Look, I know “Garden State” isn’t necessarily a cinematic masterpiece, but in 2004 when it hit theaters I was at the perfect age to really appreciate it. It was a coming-of-age film for a young man who was, in fact, coming of age, and I loved it.
But before the movie was even released, I developed an emotional attachment to the trailer, which I must have watched on apple.com about two hundred times. About halfway through, Frou Frou’s “Let Go,” the sort of main theme for “Garden State,” kicks in—and to this day it’s still one of the most moving and beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.
In the years since, Imogen Heap—Frou Frou’s lead vocalist—has earned some fame for “Hide and Seek,” which damn near everybody has heard at this point thanks to its appearance on the second season finale of “The O.C.” and subsequent Saturday Night Live spoof of it. More recently, that same song was sampled in Jason DeRulo’s “Whatcha Say,” which was at one point the #1 song in America.
So it’s not like you’ve never heard this girl’s voice before, but “Details,” Frou Frou’s only album, is from an age before Heap was so well-known, and her partner on the project—Guy Sigsworth—deserves his fair share of the credit of the record’s beauty as well. The two co-wrote every song on the album, which includes “Let Go” and loads of other transient, ambient electronica that is both musically challenging and melodically pleasing.
There are rumors of a reunion between Heap and Sigsworth, but so far nothing official has come to fruition. Still, “Let Go” remains in the annals of life-altering music for me. Few tracks have ever affected me more. I loved it when I was coming of age, and now that I’m of age I love it even more. It’s aged like a fine cheese, and held up better than the movie that helped make it famous, though I’ll never bad mouth “Garden State” or Frou Frou. Don’t you do it, either.
Pardon my French, but gosh darn if Chiddy Bang isn’t frickin’ awesome.
If I ended the article right there, would you go out and buy the gang’s debut mixtape, “The Swelly Express?” Probably. But, I’m going to explain to you why it’d be a good idea anyway, just in case you’re not completely convinced.
But seriously, they’re frickin’ awesome.
First and foremost, let the record state that Chiddy Bang—comprised of rapper Chidera “Proto” Anamege, producer Noah “Xaphoon Jones” Beresin, and a handful of talented others—does a lot of their work by sampling indie rock and flipping it into some sort of B.A. hip-hop/electronica hybrid that Pro can rap to.
Perhaps their most popular song, “The Opposite of Adults,” samples MGMT’s “Kids” and has this rolling vibe that just screams summer hit. Other samples on their first two mixtapes include “Better Things” by Passion Pit, “Chicago” by Sufjan Stephens, and “Bulletproof” by La Roux, which we featured on our Jukebox once upon a time.
Every song on both records has hit potential. The beats are ridiculously hot and the way Proto rocks the beats is flawless. The man knows how to ride an instrumental. Imagine 50 Cent, but without the marbles in his cheeks and significantly more musical credibility.
They’re on tons of charts worldwide, but haven’t really hit the U.S. just yet, despite the fact that these guys are from Philadelphia. Soon, though, I imagine that they’ll be too good for their fellow Americans to ignore.
If there’s a place for Justin Bieber in today’s music industry, there’s definitely a place for Chiddy Bang. Gosh darn it.
Here’s the video for “Opposite of Adults,” then an audio link for the next single, “Truth”:
Buy The Opposite of Adults here:
BEAST, a project from Betty Bonifassi and Jean-Phi Goncalves, is one of the most refreshing and innovative music projects we have come across in long while. Mix together electronica, hip-hop, rock and jazz and you get BEAST. The duo jokingly coined their music “trip-rock” and the classifier has stuck. Really what we have here are two incredibly talented musicians with lengthy careers that came together in the spirit of creating something new. This natural creation is what makes the music so intense and exciting.
We had an opportunity to sit down with Betty Bonifassi and Jean-Phi Goncalves after a recent visit to the United States. We caught up with the pair after they had spent a long day of traveling in from Montreal and then sound checking for a show that night. After spending ten minutes with them we were hooked. It is clear that they are still getting used to the success and attention that their project has gained. Their single, “Mr. Hurricane”, was just recently nominated for a Grammy in the Best Short Music Video category along side of Coldplay, Black Eyed Peas and Depeche Mode. An upcoming SXSW performance along with a ton of touring is setting things up for much deserved global recognition.
