This beautiful sad song was performed by José James at The Music of Billie Holiday live at AB - Ancienne Belgique concert. This song is particularly poignant now on the weekend of the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. 

You can find the full recording of the concert here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-s3KycDy3I


Jose James - Strange Fruit (for Trayvon Martin)

If you like this edit enough to download it - please follow me, favourite it or comment on it. Much appreciated! 

My first belated stab at a sweaty Italian disco edit - from the 1979 album Disco Fizz on Vedette Records comes Azoto's Soft Emotion.  What have I done here? Restructured and extended the song so that it has more of a natural build up - the original was too quick to give the listener the chorus I felt, kept the original ending though. Also removed the cheesy dueling guitar/fiddle bridge bit to preserve the dark dubby feel that I liked so much about this piece. Had a lot of fun playing with that infamous stereo/phase separation trick as you can hear to isolate and highlight certain elements of the track. 

Artwork kindly provided by Anna Higgie whose work is amazing, check her out! (http://annahiggie.blogspot.com/)


Azoto - Soft Emotion (Obsessive Impulsive edit)

Strictly for the dirty minded music lovers. Sometimes I hear mixes in my head (it's a nice change from the voices), but when I heard Trickski's big slow house jam from last summer all I could think was 'what would Biggie sound like over this?' Maybe it was the bluesy piano that underpins the dark soundscape which compliments his voice but I really like how this fuses together. 

I hope the Berlin duo don't mind me smutting up their nice house track but if you like the instrumental then please pick it up, as their original version builds with much more subtlety and grace than this hasty edit. http://www.junodownload.com/products/after-before-ep/1630331-02/?ref=mix

The track rides out after the vocals finish so that dj's can mix out of it wherever they like. 

Biggie x Trickski - Nasty/Pill Collins (Obsessive Impulsive mashedit)

In the 90's this song was fun. Latin music is fun. Busta Rhymes used to be fun. He's serious now but I still think his stuff is pretty special. This was fun to make. I sure hope it's fun to listen to. If you get a chance to play this out, would love to hear what the audience think of Busta going south of the border. Anyone who wants to blog this please do as I am still setting up mine.



Busta Rhymes - Dangerous  (Hayden Brown's Peligroso Latin Remix)

Heard this mashup last night at the 'J-Dilla Changed My Life' tribute at Scala in London and it blew me away. Had to hunt it down today and discovered it was conceptualised by Kon, of Kon and Amir fame - two of my favourite NY crate diggers.  Much love to them, much love to Dam Funk and of course Biggie. 

Find this track plus many more diggers delights on Kon's blog:
http://playin4keeps.blogspot.com/

Dam Funk and Biggie - Hood Pass Intact/Going Back to Cali (Kon mashup)

This gem of a track is a live version used as the 'outro' to the Black Wax DVD, which was recorded in 1982 at the Wax Museum Club in Washington DC when Gil performed with Amnesia Express. This version for me trumps the album versions as it's energy captures the live aspect of jazz more faithfully, whether it's the amazing solos or his little blurb in the middle about his frustration with how the music is classified, or simply his velvety singing!

The sound quality isn't brilliant as I suspect this DVD may have been bootlegged from a VHS (which was the original format this footage appeared on), A nice one to have in the collection though. I can highly recommend picking up the DVD if you're a fan of his, as it's peppered with little skits and asides of his poetry and social commentary as well as the great live performance. 

Gil Scott-Heron - Is That Jazz  (Live at Wax Museum Club DC with Amnesia Express 1982)

1. Michael Jackson - The Way You Make Me Feel (Jay Dee x JRocc remix) 
    2. Celestial Choir / Joubert Singers - Stand on the Word (Larry Levan remix)
    3. Lamont Dozier - Going Back To My Roots 
    4. Hugh Masekela - Mama
    5. Michael Jackson - I Can't Help It (Todd Terje edit)
    6. Q - The Voice of Q
    7. John Ozila - Chant N Boogie (Pat Les Stache edit)
    8. Barbara Mason - Another Man (Baresi's dub edit)
    9. Loose Joints - Is It All Over My Face 
    10. Daniel Wang - The Twirl
    11. Osborne - Outta Sight (Like Vibert remix) 
    12. Seiji - Dope Test
    13. Enzyme Black - Oh My Daze 
    14. Ike - Diskadenz
    15. Afefe Iku - Mirror Dance (Yoruba Soul mix) 

    The first track doesn't exactly belong in this mix however it just recently landed on my desk and as someone down for spreading the legacy of Jay Dee (and MJ for that matter) I had to throw it in, a brooding take on a classic. The next 3 tracks straight after that are monsters, some of my absolute favourites - disco but somehow not strictly disco. A lot of disco/house lovers will already be aware of the gospel genius of Celestial Choir - Stand On the Word, but for the handful of those who haven't heard it I put that in for you! What a ride if you are hearing that for the first time.   

