WOEBOT

With increasing regularity at the moment I come upon this issue. Some colleagues find the idea that anything more than the sonic itself is no criteria for the evaluation of a piece of music. This person is mildly horrified that a journalist would seek to publicise something which they'd been given by a friend or a connection, even worse that a journalist would be kind about a record which they weren't wholly convinced of the quality of.

Music Journalists are supposed to live in this vacuum, to be entirely divorced from the culture they comment upon with a pristine analytical objectivity.

But what total bullshit!

Looking back in history, the best and most useful Journalists have been the ones absolutely integral to the culture itself. Think Lester Bangs, or Paul Morley, or Chris Bohn (why not?) or even our big chum Mr Reynolds. And in my opinion the least interesting, least exciting Journalists are the ones who disdain involvement under a pretence of objectivity.

When you write in the press or online with a certain amount of regularity and consistency of opinion you find people gravitate to you. You'll find people who think they can (in the best sense of the word) "use you", will approach you. The truth of the matter is that nine times out of ten they're like-minded individuals. OK, only a smaller percentage of those people will have something you truly feel is worth publicising, but in my opinion thats a wholly healthy relationship.

Of course, ever since the appalling payola corruption endemic in the industry in the fifties and sixties there's been an attitude of discomfort about this kind of relationship. But really how much has the mechanics of this industry really changed in those years? Its still precisely the same of course. Again ideas of journalistic ethics, particularly strong in the USA as I understand, make anything other than "objectivity" problematic, but I'd argue that while that may be a worthwhile tenet to uphold in Political Journalism (though I don't doubt for a second that precisely the same allegiances develop in that field) but in Music Journalism? Surely not?

Lots of the Journalists here, Blackdown, Stelfox, Fiddy, jwd, and me (and thats just off the top of my head) have made a fine art of cheerleading their own particular tastes and getting deeply involved in scenes that theoretically opens us up to the charge of Nepotism.

Speaking for myself there are loads of moments when I have to balance a broad political view in order to more generally get my point across. There's records I feel a duty to be decent about. There's bigging up people who are essentially good friends (as well as, i believe, profoundly talented). And of course in the great percentage of instances there will be no connection whatsoever- but even in those instances I'll have to answer to some kind of political bent, be it respecting the reviews editor's opinions or being careful not to lash out at people who at the end of the day do a good thing for little personal gain.

On the negative side I don't think this means what I do is "Advertorial", but I do think it's just plain naive to assume that these currents aren't there. More than that I'm sick of pretending that navigating them, making decisions at this level isn't as important as just purely considering the sound issuing from the speaker. More than that, denying the presence my own grassroots network of influence (sounds pompous, i'm sorry) would be such a weird and totally counter-productive thing to do. Maybe its a Rockism thing again?

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Posted by WOEBOT at 11:04 AM | Permalink

I've always not felt so great about this thing. For quite a handful of reasons.

I never liked Blur, and not just from cultural snobbishness, i just never liked the sonic. Strongly remember an article of blissbloggers in freize around the time of Britpop (which seemed like it was happening in a separate wholly imaginary universe peopled entirely by journalists) which pointed to the paucity of Bluroasis compared to the lofty heights of Jungletricky- and that pretty much encapsulated how i felt about.

Never that keen on the "Damon Albarn persona" either. Seemed to be a white middle class bloke, rather like myself, and to be overly interested in him, well it seemed like a bit of a cultural lockdown. The other is always far more intriguing innit, even if its happening right on your doorstep.

The Gorillaz thing felt a bit sort of exclusive as well. I'd always had a kind of awe for Jamie Hewlett's drawing (being rather crap if characterful myself) but the whole combo seemed dead west-london, like a conceptual joke that lacked much generosity, that required submission.

Carrying on in this negative vein i didnt really like "Clint Eastwood" at all. Damon's vocals put me off. And even the hip Garage remixes did nothing for me.

But have you heard "Demon Days"? Well all doubters and haters would do well to check it out cos I reckon the tracks I've heard are, well, stunning.

"Dirty Harry" with it's shambling undulating bleepy-bassline, children's choir and little middle eastern touches is the bomb. "Feel Good Inc" was pretty great, again a great bassline. "Dare" (with Sean Ryder) is the kind of thing that if it came from the underground would get insane props. And I just LOVE "Demon Dayz" the title track with the big gospel choir. Thats all I've heard, but the strength of these tunes is kind of amazing.

Where did they go right? Well it appears that Albarn has sunk right back in the picture. Hardly any vocals but just concentrated on writing superb Pop/HipHop tracks. Perhaps Dangermouse the producer is the answer its all gone right? But to be honest, I never liked that Grey Album... The fact that theyve gone on to do a second LP, has meant the whole thing feels a lot less like a "project" too. Like Albarn and Hewlett really believe in it what they're doing, it seems a lot less contrite. More heartfelt. Anyways you should do yourself a favour and check it out, you'll get Shaun Ryder, De La Soul, Martina Topley-Bird and Dennis Hopper chucked in the bargain.

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Posted by WOEBOT at 11:04 AM | Permalink

I think I must have waited 15 years for a piece like Wayne's. Ever since I heard about putative connections between the Clave beat and Steely and Cleevie's rhythms. Big up your hairy chest Wayne. When I at last made it to Kingston in 1991 and I picked up the seven inch of Dave Kelly's production for Buju Banton's "Batty Rider" in Halfway Tree (shameless boasting here) I had the feeling that the Jamaica I'd come looking for, at a time when I was obsessing over Coxsone had somehow disappeared over the horizon. Where did that freaky beat come from?

cf Spanish Reggae. The rogue seafaring father of an old girlfriend of mine told us he'd heard rapping years before it broke. He'd heard it in South America he said. I dunno if Roy knew about toasting in Jamaica, but obviously the meme was pan-caribbean.

