WOEBOT

I've been putting an article together on Prog Rock for FACT magazine, and in the process of getting stuff together I picked up these two from the collectors section upstairs at the Music and Video Exchange. It was a little reckless of me, but I was completely sold on the cover art. What great covers!

Sad to report that, unlike what is suggested, Quintessence are not the British incarnation of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, but a motley bunch of post-Moby Grape plodders attired with a gossamer-thin skein of eastern mysticism. I should have trusted my instincts when I noticed one side of the elpee was dedicated to a live performance at Exeter University. Wow, cosmic!

And Camel are not an electro-fixated, synth-addled power-prog outfit as is perhaps hinted by the banks of ARPs and EMSs listed impressively at the head of their personnel break-out, but something like your breathing soft-rock nightmare.

There are though, as I discovered and share in the piece, plenty of Brit Prog splendours. Pick up a copy if you can. You can even subscribe here...

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Having knocked my Top 100 list just before Christmas, I very nearly pulled the plug on it, deciding it would be more fun to run as a limited edition pamphlet. Beautifully laid-out and mailed off to nobs-in-the-know. I reasoned I could suck up to Paul Morley and post him one. Anyway I'm glad I didn't cos one month later there are still nice bits of feedback trickling in.

Ironically, or maybe not, I got the hardest time at Dissensus, but the list got picked up by a whole raft of other boards, the excellent Black Cat Bone, Death Valley Driver, DJ History and a few more besides. I also got a link from Large Hearted Boy, who given the traffic he inspired, must be some kind of heavyweight (excuse the pun). I was also amused, and covertly flattered that Large Hearted Boy referred to WOEBOT in the plural though, as it's rumoured of Jared Diamond, I was a commitee masquerading as an individual. No. I, WOEBOT, just am that marvellously educated, discerning, trendy, intelligent and generally fantastic.

One of the most interesting spin-offs came via Opinionated Diner who has done his own Top 100 twelve inches. As a project I think there's a whole lot more sense in it than my kind of vainglorious stab at encapsulating musical culture "in toto". There's a one or two things in there that made me look askance (Lionrock? Dave Clarke?) but you've got to hand it to him that's a pretty fine breakout. These charts, although they're a bit nerdy, are always extremely useful, and as I remarked at Dissensus, there's no point whatsoever trying to be objective.

Opinionated Diner's list made me flash on these two compilations (see jpegs above) that I came across in a record shop and earmarked for possible future investigation. Googling them I came across a review by none other than eagle-ears himself Jess Harvell at Pitchfork about three hundred years ago.

Posted by WOEBOT at 07:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I was going through my collection on Sunday night, piecing together some info for my latest FACT article, and I kept coming across Folkways records, you know the way something suddenly catches your eye. And once again, what a very bloody strange label it was.

Progressive Bluesgrass! This is hot actually.

The Ituri Pygmies! Well it follows as naturally as A does from B.

Poets read their contemporary Poetry! (confesses - I only know Amiri Baraka of this lot...)

Religious Music of India!

(straining belief) A composition of Agitprop Music for Electromagnetic tape by Ilhan Mimaroglu!

Haitian Voodoo Rites! Verna Gillis is the man incidentally. Classic behind the scenes world music dude.

Harry Smith recording Indians singing under the influence of Peyote, a three-disc box set this one. You knew about the Anthology, but this?

-

Anyway it came to mind as well that the blissblogger sent me this really cute thing for Christmas, the scan doesn't do it justice because it's a record label which some artist has cropped out of the centre of the record itself. Like a coaster, except it sits on my mantelpiece. Simon also sent me a copy of this great document, a Vanguard sleeve insert which he'd scrawled hilariously and polemically on top of "the world that bastard Dylan destroyed- FOREVER the fake neurotic!" Which reminded me of this comment I made on this thread.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Vendredi 27 Janvier.

