Defiant Kinetics Drops the New Science

Kicking off my impromptu UK producers series is the brand-new EP from Scarborough’s Defiant Kinetics. Even though it only spans six tracks, The Elemental EP has everything I love to hear in instrumental hip hop — dusty, finely-chopped breaks, dreamy abstract samples, a subtle but powerful funk sensibility, all topped with a light drizzle of dirty synth and accented by skilled use of delay and reverb.

The overall result is a smooth and soulful voyage through the familiar and abstract alike, and not a single moment of the music disappoints or falls short. It’s all available on a limited-run CD with exclusive stickers for just £1, but if you’re not looking for a physical product you can download it for free as well. As if it wasn’t enough on its own, D.K’s website also includes a link to his 2007 debut, Nebuliser, which is equally as fresh.

Dr. Quandary: Now On Tumblr.

I’m sure anyone who’s spent more than two or three minutes checking out this blog is aware of the fact that I don’t post very often. The truth of the matter is, I usually don’t feel like I have a lot to say, and I feel bad using this as a venue in which I can throw frivolous internet findings at my audience.

So, without further ado, I introduce the Dr. Quandary Tumblr. Stop by for a daily tidbit, be it an awesome picture, a quote from whatever I’m reading at the time or a video clip from Big Trouble in Little China.

As a result, I’m drastically changing the nature of the Dr. Quandary WordPress: from here on out, I’ll be using it to relay information to people about my work, my music and my record label, as well as showcase an occasional album or project from my circle of friends and comrades.

The Name, Sir, is Quanny Sitar

I’m currently preparing media and new answers for an interview I did with Wishtank almost a year ago now.  At the time, the web publication was in its infancy, and for one reason or another editor Garrett Heaney and I were just unable to make this piece congeal.  Until now, that is.

The interview was about my most recent EP, Quanny Sitar.  One of the questions was about the album title — it’s a bastardization of Johnny Guitar, a Western film from 1954 starring Sterling Hayden and Joan Crawford, which is a movie I thoroughly enjoy.

Check out the video below to get an idea why.  Johnny Guitar is the coolest motherfucker on the block.

“Nothing like a good smoke and a cup of coffee.”

Have you been to Baía?

Let cigar-smoking Brazillian parrot José Carioca break it down for you, classic Disney style.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the source of these clips, they’re from the 1944 feature The Three Caballeros, in which Donald Duck receives presents from his cousins all over the world, and winds up taking an enlightening journey through the cultures of Latin America.  Note the excellent music (Baía went on to become a pretty popular song) and superb cel animation.

Wishtank Doubles the Pleasure

Wishtank has been pretty kind to me since its inception a couple years back.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a constantly-changing web publication specializing in content for free-thinking humans out to better the status of the global community.  I’m proud to say that they’re currently running a cover I designed (see here or above), which has been nicknamed the “Delorean Cover,” and I had the honor of being featured in a joint interview with Thirtyseven a while back about about our project, Algorhythms.

One of the newer features at Wishtank is an ongoing free mixtape series.  At this point there have been three, the newest of which Is called Do it Twice. If you need a dose of fresh music, you can check out the details and download it here.  If you like the selection you should definitely check out the other releases in the series: “Wishtank: The Official Mixtape” and “The Wishtank Spring Mix.”

Live from Drew Jersey

Drew James is a humble producer from the humble state of New Jersey hiding behind the well-manicured facade of his self-proclaimed “genre-defying superproducer” status.

In all honesty, I didn’t know what to think at first: there’s something about unknown musicians who know they’re the shit that makes me a bit leery.  However, after a couple of comments back and forth and some new beats to listen to, he’s proven himself to be a perfectly upright gentleman who overinflates his ego on a whim, like some kind of superpower.

Since I don’t know Drew all that well, I’m not gonna get into the history or symbolism of Enola because I would be bullshitting you.  But I will say you should download the album, because a) it’s free and b) it’s full of lush, dirty, dreamy instrumental hip-hop — just the way Quanny likes it.

The Universe is Beautiful

I originally had a lot more text to accompany this post, but in the end I couldn’t do the subject justice.  I have a feeling I’ll revisit this somewhere down the line, but for now I’m adhering to the old standard that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Theoretical physicist Antony Garrett Lisi is truly an inspiration.  After getting his Ph.D. in physics from UC San Deigo, he realized the only theoretical work available at the time involved string theory.  Not agreeing with the basic tenets of the concept, Lisi was pretty much like “fuck this” and moved to Maui to take up surfing.  He spent the next several years balancing his own physics work with snowboarding, hiking, para-gliding, customizing a van, writing a science-based screenplay and attending the Burning Man festival on two separate occasions.