We had a chance to watch BEAST perform live and it was an incredible experience. Bonifassi’s vocals burn with intensity. Goncalves’ instrumentation and production reminds us of a mad genius. At the end of the performance our hearts were racing and our eyes were as wide as saucers. Tank and I exchanged glances that simply said, “was that for real?”
KC’s Personal Picks: “Devil”, “Mr. Hurricane”, “Satan” and “Out of Control”
Check out our exclusive interview with BEAST
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Charlotte Gainsbourg is the daughter of two musician-slash-actors—a British mumsy and a French popsicle—so it probably was no surprise to see the offspring of such a talented duo go into the same pair of businesses. Yes, while some spend their entire lives unsuccessfully pursuing one or the other, Gainsbourg has been able to dip her fingers into both the music and movie industries. Her most recent musical project, “IRM,” was written and produced almost exclusively by the great Beck, which means it is, by definition, worth at least a casual listen.
But this is a complex record, and it’s going to take more than one cursory flip through the tracks to get the most out of what it has to offer. The first single is, naturally, a duet with Beck entitled “Heaven Can Wait,” and it’s absolutely Beck-ish but with a feminine touch. It’s got sort of a happy, driving beat with tambourines and major piano chords that are just rhythmic and interesting enough to get a sense of why it’s the record’s first radio release.
The opening track, “Master’s Hands,” as well as “Trick Pony” and “Le Chat du Café de Artistes” (which, as you can guess from the title, is sung entirely in French) also are pretty memorable, but the whole album is sort of a non-stop happy-go-lucky lullaby with just enough experimentation to keep it from being too poppy. It’s an interesting record, to say the least, but would you expect anything less from Beck?
The album has already been out in Canada and parts of Europe since early December, but now it’s America’s turn to get a jump on this sort of mellower, trickier style of Imogen Heap pop to see if we’re ready for it. We at Fresh Scouts think we are.
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I’m in the middle of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink,” which is a badass physcho-improvement book about the advantages of making snap judgments, and on a morning when I’m wondering who to write about for Throwback Thursday I’m introduced to an artist named Kenna.
In Gladwell’s book he spends an entire chapter talking about Kenna’s struggle to reach a mass audience—how being an African-born, American-raised musician balancing between hip-hop, electronica, new wave, and even a little bit of throwback synthesized ‘80s delightfulness makes him almost impossible to categorize and therefore impossible to play on the radio. The kick, however, is that people who know about great music love everything about the guy, even if the Top-40 focus groups didn’t immediately dig his sound. That’s what got Fresh Scouts interested because, let’s face it, a lot of the musicians we feature on this site have had many of the same problems.
So I dug right into Kenna the minute I was in front of a computer and was impressed with the three or four songs that first popped up onto YouTube. It was pretty clear why he wasn’t plastered all over pop radio, but the two songs I listened to—“Freetime” and “Hell Bent,” both from 2001—were fantastic compositions. Wildly different from each other, these two tracks were also wildly different from everything else I’d ever heard, and it got me looking for more.
That led me to the remix of his more recent single, “Say Goodbye to Love,” featuring Lupe Fiasco and nominated for a Grammy last year, which I heard and immediately thought, “How is this any different from anything The Neptunes have ever put out?” I thought, “If Pharrell wrote this song it’d at least be on a radio promo somewhere. At best, it’d be a hit.” Then I dug a little deeper and found out that Chad Hugo of—who else?—The Neptunes had been producing Kenna’s stuff since the first album and said to myself, “Oh.” I was right, dammit. Which confused me even more. Everything Pharrell touches seems to turn to gold, so why not this cat, who everybody with a musical brain seems to love?
It’s not commercial, that’s why. Plain and simple. But those of us with the musical brains I speak of know that there’s plenty of great music out there that would make Casey Kasem roll over in his grave (note—Casey Kasem isn’t technically dead, but if he were…). Kenna is hip-hop and techno and new wave and tons of other stuff, but most off all he’s really talented. And clearly Malcolm Gladwell, whose opinion I trust greatly, thinks he’s worthwhile, too. Do like Gladwell suggests in “Blink”—don’t think about it, just buy the album. Some of our best decisions are made on our instincts, and right now, our instincts are telling us, “Check out Kenna.” We better do what they say.
Here’s that hot remix to “Say Goodbye to Love”:
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