Hello,
Today's Artists are an industrial hip-hop group that was most active during the 1980s and early 1990s, and briefly reformed in 2004 for a tour. Their music occupies the territory where funk, dub, industrial music and electronica intersect. The core members are Doug Wimbish (bass), Keith Leblanc (percussion) and Skip McDonald (guitar) and producer (sometimes credited as "mixologist") Adrian Sherwood. Despite being short-lived as band proper, the legacy and output of these groups of musicians has been prodigious.......N Joy
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Delivering a powerful mix of taut funk, hip-hop-style grooves, and dub-wise electro-industrial menace, Tackhead was an inspired collaboration between the rhythm section of Keith LeBlanc, Skip McDonald, and Doug Wimbish and maverick producer Adrian Sherwood. LeBlanc, McDonald, and Wimbish first gained a reputation as the studio musicians behind a handful of early rap classics. When Sherwood hired them to work on one of his On-U Sound production projects, it initiated a series of collaborations that culminated in the first proper Tackhead album, 1989's Friendly as a Hand Grenade. The trio's original run ended in 1991, but various permutations of the band continued to work together, and they reunited for the 2014 album For the Love of Money.
Guitarist Skip McDonald, bassist Doug Wimbish, and drummer Keith LeBlanc began working together in the late '70s, serving as the backing band for many of Sugar Hill Records' early rap releases, generating the grooves behind such classics as the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" and "White Lines." In October 1983, LeBlanc scored a minor hit and international press attention with "No Sell Out," a single in which he layered samples from a speech by Malcolm X over a powerful hip-hop backing track. Adrian Sherwood, an innovative British producer and dub remixer who founded the On-U Sound label, crossed paths with LeBlanc during a visit to New York, and the producer invited LeBlanc to work with him. LeBlanc, McDonald, and Wimbish relocated to England, and soon became Sherwood's backing group of choice for his On-U projects, including albums by Mark Stewart & Maffia and Gary Clail. One of their earlier collaborations was as "Mark Stewart and the Maffia", which featured Stewart, former member of The Pop Group on vocals. Their first LP produced under that name As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade was amongst the most industrial, noise-oriented and uncompromising of the group's output, described by John Leland as "a scary mess of random sounds, spoken words, and tiny snippets of music, processed and distorted to a grating electric edge In 1985, LeBlanc, McDonald, and Wimbish cut the first of a handful of singles under the rubric Fats Comet, and they began using the name Tackhead with the single "What's My Mission Now," with Sherwood adding found voices and electronics to the rhythm section's hard-edged performances. The trio and Sherwood worked together on LeBlanc's 1986 solo album Major Malfunction, and sessions backing Gary Clail emerged on the 1987 album Tackhead Tape Time, credited to Gary Clail's Tackhead Sound System.
Later to join forces with Tackhead, was Gary Clail, who as MC for the touring version of the On-U sound system would shout and rant over Tackhead's live playing, and both were then mixed live by Sherwood to produce a wall of sound effect that was highly novel for the mid-1980s. They released one LP Tackhead Tape Time in 1987 as "Gary Clail's Tackhead Sound System" and some of the most distinctive and well-known Tackhead tracks (some were released as 12-inch singles) date from this period particularly: "What's My Mission Now?", "Mind at the End of the Tether" and "Hard Left". These tracks combined funk basslines, hammerblow percussion and Sherwood's trademark sample-laden dub production and represent the defining Tackhead sound.
During this period Leblanc also produced two solo LPs: the highly inventive Major Malfunction (1986) (inspired by the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster) and Stranger Than Fiction (1989), which although credited to Leblanc, featured all the rest of members of Tackhead. Around this time the group began to gell as a band, and started adding vocalists to what had been up until then a largely instrumental affair. On the first Tackhead LP, proper, Friendly as a Hand Grenade, vocalist Bernard Fowler joined the line-up and many older instrumental tracks re-appeared with lyrics. In 1990 Tackhead mounted a world tour which probably marked the zenith of the band's commercial success.
