Pearsall's Tunes

New blog

2008-08-08T09:42:00.002+01:00

I am going to, in future, post all of my mixes at Sonicrampage. Check it out!

Pearsall presents Mean Machine

2008-06-21T16:06:00.005+01:00

Here's a new mix I recorded last weekend. It's a tribute to the early years of the legendary Metalheadz label (including the short-lived sub-label Razor's Edge), which was one of the key players in the transition (for both good and ill) of jungle into drum n' bass. Established in the mid-1990's by future tabloid-fodder Goldie this label, and the club night of the same name that ran on Sunday nights at the Blue Note on the (then-desolate) Hoxton Square, helped to define a new sound in drum n' bass. This was a darker, more futuristic, more techno-influenced sound that helped move drum n' bass away from its roots in the pop-pupilled days of the early 90's rave scene. Eventually, sadly, this proved to be a bit of a dead end as people competed to make the darkest and heaviest tunes, and it all got a bit bleak (and hence the later turn to more tuneful, nay, cheesy elements).

For a moment, though, this sound just worked, and this is my tribute to that moment.

This was recorded on two Technics 1210's, with a Pioneer DJM-600 mixer, without any Ableton or editing, in one take. Enjoy!

Pearsall presents Mean Machine
37:16, 256 kbps vbr MP3, 69.2 MB

Back cover
Cue file

01. Codename John - The Warning (Metalheadz)
02. Ed Rush - Skylab (Metalheadz)
03. J Majik - Repertoire (Metalheadz)
04. Peshay - On The Nile (Metalheadz)
05. Doc Scott - Drumz '95 (Nasty Habits Remix) (Metalheadz)
06. J Majik - Arabian Nights (Metalheadz)
07. Adam F - Metropolis (Metalheadz)
08. Rufige Kru - Dark Metal (Metalheadz)
09. Dillinja - Deadly Deep Subs Remix (Razor's Edge)
10. Asylum - Da Base II Dark (Metalheadz)
11. Goldie - Kemistry (Grooverider VIP Mix) (Razor's Edge)
12. Dillinja - Jah Know Ya Big (Metalheadz)
13. J Majik - Your Sound (Metalheadz)

Enjoy!

Pearsall - The Waveform Cult

2008-03-30T14:51:00.004+01:00

Here is a new acid mix that I recorded yesterday, my tribute to the brain-altering majesty of the Roland TB-303! It's mostly pretty old and obscure stuff, and it starts off a bit housier (although not that housey) before heading into stomping techno territory. Enjoy!

Pearsall presents The Waveform Cult (right-click, save as)
78:48, 146 MB, 256 KBPS VBR MP3

Back cover
Cue file

Tracklisting:
01. DJ Futureshock - Third Wave (End Recordings)
02. Clones - Clones 3 (Clones)
03. Killa Productions - Feelin' Acid (Side B1) (K.B. Records, Inc.)
04. Traxmen - Make A Wish (Dance Mania)
05. Mike Dearborn - An Acid Memory (Djax-Up-Beats)
06. Kings Of Punani - Fantasy Girl (K.O.P.)
07. Killa Productions - Feelin' Acid II (Side A) (K.B. Records, Inc.)
08. DJ TJR - Ear Worm (Aciiieeed)
09. Lochi - London Acid City (Acid House Remix) (Routemaster)
10. The Binmen - Wiped Out (C.O.S.H.H.)
11. JvA - Foxy Acid (Crashes & Shares Mix) (Bang On)
12. 2 Bald Men - Acid Phonk (Experience 2000)
13. Plantastik - Tardis (Kickin')
14. The Pump Panel - Ego Acid (Thomas P. Heckmann Remix) (Primate)
15. Ant & Syber Symon - Right Hand Drive (Infected)
16. Acid Perverts - Stick It In (Smitten)
17. C.A.T. - Revenger (Choci's Chewns)
18. DJ Misjah & Groovehead - Delirious (X-Trax)
19. Pumpgun Pro - Sex Workz (Holzplatten)
20. Enri Lorenz - Mobile Telephone (Routemaster)
21. R.S.P. - Hypocrisy (Local)
22. DJ Misjah - Ultimate High (X-Trax)
23. Push To Flush - Then You'll Be It (Pro File)
24. DJ Skull - Acid Wiss L (Sino)

Pearsall presents Eurotrash 2

2008-02-18T20:18:00.005Z

Here's a mix of some obscure (and some not quite so obscure) old European hard trance and techno. Enjoy!

Pearsall - Eurotrash 2

68:21, 256 kbps VBR MP3, 126.3 MB

Cue file
Back cover

Mixed in London, February 2008
01. DJ Baphomet - Ehec Injection (Evolver)
02. Mr. Burns - Everlasting Part 2 (Unreal)
03. Razor's Edge - Sleepless (Underground Contribution Mix) (Prolekult)
04. Commander Tom - Space Sexual (Noom)
05. Elektrochemie LK - Positive Vibes (Confused)
06. DJ Randy - More And More (Smoke Free DJ Tools)
07. D-Factor - Tripwire (Tri Lamb)
08. Mandala - The Acid Of House (Noom)
09. Lectric Cargo - Active Sensing (Phuture Wax)
10. Genlog - Nightmare (Low Spirit)
11. Casseopaya - Powertrax 2.1 (Prolekult)
12. Signum - The Other Side (Jinx)
13. Insider & Stephenson - Inda (Bonzai)
14. Gollum & Hunter - Feel So Good (Strictly Alarm Mix) (Tunnel)
15. Neuronoid - Neurobashing (Time Unlimited)
16. Amorph - Sunflow (Oliver Lieb Mix) (Formaldehyd)
17. Cortex Thrill - Infiltration (Bonzai)
18. Aurora Borealis - The Milky Way (Lunatic Acid Mix) (F Communications)
19. Nature Party - Stoned Nation (Corrosive)
20. Code 27 - Got To Be Better (Stepp Off Mix) (United Ravers)

3 new mixes

2006-11-13T13:22:00.001Z

I don't play in clubs any more, but occassionally I still do new mixes for my own amusement, and here are three new (more or less) mixes to download if you are interested. One is electro, one is techno/trance/acid, and the other is hard techno. All of these were recorded in one take.

All were done for amusement - I no longer am playing out (although if anyone wants to book me, I won't say no!) so I don't spend much time obsessing over keeping absolutely up to date. The Maximalism mixes are purposefully full of old and obscure stuff. The Night Owl mix has far too many Anthony Rother tracks. But they work (in my opinion), so why not, right?

Anyways, download these if you are interested, I hope you like them if you do!

Pearsall - Night Owl (66:04, 92.4 MB, 195 VBR MP3)

Electro mix!
Mixed May 2006

tracklisting:
01. Sterac Electronics - Destination Reached (Music Man)
02. Miss Kittin & The Hacker - Sweet Dreams (International Deejay Gigolos)
03. Nasty & Tresher - Robot Repair (Electrix)
04. Ozone Layer - Planetary Deterioration (Anthony Rother Remix) (International Deejay Gigolos)
05. Christian Smith & John Selway - Altera (Electro Remix) (Tronic)
06. Mystic Letter K - Caprilectrix (Electrix)
07. Anthony Rother - Father (Datapunk)
08. Boys Noize - Jaguare (Datapunk)
09. Odissi - Groupie (Cyberfunk)
10. Mystic Letter K - Ropa_Dopa (Electrix)
11. Anthony Rother - Adam & Eve (Datapunk Limited)
12. Ra-X - Kontrol (Angelmaker)
13. DJ Controlled Weirdness - Suburban Menace (Fdb Recordings)
14. Bass Kittens - It's Better To Oscillate Than Never (Bowwow)
15. AE35 - Samurai Sword Sharpness (Tokyo Electro Beat)
16. DJ Controlled Weirdness - South London Bass (Unearthly)
17. Chris McCormack - Saturation Point (Electrix)
18. Anthony Rother - Describe Reality (Kanzleramt)
19. Dexter - D-Funked (Clone)
20. DJ Nasty - No Mercy (Motor City Electro Company)
21. AE35 - Electro Beat Stepper (Tokyo Electro Beat)
22. Kronos Device - Machine Breed (Battle Trax)
23. The Advent - Light Years Away (Electrix)
24. ATF - Hiding The Pain (Zero One Music)
25. Skream - Midnight Request Line (Tempa)

Pearsall - Maximalism 2 (64:12, 102 MB, 223 VBR MP3)

Acid/Techno/Trance
Mixed October 2006

tracklisting:
01. Thera - Skyscrape (Boscaland)
02. DJ Misjah - Obsessed (X-Trax)
03. Rob Vanden & Tailbone - Tipping The Scales (GBT Submerged)
04. D.O.M. - THC (Stay Up Forever)
05. Schall & Rauch - You See That Voice (Construct Rhythm)
06. Wax Scientists - In Your Face (Phuture Wax)
07. Superspy - Sumo V2 (Noom)
08. Men Of Noise - The Yeti (Definition)
09. Parasonic - Timeless Worlds Of Space (VCR)
10. Tasha Killer Pussies - Killa Wipers (Vixen's Car Wash Remix) (Dog Bone)
11. Norman - Bad Pulse (Suck Me Plasma)
12. Sylverbox - Circle 7 (Choci's Chewns)
13. Neuronoid - Neurobashing (Time Unlimited)
14. Mirage - Keoma (Technogold)
15. DDR & Choci - Mangled (VCF)
16. Pagemaster - Drug Center (Thai)
17. NooNoo - Submission (Titanium Trax UK)
18. Smog Blanket - Arkansas (Cluster)
19. Phuture - We Are Phuture (Slam Remix) (Primate)
20. DJ Amok - 16 Bit Rage (Kne' Deep)
21. Arpeggiators - Discover Your Innerself (Harthouse)

Pearsall - Maximalism 3 (71:30, 115 MB, 225 VBR MP3)

Hard Techno
Mixed November 2006

tracklisting:
01. Chris Liberator - The Heart Of Trance (Thomas Heckmann Remix) (TeC)
02. Thomas Krome - Soulcollector (Corb)
03. Junk Project - The Green Series A2 (Block Busters)
04. Hardfloor - Lost In The Silver Box (Harthouse)
05. DJ Misjah - Karin's Paradox (X-Trax)
06. Mike Ink - The Spoken Word Is Weak (Supersition)
07. Waverider - Untitled (Cluster)
08. Darkside - Aftershock (Dark Knight Recordings)
09. Healium - Plume (Djax-Up-Beats)
10. Chris Liberator & D.A.V.E. The Drummer - Happy Birthday (Noom)
11. Massimo Cominotto - Eroi Di Carta (Hell For Heroes Mix) (Alchemy)
12. Sonic Perverts - Apologize (Punish)
13. Static Drum - Last Story (Static Drum)
14. Phuture 303 - Professor Trax (Creators Of Deepness)
15. Trevor Rockliffe - Visions Of You (Smith & Selway Remix) (Intec)
16. Andrew Richley & Ryan Rivera - Rumba de Barcelona (Primate)
17. D.A.V.E. The Drummer - Hydraulix 11 B1 (Hydraulix)
18. Alex K. Katz - Continue (Construct Rhythm)
19. D.O.M. - Lethal Enforcers (Stay Up Forever)
20. Sudden Death - Semtex (Thai)
21. Max Walder - Orbit (Lupp)
22. Pounding Grooves - Untitled (Tortured)
23. The Weathermen - Manual Dump (Boscaland)
24. Dave Clarke - Thunder (deConstruction)

Pearsall - Called To Valhalla

2006-03-23T08:44:00.001Z

Ridiculously fast brain-bashing nrg trance/trancecore! A mash up of some of my favorite acid trance and trancecore classics. I really enjoyed doing this mix. :)

Pearsall - Called To Valhalla
(64:20, 89.8 MB, 192 KBPS VBR MP3)

01. Warlock - The Sound (Andy, Choci & Weaver's Blue Butterfly Mix) (Majestic 12)
02. Choci & The Powder Front - Just Feel It (Public House)
03. Karim - Columbia (Do Not Bend)
04. DJ Fury - Lemonade Raygun (FDN)
05. Cortex - Eurosis (Xy2)
06. Trance Masters - Call Of The Last Tribe (GBT)
07. Lab 4 - Candyman (Fragile)
08. Penguin Conspiracy - Welcome To The Future (Digital Beats)
09. Legend B - Lost In Love (Baby Doc Remix) (Perfecto Fluoro)
10. DJ M-Zone - Rave To The Slave (UK44)
11. D-Zyne - Digital Havoc (Xy2)
12. Miss Nic & DJ Swoon - Voices (GBT)
13. MC MC & Rushour - Music Maker (DJ Fury Remix) (Clued)
14. DJ Energy & Safe N' Sound - The Baptism (Nu Energy)
15. Helix - Now Control (Stompin' Choonz)
16. DJ Eclipse - Light Cycle (Bonkerz)
17. Air Bomb - Hidden Code (Techno Mix) (Electric Kingdom)
18. Shanty, Tazz & Loopy - Outbreak (Shanty Remix) (Digital Beats)
19. Suburban Delay - All I Need (Eurostomp Remix) (Jolly Roger Lite)

Pearsall - Dreadnaut

2006-03-09T20:57:00.001Z

Banging hoover-tastic rave silliness.

Pearsall - Dreadnaut
(MP3, 76:08, 105 MB, 192 KBPS)

01. Dream Plant - The Mighty Machine (Kinki Roland RMX) (Prolekult)
02. S-J - Estrella (Baby Doc RMX) (Arriba)
03. Fallen Angel - Little Girl (One Inch)
04. DJ Choci - Can You Feel The Force (Daniel Bunter & Steve Vanden RMX) (Cannon)
05. Lab 4 - Reformation II (OD404 RMX) (Alien Trax)
06. Mark NRG - Don't Stop (Baby Doc RMX) (Tripoli Trax)
07. Karim & Phillip Walsh - Technomove 3 (Tuff Trax)
08. Chris C - Adastra (Nile)
09. DJ Misjah & DJ Tim - Access (KY Jellybabies RMX) (Tripoli Trax)
10. Unknown - Hocus Pocus (Tuff Trax)
11. The Captain & RR Fierce - Street Tab (Tinrib)
12. RR Fierce - Narcan (Fierce Technik)
13. Equinox - Get Up (Tonka Trax)
14. Dynamic Intervention vs Rich & Gordi - Move It (Disco Damage Mix) (Dip)
15. Paul Glazby - I'm Your Nightmare (Tidy Trax)
16. Mad Gay Mafia - Welcome to the Arena (Go & Fuckin' Have It Mix) (Efadrine)
17. OD404 - Xpress (Hard NRG Mix) (Kaktai)
18. RR Fierce & K-Live - Yamamba (Vicious Circle)
19. Tony de Vit - Are You All Ready? (Tidy Trax)

Pearsall - Eurotrash 1

2006-03-05T17:09:00.001Z

Mid to late 90's European hard trance, with a minimum of fluffy hands-in-the-airness (although there is a bit of that towards the end to be fair).

Pearsall - Eurotrash 1
(MP3, 72:21, 99 MB, 192 KBPS)

01. Dominators - Future Is Now (Jetset Mix) (Nothing)
02. Nuw Idol - Kick Drum Domination (Well Wicked)
03. Sonic Tube - Switch off (Organic)
04. Stormtraxx - My Acid Dream (Byte Progressive)
05. S.h.o.k.k. - Folie A Deux (DJ Natron RMX) (Pulse)
06. Blade Attack - Seelenwandler (Junk Project RMX) (Drizzly)
07. Dare Devils - Daredevil (Chaos)
08. DJ Scot Project - O (Arome RMX) (Overdose)
09. DJ Fire - Spirit of Techno (Dark Spirit Mix) (Sigma)
10. DJ Jo - Progressive (Club Mix) (Fog Area)
11. Heatseeker - Xplicit (Hard Trance Mix) (Clockwork)
12. Troop - Homecoming (Noom)
13. Kinetic A.T.O.M. - Borg Destroyer (Phuture Wax)
14. Brain 20 - Acid Motherfuckers (Junk Project RMX) (Brain)
15. Nuclear Hyde - Axis (Moon X.I.S.) (Noom)
16. Planet Fuse - Innocent Game (Egoist Mix) (Fuse)
17. Mass In Orbit - Overdrive (Hubble Mix) (Massive)
18. DJ Mind-X - Nightingale (Suspicious RMX) (Overdose)
19. Commander Tom - Are Am Eye? (95 Millennium Mix) (Noom)

Pearsall - Squat Rocking 2

2006-03-05T10:58:00.001Z

Screaming acid techno in the hizzouse!

Pearsall - Squat Rocking 2
(MP3, 73:44, 101 MB, 192 KBPS)

01. DJ Orange Peel - Crackhead (Organgrinder)
02. Cores - Matabu Part One (Noom)
03. Sentience - Robotics (Full Blown)
04. Kektex - Extasy Is Fantastic (Routemaster)
05. The Weathermen - Don't Stop (Boscaland)
06. Chris Liberator - Cat's Eye (Prolekult)
07. Dynamo City - Dynamo City (Stay Up Forever)
08. Audio Pancake - Detox (Smitten)
09. Dirty Blonde - Son Of A Crack Whore (Havok)
10. Dr. Octopus - Dr. Octopus (Quazar Remix) (Millennium)
11. A&E Department - White Widow (Stay Up Forever)
12. Uneven Surface - Slacker (Stay Up Forever)
13. Geezer - The Long & Short Of It (Smitten)
14. Audio Pancake - Pull The Trigger (Karmic)
15. M.A.N.I.C. - I'm Comin' Hardcore (Hans Delbrook & Igor Farenhiet Remix) (Teknik)
16. Lab 4 - Soul Fire (Elementary)
17. Well Paid Scientists - To The Batrave (Coshh)

Something for the Weekend?

2006-02-18T00:50:00.001Z

My little tribute to early Renegade Hardware and their seismically awesome drum n' bass.

Pearsall - Renegades
(MP3, 32 minutes, 45.9 MB, 192 kbps)

01. Usual Suspects - Doorway
02. Usual Suspects - Spawn
03. Dylan - The Eyes
04. Monochrome & Subphonics - Capacity
05. Genotype - Toxic
06. Future Forces Inc - Strontium Jazz (Dillinja Remix)
07. Future Forces Inc - Point of Origin
08. Usual Suspects - Killa Bees
09. Dom & Roland - Trauma
10. Future Forces Inc - Cold Fusion
11. Genotype - Extra-Terrestrial

Pearsall - Morally Diminished

2006-02-16T06:38:00.001Z

Pearsall - Morally Diminished Part 1
(MP3, 85.1 MB, 62 mins, 192 kbps)

01. Scott Grooves feat. Parliament - Mothership Reconnection (Daft Punk RMX) (Soma)
02. Callahan's - The Sound (Sense)
03. Mood II Swing - Do It Your Way (Groove On)
04. Bob Sinclar - New York City Music (Yellow)
05. Le Night Club - Santa Claus (Crydamoure)
06. Cassius feat. Ghostface Killah - Thrilla (A Bass Day Remix) (Virgin France)
07. DJ Col vs 091 - Girls Don't Like Electronic Music (White Plus)
08. The Youngsters - Smile (Smirky Mix) (F Communications)
09. David Carretta - Lovely Toy (International Deejay Gigolos)
10. Miss Kittin & The Hacker - Frank Sinatra 2001 (International Deejay Gigolos)
11. Killer Loop - Broken (Housey Doingz RMX) (End Recordings)
12. Agoria - Sky Is Clear (PIAS)
13. Gui Boratto - Molestado (City of God)
14. DJ Falcon - Unplugged (Roulé)
15. The Wamdue Project - In The Back Of Your Mind (Strictly Rhythm)
16. Trevor Rockliffe - The Groove (Mentor)
17. Nathan Coles - Flobadob (Big Hair's Manor House Mix) (Wiggle)
18. Kings of Punani - Acid Thunder (Tronic)

About a week or two ago I decided to sort through my old records and do a mix. This is the result. It is, as you can tell, house music, and not of a particularly recent vintage either. The idea with this was to cover a variety of styles, from deeper stuff to electroey bits to more techy house.

It's not earth-shaking stuff, but it's fun.

Enjoy!

Etc. etc.

2006-01-24T22:25:00.000Z

Um, there will be no new mixes until next week, contrary to what I said in the previous post, as I've had to re-name my mixes directory because I've already transferred 75 gigs worth of stuff off of the Sonicrampage.org server this month alone, with a limit of 80 gigs.

In the meantime, if you want cheap entertainment, check out Videos on Road for the videos from the (ahem) 'UK urban music scene'. Quality ranges from quite entertaining to mind-bogglingly awful, including the most hilariously cheap-assed rip-offs of American hip-hop cliches.

Oh, and rent/go see 'Rize' if you get the chance. It's well worth it, a winning combination of impossibly acrobatic/strangely spastic dancing, teenage artsy angst, somber real life stuff, and boomingly bassy soundtrack. Good times.

Me, I'm looking forward to 'Walk the Line' opening here in Britain. Anyone seen it?

New(Ish) Mix, Updates, Etc.

2006-01-22T21:24:00.001Z

Here's a mix I recorded a couple months ago of some pretty fiercely banging stuff.

Pearsall - Squat Rocking 1 (click to download)

01. Diplomat vs Trouble - Tantalum Cones (Deathchant)
02. Megamind - Taub (Nukleuz)
03. Kai Tracid - Destiny's Path (Warmduscher RMX) (Tracid Traxx)
04. Lectrolux - Baloney (Baby Doc RMX) (Tec)
05. Ironik - Slave (Tec)
06. Immersion - Squat Rock Part 2 (Smitten)
07. Trash Compactor - Interstitial (No Entry)
08. Medicine Man & Switch - Vitamins from the Pharmacy (One Inch)
09. Rim n' Chop - The Italian Job (Karim RMX) (DP)
10. The Captain, Superfast Oz & Kristian - Let's Go (Tinrib)
11. The Hellfire Club - Voodoo Magic (React)
12. K90 - Bomb Jack (Chris Liberator RMX) (Telica)
13. DJ Choci & The Geezer - Silver Box (VCF)
14. DJ Riddler - Riddle Me This (Public House)
15. Greenforce - Afro Acid (Acid Test)
16. Cortex - Cuba (Xy2)
17. Bang The Future - Atomik Lullaby (GBT)
18. Propulsion - Without Fear (Mesh)

It's just more of the same turbo-charged head-bashing stuff, a tribute to the mid to late 90's London squat party/underground club scene that I was so into. In theory, I'll write a bit more about it when I post the second part, but that remains merely a plan.

Anyways, besides Squat Rocking 2 (which is an acid techno extravaganza), I have either done or am contemplating doing the following mixes:
- Morally Diminished: extreme crate-digging activities, fishing out stuff that is pretty old and then combining it into a cohesive(sort of) whole. I've mixed the first one, which is house/tech-house/whatever, and will theoretically upload it at some point this week. The second one will be melodic techno but I haven't actually mixed it yet, or even worked out a tracklist for it (although I do have twenty records pulled out for it).
- Rampage Teknikal: The return of my old series of techno mixes. After a year off from buying tunes, I've recently started spending money on records again. Perhaps unwisely. I have tunes for two new mixes, and one will be techno and the other electro (mullets ahoy!).
- A mix of old and very fast European hardtrance. And a mix of old and very fast UK hardtrance. Why not?
- A slower mix of old European hardtrance called, fittingly, Eurotrash. This one is already done, but just needs to be uploaded. Also finished is Dreadnaut, which is one long ode to the hoover.
- Another old dnb mix. Maybe.
- Maximalism Part 2. Same as the first one basically, a smorgasborg of techno, acid, hard trance, and whatever else is to hand.

