New Stuff for Bandcamp Friday: Lo-Fi, Underground Hip-Hop and Rock'n'Roll from Houston, Chicago, California, Chile and Argentina.

Gearing up for Bandcamp Friday, which if you click that link you'll find out it's April 2nd. Let's check out some new sounds:

Valentine Snow is from Houston. "Basket Case" is a short and sweet 3 song EP of keyboard-heavy, bedroom-produced, indie hip-pop:

Wheards is also from Houston. RTS & CULTR is a 12 song digital album, these three songs they've made available from the album are righteous:

VIBRASOUNDS by Olaf-O from Chile. 4 tracks of fun beats and turntablism:

Here's a cool older split available on Dupage County Hardcore, "created to preserve and make available (for free) the wealth of punk, metal and hip-hop related music released in suburban Chicago in the '80s, '90s and early '00s." The only notes on the release say Bleeding Kansas was from California, so one assumes La Mantra De Fhiqria was from Chicagoland. No idea what year this is from, my guess is early oughts:

From Argentina comes the inscruitably named ♏, they have a new single which is ok, but check out their May 2020 release, ✉, which is 10 tracks of excellent alt-rock:

This two song EP also from the same band, or label, maybe, I'm not sure, since they use icons instead of words, released in May, 2020. Whatever they're called, I'm into it, great sound in an alt-rock vein:

Eastern Bloc Punk; 1990s Turntablism

I should be working on the next Weird Bummer soundtrack, but instead I listened to this Yugoslavian 80s punk:

Then I saw Shortkut was doing an instructional video on the Invisbl Skratch Picklz's Facebook page and here's a couple of videos I watched after that:

A Potpourri of Sound

This morning at work I listened to Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here, which is good, on google play. Google recommended Donny Hathaway based on that listen, whom I thought I had never heard. I queued up Hathaway's soundtrack for the 1972 movie Come Back, Charleston Blue. Turns out, the fourth track on the album, Vegetable Wagon, has been sampled several times over, from Dr. Dre's Rat-Tat-Tat off my fave album ever The Chronic, to DJ Jazzy Jeff, Biggie, and KRS-One (according to WhoSampled and Youtube comments on the Vegetable Wagon clip below).

I recognized the first few seconds of the song from Mix Master Mike's absolutely amazing Anti-Theft Device. You can hear the sample from Vegetable Wagon at around 10:36:

A little while later on the Hathaway album is Little Ghetto Boy, used prominently in the Dr. Dre/Snoop/Nate Dogg song Lil Ghetto Boy, also off The Chronic. I didn't realize Lil Ghetto Boy had an official video:

Google play then suggested Minnie Riperton's first two albums, 1974's "Perfect Angel" and 75's "Adventures In Paradise," re-released together in 2004 by the U.K. label Stateside. I feel like my life has been enriched by listening to these two excellent albums -- I recommend you go do the same after you're done here.

Google play suggested Roy Ayers after that, another one I'd never heard, so I brought up Ayer's 1976 effort, Everybody Loves The Sunshine, which was cool too:

And that was my day of listening to cool shit while I worked. Meanwhile, on twitter, Canada's 4th smartest person recommended to me this new video from Winnipeg's shoegazey The Hours:

And I got the Doomtown Records update today, and zeroed in on this synth-punk sweetness, from Croatia. This was released this past February: