On April 28th I opened and closed a banger known as Dave Rave 3G at The Sycamore House in Harrisburg. DJ Business & DJ Pleasure sandwiched a pretty sick top 40/mashup set between the double dose of mayhem you can stream below. If you like what you hear, hit up flyingcircusent@gmail.com for booking or come out to my weekly residency [RSVP].
5/2/12
Olivia Bell
Flying Circus Entertainment has taken up managing the career of dance pop vocalist Olivia Bell. A Parisian born native of Cameroon, Bell currently resides in Philadelphia and has the whole world ahead of her with songs like lead single "Shut Your Mouth". Listen to the track, and follow on Facebook and Twitter!
Show Review: Shabazz Palaces
My friend Bessam asks me to play tracks by Shabazz Palaces at every Thirsty Thursday, so of course we went to see them at The Blockley on a Monday. As an added bonus, King Britt was spinning between sets and a friend of a friend's band (Ghost Craters) was the local opener. A few originals and covers (including "Wave of Mutilation") later, Shabazz took the stage and proceeded to alter all preconceptions I had of a hip-hop show. Ish Butler rapped and did live programming while Baba Maraire played various forms of percussion and served as hype man. Hype was the last word I would use to describe the show though. Intense, perhaps even mesmerizing, would describe the experience much better. I went through a progression from 'academically intrigued' through 'thoroughly impressed' to 'life changed' and then celebrated with the jubilant nu disco of !!! briefly before ducking out to catch DJ Kwestion down at Liberty Bar on the way home. Support Sub Pop's only hip-hop group however you can, and check out some shows at The Blockley. They're doing good things.
Show Review/Free Download: The Great Socio
When I saw As far as the show, it peaked when Supreem from Da Rezarekt and Alberto from The Great Socio dropped a verse and a trumpet solo, respectively, on a song from headliners Love Panther. Thereafter everyone stumbled out into the night, headed for the obligatory afters at the TGS house. They're going to be all over the place for the next few months. I plan to catch them at MOJO in Newark, DE June 20th, and they'll be back at The Grape Room July 28th. That gives you plenty of time to learn all the lyrics to this and their many other excellent jams.
3/19/12
Show Review: Darry Miller & the Veil
I finally went and saw Darry Miller and the boys at a show I had nothing to do with booking and enjoyed it immensely. The Legendary Dobbs on South Street was the venue, Friday was the night, and the place was packed. New bassist/background vocalist Josh Kirwin, formerly of Captain of Compliments, meshes well with the band's always-impeccable stage presence, and newer synth-oriented material like single "Quite the Substance" demonstrates the songwriting diversity that earned them Tri-State Indie's Central PA Band of the Year. Most impressive, however, was their cover of MGMT's "Time to Pretend", a song they've made completely their own as far as I'm concerned. Skip to 6:30 for the "Time to Pretend" cover. This is from Radio 104.5's excellent "Live @ 5" series.
The New Division, Remixers Extraordinaire
Our boys in The New Division have been very busy of late, dropping their first hip-hop remix (of Baltimore's Rapdragons):
Be sure to keep up with them on Soundcloud for all their latest remix work!
In-house producer Vaab's prog house rework of their own "Violent":
As well as their take on 2 Hearts and Chemicals' "Coming Home":
Be sure to keep up with them on Soundcloud for all their latest remix work!
Jeff Waters - Barceloneta
Two weeks on iTunes and this isn't topping charts yet? Get on it people! Jeff Waters is the man! [Buy on iTunes]
Tweet Tweet
So I finally decided I am famous enough for Twitter, or I exhausted the spamming capabilities of Facebook... take your pick.
In either case, follow @philosofoxthedj
3/1/12
Yufi Zewdu - Change Your Mind [feat. Chill Moody]
Yufi hit me up with a pre-release of this new track with Chill Moody, which I promptly premiered late night at Liberty Bar. Just goes to show the sort of excellence you may miss out on if you aren't there.
This Month At Liberty Bar
In addition to my Thirsty Thursday residency, I'll be DJing special Irish/rock/folk sets all day at Liberty Bar every Saturday leading up to and including Saint Patrick's Day. They'll be featuring green beer, Irish coffees, Tullamore Dew giveaways, corned beef and cabbage, and various other Irish paraphernalia. The 3rd I'll be opening up for DJ Harv and Plan C's new residency (you may remember them from NYE), and the 10th will be part of the Erin's Express pub crawl known as the Running of the Mick's. Check out the Facebook fan page for more details!
Show Review: Souljazz Orchestra
Ottawa's Souljazz Orchestra coaxes more varied sounds from drums, keys, and three types of saxophone than most full orchestras due from a much broader selection of instruments. For my first show at World Cafe Live, I was pessimistic about the chances of people getting on their feet, but the unique blend of originals and covers of Fela Kuti, James Brown, and others simply compelled movement. If you get a chance to see them, do it. I bought the vinyl over and above the price of a ticket at World Cafe. They are that good.
The New Division's Star Is Rising
The New Division have been upping their profile lately, performing at a pre-Oscar party benefitting Global Green, packed with celebrities like Adrian Grenier, seen above with TND frontman John Kunkel. Their focus is still broad though, as tracks from the crew's side projects just keep getting better. As John Glenn, Kunkel recently released trance track "Columbo":
Keyboardist Mark Michalski's Datsyuk project just made "Love 16" a free download on their Bandcamp page:
2/29/12
Converse "DoYaThing" Collaboration
Watch the video and then download this absurd dream [here]. Members of LCD Soundsystem, Outkast, and Blur on one track? Yes please.
Trip Lee - I'm Good [feat. Lecrae] (prod. CJ Luzi)
Christian rapper Trip Lee just dropped a new single featuring his mentor, Lecrae, who broke into the mainstream by outselling Kanye on iTunes, drawing attention from Statik Selektah and whoever selects artists for the BET cyphers, among others. "I'm Good" also happens to be produced by Flying Circus favorite CJ Luzi, whose work with OnCue has been very successful.
1/18/12
Get Free Music from NoiseTrade
While SOPA and PIPA threaten our ability to obtain free music of questionable legality and iTunes virtually monopolizes the market in paying for music, various websites have attempted to provide an alternative, and one of the best of these is NoiseTrade. They offer free downloads, frequently of entire albums, in exchange for a simple e-mail address and ZIP code, while simultaneously offering a Girl Talk/Radiohead-style pay-what-you-want 'tip' system and easy social network sharing. Today I got some excellent material from plenty of Flying Circus favorites, and I figured I could compile a list here. Click the artist name for a link to the relevant NoiseTrade download page, and I will put a link to my past show review of that artist next to it just in case you aren't sure who they are or need some help deciding whether it's worth the hard drive space.
Show Review: The P.O. Show
On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, my day job threw a benefit concert for Covenant House Pennsylvania, a children's homeless shelter in North Philly. The show started off with the musical complexities of guerrilla sticker warriors Out of the Beardspace, a prog rock outfit featuring the Berklee College of Music dropout talents of our very own Sam Gutman on keys, as well as shifting time signatures, lineup shifts, and the occasional saxophone solo. The fact that they groove a bit harder than most prog I've heard helped get the party going, and the band members were quite enthusiastic about raging on with the other acts, extreme talent not translating into extreme arrogance in this particular instance.
As you may remember, I like Lost in Company quite a bit, and not just because our own Ryan Reese plays a mean guitar. It's not too often that a band remembers the dance music origins of rock'n'roll without overusing synthesizers, and when it does the results are not often this delectable. Frontman Chris Johnson has a powerful voice, fully capable of the whispers-to-wails dynamics called for by their soulful sound. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Little Bar makes use of the same Behringer powered speakers as I do, and that they conveyed LiC's set at least as well as the more expensive setup at Hard Rock.
Banned Books is buzzing quite a bit now, and with good reason. Their spastic, overdriven beats shift tempos almost as often as those of Out of the Beardspace, while remaining consistently rhythmic enough to accompany some dope freestyle raps from our resident rappists Mikey Mo, Trizz, and La Chameleon before Banned Books frontman and our coworker Zane. As they moved into their own material, the contrast between Zane's laid back, frequently falsetto vocals and the gritty instrumentation competed for attention with the propulsive impact of the sheer noise level they were putting out. With such a compelling live show, it is no wonder they are currently leading The Deli's Philadelphia poll for the breakout artist of 2011. [vote here]
By the time resident DJ Aaron Ruxbin took over for one of his usual all-vinyl sets at the regular rock weekly, we had raised $300 for Covenant House, and had ourselves an excellent time doing it.
1/14/12
Division 87 Records
Since releasing Shadows, The New Division has been focusing on building their record label, Division 87. With releases from TND side projects as well as Argentinean electronica duo Doleips, they've been quite busy.
TND synth player Mark Michalski has been releasing some excellent tracks, primarily with vocalist Brooke Lohman, under the moniker Datsyuk (to be confused with the hockey player, not dubstep producer Datsik).
We can be looking forward to lots more great things from Division 87 as The New Division builds their electronic empire.
Show Review: The Great Socio
Around the time I got holiday busy and stopped posting, I caught one of The Great Socio's December residency shows at The Grape Room in Manayunk. The guitarless band, fronted by singer/trumpeter Alberto Munoz, throws down some serious rock'n'roll. Keys, bass, and drums round out the lineup for a full sound that almost physically impacted in the intimate space through a consistently entertaining set of originals and covers. I was most impressed by their excellent covers of songs with iconic guitar riffs rendered with keys or bass instead, like The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" and Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name". This year they are taking a brief break from playing shows to focus on recording, so we can look forward to new material in the near future.
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