the joe beats experiment present : indie rock blues

hell.o

i am not ashamed to admit it, but i love a chunk of laid back instrumental hip hop styled grooves from time to time, add a slice of cinematic ambience, a twisted sample here and there, and i'll smile like a cheshire cat. of course, in recent times, the very phrase, 'trip hop' has the masses running in abject horror as it conjures up the worst of never ending morcheeba compilations.

thankfully, the original concept of mellow hip hop beats, and deftly applied sonic experimentation is not totally dead with the release of the latest joe beats project.

for those that aren't aware, joe beats provided the loops and noises on the excellent non-prophets album, upon which sage francis dropped his noir edged paranoia and verbal heaviness. this time around, joe has taken some (un)loved indie records and mangled them, delicately, oh so very delicately, added layers of late night ambience, reverb, vocal snippets and dubbed up bass lines backlined by some very nice and easy sloppy beats.

the result, 'the joe beats experiemt presents indie rock blues', is a wonderful 43 minutes dj mixtape that has no connection whatsoever with the glut of g-unit mixtapes, instead the overall feeling is that of pure and originality.

dig around joes site for an example mp3 and see if you like it as much as i do.

in fact, putting it simply, this does to melancholic indie rock (coldplay fans need not apply), what dj shadow/cut chemist's brainfreeze did to old soul records, yes, it is indeed that good.

damn, i was determined not to mention dj shadow, oh well.

so, now i guess the only problem is coining a new genre tag for this ..

mark e

ireallylovemusic