Hey! There's an index to these things, meticulously maintained. I'm going to periodically mention it here, because these intros are dumb and why am I still typing I could just say here's the music and you'd all be happier if any of you existed that is...
By the way, shout out to the song "!!!!!!!" by the Roots for being one of my most listened songs, simply by being virtue of the first song in my entire list. I hear it whenever I forget to switch on shuffle.
J-Zone, "The 2 Bit Club"
Underground comedy hip-hop stalwart J-Zone shows up for his first song here. J-Zone's career has been fascinating, with a first act consisting of a series of left-field oddball records with strange, carnival-like beats and deeply profane, but often hilarious raps. He eventually retired, wrote a book, and then came back reinvented. The second time around, he's a little less heavy on schtick (although he's still very profane), but he also taught himself to play the drums in the meantime, and those live drums provide a tremendous backbone to his music. He even plays in just a straight-up instrumental funk band these days.
This is a track from earlier in his career, an intro piece/skit thing. The character speaking is "Chief Chinchilla", one of his alter egos. I'm not sure I can really elaborate on this much more, other than to observe that he recorded an entire album of fake malt liquor jingles centered around that particular persona. Basically, J-Zone is completely unique.
Black Moth Super Rainbow, "Dark Bubbles"
Dave Fridmann shows up again as producer, and as always, results in slick-sounding psychedelia. The drum sound on this song is a dead ringer for various Flaming Lips songs, for instance. At any rate, the vocals by Tobacco are kind of the distinguisher for Black Moth Super Rainbow, and they're no exception on this track.
Pitchblende, "Karoshi"
Art rock from Washington DC that I always associate with Polvo, which my memory says is because they had a split single with them back in the day. At any rate, they're working in a similar vein, so worth looking into if you like your rock a little noisy. Also, I just learned they have an album called Gygax!, so I have to go get that now.
Storm and Stress, "Forever, Like Anti-Oxidants (Listen to the Sound Our Cells Make)"
I picked this up due to Ian Williams (of Don Caballero) being part of it, but this is just kind of formless, wandering noise. It doesn't really go anywhere in particular, it's kind of the rock equivalent of free association.
De La Soul, "WRMS' Dedication To The Bitty"
From De La Soul's flawed second album (which still contains some great songs), this is yet another interstitial track from a rap album. I'm afraid rap skits and the like are a plague, the bane of any shuffle, and we're going to run into them cluttering up our playlists for forever.
Taking stock of today, we've got a song of pointless art noodling, two rap skits, and two actual songs. Um, sorry? If it makes anybody feel better, I'm now listening to an incredibly murky Germs live song, so it's not like things immediately got better.