acehotel:

Other Music curates selections of vinyl and CDs for Ace Hotel New York, and this is their latest collection. You can come check it out for yourself — everything’s for sale on the wall just to the right of the taxidermy birds. If you want something good to play in your room and take home with you, just call the front desk and they’ll send some things up.

THE RETURN OF SOUND SYSTEM SCRATCH — VARIOUS ARTISTS

Culled almost exclusively from recordings made at his famed and doomed Black Ark studio, The Return of Sound System Scratch is prime-era Scratch and the comp presents a fantastic showcase of Lee Perry’s amazing studio trickery. The vocal tracks are the gems here, with versions of great songs originally voiced by Junior Murvin, Candy Mackenzie, Leo Graham, George Faith, Jimmy Riley, Jack Lord, and the Silvertones, all served with the dub-plate treatment and thus swimming in a sea of floating cymbals, sweaty guitars, dripping-with-reverb organs, and minimal yet groove-filled percussion.

AMON TOBIN — ISAM

With the release of his tenth album, Amon Tobin steps forward in his study of sound design, ISAM being a collection of textured and melodic pieces completely composed from self-created sounds, which he then manipulated through state-of-the-art software and hardware. Similar to Matthew Hebert, Tobin favors the use of household items like old rocking chairs, light bulbs, springs, tools, etc. The results are great, and while you still hear his trademarked breakbeat inflections, hip-hop informed beat patterns, jazzy interludes and abstract chord structures, the actual sound has been completely re-envisioned. His always-cinematic constructions play more like dramatic film scores here; the use of familiar and natural sound elements never lose their organic origins, even as they are pushed, pulled, shrunken and expanded into an array of atmospheres. It’s a compelling concept and honestly, the results are hard to describe.

Read More