Which makes one ponder, surely then Jamaica's music history could be subsumed in that of it's neighbours. Maybe Wayne's the one to write a proper delocalised version of that history. One which takes in Cuba, Colombia, Antigua and threads Reggae through Calypso and Mento. Sure Lloyd Barnes touches ever so lightly on this in "Bass Culture", but yunnuh, not really. There's talk of Kitchener and Sparrow inflecting Reggae isnt there.

But (sound of needle ripping across vinyl) HOLD ON FOLKS!!!! Isn't this starting to miss the whole point? Seeing it like this the "Shanty House" meme (or whatever the f*** you want to call it, frankly I couldn't give a shit) running virulently unchecked. And that point is that the Jamaican identity through those years of startling fecundity (at least musically) wasn't focussed on its local borders at all. It was an alien mindset, on the one hand intensely local, riding an eternal feedback loop and on the other, and surely this is the point, locked on to American R'n'B and Rock as though it's life depended on it. New Orleans and The South was the source. Listen to those early Upsetter instrumentals and it's strictly Booker T and The MGs and The Meters. And practically nothing else.

How many cover versions of Calypso and Mento can you name in Reggae? How many covers of Soul, Funk, Disco or even Rap tunes? Shedloads. Lots and lots innit. Lots and lots and lots. My favourite JA musical anecdote is Scratch saying that he got the idea for the Reggae Beat (and yes some people think Mento has something to do with it, but that doesnt really add up in the context), he got the feeling for the Reggae Beat from American Hard Rock. And that the heavy Dub took it's cues from things like Led Zeppellin and Black Sabbath.

OK sure this might be the case for today's dancehall. Dancehall really must be just another node on the glocal riddim network. But you know what, and this aint gonna make me lots of chums, that's exactly why Jamaican music is as boring and inconsequential as it's become. It's lost it's cosmic/stratospheric perspective and has sunk to the level of a dialect. Something like Grime (at least over the past 4 years, though it's future is currently in the balance with pabulum like "The Avenue", just heard this piece of crap, it's not on the Roll Deep LP is it, must have listened straight past if it it was) has been just that over-ambitious bursting-with-energy and ideas that Reggae was once, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Which brings me to my final thought, in this solid gold rant, if the future is Reggaeton, in the US and Jamaica (even!) what's that going to do but relegate the also fabulously fecund UK-JA axis to the dustbin of History? What room is there for English speakers in the underground ha ha ha? And I'm only being half-playful, KISS is on in the background at the office I'm working in and I've heard nearly 5 Spanish tracks today. Chortle, maybe we need a "Save the English tongue" mega-blog!

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Posted by WOEBOT at 11:03 AM | Permalink

.....surely are to the 00s what The Velvet Underground were to the mid seventies!

Think about it. "The Messy Jessy Fiesta" (The Velvet Underground and Nico) and "Haus De Snaus" (White Light, White Heat) are the exemplars of what music should and could be like in the near future. I reckon part of the reason The Animal Collective have an aura of fascination, of latent possibilities is the way they echo that music. Profane and perverse, learned yet not stuffy (like practically all other Electronica), unimaginably eliptical, not tied to bulwarks like Rock or Rave (people are still talking about the collision of these two, i mean how irrelevant has this been since Liquid Liquid and 1980!!!!), in essence pungent with character and possibility.

Then theres the solo records of Kevin and Blevin, which are the equal of the stuff Lou Reed and John Cale put out in the seventies. With an wholly attractive existential weariness along the lines of "you fools still don't know what the fuck we're talking about".

Have you heard blevin's "Magic Maple" yet? (Thanks Derek!) Its a complete masterpiece, and I use that term advisedly. So much to celebrate, but "Last Track" must be about the only post-ardkore tune that REALLY conveys the rushed up murkiness of the rave. Then it struck me that Kevin's last one was fantastic as well. The way their work seems in step (like a lurchy tango) even though they're not collaborating is just the way Cale and Reeds records must have appeared in the years leading up to punk and beyond.

Both websites sheer genius:
http://www.kevyb.com/
http://blevin.lsr1.com/birds/

and here:
http://www.kevyb.com/eatmyinfo.html
Kevin's playing Live in London in October and I reckon I'm going to go down.

And Sagan! Itching to here that stuff now. On a Prog Rock tip (strokes beard and looks to the wings)

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Posted by WOEBOT at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Found this in the Kraftwerk book:

"Part of the problem, as they found on their US tour, was that early synthesisers were notoriously unreliable and difficult to tune. Often they had to be turned on in the afternoon in order to be in tune for the evening. Even then, the heat from the audience or the lighting rig would put them out of tune again. These problems were further exacerbated by the differences in voltage between countries. At the time, Germany worked on 220 volts at 50 hertz whist France operated on 110 volts at 60 hertz. Ralh Hutter:

"I remember well that time we played in Paris on 110 volts and all the tempos ere out of tune. At 8pm the big factories that plug into the network were making the voltage fluctuate. Thats the reality, Peugeot were making our tempos change."

