Before the sizzurp-slurpin’ Robert Davis Jr. chopped n’ screwed Houston, Tx to the top of the 90s hip-hop pile as DJ Screw, he was just a baby-faced fat kid from a state best known to ball-bustin’ drill sergeants for its steers and queers.

In this A Baby Guerilla Filmwerks production, DJ Screw: The Untold Story, we get a sneak peek behind the skirt of fame through candid interviews with his friends, family and Screwed Up Click homies, who reveal the origins of his name, the development of his signature style and plenty of other info you might find useful in a seriously weird pub quiz some day.

Romare, Black Acre Records’ auditory anthropologist,  jukes off our pickled cerebrum with his cross-culturally conceptual EP, Meditations on Afrocentrism. This Parisian sample-sleuth spent the past year exploring the link between African and African-American cultures by collecting snippets from culturally relevant recordings and packaging them into a gurn-friendly format.

I Wanna Go (Turn Back) tucks a collection of African percussion, soul samples and speech soundbites into footwork’s rug-cutting structure while the rest of the EP blends a similar collage with house, hip-hop and R&B-tinged post-dubstep in an attempt to forge new forms through sampling. It works. You can’t buy it on iTunes – allegedly, because Apple’s legion of flying Mac monkeys, couldn’t slip it into a well-greased pigeonhole.

After the Beastie Boys’ (R.I.P MCA) groundbreaking sample orgy Paul’s Boutique represented the end of free-for-all sampling and the beginning of the copyright stranglehold,  is colonising dusty African crate relics anthropological… or just logical?

At first spin, underground rap game changer Spaceghostpurrp being all, “I’m a god. I’m no longer a black man” sounds like a pretty controversial mission statement to be slinging from one’s Caddie. “Believe in the god of black” turns that frown upside down. Never mind the rap video bollocks – buxom honeys, dollar bills and fancy cognac: the Sunshine State’s SPG is an anti-hero worth getting more than a little evangelical about.

The official release of The Black God cuts even deeper than the original – and we had that on repeat for weeks. The signature hazy phonk that had everyone’s knickers in a twizzle over the production on A$AP’s Pretty Flacko has sharpened the claws on this panther of an anthem. SPG,  that’s the phonky shit.

Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp, which will be released on June 12 on 4AD

Austin TX analogue synth quartet, S U R V I V E, excited punters at SXSW with a scintillating, knob-fiddling stage show.  Now, they delve further into retro fetishism with a self-titled debut album that sounds like a soundtrack to 80s sci-fi movies.

It’s out as a download on Mannequin, but you can grab it on limited-edition see-thru vinyl (you pervert) later this month if you wanna listen to it how AH-nuld’s Terminator ass would want.

S U R V I V E – B4 – Dirge by Mannequin Records

Breakcore’s beardiest neek, Venetian Snares, explores that sensation between wake and slumber in his new conceptual side-project: Last Step. Somnambulating into techno territory, Xyrem, and the rest of his recently released album Sleep was created way past your bedtime, on analogue equipment. A-Funk would often doze off in the process, then wake up to the sound of the newly crafted loops, drooling all over his drum machine. As a result, he claims the album sounds like he does when he’s sleeping. If true, it also explains why he looks like a vagrant wizard.

You can and should buy the whole shebang, out on the one-and-only Planet Mu here

Danish lo-fidels VÅR – formerly known as War (a moniker possibly canned because of the other nine thousand bands called War, two of which are actually famous) – are the synthpop side-project of Iceage and Sexdrome vocalists Elias Bender Rønnenfelt and Loke Rahbek. And yeah, while it might seem like they’ve been afflicted by spontaneous illiteracy, it’s actually Danish (for ‘Spring’ – a mythical season involving sunshine, which we are not familiar with here in England).In Your Arms (Final Fantasy) was originally released on Sacred Bones’ recent Record Store Day compilation, Todo Muere Vol. 2. The video features Loke’s childhood chum, Louis Toro, an Icelandic kid who introduced him to fun before eloping to Peru in pursuit of a striptease career. Bender and Rahbek claim that Toro is the living embodiment of their sonic aspirations and VÅR is a soundtrack to his life – making it safe to assume that this cute couple is in fact a bromosexual three-way. Save us a spot in that Scandwich, we’re comin in!

n the spirit of two British bank holiday institutions:  partying and impulse buying – we’re combining your favourite habits in a makeshift music market here at JUKE HQ on Sunday. Everything you need to know about SPUN music market is here, but know this:

There will be beer.