Also, you should check out Frank McGahon's new music blog. Get the Masters At Work mix, it's lovely!

Pearsall - Maximalism Part 1

2006-01-06T17:40:00.001Z

Whether anyone actually checks this any more, I dunno, but here's a new mix of stuff for your enjoyment. It's actually all old tunes, but whatever. I apologize for how garbled my writing is, but I've had a couple of months off from blogging.

Pearsall - Maximalism Part 1 (MP3, 69 minutes, 95.4 MB, 192 kbps)

01. Mark One - Hoovers & Spraycans (Retro)
02. Underground Resistance - Punisher (Underground Resistance)
03. Cyber S - Decadance (Nitric)
04. Wicked Snails - People (X-Trax)
05. Emmanuel Top - Mars (Kai Tracid RMX) (Tracid Traxx)
06. Winnebago Warriors - Trailer Trash (Chris Liberator & The Geezer RMX) (Stay Up Forever RMX)
07. Heckmann - Satan & Deibel (Wavescape)
08. W. Jorg Henze - Domestic Nude (Pocket)
09. Millsart - Step to Enchantment (Axis)
10. Mike Humphries & Glenn Wilson - Aural Exciter (Punish)
11. Martyn Hare - Bang Harder (Chancer)
12. Megamind - Taub (Nukleuz)
13. Geezer - Liquid A (Stay Up Forever)
14. Y.A.G.O. - Acid Traxx (Sigma)
15. Karlton - Terrordome (Lectrolux RMX) (Tec)
16. Three n' One - Reflect (Chris Liberator RMX) (ffRR)
17. Sybren Danz - Dynamic Injection (Well Wicked)
18. E-Razor - Yeti (Technogold)
19. Special Force - The Hype (Gang Go)
20. DJ Randy - Pandomia (Smoke Free DJ Tools)
21. Karim & Phillip Walsh - Technomove Part 2 (Tuff Trax)
22. Madam Zu & Jon Doe - 999 Matrix (Houserockers RMX) (Mohawk)
23. DJ Funk - Fear the World (USA Hard Mix) (Pro-Jex)
24. D.O.M. - Locomotive (Stay Up Forever)
25. Arjuna - Totally Lost It (Cenobite)

I did this mix on Boxing Day for my own entertainment. It's a mish-mash of techno, acid, and hard trance, starting off with some properly old skool hoover techno before moving through some more acidic gear, then into some trancier bits, before culminating in some rather stomping nu-nrg and 'ard tekno and even a bit of ye olde Dutch hardcore (the Arjuna tune at the end). I've tried to mix it up between the UK, continental Europe, and the US in terms of the origins of the tunes, and I've tried to make it flow in a way so that it is not just seventy minutes of the same-old same-old, but something that moves through different sounds and styles while still making sense as a cohesive whole, while still avoiding the dread trap of overly chin-strokey 'radical juxtapositions'.

There's not a huge amount of dj trickery on this mix, the odd bit of cutting and chopping, but for the most part it is fairly standard smooth mixing, just done quite quickly so that I could fire through the tunes. The thing with techno is that it is pretty boring if you just let it go for about five or six minutes, and it is much more entertaining if it is constantly moving and shifting.

This is the sort of stuff I used to dance to when I was younger and, despite being considerably fatter and lazier than I was when I was, say, 17, this is still the sort of music that, when all is said and done, I most enjoy. It has never been, and will never be, the trendiest sound as it is pretty much purely functional four-to-the-floor European rave music. The culture surrounding this stuff has not spawned philosophical/sociological investigations in the way that something like jungle has. I'm not particularly bothered by this, of course. I like the relentlessness of it all, its sincerity (it is daft rave music, but it takes itself seriously, unlike consciously 'ironic' neo-electro).

If you like this sort of stuff, I hope you enjoy this mix!

Pearsall - Silver Dawn

2005-11-17T08:27:00.001Z

Pearsall - Silver Dawn

01. Secrets - Time Travel (Street Beats)
02. J Majik - Arabian Nights (Metalheadz)
03. Photek - Complex (Photek)
04. Kosmos - Liquid Beats (Droppin' Science)
05. E-Z Rollers - Synesthesia (Moving Shadow)
06. Dillinja - In The Mood (Mo' Wax)
07. DJ Trace - Mutant Revisited (Emotif)
08. Paradox - A Certain Sound (Renegade Hardware)
09. Source Direct - The Crane (Source Direct)
10. Dom & Matrix - The Vandal (Moving Shadow)
11. DJ Kane - System (Renegade Hardware)
12. Nasty Habits - 4 Da Cause (Reinforced)
13. The Specialist - Deep & Rolling (Dread)
14. Ed Rush - The Raven (Metalheadz)
15. Trace & Nico - Squadron (No U-Turn Limited)
16. DJ Peshay - On The War Path (Street Beats)
17. Goldie - Jah (Peshay VIP Rollers Remix) (Razor's Edge)
18. Dom & Roland - Hydrolicks (Moving Shadow)
19. MTS - Hard Disk (DJ Zinc Remix) (Juice)
20. Origin Unknown - Truly One Remix (Ram)
21. Dillinja - Silver Blade (Prototype)
22. Rufige Kru - Dark Metal (Metalheadz)

(words tonight)

Re-Upped

2005-11-06T14:08:00.000Z

I've re-upped that wicked Grooverider tape from a United Dance rave in 1994. Go get it.

Something for the Weekend?

2005-10-28T23:02:00.000+01:00

Gotta go out soon, so, having spent much of the evening uploading, here's a monstrous selection of stuff to check out. Don't say I don't spoil you! Btw, I promise that the next post will be non-jungle in orientation (although there's still plenty of tapes to rip).

Grooverider - Live @ Helter Skelter Energy 97 (Side A, Side B)

First up, here's a wicked Grooverider tape from the same tape pack from which I ripped that Andy C tape earlier in the week. Lots of wicked tunes on this one, a much more modern-sounding selection than the previous tape, which is not surprising considering it was three years later; it's also somewhat saddening as this was at the real tail-end of dnb's true fertility. There's a bitter-sweet quality to these tunes for me - on the one hand I absolutely love them (the Andy C remix of 'Circles' that Groove drops on this tape is an all-time favorite), but on the other I know that this was right when the music hit the wall in terms of formula. By the year after this the sounds had barely budged from the stuff featured on this tape, after years of hyperspeed development, and that was it, jungle/drum n' bass's golden era was over. Of course, today it is more popular worldwide than ever, and dnb has established itself globally - there are now dnb scenes literally around the world. What was once, almost literally, purely a London sound is now international and, in a sense, this international market is now what drives it. It's great that it's taken off to the degree it has (and it's cool that people like Dillinja are now making pretty decent change off of the music); nothing makes me happier. Still, though, I can barely listen to the modern stuff, not because it is bad per se, just that it's no better, and often worse, than the sort of stuff Grooverider was playing when this tape was recorded eight years ago.

Dr S Gachet - Live @ Dreamscape 27 (Side A, Side B)

Here's a tape from a Dreamscape NYE party, with AWOL legend Dr S Gachet. Pretty decent tape (although there's better to come from the pack). Enjoy (I really have to go out, or I'd add some more).

Back On Track

2005-10-25T23:01:00.000+01:00

As you can see, brand new look to this place. Since I've been away for so long, I figured it could do with a sprucing up. So, in the same stylee as Pearsall's Books (but with different colors), here it is.

Grooverider - United Dance @ The Rocket, London, 1994 (Side A, Side B)

The first item on the agenda is another tape rip, to go with yesterday's Andy C tape. This one is an absolutely awesome tape that I have absolutely no idea when I got it. As you can see from the image of the tape above, my actual physical copy is pretty badly beaten. All that I know for sure about this tape is that it was recorded sometime late in 1994 at a United Dance rave at The Rocket, which is the University of North London's student union on the Holloway Road in North London. This is probably one of my favorite tapes ever, and if you don't enjoy this, you need your head examined. It's Grooverider at the absolute height of his powers, dropping an absolute onslaught of hardstep classics, including 'Arsonist', 'The Angels Fell', 'Your Sound', 'Renegade Snares', and 'Lighter', amongst others. Awe-inspiring.

DJ SS - United (Grooverider Remix) - An absolute awesome remix by Groove of an SS tune. Rolling breaks, layers upon layers of them, undergird a solid rocking bass and spacey sounds, alternating snatches of incomprehensible female vocal interspersed with odd little sounds riding the gloriously choppy Amen breaks. Simple but superb.

Higher Sense - Cold Fresh Air (Remix) - Magical 1994 release from Moving Shadow. Sweetly sparkling melodies drop into deep sea bass pressure, the lightness giving way to an explosion of churning drum-led darkness, before switching back again (and back to the darkness again after that). One of the finest jungle records ever released. A truly inspirational record.

Dillinja - Brutal Bass - Always overshadowed by the two tunes it shared a release with, the all-time dancefloor classics 'Jah Know Ya Big' and 'The Angels Fell', this tune has held up remarkably well over the years. Far less immediate than the other two, this tune features some shuffly breaks and a few little sound effects, but nothing of the same dancefloor pummeling feel of the drums in the other two tracks featured tonight, but what it does have, in industrial quantities, is bass. This tune seems to be mostly about Dillinja testing out his ability to drop ridiculous basslines one after the other. If you have love bass (and you have understanding neighbors) you'll dig this tune.

New Projects

2005-10-24T23:27:00.000+01:00

Obviously, I put this blog on the back burner for several months, so, for anyone wandering back who doesn't also read my main blog (for which I've been finding decreasing motivation recently), you might be curious as to what I'm doing in London. Well, I decided to come back to London to go back to graduate school, and so I came back. This has also involved moving back in with my parents, which is somewhat pathetic at the age of 25 after having been gone for (more or less) six years, but if I can avoid paying London rents while I do this course, I see no reason not to.

One of the nice things about going home again, though, is being able to go through all of your old crap. In particular, what has been nice has been finding lots of my old rave tapes. So, since I am not feeling imaginative, but I am feeling generous, I have decided to rip these to mp3 out of a sense of general communal solidarity. We start today with a wicked Andy C tape from 1997.

Here's a scan of the tape pack cover (click for a full-size image):

Front

Back

Andy C - Live @ Helter Skelter Energy 97 (Side A, Side B)

As you'll see, this is not massively different from my own mix in the previous post, a pretty similar vibe all in all. I do have plenty more to come, having found all kinds of old jungle/dnb tapes, as well as some of yer proper gabba and hardcore techno! If anyone could let me know about the sound quality of this rip, I'd appreciate that too, as I spent a bit of time fiddling with the eq's on Soundforge to make it sound a little crisper as the tape, unsurprisingly, has degraded over time.

Pearsall - Firestorm

2005-10-19T03:30:00.001+01:00

Yeah, it's been a ridiculously long time since I actually posted on this blog, but I'm back now, baby! To kick it off, here's a fresh mix of old stuff:

Pearsall - Firestorm

01. Tribe of Issachar feat. Top Cat - Champion Natty (Congo Natty)
02. MA3 - Those DJ's (Formation)
03. Prisoners of Technology - Trick of Technology Remix (Fresh Kutt)
04. Ganja Kru - Plague That Never Ends (Parousia)
05. DJ Red - Enta Da Dragon (Trouble On Vinyl)
06. Secret Weapon - Strange Dayz (Protocol)
07. DJ Die - Play It For Me (V Recordings)
08. Mask - Splurt (Dope Dragon)
09. Vinyl Syndicate - Man of Steal (Urban Takeover)
10. DJ Krust - Warhead (V Recordings)
11. Shanie - (You're Gonna) Miss My Face (Dillinja RMX) (Cyba)
12. Mampi Swift - Hi-Tek (Charge)
13. DJ Stretch - Do Or Die (Reinforced)
14. DJ Zinc feat. MC GQ - Bring the Danger (True Playa'z)
15. Substance - Rebuke You (Breakbeat Culture)
16. Renegade - Dark Soldier (Dread)
17. S.I.R. - The Fast Lane (Prohibition)
18. Gang Related & Mask - Tear It Up (Dope Dragon)
19. Smokey Joe - Freakin' With The Cut (Remix) (Smoker's Inc)
20. Alibi & Leo - The Don (Foundation)
21. Freestyles - Play The Game (True Playa'z)
22. Jay-Dee - Vocal Acrobatics (Mecca)
23. Origin Unknown - Lunar Bass (Ram)
24. Dillinja - Unexplored Terrain (V Recordings)
25. Dillinja - Thugs (Test)
26. Micky Finn & Aphrodite - Badass (Urban Takeover)
27. Ellis Dee feat. MC Fats - 97 Style (Saturday Night Mix) (Collusion)

When I first got into jungle in 1995 it was like being hit by a comet. I'd always been into science fiction, technology, all that kind of stuff, and suddenly, BOOM, here was the future in musical form. I'd been sort of aware of jungle for about a year, because you'd hear it flicking through the dials on the radio, sudden bursts of kinetic energy from the pirate stations, but I'd never really paid much attention to it. I was into heavy metal and punk and dance music, all dance music, was 'stupid fucking computer music' that 'doesn't take any talent to make'. Eventually, though, I became curious and started listening to the pirates. And the change was sudden, like a religious conversion. In a matter of weeks, I went from laughing at it as 'crackhead music' to, quite literally, listening to nothing else. I started saving up for decks and started spending pretty much everything I could scrounge up on my weekly pilgrimages to the basement of Blackmarket Records in Soho.

How devoted was I? Well, I didn't actually buy lunch at school in my last three years! My parents gave me £2 a day to buy lunch, but that was £10 a week...why spend that on food when that would buy you two twelves? So, I'd just have an apple or a banana that I'd brought from home, and then have a bowl of cereal when I got home.

Ten years later, jaded and all that, it's pretty difficult to imagine how passionate I once was about jungle. I used to daydream in class about everything that was coming out, scheming ways to get my hands on the latest white labels (at Blackmarket all the promos were kept under the counter, and it was all down to their mood as to whether they'd hook you up). This was before broadband, so it was a lot more difficult to keep track of all the dubplates floating around...today you can find out what a track is within a few minutes or, at worst, a couple of hours. Back then I used to phone up the pirate stations and beg them to tell me what particularly awesome tunes were.

What did I love so much about jungle? I guess the main thing, what really turned me on, was that at the time it seemed like the possibilities were literally endless. The music was changing and evolving seemingly at warp speed, and just by going into the record stores on a weekly basis and listening to all the new releases, or going up to Camden to pick up tape packs, you could chart out the development of the music, how new styles and new ideas were constantly forcing themselves to the forefront of peoples' minds. To someone like me, who'd previously been into punk/hardcore which, let's face it, changes at a glacial pace, this incredible fertility, this constant mutation, was just unbelievably exciting. Jungle/drum & bass seemed to offer everything, from light as a feather LTJ Bukem-style chilled tunes to ridiculous rave mayhem from the jump-up crew to the techstep/darkside tunes which sounded...well, like angry alien robots destroying the earth. It was an incredible time, like nothing I've experienced before or since with music.

The amazing thing about this music is how minimal it is, and yet so rich; some of the very greatest tunes, like DJ Krust's 'Warhead' that I've used here, consist of literally nothing besides drums and bass, and yet the producers were able to twist these basic elements into so many wonderful forms. This mix, and the darker follow-up that will be posted soon, is sort of an attempt on my part to showcase the broad horizons of jungle, the incredible voodoo magic that the producers could wrest from their samplers and computers.

This particular mix is mostly jump-up jungle. Why was it called 'jump-up'? Well, because it made you want to jump up and down in the rave! Pretty obvious, huh? I've tried to program it in a way that the transitions between the different styles work well, that they make sense as a whole to the listener, that as it transitions between some of the spikier party tunes to the more deep and minimal rollers and to the more abrasive hard-hitting stuff it all captures that sort of vibe that was particular to the era.

I hope you enjoy it!

Wednesday Night Music Extravaganza (Pt. 2)

2005-07-21T02:35:00.000+01:00

Grime:

Newham Generals - The Anthem - I'm posting three tracks from the awe-inspiring, drool-inducing Lord of the Decks 3 dvd/cd extravaganza. Footsie is, as usual, just sort of ok, D Double sounds like he's trying to swallow his own throat (as always), there's a girl singing 'Newham Generaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal" in a true rave diva style (which is always a nice touch), a tastefully choppy beat, and an eerie, unsettling vibe. Quality.

Ruff Sqwad - Freestyle - Ridiculous beat on this one. Everyone ends their line with "an' ting" which gets a bit annoying, but the main thing on this tune is the absolutely stupidly awe-inspiring beat. Listening to this tune on headphones it sounds like the bass is strafing your ear drums, like the ghost of King Tubby has been reanimated and he has accessed top secret government sonic weapons. Or something. I can't even imagine hearing this on a big system. It would probably cave my chest in. Just awesome. Nice synth horns as well.

Skepta - Single - Skepta does some sex lyrics over the top of Wiley's 'Ice Cream Man' riddim. Skepta has come out of nowhere (as an mc, at least) in the last six months and managed to hurtle to the top rank of mc's in London, following his brother JME. Simon Silverdollar isn't convinced, but I think he's really good. Big bars and all that. Lots of charisma on the radio, and he completely wrecks this tune.

But where did grime come from? Well, it came from UK garage, jungle (which itself came from early 90's breakbeat rave), Jamaican dancehall, and American rap. Since I'm feeling generous, I'm going to hook you lovely people up with two tracks from each of these genres.

Dancehall:

Bounty Killer - Warlord - Bounty over the Warlord Riddim. Lots of odd little sound effects are chucked into the mix, while the dude does his gravel-throated thing over the top. Half the time I have no clue what the hell he's saying, but it's always a compelling confusion.

General Degree & Lady Saw - Who Badda - Propulsive stuff from General Degree (no idea who he is) and the first lady of dancehall, Lady Saw, off the Ragga Ragga Ragga 9 compilation, which I think I picked up in 97 or 98, or something like that.

Jungle:

DJ Zinc - Super Sharp Shooter - Unstoppable jungle classic. I'm assuming that most of you will have heard this at some point, but here it is anyways. Slow start "the s, the u, the p the e the r", slow break with squealing p-funk keyboard line over and throbbing bass underneath, then the drop comes in......phew. Ferocious tear-out Amen drums and wobbling bass, and the whole thing keeps changing up, cycling through different drum cycles, from rolling to tearing, and the bass chops and changes, one moment wobbling and twisting (like a plate of jelly being carried down a mountain), the next subbier and throbbier (is that a word? you know what I mean!). One of the greatest jungle tracks of all time.

DMS & The Boneman X - Sweet Vibrations - Classic '94 business. This is the one with the ragga sample saying "push up ya lighter in the air". There are so many things right with this tune. A simple rolling break that is still complex enough to hold your interest. A slow, rumbling dub bassline that sets off the breaks perfectly; if you want to, you can dance like a nut to the drums, or you can bob and sway to the bassline. Nice strings, too (I'm a sucker for that classic mid-90's synth string sound).

Old Skool Hardcore:

DJ Hype - Shot in the Dark (Gunshot Mix) - The legendary DJ Hype with a murky dark side classic. A weird multi-layered beat, echoing and choppy. This is definitely from the period when the drugs were just not fun any more. Odd breakdown, with a disembodied ragga voice singing over...I'm not sure. It sounds like a robot breaking down. Strange. Nice descending bass in the second breakdown too, to accompany the dying fax machine. I was too young for this stuff in the clubs, but I can't imagine how weird it must have sounded after all the goofy cheer that had earlier characterized rave music. There's a great scratched up riff that comes in at about the 3-minute mark.

Phuture Assassins - Roots n' Future (Altern8 Dark Future Remix) - In which the classic reggae/hardcore crossover track gets a re-rub from Altern8. Less dark than the other one. An odd mix of reggae elements and pop-puppilled rave madness, but still lots of fun.

Rap:

Gza - Swordsman - Classic tune off of Liquid Swords, which is probably my favorite rap album ever. From when the Wu were still trying. Awe-inspiring. The Wu-Tang Clan are almost certainly the most famous cultural phenomena to ever come out of Staten Island, and it's quite funny how they are often the only thing that people know about New York's forgotten borough. When I was coming back from a visit to London last July I got picked out of the check-in line to get my bags searched, and the guy who was doing the search, upon finding out I was from New York, was eager to know if Staten Island "is really like the Wu says". He was pretty surprised when I told him that it's mostly middle-class and white, except for a couple of neighborhoods on the northern part of the island.

The Beatnuts - Reign of the Tec - This is off their 1993 album Intoxicated Demons, and it's straight-up New York gangsta rap. I don't have much else to say about this tune, besides the fact that it's good. I think the whole Dipset thing is kind of cool, but New York's rap scene is producing way less good stuff today than a decade ago.

UK Garage:

Maxwell D - Bun Dem - I wasn't really into UKG that much, but some of it was pretty decent. This is one of those tunes. Maxwell D doing his ragga chat over a bass-heavy 2-step beat. Nice and nasty, much better than sugary-sweet horseshit like that godawful 'Sweet Like Chocolate' tune, which always made me want to kill myself.

Sticky feat. Miss Dynamite - Booo! - Most of you should know this tune. Classic Sticky beat with Miss Dynamite alternately singing and doing the bad gal ragga thing over a small lake's worth of bass. Miss Dynamite was another victim of the UK urban music industry's tendency to take anyone with talent and make them do really boring rnb/hip-hop hybrids. I mean, listen to this, and then think back to that godawful 'it takes more' tune...what the hell happened there?

Tuesday Night 's Uncool Selection

2005-07-20T04:30:00.000+01:00

Armand van Helden - Alienz - Ridiculously cheesy, yet great fun wobbly bass house. Stoooopid vocal sample? Check. Junglistic bassline? Check. Total, utter lack of subtlety? Check. More fun than a month's worth of fuckin micro-house? Yes, yes, and thrice yes.

The House Crew - We Are Hardcore - Total and utter classic old skool ardkore. Pianos, chipmunk vocal sample, simple break, primitive stabby noises - it's all here, and it's all beautiful.

DJ Misjah & DJ Tim - Access - Untouchable acid techno-trance classic. There is nothing to beat the sheer joy of several screaming 303 lines all converging in a state of sheer ecstatic madness.

Choci - Death to Ambient - Stomping acid trance. Ridiculously fast, ridiculously awesome. Fun fact: Choci was once jailed for football-related violence.

The Slim Thug Album

2005-07-17T04:55:00.000+01:00

It's actually really good isn't it? Better than the Mike Jones, anyways.

Slim Thug ft. Pusha T - Click-Clack - Gangsta stuff, but nice crispy beat with weird anorexic siren sound, gun clicks, crispy percussion, and thumping bass. Niceness.

I'm going to try and update this blog more regularly, as I've fallen off a bit since I got the taste back for hammering out the material on Pearsall's Books. I guess I'll just up a few tunes or maybe a set every day. Sound good?

Here's some old jungle bizness:

DJ Crystl - The Dark Crystal - Darkside epic from 1994. Compared to the space age production clarity of the Slim Thug tune, this sounds positively medieval in comparison. Ah, the speed at which music technology advances. Brooding, melancholy strings (think of the ice cave on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back) over curly Amen breaks and deep sea sub bass and classic 'tempo has reached critical level' robo-chick vocal sample. A simple formula that has been used so many thousands of times, but so fantastic. From the period before junglists completely abandoned e, has that queasy "end of the dream" feel to it. What happened to DJ Crystl anyways? He made some of the all-time greatest 'artcore' tunes, and then he seemed to vanish. It'd be great to see a junglist 'where are they now' article written up by someone.

New Blood - Worries in the Dance - Inescapably classic '94 ragga jungle anthem. I can't even begin to fathom how many times I've heard this tune over the years. On London pirate radio in 1994 when I started to really listen to jungle, this tune was inescapable. Rolling breaks and a collage of ragga-centric samples. Music best heard with your head drilled into a bass cone, but still good through headphones in a Queens living room on a Saturday evening.

Skyscraper - The Difference - This is off a '96 compilation that SOUR put out called 'Nu Skool Flava', which was reasonably cool. I'm pretty sure this tune was by DJ Trace, it certainly sounds like a vintage '96 No U-Turn studios production. Concussive two-step break that switches up ever four bars, a rap sample that sounds like KRS-One saying "I'm the difference between indo and oregano", mid-range digital thrash metal bassline, an entire galaxy of echo, with the odd snatch of strings or strange mechanical sound thrown in to keep it simmering. Simon Reynolds blames this sort of stuff for ruining jungle, and yeah he's right, but God damn was it good while it lasted.

Reggaetonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

2005-07-13T04:42:00.000+01:00

Since I've been so busy at the main blog, I've shamefully neglected hooking you people up.

Since I moved back to New York City, my thoughts on reggaetong have proceeded along the following path:
- "What is this shit?"
- "I guess it's kind of ok."
- "I actually kind of like it."
- "Jesus, why am I now listening to this stuff as much as I am?"
- "I guess I do actually like it."

It's not like hugely life-changing, it's certainly way less inventive than grime, but at least it's better than baile funk. I obviously don't have any idea as to what they are saying, almost ever, but booty is, I'm guessing, the main topic of conversation.

Nashaly y Voltio - Desespero

Wisin y Yandel - Rakata

Zion y Lennox - Me Arrepiento

I Done Fell Off

2005-06-29T05:01:00.000+01:00

Unorthodox Family & Nasty Crew on DJ Cameo's Pirate Sessions June 12th 2005 - Featuring the awesomely awesome Miss No Lay. This chick is amazing.

Also, check out Luca's interview with the Loganator of Sama at Riddim.

And the blog of Rinse FM's DJ Lioness, where you can download some sweet instrumental sets.

Falling Off

2005-06-29T04:48:00.000+01:00

Man, I've fallen off on this music bloggery.

JME on Cameo's Pirate Sessions June 12th 2005 - Chat, a few tunes, and spitting some bars. Jyeah.

Big Like Rock, Not Small Like Pebble

2005-06-20T23:56:00.000+01:00

Elsewhere:

Purpology reviews Kano's new video Remember Me, which you can see at Kano's site. Bizarre enthusiasm levels for what is, how shall I say, a massive piece of shit. Easily the worst tune he's done. And der kinder agree! Only made 71 in the UK singles chart last week. Pfft. Why don't any of these people have faith in their own music? It's baffling. Salsa? I mean wtf. Enough venting.

Last Thursday's Logan Sama show on Kiss FM. Tracklisting here.

Thoughts on some of the tunes:

- The God's Gift dub that opens the show, 'Only God Knows What I've Done', is pretty serious. Awesome production from Rapid, single orchestral stab and dubby bassline and choppy beat. Lyrically, well, is this, as they say, 4Real?

- The remix of 'Heartache Avenue' is so vastly better than the original that my brain hurts to even think about it.

- Shizzle 'I'll Be There For You' - Nice fluffy summer tune. A rare example of a lighter tune that doesn't sound like a poorly-executed cynical "let's make a softer tune for the ladies". Nice.

- Skepta is pretty dope for someone who has only been spitting seriously for about six months. Don't like the dub that Logan plays much (terrible beat), but 'Single' (which is over Wiley's 'Ice Cream Man') is quite good.

- Don't like the new Bruza tune 'So Real' much. Slow and soft doesn't really suit Bruza, he sounds better shouting over uptempo stuff. A few good lines, as usual, though. 'I know you're fake like the breasts on Jordan" - Nice.

- Nice militant remix of 'When I'm Ere'. Big bars.

- The Rossi B remix of 'In Da Place' by Stormin and Nasty Jack is really really good. Weird sort of 60's Tropicalia/James Bond vibe, but nailed really well, way better than 'Remember Me'. Both of them sound a lot better here than they did on (most of) Stormin's mixtape. A nice surprise.

- Can't stand Black Ops 'Fresh'. Their mc's are really awful as well.

- SLK 'Chrome Often' is ridiculous. Awesome production, with weird winding Middle Eastern-ish melody and little orchestral stabs and militant claps. It would be better if it was just Flirta D, because he is awesomely awesome, as they say, and the other mc's are a bit meh.

- New Roll Deep affiliated (I think) singer Alex Mills over a Danny Weed 'production' (ie stick a buzzy bass riff in occassionally) that ~~samples~~ grabs whole-sale an old Whitesnake tune. Dangerously Von Dutch, isn't it?

- The Statik tune 'I Just Wanna Fuck You' is pretty decent, quite funny, mainly notable for an awesomely silly Jammer verse. I used to think Jammer was an absolutely terrible mc, but I was wrong wrong wrong. He is way funnier and more charismatic than like zillions of other people. At the Run the Road show at Rothko he was the main dude responsible for what atmosphere there was. He's also getting a lot better in the conventional sense of mc'ing as well as time goes by. I dunno if I could deal with a whole album of his stuff, but as far as popping up to drop a verse on random tunes, he's absolutely killing it at the moment.

- Interview with Essentials and little mini-set. Lots of shouting. Lots of projects coming up soon, which sounds good, including a Jendor mixtape, which should be fun. I like his weird vroom noise. Anyways, the set is quite good. Short, but fun.

- Dogzilla 'Memories'. Lots of autobiographical details. I actually think Dogz could be one of the biggest mc's in grime, because he covers a much wider range of topics than guns-gash-I'm the top brer in the endz, and he's got this whole Cockney everyman schtick that Mike Skinner has rode to success, but fo' real. And he's got Danny Weed and Target doing beats for him, which is always a good thing.

- The new Tinchy Strider and Dirty Danger tune is stupidly good. Apparently forthcoming on Strider's album, it's just pure dopeness. Spy movie soundtrack bizness.

- The Dexplicit remix of the new Carmen Reece tune is musically ridiculous. The production sounds like a metal staircase collapsing, with extra handclap, but her voice has got that 2-steppy vocodery/time-stretch sound that I've always found really annoying. I hated that shit then, and I hate it now.

That's it. Obviously, I'm not going to comment on every tune. Maybe (note maybe) tomorrow, I'll comment on Cameo's last show, although I hate the BBC website's stream system, where you can only skip forward by 5 minute increments. Terrible setup. David Drake has also passed on a music meme to me, maybe I'll have a go at that. Oh, and the Logan Sama RWD mag mixtape just showed up in the mail today, which was nice.

Popping Back in Time

2005-06-18T09:31:00.000+01:00

Pay as U Go Kartel b2b So Solid Crew - Not sure when this is from exactly. Think it's from 2002. How things have changed so soon.

So Solid's mc's were really, really bad.

Plasticman Interview

2005-06-17T21:46:00.000+01:00

Up now at Riddim.ca.

Technotic

2005-06-16T17:34:00.000+01:00

This is a two-part post. First, some musings on my approach to music, and then some mp3's. Feel free to scroll down if you'd prefer to skip my ramblings.

Obviously, I spend a lot of time listening to music, and then thinking about what I listen to. I also spend a lot of time reading about it. One of the things that I have found quite interesting over the last two or so years of reading about music online (I was reading stuff like TWANBOC and Blissblog way before I started participating on Dissensus and doing this blog) was how different my reactions to the music I was listening to were from others. Well, maybe not in the sense of aesthetics, what I liked and so on, but more in how I tried to break it down in my mind. I think the crucial difference is that I've never spent much time worrying about the words in the music that I listen to, that, whether instrumental or not, my mind has mostly focused on the sounds. I suspect that part of this is the result of my educational background and my personal intellectual interests; it seems like a lot of serious music writers have studied English or Philosophy quite seriously at points in their lives. These disciplines are fundamentally about words, about expression, and about ideas, whereas in what I did at university, History, words are functional, pieces in a puzzle, information to be used. Of course, the very best historical writing is written very well indeed - certainly at a level comparable to the best literature or philosophy - but the words are merely the means to an end, to conveying the necessary information. Bad historical writing, if it contains the necessary information, is still useful in doing your own work. Trust me, I've used many historical journals for research, and there really are no limits to how turgidly executed the prose can be. On the other hand, badly-written literature (and to a lesser extent philosophy) is more or less useless.

How does this tie into music? Well, I think that the focus on words that is so much a part of studying literature and philosophy seriously lends itself, when applied to music, to focusing primarily on lyrics, to peeling them apart to better understand the intentions and thoughts of the artist. This does not mean that the music itself is unimportant, merely that in so much of the music criticism that I have read the lyrics are as, if not more, important than the music. I don't really approach music in this way. I listen to the lyrics of vocal tracks, but I don't really care what the artist is saying. For the most part, I just like the surface aesthetics of the human voice when set against the music; the words are just pieces of information in a larger whole.

Where is this coming from? Well, I've been thinking about this quite a bit since I read Kid Kameleon's notes to accompany his recent ragga jungle mix at Gutterbreakz. Here's the relevant quote that got me a-pondering:

Unfortunately, anyone who deals with current Jamaican-derived music eventually has to come to terms with their position on anti-homosexual lyrics. Basically, I try my hardest not to play 'em. I'm all for burning out wikkid men, corruption, bomberclaats in general, but the evidence is too strong that Jamaica has a problem with endemic violence towards homosexuals, and while I don't blame dancehall artists for that violence directly I feel I need to follow a policy of "do no harm" for my own mixes. I won't knowningly play openly anti-gay lyrics, although I'm OK editing them out with backspins. It's not a comment on the producer of the track as he managed to snag vocals that are killer in every other way and should be put to use. It's a comment on the vocals themselves. It's a tricky line, but I call on ragga jungle producers to steer clear of incendiary lyrics since I really don't believe the producers are making a statement of deeply held beliefs like the people they are sampling. Please take the time, producers and fans alike, to read LFODemon's Battybwoys are alright manifesto which I wholly endorse.

I read this (as I've read several other pieces concerning violent homophobia in dancehall lyricism, Wayne Marshall has a bunch of links if you are interested) and pondered it. For the most part, I listen to two broad fields of music: global black street music (for lack of a better term; I'm referring to hip-hop, dancehall, and grime) and global white dance music (from techno to hardtrance to hardcore and so on). Obviously these categories are hardly racially impermeable, but these are useful shorthands, and I'm guessing that my readers will understand what I'm talking about. Dance music, being for the most part instrumental, is pretty much disconnected from any concerns with lyrical content. But hip-hop, grime, and dancehall are all about lyricism as much (if not more, really) as they are about music...so how to react to sketchily questionable violent, misogynistic, racist, or homophobic lyrics? I've been wondering about this question precisely because I've found that I have no reaction to such lyrics. I just don't seem to care really. I'm a reasonably liberal guy but for the most part it just doesn't seem to bother me when I hear musicians saying things that I strongly disagree with on a personal level, because I don't really engage with lyrics. Is this wrong? I dunno.

There's a strong common thread running through my music taste - I like electronic sounds over organic ones virtually always. For the most part, I'm just not interested that interested in music made on yer real instruments, or music sampled from said real instruments; I'd rather hear synths. A lot of the sounds that I enjoy in, say, dancehall are similar to the sonic signatures that I enjoy in techno. By placing most of my focus and enjoyment on the textures and aesthetics of the music that I consume, am I abdicating my responsibility to question statements that run counter to my own beliefs and values?

This is particularly the case in regards to homophobia in Jamaican dancehall music. I have had quite a few gay friends over the years, yet when I hear these Jamaican mc's bunning out the battyman dem (or at least when I can decipher the accents to the point where I can tell what they are saying), it just doesn't seem to faze me. Even though it's an implicit attack on all of these fine men and women I've known over the years, I don't feel particularly outraged, certainly less than I do by the antics and anti-gay rhetoric of much of the American Religious Right. Is this me giving them a pass because these musicians are black? Nah, it's not that, because I'm not really bothered by Eminem's homophobia either. I guess that it comes down to the fact that I consider music escapism, fundamentally disconnected from the everyday, and that is why I like the synthesized over the organic: it is one step removed from the everyday. Perhaps it is just a defense mechanism, because my other great passions are history and current affairs, the very definition of the everyday. I spend a lot of time reading serious and heavy things, about wars and crises and virulent debate, and so I try to separate my thoughts about music from my thoughts about our world, its past, its present, and its future.

I realize that these are not particularly satisfactory answers, but it seems like the only way in which I really enjoy engaging with music is through the lens of aesthetic appreciation, and not through politics. I don't really enjoy mixing my greatest pleasure, which is music, with my masochistic need to do study the human condition. This is a cop-out, but I guess at least I am self-aware on this point.

And on that note, how about some mp3's?

Technasia - Live @ HRXXL Nightgroove 03-03-01

Technasia (pictured above) are my absolute favorite techno producers. A two-man team made up of Hong Kong's Amil Khan and Paris's Charles Siegling, they met several years ago in Hong Kong and started producing tracks together. They make everything from sweepingly melodic warm-hearted tech-house to austerely crisp electro to straight-up dancefloor hammering techno. This is a set that Charles did four years ago, and features a great variety of tunage, from ultra-hypnotic minimalism to bass-heavy percussive monsters to to crunchy electro and lighter, disco-infused moments, all mixed beautifully with some rather tasty trickery thrown in. Banging, as they say.

Dave Clarke - Old Skool Cut-Up

Dave Clarke is one of the world's best techno dj's. This is a twelve minute cut-up of old electro tracks that appeared on the Electro Boogie Vol. 2 mix cd that came out in 1998. Unfortunately, I don't have the tracklisting in front of me at the moment for this, because I ripped this onto my external hard drive when I was back at my parents' house for Christmas, and I didn't bring it with me. There are some serious skills at work here. Enjoy.

Scorchathon NYC

2005-06-15T00:50:00.000+01:00

Absurdly scorching weather here in NYC today. Fiercely hot and so humid that the air seems to have the consistency of soup. Makes me pine for British weather.

Anyways, on with the music.

Logan Sama - Kiss 200 FM London, June 9th 2005, Part One, Part Two.

Tracklisting:
HOW COME NO-ONE DON'T DANCE NO MORE / KANO / 679
REMEMBER ME / KANO / 679
STRAIGHT FLUSH FREESTYLE / KANO / DUB
SIDEWINDER / WILEY, ROLL DEEP, RUFF SQWAD, JAMMER AND GODSGIFT / ROLL DEEP RECORDINGS
GRIME RIDDIM MEDLEY / SLEW DEM / SLEW DEM PRODUCTIONS
BLAZE & ROCK INST / LEWI WHITE / SLEW DEM PRODUCTIONS
REAL LOVE / CHRONIK / SLEW DEM PRODUCTIONS
BLAZE MORE DAN U / CHRONIK / SLEW DEM PRODUCTIONS
I WONT STOP / SLEW DEM / SLEW DEM PRODUCTIONS
MOVIN & BRUSING / BRUZA / AFTERSHOCK
I'LL BE THERE / SHIZZLE / DUB
UNTITLED / TINCHY STYDER / RUFF SQWAD
GOOD GIRL / ROLL DEEP FT J2K / RELENTLESS
SINGLE / SKEPTA / BOY BETTER KNOW
SLEW WASTE MAN / RYDER / LETHAL BIZZLE

FREESTYLE / D DOUBLE E / DUB
THE ANTHEM / NEWHAM GENERALS / DIRTEE STANK
PRANGMAN REFIX INST / FOOTSIE / DIRTEE STANK
MIC CENTRE / NEWHAM GENERALS / DIRTEE STANK
**NEWHAM GENERAL'S LIVE**
WE'RE THRU / TERROR DANJAH VS THE TEMPRAMENTALS / SMOOVE
YOU GOT ME (DEXPLICIT REMIX) / PARABEATS FT CARMEN REECE / PUBLIC DEMAND
FOD FOR THOUGHT / ALEX MILLS / DUB
COULD YOU / GEMMA FOX / DUB
KAOTIC MADNESS FREESTYLE / FACTION G / DUB
CROME OFTEN / SLK / SOLOKEY
RINGER FREESTYLE / NARSTIE & SOLO / DUB
CHA / PLASTICMAN FT SHIZZLE, FRESH & NAPPER / TERRORHYTHM
POP STAR CHICKS / NASTY FT DYNASTY / DUB
SWIFT / MR KEAS / SOUTHSIDE
SHAKE A LEG / ROLL DEEP / RELENTLESS

Highlights:

'Sidewinder' - Absolutely unreal new Wiley production, featuring a massive list of mc's. Eskiboy layers the 'Murkle Man' strings over clanking beats, but what really makes this is the way that the bassline changes for each verse, versioning old tunes, as the mc's drop some of their classic lyrics (including Wiley's 'lyrical sniper' lyric). Stupidly stupidly awesome. I'm actually going to shell out for a vinyl copy of this, as it's that astonishing.

Shizzle 'I'll Be There' - A rare softer tune that I actually enjoy. Shizzle is pretty much always fun to listen to.

That new Tinchy Strider tune. I wish the quality was a bit better, but the tune sounds like something straight out of a chase movie. Robofunk in effect.

The mini Newham Generals set is pretty good, but it would benefit from less Monkey, as he's a bit meh. Apparently their album for Dizzee Rascal's Dirtee Stank (a sub-label of XL, I guess) is going to be called 'Generally Speaking', which is kind of a crappy name. Having said that, if it's all stuff like 'The Anthem' I'm guessing that it will be awesome. 'The Anthem' is really really good, with a nice electroey bassline and gloomy space vibes.

Keep It Quick

2005-06-11T02:59:00.000+01:00

Essentials - Rinse FM May 31st 2005

Enjoy!

No Words, Just Music

2005-06-10T03:43:00.000+01:00

~~Miss Kittin, The Hacker & Vitalic live @ Montreux Jazz Fest~~ - After a couple days of slacking on this blog, here's an awesome techno/electro set from the Francophone world's greatest techno heroes (fuck an Akufen, you microhouse nerds).

In the Meantime

2005-06-09T16:43:00.000+01:00

I'll have some new content up tonight. In the meantime, have a look at my post on Racial Segregation in Brooklyn at my main blog, which I'm quite proud of (and God knows, I put the hours in doing up all those statistics and graphs).

Tuff Breaks & Acid

2005-06-06T19:09:00.000+01:00

Just a quick thing, but if you're after some mixes, check out the three by my friend Jude aka Slink here. Two tuff breaks mixes and an awe-inspiring acid techno meltdown mix. Good stuff.

New Content, Yeah We Got New Content

2005-06-04T20:24:00.000+01:00

Since I'm feeling particularly benevolent, and I've got silly amounts of bandwidth left (although the month is still young), I've added May 31st's set from DJ Glamma featuring Dogzilla and Maxwell D to the Riddim downloads page.

It's cool to see Maxwell D back in top form after disappearing for a while. Back in the Pay As U Go days he was always my favorite mc in that crew, and then he seemed to drop out of view for a while, but he's spitting some fire on this set.

Dogzilla is always good fun too, cockerney geezahness in full effect. Oh, and you HAVE to check the freestyle over the Roll Deep 'Heat Up' beat by OT new boy Devlin which comes on about 17 minutes in. Pretty awesome stuff from a kid who has just turned 16.

Riddim.ca is moving.

Last Bits for a Thursday

2005-06-03T02:25:00.000+01:00

Just added a totally sweet set from Cameo featuring Shystie, Narstie, Solo, and Mini Me to the downloads section of Riddim. Check it out. Get your grime on.

Other people's stuff:

Gutterbreakz is too on it! Check out the DJ Distance interview and mix and then Kid Kameleon's neo-ragga jungle primer and mix.

Not even sure how to hyperlink to the actual post, but check out Boom Selection for a new mix of Rio baile funk. Then head over to Funky Do Morro to snag a bunch more stuff in that style.

DJ Twist's awesome 'Invent Your Enemy' old skool ardkore mix is back up at Bassnation. Huzzah!

New housey mixes from Byron Bitchlaces and Grievous Angel. Jeah!

I thought Serg's slapdown of spoken word was pretty funny.

That's it for tonight.

New Content at Riddim.ca

2005-06-02T16:56:00.000+01:00

I've posted the Street Anthems 2 review over there, and Paul has just finished up the interview with Baltimore's dubstep ambassador, Joe Nice. Have a look.

Tonight I'm going to be uploading an awesome Shystie, Narstie, Solo, Mini Me and DJ Cameo set from BBC 1xtra's Pirate Sessions. It's big, trust me!

Just got back the text of an interview with the mighty Plasticman, so as soon as we get some images, that's going up too!

We're moving.

Bossman - Street Anthems Vol. 2

2005-06-02T13:35:00.000+01:00

01. Katie Pearl & Jendor - Mr. DJ
02. Wiley - (They Can't Get Along With) Wiley
03. Kano - P's & Q's RMX (feat. Lethal B, Ghetto & Demon)
04. Crazy Titch - Sing Along
05. Carmen Reece - U Got Me (Dexplicit RMX)
06. Trim - Boogey Man (feat. Riko, Wiley, D Double E & Footsie)
07. Remerdee, J2K, New Era & Desperado - The Stick Up
08. SLK - Hype Hype SLK
09. Shystie feat. Crazy Titch, J2K & Katie Pearl - Make It Easy (Davinche RMX)
10. Ears - Fine Fine
11. Lethal B feat. Fire Camp - No
12. Doctor, Remerdee & Jendor - Bring It
13. Shizzle, Napper & Bruza - Av Sum A Dat
14. Roll Deep - When I'm Ere
15. No Lay - Unorthodox Daughter
16. Donae'O - United
17. Bruza - What U Waiting For
18. Crazy Titch ft. Keisha - Gully
19. Kano ft. Ghetto - Typical Me
20. Dizzee Rascal ft. D Double E - Give U More
21. Regal Players - Rude Boy
22. Ribz, Napper, Shizzle & Flirta D - Pull Up Dat
23. Kele Le Roc ft. Remerdee - Frontline
24. Wiley ft. Trim & God's Gift - Candy
25. Shola Ama - With You
26. Dogzilla - My Side of the Story

The Essentials' Bossman is back with the second edition of his Street Anthems mix series. And it's seriously, seriously large. Unlike a lot of other recent mixtapes, this is actually mixed. Really. It's not a hip-hop style collection of tracks with explosions and jingles between the tunes, but an actual mixed cd. Which is nice for a change. Fortunately, Bossman can actually beatmix, unlike a lot of pirate set dj's you hear, who just flick the fader over between tracks seemingly randomly. As someone who has been dj'ing for 8 years now (Christ!) it's quite nice for me to actually hear, on a mix cd, a grime dj that can hold down nice long mixes between tracks. Another nice thing about a mix cd in this format is that it it's more uptempo than the more hip-hop styled mixtapes, which underlines just how different this music remains from standard hip-hop. Sometimes the slower mixtapes show more of a convergence with hip-hop, which is ok I guess, but I'm from a dance music background, so I prefer uptempo and more distinctively dancey sounds.

Having sat out UK Garage, which I wasn't feeling at all, the main thing that attracted me to grime was the combination of hip-hop/dancehall-style lyricism and style with the raw electronic energy that reminded me of my junglist days. When the formula is worked exactly right, there's a beautiful balance in grime between these two elements. Sometimes, though, over the last couple of months I've started to feel like the balance is tipping too much towards the former, and that the sonic energy that is such an important part of grime's appeal (at least to me) is being sacrificed so that the mc's can use their mixtapes to emulate more closely their American rap heroes. This is why I often prefer recordings of pirate sets, which are almost always madness from start to finish, to the more relaxed feel of some mixtapes. This is not a problem with this cd, which is pretty wildly energetic from start to finish.

