Anyone up for a proper, useful download recommendations thread 4 REAL?

Most people seem to have labeled this as a “fine smooth mellow jam” and left it at that but… oh man, this is the stuff of dreams! My dreams, at least. It reminds me exactly of meeting a strange unknown wonderful girl in a dream and falling in love with her. Then you wake up, and can’t remember much – a conture of face here, a soft tone of voice there, sweet nothings and tender touches – but it makes the whole day that follows glow brighter, infusing it with some ungraspable mystery. In this dream, we meet at night, under pale moonlight, on a plain of some faraway Bavarian forest. We kiss and hold hands while nightingales serenade us, and the strings descend gracefully with midnight mist.

And I’m not perturbed at all that Tweet’s lyric doesn’t have anything to do with this, but when at the end vocodered Petey Pablo desperately croons “Love me like I love you… don’t you love me too? I love you, I love you, I love you… I do love you, yes I do. Can you love me, can you love me… tonight?”, I’m sure he’s not saddened because she doesn’t want him, but because he knows that the dream is about to end.

It’s loungecore, Jim, but not as we know it. Actually, this record sounds as if it was made by a gang of aliens dispatched to discreetly snoop around Earth, trying to understand what drives this thing we call pop culture, wondering in this case: why do these humans romanticize the past they haven’t lived in, things they have never experienced? What exactly is the allure of “classiness”, the high life, expensive holidays in the sun and the glamorous seaside resorts? And why do these humans have a weird gut feeling that it was all more glamorous and classy in the sixties?

Well, if it wasn’t made by aliens, it was at least made by masterful (or not that masterful, judging by what I’ve heard of the rest of the De-phazz output) pop dilettantes, who have never had summer holidays as great as they hoped, but can still dream. I mean, it rhymes “Calcutta” with “Golgota” for no reason other than that it sounds kinda exotic! Where most of nineties/noughties lounge stuff is infuriatingly bland and half-arsed, “Mambo Craze” is as intricate, detailed and lush as loveliest micro-house, chokka full with cartoonish breakbeats, tropical xylophones, piercing horn stabs, men merrily shouthing, and an indescribably gorgeous floating strings bit battling it out with a drunk trumpet. This calls for the best cocktail the bar can offer. And I wouldn’t mind a big fat Cuban cigar. “Looks like it’s time for that certain holiday”, indeed.

So then, why is this monster of a record left out in all the chronicles of UK garage? It’s one of the greatest examples of the ways dancehall has influenced (Mark S, I don’t fear ya!) London’s hardcore continuum, all the more exciting and mysteriously sexy for the fact it doesn’t wear the Jamaican fetish as transparently on its sleeve as most gutter-garridge does. It’s sleek, metallic, darkly seducing, and the technoid riff of the original this time really gets punishing, spiking the raw meatiness of sparse bassline with wicked pleasure. While in the original one could sense a dread of the song’s stalker that Beyonce & co did their best to conceal, here they truly get their revenge, re-modeling themselves into a torture chamber dominatrix nightmare.

‘The best parts of Moloko and Garbage in one yummy package’ – doesn’t look enticing on paper, right? Yet, it’s spectral in the most wonderful, ahem, spectoresque sense, it’s irresistably elegant, the guitars deliciously strung out as if they got tipsy on half a bottle of the sweetest champagne, and the way Tobey sings “In my dreams I can see us in a time breeze/ Doing all the things that we ne-e-ver really di-i-id” makes me feel like I’ve drunk some too, and collapsed on a sofa of some luxurious apartment, gone all Zsa Zsa Gabor, high on the good life, smiling.

Don’t know how much you peeps have been paying attention to the punk/ska underground recently (not much, I’d wager), but the scene has taken some interesting twists – there’s helluva lot hugely euphoric danceable stuff, some of it’s even disco-y, and the atmosphere at the few parties of this sort I’ve attended was just incredibly charged with positivity and infectious in its enthusiasm.

What has all that got to do with a vintage jungle track? Well, these latterday punks are very fond of all things Jamaican (admittedly, I’ve witnessed this only in Croatia, but listening to all those excellent tunes from all corners of the world that I’ll never know names of, I just KNOW that it’s not just our thing), and I’d like to DJ once for, ooh, a fifteen minutes at such a shindig just to play this, and watch the sparks fly & dreadlocks furiously wave about in sweaty pandemonium. When, half a minute in, the beat breaks out in an avalanche of carnival frenzy… you’ll need no ganja to feel this. Mon.

