The Cabinet of Dr. No

Everybody knows who Oh No is now, right? Sure, you missed the Disrupt, and you might have heard that little ditty he did with all of those Galt MacDermot tracks, but what has he done lately?

Oh, he's been picking through various middle eastern psychedelic rock and funk records? Oh, you wanna hear it? Oh!

Yeah, it turns out (probably coincidentally) that Stones Throw can't stop dishing out the short-track instrumental hip hop albums. This one has a little more Donuts vibe than it does, say, Beat Konducta (check out the beginning of "Hot Fire," sounds a bit like "Anti-American Graffiti" huh?), but it definitely stands out on its own.

Most of it sounds loop-based, rather than chop & paste, but that could just be some of the man's slick skills. The interesting thing (and this isn't really new since Exodus) is that it's really not surprising that every sound on the record comes from those psych records. Aside from EQ/filtering, some delay, and maybe a few other DSP techniques, the ingenuity is all in the chop block.

All in all, I would call the Oxperiment a success, even if it sounds like Daedelus sampled that flute line from "Land Mine" first. The beats are simply really enjoyable. Pitchfork shit some mortar on it. Not quite a whole brick, but mortar nonetheless. Allmusic gave it half a star more than Exodus, but Exodus has the check mark for some reason. Cokemachineglow and tinymixtapes haven't touched it. I guess that leaves me pickin up the slack and listening to the bangin' joints.

Jaylib Reissue Sample Clearance

This is probably old news for people with their head in the monitors, but I recently discovered that the new Jaylib Champion Sound reissue from Stones Throw has got some catches. Two of the Madlib beats from the original pressing have been changed, "The Red" and "No Games."

If you were paying attention in June, you might remember that the album got delayed due to "pressing complications," but it was really because Stones Throw was served with legal papers. Legal papers saying "hey, fuck you, don't use my song" from a whiney little bitch named Cris Williamson. Maybe a label exec from the Sony BMG owned indie label Olivia Records caught a glimpse of some youTube footage that a fan posted, or maybe Olivia Records has nothing better to do than lurk on the Stones Throw message boards, but either way, it's rather upsetting that the two companies couldn't work out a deal.

Blind and/or greedy on Olivia's part, as people do tend to buy albums with sample sources, and how much do they really think they'd get from royalties on this?

Business decision or completely helpless on Stones Throw's part. It either cost too much to pay off Olivia, or it was completely out of their control. Most likely the latter, as they were apparently issued a cease-and-desist letter from good old Olivia Records.

The issue of sample clearance is a fucker. It's a moral, ethical, and most prominently a financial issue, but it's one that is usually seen as confined to the RIAA realm. Well, friends, indie labels can be fuckers too. Why they can't just take their 3 cents per sale or whatever the standard is these days ($0.09 maybe?) and let Stones Throw release a proper reissue is beyond me. They probably don't understand the music, which is odd, because it seems like an open lesbian in the 70's could associate with the "mostly shitty women" sentiment that Quas expresses towards the end of the song.

Regardless of motive, the Champion Sound reissue is unfortunately missing two of the original tracks, making it incomplete to an extent. The instrumentals are a great bonus, but the closer "Ice" is also absent, and the packaging claims that "Raw Addict" was previously unreleased on CD (funny, my original copy has it). So really, we're down 3 tracks, up "Pillz" and "Da Rawkus", a couple of new instrumentals and a handfull of remixes.

With the original beats for "The Red" and "No Games" the reissue would be a very welcome enhancement to a repressing, but without them, the release seems watered down or incomplete.