Blog Archives
New video from DJ Nu-Mark features no toys, but kick-ass beats
When we first added ex-Jurassic 5 member DJ Nu-Mark to the Weird List almost a year ago, it was mainly because of his “toy” DJ sets, in which he wires up various noise-making children’s gadgets to his mixer and goes nuts like a hip-hop Willy Wonka. You won’t really see any of that in the video for his latest single, “Tonight”—but you will see a very cool portable/toy record player called a Columbia GP-3 and some nifty animation, including an Asteroids cameo. Oh and the tune is pretty dope, too.
Peep the video below; the song itself will be on Nu-Mark’s debut solo album, Broken Sunlight, due out this summer. You can also apparently buy the track as part of a single package on Nu’s website, but you may have to squint to make sure you’re getting the right one. Either I need new glasses or that dude’s online store needs better labeling.
Watch the new Mission Man documentary, “Do What You Love”
I have to be honest: When I first heard that someone had made a documentary about Gary “Mission Man” Milholland, I was really hoping it would suck, because I was jealous that someone beat us to the punch. Actually, it’s surprising it took this long. Given the success of other documentaries about struggling outsider musicians (Anvil! The Story of Anvil, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, etc., etc.), Milholland and his defiantly weird brand of homemade hip-hop is practically begging to be the next great cause célèbre of the film festival circuit.
I’m not sure Lawrence Kim’s 30-minute day-in-the-life snapshot of Mission Man is going to be the toast of Sundance or anything, but it does not suck. In fact, it’s really, really good. Damn you, Kim! We’ll have to set our sights on making the first documentary about Dwarr now instead.
Kim’s doc, very fittingly titled Do What You Love, can be watched in its entirety on the film’s Facebook page. Or you can peep the first nine minutes of it below. It might not make you a fan of Mission Man’s music—you either “get it” or you don’t, and most people don’t—but if it doesn’t make you a fan of Gary Milholland, then you probably have no soul.
Watch Insane Clown Posse’s 19-minute infomercial for their new album, “The Mighty Death Pop”
OK, so you probably just read that headline and thought, “Dude, I couldn’t even make it through a 19-minute infomercial for Girls Gone Wild. How much Juggalo jackassery can I possibly take?” But before you totally blow off the awesomeness that is The Mighty Death Pop and its bomb-ass, Braveheart-length infomercial, check out these actual quotes from the video:
“…Dropping cluster bombs of flavor…”
“You like to take chances with your life? That’s good, because he like to pop deaths.”
“Version one has a red background, so we will call it Red Pop.”
“64 minutes of non-stop hoe flows!”
“…Special guests that will melt your brain until it seeps out of your ears…”
“It’s interesting as fuck.”
Now tell me you don’t wanna watch this shit. No, don’t tell me, cuz I don’t wanna hear it. Just watch, dammit! (Resist the urge to watch it stoned, though. Cuz then it really does have the power to stop time completely.)
So, to recap: ICP’s The Mighty Death Pop comes out Aug. 14th in three different versions. Also, the FBI now officially considers Juggalos to be a criminal gang. And white announcer dudes should never be forced to say “Efil4zaggin.” I think that about sums it up, actually. Maybe you didn’t need to watch the whole thing after all. My bad.
Signmark
When Queens of the Stone Age named their third album Songs for the Deaf, we’re pretty sure they were just kidding. But Signmark is dead serious. Yes, Virginia, this is hip-hop for deaf people, created by a deaf “rapper” named Marko Vuoriheimo. And he’s from Finland, no less. We thought it was all just metal bands and this guy up there.
Marko was born deaf to two deaf parents, but he discovered hip-hop from watching MTV and decided he wanted in on the action. Predictably, everyone told him he was crazy, but Marko persevered. He began translating popular hip-hop songs into sign language and sort of half-dancing, half-signing them out at clubs. (Like most—all?—deaf people, Marko can feel beats and heavy bass, so he could recognize songs with a distinctive bass pattern.) That led to writing his own lyrics and eventually creating his own music with the help of various producers and a rapper named Brandon Bauer, who raps in both Finnish and English on Signmark’s two albums.
