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EMPT Presents: Le Miel du Mois Novembre 2013

Monday, December 2, 2013

I just watched Seeking a Friend for the End of the World while working on the November edition of LMDM and it really made me think about how we live our lives like we’re not going to die one day. If your days were numbered, which they actually are, would you have the same fears, what would you cherish and value, would you lose your inhibitions, your safety nets, would your culture matter, would you try all the things you keep thinking about, what would you do? It’s fascinating how the idea of living free sounds so radical but that’s what the social engineering does, it makes you stop when you should go. It makes people who speak out against the programming sound like they’ve lost their minds, are immature and don’t have a grasp on reality…

In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – Orwell

It makes fear comforting and fearlessness rebellion when it’s actually human nature. My life is challenging right now, not for any imaginary matrix created problem but because I’m trying to regain power over my creative nature and lose the programming that I’ve come to realize is trying to guide my actions…

Dear God, I wonder can you save me? Illuminati want my mind soul and my body.” – Jay-Z

Thank the moon and the stars for music man because sometimes art is the only place I can go to find truth. I say sometimes because there’s also a deliberate dumbing down of art and culture for the purpose of blurring the lines between trash and high quality but that’s another subject on its own. But that’s why in the age of excess the true currency is taste, selectiveness and honest sources. That my friends is why LMDM resonates. It’s not a tape that’s trying to accomplish a marketing goal, Steph isn’t trying to convince you of anything, we’re not trying to sell a damn thing…

Now before I finish, let me just say
I did not come here to show out, did not come here to impress you
Because to tell you the truth when I leave here I’m GONE!
And I don’t care what you think about me – but just remember
When it hits the fan brother, whether it’s next year, ten years
Twenty years from now, you’ll never be able to say
That these brothers lied to you JACK!”

At the end of the day EMPT & LMDM isn’t what we do, it’s what we love and I hope that we can continue to offer that distinction with absolutely no compromise. Long time LMDM listeners know the first song always makes a statement and Wolf Alice’s Blush is what got this whole post in motion -

Don’t chicken out it’s all good, you’re allowed to be what you could…”

That ethereal vibe, emotion and beauty is carried out throughout the entirety of Novembre 2013 which twist and turns from acoustic to electronic in the most interesting and futuristic way only Steph can pull off. You can really lock into this duality in the middle with the Romare track which is just incredible. Yet another work of art to add to this amazing collection. I know I’m all over the place today but that’s where my life is right now, I can’t see the limits of my own thinking and I don’t want to, I just want to express it and I don’t want to wait. Steph’s tapes always give me a platform because they’re so full of life and awesomeness, press play & enjoy.

Every LMDM is created from memories and experiences, so it should come across and feel like its an ongoing story… the last song to me always feels like it could be the first..because like all of our world’s – its about that ongoing, ever-changing, up and down, but above all, amazing, path …”

Download

Tracklisting:

Wolf Alice – Blush
H-Town – They Like It Slow (Star Slinger Refix)
Tanlines – Not the Same
Prince Innocence – Golden Hour
Wise Blood – Spider Web
Jake Bugg – Simple As This
Romare – Down the Line (It Takes A Number)
Jagwar Ma – Come Save Me
The Babe Rainbow – Love Forever
Matthew Lee Cothran – No Way Out
Blood Orange – Chamakay
The Growlers – One Million Lovers
Coma Cinema – White Trash VHS
Novembre2013


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trails and ways — Lost (Frank Ocean Cover)

Monday, December 2, 2013

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This morning I found myself driving to the local Starbucks to get away from the craziness of family life during the holidays as I’m still in Florida visiting family, and so is the rest of my “family”..  I borrowed one of the cars in the driveway and made me way out.

My mind races through several topics per second, something to do with benefits of being a multilingual being, or just some form of ADHD—whatever.  While driving and running through my mental checklist of ‘Shit That Needs To Get Done’, I hadn’t even noticed the music playing, but for some reason my subconscious senses didn’t mind it at all so I just continued to drive.  About a minute and a half later the chorus of the song playing on the radio kicked in and then I realized that it was some form of Gospel music.  I hadn’t minded it because the music itself was good.  It was sonically correct and my ears naturally fucked with it so there was no need to touch the dial or throw my music on, which then made me think:  This music playing right now could technically be in an entirely different language, one that I wouldn’t be able to understand, and I would still rock out to it.  So, that’s what I did.  I let it rock and kept thinking about the items on my list until the song was over and a commercial break came on.

