New Basement Jaxx

YEAH.

FUCK.

(PS Agree that Pharell has a thin voice, and I didn't like Frontin' for ages, but I think it takes off when Jay-Z and the synths come in... and I don't really think it sounds like Beautiful, except they both have guitar riffs)

Okay of the songs I listed the styles are, in order: minimal old skool, indian, indie-pop, fluid digi-funk, dancehall, stiff live funk, disco (also note the perversity of making the digital funk fluid and the live funk stiff!). Now it's true that these manage to sound more similar than seven songs by different artists/producers working in those separate styles, but I'm not sure what more can be expected. You could say, "well, they could be Basement Jaxx!", but there's a reason why everyone is calling Kish Kash the album of the year and it's that they raise the bar for this sort of thing pretty fucking high (although I suspect if Basement Jaxx released thirty tunes a year they'd probably be repeating themselves a bit too).

And I'm not uncritical towards The Neptunes - I could talk at length about what they do that doesn't work and why it doesn't work. Like why "U Don't Have To Call", the little "situations will arise" bit aside, is pretty useless. And even that sung bit gets reprised in Jay-Z's far-superior "Fuck All Night" so there's no use for the original). Or how In Search Of... is largely overrated and Clones is underwhelming in spite of its good ideas. Or how Justified falls down frequently (that's as much Justin and Timbaland's faults though).

I think Ronan's post is OTM. There is something exhausting about The Neptunes' constant parade of unmistakable production work, but that exhaustion comes from the totality more than specific instances of production-work/songcraft, which when viewed in isolation are often astonishingly clever and (most importantly in my book) instinctively-but-surprisingly funky. This is why releasing a compendium like Clones is a bad idea - it blurs the qualities of each particular tune into a general haze of Neptunes-ness, such that accusations of self-derivativeness become tempting even when they're not accurate.

In contrast, I find I love The Neptunes most as a series of instances - the blitzkrieg blast of Busta's "Call The Ambulance", the mindmelting rhythm of Clipse's "Ego", the peerless groove of Jay-Z's "Nigga Please" which seems to require extra limbs to do it justice, the compulsive pop-ness of Philly's Most Wanted's "Cross The Border of Kelis's "Popular Thug" (two possibly self-derivative but nonetheless irresistible moments), every element exactingly measured to produce maximum joy.

Haha and god nobody even tried to explain what a generic timba track was (tho yeah you listen to the Tim and Magoo albums and you can sorta guess but hello Missy's four albums all TOTALLY DIFFERENT)

Jay-Z on the other hand could give a sewing contest a massive sense of occasion.

And I'm only on track 4.

I think you're tying yourself in knots here a bit. If it's inherently a bad idea for the Neptunes to put out a compilation of their work, then they really must suck.

But as it is Clones is pretty good--it's just patchy. Still, I count six great tracks, six decent ones, three weak ones, and we'll just agree to pretend the two rock tracks aren't there. Could have been better, but good enough for me.

And In Search Of is so not overrated! I love that album (first version anyway).

All good producers have a style, that's how they get work, and one of the main reasons for buying a compilation by any producer would be because you like their style and you want to hear lots of examples of it in a row!

Ben I think you're perhaps reading my argument to be more damning than it was intended to be. I don't think it's illegitimate to say that one of the more appealing aspects of The Neptunes is that they work across lots of different musical contexts, and that making "The Neptunes" the context can dilute this attribute slightly. When I say "releasing a compendium like Clones is a bad idea" I mean that it's bad insofar as it encourages accusations of repetitiveness.

Because everything on Clones is new it invites considerations of the album as a unified and complete body of work, something to be listened to from beginning to end. At this stage of the game listening to ten Neptunes tracks in one sitting, to my mind tends to ram home the similarities b/w each track, and indeed the similarities found in all of The Neptunes' work (nb. this is not a problem when dancing to ten Neptunes tracks in a row for the obvious reason, although I don't think Clones is necessarily suited to that).

