Thursday, November 26, 2020

Happy Thanksgiving from UGF!


 


Sorry to say it folks, no post for Friday. No free music, no reviews, no nothing. Trylemma is on a rare fossil finding mission in Armenia, and I'm going to the coast. I feel bad about that contrast there. But the NorCal coast is very nice too.

So how's about a song, probably my new favorite track from Ceschi since hearing the revamped version featured on the deluxe The One Man Band Broke Up vinyl, which you can pick up right here.

 


 

Maybe I've missed the point of the song, but if this year has taught me anything it's to marvel at the way we grow back tails when they get cut off.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Stay safe and healthy out there!



Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Demons in Disguise / Cheap Meat Suits - Selections from Demons in Disguise / Dark City (2008 / 2010)

 


 

Sorry for the late post today, Trylemma is out of town and I didn't know he wouldn't be able to post something. Just got home from work to his note. So, since I already uploaded this stuff for a homie I figured why not publish it for everybody.

For background go to my K.Clifton post. This is dark, abstract PNW hip hop. These are incomplete albums that I received from a different PNW rapper, this upload contains two collections of songs off of the albums Cheap Meat Suits by Cheap Meat Suits and Dark City by Demons in Disguise. Both are Quiz on the raps and I believe BLVCK CEILING on beats.

Enjoy, we'll get back to writing substantive posts soon enough!

By the way, does anyone subscribe to Weird Raps emails? He wrote a very interesting article on the "optics" of white journalists commenting on hip hop, which is relevant because I'm white and a blogger is a journalist in a world where you can buy a house off a video of you drinking juice while skating to Fleetwood. Anyway here's the article in question, and here's a link to subscribe, if you like UGF you'll definitely enjoy it!

Oh yeah here's the music I posted to share:


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Friday, November 20, 2020

Earthquake Weather - Eqw (2006)

 


 

Here's one for our reader who requested some Beastmaster. I'm really excited for this one as it's an album I'd never heard of until recently, and was lucky enough to scoop up as a physical.

The Beastmaster is a founding member of the Papervehicle collective, best known as the original home of Swashbuckling Napoleon's super producer (and former rapper) Edison. A San Francisco art rap weirdo fest, Papervehicle is one of my personal favorites for their unorthodox lyricism and insanely creative and interesting production.

Earthquake Weather takes Beastmaster, pairs him with Zygoat of Audiopharmacy (a live rap act I know nothing about but can say they're awesome, I own every album they've done as a group) and has them trading dark and gritty abstract rhymes over dusty gloom bap production, with the occasional Jack Nicholson sample thrown in. What's not to like?

Enjoy Eqw!

 

DOWNLOAD

 

 

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

K.Clifton - Songs in the Key of Pessimism

 


 

Happy Tuesday, and what a Tuesday it is! Last go round I was complaining about the election, but now America has decided to rejoin the 21st century. Hooray for us! Now someone needs to sic the dogs on Donnie the Doofus so we can get some governing done, teach some folks the Webster definition of "justice" and hopefully not catch the plague.

 Anyways, as usual I was running out of time so no review this week, but I think I've got just the thing for a time of year when the leaves are dying and it's getting dark at weird hours...

Songs in the Key of Pessimism is a work by an artist who you've probably heard before, but maybe didn't know. K.Clifton (fka Quiz10 or Quiz) is a producer and rapper from the PNW who utilizes slower sample based tracks to instill a sense of quiet foreboding and vague uneasiness. His laid back and deep vocal style also adds to the dark quality of his music, and he's utilized it in a variety of ways and with a variety of different producers and emcees.

This particular album is fairly new, and for some reason is no longer available. I personally like it because it is I believe one of his last albums before he took the plunge into trap music as one member of Wrists. Not a bad group per se, but this album right here is a great demonstration of his transition between the Quiz sound and what he does now, and I think it's remarkably effective.

Lush, dark and disturbing. Just something to get you excited for a weekend indoors worrying about catching the plague and dying...

 

I've got some more darkness coming for your Friday fossil as well. Just that kind of week... This next one is for fans of Papervehicle and affiliated cats.


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Friday, November 13, 2020

Bastard Patriots - Bastard Patriots (2010)

 


Today's post is a more obscure entry from the Sandpeople catalog - Bastard Patriots' self titled debut from 2010. Bastard Patriots consisted of Randolph Mctools (of Harvard Joeys) and Jon the Baptist. Jon is best known for being a co-founder of the Sandpeople, though he parted ways (on not so amicable terms,) with the group early on. He is also the (biological) brother of Sleep of Oldominion. 

The duo was heavily politically based, as made evident on this album (their sole release) where the many failings of the government are addressed head-on (industrialism, police brutality, drug laws, militarism...) Some hardcore braggadocio and a dash of metaphysical raps are thrown in for good measure as well - think a less cringy West Coast version of Jedi Mind Tricks. The production is very rough and rugged and is handled by Flavordisk, Coley Cole, Pale Soul, $imple, and DJ Zone. The sole feature on the album comes courtesy of NW head honcho Onry Ozzborn. 

As noted, this was the duo's sole release. A second release was planned and was partly recorded, but was ultimately never finished and, due to some personal reasons, the duo eventually parted ways. McTools began focusing on other artistic pursuits (he has a great art collection) and Jon the Baptist, as far as I know, faded to black. 

Peep the album below! 


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Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Factor, Factor, and Factor Oh My!

 

2020 hasn't brought us much good (good job last Tuesday tho folks,) but one small solace can be found in the great Factor Chandelier (the best producer OAT imo) seemingly channeling his 2010 self and dropping numerous gems on us throughout the year. For those at home keeping score, here's what he's given us thus far:

Factor started things off with his solo release "First Storm," which featured some great tracks from Onry Ozzborn, Mestizo, and Cadence Weapon among others. From there, he switched things up and gave us a super solid boom bappy EP with Dope KNife in "Kill Factory." He then gave us an EP with Crabstyle MC LOGS, "Voyager," and an EP with Cali legend Myka 9, "People Into Making Progress," which coincided with a vinyl release of the duo's 2009 album, "1969" via Fake Four. Most recently, he collaborated with Oldominion rapper Diveyede on the EP "Goldbloom," a dark gothicy soundscape. And if all that wasn't enough, he's got a new instrumental album dropping later this month, available for pre-order now, called "Eastlake" (I was lucky enough to hear this and it's crazy!) And of course, there's singles in the mix too, my favorites being "DRKWLKR" from Ceschi + Siul Hughes and "Purple Bruise" from Dex Riley. 

So if your backlog is long, thanks in no small part to all these Bandcamp Fridays, and you haven't gotten around to all these releases yet - make sure to make them a priority! 

Friday, November 6, 2020

Optimystic Populists - Syntactical Assault (2004)

 


Straight out of Humboldt County, and by request from our amazing readers comes Optimystic Populists' debut EP Syntactical Assault. I've always been a fan of that SC Mountains style sound, and JtheSarge and Pendragn offer it up in a way that reminds me of the homies JKC but without the sometimes cringe worthy nerd factor that makes me want to roll the windows up (I say that with nothing but love).

This album to me helps to define Sarge's later work, as he offers opinionated political fast raps over classic sounding beats, all the while sticking to the NorCal sound. That's really about all I have to say about it. Nothing truly groundbreaking here, Sarge did that when he hooked up with M9 and started rapping adventure comics. This one is just dope underground rap that if you found this blog, you'll like for sure.


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Tuesday, November 3, 2020

New Music: Phantom Thrett - Loose Leaves 2

 

Before I get into this review, as you have to be aware unless there's something wrong with you today is election day. Maybe one of the most important elections in our country's history. I have made no secret of my leanings when it comes to the current state of America, nobody has benefited from Trump's bungling, clown-on-crack "leadership" style except  Trump and those like him (maybe not even them, it remains to be seen). How he's convinced anyone that we're better off now than we were in 2016 fucking mystifies me.