As I wrapped the details and items of my list for the day, I got back to thinking about how the words of the gospel song that just played really didn’t matter.  Then, I switched the dial to some other station out here and and Adam Levine‘s One More Night was on, and again, another song that could be sung in any language and it wouldn’t matter, because the musicality of it is so correct.  Better yet, the composition of the song was carefully constructed to minimize any chances of failure, if any were even left at all.  The lyrics, no matter what the language, simply became part of that sonic composition in form of another instrument falling seamlessly into place with the rest of the sounds.

At Starbucks, I opened up the November folder of EMPT picks and this trail and ways cover of Frank Ocean‘s Lost immediately caught my eye. Being a fan of the original song itself, there was no way I wasn’t going to see what this selection was all about—and that is exactly what I did.  What I got in return was a confirmation of the thoughts I had earlier on regarding sonic composition, and a new Bossa Nova tune that I could program into a few of the playlists in my life, and, in some of yours.

Lost is by far one of my favorite Frank Ocean songs because of its ability to paint a vividly cinematic picture for me throughout the entire duration of the song.  Aside from the descriptions of clothing he gives that allow me to visualize him watching her, I see airplanes and airports, drugs and emotions, and a rapid-fire slideshow of fragmented memory clips from the narrator’s  (Frank Ocean) point of view.  His ability to show me the different scenarios that he sees when he thinks about her is what makes the song itself so great to me, but even on this, had the musicality of it all not been so correct, then maybe I wouldn’t be here big-upping this wondrous cover.

Anyway, if you know the original then check out this delicious cover; it will be as soothing to the ears as a Brazilian bombshell whispering sweet nothings to you naked in bed, and it will only add another extended lifespan to your love for the original—something that all covers should do, but rarely every accomplish.

trails and ways — Lost [Frank Ocean Cover]


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Flume & Chet Faker – Drop The Game

Sunday, December 1, 2013

flume&faker

Sick track. Dope production. I’m pretty much obsessed.

“I’ve been seeing all, I’ve been seeing your soul
Give me things that I wanted to know
Tell me things that you’ve done.”
 
Chet Faker wrote to NPR about Drop the Game… in his very own words, ”Everyone has these notions of what someone else wants, and it becomes this massive game.”

That’s some Real talk, Mr. Faker. Real. Fucking. Talk.

Croon-Master Faker, whose name is an ode to jazz great Chet Baker, is one of my favorite ‘new’ faces on the music scene as of late. He’s come out with a plethora of recordings in the past couple of years; his originality is striking —  he embodies a sort of nostalgic inertia, a certain je ne sais quois, a sense of the ineffable even… he makes the foreign sound familiar and the familiar sound foreign.

Oh and Flume is fantastic.  The 22 year old Australian electronic musician is gaining notoriety as a  fresh-ass beat-maker and this track is a perfect example of his sound. He’s the kind of musician (//musician’s musician) you just want to have a conversation with (Mr. Faker is too, duh)… at least, that’s the conclusion I’ve come to after reading this interview, in which he cites Flying Lotus as a big influence and talks about how with music “you can just do weird.” Word. The weird is what’s up.

Drop the Game, recently released off Flume & Chet Faker’s Lockjaw EP is worth a listen… or maybe ~20-30 listens… in a row. Let’s be real.

Flume & Chet Faker – Drop The Game


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Born Ruffians – Needle

Saturday, November 30, 2013

 

I belong to no one, like the watermelon
Rolling with momentum 
Spitting out its seeds
Buried under snow and waiting just to show us
How it grows and knows how yummy it will be.”

I’m 100% on board with any song that opens with a verse personifying a watermelon. Also, any song that uses the world yummy in any context.

Born Ruffians are from Canada (do they have watermelons there?) and are a band built to thrive in an era of music industry reformation. Their brand of pop-rock is appealing and unassuming, which has led to a number of advertisement features for brands like American Express and Orange (a major telecom carrier in Europe). They’ve played on webisodes, appeared on major TV programs and of course completed a number of tours and festival appearances.

“Needle” is my favorite track off the band’s newest record “Birthmarks.” It’s catchy without being overly sugar-high (like Fun) and slightly odd-ball. The bouncy peaks of the chorus and sharp guitar stabs throughout give way to a hands-up-and-waving  bridge that you’ll want to crank up while driving dangerously fast.

