ATSIC S06E03 - 100% Pure

I’ve started a mailing list recently, so if you want a reminder when a new episode of #ATSIC drops on Mixcloud, sign up at the bottom of the page or hit me up on IG with your email. I’ll make sure you’re in the loop.

Below this write-up, you’ll find the track list, complete with artists and their hometowns. You can listen here and follow along, or if you’re using the Mixcloud app, hit the “…” to check out the track list while you listen.

This week we doubled down and dropped both Monday and Thursday. The station that airs the show here in Lethbridge, CKXU, plays the show twice weekly, so on occasion we make it happen with two hours of music in one week. Since we were slacking a bit through January, I want to catch us back up to our weekly quota through Feb.

This mix was done by me personally, and I got my first chance this year to put my “new” turntables to use. I bought a DJ controller, a Hercules T7, to practice with in December of 2023, but it had some troubles, and wasn’t sending proper signal to my headphones, fresh out of the box. So I returned it on warranty and now I have a new replacement set to work with. I have a long ways to go, but if I spend 5 hours making a one hour mix like this one, I can end up with some decent transitions. Doing it on the fly would be another thing all together.

As for the mix, I’ll do a quick rundown of what you can expect, but the full tracklist is posted below as well.

I started off without Wu for the newly added “Pick of the Spitters” opening segment track, but I got to keep it Wu flavoured with Kardinal Offishall and Sayzee barring out over top of the classic Verbal Intercourse beat. Good to see Kardi co-signing the up and coming Niagra music mogul. Sayzee has a new album out called “Stained Glass EP” with new to me producer Mally Abstract, who I think he said is from somewhere in America (I stop trying to remember anything about artists from America as soon as I hear their location). It’s what you’d expect if you know Sayzee - bars and looped beats featuring sparse drums and plenty of space for vocals to shine. I can’t tell you if its better or worse than any of the other 43 albums dude has dropped in the course of the past couple years, but I can tell you it’s at the same consistently high level of quality that the rest have been.

I played 2 from Eddy Jones and B1 the Architect’s new album “Underground Soul 2”, which they couldn’t nail down a release date for when I talked to them for FIF last week. Expect it sometime in Feb, and enjoy two of the lead singles, “Courier Des Bois” starting the main portion of the mix with some grimy horns and dark chords, & “The Essence”, which ends the mix with some classic sped up soul sample vibes. I haven’t heard the full album but it’ll be good, these guys are consistently worth hearing as well.

The rest has a lot of the usual suspects:

Lord Juco with a quotable filled feature from Pretty.Ugly on “Good Book”;

Daniel Son with Jay the Assassin & Killah Dilla for a cut from their “Jay Killa” album (I think Jay MIGHT be Canadian? Most of his listeners are in Toronto according to Spotify but that might just be because he tagged Daniel Son in for the assist. No Bio, so that’s as far as I can be bothered to look.)

Still M.A.D, another Toronto artist, near as I can tell.. talks about wanting to make a positive impact on the world with his “Rap Movement”. I’m always all for this type of message, and he does this one without sounding inauthentic, which is a tall order for a lot of artists who take aim at similar targets.

Shark the SOB with a Dano Bravo produced new single as a follow up to his Year of the Sharkman album called “Thoughts” where he briefly takes us through some of his inner conflicts.

Edmonton favourite Mitchell Lawler delivers again with “King of the Chill” - which I spent enough time to make blend into West Coast based emcee Reflectionz new single “City on A Hill”. It’s a vibe.

Rob Roy has been busy in Calgary, and I’m still catching up to playing all the singles he’s dropped, this time reminiscing and going through some Hip Hop history on “It’s Okay (Came a Long Way)”. I’ve heard plenty of songs giving props to the originators, that’s a trope that’s rightly familiar to Hip Hop, but I give Rob props here for doing a verse covering some of the Canadian pioneers as well.

A new EP from Vancouver’s Francis Arevalo & Edmonton producer Newselph just dropped, showcases a few tracks featuring smooth production and introspective wordplay. I chose “As We Grow” for this time around, but it’s a solid EP so ATSIC might hear more from this duo in coming weeks.

Speaking of solid albums I’ve been playing plenty of, Slik Jack & Vincent Pryce bring the grime to the mix with another from their “Everyone’s Gotta Pryce” album, with “Raekwon Wallabees” offering up some dreams of being as drippy as Rae, with Jack’s signature grizzled vocals right at home on another sinister VP beat with a cascading melody.

