Word: sax
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Produced mainly by Aesop himself and relative unknown Blockhead, the music on Days is melancholy and evocative, featuring a host of exotic crate-dug samples—dusty sax, ancient Japan and eerie tango—sounding quite unlike the metallic future-funk that’s currently in vogue, though equally compelling. The sparse beats are surprisingly dynamic, often shifting directions to complement Aesop’s raps, which are lightning-fast, stoic and nearly incomprehensible. While none of this really breaks with the dogma of traditional hip-hop, Aesop Rock’s real brilliance lies...
...Another Day,” is an electronic fantasy on Santana’s “Guajira,” (though unattributed). “Soul Drive Sixth Avenue” digs a little deeper into funk territory as the keys croak with wah-wah and a baritone sax enters the mix. “People’s Party (Red Alert)” starts to layer the horns over a groovy, yet still camp bassline. One has to admire the talent of the Money man: Although he does recruit various friends on drums and suchlike (including Sean...
...Girl of Mine" and his sensaysh cover of Sy Oliver?s "Yes Indeed." We came to expect the revival-show tambourine (rattled by co-producer Jerry Wexler on some sides), the backing girl group (the Cookies, later known as the Raelettes) offer response to his call, the bluesy-jazzy sax solos by David "Fathead" Newman. This was irrepressible, good-timey music, as if the early Charles had been absolved of sin and guilt and was finally permitted to express unmitigated joy. In Charles? gravelly vocals, joy sounds like the residue of a lifetime of pain. It?s not what...
...minutes, begins with water-bubble sounds, cueing its novelty nature; but it had drive and its narrator?s tough-guy befuddlement at finding "a party going on" outside his bathroom. "Queen of the Hop," with Darin?s tentative, occasionally flat vocal submerged beneath a guitar and a sax that both beat a hard rhythm, was choked with references to recent songs ("Peggy Sue," "Good Golly, Miss Molly," "Sugartime," "Short Shorts," "Lollipop," "Sweet Little Sixteen") and dances (the chicken, the stroll), with a commercially canny citation of Dick Clark?s "Bandstand...
...Leiber?s parodies - "aural cartoons," Donald Clarke calls them - were also social criticism; they sounded black but could apply to alienated whites too. Stoller?s uptempo bluesy charts (usually 12-bar blues) found the ideal blend of honking sax solos by King Curtis and the singers, who had distinct comic personality: Gardner?s lead tenor in a vaudeville vibrato of fear and trembling, Bobby Guy?s smart-guy growl (a nastier version of the Ray Charles tout-voice), Dub Jones? mindshaft bass delivering the cool catchphrases (as parent: "You better leave my daughter alone" and "Don?t talk back...