MD's Picks of the Week

In Rotation: Tuxedo- “Shy (feat. Zapp)”

By Jordan Abrams
After releasing albums “Tuxedo” and “Tuxedo 2”, the new-funk duo releases a single this week featuring Zapp. Mayer Hawthorne and Jake One of Tuxedo come together with the electro-funk band of Zapp to create something magical. Zapp’s 70s influence and Tuxedo’s modern influence blend together so naturally. Tuxedo bends the genre of funk in new directions, which is always notable. Mayer Hawthorne’s voice gives the track so much depth. I would love to see a whole collaboration album with these two iconic funk groups. The crossbreed between traditional and modern electro-funk is too fire!

Classic Album of the Week: Portishead - Dummy

By Peter Melero
Trip-hop is one of those ambiguous genre labels invented by the music press to describe a loose scene of artists from the UK in the mid-90s. It’s not particularly trippy, but it can be, and hip-hop isn’t necessarily the dominant flavor. Instead, it was a stylistic soup of alternative rock, hip-hop, house, dub, R&B and jazz (i.e. the perfect recipe for the objectively coolest music ever). Portishead are not only the greatest artists to ever come out of the trip-hop scene, they’re also one of the most startlingly original and effortlessly cool artists to ever come out of the UK. Dummy plays out like the best spy movie you’ve never seen with singer Beth Gibbons as the tragic diva able to lure in any man of mystery. Her interplay with the eerie theremin on opening track “Mysterions,” is as spooky as her vocal sauntering over the organ vamp in “Numb” is sinister. It’s mind-boggling how the juxtaposition of Gibbons’ vocals along with the guitars, keyboards and theremin sound so natural over Geoff Barrow’s icy hip-hop influenced productions. The single element that dates this album is its use of scratching, and even then this has the most elegant record scratches ever committed to wax. Dummy could be released today and it would still sound as fresh as it did in 1994.

Other Adds This Week:

Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt - Moby
Nobody Has To Know - Orna
Superorganism - Superorganism
Online - Triathalon
Once - Peggy Gou
2012-2017 - Against All Logic
How to Socialise & Make Friends - Camp Cope
Drift - Men, The
Memories of Tokyo-To: An Ode to Jet Set Radio - 2 Mello