Unless you’re a hockey-jersey wearing underground dittohead stuck in 1997, you wouldn’t dare underemphasize the contribution Andre 3000 made to all forms of popular music with The Love Below. Guillermo E. Brown dropped this limited edition single, and I can immediately place it in cousinhood to 3 Stax’s more experimental jams, or even Outkast’s possee-driven experimentations from Aquemini. But the more I play it back, the more I’m drawn out to Brown’s new realm… Where the Cocteau Twins croon like banshees across the seas to soothe the passions of Fela Kuti and TV on the Radio.

This video’s been sitting on my iphone for a minute.  It was a real exercise in patience not to blast this thing all over the computerscape.  Being able to do it now is a weird feeling.  Like taking off a watch after you’ve been wearing it for mad long.

You can download the track here:

Best Crisis Ever drops July 21 on Quannum Projects.

Watching Mos run down Doom’s lyrics is probably the best thing I’ve done for myself all week…

You know, once in a while, every so often, you find yourself in a public toilet that has a Dyson Airblade. And it’s an awesome thing.

Remember in Blade Runner?… When that stripper replicant is in that space-age sonic shower, then she walks into this stand-up air-dryer and it’s like ‘fwooosh’ and her hair flips up and she’s dry…like that? The Dyson Airblade does that to your HANDS.

The Dyson Airblade is the Barack Obama of hand dryers. Man, you know how I know the future will be sweet? Because in the future every bathroom will have a Dyson Airblade in it, and we’ll tell our grandkids “You know, hand dryers didn’t used to dry your hands…” and they’ll be all “Nuh uh,” And you’ll be like “Uh huh,” and they’ll say “Well what were they for?” and you’ll say “I don’t know.”

The album’s all done, delivered to Quannum & in the printing press as we speak… As ApSci pack up the beach bungalow and brace themselves for colder days in NYC, come down and give them a proper sendoff at the Beach Road in Bondi. Special guest DJ Anna Lunoe.

Eclectic Method are on that video mixing tip, kind of somewhere between Mike Relm’s provocative visual mashups and Girl Talk’s fast paced audio neurosis. This mix shows a healthy love for classics by Led Zep & early Motown, & fearlessly juxtaposes em with the likes of Beyonce, Jay Z & Missy Elliot. Worth the trip.

ApSci feature in FBi’s November podcast.  Click above to download.

I made some ApSci related musings here.

live @ SCUFF KICKS Ruby Rabbit, Sydney Australia 2008

As a rule I never want to say something bad about someone who made good.  I saw Mos Def over at Wetland’s on some Sunday back in the mid-90’s, a couple years before the Roots had their regular jam session over there.  A few months later his first single dropped on Rawkus, with this pic on the cover, taken from that Wetlands show, with Mos in the B-Boy stance. His delivery was instantly recognizable as something kindred to the hip hop I knew and loved from the late 80’s.  And thus began the resurgence of true-schoolers under the Rawkus banner… an era of artists more engaged with what hip hop should be, could have been, or could be again… for the first time.  Yeah it did my head in then too, but I was too busy collecting 12″s to care.

I can’t slam him for his recent recorded material, mainly because I haven’t bought any of it.  It’s good to hear him on the track here though, even as he waxes prophetic, telling us we can’t live in any other era than right now… Ey the guy means well, and he seems more engaged here than anything he’s put out in recent memory.

You can check his new single out here via RCRD LBL