fight!

once again i am in awe of Akira The Don.... sickening, sickening awe!!

his latest output is amazing, and i honestly think that this is not gushing enough.

his previous superhero themed mixtape had some outstanding touches of brilliance on it, and the quality control does not let up, if anything i think it may have been improved upon for what Akira himself admitted was intended to be an days worth of mashing up some old 16bit SNES tunes and a handful of inspired old joints but ended up being an epic three week task turning out a geeking freaking masterpiece of retro gaming nostalgia

ATD23: The Street Fighter Mixtape is so much more than it more than it deserves to be.

Akira The Don - ATD23 - The Street Fighter Mixtape by Akira The Don

perhaps that little build up didn't sell it enough, there has been hard work gone into this thing and it shows.  hard work, love and a hell of a lot of skills, courtesy of Akira himself and his co-collaborators !!

the quality control is definetely what places this mixtape head and shoulders above anything else of its ilk, from searing rap vocals to laid back grooves and inventive sampling, all of these factors come together like a 12 hit combo that would leave no competitor standing.

it would be a severe injustice to overlook this mixtape as just 52 minutes of beat-em-up influenced music, even if the subject matter seems a little niche this still stands alone as an extremely well constructed album that has far outgrown the gimmicky premise of its creation.

cop the whole thing, in track seperated CD quality over here





and i'll even forgive Akira for encrouching on my personal thoughts and intentions, as he has only gone and bloody recycled an old chorus from britpop also-rans Rialto, a chorus from the song that i intended to cover and had already recorded the vocals for about a month ago, but have sat around on my hard drive doing not very much since.......

oh well, i snoozed and i loozed.

player 1, you win!!

skankin'

it has already been over a month since i originally intended knocking a post up about Littles, back when the sound of his mixtape was still fresh in my ears, the mixtape may have been a little overlooked recently in my burgeouning generic mp3 player but one tune that has stuck in my head the whole time since is one that was only featured as a snippet.

Skank Out. can't say i know an awful lot about it other than it was recorded by the ever present (in my life anyway) Akira The Don in his studio, Akira also provides backing vocals and pops up in the vid, alongside members of Son Of King Rebel.

what a tune tho




this may also be a good time to bring up the fact that i've remixed Littles and Akira, this was originally a track from Akira's The Don mixtape and didn't quite make it onto his follow up remixtape, but cos i'm a caring sharing guy, here it is...

No Matter What Ft. Littles (Hunchbakk remix).mp3
Free file hosting from File Den

blood splashing

had afew computer issues yesterday, i thought i mite have posted about the fact that although everyone had been whinging about it for ages, the recession is now official (some boring statistic about the rate of something or other dropping for the blah blah blah...) or that i'm still reading Bill Bryson.

Alas, this post is about neither, as obsessed as i am about music, this shall be about music. I'm not gonna become another of the many multiplying music blogs, i just wanna share a little enthusiasm.

I could have posted about Littles, his new mixtape that i was listening to this morning and the amazing new track 'Skank Out' but instead i felt compelled to blog about the mysterious Fake Blood who smashed it last year with 'Mars', 'Blood Splashing' and a smattering of remixes.

Compelled, since last night on Xfm, i heard Eddy TM mention that Fake Blood is none other than DJ Touche, perhaps this is common knowledge that had passed me by, I loved his previous work such as 'The Paddle' and even way back further than that to his days in 'The Wiseguys' ('ooh la la' was ten years ago??)

I'd love to share A Fake Blood track with you but i see a handful of other forums have had tracks removed by request, and i don't wanna step on no-ones toes.

Their ain't even any official videos to check out, so maybe jus check his myspace and if you like what you hear, shell out for it on i-tunes or something

Hunchbakk’s Selection Box

OK, so you’ve been gorging yourself on chocolate over Christmas and you swore you’d start a diet and resist temptation, but you shouldn’t resist this…

Available at the crazy, knock down price of absolutely nothing at all…

Even better than that, it contains ZERO calories…

I present to you…

The Hunchbakk Selection Box





It’s not quite like your normal selection box, because it doesn’t actually contain any chocolate at all, but it is a bumper selection of Hunchbakk tracks and remixes to download…

I’m afraid the ‘christmas single’, www.xmas.com, is past it’s sell-by-date now so the collection has been rounded off with a couple of additions that weren’t available pre-christmas, just as a little extra treat.


So stick with me for artwork, download links and brief descriptions

First up

HUNCHBAKK PROMO EP



The first material to see the light of day, originally given away on CD also containing an exclusive mix to promote the Bubblegum Stomp club night I was involved in way back in 2005, it was later re-packaged, with a cover provided my little brother, to send out to radio and just to promote my own music.