In 1989, the same year LeBlanc dropped his second solo set, Stranger Than Fiction, Tackhead finally released their first proper album, Friendly as a Hand Grenade, issued by TVT Records. The LP debuted a fifth member, Bernard Fowler, who contributed vocals, rather than relying on the vocal samples Sherwood often added to the tracks. In 1990, Tackhead moved to the EMI-distributed SBK label and delivered Strange Things, a more rock-oriented effort that included guest appearances from rapper Melle Mel and Mick Jagger on harmonica. The album didn't live up to commercial expectations, and while LeBlanc, McDonald, and Wimbish continued to play on various On-U Sound System projects, it represented the last new Tackhead material for many years. Between 1994 and 1997, Tackhead brought out three volumes of rarities, outtakes, and live material under the title Power, Inc. In 2004, they reunited for a tour of the United States and Europe, and in 2006, Sherwood assembled a collection of highlights from the group's recording career, Tackhead Sound Crash: Slash & Mix Adrian Sherwood. Tackhead staged another reunion in 2013, recording a collection of covers titled For the Love of Money for the German label Dude Records. 2016 brought The Message, a limited-edition collection of Tackhead and Fats Comet material remixed by Robo Bass Hifi (aka German producer Markus Kammann). Another collection of rare Tackhead material, The Lost Tapes 1 & Remixes, appeared on the Echo Beach label in 2018.
Despite not recording any new material as Tackhead since, group members continued to record as the backing band or along with various Sherwood-led On-U Sound productions artists such as Gary Clail's solo efforts, African Head Charge, Dub Syndicate, New Age Steppers and others. Subsets of the group have also appeared in various guises such as the Strange Parcels, Barmy Army and the blues-oriented Little Axe.
In addition to continuing to collaborate with Sherwood and the On-U Sound record label, each of the other members continues to lead active solo careers. McDonald leads the Little Axe project, and Leblanc runs a record label and plays with two jazz outfits, Noah Ground and Nikki Yeoh's Infinitum. As well as remaining much in demand as a session bass player, Wimbish later became the bass player for Living Colour and has recorded solo material as well as forming the short-lived Jungle Funk (later Head>>Fake), a live drum and bass outfit also featuring Living Colour drummer Will Calhoun.
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In 1990 Tackhead mounted a world tour which probably marked the zenith of the band's commercial success. The follow-up album, 1990's Strange Things (the first on a major label, EMI), despite some praise for harder-edge singles such as "Dangerous Sex" and "Class Rock" was not as well received by critics. Many followers of the group were disappointed by the more restrained production, less industrial and more mellow R&B elements. Yet the album was still experimental enough that it did not gain as wide an audience as had been hoped and the band was dropped from their record label shortly after. Yet, It's a fantastic mixture of rock and funk with a unique sound all of its own. The lyrics are clever, original, atmospheric and engaging. Maybe not everyone will like this. But if it gets you the way it gets me, you will love it.
Tackhead - Strange Things (flac 302mb)
01 Nobody To Somebody 4:27
02 Wolf In Sheeps Clothing 6:11
03 Class Rock 4:36
04 Dangerous Sex 5:03
05 Strange Things 3:28
06 Super Stupid 2:32
07 See The Fire Burning 4:44
08 For This I Sing 7:51
09 Change 4:08
10 Positive Suggestion 3:10
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Shortly after the release this album was deleted on behalf of the band, which clearly points to that they were in disagreement as this played out during the switching to a major label who may not have been amused by a release competing with the new Tackhead. Considering the subversive nature of the band it's likely some were responsible for dropping a quality bootleg on the market. Fine by me.... And that major dropped them when Strange Things didn't deliver what was expected, and Tackhead fell apart..
Tackhead - En Concert (flac 259mb)
1 King of the Beat 5:51
2 The Game 5:31
3 Heaven on Earth 3:01
4 The Message 5:10
5 Drum Solo 3:38
6 Crosstown Traffic 3:30
7 Ticking Time Bomb 3:45
8 Stormy Weather 7:45
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
The Tackhead gang -- sans producer Adrian Sherwood -- tone things down some as the stripped-down Strange Parcels. Gone are Sherwood's ubiquitous samples and most of Tackhead's dogmatic funk grooves, and in their place is the synthetically international sound of Sherwood's African Head Charge and Dub Syndicate collectives. Guest percussionist Talvin Singh helps out greatly in this department, adding tabla and varied drum accents to a mix of African, Indian, and Caribbean-styled cuts. The whole things comes off as a cross between David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and some of Singh's later solo outings, with the occasional funk-rock beat being wholly a Tackhead leftover. Augmented by Bernie Worrell collaborator Jesse Rae and vocalist Basil Clarke, Strange Parcels delivers an enjoyable yet unexceptional mix on Disconnection.