Tunes wise, there's not much arguing that can be done with this cd. If the first edition was a bit dated tunes-wise, at least by the time it came out, this is all quite current and fresh stuff. There's not much on here that I haven't heard before, but I'm a chronic junky for this music, so that's no big surprise. Still, there's little here that I'm sick of. One of the things that you notice when you listen to this cd all the way through is just how good grime is getting. The London scene seems to be pretty supremely confident at the moment. The quality of the mc's on a flow, lyrical, and style level is as good as it's ever been; it's amazing to think of how far standards have improved in only a couple of years from the frankly dire levels of people like So Solid Crew.

On a musical level the tunes are, to be honest, awesome. The production quality seems to be constantly improving, the quality of the tunes' execution always moving on to a new level. Indeed, unlike jungle/dnb, which, as the quality of production improved painted itself into a corner of glossy screwface rave noise, grime is spreading its wings musically. There's an awesome range of styles on this cd, from Dexplicit's rnb-as-made-by-vengeful-robots remix of Carmen Reece's 'U Got Me' to the Gypsytronic roll of Roll Deep's 'When I'm Ere' to the synth-horned explosions of the handful of Davinche tracks, and so on and so forth. That's another nice thing about this cd, that despite being a member of Essentials, Bossman has gathered tracks up from a whole range of London crews. The slewing/warring thing is kind of amusing to hear from an outsider's perspective, but I definitely hope that the grime scene can work together, and that stuff like this can work as a catalyst for further collaboration.

So, final verdict? Awesome cd.

You can get this cd from Rhythm Division and UKRecordShop.com.

No Lay

2005-05-30T22:15:00.000+01:00

Another thing that's worth downloading is a live set from a London party called Heatwave vs Mas Fuego a couple weeks ago, featuring a girl named Chann from Suncycle (I have no idea who they are, but she seemed decent) and No Lay from West London's Unorthodox Family, who is probably, in my opinion, the best female mc in the London grime scene. Her track on Run the Road, 'Unorthodox Daughter', was possibly the best tune on the whole compilation. She turns up about 45 minutes in and flows over dancehall and grime, while also moaning about the name grime, which seems to be common among a lot of these artists. Grime is a cool name, still calling it garage just seems absurd (you could still maybe draw a link back to Larry Levan's Paradise Garage from some of the fluffy 2-step, but now? No.) and all of the other names I've heard suck. Grime sounds underground, real, blah blah blah. Anyways, whatever, you can download the set at the Scandal Bag site here. It's worth grabbing some of the other downloads as well, especially Riko's dancehall set if you haven't heard it yet.

Unorthodox Family - No Help Or Handouts

No Lay - Unorthodox Daughter

Oh Yeah, And...

2005-05-30T08:51:00.000+01:00

I've forgotten to mention that Paul Meme and John Eden have posted a fantastic new mix of some of the biggest dancehall riddims of the last couple of years. Go here to read Paul's write-up and here for John's write-up, then download it and enjoy.

Still Awake

2005-05-30T08:30:00.000+01:00

I'm still awake from writing Dubai Fresh, so here's a few tunes for Memorial Day. With melodies n' all!

J Majik - Your Sound - The apotheosis of the mid-90's hardstep aesthetic. A double-layered melodic attack of sweeping strings and wobbly electronics (a sonic reproduction of the joys of cookie dough ice cream) slides sweetly over absolutely tearin' Amen drums. Simple but devastating sub-bass - this was before No U-Turn made midrange basslines that sounded killer on home stereo systems all the rage. It's incredible that this was made when J Majik was only (if I'm remembering right) 16 or 17 years old. One of my favorite things about this is the way that by simply removing and reintroducing the melody the entire feel of the track changes in an instant, like covering your eyes with both hands and then suddenly pulling them away. This is one of those tracks that reminds you of how wonderful, how truly life-affirming, the Golden Era of Jungle/Drum n' Bass was (I capitalize because that's what it deserves).

Doc Scott - Tokyo Dawn - Here's another tune along similar lines, from the first Earth compilation that LTJ Bukem. Doc Scott's output from the period is mostly remembered for darkside monsters like the alltime anthem 'Shadow Boxing' as well as a host of lesser-known but still brilliant tracks like 'Swarm' and 'March', but he also was quite handy at more melodic tracks. This is a particularly choice example of this other side of his production skills. Despite playing a major role in popularizing hyper-fast robofunk boom-bap two-step beats, Doc Scott has always been skilled at chopping up the beats, and here he provides a vintage lesson in carving up the classic Amen break. He then meshes this furiously torn-apart beat with the deep-space atmospherics that LTJ Bukem's labels became famed for (unfortunately they later descended into noodly jazz-funk nonsense, so the less said the better), overlayed with drifting pads and undergirded by a warmly funky 808 pulse bass. Lovely stuff.

Wax Doctor - Cool Breeze - Great tune off of the awesome Moving Shadow compilation cd, 'The Revolutionary Generation', which for my money was one of the great mid-90's dnb releases. Wonderful rolling breaks, that were complex enough to be engaging and fun, but simple enough to be danceably non-chinstroke. All complete with nice female vocal sample and tasty housey melody.

Quick Thing

2005-05-30T03:33:00.000+01:00

This is a set that I've been listening to a lot recently. It's a couple months old now, but it's one of the best distillations of a certain grime vibe that I'm really into. This really spacey and cold sound that is not quite as empty as dubstep, but that is still defiantly alien and flat-out weird, and with less of the hip-hop affectations of a lot of other grime. Winter sounds.

Maximum b2b Geeneus w/. mc's Wiley, Scratchy, Syer & JME - Rinse FM January 29th, 2005 (Part One, Part Two)

Other People's Business

2005-05-28T22:05:00.000+01:00

Don't have the time for a proper post, so why not some links?

Fresh Dizzee Rascal/Grit Boys collabo up at Lemon-Red. Too strange to hear Dizzee screwed n' chopped. If you still haven't heard it, you have to check out the set they were on together in Houston last month.

U Mean Competitor. Michael McDonald, Dipset, and disturbing gifs...can you really ask for more? I've also been swapping music with Matt, the man behind the madness. Yousendit is the digital era's 6th grade tape-swapping.

Cool interview with Rinse FM's DJ Distance at Gutterbreakz. Also including a mix! Nice.

Martin Clark on the month in grime & dubstep in Pitchfork.

I've also updated my links bar at the side to include people who've graciously linked to me plus other music blogs I've been reading and enjoying. If you want even more links, you can check out my public bloglines account which has a frankly silly amount of stuff to read.

Cutty Ranks - Grizzle (Punany Riddim)

I Don't Care About Your Craft

2005-05-27T00:15:00.000+01:00

One thing I am mightily sick of is musicians who think they deserve a cookie or a medal or something for spending years slaving away learning an instrument.

I don't care.

Fuck your 'struggle'.

Is there anything more boring than rock musicians and fans pretending that 'craft' actually means anything? That 'emoting' through your guitar while you insouciantly flick your bangs out of your eyes is somehow meaningful?

No, the only thing that matters with music is end result.

Stop pretending that you are doing something that hasn't been done 10000 times before. You aren't.

I don't care about your 'message' either. If I want to learn, I'll read a book. Your lyrics are just window-dressing for the music. Let's face it, music fans don't deserve a pass here either. Most lyricism is nonsense. It may be fun, but stop pretending it's going to make you smarter.

Your emotions don't matter. I care about my friends and family, not some random musician. I am not 'touched'.

IDM, too. 'Intelligent dance music'. Christ, give me strength. I don't care about your 'experiments' or your 'journeys into sound'.

This is why the rave end of electronic dance music is the most honest music out there. It's loud, it's crude, it exists only for partying, and doesn't pretend it is anything else.

And I don't care about 'deconstructing' the music. I like the surface. I like the sounds. I like textures. I'll let my imagination do the rest. I'm interested in histories and pathways, but I don't care about music critics' need to connect everything up for silly 'theory' purposes. Maybe you're angry you're not working in a philosophy department, but you should be proud. You get to listen to and write about music for a career, which is surely by anyone's standards than having to wade through the latest silliness from Zizek or similar voodoo linguist?

I don't care about where music fits into some 'cultural studies' paradigm. Whether some rapper talking about shooting people is 'actualizing his resistance' or some nonsense like that, or whether a metalhead hailing Satan is 'defying bourgeois codes of conformity'. Fuck that. The 1960's are over. The revolution is not coming. Marxism is an ideological corpse, and dressing it up with over-wrought language isn't going to bring it back. At least you are getting to hear some tunes.

Hellfish & Producer - No More Rock n' Roll

Raving, We're Raving

2005-05-26T03:44:00.000+01:00

All the pictures on this post were taken from a Harderfaster photoset by Joeyxx of a party called Obsession at Happy Jack's in London Bridge, January 2004. It was an awesome party, and the pictures are really nice, so I re-sized them for blogging purposes. Clicking on any of the pics will take you to a larger version. The mp3's are arranged in order of ascending madness.

CJ Bolland - Camargue - Swooning old skool classic from CJ Bolland, one of the great heroes of dance music history. The stomping beats are sweetened by a lovely keyboard line, sweeping strings, and a fantastic house b-line.

Hardfloor - Safety Razor - Hardfloor are the German lords of acid, and this, a track from their superb 'Jack the Box' mix cd, is nothing more than a thumping kick, some writhing hi-hats, and an endless succession of hypnotically squelching 303 madness. Beautiful simplicity.

Spectrum - Brasil (Remix) - Thumping old skool Belgian classic from the first R&S Records 'In Order to Dance' comp.

Yves Deruyter - Outsiders (Original Mix) - Here's another track from a Belgian. Belgium may be considered a 'boring' country, but if you like the pounding end of dance music as much as I do, then you know that the Belgians have been absolutely instrumental in the development of European club/rave music over the last twenty years. This is an awesome tune, a real teeth-grinding analogue barrage.

Jon Doe - Warehouse 2002 (Hard Mix) - Hammering bass nu-nrg with one of the best riffs I've ever heard, a conventional hoover riff that's been scratched-up and laid over the stomping kick and bass. Pretty pacy stuff, too, because this was the last track on my 'Rampage Audio 4' mix cd that I did a couple years back, so, since at the time I always jacked up the speed towards the end of cd's this is over 160 bpm.

Lab 4 - Stungun - Hyper-speed madness from Oxford's Lab 4. This is yer dystopian futurescape, for real.

If It's Wednesday, I Might As Well Post Some Music From London

2005-05-25T15:00:00.000+01:00

None of the pictures on this post have anything to do with East London or grime. Just sayin'.

31st St & Queens Plaza, Long Island City

Wiley - (They Can't Get Along With) Wiley - This is the vocal version of 'New Era', which is the remix of the Wiley classic 'Ice Pole'. It's a classic Wiley beat, strange 80's squiggles rubbing up against a grunting bass over a rhythm so sparse it's like a digital representation of the Arizona desert. Or something. Moving swiftly on this beat is pretty similar to a bunch of other tunes ('Dragon Stout' and 'Ice Cream Man' in particular) that Wiley was making late 2004, eight-bar switch-ups that juxtaposed oddly bouncy 80's-style synth work with clankingly choppy beats and bass. The sort of stuff that has driven a generation of music critics to reach deep into their minds to claw out the phrase 'dystopian futurescapes'. I, of course, boycott such tactics. Anyways, this track is already a bit of a time capsule because Wiley, being The Supreme Dude that he is, seems to have moved on to a new style pretty much straight away, at least if new tracks like 'Sidewinder' and 'Top Producer' are anything to go by. Nonetheless, this is an excellent, excellent beat, hitting several different sonic pleasure centers at once by being cheerfully silly and ruffff at the same time. Above it Wiley does his "I'm the top boy" lyrical thing, which is nothing new, but entertaining as ever. I always enjoy Wiley's mc'ing. He's not the world's finest technical mc (he certainly couldn't tie the shoelaces of, say, the best New York mc's), but he always sounds so distinctively himself, so commanding and so in control. And fun too, which in this era is something to be thankful for.

Shibuya, Tokyo

Essentials - Fire Tramp - This track, which is Essentials laying into Lethal B and Fire Camp for nicking one of their hooks for Fire Camp's 'No' tune, is taken from Remerdee's 'Public Demand Vol. 1' mixtape. What's the mixtape like? It's ok. Not amazing, not terrible, somewhere in-between. There's some really good stuff, though, and this track in particular is a real standout. The beat is a completely insane new version of 'Bongo Eyes', which was Bossman's own massive mashup of Davinche's 'Eyes On You' with Youngstar's 'Bongo'. This takes it to an entirely new level of electro freakout furiosity. It's amazing. If the 'electroclash' scene had been making beats like this, it (1) wouldn't have sucked anywhere near as much, and (2) it wouldn't have been over the moment Vice Magazine got bored of it. On a vocal level, this is mainly notable for how rantingly pissed off Essentials sound. Apparently (this is according to some thread I read on the RWD Forum, so don't take this as the gospel) Lethal B called them up when 'No' was getting released to offer Davinche (their producer) the chance to do a remix where some of the Essentials mc's could appear alongside the Bizzle, but they turned him down. Remember, though, RWD Forum. This could be a complete lie. Anyways, Essentials are one of my favorite London crews. None of their mc's are real stand-outs, or at least none of them I'd say are in the top tier of London mc's, but as a crew they work brilliantly together on every radio rip I've heard of them or on the little showcase performance that they did on the Aim High 2 dvd. A lot of energy, a lot of commitment, and a lot of team work. Anyways, on a lyrical flow level this tune is pretty decent, but the main reason to check it is the ridonkulous beat.

Franklin Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Durrty Goodz - Freestyle - As disappointing as the Titch/J2K/Cameo show here in NYC ten days ago was, the London guys were quite entertaining, and I managed to grab some freebies, including Crazy Titch's Crazy Times Vol. 1 cd/dvd (I went up to Titch after they finished and asked for it, and he gave it to me, which was nice), which is where I got this track from. The dvd is pretty decent, following Titch around to performances, the barbers, his mom's house, on holiday, all that sort of stuff. It's always good to get free stuff. This freestyle is by Durrty Goodz, who is Titch's older step-brother (I'm pretty sure they're step-brothers, anyways). He used to be called Durrty Doogz, which was a way better name, but for reasons unknown about a year ago he changed it to Goodz. Who knows the minds of men? Anyways, he's sort of gone silent for the last little while, and apparently he is now working on an album chocka-block of UK hip-hop/dancehall, which is a bit of a bummer. Do grime! Anyways, he's a very good mc, and he has an awesomely, hilariously distinctive voice. Imagine if Disney, at some point, did a movie with a cartoon Jamaican dog; if said hypothetical cartoon yarda doggie were to mc, they'd sound like Goodz. Although this is pretty cool, in the end it's just a freestyle over a hip-hop beat, which is not earth-shatteringly exciting. Actually, I was wondering if any of you reader types could help me out and tell me where the beat is from? I swear to God I recognize it as being originally from something American, but I just can't seem to place it. Anyone know?

a temple in Tokyo

J2K - The Return - And this is a track from the other freebie I wrangled at that show, J2K's 'Heat in the Streets Vol. 2'. It's pretty much straight-forward UK Hip-Hop. Nice beat, though, and Jay does his thing. I like it, but there's not a huge amount to say. Worth a listen, though, faithful readers.

Me (far right) with a bunch of friends at Dancevalley, Holland, August 2001. There were 100,000 people at that event...sheer lunacy! I'm not looking pleased in the pic because by that point of the day I'd managed to fry my corpse-white skin to a nice shade of lobster.

Ears - Fine Fine - This is off the stupidly good new Bossman 'Street Anthems Vol. 2' mix cd. Ears is Jammer's 17 year-old prodigy, who tore it down when they were over here in New York a couple months ago (as much as anyone can tear down a room of twenty-something white hipsters folded-arms like 'impress me'). This tune is quite tasty, with Ears dropping his hottest rhymes about how he is basically a new era of dudeness over a snap-crackle-pop rhythm and little siren and horn stabs provided by (I think) Jammer. Nothing more needs to be said.

Last of the Finlandicans

2005-05-22T04:39:00.000+01:00

All photos on this post were taken by Eric Luk during our trip to Finland, July 2003.

Carbon Based - Real Stuff - This is a slightly less frantic offering than usual, clocking in at a (relatively) restrained 160 bpm. After a functional and dj-friendly intro, they drop in a quirky little riff, a plip-plopping ghost of Eurodance past. Then they drop the main riff, which is a shimmery Eurotrance riff. This is quite a trancey tune, perhaps one of the most conventionally trancey that they've done. It's not as hard charging as most of their stuff, preferring to float along instead. As ever with their music, there are layers upon layers of sound within the track, lots of little details to idly pick out as it pumps from your headphones.

Carbon Based & Nemes - Charmed Dreams - Carbon Based hook up with Nemes, another excellent Finnish dj/producer, for this strange and haunting track. Opening with haunting strings and a strange distortion line winding around the rock-solid kick, it quickly drops into the bassline and a filtered synth line that twists around the kick like snake to the flute of the snake charmer. There's some awesome synth work on this, all twisting and turning over the simple snap-snap of the rhythm, including a particular awesome breakdown, where odd distorted noises, deep bass drops, and the main staccato riff intersect at strange angles before snapping apart again. Not a head-banger, more a chin-stroker, or at least as much as anything can be at 175 bpm! This is the sort of tune that should be sound-tracking sci-fi chase sequences.

So, anyways, that's the last write-up I'm going to do on the blog, I'll be doing some more for the Finrg Digital site when that launches.

Still want more? Why not check out the recent mix from Drumhead (aka Teemu Lahtinen from CB) for a bunch of new Finnish and British freeform hardcore tunes?

Drumhead - Freeform Weapon Warfare
01. Re-form - Intro [CD-R]
02. Shanty, Tazz & Loopy - Maximum (Carbon Based Remix) [Electronic]
03. Pain On Creation - Thru 2 Secrets [FINRG Hard]
04. DJ RX - Liberator [FINRG Hard]
05. Alek Száhala - Dryard Machine [FINRG Hard]
06. Carbon Based - Tuonela [FINRG Hard]
07. Nomic - Last Aurora [CD-R]
08. Alek Száhala - Ashurnishishi [Camel Records]
09. Dougal & Gammer - Crackwhore [Essential Platinum]
10. Nomic - You Have a Dream [CD-R]
11. K Complex - adagio [Nu Energy]
12. Alek Száhala - Anmitzcuaca [Electronic]

Want more more more? Links time.

Artists & DJ's:
Alek Szahala (totally utterly amazing)
Carbon Based
DJ Orfeus
DJ Proteus
DJ Rx
Fea
Nemes
Nomic
Pain on Creation
Re-Form
Tr3ox

Labels:
Camel Records (UK)
Electronic (UK)
Finrg (Fin)
Nu Energy (UK)
Teflon Bullet (Fin)

Also, check out Sessions2 for party pics, video clips, and other stuff.

That's it for now, I'll upload some grime tomorrow to please you, my beloved readers.

Future Forces

2005-05-20T03:36:00.000+01:00

The Mexican - Land of the Pharaohs (Carbon Based RMX) - This track opens with some lovely melancholy pads. That's one thing the Finns seem particularly adept at within this style of music, evoking a complex range of emotions. Most English hard dance/hardcore is usually gogogogo mad-eyed joy, occassionally hoods-up darkside terror, but the Finns manage to draw something more complex from their machines, that weird intersection between joy and sadness, between ecstasy and fear. This track quickly kicks into a nice jagged riff, glittering from the rhythmic bed of the track like smashed car window glass on a sidewalk late at night. Then into the breakdown, where a fantastically incongruous Middle Eastern melody rubs up against some nicely sweeping synth vamps, which then cuts out into the main riff. It's a familiar arpeggiated trance riff, yet there's something about it that sets it out from so many of the other millions that I've heard. Although it seems to replicate the usual arms-aloft euphoria, there's this weird edge of dread to it; a clenched-teeth, eyes-shut kind of power.

DOK - Mental Ward (Carbon Based RMX) - This is where Carbon Based take DOK's darkside freeform classic and strip it down and charge it up, Suomi-style. If the original version was a mean-assed Harley Davidson of a tune, all gutteral roars and thundering engines, this remix is a souped-up Superbike of a tune. A coming-out party for all the little synth tricks they have up their sleeves, this tune is a compilation of some of the most intense digital riffage ever concocted. Furiously unstoppable energy. It fires through the speakers like a missile. Describing it is almost pointless...what more is there to say than that they bettered a classic?

Carbon Based - Dark Side - Straight into a pounding off-beat bass and choppy percussion, this one only takes about 40 seconds to get into a classic Carbon Based spider-riff, skittering across the track. One of their most melodic tracks, this marries that familiarly skeletal skitter to a melody that starts as a simple up-and-down plucked riff before, in the breakdown, building and building into an epic, sweeping, soaring, insert your own adjective, explosion of joy. What I love about this track is that it keeps shifting the emotion, alternating between a holding-pattern glide and the diving headfirst off a mountain madness of the main section. This is one of the most conventionally trancey tunes they've done, which is, of course, no bad thing. You are a sick and joyless person if you hate all trance.

Raw Power

2005-05-19T02:20:00.000+01:00

More Finnish madness.

Carbon Based & DJ Rx - Reptile - A Lahti hometown heroes showdown as Carbon Based hook up with DJ Rx (left), one of Finland's most popular hard dance dj's. Rock-solid kick-drummed intro with the spiraling synths starting early. The Finns are experts at the use of a particular style of synth riffs; they use this arpeggiated synth noise that seems to skitter over the rhythm like a horde of digital spiders across a floor. They are also big fans of the traditional 303/acid sound, which they use to particularly diseased effect in the intro here. That's no problem for me, because there is, for me, no noise like it. It draws out powerful, powerful emotions within me. After a couple bars of distorted breaks right at the start of the break, the main riff drops and it's a nicely filtered trance effort. Then, you know, a snare roll, massive massive build in intensity, then the drop into silence, a little rising acid line and BAM! Back into the beat. Textbook stuff, but always a beautiful and powerful thing.

Carbon Based - Underworld Species - Epic opening, like the winter sun rising over one of the thousands of Finnish lakes. A slow, stuttering rhythm creaks into action beneath the sweeping pads; the quiet before the storm. Then suddenly that drops out and, unprepared by the calm of before, the kick and twirling bass launch into action. Soon they are joined by an insistent one-note riff, that one ray of light, the tip of a lit cigarette waving in the corner of a dark room. Then a classic spider-riff rifles snarlingly in, leering over the beat with the knowledge that, when if you're there when it's 170 bpm, you are one of the committed. Then, of course, the breakdown, which sees the reprise of the intro, but with the addition of a couple more layers of riffology. The ticking sound of a night winding down, the sound of an early morning, dancing in the rising light, forcing yourself through a wall of exhaustion to keep moving. Epic and beautiful, this track, perhaps more than anything else they've done, expertly balances the light and dark within the Finnish sound.

You Can Stop Reading Now

2005-05-18T14:55:00.000+01:00

For the rest of the week I'm going to be doing write-ups for my friends at Finrg, Scandinavia's number one hard dance/freeform hardcore label. They are launching a new digital download site soon, so I'm doing my little bit to help them out.

