Two Madlib Interviews

If you know anything about Digital Monk Soundsystem, you know Madlib is one of our main dudes. His fearless pursuit of the unknown is the same journey we embark on. He is also notoriously reclusive, sorta like us (in case you haven’t noticed none of us are the blog-twitter-status update every day type), which is what makes a new Madlib interview so eventful. This interview in Electronic Beats was conducted by Thomas Fehlmann of The Orb and other experimental electronic music projects, and the conversation ranges from krautrock to Yesterday’s New Quintet to Madlib just beginning to use the internet – which isn’t for keeping up on the times as much as tipping him off on his next record store hunt, since he’s got “so much old stuff to discover I don’t know when I’ll have time to get to the new stuff.” & we’d love to hear one of those unreleased Madlib synthesizer records!

This made us go back to Madlib’s 2009 interview in Wire, and thankfully magazine scans were posted up on 12 oz. Prophet. Read those below:

Rob Nova & Gasoline Monk’s Top 5 Albums of 2012 in Trainwreck’d Society

Rob Nova & Gasoline Monk were recently asked to be part of the group of musicians, artists, actors & writers Trainwreck’d Society rounded up for their Best of 2012 feature. The reactions are pretty diverse – no title shows up on more than 3 or 4 of the contributor’s lists. Kendrick Lamar‘s major label debut resonated with a handful, as did Nas‘ Life Is Good. But we were surprised to see Nova & Monk were the only two to mention Flying Lotus‘ incredible latest release, Until The Quiet Comes. But we aren’t strangers to being different.

Read the whole feature here, and check out our artists’ responses here:

ROB NOVA

KENDRICK LAMAR – good kid, m.A.A.d. city
FLYING LOTUS – Until The Quiet Comes
THE WEEKEND – Trilogy
KILLER MIKE – R.A.P. Music
JJ DOOM – Key To The Kuffs

GASOLINE MONK

FLYING LOTUS – Until The Quiet Comes
SHATTER HANDS – Land Fly
KARRIEM RIGGINS – Alone Together
ROBERT GLASPER EXPERIMENT – Black Radio
NAS – Life Is Good

B’s & 3’s Top 25 Boston Hip Hop Albums of 2012

Boston hip hop blog B’s & 3’s were thorough in this Best Of list, even noting beyond the Top 25 great local releases like African Man Born‘s last two albums and Notoriety‘s Road Trippin’, Kool-Aid Sippin’, Chicken, Beef Patties, And Herb. We were glad to see Retrospek at the top – they’re definitely one of Boston’s most original acts,very left field. If 2011 was the year of Boston legends (Edo G, Reks & Statik Selektah were only a few of the dudes who dropped major albums), 2012’s been the year of the underground – the city’s full of vibrant artists who’re, in a lot of cases, just getting started blowing up out of the local Boston scene. Keep tabs!

& check out a video from the winner, Retrospek –

Digital Monk T-Shirts Now Available

The Digital Monk Soundsystem t-shirts are finally in – order them here.

About time we put Dirtywork‘s beautiful art on something you can wear. Big shout out to Skurvy Ink, who made this possible – they’ve been doing shirts for Bizarro writers for a minute now. In fact, the DMSS-Skurvy connection originates with Gasoline Monk‘s publisher, Swallowdown Press (yes, Gas Monk’s written novels, under the name Forrest Armstrong). Art 24/7 over in these parts.