All we do is stack loot. Run around and chomp fruit.

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Midwest Product
World Series of Love
***

Mini bed sheet ghosts with soulless stares have invaded the CD booklets of many a Poplife loyalist over the last year, damning their owners’ bad Case Logic for not zipping the light away so they can party. But such fanatic listeners aren’t to blame; it’s the gurus occupying a clever marketing compound in Ann Arbor, Michigan – polite, well eductated specters who package infectious minimal “avant-electro” like no other.

And if they had fingers, those ghosts should also be pointing digits at Ann Arbor’s Midwest Product for concocting yet another disc of mesmeric clarity and with-it fun for their luxx record label.

The follow up to last year’s decidedly more pointed, bluer-collared gem, Specifics, the Midwest three have cashed in some of the glitch for a briefer, airier pop sensibility. Not exactly a surprise when the album’s titled World Series of Love and a thick stream of rainbow graces its cover of classic off-white.

But, upon flipping the case over and shuttering in sprites of disbelief – a mere seven tracks! – seeing a song called “Avant Poop” quickly washes away paranoid notions of a trendy Bravo hipster makeover. And besides Joe Straight – Salinger paperbacks inspired the rainbow.

Unlike the rest of Ghostly International’s adroit stable, which includes instrumental phenoms Dabrye and Matt Dear, MP get biz with the electronics and ye ol’ axe and chisels. Rather safe opener “Dead Cat” is familiarly whisked into gear by guitar and percussion, before “Bank” – hopefully you’ve never heard Fear Factory’s remake of “Cars” – emits a smell of ’80s nerd cheese equal parts aroma and odor.

Not too rad with five remaining tracks, but ethereally shifting fractal explosions like “Swamp” and “Duckpond” bust open the planetarium, leaving “Umbrella” to go supernova as you wax deeply on the cosmos and having candlelight sex with ex-flames, like a (seemingly content) Ghostly ghost.

For more info, follow the power pellets to Ghostly.com.

– the Hza, L&A Editor

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Lord Finesse
The Lost Sessions
***1/2

“I got more styles than you see in a kung fu flick,” a typical example of Lord Finesse finessing it; but it doesn’t get much more complex than that. For those few who know who know about D.I.T.C., perhaps one of the illest (however lacking a requisite album of bangers) rap cliques ever, even fewer know about one of its quieter and less metaphorically gifted members, Finesse.

Yeah, he’s popped up here and there, sounds like a fatter and slower Big L, never really made a name for himself; but any true hip hop head (is there a more retarded phrase to coin?) will be like, “Yeah, yo I know that nigga Finesse”as he spits and grabs his crotch (there aren’t any girls up in this, period blood).

All the songs up in this mishmash are byproducts of sessions that never made it anywhere. They’re dope though, all from the era when beats didn’t sound like some peg leg guy trying to play “Heart and Soul” up in F.A.O. Schwartz then convincing the world that mesh hats are the new shit when they’ve been over like the word “like,” oohh baby get wit me lady (then call Jay-Z) and so forth.

The long gone, bullet-holed Big L, like Andrew Lowery in My Boyfriend’s Back, turns into a zombie and hooks up with his old girlfriend. “Check the Flavor” is the dopeness, as dope as the dopeness can be, smooth as Dairy Queen shits, (plus the Lord talks about getting his dick a face lift, hee hee).

It’s nice to hear something that sound like it’s ten years old and you’ve already heard it a bunch of times. Familiarity also makes it a lot easier to be that ass who’s always saying, “Yeah yeah, I’ve heard that before” after which you bob your head to “A street genius/Never thinks with his penis” fold your arms and lean against the wall and pretend you didn’t show up at the party to try and get some play. So stumble down the alley of fictitious memories and get these latest beats courtesy of Fat Beats.

For more info, jump down the green pipe to FatBeats.com.

– Svengali, L&A Senior Writer

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