WOEBOT

Last years Tate prize was a total debacle. Terrible work by everyone and that fucking awful tranny potter won.

Didnt get to see this years one, but I was delighted Jeremy Deller (Dellar?) one it. I've been following his stuff ever since the K Foundation brass record. Indeed you could read his winning the prize as the final absorbtion of their openly-democratic occult post-rave situationalism into the mainstream. Did anyone see that film he made where the open-topped truck passed through that small town throwing stuff off the back of it? That was good.

The funny thing is that the themes he chooses to explore are extremely close to the spirit of our particular neck of the woods. Hes big on what Simon would call "the lumpen" (and i rechristened the avant-yob) and that entails being big on folk-art from a quite knowing (if avowedly unpatronising) perspective. In passing it strikes me that this must be quite a similar way the Marxists were big on Folk Music (and despised pop), whereas now we know that Marxists all listen to Dub Reggae

Has anyone seen the History of Our World chart that Deller had in his winning entry for the prize? Its a diagram which aspires to connect the miners strike and brass bands to ardkore rave, the theoretical template behind the Acid Brass project. Its definitely taking the mick, the larger leaps are very tenous, but therein lies its inventiveness. I wonder if it would have made more sense as table than a flowchart!

I bet you fifty quid he reads Blissblog.

Original Thread Here
Also of interest...

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:21 AM | Permalink

Just heard his LP the other day, my boss frisbeed it onto my desk after i came in laden with grime twelves en route somewhere.

Listened to it straight through twice.

Its dominated by those samples from that film isnt it? Is that Kes? Mcvicar? I'm sure i ve seen it before myself, what a chilling picture of the law/borstal/prison? Also extremely evocative of another Britain, that of the late seventies early eighties, one of terrible desperation.

Is the underclass as fucked as it was back then? I know k-punk seems to think so. Part of me suspects that it isnt, that what we're witnessing rather is the "oppressed"/"working classes actually having a voice in Grime/records like Skinnymans that it didnt before. Sorry if this sounds patronising, i'm just a toff struggling to see whats outside my own window. I can't think of any potent angry working-class voices from that era off the top of my head. Punk is almost exclusively middle-class in content, any revolt is aimed at largely abstract targets, rather than making forthright denunciations of the horror of inner-city life.

Oi, the supposed working-class punk, seems more involved in plain rocking and rolling or in procuring gang joy. Shoot me down if you disagree.

The Skinnyman record is gorily articulate. Kind of unflinchingly bleak. You suspect that Skinnyman, and this may be incorrect/unkind, has had his fair share of involvement in making the streets as ugly as they are. We take this for for granted with US Rappers, one doesnt need much persuading to believe their background is as dicey and criminal as they let on, but its new in the UK, certainly new the way it bleeds into the music. SUAD for instance, you might suspect they were on the edges of criminal activity, but they never really delved into/explored it in their music. Same applies to all ardkore really, it was brushed slightly under the carpet, even if it was a large part of the rave economy. Skinnyman, though you feel he's moved into a pseudo-righteous position, is clearly at his least comfortable there, takes this high-ground quite squeamishly.

The most enticing thing about the record, the tunes are so-so, beyond the acerbicism and his undeniable charisma is the completely healthy disdain he has for the record industry and this one particular part of his own career (dodgy deals on the side MUST make up 3/4 of his income!). Hearing all the Grime-rs wishing that their music would "Get them out of here" a Wiley prays on Roll Deeps "Let it Out", you just know, god bless em, that its a fucking pointless fantasy. Maybe on or two may squeeze through, be able to make a career, use it to escape the ghetto, but for 99% of them, if they want a semi-decent lifestyle, they'd be better doing as Dogzilla says and get back to school. Go back to technical college, pick up some useful skills for goodness sake! Skinnyman, its obv to see, thinks British HipHop is a total joke, has absolutely no faith in rapping as a "career" and it just gives what he's saying a vital edge, an undeniable shade of darkness, menace and power.

Anyone else heard it?

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:25 AM | Permalink

If you're working for an advertising agency you have to pay huge amounts of money to get the music you want to endorse your product. Quite rightly. You can even go to the point of commisioning a known musician to write the score for you. For instance when i was working for a bloke called Ge**rd De Th**e a long time ago he had The Aph** Tw** do music for that one where the athlete (i think Carl Lewis) runs across the water.

On the other hand if you're unlucky enough to have your music chosen to be played on BBC1, BBC2 or ITV (the main terrestrial TV channels in the UK who exclusively have this deal) you'll only recieve $14 for them to have the usage rights. So just imagine you're quite a cool little electronica outfit, labouring to build a fanbase and then Jamie Oliver comes along, sticks your tune in his cookery programme whereupon all his mainstream audience go "ooh thats pretty" before completely forgetting about it, utterly ignorant as to it's provenance.

