I Eat Music

Why?’s new album, ‘Eskimo Snow’, is released in America this week by Anticon. Which is nice for Americans, but Tomlab won’t be releasing it in the UK until 5 Oct. Boo! But you can stream the whole album right now on Muxtape. Yay!

As previously reported, the songs on the album were all recorded during the same sessions as last year’s ‘Alopecia’ album, but take a very different direction. The band’s core member Yoni Wolf has previously described the album at “the least hip hop [thing] I’ve ever been involved with”.

Listen to it here: why.muxtape.com

The history of Why? can, on the face of it, seem a little confusing. Yoni Wolf, under the name Why?, came to prominence as a member of experimental hip hop outfit cLOUDDEAD, before going solo, releasing a couple of EPs and an album, ‘Oaklandazulasylum’. Then he was joined by his drummer brother Josiah and keyboard player Doug McDiarmid, at which point the band Why? came into being and Why? the man went back to being Yoni.

Not that you necessarily need to know this, because this show was performed with no reference to the pre-band past, save for the disparate collection of influences collected in the years leading up to the band’s formation. But, ignoring that, the songs played came mostly from last year’s ‘Alopecia’ album, with a handful from Why? the band’s 2005 debut ‘Elephant Eyelash’, and one from the forthcoming ‘Eskimo Snow’ (due in September).

Boosted to a four piece by guitarist Austin Brown for the live show, they have nailed a sound that is completely unique to them. It’s stripped down and simple on one hand, but complicated in both its mixture of hip hop, folk, psychedelia and pop and the need for everyone on stage to play various different instruments. In fact, it was worth attending just to watch Josiah playing drums, xylophone and singing all at the same time on ‘A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under’. But that was just one part of a finely-crafted live show, balancing Yoni’s lyrics, which always manage to make even the most mundane things seem utterly beautiful, and music that is never afraid to take it slow where it could race off into the distance.

As they finished on a grand-sounding rendition of ‘By Torpedo Or Crohn’s’, they had the audience eating out of their hands and I stood praying that they wouldn’t crack and play any more. Thankfully, they brought things to a close at the perfect moment, pushing the audience back into the world with those last notes still ringing happily in our ears.

Prolific hip hopsters Doseone and Jel have dusted off their Themselves project and created a new mixtape, entitled theFREEhoudini. As the title sort of suggests, it’s a free download (although there is a CD version, too. More on that in a sec).

But what would a mixtape be without guests? Nothing, that’s what. So it’s lucky theFREEhoudini is packed full of them. Pretty much anyone you could name from the Anticon family is in there, including a very briefly reformed cLOUDEAD, as well as Buck 65, Aesop Rock, Busdriver, Lionesque, Slug Of Atmosphere, D-Styles, DJ Baku, Pedestrian, Sole, and Serengeti. And it was all mixed down by Odd Nosdam too, which was nice of him.

The download version is 40 minutes long and features no real surprises for anyone who’s familiar with Themselves, cLOUDDEAD, Subtle or any of the myriad projects that have involved Doseone and/or Jel in some way, but that doesn’t make this any less worth listening to. Their sound isn’t the only thing recognisable about them – the endless attention to quality control is in there, and each and every guest turns in a storming performance, with plenty of rapid fire rapping to warm up your ears.

All in all, it should be more than enough to convince you to part with your cash for the deluxe CD version of theFREEhoudini, which features an extra 16 minutes of music and some more guests – Passage, Alias and Fog’s Andrew Broder.

Go and download it from www.anticon.com/thefreehoudini/

Buy Themselves stuff on Amazon

Psychedelic, guitar-pop, folk-hop

If you have any kind of interest in indie hip hop you can probably find Yoni Wolf at play somewhere in your music collection. He’s nothing if not prolific. Best known as one third of cLOUDDEAD and as a founding member of the Anticon label, Alopecia is the third outing for his one-time solo project, Why?

Joined again by his brother Josiah and Doug McDiarmid, Wolf also drafted in Fog’s Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson for this album. Together, the five recorded these fourteen new songs live, giving Wolf’s off-kilter vocals the required loose and peculiar backing.

With those lyrics Wolf manages to paint pictures like no one else as he half raps, half sings. He makes the seemingly innocuous seem beautiful and amazing and the amazing seem like an every day occurrence. I could just about fill my entire word limit for this review with my favourite lyrics from this album; there are just so many gems in each and every song.

The music is a collision of psychedelia, indie guitars, folk and hip hop. Toy pianos tinkle, guitars swell and feed back, chains rattle, drums trundle and bass pushes down your throat. The sound matches the frontman’s own originality perfectly and it’s the band who make this great music, rather than just impressive poetry.

Why?’s previous album Elephant Eyelash was one of the most talked about in indie circles in 2005 and spawned it’s own underground hit single with Rubber Traits. Thus, Alopecia had a lot to live up to and risked being drowned by expectation. Somehow, wolf and co have managed to not only meet those expectations head on but barge right through them and dance around like it was nothing. (5/5)

This review originally appeared on Subba Cultcha

With less than a month to go, we’re now well into the run-up to this year’s South By Southwest festival. The extensive list of this year’s showcasing artists is now up on the SXSW website, with MP3s available for many. Take careful note, a number of these bands will be huge this time next year. Here are a few treats to get you started:

Capgun Coup
Death Sentence: Panda!
Does It Offend You, Yeah?
The Duke Spirit
Fuck Buttons
Fucked Up
The Indelicates
The Ironweed Project
I Was A Cub Scout
Lykke Li
Nekromantix
The People’s Revolutionary Choir
Shit And Shine
These New Puritans
Why?
Saul Williams
Yeasayer
Zookeeper

Click here for the full list.

As every year, I will be spending this year’s SXSW week in the UK, pretending I don’t care. This won’t be helped by all the emails I’ll get saying “Hey, let’s meet up at SXSW!” Lucky, Flight of the Conchords made this informative and amusing documentary last year that captures at least some of what we’re missing out on:

Flight of the Conchords – A Texan Odyssey
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5