Whiuch reminded me of this about La Monte Young:

"It is no accident that Young derives the fundamental tones of his Dream House installations from the 60Hz Bb of the electrical grid; in fact, when setting up installations in Europe, Young adjusts his frequencies so that they fall within the harmonic series of a fundamental derived from the 50 Hz European electrical grid. "

More:

"The Bb figuratively echoes the wind Young famously recalls hearing as it whistled around the cabin of his childhood, and, more literally, resonates within a quarter tone of the whir of the machine shop where he worked as a teenager—the motors running off of the 60Hz current of the electrical grid, North America’s continual drone. It portends the 60Hz fundamental tone implied acoustically by the complex harmonics of the Dream House installations and even presages the Bb tambura drone to which Young would later sing raga—and, on at least one occasion, the cowboy songs of his childhood. The Bb at the center of the Trio is not simply a line, but a timeline, on which Young charts his personal and musical life.

and a bit more:

"“There are two examples of sounds of electrical power transformers that I remember listening to during the first four and a half years of my life. One was a telephone pole on the Bern road (there’s only one road in Bern, Idaho; it is gravel)... I used to stand next to this pole and listen to the sound. The other electrical sound was produced by a small power distribution station just outside of Montpelier next to a Conoco gas depot that my grandfather managed... Sometimes on warm days I would climb up on top of the huge gasoline storage tanks and sit in the hot sun, smelling the gasoline fumes, listening to the sounds, daydreaming and looking off at the mountains.”"

(sxtract from Jeremy Grimshaw: "The Tabula (not so) Rasa: La Monte Young’s Serial Works and the Beginnings of Minimalism, 1956-58")

What I like about this is how it dovetials with the idea of "Om" the tone which is the central vibration of the universe. La Monte's "Electric Grid Drones" thus serve as "The Urban Om"

And I couldn't resist including this which I found in Jane Grigson's "English Food"

(on discussing the roasting of Boned Roast Sirloin of Beef)

"Turn the heat down to mark 4, 180C (350F), and leave for 30 minutes per kilo (15 minutes per pound). This gives you rare beef. For a joint of 2 1/2 kilos(5lb upwards), reduce the oven temperature to mark 5, 190C (375F).

The snag about this method is low Sunday and Holiday gas pressures. With such problems, you will do better to stick to the method of the recipe above."

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Posted by WOEBOT at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Came across the "Ruckzack" Bootleg of Kraftwerks.

Turns out it's essentially a Neu! record.

Here's Julian Cope on it:

"Neu! was born in a royal shitstorm, live on German TV, on a bizarre night in August 1971. And in true keeping with their convoluted history soon to come, that incredible performance on Beatclub, including the delicate and chillingly beautiful snatches of their forthcoming classics "Im Gluck" and "Weissensee", was not even played under the nbanner of Neu!, but of Kraftwerk. That truly incredible Klang they called "Truckstop Gondolero" was played by a Neu! phoenix rising out of a Kraftwerk funeral pyre."

He goes on:

"Temporarily reduced to a duo, Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider asked Michael Rother (pronounced 'rota') to play guitar and Klaus Dinger to drum for them. Rother and Dinger were good friends and extremeley confident musicians, and they very quickly carved a path out within Kraftwerk tat was at once Impressionist and Meditational at the smae moment, expressionist and Ur-punk the next - taking the sound in a direction that neither Ralf or Florian had intended. But their live TV appearance was already booked, and a frantic Ralf Hutter freaked out and left the group. "Kraftwerk without Ralf" played Beatclub amidst huge orange German traffic cones, though it would be more correct to call the group "Neu! with Florian".

Except Florian is almost completely drowned out. This is a great great bootleg. "Truckstop Gondelero" is fabulous, but the 22 minute-long version of "Ruckzack" Rother with those crisp violently harsh licks and Dinger in fine fettle is astonishing. Even if the truly appalling quality of the recording slightly marrs the memento.

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Posted by WOEBOT at 10:59 AM | Permalink

It looks like my local store Golden Grooves is shutting down.

We came across the owner the other night emptying the store in shopping market trolleys.

"Trade's really bad, they've put the rent up and I'm going to have to shut the shop down", he said "I'm going to stash these in my basement and sell them on the net"

This year will always go down on record for me as the year the Second-hand record store died. Its a tragedy.

But on the other hand if you visit eBay or GEMM the whole place is filled with those self-same boutiques selling their stock. It occurred to me that the proclivity and deep availability of music, I mean you can literally get ANYTHING you want must have benefitted from this implosion of the second-hand stores into the web.

All the stock is there! And you can search it. If you'd been to any one of those shops you might have been able to get one or other thing you were trying to find, but as it is, as a swollen organism, now everything is findable at the press of a button.

I mean how many times have you bothered to search through an entire online boutiques stock via eBay or GEMM? You don't, you cherry pick.

However, conversely it strikes me that the maintenance and availability of these vaste databases of records isn't something that can continue indefinitely. I mean, the rewards we're reaping now, the conditions which have made that possible will change quite rapidly. For one thing as these stores go out of business, keeping the stock available will gradually become impossible. Quantities such as these, well people can't stash them under their beds, and it takes manpower to manage these record sales businesses, manpower which stores must be finding is scantily rewarded. How many records COULD an individual shop actually sell in these conditions?

Anyway, my theory is that quite soon, in lieu of conglomerates arriving and rounding up all this stock into huge acutely-catalogued warehouses, quite soon we'll find the "deep" availability will evaporate. In short, if it's rare, and you want it, but it now.

