photo by B Fresh Photography
Guante & Big Cats at Bedlam: Make your best “big cat” face
We checked out the Guante and Big Cats release show for their new album, ” An Unwelcome Guest” over at the Bedlam Theater, and we asked you to give us your best “big cats” face. Here are our Top 10 as well as pics from the show. PHOTOS BY B FRESH PHOTOGRAPHY. To view the slideshow link to original post on City Pages on 13 December 2009.
Guante, yet another consciousness-raising rapper who calls the Twin Cities his home, commands center stage tonight at the Bedlam Theater alongside his producer Big Cats. They’ll be celebrating the release of “An Unwelcome Guest,” a 15-track concept album about—I kid you not—a zombie apocalypse. The disc features guest appearances by some of the Twin Cities’ finest (Haley Bonar, Big Quarters, Eric Blair of No Bird Sing), but the real star remains Guante’s endless repository of establishment-agitating lyrical insight (“This isn’t patriotism/This is the Stockholm syndrome”). (10 p.m., $5 adv/$7 door, 18+)
Originally posted on Metromix Twin Cities.
Guante + Big Cats! ‘An Unwelcome Guest’ received an honorable mention as part of Culturebully’s Top Ten Twin Cities albums of 2009. Link here.
Wanna Guante?
By CHRIS
RIEMENSCHNEIDER
Star Tribune
Another deep-voiced, grit-kicking MC in the style of Crescent Moon and No Bird Sing’s Joe Horton, Guante’s full-length debut, “An Unwelcome Guest,” is a concept album about a weary traveler walking through a land of zombies. No, it’s not about a recent trip to Uptown. The real-life Kyle Myhre, who got his start as a spoken-word poet, co-produced the album with wild-eyed beatmaker Big Cats!, with whom he’s performing at Saturday’s release party at Bedlam Theater, 1501 S. 6th St., Mpls., with openers No Bird Sing and Kristoff Krane (10 p.m., $5-$7). Guests include Haley Bonar, Big Quarters and Chastity Brown.
Original post on Star Tribune on 10 December 2009.
Strange Famous Records + Tru Ruts
to offer exclusive pre-sales of ‘An Unwelcome Guest’
“Earnestness can go wrong in hip hop. On this album, it goes very right.” –Sage Francis
Tru Ruts/Speakeasy Records’ release of “An Unwelcome Guest,” the hip hop concept album from Twin Cities duo Guante & Big Cats, will be available exclusively through Strange Famous Records until its official release on January 12th, 2010. The indie-rap powerhouse, home to Sage Francis, B.Dolan, Prolyphic (who guests on the album) and other forward-thinking artists, will sell the album through its web-store at www.strangefamous.com.
Following the pre-sales period, rising indie label, Tru Ruts, will make the album available in stores and other distribution outlets, however, ‘An Unwelcome Guest’ will continue to be available via digital download through Strange Famous Records.
“An Unwelcome Guest” tells the story of one man fleeing the zombie apocalypse. It may sound original, but isn’t. The post-apocalypse concept has been done to death. What is original, however, is the way the duo plays with perspective, pushes the boundaries of hip hop narrative and somehow makes a love story about zombies, superheroes, displacement, violence, struggle, and America work.
Big Cats’ beats could almost tell the story themselves—intensely cinematic, the production walks the line between crazy outer-space simmering funk and straight-up hip hop bangers. Guante, part of the championship 2009 National Poetry Slam St. Paul team, writes like a poet but doesn’t rap like one—the songs are hook-driven, dynamic and instantly quotable. Unapologetically political, unflinchingly descriptive and undeniably ambitious, the album is the duo’s first full-length collaboration.
Listeners who buy “An Unwelcome Guest” through the Strange Famous store will receive a signed copy of the album, a free instrumental CD, a limited-edition sticker and a booklet by Guante containing song lyrics, commentary and pictures.
SPECIAL NOTE FOR TWIN CITIES RESIDENTS:
Though the album’s official release (for record stores, ITunes and other retailers) will be in January, Twin Cities residents will have an exclusive opportunity to get it on Dec 12 at the Bedlam Theater during the special Twin Cities release party. Joined by No Bird Sing, Kristoff Krane and the Tribe, and backed by a live band featuring members of Dragons Power Up, Guante & Big Cats will play the album in its entirety and sell physical copies of the album for one night only (10pm, 18+, $7).
Memorable vocals, a concept album ‘with zombies’ and much, much more
By Ross Raihala
Kyle “Guante” Myhre made a splash last year with his album, “El Guante’s Haunted Studio Apartment,” a disc that got him named an Artist of the Year by City Pages and landed him on URB magazine’s “Next 1,000” list. In addition to organizing the local Hip Hop Against Homophobia series, he’s also a local and national slam-poetry champion for two years running. He has followed up all that with “An Unwelcome Guest,” his new album recorded with producer Big Cats, whose resume includes work with Sage Francis and Jolie Holland. It’s a concept album, telling the story of “one man moving from east to west in the wake of man-made disaster and his own personal tragedy. Also, there are zombies.” Guante and Big Cats play a CD-release show Saturday at the Bedlam Theatre in Minneapolis with support from No Bird Sing and Kristoff Krane.
