“Sightseeing” (Zo! & Tall Black Guy – OFFICIAL Abstractions Album Trailer)

Zo! & Tall Black Guy
Abstractions Album Trailer
Video by Digife
City footage captured by LaDarrel “Saxappeal” Johnson
Abstractions is available NOW

Sightseeing (feat. Pirahnahead & Diviniti)
(L. Ferguson, T. Wallace, P. Coleman)
Produced by Zo! & Tall Black Guy & Phonte
Lead Vocals by Pirahnahead & Diviniti
Background Vocals by Pirahnahead, Diviniti & Phonte
All Instruments by Zo! & Tall Black Guy, except
Saxophone by LaDarrel “Saxappeal” Johnson
Trumpet by Aaron Janik

City of
Motown 
Woodward Ave, Cass Tech
Eastern Market, 7 Mile
Sweetwater, Aretha

In the city

City of
Greektown
Spectacles, Outer Dr
New Dance Show, Belle Isle
Bread Basket, The Shelter

In the city
In the city

Zo! & Tall Black Guy – Abstractions (Deluxe Edition)

Zo! & Tall Black Guy – Abstractions (Deluxe Edition)

01. Talkin’ To Myself (feat. BeMyFiasco)
02. Sightseeing* (feat. Pirahnahead & Diviniti)
03. The Ride (feat. Sy Smith, Black Milk & Elzhi)
04. Blackout
05. I Love The Way (feat. Omar)
06. Hold My Hand* (feat. Darien Brockington, Muhsinah & Phonte)
07. Northland (feat. DJ Dez)
08. Connected (feat. Josh Milan)
09. Epilogue*

*BONUS TRACKS*
10. Dem Nights** (feat. Phonte)
11. In The Wind (feat. Debórah Bond)
12. Blackout (The Scene Remix)
13. Blackout (Daz-I-Kue Re-Edit)
14. Connected (Terry Hunter Club Mix) (feat. Josh Milan)

Produced by Zo! & Tall Black Guy
*Produced by Zo! & Tall Black Guy & Phonte
**Produced by Zo! & Tall Black Guy & Buscrates
Recorded by Zo! & Tall Black Guy at East Wing Studios, Silver Spring, MD
Mixed by Zo! & Phonte
Mastered by Chris Boerner at Kitchen Mastering
Artwork by Rachel Stewart
Layout & Design by Chris Charles

Studio Campfire Stories: The Foreign Exchange “Listen To The Rain”

foreign-exchange-love-in-flying-colors-lp-lead

Last year, I wrapped up everything ManMade around February/March 2013. During that same time, The Foreign Exchange was working on the music for Love In Flying Colors and I hadn’t yet gotten an expected call to work on anything for their album yet. Why is this important? Here’s a small bit of +FE trivia that most don’t know… I have the only outside production credits on the last three +FE albums – Leave It All Behind (“If She Breaks Your Heart”), Authenticity (“Fight For Love”), and Love in Flyi…Well… Just keep reading. Sometime in April or May, Phonte gave me a call telling me that he had a song idea for the new +FE album… I remember telling him, “I’ve been waiting on this call – I’m down.” Since I was scheduled to be in Raleigh, NC at the end of May for a video shoot, we figured that would be the best time to sit down, put our ideas together and see what we could come up with.

On May 25, 2013, I made my way down I-95S to shoot the first video from ManMade, which had just been released four days prior. We were to gather the crew in Downtown Raleigh and shoot a playful spin on an old school Sesame Street performance for the song “Count To Five” with director and frequent +FE Music collaborator, Kenneth Price. Come to think of it, this was the first time that Gwen Bunn and I actually met in person… at the damn video shoot for the song we had already worked together on! It’s kinda crazy how routinely that happens now…. Anyway, we shot the video in a few hours and afterward everyone got together to grab some food from a burger spot not too far from our filming location. Some folks went home, the rest of us headed over to Phonte’s spot where the movie ‘Campaign’ was running and jokes were on ten. Once everybody cleared out, Phonte and I hit the studio at about 2:30 in the morning and he told me that he had a melody in his head already with a few words here and there and needed the music to follow. This was no thing… We had utilized the same “sit down at the piano” formula when we worked on the title track from ManMade almost a year prior, “Fight For Love”, and “If I Could Tell You Know” from the SunStorm album. Like “ManMade”, it was the hook that we started with. When I go back and listen to the demo recordings we did of the song on my phone, chronologically we did the hook first (looped it twice), then there’s a recording of the verse, which we also looped twice. I distinctively remember wanting to accentuate that ‘break’ toward the beginning of the verse where he sings, “All alone (*break*) agaaaaaain….” …just to add a bit of personality to the music. The usage of breaks and “white space” is something that you don’t hear too often in many slower tempo songs and the more we worked through the verse, the more distinctive I made the break. The same with the chord climb up during the hook when he sings, “…….down out-siiiiiide…” by playing a different chord for each syllable, adding more of accents in the music. The last thing we worked on was the song’s ending. We wanted to close this one a with descending chord progression, which would set it apart from our previous “written at the piano” joints. The final demo recording starts off with my countdown into Phonte snapping his fingers for tempo while humming the melody of the hook then going right into the ending… And to be honest, I have listened to these demos about 5 times a piece while writing this story. To hear this song again with only piano and a reference melody is really kinda crazy.

