The second and final video from The 6 Billion EP (2010), a FREE release from Twin Lizard Version 4. Features Beatmasta Bill on the cuts.

 
Free Music – twinlizard.net
Twt – @twinlizardv4
Facebook – facebook.com/twinlizard

Produced by Witheld Evidence / Antistarr / Onus
Further mixing and remixing by Twin Lizard Version 4 and Maurice Mulligan at Brickbeat Studio.
Video production by Graham Cooling (@yellingatcon) -http://grahamcooling.co.uk/

A blog about this video can be found here:http://twinlizard.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/video-6-billion-by-twin-lizard-v4.html

Twin Lizard release via the netlabel Needle In The Groove (www.needleinthegroove.net)

Distorted Thoughts, a small collection from Krowne, one of Black Lantern Music’s producers has kept coming up, and every time I make it all the way through every single one of the tracks, which is by no means a certainty for any record…

Check this one…

Krowne – Total Debunk by KROWNE

It’s loping, busy electro that’s guaranteed to get your head nodding and I can’t recommend it enough. Simple as that really.
Go and download it for free here

Listen to Krowne’s tracks and mixes at Soundcloud

The Death Bazooka are releasing a series of mixes highlighting some the best Creative Commons music around… hip-hop, electro, ambient, techno, house, freaky jazz and general electronic madness.

Twin Lizard Version 4 feature on the first ever Plastic Factory edition, so go check it out.

Check out the full tracklisting and credits, and download the album here

Free Music – twinlizard.net
Twt – @twinlizardv4
Facebook – facebook.com/twinlizard

Features David Downey of Woke With a Plan and Texture of Black Lantern Music.
Produced by Ioneye and Twin Lizard Version 4.
Video production by Pip Wilson (@pipwilson)

A blog about this video can be found here

Twin Lizard release via the netlabel Needle In The Groove (www.needleinthegroove.net)

I say they’re an oddball, underground alt-rap act anyway, and whilst Rewired is only a handful of tracks released from the backburner, it’s a worthy effort nevertheless. Veering from tender-I’m-sad to bitter-as-fuck, it’s the sound of angry geeks dealing with girls and broken relationships, and I’m digging it.

The Alien Breed – Rewired EP – 01 Felt Tip by TheAlienBreed

Rewired is full of good, solid delivery from the MC who, as far as I can tell, is called SeveeR. He bears a similarity to Sage Francis, and this is surely six tracks of Personal Journals type stuff, but more overt. Lyrically strong throughout, and there are occasional brilliant one liners that really made me sit up and listen.

Production is tasteful and sparse for the most part, which is good because the only weakness of this collection is slight over-cluttering of their sound on one tune which detracts from the impact of the MC a bit. A minor criticism that though, and it could just as easily have been down to my crappy car stereo.

You can’t go wrong with free music like this, so I’m off to download the rest of their EP’s immediately.

Here’s the acts Soundcloud

Their Bandcamp

And Facebook

5 O’Clock Shadowboxers apparently comprise MC Zilla Rocca and producer Blurry Drones, with a number of guests apparent on this release. This free EP contains a number of remixes and collabs across it’s nine tracks, and all told it’s a collection of hugely listenable tracks which contains one or two absolutely outstanding tunes, the first of which is a remix of Bottomfeeders, originally from The Slow Twilight EP:

Zilla Rocca is a master of passive-aggressive, sarcastic tones and for a first impression I heard similarities to my old mate Longusto. If you must have a better known comparison he could been called a more aggro, less veiled Aesop Rock I suppose, but only at a push. Whichever you choose, I say the chaps mic skills are undeniable.

The album is brilliantly produced too, both remixes and originals…The beats are a lesson in tasteful sampling, with chopped up live instruments and bits of classic tracks over beefy rolling drum loops. Musical, dynamic and guaranteed to get your head nodding:

I’m sure these guys are a bigger noise in the US than I’d know from this side of the ocean, but if he’s not he soon will be, so I’m off to leech everything I can afford from the Bandcamp. I suggest you do the same.

You can download a free copy of the EP, or buy a limited edition CD copy at Bandcamp

Zilla Rocca’s blog is here

More of Zilla Rocca’s tracks can be found at Soundcloud

This collection of songs is the first from the stable of two 18 year old producer / MC’s from Louth in Lincolnshire. It’s a concept album in something like the style of Professor Elemental, loosely based around the Jack Frost persona of one of the MC’s, and you can find the two protaganists performing live around Lincolnshire as The Orchestra of Strangers.

