Tell your Monday cubicle to fuck off!!!
Peace,
Employee

The Whitefield Brothers (nom de plume for the veteran german funk band Poets of Rhythm) recorded their gritty dark kinda weird 2001 album In The Raw back when The Menahan Street Band were still a bunch of marching band geeks in an Iowa high school (this is a completely arbitrary and likely wildly erroneous assumption). As these things often go the album became a bit of a cult hit, and was recently re-issued in expanded form by Now Again records.
The Gift is the first single from their upcoming followup Earthology. It features Edan and Mr. Lif. It sounds like it could’ve been on Edan’s Beauty and The Beat, albeit slightly mellower and more organic. Naturally it sounds like it was recorded inside a rusty bucket. There’s a lot of tuba and echo-effects, and a little Ron Burgundy-esque jazz flute. I can dig it.
The Whitefield Bros – The Gift ft Edan and Mr Lif

Yesterday the cover and press release for Edan’s highly anticipated new mix/album hit the internet with the force of 1000 celebrity nipple slips. Today a short sampler appeared. God only knows what kinda crazy shit will happen tomorrow.
Here’s the text of the press release, downloads immediately below:
Artist: Edan
Title: Echo Party
Label: Five Day Weekend
Released: 23rd November 2009
The Hiatus Is Over
‘Echo Party’ is Edans first album since his 2005 critically acclaimed sophomore release, ‘Beauty And The Beat’ (Lewis Recordings).
Boston native, Edan Portnoy first made his mark with debut album ‘Primitive Plus’. Hes a producer, emcee and deejay whos produced for notable artists such as Souls of Mischief, Akrobatik, Mr. Lif and David Holmes.
‘Echo Party’ is just that – a party, an eccentric bonanza of sounds that has been lovingly crafted, polished and played to perfection. Edan had full access to Traffic Entertainment Group’s extensive back catalogue to mix and rework in any way he could imagine. Two years later Five Day Weekend and Edan are set to release ‘Echo Party’. What began as a simple mix, has grown into a colourful full on production album that features Edan as the musician displaying his skills on live instruments including synthesizers, guitar, percussion, echoplex even glockenspiel and kazoo.
‘Echo Party’ has Edans personality intermixed with a wealth of amazing material. Elements are pulled from original multi tracks and these isolated accapellas and drum breaks have not been heard by any ears except the engineers and original artists that were in on the original sessions. Other portions are more identifiable though obscured by the filter of Edan’s ever improving studio techniques. Only an artist like Edan with his borderline obsessive commitment to detail could have brought such a project to life.
‘Echo Party’ promises to be one of 2009s most celebrated releases.
Edan will also be touring an ‘Echo Party’ themed DJ set throughout the UK and Ireland in December.
You can hear a ‘BS Promo Sampler’ here although as Edan will tell you it isn’t for your enjoyment – he talks over it to stop bootlegging. A full album will be mailed to you nearer the release date. Sorry if this irritates you…it irritates us!
The sampler came in a loss-less audio format (aiff), which can be a pain in the ass. I converted it to mp3 for convenience, which you can stream and download below. A link for the aiff file (150mb) is also available below.
Echo Party Bullshit Promotional Copy

There was a recent interview with Edan where he talks about future projects and mentions working with live instrumentation, which seems like a promising concept. With that in mind here are a few songs from Edan’s band Fiber (aka Fiber 2001 aka Fiber 2007 depending on which site you check.) He is listed as playing glockenspiel and marimba, the latter being the thing that the badass mayan in the pic above is jamming on. Their music falls relatively in line with the aesthetic of Beauty and the Beat, mixing elements of hip hop with various forms of psychedelia and free jazz. It’s mostly instrumental, with the exception of some brief goofy vocals on the Avocados song. As far as I know they’ve never actually released anything officially, however I did come across this handy Soundclick gizmo via their myspace which will let you play the songs and buy them if you so choose.
You can watch the interview I was referring to here http://vimeo.com/5955154