This moody hip hop cut sounds like it could have come straight out the late ’90s underground. But 20-year-old producer Bagir wouldn’t even have been ten by that point. His smokey beat on “Babylonian Nights” is comprised of a jazzy instrumentation flipped on the mysterious tip, all surreal and dangerous. Meanwhile, Toronto’s Sense I matches that with a picturesque, streetlamp-lit tale full of dense rhymes, a smooth voice and a chill delivery. If dudes like this were in the spotlight more often, maybe backpacking would never have become a dirty word.

The song is part of an unfinished album from 2007. We have no idea why it remains unreleased, but now it’s free for y’all! Bagir, who resides in Virginia and has played the djembe since he was a kid, was featured on our last mixtape and you can be sure to hear more diverse styles from him around here in the future. (Photo by Patrick Boury)

The American system may result in a bit of stifling of creative music, but at least people have the freedom to make music without the fear of arrest. In Iran, on the other hand, musicians face government opposition all over the place. If you want to play rock there, good luck. And women in Iran are only allowed to sing solo in public in front of an all-female audience. If they want to sing to a mixed crowd, they must be accompanied by a male singer.

The Plastic Wave is an Iranian electronic rock band (with Portishead leanings) and has a female lead singer. They’ve been arrested before. But they had a rare - and legal - opportunity to perform in public when they were recently scheduled to perform at SXSW. Unfortunately, the US consulate in Dubai wouldn’t give them a visa to get them here, the band says.

New Yorkers, however, will still have the chance to hear their music, albeit through a cover band, at Littlefield in Brooklyn on Wednesday, March 3rd. The night is part of a worldwide protest in support of musical freedom aptly called Music Freedom Day. Cruel Black Dove will play Wave’s music, but for added poignancy, the night’s last song will be only a recording that will echo through the venue as the stage remains empty of all but the instruments they would have used. The event is called Impossible Music, and they plan to host more nights like it. This first session is sponsored in part by Freemuse, which is also organizing the worldwide protest.

On a related note, here’s a video of a pretty nice sounding cut by a female Iranian rapper named Farinaz, courtesy of The Atlantic. She would probably face arrest if she lived in Iran. (Image by Kako.)

The latest Culture System mixtape seems like it would make a good soundtrack for “Lord of the Flies.” Full of driving and deep dubstep oriented tracks, it starts off with a final pleasant sunset as Warnings already creep up in the background. Immediately, it jumps into a Chase in the Woods and from there carries a quick-on-the-feet tempo amongst the darkness. Although there’s moments of rest where there’s a chance to reflect on the evil that men do, the pace constantly excels throughout the mix until the island is finally burning with the Cosmetics remix. You can listen to it over on Bass Music Blog and get the tracklist there. Out to ID for posting it! (Original cover painting by Cern YMI.)

Reverse Engineering’s “Instant Art” is almost industrial in its use of distortion, mechanical sounds and its militant, marching beat. Visions of towering blocks of grey, wet buildings definitely come to mind. But there’s also a touch of the boom bap and it shares an atmosphere similar to that of subtler dubstep. “Art” has a simple but progressing lamellophone-sounding melody with a couple layers and some haunting vocals similar to Bjork. (When exactly to biting her become a ’style’ of singing?) There’s even some turntablism, which adds to the composition a scratchy, analog melody that fits the song’s overall soundscape. You can definitely hear the Company Flow influences in this one. It was featured on the Swiss outfit’s newest release, Highly Complex Machinery, and was released through Jarring Effects records, which was cool enough to lace us with this download for you. (They also put out Filastine’s Dirty Bomb.) Although you can’t cop Machinery on sites like Juno if you live in the US, you can buy it or any of the songs from it at CD1D, a French DIY platform. (Photo by March and Meffre).

Using Predator-like drones, private military contractors remotely defend water reserves in Mexico from drought stricken locals to a soundtrack by Nacional Records. This all-too-possible near future set to a nasty beat is the vision of Sleep Dealer, a Spanish language science fiction film written and directed by Alex Rivera.

It premiered in NYC last April, which makes it ancient in internet time, but we had to post something about it. The thoughtfulness of Rivera, who resides in New York and first filmed the Sixth Section documentary for PBS, charts the genre into unlikely territory. By addressing current political and environmental issues, he grounds it in reality. And he avoids diving into fantasy by exploring technology that seems probable in the near future and in need of serious discussion. All this brings the movie closer to social commentary than mere entertainment.