You get an insulting $14 buy-out fee (no exaggeration, it's 8 UK pounds stirling) and you're carefully built audience suddenly think you're deeply naff AND, AND, they leapt to the conclusion that you've gone out of your way to sell it to the TV producers (euch!) AND they assume you're rolling in money.

If you ask me that's a pretty shit scenario. If you ever hear a bit of good music on any of those channels, just remember how shafted the artists are!

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:27 AM | Permalink

Here is the second installment of this years Grime CD. Part one (http://www.woebot.com/movabletype/archives/000893.html) looked like this:

Ch Ching: Lady Sovereign
Wonky Vocal: Jookie Mundo
People Don't Know: Donae'O
Bang Bang Bang: Jon E Cash/Black Ops
Lethal: Ruff Squad
S.T.D's: Target feat. Dogzee & Syer
That's Me: Flow Dan
Get Over It: Essentials
Girls get lend, to my friend: God's Gift
Don't Watch Me Though: Donae'O
Top Boy: MC Narstie
Straight Version: God's Gift
Torch: More Fire Crew
Bastard: Wiley
Back To School: Durty Doogz
Chosen One: Riko
Problems: Wiley
War Wid: Footsie & D Double E
Serious Thugs: D Double E & JME
Juggling: Terrah Danjah

--------------------------------------
And here's it's new, tricky to compile, companion (so much to choose from!),

Bruza: Get Me (Aftershock)
Dizzy Rascal: Trapped (XL)
DPM feat Bruza, Napper and Shizzle: Ave Some of That (White)
D Double: Anger Management (White)
Eastwood & Oddz: UR Not Original (A.R.M.Y. Bullett)
Gemma 'The' Fox Feat 2Face: Gone (White)
Guerilla Warfare Feat Swarvo, S.L.K, Rugrat, Musical Mob and Renegade Boys (2 Shoes)
Kano: Mic Check 1,2. (679)
Lethal B: Forward (White)
Ruff Squad: Anna (White)
S.L.K. Feat Wonderkid: Hype Hype (Stick)
Sadie Feat Kano: So Sure (White)
Shola Ama Feat D Double: So Contagious (White)
Ruff Squad Feat Tinchy Stryder: Move (White)
Trim Feat D Double, Wiley, Riko and Footsie: Boogieman (White)
Dizzy Rascal: Untitled (Unknown Genius)
Wiley: Icepole Remix (White)
Wonder Feat Kano: What Have You Done (New Era)

--------------------------------------

That's quite a lot of action since August all told. Huge respect to all the people bringing out records. I reckon putting out a record in itself is a cogent artistic statement, it's a lot more difficult than cobbling together a mix CD, a genuine real-world production hurdle. If you're releasing out records you've definitely got something to say.

On the subject of real world hurdles I was not just distressed but very frustrated to hear that poor old 679 recordings who are putting out the excellent "Run The Road" comp have had their tyres let down by Terrah Danjah who's pulled his tracks because they weren't offering him enough money. This bloody scene needs to get it's records out, or it might as well be Improv. Comps the ilk of which amateur goons like I put together are no substitute for something people can wander into HMV and buy off the shelf. Pull your fucking socks up.

This year was great, and on the basis of the eight or so tracks I wanted to put on here, but which aren't in the shops yet, next year is going to be even better. 5 copies of this are going in the post tomorrow.

My favourite tune of 2004? Gemma Foxs "Gone."

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:25 AM | Permalink

Here's a bit of end-of-year synchronicity the kind which always leads me to expect i must be losing my marbles.

I was going through an old copy of Dazed and Confused at work. Not my copy I can assure you when I came across this little piece they'd done on my local record store. Dazed's office is about a hundred metres from my front door on Old Street. This record store, who they obviously featured as a favour to the owner, is again just round the corner on Whitecross Street.

I read the piece slightly biting my lip because of course this is the very same emporium that I boycotted some 5 years ago when they accepted from a random bloke on the street (without asking for any form of ID) a large pile of CDs that had been stolen from my house. I think that's pretty heinous, tantamount to buying stolen goods. I've also boycotted one store in Glasgow where I worked and discovered the owner had knowingly sold someones stolen collection. Righteous to the core.

Anyway that very same evening I was looking on GEMM for African Headcharge's "Drastic Season", seeing if I could score a cheap copy. Incidentally, I've time on my hands right now cos the Mrs and kids have stolen a march on Christmas and left me alone in London. So I was hunting through GEMM and I came across a single copy, located....................in................Golde n Grooves records.