Yes, Signmark has released two albums: a self-titled joint in 2006 that’s mostly in Finnish and a 2010 sophomore set in English called Breaking the Rules. The self-titled effort was apparently mostly a labor of love, but Breaking the Rules was actually released through Warner Music, making Vuoriheimo the first deaf recording artist signed to an international record deal.
Now you’re probably asking: How can a guy who can’t hear, sing or even speak get a record deal? Well, the answer is that both albums were actually released as CD/DVD packages, with videos accompanying each song, so you can see Marko signing them out. I admit, I was skeptical myself at first, but watching Marko do his thing does definitely add an extra dimension to the music. And the songs, by turns defiant and inspirational, all tell his story, even if he’s not the one actually speaking the words out loud.
Signmark is a big deal in the international deaf community and a very big deal in Finland, where he even narrowly missed representing his nation in the annual Eurovision Song Contest in 2009. (He lost out to this. Way to blow it, Finland.) But he seems to remain a well-kept secret just about everywhere else. Let’s help change that right now, shall we?
P.S. The white dude with the John Legend pipes is named Osmo Ikonen and yeah, he’s from Finland, too. Who knew Finnish people could be so funky?
P.P.S. Is it just me, or does Marko look like a little like Andy Samberg’s long lost Finnish brother?
P.P.P.S. The audio on that video is a little crunchy—whoever encoded it had the volume cranked up too high. It’s almost as though they were having trouble hearing it! Ha! Am I right, people? (Damn. Nearly made it through the entire post without one politically incorrect deaf joke. So close!)
Links:
- Signmark official site
- Signmark on MySpace
- Signmark on Facebook
- Signmark’s U.S. website (mostly tour dates)
Weirdify Playlist 7: Hip-Hoppish
I once wrote in these virtual pages that there was “a severe shortage of truly weird hip-hop acts out there.” I’d like to now officially apologize for making such an ignorant and obviously untrue statement. I was listening to way too much formulaic Top 40 rap back then. I’ve broadened my horizons since then.
To illustrate, this week’s Weirdify playlist is all about the beats, rhymes and turntable wizardry. Shout out to Ian Frost and Army of Gay Unicorns for some helpful suggestions to round out the playlist. So fire up the ol’ Spotify and for God’s sake, make sure you’ve got a sound system with some decent bass. Even weird hip-hop needs to bump.
1. Die Antwoord, “Fok Julle Naaiers.” South Africa’s twisted “zef rap-rave” crew strikes again. Apparently the title is Afrikaans for “Fuck All Y’All.” I figured we oughta get the playlist off to a warm, fuzzy start.
2. TTC, “(pas la peine d’appeler je ne réponds pas au) TELEPHONE.” From South African rave-rappers to French rave-rappers. TTC are sort of France’s answer to the Beastie Boys, a bunch of smart-alecky white dudes who rap over everything from candy-colored electro (as on this track) to cheesy old-school disco. Je ne parle pas Français, but I hear the lyrics are hilarious.
3. Das Racist, “Happy Rappy.” Das Racist is a bunch of smart-alecky brown dudes (MC Heems and hype man Dapwell are of Indian decent, Kool A.D. is Afro-Cuban and Italian) from Brooklyn. Their big claim to fame is a novelty blog hit called “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” but they’re smarter than that. Mostly.
4. Birdy Nam Nam, “Engineer Fear.” Back to France again, this time to hear the crazy-quilt cut-and-paste sounds of a four-member DJ collective who can sample just about anything and make it sound funky, creepy and awesome.
5. Amon Tobin feat. MC Decimal R., “Verbal.” Tobin is another sample-based producer whose music is often only tangentially related to hip-hop. I just love the way he’s able to chop up this MC’s verses in a way that renders them completely unintelligible, but keeps their rhythm and attitude fully intact.
6. Goldie Lookin Chain, “Half Man Half Machine.” Imagine a bunch of Welsh lager louts putting their own sophomoric spin on the comedy rap of Flight of the Conchords and Lonely Island, and you’ve got Goldie Lookin Chain. It probably wouldn’t be half as funny if it weren’t for the drawling, gap-toothed accents. Apparently Wales is Great Britain’s answer to Mississippi.
7. Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, “Thou Shalt Always Kill.” More British hip-hop, this time from a producer/rapper duo who sound like characters from a Charles Dickens novel, except for the state-of-the-art, blippy production and the sardonic torrent of hipster one-liners. Say it with us now: “Thou shalt not shake it like a Polaroid picture.”
8. Mission Man, “These Are the Moments.” Gary “Mission Man” Milholland is the only artist featured in each of our last two playlists (this one and Weirdify 6: When You’re Strange, our tribute to outsider music). Yes, he’s that amazing. That free-form guitar solo at the end of this track? Genius.
9. Buck 65, “Spread ‘Em.” Richard “Buck 65″ Terfry is, to the best of my knowledge, the only successful hip-hop artist ever to come out of rural Nova Scotia. Apart from that, he’s not actually that weird—although the Deliverance-like pervy cop he channels on this track is pretty incredible.
10. MC Frontalot, “Charisma Potion.” The first and still-greatest nerdcore rapper, MC Frontalot fills his tracks with references to role-playing games, tech blogs and other über-nerd touchstones. And he still manages to sound cool doing it. Also, he debates the correct pronunciation and usage of “attribute.” As a writer, I cannot tell you how deeply I appreciate this.
11. Yea Big & Kid Static, “We’ve Built a Time Machine That Runs on Beats. We Shall Only Use It for Good.” More geeky sci-fi rap, this time courtesy of a cult duo from Chicago. Turns out there’s a lot of this stuff out there; we could have also included tracks from Dr. Octagon or MC Hawking, but we decided, in the interest of equal time, to include an Insane Clown Posse track instead.
12. Busdriver, “Unemployed Black Astronaut.” Yeah, Busta Rhymes is pretty great, but this L.A. rapper is the underground’s undisputed master of tongue-twisting, warp-speed wordplay. He’s got weirder tracks than this one, but none cooler.
13. Sage Francis, “Zero.” Francis is chubby, bald, white and from Providence, Rhode Island. And he can rhyme circles around just about any mainstream rapper in the biz. This is from his most recent album, Li(f)e, which featured collaborations with members of Death Cab for Cutie, Grandaddy, Calexico and the late Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse.
14. Techno Animal, “Cruise Mode 101.” No weird hip-hop mix would be complete without a little industrial hip-hop. This angry little number comes courtesy of British producers Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick’s Techno Animal project and features raps by a Chicago crew called Rubberoom. Angsty!
15. Insane Clown Posse, “Chicken Huntin’.” A funky little ditty about killing and eating hillbillies. Who’s hungry?
16. Brokencyde, “Goose Googlez.” I’m really sorry about including this one. I couldn’t resist. #Douchecore
17. The Notorious MSG, “Egg Rollin’.” Chinese comedy rap. It’s not racist if it’s being made by actual Asian guys, right? Actually, no, it’s still pretty racist.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s mix.
Whoop! Whoop! Gathering of the Juggalos tickets now on sale
Break out the hallucinogenics and the black-and-white facepaint, motherfuckers. Tickets for the 13th annual Gathering of the Juggalos went on sale this weekend.
For those of y’all not familiar: The Gathering of the Juggalos is sort of the white trash, Midwestern answer to Burning Man, only with less hippie pretentiousness and more illegal fireworks, bad hip-hop and tit-flashing. Founded and hosted by clown-paint horrorcore rappers Insane Clown Posse, The Gathering takes place in a lawless corner of rural Illinois called Cave-in-Rock. Tickets will set you back $175 apiece, with additional fees for RV and car camping—which you will almost certainly want to do, because really, are you just gonna leave all your shit in a tent when you’re camped next to these people? They will smell the drugs stashed at the bottom of your knapsack the way a hungry grizzly smells a cooler full of hamburger patties.