If you actually listen to it like a compilation to be delved into a track or two at a time, it works much better. And yeah, it's very convenient to have all the songs rounded up on one cd!

"And In Search Of is so not overrated! I love that album (first version anyway)."

It's a great album, but I'm sick of people saying "The Neptunes better stop churning out identikit singles and start making their second N.E.R.D. masterpiece" - I mean wtf? What is the inherent qualitative difference?

I mean, 'Plug It In', 'Lucky Star', 'Good Luck', 'Cish Cash'...awww man, I'm a slave to the rhythm. Watch me dance to these anytime they get dropped in a club.

so i do hope we all go and buy the album when it EVENTUALLY comes out so we may demonstrate that this method of distributing new music works to EVERYONE'S advantage. the album was uploaded because it was worth hearing thus worth owning. of course if you cannot afford to buy 'Kish Kash', you must delete the mp3s immediately or be forever damned by Jollyon Benn and his band of scheming robots (it's a dirty job but the RIAA says someone's gotta do it, if they want that cash handout)...

oh they're also sending out C&D e-mails to a number of 'bootleggers' seemingly at random requesting the takedown of material that samples copyright recordings. truly we have entered the end of days...

I initially read this as 'classic or dud' e-mails.

Also, BJ on cover of next Mixmag and waiting on the Face to give BJ (haha) their 3rd-in-a-row cover story.

album review:

BASEMENT JAXX
KISH KASH
(XL)
When Basement Jaxx exploded overground back in '99 they proclaimed their sound to be 'punk garage'. Couldn't call it that now, of course, for fear of confusing pallid teenagers in drainpipe jeans searching for an amphetamine guitar fix. And it seems unlikely, given the current musical climate, that any other 'dance' act will be leaping from the underground to the heart of the charts any time soon. The times they are a-changing - Basement Jaxx, thankfully, haven't.
'Kish Kash', you see, is instantly identifiable as being from their Brixton basement. There are the big singalong numbers like 'Good Luck' and the beats that get their weight through sounding like they've been deep fried in a greasy spoon rather than pumped up in the studio.
But as ever the only 'formula' at work here seems to be 'throw it at a wall', and 'Kish Kash' is another glorious mess of ideas that sticks rather than slides. Take 'Lucky Star', where bhangra samples and bashment basslines are stuffed together like clothes into an overflowing suitcase, whilst Dizzee Rascal bounces on top trying to keep the whole thing locked down. Getting the garage man of the moment on your album would look cynical were the Jaxx's street level affiliations not so solid, as would roping in Siouxsie Sioux so soon after electroclash has made the old dominatrix trendy again. But her appearance on 'Kish Kash', like Dizzee's moment, sounds utterly unforced - like a scuzzier progression from Peaches' on 'Rooty's 'Get Me Off', a track which still beats the current crop of electro-porn cuts into submission. Which is what 'Kish Kash' does to the glut of retro 'garage punk' - if you want real rock 'n' roll energy, remember which way round those two words should go. (8)

"If I Ever Recover" sounds-an-awful-lot like "_______________" by _______________.

Instead of the "Didn't know that it was over..." part the chorus consists of a sampled diva singing "Looking for something/It's too late/Won't you be a man?!?" in a pretty pissed-off manner (ie. it's Mike's girlfriend). Presumably changed due to clearance difficulties???

imho it's nowhere near as good as the version on the finished album, though.

I wonder if software exists or is in R&D that could compare the sonic signatures of all your MP3s and identify songs that sound similar that perhaps hadn't occurred to you before.

I suppose it'd take some of the fun out of the research that happens when a Basement Jaxx track sounds awfully familiar and you can't quite place it, but isn't technology supposed to take the fun/mystery out of everything anyway?

Or maybe it's the software/tech that produces mash-ups, no? (Or could mass produce mash-ups?) Mind you I'm not advocating mass production - I just wonder if the software exists.