Northern Heads celebrates 60,000 visitors

Northern Heads began as northernheads.com (a very lo-fi website, essentially a proto-blog covering largely Canadian improvisational 'jam' based music) from 2001-2005.   The website was founded by Canadian Luke Bowden and American Abe Robins and might best be described as jambands.com meets The Onion on ketamine.  

After some dark and hairy times Northern Heads was revived by Luke Bowden as a blog at first primarily focused on Detroit Hip Hop.  The notion behind this limited focus at the outset was that there are countless general interest blogs and music blogs out there and the world of music is so vast that once one starts down a path (say Blues from the 1920's) you could literally spend a lifetime trying to understand that little niche.  From an initial focus on the preternatural J Dilla, his protege Black Milk and many in his camp including Elzhi, Guilty Simpson, Sean Price and (Hybrid-era) Danny Brown the scope of coverage has grown.

Gradually the focus of the blog dilated to include its namesake the Grateful Dead, Phish and the immortal Prince - but more importantly progressive improvisational groups such as The Slip (now The Barr Brothers) as well as a variety of Electronic musicians influenced by a deep musicality (The Gaslamp Killer, Flying Lotus etc.).   Swinging to the other end of the spectrum my other area of specialization is Roots and Americana music with a fervent interest in Canadian groups with spine and spirit such as The Golden Dogs and their kin Zeus. 

As a freelance music writer I have always operated on the margins of Canada's nepotistic and clingy world of music journalism.  As a rule I do not feature any music which I am not deeply passionate about- setting a standard of requisite craftsmanship rarely present in the glut of releases pumped out on a daily basis.  Put plainly I listen to all the shit so that you don't have to.

As the New Year approaches we'll be highlighting the best of 2014's releases as well as highlighting long form interviews from the past year originally published on No Depression (the Roots music authority since 1995).  Thanks for reading and coming back - if you don't currently follow the blog please consider following it in the future.  I promise to bring you more music, more diverse music and insights, and more frequent updates over the coming year.

sincerely,

Luke C. Bowden

ScHoolboy Q - Man Of The Year

Flying Lotus Toronto setlist (10.21.14)

Flying Lotus - Danforth Music Hall, Oct. 21, 2014

Flying Lotus 
Danforth Music Hall
partial setlist (out of order)

Theme
Camel (Los Angeles)
Sultan's Request (Until The Quiet Comes)
Getting There (Until The Quiet Comes)
MmmHmmm  (Cosmogramma)
Do The Astral Plane (Cosmogramma)
Coronus, the Terminator (Your Dead!)
Dead Man's Tetris (Your Dead!)   
Man Of The Year*
El Topo#
Mighty Morphin' Foreskin#
The Killing Joke# 
The Protest

* ScHoolboy Q
# Captain Murphy 

Flying Lotus Toronto Review (10.21.14)

Flying Lotus ended his Your Dead! album promotional tour stop with a stark appraisal of the Toronto crowd: "You're poor!".   Invoking the built-in rivalry between Montreal and Toronto Lotus couldn't help himself but to comment on the superiority of the Montreal audience the night before.  And it's true the crowd was weak, Toronto crowds are notorious chin waggers and even at events where you would presume dancing would be involved (like an EDM concert) - there is not.  Toronto is the Screwface Capital- it's true.  But Brainfeeder label honcho Steven Ellison should have known to come correct.

Whatever weak label DJ's he threw on before his set basically trotted out all the club staples from trap to electro to breakbeat with no particular identity.  The second DJ, JPX or JFX (don't look it up), had no well, soul.  His song selections lacked any sort of coherent linkage (or even non-linkage).  If he was making noise it was just noise.  At one point he played the opening of some Metalheadz Goldie shit, which got you half hyped for a second, but then it turned out to be some soft boy remix.  He threw in some reggae and dancehall at the end of the set for the 11 persons of colour in the audience as well as one - clearly overjoyed - Trustafarian.