“So Rough” features a classic Wu sample, and probably could have stayed in the vault to be used as the first track, but Dystrakted & Lu Chin Chen fit the vibe so the lyrical narrative featuring a kids search for his moms killer made the cut this week.

There’s some good bars from Noah23 on “Head on Swivel” - the ones about rejecting superstition secured its place in the playlist, but the beat is extra nice too. I never figured I’d be playing someone rapping about a meth crystal ripping through flesh and vibing.. but here we are.

More dope from Detales & Le Zeppo new “High Rollers” album, with them recruiting Dealwon for a trip down memory lane on “Days & Times (featuring Dealwon)”.

I normally stick to rappers rapping, but Massiah brings some melody to the mix on “Millons 4 My Misery” with big dreams of owning hundreds of acres.

Ezza of Choom Gang declares himself the best in Niagra on “Maple Leaf” with Yung Next from their “Tree of Life” EP, which I thought might raise some eyebrows after talking to Dialect Sosa a couple days ago and hearing his opinion of himself being the best. Every emcee thinks theyre best though, that’s what this game’s all about. If they don’t like their own words more than the next guys, I gotta ask why they wrote them that way.

Anyways I’m bored and no one reads these things, so that’s all! Appologies to the guys asking me to write full album reviews - I know yall need quotes for grants, but frankly I don’t care enough to help with that shit, and I look down on these clowns who will review anyone who gives them 200 bucks. It’s a problem that grant juries can’t be bothered to listen to music and instead rely on who has the best quotes about them, but the fix to that problem isn’t to grovel to people for quotes, it’s to change the grant system and get someone on those juries who gives 2 fucks about what they’re funding. I talk all sorts about everyone’s music over on Twitch, but to hear those thoughts, artists might have to come through while I stream and hang out long enough to hear it and clip it themselves. I don’t have time to scrub through those streams looking for clips, it’s all I can do keeping up with clipping from the interviews. I know it might be incredibly painful for all the artists to spend any time at all listening to another Canadians music while they wait for their own soundbite.. if they aren’t careful, that’s the sort of thing that might build some sort of community. Ultimately, I’m here to spread awareness on what I think is dope, not critique anyone’s art like that - I play what I like and ignore the rest. If the music is on the show, that’s my positive review.

If you want to check out what I had to say about this music as I was doing it, I posted the “Making Of ATSIC” stream below - feel free to chop a clip of me saying things about your favourite artists music if that’s the sort of thing you do.

Fly in Formation is flying high. This week I talked with B1 & Eddy Jones, and for now, Mixcloud is the only place to listen to it in audio only podcast format. Both these guys are easy to talk to, and I’ve enjoyed our chats separately on FiF in the past. Looking forward to keeping up with them as they keep pushing new music. Tune in every Tuesday for interviews with artists across the country as I learn more about local scenes and artists creative processes, talking to artists we play regularly on ATSIC. I’m looking forward to my next interview for FiF - Def3, a legendary west coast based artist who has ascended the ranks and found himself rhyming to huge crowds at festivals where his EDM blended with boom bap vibe is making waves. We talk Feb 18, and we’ve been talking some politics recently on threads, so we might get into that whole dumpster fire situation, his recent step back from social media, his visual art, the journey into EDM areans, and a bunch of other important stuff. Come through, hit subscribe on Twitch, skip the ads, and chat live while we stream.

I buy every track I play on ATSIC unless it’s sent to me directly. Streaming barely pays, so it’s essential to support indie artists by buying their music, tickets, or merch to keep them creating. Listening to #ATSIC on Mixcloud is free for you, and makes sure that each song you hear pays the artist at least SOMETHING. Spotify pays 0.006 CAD per stream, and only if the song hits 1000 plays in 3 months. Assuming a song gets 1000 spins, that means it takes around 125 Spotify plays to earn an artist the same .76 cents they earn from my 1.29 cent purchase on iTunes.

Shows like After the Smoke is Clear also need support. If you appreciate discovering new music without the algorithms, or if you appreciate my efforts to get indie artists music in more ears, consider donating via PayPal to help me buy the tracks and keep the show going. Every dollar helps indie artists and ATSIC alike.

If you can’t donate, that’s cool—just spread the word! Shoutout to everyone already supporting financially, by sharing the show, or by coming through in comments and chat to help build community.

Stay up.