Be quick (because the world’s number one backpacker congregation point doesn’t seem to have permalinks for their front page news items) and check out Okayplayer giving some props to funny-accented rappers from the UK and Australia. Naturally, Macromantics gets the bulk of the Oz coverage, but Nick Sweepah and Aux One’s EP from 2005 is lauded as “the best foreign Hip-Hop release of recent years” by writer El Keter, who gives honest opinions on Macro’s Moments in Movements and Braintax’s Panorama.
More news from the Elefant Traks camp! Sophomore solo records are due from The Herd’s Unkle Ho (May) and Urthboy (mid 07, produced by Count Bounce of TZU and Elgusto of Hermitude). Unkle Ho’s Roads to Roma was criminally overlooked. Don’t sleep this time!
Astronomy Class, fresh off smiling with one Ms Lily Allen on her recent sideshows, hit the road for a national tour with Mr Savona, pimping the much acclaimed Melbourne meets Kingston record on most dates.
SKOOL DAZE TOUR DATES
Saturday April 7 – The Great Escape Festival, Newington Armory
Saturday April 14 – Shoreshocked Festival, St Leonards Park
Thursday May 3 – Ruby’s Belgrave + Combat Wombat
Friday May 4 – East Brunswick Club + Combat Wombat
Friday May 11 – Beach Rd Hotel, Bondi
Saturday May 12 – Groovin the Moo Festival, Maitland
Saturday May 19 – Republic Bar, Hobart
Sunday May 20 – Lewisham Tavern
Thursday May 24 – Pirate Radio @ Yallah Roadhouse
Friday May 25 – The Red Room, Katoomba
Saturday May 26 – The Annandale Hotel, Sydney + Unkle Ho
Friday June 1 – Three Bears, Dunsborough
Saturday June 2 – The Rosemount Hotel, Perth
Sunday June 3 – Mojo’s, Fremantle
Friday June 8 – Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay
Saturday June 9 – The Columbian Bar, Brisbane
Sunday June 10 – Solbar, Coolum
Someone at Elefant Traks realises they better make the most of Triple J flogging the unintentional second single from The Tongue’s Bad Education EP, so this nifty little clip gets made, featuring a cameo from the mall where that one guy gave out a bunch of free hugs. Not bad!
It would appear that one of Australia’s more novel hip hop releases, the album from our most self-celebrated and indiscriminately entreprenuerial criminal Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read, is now available through digital music services. Interview with a Madman is as much about the hilarious autobiographical skits as it is about Uncle Chop Chop’s “flows”, even if the guests do their best to inject the release with a bit of cred. The ever-gory Necro fits in perfectly and the beats, by the likes of Simplex (Adelaide’s Terra Firma) keep it all feeling like a soundtrack to the Melbourne underworld.
For a taster, here’s “The Heist”, produced by Nino Brown and featuring Anecdote and Justice dropping verses around Chopper’s spoken word-ish material.
Meanwhile, Obese Records have scored themselves a nice little feature on the Aussie iTunes store and The Hard Road unsurprisingly remains one of the most consistently popular hip hop tracks on the site. Speaking of which, the Hilltop Hoods are following in the path of Portishead and Metallica by preparing an orchestra-accompanied version of the multi-award winning album, presumably a la their performance of the title track at last year’s ARIA awards, but without the accompanying suspect sound mixing. Will The Hard Road Restrung convert classical purists to Aussie hip-hop, or at least open some minds? Will the Hoods launch the album at the Sydney Opera House? I’m willing to bet they will.
EDIT: The Adelaide launch was announced about the same time I posted the above. The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra will perform with the Hoods on May 12 at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. Purported to be the trio’s only South Autralian performance for 2007, this doesn’t necessarily rule out a SOH launch in NSW. The latter half of the year will see the Hoods, who have hit high orbit in the Oz indie music stratosphere, attempt to crack overseas markets.
Australian independent distributor Inertia have just announced the addition of once-respected hip hop label Rawkus to its roster, where it should sit comfortably next to Antidote, BBE, Big Dada and, uhh, Def Jux, which is run by Rawkus’ biggest fan. The announcement is understandably keen to talk up the label’s impressive history:
There is no doubt that Rawkus Records is world renowned, seminal and ground breaking, founded in1995, Rawkus cultivated and captured a culture on the eve of its commercial boom, it was a very exciting time for hip hop indeed. They were responsible for introducing to the world luminaries Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Company Flow and were one of the first labels to put to record a beat by then the relatively unknown producer Kayne West. Rawkus also released the now classic compilation series ‘Soundbombing’ and ‘Lyricist Lounge’ in which showcased the talents of Big L, Common and the then underground rapper Eminem.
Can the label return to those Olympian heights? We’ll see. Rawkus’ resurrection was heralded by last year’s Procussions LP 5 Sparrow for 2 Cents (which Inertia handled for Oz). The once-mighty imprint’s next release will be a production album from Canada-via-NY beatsmith Marco Polo.
This has gotta be one of the weirdest US tour packages we’ve seen in a while (and yes, the dead prez/Naughty By Nature/Phrase-helmed ‘Uhuru War-I-Tour’ is still fresh in our minds). You’ve got Akrobatik, who’s on that super-lyrical, conscious, pro-Black shit; you’ve got RA the Rugged Man, who’s on that crazy whiteboy, stab-you-in-your-fuckin’-face-just-for-livin’ shit; and of course Lenny Kravitz lookalike Louis Logic (pictured above) who, as one astute observer pointed out to me, is “basically a fag now” (no Electric Circus-era Common).
And what’s this – Dilated Peoples spin-off Expansion Team Sound System (Rakaa & DJ Babu) on the Adelaide bill too! Nice work…
The tour (which is definitely worth a look, despite its random nature) will be rollin’ through Adelaide and Melbourne (on April 5th and 7th, respectively), with Brisbane and Sydney shows still to be confirmed. Ticket prices look like being in the $40 vicinity at this stage.
Posted by Writin' Exact 
Posted by Writin' Exact 
Posted by Writin' Exact 
Buy at 
Buy at 
