C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 01/03/2025#MWE Day 28 A compilation of various Thelonious Monk sessions from the early-mid 50s, a couple cuts of which feature Sonny Rollins. Man. Sonny Rollins is a master of melody - a seemingly endless wellspring of ideas. I just want to say that we’re all lucky to be living at the same time as him. 010
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 01/03/2025#MWE Day 27 Gritty Midwestern soul meets silky Philly elegance (Gamble & Huff! Thom Bell! Vince Montana!). You can hear the emergent strains of what would become disco in a few years, but it’s really about the ballads and slow dance numbers here. They don’t make slow jams like they used to. Word. 020
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 28/02/2025#MWE Day 26 Generally, more of the kind of material present on the first LP with slightly better recording quality. What I said about Take One applies. “Reverend Lee” is a huge stand out- vivid storytelling with her voice contorting to match every lyric and an all-timer Chuck Rainey bassline. 071
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 28/02/2025#MWE Day 25 A ballad-heavy set that exemplifies Flack’s steadfast elegance. What would be saccharine in someone else’s hands is graceful in hers. My favorite moments are the more groove-oriented tunes. Ron Carter absolutely holds it DOWN on “Compared to What” and “Tryin’ Times”. 040
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 27/02/2025I’m so tired of jazz album cover design that’s an inferior rip-off of either the Blue Note or ECM graphic design aesthetic. We need more arch-top guitars on Mars. 051
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 27/02/2025#MWE Day 24 Kool & the Gang’s early brand of jazz-inflected funk speaks for itself. I just have one question: Is “Rated X” the greatest funk Mellotron performance? It’s kinda running unopposed unless we count the outro of “Mercy Mercy Me”. Still though, love hearing Mellotron outside of prog. 030
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 26/02/2025#MWE Day 23 Scarface casts a cold, unflinching gaze towards 90s street life. There’s a darkness underpinning everything- even the escapism afforded by sex, weed, and drink. Vivid and soulful, every word carries the greatest possible weight. How’d it take me this long to get around to this?! 020
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 24/02/2025#MWE Day 22 A precision engineered missile of angsty rock aimed squarely at 13-year-olds from ‘94 til Infinity. Basically immune to critique- it is exactly what it aims to be. No more and no less. The album that launched a million power chor 130
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 22/02/2025#MWE Day 21 Noodly. Not necessarily in a bad way. Has the vibe of a live-focused group attempting to consolidate their sound into a studio recording. The LP makes me more curious to seek out a live bootleg. National Health, this group’s heir apparent, got it right tho. For nerds and completists. 110
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 22/02/2025#MWE Day 20 Honestly? Went into all of these albums expecting to dislike them and maybe get a dunk or two off. Coming out of all of them not necessarily loving everything, but deeply appreciating that a guy as open and curious as JC can be successful. Good for him. 010
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 20/02/2025#MWE Day 19 You know what? I went in expecting to really detest this album but I don’t. R&B JC isn’t my favorite, but this could be a lot worse. I don’t need to hear him rap ever again tho. Sidebar: sometimes I wish music school students never found out about Dilla tbh. 010
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 18/02/2025#MWE Day 18 Kind of a nice surprise! When JC slightly dials back his maximalist approach, he’s capable of moments of subtle beauty and charm. The folk orientation works better for his voice. A bit long, and stumbles towards the end, but I found myself enjoying this much more than anticipated. 010
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 18/02/2025#MWE Day 17 What happens when you put Hiatus Kaiyote, Bo Diddley, and Hideki Naganuma in a blender? Track 3. It’s… a whole lot. I can kind of appreciate the boundary-free exploration of styles but the phrase that kept coming to mind: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. 110
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 17/02/2025#MWE Day 15 The embryonic beginnings of a distinct regional rap sound developing on the West Coast. Much of this album has more than a passing resemblance to contemporary East Coast styles (Juice Crew, Run DMC), but “Just Clowning” feels distinctly LA. Solid 80s rap LP that suggests the future. 140
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 16/02/2025#MWE Day 15 There are many recordings of Ahmad Jamal playing “Poinciana”. It’s astounding that it never seems perfunctory- there’s a palpable joy that exudes from every performance. He was happy to sit in that tune, explore it a little more, and share that with folks for his whole life. Message! 040
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 15/02/2025#MWE Day 14 Black Milk is a producer with few true peers as a technician. Rather than give us the full baroque treatment here, he strips it back to the loop. “Drumless” maybe, but masterfully executed with Fat Ray’s charismatic stink pink gator Detroit flow as a perfect complement. 010