The Finns are, right now, the number one in the world at making turbo-charged dance music. I've been meaning to get around to doing a full write-up ever since I started this music blog, but every time I've sat down to do it I've felt like there was way way way too much to say, so I haven't done it. Sad but true.

If you want a bit of background/context, check out my old "The Speed of Sound" post for a bit of history and explanation of what freeform hardcore is (ie manically fast multi-layered hard-trancey acid-flecked yumminess). If you want to know a bit more about Carbon Based themselves, check out their site, as well as an interview that I did with them when my good friend Eric Luk and I went out there in the summer of 2003. Man, I have some stories to tell about that trip! You might also enjoy the videos at Sessions 2.

As ever when I write about this type of music, every write-up is going to be done in the style in which I wrote up my review of their 'Straight Out of Finland EP'. No sociology, no history, no nothing, just straight up what it sounds like and whatever weird metaphors I can pick out of my head.

Carbon Based - The Choice - Slowly revolving synth to open, then snap-crackle-pop percussive loop into twisty bass. Slower than a lot of their other stuff, but still pumping. As the kick comes in there's a nice juxtaposition of the icy fairground melody with some weird detuned stabs. Like most of the other Finnish stuff, it slowly builds in intensity as new layers are added, like a graffiti artist building a piece on a wall. Then into the breakdown, with its plaintive, one-note echoey chord giving way, slowly slowly, to a sugary sweet riff that cuts in like Nordic sunshine over a crippled breakbeat. Then, instead of building and building in the traditional style into a massive snare roll, the track abruptly drops back into the kick with a sudden whomp. Keeping it simple for a while with a straight-forward acidy riff and no bassline and an odd sound seemingly dredged from the early 1990's rave scene. Then the tranceyness slowly filters back in as the track kicks itself back up again, layers twisting over each other, your ears navigating the maze of sound.

Carbon Based - Painkiller - Simple dj mix intro into a gnarly bassline that always makes me think of someone frantically tearing off flower petals. I know I have an overactive imagination, it's just that it sounds like someone is ripping pieces off of it even as you hear it. Sample time ("I was hallucinating, there was a blind spot in my head") then a detuned riff saws through the mix with strange industrial sounds flickering in the background. The whole thing sounds submerged, like a dark room somewhere deep beneath the city, blanketed by smoke and strobes. Breakdown time and the main riff comes in, ultra-insistent, a revolving two-step juggernaut. As it kicks back in it reminds you of those tracks you'd hear late late late at night, mad staring eyes looking out across the mutant aerobics on the dancefloor. Fiercely pummeling sound and energy, the whole thing compressed together like a renegade dark star sucking up light itself. Lacking in a memorable main riff like a lot of hard dance, this simply pummels you into submission.

More later.

How About That?

2005-05-18T14:08:00.000+01:00

Riko from Roll Deep joins the blogosphere.

Saturday Night Verdict

2005-05-16T18:59:00.000+01:00

Besides Cameo, Crazy Titch and J2K, who were pretty good despite everything, it was not very good.

No battle as far as I could tell.

Totally wrong wrong wrong venue. It was super-plush Guido-esque (you know what I mean, I'm not insulting Italians...my 'ethnic background' is German and Irish, so I'm in no position to talk!) and didn't seem right at all. There were even tables with little candles on them ffs!

Pretty much empty.

Muddy sound.

Besides the set from the London guys, the rest of the music bounced all over the place and seemed kind of unfocused. Way too much four-to-the-floor and 2-step UKG, which doesn't work with grime. Straight dancehall and hip-hop would have been better.

It just didn't work.

A good example of why I almost never go out to clubs in New York, because it almost always sucks, and I end up filling my time drinking more than I should.

A bummer.

Shystie - One Fierce Chick

2005-05-14T04:59:00.000+01:00

This one's for Hecticblog. Shystie's album from last year, 'Diamond in the Dirt', was ok, but had too much hip-hop. Why is it when grime mc's get signed, they then do lots of hip-hop on their albums? Stop it! Anyways, these are good.

Shystie feat. Crazy Titch, J2K & Katie Pearl - Make It Easy (Davinche RMX) - Davinche rebuilds 'Make It Easy' into a bass-throbbing, string-stabbing epic, with Titch and J2K doing their thing as well. Awesome.

Shystie feat. Lady Fury's Mum - Murderation - Shockingly personal attack, replying to Lady Fury's diss. It's all in the little details on this, like sampling Lady Fury's mom calling up to complain about a previous Shystie diss or cutting back to where she got booed off stage at a Sidewinder rave. Harsh harsh stuff, but since I'm thousands of miles away and will never meet either of these girls, I can get all voyeuristic and find it funny. I wouldn't mess with this chick.

Tomorrow Night, New York City

2005-05-14T03:30:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow J2K and Crazy Titch, two of London's leading grime mc's, will be here in New York City with BBC 1xtra's DJ Cameo, which should be too much fun. I'll be there, at the back, sipping beers, and contemplating a review for Riddim, which I'll write up Sunday or Monday. Only $5 before 1am, which you can hardly complain about. It's at Crash Mansion on the Bowery on the Lower East Side.

Crazy Titch & Keisha - Gully - Titch does his shouting thing with (improbably) Keisha from London pop rnb crew The Sugababes over a beat from Alias. A nice combo of Titch's shouting and sweet rnb style vocals over flickering percussion, a nice stalker-ish string riff and a whomping bass that sounds pretty nasty even through these headphones (no soundsystem for me!). I love beats like the one used on this track, they sound really thin when set against the heavy bass, like anorexic electro. This is off Bossman's 'Street Anthems Vol. 2' mix cd, which is really really good. I'll be reviewing it for Riddim tomorrow. You can get it from Rhythm Division like I did.

J2K - Exclusive Freestyle - This is off Aim High 2, which is generally awesome. J2K is mostly a Hip-Hop mc, and this is him going on about his shitty, stressful life over a very slowly snapping beat. One of the highlights of the entire mixtape.

Crazy Titch - Freestyle - Crazy Titch does his shouting thing over a hip-hop beat by DJ Target. Dude is always shouting, but has a lot of character. The quality is fairly crappy, as I ripped this off a Logan Sama Kiss FM show a while back, from when he was guesting. This is quite a conscious effort compared to a lot of his other stuff. Not sure if this has come out, it might have been on the mixtape for his Crazy Times dvd, but I'm not too sure (cos I don't have it). It's good, though.

Wiley feat. Breeze, J2K & Riko - Pick U R Self Up - Wiley and a bunch of others do their self-help thing over an unusually light Wiley beat. His beats usually sound like they've been beamed in directly from outer space, whereas this one just sounds like a robot trying to recreate a Tribe Called Quest record. From Wiley's first album 'Treddin' On Thin Ice', which has apparently only sold a grand total of about a thousand copies in the entire United States. Oh ye fools, soon you will learn!

One Mixrace, One Black, One Yid...

2005-05-12T16:46:00.000+01:00

Since I mentioned Nine's lost classic 'Cloud Nine' in my previous post (go download that mp3, trust me, it's worth it!), I figured I should talk about another old(ish) hip-hop album that seems to have disappeared in collective memory, but that I still listen to and enjoy. The Brotherhood were a rap group from North London (DJ Dexter and mc's Shylock and Spice) that hooked up with the producer Trevor Jackson (aka The Underdog), who is better known today for his work in Playgroup. After being signed to Virgin in Britain in the mid-90's they dropped their one and only album, 'Elementalz', in 1996. Even today it is one of the (few) landmark albums in UK Hip-Hop, a true classic. It was also one of the first proper full-length UK Hip-Hop albums where the mc's actually rhymed in their own accents, not fake American accents. If you ever see a copy, it's definitely worth picking up. The mc's are really good, and the production is just amazing. Drawing on his diverse musical history, Trevor Jackson created a broad sonic canvas for the mc's to do their thing over. That's about all that I know, as there seems to be little info online about The Brotherhood, so here are some mp3's for you to check out:

On the Move

Goin' Underground

One Shot

The Man With a Throatful of Gravel

2005-05-11T03:48:00.000+01:00

I'm trying to wrassle a piece for Pearsall's Books into shape, so I'll drop the Nasty Crew weed carriers piece tomorrow night. In the meantime, here's Bounty Killer over some hip-hop beats. I recently realized that I can actually understand what he's saying a lot of the time now, which pleases me quite a bit.

Nine feat. Bounty Killer - Warriors - This is from an album that I think has been chronically slept on, Nine's Cloud Nine, which I got when it came out off the back of a very good review in XXL (I think). It's a bit of a lost classic, because Nine (with his crazily gruff flow) soon disappeared. I rarely see it mentioned anywhere, but I've always thought it was a really really excellent piece of classic mid-90's New York rap. If you ever see it in a second-hand store, buy it! Trust me, you won't be disappointed. Anyways, this track, as you'll see when you download it, is awesome. Nine may be one of the few people on earth to have a harsher voice than Bounty Killer, and they combine fantastically over some nice sampled Chinese strings and a classic boom-bap.

Bounty Killer - Eyes A Bleed (Rza RMX) - This is a random mp3 acquisition I picked up a while ago. It's from Wu Chronicles II, which was I guess some kind of Wu-Tang Clan related compilation, but basically it's Bounty Killer riding one of Rza's beats. Can't argue with that.

Bounty Killer feat. Junior Reid & Busta Rhymes - Change Like the Weather - This off Bounty Killer's 1996 album My Xperience, which was his first major label release in the US. This track features reggae legend Junior Reid and New York hip-hop hero Busta Rhymes (this being back when he was consistently good) along with Bounty Killer over a classic Erick Sermon beat

Fleshing It Out

2005-05-09T03:48:00.000+01:00

As a companion to my aging mixtape roundup at Riddim, here's some tracks from a couple of the mixtapes that I reviewed.

Bashy - My Manor - from 'Ur Mum Vol. 1'

Essentials - Shut Down Shop - from 'Street Anthems Vol. 1'

Breeze - Marchin' On - from 'DJ Target presents Aim High Vol. 2'

Yeah, Hardtrance

2005-05-08T16:55:00.000+01:00

OD404 - Magnecor - (from Rampage Audio 3) Solid rumbling off-beat bass into slightly 1950's sound effects deep back in the mix. Lots of little edits and fills, as is usual with Superfast Oz & Dom Sweeten when they're on it. Gigantic breakdown...gated riff over synth washes. Hairs up the back of the neck moment in a dark room. I remember playing this at an illegal rave I played in 2002 in a barn outside Prestonpans in East Lothian, right as the sun was coming up. Big moment.

Helix & Fury - Sanctus Dominus - This is from the DJ Ramos mix cd off a compilation called 'Off Yet Nut!' (the other two cd's were terrible happy hardcore mixes). Opens with the mix out from 'Lemonade Raygun', queasy strings slowly fading out. Doom-laden "let us pray" sample. Simple tick-tocking bassline, driving into flashing alarm synths, snare-rolling into savage 303 line.

Alek Szahala - Firecloud - So bezerk I don't even need to say anything about it. So fast you'll swear you are hallucinating. When the main riff kicks in...phew. Big up Finland!

Roll Deep Regular

2005-05-06T04:16:00.000+01:00

So the Roll Deep album 'In At The Deep End' is dropping on May 30th, which is just over three weeks away. They were originally supposed to be releasing an album last year ('Rollin Deeper') but that got leaked and bootlegged mercilessly, and so they went back in the studio to redo it.

Some of you may be asking who Roll Deep are. Understandable. They are, bar none, the biggest crew in the entire grime scene (if you don't know what grime is, cos you've just dropped by, have a look at Jess Harvell's excellent primer for Pitchfork, although I'm actually going to be writing my own primer for Riddim.ca when we relaunch the site). Dizzee Rascal was a member for a while when he was younger, but he left after his album launched him into the stratosphere. Despite losing him Roll Deep, led by the grime overlord Wiley, have only consolidated their status as the dons of the scene. Their album should be a major event. Or maybe it will flop. Either way I'm excited about it.

Anyways, there'll be plenty more biographical stuff on them in the British press over the coming weeks, so I don't really need to get into that stuff at the moment. But if you want to get started, check out Sean Downes' introduction to (some of) the mc's at Government Names. On with the mp3's!

Trim - The Lowdown - Trim (aka Taliban Trim, Trimothy, Trimble, etc) emerged last year and instantly blew up the scene. Coming seemingly from nowhere (well, prison) he joined Roll Deep and started smashing up radio and raves with his unique voice and flow. For me, he's the best mc in grime. This tune is a collection of his various slewings over the 'Fire Hydrant' riddim, tearing into Stormin, Cell 22 and Major Ace. Too much.

Roll Deep - No More - This is from the leaked version of the Roll Deep album and hasn't made it on to the actual release version. A lot of people have bitched about Roll Deep doing slower, less grimey stuff, and sometimes it's been a fair criticism, but this is a lovely tune, with Wiley, Breeze and Brazen speaking sense over a rather lovely track. Yeah, I grabbed this off Soulseek. Why lie?

Scratchy - Freestyle - This is off Creeper Vol. 1, which hasn't come out yet. Again, Soulseek. Here is Scratchy riding one of Wiley's beats. Not sure what beat this is. Scratchy's a dude.

Da Cream - Moving (DJ Target Remix) - This isn't Roll Deep, but I'm posting it because it's a classic Target beat. Target is one of Roll Deep's three main producers (along with Danny Weed and Wiley) and over the last six months or so him and Danny Weed have been perfecting this odd accordion-flecked Gypsybot style of grime. This particular tune is a rip from a BBC 1xtra show, and is a forthcoming single to raise funds for tsunami relief, featuring a stack of different London mc's and one of the girls from Mis'Teeq. Massive beat.

Wiley interview - Luca sent me this a while back, and I'm posting it because it's pretty amusing. It's a phone interview with Wiley from Rinse FM where he's having a go at various people.

DJ Garna - Sword Stylee (feat. Manga & Krafty) - This is a tune I ripped out of a Manic FM radio set that I grabbed off the RWD forum last week. Manga is one of the new boys in Roll Deep and he has a totally unique skippy flow. This is just him and someone named Krafty over one of DJ Garna's productions. This is a seriously seriously big tune. I love darkside bass monsters like this. It's like a slow version of one of the No U-Turn tunes that blew my mind apart when I was 16. *swoon*

You might also want to check out the video for 'When I'm Ere' (real media).

Also, Christ, grime stores need to step up their game. I was thinking of ordering four mixtapes from UKRecordShop.com and when I got to the checkout I found out that postage would be 15 pounds!!!! For four cd's!!!! That's completely ridiculous. When I lived in Britain I'd often sell records overseas and usually 4 records to the US would cost about 7-8 pounds. 4 cd's would be even less. If these people want to grow their business internationally they need to actually charge sane postage rates for their products and not try to gouge the fuck out of people. Look at Juno and Chemical, they do huge business internationally by charging reasonable postage rates and plus they don't charge VAT for non-EU buyers. Sorry, needed to get that off my chest.

Review: B.A.R.S. 2 DVD

2005-05-03T06:15:00.000+01:00

B.A.R.S. 2 is one of the most recent efforts in the burgeoning UK underground music dvd scene. Produced by a crew calling themselves Low Budget TV their B.A.R.S. ("Black Arts Rule Streets") dvd series aims to cover all aspects of young black life in Britain. This marks it out from some of the other, more grime-focused, dvd's like 'Practice Hours' and 'Risky Roadz' that I've seen so far. Unlike those, which barely left a small part of the East London grime scene, in B.A.R.S. 2 the film-makers went out around England to interview people from both the UK hip-hop and grime scenes. They then mixed this footage up with street freestyles, street fights, club footage, going behind the scenes at music video shoots and interviews with people like Shaun Wallace, the first black winner of Mastermind, and Patrick Kluivert of Newcastle United.

One of the main things you notice when you watch this is how well it's put together. Right at the beginning the main guy behind LBTV, a dude named E. Monourver, is explaining how he's totally self-taught and how he started out just messing around, putting together footage for when his friend got out of jail. In this context this dvd is pretty impressive stuff. Digital technology has really leveled the playing field for aspiring documentary makers. The editing, sound, and camera work is, generally speaking, up to quite a high standard. The only technical problem is that on a couple of the interviews the sound drops out on one channel. I dunno if that's on all the copies, or just the one I got, or if it's some codec problem with my computer.

There's also quite a pleasing variety of stuff. There's a lot of UK Hip-Hop on here, which is cool to see because I don't keep up with that scene at all. I have to be honest and say that I don't really have much interest in UK Hip-Hop, because, well, I find it kind of boring. Still, though, it's kind of cool to get a little bit of a sense as to what is going on with that scene. On the grime tip there's not a huge amount (apparently there's going to be a lot more grime on volume 3), but there are a couple nice bits, like some freestyles from Kano and Ghetto of Nasty Crew (well, until the last couple weeks when they officially left), some club footage, and some interviews with people like Flow Dan from Roll Deep, a bunch of people from Nasty (Demon, Marcus Nasty, and Kano), and Mike Skinner's new signings the Mitchell Brothers, amongst others. There's also, let's be honest here, some segments on some pretty wack musicians, like Ipswich grime crew Hectic Squad (chorus to their tune: "What you know about Ips? We're the top boys in Ips". Christ.), some rap duo named Trics and Vics (they show a bit of one of their videos and NO LIE it is one of the worst things I've ever seen...Star Trek uniforms and all), but presumably you gotta work with who is willing to show up, and I figure that, based on how good a job they did making this, there should be some bigger and better people on the next volume. Even the interviews with the bad musicians are ok, because the LBTV crew keep things moving pretty briskly and you don't have to hear too much of their music. The only scene on the dvd that I think is a complete and utter waste of time is the bit where they are following the Newcastle United footballers Titus Bramble, Jermaine Jenas, and Keiron Dyer around on a night out as they get hassled by the paparazzi. It goes on for a while and it seems kind of pointless...like, I dunno, I'm not really surprised that professional athletes get followed around by photographers. Dudes are getting paid millions to kick a ball around and live out the fantasies of tens of millions of people. Of course there's going to be trade-offs. But that's a whole separate issue. Plus it doesn't seem to have that much to do with the music stuff that dominates the rest of the dvd, beyond the fact that these guys are actually living the lifestyle that all the music types are so desperately hungry for.

All in all, this is quite a good dvd. For someone looking for a total immersion grime experience, this ain't it, but it is cool as a general overview of the state of the black music scene in England. It's well paced, professionally shot, and slickly put together. Well done, and I'm looking forward to the third volume.

Favorite bits:
- A brief clip of Wiley mc'ing over jungle back in the day. Wearing a truly monstrous tracksuit top.
- A behind the scenes on the video shoot for Nikki Slimting's 'The Link Up' where an army of grime mc's got the chance to do a London version of the formulaic American 'hoochies in the pool, champagne in the glass' rap video. Cheesy but fun. The behind the scenes at Akon's video shoot in Peckham for the 'Ghetto' video is kind of cool as well.
- Some nice bits from a grime rave in Tottenham with Kano, Ghetto, and Wiley on the mic.
- Street fighting scenes. Nothing serious happens, just some shoving, some shouting, the odd flying fist, but nothing major. Fun in a voyeuristic way.
- The Mitchell Brothers interview. I thought 'Routine Check' was a bit meh as a single, but they seem like pretty sensible guys with some interesting stuff to say. The sort of people you'd be happy to have a beer with.

You can get your copy of B.A.R.S. 2 from Rhythm Division, UKRecordShop.Com, Juno, Uptown and Independance.

Cross-posted from Riddim.ca.

Monday Night and the Feeling's Alright

2005-05-03T01:26:00.000+01:00

Johnny Cash - San Quentin - From his famous performance at California's San Quentin prison. Check that atmosphere.

Other stuff:

Wayne Marshall talks about his recent trip to Kingston, and the impact of hip-hop on the Jamaican musical landscape.

David Drake's new podcast for Stylus.

Logan Sama's first show for Kiss 100 in London. Stupidly large. Although not as large as his farewell set (right-click, save as) for the pirate station Rinse FM.

At this point, I should probably mention the interview with Bizzy Bone from Cleveland's mid-90's rap heroes Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony that Matt 'HoustonSoReal' Sonzala did last week. It's pretty depressing stuff, though. That guy needs some help.

Two free new mixes at Gutterbreakz...can't argue with that!

This is just a stopgap post for the evening. A proper post is headed your way.

Sunday Morning Music

2005-05-01T16:20:00.000+01:00

It's all a bit grim and grey outside where I am, how about some tunes to fit the mood?

Sabres of Paradise - Smokebelch II - A project of acid house hero Andrew Weatherall and his sidekicks Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, the Sabres of Paradise released a couple of experimental techno albums in the early 90's. Along with a lot of the other acts on Warp Records they played an important role in creating today's bespectacly nerdy IDM ('intelligent dance music') scene. This is off their second album, 'Sabresonic II', and is one of their best known bits. Four minutes of blissfully delicate electronics, this was also remixed into a club classic by Belfast's David Holmes, who transformed it into a ten minute plus cosmic workout.

As One - Away From All Of This - Jazzy techno from Kirk DeGiorgio. That should be enough to send everyone running away screaming! Having said that, I've always thought this particular tune (from 1997's 'Planetary Folklore') was quite lovely.

Glamorous Hooligan - Tokyo Heartwash - Here's a tune off an album I picked up years and years ago that was called 'Wasted Youth Club Classics'. I think I read a review and an interview with them when it was released and decided to pick it up. I think the whole schtick was that these were dead 'ard council estate football hoolie types who also happened to make, er, trip-hop. Trip-hop, of course, was the early to mid 90's sound of someone staggering into a petrol station at 4 am to buy frozen pizzas, Pringles, Rizlas, and foodstuffs so mind-bendingly obscure that only the stoned could consume them. This tune is sort of ambient house and despite it's quite obvious deficiencies (ie it's cheesy as hell) I've always liked it. It's sort of saccharine melancholy. Ooh arr. The rest of the album is ok trip-hop, but since I haven't smoked a joint since I was 18 I guess I can't really fully appreciate it.

A Guy Called Gerald - The Nile - This, however, is pretty unambiguously awesome. A Guy Called Gerald is a Manchester musical legend, creator of the supreme acid house classic 'Voodoo Ray' and sizeable quantity of classic early jungle/drum n' bass, like 'Black Secret Technology', the album that I've pulled this track from. Although the mastering on my copy of this album is pretty horrendous (I bought the original release when it came out which was, Christ!, ten years ago) this album has really stood up to the passage of time and if you can source it I highly recommend it (probably the 1997 remastered version is a better bet). This track is a good example of the album, since basically everything on it is worth putting up, which was an early salvo in taking jungle away from strictly dancefloor mayhem to being something deeper and more powerful. Of course, it all went pear-shaped in the end, but this still sounds good, even if the mastering sounds positively Medieval when compared to today's ultra-compressed, super-clean head-bangin' dnb.

Re-Up Policy

2005-04-29T02:57:00.000+01:00

I've just re-upped everything from last week's Wednesday Night Music Extravaganza" post for the benefit of Bassnation from Dissensus. So if you didn't catch any of those before, there they are. If any of you want any of the expired links to be re-upped, just let me know either by leaving a comment in the appropriate post or by emailing me.

Disclaimer for labels and artists and their lawyers: if you want me to take anything down, don't sue me (it's not worth your while), just send me a message and bang goes the link. This is a pretty smally fry operation. Even with the recent uptick in visitors, this blog is only averaging about 40-50 unique visitors a day.

I'm tired, so I'm going to bed early. No tuneage for tonight.

Bits

2005-04-28T01:39:00.000+01:00

Why is Lost, tonight, after three weeks of no new episodes, nothing but a collection of clips from earlier in the season? Wtf? This show started ages ago, why is it taking them so long to finish the season. God knows there's been a zillion weeks off. Having said that, if you haven't been watching it, I highly recommend it. It's probably the best new show on tv this year.

