Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the coolest gig poster of all time. Of all time!

Yours truly, a resident of the coolest neighborhood of all time (yes, of all time! it is the Center of the Universe, after all) in which mister The Front’s touring will occur for Seattle denizens, was happy to hear that he could lend a hand in getting the word out locally. But look, I’ve got a website that knows no geographical boundaries. I’m international. Intergalactic, even.

So while the poster above implores you to attend one of Fremont, Seattle’s fine venues, High Dive, on the 8th day of May, 2010 to bear witness to the astounding feats of lyrical and musical entertainment purveyed by MC Frontalot and our own Billy the Fridge, I also wish to provide for my readers outside the comfortable environs of Seattle a list of dates and locations which may be more suited to your geographical and temporal requirements.

Not yet familiar with the Front? Check out my recent post about his freshly born album, Zero Day, which is worthy of your attention at the least, and perhaps even a modicum of worship. If the samples included within said post do not sate you, and I assure you the reality is that they may not, you will find a bevy of additional treats on Frontalot’s own portion of the world wide web.

If you are of the type to have your visual stimulation habit supplied by Netflix, you also have available to you the documentary film, Nerdcore Rising, which takes you along for MC Frontalot & friends’ first tour some years past, culminating in his performance at the legendary Penny Arcade Expo (once PAX, now PAX Prime) in this very city. You may even stream this documentary film to your computer immediately, if you’re into that sort of thing. I know I am. I hope you are too.

See you at High Dive!

UPDATE: Here’s the Facebook event page!

The Front’s latest endeavor is high quality awesome, so let’s just eliminate any ambiguity about that right now.

To be frank, I’ve had a hard time embracing MC Frontalot’s music prior to Zero Day, despite appreciating his stage presence at Nerdapalooza and PAX, and thinking he was a pretty cool guy based on repeated viewings of the Nerdcore Rising documentary and a short conversation at Nerdapalooza last summer. His peculiar delivery is often, let’s be honest, challenging and the non-lyrical elements weren’t all that compelling on their own, but there’s unquestionably a lot of cleverness and humor throughout every Frontalot album.

But Zero Day succeeds on all fronts (yes, I did that.)  All of the characteristic terse lyricism is still there but it seems like Frontalot has found a way to employ it without staggering through a murderously jagged syllabic rhythm that shakes off any but the most tenacious listener. The instrumentation has likewise been raised to a new level, with fun, interesting music backing every track.

Finally, the collaborators lacing this album all had fantastic contributions and I think Zero Day is so excellent as much due to their efforts as to the Front and his perennial cohort. The album would have been an altogether different creature absent their additions.

Though I have many expressions of wonderment I could continue to offer in service of Zero Day’s edification, every album has its warts, and I would not be me if I did not strive to make them evident alongside the features deserving of adulation. But my grousing may be easily confined to two topics here. I like John Hodgman and all, but his skit was sadly a clunker. Just not funny.

The other thing is …The Painstakingly Concealed Secret Track. Which only annoys me because it isn’t easy enough to just access the track if you’re not interested in playing a game to get it. Hell, it’s a miracle I managed to throw enough time together to make this post, I don’t really have the time or attention to play mini-games to access stuff I paid to hear.

Anyway, check out a couple of my favorites from the album and go buy it. Frontalot actually sells FLAC copies of his albums. Support that my friends, for it is far too rare a thing.

MC Frontalot – Zero Day
MC Frontalot – The Council Of Loathing

MC Frontalot’s official site

Maja (pronounced “MAY-ja” by the way–a surprise to me) isn’t incompetent, but I felt his even tone throughout each track conveyed boredom, and I could only echo that temperament when listening, often completely tuning out the music as it rolled on smoothly.

The lyrics are often clever or cleverly pronounced, but the lack of any emphasis at all made paying attention to them a chore. The one exception to this impression was “Hip Hop Daikou” which has nice, minimal beats, a fun chorus, and more of the punchy flow that I find engaging. If I understand correctly, it’s outside of the Bleach-themed set of tracks on the release, explaining the scattered references to other anime and video games.

