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"The Drop with Danno" on GFN 광주영어방송 98.7FM in Gwangju & 93.7FM in Yeosu, Korea. An eclectic radio curation of all things musical spanning the spectrum every week. Broadcasting 8-10pm KST nightly.
Sampled & AMPED 4/20/2023
Part 1
MFSB – Love Is The Message
Lady Wray – Joy & Pain (Pete Rock remix)
ENNY feat Loyle Carner – Take It Slow
Allen Stone – Magic
Rudy De Anda – June Gloom (Smilin’)
The Ironsides - Outlines
Facts
MFSB – Love Is The Message
- The Soul Train theme song ("TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" by MFSB featuring The Three Degrees) hits #1 in America. MFSB, which stands for Mother Father Sister Brother, is a studio group established by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff at Philadelphia International Records, the famed craftsmen behind the Philly Soul sound.
- Soul Train & Don Cornelius was a local show on WCIU in Chicago before gaining massive popularity and then nationwide syndication a year later and moving to LA. The Show would remain on the air nationwide every Saturday for 36 years, influencing generations of viewers and exposing millions to the amazing funk, soul, and later hip-hop sounds of the time.
- The show’s iconic opening was of course accompanied by MFSB’s
Lady Wray – Joy & Pain (Pete Rock remix)
- The latest remix of Joy & Pain from Big Crown is out, this one featuring the remix treatment from the iconic producer and MC Pete Rock.
- This would be the flip of the 7” release, with the previously aired version of the same song getting reinterpreted by Ghostface Killah.
ENNY feat Loyle Carner – Take It Slow
- For those not familiar, ENNY has been quite the busy artist over the past 6-8 months.
- This tune features on the newly released We Go Again EP, which would be the latest to come out from the South London singer-songwriter since the release of the positively viral Champagne Problems late last year.
Allen Stone – Magic
- This latest single from one of our favorite guys in music sees the artist finding his heart’s rhythm on this tune.
- Late last week, Stone also made his 2nd appearance on American Idol as a mentor, and omg does Lizz Kalo wish that she was the artist being mentored, but alas.
Rudy De Anda – June Gloom (Smilin’)
- The latest single from the Chicago-based singer-songwriter is out from his upcoming LP, due out in 8 days’ time.
- Closet Botanist is the title, and out next Friday for those of you chronologically and/or mathematically challenged, which would be De Anda’s 2nd album on Colemine.
The Ironsides – Outlines
- The latest single is also out from this upcoming Colemine album, which would be the band’s first on the label.
- Changing Light is the title, and this tune is remarkable for its richness in sound and collaboration, featuring 22 musicians sitting in on what must have been a remarkable session. Changing Light is out May 19.
Part 2
Lonnie Liston Smith w/Jazz Is Dead – Dawn
Wnbl – Contemplation
Born 74 & Onj – Don’t Need My Shadow
LITE – Endless Blue
Dragonfruit feat Hudson – Space Traveler
Rick Wade – The Emperor
Facts
Lonnie Liston Smith w/Jazz Is Dead – Dawn
- The latest single from the upcoming JID017 album is out as of this week, presumably the last on the record before it drops in full.
- This of course is the label run by the titanic twosome of Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad. JID017 from the legendary Lonnie Liston Smith, who still sounds amazing, is out next Friday April 28.
wnbl – Contemplation
- This is the latest out from Wanubale, an ever-morphing collective out of Berlin.
- Not so sure about what’s coming from wnbl as they have rebranded at least on the spelling front, and there have been quite a few singles of late, but they’re still appearing courtesy of our friends at Germany’s Agogo Records. Big up.
Born 74 & Onj – Don’t Need My Shadow
- This is from a new EP called Mind Vibrations, which dropped exactly one week prior.
- The duo is Born 74 t/n Andrew Nicholas who hails from Bristol, and Onj is Andre Louis on the keys here.
- The EP out via Tru Thoughts of London, symbolizes connection through music and celebrates the coming together of creative minds despite the pandemic.
LITE – Endless Blue
- This is the latest single from the famed Japanese quartet, who are usually far more complicated in their typically progressive delivery.
- This tune is a far more subtle taste of lo-fi and jazz at least initially before returning to form by the finish, just a standalone single for now from the veteran band.
Dragonfruit feat Hudson – Space Traveler
- Just out last Friday is the latest EP from the group out of Rotterdam.
- The Honeymoon Phase EP is everywhere now, so go and peep, as always highly recommended from us here on the other side.
Rick Wade – The Emperor
- The latest from our main man Rick Wade is out, part of a little 3 song EP just out via Low Recordings.
- The My Soul EP would be the boutique label’s first release, so congrats to all involved there, especially our main man back in Detroit.
