Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

I'm still listening to Nine Inch Nails (and Peter Hope)

2008-05-09T23:03:47Z

Here I am saying The Slip is the best Nine Inch Nails album since the first one when I haven't really listened to any of them since Broken. So I've been trying to catch up, going from recent to older; Year Zero and With Teeth are actually better ...

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Back to the funk: Brownout

2008-04-29T02:55:02Z

I've been spending a lot of my listening time lately back in the 80s and neglecting the funk, so I sought to remedy that today. I started listening to Brownout, the Latin funk band from Austin, and as soon as I heard "African Battle" I was hooked...

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Medeski Scofield Martin and Wood give me goosebumps

2008-04-26T16:00:13Z

I've liked Medeski Martin and Wood ever since I first heard them on the Get Shorty soundtrack (one of the grooviest soundtracks to a mainstream movie since the 70s), but I only ever got a couple of their albums. One that I bought was their first ...

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The Doors, funky?

2008-03-28T03:11:05Z

The Doors were accused of a lot of things, but being funky wasn't one of them. So I am naturally surprised when I hear Doors influences in contemporary funk; who'd'a thunk it? Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators (she's from Brooklyn, they'r...

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Chris Joss

2008-03-09T18:49:56Z

To the elite group of musicians who have mastered the art of retro-disco-cop-show-funk-o-lounge-a-phonics (i.e. Skeewiff and Shawn Lee) add Frenchman Chris Joss, who since 1999 has built up an impressive catalog of recordings in that vein. His la...

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New funk from Jamie Lidell

2008-03-09T04:26:17Z

Starting with the premise that it's not healthy to live in the past all the time, I scan the zip blogs once in a while to get a taste of what's new, to hear if anyone is making good music today. Answer: for the most part, no. Same as always. Bu...

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Back with some vintage guitar funk

2008-02-12T03:08:40Z

I've been laid low by illness for the last few days, too sick to blog, but I did manage to listen to some music and find a nice trifecta of funky guitar instrumentals from the 70s. The grandaddy of them all is Dennis Coffey's "Scorpio" from 1971....

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More Blood

2008-02-08T22:18:30Z

I could sit and post songs and videos to this blog all day every day, but the prospect of picking out one or two from the universe of things I want to post sometimes paralyzes me into inaction. So in the interest of catching up, here's a follow-u...

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Take a look overhead!

2008-02-04T02:12:29Z

The Spiderman theme is fine as a jingle, but I've never thought of it as an actual cop-show theme. Until today, that is, when I found Norwegian electro duo Ugress's groovy remake: That's definitive; I doubt you'll ever hear a better version of ...

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Ultramarine reminds me of 23 Skidoo

2008-01-10T23:38:44Z

Upon discovering, just last year (fashionably late again) that A Primary Industry had morphed into Ultramarine in 1990, I got Ultramarine's first album, Folk. It's a nice extension of the softer side of API, with lots of layered reeds (from both ...

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