The N&G Listening Club V2

Crenshaw Blvd

Crenshaw Blvd

Well-Known Member
A continuation of the original Record Club Club, founded by @AudioAce (established July of 2018) which was then carried on by @Bohnjaggs. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to run this thread!

Every other week a new album is chosen by a random forum member. We then spend the following two weeks listening to and discussing that specific album. If you are interested in selecting one of these bi-weekly picks, enter your forum name/handle on the Google form below.

I have a list of forum members that had not picked yet from the previous thread...but if you want to pick again go ahead and sign up. There is a lot of music to listen to and The N&G Forum has a wealth of hidden gems, hot takes and albums that come along at just the right time.


> Click Here To Sign Up <
 
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Current Album Discussion: The Philadelphia Experiment - Philadelphia Experiment selected by @Crenshaw Blvd

Past Albums:

Week 1: Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear
Week 2: Ween - The Mollusk
Week 3: Spoon - Gimme Fiction
Week 4: Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Week 5: Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Flight
Week 6: Battles - Mirrored
Week 7: Jeff Buckley - Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk
Week 8: Punch Brothers - The Phosphorescent Blues
Week 9: Death Grips - The Money Store
Week 10: Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Week 11: Animal Collective - Sung Tongs
Week 12: Beck - Guero
Week 13: Moses Sumney - Aromanticism
Week 14: Wax Tailor - Tales Of The Forgotten Melodies
Week 15: U2 - Achtung Baby
Week 16: The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico
Week 17: Pet Shop Boys - Behaviour
Week 18: My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Week 19: David Bowie - Blackstar
Week 20: Iceage - Plowing Into The Field Of Love
Week 21: Mew - And The Glass Handed Kites
Week 22: Julie Byrne - Not Even Happiness
Week 23: Girls Against Boys - Cruise Yourself
Week 24: Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
Week 25: Herman Düne - Giant
Week 26: Her - Her
Week 27: Dr. John, The Night Tripper - Gris-Gris
Week 28: Howard Wales & Jerry Garcia - HOOTEROLL?
Week 29: Hiatus Kaiyote - Choose Your Weapon
Week 30: F.S. Blumm & Nils Frahm - Tags Ein Tag Zwei
Week 31: Typhoon - Offerings
Week 32: Pom Poko - Birthday
Week 33: Antaractica - 81:03
Week 34: Paul Pena - Paul Pena
Week 35: Ball Park Music - Happiness And Surrounding Suburbs
Week 36: The Collection - Listen To The River
Week 37: Swans - The Seer
Week 38: The Bees - Octopus
Week 39: Savages - Adore Life
Week 40: Herbert - Bodily Functions
Week 41: Twin Tones - Nación Apache
Week 42: Gotye - Like Drawing Blood
Week 43: Julian Cope - Peggy Suicide
Week 44: Roxy Music - Stranded
Week 45: DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
Week 46: Lonely Boys - The Hunter
Week 47: KISS - Destroyer
Week 48: Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider
Week 49: Gorillaz - D-Sides
Week 50: George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
Week 51: Ethan Gruska - Slowmotionary
Week 52: Small Circle of Friends - Future
Week 53: Jellyfish - Split Milk
Week 54: Moxizishi - Moonlight is very white
Week 55: Tori Amos - Strange Little Girls
Week 56: Xeno & Oaklander - Hypnos
 
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Hello everyone! I feel honored to start the Listening Club 2.0! What a big responsibility and I hope we will discuss the album I selected, speaking of which...



Small Circle of Friends "Future" 2008

Wanted to introduce to you this album and hip hop group from Japan. Consisting of Azuma Riki and Satsuki Mutoh, they've been recording and releasing beats and music as Small Circle of Friends with their studio producing most of the tracks also, going by the name of STUDIO75.

I first found out of this group when they were releasing this album back in '08 and instantly fell in love with the music and the flow of both members webbing around their melodies. Even before I understood Japanese I was drawn by the songs and feeling of nostalgia of good days and great vibes.

I hope you'll get to listen to this album, even if you don't know Japanese or even like hip hop. It's just great music to chill out too, but I hope you find some songs or albums that will catch your ears and heart. This is one of my favorite albums of theirs(and their next one after this, called Superstar, is great too!).

Looking forward to hear your opinions of it, cheers all. Hope you are staying safe!
 
gave this a once through just now and i dig the music, the chill-out vibe as mentioned above, but also the summertime feel. vocally, i think the moments i enjoyed the most are when both members are involved at the same time rather than alternating verse/chorus and whatnot, so i kinda wish there was more of that. favorite track was probably the intro track, but i don't think that's really reflective of the album that follows, so i'll go with time- that guitar bit driving the track is an earworm.
 
@ThePakoBuelna Thanks for the pick. When I first heard this, it immediately reminded me of the De La Soul track on Buhloone Mindstate (Long Island Wildin) that features Japanese rappers (SDP I believe). That, sadly, has been my only exposure to Japanese hip hop. I would be interested to know how did you discover this group? Is this genre one that you have kept track of or did you read something that recommended it...or were you in Japan and discovered it? Keeping the De La theme...the music and beats have that laid back, jazzy element that I feel would be found on a De La or Guru track which makes it really "great music to chill out to" as you put it above.
 
Crenshaw Blvd said:
@ThePakoBuelna Thanks for the pick. When I first heard this, it immediately reminded me of the De La Soul track on Buhloone Mindstate (Long Island Wildin) that features Japanese rappers (SDP I believe). That, sadly, has been my only exposure to Japanese hip hop. I would be interested to know how did you discover this group? Is this genre one that you have kept track of or did you read something that recommended it...or were you in Japan and discovered it? Keeping the De La theme...the music and beats have that laid back, jazzy element that I feel would be found on a De La or Guru track which makes it really "great music to chill out to" as you put it above.
Click to expand...

I discovered them a while back on YouTube, going from random video to random video. I was into mainly japanese music those times and they were just about to release the album FUTURE, where this was one of the main singles.



I went diving a bit more into their songs and videos, and discovered they been at it since '89! If I recall correctly they were part of the United Future Organization(U.F.O) collective in Japan along with other big names like Toshio Matsuura and they were even hyped up a little bit by Gilles Peterson back in the day with their release of Platform 5 on his label.



Some of my favorite songs are the following:



If you've watched Samurai Champloo, you may recognize Azuma-sans voice from the ending of the series.





Superstar - Small Circle of Friends (Official music video)

I'm really glad you guys are liking these! I feel they need to be recognized and heard more.
 
ThePakoBuelna said:
Hello everyone! I feel honored to start the Listening Club 2.0! What a big responsibility and I hope we will discuss the album I selected, speaking of which...



Small Circle of Friends "Future" 2008

Wanted to introduce to you this album and hip hop group from Japan. Consisting of Azuma Riki and Satsuki Mutoh, they've been recording and releasing beats and music as Small Circle of Friends with their studio producing most of the tracks also, going by the name of STUDIO75.

I first found out of this group when they were releasing this album back in '08 and instantly fell in love with the music and the flow of both members webbing around their melodies. Even before I understood Japanese I was drawn by the songs and feeling of nostalgia of good days and great vibes.

I hope you'll get to listen to this album, even if you don't know Japanese or even like hip hop. It's just great music to chill out too, but I hope you find some songs or albums that will catch your ears and heart. This is one of my favorite albums of theirs(and their next one after this, called Superstar, is great too!).

Looking forward to hear your opinions of it, cheers all. Hope you are staying safe!
Click to expand...

This is enjoyable as hell.

Reminds me of golden era hip hop. The music reminds me of Ninth Wonder, Jazzy Jeff, along with Native Tongues/Hieroglyphics.

Dig the breezy flows. I’m catching some Jurassic Five vibes. I’m at work, can’t wait to give it the dedicated listen it deserves.

Is there somewhere one can find a translation of the lyrics?
 
Lee Newman said:
This is enjoyable as hell.

Reminds me of golden era hip hop. The music reminds me of Ninth Wonder, Jazzy Jeff, along with Native Tongues/Hieroglyphics.

Dig the breezy flows. I’m catching some Jurassic Five vibes. I’m at work, can’t wait to give it the dedicated listen it deserves.

Is there somewhere one can find a translation of the lyrics?
Click to expand...

Let me see if I can dig up my old CD copy, don't recall if there are lyrics there. I'll ask them if they happen to have them translated too. Will update with any news.
 
Lee Newman said:
This is enjoyable as hell.

Reminds me of golden era hip hop. The music reminds me of Ninth Wonder, Jazzy Jeff, along with Native Tongues/Hieroglyphics.

Dig the breezy flows. I’m catching some Jurassic Five vibes. I’m at work, can’t wait to give it the dedicated listen it deserves.

Is there somewhere one can find a translation of the lyrics?
Click to expand...

ha I was listening to this and thought, this is so divorced from the dark hard edged hip hop that I’m used to. I wondered what kind of hip hop could have inspired them at all.
 
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