WOEBOT

Thanks to being linked by the excellent Voltage Controlled Technicolor I've stumbled into a netherworld of really extraordinarly high-class "whole LP" mp3 blogs. A million miles from the established, tired circuit of mp3-blogs with their piecemeal single-track offerings (Ha, neo-Rockist to the core I'll always love the long-playing 7+ song configuration!) these museums of arcana have grown spontaneously out of the esteemed Soul Strut Boards (a similar turf to the Wax Poetics journal, hip-hop breaks and then some) and the also excellent Vinyl Vultures Forum, in a similar way that ILM spawned authoritative "heavy" blogs like Church of Me and Skykicking.

The phenomenon is extremely recent, most of these sites are only one or two months old. While one's guaranteed some will fall by the wayside quite quickly, with the obscurity and excellence of the music they're sharing it doesn't seem to matter, like the appearance of manna in the desert one is simply grateful. Again unlike most mp3 blogs, where the content is copied from CDs which are commercially available or repackaged from Soulseek forays, these blogs tend to offer music which has been ripped from vinyl from their owner's cavernous record collections and uploaded onto Rapidshare. Nine times out of ten this is music which simply isn't available in any shape or form so how illegal it is to present it is moot. Wasn't there some landmark ruling about works of art no longer available in the public domain being legally distributable in this fashion?

Of the fifty or so blogs I looked at, these were the most excellent (in alphabetical order):

Brazilian Nuggets

Some fascinating stuff here, recently careening out of Prog Rock period and into a folk phase.

Flashing back to some of the remarks about my top one hundred records: "Oh this is just willful obscurantism! etc", comments which made me roll my eyes in exasperation, this ring of blogs should underline the canonic centrality of the choices I made. They *weren't* obscure records! I ought to add, however, that when it comes to the hardcore vinyl culture as it manifests in a purism centered around Library Records, Soundtracks, the most left-field of break samples, Eastern European Progressive Rock Turkish Psych and Brazilian obscurities I'm slightly skeptical. The music I've gravitated towards always enjoys some connection to the rays of the zeit. Often I feel slightly bored by the occasionally hermetic and insular culture of wax and its total failure to grapple with new music. Certainly when I went to one Vinyl Vultures meeting I didn't notice anyone particularly excited to hear my bag of (impossibly rare!) Cold Rush Gloomcore classics (titters). Sniping aside, the opportunity to savour the rarities these collectors are offering up is not to be missed. The price is right, innit.

Posted by WOEBOT at 01:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Who says buying on the internet is impersonal, lacks that magical geographical aspect? Last Friday I heard back from GEMM after ordering my copy of "Phonography". They were requesting that I send a cheque to California so they could forward it to the dealer who lived, um, about two streets away from me in Islington. No, GEMM, we said. I called Andrew of Retro Vinyl and we fixed up a time. The towerblocks around us have stunning views. It always makes me laugh how people who pay a fortune to live in the Barbican complex, in er, towerblocks, somehow manage to behave haughtily to people who live in council property. Certainly it's *because* the difference is so slight that they go into class-emphasis-overdrive. Anyway, whatever.

Andrew was on something like the 53rd floor. He has a huge amount records. Two whole rooms, though only a "3 by 6" of stuff he wasn't selling. Geeta, who came round the other day made a remark to me about how few records I had. Mark Sinker and I kinda chortled. It was one of those conspicuously de-masculinising moments. I don't think I've got a small record collection (blushes), it measures up I reckon. I know Twitch has lofts and lofts of stuff, but he's a big name DJ. Likwise Weatherall, who apparently has stuff filling the kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom etc. DJ Spooky apparently has an entire room. Reynolds allegedly has a whole room too; although when I visited Simon last he only had two small shelves on view. I was devastated naturally, too polite to remark (gulp) "Oh master, is that all of which we speak..." It's quality not quantity cloth-ears! (mumbling) I've sold on twice that amount..... Anyway, Andrew has lots of records. Was listening to The Cure and commented: "Does this qualify as a guilty pleasure?" "Probably" I replied. I wonder if he wasn't a little nervous of meeting a freak from the web? I'm so entirely used to this nowadays.

I picked up "Phonography", which is stunning. Plied full of Beatles-y harmonies it featuring stunning musicianship. RSM is quite self-consciously a maestro, maybe that's why he records alone here? Brazenly show-off guitar runs, nifty drum-fills, production wizardry too. There are some fantastically catchy numbers, my faves being "Goodbye Piano", "California Rhythm" and bizarre interludes (RSM introducing himself as he has a piss and double-tracking himself in dialogue with himself). In fact it reminded me a great deal of Todd Rungdren's "Something Anything" another virtuoso one-man band performance, but for the power-pop in a phone-booth atmosphere (which Todd struggles against and RSM embraces) and it's "classic rawk" flavours rather than anything else. Given that it was recorded between 1974 and 1976 it's presciently new-wave; new-wave being less about Punk (this is the science bit) more about galvanised, authetically modernist Pop. Do RSM and yourself a favour and buy a copy here. Trust me, it's totally excellent.

As I was leaving I poked my head out of Andrew's window, and lo, in the shimmering distance, just past the football pitches, through a gap in the trees, beside the glinting silver car I could see my house.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:40 PM | Permalink

As a critic (or, seeing as how I don't have a professional gig anymore, to be more accurate one imbued with a critical inclination) you'd think I relished going out of the way to be unpleasant about other people's hard-wrought work. Not so in fact, it hardly ever occurs to me that someone might be upset by my opinions. I suppose I tend to wax positive and carefully pick my targets (like Goldfrapp or the Black Eyed Peas who are so clearly beyond worrying about guttersnipes like yours truly). However occasionally something like MIA really gets my goat, and even though she's at the bottom rung of the ladder, a worthy enough individual in many ways and from the perspective of political-correctness not someone you go out of your way to slag off, I just can't help myself. Tee hee.

My writing off R Stevie Moore was a case in point. Here's the most respectable kind of artist. A one-man cottage industry devoted to his vision. So actually I felt pretty shitty when he discovered my remarks at Dissensus and (gulp) actually linked to them from his news page. Blimey I'd be mortified if MIA ever emailed me. To be fair to me the mp3s at the website which are supposed to entice you further into Moore's vision are plain terrible. And dammnit he needs to get his presentation sorted! I mean I know it's a superficial observation and we're only supposed to care about the music (bullshit IMHO), but yunnuh there's amateurishness and there's amateurishness and SRM could learn a bit from his disowned protegee Ariel Pink's graphic sense, uncompromisingly crude as it is too.

Just recently I discovered this 12" from 1982 or 1983 (I'm guessing) in a record store and, well, I absolutely love it. Stevie had this new-wave thing going. "Manufacturer" and "Dance Man" sound like The Stranglers and Elvis Costello, but in a deliciously gonzoid, slightly seedy way. RSM, enchantingly, sounds like an old man playing the young man's tunes. The effect is one of at once familiarity and discomfort, like perhaps your uncle making a pass at you. Or summat. This mustiness of bygone eras is compounded by RSM's brazenly 1950s Rock'n'Roll influences. If you grew up in the United Kingdom in the 1970s (well, anywhere for that matter) you'll remember the pervasive odor of Presley's rotting corpse, cropping up in the most unusual places like in the music on Children's TV (presumably made by hacks out of touch with the zeit) and with pop hangovers like Shakin' Stevens and Showaddywaddy. Thinking about it now, twenty year-old rave music must sound like todays teenagers to be similarly anachronistic as music from 1956 did in 1976.

The flipside of this excellent EP is, improbably enough, a rather daring ambient melodic suite. So big up yourself SRM if you're reading this, and yes I'm looking forward to the copy of "Phonography" I was delighted to find on GEMM.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks to Dissensus's Noel Emits for providing me this mp3 of my last Kosmische radio show which accompanied my post on Underground NDW. Lots of folks emailed me asking for the CD I posted out to the faithful last November and I'm afraid I had to disappoint them on principle.

This set would have been available to download from Resonance's archives, but I understand things went a little pear-shaped there. Offering it up now, therefore, I am only furthering the service they would/should have provided. With any luck I won't be the subject of a witch-hunt by a gang of militant greying German New-Wavers.....

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

1. Never Gonna Let You Go / Tina Moore (Tuff Jam Classic Vocal Mix)
2. Friday Night / David Anthony (Sunship Vocal Mix)
3. Cape Fear / KMA
4. Life Is What We Live In / Yardcore Crew
5. Body Killin / Vincent J Alvis
6. Beautiful / Matt Darey (Dubaholics Deeper Dub)
7. Kaotic Madness / KMA
8. Cum Cakes / MJ and Rob D
9. Flava / Young Offendaz feat CKP
10. 1999 Remix / Groove Chronicles
11. Endorphins / Skycap
12. Faith In You / Groove Chronicles and First Steps
13. Dibby Dibby Sound / Napa-Tac
14. The Clash / Skyjoose Feat Skycap
15. Screw Face II / Tweaker Pimps
16. Stuck to the Floor / Sticky
17. Un-known Genius / Dizzy Rascal
18. Down 4 U / Ja Rule, Ashanti, Vita and Charli Baltimore (D'n'D Conemelt Mix)
19. Tonka / Jammin (Menta Remix)

