ON REPEAT: Doddodo, Kenny Mason, Zombies, Habibi, Previous Industries, Yu Ching 黃雨晴, Freddie Gibbs & Madlib, Serena-Maneesh
hectic shit from this funky lady enjoy
Hello. I hope you’re all having a SKY HIGH JULY, but I’ve got a very fun collection of songs for you this week, as well as instructions for my death! (Read on!)
But first, in case you missed it, The John Gentle Show is now available for everyone everywhere:
Let’s get into a bunch of these songs, which are collected here:
Doddodo “abcdosaka”
This YouTube description sums this up well:
hectic shit from this funky lady enjoy
I featured a song by the possibly feral Doddodo way back when, but I’ve grown to love this one even more since. While I feature all sorts of music on this, it’s “hectic shit” like this that is really my favorite kind of stuff. It’s a cross-section of hip-hop, punk and weird ass performance art.
Doddodo is Namin Haku from Osaka. Her earlier records had this cool blend of 80s breakdance hip hop and breakcore vibes, with all kinds of toy instruments and samples thrown in. Other songs have everything from traditional Japanese folk to bagpipes.
It’s got some Edan-esque scratching from DJ Maighty Mars, who is doing an in-store performance with a shoeless Doddodo on the counter like Mister Fucking Peepers. I cannot stress how much I love this.
Play this at my funeral.
Play this at my funeral LIVE.
Zombies “Aloha (Araedecer en el Pacifico)”
I saw The Zombies once at a concert in a muddy field on a rainy day in a random town in New Jersey. I was amazed at how smooth these guys in their 70’s were playing “Time of the Season” and was bummed the turnout for these legends was lighter due to the rain. You can track down footage of this particular show that I won’t link because the person filming it was directly behind me and my college girlfriend and we’re in the entire thing.
This is not that Zombies.
This is the Zombies from Spain, a project by Bernardo Bonezzi, the young son of an Italian and an Brazilian who had a precocity for music and some talented friends who he turned onto bands like Devo and Roxy Music. I suppose he hadn’t gotten around to Odyssey and Oracle yet, given the name choice. The band had one of the biggest Spanish language hits of 1980, “Groenlandia” but I heard this song first, so here’s that one!
Previous Industries “Showbiz”
Stay tuned for more cool shit from new Merge Records signees Previous Industries, an all-star trio of LA transplants via Chicago: Open Mike Eagle, Video Dave, and STILL RIFT. You really can’t go wrong with building a song around a Humpty Dance homage but nobody else would make it sound quite like this.
RIP Humpty Hump!
Habibi “On The Road”
Habibi is a band that got their start in Brooklyn in the early 2010’s. I actually crossed paths with them there, where members of the band played on my public access show, and in my film BANANAZZZ, where they made impromtu cameos alongside R. Stevie Moore and Vivian Girls, in exchange for one can of Tecate each at SXSW.
Rahill Jamalifard has had some success with solo stuff and big collaborations with the likes of Beck, but I’m a big fan of the band and it’s nice that they’re “on the road again” which is what they sing in the song ha ha.
Yu Ching 黃雨晴 “Love”
Here’s a great “waking up” song from Taiwan’s Yu Ching Huang, one half of the group Aemong in Berlin. Some of her inspirations are all-time ethereal weirdos Les Rallizes Denudes and The Space Lady, which I love.
Kenny Mason “JUMPIN IN”
John & Maria Vanderslice talked up Kenny Mason big in their guest list here a few weeks ago and I’ve been “jumpin’ in” ha ha on Kenny’s stuff and I love it. He broke out in 2020 with the album, "Angelic Hoodrat” which cites influences all over the place, from Frank Ocean to Deftones.
I also love how simple this music vid—uh “music visualizer” is. Maybe because I too have spent a lot of time sitting in Chinese takeout spots waiting for food because I don’t plan ahead.
Also this flips a great Love Apple sample, here’s the original which was a Numero Group re-release a few years back:
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib “Crime Pays”
This video feels like one of those weirder episodes of Atlanta.
I admittedly slept on this collaboration between these two legends a few years ago, but I’ve been playing it frequently alongside the previous song. This one also features another nice sample of the Bob James-esque Walt Barr.
I’d talk about Madlib here but that deserves it’s own whole entry.
THE GOLD STANDARD
Serena-Maneesh “I Just Want To See Your Face”
I talked about Norway’s Serena-Maneesh a few months ago, and I’ve had this classic in rotation since then too. I love how charging and distorted and swirly this song is while there’s a nice little love song sung over it by vocalist Elvira Nikolaisen. One review by Tom Breihan called it a “instrumental motorik dirge caked in crackly, inscrutable shards of walkie-talkie chatter” which puts it much better than I could.
Also play this at my funeral.