sole & the skyrider band REMIX ALBUM
black canyon records
2/17/09

Download the promo HERE using your pre-assigned username & password. If you experience problems please email tim @ anticon . com for a new password.

A year after the release of the self-titled lp from sole & the skyrider band, many of the songs have become prophecy. After 2 world tours as a band, and ten years of touring the globe, sole has witnessed the decline of the the west, from France to america, the first world is becoming the third world, one giant conflict zone where there are no innocent bystanders. The stupid things have indeed begun to implode on themselves, and this year has indeed turned out to be a "sad day for investors." This is sole's first major release outside of anticon on his new imprint "black canyon recordings." The new strategy embraces a shift away from the pay for play politics of the past, inflated publicity budgets and chart infiltration. This marks a return to the DIY guerilla roots, a re-ignition of the culture war, and the clarion call that "the only role of art is to challenge the status quo."

What better way to celebrate such an occasion than a remix album with old and new friends? Featuring up and coming artists and indy stalwarts alike, the record features; Dosh, Andrew Broder of Fog, Electric President, Astronautalis, Son Lux, Sleeper, Telephone Jim Jesus, Odd Nosdam, Thavius Beck, Subtitle , Bit tuner, DJ Egadz, Otem Rellik and {ictureplane.

This record is a departure from the post-rock influenced lp that came last year and is re-visited in a more IDM/electronic fashion. Song structures are destroyed, but the theme remains, whether it's Pictureplane calling for a return to 68, Dosh's re-emphasis of "to know thy enemy is to know thyself" or Son Lux recalling "everyone you know is on a tiny blue dot," in this rapidly changing world these aren't empty songs of protest, love, or gluttony, they are calls to arms. Sole & the skyrider band go where no one else in hip-hop or indy rock dare to go, stock up on guns, grains, and ammo; fill your library, you won't be needing your i-phone much longer. Strange days are upon us yet there is no need to fear, the burning plastic smell can't last forever...

press clippings for sole & the skyrider band's debut LP:

"Though high expectations can taint an experience, the self-titled Sole & The Skyrider Band debut easily lives up to my own hype. Working closely with multi-instrumentalist William Fritch and apt programmer Bud Berning filling in the holes, augmented by the odd piece of live drumming, they don’t just recreate but improve upon the formulas which have essentially become standard in underground rap and Sole’s own work. They embrace the record popping, sci-fi synth, classic blues and soul sampling swagger which gives Holland’s fierce social commentary its punch, but the live human element, as always, puts it all over the top." -Popmatters

"The pairing provides Sole Tortoise-like oases of calm, an effective platform for his cut-up-style sociopolitical observations" - AP

"For Sole, fire and smoke offer not only death but a chance at renewal, at reinvention. He knows his words are too weak to prevent what's happening-- "Hard as I try, man, I can't change this"-- but he hopes the exercise at least makes him strong enough to see what's on the other side....his most consistently engaging album to date." -Pitchfork

"This isn’t the “conscious” hip-hop of the genre’s early ’90s renaissance, nor are these tracks the furiously political utterances of artists like Public Enemy or Paris. Sole’s rhymes are informed by the geopolitical disasters of the modern age, but he has the good taste not to address them too overtly in his lyrics like some kind of beat-mining Brett Gurewitz. This is the sound and sensation of one man’s foreboding traversal of a commercial highway at 4 a.m., the shuttered gloom of big-box warehouse stores and fluorescent mini-malls rising up around him in a grim reckoning of present history." -Dusted Magazine

"Sole & the Skyrider Band are performing truths, not hope or pop." - The Owl Mag

tracklisting:

1. sad day for investors (astronautalis remix)
2. ghost assassinating other ghosts ( telephone jim jesus remix)
3. magnum (sleeper remix)
4. 100 light years and running (son lux remix)
5. bridges let us down (thavius beck remix)
6. bones of pets (bit tuner remix)
7. in paradise (dj egadz remix)
8. nothing is free (radical face remix)
9. stupid things implode on themselves fog
10.one egg short of the omlette (nosdam remix)
11. sound of head on concrete (dosh remix)
12.shipwreckers (otem rellik remix)
13. on cavalry (pictureplane remix )

for more information:
soleone.org
myspace.com/soleandtheskyriderband