Strange Parcels - Disconnection (flac 257mb)
01 Badman Land 6:10
02 Pride 6:37
03 Sorry Bootsy 4:11
04 The Danger 4:16
05 Disconnection 4:56
06 All Souls 5:52
07 Strangeland 4:29
08 Control Breakdown 4:59
09 No Hands On The Wheel 3:01
10 Funk Dog 5:07
11 Outsider 5:11
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Comprised of drummer Keith LeBlanc, bassist Doug Wimbish, and guitarist Skip McDonald of Sugar Hill Records fame, as well as British producer Adrian Sherwood, Tackhead forged a mix of rock, cyberfunk, early electronica, and avant-reggae on a series of On-U Sound releases cut during the late '80s and early '90s. The veneer was decidedly industrial and enveloped didactic dance beats and a variety of samples and synth outbursts. And while the band's sound initially came off as innovative, LeBlanc's robotic drumming, Wimbish's non-stop slap basslines, and McDonald's often chintzy guitar and keyboard contributions have not worn well over time. This first volume of the Power Inc. roundup series of album sides, alternate takes, and unreleased originals finds the band (as Tackhead and Fats Comet) joined by both On-U Sound regulars Gary Clail and Bim Sherman and Sugar Hill-era notables Bernard Fowler and Melle Mel. Many of the ten tracks -- while having some choice samples -- mostly meander along in a heavy-handed, Living Colour-style funk-rock mode, with the apocalyptic touches losing their appeal after repeated listenings. More expansive and subtle productions like the soca-informed "Bastard Son of Fats," the densely layered "Rochester," and Bim Sherman's feature "Stealing" are worthwhile, while Melle Mel's disappointing "Original Sex" and a regrettable version of "Stormy Weather" are more indicative of the album's overall quality. Certainly a must for Tackhead fans.
Tackhead - Power Inc. 1 (flac 371mb)
01 Tackhead – Ticking Time Bomb 6:17
02 Tackhead Featuring Bim Sherman – Stealing (Original Version) 4:21
03 Fats Comet – My One and Only One 3:17
04 Gary Clail / Tackhead – Hard Left 7:46
05 Tackhead Featuring Melle Mel – Original Sex 6:06
06 Fats Comet – Stormy Weather 6:21
07 Fats Comet – Bop Bop 4:05
08 Tackhead – Bastard Son of Fats 5:25
09 Fats Comet – Rochester 5:08
10 Tackhead – What's My Mission Now? (Parts 1 & 2) 7:30
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Today's Artists are an industrial hip-hop group that was most active during the 1980s and early 1990s, and briefly reformed in 2004 for a tour. Their music occupies the territory where funk, dub, industrial music and electronica intersect. The core members are Doug Wimbish (bass), Keith Leblanc (percussion) and Skip McDonald (guitar) and producer (sometimes credited as "mixologist") Adrian Sherwood. Despite being short-lived as band proper, the legacy and output of these groups of musicians has been prodigious.......N Joy
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Delivering a powerful mix of taut funk, hip-hop-style grooves, and dub-wise electro-industrial menace, Tackhead was an inspired collaboration between the rhythm section of Keith LeBlanc, Skip McDonald, and Doug Wimbish and maverick producer Adrian Sherwood. LeBlanc, McDonald, and Wimbish first gained a reputation as the studio musicians behind a handful of early rap classics. When Sherwood hired them to work on one of his On-U Sound production projects, it initiated a series of collaborations that culminated in the first proper Tackhead album, 1989's Friendly as a Hand Grenade. The trio's original run ended in 1991, but various permutations of the band continued to work together, and they reunited for the 2014 album For the Love of Money.
Guitarist Skip McDonald, bassist Doug Wimbish, and drummer Keith LeBlanc began working together in the late '70s, serving as the backing band for many of Sugar Hill Records' early rap releases, generating the grooves behind such classics as the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" and Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" and "White Lines." In October 1983, LeBlanc scored a minor hit and international press attention with "No Sell Out," a single in which he layered samples from a speech by Malcolm X over a powerful hip-hop backing track. Adrian Sherwood, an innovative British producer and dub remixer who founded the On-U Sound label, crossed paths with LeBlanc during a visit to New York, and the producer invited LeBlanc to work with him. LeBlanc, McDonald, and Wimbish relocated to England, and soon became Sherwood's backing group of choice for his On-U projects, including albums by Mark Stewart & Maffia and Gary Clail. One of their earlier collaborations was as "Mark Stewart and the Maffia", which featured Stewart, former member of The Pop Group on vocals. Their first LP produced under that name As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade was amongst the most industrial, noise-oriented and uncompromising of the group's output, described by John Leland as "a scary mess of random sounds, spoken words, and tiny snippets of music, processed and distorted to a grating electric edge In 1985, LeBlanc, McDonald, and Wimbish cut the first of a handful of singles under the rubric Fats Comet, and they began using the name Tackhead with the single "What's My Mission Now," with Sherwood adding found voices and electronics to the rhythm section's hard-edged performances. The trio and Sherwood worked together on LeBlanc's 1986 solo album Major Malfunction, and sessions backing Gary Clail emerged on the 1987 album Tackhead Tape Time, credited to Gary Clail's Tackhead Sound System.
