I had to do a mega post here of one of my favorite new artists/MCs Shaz Illyork. Hailing from Queens, New York, Shaz has dropped 4 mixtapes in the past year, and has just dropped another for 2012. Dude is puttin’ in major work.
James Jean is a Taiwanese-born mixed media artist currently residing in Los Angeles. Along with illustrations and oil paintings, Jean had published SIX books of his works and won 18 design awards since 2000. He also has a line of jewelry in his Drip Simple Series. His body of work, and the various mediums used [...]
I had the pleasure of checking out a 1981 Serge Modular synth last night at a friend's place. What an experience that was. What made it great was that he knew the whole history of the synth, who created it and where, and had records of bands that had recording weird experimental albums with it.
He [...]
Roland R-MIX Audio Processing Software
I've mentioned a few times about how I'm a huge fan of Roland (and Boss) and their gear, and once again they have released another incredible product. This new release is different than most of their traditional lines of gear (besides Cakewalk), as it's software instead of hardware.
Employing Roland's Veriphrase technology, [...]
Strictly Cassette is a new website/blog that's been collected, compiled and presented as a cassette archive.
Seeing it all come together and on display is pretty mindblowing. Some of these I had when I was younger, so there's the nostalgia factor, but then a lot of them I had never seen or even thought that they [...]
So we did it. 2012 Winter NAMM has come and gone, and I'm not really sure how I made it out alive. We were in kind of an inebriated Fear & Loathing style happy mess at the Hilton next door for the weekend, and the amount of bells & whistles and flashing lights and drums [...]
Another DAW? Sure, why not. This one is put out by Bitwig Studio (Ableton Live expats). It looks a lot like a slicker, more polished version of Live. Whether it works as fluidly as Live won't be known until the Beta version is released.
Besides the interface, one of the coolest features I saw was the "Lan [...]
For this post, I gotta give a big shout out to a friend, mentor & inspiration: Danny Holloway aka @smokinvinyl. I can only footnote it with the time I have, but from selling wax to Cut Chemist, the Beat Junkies, Peanut Butter Wolf, Madlib, etc, to having a young B+ (Mochilla) working as his early [...]
Coast To Coast Album Covers: Classic Record Art From New York To LA
by Graham Marsh and Glyn Callignham
Jazz is forever associated with labels like Blue Note, Prestige, Atlantic, Contemporary, Pacific, and Riverside. Each of these companies strove to communicate the essence of its sound through album covers. Now, this captivating anthology of 400 covers brings [...]
Gilles Peterson, Stuart Baker and Soul Jazz Books have put out some great books the past couple years.
In 2009 they released the great Freedom, Rhythm & Sound, which is around 200 pages of rare, private press and obscure Free Jazz album covers. The years span 1965-‘83, through the Civil Rights movement, much of the music [...]
