Want some totally awesome UK hip hop, with just a hint of wrongness? Well check this wonky 2-step drawl...

Download the free 4-track EP here: GhostPoet – The Sound of Strangers EP

The world is awash with free music these days!

There was a big discussion lately on a Bristol geeks mailing list I subscribe to about the Digital Economy Bill with the result that several people concluded that they'd be boycotting BPI members music for the foreseeable.

Being active in music-blog-land it's hard to get so passionate about it I find - I haven't bought (except for from charity shop, & car boot sales) any major label music for years. Not because I'm too cool for it or it's too mainstream for my tastes, I love a bit of Dario G, me, but because I'm so completely swamped by the amount of music I can (legitimately) get by bypassing the music 'industry', often for free. Of course, there's still major questions about how independent artists should go about releasing music these days, but I just feel like something like the DEB could not be less relevant to the way we interact with music these days. Let them have their fun making no-longer-applicable rules, lets have ours with some amazing music, shall we?

So anyway, after the jump, here's a whole bunch of free (mostly hip hop based) albums that I've been checking out lately...

Plenty of RIP Guru posts about at the moment but had to add mine since Moment of Truth was so formative for me, to the extent where as soon as the beat from You Know My Steez kicks in I'm wrapped in the cozy duvet that is Guru's calm, considered rhyming and Preemo's solid, confident beats. The whole album has reached almost lullably status for me... nothing can stress me out if this is playing.

This is where it all started for me:

So RIP to the king of monotone, your voice will be missed!

There's some good pop music around at the moment! Well there always is really, among the endless churning out of tripe (which I think is probably necessary to turn up the gems) but there's at least two tracks around at the moment which are totally rockin, the first being Tinie Tempah's Pass Out which I correctly predicted would be huuuuuge (at this point I'm retiring from the chart predicitons business with a 100% success rate). The second is Rude Boy by Rihanna - I've never been a fan of her previous stuff but that hook is just pure wickedness. Seems like everyone and his dog has done a remix (my dog is in the studio right now) - here's a little selection:

Heavy dancehall / reggaeton grind: Rihanna & Agent Sasco - Rude Boy Remix (usershare link). I think Agent Sasco replies "like a bus" to Rihanna's "is you big enough?" - that's pretty big

Bleepy IDMesque dancehall: Rihanna - Rude Boy - Murlo Remix (via Palms Out

More after the jump...

So there's probably going to be a whole other dude posting on the blog soon - robbiefelixawesome (or maybe he wants a new name now), the original Untimely collaborator, the one guy who can regularly out-awesome me in terms of new / unexpected / crazy / and, well, untimely sounds... Which I'm excited about, as I think I get a bit too sucked into the whole Ghettotech (whatever that is) thing, which should only be a part of the whole Untimely thing (whatever that is).

Here's our original Untimely mix, back when the full Untimely Skank Sound System name was still in use... no fancy DJ tricks - in fact very little actual mixing at all per se - but this is one of my favourite mixes I've ever recorded. Tune after tune!

Untimely Skank Sound System - Summer 07 Mix

Tracklisting after the jump...

Been getting a whole bunch of hits from Kenya today since my post on Muthoni The Drummer Queen (still my hero) yesterday so I thought I'd return the favour and check out some more Kenyan stuff... here's a little selection of links to what I've come across (all with downloads!):

Two tunes via Ghetto Bassquake, both called Hey Baby:

Chiwawa - Hey Baby - raw Swahili hip hop..

Marya feat. Colonel Mustapha-Hey Baby - Cheery afro-pop..

I've got a new hero: Muthoni The Drummer Queen! How totally awesome is this tune???

Don't know why I'm asking you cos the answer is plainly 'totally freakin awesome'. The relentless vocal hooks! That beat! Those clipped trumpet stabs at the end! Man this is one of the most exciting hip hop based things I've heard in ages. I'm loving her vocal style, beat perfect machine gunning the chorus hook, slipping between singing and straight rhyming perfectly in the verses.

(Image robbed from Brenda Howell cos I thought it was kinda cool. Sorry Brenda - but here's a link back to you!)

Here's a new remix from me... it's kind of a work in progress, but everything I do at the moment is kind of a work in progress, due to my convoluted mastering process involving listening on various headphones then burning to CD and listening on a car stereo...

SAOTV - A Bruised Reed (andykisaragi remix 0.2)  by  andykisaragi

OK the Mongolian clusterfuck thing is a lie. I'm not even sure what qualifies a clusterfuck as Mongolian

Anyway

I made this mashup a couple of years ago...

andykisaragi - jurethiopique (jurassic 5 / Mulatu Astatqé)

...combining a Jurrasic 5 vocal with a Mulatu Astatke tune from the Ethiopiques series of albums - the instrumental was crying out to be hip-hopified, recorded in the 70s (or so) but it could have been a RZA production... well now someone has made a proper beat out of it, and Nas & Damian Marley have lent vocals to it, and man it's pretty awesome, check it out over at the Seen blog: JUNIOR GONG & NAS VERSUS MULATU ASTATKE where you can also download the original...

Just found this dude on Soundcloud: Meltus Riddler

He's making some awesome glitch-hop-step with occasional 8-bit flourishes and some vocals from someone named Slippy Skills which I'm loving. Check this one out:

Super Rap 64 feat. Slippy Skills by MeltusRiddler