*ALWAYSONTHEBRINK*

fly me to swimming pool planet

Holy hell it’s hot out here. It’s 4:00 in the morning right now and I’m still hot and sweaty, and it’s only getting hotter. it’s supposed to be around 100 all week. I know that means nothing to people other places in the world but we’re not used to this shit here in Portland. So I put together a nice little refreshing Summertime mix to share. The overall theme is light and breezy, soft and mellow. Some tracks dip down in volume level which creates a nice floating ethereal effect in my mind. Mostly just mid tempo dubby grooves that seem to fit perfectly with the heat. I did this in one take earlier today, and it could be fine tuned a bit, but fuck it it’s too hot to do anything.

DJ Honeydripper - Sun Drenched And Stoned Mix July 2009

1. Grace Jones - La Vie En Rose (Casinoboy Version)

2. Antena - Seaside Weekend (Escort Remix)

3. Studio - Life’s A Beach! (Prins Thomas Mix)

4. Sorcerer - Egyptian Sunset

5. Lexx - El Sueno Lucido

6. Noir Desir - Le Vent Nous Portera (Rubber Room Rerub)

7. Low Motion Disco - Things Are Gonna Get Easier (Windsurf Remix)

8. Felix Laband - Whistling In Tongues (Todd Terje Remix)

9. Hall & Oates - I Can’t Go For That (Beatconductor Remix)

10. Canyons - More Champagne?

11. Ilya Santana - Holding You

12. Bebel Gilberto - Bring Back The Love (Prins Thomas Miks)

200X, so many great memories from that year

Here is another project from one of our most popular artists, Cassidy Demarco (Gouseion, Brokaw, Casiocity). We’re pretty much saving this release from obscurity I believe, and if you’re a fan of any of the other works by Cassidy that we’ve posted up here, or any of his work as Gouseion you’ll greatly appreciate this.  Recorded in 2005 at the height of the mash-up/remix craze (see Ratatat, Diplo, Glitch Mob, Etc.) this was Ca$io’s own take on some club hits, as well as some more obscure japanese songs (maybe not so obscure if you’re a J-Pop head I suppose?). Over all the mix has a very crunky electro glitch sound heavy on  snappy percussive sounds and maybe less so on melodies than his more recent works. If you’re a fan of club hip-hop as well as IDM or just interesting electronic music in general, then you’ll most likely flip your shit over this mix.

Ca$io - MIXTAPE 200X

Dreams shouldn't be stoned, only the dreamer.

     Here is my tribute to psychedelic lounge synthesizer king Mort Garson. Mort started out doing arrangements for jazz singers in the early 60’s. These recordings didn’t really feature any of his signature space-synth touches, just nice airy lounge grooves with strings and Brazilian rhythms. The first track that really features an early version of his trademark style is a song that he wrote for the group Ruby & The Romantics in 1963, titled “Our Day Will Come”. I suppose this was somewhat of a hit at the time although I’m really not sure. However the song was later covered by tons of people. There’s no synth work on this track, just organ and some vibes, but it has a great sound:

Ruby & The Romantics - Our Day Will Come

Here are some of my favorites of his. By no means a complete list, just a few select choices.

In 1968 He recorded a psychedelic hippy version of The Wizard Of Oz titled The Wozard Of Iz. The content of the record is super tripped out and a little stereotypical beat/hippy acid style, but the production value is very high and the synth work is very much ahead of it’s time. Check out this track with it’s dark arpeggios and strange percussive hits:

The Wozard Of Iz - Leave The Driving To Us

Here is a later track on the album that features great singing by Suzie Jane Hokum who was a protégé of Lee Hazelwood. This song has a dark moody downer vibe that I really appreciate:

The Wozard Of Iz - I’ve Been Over The Rainbow

In 1971 he released a record under the artist name Lucifer, titled Black Mass. The whole record has a theme of the occult and has an overall dark, scary feeling. Here’s one of my favorites:

Lucifer - The Ride of Aida (Voodoo)

Here’s a track from a much happier record from 1976 called Plantasia. It’s all supposed to be songs that you play for your plants to help them grow, and a lot of the songs are dedicated to a certain variety. This is one of the more mellow songs on there that is very well written, a real feel good song.