The samples were totally lost on me. Not only did they fail to add anything to the overall composition because of language, but I didn’t recognize any of them, though one guy sounded a lot like Gendo Ikari in Neon Genesis. Wait, that was indeed the same guy. Thanks, Wikipedia.

Maybe a Bleach fan would get a lot more out of this album, but for me, the so-so musical aspect combined with complete lack of familiarity or interest in the theme made this a very hard album to get through, and after a few subsequent attempts it didn’t get any better.

However, I do look forward to checking out what Maja does next. I think if he were to create a more personal musical project, it would result in a very interesting and engaging album. As a whole, Bleach’d Out was not for me.

Maja – Hip Hop Daikou

Maja on ReverbNation

In all honesty, I was not expecting to like The Free Estate, but Karl Olson, aka Ultraklystron’s difficult-to-categorize new release turned me right around.  Before I knew it I had his sharp rhymes and clever hooks bouncing around in my head at all hours, unable to be exorcised without touring the tracks a few more times back-to-back.

My expectation has to do with Ultraklystron’s rep for anime and manga fandom.  While I was a rabid fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion when I was younger, that’s the only anime* I could ever claim to be a fan of, and as for Manga, well, I feel that the best work was done a long time ago.  So I don’t expect to catch any of the references, and I expect the music to be as …how to put this gently… juvenile (whoops, that didn’t work) as those influences.

*Anything Hayao Miyazaki does transcends its medium and any genre-boxing to become simply wonderful storytelling.

But either I was mistaken in my impressions, or I’m losing my perspective as an outsider of this music scene, or this release was a departure from previous efforts, as it rests so lightly on any of those undesirable influences that they are easily digested.  Indeed happily digested, as this is one of those nerdcore releases that strikes me as having strong cross-over potential.  With great production, smooth performance, and engaging material, this has everything and more that you could expect out of a good pop album.

I challenge you to avoid nodding and grinning along to the refrain of Webcam Girls or Greatest, or if you go ahead and download the full, free release, empathizing with him in Not A Criminal and Dumb Crush.  I expect that, like me, you’ll wonder how it went by so fast when the whole album has finished playing, and that’s because (and this is the best part) this free version of The Free Estate is a subset of the tracks from the full release.  Kudos to Karl for embracing the new methods of getting your music noticed.  I’ll be the first in line when the digital retail release is ready!

Ultraklystron – Webcam Girls
Ultraklystron – Greatest

Karl Olsen’s Website, The Free Estate on Rapidshare, Buy Ultraklystron Music

My only strong complaint about this release is how far it goes into modern rap territories of violence and misogyny.  I understand these are character portrayals, but I still find it unpleasant and fail to find the humor in it that others do.

Basically it’s just the b-sides that wont be making my next pressed album, I actually asked the producers who contributed for throwaway beats to make this one.

Fair enough.  With that sort of expectation in place, even the occasional so-so production and sometimes “meh” lyrics in this teaser release, it can still be considered overall “good enough”.

Epic-1 – Lvl 99

Epic-1 on EMPulse Records, Epic-1 on MySpace, Good Enough: MP3, FLAC

I can’t say I understand the obsession with Mega Man in nerdy music.  I was just like most NES gamers back in the day and consumed huge quantities of games that were little more than copycats of each other.  In my memory, many of them are indistinguishable from each other, and Mega Man is one of those games.  A platformer where the player has a cannon for a hand?  Excellent, I loved that game when it was called Metroid.  Anyway, the music…

Random has a great, laid-back quality to his delivery that is hard to resist.  Calm, rhythmic, and smooth, he’s easy to follow and immediately engaging.  Paired with some mild, fun beats laid over what I assume are loops from the game, the whole package is unchallenging in the best way, easy to approach and appreciate.

There are a few smudges on the album that I’d feel dishonest leaving unsaid.  The vocal samples, from Mega Man cartoons I have to guess, are often jarring and feel forced.  Track 5, My Love (Go Shop), features Rufus Pipes and completely disrupts the good vibe of the album.  I realize I’m biased against any sort of ballad, but regardless, the discordant vocals just stick out like a sore thumb and challenge me not to hit the skip button.

There are some ups and downs, but if you liked Mega Ran, you’ll probably like Mega Ran 9.  I did.