The lineup for this year’s Gathering has yet to be announced, but that’s sorta beside point. The real point of the Gathering, as documented in the awesome short film “American Juggalo,” is to get fucked up with your fellow Juggalos and yell “Whoop whoop!” a lot. That being said, you can actually vote on who you’d like to see at the Gathering on the ICP website. Results of the poll guarantee absolutely nothing (i.e. you’re probably gonna wind up seeing Twiztid and Kottonmouth Kings again), but it’s fun to see who your fellow Juggalos are voting for. I’m probably not going, but I voted for Limp Bizkit, Naz (sic), Morris Day and Motley Crue anyway—the last three because they’re awesome, and Limp Bizkit just to be a dick.
This year’s Gathering of the Juggalos takes place Aug. 8-12 in Cave-in-Rock, Illinois. You can order tickets here (installment plan coming soon for all you broke-ass ninjas). Conveniently, ICP’s next album, The Mighty Death Pop, comes out just two days later on Aug. 14. Wonder if they’ll hype the shit out of it all week?
Die Antwoord on Letterman Monday night
Now here’s a sentence you probably never thought you’d read: Die Antwoord will be joining Giants quarterback Eli Manning as the guests tonight (Monday, Feb. 6th) on The Late Show with David Letterman. Set your TiVos, you fokken chommies.
In other zef rap-rave news: Ten$ion, the second album from Ninja, Yo-Landi and DJ Hi-Tek, arrives this week in all fine record shops and e-tailers. You can stream the whole thing here, but play nice and buy that shit, because Die Antwoord turned down a million bucks from Interscope Records so they could go indie and release the weird-ass record we were all hoping for.
They’ve also got some U.S. tour dates. We’ll see you out at that LA show gettin freeky.
02.09.12 – Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero Theatre
02.10.12 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club
02.11.12 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza
02.12.12 – Washington D.C. – 930 Club
02.14.12 – Toronto, ON – The Phoenix Concert Theatre
02.15.12 – Chicago, IL – Metro
02.18.12 – Portland, OR – Roseland Theater
02.19.12 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
02.22.12 – San Francisco, CA – The Regency Ballroom
02.20.12 – Seattle, WA – Showbox at the Market
02.22.12 – San Francisco, CA – Regency Ballroom
02.24.12 – Los Angeles, CA – Club Nokia
02.25.12 – Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues
*We’ve since learned that Die Antwoord apparently plan to release Ten$ion only digitally and on Flash drives because, in their words, “CDs are like motherfucking VHS.” Truth! Lies! You can buy the motherfucking CD version here.
Update: The video from their epic, unsettling performance is now live. “There’s your Super Bowl halftime show!”
New Die Antwoord track: “I Fink U Freeky”
Those hipster bastards at Pitchfork scooped us again. Today, they premiered “I Fink U Freeky,” a new track off the latest album from our favorite South African zef-rap-rave crew, Die Antwoord. “Freeky” is basically Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er’s version of a soccer techno anthem, with lots of Godzilla-sized synths and builds and breakdowns and whatnot. It’s what the Brits (and the South Africans, too?) call a huge choon, I believe. Or a right fokkin teef-grinder, innit?
Die Antwoord’s new album, TEN$ION, drops Feb. 7. Head on over to Pitchfork to hear “Freeky” and watch this space for more Die Antwoord news you can use.
Brokencyde
Today’s weird band was brought to our attention by Richard, the man behind Army of Gay Unicorns. Dude knows his weird shit, and by his account, this band Brokencyde is not only bomb-ass weird, they are, in his words, “the worst thing I have ever heard.”
A quick search around the Interwebs for all things Brokencyde reveals that Richard is not alone in his low opinion of these four neon-shirted wiggers from Albuquerque, a city that, thanks to Breaking Bad, we mostly associate with crystal meth and now, thanks to Brokencyde, we will also associate with douchey white kids drinking 40 ounces outside their parents’ McMansions. To hear the music journos tell it, Brokencyde is the worst band on the planet. Which is bullshit, of course. Everybody knows that title still belongs to Nickelback. But yeah, Brokencyde are pretty bad.
