a linking back to britcore, the devil Made Me Do it, and track 35, which barty said was the night slugs rhythm 20 years before. I tried to weave an alternative pathway that wasn't (dubstep really came from freq nasty and rennie pilgrim!) so I've tried to be faithful but kind of emphasise the um. what's the right word? those bits of the canon that are overshadowed by the more accessible highlights.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yeah I was just in the shower wondering about that. I think what Barty reads as rhythmic sophistication can equally well be read as the conservatism of an edvertising jingle, which is what Crowley was pointing to with his "dab of ranch" videos. Something easy to get hold of and repeat, which is what Keef dodges, subverts, rejects.

I have to get out and work. I've got much more to say about the list but it will have to wait till this evening probably.
 

luka

Well-known member
With Migos you can never quite shake the image of them as aerobics instructors. Mr Motivator in a technicolour spandex leotard doing star jumps on GMTV.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Yeah I was just in the shower wondering about that. I think what Barty reads as rhythmic sophistication can equally well be read as the conservatism of an edvertising jingle, which is what Crowley was pointing to with his "dab of ranch" videos. Something easy to get hold of and repeat, which is what Keef dodges, subverts, rejects.

I have to get out and work. I've got much more to say about the list but it will have to wait till this evening probably.

Well this is why I didn't include any basic channel, as much as I love them, there was plenty of dub sensibility in the list by that point anyway. but... the other futuristic aspect of basic channel was transmuting the momentary zen of (again counter-intuitively) free improv and free jazz into a structure. something that has a logical cohesion and flow to it whilst being elusive afterwards. and that's always an important device i feel needs to be recalibrated in different contexts, as its the only real way of exposing the value of the commodity within the commodity itself.

You listen to like Danny Brown and it's a moronic gloopy phallic metal mess.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
With Migos you can never quite shake the image of them as aerobics instructors. Mr Motivator in a technicolour spandex leotard doing star jumps on GMTV.

well that makes me think of track 20 sort of. My funk is useless, but it's not art techno. which is why i am not quite in agreement with the heavy metal and guitars parallels. like, i knew nothing about that world until i went to uni, but i caned track 79 for what seems like an eternity when i was 15.

I guess I also wanted to well not divorce the cannon from rock but also show that there were alternative pathways to reach equivalent (maybe even greater) intensities. the unthought in disco realising itself in electro and chicago acid.

I'm starting to qualify things now aren't I? I'm not sure if it's too early to do this but just thought i had to say it. I heard Jeff Mills and Bizzy B before I did Napalm death.

Why didn't i gravitate to emo rock or nu metal? It's a valid question to ask. why this strange mutant funk variant out of detroit that noone at my school knew about? why a hip hop+techno firehydrant that was long since out of date in london and being extended into seemingly endless infinity by congo natty doing relicks of endless jump up tunes for old people in Brixton? All good questions, very good questions.

My tentative answer is social isolation. If I may be not a bit controversial (and this is directed at absolutely none of you, well, maybe a bit blissblogger) dare I say it this can problematise the latent ableism in the dissensus framework. Not ableism as discrimination, but ableism as a subconscious value set.

ooft! Hope I said that as respectfully as possible!
 
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Leo

Well-known member
a great read, third, congrats. learned a lot here, also had a few eye openers on familiar tracks where your descriptions reframed my prior perceptions. thank you.
 

catalog

Well-known member
91) A Guy called Gerald - Nazinji/Zaka

The first rhythms came from Africa and the completely dissociated urban tension was first perfected in Manchester by a black man. the most avant-garde record of the 90s, and it isn't even drill n bass. all sounds smeared into an ice cold remove - a distant alien chatter. whilst the drums nervously hammer in rhythmic counterpoint. it is defeat you must prepare for. this, before later 90s dnb, was the consummate eroticisation of anxiety. and that is necessary. without anxiety one cannot live. why am I here?

As a document of your mind playing tricks on you, this is unsurpassed. Brutal jazz funk. simultaneously the most raviest and the most anti-rave record in this list.


that vocal sample. what madness.
 

other_life

bioconfused
i really need to buckle down and try to write something substantial about this because it's actually rewiring my brain
this is my Other People's Music folder rn and it's making me want to throw all of it out, at least a good chunk. there's no vitality here. the hypnagogic illusion distilled:

0pn
bee mask
caroline
coil
emeralds
hannah
hype williams
jeff witscher
liz harris
robert turman
robin burnett
sam mehran
skaters
tim hecker
yellow swans
young thug

silly ho is such a good starter for this list. the 'klangfarbenrhythm' (thanks barty) of the vocal towards the middle/end, kind of a false ending to the song. had no idea about like, 65% of anything on this list. it's hitting w the force of a revelation. the parallel persia track is the perfect closer, as well. from contemporary rnb machines-as-funk to a rainbow serpent, a gigantic peacock tail of resonant harmonies, this machinic collision, metal torsion. it spans everything.
 
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