Death Row Greatest Hits
The Death Row Greatest Hits compilation that I picked up for three quid in a charity shop a little while ago. It can successfully make me feel like I’m rollin’ in my Hummer, Entourage-style (more of that later), through the palm-lined streets of Hollywood – when I am in fact pootling through a rainy Oxfordshire B-road in my Ford Ka with a CD player plugged in through the tape deck. [Simon Minter]

Eating Us by Black Moth Super Rainbow
Sunny melodies, analogue synths, excessive use of the vocoder; in another dimension Air made this album right after “Moon Safari”.  Will I still be listening to it in a year’s time?  Probably not, but for now it’s the perfect soundtrack to a scorching summer. [Alex McChesney]

V/A – The World Is Shaking: Cubanismo fromthe Congo 1954-55 (Honest Jon’s)
I’ve only really discovered Honest Jon’s slew of releases made up of the best bits of ‘field recordings’ by ethnomusicologists that are stored up in some vast vaults that make up the legendary EMI archive in Hayes, but they’re all fantastic collections. This is the latest, tracking the earliest stages of “rhumba” music that would dominate the sound of African music in the ’60s and ’70s, heavily influenced by Cuban music brought home by sailors and workers and mixed with existing msuical forms to create something new. It’s all incredible, danceable, soulful stuff that sounds as great DJing at a house party as it does sitting at home and soaking it in. Totally brilliant. [Dave Stockwell]

Klezmer
Oh good lord. A record? Well… I’ve been listening to a lot of klezmer and it has got me very excited walking to the shops with clarinets and trumpets whirling around my head. Klezmer is extremely lively music with oodles of humour and sadness. At the end of some tunes it gets itself into a bit of a frenzy with speeding up and increased madness – a surreal treat well worth its weight in pretzels. [Pascal Ansell]

Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective
I might as well say that anyone who’s not bought Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective yet should do so immediately. It will definitely be my album of the year, unless someone records an album that’s literally perfect in every conceivable way before then. From this year’s releases, I’ve also been enjoying Cymbals Eat Guitars, Dan Deacon and The Flowers of Hell. [Stuart Fowkes]

Doom – Born Like This
At first I didn’t really pay any mind to the latest MF Doom incarnation and then suddenly one day I was hit with the track “Cellz” which opens with Charles Bukowski reading his poem “Dinosauria, We” and quite frankly it sounds as if the world is ending. I have never been able to work out over the years how come Marvel Comics haven’t sued a large part of the hip hop community into oblivion. Overall it’s a pretty solid record if not a perfect one but the superhero samples, old skool beats and trademark MF Doom rhymes (mouth too close to the mic, very few stops for breath, all smashed out direct in a very straight line) makes for one great episodic adventure. [JGRAM]

Everything I own
I just bought a new laptop the other month and have been childishly delighted by my iTunes play counts being reset to zero. I am now relistening to all 4423 songs in my iTunes library and enjoying every minute. Well, every two minutes at the moment as I’ve ordered them by song length. I am very guilty of listening to the same 5 albums and 4 songs for months on end so this is a real shake-up for me. I may get more bored once I hit the 5 minute mark but at the moment it’s a blast of Huggy Bear, The Yummy Fur, Lung Leg, Kenickie, bis, Gay Against You and other lo-fi joys. Hurrah! [Marceline Smith]

Posted: 07|20|09 at 11:00 am. Filed under: catch-ups, record reviews.
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