KATALYST - What's Happening (BBE) Comentários: Katalyst’s new album ‘What’s Happening’ is the much anticipated follow up to the great ‘manipulating agent’ and it features a massive all star special guest lineup which includes talent from all over the globe - Katie Noonan (George), Mat McHugh (Beautiful Girls) , Adalita (Magic Dirt), Hau (Koolism), Stephanie McKay (US soul songstress), Diverse (US MC) and Steve Spacek (the future of soul music!). Previous album “Manipulating Agent” released in 2002 has gone on to sell 15000 copies here in Australia and nominated for an Aria Award, “Manipulating Agent” won Best Album and Best Producer at the 2002 Dance Music Awards. It was album of the week on JJJ and featured hits like “Fusion” and “Showtime”. The new album “Whats Happening” is a musical excursion through many different styles, brought together with Katalyst’s signature sound. Moving seamless though space-aged soul, hip hop, funk and rock, this project is truly diverse. in inertia [Para Ouvir/Samples] [Buy]
ONRA - Chinoiseries (Label Rouge) Comentários: Brilliantly odd instrumental hip hop album here from Onra, compiled and constructed around vintage Vietnamese pop records picked up in flea markets on a trip to the far east. 32 short tracks make up "Chinoiseries", each of them clocking in at the 1 or 2 minute mark and delivering a tight selection of beats that somehow bring to mind J Dilla, Rza, Madlib, Moondog, MF Doom and the Sublime Frequencies label rolled into one beautifully incoherent package. Having a ravenous appetite for the "Radio Transmission" style beloved of the aforementioned Sublime Frequencies crew, we might be perfectly primed for this sort of thing, but while the dusty exotica, folk and plastic pop of the source material here could so easily have ended up sounding like the sterile plunderphonic coffee table beats that typified so much instrumental hip hop in the late 90's, Onra manages to harness the mystifying magic of the original material and
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