+ Cool stuff to buy from artists, record labels and musicians you dig.

+ DJs and bands, including the intensely awesome THRONE, doing their thing on top of a crusty milk float.

+ Delectable hangover noms – including bites from horny crustaceans Hardcore Prawn.

+ And no doubt: several lost people looking for the Burberry outlet store and wondering what all the noise is about.

Big ups to our bros The Island, Popular, Sexbeat, Look Mum No Hands and our mothership Emigre Studios

SPUN music market – SUNDAY 6th MAY – 12-6 – FREE

@ Emigre Studios,  274 Richmond Road | London E8 3QW

A Hundred Million Roses is set for release on an A$AP mob compilation later this year – and evidently, those months spent as a Rocky side order haven’t blunted Ferg’s ego. Reminiscent of Yeezy’s 2006 Rolling Stone cover, Ferg humbly hoists himself all up on a crucifix and rhymes his own eulogy, like some sorta patron saint of trill. We’re not sure whose sins he’s dying for, but have it on good authority that the sheer blasphemy quotient has wiped Cradle of Filth’s slate clean.

Avant-depressives, Xiu Xiu, could easily be mistaken for happy people who make joyous music;  so, just in case Honeysuckle had you smiling and tapping your feet, they enlisted director Amir Shoucri to piss on your chips.

Taken from Always (their 8th album) it was written by synth-wielding sidewoman Angela Seo on a stolen copy of Ableton. Her first-ever solo tune, this sonic cherry pop is about the soul-snuffing nature of recurring failure and fits perfectly into pop music’s untapped sideline opportunity in divorces and pop-up funerals.

In an act of obscene sonic self-indulgence, Madlib originally remixed Madvillainy (his 2004 collab with JUKE Vol. 04 cover star, DOOM) so he had something to listen to on a 10-hour flight to Japan. Madvillainy 2: The Madlib Remix CD dropped on Stones Throw back ’08, but you can now satisfy your geeky whoring tendencies – we mean, hoarding tendencies – with a package that includes a double vinyl LP and a ‘60s style comic book illustrated by ‘jolly’ James Reitano – the animator behind Madvillain’s comic-inspired music vid, ALL CAPS.

Jolly’s Comics Code Authority-approved narrative, Meanwhile…, continues for another twelve pages where ALL CAPS’ cinematic cliff-hanger left off and may give us some sort of closure to Madvillain’s seemingly endless struggle against the dorkishly-dubbed Minions of Death. But, in all likelihood, we’re probably in store for another open-ended non-conclusion that’ll leave us with blue balls ‘til Madlib gets a gig in Uzbekistan and treats us to another remix package.

Champagne Coast’s weird Sims-meets-Amsterdam-red-light-district, hot girl in customised box big idea and medicinal-strength ’80s catchiness will threaten your very commitment to doing any work at all today. In fact, the only thing stopping us from violently overturning our desks and dancing out of the office right now in the style of Ferris Bueller is our freakishly tapped-out overdraft facility.

NY’s latest pretty muthafunker Venus X is a dj, clotheshorse, post-goth ghetto ghoul and all-round badass moon rising While we’re not usually blinded by beautiful young girls with the hypemachine at their fingertips, we’ll make an exception for any one who can throw bleeding-edge NY queercore, Alien Sex Fiend and Waka tracks together in one mixtape. Here’s the cyberdawg’s sonic mindmeld. And here’s some visual stimulation. Get familiar.

