Howsa botta litta bitta hip hop, put it on a stove, melt it down and cook it up, with musical herbs and spices to create delicacies of rap, aquired tastes meant only for the seasoned listeners with eclectic palates. Here’s a mix of older and newer tracks that will stick to your ears, not your teeth.

‘s new romp, the creatively titled Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian, came out earlier this week. Now I’m just speculating here, so it’s not confirmed or anything, but the album cover for this release appears to have been done by the same artist as posted above, Dan McPharlin.  Even if it’s not him, the artwork of both is beautiful, drawing style and color schemes from the late 60s and 70s, most specifically paying homage to the work of Roger Dean.  But enough about the artwork, the release is entertaining and dynamic, with lots of shorter tracks that flow into each other.  For the sci-fi nerds who are wondering what Ampexian could refer to– Amazon revealed that Scott Herren (P73) rejected the trend of digital recording in light of analog, recording the entire release on Ampex tape.  This track may not be the album’s most prominent, but I think it’s a fun listen, parts of Ampexian remind me a lot of , but even they weren’t brave enough to go into a dancehall breakdown like P73 does here.

This song came crashing back into my world with the help of my friend Jay (aka A Setting Sun), and his recent obsession.  Included is the video, which is what drew me in as a youth watching The Box on TV.  Anyone else remember that channel where you would order music videos by phoning in their 3-digit code and they would get played?  What ever happened to them? Tricky is a very talented actor and musician from the UK, whom you may remember seeing in The Fifth Element.  He was onto something around the turn of the century, I wish I was seeing/hearing more from him.

I’ve been wanting to post up this beat, called Black Snake Root from for months now, thinking I couldn’t until I remembered iTunes can now convert m4a to mp3.  It’s by Metal Fingers, MF Doom‘s producer alter-ego.  I’ve had most of the Special Herbs collection for years now until my friend Corey played this track and almost made my head explode.  It’s one of the sickest beats I’ve ever heard, I could play it on repeat and freestyle on it for hours, which we’ve done more than a few times.

Finally, here’s a track I could have used in response to Black Snake Root, it’s from Chocolate Swim, yet another one of Adult Swim‘s collaborative musical releases, this time with Chocolate Industries.  It’s a remix by Edan of Vast Aire (of Cannibal Ox) and MF Doom’s track Supafriendz.  Love the slow, murky, trip hoppy beat and the way Edan stays true to Doom’s wordplay, which waltzes along with the instrumental.

Prefuse 73 – Preparation Kids Choir

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Tricky – For Real

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MF Doom – Black Snake Root

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Vast Aire ft. MF Doom – Super Friendz (Edan Remix)

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Tricky – For Real (Video)

Posted in Album Artwork and Music and Music Videos Posted by Alex on Apr 23 2009 12:00 pm

Tags: Adultswim, Dan McPharlin, Edan, Metal Fingers, MF DOOM, Prefuse 73, Roger Dean, Tricky, Vast Aire