    We venture onto the disco rollercoaster for a while before it gets dark all of a sudden and things start to get a bit heavier. If you're still grooving along to Osunlade's Yoruba Soul polemic at the end then thank you for listening, much respect.  

    Image by Kuniyoshi (click on it to see the whole thing, Soundcloud always crops it)

The Future is Back There Part 2

Another fun take on a classic hip hop track, this time early 90's Dj Polo and Kool G Rap's 'Ill Street Blues' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxysgIzX3Ps) mixed with a heavily chopped cut from one of my favourite producers of all time Quincy Jones. Kool G Rap's flow is amazing and his narrative of the seamy underbelly of daily life being a goon for hire in pre-Giuliani New York seemed to fit so well with this theatrical funk sequence.   

Props to the man Keith in Montreal for suggesting the acapella.

Quincy Jones x Kool G Rap - Ill Street Burrs (Hayden Brown remix)

'Shut your eyes and picture the scenario for a second - It's a crisp autumn Sunday and you're enjoing a much needed sleep in when you are woken by the smell of coffee dancing it's way from the kitchen to your room, accompanied by the faint soundof AM radio and something delicious being cooked up in the frying pan. It's time to join the land of the living. A scraggy haired hybrid mess of pajamas, warm jumper and socks, you stumble downstairs to see what's cooking. Mmm, smells good - mushrooms and bacon served with perfectly cooked brown toast - and yes, that coffee was for you. Absent mindedly grazing on your prize, you cast a stoney eyed gaze out the window. You sense the contrast of how cold it is out there and how warm it is in here. People are rugged up with hats, scarfs and coats, you see fresh steam rising from house vents into a cloudless blue sky, a young mother pushing a stroller with a child wrapped up like a present, a gruff man is walking his terrier who is excitedly cold and clearly pissed off that he doesn't have a coat too. "Thismust be what Paris is like in the winter", you think. "You're going mad" comes your brains reply. But that's fine, who needs their head together on a Sunday morning? As you get lost in a big newspaper, reading articles of fascination that you never have time for during the week - time slips by and before you know it it's 2pm. This is your soundtrack.' 
I realise that some of these songs might already be familiar to people, but I'm pulling out all the stops to capture the mood just right, to make my perfect Sunday morning soul mix. If you feel this material, hopefully it can be yours too.
~Hayden


OLD GOLD SOUL

This is a snippet from my upcoming mix 'Without Even a Single Slice of Pizza To My Name' that I'll be uploading later this week. Sometimes two tracks just fit so well together you have to let them make sweet love on your turntables and share the results. But this is just messing about - the two individual tracks are amazing in their own right so that being said, hunt them down and enjoy them for what they are. 

Pilooski - AAA x Actress - Maze (snippet)

Logg was the brainchild of legendary disco producer Leroy Burgess - with only one self titled ablum released on Salsoul in 1981, Logg was rumoured to have formed to continue what Burgess and his bandmates started without having to fulfil their previous contractual obligations as the band Convertion. You've Got That Something was a disco funk number whose chord progressions and uplifting vocals sound suspiciously like the precursor of house music to me.

The original version of Dj Honda and Mos Def's Travellin Man is one of the most raw and soulful hip hop songs of it's era showcasing Mos' singing abilities years before Umi Says surfaced. This was recorded presumably during Mos' fleeting late 90's love affair with Japan which also yielded a couple of great cameos on Dj Krush's album Milight that are worth digging out. This edit was made as a bit of fun and doesn't do justice to the raw emotion of the original so please watch it in all it's glory here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlsDPN-Tjks

Hopefully this can enrich a few sweaty dancefloors before the summer is out. This one is called the Rugged Radio Edit because I'm working on a second edit called the More Leroy Soulful Edit which is extended and features more of LB's vocals. It's a little genre crossing experiment - If you like good hip hop and disco in equal ammounts as I do, then this might just work for you. 

Logg x Mos Def (Hayden's Rugged Radio Edit)

A little beat I made eons ago on the MPC where I was experimenting with recording the same sample in both stereo and mono, which you can hear on this if you listen closely. Threw a bit of Michael on top for good measure. The image is of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the artist whose record I sampled to make this.

Have been noticing lately that Soundcloud tracks play back at really low volume, I'm guessing they are scared of lawsuits if someone damages their hearing or something. Please download this if you like it, if only to hear it at the normal volume! 

Hang On (snippet)

Dj / Producer / occasional Music Journalist and Sound Engineer from West Australia. Lived briefly in New York and Montreal before settling in the UK. I also make Dj mixes for my friends and put them up here along with the odd remix/edit.

Hayden Brown

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