Well, Buck 65 recently passed through Australia on a whirlwind tour which was surprisingly low key and perhaps underpromoted. If you managed to catch him (and his partner Claire Berest) at one of the shows then you’d know that despite the disappointment that many of us shared with his last album Secret House Against The World, that his live show is still great and that the new material showcased was pretty fantastic.
I caught him at the Sydney show at the @Newtown and despite a very husky voice caused by illness and a long flight, he managed to pull off with finesse and style. And Claire, well . . . amazing.
Anyway, Buck has put together a nifty little downloadable ‘mixtape‘ on his website which sees him rhyming over the top of Trans Am, John Fahey, Broadcast and others – in old school NY/JA stylee. Its pretty great – and is a lovely ‘filler’ until his new album is ready later in the year. If you caught one of the shows then you’ll no doubt recognise a few of the rhymes from recent tour!
Strong Arm is a “mixtape” in the New York-style underground hip hop sense of the word . . . with a twist. None of the instrumentals are from hip hop records. The music comes from the worlds of punk, classical, folk, library music, everywhere else.
It was recorded in a day on a budget of $0 and it shows. This is a scrappy piece of work. There are loud vinyl pops, mistakes, vocal glitches… In other words, it’s very lo-fi.
Considering the patch-work, collage-style assembly and that everything was done by me, by hand, in my bedroom, I’m calling this Language Arts Part 7.
Grab it while you.
