What I love about Shade Cobain‘s Them Fighting Words series are the clever twists and turns they make in sounds. TEARS, the fourth installment from the Them Fighting Words Series is: “Denial. Patience. Regret. The mere thought of these words can break the average man down. However, the man who has focus and a purpose will not fear these words, nor the power behind them. He will instead learn to respect these terms and ultimately obtain…the prize.” Shade Cobain calls this a musical memoir of 365 days, and seriously, when you listen to it, the sounds span across so many genres, moods, periods in time, bringing to the forefront the notion of music being life. If you missed any of the previous projects, check them out here. All songs are produced, mixed, and recorded by Shade Cobain, except track 11 written by Simon Stone.

Shade Cobain is what I call a deep crate digger, where his selections are like going to school for a diploma on rare grooves! With Cobainish Theory, the 3rd installment to the Theory series, we are taken deeper into the musical mind of Shade Cobain. The head nod drum tracks will take you to a place in your solitary mind, with beats that recline you into grooves that  are relaxing and sensorial. You truly get a sense of who and what Shade Cobain is from these instrumentals, and he comes from the school of Jay Dilla and DJ Premiere.

If this is your first time hearing music by the Pittsburgh native, you can check out previous posts on his Theory Series (Cassette Theory – The Beat EP and The Anti-Love Theory) and bookmark his Bandcamp page - www.shadecobain.bandcamp.com.

Firstly, I need to apologise for taking so long to post this! I unintentionally held out on you. Them Fighting Words: The Anti-Love Theory, produced by Shade Cobain is muphorically sound!! Shade gets a bit darker on this collection of instrumentals, honing in on his interpretation of how love can be equated through music. And as we know, love, at least the shaky kind of love, is far from a bed of roses. The various soundbytes will have you laughing, or feeling waves of sadness and even compassion for a fellow sister or a brother. Even down to nuances within a particular music sample, tap into the level of love Shade wants to convey. He has definitely worked out the theory—Love, any type of love, is part of living.

Pittsburgh native, Shade Cobain is no stranger to us here at Muphoric Sounds, where we featured Shade’s Cassette Theory: Beat EP, this past summer — a fusion of hip hop, soul, jazz but largely capturing the essence of the Golden Era in hop hop. If you missed it, you can check it out here.

So kick back and listen to Them Fighting Works: The Anti-Love Theory by Shade Cobain, and as JillzWorth says in the intro, “Love is Love, Love is Life, Love is an experience.” Enjoy!

Back in July, we featured the Pittsburgh native DiViNe SeVeN, who had just released his third album, LISTEN!!! which was produced by Shade Cobain. Here is the video for “Doin’ My Diddy,” where the laid back emcee strides through his town, while doing his diddy. Always cool to see independent artists in motion, and better yet, those who are fun to watch.

If you’re looking for an album you can just let play, LISTEN!!! is it! Hitting us with his third release, DiViNe SeVeN, hails from Pittsburgh, PA, a town that is often forgotten. But know that big things are happening in the city of Pittsburgh.

On LISTEN!!!, DiViNe SeVeN teamed up with Shade Cobain (Shade Cobain was featured Muphoric Sounds last month – check it out here) for the production and collaborated with a few friends from Pittsburgh, such as A.P.E.X, Tabu Mahogany, Jon Quest, Beedie, Living Proofe, Vaig, and L. King who all sprinkle their distinct flavours on the album. What you get are gritty tunes, with hard slapping beats, dirty basslines, which are funky and delve through many genres to create interesting sounds. With DiViNe SeVeN‘s lyrical flow laid on top, the music is reminiscent of a DJ Premiere tune. What’s also interesting, while DiViNe SeVeN does not sound like the late Guru, there’s something in his flow that would put one in the mind of him, or his protege’s Group Home.

His previous recordings are The Native Son and Seven Wonders…The EP, which were both released in 2008 to critical acclaim, and he quickly became the staple to underground hip hop in Pittsburgh. DiViNe SeVeN is the recipient of Hip Hop Buffet’s 2008 Best Male and 2009 Best Group Performance awards, and has been nominated for 2009 and 2010 Pittsburgh Hip Hop Awards Underground Artist of The Year. Definitely an artist to watch out for. He is currently working on his next album, The Life and Times of Dat Turner, and a mixtape entitled De Talk About: Vol. 1, which are both scheduled to release towards the end of the year, early 2011.

Check out a couple of cuts below and get yourself a copy of LISTEN!!!, a solid album which can be downloaded for FREE here! Let me know what you think.

If you’re a product of the 60s and 70s, you’ll know all about the cassette tape, the Walkman, and making your own personal homegrown mixtape. If you were as fortunate as me with a mother who liked to blare her music on a banging sound system, which made me feel like a producer who could manipulate sound levels on a tape deck, I knew Shade Cobain‘s Cassette Theory: The Beat EP was going to bring it all back!

Hailing from the unlikely state of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home to many of Jazz’s great musicians, Shade Cobain is a member of a growing collective in hip hop producers rising from Pittsburgh, which includes BusCrates and Grand Ear.

Cassette Theory: The Beat EP is an ode to the cassette tape. As Shade says, “Audio cassettes take us back to a time of mixtapes, home dubbing and low fidelity.” Cassette Theory is a celebration of hip hop’s Golden Era, where music was inventive and original, bringing in sounds of jazz, classic hip hop, and soul, incorporating electronic elements to make it Shade Cobain. Each instrumental is dedicated to a tape brand, which perfectly hones in on the factor of low fidelity married with the hiss of vinyl. It’s pure beauty to listen to. Check out “Private Enemies (Scotch)” below and then head over to Shade’s Bandcamp page for the free download of this incredible beat tape! You can also hear more of this outstanding producer on Soundcloud.