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Posted by WOEBOT at 10:58 AM | Permalink

Recently I've been nursing a bit of a Kraftwerk thing. I'm even reading Pascal Bussy's really dreadful book about them. And actually a month or so ago I'd think this was beneath discussing....

Then it came to my attention that they let Coldplay "adorn" one of their rubbish LP filler tracks with the chords from "Computer Love."

Why on earth did they let this happen? apparently they usually never approve this sort of thing.

On one level it's a tritely clever gesture of Coldplays. "Classic rock riff", rendered as classic rock riff. A likke Radiohead-ification, in character with a band that seem to flirt with all the post-rave paraphanalia but never get-it-the-fuck-on which Thom Yorke and crew (to their credit) did on Kid A.

Surely Kraftwerk must have seen this strictly as a kind of astute demographic advertisment. With Techno and Rave seeming like they never happened, they feel they need to latch safely and squarely onto the new generation of guitar music.

But what a wretched track to let happen. The way the original works those chords are the hook, but on the geetar version its like the sounds are in the wrong place in the track. At the wrong time.

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Posted by WOEBOT at 09:16 AM | Permalink

OK I fully understand that this may be a deeply unpopular opinion, possibly even a purist's one (if defending impurity counts as purism!), but I'm a bit concerned about Grime being "encroached upon" by the twin forces of Grimm and UK Hip Hop.

****OK whoah! Everyone calm down!******

Its probably cos I'm not a fan of either of the two that i find it a problem. It just strikes me that the likes of Sway on the one hand and FWD on the other are sidling into Grime, just as Grime artists seem to be becoming less differantiatable from their colleagues in these adjoining fields. It seems that a load of Grime artists (from Duurty Goodz downwards) are quite comfortable with the contraction.

It seems what is a heart of this to me is an abandonment of the Ardkore "Guttah" element of the music. Both UK Hip Hop and the FWD sound are "classy", "professional" and "polished", and to be frank what I've liked about Grime is its ugliness, noisiness and rankly amateur qualities. Terrible to admit!

Despite a few recent tunes , the Statik LP, the PJam "Compass" EP (didnt know he was behind "Anger Management") and the latest Ruff Sqwad tune (though for a first time i preferred the instrumental on this) which i've liked. I wonder if this is the end of Grime as I knew it?

Also it seems like post-Grime, artists like Sov, are what are being tipped as the way forward? Me, I dunno.

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Posted by WOEBOT at 10:55 AM | Permalink

Get your hankys out BTW

This was playing int the office the other day and it was the first time I'd heard it since it I was nine years old. I've mentioned before how "No Nathanial No" breaks me up something serious, as this was the music i was listening to as I was being sent back to prep school (i was packed off from home at the age of seven). The feelings of emotional devastation, pretty much compounded by the fact that I was also miserable and alienated at home (I know I know its a real blubberer this one) just made the impact of this record overpowering.

Anyway yesterday was the first time i'd heard it since then, and I was struck firstly how bloody good it is. The music, I know its only Jeff Wayne, well its pretty excellent. All that quite controlled bombast, spooky kate-bush-esque martian leitmotifs, clangorous sliding guitars, the bleeps; the whole thing coming across like an anglophile Goblin- thats to say super-slick nasty sleaze rock. Burton (as k-punk I think mentioned somewhere, scarily world-worn)

It dawned on me too that the reason I must have identified it with it was that commonfolk, the victems of the martians, Richard Burton included, are so entiely helpless. They're quite completely at the whim of forces outwith their control. Reduced to the state of orphans, children. There are resonances too between the state of the martian attack and London's predicament at the moment. And again, perhaps more appositely, between the state of Iraq's subject to the invasion of the faceless American war machine.

What added extra depth to my own personal recollection of it was that I was introduced to it, almost forcibly, by my housemaster of the time. A very fucked-up man. Essentially a child-abuser who really relished the powerlessness of children (wont go into it in too much detail, suffice to say that he would, amongst other things, beat me every week for things which I hadnt done, for reasons I never understood) I suppose he was the monster who lurked awaiting my return to school. Ended up commiting an auto-erotic suicide. Vile.

I was so totally knocked out by hearing the record again that I actually had to slip out of the office and hide. It hit me like a juggernaut. Whats the film like incidentally? Anything with Tom Cruise in it is, as a yardstick, utter crap.

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Posted by WOEBOT at 10:54 AM | Permalink

Picked this up in the basement of HMV for £1.99. I love it when books are cheaper than magazines. What would a copy of MOJO cost you? Don't fackin' ask me, how would I know?

I'd been meaning to read it for years. Just recently gave up trying to read proper stuff after a year of picking up k-punk reccomendations (just about wore the hell out of me, guffaw! not cut out for the intellectual breadth of badiou and all that ting and ting)

And boy was I glad to find it. Admittedly I just read what must be the weakest chapter on The Beatles (Cohn sounds bored shitless by them) but this might be the music book I feel closer too than any others. This must be because like me (OK just becasue I'm talking about myself doesnt mean I think I'm a hard guy, actually I've been strugging like hell these past two months, struggling to not sink into a swamp of misery.. plenty of work, good prospects and all that shit, just aw fuck it you're not interested...)

Yeah anyway, Cohn is basically a no-nonsense hipster. No-nonsense requires some qualification. I mean, what a fucking effete and absurd passtime, writing about music. Just fucking tell it like it is and get the fuck out of there. And thats how Cohn rattles through it. I swear he must have written this book off the top of his head, dashed it off in about half an hour. He pretty much sees right to the centre of a person or a phenomenon and can wrap it all up with a few chosen words. He talks like most of the real people I've known, real in the sense of people who are actually "doing the shit", you wouldnt be embarassed to see him having a conversation with i dunno, some movie director (like Ridley Scott fr'instance) he wouldnt be all gauche and mistake having an intelligent opinion for talking a load of waffle.

Alot of people, particularly on the net, talk a hell of a lot of crap. Endless spooling shite. Talk is cheap online. Oh sure I'm not slagging off discourse, and I'm not ramraiding large word-counts, its just that concision is in short supply. Theres a lot of quite shrill tub-thumping (and if that sounds like a macho thing to say, well sue me baby)

I really identified with "Awopbapaloobop Awopbamboom", and if I start talking about "cats" and start saying "baby" alot well thats why. Also I've decided I'm going to henceforth call records "tiles", i heard a reggae dj do that on the radio and i thought, hmm, you're a cool cat like me, i'm gonna co-opt that into the new Woebizzle slang. Baby. Innit. (you know, chuck in a few old favourites as well)

And its such a great book. I like the indusrty-insider stuff, all the chat with managers and stuff. I like the general suspicion of the pretentious, yes I really do, which surprised me, gonna have to work that out. Cohn's model of what he calls "Pop" however is much closer to the Nuggetts groups/Punk Hordes/Ardkore Massive, than todays "pop". He basically valorises the brutal and unpretentious, doesnt have much truck with the later Brian Wilson etc. Peppered with daft wiscracks like this:

"Really I bring him in only because I never met anyone who understood pop so well. Who agreed so much with me that is." Its also fantastic in unexpected ways.

• The first "Discotheque" DJ: Johnny Rivers who played Hollywood's "Whiskey A Go Go"

• The first dance where people actually danced ON THEIR OWN (think about it, thats key) Chubby Checker's "Twist"

• On Jimmy Saville. Fascinating. Also (I know this from elsewhere the first man to use twin decks, even built himself a cross-fader, eat your heart out Grandmaster Flash, Jim'll Fixit!)

Drool drool, anyway I love it. Be like me and buy a copy. Baby.

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Posted by WOEBOT at 10:53 AM | Permalink

Don't know if you caught this thread on ilm (surely?!?)

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=5942033#unread

i'm bound to say this (supress laughter everyone) but i didnt find it that sidesplittingly amusing

especially as it struck me that truth is nearly always stranger than fiction as these sleeves prove:

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Posted by WOEBOT at 09:30 AM | Permalink

If you havent heard the "Verschwende Deine Jugend" Compilation of German New Wave and Punk yet, buy or steal a copy. Its a classic compilation.

My favourite track on it is called "Fred Vom Jupiter" by Andreas Dorau & die MARINAS. My taste in NDW does lean towards the "catchy" (shall we say). Of course, prepare yourself for cultural sterotype, the Germans do austere fabulously, perfectly even, but its when the underground sound becomes poppy that all that austerity gains it's charm. Like Kraftwerk innit. Sublimely catchy but mechanik and precise (dont know if you know the Eddie Izzard sketch about "very precise instruments")

Fred Vom Jupiter has this chugging clanking steam zug propulsiveness. Much like the toy rocket on the sleeve might sound, with just the faintest edge of over-precision. Ally this with the swoony, off-the-mark, plaintive voices of (I learnt, REAL CHILDREN) and the concotion is irrestistible. This might well be the raindrop distilliation of all that was wonderful about Mouse on Mars. It was a big hit this track!

Also got me to thinking what an incredible label ATA TAK was/is:

http://www.atatak.com/assets/s2dmain.html?http://www.atatak.com//e/ehome.html

If you havent got a copy of Pyrolator's "Ausland" or Der Plan's "Geri Reig and the Normalette" get thee hence.

Have a look at the kids on the back sleeve. Aw, dont they look cute!

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Posted by WOEBOT at 09:28 AM | Permalink

Went to see these cats, and said a brief hello to them, at the Kosmische 9th Birthday party. V.salubrious affair.

As far as I'm concerned these two are my great "white" hope (no ref to skin pigmentation obviously)

I've uploaded a little movie I shot here (you'll have to tilt your head) which is footage of them playing a version of
their single El Monte. I don't have the single, but from what Sacha told me the live rendition was miles better. Of course I do have the Black Lyotard Front single which is just divine, if you havent heard it yet (well you must be in some bunker in Poland) find a copy immediately, its BY FAR the best Post Punk disco romp, maybe ever!

I've also attached a nice piece by Xavier Chamone which FACT ran, which alludes to the Days of Mars release. On the strength of the gig, this stands every chance of being the best thing DFA has put out. Xavier alludes to Italo Disco, I don't really get this, but disco yes. The most pungent aural similarity I took off the performance was to Terry Riley's oevre, quite specifically to "Persian Surgery Dervishes", in fact I imagine this is how those mantric mini-moog extravanganzas of his actually sounded. ie ROCKING!

Isnt it interesting how with this and the forthcoming Jackson LP (proper insanely-spliced together INAGRM-infused Disco) have really put the Avant-Garde into disco with purpose. (scratches head) There isnt much of a history to this beyond Arthur Russell and the odd one-off record is there. Is there?