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 14/02/2025#MWE Day 13 When I was a child, my mom would occasionally return home from the import store with some small instrument. I would sit around with it, tapping out rhythms or plucking notes and sitting with the reverberating sound. This album reminds me of those times innocently exploring sound. 040
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 13/02/2025#MWE Day 12 I love Phil The Agony. He’s like the snotty, raw Phife Dawg of the Strong Arm Steady/ Likwit Crew continuum. Whenever he pops up on a record, it’s a high point for me. This is labeled as an album but it’s really a mixtape- a 2004 mixtape. Kinda a mixed bag, but again… Phil rules. 030
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 12/02/2025#MWE Day 11 The post-Chronic 2001 checklist: Dre, Nate, Snoop, & Em features ✅ Mel-Man, Scott Storch, Battlecat, & Quik production ✅ Brickwalled to the point of slightly clipping mastering job ✅✅✅ Extremely of its time, but still a pretty fun listen. A step down from the last LP to me tho. 140
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 11/02/2025#MWE Day 10 It’s the bigger, more expensive sounding sequel record that so often falls flat on its face but here… doesn’t! Well, a couple regrettable choruses and beats don’t kill it anyway. A marvel of engineering- this sounds HUGE. I want my future records to knock like this. 040
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 10/02/2025#MWE Day 9 Hard rhyming on dusted beats. This record is the platonic ideal of a good mid-90s rap record. Nothing is blowing my mind conceptually, but it hits exactly the way it should. Also, E Swift deserves more acclaim as a producer. That man’s sound is incredible. 040
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 09/02/2025#MWE Day 8 Today I’m switching it up with a good rap record that I didn’t have to force myself to finish! Blu and Evidence craft a love letter to the ugly beauty of their hometown. It’s a study in contrasts: grime & glamour. “LA has a dark side” has been explored before, but this does it well. 040
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 08/02/2025#MWE Day 7 In 1994, Guru told us it’s “Mostly Tha Voice”. In 1999, Ja Rule and his raspy baritone proved that it really isn’t only the voice. Listen to the difference in charisma and presence when Jay-Z and DMX pop up on “It’s Murda”. Says it all, really. RIP Irv Gotti though. 160
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 07/02/2025#MWE Day 6 Last week, our man Gary was on a podcast talking about the Belly OST. Yesterday, the use of ARP Solina strings made me think about the title track of this LP. I put this LP on and it all connected! “Moving On” with Mya, Nore, and Raekwon is pretty great for a random soundtrack cut. 230
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 06/02/2025#MWE Day 5 Post-Headhunters, pre-DeFrancesco- what’s a jazz organist to do? Get an armful of electric keyboards (Rhodes, Solina, Pro-Soloist to my ears) and make the best of the situation, apparently. Enjoyable as a slightly chintzy example of the shifting tide of mid-70s soul jazz. 040
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 05/02/2025#MWE Day 4 Circling back after Sunday. The part of this mixtape I really like comes out of an alternate reality ‘97ish where major label rappers can be sober, introspective, AND outlandishly hilarious. The vibey melodic stuff is cool, but *THAT* sticks out. Looking forward to hearing more. 051
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 04/02/2025#MWE Day 3 I really loved the first NxWorries record as a young, dumb man. As an older, less dumb (arguably) man, the follow-up is an enjoyable slice of hip-hop inflected R&B that I don’t love in the same way. It goes down smooth- maybe too smooth for my taste these days? 020
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 02/02/2025#MWE Day 2 A good album for the moment. Tranquil plucks of tape-looped acoustic guitar harmonics give way to churning mechanical drones over the duration of an LP. I listened while reading, my attention divided between the words on the page consciously and the sound of the record subconsciously. 081
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 02/02/2025#MWE Day 1 An early experiment in sampling from the founder of Yellow Magic Orchestra. Stylistically somewhere between synth pop and ambient. Quirky, playful, and prescient. I hear it predicting the sonic palette of the Earthbound/ Mother 2 soundtrack more than a decade early! 070
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 13/12/2024Simple joys in life: listening to sweet soul from a crackly 45. Gets no better. 120
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 08/12/2024Four albums that dropped when you were in elementary school that defined your music taste forever. Full disclosure- I wasn’t up on any of this in 5th grade, mostly I was listening to Yes and The Beatles 😂 141
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 01/12/2024Copped this MPC in February, got busy for a couple months, then pivoted back to the SP-404 hard to finish an album and just kinda stayed over there. But now, I need more sequencing power to execute my ideas so I’m back on the MPC. Going through joints I made in here this year- I have some SHIT! 010
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 26/11/2024Hands down the illest album cover in my collection. Matt Doo forever. 030
C.Scott @cscott412.bsky.social · 22/11/2024Jungle on the SP-404MKII The sequencer was struggling with this one, but I got it in! 011
