HEIGHT WITH FRIENDS - UTILITY FOG 4 (2009)
Recorded and mixed by Mickey Free and Lord Grunge
Tracks 6 and 11 recorded live by Jeff The Taper
Produced by Mickey Free, Lord Grunge, Tobacco, King Rhythm, Jones and King Rhythm.
INTRO
I released this disc in May 2009, as we were setting off on the Wham City Records Is Real Tour with Ed Schrader. This was meant to be the final part of the Utility Fog series, and I wanted it to feel like a full album.
HEIGHT ZONE WORLD w/ Mickey Free, Emily Slaughter + Gavin Riley
This posse cut was recorded and mixed the day that Utility Fog 4 was released. We bounced the final mix and instantly started burning CDR’s, with hours to spare before the tour kick-off show.
ONE ENEMY
This is my favorite Height deep cut. It was made while we were holed up in a cabin in Western Maryland, making our album Bed Of Seeds.
GET YOUR DICK READY w/ Grand Buffet, Shields + Jones
This track is from 2000. I never heard the finished product, and assumed it never got completed. As I was finishing Utility Fog 4, I realized Grunge had actually finished the mix back in 2000, so I put it out. It’s called ‘Get Your Dick Ready,’ because that’s what Shields says on the intro.
COAST IS CLEAR
Tobacco, (of Black Moth Super Rainbow) had asked me to remix a song off his solo album, Fucked Up Friends This is what I came up with… I think it was kind of ignored or forgotten about by his label, so I released it myself.
A SECRET THING 2009
This is Nuclear Power Pants and me, doing a live band interpretation of the secret track off I Have A Gun, during the release party for Baltimore Highlands.
ORCHARDS
I found this beat on an ancient Mickey Free beat tape. We played the tape into pro-tools and did our best to modernize it. If people ask me to rap, this is the verse I say.
PIMLICO
This is my second experiment emulating old-school rhyme styles. I’m not dead-on with it, (as I would be on my later old-school albums) but I wasn’t really going for accuracy at this point.
2009 (pre-mix) w/ Emily Slaughter + Mickey Free
This one was also going to be on my album, Bed Of Seeds. The original idea was that it was going to be like Jackin’ For Beats, but with (previously unheard) Mickey Free and Shields beats under these simple back and forth raps. It didn’t work out that way, but we came up with a cool interplay between the a and b sections.
8 LANES
This song was inspired by walking into these giant Flying J’s on tour and realizing how my mission is like the mission of everyone else that’s road tripping or driving a truck. I liked the idea of everyone congregating in one spot to get these 24 ounce coffees, knowing we would all be 300 miles away from each other by midnight
BALTIMORE HIGHLANDS (Live At Zodiac)
Another fun live recording from my Baltimore Highlands release party in Baltimore.
MAP RAP
These were instructions about how to get to a secret patch of woods in Maryland, until those woods got leveled and turned into a movie theatre.
COLD RHYMES TWO w/ Mickey Free
A fire remix of Cold Rhymes, the last track off Utility Fog 2.