I have to declare an interest in this one, since I’ve recorded both Jack Frost and his partner in rhyme Afterbyrne, and have future collaborations in the pipeline with them too. Lincoln hip hop is a small world, what can I say?

Entirely lacking in UK rap school’s grimey street pretensions, Rough Drafts draw influence from the US Rhymesayers / Strange Famous school of hip hop, and particularly the spoken word tradition that backs some of SFR’s artists.

It’s evident immediately that the ideas and production in and of the beats is the strongest thing about this project, with a very specific sound and vision that shines through…When the tracks are good they’re mighty, cheesy keyboards and 80′s bass, with sweet drums to drive it all along.

Rough Drafts – The Riddler by Needle In The Groove Recs

There’s a certain energy in the performances that’s infectious, and all the lyrics are ridiculously strong from chaps as young as this, whom I know haven’t been writing or rapping for long at all.

Despite this one or two of the performances are technically weak, and some tracks have a tendency to go on a bit.. It’s all well and good trying to fill a lot of dead time with samples, but that gets repetitive fast. A couple more musical ideas in the structure of the tracks wouldn’t go amiss either, as one or two of them are loopy and lacking in dynamics.

Having said that though, I’m very much looking forward to a better quality, more polished next release, maybe with a bit of emphasis on quality rather than quantity. An act with this much potential owe it to themselves, though this release highlights something about this generation of internet savvy musicians, as Jack Frost is the equivalent of those four track tapes us old-timers all have knocking about that are never going to see the light of day. Well, people routinely upload that material to the cloud now, and this heroic first attempt at an album is an example of that.

Rough Drafts – A Word About Me, Myself And Irony (ft. Afterbyrne) by Needle In The Groove Recs

Whilst it makes some errors these are forgivable in such a heart-on-sleeve record, and whatever happens I’m going to ask Twin Lizard Version 4 to remix and master a couple of my favourites from the record.

You can download Jack Frost by Rough Drafts here

Rough Draft’s Facebook group

COOL POINDEXTER + Twin Lizard (V4) – We Do This Everyday by TwinLizard

Though intended as a promotional tool for Cool P’s production skills, this record sounded much more like a labour of love than a strictly commercial venture from where I was sitting, and it brings together 18 artists all of whom were mixed and mastered by one man in a corner of the room home studio to a pretty tight schedule

Musically, this collection swings from classic 80′s guitar riff and driving, live sounding drum loops to proto nu-metal, all finished off with a diverse collection of (mostly Australian) voices. There are plenty of “That riff’s from…” moments, and though it strays into the formulaic once in a while, when the elements come together there are some great moments.

There’s a couple of rough edges… A track or two of filler, which is hard to avoid on a 16 tracker put together against a deadline, and a couple of the beats do miss the creative flair of the majority, but all in all this is a good collection.

Here’s a couple of my personal favourites, hosted exclusively by NITG:

Cool Poindexter – Mind’s Eye (feat. Blake Walsh) by Needle In The Groove Recs

Blake Walsh defines this one with some of the better lyricism on the record.

Cool Poindexter – Integrity Is Where It’s At (feat. Pyxidata and Siege-A) by Needle In The Groove Recs

Ignoring the UBER-CHEESY call and response moment, this is a top slice of 80′s hair rock with two diverse voices.

Coolpoindexter is at his best mixing powerful guitars with funky, rock sounding hip hop beats, and in terms of production the tunes that play to these strengths are head and shoulders above a lot of producers out there. It’s an odd niche to be filling too, but great if you want to infuse your hip hop with some Van Halen vibe.

If you like the sound of all this, go check out Cool P’s Soundcloud for what he has for sale.

The piece that appeared in the paper was a heavily edited overview of this interview in 500 words, so I thought I’d post the original question and answer session here:

Tells us briefly about the history of the band?

I’ve been making rap music under this moniker on and off since 1996, when myself and an old friend decided we wanted to front a band but couldn’t sing.
Twin Lizard has been through proto-metal rap, laid back indie-rap, to straight UK hip hop rap, and up to the current version 4’s mish-mash of Black Grape style 90’s indie grooves and US weirdo-rap.

We’ve been through loads of members in all that time of course, some of whom have made such a significant contribution that I felt it was necessary to differentiate each ‘era’ of the band, hence the Version’s thing.

Where has the name come from?

It’s officially The Twin Tailed Lizard, because a guy I co-founded the band with 10 years ago found a lizard with two tails on holiday, took a photo of it, and that formed the basis of our first logo. There isn’t any such thing as a lizard with two tails, so we thought it represented something unique. That was a long time ago, and quite naieve of us, but I couldn’t change it now.

