Music Report

Love is in the air with the Valentine’s Day version of The Report.

This week, Blue Note released “Droppin' Science: Greatest Samples From The Blue Note Lab” compiling the songs from their catalog that have been most often and most famously sampled. The ten tracks have been sampled a total of 29 times by Dr Dre, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and others. One even made it onto Brian Austin Green’s rap album. Follow the link for a free mixtape sample of the material.
http://www.giantstep.net/news/748/

Ladies Night! Shara Worden, who records under the name My Brightest Diamond, will be performing two sold out shows as part of the Brooklyn Next series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) February 22 and 23. MBD will be opening for The National, whom Angela and I saw live before they began providing the soundtrack to teen dramas on the CW. Worden “channel[s] the vocal theatrics of Kate Bush, the soulful seductiveness of Nina Simone and the gothic pop of Portishead.” All the Music Report readers out there in e-mail land are my brightest diamonds.
http://www.myspace.com/mybrightestdiamond

Something at BAM that’s not sold out (yet) is Paul Simon’s month long residency during April wherein he’ll be collaborating with a range of artists to produce three shows called “Songs from the Capeman” rife with Latin beats and 50s doo-wop (Special Guest Appearance by Little Anthony and the Imperials, “Under African Skies” featuring David Byrne among many others and picking up where Simon left off with Graceland, and American Tunes featuring Nas’ father Olu Dara and popular Brooklyn indie act Grizzly Bear.
http://www.bam.org/events/music.aspx

Kid band Smoosh will be opening for Tokyo Police Club (of Music Report fame) at three NYC shows in April, two of which still have tickets available. Smoosh, out of the Seattle indie scene, consists of Asya (16), Chloe (13), and Maia (12). They write all of their own music and have opened for the likes of Pearl Jam, Jimmy Eat World and Bloc Party. Smoosh are sometimes considered protégés of Chloe’s drum teacher, Jason McGerr, now drummer of Death Cab for Cutie but they’ve most frequently been compared with Tori Amos and PJ Harvey. I prefer the piano-driven song “Free to Stay” off an album of the same name.
http://www.smoosh.com

Watch out Concept Farm! Jay-Z has entered a joint venture with Steve Stoute of Translation Consultation and Brand Imaging and Interpublic to create an advertising agency “us[ing] his eye, his taste, [and] his understanding of the culture" to help guide the company. "He left his day job at Def Jam; he has to do something," Stoute said. Of course Spike Lee had long beat Jay to the punch with Spike DDB.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/media/08adco.html

In closing, I’ll leave you with a link to Thom Yorke’s “DJ set”/Interview on NPR’s All Songs Considered. He mentions Bleep.com and Boomkat.com as the places he finds new music but they’re both pretty tough to decipher, even with the lofty expertise and sensibilities of The Music Report.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18960914