Le Triptyque
142 rue montmartre
75002 Paris

DJs !! JERRY DAMMERS (The Specials/2-Tone/Brixton) - Mr SACHA (Brixton/UK) ROLLS AYER CREW !! puSHER mix (Quiet The Cat) - MOLIA 75 (mac cam) L’Angleterre n’a pas connu d’artiste capable, depuis Jerry Dammers, de squatter les charts avec des hymnes festifs et engagés de la trempe de « Ghost Town », « Too much too young » ou « Nelson Mandela ». Légende du ska, symbole de la lutte anti-apartheid, le fondateur de The Specials et du label 2-Tone sera le grand invité de cette « Far End Night » spéciale Brixton et nous réserve une communion par la danse à grand coup de soul, de rocksteady, de punk funk et de early reggae. Avec également nos résidents Sher et Molia ainsi que Mr Sascha pour un clash Paris-Brixton.

-

My old sparring partner Sacha is playing a special one off gig with Jerry Dammers this coming Friday in Paris. This'll be an aural feast for vinyl afficionados, they'll both be dropping some heavy Library bizniss alongside "de soul, de rocksteady, de punk funk et de early reggae." Jerry provided a very large proportion of the sleeves for Johnny Trunk's recent fabulous "The Music Library" tome as well as the hilarious introduction and my friend Sacha was the uncredited invisible hand behind a good deal of those plates. Seb, Guy, Patrice, Etienne, Jean-Rene, Gwen - you'd be mad to miss it!

Posted by WOEBOT at 02:47 PM | Permalink

Singles:

Jammer and Lewi White: Countdown Remix (White)
Richard Whitely turns in his grave as Jammer and crew tear it up inna fine style 'pon the Countdown riddim. More balls than the original and boasting a vintage Ardkore flow.

Dogzilla: Hello (Dogenham)
Danny Weed delivers another of his Amphiteatrical beats and Dogzilla makes like an overweight sweaty East-end Maximus Prime and throws his girth around.

J Sweet Feat Aaron Soul and C-man: Marxmen (White)
Grimey-style take on Blackstreet's "No Diggedy". The baseline corners like a low-slung Cadillac taking the long arc, assuredly behind the beat. Exquisite, plaintive vocals full of male regret.

Essentials: Young Dot EP (Paperchase)
All Grime's hallmarks, inflexible drums, cascading string samples, horror bass, prismatised post-Swizz Beatz synthlines, rendered into something like a definitive vision of this music.

LPs:

Northern Lights: Sparked (VIP Recordings)
Do your best to sit still when you play this utterly danceable state-of-the-art Bhangra by Glasgow producers Tarv and Dev. Dhol and Dholkey romp across the soundscape and Sarangi weaves in and out of vocals from the Punjab's finest. 15 tracks with the consistent ability to send shivers down your spine.

Dr. Zeus: The Original Edit (Envy)
Another classic offering from Dr. Zeus, Bhangra's genius producer, the equal of 2003's faultless "Unstoppable". This time Zeus employs legendary vocalist Lehmber Hussainpuri across the length of the record, rather than for just a track or two and the results are spell-binding. Concomitant with Bhangra's current's roots vogue there are lots of exquisite instrumental colour from the Algoza (flutes) and Tumbi (the single-stringed mandolin) though the production style is, as you'd expect from Zeus, electro-chrome.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:38 AM | Permalink

Dirty Canvas represents a highly unusual foray of Grime music into “uptown” culture. Curated by aficionado David Moynihan and convening at The Whitechapel Gallery, the event is planned to be the first of many opportunities for bohemians shy of visiting grassroots events like FWD and Eskimo Dance to feel the true underground vibe. It’s no surprise to long-standing supporters of the music that it has leap-frogged conventional venues directly into a gallery. The evening’s supremely over-articulated thuggery, as evidenced in Ruff Sqwad’s pugilistic logos juggernaut, is a neat counterpoint to the gallery’s day-show, Paul McCarthy’s work with its Rabelaisian currents and themes lifted from Viennese aktionism and Pirate theme to boot.

