SebastiAn - Smoking Kills (?)

SebastiAn, "Smoking Kills (?)"

SebastiAn, "Dolami"

SebastiAn, "Shoot"

In honor of Thursday night's Ed Banger Records show at Element in the Lower East Side, here is another of the Ed Banger releases. I'll talk more about the show tomorrow, when I have a chance to catch up on sleep after pulling an all-nighter and catching the first Chinatown bus home at 7. All I'm gonna say is do not try that at home kids. Yikes, killing time in NYC at 5:30 a.m. is not a good look.

We're taking it back to the label's sixth release, before hipsters like me had any clue. This one dropped in 2005, featuring one of the best artists from that label, SebastiAn. Actually, I feel like he may be one of the most unappreciated artists in dance music today, a name that never seems to get mentioned even with the big boys of this scene like Justice and Digitalism. This single should put any way doubts as to genius of the man. What I noticed right away was the fact that SebastiAn seems more versed or more open about the influence of electro music than anyone else. I'll get into this more in the next post, but I was struck at the Ed Banger thing how essential house and dance music was to the night.

Sebastian's shit, on the other hand, seems as influenced by those early vocodered sounds as house. "Smoking Kills (?)" actually has that question mark in the title, but that's the end of the doubts for me. The title track is a fuzzed out dance track, complete with Daft Punkesque robot voice talking about how smoking kills below the layers of fuzz.

It's the B-side that kills in my opinion, as "Dolami" and "Smoke" are pure crack (don't do drugs, kids or you'll end writing a blog and lonely!). "Dolami" starts with a repetitive piano-y chord opening, adds some bass and gets rumbling. He starts to machine gun the bass at times and bring in some feedback, never quite letting it become a rager. "Shoot" is even sicker, complete with vocodered rap, great bassline and a crisp drums. Awesome stuff, my favorite of the single.

-When I started this blog a year and a half ago, I set a few goals that seemed unattainable. Some of them have already been accomplished, like passing the 100, 000 visitors mark. One that I never thought would happen went down yesterday: I got a link from Catchdubs! On the real, Nick's blog was one of my inspirations and models and it's a real honor to get a shout from him. No homo, but this has made my fucking week. Cheah!

-As the final nardchapper of this month and this summer, my fucking iPod broke yesterday, leaving me without any tuneage. It really has been one thing after another, which leaves me looking forward to September in a big way. I'm expecting at the minimum an encounter with Scarlett Johansson (maybe coffee at Last Drop and sushi?), a free mixer, some free vinyl, a new bike and news that penis size really isn't that important to women. It doesn't all need to happen, but I demand two of those things. Are you there G-d? It's me Jack.