Blah blah blah called up the owner, got him to drop the record at our local off-license where I picked it up last night after-hours. Lets just hope they've gone straight eh.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:15 AM | Permalink

ED LAWES
14 TRACKS/PIECES
PLANET MU

This is a set of great integrity, the product of three years dedicated
programming. Lawes aesthetic lies in the netherspace between Gil Evans,
Ingram Marshall, and Pierre Henry. However it's this ease with which the
listener can pinpoint antecedents that slightly dogs the record. Many
of the themes have a nagging similarity to music you're sure you heard
once somewhere, indeed occasionally it can feel like an index of Avant-Garde
dabbling. This would be a greater problem if Lawes wasn't so convinced
by his project. Care is taken to explore every sonic nuance: the limping
saxa-tones of "More Time Honoured", the Tibetan gongs of "F/S Bowl/
Fourths and Fiths", and the 1mph string quartet on "Obstacles" are all
wrung for their timbral minutiae.

The bucolic, near-serial tuning used consistently across a broad range
of instrumental set-ups lends the suite a cohesive feel. As the attack
is so even-paced, so gentle, the experience is akin to hearing quite a
traditional jazz record filtered or denatured. Again the question of
artistic originality is an issue here. The release, issued on Mike
Paradinas's Planet Mu imprint, is evidently following an escape-route
out of Techno laid down by Autechre, even if the oldest track on the
record "Actually Real" is the only one with a hint of linear/programmed
beats. Though it seems to be struggling slightly with its origin, there
are promising signs that Lawes may yet reach terminal velocity.

Compared in the cold light of day to some of the music of his
antecedents, most notably that of the historic avant-garde, and
particularly the luminaries clustered around Pierre Schaeffer whom Lawes
seems to beg closest comparison, it's impossible but to remark that the
tone of "14 tracks/Pieces" may not be tart enough. On the other hand it's
worth recalling that some of the pioneers of Musique Concrete (Jacques
Lejeune etc) also worked in this comfort-zone where Jazz is bequeathed a
deeper hue by merit of its inflection in the prism of electronics. It
may well be that the collection's method of composition, hard-disk
editing, is a red herring in the appreciation of an excellent "cool"
jazz record.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:13 PM | Permalink

BOOM BIP
BLUE EYED IN THE RED ROOM
LEX

How did Undie Hip-Hop end up here at the cutting edge of post rock? It
seems as though the backpackers hitched their way across town and in the
process swapped memories of empty malls for jet stream reveries. In
fairness Boom Bips common ground with Hip-Hop extends to a fondness for
sampling (a technique he eschews on "Blue Eyed in The Red Room") and a
previous collaboration with rapper Dose One, not much further. However,
somehow Hip-Hop's corpulence infuses his records, providing his "Rock
Proper" with a transfusion of motivation and righteous energy missing
from the default white indie model.

"Blue Eyed in The Red Room" is, like "Seed to Sun" Boom Bips debut, a
canvas for his yearning, seldom cloying harmonies. Unlike that earlier
record the tenor here is less crisp and ethereal, playing his own
instruments has lent the sound more body and a rougher edge. A track
like the opener "Cimple" is a case in point. The guitar part (reminiscent
of Neil Young's plangent strum on "Dead Man" soundtrack score) carries
the high harmony while beneath it drum machines flicker, box and pulse.
A harpsichord seems to pick up an altogether different rhythm. The whole
assemblage strobes with filigree and aftertrail and it seems a miracle
that it moves forward so gracefully, as purposeful as a hand-woven rug.

It's a surprise to learn that the record was laid down at Silverlake,
Los Angeles, as the sound is both unerringly rural and almost
frostbitten. Indeed one imagines "Blue Eyed in The Red Room" might serve
as an alternative soundtrack to "Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind".
"The Matter (Of Our Discussion)" even sports a romantic vocal, which
would match Kate Winslet's role, delivered here by Nina Nastasia. The
images Boom Bips instrumental mood-scapes conjure are most usually sub-zero:
"Girl Toy" depicts snowy neon-lit carparks, in "Aplomb" Alaskan rail-tracks.
This is carried through more broadly in details like the crisp alpine
chimes of "The Move" and the drums in "Soft and Open" which seem to
skitter as though about a frozen basement.

The record is also a welcome suppository of the generous melodies of
flared rock of the 1970s. For instance "Dumb Day" with its dulcimer,
glockenspiel and silently swelling organ gives the impression of being a
revision of The Band's "Music for Big Pink." Boom Bip somehow manifests
the same charming, yet sturdily unreconstructed masculinity, which
characterised music of this era. "Do's and Don’ts", the record's hit, is
strongly (almost certainly guilelessly) reminiscent of Faust, here
posing as hairy-footed Fugs, and at their most American.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:10 PM | Permalink

Quite intrigued to come upon two genres of music recently which appear not to have been given a name at the time. The first I'd encountered before, most clearly in a selection of tracks which Afrika Bambaata put together as a list of his favourite tunes. This list was a guiding light to funk collectors for years, the likes of Patrick Forge et al, and recently got reprinted in the ego trip book of rap lists. If you'd been to one of Bambaata's early parties this is what you would have heard him play; music from the roots of rap. In Audiogalaxy's heyday I downloaded a load of these tracks, tunes like Yellow Sunshine's "Yellow Sunshine", Dennis Coffey's "Son of Scorpio" and stuff from the Willie Dynamite soundtrack. (I'll dig out the list in full and post it here) These tunes are dominated by huge congas and, perhaps surprisingly squalling guitars. They're quintessentially "Butch", with a capital B.