From Left to Right: Tinchy Stryder, Slicks and Dirty Danger

There should be no doubt as to the threat posed to the established order by the monstrous energy Ruff Sqwad represent. On the Thursday Ofcom raided 44 Pirate Radio Stations, seized 53 transmitters, disabled 17 more and harvested 43 mobile numbers attached to Pirate activity in a bid to clear the airways for the London Fire Brigade and National Air Traffic Services. While Section 3 of the Communications Act 2003 with its aim to “secure optimal use for wireless telegraphy of the electro-magnetic spectrum” was invoked, official comment swiftly dovetailed into critique of the “direct link between some illegal broadcasters and serious crime.” What this has to do with a supposedly practical exercise run by the Office of Communications is anyone’s guess. All told, that freethinking institutions like The Whitechapel gallery (here out-stepping the ICA) have started to make room for Grime’s destabilizing noise is a deeply positive sign. Too often supposed “alternative” culture chokes on that which isn’t produced by the white middle-classes, settling for the comfort of the bourgeoisie’s self-appointed “radical” culture.

From Left to Right: Fuda Guy, Rapid, Dirty Danger and Begg.

The evening started slowly with a tiny crowd hugging the venue’s back wall as Ruff Sqwad performed their sound check, a scenario reminiscent of teenage discos with girls and boys tittering at either side of the dancefloor. Fortunately by the time Tinchy Stryder, Rapid, Slicks, Danger and crew hit the stage the place was reasonably well stocked. The reaction to their delivery of what amounts to Grime’s greatest tracks of the past two years was nothing short of ecstatic. “We Bring it Down”, “Underground”, “Don’t Truss”, “Anna”, “Lethal Injection” and “XTC” were greeted with uproarious cheers; Roachie of Roll Deep’s cameo on “All Night Long” cranking the excitement up to an almost unbearable level. Ruff Sqwad’s form, as many as seven MCs accompanying their own instrumentals spun by a DJ, is reminiscent of that of the earliest Hip-Hop outfits, wherein a progressive social democracy and the collective generation of energy eclipse in importance beatnik ideals like the artist’s ego.

From Left to Right: Fuda Guy and Roachie.

Ruff Sqwad’s signature high-velocity sonic combines the crash of early Hip-Hop (crudely, think Marley Marl on 45) with the trilling synth patterns of Swizz Beatz. However the speed of the riddims, and the breathless xenoglossic delivery push everything into the red, forming a molten, strikingly Avant-Garde mess. More than on record, more than on pirate radio, live before a crowd is the best place to witness this. The evening was a total and unexpected success, Ruff Sqwad delighting in and “feeding off” the crowd’s energy, unselfconscious in the face of what proved to be a smaller cultural gap than many anticipated. This was a most auspicious start to what promises to be groundbreaking series of events.

-----
Extended version of live review published in The Wire.
Link

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:56 AM | Permalink

This is a bit of fun! I had to provide my colleague Dave Mandl with a single black and white graphic for his magazine "The Brooklyn Rail" who will be publishing the "Greatest 100 Recordings" piece, and in the process created this monster.

If you've an A3 (or A4...) Colour Printer kicking around you might have some fun with this. Graphics Professionals may need to tweak the levels/hue/saturation a bit for optimum results. But still, it's better than a punch in the face!

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:28 AM | Permalink

I’ve discovered Pepe Bradock a few years too late, which truth be told is how I usually discover most things. It was Panash, his 2004 collaboration with Jackson which I came across at the end of last year, that alerted me to his work. Bradock’s micro-celebrity precedes Jackson’s. The earliest release of his I can trace is the “Un Pepe En Or Vol.1” on kif records from 1997 ("Lara" off which is pretty straight noodling French House) Part of Bradock's charm is how few records he puts out, contrary to the typical knock-em-out factory production line attitude of most House producers servicing the dancefloor, he seems to relish taking his time on a record. Obviously there are arguments against this kind of approach but within its context it's refreshing.

From "Intrusion"

With the foundation of his own label Atavisme this studious technique has extended to the packaging and identity of the records. Bradock has extensively used the artist Numero Six to develop "concepts", worked out in a combination of sculpture, illustration and graphic design to counterpoint his spooky, lushly-textured, soft-edged deep house. Part of me finds Six's work (like Bradock, about whom I can discover nothing on the internet) faintly revolting. There's some element of it which reminds me of "Delicatessen" or Marc Caro's other famous film "La Cité des Enfants Perdus" the over-ripe camembert aesthetic of which I find difficult to bear. But, interestingly, it does connect strongly with the artwork of Progressive Rock.

