I am not a music snob. I know this because my brother is a music snob and I can't hope to keep up against him.
But I've got a decent sized library and enough ear talent to hear what's important. I don't hardly ever listen to the radio, and I'm woefully deficient in what's hip. If a song comes on and people groan and go "oh man I'm so tired of this song" it's a good chance I haven't heard it before.
Most of the time it's advantageous.
Anyway. I'm not a music snob.
But it's fun to pretend, anyway. If it wasn't, so many people wouldn't be doing it.
What am I trying to say.
What I am trying to say is.
I found a record. Of my favorite band. That I hadn't heard yet. From two years earlier than the album I used to think was their first.
It's, I mean, when I say "favorite band" you have to understand that I don't have favorite anythings. I'm annoyingly well rounded. So when I say favorite, I mean "a group I like a lot. One of my favorites. If you held me down and forced me to claim them as my end all be all favorite, I wouldn't feel too bad to accept that." If you ask me to talk about hip-hop with you, I probably wont talk about them. They're probably not what you're looking for. They're mine.
Panacea. Have you heard them. I've talked about them before, provided samples of them before.
Two guys from D.C., an intellectual renaissance hip-hop group from Washington.
Here is what I mean. I don't possess the necessary vocabulary to express why I like them or why I think they're good. I like their brand of hip hop. I could listen to the voice or the music.
Their wikipedia page states "Panacea blends Native Tongues-inspired beats with warm major chords and soul samples and add smart, conscious rhymes about life, love, and of course, hip-hop."
I guess they do. I guess you're right, I do like the warm major chords layered over the soul samples. I like the smart rhymes about love. I can point them out on tracks now, now that I know how to look for those things I had already found.
It has to do with setting, really. My connection with this group is deeply personal and linked with my experiences for the past few years.
I found Panacea on the shared iTunes network of my UW dormitory halfway through my first miserable year.
The library belonged to some guy named Matt. Maybe Mike. I never found out, never contacted him, but he had a goldmine of a library that he chose to make available to the public.
He had the only two Panacea albums at the time - their debut, Ink Is My Drink(2005) and their follow up 2 years later - The Scenic Route.
These albums became my theme songs for the next half year of heavy shit. In their tracks is ingrained the entirety of my life at the time, and when I listen to them it's one of the most obvious examples of musical cues for memories.
The alternating slow-fast optimism and reflection of Ink Is My Drink, the really out there samples, the no-two-songs alike style, the brainlightning verses that you didn't notice until they had already happened and had to skip back and listen to again, these are the things that made me like them in the beginning.
Before I started liking them because I liked liking them.
By The Scenic Route I was a confidante. These guys knew music. They had "conscious rhymes about life and love" backed up by the truest of hip hop. The Scenic Route became music to live to, a soundtrack piped in through tinny wireless headphones I had bought in weak effort to cheer myself on.
Music to walk across busy Seattle streets to, through crowded hallways of academically superior Engineering and Business majors. Music to keep yourself busy, music to keep yourself sane.
Reflective, in their sophomore album. The Scenic Route is an actual story Every song had a "switch-up" moment when they yanked you out of the reverie they infallibly lulled you into and set you on a different path. You'd put the album on to stop yourself from thinking too much, and they'd oblige until they didn't. Until, tired of your blankness, they changed up the beat and you'd start listening because it made you think.
I still use Burning Bush as my test run song for any sound equipment I buy. If I can't make the speakers produce sheer brain fuzz, something is wrong.
I left Seattle, eventually. Took Panacea with me back to Maui, started riding the bus and walking through green fields and growing up. I didn't forget about Panacea, but they were absorbed fully into my rotation. They formed the basis for a whole pile of new stuff.
A Mind On A Ship Through Time came out late 2008, and I discovered it in January of the next year.
It never occurred to me that Panacea could continue, could make new music. I never actively searched out information about them. They just were. Until they were, new. It was strange and exciting and now, listening back, I realize I've formed new Maui memories of its tracks just as easily as before.
Mind on a Ship is mature, older, with some new humor and callbacks. Mind is more confident now, able to speak up about personal things and experiment a little with some esoteric musical techniques that might not all work out.
Mind on a Ship is music to do a routine to, music to have memories to, not make memories to.
It's still Panacea though, it's got the warmth and the consciousness and the undefinable perfect essence, it's just different than what I had already so deeply ingrained Panacea to be in my brain.
The reason I'm telling this story is that I came across, almost accidentally, their real debut album - an EP called, ironically, Thinking Back, Looking Forward (2003).
Listening to it is one of the strangest musical experiences I've had in a long time. It's....new memories. Of things that haven't happened yet.
It's definitely Panacea, but an adolescent incarnation.
They're self conscious, rough, not sure if they're taking themselves seriously yet. They have no idea they're two years away from mastery.
The beat is younger, less specific. You can see the proto-groups that influenced them, the masters they learned from. You can see the true Panacea though, in between less original pieces. Raw expression of self.
It's like time traveling to a year before you met your best friend and seeing who they used to be before they moved to your town.
So I've been listening to it a lot, burrowing down into my music snob bunker, feeding off the pride I generate awarding myself points for arbitrary auditory accomplishments.
It's sparked a burst of musically oriented actions. I've started grabbing records off the ether again, swinging my needle over to the Arts side. Science has dominated for too many months.
So imagine how I might feel discovering that they've just released Corkscrew Gaps, an EP containing unreleased or remixed or collaboration tracks ranging from 2003 to Present.
Imagine, and listen to this. They had this in 2007. I just never got it till now.
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