Tag Archives: Nosaj Thing

Bay Area, Music

“Saw You” by Laff Trax Was Tucked Away On Soulection Radio

So Laff Trax (Toro Y Moi x Nosaj Thing) is set to perform at Treasure Island Music Festival in Oakland this weekend. But strangely, the super production duo hasn’t officially released  a single track?? That’s laughable…ok I’ll stop.  But seriously, it leaves a lot of people wondering what to expect from an hourlong set from the collaboration project of two highly respected producers in Toro’s Chaz Bundick and Nosaj’s Jason Chung. Well my friends, I’ve been internet sleuthing… And I found something awesome.

Looks as if when Chaz hopped on to Soulection Radio #323 (back in August of 2017!) he dropped a track called “Saw You,” in its entirety (which Soulection cutely listed as being by ‘Laff Trak’) and it hasn’t really lived anywhere else, besides perhaps live Chaz DJ sets (Boiler Room), or the very limited Laff Trax performances that have gone down before TIMF this weekend. In the past, Toro & Nosaj collabed on the track “Try” off of Nosaj Thing’s 2013 album, Home, but this is on another spectrum entirely.

“Saw You” has those signature Nosaj cosmic effects and settles into a gamelan-soaked house beat in the mold of Chaz’s Les Sins project. As the track unfolds, vocals (presumably from Chaz) send us into an affirming musical comfort zone. I strive to find this kind of harmony in a production and I haven’t stopped blasting “Saw You” multiple times a day since I discovered it.

I’m gonna drop the track below and you can peep the whole Soulection #323 episode here. It’s a stellar mix and Joe Kay’s interview with Chaz in between tracks is insightful and endearing to say the least. More importantly though, some internet hero ripped the perfectly placed “Saw You” track into its own standalone soundcloud file (4 months ago!), which gives us our moment of zen below. This is an unofficial release obviously, but let this kindly be a call to Laff Trax: Get this shit out to the world son! (and I’ll happily swap in an official link when they do.) See y’all on the Island…err….in Oakland this weekend!

AS

Laff Trax plays TIMF Saturday 10/13/18 at 4:20 – 5:05 on The City Stage. 

(Image courtesy of TIMF)

Albums of the Year, Music

The Top 50 Albums of 2015

Here it is….Everything Ecstatic’s 9th Annual Best Albums of the Year List. Shouts out to everyone who’s followed along over the years and I’m excited to share the spoils of another year in music witchas. This year, I had to abandon the one album a day for 20-30 days format of the past few years, cause there just weren’t enough hours in the days leading up to this post.  But you can still see all of the archives from ’06 to ’13 here and 2014’s entries beginning here.

At any rate, this year’s list is 50 albums in one post, straight up. Each entry is brief, with some scattered notable videos, links and I made a playlist of all the albums at the bottom. Props to Abhi/Dijon, Drake and Bob Moses, who put out quality releases in 2015, but were the last 3 albums cut from the Top 50. Also, you won’t find D’Angelo on this list as Black Messiah was released on December 15th, 2014. I know some outlets are ranking it this year, but release dates are the only definitive indicator of what year an album belongs to. But ultimately, Black Messiah doesn’t need to be placed on an arbitrary list to validate it’s beauty and importance far beyond a musical context. You can read more of my thoughts on the first performance from D’Angelo’s renaissance here, and know that if it was a 2015 album, it’d be sitting at #2 on this list. With that, let us begin the annual ritual. Enjoy!

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