Abstract Index Playlist - October 22/08

For me, the highlight of CIUT's Nuit Blanche broadcast was INSIDEaMIND. When Steve Birek and I first started developing the theme of "A tribute to 91 St. George St." I felt strongly that CIUT's vast vinyl collection ought to be part of the action. One of the most entertaining shows on CIUT is called Vinyl From The CIUT Crypt (a reference to the basement where the vinyl is now stored), in which someone from the community spends some time in the basement and puts together an hour's worth of programming and personal insights about music. I figured INSIDEaMIND could put together an epic edition of the show, and that's exactly what happened.

Everyone in the studio was astonished that the majority of their midnight shift was sourced from records they'd found only a day before. That's what impressed me most - it's one thing to be able to manipulate the crap out of generic breaks, or records that have been in your collection for years, but it's quite another to be able to absorb so much new musical information and transform it into something utterly unrecognizable yet funky and often hilarious.

Their first album "Scatterpopia" is due to be released on November 6, and features contributions from some well selected guests. Laura Barrett contributes some pristine vocals, deftly subdued rhymes from Sarah Sayeed, and a particularly fractious tenor sax part by Colin Fisher which is an album highlight. Hip hop is just a beginning for these guys - the grooves they generate use a hip hop vocabulary, but their dub techniques are always pushing and pulling at the basic beat to create variations on a theme. They're also unafraid of extended beatless segments in which they display a keen sense of conventional musical harmony (as opposed to the harmony of the megamix, where two records sound kind of cool played together, but tend to exclude any other conventionally tuned instruments - not that that's a bad thing...).

To paraphrase their tagline, these guys truly are master "musicians on turntables".

Podcast

sore knights - women in tragedy (gf noise)
sculptures - geordie haley (no label)
homia/mantra - shahrokh yadegari (lilasound)
fantasma/parastasie - tim hecker/aidan baker (alien 8)
a kind of fool - rare moods (comet)
mdina experience - hans tammen (innova)
dust - gang gang dance (social registry)
sunset sorcery - insideamind (ptr)
afro - peru negro (times square)
dame juaneco - juaneco y su combo (barbes)
lisandra - bio ritmo (locutor)
la rumba se pone buena - jesus pagan y su orchestra (rough guides)
ilu baje - lightning head (lion head)
people people - souljazz orchestra (do right)
bringin' it - nightmares on wax (warp)
muchacho - bio ritmo (locutor)
kingsmen - o'luge (last gang)
yeah (ina dravidian bombstep) - sub swara/juakali (low)