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After exhaustive research and much deliberation I've made the Two-Step mix I was threatening to back in December. Johnny Dark had asked me to send him the tunes I'd referred to in the review I did of his record (I was surprised, even impressed he was unaware of them) and that inspired me to gather up all my material. Since plaguing Tim Finney, Matt Mason and Paul Meme for their insights I fleshed out my own selection with about twenty new tunes, five of which appear here (4, 5, 6, 8 and 9), so thanks to them and all the Dissensus massive who contributed to that thread.

I was attempting to make an abstract historical point with this set. I was trying to point to the scene's drift away from its Paradaisical Garage roots and towards the Swizz-y Beatz of Grime and the riddimatized void of Dubstep. I'll freely concede that Two-Step's presence in Grime is practically (woefully?) non-existent, the two tracks I've marshaled, Sticky's "Stuck to the Floor" and Dizzy Rascal's "Un-known Genius" are almost surreally, fascinatingly, improbable. Yes, there's an infinitely stronger case for connecting Dubstep to Two-Step. The more reggaematic and hip-hopped-up strand of Two-Step, which ironically was more-often-than-not made by righteous white blokes, mutated into the FWD scene and Dubstep. Back in the day, buying tracks like El-B's "Digital" I remember mourning the death of what Simon Reynolds called "Feminine Pressure" and the expunging of slinky R'n'B flava from the music. I suppose my reservations about Dubstep are tediously well-documented, at least with Garage Rap or UK Bounce (my own fruitless coinage!) there was some kind of substitution of content with the MC's rhymes. Putting Arthur "DND" Menta's amazing Jammin remix at the end of this is a tacit acknowledgment of that drift.

But it's also a mix which tries to show the emotional journey the music took. I remember shocking out on the desperation in Tina Moore's "Never Gonna Let You Go" when it pumped into the offices on Kiss FM in 1996. This was an archetypal Speed Garage track but the way the vocal looped and twisted into the siren sonic (here plumbing the greek derivation as well as its familiar use as an emergency signal) hinted at the way the surplus of emotion was to form the drive towards formal abstraction. This is obviously the case with the over-excitement curdling (again) into desperation of David Anthony's peerless "Friday Night", twitching with impossible expectations of pleasure; then rupturing and buckling. It's a very short step from there to the darkside vibe of KMA, made explicit in the hijacking of B-Movie dialogue from the Cape Fear remake: "the only thing to fear on those enchanted summer nights was that the magic would end and real life would come crashing in" This isn't really a contrast as bleak the blazing heat of Ardkore's chart-peak to the frozen tundra of Darkcore, more an Indian Summer shading into Autumn.

The actualisation of real life crashing itself becomes the thrill. The "real" street life (albeit elegiac) of Kronik records' Yardcore Crew, the rudely masculine "Body Killin" a possibly transgressive acting out of over-stimulated male desire (actually one wonders if only the Adina Howard of "Freak Like Me" would approve of someone coming on this strong!). Perhaps this marks the first signs of the incipient male encroachment on the territory which had previously sparkled with feminine delight; the clubs draining of girls. The music though is still thrilling; the middle section of the mix here is topsy-turvey with the moody, hiccoughing and scat-scattered; the two Groove Chronicles tunes trading on ever more minor key modulation buffered with bass.

Everyone on my links-bar is very welcome to a free copy of the CD which I will gladly mail out. Futhermore blog-less Dissensoids: mms, droid, stelfox, confucius, bassnation, gumdrops, matt b, hint (all more than 500 posts) are very welcome to a copy. Just email me.

Posted by WOEBOT at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Baldelli flicking through his tracks.

I was working late last night when at ten o'clock I glanced at my calendar. It hit me like a brick! I was supposed to be down at Plastic People with two imaginary friends (I'd bought three tickets in a fit of largesse) dancing to the legendary Afro-Cosmic sounds of Daniele Baldelli! I got on my bike and made haste to Plastic People, a venue I usually have a habit of appearing far too early at. I've done this twice, showing up early for Target at FWD last year and for a BASH a few weeks back; giving up and going home in a fit of impatience.