By the time I returned home to Maryland the following evening, Phonte had completely finished writing to the song and sent me a text saying, “The title of that jam we did is called, “Listen To The Rain.” Lemme know when you lay THAT…” …No thing at all. The next day, I sat in the studio and recorded a main piano part, layered with a rhodes, and also played the bass live on it …all to a finger snap (that same finger snap can be heard throughout the majority of the first two minutes of the song). I sent the music on through to Phonte along with the, “Check that Gmail” text…… He then hit me the next day with the SAME text. When I checked, he had laid his vocals down and Chris Boerner had recorded a third chord layering by recording his acoustic guitar, which added some nice texture with the subtle fret noises and string plucking. So here we are with the main portion of the song completed just a couple days away from when we started……. But here’s where it gets good. Phonte told me that they had hit up my dude, Detroit’s own Pirahnahead to do string arrangement on it…

*drops phone*

Now, I’ve known Pirahnahead for a good 10-11 years and he was a monster back THEN so I couldn’t have even imagined what some damn strings would sound like over that music. So, when I received the song back a month later……. WITH STRINGS?!?! LOOK man…. I had all TYPES of goosebumps running up my arms. The shit was just beautiful…. I can remember listening to it about 5 or 6 times in a row and THEN listening to the isolated strings track a few times in a row afterward. Maaaaaaan, make you wanna shed that good single “Denzel in ‘Glory‘” thug tear!! Then, I received the final version with Nicolay’s drums on the song that put the song into another gear by taking it from an acoustic singer/songwriter mode to something you could break your neck to… All the way through an extended hook where Phonte calls out “…and my backgrounds sing, and my backgrounds siiiiing…” (that’s Jeanne Jolly assisting him on the background vocals too, by the way) right into that ending that we worked on at the piano. An excellent climax to a dope song.

The Foreign Exchange Presents +FE Music: The Reworks

the_reworks

I have been hinting at the fact that I have something on the upcoming +FE Remix project, well… the official announcement has been made. There’s a helluva line-up of music here as you read through the tracklisting AND the lead single “So What If It Is” is available for free download. This double-disc is available for pre-order NOW and will be released on February 26, 2013.

Aaaaand 2013 is OFFICIALLY underway…

Taken from The Foreign Exchange’s Site:

Selections from The Foreign Exchange’s +FE Music catalog as remixed by Nicolay, Zo!, 4hero, The Randy Watson Experience (?uestlove & James Poyser), Focus…, Tall Black Guy, Pirahnahead, and more. Includes three new studio tracks. In stores February 26 on +FE Music.

Tracklisting:

Disc 01:

01. The Foreign Exchange- So What If It Is
02. The Foreign Exchange- The Last Fall (Focus… +FE Experience Remix)
03. Zo! feat. Phonte- Flight of the Blackbyrd (4hero Remix)
04. The Foreign Exchange- Fight For Love (Nicky Mendes and Brasil ’66 Remix)
05. Deborah Bond- Say It (Nicolay Remix)
06. The Foreign Exchange feat. Paris & Amber Strother of KING- All The Kisses (Ahmed Sirour Remix)
07. The Foreign Exchange feat. YahZarah- If She Breaks Your Heart (The Randy Watson Experience Remix)
08. The Foreign Exchange feat. Darien Brockington & Median- Maybe She’ll Dream of Me (Pure P’s Sky Hygh Remix)
09. The Foreign Exchange feat. YahZarah- If This Is Love (Nicky Buckingham’s Fleetwood Remix)
10. Vikter Duplaix- Electric Love (Nicolay Remix)
11. Zo! feat. Chantae Cann- All Is Well With Love (Pirahnahead Remix)

Disc 02:

01. Phonte feat. Focus… & Sy Smith- Love Songs
02. The Foreign Exchange feat. Darien Brockington- All or Nothing/Coming Home To You (Pure P’s Midsommarkransen Night’s Dream Remix)
03. RJD2 feat. Kenna- Games You Can Win (Nicolay Remix)
04. Phonte feat. Carlitta Durand- Gonna Be A Beautiful Night (Zo’s Legendary Story of a Star Remix)
05. Jeanne Jolly- Sweet Love (Nicolay Remix)
06. The Foreign Exchange- Don’t Let It Be So
07. Zo! feat. Eric Roberson, Darien Brockington & Phonte- This Could Be The Night (Tall Black Guy Remix)
08. Sy Smith- The Art Of You (Nicolay Remix)
09. Phonte- Ball and Chain (Sheldon Williams Remix)
10. The Hot At Nights- ACSlater (Nicolay Remix)