III & IV. AMPED
Better Lovers – 30 Under 13
Metallica – Too Far Gone
Squid – Undergrowth
Rancid – Tomorrow Never Comes
Mars Volta – Blank Condolences (Acoustic)
Militarie Gun – Very High
Jethro Tull – Ginnungagap
Cinema Stare – Bad
Royal Thunder – Fade
The Breeders – Saints
Dave Hause – Tarnish
Better Lovers – 30 Under 13
Better Lovers — a newly formed supergroup featuring current and former members of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die, and Fit for an Autopsy — are introducing themselves with their debut single, “30 Under 13.”
The band is comprised of singer Greg Puciato (ex-Dillinger Escape Plan), guitarist Will Putney (Fit for an Autopsy), and three ex-members of Every Time I Die: guitarist Jordan Buckley, drummer Clayton “Goose” Holyoak, and bassist Stephen Micciche.
The fiery single “30 Under 13” features Puciato in full scream mode during the chaotic verses before delivering a clean vocal for the trippy chorus. At the 2:15 mark, the track goes high-speed hardcore.
“Jordan sent me some already finished instrumental tracks, and they hit me at just the right time,” said Puciato in a press release. “Those tracks woke up a side of me that I thought was fully extinct but was merely evolving and changing. To my complete surprise there was still something left in that area to dig at, and the vessel for it made sense.”
Puciato has kept quite busy since The Dillinger Escape Plan broke up at the end of 2017. He has released a couple of solo albums, as well as LPs from his bands Black Queen and Killer Be Killed. He also toured multiple legs as a member of Jerry Cantrell’s solo band. Next month, he’ll kick off his first-ever full-scale North American solo tour, with tickets available here.
Meanwhile, the former Every Time I Die members are back in action after a tumultuous split with singer Keith Buckley that led to the demise of the band.
“Looking back, I’m so happy everything got me to where I am,” explained Jordan Buckley. “The pandemic and the last few years made me hungrier and more grateful. This isn’t a hobby. This isn’t temporary. This is the next evolution for each of us. Greg and Will rejuvenated me and made me even more confident. Now, everybody needs to know we’re a wild animal that just broke out of the zoo—there’s no trying to put it back in the cage.”
Metallica – Too Far Gone
Overall 72 Seasons has been well received; it currently sits at 77 on metacritic, with some reviews stating it’s one of the band’s best records in years. Some critics are unimpressed though; Clash music called it “solid but safe”, and Anthony Fantano coined the term “Mehtallica”. I certainly enjoy it more than Death Magnetic and Hardwired… but it’s not a patch on the band’s early output.
Squid – Undergrowth
UK post-punkers Squid have extended their upcoming tour with 2024 North American dates and shared their new single, “Undergrowth,” along with a video game of the same name.
“Undergrowth” comes after the album’s lead single, “Swing (In a Dream),” following a similar experimental path of expansive synth sounds, danceable bass notes, and hyperactive horns creating frantic atmospheres. Vocalist and drummer Ollie Judge does his duty with a catchy chorus and dark, yet relevant themes like morality, environmental demise, and the afterlife.
“I really got into animism, the idea that spirits can live in inanimate objects,” said Judge. “I was watching Twin Peaks, and there was the episode where Josie Packard’s spirit goes into a chest of drawers.”
He continued, “So ‘Undergrowth’ was written from the perspective of me being reincarnated as a bedside table in the afterlife, and how the thought of being reincarnated as an inanimate object would be dreadful. ‘This isn’t what I wanted/ So many options to be disappointed.’ Even though I’m in no way religious I don’t think anyone who isn’t religious is confident enough to not have had the fleeting thought of ‘Fuck, what if there is an afterlife? What if I’m going to Hell?’”
Rancid – Tomorrow Never Comes
Rancid have announced their first album in six years. The veteran punk band’s 10th studio LP, Tomorrow Never Comes, arrives on June 2nd, and features the just-released title track as its first single.
Tomorrow Never Comes follows 2017’s Trouble Maker. Like that album, the new LP was produced by Epitaph Records owner and Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz.
The single “Tomorrow Never Comes” features a three-vocal attack, with Tim Armstrong handling the verses, Lars Frederiksen taking on the main chorus, and bassist Matt Freeman belting “tomorrow” in a call-and-response extension of the chorus.
Prior to the album’s release, Rancid will headline the Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival in Las Vegas on May 28th. After that, they’ll embark on a European/UK tour that kicks off on the album’s release date (June 2nd) in Rimini, Italy, and wraps up June 25th in Tabor, Czech Republic, at the Mighty Sounds Festival. They’ll return to the States for the Louder Than Life and Aftershock festivals in the fall, with tickets to their upcoming shows available here.