Mort Garson - Rhapsody In Green

Here’s an actual disco track that Mort was involved with, the only one I think. It came out on West End in 1979 and he produced and arranged the track. It’s really a great disco song with a huge Spanish influence and of course signature warm analog keys.

Pico - Malaguena

Lastly here is a song from a very obscure movie soundtrack called “Didn’t You Hear?” from 1983. You don’t really hear his style change at all over time, even with the evolution of synthesizers and what not. Which you can’t really complain about, I’m sure he just stuck to his big old patch synths, spring reverb, and space echos. The soundtrack sounds like it could just as well be from 1970 as 1983. This song features some folk style singing and it’s very beautiful and haunting.

Mort Garson - Didn’t You Hear?

The Ghosts of Brokaw

     Here is, at long last, Brokaw’s full length album Nonconflo. Well, kind of.

     Brokaw began around 2002 in Portland and consisted of Cassidy Demarco AKA Casiocity on music and Chip Brokaw AKA Colin Jones on rhymes. They were a staple of Portland’s small Hip-Hop world for about five years, releasing homemade CD’s on their independent label Diss Company and playing out on a regular basis around town. At some point around 2005/2006 it seemed as if they were poised to take shit over around here, and everyone was anticipating their full length release Nonconflo, which was in the works for what seemed like forever. Then all of a sudden they pretty much disappeared. The album was still coming out in theory, but the excitement had died down and both members seemed much more interested in their own solo electro projects (Gouseion and Colin Jones, respectively). Time passed, and eventually it seemed unanimous that Brokaw was done and Nonconflo would never be seen.

     Then I got this message from Chip last week that he had decided to take what he had of the album and put it up for download. It may not be complete to their original vision, but it sounds complete enough to me. No art, rough mixing, no mastering, just raw original Portland Hip-Hop. I played this to a friend in the car the other day, and he said “this is really a true Portland sound”, and I couldn’t agree more. There are really no traces of any West Coast or East Coast influence in the sound, just the melting pot of the musical landscape that is the city I live in. Heavy electro/hip-hop beats, cut up noisy shit, and equal parts politically conscious and dance party minded lyrics. As a born and raised Portland Hip-Hop kid, this is 100% my kind of shit. Download and enjoy!

Brokaw - Nonconflo (The Non Album)

As an addendum, here is the video for “Palace of Pride”

Brokaw - Palace of Pride (Youtube)

Here’s a lo-fi live video from an outdoor show in Summer 2006

Brokaw - Live Medley (Youtube)

And here are a few remixes that I had done, one of “Untitled” and one of “In The Sun” which apparently  didn’t make the final mix here.

Brokaw feat. Lean Rhymes & Shambles - Untitled (Sleepyhead Rmx.)

Brokaw - In The Sun (Sleepyhead Rmx.)

Hippies like disco after all

Here’s an Edit I just worked out. Getting stoned and listening to disco are two favorite pastimes of mine so I was super excited to find this record while out digging a few weeks back. Spark one up and jam this shit out in the sun. I mostly just made it mixable and cut out some vocals that annoyed me.

Casiocity beats make me feel so pretty

My good friend, long time music collaborator, and electro/idm king of Portland Cassidy Demarco AKA Gouseion just sent me some new tracks to share with you. I originally met Cassidy through his hip-hop group Brokaw which was MC Colin Jones on the vocals and Cassidy on all the music. Brokaw is no longer playing together (RIP), but as long as I’ve known Cassidy he’s always been unbelievably prolific. I’m not sure how many different projects he’s had since I’ve known him but I can think of about ten off the top of my head. These days most of his energy is focused into his main project: Gouseion. This project seemed to surface after a trip to Japan a few years back, where his first record was created. The music is grounded in krunky hip-hop, fucked up IDM, and trashy electro, with elements of teeny bopper pop culture thrown in for good measure. Gouseion now has two full length albums, two EP’s, and five remix mixtapes all released on the label RunRiot. His newest EP titled More Friends For The Fire was just released digitally last week. Here’s a track from that release, this shit goes hard:

Gouseion - Capitalized Braces

I highly recommend you buy this EP. 