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Posted by WOEBOT at 10:54 AM | Permalink

I know I may appear quite curmudgeonly about Pop, that Pop music thread for instance, amidst the rhetorical panning i was genuinely asking what case could be made for Pop. The truth is 9 times out of 10, okay 99 nine times out of a hundred, it doesn't do it for me. Even when I was kiddywink, ducking off school at the college sanitorium, listening to a constant stream of Radio One in the early eighties, it was Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" and The Specials "Ghost Town" that would haunt me with their off-kilter vibrations, emanate internal logics foreign to the school and home, suggest the purple modes of secret societies. You might say those tunes are all Pop, yeah and I say maybe they became Pop but they weren't conceived as Pop and we'd fucking argue all day.

Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" is, as far as i'm concerned, the absolute best of what Pop has to offer. What an improbable success! Old Madge with her stretchmarks, in (is it?) a movie tie-in. That must put it way down the rank of what qualifies as someone's idea of a perfect pop record. It's not a glistening oiled girl-band with mirco-schaffel track or Ricky Martin. Its some fading star, ok she's amazingly lithe, but we're entering into the appreciation of the older woman with this one. Madonna hadn't done a catchy tune for ages, well at least not one I liked ('Ray of Light' 'Music' all that stuff just makes me flash on aerobics classes)

What makes it the very definition of Pop is how totally it's orphaned from these subterranean rhizomes the connection to which DEFINE the Rockist. She hasn't written the track herself, Madonna buys tunes from songwriters, unlike the things just previous to it she hadn't strapped herself to the underground with people like Mirwais and William Orbit (didn't she try Liam Howlett, Goldie AND The Aphex Twin, all of whom told her to walk). She's just gone 'Dash it all!' I suppose using Mike Myers in the video, was, like using Ali G in 'Music' an anglophile gesture, but its one loaded with irony, cos of course Austin Powers is a send-up.

That the track is inseparable from the video is another reason its a quinessential piece of Pop. Here's a handy rule of thumb: any piece of rock music (in the sense of Rock-ist) which has a video made for it is always a crap piece of music, almost without exception, perhaps 'Windowlicker' but certainly none of the other Aphex Twin tracks. Here's another rule of thumb: if the video is a good as the song whatever the track's background in the murk of cult, it's Pop. Obvious really.

I just adore the tune on this one. Cut off from the body of the rest of Madge's trendy records, as well as isolated from the underground, its also incredibly anachronistic. A pastiche of a kind of Lovin' Spoonful, Mama's and Papa's and The Archies day-glo, flower-sucking, penny-farthing-sporting harmonically over-abundant 3-minute wonder, instead of sounding like a modern version of those sort of tunes it sounds like the sort of track that would emerge form LA's 1980s Psychedelic Pop underground. It sounds like The Bangles or Dream Syndicate or summat. The way its built on, and flows between, what feels like a succession of choruses (ie 100% Sugar, sugar) is excessively dreamy. I've worked the song into a video I've just completed, something Sky have commissioned and everyone in the quite militant office where I've been freelancing is whistling it. It's not catchy, it's not addictive, it's practically the Ebola virus.

And the video. Well it's sidesplitting isn't it? It also has this kind of wonderful gravitas. That grown people like Madonna and Myers can send themselves up, and just about everything about who they are, where they live, what they do, like this, well it isn't just funny it's touchingly heroic. The way Madonna rubs her arse in Myers head, it's just nuts. The way he makes a mobile phone with his hand and mouthes 'call me' as she gyrates, seemingly isolated and ignorant on stage; just perfection. OK I hear you say, here we go, taking Madonna seriously (I should do more of this!) well no actually, this isn't really about Madonna. That's the thrust of my argument, it's not about anyone. It's about meat and hair and teeth. OK something portentous and self-conscious like 'Papa don't Preach' is wide-open to "serious interpretation" but this is just a piece of Pop flotsam. It looks like it was filmed in about half an hour for goodness sakes!

To summarise (!) what allows 'Beautiful Stranger' it to be a perfect Pop record is that it's orphaned. Not only does this allow it to stand on fall on it's own merits (THAT'S the argument for Pop) it also means that any alchemy it accrues it has done so in a purely accidental manner. And if you ask me, answering my own question, that quality of the accidental is the quintessence of why Pop might (even if only occasionally ) be valuable.

Download the video here

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:32 AM | Permalink

It's k-punk's birthday soon, and he's always been plagueing me for a comp of Mover/Gloomy Stuff, so I took the time to dig out and go through all my Gloomcore tracks and cherry-picked 2 CDs of stuff, which I recorded to disk from vinyl.

Does anyone know these tracks? Was I the only person besides blissblogger (?) who managed to source any of these at the time? Does anyone have any recherche recommendations?

I found 80% of my Gloomcore in one go. In Spitalfields market there was an extremely dodgy little store run by a creature (OK thats unkind ) called Tog. I found over 100 PCP, Cold Rush and Dance Ecstacy releases in one of the bargain bins. It took a very long time to convince the bloke to actally sell them to me (3 weeks ringing him up and pestering him up) He said he needed to get them priced accurately, but I think eventually gave up, and sold them to me for a quid or so each. I actually went through them a few years ago (2000?) and weeded out the crap, quite thoroughly and well, if I remember so no gasping at the back. Sacre blue! etc

Was very weirded out at the time cos I was a member of the Alien Underground Gabba mailing list (where I found quite a few other PCP tracks, that along with the Soul and Dance M&V where I scored Spiritual Combat and Into Mekong Centre, actually Spiritual Combat was the only track i wished I'd put on here, but must have forgotten to hook it out). Anyway Alien Underground had an editorial where they said their container had been broken into and a load of PCP records had been stolen. I did REALLY worry that, given the quite shady nature of Tog, he might have been complicit as a Gabba fence. But, BUT, the dates were wrong. My records were available BEFORE the alleged break-in. Still it was a bit uncomfortable, though I stopped short of ringing Simon Underground and telling him lest he impound my Gloomcore

Just for the record, in the past I have permanently boycotted 2 record stores who I found knowingly sold stolen records. I'm a righteous git at the best of times.