 

VENUS X “ROUGH + RELIGIOUS” MIX

Wacka Flocka & Slim Dunkin’ – Koolin’ It

Fatima Al Qadiri – How Can I Resist U

Sissy Nobby – Crazy Bout My Boyfriend (Loopy)

Alien Sex Fiend – Walk The Line

DJ Exota – Love 4 Bass

Cybergiga – Bruxia Gruv

David Vandetta ft. Haifa Wehbe – Yama Layali

Eifel 65 – I’m Blue (Jumpstyle Remix)

El Shick – Prendelo Prendelo

House of Ladosha – I’m Carrying

Kevin Prodigy – If I Throw My Pussy in the Air

Misionero – Dembow Rocoloco

Nguzunguzu – Got U

Rotterdam Terror Corps – God is a Gabba

Total Freedom – Nilcap meets the Qur’an

Unknown – His Eye is on the Sparrow

Photos Cameron Alexander
Styling Madeleine Østlie

Cap aNYthing

Jewellery Dominic Jones

Clothing  Shaun Samson

MAN DEM t-shirt: Stylist’s own

In a nod to the ghosts of batshit past, electro-experimentalists YACHT mark the beginning of their EU tour tonight in Nantes, with a cover of Le Goudron – Brigitte Fontaine’s 1969 apocalypto-pop collab with Chi-towns avant-jazz Art Ensemble. Unlike the original, it’s better suited to a dancefloor than a colonial opium den.

In case you don’t understand French, Brigitte’s lyrics first suggest we eat a shit ton of doughnuts, fries and chicken – before checking into a motel room to co-cannibalise each other. This probably won’t bother YACHT songstress Claire Evans though; her all-girl side project, The World Court, allegedly formed in the summer of 2006 with a blood ceremony that bound the trio and their instruments. To some this might sound like a cultist one-man band, to us it’s just a fancy way of saying they’ve sonically synched their menstrual cycles. Uh, hello? JUKE’s been a world of pain every 4th week like clockwork since ’76 – even the straight dude.

In 2012, cross-dressing rhyme-writers from NY’s burgeoning queer-rap scene – like this guy, Mykki Blanco –  threaten to rock hip-hop’s hyper-hetero status quo, much like the 2011 rise of femcee’s Azealia, Azalea and Natassia [the elegant Kreayshawn] heralded a new era of equal opportunity in the rap game sausagefest.

What started out as a YouTube parody by performing poet, Michael D. Quattlebaum, soon evolved into a full-blown ladyboy alter ego once he realised that he needed background music if his prose were to reach an audience coming in under an average age of 120. On Wavvy, Blanco enlisted Pauly D lookalike, Bremner, to lay down the beats – a significant improvement on his previous tunes, which sound a lot like rapping over a dial-up modem.

Anontune works pretty much like streaming music on YouTube: type in Slayer (or… something) and Anontune then pulls the tunes from third party streaming sites like Soundcloud and puts it into a playlist that you can share with other users or play back whenever you like. A 20% beta vibe is available on anontune.com now, although Wired magazine claims it could mess with your computer worse than Romanian dwarf porn.

The service is entirely free and your identity will, predictably, be kept anonymous. The creators claim to have learnt from past piracy pioneers like Limewire and will not host copyrighted music or allow downloads, therefore protecting users from legal ramifications. Their YouTube-based public service announcement explains the rest, while the soundtrack proves our casual theory that Anonymous dress like World of Warcraft avatars, exist on novelty hummus multipacks and have flash drives for thumbs.

It was late last year that scouse recluse, Evian Christ, slithered into our consciousness via YouTube with the stealth of a Merseyside carjacker. Before long, his name and minimalist hip-hop experiments spread like D-list knees in a VIP room, resulting in loads of embarrassing drooling from would-be labels and managers ready to put blood to parchment. Eventually, the trainee teacher signed with TriAngle based upon their bromance with music’s most illustrious mollusc, Clams Casino. After a couple months of inactivity, E-Christ puts Marina & the Diamonds’ Dr. Luke-produced abomination, Primadonna (taken from her album out next week, Electra Heart) to the chopping board and serves up a popcentric edit that goes great with seafood.

