Beneath the Surface

(Youtube version is here.)

Not Quite a New Shifters Album

The Shape Shifters have a newish album out... sorta. It's called The Shape Shifter Army, and it popped up around the end of 2010. Accesshiphop describes it as a "[t]our only release from the Shape Shifters! Featuring greatest hits, remixes and unreleased or no longer available material!" And if you got it from them or at a show, you received a CDR in a purple slimline case featuring a pretty random track-listing, including a lot of songs that don't appear to be from their past albums. It's a little bit hard what to make of this album, exactly, with such an eclectic collection of songs, but that's fitting for the Shifters, I guess.

So just what do we have here, exactly? Let's see if we can demystify this track-listing a little:

1. G's In da House - This is a track from the incomplete and unreleased collaboration between Circus and Odd Nosdam. The whole thing would make a great official release, even incomplete, it's so strangely compelling. Just the finished tracks, "Circus for President" and the other Nosdam instrumentals would make an awesome CD or limited vinyl. But oh well. Anyway, this was leaked online as an mp3 but has otherwise gone unreleased until now.

2. Soyons Sales - This is a bi-lingual song by a group called Gourmets featuring the Shifters from 2008. This is a cool, wild song that was released on vinyl in 2008 - I wish I knew what the French MCs were saying.

3. Dig Dig Dig - This is another great song - love the hook! It's an ode to crate digging by Akuma & Factor featuring Awol and RadioInactive, from their 2005 album, Dawn of a New Era.

4. Yum Yum - This is from the Shifters' last official album, Was Here.

5. The Funkiestereo - This is the opening track to Existereo's 2004 album, Crush Groove. It's got a dope, 90's throw-back style beat with some hard cuts.

6. Get Acquainted - Another track from Akuma & Factor's Dawn Of a New Era.

7. Three the Hard Way - This one's from another Akuma album that dropped the same year as Dawn, called Eye In the Sky.

8. Tobasco - Another one from Was Here.

9. L.A. Is the Mother Land - This one's from the Existereo & Deskee album, Hopeless Crooks With Open Books.

10. Automatic Movement - I think this is an exclusive song to this CD, another unreleased track. It's a catchy, upbeat solo track by Doc Lewd. If you don't recognize Doc's name, you'll surely remember his voice from other Shifters projects like the Soul Lows album. He was also on "Get Acquainted," above.

11. S.O.T.F. - This is from Awol One's 2004 album, Self-Titled and features Circus and 2Mex.

12. Tarantulas - This is from RadioInactive's 2006 album, Soundtrack To a Book.

13. Welcome 2 America 2012 - This is a Die Young song from Soul Lows.

14. Futuristic - Another track from Was Here. I'm surprised they keep going back to that album, since it was their last official album and pretty widely released. You'd think they'd stick to rarer stuff.

15. Counter Clock Wise - This is actually "Counter Cloudwise," an OMD song from Fat Jack's Cater To the DJ compilation album, mistitled.

16. Beetleborg - This is from Adopted By Aliens, and certainly one of their most "out there" numbers, half in English and half in Spanish.

17. Miracle Business - This is fun, religiously subversive posse cut from Matre's 2009 solo album, Easter Sonday[sic.].

18. Quit Your Job - More from Was Here.

19. FEARS - Another from Awol's Self Titled.

20. Run the Crowd - And, finally, still more from Was Here.

All in all, this is an interesting little album. There's not much unreleased or unique to this disc (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that Doc Lewd song was on some obscure CD I missed). It picks out some nice gems from the lesser known extended Shifters family members' solo albums, meaning only the most die-hard fan would have all these songs already. Some exclusive remixes or something like accesshiphop promised us would've gone a long way, though. And there's certainly far too much of Was Here on here (surely anybody who would be picking up this obscure album would have that one already). So I can't help feeling a little disappointed.

If you're a major fan, this off-beat little Shifters compilation makes for a rewarding listen - certainly there's a lot of good songs. But for the rest of us, don't worry that you're missing out on anything essential. There's not much here by way of new or lost recordings, just recycled product.

Word To Your Mutha Ship

Some of you may remember this blog as the one you never got to read ages ago because AOL ate it... well, here it is, with the second half freshly rewritten:

Here's a weird, little collector's edition 7" single from a label that specialized in weird, little collector's edition 7" singles - including the Object Beings' debut I covered in a previous post. Weapon-Shaped Recordings was owned and run by Eric Steuer, music editor for Wired magazine. They later changed their tactic, signed some in-house artists (Substance Abuse, The Forest Fires Collective) and became a bit more of a "legit" label. But this, their first release, came out before all that started in 1999.

"Werd To Yer Motha-Ship" was the single off of The Shape Shifters' self-released (not on Weapon-Shaped) album, Planet Of the Shapes. It was limited to 550 copies (mine is #5) and came pressed on clear-orange vinyl in a regular paper sleeve and a folded piece of cardboard with the artwork on the front & back, and came with a little, yellow lyrics sheet. Few MCs are so well served by coming with printed lyrics, let me tell you, then Circus, who provides all the raps on this single. It's a dope track, produced by the late DJ Rob One and Mr. Fung (an alias of Shape Shifters crew member Mek One), featuring a popping beat underneath a really addictive bassline and a plethora of bizarre sounds and samples. It's one of Circus's best flows, with just ill freestyle lyrics, drifting from "MCs step off" into crazed, sci-fi nonsense and back again.

It's followed by a brief instrumental interlude produced by Transducer and entitled, "Transcend & Evolve," with a vocal sample of an exchange between Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson's characters in Easy Rider discussing the people of Venus, "Why don't they reveal themselves to us is because if they did it would cause a general panic. Now, I mean, we still have leaders upon whom we rely for the release of this information. These leaders have decided to repress this information because of the tremendous shock that it would cause to our antiquated systems. ... So now the 'Nooshins are meeting with people in all walks of life in an advisory capacity. For once, man will have a god-like control over his own destiny. He will have a chance to transcend and to evolve with some equality for all."

The B-side, "Happy Birthday Nimrod" was originally an exclusive, but later found itself on the Shifters' double album, Know Future. It's a crazy Circus solo joint, co-produced by Circus and Transducer, with a grungy guitar loop, keys by Nico "the Funky Greek," and a crazy patchwork of weird sound effects, being cut up by Actual Jae L.A. over a slow rolling beat. The lyrics are just Circus ranting insanely to the beat; here's an excerpt (note: the punctuation is how he's written it on the lyrics sheet):

"ZOG IS COMING SOON !!! THAT'S WHY WE GOTS TA HURRY HOME
BY 11:30 P.M....... SO I CAN BE DECEIVED NY MY T.V.
HOW THE WORLD WILL BEGIN ???
IN 1997 ? ONLY 42% OF THE THE UPS.PEOPLE ........ VOTED FOR THE DEVIL !!!
FOR WHAT SHALL MONKEYS DO , WITHOUT JET PACKS OR SOLAR POWER?!
YOU ARE ALL THE SAME... YOU ARE ALL THE SAME.... YOU ARE ALL ON RITALIN INDIGNANT WITH ? FEELINGS OF ABANDONMENT
READING LEVEL WELL ... RUB STICKS ?? TO START A FIRE .... 'CAUSE
ALL THE USED UP LIGHTERS ? ARE BROKEN ... LAYING IN THE GUTTER
CLEAN UP ON AISLE SEVEN !!
THERE IS A ROBOT ... AND A CAVEMAN ... HAVING A FIST FIGHT
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TARGET
PREESTABLISHED SOCIAL SKILLS .... OF GREED AND VIOLENCE !?!?
NOW THE TIME HAS COME !!!! FOR YOU TO BUST A MOVE !!!!!!!!
AND RESERVE YOUR VISIT TO THE * GOD MACHINE *
SHIT IN THE URINAL ..... OR NAME THE CAT ROVER
NOW YOU'VE GONE AND DONE IT !!
THEY HAVE COME TO TRY & FIT US WITH ???? RESTRAINING BOLTS
AS BUG EYED ANGELS OF A SUBSTITUTE GOD ARRIVE
TO WITNESS THE UNVEILING OF THE 7th CHOCODILE ..... WHILE ?
PEOPLE GATHERED THEIR MOST VALUABLE ITEMS ... FOR THE ARRIVAL ?!
OF THE FLYING SAUCER !!!!!!!!"

...And that's just a small sample of this crazy rant of a song, co-written by Circus * the Robot Impostor * 1997 (as he credits himself here in the liner notes), Jovian * MC Jackalope * and Sean Steele. It also plays backwards (i.e. you put the needle closest to the label and it plays to the outer rim - so be ready to grab the needle at the end before it skids around your player and breaks!).

So, all of the music on this (which was all recorded on an analog Tascam 8 track by the way) has now seen wider release, but you can't say this isn't still a pretty neat collector's item.

Now, the Shifters have a myspace, naturally; as does Circus... in fact, he used to do a lot of blogging on his, but has since deleted it all after a big, messy thing with his ex-wife in the comments. :/ I'm not sure what's next for the Shifters - they seem mainly to be focussing on their solo projects; and Circus hasn't announced anything in a while. I don't know about you, but I'm very ready for some new Circus material. ...And RadioInactive, too, for that matter. What's he been up to?