Tales of Interest, Thursday Edition: Good News, Bad News

Bad News

• Atmosphere's When Life Gives You Lemons... kind of sounds like he decided to make a Will Smith album. I liked him a lot better when he was angry.

• I came across Mike Doughty via the Interface and his acoustic set with his buddy Andrew 'Scrap' Livingston on the cello. It was a really cool upbeat performance, but unfortunately his album is horribly, horribly, over produced to the point where it in no way resembles what he did on the interface.

Good News

• Wolf Parade's At Mount Zoomer is a month away (June 17). A lot of people are going to be more excited about this than me, but I'm still very interested to hear the finished product.

• As you may be able to tell, I spent some time catching up on my interface videos ... I really enjoyed the one by 19 year old soul singer Adele. View it here.

• Matthew from i(heart)music has a Sunparlour Players CBC Radio 2 performance.

• Allan forwarded me a CD from Frightened Rabbit called Midnight Organ Fight... both Allan and Charles from Heartache with Hardwork are saying its their favourite of the year so far.

Strictly Leakage.... is not a porno movie... its Atmosphere's newest album

You know how they say the best things in life are free, well, that might not be exactly the case with Atmosphere (emcee/Slug and producer/Ant)'s newest, freest, release, but its worth a once through at least for the production (which is heavy on the 70's retro, funk, soul). Atmosphere, the Minneapolis rap duo, is scheduled to release its full length When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold later this year, and has released Strickly Leakage as a "token of [their] appreciation for [me]" ... I'm blushing, really, stop it. You shouldn't have.

I think the best way to look at this freebie (downloadable here and probably at every torrent site across the internet), is as a collection of b-sides that didn't make the cut for the full-length LP. Although, with Ant's production you'd never know that these were beats that couldn't cut it. So, its not as tight as 2005's You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having, which was angry, intense, and a great, great, rap album. But, on the whole, I'd say SL is a pretty solid value for your dollar.

From Strickly Leakage:
Atmosphere - Crewed Up ft. Stage One, St. Paul Slim, Muja Messiah, YZ, Brother Ali, Toki Wright & Blueprint.mp3

Because I think Ant is at his best with Brother Ali (Ali's 2007 The Undisputed Truth):
Brother Ali - Daylight.mp3
Brother Ali - Faheem.mp3