Here is an update on our top Electronic, Rock, and the occasional Hip-hop plays!

Wu-Tang is back on our hip-hop radar in a big way with numerous kick-ass releases.  We started out early summer with Meth and Red’s “Blackout 2″ followed by Raekwon’s bangin sequel, “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2.”  In the last week or so, Wu soldiers have unloaded a trove of awaited albums.  Meth, Ghost, and Rae’s “Wu Massacre” explodes with crisp reinterpretations of Shaolin classics.  Inspectah Deck’s “Manifesto” is  a fresh NYC cut rife with tension enhanced by notable appearances from Cormega, Raekwon, and others.  If that’s not enough, DJ Mathematics, a formative Wu producer, unleashed “Return of the Wu”, an album of crisply produced remixed favorites from the Staten Island squadron.  To celebrate the recent Wu renaissance, the Danger Zone collective is interviewing John “Mook” Gibbons tonight at 10:30p.  Mook, an early Wu promoter and manager, pushed soon-to-be classic Wu albums from the early 90’s when the group was still hungry.  Mook will be plugging his upcoming “Next 9 Generals of Wu-Tang” competition to be held this summer.  Listen in!  KZSC aint’ nothin’ to f*#$ wit!

Here are this week’s charts.  Some stalwarts around the top.  Grizzly Bear, Camera Obscura, and Phoenix are all things that have done well at KZSC and at radio in the past, and our charts reflect that this week.  As music director, I’ve tried to make our charts reflect smaller, stranger bands that have broken into college radio recently – not the Decemberists of the world, etc, but I am always pleased when a band with a baroque sound like Grizzly Bear can be atop any chart.

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Alas, it has happened.  Woods have reached the top of the KZSC charts.  Woods are Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere (and others) and they sing into a pair of headphones and an old bullet microphone.  It is gorgeous sun-drenched psych-folk from Brooklyn that I cannot recommend enough.  With releases on their own label Woodsist and Mike Sniper’s Captured Tracks, you can’t go wrong. The b-side of the Captured Tracks single, “The Dark”, is one of the best 2 minute nuggets of pop this year.

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KZSC has decided on a new music director for next year! Her name is Caitlin Hannah, and she’ll be updating this soon enough.  She’s wonderful, and a more experienced blogger than I.    But for now, stuck with me, here are this week’s charts.

St. Vincent takes hold of the top spot! Annie Clark has put out a wonderfully dynamic pop record, which spans many soundscapes and feelings.  The track “Actor Out of Work” has a fuzzy pop thing and an upbeat pace kind of like Julie Doiron’s “Consolation Prize” (a category of songs I like this year) and it’s wonderful.  It also has my favorite album cover of the year so far perhaps.  Apparently, Annie likes stark photographs of her face.

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