Buy Gouseion - More Friends For The Fire EP on ITUNES

Visit RunRiot Records website for more purchase options

Here are a few bonus tracks that Cassidy sent me. First, an unreleased track that was used for live performance, most likely only once or twice. This one is very catchy and has some nice 8-bit synths as well as vocal samples of Hannah Montana or some shit:

Gouseion - Facefuk

Here is an out-take from his latest full length release, Nijikon. This track features very moody synth work and rapid fire IDM sequencing.

Gouseion - On My Holodeck

Lastly here’s a nice little bouncy percussive piece which is also an out-take from Nijikon:

Gouseion - Recursive Retour

For more information on Gouseion and to purchase his music check out his website:

http://www.gouseion.com

Big up Cassidy and keep it digital gangsta!

Old World

I have a musical project I’ve been working on lately a lot called Old World. It’s all me in my room with a bunch of clutter and mind altering substances. There’s not really a huge common sonic theme, although I’m limited by my means and overall I would say is a blend of psych-folk and disco. Here are two recent tracks I’ve finished. One is pretty uptempo dance and the other is a remix I did of local new disco band Chromatics and is a bit more mellow.

Old World - Children Of The Night

Chromatics - In The City (Old World Remix)

HERE is my myspace page as well which has a bunch more songs as well as some free mixes. Hope you like the sounds!

When I was a kid every Sunday I would stay up late to watch 120 Minutes and AMP on MTV. I remember at the time a lot of videos for electronic music were just bad computer animation. This video however, was fucked beyond belief. I remember the first time I saw it, one night I couldn’t make it to AMP and ended up passing out early, only to wake up about a half hour later to this video with pure terror. The sound of the music was so foreign and cold to me at that time, such a young age. I saw the video quite a few times after that and it always gave me the spooks. Me and my brother (who saw it many times also) would bring it up over the years but never saw it again after AMP went off. Now, thanks to youtube, it’s back in my life. Of course it’s not as scary now as it was back then, but it still brings back dark memories.

D.H.S. - The House Of God (Youtube link)

This is pretty much how it is in my recording studio too.

About two years ago I was living on the outskirts of town (if you’re a Portlander you know what “past 82nd” means) in a house I was renting from my dad, which also happened to be the house I spent my early childhood in. It had a great basement where I had all my recording gear and records set up. For a few months Nafie would come by fairly often and we would hang out all night and listen to records, drink an 18-pack of Budweiser, and blast my fog machine. We were mostly playing a lot of Italo and Disco. Here were our undisputed top three of that era, songs that remain huge classics for us:

Advance - Take Me To The Top

Advance was Alvaro Ugolini and Dario Raimondi who are most famous for producing Fun Fun. The singing on this song is by Ivana Spagna who was one half of Fun Fun. This is the only song as far as I know that they did under the name Advance, and it’s a serious 80’s Italian funk jam.

Musique - Summer Love

This is a Patrick Adams classic that features amazing strings and a young Jocelyn Brown. Also in the group of note was Christine Wiltshire who sang lead vocals on Weekend by Phreek then later by Class Action, and was part of Alphonse Mouzon’s Poussez!

Tammie Lee - Sky High

This was her only song as far as I can tell, it’s a cover of the very English soft rock/funk band jigsaw. It’s produced by Stefano Zito who also produced Blackway and a few other italo gems. The song has a nice moody feeling I think and I much prefer it to the just got castrated sounding Jigsaw.

FUCK THESE BLINDS

Here’s an edit of DJ off of the Lodger album. It’s always been a favorite of mine but impossible to mix. I kept this pretty subtle, no radical changes.