The venue, which if you haven't been there before is tiny with an excellent crisp sound-system, was half-full with a curtain drawn around the dance-floor. There must have only been 60 or so people there but everyone was dancing to the languid loping analogue sound of classic-era Afro-Cosmic. The music was exhilarating, and I was devastated to learn from my colleague Tim Lawrence (author of the landmark "Love Saves The Day" disco tome and joint-manager of the David Mancuso vehicle, the Lucky Cloud Soundsystem) that Baldelli hit the decks well over an hour before. There's nothing quite as awe-inspiring as hearing the fat organic sounds of disco being mixed together, the tension between rhythmic perfection and collapse so dramatic. It's like the difference between hard-won yogic nirvana and the supermarket of LSD-fuelled transcendence.

Quite quickly the groove became more mechanised, which was a shame. However, not before Baldelli treated us to a suite of hard-rocking guitar numbers. You could throw the average clubbing crowd with something like this, the sinewy Baldelli striking rock-star moves behind the decks like a misplaced Osterburg Jewel, but the faithful took it in their stride, grooving out of the daft nihilism of the whole thing. Baldelli does take you to some kitsch places, a huge throbbing cover-version of Tina Turner's "Better be good to me" was one excellent example. Lord knows what any of the tunes were, one or two members of the crowd seemed to herald the mnemonic flourishes of some tracks, the only exception to this being some dippy modern B52s remix (Fred's plain bark unmistakable...) I was boogying away regardless. Baldelli seems to have all his music ripped to CD, with only a few records in evidence, flicking deftly through Case Logic folders of tracks.

In time the beat became flesh once more, and we were treated to a retro come-down. I supposed the evening was marked by my regret at having missed more of the fluid pulsating sounds from earlier in the evening. But hey, I missed clubbing in the Italian lake resorts in the mid-seventies too.

Posted by WOEBOT at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A Nick Kilroy original entitled "Dark" from the Zabriskie Point website

If there's any label which I feel a kind of emotional entanglement with it's KIN. I let Nick Kilroy Kin into my heart when that was obviously a risky thing to do. The first time we met Nick confessed to having slept rough for years while he took smack. Even if I had dabbled in narcotics myself (checks watch, nearly a decade since I touched a thing...) I was a family man. I wasn't dissuaded because Nick was such a passionate, charming character. I've achieved enough, what with Anil Bawa and my memorial skin and symbolic fights with VICE UK to feel that I've done Nick's memory justice. In spite of Dee, Nick's partner, courageously continuing to run the label, I think I've earned my right to be dispassionate and objective. However, even the fact that this certainly ain't my exclusive (see k-punk's excellent press release here, I'm frothing with enthusiasm for Johnny Dark's record.

Certainly as Mark points out there are resonances of 2-step here but in actual fact Johnny's palate is infinitely more localised. To categorise something as 2-step actually denotes a dazzling heterogeneity of styles (in the way neither Grime or Dubstep enjoy much internal variation). This majestic EP owes nothing whatsoever to hyphenated soul of MJ Cole and The Dreem Teem, little to the bleak skank of 500 Rekords and Kronik, not much to the cheerfully surreal skip of the Dubaholics and Y-Tribe. No, Johnny is hooked on the then-anomalous, permutated, register-defying basslines of KMA ("Cape Fear", "Kaotic Madness"). Those basslines were literally "baffling", baffling as though you'd been physically manipulated by gigantic rubber/foam paddles, baffling in the sense that they at once thicken out the bottom-end AND ride slickly up the sides of the track, like a malign froth, and spill into the riff. Darkside Garage was a tiny proposition, but there were also the Skycap records. Everyone knows the skittering "Endorphin" but that tune is a subtler proposition really, an invitation to the spasticised charleston rather than a (pulls showerface) black-hole of dance-floor dread. More obscure is Skycap's later remarkable "Darksky EP" (2001) with Sky Joose pulls very similar moves to Johnny on "Can't Wait". "Never Happened" and "It's too close". The early Menta/DND tunes are probably also worth mentioning in conjunction.

I suppose the comparison is begging to be made with this quite excellent EP and Sound Murderer's Bad-bwoy Jungle revisionism. There's the unexpected gesture of Americans choosing to telescope in on obscure, neglected strands of UK Dance music. The key difference between the two is that the Dark is stunningly-good. Trading hard on 2-step's helium-pitched vocals Johnny rubberises the KMA bassline, but still it see-saws and roves; the music springs immediately to life. Although these endlessly restless tracks immediately conjure the quivering varispeed utopias of the Cocaine fiend, I prefer to think of them, rather than amphetamine-fuelled, as over-oxygenated: the body, accelerating, burning brighter. These tracks will have you twitching.

