Blog humbug

There’s a pretty cool write up of the Invisible Superstars LP on Impose Magazine. They also include access to the tracks streaming live because, as they point out, music speaks louder than words. Funny, Impose compared the Corsic track to Boards of Canada… a comparison I hadn’t thought of, but kind of makes sense.  Mormon Freegan was described as “destabilized funk dirges”… damn I gotta remember some of this shit. They’re actually pretty good with the musical metaphors.

The hype machine blog also featured Corsic’s “Romoxy” track from IS001…

WFMU playlist

WFMU is this awesome freeform radio station in East Orange, New Joisey.  They’ve been playing the Invisible Superstars album (thanks people!) and if you want an example of what really cool radio can be like check out some of their programming on your browswer….

http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25229

I am feeling the RZa right now a lot more than the rest of the Wu

I heard the Raekwon interview and all that RZA is the “hip hop hippie” BS…. I also heard the Wu is not feeling the 8 diagrams and might want to go back into the studio?? Well, go, I mean, shit do another album… not everybody makes an album once every ten years yall!!! Get on it, make the antithesis or whatever will make you feel good. But RZA is blazing some trails that will make the Wu proud… at least that is my intuition.

IS001 review

Keith Pishnery put a nice review of Insivile Superstars in his blog

KISS MY BUTT!!!!

Josh Zoomcreep did this video at the Little Flower Shop in Chicago. It was a hilariously awesome video shoot/performance featuring Sharkula, PJ Sumroc and of course, the Kaptain. You can also see me and Sharkula elsewhere on Youtube, collaborating on some awesome footage from this show, like the hit “Cookies and Milk”…. that is the straight dope right there kids.

Invisible Superstars 001

So… it is here.  The vinyl for IS001 dropped on our doorstep yesterday, and it is a joyous thing.  It has been a long time in the works and it is nice to see the payoff finally here.  I trust everyone involved will feel the same way in the coming days when they get their copies too.  I hope people will feel motivated to check it out and support each of these amazing artists. I’m not gonna turn this post into a regurgitation of the promo material, but I definitely feel this album is a solid winner.

We’ve got some interesting releases coming up on The Secret Life of Sound for the future too… Youth : Kill ( a project featuring K-the-i-??? and Walter gross), PJ Sumroc (a true MC working hard in the lab), a new RCF, and of course the Sharkula Diagnosis LP (and possibly a CD re-release) as well as a possible release by Room 101 (project featuring Roburt Reynolds Wrap, who produced the Diagnosis of Sharkula).  Stay tuned to tslos.com for more details on all of these.

I gotta say the response to the Legend of Kaptain Nemo mixtape was pretty astounding! Everybody loved the Mc Serch guest shots (Thanks Serch!) and especially ‘Kiss My Butt’ with Sharkula and PJ Sumroc. There is a video for this track out there somewhere too… maybe you’ll see it on youtube in the coming days. For now the Kaptain is in hiding… but you never know when he will surface. Oh bigs up to XLR8R for the little mention. It was eal cute.

Thanks to everyone for supporting the continued work of these artists. Peace – One Love – Respect….

Rob

Yo Mtv Raps! x Pumas

These are dropping September 15th, exclusively at “upscale Puma stores”… (I am assuming that means the Puma brand stores as opposed to Footlocker or whatever) and it is a whole line of Yo! MTV Raps kicks and matching jackets and Ts… just check out these pics of the BDK’s and you can figure out where I’ll be on 9/15.

The Secret Life of Blogz

Jay (aka Zombie Mountain aka Robots Red Robots aka the TSLOS webmaster and designer extraordinaire) set me up with this blog a while back and I have yet to really start posting anything…. so I thought I would start by recapping a little bit of where TSLOS has been and where we are going as we head into the final quarter of 2007 (and beyond).

First off the name TSLOS is a take off on a book called The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tomkins and Christoper Bird. The book was actually made into a movie (which is IMPOSSIBLE to find) with a soundtrack by Stevie Wonder (which is pretty amazing in an odd way).

The first release back in 2004 was a double CD-r (5″/3″ set) of Merzbow remixes called “Raw Material”. Actually, nothing much really happened with this release, and only about 20 were made because of a problem with vssW (very small sound waves) which prevented us from burning very many of the 3″. I’m actually seriously considering making some copies of this as a limited edition cassette towards the end of this year. I’m sure they’ll make great Chanukawanamas presents. But , I digress….

The whole idea of the label was to bring together really different approaches to music… and create a fusion of “outsider” artists. I can’t say enough about the fact that there is so much crap in every genre with people trying to be cool by aping somebody else’s best idea without putting much original thought into it. Yet there always people who are coming up with new ideas (and fresh new takes on the old ideas). I have always felt there was more of a similarity in “outsider” genres like hip-hop and experimental noise than people realized. The same way hip-hop challenged the idea that you had to have a “band” to play music, experimental artists challenged the idea that music had to be “Music”. To me, it comes down to people being willing to go against the grain to come up with something fresh.

The beginning of next month (October 9th to be exact) we will release TSLOS11, the Invisible Superstars compilation on LP and iTunes. I really feel like this record in particular is a summation of the kind of ideas that lead to the creation of the label and continue to motivate a lot of my efforts in promoting interesting new music.

Basically I approached more than a dozen artists that I really liked and thought were creating sound in new and exciting ways. The first artist I got in touch with was Controller 7, whose ‘Left Handed Straw’ album has been at the top of my list for a number of years. After some initial negotiation we worked out a deal for him to help put the record together with him selecting some of the artists and me selecting some. Initially I wanted Tommy (Controller 7) to create more of a mix, using interludes and transitions, but eventually he convinced me that the songs were all different enough that they needed to really stand on their own on the record.

In the end result, all of the artists on the LP – Controller 7, Scott Matelic, PNS, Corsic, Buddy Peace, Zombie Mountain, Meatsock, Mormon Freegan (ahem), Skoweyajeed, Thomas Dimuzio, 10shun, bring some different to the table. I feel that on IS001 we provided a diverse, yet consistant, mix and a chance to really change it up with different styles and different approaches to sound. I hope people will appreciate this sonic experiment, and take it as an opportunity to check out some new music.

Oh yeah and there are only 1000 copies; 300 of them on gold vinyl. After that they’re all gone. Unless you have an ultra-rare copy of The Secret Life of Plants the movie. Then we can talk.