Mars Volta – Blank Condolences (Acoustic)
Texas proggy rockers The Mars Volta have announced their new release, ‘Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazon,’ which serves as an acoustic re-imagining of their latest self-titled album (released September 2022). The album is set to drop on April 21st, 2023 through Clouds Hill. Here’s more info from today’s announcement:
“Much more than a simple “un- plugged” version of ‘The Mars Volta’ – the bands self titled seventh album and return as a band – this acoustic rendition furthers the mission of the source music, which drew into sharper focus the traditional Latin influences that have always inspired Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. This is, says Rodríguez- López, The Mars Volta’s version of a “folk record”, tracing the melodies and rhythms of the parent album back to their traditional Caribbean roots and chal- lenging listeners to hear the group in an entirely new light.”
They add, “The upcoming new album isn’t simply more content, but a bold, radical, political album, and one that recontextualizes the music of the group’s powerful last album within the lineage of the Latin and Caribbean sounds that Rodríguez- López has been mining his entire career, only many ears couldn’t hear past the distorted guitars to know what was going on. The songs are re-orchestrated and set to the traditional Caribbean rhythms that Rodríguez-López grew up on. Here, “Black Condolences” becomes an object lesson in this music, segueing be- tween three different traditional rhythms across its three-and-a-half minutes.”
Militarie Gun – Very High
Militarie Gun have unveiled details of their upcoming debut album, Life Under The Gun.
Due out on June 23 via Loma Vista Recordings, the first full-length from the Los Angeles hardcore gang is a record that frontman Ian Shelton jokes sounds like how he always thought they did: “It’s always felt like a melody-forward band to me, but I think now we’re finally achieving what I was always setting out to do.”
The quintet have previewed Life Under The Gun with brand-new single Very High, which Ian reveals “centres around the desire to escape the embarrassment of day to day life as much as possible. From the lyrics, to the video to the cover art of the album, it’s about struggling with something no one else sees, ‘I’ve been feeling very down, so I get very high.’”
Jethro Tull – Ginnungagap
Jethro Tull, which has Ian Anderson as the only original/longtime member, release their 23rd studio album, RökFlöte, this Friday (4/21) via InsideOutMusic, and they've announced "The Seven Decades" tour, which will have them out in the US from August through November.
A press release for the album noted that the track is inspired by the Norse mythological god Ymir, a character who is “the proto-being, a primeval being, who was born from venom that dripped from the icy rivers called the Elivagar and lived in the grassless void of Ginnungagap.”
Anderson explained the name he invented for the album title: “I started with the idea of a predominantly instrumental album for rock flute – as in rock music. When the subject material of the album presented itself, I was drawn to the term Ragnarok from Norse mythology – their version of apocalyptic end times or Biblical Armageddon. The ‘final showdown’ scenario is ubiquitous and inherent in Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, for example.”
Cinema Stare – Bad
Connecticut atmospheric pop punks Cinema Stare have announced their debut LP, The Things I Don’t Need, due May 19 via Static Era Records. Speaking about the catchy lead single "Bad," vocalist Quinn says, "The song is sort of an inner analysis of my sexuality and the relationships I was having at the time. The lyrics culminated from feeling confused and like things were moving so incredibly fast that I couldn’t confront them quick enough. Looking back on how I felt when I wrote the lyrics, I can definitely see someone who was struggling to form their own identity."
Royal Thunder – Fade
Atlanta rockers Royal Thunder have announced that their fourth album, Rebuilding the Mountain, will arrive June 16th via Spinefarm Records. The upcoming LP marks the band’s first full-length studio release in six years and the follow-up to 2017’s Wick LP.
Royal Thunder have undergone some internal changes over the years, as guitarist Josh Weaver addressed in a new statement.
“It was really a special time writing and working on this record,” Weaver said. “There were a lot of hardships we had prior to the pandemic and during, as everyone experienced. The band dissolved and toxic behavior became a priority over the music, addiction being the number one factor for things falling apart. We reconnected with our drummer, Evan Diprima, during the pandemic.”
He added, “We agreed that we needed to get our priorities straight and do the band uncompromisingly right, as in right for us. There was a huge void in us, not playing. We started writing our album immediately. We surrendered our heart and soul to each song. It felt good to work hard and create, to have what felt like a second chance to be a band again. We are thankful for the music and the healing it has brought us. We hope that the music will be a source of hope, inspiration, and healing to all that hear it.”
In addition to the new album news, Royal Thunder have released the second single off the set, the mid-tempo rocker “Fade.” The tune follows the album’s first single, “The Knife,” which arrived back in November.
The Breeders – Saints
I didn’t watch much of the Coachella livestreams, but I did manage to catch the Breeders set, the highlight of which was this song, where the band was accompanied on backing vocals by all four members of the Linda Lindas, who had just played on the same stage. The album this single comes from, Last Splash (one of the best rock albums of the 90s), turns 30 this year.
Dave Hause – Tarnish
Dave Hause has released a new song. It is called “Tarnish” and is off his upcoming album Drive It Like It’s Stolen which will be out April 28 via Blood Harmony / Soundly Music. Dave Hause’s festival Sing Us Home will be taking place in Philadelphia this May and he released Blood Harmony in 2021.