Bashy - Star - This is the only grime track off the 'Ur Mum Vol. 1' mixtape, which is mostly a collection of tired hip-hop beats. I don't think it's up to much, personally, but I like this track. Judging by the RWD Forums, though, the kids have been loving it, so who am I?

Chingo Bling - Osama Who Got The Keys To My Hummer? - Ultra-silly rap from Houston's tamale kingpin Chingo Bling. His album is pretty silly and a lot of fun. Comedy/novelty stuff is always a good time.

T-Dot's Number One

2005-04-27T02:50:00.000+01:00

One of my favorite artists in North America right now is Toronto's dancehall/hip-hop don Kardinal Offishall. There aren't many people out there who can flow over both styles so well and with so much style. And yet he isn't really a big star, or at least to the level that he probably deserves. His career has probably suffered a fair amount because most Americans are, not to put too fine a point on it, totally ignorant about our northern neighbors. Toronto is the third biggest city in North America, after Mexico City and New York, and yet most Americans probably think of it as being like Cleveland or Buffalo or somewhere like that. He has also suffered from label shenanigans after his major label, MCA Records, was taken over by Geffen Records in 2003 and his second album was swallowed up in the re-shuffle.

Akon & Kardinal Offishall - Kill Di Dance - This is off Akon's 'Illegal Alien Vol. 1' mixtape, and features Kardinal flowing over the Kopa Riddim, one of the biggest dancehall riddims of the last couple of years. There's also Akon's singing, which is a bit of an acquired taste. I kind of like him in small doses, but this is mostly about Kardinal tearing up the beat. The son of Jamaican immigrants to Toronto, he connects the dots between hip-hop and reggae about as well as anyone else out there in music at the moment.

Vybz Kartel & Kardinal Offishall - Kartel & Kardinal - Here's another dancehall cut, with Kardinal guesting on this tune from Vybz Kartel's 'Up 2 Di Time'. Vybz Kartel is one of Jamaica's finest dancehall mc's, and, although this ain't the best tune on the album, it's still pretty cool.

Kardinal Offishall - Gas - Having upped two dancehall cuts, check out this hip-hop cut from last year's 'Kill Bloodclot Bill Volume 1" mixtape. Nice horns.

Kardinal Offishall - Forward Riddim - And just to show how versatile he is, here's Kardinal getting busy over grime. The Forward Riddim, produced by Dexplicit, was last year's biggest grime anthem. In it's vocal version (with appearances by Lethal B, Flow Dan, Demon, Fumin, Jamakabi, and a whole gang of mc's) it tore it's way to the edge of the UK top 10. Of course, most people reading this probably know that already. This is Kardinal's version and it's fantastic. The dude is spitting some fire on it.

The Silver Box

2005-04-26T01:56:00.000+01:00

Man, I love the sound of the Roland TB-303. It's one of those things I just don't get sick of. Ever ever ever. Perhaps the most over-used sound in dance music ever, it was originally created to function as a bassline generator for guitarists to play along to. It was, however, terrible for those purposes and mostly ended up on the scrapheap until the 80's Chicago house scene rediscovered it and realized that by messing around with the dials you could create some almost unimaginably (for this was the 80's after all) freaky sounds. What helped this even more was that the 303 riffs sounded absolutely batshit insane on large soundsystems and even more effective if (cough cough) you were a bit, um, refreshed. In the years since the sound of the silver box and its legion of hardware and software clones has become an essential part of the arsenal of dance music production, especially on more the more boggle-eyed rave scenes. Here's some acid tunes, taken from old mixes of mine:

Warmduscher - Hardcore Will Never Die - This is off a mix I did in 2002 called Rampage Audio 2. This is a German hard trance record, and in true German style it is very linear and marching. True, unadulterated rave music. Frenzied 303 action, marching snares, and an absolutely thwomping kickdrum (you should hear this record loud). A classic from Tracid Traxx, a German acid trance label that has, down the years, alternated between releasing amazing stuff and the most godawful pap imaginable (usually by the label owner Kai Tracid, who has released dozens of gigantic cheesefests, and about three good tunes).

A&E Department - And the Rabbit's Name Was - This is off the same mix, but it's the very last track. As you can tell, I tend to up the bpm's by quite a lot over the course of a mix cd! This is north of 160 bpm and is one of the finest records to ever emerge from the London acid techno scene. Acid techno was my thing for a good couple years. It was the true ruling sound of the illegal rave scene. I've been meaning to write a long post about the whole squat party scene, but I haven't had a chance to get round to a friend's house to record a new mix (of old tunes) to accompany it just yet (unfortunately I don't have turntables in New York). Music at squat parties ranged (and ranges) from jungle/drum n' bass to gabba to psychedelic trance and even (sometimes) stuff like dub reggae and punk rock, but the king sound when I was going out on that scene was always stuff like this. Completely manic acid techno/trance. The sort of tunes that anal-retentive techno purists hated with a passion. And this was one of the very mightiest tunes, a classic from Stay Up Forever, the flagship label of this particular slice of the London underground. Legend has it that the Liberator dj's (the guys who ran SUF) sent a copy of this to the Detroit techno legend Derrick Mills who faxed back a response sheet simply saying "please send more".

Lochi - Element - More London acid techno. Not much to say about this beyond the fact that it I really like this sort of thing.

Winnebago Warriors - Trailer Trash & DJ Futureshock - Third Wave - This is off Rampage Teknikal 3, from which I took that Mood II Swing track yesterday. These are two tracks that I decided to join up as I think they work quite nicely together. 'Trailer Trash' is another London acid techno record, but it's a fair amount less frenzied than the other two I posted, while 'Third Wave' was also released in London, but on the tech-house End Recordings label, which usually puts out quite housey stuff. This was comparatively banging for them. It has a great acid line and some nice pads.

As long as we are talking about druggy music, on a separate but similar line, check this madness out. Look at the rictus grin and exploding pupils. Drugs at your 15th birthday party - not a good idea.

24's about to start. See you all tomorrow night.

Sunday - Hahse Music

2005-04-24T15:37:00.000+01:00

Big day yesterday. Had the Foreign Service exam and killed it! I was terrified as I went in that I was underprepared and I was going to make a total fool of myself, but when it came it was actually pretty easy and I fired through the four sections. Whether I did well enough to get in is another question as I'm not sure where they have the cut off, but at the very least I'm certain I didn't make a fool of myself. Which is nice.

Then, after that, I headed down to Chinatown to meet up with my friend Anthony and some of his friends to check out "The Taste of Chinatown", where loads of Chinese restaurants had set up little tables outside and were selling bits of food for a dollar each. Wandered around for a while, had some great food, then headed home and chilled for a bit before passing out early. Nice day.

So now it's Sunday, so why not some house music? Unfortunately the weather the last couple days has been a bit chilly and a bit grey, unlike the scorching sunshine of earlier this week, but still. A bit of house to lighten up life is always good.

Mood II Swing - All Night Long - This is possibly my favorite house record of all time. A classic bit of mid-90's New York house. Great house music is a kind of alchemy, because the elements of house are so obvious and cliched that individually they are kind of boring, but when they are fused together with love and care the results can be so inspirational. This is a lovely, romantic track, with an insistent bassline, sweeping pads, skippy rhythms, and a nice male vocal. Like I said, those are all pretty banal elements, but the way they work together is so beautiful. This is off a mix cd I did back in late 2003, 'Rampage Teknikal 3', which started with house and ended with techno, so this is actually at +8 so that I could fit it in. This is not unusual in a UK context, because it was in fact stuff like this being pitched up that was originally 'speed garage'. It wasn't until later that people like Ice Cream Productions and TuffJam started making their own 4/4 stuff at a faster pace with larger basslines. Bizarrely enough, tracks like this are the first evolutionary stage of the process/scene that today brings us grime. It's a long road in just ten years.

Basement Jaxx - Undaground - This is a track off of the Atlantic Jaxx compilation that was called, er, Atlantic Jaxx: A Compilation, which collected all the early house stuff that Basement Jaxx released on their own label. In the years since Basement Jaxx have gone poppier and a bit more sonically widescreen (don't get me wrong, I still love their stuff), but this compilation (which, coincidentally, is still available) has lots of straight-up house treats, including a whole bunch of classic Brazilian-tinged tracks like 'Samba Magic', 'Belo Horizonte', and 'Eu Nao'. This is probably the moodiest track on there, but it's really nice. Rainy weather music.

Fast Eddie - Acid Thunder/Yo Yo Get Funky - Now for some old Chicago stuff. This is off the first disc of Layo & Bushwacka's 'All Night Long' mix set, and is a blend of two old Fast Eddie tracks. 'Acid Thunder' is a prime example of the original Chicago acid house sound, and it still sounds quite fresh today. You can play tracks like this in clubs now and they will tear things up. A good year and a half ago, before I moved back to New York, I went to Bugged Out at The End in Covent Garden with my good friend Dan Durnin, and in the middle of Dave Clarke's tearing techno set he dropped the tempo down and started hammering out a selection of early Chicago acid tunes, and the crowd went mad. This music is so simple, yet it works so well, it holds a certain timelessness.

Mr. Fingers - Can You Feel It - This, on the other hand, has aged much more noticeably. Or at least in my opinion (I do love 303's, though). One of the most legendary of the early Chicago house classics, Larry Heard's magnum opus sounds positively primitive from a production standpoint. To put it this way, consider the gossamer glisten of modern electronic music production as being like today's awe-inspiring digital trickery in movie special effects, and stuff like this track as being analogous to the amazing at the time but now somewhat creaking effects of movies like Jaws and Star Wars. Very slow, hypnotic, incredibly ancient, yet still tender and warm.

Thursday Night Grime

2005-04-22T03:03:00.000+01:00

Stormin feat. Nasty Jack - Fakes - This is off the 'Storm the Streets' mixtape, which is pretty wack in all honesty. Stormin is probably only the fifth or sixth best mc in Nasty Crew (after Kano, Ghetto, Sharky Major and Demon definitely, and probably behind Hyper as well), and his mixtape isn't really up to all that much. This, however, is an absolute killer, best thing on it for me by a mile. An icy Miami Bass style pump overlayed with gangsta lyrics. Simple stuff, but it works really really well.

Mucky Wolfpack - Wolves are Lurking - This is off Aim High Volume 1. Aim High 2 is, imo, the single best grime comp yet, but the first one is really good as well, even if it doesn't quite reach the same heights. This is one of my favorite tracks off it, with the whole of the crew dropping their rhymes over some strings and orchestral stabs. The guy who does the chorus, Discarda, is one of my favorite underrated mc's. He's a young (17/18 I think) short ginger white guy who spends lots of time shouting, but I think he comes up with some quite clever rhymes and he has real presence on tracks. Lots of people think he's terrible, but I've always quite enjoyed him when I've heard him show up on tunes. On radio sets that I've heard of him I've found him a bit much (he has a tendency to get over-excited and start screaming) but on tracks he's good. If Bob Hoskins's cockney gangster in The Long Good Friday had a nephew who mc'ed, it would be Discarda.

Sway - Down Load - This is one for us dirty downloaders, off the Aftershock label's 'Shockin Volume 1' mixtape. I don't actually have it yet, as I worked out a deal with a guy off Dissensus who lives in London for him to bring some stuff over to me (thus saving the postage!), and the Aftershock mix is one of the things I asked for. I should have it this weekend. This I grabbed off the RWD Forum the other day, and it's got the UK hip-hop mc Sway over the top of one of the Aftershock beats. Sway is really really good (his terrible New York dis track 'Fuck New York' over the Ja Rule 'New York' beat notwithstanding). He's going after the downloading crew. Favorite line on this: "keep it on the downlow/I download too/I'm a big hypocrite/I'll download you!"

Now for something special. Here's an mp3 of Roll Deep's DJ Target on Rinse FM on Sunday. For those who don't know, Rinse FM is one of the main London pirate stations, featuring many of the scene's biggest dj's and crews. This show, where Target was filling in for Slimzee (the recent recipient of an Anti-Social Behavior Order for his dedication to the pirate radio cause), features lots of fresh Roll Deep stuff (including the awesome remix of 'Heartbreak Avenue') and tons of quality vocal cuts. It's amazing listening to shows like this. I do think that in years to come, people will look back at this era of London music as a true golden age, one that measures up fully to moments like 91-92 hardcore and 94-95 jungle. London really is on fire at the moment.

DJ Target - Rinse FM April 17th 2005

In other stuff to check, check out Riko's dancehall set from last Friday night in East London, plus if you are interested in some background on all that Houston stuff I've been posting recently, check here for some links to articles on DJ Screw and the Houston hip-hop culture he played such an important role in creating.

Getting It Hilariously Wrong

2005-04-21T06:57:00.000+01:00

One last thing before I go to bed. Was searching for something else when I came upon this review of Dizzee Rascal's first album. Check this:

Boy in da Corner fails miserably in the beat department, coming through with production on some second-day-with-the-equipment shit. Sounding like Timbaland with ADD, the drum programming seems done at random. The tracks rarely offer a melodic bassline or hook, relying instead on the unpleasant hums of “Live O” and “Seems 2 Be.” When a melody does show up, it is redundant and sparse, as on “Hold Ya Mouf” and “Jezebel,” wearing out its welcome long before the song ends. The lead single, “Fix Up, Look Sharp,” uses Billy Squier’s extremely played-out “Big Beat” and shamefully yanks his lyrics for the hook. For the most part, the problem with bad production usually stems from bad judgment. Though one may object to tracks like Puff Daddy’s “Come With Me,” an unapologetic rip-off of Led Zeppelin’s “Cashmere,” the beat at least has some semblance of that old boom-bap. Even with its creativity in question, “Come With Me” is well constructed and professional—the antithesis of the production on Boy in da Corner.

Despite a reasonable showing lyrically, Boy is, as a whole, unconventional to a fault. The album practically dares listeners to dislike it and join their parents in the ranks of uncultured music fans. This is not paradigm-shifting musical genius; it is merely unlistenable. For the sake of British hip-hop’s good name, one can only hope his recent rise to American fame will land Dizzee Rascal on some tolerable production in the future.

Wtf.

Yeah, what Dizzee really needs is some of Puffy's beats. Is this the worst album review ever written?

Oh Yeah...

2005-04-21T04:30:00.000+01:00

Check out David Drake's inaugural podcast for Stylus Magazine for some of the best new rnb (and some words and thoughts too). Well done dude.

Wednesday Night Music Extravaganza

2005-04-21T04:20:00.000+01:00

Been pretty quiet on the blogging front recently (as I explained before) so now I return like a benevolent god, bringing with me a large quantity of legally grey musical treats.

This post was going to be longer, but Blogger keeps eating parts of the post when I flip between the preview screen and the normal screen. I am not amused. Oh well, more bits tomorrow.

International beat selection:

Cidinho & Doca - Cidade de Deus - This is from a compilation called 'Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats' that came out on an Austrian label last year. I've featured some tracks in this style before, and they're all pretty much the same, which doesn't really detract from the fun. A massive dose of 80's electro flavor, some shouting in Portuguese, and some bongo drums. Simple but effective.

Vybz Kartel & Marlene - Goodas - Vybz Kartel is my favorite Jamaican dancehall mc, and this is him and some chick over the Bionic Ras Riddim, which is one of the most awesome/hilarious things I've ever heard. Having spent years deep in the hard house/nu-nrg scene it is so so so strange to hear hoovers (that's the term for the sound they used for the main riff) used in a black context. The hoover is the ur-rave riff, the soundtrack over the years to millions of pop-pupilled melanin-deficient jaw-grinding sessions when laid over rampant kick drums. Hearing it in a dancehall context is wild and exciting, and they've used it brilliantly. Cool stuff.

Saian Supa Crew - Darkness - The Saian Supa Crew are one of the biggest rap crews in France, and this is my favorite cut off an album called 'KLR' that I picked up in Geneva a couple years ago. They have amazing flow, and they work really well as a crew.

Lil' Black Lion - Pun Pouf Gyal Yuh Stinka - I've put up a fair amount of reggaeton recently, so I'm giving it a pass for tonight. Here, instead, is something from an album I downloaded of French-language dancehall. Not sure whether this is from France itself or from the French West Indies. Nothing particularly special about this I guess, but it's dancehall! In French! Crazy times!

Breakbeaty type stuff:

DJ Ron - Crackman - Classic jungle. For Robert from LoveEcstasyCrime.

Lee Coombs & Meat Katie - 2 Men on a Trip (Lee's Tripped Out Mix) - Nu skool breakz is one of those dance music scenes that exists mostly outside the critical (or shall we say 'Dissensian', heh) continuum. Neither artily ultra-stylish nor agressively lumpen prole, it just keeps on keeping on. This track is off the mix cd that the Plump DJ's did for the Fabric Live mix cd series. It's pretty minimal stuff, with a pretty simple break, some sound effects, and an understated piano vamp for a main riff.

Success & Effect - Roll It Up/Let's Do It (Carl Cox RMX) - Before he became superstar techno dj extraordinaire Carl Cox was a lord of the early 90's hardcore rave scene. This track is classic breakbeat ardkore: frantic breaks, manic stabs. This track is off a compilation I picked up a couple years ago called 'Rave Anthems Vol.1' that was put out by the New York dance label Smile. If you can find it, it's a really good selection of cuts from the original UK rave sound.

On Sunday the New York Times had a story on the Houston rap sound, including the wildly distinctive 'screwed n' chopped' style, where Houston dj's slow down the beats to a sludgy crawl, and chop them up, repeating lyrics and stuttering the beats. Anyways, Marc Bassnation from Dissensus wanted to hear some samples, so here's some screwed n' chopped bits. I've put up the Keith Sweat tune before, but it's so good I've upped it again for those who missed it the first time. That and the Christina Aguilera tune are off a recently released screwed rnb compilation called 'Fuck Action 40'. The Christina Aguilera tune is amazing, it sounds frankly astonishing after OG Ron C has worked his magic on it. The other tune is from an old DJ Screw mix cd called 'As the World Turns Slow'. DJ Screw (read the article!) was the originator of all that Houston business, and this track is a pretty good example of the deep space sound of Houston's street scene. If Cadillac made an interstellar craft, this stuff would be the soundtrack.

Christina Aguilera - Beautiful

Keith Sweat - How Deep Is Your Love?

DJ Screw feat. Guerilla Maab - Grippin' Grain

More stuff tomorrow night.

Saturday Bits

2005-04-17T00:00:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday night Dizzee Rascal appeared on Damage Control, a radio show in Houston. He was interviewed by Matt "HoustonSoReal" Sonzala, and freestyled with the local rap crew the Grit Boys over some Dirty South instrumentals and some grimey tunes provided by his tour dj, Wonder (who is a badass producer in his own right). You can check out a write-up of Dizzee's time in Houston as well as some photos from the show, Dizzee's studio work with the Grit Boys and Bun B of UGK and his show on Thursday night at Matt's site here. I've cut out the section of the show where Dizzee and co were on and upped it to Riddim. Check it out:

Dizzee Rascal, DJ Wonder & the Grit Boys on KPFT Houston, 4/13/2005

As ever, here's some more mp3's for the peeps.

For Paul Autonomic:
Dub War - Silencer (Ninj RMX) - Not sure if you've ever heard this, but I got this on a cd single aeons ago. Dub War were a band I liked when I was about 14 and they did some singles with jungle remixes. I have absolutely no idea who Ninj is (never saw his name on any other productions) but this is an amazing Amen tear-out in the classic 95 style that seems to have slipped through history's cracks.

For David25:
Country & Western - Reincarnation - This is an earlyish techno-trance track. Think it's from some point in the early 90's. Lolloping rhythm, some lovely pads, and a twinkly Teutonic melody. This is from a compilation I picked up years ago called Flux Trax II, which is, to this day even, one of the best dance compilations I've ever bought. Hell, check the tracklisting..."Fragile"! "Kinetic"! "My Definition of House Music"! "Plastic Dreams"! *shudders uncontrollably*

For general peepages:
Two Lone Swordsmen - Sticky - This is off the 'Stay Down' album, and I hadn't heard it in ages until last night when I was listening through some electro stuff (being able to sort stuff by genre in iTunes rules to the nth power) when this came on. I'd completely forgotten about this, but this is a totally dope electro tune. Pretty uptempo, yet also kind of spacey and dubby at the same time, with lots of little echoey noises and stiffly robotic percussionisms. Really superb and I can't believe I'd forgotten about it for so long.

Mike Wade - Crowd Control & Evolution - These are two tracks from a mix cd by Charles Siegling of Technasia that I picked up when I was in Tokyo three years ago. Technasia are perhaps my favorite techno producers, and Charles Siegling is one of the best techno dj's in the business (I can up an absolutely jaw-dropping live set if anyone wants it). These two tracks, however, are by Mike Wade and they worked quite well in the mix, imo, so I joined them together and I've upped them for your listening pleasure. 'Crowd Control' is all jittery percussion and spiky sounds, while 'Evolution' is soothing strings and a romping bassline.

Semi Hiatus

2005-04-15T03:38:00.000+01:00

Sorry I've not been posting much this week. I've been studying for the Foreign Service exam, which is next week. I've got a couple of posts as drafts which will be up this weekend, though.

Ruff Sqwad - Guns & Roses Volume One

2005-04-12T00:12:00.000+01:00

01. Ruff Sqwad - Introduction
02. Slicks, Tinchy Strider, Dirty Danger & Rapid - When It's On
03. Shifty Rydoz - 1999
04. Dirty Danger, Rapid, Slicks & Shifty Rydoz - Future
05. Slicks, Tinchy Strider, Stamina Boy & Trim - Jampie
06. Slicks, Shifty Rydoz, Dirty Danger & Lightning - Heat
07. Tinchy Strider - Move
08. Slicks - Style Up (Freestyle)
09. Rapid - Wide Awake
10. Tinchy Strider - Stryder's Back (Freestyle)
11. Slicks & Mad Max - Gangster (Freestyle)
12. Wiley - Wild Clipse (Freestyle)
13. Mad Max - Back 2 Basics (Freestyle)
14. Dirty Danger - Dirty
15. Dirty Danger, Slicks, Tinchy Stryder & Shifty Rydoz - Shake Ure Bum
16. Slicks & Fuda Guy - Wake Keeping
17. Slicks, Dirty Danger, Shifty Rydoz & Rapid - Ure Girl's With Me
18. Slicks - Chemistry (Freestyle)
19. Shifty Rydoz, Dirty Danger, Rapid & Slicks - Jennifer
20. Roachee, Tinchy Stryder, X.T.C., Mad Max, Slicks & Rapid - Ice Cream
21. Slicks & Dirty Danger - Cok Aim Shoot (Freestyle)
22. Slicks, Dirty Danger & Tinchy Stryder - Woah!
23. Slicks, Tinchy Strider, Rapid, Dirty Danger & Shifty Rydoz - Guns & Roses

Yeah, I know this has been out for ages. But, well, so what?

Starting out absurdly young (they were all about 14-16 when their first big tunes came out) over the last couple of years Ruff Sqwad have put a constant stream of huge tunes. A full list would take some time, but they've dropped tunes like 'Misty Cold' 'R U Double F', 'Lethal Injection', 'Ur Love Feels' and 'Tings in Boots', amongst others. In that time they have become, in my humble opinion, one of London's finest grime crews. This is their first mixtape. And it's awesome.

Their producers, Dirty Danger and Rapid, have a lot to do with this. They love big sounds, like squawking guitars, massive horn fanfares, thunderous bass and clouds of synth noise, and they draw all these elements together into an ocean deep sonic stew, that is totally fresh and unique. Like Slicks said on 'Practice Hours', when you hear a Ruff Sqwad tune, you know who it is. Their mc's are less universally loved, but I think they are great. Lyrically, the stuff on this mixtape is, I guess, pretty standard (girls, hustling, we are the best, our beats are the best, we're gunmen, etc.) but they've got style and they work well with the music. Plus they have really unique voices, which I guess is down to them being (mostly) from African not West Indian backgrounds, and awe-inspiringly cool names like Tinchy Stryder and Shifty Rydoz. One of the things I like about them as mc's is that they are so serious, so composed. They have a unique style. They don't get hysterical like other crews tend to, they just keep on in an unruffled style, like they know they are on a long mission.

All the highlights on this are their own tunes, and I'll get to those in a minute. The lowlights are all freestyles over American rap beats. I know I have a bug up my ass about this ('bring me my exotic furrin music!') but I don't see the point of including some of the stuff they've included when I think about all the frankly incredible productions in their back catalogue they could have used for fresh freestyles. I mean, when you listen to, say, 'Future' with it's deep sea bass, horn explosions, and tinkling synths n' strings and then flick forward to the freestyle over Black Rob's 'Whoah!' (which is a pretty standard hip-hop beat) there is no comparison between the two. 'Lean Back' was a good beat, and Stryder is a good mc, but does anyone really need to hear it again? When you've made tracks like 'Muskateers' or 'Anna' or 'R U Double F' (none of which appear on here) why bother with stuff like Ludacris's 'Splash Waterfalls'? I know people want to appear versatile, but really, have some faith in your own talents, boys.

Don't get me wrong though, because even these are only relative lowlights. None of the American beats they used are really bad, they're listenable, they're just not on the same level as their own productions. Happily, though, the good moments are far more numerous than the bad ones. Like the whistles, weird kazoo-like noise, collapsing beat, and squealing bass that form the backbone of Dirty Danger's sex tales on 'Dirty'. Or the aforementioned 'Future' which is easily my favorite tune on the whole mixtape. Then there's the Sinogrime of 'Jampie', which features some delicate Chinese-y plinks and plonks, and also features Stamina Boy from Mucky Wolfpack and the godlike Trim from Roll Deep, who turns up and does his deep voiced word-twisting thing. Or the horn explosions and shoutouts to half the neighborhoods in London of the intro. Another favorite is 'Wide Awake' where Rapid lays out his plans for the future over an eerie piano-crusted hip-hop tempo beat. The Grimefather Wiley turns up as well, dropping a freestyle to warn off the haters, as well as allowing Ruff Sqwad to use his 'Morgue' and 'Ice Cream Man' beats.

All in all, this is a really really good mixtape. Obviously I have my reservations about some of the American rap beats they used, but there is a huge amount of good stuff on here. On the basis of this, the album which is (apparently) due sometime later this year should be absolutely huge. Well worth a purchase.

Cross-posted to Riddim.ca

Stereotypical Sunny Day Offering

2005-04-10T21:50:00.000+01:00

It being an almost unbearably lovely day, I had an awesome walk this morning. I left home in Astoria at 8am and wandered up 34th Avenue to Northern Boulevard and then cut into Woodside where I walked up Woodside Avenue to Roosevelt Avenue, which I followed up, through Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, to 90th Street. I turned there down Elmhurst Avenue and walked through there (which seemed to be a pleasant and tidy neighborhood), which I walked down until I reached Broadway. I then turned south and walked down to 80th Street, where I cut over and through the side streets until I reached Queens Boulevard. I walked down the side of that vast expanse to 46th Street in Sunnyside where I turned on to Greenpoint Avenue, which I walked all the way down, civilization progressively disappearing around me (the last stretch of Greenpoint Avenue in Queens is spectacularly desolate), until I crossed the bridge into Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I then turned at Manhattan Avenue and then walked down to McCarren Park, where I stopped to chill for a while. Then I got some lunch. Then I took the bus back to Queensboro Plaza, where I got the N train home.

Now, that is quite clearly total gobbledygook for 99% of those of you who are reading, but it was a good walk. I didn't bring any music with me, but when you are on a serious urban walk it has to engage all five senses. Plus you don't want to get run over. If I did though, I would have definitely listened to Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy.

The Time is Now, The Wait is Overrrr

2005-04-10T12:08:00.000+01:00

Man, I'm up early for a Sunday.

Akala feat. Riko, Ears, Jammer, and Baby Blue - Roll Wid Us (Dexplicit RMX)

I ripped this out of Cooper's recent mix, hence the little bit right at the beginning where he's mixing out of Jammer's remix of Lady Sovereign 'Random'. This is an absolutely huge tune, one of my favorite recent grime tunes. Dexplicit is an awesome producer, he makes some truly militant shit. This one has some crazy strings, a monstrously single-note pounding bass and some military percussion. The mc's are all on form as well. Awesome.

I don't need to say any more. Have a listen.

Codeine-ified

2005-04-08T02:35:00.000+01:00

This is for my good friend Jon Hollamby (far right), who recently returned to his native Australia. He'll be baffled. Special thanks to David Drake for hooking me up with all this Houston screwed n' chopped stuff. Screwed n' chopped is a Houston specialty, where the dj slows the music down to a syrupy sludginess (they also do all kinds of little dj tricks), giving it a weird, weird, weird texture. This is especially so with singing, which sounds bizarrely emotional and breathy and just straight-up weird. Women sound like Barry White, and men sound like Darth Vader on heroin.

Big Moe - Sippin' Codeine

DJ Screw feat. Pimp Tyte - Thuggin'

Slim Thug, Mike Jones, and Paul Wall - Still Tippin'

Keith Sweat - How Deep Is Your Love?

Glowsticks at the Ready

2005-04-06T05:37:00.000+01:00

A while back in my speed of sound post I talked about how the freeform/hardcore sound was partially the result of the happier side of UK hardcore going from good/amazing to god-awful/brain-meltingly bad. Want to hear some examples of what it was like when it was good and fun? Yeah, you do. :)

Billy Bunter - Let It Lift You - Bunter was one of the main dudes in the emergence of trancecore as an alternative sound to the cheeseathons that then dominated the UK hardcore rave scene. His label, Great British Techno, produced many frankly astonishing tracks and was a key figurehead in the fusion of hardtrance with UK hardcore. This track, however (nicked from DJ Luna-C's Breakbeat Old Skool Sessions mix) is from when he was still making happy hardcore. This has all the elements of a classic hardcore track. A happy-go-lucky piano riff, a phantasm of a diva vocal, some chopped-up breaks over a pumping kick, and then some stabby chords. Simple, effective, an anthem. A classic example of the fun that happy hardcore was at its best.

Slipmatt - Breaking Free - Slipmatt (or 'Slippers' as he was often known haha) is one of the godfathers of hardcore. He's been around since the earliest beginnings of the house scene in England (and I'm a bit hazy on it, but I think he might have been involved in the soul-funk scene that preceded the Summer of Love and the Ecstasy Revolution). When the rave scene split between jungle and hardcore, Slipmatt stayed with the happy vibes of hardcore and became a key player in happy hardcore. This track was one of the latest ones that criss-crossed both scenes. It has the heavily-chopped amen break that the junglists were beginning (this was 1993) to take in all sorts of fantastical new directions, but it also has a lovely sweeping pad riff and a cooing wordless female vocal. A ginormous anthem in its time, and if you ever hit an old skool night you're guaranteed to hear it.

Slipmatt - SMD3 - Here's another Slipmatt tune, pretty similar but still total dopeness. Cookie-cutter hardcore: driving bassline, bouncy piano, some silly strings, divagasm, ragga sample, ginormous stabs, chopped-up breaks. Still awesome though.

Digital Mullets

2005-04-05T04:15:00.000+01:00

Rudi - Paranoia - Trancecore remix of 'Paranoid' by Black Sabbath. More fun than it sounds.

Diplomat & Trouble - Accursed Delusions - Bezerker fury speed from the Deathchant camp. Industrial rhythmic creakery to start, then the exploding easy chair sound of ardkore's beloved distorted kick. Deathchant releases always feature an astonishing attention to detail, little fills and sound effects that are too numerous to list. The level of microscopic detail that is implanted in tracks like this is remarkable. Unlike most other hardcore producers, the main dudes from Deathchant, Hellfish and Producer, as well as their associates, actually care about rhythm, and clearly spend a lot of time programming the rhythms on their tracks. Even though they rely, as ever, on a madly speedy 4/4 kick they chop the rest of the track up with all sorts of little rhythmic tricks, crazy little edits that appear out of nowhere or sudden drops to hip-hop tempo breakbeats. This track also features a fantastically filthy 303 line, which is why I've upped it.

Seethe

2005-04-05T01:58:00.000+01:00

Surgery - Cybersurfin - This is taken from Sharkey's mix on Bonkers 5, so right at the start of this mp3 you get the last bit of 'Mind Launch'. As far as I know, this track has never been released, but it's an awesome one. Hustling percussion, twisting 303's, then into the breakdown. The main riff is giant, emotive, block-like. All hard right sonic angles over the seething undergrowth of the track, the acid line and the little arpeggiated riff that twist and move as the main riff marches rigidly forward.

Drumhead - Hygiene - The Finnish sound (big up Teemu Lahtinen!). No messing about with bassless intros, this starts straight off with that bouncy off-beat bass and snapped-on percussion. Little fragments of sound come in, like a hiccuping R2D2, then they are joined by a larger riff that sounds like a parrot squawking through a tracheotomy box. A third element is introduced, an underpinning sound like a rattle in a washing machine as heard through a seashell. Then the break, which introduces a delicate little plinky-plonk melody, a refugee from Europop past, which beeps and boops over a melancholy synth wash. It builds for a bit, then it drops back into the beat, but without the melody, just the harsh sounds, before slowly reintroducing the melodies. In a club this is that moment when the energy shifts upwards, as the melodies swell over the toughness. This is what the Finns do so brilliantly, they layer the tracks so thoroughly and yet so cleanly. It is the final realization of the potential of mid-90's Goa trance, where there were all kinds of layers yet they often worked against each other. The Finnish sound, on the other hand, has multiple layers to unpick and yet everything makes sense in its place, everything is where it should be.

Re-Up Requests

2005-04-04T16:19:00.000+01:00

If anyone wants me to re-up any of the mp3's from earlier posts, just let me know in the comments for this post and I'll do it tonight and update this post to indicate.

Into the Bleak Night

2005-04-03T03:30:00.000+01:00

Apple Juice - Raving Together (mp3) - Synth pads, requisitioned from a 1950's vision of the future, open with a Germanic voice intoning "for one priceless moment, in the whole history of man, all the people are one...raving together". Echoey one-note stab noise (particularly all-encompassing on headphones) and then the boshy kick drum comes in. The bare bones percussion of Eurorave bolt themselves on (melody and texture being the main attraction) preparing for the rolling off-beat bass. One of those dance music cliches I never get sick of, there's just something to that kick-bass-kick-bass pump that awakens something deep inside of me. Maybe it's a phantasm of memory back to the Germanic tribes slaughtering their way through Europe to sack Rome. Or maybe I just like my pleasures simple. Whatever. The layers of melody interwine, the signal note slices through the air, sharp as a blade, a piano line twists in and around the kick like a graceful and sober girl cutting her way through the dancefloor delirium. Above it all is the main arpeggiated riff that emerges from the breakdown not with an explosion, but a shimmer, sparkling like a waterfall on a summer day.

Xavi Escolano - D.a.f.y.k. (mp3) - This one, too, opens with those peculiar synthetically melancholy mid-90's Eurorave strings. Like Robocop on a mountain top trying to remember genuine emotion. Then, well, you know, whomping fast kick, pumping bass and that shrivelled percussion, the frame that contains the layers of sound. Then one of those ridiculous English-language samples that non-English speaking dance music producers (in this case, Spanish) seem to love. 'The eye of the king'? The sort of thing that you hear on a dancefloor and stop for a second, look at your friend and raise an eyebrow. But not for too long, because the 303 line has arrived. Despite being possibly the most overused sound in dance music, for me there is nothing to match it. On a big soundsystem it comes across, all at once, as angular, organic, and mechanical. Dry ice as sound. Psychedelia as a coldly inhuman command to stomp. The main riff is basic, simple, but so sublime. A single, pulsing chord, shadowed by its fractionally later echo, that floats over all else, over the jackhammer rhythm track, around the screaming 303 line, under the cloudy, gaseous presence of the strings. Slowly all the elements subtract themselves from the track, leaving only the rejected drunk's attack on a wall of a kick and the feeblest trace of the melody.

Virus Syndicate - The Work Related Illness

2005-04-02T18:46:00.000+01:00

01. Slowdown
02. Major List MC's
03. Clockwork
04. Throwing in the Towel
05. Girls
06. Karma
07. Wasted
08. On the Run
09. Nadine
10. Get Money
11. Taxman

Throughout the continuum of British electronic street music (rave, jungle, UK garage, and now grime) most attention has been focused on London. This is especially true with today's grime scene, where at times it is hard to pull your eyes off what's happening in East London (which is, admittedly, home to Dizzee Rascal, Roll Deep, Nasty Crew, Ruff Sqwad, Newham Generals, Jammek the World, plus about a billion others) to realize that there's a lot going on outside the M25.

One of the places that has its own thing going on is Manchester, the (literally!) grimy, crime-ridden former industrial city in Northern England that has traditionally been the second city of English music. Manchester has a glorious musical history, and today it is home to a variety of new grime crews. For instance, Tony Wilson, the man who started Factory Records, the legendary Hacienda club, and discovered Joy Division and the Happy Mondays, has recently signed a grime crew called Raw-T to his new label. But the main crew in Manchester is Virus Syndicate, and this, their first album, is probably the biggest grime release to come out of Manchester yet, and one of the first proper grime albums period. Released on long-term experimental electronic music specialist Planet Mu label it is, frankly, fucking sweet.

There's a lot that I really like about this album. For one thing, the production is totally on point. Their ace in the hole is their producer, Mark One, who is one of the very best grime/dubstep producers in England at the moment, and on this album he really exceeds himself, weaving together an awesome tapestry of sound. A good example of this is 'Girls', which combines ocean deep bass, jittery percussion, a one-note old skool stab, computer game beeps, and a strange disembodied voice into an amazingly deep and spacey backing for the mc's. Another cool tune is 'Wasted' where the mc's drop their verses about getting drunk and high over a slithering rhythm, bass that wobbles like a 'Big Naturals' video, and a few layers of tinkly melody.

This is one of the things that I really like about this album: it's nothing but grime, and they resisted the temptation to soften things up with any American-style rnb or hip-hop cuts. Maybe this is just me being a bit "give me my exotic music damnit!", but one of the things that I like about grime is that it isn't rap, that it's different, that the music is different, that the mc's flow differently, that it just sounds different (count them differents!) from the rap music that is ever-present in New York. Although I like hip-hop and rnb, I don't think it is all that exciting or interesting, certainly not compared to grime, which is probably the most sonically exciting stuff I've heard in years. It makes me throw my hands up in frustration when I hear grime crews who are otherwise responsible for some of the freshest music around turning their hands to standard hip-hop/rnb stuff that is the same (except for their English accents) as what I can hear if I turn on Hot 97.

I also like their mc's JSD, Nika D, and Goldfinger. Not only do they not bother appropriating American accents/flows, but they keep it strictly Mancunian. Since most of the vocal grime stuff that has been released so far has been from London it's cool to hear the Manchester accent flowing over the beats. They cover the usual topics of grime lyrics (getting messed up, fighting, petty crime, their own awesomeness, women) with an unusual level of style and the odd bit of humor. Lyrically, for me, the standout track is Nadine, a harrowing account of one girl's descent into crack addiction and prostitution.

All in all, this is a very good album. The production is absolutely top notch, and the mc's are excellent as well. I think that the hook-up with Planet Mu is a good idea, because it's quite clear that Paradinas has given them the space to do what they want. Well worth a purchase.

Crossposted to Riddim.ca

I Need to be Updating More Often

2005-04-01T05:36:00.000+01:00

I'm giving my apartment a comprehensive clean tonight, which is probably a bit overdue, so no long post, just a template bit of quoting someone else's article and then giving you some mp3's (which is what you are here for, right?).

I like reggaeton. Considering that while I am, say, watching tv I often find the sofa vibrating from someone driving by playing it at death star volume, it's a good thing. I live on the third floor as well. As far as bass heavy music goes, it's fun, and it's nice to listen to something and just concentrate on the sound of the voices without having a clue what they are talking about - undoubtedly the lyrics are as foolish and stereotypical as a lot of English-language music, but if you don't know what someone is saying you can pretend that they're talking about serious stuff (maaaan).

Anyways, the quotage (from "Riddims by the Reggaetón" in this week's Village Voice)

"Tego Calderón enters stage right at Madison Square Garden. On cue, the crowd at last October's second annual Megaton concert—the largest reggaetón event in the country—erupts into a frenzy. They're drunk off the deafening riddims pulsating from the venue's enormous speakers. Midway through a medley of hits that secured Tego's position as the king of reggaetón in the U.S., Fat Joe and the Terror Squad join their Afro-Boricua counterpart to perform the year's pervasive "Lean Back" remix. And the sea of almost 20,000 screaming (and some sobbing) fans of all ages and races ripple enormous Puerto Rican, Dominican, Colombian, and Ecuadorian flags in the air. It looks like closing night at the summer Olympics.

Today, the stuff is increasingly invading the U.S. rap and r&b charts, and a whole crop of stars have major releases scheduled for this spring. Last month, S.O.B.'s even kicked off its weekly "Picante Fridays: Latin Rap & Reggaetón Fiesta" at Joe's Pub. Other Megaton top-billers—Zion y Lennox, Trebol Clan, Nicky Jam, Mickey Perfecto, and the genre's next great brown hope, Julio Voltio, who is on Tego's own Jiggiri/White Lion label—blur the lines between hip-hop and reggaetón culture. Like rappers, reggaetón artists are driven by the competition of freestyle battles. And the incorporation of the DJ into sets is becoming the industry norm. "Musically, reggaetón was born in a hip-hop environment, with a little bit of Jamaican dancehall and Puerto Rico's own tropical flavor and ritmo," says Vico C, one of the movement's founding fathers."

Yer mp3's:
Don Omar - Dale don mas duro
Ivy Queen - Matando
Tego Calderon - Bailalo Como Tu Quieras

Get Better Soon, Laura

2005-03-24T04:04:00.000Z

My sister has been sick recently, and seeing as she is a New York rock queen, here's some mp3's for her benefit (and everyone else's too). I don't buy much rock music these days, so these are all kind of old, but I like them, and hopefully you will as well.

Sonic Youth - Chapel Hill - From their 1992 album Dirty, a melodic one with Thurston Moore sounding whingey. I like it.

Husker Du - Books About UFO's - From the 1985 album New Day Rising, which was Husker Du's big switch from their older hardcore punk styles to a more melodic thing. This is about a girl who reads books about UFO's. And it even has pianos. Fun.

Fugazi - Turnover - Shouty stuff from the Washington DC hardcore legends Fugazi. Off the 1990 album Repeater.

Dinosaur Jr. - Start Choppin' - From the 1993 album Where You Been. Main dude J. Mascis does his strangled cat voice, some pretty riffs , and a monumental guitar solo.

Wake Up!

2005-03-18T06:00:00.000Z

The Producer - B-Boy Brutality

Shadows

2005-03-18T02:28:00.000Z

Via Jeff Chang I found a link to a really cool overview of the history of Quannum Projects, the Bay Area giants of underground hip-hop.

The bass line thunders out of the DNA Lounge's colossal speakers as the sold-out crowd pushes toward the stage. With this many arms and bodies intertwined, it's hard to tell where one person ends and another begins. The beat drops. Cutting through the darkness, stage lights find the performers -- MCs Lyrics Born, Lateef, and Gift of Gab -- as they shuffle onto the stage, dressed immaculately in pressed button-down shirts. As the bodies surge, Lyrics Born cracks a quick grin before breaking into his gruff, singsong flow that rides over a deceptively laconic sample. Marveling at the crowd's enthusiasm, Lateef provides Lyrics Born with a smooth, supporting vocal counterpoint. From the amount of fun everyone's having, it's hard to imagine that these three are CEOs of the most successful independent hip hop label in the Bay Area, Quannum Projects. But they are that, and much more.

For the next 2 1/2 hours, the Quannum MCs, with the help of their DJ, Chief Xcel, deliver a euphoric set that spans from their early days when they were part of a crew known as Solesides -- and when many in this crowd were barely teenagers -- through their most recent output, most notably Lyrics Born's celebratory anthem "Calling Out," the only hip hop song to stay atop local alternative rock station Live 105's request charts for 15 weeks. Judging from the fervor of both the fans and the performers, it's evident that this is more than just a homecoming for this crew, which was on tour most of last year. This is an assertion of dominance, a presence not felt since the glory days of Hieroglyphics in the mid-'90s. Later, Lateef declares that this is "probably the best show [he's] ever done."

It sounds like hyperbole, but it's not. Over the past 13 years, Quannum Projects and its stable of musicians/owners have had arguably the greatest success of any independent hip hop label in balancing artistic viability with commercial appeal. Quannum co-founder DJ Shadow's 1996 album Entroducing is the top-selling instrumental hip hop album in the genre's history, while many consider Blazing Arrow, the second full-length album from Blackalicious, a duo composed of MC Gift of Gab and producer Chief Xcel, to be the epitome of politically conscious, socially responsible hip hop. Lyrics Born's 2003 release, Later That Day, was renowned as one of the strongest debuts from an MC this decade and broke into the Top 40 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart. But what is most exciting -- and what makes Lateef's assertion seem genuine -- is that the label is really just beginning to gain momentum.

Anyways, reading it inspired me to throw up some Shadow mp3's, because I've always thought he was really really good. There has perhaps never been anyone else so skilled, in my opinion, at creating entire soundscapes through sampling, where everything meshed together beautifully to make beautiful, deep, and emotionally powerful music.

DJ Shadow & the Grooverobbers - In/Flux - A very early release from his time with Mo'Wax, possibly his first solo release for the label. A twelve minute virtuoso performance of sampling. Hypnotic and beautiful.

Zimbabwe Legit - Shadow's Legitimate Mix - This is off the Headz II compilation, which was a bit of a grab bag of stuff, featuring some really cool stuff, some trash, and lots of 'meh' material. This is really good, though, so that's why I've upped it.

DJ Shadow - Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt - This is off his first album, Entroducing, and is probably my favorite track off of it. It's built around a little piano riff, some heavy heavy drums, and all kinds of vocal fragments, and a strange monologue that he must have grabbed somewhere. Powerful.

Beat Camp

2005-03-17T02:10:00.000Z

Last Wednesday's Richie Vibe Vee show on BBC 1xtra, well the bit featuring the Beat Camp crew of producers, dj's and mc's. One of the crew, Dexplicit, did the production on 'Pow', the biggest tune of last year.

Part One - Includes interview with the crew members, plus some tracks.

Part Two - Part one of the crew in the mix.

Part Three - Part Two of the crew in the mix.

Last Friday

2005-03-17T01:34:00.000Z

Last Friday I went with my friend Andy to Rothko on the Lower East Side to see the US debuts of the London grime mc's D Double E, Jammer, and Ears. It was a pretty fun show, and you can read a review of the night here. It was a pretty good time. Anyways, you can check out a video of the guys from earlier in the night spitting over the Mike Jones 'Still Tippin' instrumental at East Village Radio, which is, if you've ever been to 1st and 1st, that weird looking little storefront radio studio where the dj is literally right in the window.

