Beatsmith Thelonious Coltrane has been busy updating his bandcamp presence of late. Over 70 releases up there and as of this morning the entire catalogue is “Name Your Price” to purchase. It would be remiss of you not to check it out.
Maccy D (of Hip-Hop Skate Decks and Ghetto Handball fame) put me on to Thelonious a couple of years back. My first introduction to him was the unoffical remix of Doom and Westside Gunn. I’ve headed down a rabbit hole since then that I’m yet to emerge from.
In a time where hype is generated from how well you maintain your social media platforms Thelonious Coltrane remains focussed on his production game. His hometown is listed as Frankfurt, Germany but his releases seem to come from all over the globe. Some with purely Japanese samples, some titled with Georgian characters and others entirely in Russian. I’m not sure if he’s just a language fan or if it’s intended to throw the spotters, but it allows his catalogue to speak for itself.
Last week I paid $1 and picked up Enta The Killaz credited to the Russian Hip Hop Killaz Instrumental Ensemble; a collaboration with fellow Diggin Around The Minds Flava associates Aesthetic and Funky Waves. His collaborations are frequent but this collective is fast becoming my favourite project of his.
Also on high rotation is Galaga the more golden-era tipped collaboration with Grant Le Bart and Workspace which is a solo outing described as “1 break, 10 beats with old loops”. Don’t know how to read in to that.
There’s so much goodness within this catalogue and Thelonious keeps the themes diverse. Boogie On The Bones, for example, is 25 tracks of 80s disco and boogie edits. It’s nice to hear these delivered in shorter cuts – beat tape style – than the unnecessary long ‘disco edit’ we’re used to.
The crew is hooked in to Qrates for physical. Physical is always the preference, but unfortunately the shipping prices make it inaccessible to most of the world. While we wait for them to sort their business and not rip us off on shipping, head over to his page to stock up on digi: https://dertheo.bandcamp.com