As for the soundtrack, it features a number of good songs that have since been released for free in one form or another. Bomba Estereo’s “Raza” made its psychedelic Cumbia debut here. It’s since been released as an MPFree over at NYRemezcla (hastily compiled English translation after the jump). The album also included the Latin dub stylings of Fidel Nadal’s “Puerta De Oro (Con Pablo Lescano)”. That was more recently part of the free Nacional Records Sampler 2009. Nortec Collective’s “Tijuana Sound Machine” and “Discoteca Nacional” were also on the soundtrack.

the jump » »

Barney Iller is a Brooklyn hype man of sorts, but he still doesn’t understand why New York doesn’t have more music producers. He calls BK’s “Fort Stuylliamsburg” (Clinton Hill?) home, and labels it the “epicenter of the Brooklyn underground.” In fact, “the Brooklyn underground party scene,” Iller adds, “is among the best if not the best in the world, and most people would have no idea where to look for it.”

Yet he still can’t figure out why there’s not more producers here killing it: “New York rules, but the one area I feel we lag in is a community of producers. There are super talented people here too, so I think busy schedules are partly to blame, and partly that there wasn’t already a tight community of producers for people to glom onto when they arrived on the scene.”

His music is part of a new fusion of pan-Latino and tropical sounds with electronic and other contemporary influences. He credits the interest in this style of music in New York “to individuals with a passion for promoting it such as Geko Jones and Uproot Andy of Que Bajo.” But he also notes that this kind of scene “only exists right now, I think, because of the small handful of talented producers worldwide carving out a new genre, making really killer new music.” Here’s a couple tracks he hit us off with to share with y’all:

In “Underworld Merengue“, gold plated NES tomb raiders hyped up on pixelated tamboras make a mad dash for underground dancefloors. It’s a frenetic combination of Dominican-birthed beats, dark ’80s sample-play nostalgia, and washboard-grated analog basslines. The smoother and more organic “Tamborito Breaks” pairs horns and fuzzy, amelodic jaw harp styles with persistent clappers and big bass strings. It’s an edit of “Tamborito Swing” by Los Silvertones, released last year on the Panama! compilations by the excellent Soundway Records. (Aztec Calendar installation by Fernando Mastrangelo.).

Ghostly International just released a free instrumental hip hop EP by Brooklyn’s own Mux Mool called Viking Funeral. It’s a promo of his also recently released single, Lady Linda, which itself is a promo of Mool’s upcoming full length, Skulltaste. (Did we even get all that right?)

The track featured here, from the EP, is a good example of the disco downbeat popular with Brooklyn beatmakers like homeboy, Eliot Lipp and Machinedrum. It’s full glittering melodies, fuzzy bass and a doors of perception keyboard solo. With full bravado, the rhythm hits the beat at the very last possible chance.

But the star of them all is “Hog Knuckles“, the B side on the single, with its meticulously layered melodies and richness of composition. Stuttering, chopped and repurposed guitar melodies lay the foundation on top of a wonky, wavering beat of clacking percussion and hollowed out bass kicks. Synths uttering melodic nonsensical computer speak and crushed keyboards flesh the rest out. Overall, it gives the impression that the song was the last drops of music squeezed out of a pile of discarded, yet recently valuable hardware. That’s the one you gotta buy. “Lady Linda”’s sputnik satellite styles and latch clasping percussion are actually available for free at RCRDLBL. Also, in case you missed it, Mux Mool’s most recent Moongadget effort “NAFE” was pretty good, so cop that too. (Photo by Tuftsmania.)

We first heard this joint a few months back on a mix at Eddie STATS‘ blog, and have been drooling over it ever since. It’s a Sizzla refix, featuring a beat by Damon Alexander called the “String Dub Riddim”. Eventually, it’ll feature the vocals of Miss Cherry, but he just couldn’t wait to let people hear it, so he laced the Sizzla lyrics over it, and BOOM, here we are. Up for freeload! Together, Damon and Cherry are called De Tropix. Warp Records has offered them a deal, and they’re currently trying to negotiate the details. “Either way,” he says, “we’ll still be doing tunes, so whatever happens it’s all about the music.” You might remember the De Tropix “So Blessed” blend? Well that riddim is about to get mixed down with original lyrics by Cherry and Natalie Storm. (Image by Mickey Duzyj.)

Chip Chop drops a new EP on Tuesday called Launch Blank. This is lazer bass fueled boom bap that uses an almost entirely electronic and heavy sound palette. It’s like digital woodshop, where the deep whir of engines fill the space, buzzsaw bass slices chip boards to the perfect shape, and nail gun drum pads hold everything in place. A mist of glitchy sawdust hangs in the air. The textures of this album are likely to take on a larger than life presence in the club, but there’s enough layers, warmth and progressiveness to keep it interesting during headphone listening, too. We streamed the neck-breaking title track “Launch Blank” a while back when it was featured on the Motion Sickness mixtape. But their label, Run Riot Records, recently released it for free download as a promo, so here it is again. (The gold-toothed, cancerous HTML character featured on the cover fits the sound of the EP perfectly.)