Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do

This past week I finally got my hands on one of my most highly-anticipated albums of the summer: Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do. Producers Diplo and Switch did an amazing job of keeping the album from leaking, and I had to wait until I received a pre-ordered copy for my birthday before I could hear their self-described electro reggae-dancehall hip-hop magic.

Major Lazer, whose name you'll never tire of hearing during all 13 tracks of the album, is "a Jamaican commando who lost his arm in a secret zombie war in 1984. He fights vampires and various monsters, parties hard, and has a rocket-powered skateboard." This little description from Wikipedia perfectly captures the essence of the album: it takes various things that people find cool and puts them all together into one ridiculously awesome thing. Indeed, the music is very diverse and is a product of many different influences, including marching bands, found sounds, old-school drum machines, and auto-tune. Each track is completely different, yet the album is unified under the simple goal of pushing everything to the absolute limit (which occasionally crosses over the border and into absurdity). However, it really seems like the album is aware of itself, and that's partly what makes it so good.

By now you should've all heard the first track and single, "Hold The Line," but if you only have the DJ radio edit you need to get the album version, which has an additional Kill Bill-esque intro that makes the showdown between Mr. Lexx and Santogold much more intense (and now Santogold gets the last word, which is great.) The second track, "When You Hear The Bassline," is a fiercer complement to the opener, featuring an incredible vocal performance from Ms. Thing and vocal effects similar to those used on the "Zumbi" song I posted earlier. The album makes an abrupt shift into some chillout reggae on the next track, "Can't Stop Now," which will find you singing and grooving along to the relaxing sounds of summer. Next comes the bad-ass "Lazer Theme" which is darker and much more inappropriate. "Anything Goes" comes next, opening with some awesome auto-tuned Jamaican stereotyped "yeah man"s and then developing a pulsating beat to go with Turbulence's vocal stylings. Another reggae song, "Cash Flow," follows. The halfway point, "Mary Jane," features a marching drumroll, some evil villain laughs, and some manic, high-pitched vocals declaring their love for marijuana, which "gives them wings like a canary" (this is also my favorite song on the album.) "Bruk Out" is sort of a continuation of the same dancehall beat, again featuring Ms. Thing. "What You Like" is a testament to the over-the-top explicitness of the album, and may be one of the most vulgar songs I've ever heard (which is bad for me because it keeps getting stuck in my head and I love to sing along.) "Keep It Goin' Louder" open Diplo and Switch up to a wider audience by paying homage to radio/club hip-hop (only done extremely well) but then "Pon De Floor" brings them right back to a more selective scene, featuring an energetic beat composed of wailing, siren-like screams. "Baby" is more of a skit than a song (it features Prince Zimboo comforting a crying, auto-tune baby) but when a beat gets added on toward the end of the 1-minute track it makes me wish it was much longer. Finally, the marching drums return with closer "Jump Up," which will make you want to do just what the title says. However, Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do is more than just a fun collection of danceable tunes (though it definitely is that.) The tracks sound even better in the context of the whole, and the album itself provides an exaggerated yet spot-on representation of the modern dance music scene. Definitely one of 2009's best releases.

The Ocarina Of Rhyme

And now for something completely different: Team Teamwork, a blog group that prides themselves on "ghettotech" hip hop remixes, has recently compiled an album of mash-ups that take instrumentals from everyone's favorite game in the Legend of Zelda series, The Ocarina of Time, and overlay them with rap from some of today's better MCs. The Ocarina of Rhyme is available for digital download pretty much anywhere online, so get to it!
To some the album may seem lame or nerdy (and it might actually be a little of both) but fans of old-school rap and old-school video games, which I'm sure there are a ton of, will be really pleased. The editing is done very well and the separate elements of each song were carefully chosen to fit together surprisingly well. The first track, which mashes Clipse's "Virginia" with the Lost Woods theme, is especially ironic in its combination of the most playful tune in the game with some pretty serious lyrics. The team does interesting work with "Still D. R. E." and the brief 6-second sample that accompanies Link's discovery of a treasure by altering the speed, chopping it up, and flipping it around to make a pretty royal accompaniment to Snoop Dogg's and Dr. Dre's rhymes. The best tracks, however, use the more simple and repetitive rhythms that play in the background during the game (and are thus deeply ingrained into the player's memory.) These include the mix of Goron Village's somewhat tribal percussion-and-yelping theme with Aesop Rock's "No Jumpercables," Spank Rock's dirty "IMC" over the serene and subtle theme from Zora's Domain, and the "Still Tippin'" duet between Slim Thug and Mike Jones with the high-pitched fantasy-synth melody found in all four Great Fairy fountains. The album is short, sweet, and a ton of fun, especially for those nostalgic types like myself, so go make like Link and explore the depths of google.com until you stumble upon this hidden treasure.

"Hold The Line"; "Zumbi"

Two singles from Major Lazer, the new collaboration between recent popular remix DJs/producers Diplo and Switch (or Sinden) are available for free download on music blogs everywhere, and if these tracks show any inkling for what to expect from the debut album Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do, it's going to be one hell of an album.

The first single from the album, "Hold The Line," featuring vocals and rapping from Mr. Lexx and Santigold (who has become quite the trendy artist to feature on singles), is an example of the variety, ambition, and strangeness we can expect from the two DJs. It samples horses, phone lines, operators, and various other random things while keeping a quick pace with a rockabilly "Misirlou"-like background. It's crazy, it's weird, and it's extremely addicting and an all-around pleasure to listen to.

Playing up the bizarre side of things is the other single, "Zumbi," which is not actually on the tracklist for the album but should still be downloaded. Featuring incredibly distorted and mechanical vocals from Andy Milonakis, whose growth hormone deficiency leads to some incredibly creepy thoughts considering the subject matter, the track is pretty minimal in its elements (rhythm is kept only by something that sounds like a laser gun and a repeated groaning in the background) but so intriguing that it's hard to stop listening. The lyrics are both corny and bad-ass at the same time: the song is from the perspective of a zombie who repeatedly refers to eating brains as a sexual act. Some of the more hilarious lines include "you can't test me, 'cause I eat your zombie blood like Nestle Quick, and you'll suck my zombie dick" and "me, I'm zombie and me don't eat gays 'cause I don't like the HIV." At certain moments in the song (like the former of the two lyrics I just mentioned) Andy's voice dissolves in an infinite reverb loop: these are the big payoffs that make the song incredibly worthwhile.

The album drops June 16th, and I hope to get a copy ASAP.