Mixtape Volume 2

[Currently listening to Adrian Clement Dot Com Mixtape Volume 2]





(click to enlarge)

Here is the second volume of the Adrian Clement Dot Com Mixtapes. This collection of songs exemplify the interrelationship between heavy metal, noise, folk music and rap, especially in today's music scene. Artists like Madlib, Pocahaunted, Tomahawk and Lukas Ligeti are postmodern in their attempt to recontextualise elements of traditional, sacred and folk music into contemporary sounding compositions. Mike Patton's solo project Peeping Tom and Dälek's Abandoned Language were released on Ipecac and show the debt both rap and experimental rock and metal owe to each other; blurring generic distinctions as a whole. The opening track for this mixtape "Isolated Stare" represents Dälek's homage to My Bloody Valentine and other mighty artists who have experimented with a wide palette of sonically dense textures. Rock-A-Rolla states that "[h]aving already created an entirely new sub-genre for themselves, Dälek rip it to shreds and mark a massive leap forward for both hip-hop and music in general." The obvious connection between rap and heavy metal is closer "Bring Tha Noize", a retake of the classic Public Enemy track "Bring The Noise" from It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, done in collaboration with quintessential thrash-metal outfit Anthrax. It is needless to say that Public Enemy's influence has been huge, but it is particularly evident on the tracks "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by Saul Williams (a U2 cover) and "My Violent Heart" by Nine Inch Nails, which are rooted in the sound-collage work of Hank Shocklee's Bomb Squad's fine production. The influence of jazz and funk spans a long period of time, and has entered the consciousness of the pop music scene (David Bowie's "Fascination" is an obvious pick) and improvisational rock (Lightning Bolt cite Sun Ra as one of their major influences). John Zorn's involvement in various sub-genres and music scenes over the course of his career particularly displays this.

Perhaps it is a sign of the increasing irrelevance and artistic decline of once-influential old media such as music magazines (Rolling Stones, I'm looking at you) and the ridiculous genre terms associated with certain groups of bands (read this blog entry by The Dillinger Escape Plan's to hear Greg Puciato's opinion on the everlasting "mathcore" label his band has acquired or look to Portishead's dismissal of the "trip hop" label their music has been associated with) that artists and musicians are becoming more and more aware of the versatility and excitement of non-generic restriction and that listener's appreciation of all sounds and styles of music as equally important is further developing. I believe this mixtape represents the ways in which artists have freely explored styles and genres. At times they disregard them. At other times they subvert or playfully conform to certain conventions. And at others they care solely on the sounds they create, unaware of the genres they take part in, or completely disregarding genre as a whole.

Download it HERE.

(all feedback appreciated)