Monday, April 7, 2008

Damn, I'm Cold

Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein [The Samples]
(Megaupload)

"It's a Cold world out there, sometimes I think I'm getting a bit frosty myself". Thus begins the greatest album to ever grace the hip-hop genre ((c)Alexander Opoku-Agyemang). I copped this album within a few weeks of its release and I haven't gone longer than a few weeks without bumping it since. When I relive my high school memories, this is the soundtrack. It was for my friends and I in the Bronx what Smells Like Teen Spirit must have been for suburban kids a generation before and The Ramones were to the generation (or so) before that. It was bleak, dissonant and devastated. It was about fury but not anger, cold without being unwelcoming.
Without it, I doubt very much that I would be a hip-hop fan today. It stretched my mind beyond the restrictive by-the-books-boom-bap let's-save-hip-hop New York underground bullshit (not all of it, but most of it) that I was an ardent disciple of back then. Consequentially, this expansion of the confines of hip-hop is what later allowed me to appreciate Dipset for what they were. The lyrics were mind-bending (I'm still (re)discovering nuggets of lyrical wisdom even now) and the beats, as evidenced by the far out sample set, were like nothing I had ever heard before. It redefined the term organized cacophony and the philosophy of creation through destruction. It redefined my conception of beauty itself (1.[||] 2. I'm deadly serious).

Leopard Tree People ('Iron Galaxy') 1 Giorgio Moroder 3:58 Cold Vein [The Samples]
Mexican Radio ('Iron Galaxy') 2 Wall of Voodoo 4:10 Cold Vein [The Samples]
The Unutterable ('Straight Off The D.I.C.') 3 Philip Glass 7:03 Cold Vein [The Samples]
Sweaters ('Raspberry Fields') 4 Laurie Anderson 2:23 Cold Vein [The Samples]
All Night Long ('The F-Word') 5 Dexter Wansel 5:33 Cold Vein [The Samples]
Attic Thoughts ('Stress Rap') 6 Bo Hansson 5:33 Cold Vein [The Samples]
Astronauts Nightmare ('Battle For Asgard') 7 Nektar 6:27 Cold Vein [The Samples]
Tambura ('Battle For Asgard') 8 Ramsey Lewis 3:01 Cold Vein [The Samples]
Love and Happiness ('Painkillers') 9 Al Green 3:14 Cold Vein [The Samples]
Portrait of Tracy ('Pigeon') 10 Jaco Pastorious 2:23 Cold Vein [The Samples]
Love Is Like Oxygen ('Life's Ill' (Bonus)) 11 Sweet 6:53 Cold Vein [The Samples]

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Crazy Mix. Thanks for posting this one. Keep up the dope sample Mixes.

Jason @ PSB said...

Holy Jesus! Goon, you're a genius. This album is very dear to me too. It took me a couple weeks to get past the first track. I would press play and it would blow my mind. It's so beautiful and so ugly all at the same time. Thanks a million!

Anonymous said...

Genius!!Been waitin, on this for a minute...Peace

Anonymous said...

Here is one more. It's at the very end of this eno track.

Cindy Tells Me ('Raspberry Fields') Brian Eno Cold Vein [The Samples

Anonymous said...

Here's another one. In Real Earth the scratch is a line from "You Know My Steez" by Gangstarr. not sure its that important but still...

Chris Wolfe said...

Plus on the track after "painkillers" is that real dope "space" type beat with Heavy drums...that sample is from the 1987 I think it was. Transformers movie. The death of Optimus Prime musical score.

Marie Chase said...

Interesting readd