Born Ruffians – Needle


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H A R T E B E E S T — Death

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

deathhartebee

 

Moments long gone have a tendency to split us in half.  The funny thing is that it’s more the best moments from our pasts that have this kind of power of providing aching pains that resonate profoundly throughout our insides.  Most likely, it’s because these moments are the ones that we yearn to have back again, and for the most part, these are the moments that we won’t ever get back.  It isn’t that we won’t have comparable moments in our present or futures, or even better ones, but at those instances when we are reminiscing about them none of that seems to really matter.

Familiar chords, familiar chord progressions and familiar synths have a way of pulling us back into the past the way only a well designed time machine from a sci-fi film or book can.  Familiarity, is found to be the key component of mostly every single music hit to date, so it’s no coincidence that when we listen to this H A R T E B E E S T production: Death, we are pulled into places where acute nostalgia takes over, and where slideshows from our pasts become the only things we can see.

Death begins with an eery wind lightly howling right into a sonic space where familiar analog synths begin a ride that nostalgics will gladly embrace.  The track is gingerly interlaced with a beautiful medley of falsetto harmonies and vocals that soothe the ears, and only help to pull us deeper into the rabbit hole we refer to as the past.  It is a beautiful production that won’t interrupt your day or workload, instead it will only provide a much welcomed rhythm that will leave you feeling refreshed and happy inside despite its dark title.

I’ll clutch your hand
when you feel like death is coming for you.”

Aside from the wonderful mixing job these UK bandidos have done on this track, something else resonated within me, and that was the line in the song that says:

Hold you in my hands 
when we cross over to the other side.” 

Every song and every lyric reach out differently to most people, and here at EMPT it’s always about how the track being written about reaches out to us individually.  This reached out to me in particular because of two friends of mine that are at a crossroad.  In both corners, you have two people who are coming from past relationships that have left them wounded and scared to dive into the murky waters of love again.  They have very reluctantly fallen in love with one another, but even more reluctantly find themselves afraid to crossover into the side of the lake where love is the only constant, and where compromise is the only guaranteed method of survival.  Each of them feels as if they have found within them what they once lost, and each of them, equally, is afraid to lose that again only to find themselves lost once more within the compromises of unity.  The fear that makes them powerless is the loss of one another, yet they falsely believe it is the loss of their own selves that they are ultimately afraid of.

To my dearest friends, hold hands and crossover already, because what’s waiting for you on the other side are more moments of beautiful nostalgia that have not yet happened, and those are the most exciting kind.  Think of a time when you experienced the greatest love affair that you know about in your life to date, and then picture an angel having come down from heaven to tell you and show you what was about to happen to you, before it happened.  As a matter of fact, the only death that is waiting for you on that other side of that lake is the death of self, because together, if you allow it, will only bear a truer form of love than you have ever known.

Good luck.

H A R T E B E E S T — Death


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Janelle Monae – What An Experience

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

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To be called weird is a compliment.

Normalcy is an illusion, constructed by people who spend their entire lives pushing any confusing thought away. For creativity springs from confusion and questions, unbidden into the mind of every person to ever live. I truly believe that.

It can only be stifled, never erased. Imagine the trauma of a person who suppresses their creative spark forever, because they believe their world would reject them in an instant should that spark find tinder and rise in glorious flame. The self-declared pharmacist – be it mother, father, teacher, priest – prescribes a fistful of pictures and words and histories to be consumed each morning and afternoon and evening: White picket fences, the same old street signs, the butcher, the baker, the chemical candle maker. The yammering drones who cry “Buy!” and “Sell!” and “They’re coming for your freedom.”

Long have those who wield power directed their charges to the trough of inside-the-box, where, head down, they (we?) feed oblivious to the fresh air just inches above. Where they worship at the altar of those creatives they fear to emulate.

A round of applause for those brave souls who live with five random Craigslist roommates in downtown Hollywood writing that pilot. For those single ladies fighting to rise on their creative merit through the glass ceiling of a normal, suite and tie society. And a shoutout to the bloggers, chugging away, without pay, emptying their souls and sharing their studies for the benefit of their fellow space agers.

Sitting with a calcified smile plastered on your plastic face with a brain working overtime to maintain a façade of polite distraction…that’s no way to live. Join Janelle, the weirdest sentient android queen on the block, and shed yesterday’s skin. Emerge into the light of a sun that doesn’t care what you think or what you’re wearing, a sun that will outlive you and all of your neighbors who cluck at Mrs. Peterson’s teenage daughter who shaved her head and is heading to art school.

And if someone calls you normal…them’s fighting words.

Janelle Monae – What An Experience


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Nero – Must Be The Feeling (Flux Pavilion & Nero Remix)

Monday, November 25, 2013

MustBeEMPT

Must be the feeling…”

We don’t claim to know anything but we try to see everything. We don’t want to be identified, classified, recognized or expected. We’re all enigmas, usually misunderstood but neither bad nor good. No genres, no favorite things, just great things. We’re not trying to be anything but ourselves. We were raised here and we’ve been everywhere but we’re from no where.  Don’t call us white, black, asian, latin, this is the f%&ing Space Age, don’t call us nothing!

We’re not satisfied and nothing will ever be enough. Too much is not enough because we’re addicted living. We’re not learned, we’re learning. Our tattoos say Fear Nothing yet the only thing stopping us now is fear, not ours but theirs.

The only happiness I’ve ever known is limitlessness.

I can’t explain who I am or what I want. I can’t tell you why I sit by myself in front of machines for days on end, why I sacrifice everything to give you better art, why we go above and beyond to put on the f&$ing show! I can’t explain why I’m writing this right now. Shit, why do you do everything you do? Why do we hurt ourselves? Why do we f&%k, why do we love? I guess at the end of the day there’s only one explanation…

Must be the feeling it brings to you…”

Nero – Must Be The Feeling (Flux Pavilion & Nero Remix)


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Pat Bowie With Charles McPherson – Feelin’ Good

Monday, November 25, 2013

You heard the Nina Simone version but haven’t hear this one. There are no Monday Blues in the Space Age, enjoy.

Birds flyin’ high, you know how I feel
Sun in the sky, you know how I feel
Breeze driftin’ on by, you know how I feel
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me.
Yeah, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me, ooooooooh…
And I’m feelin’ good.

Fish in the sea, you know how I feel
River runnin’ free, you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me,
And I’m feelin’ good”


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Sia ft. The Weeknd (prod. by Diplo) – Elastic Heart

Sunday, November 24, 2013

I’ve had a string of shitty days in the office. If you want me to churn out some busy work spreadsheets, fine. If you want me to build some Ikea furniture, I can do that. But if you want me to just sit there and wait around doing nothing…no thanks. Factory workers stand for 18 hour shifts in horrible conditions making widgets and pillows and shit and get to go back to a windowless dorm room to sleep for a few hours before restarting the whole process. That is hell, and my plight isn’t even comparable.

I can’t wear headphones at work, so I fill my days writing blog posts for EMPT and others. I sometimes can sneak a few minutes of reading a book in (currently: “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder). Far too much throwaway internet content slips across my retinas. It’s a sad state when the commute is more exciting and enjoyable than the work day.

My commute is about an hour: 45 minutes of waiting for, then riding the train, and 15 minutes of biking. Usually I listen to an audiobook and drift into whatever world the sonorous, slightly British male voice takes me into (for the past 6 weeks, early 1800s Russia). But today I needed a pick me up, so I queued up “Elastic Heart,” a newish collaboration between songstress Sia, blogosphere hero The Weeknd and hand-in-everything-these-days producer Diplo (That annoyingly, I’ve just discovered, is from the new Hunger Games soundtrack).

You’d be hard pressed to find three more consistent artists. Not that everything they put out is good, but each has a distinct sound that they’ve stuck with from the start. Perhaps it isn’t a combo you’d expect, but fuck it works so well. It’s becoming clear that The Weeknd needs to do more guest verses on non-Weeknd-y beats, and that Sia is a legit crossover act. And it’s long been clear that Diplo is at his best when producing for versatile female singers (See: Robyn – “Dancehall Queen” and most Major Lazer female-fronted tracks).

So pop in those hopefully not-Apple earbuds, or throw on your audiophile cans and forget the economy and all of your friends whose photos make you jealous. You’re probably young (I’d guess the average age of EMPT viewers hovers around 25?) with a whole lot of years ahead. Keep answering those phones and churning out spreadsheets with the knowledge that when you get fed up with it, at least you’ll have great music to listen to while you apply to that dream job from bed.

Sia ft. The Weeknd (prod. by Diplo) – Elastic Heart


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Sam Smith x Nile Rodgers x Disclosure x Jimmy Napes – Together

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Yes, this is real and official.


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