AND BEFORE YOU ASK, NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE A COPY OF THESE CDs.

NO!

This one's for the k-punk alone.
Though I was amazed how much Arcadipane was available at Gemm, so get thee hence.

ps For the record, two of these tunes "untitled" and the Slaves to the Rave Remix come from a cassette Simon made me back in 1997 (!!!). I have a version of Slaves to the Rave on vinyl as well, but its the original. The remix, in this instance, is superior.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:38 AM | Permalink

Anyone else picked this up? I was a little disappointed, but its not bad. What it does have in it's favour is that they're actually making a sound. Does anyone else know what I mean by this? Its as if Wire music is so nebulous and intertextual that bohos are actually afraid to strike out, be direct, not be determined to make record-collection music.

Actually I reckon its not as difficult as people make out to be original, people have just become used to being toadies. Theyv've got used to the emotional security that comes with not being original. Original may even be the wrong word (thinking out loud) cos this isnt that startling innovative, praise the lord, its just direct. Unfussy.

Also the other thing I thought was that maybe this signals the end of "The Dominating Hegemony" of ambience or post-ambience over Wire music. By that I mean that the mag, since Toop's "Ocean of Sound" has pretty much explored every cul-de-sac leading out of the market phenomenon know as Ambience. Avant-Garde Classical music, Free-Jazz, Glitchtronica etc all this I reckon, in its purest essence, is consumed and construed as a form of Ambient music. OK you say Keenan and his post-Bangs Rock-into-Free music trip, hmm, I dunno if that would be sustained by a Rock market. I reckon that's been sustained by a post-Ambient market. Certainly thats how most people I know ended up with a taste for the Avant-Garde....

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:36 AM | Permalink

(absolutely no apologies whatsoever for posting this in the thought forum)

Lots obviously. If being a hipster actually means copying what other people do, making decisions based not on what is meritorious and splendid but what is a generational consensus. If it means not actually thinking for yourself and not thinking. If, I suppose, it means valuing something on the basis of its radiosity above anything else.

The thing is, almost everyone I know who would be pejoratively described as a "hipster" is almost by definition ahead of the curve. They're searchers (scarves fluttering in wind). They're actually the last people in the world to follow anyone's lead.

That last point though is maybe problematic. Radiosity. The thing about "hipsters" is that real quotient on the hipster-icity is their ability to sense what sounds "fresh". This could be genuinely problematic. (stepping back slightly) As someone who might be construed a "hipster" I often worry that always valuing something on the basis of its vital energy means that my listening (and this could equally apply to Art, Film whatevs) tends to be consumed in a heat of white light. Its quite often difficult to hear anything other than energy. Also seeking energy can obviously make one feel quite superficial, like a moth.

On the other hand, what is there but energy? This might seem like a vapid remark, but would you want to eat rotting vegetables? Who reads yesterdays papers? And although Bergson gets quite short shrift in these parts (you have to read the books themselves people, not trade in assumptions) isn't the vital force that which is most divine?

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:30 AM | Permalink

There's a resurgence on interest in this bloke's works, largely in these parts owing to Ariel Pink's championing of him (though now it appears they're no longer pals!?!) just last week i went here:

http://www.rsteviemoore.com/

which is slightly gruesome in the way that most outsider art is. what is it about outsider art that is so distinctly repellant? i suppose its difficult to qualify precisely what characterises an outsider artist, recognition of them seems to be more based on an instinctual reaction one (OK 'i') have upon being confronted by them. someone like harry partch for instance. you could argue he's an outsider, but somehow his vaulting ambition, enthusiasm for culture and historical adroitness (he's an archetypal modernist) compensate.

even someone like sun ra, who cons you into believing he's an outsider (and all the discourse around him suggest he is) plays ball with the zeitgest time and again. being a member of the AACM, signed to esp, even doing versions of funk (UFO) and Rap (Nuclear War) to keep his hand in. nah, Ra's not an outsider. ariel pink's the same too. he's no outsider, theres some kind of tension between the fame and obscurity in his case (maybe thats where his and rsm's rift founders) but THANK GOD, he's engaged with the here and now.

all the arguments in favour of outsider artists appear strong and valid, even more valid than those "locked within discourse with their time and place". you know, the indefatigable auteur shaking his fist at the corrupt body of capitalist-dominated toadying fake art. all thats bullshit i reckon. even more strongly i've begun to come of the opinion that the true artist is the person who self-conciously emulates rather him than strives for individuality. probably ancient chinese wisdom of some flavour but STILL anathema to the standard western romantic traditions of appreciation and enculturation.

maybe the refusal to engage with the broader culture instead of producing bracing originality engernders a kind of solipsistic hermetecism. the word wank immediately springs to mind.

when i hear r stevie moore's music, and actually no i'm not bothered that everyone from the rather charitable mr robert christagau downwards thinks he's some lost genius, i hear mildew and carpet-stains. of the 34 songs i've heard which are available to download off his site i've not heard a single one which doesnt make me wince. and c'mon who but a total idjut is going to make his bad songs available as a taster for the public?

