Back by popular demand, my electronic music. Now freely downloadable.
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Back To Life (SixoMix)
This is one of my favorites and the first time I sampled somebody else's music. Of course Back To Life is one of the greatest hiphop songs ever, and I do love those beats. In sort of my traditional style I threw in some droning to make it a bit ambient. In this case horns. Then dug that Caron Wheeler and her background chorus, which is kind of signature for the song but put it in the downtempo parts on a minor key. Altogether a smooth thing.
Baldwin Hills
This was my first long composition. I had in mind something that started off clean, simple and elegant but slightly off balance. The beat is clean and elegant - very Nile Rodgers (I hope). Minimalist piano and strings over snappy beats, that was the formula. Very bourgie, like Baldwin Hills. But towards the end, I want it to decline. The feeling was that Baldwin Hills was in decline, so I put in some dissonant metal, truck beats and scratch. You can hear at the breaks as I change up the beat. Eventually the strings disappear and things start getting funky around four minutes in, bringing you back to the top theme and then down to the gutter with the second primary beat.
Bhangra Chubb
This was a cut that I just couldn't keep down. I found some bhangra vocals that worked at a high pitch and put them over a modified sample of Chubb Rock's great beat with a metal backbeat. It's definitely a high energy club dance kind of thing. If you listen carefully you can hear some Kraftwerk in there too. Everytime I hear it, I want to dance like Heavy D and the Boyz.
Groove 74
This one I wanted to be a funky kind of spy groove. A little pitch of mystery and back to my new signature which is solo acoustic guitar melody. It's got vibey piano in the back and moves rather nice. This is one of my latest compilations, and shows I've still got a little bit of skill in mixing.
Hard Blue
This was probably the second or third song I ever did. It's from back in 2001. Basically my first horns. Just a very contagious groove. This was my answer to the question way back before Kanye West, why doesn't anybody in hiphop exploit the blues?
Hard Work
This is my first work. This is fundamental Sixoseven. I still think that it says just about everything about the kind of music I like. Slammin' beats, ambient droning, sophisticated polyrhythms and percussion, melodic and smooth all at once. The fidelity isn't very good on this one, I need to remix it, but it still works very nicely in the ride, especially the final break with the Truck Beat.
Hold Me
This is a clean minimalist groove that was inspired by a Sade song. I can't remember which, and damn I need to listen to more Sade. Definitely chillout music. I especially like the timing beat on the closed hi-hat.
Holly
This is my oldest daughter's theme song. It's the third remix of it. Bright, enthusiastic, snappy. It's what I call, Happy Hiphop - the kind that just doesn't get made commercially.
Mari-iqua
There was a goofy comedy movie with Eddie Griffin and Orlando Jones. I cannot remember it for the life of me, but when it came out, nobody was doing latino hiphop on the air. Except there was one scene in that flick at a gas station out in the middle of the desert where they did it. At the time, I was big into Mana and some other Latin music (insert name of band here) and so as soon as some guitar samples were available from Sony, I put together this cut. Yeah I know the horns are a bit cheesy, but horns are damned hard to arrange and sample. At least I tried.
Mystery Theatre
This is kind of unusual for the set that you're listening to here but kind of representive of my mashup music. Obviously sampled from my old favorite CBS Radio Mystery Theatre, I liked the theme of putting some spooky organ and insidious guitar over a peppy beat with an old geezer's voice telling ghost stories. I think this one is very Art of Noise.
Smooth Bear
This is probably my favorite of all of my music. Downtempo chillout bumping groove, aetheral spectral droning and dishpan percussion lightly in the breaks. Just cool, baby!
Taxi Jam
I have no way to describe this except just dance music for kids. I have played this a million times in the car with my elementary and pre-school kids. I wonder if they still like it.
Juicy
From Mtume's classic. I added some japanese flute and some dishpan / paint can percussion. It's got a mellow thing to it with a harmonic twist. This is a track just built for a smooth rapper.
Jayboom
I also enjoy doing hard beats. This one is for the gangstas. It doesn't go anywhere but it just begs for somebody to be screaming about damage they're going to do to suckas.
Old School Interlude
I wrote this specifically for me to roll the windows down at valet parking and blast on my way out of a cool joint where people who grew up on my side of town would say Dayam!
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