Later to join forces with Tackhead, was Gary Clail, who as MC for the touring version of the On-U sound system would shout and rant over Tackhead's live playing, and both were then mixed live by Sherwood to produce a wall of sound effect that was highly novel for the mid-1980s. They released one LP Tackhead Tape Time in 1987 as "Gary Clail's Tackhead Sound System" and some of the most distinctive and well-known Tackhead tracks (some were released as 12-inch singles) date from this period particularly: "What's My Mission Now?", "Mind at the End of the Tether" and "Hard Left". These tracks combined funk basslines, hammerblow percussion and Sherwood's trademark sample-laden dub production and represent the defining Tackhead sound.
During this period Leblanc also produced two solo LPs: the highly inventive Major Malfunction (1986) (inspired by the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster) and Stranger Than Fiction (1989), which although credited to Leblanc, featured all the rest of members of Tackhead. Around this time the group began to gell as a band, and started adding vocalists to what had been up until then a largely instrumental affair. On the first Tackhead LP, proper, Friendly as a Hand Grenade, vocalist Bernard Fowler joined the line-up and many older instrumental tracks re-appeared with lyrics. In 1990 Tackhead mounted a world tour which probably marked the zenith of the band's commercial success.
In 1989, the same year LeBlanc dropped his second solo set, Stranger Than Fiction, Tackhead finally released their first proper album, Friendly as a Hand Grenade, issued by TVT Records. The LP debuted a fifth member, Bernard Fowler, who contributed vocals, rather than relying on the vocal samples Sherwood often added to the tracks. In 1990, Tackhead moved to the EMI-distributed SBK label and delivered Strange Things, a more rock-oriented effort that included guest appearances from rapper Melle Mel and Mick Jagger on harmonica. The album didn't live up to commercial expectations, and while LeBlanc, McDonald, and Wimbish continued to play on various On-U Sound System projects, it represented the last new Tackhead material for many years. Between 1994 and 1997, Tackhead brought out three volumes of rarities, outtakes, and live material under the title Power, Inc. In 2004, they reunited for a tour of the United States and Europe, and in 2006, Sherwood assembled a collection of highlights from the group's recording career, Tackhead Sound Crash: Slash & Mix Adrian Sherwood. Tackhead staged another reunion in 2013, recording a collection of covers titled For the Love of Money for the German label Dude Records. 2016 brought The Message, a limited-edition collection of Tackhead and Fats Comet material remixed by Robo Bass Hifi (aka German producer Markus Kammann). Another collection of rare Tackhead material, The Lost Tapes 1 & Remixes, appeared on the Echo Beach label in 2018.
Despite not recording any new material as Tackhead since, group members continued to record as the backing band or along with various Sherwood-led On-U Sound productions artists such as Gary Clail's solo efforts, African Head Charge, Dub Syndicate, New Age Steppers and others. Subsets of the group have also appeared in various guises such as the Strange Parcels, Barmy Army and the blues-oriented Little Axe.
In addition to continuing to collaborate with Sherwood and the On-U Sound record label, each of the other members continues to lead active solo careers. McDonald leads the Little Axe project, and Leblanc runs a record label and plays with two jazz outfits, Noah Ground and Nikki Yeoh's Infinitum. As well as remaining much in demand as a session bass player, Wimbish later became the bass player for Living Colour and has recorded solo material as well as forming the short-lived Jungle Funk (later Head>>Fake), a live drum and bass outfit also featuring Living Colour drummer Will Calhoun.
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
In 1990 Tackhead mounted a world tour which probably marked the zenith of the band's commercial success. The follow-up album, 1990's Strange Things (the first on a major label, EMI), despite some praise for harder-edge singles such as "Dangerous Sex" and "Class Rock" was not as well received by critics. Many followers of the group were disappointed by the more restrained production, less industrial and more mellow R&B elements. Yet the album was still experimental enough that it did not gain as wide an audience as had been hoped and the band was dropped from their record label shortly after. Yet, It's a fantastic mixture of rock and funk with a unique sound all of its own. The lyrics are clever, original, atmospheric and engaging. Maybe not everyone will like this. But if it gets you the way it gets me, you will love it.
