Green Lantern – Hey Ladies (Green Mix)

Although this song made the rounds a couple months ago, with Sasha’s recent foray into the Justo Mix-tape awards and reading Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, I was reminded of Green Lantern’s uncanny New York State of Mind mix-tape and how well it plays with the Beastie Boys’ outsider status to hip hop. Mashing the Beasties against the Notorious BIG standard “Hypnotize,” the song loses “Hey Ladies”’ cowbells, but surprisingly, still suits Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock’s rhymes. It shouldn’t be surprising given the Beasties’ rap-pioneer status, but it still is (because they’re not that type of hip-hop). It should sound like just a gimmick party track, but it really isn’t (maybe because Herb Alpert, Notorious BIG and the Beasties end up as an unexpected cluster-fuck of sampling).

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Brooks– Roxxy

Beginning with a wash of slowed insects and repellant, “Roxxy” adds layer after sonic layer, increasing in pace until the frantic end rush. Rather than sounding formulaic, the accumulation of disparate elements in “Roxxy” is a surprisingly apt structure for the half-bitter love song. An ever-morphing creature that shifts cut-up sonic elements practically every four bars, Andrew Brooks underpins the whole song with a bassline itching to bounce away and uses an electro-lobotomized snare downbeat to tame it all. While easy to label this another instance of the synth-pop revival, Brooks’ complicates any genre write-offs with both his blissfully tweaked production and ominous vocals that make for one of the best pop love songs of the last year.

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My My – Bel Etage Time

Recently, I was struck when Todd Burns said—“Say what you want about the gimmick of micro-sampling. When it’s done well and there’s a hot beat over it, there’s not much better”—and with “Bel Etage Time” I couldn’t agree more. Like the stitch-work of Laszlo and Beckett from Hand on the Plow last year, Berlin’s My My don’t follow in the direct lineage of Todd Edwards/Marc LeClair’s micro-sampling, but they grind micro-sampling into something less crisp at times, making every element bleed. The sample “come with me” is the best example, strewn throughout the song and filtered into a myriad of variations until, with a minute left in the song, everything drops out and the sample tugs you back in.

[visit the website here, buy it here]