Get out and vote, and even if you like the state of our nation now, please consider what Trump's dismantling of the checks and balances our country's founders put in place to limit the power of the executive office might mean for the future of this nation. Maybe you think Trump isn't so bad. But sooner or later we'll wind up with someone who is, and he can now use precedence Trump has set to abuse executive orders, benefit from treasonous foreign collusion and pocket taxpayer money all while ignoring Congress to bully his plans into action. We're one step closer to fascism thanks to the orange buffoon, and in four more years who can say how many more protections set in place to make our country different from the monarchy we rebelled to escape will have been ignored into irrelevance?

That's that, now here's this.

 

 

Phantom Thrett is a one in a million rapper. I can't emphasize enough how talented of a poet this man is. You may have read my review of his performance opening for R.A.P. Ferreira, but this is my first time highlighting one of his releases [they're all amazing and available for mostly very low prices on his Bandcamp (see the customary link at the bottom of the page)]. However, since we try to talk more about recent releases here I'm going to focus on his new mixtape, Loose Leaves 2. I feel like UGF needs to publish some support for someone as clearly skilled and dedicated to the art as Thrett is, and this record is a great introduction to his unique and immersive take on hip hop.

Thrett's sound is hard to pin down. With a production style and preference that consists of lo-fi, slowed down jazz samples and dusty drums his tracks tend to offer the listener the sonic equivalent of a hot summer night on the outskirts of a thriving metropolis, and an approach to writing that jumps effortlessly between sleepy raps and syrupy R & B influenced singing. I feel like Thrett's work is a time travel experience through urban music's dense and layered history. His albums offer something rare in hip hop, and that is I believe a sound that could get older folks who look down on rap interested in it as a real and vital form of artistic expression. His spoken word poetry is beautiful, emotionally deep and relatable. Listening to his music almost always makes me feel good, even when it makes me feel good about feeling bad. Does that make any sense? If it does than I think you may like him as much as I do.

As a concert goer I was very impressed with the level of wisdom and enlightenment present in the songs he performed. Thrett seems uniquely gifted at capturing the human experience through words in a way that is both ingenious and easy to grasp. I feel like that is an extremely difficult thing to do properly, sometimes rappers demonstrate intelligence through the obfuscation of what is basically an inherent lack of meaning in their tracks (not naming any names, and not even judging this approach to writing, I feel like confusing for the sake of confusing definitely has it's place in music, especially if that place is alongside a psychedelic of some sort). Thrett however writes lines that have you saying to yourself "holy shit I never thought of it like that but he's totally right!" And you can pick up those nuggets of wisdom through casual listening, and needless to say less casual listening can be extremely rewarding.

Loose Leaves 2 is a mixtape style collection of tracks recorded through the second half of October, so these are fresh out the oven and relevant to our experience of the day. With production mostly handled by Jippy and not Thrett himself this is slightly different from what he's offered in the past, but with that said I don't mind too much. Songs like "Caviar" and "Built This Way" offer production that brings out some of Thrett's smoothest jams yet. All of the production is melodic and slowed down, and works wonders whether he sings or raps over them. The songs are all very short, in fact the entire record is 17 tracks and less than a half hour long, but the vignette style fits well with his poetry and allows him to pop up, make statements both humble and earth shattering, then disappear again. This is in line with the description of the album, Thrett is the most well known unknown, he offers his art and vanishes from the scene. Makes me feel blessed to have gotten the chance to hear him live.

So that's about it for today. I just finished listening to this record while gearing up for the day, between exercising, brushing my teeth and feeding the cat. I feel spiritually fit, mellowed out and eager to get started with the rest of my weekend (this was written Sunday morning). There's nothing wrong with music that makes you feel damn good sometimes, especially when it comes in such a smart and professional package.

 

Get Loose Leaves 2 from Thrett's Bandcamp page here! The write up for this album is straight up gold status poetry as well by the way, read it.