As I never tire of telling people, "Funk" was a teleological invention, thats to say (and I hope no-one minds me ditching the jargon) invented as a genre retrospectively. Only with the passing of years can it be pinpointed so crisply, it was almost defined by what Mid-Period Hip-Hop deemed worth sampling. In the seventies it was pretty much a mess of Soul, Rock, Jazz, Pop etc. Almost spite of this, the genre i've pinpointed seems distinct, ironically possibly even more distinct that "Funk Proper" which seems to exist nowhere outside of The Meters back catalogue and a few select James Brown records (fat drums, minimalistic interplay, guitars on a reign, vocals as instrument etc) and it's (roll of drums) "Rock Disco" (though "Dance Rock" or when it isn't so purely Rock (like Funkadelic fer instance) "Funk Rock")

What really set me on the trail of the beast, which must have filled the discos between 1971 and 1975 as the heat went out of the counter-culture (return to socio-normalcy, the heat moves off the streets, out of the fields and back to the clubs) before "Disco Proper", was the recent Nicky Siano "The Gallery" compilation. If you haven't checked this out, do. Again like the Bambaata selection it's very macho (in quite a noticably Gay manner) and strongly "rock-like", kind of a freight train out-of-control sound, rolling amplified frug music taking the lead from Sly and The Family Stone's "Stand"-era sound (less so "There's a Riot" which is more conspicuosly sinister, bloodless and synthesised.)

To explore the counter-cultural angle a little further it's fascinating to see how the forces of optimism and overthrowal embodied in the hippie avant-garde (epitomised I guess by music by Hendrix "Star Spangled Banner", the MC5 "Kick Out the Jamms", Dylan and The Beatles) end up on the dancefloor as transcendant "we gotta change the world" Rock Disco. On the one hand it's a pathetic sight, seeing how this spirit is crushed into baked-bean-tin-size, but on the other the spirit of those parties (The Loft and The Gallery especially) was supposed to be so powerful as to engulf people lives, spawning as it did a generation of nutters like Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy who went on to light the wick of our Acid House revolts in the UK. You could trace a sketchy line in chalk between Woodstock and Castlemorton through those revolting home discos of this era. Anyway I'm meandering a bit here.

The second forgotten genre I'm gonna claim (with dubious right) to discover is what I'm gonna call "3-part Harmony Avant Bossa Folk" (YEAH! Watch that one take off!) Its the, mainly American, eclectic folk trio music of the late sixties and early seventies that dwells in some marsh between Jazz, Bossa Nova (big Jobim influence permeating), the Avant Garde, and "Soft" Psych punk. And it encompasses all manner of waifs and strays like Spleen (big iueke record!), The Free Design, The Silhouettes etc. Julian House is big on this territory....

"Bubblecrunk"- always like that and why has no-one coined a good term for the Grime-y R'n'B that we're hearing from Da Vinche and Aftershock camp (or did silverdollar have a go?)

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:24 AM | Permalink

Recently made this comp of old MC twelve inches that i've been picking up. I've tried to keep it obscure (, no G.A.R.A.G.E etc) Everything is pretty much before 2002, certainly early 2002 at the latest. It's interesting to hear the differences between the older form of MC-ing and todays. They're still (even on the So Solid track) essentially pushing the rhythm along in the way someone like GQ might, as a result quite a few of the tunes have a low-slung funkiness which is quite Mantronk-like. Also the voices have that "rrrich rrrolling" quite male baritone feel to them, shades of luxury. Even God's Gift (who now always seems to chat ragga style) sounds like this. Lyrics per se are pretty thin on the ground. Big holes in the tracks whereas nowadays there's always someone popping in with a rhyme to drop.

Quite funny to see who and how survived this era. Luck Neat became part of Special Delivery with Major Ace and were pretty much laughed out the place (i liked them...). There's the aforementioned Gods Gift. Recent news that Megaman was in court on murder charges (seemed to go uncommented on). It seems like an absolute age ago. The two labels which caught my imagination back then were Kronik and Red Rose, what happened to them. Practically everything on those labels is both excellent and prescient.

I sent this comp to Reynolds, Stelfox and Luke and both of the former's copies went missing in the post. Weird or what. As for Luka, well he's kept schtum. Granted it is all a bit creaky. But charming nonetheless.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:28 AM | Permalink