Uncanny

YAHOO NEWS interviews Bay Area hip-hop hyphy head E-40.
PITCHFORK interviews fellow Bay Area hip-hop future star Keak Da Sneak
MIX TAPE TALK interviews The Demolition Men
SOUNDSLAM interviews Killa Klump

More HYPHY headlines:
INSIDE BAY AREA
CREATIVE LOAFING
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
NEWSWEEK
MTV
EAST BAY EXPRESS
USA TODAY
YOUTH RADIO
CBS 5

GUARDIAN UK "Now that Scritti Politti is effectively just Green Gartside, it's understandable that the perfectionist's first album in seven years is dominated by his voice. Those gorgeous, minty-fresh, aqueous vocals are multi-tracked and harmonised, giving this the feel of an almost a capella Scritti or Brian Wilson's Smile. However, [White Beer, Black Bread] is more flawed than masterpiece."

GUARDIAN UK "The most moving concert I've been to was Brian Wilson performing Pet Sounds in 2002, with a blend of sadness and fun, innocence and damage, that had half the crowd in tears. The ticket was functional to a fault, with Wilson's name dwarfed by that of the Festival Hall."

MARK LINETT has been the favored producer/engineer for numerous Brian Wilson and Beach Boys projects for many years.

According to a recent article/interview in MIX ONLINE Mark Linett uses an upgraded API 2488 console that started life as a simple 24-input stock black console. "The last big change I made came when I commissioned entirely new input modules for the board, which would give me everything that I wanted," Linett says. "So, now I have 12 echo sends and three stereo buses that are all switchable."

Building a studio around the API console was important, Linett explains, "because I am not a believer of mixing in the box. Even as I've graduated from [having] no Pro Tools to having a Pro Tools system for ancillary work, to a full-blown Pro Tools HD system, I still treat it as a tape recorder and I use the console for mixing. So, even some of these bigger projects where I have up to 62 channels of Pro Tools playing back, we'll sum a few things down, but I'll still bring it up on the API as individual channels and mix that way. I've never heard a digital summing system in a box that seems to work quite right. Maybe I'm old school, but I like to think of Pro Tools as a big, fancy, ultimate tape machine that will do all the things that a tape recorder can't."

For more information on API recording equipment, check these links:
DAN ALEXANDER AUDIO
PROAUDIO EUROPE

For more information on Mark Linett, check these links:
STUDIO EXPRESSO
API AUDIO
MIX ONLINE

MASSACHUSETTS

More snaps of this boot can be found HERE and HERE.

LA WEEKLY "But you know what's really weird? Out of the blue last week, I found this bizarre Brian Wilson cassette tape at Out of the Closet, called 'BRAINS & GENIUS' (which is presumably a pun on its creators’ names). It’s got a sort of homemade-looking J-card thingy (Do you remember J-cards? The piece of paper lining a cassette?) that reads: 'BRAINS & GENIUS presents SMART GIRLS Produced By: Brian Wilson & Eugene Landy.' It gets weirder: The song, 'Smart Girls,' is a rap song. And it samples all these classic Beach Boys songs, and it says it’s co-engineered by Jeff Lord Alge. (How many Lord Alges are there, for the love of Pete? That makes at least three Lord Alges I’ve heard of who do recording/engineering/mixing/mastering.) Jeff, Chris, Tom . . . one more and they could start an incredibly well-mixed boy band. 'Smart Girls' is probably the strangest bit of musical detritus I’ve found lately."

Apparently, this writer doesn't know that "Smart Girls" was part of Brian Wilson's unreleased Sweet Insanity project. For more information on this, and many other, unreleased Beach Boys/Brian Wilson projects, check out ANDREW G. DOE'S EXCELLENT WEB SITE.

THAT LITTLE ROUND-HEADED BOY BLOG
OFFICIAL WEBSITE FOR JAN BERRY

Hey, Seuss

Perlon’s stable of artists features the best minimal techno/tech-house musicians in the game today. These electronic wizards know how to channel an enticing minimal sound by balancing repetition and change with an extra bit of booty-shaking funk.

Here’s the track-list for Superlongevity 4, a compilation of exclusive tracks by an all-star cast of electronic artists:

01 Pantytec - Maybe Not
02 Melchior Productions ltd - In The Shadow
03 Baby Ford & Zip - Morning Sir
04 Luciano - Blake Purple Frase
05 Dandy Jack and the Third Leg - Ixchel
06 Kalabrese - Skamel
07 Dimbiman - First Laki
08 Stefan Goldmann - Darkstar
09 Cabanne - Smiling Papers
10 Soul Capsule - International Party People
11 Ricardo Villalobos - Balacharde
12 Narcotic Syntax - Raptors' Delight
13 Markus Nikolai - Wheelsucker
14 Matt John - Landing
15 Soulphiction - Her (JMS Dub)
16 Horror Inc. - The Absent

PERLON label site
PHONICA RECORDS has sound samples
STYLUS MAGAZINE has a good review
RESIDENT ADVISOR has a brief review
FORCED EXPOSURE lists most of Perlon’s releases
I LOVE MUSIC 1, I LOVE MUSIC 2 has Perlon related threads
PITCHFORK writer Philip Shereburne opines on the current state of minimal techno - “Sound design lends some credence-- or at least convenience-- to the term [minimal]. Much current minimal favors the truncated samples, reduced bitrates, and general proclivity for clicks and pings that characterized the flourishing of a ‘microhouse’ sensibility six or seven years ago….The problem, insofar as there is one, is that no terms have come along to supplant ‘minimal,’ and it's come to mean as little as 'progressive,' a genre misnomer if ever there was one."

According to HMV, a 40th Anniversary version of Pet Sounds is supposed to be released on 6-6-2006.

EDIT: HMV now lists release date as 28-8-2006.