The audience was as noteworthy as the musicians for their lack of diversity.  Many would not look out of place in a United Colours of Benetton advertisement if that reference had any cultural cache anymore.  It seems highly likely that at least three couples had some form of charcuterie before they arrived.  But they deserved better and did not get it.  Or at least not until mid-way through the Flying Lotus' set at the end of the evening.

There was a lot of anticipation for Thundercat, who sounds great on record as recorded by Ellison.  Unfortunately live his set (plagued by sound and sonority problems) comes off like one long godawful fretless bass solo that is circling the bowl of some cruise ship calibre type shit.  His drummer has no feel, no touch and only the most rudimentary understanding of his instrument.  If he was a barber he would only know how to do four haircuts.  The keyboardist Edgar Winters IV (not actual name) made the best of his winnowing locks and tightly tailored jacket (he also played a number of keyboards) and fortunately was not stricken with the albinism of his forebears.  When they finally stopped playing most could not comprehend what they had just experienced. Literally.

The hype around Ellison is largely legitimate.  His background alone, as the nephew of John and Alice Coltrane's makes him a genuine source of curiousity (with all his recent outings Cosmogramma (2010) and Until The Quiet Comes(2012) steeped in Alice's brand of mysticism.  His sound is often a pastiche of glittering sound, chimes, saxophone squawks and bass freakouts- affecting a sort of electronic confetti.  Bohemian EDM might be a good way to describe it.  As with any musician these days the endorsement of  Pitchfork is pivotal and they grabbed on by both ponytails.  Pitchfork and Flying Lotus are embroiled in a love embrace that is both repellant and perfectly fitting since the latter's job is to name the zeitgeist and the former is - well the zeitgeist. At least for this moment.  

So where was I?  Basically Ellison presses play on a pre-recorded mix within a convex dodecahedron that functioned as the performance pod/ visual backdrop for the whole proceeding.  He also made large silhouetted and pantomimed gestures some of which included actually adjusting levels- mids, mid-highs, highs, as well as quite a lot of lows. For the first part of the set he had lit up sunglasses, at one point he asked for some water rather brusquely.  The visuals admittedly were unbelievable and saved the show.    Drawing at times on some of the Brainfeeder motifs (brains, lobotomies, skulls) they were largely a constantly evolving barrage of deeply hallucinatory visuals.  If you didn't have Nintendo Epilepsy before this concert you do now.

He also played some music including Camel (from 2008's Los Angeles) Sultan's Request and Getting There (from Until The Quiet Comes); MmmHmmm and Do The Astral Plane (from Cosmogramma) and very little actually from Your Dead! (Coronus, the Terminator and Dead Man's Tetris).  He did a great left-field drop of ScHoolboy Q's Man Of The Year.  When he finally came out from behind the curtain he got into some of his MC material as Captain Murphy from 2012's Duality (El Topo and Mighty Morphin' Foreskin) which seemed to legitimately hype up the crowd- right up until he started shitting on them.

Then Thundercat came out in some godawful fucking fox headdress and jammed out with his lord and master from behind the Oz thing.  That part was really awful.  As one parting dig despite the fact that the audience didn't show him enough love or not the kind of love he wanted he sharply exited the stage saying: "But I'm still going to go back there and press play" (because I already have your money).  Then he put up some trippy album cover promo and basically said peace I'm out.  And we were like 'yeah we're out too'.  Yikes.