During this awesome, carefree life of his, he had a lot of free time to ponder the nature of the universe.  The result, a project ten years in the making, is An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything, according to which, the universe looks something like this:

“In Lisi’s model, the base is a four-dimensional surface—our spacetime—and the fiber is the E8 Lie group, a complicated 248 dimensional shape, which some mathematicians consider to be the most beautiful shape in mathematics. In this theory, each of the 248 symmetries of E8 corresponds to a different elementary particle, which can interact according to the geometry of E8. As Lisi describes it: “The principal bundle connection and its curvature describe how the E8 manifold twists and turns over spacetime, reproducing all known fields and dynamics through pure geometry.“

I like this even better than string theory’s eleven-dimensional Calabi-Yau Manifold universal model, even though theirs has a very sexy animated GIF.  Yeah, I know, it’s all a little bit complicated, to say the least.  But that’s why Lisi and the good folks at NewScientist put together this narrated animation to show how rotating the manifold reveals the relationships between different particles and forces, including that pesky gravity physicists have so much trouble reconciling:

[Concept lifted straight from The Daily Galaxy.]

Daimyo! – Self-Titled EP

Daimyo! (exclaimation point included) is a sixteen-year-old producer who joined the ranks here at World-Around Records earlier in 2008.  Despite his age and inexperience, he still manages to bring an impressive sense of sampling and structure to the beatmaking fold.  The resultant tracks are crisp, jazz- and soul-laden tunes with a truly classic feel.

His self-titled debut dropped a few days ago on worldaroundrecords.com.  Basically a best-of collection spanning his more recent works, the release might be rough around the edges, but the core is smooth as hell.  Adam Kadmon would be proud.

So check out the site, download the EP, show some love on his MySpace and, most importantly, keep your eye on Daimyo! — with a first album like this one, I don’t know what to expect further down the line, but I assure you this: it will be fire.

Roomba as a MIDI Instrument

Yes, that Roomba, and yes, it is pretty much as awesome as it sounds.  Not only can you control the monophonic beeps the thing makes, but you can control the motors, the vacuum and the LEDs, the behaviors of which are all velocity-sensitive.  Watch as Tod E. Kurt demonstrates this clever mod by playing the Pac Man and Mario Brothers theme songs.

I mean, come on — is that not amazing?  And let’s not neglect the coolest part — support for multiple Roombas.  According to the features list on Tod’s blog, RoombaMidi supports up to 16 Roombas, one per MIDI channel. That’s a veritable Roomba symphony!

Of course we’ve all seen the iBand (lame), and nowadays you can make beats on an iPod (I’ll be exploring that one at length later on), but I’m really hoping we’ll see the Roomba surfacing in more music-related instances in the near future.

You can learn more about this and other Roomba hacks, like adding a camera or Bluetooth capabilities, at the appropriately titled Hacking Roomba website.

Books on Tape

It’s been a long time since I first came into contact with Man Mantis, way back in 2002.  During that time we were both maintaining as rapper/producers, before the true advent of MySpace Music and before we both decided to stop spitting.  At the time, Mantis was still using his old moniker — “Intercooler” — although he made the final switch to his current name shortly after we were introduced.

Now, by some strange trick of fate, a good friend of his and a good friend of mine wound up boarding together during their first year at NYU, and that’s how we first got wind of each other.  Apparently my friend (the infamous Bennett Williamson of fffff.at and the GRL, AKA Watson) had passed a disc of unused beats I was trying to find rappers for back to Mantis, who had in turn chosen one and recorded a track over it.

When Watson first told me about the spontaneous collaboration, I was skeptical bordering on pissed.  Even though I wasn’t very good at the time, I was still iffy about the concept of a cat I had never even heard before rapping on one of my beats.  Regardless, I gave what he had done a listen and all of that apprehension drained away — the resultant track, “Candelabra,” was ultimately featured on my first project, MEDEVAC.

After that, Mantis and I became good friends and worked on several projects together.  When Justin Boland and I decided to start World-Around Records, he was an obvious choice for the roster, and to our surprise and delight he brought STINK TANK — his project with Laduma Nguyuza — along with him.  The collaboration features Man Mantis at his finest, dropping crisp, soulful beats reminiscent of the mid-90s, but Laduma provides the unexpected twist that really makes this album stand out: he raps in character as four different emcees.  The main persona, Dudu Stinks, is incredibly witty and articulate; Jimmy French Fries of Maryland is a living stereotype of the gangsta lifestyle; Minnesota’s Billy Buffalo is the epitome of the white rapper wannabe; and Mr. Parker, an abandoned alter-ego from Stinks’ past, makes a couple of posthumous appearances.

The end result is not a concept album, per se, but it’s still highly conceptual.  If you’re interested in getting a copy, the CD is available exclusively at worldaroundrecords.com, and it comes in a beautifully-designed Digipak featuring artwork by Cole Eggen.  If you prefer to download a digital version, it will be available on iTunes within the next month or so — but you’ll be depriving yourself of the six-track bonus EP, Books on Tape: B-Sides & Remixes, available only to CD buyers.