05/28/2008
Nauseating self-promotion (now improved with even more self-promotion)
In a true coincidence of Life Itself, the week I vanish to deal with important personal issues is the week my retrospective on illegal art drops in the marketplace.
"It's an irony of musical history that one of the greatest hip-hop singles ever released was produced by a pair of entirely un-hip white advertising men."
From the Dusted review
The release is/was flagged on Yahoo Music's Hottest New Releases, AOL/Spinner, Paper Thin Walls, The NY Sun, the NY Times, The Onion's AV Club, All Music (as well as the All Music Blog), and Dusted, with mentions at Wired and Pitchfork. It didn't happen by itself; the hard-working souls at Fanatic Promotion are on the case.
Update with yet even more promotion:
Download.com has a few nice things to say, along with their stream of three of the cuts from the retrospective. Wired's blog also carries the streams and their own comments, adding a contest to win the album. Exclaim from Canada featured a rather sweet review. The Onion's AV Club ran an actual review that gave the set an "A" grade. Pitchfork added a sure-enough review with a generous 8.7 rating. NPR's "Needle Drop" interviewed me about the ethics of sampling. Needless to say, I don't think I have any. Loudersoft had a generous review, with extra love for the second-disc of the set. Robert Christgau reviewed the set at Blender, giving it 4 stars out of 4. Earplug and 3hive both weighed in, as did 30music (taking a somewhat different slant on the work, and still giving it 8.5 out of 10). TimeOut NY carried a full page interview in the club section, too.
Glutton for punishment?
When I was in Switzerland a few weeks ago (he mentioned casually), I taped a video interview with PJ Crittin, of Vibrations Magazine. It's running on their website. They've applied some extreme editing to bring my long-windedness under control, so be aware that a few of the events that appear side-by-side in the video weren't necessarily that way when I was shpritzing away in their offices. Many thanks to PJ for the opportunity, and for the intelligent direction of the questions. Blame me for the answers.
And please don't forget that Douglas and I have a live set available for cheap.