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Let the transmission commence! A few weeks ago I promised to touch on a couple key links in the proto-punk funk story, both of whom seemed to possess wholly self-contained visions of new wave disco years before the fact. As was the case with Suicide's debut, the cockney disco of Ian Dury And The Blockheads … Continue reading Terminal Vibration: Back To Get Ya!
Detroit Love live @ Spin Nightclub 11/2/2019 Everyone knows the story of The Belleville Three, the by now legendary trio who emerged from Detroit in the mid-eighties to invent techno music as we know it. Juan Atkins was the The Originator, who first in Cybotron and then with his own Metroplex imprint bridged the gap … Continue reading Detroit Love San Diego
Bomb The Bass Clear 4th & Broadway 1995 I think it's time to discuss the philosophy of hip hop blues as it relates to Terminal Vibration. Prime trip hop, in other words. Aside from Tricky's debut, I can think of no record that embodies this outlook more than Bomb The Bass' third album, Clear. Squaring … Continue reading Bomb The Bass – Clear
Man-machine rhythms melting into the night... There's a few things I noticed while compiling the Terminal Vibration anthology on Cheap Hotel, things that had been swirling in the background for some time before finally coming into focus. They all center around the idea of the 1980s as the decade when the liquid, telepathic grooves of … Continue reading Terminal Vibration: Melting Machines
Can Ege Bamyasi United Artists When discussing the basis for the whole Terminal Vibration vision, in laying out its roots at the axis of rhythm and atmosphere, there are any number of notable precursors that immediately spring to mind. If you root around in the shadowy pre-history of the 1970s, you come across obvious rhythmic … Continue reading Public Image Ltd. – Metal Box
Tonight... I'm gonna do it to you right... tonight! I wound up spending a lot of time on this final chapter of the Terminal Vibration saga — on and off — over the past few months, generating so much content in the process that I've decided to spin it off into its own series. In truth, all along I'd … Continue reading Terminal Vibration X (Machine Soul)
A couple weeks ago, Sari, Kayli and I traded lists of our favorite records from 1997 in a New Years Eve extravaganza. Why 1997, you ask? 1997 was without a doubt my favorite year in memory, and its music more than lived up to the times. If the era's clash of dancefloor futurism, breakbeat science, … Continue reading 25 From 97
Damon G. Riddick: L.A.'s Laidback Ambassador Of Machine Soul I'm in Texas this weekend, which is strangely enough an ideal time and place to talk about the machine soul exploits of one Damon Riddick, aka Dâm-Funk. Ideal because of that Houston connection — UGK, DJ Screw, E.S.G., Fat Pat et. al. — and its strange affinity with L.A.'s sprawling … Continue reading Dâm-Funk
The Bay.. The Bowl... The Universe This time of year — when late autumn begins giving way to the dawning chill of winter — often takes me back to the year 2001, when I spent my days going to community college out in Grossmont and shelving books at the Clairemont Library to make a little money. Then, I'd spend … Continue reading Students Of The Future
The Zodiac Cosmic Sounds Elektra 1967 Once I posted the final cut of the Geology 35 last week, I began to have a nagging suspicion that I'd forgotten something. An unintentional omission, perhaps. It was there hanging in the back of my mind, gradually coalescing into a vague outline, seeming to be something at the … Continue reading The Zodiac – Cosmic Sounds