People get annoyed with me because it isn’t a David Icke conspiracy theory reference these days.

How is rap in Lincoln? Is it difficult to find a venue and a voice in Lincoln?

Not when you’re as used to making things happen here as me and my cohort’s are. We used to run a tiny indie label, and all the live music at The Falcon, and were the first people to bring the big names of UK hip hop to the city six or seven years ago, and now we run a netlabel and spend all our spare time either making or promoting music, so dealing with the problems people encounter in a small city like Lincoln is second nature to us now.

Lincoln has enough good voices of one form or another at any given time, and where there’s a will to make it happen, there’s a gig for those voices.

As for rap in Lincoln, Twin Lizard’s home studio has been the testing ground for three generations of Lincoln MC’s in the last ten years. There isn’t a ‘scene’ as such, but that’s because there isn’t a place where performers regularly get together and spar with each other, and scene’s grow out of that kind of thing. That’s because there aren’t enough performers here really though, fundamentally…For my part, I continue to help out anybody I can with recording, and Twin Lizard are always looking for collaborators.

Do you get a good reception?

In Lincoln? Yes, but mainly because I ruthlessly control our shows, making them small, invitation only, and free for those on our mailing list wherever I can. The music we make isn’t widely understood, and the easiest label for it – hip hop – is very misleading now, so it’s a hard-sell for those who aren’t already into it, especially in Lincoln.

How do you separate yourself from ‘ringtone rappers’?

We haven’t got anything to do with popular mainstream hip hop, ours is a totally different world to that. It’s a misleading marketing term now. Listen to Twin Lizard’s more caustic lyrics if you want my opinion on things like that.

How did the B Dolan gig come about?

We set it up, paid for it all, promoted it and made it happen firstly because I wanted to try and get an in-road with B and his label Strange Famous Records in a musical sense, and secondly because I wanted to be the first person to put the innovative US weirdo hip-hop underground I’ve been into for the last eight years on in our city. People should try and bring the music they love to the attention of local music lovers, and we are planning shows in a similar vein in the near future.

What do you make of current mainstream hip-hop?

I don’t and never have listened to it regularly, but last time I checked in it’s mostly absurd, irrelevant and devoid of anything interesting to say, which is weird for RAP MUSIC if you think about it. That’s a function of mainstream music fundamentally really though, not just hip hop. As I say, I have tunes about that kind of thing.

What made you want to set up the label?

A band is effectively it’s own record label, management and promotions team if it’s being run sensibly, so you could say I may as well have set one up. It legitimises what we get up to in a business sense and gives me a platform to try and spread the word about some of the awesome free music that’s everywhere online these days as a by-product. Great for promoing Twin Lizard’s many collaborators too.

What’s in the future for Needle in the Groove?

I want to make it less of a by-product of mine and my friends bands and more of a ‘regular’ netlabel by really developing and focussing it’s identity over the next six months, starting with a revamp to the basic website I’ve been using for years. Check out Black Lantern Music up in Edinburgh, they’re my blueprint for a quality netlabel. Great output, strong identity and loads of releases. Go and give them some money.

Priority is a bit of a nightmare when you’ve been as busy as we have lately though…Most people listen to and review things when they’re released, but not me, I have to have at least a 6 month lead time before posting anything about anything…

Red River comprises three ridiculously good tunes that are a genuine joy to listen to, laid back, flow shifting preacher-rapping dressed in proper choruses and mostly cheerful beats. This combination is a rare find in the musical line I usually tread with NITG, and Tickle ought to be seen as defining the cheery-but-serious end of the spectrum, judging by this release.

Production is consistently gorgeous, tasteful and understated and at times the tune’s have something of the Just Jack about them, though lyrically Tickle’s about a thousand miles ahead of that guy both technically and in terms of the depth of his content.

My Wee Tribe, the second track, particularly stands out for me since it reminds me of the mighty Tom Caruana’s work with Elemental over the years, and the earliest forms of that were part of the reason I took to writing rhymes. Inspiring stuff, to my mind.

Go download Red River if you want a cheery start to your day, and you’ll all be singing the choruses for at least a day, I guarantee. I only gave them a couple of spins enroute to holiday in the car a bit ago, and they’ve been stuck with me since…Annnd the clown cooks lovely food….

Here’s the download and info page at Black Lantern Music

There are also some great little oddities tucked away in the earlier tunes on Tickle’s Soundcloud page, I suggest you check those out too.