Music Tuesday: Buraka Som Sistema, Tribe Called Quest and more

Did you get spooked? We had a grisly assemblage of videos for you over the Halloween weekend, including a murder ballads playlist from eMusic, BlankTV’s Got Horror?! collection, a round-up of vampire-inspired music videos, and other creepy delights. Now that it’s November, we turn our gaze in non-Halloween directions -- starting now!

Rocking With Buraka
Yes, we live in a globalized world. You know it when you hear a band like Buraka Som Sistema, whose roots are so spread out as to make them almost nation-less. They formed in Portugal, a mix of Angolan and Portuguese musicians, and released their major-label debut, Black Diamond, to critical praise (and sweaty dancefloors) back in 2008. Three years after that release dropped, they’re back with Komba, a more polished but still profoundly mongrel album that looks to Brazil and many other countries for inspiration -- and they’ve been releasing characteristically excellent videos to go along with it. Today they take to the YouTube homepage to school us in the ways of dance music, international style.



Remember Tribe?
A Tribe Called Quest remains one of the greatest hip-hop acts of all time. The proof is in the songs -- and in the new documentary about them which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube today. Check out their amazing catalogue in our celebratory playlist, and get the story behind the songs with the Beats, Rhymes and Life documentary.



Sleep Over “Casual Diamond”
Have you heard this Austin trio yet? How they manage to be both insubstantial and scary is beyond us -- but they do it. This casually creepy video echoes the music, which has a kind of narcoleptic grace. You can hardly understand a word from the singer, whose gauzy voice seems to disappear into the ether while hovering noise scrabbles at the edges of the song, threatening to engulf it. And we don’t know what’s going on with the video. Yep, cool stuff.



Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “I saw Sunn O))).”