The Oxhorn Music Mix

Roxy Music lead that glimmering wave of 80’s world-beat synth pop, that, for a brief, brief moment seemed set to change the timbre of music for eternity. Listening to Roxy Music, it comes as no surprise that Brian Eno - soundscape architect and Talking Heads/U2/Coldplay collaborator - was a founding member.

Avalon is the final album Roxy Music recorded. It remains a brilliant, thickly layered exuberance, bursting with acoustic peals and electric shivers. Avalon is best known for the hit More Than This, also performed by 10,000 Maniacs and powerfully by Bill Murray (as Bob Harris in the most poignant scene from Lost In Translation).

However, Avalon is full of powerful songs. The Space Between stands out as much for the deep groove as the mesmerizing improvised movements carried out across a dozen instruments drenched in syrupy effects. Ferry croons about a relationship not quite right.

The way I see it
This relationship ain´t right
The space between us
Better close it up tonight
The space between us
Close it up tonight
The way I see it
This relationship ain´t right
The space between us
Listen here listen, listen here listen
We better
Close it up tonight

After the initial theme is established by the bass, drums and a funky guitar, the wild things come out to play. Saxes, synths, percussion and un-nameables ricochet across the shimmering surface. Around 2:40 Roxy Music tighten the groove ever so perceptibly. What initially sounds like a blistering pattern on repeat shatters into a thousand, beautiful echoes.

Sounds like the love child of: Talking Heads and Brian Eno

Download The Space Between by Roxy Musicc

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Photo by Jlacpo

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A big, sluggish alternative rock song full of chunky chords, Candy lets Martin Sexton’s overpowering voice… overpower. Sexton’s range, from low to high, vibratto, falsetto, and a bunch of other latin words, sends shivers every time I hear them. Candy is one of the many highlights from Sexton’s album The American. Sexton is more than a powerful singer, though, he is a master story teller.

Hey little jail bait
Tell me a story
Let me bum a smoke and we can chat a while
I only need a moment
One moment in your glory

Lyrics delicate, precise, but obscured by the smoke as well. A metaphor so clear it’s meaning nearly disappears. When it does, Sexton’s voice remains, roaring and rising, raging and resigning.

Sounds like the love child of: Dave Matthews and Van Morrison

Download Candy

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Get The Americanon Amazon.com

Photo by Peter Kelly

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Here’s a Romantic Mix of Downtempo Lounge Music for Valentine’s Day with a strong Brazilian flavor. Let’s call it something special for the ladies. Download these songs and press play. You’re sure to have an enjoyable night.

Valentine’s Day Romantic Downtempo Music Mix

right click to “save as”
Thunderball “Solar”
Phoenix “Definitive Breaks”
Lemon Jelly “Stay With You”
Basement Jaxx “If I Ever Recover”
Babel Gilberto “August Day Song [King Britt Remix]”
Eddie Harris “Theme in Search of a Movie”
Milton Nascimento “Clube Da Esquina No. 2″

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This recording of Cocaine Blues by Blind Reverend Gary Davis, sounds like it’s gonna fall apart under the crush of all the cobwebs and dust. But the Reverend’s brilliant, sparkling finger picking provides the momentum to keep the edifice intact.

Despite his backwoods birth in 1896, Davis’ unique guitar technique was a huge influence on the folk and blues revival of the 60’s, and can be heard in The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan and Jorma Kaukonen.

Cocaine Blues evokes a stroll through humid country, fragrant pastures, religious revivals moonshine, barbecue, old men on rocking chairs chewing dip on their porches. You can hear it all in the steel plod of the bass notes, one-two, one-two, the march steady like a steam engine pulling a long train of cars. The treble arpeggio betrays the grace and majesty of the locomotive coming round the bend, while Reverend Gary Davis listens and plays this song.

Sounds like the love child of: Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson

Download Cocaine Blues by Reverend Gary Davis

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Get The Complete Early Recordings.

Photo by Bill Smith

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Emcee/DJ/Producer/Musician/Artist Edan is a master of musical collage. His second LP, Beauty & The Beat is a rich psychedelic tapestry, punctuated with soundgems pilfered as readily from 60’s and 70’s rock & roll as from funk and rap. Combine this with blistering lyrical imagery steeped in hip hop history and a humorous, even humbling, dose of self aggrandizing and you have yourself one the best albums of 2005. Shedding the silliness that permeated earlier release Primitive Plus (which is still a damn good album), Edan comes into his own.

shoot my television walk out doors and explore
with the innocence of kids age four
I frolic in the sand with a colony of ants
my particles expand building oxygen in plants
from Rakim to Caz to Lakim Shabazz
illogically advanced with a knowledge of the past”Download Making Planets

Edan has associated himself with some of the rawest, most significant and established emcees and djs in the underground and in the biz at large. For example, check out his jam, Cut Chemist remix of Torture Chamber featuring Percee P.

In addition to time tested emcee, Beauty and the Beat features, Mr. Liff, Dagha and Insight.

Incorporating vintage pedals and digital effects keeps his show live, hitting hard on reverb and delays at key moments. Moving from the tables to the mic, to both at once is a feat few in the world can do well.

In addition to all that, dude does his own album art and has a singer/songwriter folk project on the side. Plus he’s environmentally conscious…“I don’t think human beings right now are doing too much to assess their relationship with nature, and just the natural ways of this world. Ultimately it’s about saving ourselves because once we cross that line the world will shit us out and revitalize and bloom once again as if we never even existed. It’s not really about save the earth as, respect the earth and save ourselves. And respect each other and love each other. And know that love is all we got here, and make most of our actions stem from that.”
- Grand GoodThe combination of all these seemingly disparate elements is Edan Portnoy, a hiphop jabberwok.

The artist receives an Oxhorn rating of “if you haven’t heard it, I will hunt your ears with a soundgun”

Check out Edan’s official page or his label Lewis Recordings.

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