Originally posted on Pioneer Press’ TwinCities.com by Ross Raihala on 10 December 2009.
Guante and Big Cats! roll out ambitious new concept album, “An Unwelcome Guest”
By Justin Schell, TC Daily Planet
For you know, and I know, good horse ´mongst the rich ones
How oftimes we go there an unwelcome guest
-Woody Guthrie, “The Unwelcome Guest”
Earlier this year, Minneapolis MC and spoken word poet Guante told me that he was working on an album that was “about immigration.” This vague, yet full-of-potential germ has resulted in An Unwelcome Guest (Trú Rúts), the debut album from Guante and producer Big Cats!. The album is a follow up to the group’s Start a Fire EP, also on Trú Rúts, which was released in May of this year. The duo will celebrate its release Saturday, December 12th at Bedlam Theatre, with support from Kristoff Krane, No Bird Sing, and The Tribe.
Part Cormac McCarthy, part Woody Guthrie, and part Public Enemy, An Unwelcome Guest is an intricately woven poetic and sonic excursion through landscapes mental, emotional, and physical, cementing Guante and Big Cats!’s status as two of the best emerging artists within Twin Cities hip-hop. When I spoke with them at their St. Paul rehearsal space, they were quick to emphasize how collaboratively they worked to create An Unwelcome Guest.
According to Big Cats!, “we would start with, ‘hey I have this beat, do you wanna use it?’ But then there was a process from there, ‘Can you change this part of it, can you rearrange this section, can this verse be 24 instead of 16?,’” he says. “It wasn’t just taking a verse and slapping it on a beat.”
“Each beat needed to fit a certain mood,” Guante adds, “to fit what was going on at the story at the time. They make the album as a whole more captivating.”
That attention to detail is evident throughout the album. Something that’s marked Big Cats!’s work since his first beat tapes is his vivid use of sonic color. Part of this comes from the producer’s multi-instrumental skills. “I have a musical background, I know how to play some instruments,” he says—including piano, guitar, and bass, along with the AKAI MPC1000 sampler. “I came up playing other people’s music, writing my own music.”
These details are not just present on drums that bump and hooks that grab, but also on elements like the constantly shifting sonic beds for verses, such as the hauntingly effective auto-tuned voices on “The Stockholm Syndrome.” Elsewhere there is the discordant harpsichord on “Yes, God is a DJ; No, Not a Good One.” This grating musical dissonance matches the social and emotional dissonance of the lyrics, which features a guest verse from No Bird Sing’s Eric Blair, as the two MCs explore the how the events of the album are “going according to plan/but whose plan?” This line is just one of many bursting with meaning, made all the stronger by their unified place in the album’s overarching story.
The idea of doing a concept album is nothing new to Guante. “I’ve been wanting to do a concept record for a long time, just as a challenge for myself. I think it makes interesting listening.” This emphasis on listening is key for Guante. “Music, and particularly hip-hop, has become a very passive listening experience,” he says. “It’s something you just nod and zone out to. We definitely wanted to have beats that anyone could appreciate and rhymes that flowed nicely, but it’s the idea that you could go deeper.”
The basic narrative of Guest, as I understand it and without giving too much away, revolves around a person is escaping some terrible event (although it’s never quite revealed what that event was), and while doing so, explores not just the physical landscapes he traverses on his post-apocalyptic journey, but also the emotions and meanings of that changed world and his place within it. “It’s not super abstract,” says Guante. “The language is very simple. I think where it gets complex is the subtext.”
The subtexts of Guest change with almost every song, invoking numerous interlocking themes. These include contemporary rhetoric about immigration; the reality and ideology of borders physical, national, and emotional; a biological plague; and governmental irresponsibility, conspiracy, and violence, as well as the insurrectionist response from the victims of these actions. There are two themes, however, that provide an inspiring and redemptive power in the midst of so much darkness and destruction. One is an insistent and unwavering emphasis on the power of aggressive social critique and the fight for social justice; the other is the power of love, a love that is neither hokey nor Hallmark, but one that persists and emboldens even through an apocalypse.
“Hopefully,” Guante says, “listening to the album is an experience that demands and rewards multiple listens.” Like the people whom Guante speaks about in “No Capes,” the everyday heroes that don’t need a costume or a mask to fight for what’s right, the messages of the tracks on An Unwelcome Guest possess more power together than they ever could alone, sounding a 21st century battle cry rooted in the righteous hoof beats of Woody Guthrie’s Black Bess.
Originally posted on TC Daily Planet on 8 December 2009.
In anticipation of the new album from rapper Guante and producer Big Cats – the fellas threw together a quick video of punchlines and MPC to promote the album and their upcoming album release party which will also feature performances from No Bird Sing, The Tribe and Kristoff Kane.
Very much looking forward to hearing the album. This would should be pretty dark. Look for An Unwelcome Guest dropping December 12th.
Originally posted on Pwelbs.com.
TRU RUTS | SPEAKEASY RECORDS 