Yes, up there with Bacharach’s most beautiful tunes (though curiously absent on Warwick best-ofs I’ve come across), but Hal David is the one who really shines here. It’s about losing someone we love, and those little details left behind that sting us most painfully. I’m in such a perfect relationship at the moment and, bar the fact that I haven’t got a proper job, I’m the happiest guy in the world… and yet, recently, when I heard Dionne sing “Nothing was left of all the memories that we used to share/ Just an empty tube of toothpaste and a half-filled cup of coffee/ Odds and ends of a beautiful love affair”, I almost cried.

I’m aware that many ILM denizens are well acquainted with reggae outside of the mainstream canon, and I’m not that much of an expert myself really so won't patronize ya… but, but, BUT! If on these boards there’s even just ONE person who thinks that reggae is only about Bob Marley, smoking pot and rasta politics, and isn’t aware that it was once also about heartbreaking, rapturously romantic pop songs and startingly gorgeous orchestral arrangements, then he or she needs to grab this Trojan jewel pronto.

Not much needs to be said - if you loved Darude’s “Sandstorm”, you’ll love this too. The sort of record that immediately makes you wish you’d hear it in a club, off yr tits on some pretty darn good shit. As it is, while I type this sober in the comfiness of my room, I can just grin like a loon, savagely punch the air and flail my limbs about, feeling that glorious wiggly snake-like synth riff swelling in my chest, riding its wave of E-uphoria as all serotonine breaks loose.

It’s modern-day Italo.disco! With an oriental slant! And an Italian MC-guy chanting some nonsense who tries to be all macho and commanding but comes out sounding silly and campy because all Italian MC-guys chanting some nonsense do! But, oh my, what a great record for stomping. Especially when the beat kicks in, pounding relentlessly with singlebloodymindedness into the ground. And it sounds blinding when played in a car! The louder, the better.

these are really great MT...i'm looking for that jameson v d child track right now

To the best of my knowledge, the biggest crossover new age single of the last decade (maybe the only one, coz all the bestsellers seem to arrive on album format, like those Gregorian monks & whatever?). And a song that makes me wish I’d explore new age more. Yes, that good.

Or, if I’ll be honest - only half-good. Because it’s basically got two parts, and the celebratory one makes me squirm, it’s well dodgy (or just shows that I’m afraid to feel it maaan, who knows?). But the melancholic part gets me. This is unashamedly epic, LOTR stuff: it starts with a gentle Enya-ish swoon, like Galadriel looking into that watery mirror of hers and seeing bad times. Then a wordless babel-speak torchsong breaks out, with deeply oceanic, mournful strings. Bemoaning paradise lost.

For all those who believe that Middle Earth actually existed, and get unexpectedly misty-eyed when they think about it.

2. motley crue - "kickstart my heart (the live version from decade of decadence)"
the most true song about "making music" ever written: "when we started this band all we needed was a lay; over the years i'd say we kicked some ass" (if this is not what he's saying, please don't tell me, I don't want to know.) the harmonies are the beach boys played as the studio hacks they always were, and crowd noises invariably improve any song like this.

3. bernhard gunter - "untitled ii"
what? speak up, son.

4. royksopp - "eple"
pleasantness taken to such abject ends it's almost depressing.

5. leee john - "your mind, body, & soul"
2-step at it's apex of minimal is maximal starkness/lushness...bass like amniotic fluid, drums like walking through a jungle of colored celophane, an almost twee vocal hook.

6. led zeppelin - "d'yer maker"
can i be the only one who enjoys zeppelin's attempts at other genres more than their "own"?...really, wasn't zep's whole project attempting to make the whole of whatever interested them at the time (prissy/pussy english folk, steel drums, "sex machine", whatever) fit into a hard rock framework, while somehow avoiding the bitmapped referentiality of every shmuck who would attempt the same twenty years later? also, bonham clearly should have guested on a few studio one tracks.

7. kaito - "release your body"
trance minus the drums = new age, but what's wrong with new age? like watching dust motes spin through mid-afternoon light (clean your apartments, you filthy bastards), this has soundtracked most of my naps lately.

8. nas - "made you look"
this track depresses me - it's the "apache", i know...an unintentional reference to a past (in which the renovation of old drum breaks signaled both the demise of the elevation-through-hard-work ideal but also signaled a possible way out) that seems further away than ever, a world which has seen even more negative change, a reference which is just trying to be "refreshing via the past" - but it's a hurtling, desperate depression, so at least it's got manic-ness on its side.

9. jesus jones - "zeros and ones (aphex twin remix)"
"two things make for a great remix: reverence or rape." bullshit, of course, but this is one of those remixes which makes you might wonder if there's not some grain of truth. for all of you embarassed by your early 90s roots: don't worry, there's not discernable traces of j. jones in this track: it sounds like other i care because you do era aphex.

SEARCH: the 23 minute Gigi d'Agostino Megamix done by a certain "DJ BBluefox". Has ALL the hits, and never gets boring! Indeed, to be played loud in the car.