Random – Splash Woman
Random – My Love (Go Shop) (Feat. Rufus Pipes)
Random – Endless (Feat. Storyville)

Official Site, Buy on Amazon

Here at NerdLust.net, we’ve been playing catch-up with all the great releases of the year, so it’s been positive post after positive post.  But my friends, they’re not all winners….

MC ZudoBird’s “Molted Feathers” is so bad, so absolutely awful, it has to be shared with you.  Autopsy IV ran down a list of the three most common problems with nerdcore in his recent post about Kabuto, and this release suffers from all three.  Most especially the second, poor production, and the third, bad emcees.

It’s hard to understand why ZudoBird wants to subject others to his work, especially if, as he says in the video below, he’s only rapping for himself.  If Awkward, Kabuto, and others are carrying the genre forward, it’s releases like this one that are holding it back.

MC ZudoBird – 1st Degree Murderer
MC ZudoBird – Scotch Plains Gangstas Freestyle
MC ZudoBird – Harry Pottah Rap

MC ZudoBird on MySpace

Earlier this month Dr. Trevorkian described Dr. Awkward’s Next Gen EP as one of the most promising indicators that nerdcore hip-hop is growing up and destined to go places. A bold claim that I tend to fully agree with. However, if Dr. Awkward is an indicator Kabuto is an undeniable fact. Both seem to shine within nerdcore instead of being shackled by it and as a result have something MCs Lars, Chris and Frontalot never will; legitimate hip-hop crossover appeal. I’m sure some of you are already prepping scathing replies but let me clarify. I am not making these claims to be controversial nor am I doing it to generate comments. The fact is the bulk of nerdcore (that I’ve heard) suffers from one or some combination of the following: “niche” lyrics, poor production, or bad emcees. With that said there is a collection of nerdcore artists out there rising above these limitations and making some fucking good hip-hop that also happens to be “nerdcore”. Dr. Awkward & Kabuto fall into that category.

With that said, I wanna talk about Kabuto’s latest effort, The Parseltongue Mixtape.

After 2 disposable intro tracks the album finally begins with “Saigons of Thump” and by the time the bridge “hey yo Buffalo Buffalo fucking Bison ya punk” comes through the speakers you should have a good idea of what Kabuto is all about. As the next track, Open Season, begins, you’re wondering if he can maintain this level and by the time the Margret Thatcher sample starts any doubts about Kabuto’s skills will be dashed. Kabuto is the Ice Cube of this genre and no MC is safe from his pyroclastic flow.

As with any album that is 28 tracks long there are ebbs and flows to the album and there are some skits and some tracks that leave you wondering why they were included at all. With a little more self-editing, patience and restraint on the track selection & production Kabuto will have little problem rising to the top of the nerdcore mountain.

Kabuto The Python – Saigons of Thump
Kabuto The Python – Open Season

You can download The Parseltongue Mixtape for free from Scrub Club Records.

I’ll be honest, my recent adventure at Nerdapalooza with Autopsy IV was …sodden.  So there were a good number of acts that I remember hazily or not at all.  Dual Core is one of those that I’d file under hazily.

So when I gave it a shot after reading Beefy’s recent post talking up the album, I was completely taken by surprise.  It is a killer piece of work from start to finish and I can’t recommend it enough.  With small exception, every track makes me bob my head and rock along.  Not something I usually do!

Dual Core – For You
Dual Core – Natural 20s
Dual Core – Painting Pictures

Official Site, Buy on the Dual Core site

Dr. Awkward’s Next Gen EP is one of the most promising indicators that nerdcore hip-hop is growing up and destined to go places.  Awkward has his delivery down and he succeeds at giving us a great hip-hop release without sacrificing his geek identity, as documented in the introspective Geekquilibrium and displayed in the brutally nerdy track, Clan War.

He also killed it at Nerdapalooza ’09.  Showing up his labelmates during the Scrub Club set and coming close to straight out stealing the show.  Dr. Awkward is working on new material now, and as far as I’m concerned, the new release can’t get here fast enough.

Dr. Awkward – Geekquilibrium
Dr. Awkward – F.U.F.

Download the whole EP FOR FREE from Scrub Club Records!