Our boy Liam Dirlam, aka VOODOO FARM, is back at it again – this time in the form of a four-song EP titled Hitsville U.S.A. Upon searching the term ‘Hitsville USA’ – I discovered it was the nickname given to Motown’s first headquarters in Detroit starting in 1959. For those of you candy ravers not familiar with Motown, it was a record label that saw mainstream success in the 1960s and 1970s, home to artists who wrote and performed Soul/R&B music; between 1961 and 1971 the label gave birth to 110 top-ten hits. It’s easy to see why Liam named his newest EP after one of the biggest Soul labels to ever exist: there ain’t no shortage of Soul sounds and samples in his tracks!
VOODOO FARM prides himself on a style of music he calls Moombahglitchtrohop. The first record of Liam’s I heard was his remix of Marvin Gaye’s “Grapevine” which we posted back in August of 2011. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him perform live (kills it) as well as listen to his consistently hyphy original tracks and remixes. If I had heard the Hitsville EP without having known who produced it, I would have thought a member of the Pretty Lights Music family put it out – maybe Gramatik or Griz, and “Rain” reminds me of a Paper Diamond track. As I said before, this is a funky and soulful release with three out of the four tracks coming in under 100BPM – that swerve-and-lean swag. “Cocaine” is a great tribute to the legendary Eric Clapton but I bet the guitarist never pictured his song with wobbles the way VOODOO FARM did. And how about that horn section? I thoroughly love each of these tracks and I think the vocal samples work perfectly for this style of music.
If you’ve been a supporter of Liam in the past, continue to do so. And if this is your first time hearing his work, make sure you show him some love over on SoundCloud and Facebook and dig through his crates a little deeper.
Download the full EP for free HERE
Check out the video for “I Don’t Know Why”:
Check out a recap of his performance at Webster Hall NYC: