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.
Christeene’s debut album, “Waste Up Kneez Down,” is coming on May 26
Good news from deep in the…uh, well probably not the heart of Texas. The colon? Wherever it’s being spawned from, Christeene’s debut album has a release date!
For those of y’all not familiar: Christeene is the self-styled “drag terrorist” we first blogged about back in March, when s/he was just days away from wrapping up a Kickstarter campaign to fund the release of her first full-length LP. She hit her Kickstarter goal of $10,000 just 24 hours after we made her our Weird Band of the Week, which was probably just a coincidence, but which Jake and I chose to believe meant that a.) this blog is more influential than we realized and b.) we really should come up with a Kickstarter campaign of our own at some point, because apparently you people are soft touches.
Anyway, the fruits of that ten grand are finally due to arrive at the end of May, in the form of an album called Waste Up Kneez Down. And there’s gonna be a release party in Austin that you freaky Texans (not an oxymoron, I’m told) will not want to miss. I’ll let Christeene explain:
It’s been some hard hittin and heavy winnin here in Austin, and we are stanked as all hell to announce that the Official Album Release for WASTE UP KNEEZ DOWN is going to be on Saturday May 26th, Memorial Day Weekend here in Austin Texas at Elysium Nightclub! Haaaaaay!!!
Elysium is a dank and stank club where we released our EP three years ago, and we wanted to return to the scene of the crime with the album release.
The new songs produced by JJ Booya (Brett Hornsby) are fugggggin phenomenal, yallz. We can’t wait for you to fill your ears with this stank.
The album has 12 tracks plus a bonus track that’ll make ur nay nay cry.
Jake and I have been to Elysium and we can confirm that it is, indeed, dank and stank.
Here’s the promo video for Waste Up Kneez Down, which will forever change the way you view gay porn, ’80s aerobics videos and The Brady Bunch.
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.
Christeene
Here at TWBITW, we’re always up for supporting a good cause. So when we learned that self-described drag terrorist and “sexually infused sewer of vile shamelessness” Christeene had only three days left on her Kickstarter campaign and was still more than $2,000 short of her goal, we just knew we had to leap into the breach. Even though we were a little afraid of using the word “breach” in a sentence about Christeene.
For those of y’all not familiar: Christeene Vail is the creation of singer/rapper/filmmaker/drag artist Paul Soileau, born at a queer open-mic in Austin about three years ago (Christeene, not Paul—Paul looks to have been born sometime in the late ’70s, though only his makeup technician knows for sure). Paul had performed for years as a more conventional drag queen named Rebecca Havemeyer, but he concocted Christeene because he wanted a persona that was more, in the words of one writer, “quick, destructive and fun—something to leave his audience speechless in less than five minutes.” Mission accomplished!
Christeene is a foul-mouthed, dirty-minded, trailer-trash naif who makes improbably catchy electro-pop with touches of R&B, hip-hop, dubstep and booty bass. She’s sort of what might have happened if Crazy Britney had spent less energy on shaving her head and attacking cars with umbrellas and more on actually making music as provocative as her pantyless bouts with the paparazzi.
Christeene’s performances and amazing, totally NSFW videos (made with filmmaker PJ Ravel under the name Three Dollar Cinema and mostly available on Funny or Die) are aural and visual assaults of gold teeth, smeared lipstick, flashed privates, ass-cheek-spreading backup dancers, and gender-bending songs and raps about ass play (“Bustin’ Brown”), sad hookers (“Tears From My Pussy”) and what we can only assume is old-people sex (“Workin’ on Grandma”). It’s not for the faint-hearted, even though Christeene herself maintains an endearingly childlike, Adam Sandler-ish quality throughout.
Arguably the weirdest—inarguably the most downright nasty—thing Christeene’s ever produced is “Bustin’ Brown,” a song about anal sex (“breakin’ laws in your bee-hind”), with a video that mostly takes place inside a giant colon. But for sheer NSFW hilarity, we have to agree with reader Hirsh, who first brought Christeene to our attention on our Submit a Band page by posting the “Fix My Dick” video along with the that-about-sums-it-up comment, “Mmmm yes.” (Did I mention this video is NSFW? I really, really can’t stress that enough.)
