Tag: Ice T

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Singer/songwriter and guitarist Laura Weinbach is the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles-born daughter of a horror filmmaker and the sister of a cult comedian. As a child Weinbach grew up in a household and community that proudly embraced eccentricity: her next door neighbors were circus contortionists with emus and fang-toothed monkeys as pets — and some of her favorite childhood activities included snail hunting and spying on celebrity neighbors like Slash, Ice-T and Mark Linn-Baker, the guy who played Larry on Perfect Strangers. Unsurprisingly, Weinbach’s upbringing manages to be present throughout her work in Foxtails Brigade — from the lyrical imagery, to the hand-drawn artwork and the sophomoric Insstagram cartoons she posts.

Since their formation, the project has released three full-length albums — 2011’s full-length debut The Bread and the Bait, released through Antenna Farm Records; 2012’s sophomore effort Time Is Passed, released through DIY Records; and 2016’s self-titled album released through OIM Records. Their previously released material was centered by hazy chamber folk melodies and spectral strings with songs reaching inward – but interestingly, Foxtails Brigade’s Jeff Saltzman-produced third album found the Bay Area-based act completely reinventing their sound. The material on that album featured peculiar percussion and synths paired with Weinbach’s guitar work with the band’s sound exploding outward in all directions. Additionally, the band focuses on crafting material with a directness and clarity without sacrificing the intricacy of their previously released work.

Foxtails Brigade support the release of their third album with touring across the Pacific Northwest, Southern California, the Midwest and South, as well as a tours opening for Emily Jane White across the East Coast, France and the rest of the European Union. Live, the Bay Area-based act’s live show is a meshing of junkyard beats, warped orchestral sonics, Weinbach’s gorgeous vocals and classically trained guitar work paired with a rotating cast of collaborators, who have played with Bright Eyes, Van Dyke Parks and John Cale.

According the band’s website, they’re currently working on their fourth album but in the meantime, Foxtails Brigade released a split 7 inch single with the Colorado-based act Kramies. The Bay Area-based act’s contribution to that split 7 inch is the contemplative “On The Other Side.” Centered around a shimmering and atmospheric arrangement of looping, classically-inspired guitar, twinkling keys and Weinbach’s gorgeous vocals, the song may be the most straightforward folk song they’ve released in some time — but while evoking the wintry chill of a Northeastern winter night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Everlast’s Searing Indicment of Instagram Culture

Born Erik Francis Schrody, the Valley Stream, NY-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter, guitarist and emcee Everlast is a multi-Grammy Award-winning and multi-platinum selling artist. best known for as being the frontman and co-founder of House of Pain, a member of hip-hop supergroup La Coka Nostra, which featured members of House of Pain and others, and for an lengthy solo career that he can trace back to the late 80s as a member of Ice T’s Rhyme Syndicate collective; but he’s probably best known for his critically and commercially successful sophomore album Whitey Ford Sings the Blues, which featured smash hits “What It’s Like” and “Ends,” and for his Grammy Award-winning collaboration with Carlos Santana “Put Your Lights On.” 

Everlast’s seventh full-length album Whitey Ford’s House of Pain was released last month through the Valley Stream-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s own label Martyr-Inc.. The album is the first batch of new material since 2011’s Songs of the Ungrateful Living and the album’s latest single “Don’t Complain” is centered by his imitable gruff and raspy vocals and a bluesy production featuring strummed acoustic guitar and boom bap drumming — and much like the bulk of his solo catalog, the single is a searing indictment of the phoniness and douchebaggery of Instagram culture, in which everyone hides their misery and discontent with all the cool shit they’re doing, all the cool shit they own and so on.  As Everlast says in press notes,  the song is “about some Hollywood cats I find humorously douchey,”

The recently released video follows a greedy and cynical talent agency, who picks a homeless man off the street to make him famous, only to drop him back on the street a few months later. Throughout the video subtly points at what happens to this man’s soul as he’s becomes a celebrity of sorts, drinking, drugging and womanizing with some influence and power — to cruelly lose it. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Mello Music Re-Releases Another Single from a Rare Early 200os Collaborative Effort Featuring Ice-T, Kool Keith and Others

. The third and latest single “More Freaks” features a collective of emcees rhyming about pimping, hustling, being a bigger badass than anyone else, complete with ridiculous pop culture references, surreal imagery and punch lines that are both hilarious and morally bankrupt over a sample that features a looped horn sample and enormous, old school-leaning boom bap drum programming reminiscent of a sleazier version of Mary J. Blige’s “Real Lov

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rare and Trippy Hip-Hop All-Star Collaboration Meshes R&B, Soul, Synth Pop and West Coast Hip-Hop 15 years Before Their Time

Earlier this month, I wrote about Analog Brothers, a brief collaborative project featuring  Ice-T, Pimp Rex, Kool Keith, Marc Live and Black Silver that recorded an extremely rare album Pimp to Eat back in 2000; in fact, the album is […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

As the story goes, back in 2000 Ice-T, Pimp Rex, Kool Keith, Marc Live and Black Silver teamed up for a project that they dubbed Analog Brothers, and they recorded an extremely rare album together Pimp to Eat; in fact, the album is so rare to me at least, that I didn’t know it existed — and I bet that you didn’t know it did either. According to Ice-T, the original masters of Pimp To Eat were delayed when Kool Keith’s vocals were stolen during the melee that followed the Indiana Pacers vs. Los Angeles Lakers NBA Finals game on June 19, 2000. Of course, no one actually knows if that’s some insanely true and legendary story or if it’s something someone just made up.

In any case, Mello Music Group will be re-releasing Pimp to Eat on June 10, and the re-release’s first single “We Sleep Days” feat. Jacky Jasper possesses a acid-tinged and futuristic production that paris shimmering and oscillating synths and stuttering boom-bap beats with some of the most talented emcees out there trading fiery bars about pimping, hustling and drug dealing. Sonically, the song sounds as though it evokes a hip-hop alternate universe in which Outkast and Too Short managed to collaborate together.