DAILYSESSION

By DailyNews

Dr. John becomes the Night Tripper again on his latest CD, thanks to Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys

Two key qualities infuse the music of New Orleans: mystery and joy. The latter couldn’t be more obvious. This is party music created in what may be America’s most celebratory city. But it’s rarer to find local music in tune with the city’s darkest mystery — that mix of voodoo culture and gris-gris imagery that gives the place its connection to the next world.

At the start of his solo career, over 40 years ago, Dr. John translated the spookier and more elusive part of New Orleans for hippie rockers. His first four albums, starting with 1968’s “Gris-Gris,” recorded under the persona “the Night Tripper,” made the connection between native spiritualism and stoner culture in a way that ranks them among the most mind-bending albums of their day.

By 1972, however, John streamlined his sound, making more conventional New Orleans blues and soul records. That gave him hits but robbed him of his eerie cool.

Clearly, the spooky part most interested Dan Auerbach (guitarist of the hit, primitivist rock band Black Keys). He produced the Dr.’s new “Locked Down,” which revives some of the shadowy intrigue of his first solo recordings while combining it with enough other elements to make this one of the smokiest, funkiest, sexiest works of the legend’s career. [Read More]

DJ Spider & Hakim Murphy – Kaiju EP

New York’s DJ Spider and Chicago’s Hakim Murphy have been mainstays of the underground for years now, each bringing to the table a highly idiosyncratic but deeply appealing envisioning of familiar house and techno forms. But would you think to put them together? Perhaps not. Hakim Murphy is a details man compositionally, weaving sounds together just so; DJ Spider’s tough-to-peg tracks, on the other hand, tend to sound like they were dropped from an alien spacecraft as it speeds away in the night. Regardless, the two apparently have loads of mutual respect—Murphy has released a number of tracks on Plan B Recordings, Spider’s label documenting his own and other’s dark excursions through the recesses—and the Kaiju EP, fittingly on Plan B, finds the two properly joining forces.

Their chemistry is palpable, though the two take a minute to really get going. “Submerged Giant” is a jumble of contrasting styles that don’t seem mutually soluble, but after the palate-cleansing “Thermionic Emission,” the duo hit more of a stride. “Attack Lines” manages to pair the charred landscape of a Milton Bradley record with the gossamer deep house chords of someone like Lerosa. “Serpant Seed” pulls a similar stunt, though it takes less of a feat to meld its metallic chords with the fierce techno backing. All trappings of melody lift off by the playfully rhythmic “Sector Zero,” a departure hammered home by “Abort Mission,” the EP’s Godzilla-sampling, creepily beatless final bombing mission.  By Jordan Rothlein – RA

A1 Submerged Giant
A2 Thermionic Emission
A3 Attack Lines
B1 Serpent Seed
B2 Sector Zero
B3 Abort Mission
DJ Spider & Hakim Murphy (Downtown 304 snippet link)

SESSION 1218: EVENT SESSION 01.20.12 MOLDAVITE – Mixed by Hakim Murphy, DJ Spider & Dakini 9

Please click HERE for more info.

By Recordstoreday.com
THE RELEASES OF RECORD STORE DAY 2012. NOW IT’S OFFICIAL

Our second favorite day of the year, the one where we get to play Santa and reveal the loot under the record-store-shaped tree (insert your own gift-revealing analogy here). We’re thrilled to tell you that the list of titles being released ONLY AT RECORD STORES is only a click away, in TWO versions: A handy PDF that you can use as a shopping/wish list and a Pull Down menu with more detail and artwork.  These are the pieces that are available only in REAL LIVE RECORD STORES on April 21, the fifth annual Record Store Day.  A few things we wanted to tell you first, though:  [Read More]