Brussels-based Spaniard, Strand, blends his staple output of experimental electronica with an exploration of sultry 70s and 80s funk in a 10-track record, Slam Funk! It fits perfectly into Belgium’s burgeoning synth funk scene and helps promote a new image of the country (one that isn’t based on delicious grids of carbs). We caught up with Miguel aka Strand to get some specifics on just who he’s dipping into in this nostalgia binge: “Mainly Herbie Hancock, Cybotron, James Brown (of course) Funkadelic, Prince, Reggis Griffith and techonofunk, Funkitionaries and Dwayne Omarr. But also the funk albums of Brazilian artists like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Marisa Monte (her version of ‘Cerebro Electronico’ with members of living colour is one of my all time favorites). There are echoes of funk in Spanish electric flamenco bands from the 70s too”. Something to chew on Music History 101-ers (and it’s not a goddamn waffle, ok?)

Late last night, pretty Harlem-repping muthafucka A$AP Rocky ripped the panties off western civilization for some heavy foreplay with the debut of Goldie, the first single from his forthcoming major label album, LongLiveA$AP. Produced by Hit-Boy, the SoCal beatsmith behind Niggas in Paris, it first appeared on NYC’s Hot 97 FM. Rocky revealed that the track’s original title was Cristal – in reference to the time the flashy dudes first met, supping champagne at his LA studio with Chase N Cashe and G-mo Drake (a habit we just call ‘breakfast’).

While Goldie leans more towards the club, Rocky doesn’t sacrifice the haziness that made him famous, but maybe it’s only a matter of time. Collabs on the summertime scheduled LP include snappy dresser Pharell, and his “dream girl” aka boxtox buzzbabe Lana Del Ray.

LA jazz mutant and bass virtuoso (he’s been playing since the age of four), Thundercat, spent his late teens living out our thrash fantasies: at 17 he was recruited by Suicidal Tendencies to replace the Metallica-bound Robert Trujillo. While we were huffing glue and learning algebra we’d never need, he was touring with Suicidal and slappin’ out adolescence anthem, Institutionalized.

Now it’s Monday morning and his soulful celluloid stroll to the soundtrack of Walkin’, taken from 2011′s Golden Age of Apocalypse EP, is dealing out Monday morning commute flashbacks. After spending approximately 54 hours of weekend tinkering with our brain chemistry, we too had to dodge zombie children, horse-faced neighbours and a laser-vision equipped Fly-Lo. Just substitute his smug grin with cold sweats and crippling paranoia.

Berkley-based BasedGod, Lil’ B, was in New York on Wednesday to give a lecture at the illustrious NYU, whose famous alumni include bearded record industry g Rick Rubin and breakfast cereal tycoon/ bowel movement enthusiast, John Harvey Kellogg. B entered the auditorium to rousing chants of “BasedGod, you can fuck my bitch”, “Look, a “black guy”!” and “Why are you here?”  His response? “Because I specialise in the progression of the human race”… #2012.

B’s unscripted sermon switches between philosophical themes outlined in his 2009 manifesto Takin’ Over : (“Am I walking weird? Something’s in my butt? You know what I mean?”), inspirational positivity (“Who knows about hydraulic fracking? Let’s stop fracking! Hey, bruh, stop messing with the earth, bruh”) and self-administered trumpet blowing (“You know I’m the first rapper to adopt a tabby cat? Just breaking the boundaries, man”)… all with the streamlined cohesion of watching a Family Guy episode whilst tweaking on crystal meth. Listen to the full 90 minutes here if you couldn’t get in, because you don’t go to NYU, or couldn’t afford the $5 door charge.