Cannot recommend Seattleite Justin Ripley's freely downloadable album "Sex on the Beach" enough. The erstwhile Showbox sound-man's most recent batch of songs are '60s-ish bedroom-produced guitar pop, unafraid of running off on this or that dreamy tangent but also rife with concise verse/bridge/chorus gems and more sounds than one might assume would come from a single man recording in a residential environment: tambourine, off-stage background vocals, layered guitars, various amplifiers, drums sourced from a few different places, etc.

"Reducing my Globe" is vintage jewelry, pretty as a whole but made up of individual sparkly parts, and my favorites are the swear-you-heard-it-before verse, turn-on-a-dime bridge, and brain-scratching lyrics, some of which are below:

"all these planes are reducing my globe to the tiniest frames
all these trains are reducing my globe to the tiniest planes

all these planes are reducing my globe to the tiniest frames
all these leaves are reducing my globe to the tiniest fears"

Another remix from Renton's 10.4 Rog, this one of a late '90s hiphop song by forgotten NYC rapper Royal Flush. Rog's "Rotten Apple" flip is notable for the fact that the choruses are excised and verses linked together in one long stream. Also running through the whole track: a gravel-sparkle synth drone I'm assuming Rog made with a keyboard and a computer. Simple stuff, but effective.

Though not from the Big Apple ca. 1997 like the above track, "Culture" could have been by the sound of it. South Seattle rappers LA (Language Arts) and Chev combine on Def Dee's plinky-pluck/piano chord beat for some serious verbal working-out. Nonstop "darts," like the Wu-Tang used to say. My favorite couplet from LA, wearer of much Polo, extremely arrogant performer and lover of great one-liners:

"F__k the fakery, I say it like I'm under oath
I don't need the whole bakery, yo I just want a loaf"

Chev's verse goes this way and that, not deciding whether it wants to be a battle rap (calls himself a king cobra) or a sex rap (talks about loose women and his own exploits) but ends neatly, combining a personal insight with a nice image:

"I'm just living out my fantasy
supplied by my vanity
dippin in the ride through the canopy"

Photos by me