From "6 Millions Pintades"

Immediately this has become the context within which I've been understanding Pepe's quite unabashed "Progressive" House. Obviously France has a rich tradition of Progressive synthesizer music. Currently rocking my socks is a Lard Free "April Orchestra" library record from 1976 (I understand their later work becomes more and more synth based- presumably as Gilbert Artman was deserted in his own group, lol). Other documents include Richard Pinhas's "Rhizosphere", Heldon's "Allez Teia" (yet to check this, but have it on good word) and the elegant electronic watercolors of Pascal Comelade circa "Detail Monochrome".

From "Burning/Deep Burnt"

One of the striking parallels between this largely abandoned backwater of music, passed over in favor of Krautrock, and Bradock's is the comfortable, unquestioning relationship it has with American Jazz. It's not just the use of similar tonalities and chord patterns, but also the occasional saxophones and in the case of what is often described as Bradock's high-point "Deep Burnt", a sample of Blue Note stalwart Freddie Hubbard's "Little Sunflower". I guess this is something which is audible in French music from the 1950s to the present-day. While we in the UK connect more strongly to the Electric Blues and the Blues, in France (and there is some vestigial connection to my Beatnik-AvantYob theory here which states categorically no French people are AvantYobs, that needs working out) Modern Jazz is the sun.

From "The Forbidden Fruit EP

All of the Atavisme EPs are worth investigating, though Panash is perhaps the highlight and the perfect entree for those fans of the post-PIL "Death Disco" strain of Techno. I'm also grateful to Dave Stelfox for hipping me to the astonishing 'Brad Peep' remix of Iz and Diz's "Mouth" which as Dave correctly observed, out-hiccoughs Herbert and which you can hear a sample of at the Atavisme website.

From "Panash"-Imagery by Jackson/Bradock

Posted by WOEBOT at 05:22 PM | Permalink

This, the Psychic TV Testcard, from Jon Eden:

"used at the beginning of their videos, performances etc... :cool:

designed by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson I think, who knew a bit about telly cos he directed loads of adverts..."

Posted by WOEBOT at 08:01 AM | Permalink

Seeing as how this has come up (swift thinking blissblogger...), I've dug out a copy of it. Described on the back as "Six instrumentals in praise and celebration of mid-morning television made and played by Stuart Moxham and Phillip Moxham", even more than the "Final Day" 7" or the "Colossal Youth" LP it's a bonafide slice of British Proto-Nerdtronica (see also Joe Meek) because of course the boys have been abandoned by Alison Statton. Her work with Weekend gets pretty short shrift (cos of their connection to the Wag Club Indie Soul Boy scene) but check out "Drumbeat for Babies" (slsk massive get busy) -that's a monster track. I was interested to see generally maligned individual Gilles Peterson making sense of the post-punk revival in some chart or other by giving some early Weekend stuff the thumbs up.

And (doh!) nearly forgot this, which came up very recently here. Jon Dale mentioned in an email to me that his "mum says I used to sit and watch testcards for ages as a kid" and I wonder if that wasn't as much to do with the drone accompanying the Test card (Dale's tastes are well documented). Sweet Exorxist made the connection between the Test tone and the bleep, with the visual dimension an ancillary factor for Jarvis Cocker to peg a pop promo onto.

Posted by WOEBOT at 05:22 PM | Permalink

TV Zeit

I got this nice graphic insert with my copy of The Advisory Circle's "Mind How You Go" with this image on it:

I wouldn't want to second guess Julian but I reckon test cards must be the inspiration behind it. It's kind of an apt symbol within what Simon is calling "hauntology", because it represents a TV which is both switched on and off, at once dead and alive.

Fittingly I've spent all week building graphics for a TV show which builds historical "trees" out of BBC TV programmes, tracing the paths of actors, directors and writers through the years. Whilst hunting the web for information I came across this great website: "The Test Card Gallery", and naturally enough thought of The Ghost Box massive.

Here are a few of my favourites:

...very "Dada" spooky and mute...

