Blockhead - The Music Scene
(CD/Download) Ninja Tune ZENCD149/ZENDNL149, 2009-11-02

Tracklisting:
01. It's Raining Clouds
02. The Music Scene
03. Only Sequences Change
04. Which One Of You Kerks Stole My Arnold Palmer
05. Attack The Doctor
06. The Prettiest Sea Slug
07. The Daily Routine
08. Tricky Turtle
09. Four Walls
10. Pity Party
11. Hell Camp
12. Farewell Spaceman

Links :
myspace.com/theblockishot
ninjatune.net/blockhead

Press Release :
New York hip hop producer Tony Simon aka Blockhead returns with his third and best instrumental album for Ninja Tune.

Blockhead has long made beautiful, emotive music based around the hip hop template, but on "The Music Scene" he elevates his craft to another level. Tony puts it down to the use of Ableton, which means that rather than working from "one basic beat and building off it" (the standard hip hop model), he has begun stringing together multiple beats and weaving them together into increasingly complex, surprising and satisfying pieces of music. As he himself puts it, "I made each song a little more of a musical journey than anything I have ever done before."

Blockhead's ambition to "tell stories without words" is evident from opener "It's Raining Clouds" onwards. The tune starts off as classic downtempo and ends up almost drum and bass, the music having changed and fallen away, echoing back through itself and feeding into previous themes at least three times. It's an epic in an album of epics.

At the heart of the record is the remarkable "The Daily Routine" - an exploration of drug addiction (based around a found recording of drug addicts arguing), Blockhead says "it's pretty much the creepiest song I've ever made." "Four Walls," meanwhile aims a musical broadside at the current vogue for autotune. "Which One Of You Jerks Drank My Arnold Palmer" is huge ambient space rock hip hop. "The Prettiest Seaslug" is Bahia-beat on opium. "Tricky Turtle" begins as afro-blaxpoitation, turns into a voodoo orgy and ends somewherte in the Middle East. "Farewell Spaceman" starts off sounding like an outtake from "Bewitched" and ends as an ecstatic, chugging flight off into the stars.

While "The Music Scene" represents a development in Blockhead's work, he still holds true to his basic beliefs about music and rhythm. When not working on his new album he has been providing production for Aesop Rock, DJ Signify, Joanna Erdos and many more, plus remixes for Yameen and Chin Chin, amonst others. Whereas the music scene is "a bastardized version of something that was already watered down," Blockhead's "The Music Scene," like his career as a whole, is "the opposite of that." By re-working, chopping and melding samples, by blending them together, Blockhead restores rather than dilutes their purity.

Info from Blockhead's MySpace page :
My new album is done.
as of last week, i have finished work on my new album "the music scene". now begins the song and painful process of getting it into your hands. i'm hoping for a summer release (and that's looking like it's gonna happen).
a few fun facts about this album:
it's 12 songs long
it's coming out on ninja tune records
it's bringing back that depressing shit i know you guys love, but not so depressing you'll wanna kill yourself.
it's epic (I don't mean that in a bragging way, the songs are long and they flip up on a level that i've never done).
soon enough, i'll begin putting sneak previews of song up on my player but tis' gotta get it's final mix and mastered first.
so, yeah, this is just an early heads up. "The music scene" is coming.

UPDATE:
so, it's looking like the album is gonna come out in very early 2010. before that there will be a single with a few songs from the album and one bonus track that will only be available on the single. that should drop sometime in the fall.

i'll keep you guys updated about other happenings as i find them out.