A PUNISMENT TO FIT EP



A second collection of four tracks, one of which was the mutant re-jigged final track of the Promo EP taking on a new identity and direction as Felix 2.0 (which has even made it to air on New Zealand radio). This EP closed a chapter of my music making, acting as a companion piece to the first EP and allowing me to move on to more advanced methods and music creation software.

THE ENEMY – THIS SONG (HUNCHBAKK’S YOUTH OF TODAY REMIX)




The track that kicked off my flirtations with not being such an unknown, created for a remix competition but not chosen as one of the final winners, I felt passionately enough about the track that I would share it with the wider world to co-incide with the official single release. I passed it along to a couple of people and sent afew copies to radio, and the results were more than I ever expected, culminating with a play from Eddy TM on Xfm’s The Remix and also, bizarrely picked up by a radio show in New Zealand and played out on a Saturday afternoon (the play of Felix 2.0, mentioned above, came after).

KOMAKINO – KID FEAR (HUNCHBAKK’S AWAKE NOW REMIX)




Possibly the runt of the litter, this was my first stab at remixing while I was getting to grips with new software (the remix of The Enemy came later, but was still finished before this one) and actually took me so long to complete that the band had split up before I was even done. Despite getting in touch with the remnants of the band in their new guise, I’ve never received any feedback on what they actually thought of it.

RADIOHEAD – NUDE (HUNCHBAKK’S TOWERBLOCK DUB REMIX)



How do you get people to listen to your music? Remix Radiohead. The gauntlet was thrown down in another remix competition was participants offerings uploaded to a site in which was essentially an overblown (and over subscribed) popularity contest. I never really had any intention of entering and I don’t think I even started tinkering with it until the deadline had already passed, but again, this time with a ‘less is more’ approach, I’d found myself with a remix I didn’t want to keep to myself.

And a good job too. Cos once I’d passed it onto Saam, who had been kind enough to feature my Enemy remix on his blog, it kinda got everywhere, picked up by a number of other blogs and downloaded by a troubling number of people, and it still crops up in those audio tracker things that I have never cared to understand as being listened to, and appreciated, by people all over the world.

MARVIN – THAT ONE TIME (HUNCHBAKK 2 SKOOL BOOTLEG MIX)




Marvin is an artist I’ve gotta lotta love for and I was proud when he featured my remix of The Enemy on his blog. He liked it so much that he sent me the accapella of his forthcoming single for me to play around with, and he released the track as a little internet exclusive.

THE FREEWHEELIN’ TROUBADOUR – THE NIGHT THAT I DIE (HUNCHBAKK REMIX)



Another one that strikes me as a rather mis-understood creature, it seems to have been ignored by it’s original owner, and even my girlfriend didn’t seem to like it an awful lot. A little disappointing when you have put a lot of time and heart into a new creation but you can’t please everyone all of the time. I’m hoping a few other people might have a different opinion of it.

AKIRA THE DON FEAT. LITTLES – NO MATTER WHAT (HUNCHBAKK REMIX)



More remix comp fare. The entire month of November was spent toiling over this as it slowly but surely took shape. This was my chance to be included on an Akira The Don mixtape, I’m a fan of the man himself, I’m a fan of his music and of his mixtapes. Sadly it wasn’t to be, it didn’t quite make the final cut, instead trumped by the magnificent pydos in spydos.

AKIRA THE DON FEAT. MARY TURNER – MUSIC OF THE SPHERES (HUNCHBAKK’S DIRTY ELBOWS MIX)



I struck gold with this one tho, ‘No matter what’ troubled me for a month, this lil miraculous gem was conceived in a couple of hours, purely by chance. I’d had a crack at a number of other Akira The Don remixes but this one just fell together perfectly and secured a place on the ATD remixtape.

HUNCHBAKK / IAN BYFORD ART – SOUND / ART TRACK 1



The first track to come to fruition as part of a new collaborative venture. Ian Byford is an artistand he is my little brother and he quite often provides artwork for my tracks and remixes, at my suggestion we flipped the script and he created a new piece of art that I then produced the music for.



Since you managed to pick up this selection box at such a massively discounted price, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that it is near the end of it’s shelf life, all the tracks listed above will be taken offline after their expiry date: 31 January 2009. So indulge while you’ve still got a chance, as unlike the wispa bar, it’s doubtful the remixes of Komakino and The Freewheelin’ troubadour will ever make a comeback.


*all artwork designed by Ian Byford. Except: ‘Punishment..’ EP, This Song and That One Time designed by Hunchbakk. May contain nuts.