Awesome Music

(PG-13: Language) “Gotta get it together forever.” The late Phife Dawg’s message reverberates throughout A Tribe Called Quest’s sixth album. This is a palate cleanser not just for hip hop fans but for society at large. This is the sound of MCs having fun and calling for unity.

Chinese beatbox champion Zhang Ze shows off his mad skills, which include the ability to create some crazy zipper-like noises, along with more crazy mouth sounds than the guy from the Police Academy flicks.

Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (aka The Exorcist theme) requires multiple musicians when played on anything but a synthesizer due to its layering. Arranger Phil Toms and musician Steve Bingham replicated the track using a loop box to augment his single string instrument.

The latest redub by the consistently awesome Andy Rehfeldt sees the metal guitar riffs of Glenn Danzig and company replaced with softer, more grandparent-friendly instruments and rhythms, with the vocals left pretty much intact.

(PG-13) “La vida or I vida either way you need a visa, I ain’t talking ’bout MasterCards, debit cards either – credit cards, Kermit the Frog, margaritas” A$AP Rocky raps over Lovesick, the 2015 hit of 20-year-old soft trap artist Alex “Mura Masa” Crossan.

The Ladies’ Man really has died; he was 82 years old. Beset with financial and psychological troubles for most of his life, Cohen exhaled his demons as art. He kept doing so for most of the past 50 years, down to 2016’s You Want It Darker.

YouTuber Tronicbox puts his ’80s touch on Ariana Grande’s Into You. It’s not as densely retro as his viral Justin Bieber remix, but we’re not recommending this because it’s edgy. It’s just a plain good remix.

Haddaway’s 1993 tune What Is Love conjures up images of Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, and Jim Carrey endlessly bobbing their heads, but Lisztlovers‘ piano arrangement turns the cheesy dance track into an elegant and moving piece of classical music.

The Warp Zone and Jimmy Wong team up to remind us how much better TV theme songs were when they actually explained the plot of the show, with a head-boppin’, finger-snappin’ rendition of Mark Mueller’s theme song from the late ’80s classic DuckTales.

There’s something just so wrong when vocalist Natalie Angst sings “Well, I’d pop a cap in Sancho and I’d slap her down.” We can think of no stranger cover version of Sublime’s controvertial 1996 classic than this jazzy remake by Postmodern Jukebox.

“Snapchat is goth… if you use the right filter.” Pitchfork reminds us that Goth started off as more than just dark eye makeup, with a look back the subculture’s earliest days in the late 1970s as an offshoot of the UK punk scene. In other news, we miss old Ministry.

There’s nothing like an acoustic guitar and a powerful voice. Or three. The Closner sisters aka Joseph made their name with just that. Watch them perform a few of their wonderfully harmonized folk songs from their new album I’m Alone, No You’re Not.

Hi-dilly-ho Neigboreenos! If you’ve been dying for a Ned Flanders themed metal band, today is your lucky day, as these guys just dropped the first single from their debut album, Howdilly Doodilly, due out 11/11/16.

From the makers of the Seaboard comes a modular and newbie-friendly MIDI controller. Blocks’ main unit is the Lightpad, a pressure-sensitive block. You can connect multiple Lightpads together or with the optional control Blocks. Works with iOS and desktop DAWs.

Pay what you want for the debut album from Air Credits, the collab outfit of indie mashup specialists The Hood Internet and rapper Showyousuck. Like their solo pieces, Broadcasted is filled with pop culture references, humor and energetic remixes.

Keyboardist Dave Wave performs a medley of music from movies where a piano played a major role. It’s by no means comprehensive, but still well done. Also, we must go back and watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit? again.

You don’t have to go to Westworld to enjoy its player piano saloon songs. Warner Bros. has released the title theme as well as some of the covers featured in HBO’s series, all by by Ramin Djawadi, the same composer behind Iron Man, Game of Thrones and Pacific Rim.

Oooga Chaka! Music video director Jonas Åkerlund looks back at four decades of catchy tunes from our Scandinavian friends, who brought us such classics as Hooked on a Feeling, Waterloo, She’s Got the Look, Young Folks, and even The Final Countdown.

Musician Travis Netzer shows us how with a few effects pedals and the right technique, an ordinary tuba can sound like an fuzzed out electric guitar, as he performs a cover version of The White Stripes’ Catch Hell Blues from the 2007 album Icky Thump.

It’s hard enough to get adult-sized digits in the right neck positions on a normal ukulele, so we have no idea how musician Ian Emmerson managed to cram his fat fingers in the proper spots to play this ridiculously tiny instrument.

The Who’s Baba O’Reily isn’t an easy tune to play, especially given that the original’s rhythm was an organ effect. While we’re not exactly blown away by the vocals in Stewart Bozarth’s 2007 rendition, his piano playing is top notch. We love his drop-the-mic sort of finish.

She was using her powers, she’s freaking me out! Musical master melodysheep created this awesome Stranger Things tribute music video using sound bites from the wildly popular Netflix series. In related news, we’ve heard that season two has started filming.

Luthier Linda Manzer shows off one of the most amazing stringed instruments we’ve ever seen – a multi-necked guitar with a whopping 52 strings that she built for musician Henrik Andersen, based roughly on a hilarious cartoon he provided. Hear Henrik play it at 3:06.