If you enjoyed that, please for the love of Jesus proceed immediately to Christeene’s Kickstarter page and give generously so that her debut album, Waste Up, Kneez Down, may see the light of day. Jake just stole one of my credit cards and gave five bucks, and if that raging homophobe can support this hot mess with someone’s else money, you sure as shit can, too. (I kid. Jake’s not a homophobe. He just gets squeamish about hairy guys in thongs.)
[Update: Well, shit. Christeene just hit her $10,000 Kickstarter goal with 46 hours to go—and barely 24 hours after we first wrote this post. Y'all just got the Weird Band Bump, Christeene! Congrats.]
Links:
- Christeene official site
- Christeene on Facebook
- Three Dollar Cinema on Funny or Die (Christeene’s video channel)
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.
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:
Imperial Stars
First off: our sincerest apologies for not posting any new content in so long. We’ve been slacking, clearly. Also, we’ve been stuck in traffic. And that part is totally the fault of these guys.
See, earlier this week, a bunch of douchebags from Orange County calling themselves Imperial Stars thought it would be cool if they promoted their new single, “Traffic Jam 101,” by…get this…causing a traffic jam! On the fucking 101 freeway! Genius, no?
To achieve this totally awesome end, the group drove a big-ass van down the 101 freeway in Hollywood during Tuesday rush hour (okay, it was 10:30 am, but this is LA, people…it’s always rush hour), then parked it sideways across three lanes of traffic, climbed on top, and started performing a little impromptu concert for all the poor suckers running late to their auditions and yoga classes. Concert ended when the cops showed up and arrested all three guys for disturbing the peace and unlawful assembley, but a really lame-ass hip-hop band from the O.C. that no one had ever heard of was all over the evening news, so hey…mission accomplished, I guess. No such thing as bad publicity and all that.
Now, obviously, one crass but effective publicity stunt does not a weird band make, so you’re probably wondering why we’re wasting precious bandwidth on these clowns. Well, there’s a few reasons. First off, there’s the band’s publicity materials, which seriously read like they were run through one of those programs that translates text into, I dunno, Slovenian or some shit, then back into English. Here’s a brief sample, from the band’s Facebook page:
“Dynamic synthesizers, authoritative drum patterns and mainstay power vocals that remind even the average ear of greatness, The Imperial Stars pierced themselves into the heart of music history…Vocalist Paul Arabella exhales igneous verse that bridge chorus potential into hit records…Imbedded into the culture of hip hop from the ages of adolescence, big Paul reinvented himself in content and persona that parallels elevated status.”
Second, there’s the band’s actual music, which almost makes the press materials seem coherent by comparison. At some point in “Traffic Jam 101,” the aforementioned Paul Arabella (who kinda looks like Andy Samberg in O.C. hip-hop drag) drops igneous verses like, “In the traffic jam, bumper to bumper/Heat for your winter, cool for your summer.” And head Imperial Christopher Wright says he “play my music for the children of the stars.” Dude, did the “children of the stars” tell you to ruin the morning of thousands of strangers?
Last but not least, there’s the alleged reason Imperial Stars decided to risk arrest so they could subject Hollywood commuters to their crappy song. They did it for the children.
“We were thinking we needed to do something big to grab the attention of the American people to this cause of the 1.5 million homeless children,” guitarist Keith Yackey told a local radio station the day after the stunt. The group claims it will donate 50% of all proceeds from sale of the “Traffic Jam 101″ single to help homeless youth.
If this is whole thing is some kind of weird Die Antwoord style meta-joke, it’s kinda brilliant. But if Imperial Stars–who, by the way, used to make incredibly derivative faux-gangsta rap under the name Imperial Assassins–are trying to be serious…and I think they are…well, then, wow. Just wow.
Links:
- Imperial Stars official site (it says you need to give them your email address to enter, but fuck that–just follow this link and you can peruse the site in all its glory)
- Imperial Stars (aka Imperial Assassins) on MySpace
- Imperial Stars Facebook fan page