Brokencyde’s music, if you could call it that, is basically a combination of shitty club hip-hop and screamo, a mutant strain of emo that’s really, really pissed at you for thinking emo sucks. Apparently Brokencyde’s stuff is called “crunkcore,” although we’re proposing right here that it be dubbed “douchecore” instead. It’s party music, sort of, but only for those parties that are shot through with social anxiety, desperation and the threat of meth-and-alcohol-fueled violence—the kind of parties where the next day, everyone talks about who got his stomach pumped and who got his jaw broken and which girls may or may not have gotten date raped after passing out in the bath tub. It’s party music for people who are, deep down, not really in the mood to party. They’re more in the mood to break shit, up to and including themselves.
Still, it must be said that Brokencyde’s greatest artistic achievement to date, the video to their early hit “Freaxxx,” is such a perfect storm of terrible that there’s actually something kind of genius about it. With its sad little cluster of girls, trying to look hot while the “screamo” guys shriek into their faces, the random dude in the pig suit, the suburban soccer mom-ish choice of rides (Range Rovers and Jaguars? really?)…no wonder someone smarter than me called it “a near-perfect snapshot of everything that’s shit about this point in the culture.”
By the way, if anyone cares, Brokencyde recently released their third (!) album, the aptly titled Guilty Pleasure. Would you be surprised if I told you it’s available exclusively at Hot Topic?
[Update: To give credit where credit is due, it should be noted that while we came up with the term "douchecore" totally on our own, these guys actually thought it up first. They even specifically applied it to Brokencyde. We might have been guilty of unconscious plagiarism on this one.]
Links:
Mission Man
Sometimes, being weird can be a lonely business. Take Gary Milholland, aka Mission Man, veteran creator of “hip-hop without ego.” For 15 years, Gary’s been toiling away in his home studio somewhere in the boonies of Ohio, cranking out album after album of his bizarre version of hip-hop, doing everything from producing and playing all the instruments to, as he proudly notes in his video bio, “booking, promotion, choreography, music video production and direction, web design, and anything else that goes into living the life of an independent musician.” Yep, when your music is as out there as Mission Man’s, you pretty much have to be a one-man operation.
The message behind Mission Man’s music—his mission, if you will—could best be summed up with the title of one of his songs: “Do What You Love.” Mission Man loves making music and he’s going to keep on making it, even if no one really “gets him.” And believe us, the subtext of the video to “Do What You Love” is clearly “nobody gets me”—it’s pretty much just an endless series of shots of Mission Man performing at various near-empty bars, probably mostly at open mics, which he travels to all over the Eastern U.S., chronicling his journeys in heartbreaking detail on his website. “I received almost no response whatsoever, though I could see one person making fun of me,” reads a typical entry. After the open mic, “I found a Wal-Mart parking lot to sleep in, instead of a rest area. It’s nice to mix things up a bit.”
Back home, Milholland supports his Mission Man habit by delivering pizzas for Papa John’s. He even wrote a song about it, called “Chillin’ at the Papa,” which is actually among his catchier numbers. If the folks at Papa John’s had any sense, they’d license the song and make Mission Man their new spokesperson. I mean, look what Jared did for Subway—and that guy can’t even rap.
Some would argue that Mission Man can’t really rap either, and it’s fair to say that his flow is, well, unconventional. His verses do actually rhyme, for the most part, but rhythmically, they’re all over the place, and Milholland delivers them in a droning, Lou Reed-like monotone. He backs this up with instrumentation—guitar, bass, keyboards and electronic drums—that’s even more unconventional than his vocal delivery. “I have never learned music theory, nor have I ever learned how to play any other musician’s music,” Milholland defiantly declares on his blog. “I just make music from my heart.”
Earlier this year, Mission Man released his latest album, liberty island. (The album and song titles are all in lowercase to “reflect the lack of ego in Mission Man’s music,” according to his press release.) Milholland says the new songs represent his growth as an instrumentalist: “I’ve been really listening to Prince and other artists I have always loved, and most of all I am more free when I’m playing.” He’s also promised to make a video for each of liberty island‘s 11 tracks. If they’re all as wackadoodle as this computer-generated clip he created for the song “wonder,” we can’t wait to see the rest of them.
Links:
