This is what happened

Whoa, it feels like it's been to eternity and back since i wrote a blog post. To be really honest I was not sure to write one again. But here I am. In a recent (that moved us here) post DTYD asked: "what happened to the dinosaur dog blog?" Well, I'll try to wrap what happened to me in a few sentences.


Several things have happened to us in the previous months... We traveled a bit, we worked, we found badly paid internships in cool firms, we finished uni... You know, trying out to figure what you want or will to do with your life.

Personnaly, I've met new people, I've been busy making music with talented people (thx Lucas), Djing with my dearest friends and We've been organising a tour for another (canadian) Friend. I've traveled to Berlin to meet my beloved Putulips, we went to the Berghain, BIG TIME. He is now hanging out with the deep house steyoyoke label (really cool stuff).
 


But we did not stop making music and we did not give up digging for good records. Anyway, it really was a pleasure to hear from you DTYD, you are our one truest blog-friend (if there is such a thing), and we all appreciated your concern about us ;). Everything now has cooled down.

Here are my present favorites: I've been madly in love with recent off-recording releases. Especially their basses, yep:
 



I try not to succomb to post-rap game but this is beautifully executed, almost look like an ad. (Thank you Tomas for teaching me about rap):

 


 La préférence nationale:


 And finally, pop songs:
NZCA/Lines - 'Airlock' // AllSaints Basement Sessions from AllSaints on Vimeo.

Cigarette butts

We guys have it real good, we guys are pretty lucky. We’re a bunch of rich, taken care of, lucky bastards. Not instagram rich rich, but still, even if we’re pretty much shit at dealing with money. But we have it real easy. We know no big drama except for the rare « Grandpa died » thing, and « my parents are divorced » thing, but really, we kinda don’t know shit about anything. 

Yeah, some of us worked during summer to pay for I don’t really know what technologic gadget who died six months later when you sat on it. Some us went through rough times but like cuts they’re mostly self-inflected and we have nobody but us to blame for ‘em.

I guess that’s why we go to the movies, that’s why we try a bunch of drugs one or twice (or more cause we’re rich), that’s why we fuck friends while drunk or strangers while sober or both. We’re all running after emotions which explains why I fucking love music and Charli XCX’s Blood Orange remix. We’re just buying emotions just like we buy beers by half a dozen. Feelings. That’s why we smoke, that’s why we quit smoking (the pain, the excruciating pain), that’s why we run and hurt ourselves, that’s why we’re driven mad in the subway because there are so many girls, and so little time, and what if we took our chances? And we fuck our brains out with regrets in advance and what ifs and what nots.

But once in a while, I guess we can be pretty happy, for moments. Like when a girl puts on your shirt and just catwalks with her boobs perking underneath, just catwalks towards you with a look that asks for more. For more dreams more bed more drugs more lust more lies more head more love more fear more fun more pain more flesh more stars more smiles more fame more sex, like Cure used to sing.

I like One for Kenny, the third track of Idjut Boys new album because it slowly builds a momentum of emotion. Lost between broken disco, jazz and balearic whatever (this just means sun-kissed sun-goldened music), the first three minutes just hang there like sounds from a broken record player. They're just there and the rythm just goes on but nothing happens but my foot claps. It’s a track as danceable as an epilepsy crisis, until it decides to be something : suddenly you’re in a piano bar and 20 dollars cocktail are piling up on the table and it sounds like a cavalcade and a rush of adrenaline. Some of it is extremly good and some of it will raise a few eyebrows. Perfection may just be a synonym for lifeful : three minutes of waiting, drum beats like irregular heartbeats, three minutes of thinking and hesitation and then the jump. Three minute to gather your strenght, and three to get the girl, and the last seconds to kiss her. Go tiger.

GIRLS DO IT BETTER

I don’t know if it’s the exhausting heat, or public holidays but the summer seems pretty long this year.  As migratory birds, peoples left the grey horizon, the dust and the weird smell of rain on hot concrete for better locations filled in by the perfume of sunspray. The few left curse those who have the chance not to be there, and notice that there are a lot of weird peoples in town during summertime. Fun fact: even girls’ shortened flowery dresses do not seem interesting or attractive.  And it gets worse with the alcohol running through my veins. But good things could happen even within the most desperate situations.

I was really found of this girl, a long time ago and it did not end pretty well. So when news from her popped out of my mailbox, my bones shook, and the sweet excitations of far off times somehow reminded me how it feels. Only sweet remembrance of someone you thought lost for too long can provoke it. Or, you know, girls.

It’s inept to introduce a band with the most patent failure in my love life, but its music has been produced by passion, ‘cause the two girls of THEESatisfaction are in love (well, that what’s the Internet says anyway). And yes I’m a bit awkwardly romantic now.  

In today’s saturated swaggy-shiny and in the end meaningless hip-hop fashion, one place seems outdated by the quality of its production, its constant experimentation and the ideal it held. From the ashes of Jimmy Hendrix and the grave of Grunge music, Seattle is surprisingly an Eldorado for those who believed that the equation of a good song is not resolved by the addition of slow beats and low pitched voices. No, hip-hop is not dead, not yet.

Among this massive (good ass) quality production, THEESsatisfaction’s singularity shines like rainbow in the dark. The tone of their melancholy beautiful half rapped / half sang song reminds some good old days, when Lauryn Hill with fellow rappers Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel recorded the magic album, “The Score”.

The quality of the vocals is not the only interesting thing in THEESatisfaction. In the vein of Shabazz Palaces their instrumentals is a mix of weird minimalist loops, and old school soul samples. And the whole is surprisingly catchy as on their first album, “awE naturalE” released in March.

As Shabazz Palaces, the band is signed on the legendary label “Sub Pop”, which reputation has been made by the quality of its productions, from Nirvana to Fleet Foxes. When Portland is mocked, being too much hipsterish, its older sister seems to have succeeded in mixing indie and hip-hop culture. Girls can do it so much better.

It’s the fifteen of august and Virgin Mary celebration makes the city even more boring as it is usually. But sometimes the way out is as simple as a phone call.

P.S: Lautrec, French MC, just dropped a massive song. And because he raps about depressing life in big city during summer, I felt this could fit in here. One Love.

ETERNAL OUTSIDERS

At this time last year, I was drinking. I was working during the day, but my life revolved mostly around drinking. Days and evenings were hot, even besides the pool, and the sun was too shiny too, even behind black glasses. Days were too hot even when I drove my Austin around, windows and roof opened. I spent my time between the ashtray, the fridge, and the water, smoking, drinking, and bathing naked, and the light ate my face while I grew bored.

I dreamt of Australia in the summer. I dreamt of Cairns, of the Rain Forest and the Great barrier reef, of heavenly beaches, and I dreamt of spending days locked up in a motel room to smoke, drink, and watch Nickelodeon. I could see myself go out and walk or swim under the tropical rain when the weight of the sky would melt down with a clocklike regularity, every day at the same time, and fall on my face. I’d swim in the kitsch bean-shaped pool with the amphora fountain, and rain would beat drums on the roofs and the grass will shine, and sometimes I’d hear thunder, and everything would be waterlogged and rain would stream everywhere and I’d be better, I’d be fine.

I dreamt of Australia but I only had Foster to swallow and cigarette butts to crash from the pool, before going to boring parties with a liberty shirt and docksides. The city was taunting me, dusted by light, splotted by heat, she was shining like mirrors in the August brightness, her roads whitened by the sun, when I looked like shit.

I did not want to be sober. I knew I’d be in hell, so I just drank to quiet my brain. I drank anything, but mostly gin, and my brother worried. I read Echine, and The Sun Also Rises, and Under the Volcano, and drank but went through hell still, under the burning sun of the Virgin’s day, burning in front of the calm water, and I was thankful for the ice cubes to imprison everything in my glass.

At that time, I was an outsider. It’s better than « imposter », it’s less pretentious since I did not write Pills and soap, and it really has a nice ring to it. I’m an eternal outsider, and we, at Dinosaur dog, are eternal outsiders. It means you could do real shit if you just cared enough to persevere. It means you could do real shit if you weren’t too lazy to do them after you started. One year ago, I was wasted and my talent was wasted. I was a wreck, but, hey, everybody has to hit rock bottom once in a while. Drinking was fine, there’s something appealing and comfortable in it, though I’m not too proud of that, but I got my shit together in the end. And, don’t worry, I got the girl.

One year ago, I listened to Kisses sunny disco pop, and well, their new track came out yesterday. It's produced by Pete Wiggs, from St Etienne. It’s already old, but we’re not doing it for the fame, we’re doing it out of love, and for the memories.

LONG STORY SHORT

Dinosaur Dog was the name we gave to the flavoured musical-blogging whose quality, we like to believe, does not lie in the unstoppable race for news. Long story short it’s also after 2 years of existence the name of an eternal comeback, of an unrelenting struggle between inspiration and procrastination. Anyway we’re not gone, we’re just there. Just to let you know.

A long time ago, Nas was also the name the crowd gave to the quintessence of great hip hop, of a MC who released probably one of the best album in rap history, 1994’s Illmatic. Apart those “ups”, the story of Nas has also been rythmed by great downs, such as in the end of the 1990’s. The god’s Son got lost somewhere in the twists and turns of fame.

  

The discontinuity of Nas discography was probably sealed right after he released the one masterpiece we evocated before. How to compose after such an Everest of poetics and mastered produced beats? History taught us how difficult it is to be a constant game changer in music. But not impossible.

  

Life is good came after 4 years of silence for Nasty Nas, 4 years during which he had to deal with the vicissitude of life: his divorce with R’n’B singer Kelis, his child growing up, or you know just the difficulty of existence. Adult life takes its toll.

And that’s what that album is about. Acceptance. Acceptance of the changing and vanishing of time, of the obstacles one has to face, of what is lost and will never be paid back.  Acceptance and Faith because living is the only piece of satisfaction we have. And in the end it is not that bad. Nas turns 38 and his existential-unbeatable stream of consciousness flow has not dried up.

“Life is good” is no revolution. The floor is not to be shaken. No deepened changes in rap music will occur. “He is no swag, no green and black “. He is where he is supposed to be, becoming a standard, its own genre.

In his kingdom, Nas is the only one to reign.