Everytime I’m losing contact with contemporary Hip-Hop it pulls me back in again. After breakdancing like a clown to Old-School Hip-Hop and Electro there was a guy ten years later who gave me a tape with music by A tribe called quest’s „Low end theory“ to get me started again. Now Dubstep has done it again, combining Dub, Hip-Hop and Electro, exploding now in many different directions.
Skweee is a new music-genre by itself combining compressed digital Funk, Electro, Hip-Hop and Dubstep with Eighties Disco Flavor. People like Eero Johannes, Daniel Savio and Mesak are only a few among a lot interesting projects from Sweden, Finland und Norway. For a beginners guide, check out my mix from weeks ago or buy the new compilation „International Skweee Vol. 2″ or „Skweee Tooth“ as long as it’s available.
I mentioned in this post from a while ago the Vocoder-driven Post-Dubstep by Darkstar and Robot Koch.That’s just the beginning of a real postmodern mishmash of styles and reminiscences. Black Moth Super Rainbow’s front guy Tobacco is trying to push the psychedelic sound of his Indie-Rock band closer to the Dubstep-universe by replacing the drummer with a drum machine. Please be sure to check out the 2007 album „Danedlion Gum“ by his band Black Moth Super Rainbow.
After Prefuse 73 and Sixtoo I was kind of bored with experimental, instrumental Hip-Hop and wasn’t expecting anything revolutionary or even interesting happening in near future. After finding out about Madlib, Quasimoto and J.Dilla I fell in love with Disco Balls by Flying Lotus and discovered they’re people like Hudson Mohawk and the Gaslamp Killer doing their sometimes very psychedelic version of Hip-Hop. William Benjamin Bensussen aka the Motherfucking Gaslamp Killer runs the „Low End Theory Club“ (check the podcasts) in Los Angeles and produced the new album “ A sufi and a killer“ of Gonja Sufi on Warp.
A high influence on all this new forms of Hip-Hop and Dubstep had certainly Kraftwerk-inspired Old-School-Electro and Minimal Wave. Peanut Butter Wolf is writing on Stones Throw Records about the „Minimal Wave“ scene in Europe in the Eighties, I recommend you to listen to the podcast here.