The Gaslamp Killer - Boiler Room DJ set

In a long line of Turkish American musical visionary producers and genuine lovers of music, including Ahmet Ertegun and Arif Mardin, Willliam Benjamin Bensussen (also know as The Gaslamp Killer) stands alone.  Listen here to the Killer at London's Boiler Room debut the bulk of the stupendous Breakthrough LP, just released on Brainfeeder, in this devastating hour and a quarter DJ set.  Seeing The Gaslamp Killer execute his own material beyond-deftly in a club context is illuminating.  His raw enthusiasm for music- as expressed in his sufi-mental dance style - is only the entry point.  Hear him redefine so-called 'Bass Music' to suit his dervish instincts.  In his typically amped fashion  as the set dances through material of his own featuring Gonjasufi as well as recent releases from (Brainfeeder label honcho) Flying Lotus (Pattern and Grid World EP) and his cohort Thundercat including DMT Song, a hilarious Mark Wahlberg sample from The Fighter, new instrumental hip hop bangers from in demand producers Hudson Mohawke (solo) and with Lunice as TNGHT (which actually sound good in a well executed mix for once), some Ghetto Tech from both DJ Rashad and a quick cut of Danny Brown, Dilla, Wu-Tang's Ice Cream, Portland producer EPROM's Regis Chillbin,  Frank Ocean's Pink Matter, Clark's Fantasm Planes, the jungle classic Dead Dred, Zomby, Flosstradumus Lana's Theme, Coki, Zebra Katz, and Dimlite.  The cherry on the sundae likely comes just past the hour mark with Andre 3000 and Pimp C's verse off UGK's International Players- suddenly his whole system drops out on him and without losing any momentum at all gets it back up and wobbles the opening of Glory by Domo Genesis.  Somehow the whole set culminates with Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner mixed pitch perfectly into Pink Floyd's Great Gig In The Sky. Psychedelia. 

Then in several deep bows of reverence he closes his set with a sad, erstwhile Mariachi trumpet ballad.

The Gaslamp Killer - The Mayan (live set)

When I started this blog 2 years ago, out of a renewed interest in music in general, particularly a renewed appreciation for certain types of - largely Detroit- Hip Hop (the production opus of J Dilla, Black Milk, a young honk named Danny Brown) as well as a handful of Electronic Dance Music producers and DJ's who fascinated me.  The Gaslamp Killer was exactly that cat.  His infectious mixes of everything from Jimi Hendrix to Dilla, to psychedelic pastiches of the Turkish Pop his grandfather cultivated a deep and abiding love in, spoke to types of devotional and psychedelic music I've always been drawn to.  I scoured the internet looking for the best performances of him live, such as this one which I called The Best Backyard Party Ever for obvious reasons.  Another particularly brilliant set in a unique setting I came across was at the Natural History Museum First Fridays (06.05.09). 

William Benjamin Bensussen is a Turkish American (he is in fact the son of a Turkish-Lebanese-Jewish father and Lithnuanian-Jewish mother) visionary who came to prominence in the DJ club culture of San Diego.  The questionable club district was dubbed The Gaslamp District and so arose a counterpoint to that glib surface side of club culture.  In 2005 he relocated to LA and co-founded an experimental party series (Low End Theory) with Daddy Kev and DJ Nobody in the area of Lincoln Heights.  In the eclectic LA beat scene he played frequently alongside Daedalus, Samiyam and Flying Lotus; all of whom he collaborates with on his brand new Breakthrough LP (on Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder label).  In the interim he seems to have done everything from playing over-inspired sets for under-enthused hip hop fans waiting for headliner MF Doom to take the stage (or someone wearing his mask) to producing the bulk of Gonjasufi's A Sufi And A Killer.

With Electronic Dance Music having become hyper-popular and lionized some very questionable button-pushing barbarians at the gate will The Gaslamp Killer prove to be the refreshing antidote for DJ culture gone wrong?  Or gone right?  Despite his prodigious skills as a producer the Killer is best heard as a DJ such as here in his set the other day at The Mayan in LA. Listen early in his set for his debut of Nissim with Amir Yhagmai (who predictably for LA is a member of a musical duo Jogger with Alan Thicke's son Jonathan) plucking a virtuous line on yiali tambur and guitar.  The track also features Daedalus on bass as the three tried to extend and breakdown a Turkish record the Killer found one day. 

Flying Lotus - See Thru To You feat. Erykah Badu

 

This tasteful collab (although shy on the full frontal nudity, sparkles, and mysterious goop highlighted in the Flaming Lips/ Erykah Badu sister clone collaboration) teases the full length release of Flying Lotus' 'Until The Quiet Comes' (out October 1/2) 



 

Flying Lotus - Between Friends/ Instrumental (feat. Earl Sweatshirt and Captain Murphy)