So in the battle for the night of July 31 st  between Opus One Productions (Girl Talk Concert) and Joker Productions (Neko Case concert) it seems as if the final tactical maneuver on behalf of Opus One has rendered the Neko Case show (in my opinion anyway) obsolete.

Opus One (most likely at the behest of Mr. Greg Gillis) has proceeded to gather arguably the greatest collection of Pittsburgh-based talent on one bill in years.  In addition to the illustrious Girl Talk, the lineup will include Wiz Khalifa, Don Caballero, Donora, Grand Buffet, The Modey Lemon, and Centipede Eest peforming together at the Ampitheater at Station Square on July 31st at 6:00 pm.

The combination of The Modey Lemon, Grand Buffet and Don Caballero alone, who are all Pittsburgh legends respectively but played very few local shows as of late, has me frothing at the mouth.  And of course, anyone who has ever attended a Girl Talk concert knows what that means.  Mr. Gillis’ victory lap last fall at Gravity Nightclub was one for the ages, complete with a New Year’s-like blanket of  black and gold balloons, a large projection screen shooting up an elaborate collage of Pittsburgh sports iconography, and more high school kids than anyone could have possibly imagined.

Girl Talk was the first Pittsburgh-based artist I decided to write about.  When Night Ripper hit my iPod in the fall of 2006, which was passed onto me by a friend of mine  at Princeton’s WPRB, I did a number of things.  First, I frantically shoved the record in front of every member of my college soccer team, five of whom I lived with, desperately explaining how this guy, Greg Gillis, came from Pittsburgh and was the DJ equivalent of Batman (at the time of the record’s release Gillis was working at a still unnamed Pittsburgh- based chemical engineering company, repeatedly escaping the white collar grind to play riotous weekend gigs across the northeast, all while his co-workers were none the wiser).

Second, I came to the obvious conclusion that Night Ripper must become a pregame, house party, and late night dance session staple, simply because the album possessed an unparalleled ability to pitch the most disparate group of people into a dancing fervor.  Most importantly, I realized that Greg Gillis’ taste for popular music was unrivaled by any DJ working today.  Yes, while his technical prowess is impressive, (I read somwhere he crafted his albums, most averaging 200+ samples, using only a wave editor and a calculator) his keen ear for brilliant mash up combinations has taken a genre previously maligned as a mere novelty to an entirely different, challenging level.  A simple list of his most famous combinations will cement this fact: The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” -  Ying Yang Twins’ “The Whisper Song,”  The Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin” – UGK ‘s “International Player’s Anthem,” Metallica’s “One” – Lil Mama’s “Lip Gloss,” and last but not least, Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” – Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.”

With such a strong line up of groups leading to the explosion of pure, unmitigated fun that is a Girl Talk  live show, I am convinced this will easily become the party of the summer.

Girl Talk – Play Your Part pt. 1

In addition to all this home grown talent, spots like The New Amsterdam and Shadow Lounge continue to bring some seriously challenging hip-hop into the Pittsburgh scene. Some upcoming shows include Wale (pronounced Wall-ay) at The Shadow Lounge on May 22 and Vast Aire of Cannibal Ox at the Thunderbird Cafe on June 13.  Now that we have established the steel city can bring that boom boom boom as good as any other scene in America, onto the tracks. 

Wiz Khalifa – Soulmate ft. John Record

Wiz Khalifa, the crown prince of Pittsburgh hip-hop, is back with a cut off his latest release, Flight School, out in early May.  “Soulmate ft. John Record” is one of the more minimalist efforts on a mixtape that could be considered a kitchen sink affair with the majority of the cuts suffocating from overused, contemporary rap production cliches (re: “Boarding Pass”).

“Soulmate”‘s beat is easily the most affecting on the album, showcasing stuttering drum combinations at various speeds and a heavy oscillating synth backdrop that hums with the robust atmosphere of a Dave Sitek production.  Khalifa’s delivery is startling in its disconnection from his usual flow with his constant, relaxed arrogance being replaced by a straining, sincere draw that puts effort behind lines like “and last night was amazing/I can honestly say that you the best I ever had/and you don’t remember/because you weren’t even there/but your soul was.”

The honest day’s work suits Wiz, and more importantly separates him from the magnanimous hip-hop masses. This isn’t exactly Kanye-level insecurity, but “Soulmate” provides a healthy glimpse into the head of an MC poised to take his place on the national stage.  Stay grounded Wiz, we still love you.

Recollect – Deep Submergence

DJ Shadow famously asserted on the seminal “Building Steam From a Grain of Salt” off 1996′s genre defining Entroducing… that he is both a student and teacher of the drum. With “Deep Submergence,” Pittsburgh-based beat maker Recollect (a.k.a. very good friend of mine Derrick Dumont) makes it extremely apparent his homework is done.  The drums on this record push things around, clearing paths big and small for beautifully aged samples to fall into place.  After the ominous, shuttering organ cut-up that begins the track, some dusty horns, pianos and hungover guitars fill the piece with a hazy familiarity.

This is a record digger’s dream, nostalgic and loose, composed with the same fly by night enthusiasm of the best jazz recordings.  Maybe Recollect’s aiming to replicate the feeling of an improvised jam session, slowly revealing the effortless complexity and technical wizardry that can happen not only in a recording studio, but in a bedroom as well.  A headphone symphony? You’re damn right.

Tobacco – Dirt (ft. Aesop Rock)

I’ll make no apologies for my allegiance to Brooklyn-based, Definitive Jux Records, a label known for their harsh, Bomb Squad influenced production techniques and verbose, game changing MC’s (El-p, Cage, Mr. Lif among others).  So when I first listened to “Dirt,” off Tobacco’s(driving creative force behind the Pittsburgh based Black Moth Super Rainbow) debut solo release, Fucked up Friends, and marveled not only at Aesop Rock (crown jewel of the Def Jux empire) and his paranoid, surrealistically dense verses, but Tobacco’s schizophrenic beat that was underground rap-challenging and mind blowingly psychedelic in the same measure, I realized it was a match made in heaven.

Even Tobacco’s most prized “instrument”, a surprisingly agile vocoder, provides the perfect chorus to split up Aesop Rock’s stream of consciousness rhymes that showed the MC in top form, spitting lines like “Kenobi comma Ben/Mingled the common men/He had the fangs of Gengis Kahn, he had the heart of Gonga Den.” Hopefully Tobacco will eventually lend his kaleidoscopic sense for sonic narrative to some local wordsmiths. Can you say Lord Grunge-Tobacco collab for 2010? I’m sure as hell holding my breath.

Discuss a.k.a. Young Frankenstein – What it is to Fly

Discuss a.k.a. Young Frankenstein (a.k.a. Andrés Ortiz-Ferrari) has an uncanny knack for making compellingly intricate, instrumental hip-hop that keeps the audience in mind.  In a genre that is overstuffed by too many self-indulgent experiments, where some compositions are more interesting for the artist to create than for a crowd to listen to, Discuss provides a unique bridge between older crate digging samples and glitchy breakbeat production.  The convergence of the twain can produce a track like  “What it is to Fly,” which boasts not only some choice soul, reggae and jazz samples but a massive lumbering synth encrusted beat that crackles and shimmers with each progression.

This technically heady (but more importantly danceable) track paints a vivid, slow motion fever dream that is as atmospheric as it is entertaining.  With “What it is to Fly,” Discuss has thrown the gauntlet down for the hip hop/IDM scene in Pittsburgh to follow suit.  The track will be featured on an internet only ep distributed by Puerto Rican label Tekadisko and will be out by the end of May.