Donuts - J Dilla (2006)

this is one of those albums designed to loop infinitely, and not just because the last song ends in sync with the beginning of the first song.



released on February 7, 2006, three days after its creator passed on, "Donuts" is a 31-track instrumental hip hop masterpiece, a journey through the dustiest yet most delicious funk, rap, jazz, and R&B vinyl sounds imaginable.

the longest track is 2:57, the shortest is 0:13, and most of the other pieces fall somewhere around 1-2min. they're more like doughnut holes than donuts, but then, holes are donuts too and, breaking apart the metaphor, these are all songs, not just brief, unprepared, hashed together thought experiments. they are J Dilla's babies, each one a little more than a peek into the man's record collection, each one a mini-factory of sound outputting clear visions of samples that J had clearly synthesized in his head for many, many years.

the most lengthy track on the record and song #2, "Workinonit," gets things started the right way. blasting off with J Dilla's signature siren call, we are launched into a bouncy room of stringed reverberation with slick drum beats pulling us through. suddenly ascending guitar solos make us forget that we're listening to a hip hop record, while a hermaphroditic voice pulls us in:

play me
play me
buy me
workinonit
workinonit
workinonit
workinonit

girls moan, the guitar solos keep recurring, then breakdown: the guitar sings heavenly, bells twinkle, and we are summoned into the next donut.

listen to "Time: The Donut of the Heart." maybe he's just playing back a Jackson 5 b-side, but i don't care. he's playing it for me and it's divine. he lets it slow down a little bit, just to make you realize how dependent you had become on that sweet melody, and then he lets it do its work at normal speed again.

try "Lightworks:" boop boop beep boop. "This is Bendix: The Tomorrow People." it sounds like he sampled and panned the hell out a commercial from the 50s or something. layering boops and beeps like something out of Kraftwerk,

who the hell is this J Dilla? James Dewitt Yancey founded Slum Village in the mid-90s, but he is most remembered today for his production skills, which, if you've ever listened to Common, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest, or The Pharcyde, you've already experienced. he released some solo albums in the early 00s under the moniker Jay Dee and you'll find some great stuff there. in 2003, Jay collaborated with Madlib on an album called "Champion Sound," released under Jaylib. then in 2006, J Dilla gave us "Donuts," which would be so incredibly crafted out of perfectly chosen samples that it would make music lovers around the world pause and wonder, "who the hell is this J Dilla?"

some posthumous albums have made it out since the release of "Donuts," but (and i am by no means a Dilla expert) check this monster out first. if it does the same thing to you as it did to me , you'll think it nothing special until you realize you've just listened to it 15x in a row.

download or buy.

Four Organs - Steve Reich (1970)

it starts with an innocent maracas player, alone in his robotic, unaccented shaking for almost four seconds. but, even though the shaking continues nonstop and steady for the rest of the fifteen minute song, the shaking is never left alone again for longer than a moment.

that's because at 0:04, the organs come in. four organs, to be exact. and when they do, you know it's Steve Reich minimalism at its finest.

i don't know anything about music, so i'll let Wikipedia describe exactly what happens in this song from start to finish: "the four organs, harmonically expound a dominant eleventh chord (D-E-F#-G#-A-B with an E in the bass), dissecting the chord by playing parts of it sequentially while the chord slowly increases in duration from a single 1/8 note at the beginning to 200 beats at the end."

now, to make this a little more visual, Reich's vision for the piece (as given at the premiere): "I had the idea that if a group of tones were all pulsing together in a repeating chord...one tone at a time could gradually get longer and longer.... The tones would simply begin in unison...and then gradually extend out like a sort of horizontal bar graph."

playing on organs popular in rock & roll at the time (think The Doors), the organists play longer and longer, more and more sustained tones, building on top of each other the entirety of the song. one chord. one chord the whole time. one chord over and over and over again. one chord, in the beginning, just an eighth note. then a quarter note, half note, whole note. one chord played for minutes at a time, by the end of the piece. with the omnipresent shaking as a foundation, they construct an upside down pyramid, working their way to textures so thickly layered that at one of the early performances, they nearly drove a poor old lady to insanity.

allmusic describes the first couple performances of the piece in 1971, when "Imagine," "My Sweet Lord," "Maggie May," and "Brown Sugar" were the world's biggest hit singles:

In 1970, Reich received a phone call from the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas asking for some new orchestral repertory, and he jokingly responded, 'Of course, my new piece Four Organs." To his great surprise, Tilson Thomas agreed to Reich's suggestion. While it was anything but symphonic, Four Organs was performed by the Boston Symphony in Boston's Symphony Hall in October, 1971, along with works by Mozart, Liszt and Bartok. The stoic New England audience took the work in stride, but a more volatile New York audience was less approving when it came to Carnegie Hall in 1973. Shouts, boos, cheers, threats and counter-threats by patrons broke out during the performance, and one elderly lady even banged her shoe on the edge of the stage in an attempt to stop the music. The New York Times critic Harold Schonberg reported that "the audience behaved as though red-hot needles were being inserted under fingernails." Nevertheless, Reich soon became a hot commodity and his reputation took off soon after the notorious concert.

as Meryl expressed last night, by comparing this reaction to that of Edouard Manet's Olympia, which also sparked controversy when it was shown in 1863, it seems that there's something to pieces of art that make people want to tear it to shreds. she said, "if your art upset a lot of people, you're probably doing something right." i think that's exactly what happened here.


one chord, two words, three syllables, four organs, five musicians, six stars.

listen.

Fishmans-Long Season

Last night, i went to a farwell party put on for me, by my music club I am a part of over here in Japan. My good friend who is in the club who speaks very decent english, gave me this cd as a thank you/goodbye present. As she gave it to me, she mentioned that the members of the band used to go to our college, and were a part of the same circle we were all in. I also recieved another cd by a more current group that had recently graduated.

Anyways, this cd is excellent from the first listen. even though I hate it I will go for it: if Can made a band Air, had a japanese girl singer at times, and were super mellow and driving. Its a stretch I know, and rather pointless, but go for that idea, maybe. This mini-lp, as its called, is one 35.2 minute track split up into five parts, but never truly stops. Its got great mellow but moving basslines, upbeat up simple drumming, athmospheric singing at times, sweepingly simple accordians, and tactfull guitars. There are also some bells and pianos in there. and some quiet spoken words. The layers pile up at times, but its great. A guitar part that is minmally used in part one is brought to the front more, in part 5, and a little in almost every part actually. besides that, its a fun ride. long delays on the vocals, and lost of echo on everything. this album will fill the entire room. its got that warm feeling to it.


i'd recommend listening to it at night in the car. or on the cpu while working or surfing the inetrnet. but then again, thats how I listen to all of my music, so who knows when you will like it best. I feel as if the album could be twice as long and just as interesting, but thats just me. I love the cover of the album, and that they dont look so serious, and that they are in the woods.

music love from a friend in japan. please enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wdj30mynemw