Tackhead - Strange Things (flac 302mb)
01 Nobody To Somebody 4:27
02 Wolf In Sheeps Clothing 6:11
03 Class Rock 4:36
04 Dangerous Sex 5:03
05 Strange Things 3:28
06 Super Stupid 2:32
07 See The Fire Burning 4:44
08 For This I Sing 7:51
09 Change 4:08
10 Positive Suggestion 3:10
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Shortly after the release this album was deleted on behalf of the band, which clearly points to that they were in disagreement as this played out during the switching to a major label who may not have been amused by a release competing with the new Tackhead. Considering the subversive nature of the band it's likely some were responsible for dropping a quality bootleg on the market. Fine by me.... And that major dropped them when Strange Things didn't deliver what was expected, and Tackhead fell apart..
Tackhead - En Concert (flac 259mb)
1 King of the Beat 5:51
2 The Game 5:31
3 Heaven on Earth 3:01
4 The Message 5:10
5 Drum Solo 3:38
6 Crosstown Traffic 3:30
7 Ticking Time Bomb 3:45
8 Stormy Weather 7:45
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
The Tackhead gang -- sans producer Adrian Sherwood -- tone things down some as the stripped-down Strange Parcels. Gone are Sherwood's ubiquitous samples and most of Tackhead's dogmatic funk grooves, and in their place is the synthetically international sound of Sherwood's African Head Charge and Dub Syndicate collectives. Guest percussionist Talvin Singh helps out greatly in this department, adding tabla and varied drum accents to a mix of African, Indian, and Caribbean-styled cuts. The whole things comes off as a cross between David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and some of Singh's later solo outings, with the occasional funk-rock beat being wholly a Tackhead leftover. Augmented by Bernie Worrell collaborator Jesse Rae and vocalist Basil Clarke, Strange Parcels delivers an enjoyable yet unexceptional mix on Disconnection.
Strange Parcels - Disconnection (flac 257mb)
01 Badman Land 6:10
02 Pride 6:37
03 Sorry Bootsy 4:11
04 The Danger 4:16
05 Disconnection 4:56
06 All Souls 5:52
07 Strangeland 4:29
08 Control Breakdown 4:59
09 No Hands On The Wheel 3:01
10 Funk Dog 5:07
11 Outsider 5:11
xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx
Comprised of drummer Keith LeBlanc, bassist Doug Wimbish, and guitarist Skip McDonald of Sugar Hill Records fame, as well as British producer Adrian Sherwood, Tackhead forged a mix of rock, cyberfunk, early electronica, and avant-reggae on a series of On-U Sound releases cut during the late '80s and early '90s. The veneer was decidedly industrial and enveloped didactic dance beats and a variety of samples and synth outbursts. And while the band's sound initially came off as innovative, LeBlanc's robotic drumming, Wimbish's non-stop slap basslines, and McDonald's often chintzy guitar and keyboard contributions have not worn well over time. This first volume of the Power Inc. roundup series of album sides, alternate takes, and unreleased originals finds the band (as Tackhead and Fats Comet) joined by both On-U Sound regulars Gary Clail and Bim Sherman and Sugar Hill-era notables Bernard Fowler and Melle Mel. Many of the ten tracks -- while having some choice samples -- mostly meander along in a heavy-handed, Living Colour-style funk-rock mode, with the apocalyptic touches losing their appeal after repeated listenings. More expansive and subtle productions like the soca-informed "Bastard Son of Fats," the densely layered "Rochester," and Bim Sherman's feature "Stealing" are worthwhile, while Melle Mel's disappointing "Original Sex" and a regrettable version of "Stormy Weather" are more indicative of the album's overall quality. Certainly a must for Tackhead fans.
Tackhead - Power Inc. 1 (flac 371mb)
01 Tackhead – Ticking Time Bomb 6:17
02 Tackhead Featuring Bim Sherman – Stealing (Original Version) 4:21
03 Fats Comet – My One and Only One 3:17
04 Gary Clail / Tackhead – Hard Left 7:46
05 Tackhead Featuring Melle Mel – Original Sex 6:06
06 Fats Comet – Stormy Weather 6:21
07 Fats Comet – Bop Bop 4:05
08 Tackhead – Bastard Son of Fats 5:25
09 Fats Comet – Rochester 5:08
10 Tackhead – What's My Mission Now? (Parts 1 & 2) 7:30
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hello
ReplyDeleteCan you please re- upload all Tackheads and On-U sounds.
Thank you