News

Updates have been sorely lacking around here lately. Life gets in the way sometimes.

The new album is officially out. People seem to like it. Record stores in the twin cities have it. Amazon, iTunes and other online retailers have it. Record stores nation wide will have it soon.

To better keep up with me, you can check www.guanteandbigcats.com or twitter.com/bigcatsbeats

Big big thanks to everyone that came out to our release party last weekend. We had an amazing turnout, and amazing music. Be looking for some video, photos and audio from that night coming soon.

If you missed it, we will be performing on Jan. 1st at Sauce in Uptown. We will be joined by Dragons Power Up! and Wizards Are Real.

Here are some photos from the release party 

Strange Famous is offering a KILLER package deal on my new album.

Signed copy of the album, instrumental album, 5o page booklet, sticker and more. $10

TEN FREAKING DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

also, if you follow the link, you can download the single for free. This shit is just too good.

GO HERE NOW

Twin Cities Metromix

Whiskey For The Holy Ghost

Culture Bully

TC Daily Planet

City Pages

“Earnestness can go wrong in hip hop. On this album, it goes very right.” –Sage Francis

The Current (Minnesota Public Radio) has added my new single to their catalog. If you want to hear it, go to www.thecurrent.org and request “The National Anthem ft. Haley Bonar” by Guante and Big Cats.

These albums aren’t necessarily what I consider to be the best five albums of the decade, because that’s damn near impossible to figure out. I’ve just come up with the five records that hit me the hardest over the last ten years, which in my case, takes me back to age 13, and covers most of my music listening career. There are many great, influential albums that I had to leave off that I’ll list at the end.

Kid Koala: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (2000)
Kid Koala, and this record in particular, was one of the main reasons I wanted to get into DJing. Once I figured out that I wasn’t going to make it as a scratch DJ, I started making beats. Aside from being really personally influential, this is a dope record. Kid Koala can scratch with the best of em, but his records are about more than that. At a time when most scratch DJs were making records about outer space and scratching the same 3 noises, Kid Koala took it in a totally different direction. This record is funny, melodic and oddly down to earth.

Non-Prophets: Hope (2003)
After Sage got Personal Journals out of the way, he made a straight up rap record. A “kick you in the face, I can rap better than any of you without even trying” rap record. Joe Beats produced the whole thing, and it bangs. 90’s style filtered loops and drum breaks banging, but banging nonetheless. This is the only Sage release that doesn’t get too weird for me. Or maybe it does, and I can just ignore it because of the more straight forward production. Full of wordplay, rap references and flexing, this record still gets better the more I listen to it.

Deltron: 3030 (2000)
This album made my list, and I don’t even like Del. Haha, that’s how much Dan The Automator brought it. Plus you have Kid Koala on the cuts? dang. The production on this record is just out of this world, especially considering it came out nearly 10 years ago. Del gets old at times, as do the interludes, but you can’t aruge with beats like 3030, Mastermind, Madness, Time Keeps On Slipping, and Memory Loss. Time hasn’t been very kind to Del on this album, but the beats have held up amazingly well as they age.

D-Styles: Phantazmagorea (2002)
This album alone pulled scratch DJing out of the past and created new, incredibly lofty standards for DJ records. No programming, no live instruments, even the drums are scratched. D-styles brings it funky and musical as hell for an hour plus. I catch myself listening to it now and thinking, “damn, that bassline is nice”, or “I wonder who played keys on this” before I remember that it’s only D, a turntable, and a mixer. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around just how good this album is. It’s one of my goals in life to collaborate with this dude.

J Dilla: Donuts (2006)
This album gets a lot of love, and I know some people think it’s overrated, but this record deserves every bit of that love. This record is the exact opposite of a record like Phantazmagorea or 3030 in that most of the music is very simple. The record is basically a beat tape, but as a producer, 31 vocal free Dilla beats makes it on my “best of the decade” list, haha. On the surface, there are plenty of dope, head nodding beats on here. At the same time though, I’ve learned a lot as a producer just from listening to how Dilla put everything together.

Narrowly Missed: Jel: 10 Seconds, Elliott Smith: Figure 8, Oddjobs: Drums, DJ Shadow: The Private Press, Sage Francis: Personal Journals, El-P: I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere, Rage Against The Machine: The Battle Of Los Angeles, Guante and Big Cats: An Unwelcome Guest.