So I bumped into Hunny the rapper from Admonition/guest-starred-in-Three-Flow/Doze-2 who is now-a-hitz.fm-deejay at the last night of the Sunrise Jazz Fest. She said I was familiar!

How I’d love to pick that as a pick-up line but she said she’d stumbled upon my blog.

So here’s a “Albert with celebrity who found my blog” shot.

I really need to figure out a better expression to have in pictures.

So there was Adil, Malaysia’s best saxophonist according to Saharadja, this kickass Indonesian jazz/fusion band. Yes he is kickass because he used to play Prince and James Brown covers back in California, and I have yet to see anybody do one of those super funky Prince numbers (just piano ballads like How Come You Don’t Call and Nothing Compares To You.)

Somehow most naturally, the topic went to music.

What if we had… progressive rap?

You know, progressive in the sense of progressive rock, not progressive dance. Where the song tempo and mood changes often, with complex time signatures, polyrhythms and elaborate instrumentation. Think Pink Floyd and Dream Theater… or even Queen – Bicycle Race for a simpler example of such musical schizophrenia. Locally, I could cite Tempered Mental as a well-known progressive band around here.

Rappers could be switching beats and vocal styles real quick. The only coherence might be that they’d have to rhyme.

The lazy crop of song producers these days don’t bother playing with beats that interweave with the vocals. They’ll put in just one part of the song and loop it all over. Think Rihanna.

Try to play Beastie Boys – Intergalactic in your head. Note that you can remember all those times the deejay starts scratching and making funny bleeps?

At this point somebody pointed out that Kanye West is progressive.

…well, not with what he did with Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. So not cool, man. The original song feels progressive due to the ever changing tempo, although it keeps to its motif. Like what Fatboy Slim does.

Despite how much the Black Eyed Peas annoy me, I think they did good with Pump It. Without vocals, the song is exactly the same as the Dick Dale – Miserlou instrumental.

Anyway, on to pictures from a gig long time ago, Moonshine 9th August 2007 to be exact. Shot with my newfound love for Kelvin White Balance set to 2500 K.

Mia Palencia!

From acoustic fingerstyle, she now has a full band, with the ever guitar-lick-ready Faz.

Reza Salleh, who I’d say has a few rock progressions up his sleeve. Spot a different drummer!

The crowd went too insane, plus I didn’t want to get caught in the Hujan crowd.