As invitingly improbable as the German Something J/DJ Maxximus's "Mercedes Bentley vs Versace Armani" as improbably inviting as The Soft Pink Truth's classic "Do You Party", both similar examples of orphaned electro-pfunk this EP deserves to be massive. My only reservation is with track 4, "HCD2" a remix of The Junior Boys "High Come Down" which prompts me to think that Johnny may indeed be better off without Jeremy Greenspan's occasionally irritating vocals.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My old mate Flashos (genius, legend etc) has asked me on to his Resonance FM show this evening.

Tune in between 6pm and 7pm to 104.4 FM. GMT bizniss striktly. Don't miss us!

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***NEWS FLASH***

And when we've finished clowning about it looks as if the Ghost Box massive have the slot immediately after us from 7pm to 8pm! How hauntological is that! You're going to be sorted mate! Get yer C90s out!

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:45 AM | Permalink

This festival is weirdly synchronous with my epic french series which I've now blessed with its own category heading.....

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:37 AM | Permalink

In my recent gloom-laden prognosis I forgot to mention Hot Chip, who along with Various Productions embody the new touchy-feely side of Hoxton music. How strange that the coke-zone should start to defrost and actually begin producing tender music of depth? Good music in other words.

Hot Chip might not actually be from Hoxton anyway, from the lyrics of "Playboy", the highlight of their excellent debut: "Driving in my Peugeot, 20 inch rims with the chrome now, blazing out Yo La Tengo, driving round Putney with the Top down." "Coming on Strong" (2005), which blissblogger passed on to me at the end of last year, is a very depressed record full of the woes of middle-aged bachelors. It seems this is a gang of average, overage boys, stuck sucking their youth while girls with ticking biological clocks, or ambitions for more than kraft dinners and roach-strewn ashtrays, pass them by. But the gloom is brilliantly undercut with genuine humor. They bullishly profess to have liked Prince since they were seven (just the kind of goofy pigeon-chested gag I adore) and there's the recurrent theme of the ridiculousness of middle-class white blokes identifying with Crunk culture (hammered home until the joke actually starts to gently open up the ridiculousness of that culture, period). Even the clumsy falsettos and the straining ambitiousness of two and three-part harmonies is gently self-mocking.

The latest record is a huge leap forward in production and ambition. Gone is the edge-of-squatland Young Marble Giants-esque shamble and in its place a much flashier self-confident sound. The vocal harmonies are even self-assured! I was really chuffed to discover a copy of "The Warning" (2006) on vinyl, these may still be kicking around, grab one if you can, the photo above isn't actually of my copy which is black as night with embossed shapes, but a scan. Also I dropped my camera in a Chinese restaurant at the weekend and it's reet fucked-up. There's a whole raft of exquisite pop tunes on this, absolutely essential, LP. "The Warning", "Over and Over", "Breakdown" and "Careful" are all astonishingly hooky. If I had to peg the sonic, I'd say hot dang at last someone has picked up where The Beta Band left off on the truly wonderful "Hot Shots II" (2001) before they lost all their confidence in the face of a nation of wretched derivative Indie-Rock and blew it with "Heroes to Zeroes" (2004).

There is just one shadow casting itself over Hot Chip, and that's (whisper it) The Squeeze. That's right, there's something ever-so-slightly "reliable Lunden" about them, but as long as they keep the sonic freaky, like on the Acen-influenced neo-Ardkore of "Careful" well it's cool with this cat.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Not just one:

Permanent Condition

not even simply two:

Awesome Tapes from Africa

but three:

The Hiplife Complex

The last two by Brooklyn's own Thursday Born.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:12 AM | Permalink

A series of pipe organ recitals featuring experimental transcriptions of underground music

Northern Soul
Thursday 27th April, 2006 at 7 o'clock
St Paul's Chruch, Bedford Street, Covent Garden
Music selected by: Ali Duff, Tam McClymont, and Alan Watson
Transcribed for the organ by: Andrew Macintosh (Royal College of Organists)
Performed by: Daniel Moult (St Peter's Church, Eaton Square) and William Whitehead (Royal Academy of Music)

Entrance is free.

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This doesn't sound exactly original (let's not forget Jeremy Deller) but the idea of Sy selecting Ardkore classics for transcription to church organ. Well, that'd be unmissable! I'm going to try and make this.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)