Plus you can read an interview with Shadetek, the guys who put on the party (it's called 'Bangers n' Mash' - terrible name) here. Plus, an article from the New Yorker that easily explains everything to everyone.

Update

2005-03-16T17:04:00.000Z

I've just finished an expanded review of the L-Man mixtape at Riddim.ca. Have a look.

Apropos of Nothing

2005-03-16T01:54:00.000Z

Reading tonight, so no big post. Still, here are two mp3's.

Jedi Knights - Dance of the Naughty Knights

The Jedi Knights was the electro side-project of Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard, better known as ambient pioneers Global Communication. This appeared in the mid-90's, well before the 'electroclash' revival of those early 80's tracks. Ultimately they were forced to abandon this particular alias when George Lucas's lawyers got wind of their activities.

Unkle - Celestial Annihilation

Unkle started out as a collaboration between DJ Shadow and James Lavelle of Mo'Wax Records. It's still going, but Shadow has left to pursue other projects. This is a track off of the 'Psyence Fiction' album which, to be honest, wasn't all that great. This tune, though, is awesome. Sweeping strings and a solid electro boom-bap. Simple but effective.

The Speed of Sound

2005-03-13T09:45:00.001Z

I love music that is made with computers.

I don't mind 'real' instruments and all that, but when you get down to it, I'd rather listen to synths.

I especially love rave music.

I love straight-down-the-line kickdrum nonsense.

I love high bpm's.

I love screaming synths.

I love the much-mocked offbeat bassline.

I even, still, love snare rolls. Cheesy or not.

And when it comes to completely maniacal rave music, nothing is better than freeform hardcore. But what is freeform hardcore? Freeform is the new name for trancecore. But what is trancecore? Ah.

Trancecore, as a distinct genre of UK hard dance music, emerged in the mid-90's when long-time stalwarts of the happy hardcore scene like Billy Bunter of GBT, Sharkey and the RSR crew started moving away from the diva vocals, piano samples and cheesy stabs that characterized UK hardcore and towards a synthesis of their sound with European hard trance. Slowly, other artists emerged, particularly the utterly awesome Helix and Fury, but it was a micro-niche of what was anyways a relatively small niche of electronic music.

Happy hardcore was a strange thing, the essence of happy-go-lucky early 90's raveyness preserved in aspic, charging forward like a manically grinning amphetamine-addled Frankenstein. To tell the story to the uninitiated in the quickest and most perfunctory way possible, in the early 90's there was only one UK rave scene. If you listen to sets from these events, massive festivals of debauchery set in the otherwise sedate English countryside, the music covers an enormous range of sounds and textures, furiously chopped-up breakbeats melding into the classic 4/4 kickdrum and heliumized diva vocals and ecstatic pianos giving way to darkside pads and furious mentasms. Slowly the scene started to fracture, due to police crackdowns and to the long harsh comedown as hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ravers started to really hit their tolerance limits for drugs (at the same time as the quality of imported ecstasy tablets started to really nosedive).

In London the musical focus started moving away from the most stereotypically 'ravey' aspects (the manic pianos, the delirious stab patterns, the diva vocals) towards a more serious sound, as producers started to take advantage of sampling technology to twist the breakbeats in all kinds of revolutionary ways. This was the beginning of jungle. Out in the provinces the opposite was happening. Increasingly turned off by jungle (its open ragga influences, its lack of e-friendly vibesiness, its reputation for trouble) the other part of the hardcore scene started to move in the other direction, purifying and concentrating the happy vibes and consciously jettisoning the melancholic and moody elements that had always been an essential part of the ying-yang balance of the earlier rave sound. As jungle moved to ever greater rhythmic complexity hardcore was moving in the other direction foregrounding the 4/4 kick, reducing the breakbeats to framing elements of even jettisoning them entirely. With the influence of Dutch gabba the kickdrums solidified, taking up much more of the space in the sound than in earlier tunes, becoming so powerful that they shook your ribcage when played on a massive sound system. As producers refined their game, slowly the amateurish but exciting unpredictability of the early 90's sound disappeared, as the producers, through great trial and error, developed pretty fool-proof methods of triggering the raver's rush. Certain elements became standard in every hardcore record - the overpowering kick, the off-beat stabs, the Fantasyland piano n' vocal breakdowns.

The difference between jungle and hardcore was apparent too in the difference between the crowds. As jungle moved away from pop-pupilled mayhem to being fuelled mainly by weed and alcohol the look became much more street, and the more eccentric accessories of rave culture were jettisoned in favor of a stripped-down urban look. Unlike the multiracial crowds at jungle raves, the happy hardcore scene was overwhelmingly white working-class, and predominantly suburban and provincial. At happy hardcore raves the early 90's never ended, from the blizzard of road-worker's jackets, glowsticks, tracksuits, whistles, horns, grinding jaws and rolling eyes that greeted anyone walking into an event like Dreamscape, Helter Skelter, Hardcore Heaven, United Dance, Labyrynth, Rezerection or Slammin' Vinyl.

At the same time as these changes were occurring, across the North Sea there were two giant rave scenes that were also in the throes of light-speed evolution. One was gabba, Holland's crazier-than-thou rave sound, militant hyper-fast distorted kick drums with maniacally darkside synths scraped directly from a bezerker fury hallucination. The other was hardtrance, Germany's more melodic rendering of raveyness. To be honest, as much as I love hardtrance, I'm pretty unclear on its history, as I've never seen anything in English about the origins of that scene. It evolved out of the earliest techno-trance music in Germany, the application of Teutonic arpeggiated melodies to techno rhythms. Hardtrance was fast music, with bpms ranging from a brisk 150 bpm to a deliriously charged 180 bpm, but it was generally not as fast as gabba, and it was much more melodic. In the early years this often took very simple forms, one or two-note riffs over a whomping kick and offbeat bassline. Unlike the monochromatic charge of gabba, which lacked basslines in any defined sense, relying on the distorted kick to provide bass pressure, hard trance had that kick-bass-kick-bass power that, on a loud sound system, gets people (like, well, me) grinning from ear to ear and pumping their fists. Hardtrance also had wonderfully, gloriously cliched key changes, as the music would suddenly shift up and down in intensity.

So, this influence made itself felt in Britain. Happycore was in a deep creative rut, with the same 10-15 dj's monopolizing the scene and the few specialist labels turning out a nonstop flow of mindlessly similar stuff. Indeed, as time went on the music went even deeper into cheesy territory, culminating in a truly shocking period around 97/98 when a disturbingly high proportion of the output consisted of terribly tacky tunes with fairground melodies and 80's pop vocal covers. Dire stuff. So, for dj/producers like Bunter, Ramos, and Sharkey a new avenue was definitely needed. Looking to the European sound of labels like EDM, Spaceflower, and Tesseract they started adapting their sound. The new sound was much rougher than the happycore sound, with the divas pensioned off and the pianos shoved into the attic. In their place came screaming 303 lines, attitudinally-challenged synth riffs, sweeping pads, and a much more serious vibe. Labels like GBT, RSR, Bonkers, Stompin' Choonz, Xy2, Nu Energy and Digital Beats were putting out some of the best rave music I've ever heard, even though it was a real hassle to find a lot of it, so microscopic was the demand.

I loved this sound at the time. It was such powerful music, the perfect synthesis of a couple of different styles of rave music. Unfortunately, it was, at the time, never accepted by the main part of the hardcore raving crew, who saw it as too weird and moody. The problem was that happy hardcore was dying on its arse by the late 90's, a corpse of a scene that hadn't had even a single vaguely original idea for years. With Gatecrasher-style uplifting eurotrance taking its place as the mass-market pillhead music it more or less completely collapsed, taking with it the puny trancecore scene. For several years hardcore was in the doghouse as record sales collapsed, raves emptied, and even the flagship compilation series Bonkers was put on ice. Most of the producers and dj's in both happycore and trancecore went off to get involved in other styles of music. For instance, Billy Bunter and Jon Doe started making and playing hard house and hard trance, while people like Helix, Fury, and Ramos gave up making music altogether.

The only person left flying the flag for maniacal trance riffs, screaming 303's, and rampaging bpm's was Kevin Energy, boss of the Nu Energy Collective. For years Big Kev (for that is he) was the only guy in the UK putting these sorts of tunes out, pumping out tune after tune from himself, Sharkey, and a few other people like Marc Smith and DJ Eclipse. Basically, being into trancecore meant that you'd buy releases whenever Kev put something out, which was maybe once every two months (obviously I was buying other styles of music at the time), and otherwise you'd spend your time tracking down the stuff you'd missed from the first flowering. Slowly but surely his hard work started to pay off and other people who had given up, like Richard Andrews (aka Shanty) of Digital Beats, got back into the production and release game.

It was around this time that the name shift from trancecore to freeform occurred. The idea of calling it freeform hardcore was that it would be a style of hardcore music that was unconstrained by boundaries, where influences could be taken from the full spectrum of electronic music to make original and powerful hardcore rave music. In practice, of course, it remained very heavily trance-oriented. Which was fine with me.

The actual hardcore scene itself has in the last couple of years has experienced its own revival, having taken on a heavily trance-influenced sound, as pushed by Hixxy's Raverbaby label and Scott Brown's Evolution label. This new hardcore sound was similar to the old trancecore sound, except cheesier. At the same time, the trancecore/freeform axis benefited from this revival and from Kev's years of hard work, becoming far more accepted in the hardcore scene at large as well as in the hard house/nu-nrg scene. Lots of new producers entered the scene, including a large contingent from Finland, who completely revolutionized the freeform sound. But that's a topic for another post.

Pearsall - Rampage Turbo Volume 6

98.7 megs, 192 kbps, 72 minutes

01. Carbon Based, E-Nrg & Nemes – Prologue (Electrolysis)
02. Code 33 – Tabular Desperation (United Ravers)
03. Kevin Energy – Crazy Styles (Vinal & Devotion RMX) (Nu Energy)
04. DJ Fury – De-Sensitize (Stompin Choonz)
05. Stargazer – Released (CLSM RMX) (Elation)
06. Vinal, Devotion & K-Complex – A World Of Illusion (Nu Energy)
07. Pozor – Lost Generation (Tesseract)
08. Furious – Nightbreed (Electronic)
09. Bass-X – Pilgrim (Kevin Energy & K-Complex RMX) (Evolution)
10. Scott Majestik – Psychopathic Bitch (Bonkerz)
11. Storm & Menis – Dynamite (Destructive Force)
12. DJ Fade – The Future (Future Dance)
13. Shanty & Tazz – 50,000 Jars of Hardcore Jam (Electronic)
14. Nocturnal – Fuck Existence (Digital Beatz)
15. DJ Eclipse – Stairway to Brooklyn (Nu Energy)
16. Sharkey & K-Complex – Delusion (Hec-Tech)
17. Alek Szahala – Superstition (Electronic)

This is a mix I did in December 2003, and it includes a couple of the different styles of hardcore I've mentioned (of course we're talking micro-genre hair-splitting so for the uninitiated I'd guess it would all sound like ludicrously last mayhem). This mix is book-ended by two twisted Finnish tracks, and includes mid-90's European tunes from Code 33 and Pozor, two early(ish) UK trancecore tracks from DJ Eclipse and DJ Fury, some dark and rough UK hardcore from Scott Majestik, Nocturnal and Sharkey & K-Complex, some lighter ravey stuff from DJ Fade and Storm & Menis, and some acid-trancey freeform tunage from Furious and the Nu Energy Collective. I've always been really pleased with this mix. I get quite anally-retentive about the technical side of my djing, and this mix has some of the sharpest mixing I've ever done on a recorded mix, with the tunes morphing into each other really nicely.

As I said before, this is very much a minority interest as far as music goes.

But I don't care.

I think it's awesome stuff. Pure manic energy from start to finish.

Righteousness

2005-03-13T00:58:00.000Z

Some guy named releaseroger sounding off in response to a Hattie Collins column on the BBC site entitled 'Can Grime Pay?'

Maybe I'm getting too old for all of this.

Correct me if I'm wrong Collective Ed's but every two or three years a 'new' movement arrives to save us all from the 'majors'.

Let's play the cool card like all of the artists featured in the article have.

To champion something as 'fresh' and 'vibrant' is to make it cool? No? When something's 'cool' the quickest way to make it 'uncool' in a dad-dancing kinda way is to sell out to the majors?

You telling me this 'movement's not all about 'front'?

None of these guys want to earn any money right? They are all just doing it for the kick. I bet as long as there's room to breakdance everything's ok?

Get feckin' real. The REAL deal is that they're all out to make a quick buck on the back of any movement.
Jeez, why bother with it all if you're not out to make a few quid?

To me, this stinks of cultural snobbery. An exclusive club which allows entry to only cool people. There's a sense of hanging on to something precious yet something that would be sold as quick as your granny if the man with the suitcase full of money from the big major record label came knocking on the door.

"The worry now, of course, is whether Grime will go the way of UKG and end up merging into the mainstream,its real roots lost to the corporate coin eager to rake in the cash rather than build and nurture. "

You mean, it's not happened already?
"Real roots lost to the corporate coin"? My god, how funny is that sentence? Get a feckin' grip of the situation here.

"I've seen a lot of people at the top end of music who have no idea what's going on in the street; says 18-year-old Lady Sovereign, whose ear-splitting Cha Ching is just one highlight on Run The Road. They're asking 'What's the hottest thing?; And these people are controlling music? Some of them ain't got a clue."

You mean, like you?
What people at the top end of music? Oh, you mean you've had lunch with the head of BMG on Tuesday and went to a cocktail party with the head of EMI on Thursday?

Snobbery goes both ways here. The majors have the money and the marketing power.
The independants or the 'new wavers' or whatever they want to call themselves this week rely solely on that snobbish outlook that 'our music is too cool' for just ANYONE to like.
So, you don't want to be popular? You don't want adulation? You just want to 'keep it real'?

Obviously, my interpretation of being a respected musical artist is wrong. You should play behind closed doors, never release an album, just tell people you're 'keeping it real' and drive around in a knackered Ford Fiesta with a wonky exhaust and no MOT.
If that's the case, I'd like to be the first to champion myself as the greatest ever musical artist. I'm also the coolest as absolutely NOBODY has heard of me. Check that out. How 'real' is that?! Y'see the thing is that the majors don't get it. My guitar playing is so unique and so fresh that the big guns aren't ready for me yet. I'm ten years in front, baby! My way of combining Welsh Male Voice Choirs with Naplam Death samples whilst playing them over a speeded up version of 'Trans-Europe Express' is too goddamn cool to be heard by all you people that think you know music. Only my cat has heard it and he thinks it's sh*t.
You wait till you hear my version of 'Boogie on Reggae Woman' made with a kazoo, ping-pong balls on the back of a piano, nipple clamps connected to a 240V charge placed on the arse of my local MP and a bangin' house tune clocking in at 30,000 bpm's......oh, you can't coz if you do hear it then that means I'm no longer fresh and therfore I've sold out to the majors......f*ck it.....I'm off to be an insurance salesman.

[back on planet earth]

Somebody for fu*k's sake explain 'keeping it real' to me?
And I double dare anybody to explain it without reading back your comment and smelling the musical snobbery in it.

"Semtex agrees. 'The biggest conflict I have is with major labels because they still don't get it,; he sighs. "

I beg to differ.
I think you 'don't get it'. I think you don't understand how music evolves or has even evolved to your latest brand of 'new'.

Articles like this f*ck me off.
I am TIRED of being told what's 'real' and what's not, what's 'cool' and what isn't.
I'm an adult. Treat me like one.

"Abroad, they understand the cultural value and music of our artists."

You telling me that Britain doesn't?
Where the f*ck have you been for the last 50 or so years?
You think America understands the "cultural value and music of our artists"?

"you can guarantee we'd have a beautiful industry."

You bloody hypocrite.
Industry.
What is industry without money?
What is industry without a market?
What is industry without lots of people to finance your industry? Are they not fans? The ones that WILL BUY THE RECORDS?

"don't believe the hype" - Public Enemy
Ain't that the truth.

As someone who has sometimes used 'not real' and 'not underground' arguments in discussing music I don't like, reading this is receiving a cold, hard slap of truth.

Who's that white kid L Dot Man?

2005-03-12T21:10:00.000Z

L-Man - Facts of Life

This is a zip file, if you don't have an unzipping program, I recommend Stuffit.

01. The Other Side Of Me (Produced By Mr.Fusion)
02. My Life Ft.Chloe (Produced By L-Man)
03. When I Look Into Your Eyes (Produced By Mr.Fusion)
04. Freestyle
05. Hannah (Produced By Mr.Slash)
06. Disturbed (Produced By Mr.Slash)
07. Freestyle (Produced By DJ Q)
08. Some People (Produced By Ripperman)
09. 25 Minute Mix Set (Mixed By Dj Frampster)
01. Freestyle Ft.Narstie (Produced By Dj Suicide And Rawdeal)

I got this recently from the RWD forum, and I've re-upped it because I think it's really good. L-Man is one of the mc's of one of my absolute favorite grime crews, South London's N Double A. They aren't as well known as the big East London crews (well, 'known' is relative, as it's a pretty small scene, in all honesty) like Roll Deep, Nasty Crew, Fire Camp, and Ruff Sqwad, yet the sets I've heard from them have been really awesome.

This mixtape doesn't have the same raw energy of those pirate radio sessions, but I like it for the raw emotional honesty he brings to his lyrics, which is something quite different from the usual 'I'm the baddest/best lyricist/best lover' type of lyrics from most London grime mc's. He talks about living in a children's home after being abandoned by his birth mother, his love for his foster mother, an ex-girlfriend who broke his heart, and even political and historical themes. He's got a really weird, angularly accented voice that sounds really good, fusing his London accent with a pseudo-patois influence. For those who don't know London accents it might sound quite weird, but I really like his flow and his lyrics. Most of the tracks on this are hip-hop, except for the 25 minute mix, where L-Man rhymes over big instrumentals like Wiley 'Dragon Stout', Plasticman 'Cha', and Bossman 'Bongo Eyes'.

I've also included another mp3, a promo mix cd where he appears with the rest of N Double A. The disc was mixed by Plasticman on the decks, and it is possibly the most exciting grime set I've ever heard. It's amazing, 45 minutes of pummeling basslines and absolutely chaotic mc'ing, pure undiluted energy, a torrent of words from guys who you can tell are absolutely, 100%, purely committed.

Plasticman feat. N Double A - Top Boy Promo CD

You Thieves!

2005-03-09T19:35:00.000Z

"Last month, a student at the University of Arizona was sentenced to three years probation and a $5,400 fine for illegally distributing music and movies on the Internet. A spokesman for the recording industry claims investigators found more than $50 million worth of pirated material on his computer. That seems like an awful lot of money. How much is stolen music worth?

A lot more than you might think. Since a song costs only 99 cents on iTunes, and movies go for less than $20 on Amazon.com, it seems impossible to amass $50 million worth of entertainment on one computer. (Indeed, even if you could find 50.5 million songs or 2.5 million movies to download, they would take up hundreds of terabytes of disk space, which would itself cost a fortune.) But in some court cases, the value of a pirated file is based not on its retail price, but on the damages done to the company that legally produces and sells it.

There are a number of ways to calculate these damages. Some federal prosecutors have assumed that about 10 people will download anything on a file-sharing network, so they multiply the retail value of shared song files by 10. But it can get much worse: Lawsuits brought by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America have claimed statutory damages as set out in the United States Copyright Law from 1976. According to the section on "Remedies for infringement," each work carries a value of between $750 and $30,000, as determined by a judge. (These are the current figures; the Digital Theft Deterrence Act boosted statutory damages by about half in 1999.) While a judge must also determine what qualifies as a "work," RIAA lawsuits typically request statutory damages for each song—and not each album."

Read the rest. Oh, and check out The Great MP3 Ethics Thread from Dissensus.

Rob One

2005-03-08T21:35:00.000Z

We Eat So Many Shrimp has two superb hip-hop mixes from DJ Rob One up for download. Go check them out.

MIA

2005-03-08T00:20:00.000Z

Over the last year probably no single musician has gotten the music criticism community into such a lather as Maya Arulpragasam. M.I.A., as she is otherwise known, is the Sri Lankan-born singer whose debut album is just about to drop on XL Recordings. Her back story has stoked much of this controversy. Her father was (is?) a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, generally known as the Tamil Tigers, and she has named her debut album , Arular, in his honor. As a child she moved with her mother to West London where she went to school before going on to become an art student and become friends with some of London's most known hipster types, like Justine Frischmann from Elastica. So, this hugely varied life-experience, as well as her music (which mashes together dancehall, grime, hip-hop, and variants like reggaeton and baile funk), has provided the grist for a thousand mills churning over the eternal questions of "Is she 4 REAL? Does it matter?"

Personally speaking, I think that her stuff is a bit meh, some of it's pretty good, but I haven't heard anything that really blows my brains out. I like the mixtape she did with Diplo, Piracy Funds Terrorism, but it wasn't absolutely incredible. What has been cool has been the discussion about her. All the debate-type back and forth has been awesome, so here's a collection of stuff to read through:

Very very long ILM thread.

From Dissensus: "MIA - "Galang" on XL" and "Is MIA really that in tune with the hottest sounds?".

What MIA is listening to.

Three articles from Robert Christgau from The Village Voice: "Right, the Record", "Quotations From Charmin M.I.A.", and "Burning Bright".

Reviews of her mixtape with Diplo, Piracy Funds Terrorism from Pitchfork Media, Glorious Noise and Stylus Magazine.

Sasha Frere-Jones on her in The New Yorker.

Carl Wilson has had a lot to say, see here, here, here, and, hell, here.

A Nirali Magazine feature.

Luca Lucarini has a go as well, here and here.

Finally, check out Simon Reynolds offerings including the ones that can be found here, here, and here. That last one is the most recent one, and is pretty serious stuff (maaan).

If you made it this far, you deserve some mp3's. These are tracks from Piracy Funds Terrorism, so you'll get an idea of the sort of thing she's up to:
MIA - China Girl (Diplo Mix)
MIA - Fire Bam (Diplo Mix)
MIA - Uraqt (Diplo Mix)

Update, 3/8/2005, 3:53pm: Matt 'Woebot' Ingram weighs in.

Still...

2005-03-07T00:10:00.000Z

Harajuku, Tokyo

I did manage to salvage some stuff, so here's an mp3. This is at least ten years old. Before I had full-on my religious conversion to jungle around my fifteenth birthday I listened to both jungle and punk, and one of the labels I used to buy a lot of stuff from was a Hamburg-based rock label called Crypt Records. They put out all kinds of low-fi balls-to-the-wall rock n' roll, from compilations of original 60's garage rock (the precursor stuff to punk) to albums by all kinds of never-to-be-succesful American punk and bluesy rock bands. This particular track is from a Japanese band called Teengenerate whose album I got this off of ('Get Action') was utterly, utterly awful, except for this and one other track. This one, though, is great. Just over two minutes of concentratedly noisy mayhem wrapped up in some charmingly awful production. Screaming, squealing smack your head into the wall music. Love it.

Teengenarate - Right Now

Hard Drive Update

2005-03-06T23:39:00.000Z

My external hard drive completely died last night (I couldn't get into it at all due to I/O errors) so I said fuck it and formatted it and lost pretty much all the info. Fortunately earlier this week when it started acting up I transferred all of the essential stuff directly onto the main drive, but I've still lost a huge amount of stuff. Luckily at various points I've burnt a lot of stuff onto cd, but as I am currently copying lots of stuff back onto the external hard drive, no (proper) blogging today. There'll be new stuff up tomorrow, cross my heart.