...nice bit of visual corruption...

and this one which has a wicked eighties feel to it:

The purpose of the test card is to let technician dweebs like me to check the luminance and chroma values on monitors and to eyeball any "artifacts", which are televisiologic graphical mis-representations. Bugs. In the use of one as an icon I guess there's an allusion to the kind of behind-the-scenes occult-ish quality of technical knowledge and the mysteriousness of it to outsiders. On reflection it's strange that the BBC technicians of this time were so unmediated that they were allowed to hijack the beeb's output and bewilder the populace with this bizarre constructivist imagery. It's not the sort of think you'd see nowadays is it?

The Advisory Circle's "Mind How You Go" shares all those things we love about Ghost Box, who have rightfully provided the blogosphere (and beyond) with a poster act unrivalled since Nick's The Junior Boys. Listening to it I was struck quite forcibly, not with a tangled web of half-baked pseudo-philosophical thoughts and maze of musico-cultural references (the usual reaction...) but of a recollection of a person. That person was Steve, the polytechnic student who rented a room off my parents when I was five years old living outside Stroud in Gloucestershire, who gave me a textbook on Paleontology and who would play me Jean Michel Jarre's newly-released "Oxygene". Steve seemed impossibly tall and hairy, but I still liked him a great deal.

I'm extremely keen that Jim and Julian take my advice and approach Radio 4 Somerset with Belbury Poly's "Farmer's Angle". Beyond irony, it'd make the perfect soundtrack to some agricultural news program. The Hyperstitionists say that it's better as a "imaginary" soundtrack, but I think it'd be a superb "front-page" conceptual coup to have it blaring out of the combine-harvesters.

Posted by WOEBOT at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Posted by WOEBOT at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Geeta gave the Blissblogger, Gutterbreakz and me a nice little write up at Flavorpill and as a result Plucky New Yorker Alyce Santoro got in touch with a link to her Sonic Fabric mini-site, which is all about this cool material she's made from audio cassette tape. A timely idea in the light of the current surge in interest in C90s. Maybe I should try and hook her up with Sharon at My Woebot T-shirts (part of the global WOEBOT/Blissert conspiracy) and get them to make me my own WOEBOT T?

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:21 AM | Permalink

Came across this browsing through a junk insert from a newspaper. S'funny how the mainstream represents vinyl as manifestly, unequivocably outmoded, when for so many of us it's the cutting edge. It's that same curious impulse which manifests itself in middle-aged people "regretting" the fashion they chose to wear when they were young. Why do people have such difficulty connecting with their previous selves? It's as though they're locked in a permanent process of brain-washing. Some would blame capitalism, me I just think people can be lame.

In this device's favour it does offer 78 rpm which is incontestably bordering on the recherche (at last Jim Clarke can play that Vincent Gallo 12"), but I'd bet good money on almost no-one who buys this owning anything other than 33s and 45s. More prosaically I suppose what happens with record players these days is that the needle or the cartridge break and the owner never gets round to getting it fixed.

Discovering this advert coinciding with me overhearing a snippet of a Radio 4 programme with Stephen Fry talking, his tone pure young fogey, about his love of the "gramophone record", again as if vinyl were some neolithic phenonenon. I wanted to link to the show, but can't seem to dig it out of the Radio 4 archives, my questions on the Radio 4 forum (don't laugh) falling on deaf ears.

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Amongst many other things, our babies got toy instruments for Christmas. Lulu is generally less interested in them than Sam, who loves them to bits. He has a tiny guitar, and he peels off to a bean-bag and plays it, singing along as only a one year old can. I should add that, although I really adore these instruments (and indeed the entire toy instrument oeuvre-General Strike and beyond) I haven't been hot-housing. When Sam first saw the guitar in a shop with my wife, he wept when she wouldn't buy it for him, and then carried on weeping the entire morning until she she asked him if he'd like it. Then he stopped.

The red piano got damaged on the plane back from Glasgow, I've had to glue it back together, but it's fine. Quite co-incidentally we discovered the batteries on the Chicco electric "synthesiser" had worn out, so that needs fixing too. Dads out there will know about the crucial fatherly role of repairing broken stuff. The Chicco is a great little thing, you can half kid yourself that you've mastered tunes like "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Frere Jacques".

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)