Man, is this a painful Monday morning or what? It’s 11am and my body is still failing to get it’s shit together. I don’t know what to tell you. My usual gigantic morning coffee from the bodega below my apartment didn’t really do anything, and neither did the fact that there was no cigarette to go with it while I walked to the subway because of something I told someone over the weekend about me and smoking cigarettes. I won’t get into what I said, just that it was something alright, and something that means I won’t be having cigarettes with my morning coffee anymore, because, really, who the hell needs one that early anyway? This isn’t Cowboy Bebop. I’m not Spike Spiegel. Hell, Spike Spiegel isn’t even Spike Spiegel. You think anyone could smoke that consistently and still pull all those aerial moves without getting a little winded during the second half of the episode? Christ.

Hell, I don’t know what I’m saying. Man, I’m tired. Mondays. God.

Anyway, dublab really came through for me in kindness this weekend. Got a nice little care package with some beautiful things, a nice hand-made silk-screened dublab tote bag, some assorted CDs from Stones Throw and Plug Research, and a small pile of Stones Throw swag. Not that all the stickers and tote bags in the world can do a damned thing to this Monday morning. No, for that I’ve been kicking it with an mp3 CD the Labrats sent me holding most of their regular DJs’ “Best of 2006″ sets.

So that’s where we’re at today, on this Monday’s edition (hah, makes it sound like a regular thing) of The PopCultureShock Soundtrack. Been battling a Monday morning hangover to some smooth beats from Kutmah’s 2006 retrospective. It’s perfect for this kind of morning, a morning overcast with a little bit of rain, and a morning in serious need of some low-end.

So check this set from Kutmah. I mean, really, it’s that good. If you think you got an idea of what the guy was about from the last set of his we posted, really, you’ve got to click that little embedded player below and hear what this new set is about. You might pick up on some nice tunes from last year you didn’t otherwise hear. He mixes pretty nice too. A lot of downtempo electronica, a lot of hip-hop instrumentals (some of them so funky you’re not even sure if they were ever even supposed to have vocals), a lot of smooth, chunky beats in the vein of Dilla, Sa-Ra, Umod, Ammoncontact, and the like, though seeing as this is the one set I don’t have a playlist to, it’s your guess if any of those guys are actually on this set (I just remember hearing a couple of Dilla songs). And if Mondays need something, it’s a little bit more of the smooth and chunky.

For those still a little green around the record crates, for this set try and think, maybe, about something that sounds like it could have been pulled from an episode or two of Samurai Champloo. It’s nice. And he does this crazy little bit during the second-half where he puts together a bunch of 45 RPM records at 33 1/3, to give it this crazy sort of downtempo tip (never played Nomo’s “Nu Tones” at 33 myself, though I love the track so it was kind of crazy to hear sneak up in the set). But rather than sit here explaining it, it would probably be easier to just give it a little click and see for yourself.

So here you go:

Kutmah’s Best of 2006 from dublab.com
kutmah_best_of_2006.mp3

I’ve got a lot more of these sets, though I’ll probably be hand-picking good ones every now and then to put up here in the PCS blogroll, try and give you all a little something to freshen up your playlists, and a new soundtrack to waste time on the internet to. Myself, after playing out this Kutmah, I’ll probably be putting on some more of this Guther album I’ve been telling myself to check out. Never was too big on the Morr stuff at first, but it’s been growing on me. Then again, it’s definitely a Morr Music kind of Monday Morning.

Keep it easy, and hope you all have some good listenings this week.