Listening - Sunday, Nov 10th 2019
- Child’s View – Minna No Yuenchi (2000 Childisc)
- Silent Poets - To Come… (1999 Idyllic)
- The Arsonists & Anomolies / El Battalion – Blacklisted / MC Squared (1999 Sub)
- Aceyalone / Dilated Peoples – Rappers, Rappers, Rappers 12 For 10 / Strength (1999 Full Frequency)
I think I’ve finally (already) reached the end of the Anomolies catalog, which primarily consists of alternate versions of their collaborations with Silent Poets on To Come…. There’s one track listed on discogs that they are listed as guests on, and they all have at least one or two solo releases or side projects. So there’s more to look forward to, but I wish they’d done a whole series of albums with Silent Poets. Those tracks on To Come… are iconic.
I also finally tracked down (well, in today’s internet – I basically just decided to look, discovery wasn’t the problem) the original version of To Come…. My introduction to the album was via the French alternate cut with a shuffled track order and dub versions of several songs. I was a little sad to discover that the Anomolies tracks are exactly the same on both versions, but I liked the non-dub versions of songs I know way better in their alternate forms, and there was a little Fork In The Road that was brand new to me. I think I’m glad to have started with the French version though, because that Ursula Rucker collab is absent from the original, and that is also a longtime favorite.
I guess I was digging into some new discoveries from old favorites yesterday since I also made another notch into my Nobukazu Takemura completism with this really early remix album Minna No Yuenchi that reworks his first post-hip hop / acid outings as Child’s View in the most delicious early 2000s broken digital fashion. I’m totally unfamiliar with the remixers (and for a brief moment of confusion I thought I’d unearthed yet another alternate solo EP from Takemura) but making my way through the sadly obscure catalog of Childisc is another one on my bucket list, so I’m sure I’ll spend more time with them eventually.
Hard to choose a favorite but that Wunder mix stood out with vocals and almost pop-ish brevity. I think Asao Kikuchi could have reduced his two mixes to one, but I can’t blame him for wanting to try every angle with the original material – that early digital post-turntable Takemura includes some of his best work.