sure there's sonic similarities to lots of things in there (i'm not valorising "connections" im just using it here as some kind of barometer for engagement) you can hear second-hand traces of paul mccartney's solo albums (being a bit snide here in case you need me to underline it )

two thoughts sprung to mind. one that r stevie moore might, even more than kylie minogue be the apposite "pop" artist in that he's only playing lipservice to the cultural groundswell of the day. actually, weirdly, listening to these quasi-demos gives me (shudders) the same feeling as listening to past-its-sell-by-date pop music like for instance brian and michael's "matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs" that unmistakable odour of public toilets (i'm no cottager honest guv!)

my other thought is that i'd rather (a thousand times over) listen to an honest failure. some poor band who falied in their absurd attempt to reach recognition, like i dunno The Associates or maybe even St Etienne (?) than some under-ambitious disapproving self-obsessed self-sufficent crackpot. you got to fucking put it out there, try to engage, even if you know everyone's going to think its crap.

r stevie moore=bad vibes

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:28 AM | Permalink

Enjoyed this:

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=1679

via Blissblog:

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_blissout_archive.html#111823558391914615

except this slightly feeble definition of Rockism:

"For purposes of this discussion, rockism is an approach to music that uses the values of one genre as an unquestioned set of rules and then judges other music by those values."

Which makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

I thought long and hard and came up with this:

"For purposes of this discussion, rockism is an approach to music that uses a music's coordination within the matrix of previously released music as a criteria for its evaluation, thereby prioritising Geography, Tradition, Community and notions of Integrity."

How does that sound? Can anyone improve on it? Or even explain what Erick Bieritz was suggesting in clearer terms if you think I'm barking up the wrong tree and there is some kernel of truth to his assertion (I don't think there is, I just think he missed the mark on the definition).

I ought to opine that I really like the idea that Pop-ism is a useful self-regulating tendency on the otherwise unimpeachable tactic of Rockism.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:34 AM | Permalink

I've always slightly glossed over this, just have never been that interested in it, not so sound mean or unkind its just been off my radar. However just recently I've found this bit of what they do http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/best/ quite useful in a journalistic kind of fashion.

I dont check it all that often, but its a useful snapshot of what some people think is hot and what is snot. Actually I dont tend to find any great surprises there but its good to be open to to new stuff (of course innit!). Its quite handy the way they link to that shop where you can check mp3s too, so for instance the Architecture in Helsinki record (which looked like it might be good) i was able to dismiss in one go (grins, im not exactly sounding that +ve am i?)

Anyway i was quite surprised to realise that Dave Stelfox, Martin Clark, Jess Harvell AND Phillip Sherburne now all have what amounts to a column there. All specialising on their chosen topic. Thats the bloggers man dem. And I'll admit that for a split second my tiny face fell, why hadnt they asked me (?!) and then i quite cheerfully and quickly came to the realisation that, well, I'm not actually an expert on anything (gurgle gurgle). And of course (ha!) if they had asked me (full of bravado) i would have turned them down instantly!

But you know, on the simplest level, Pitchfork, thats a good thing....

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:32 AM | Permalink

Just put together my latest CD-R round up of the Grime scene.

These are my favorite comercially-available tracks from the past six months:

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

1-3. Come from the Aim High Volume 2 CD.

4-9. An astonishing 6 tracks (all solid gold) are Ruff Sqwad tunes. These boys are really carrying the can for the whole scene at the moment. Damn I love them. A year or so ago (even after Anna) I was really sceptical of their talent, but believe, they've MORE than delivered the goods. So hot right now.

11-12. Come from the Aftershock Mix CD. Mixtapes seem to be sopping up alot of the "proper" release material. Combined with TD's and Wiley's seeming reluctance to actually put out music without a chance of serious remuneration.

13-14. Only two tracks from Jammer's slew of releases. Murcul Man is crap but I have a real affection for it. Luka will tell you why.

15-16 Fire Camp Bizniss. "No" trumps "Pow" for me anyday. "Backwards" a bit daft, but it just about makes the grade (only two tracks I couldnt fit on this comp, usually I cast aside 5-10)

19. Ebony and Ivory, an obscure but fantastic track. There seem to be a lot less of these one-offs from small crews. My other 3 compilations Grime Scene, Grime04aCD and (its imaginatively titled successor) Grime04bCD were full of this kind of spirited orphanry. Not a good sign really, shows consolidation around "the names" Reminds me of the times near the end of my dalliance with Jungle when THE ONLY things I was picking up were Full Cycle and V tracks (which was more or less the same label).

22-23 Two very hot instrumentals. The more I hear "Shank" the more I think it stands up on its own. Heard a bloke called Tim playing this the other night at the ICA (totally Dissensus set he was spinning) went and said hi, and met man-like Trevor Jackson for the first time (anyway, i digress )

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:45 AM | Permalink

i first heard about this in the pages of uncut magazine. that same issue with the postcard feature (ie the only one ive picked up in the last couple years, lest anyone be scrutinising me for dad-rock tendencies, lol! i am a hipster, honest guv!) it comes across as an art-rock take on 70s US AM-rock, a kind of radicalised version of chicago/al stewart/tom rush/seventies bob dylan. amongst the producers on it number steve albini and jim o'rourke.

the legend goes that the record label (i think domino?) pulled the plug on the lp because the production costs were spiralling out of control. plush ended up footing the bill himself (in the region of six figures apparently, gasps) one the one hand kind of admirable (the pursuit of art) on the other giving the proceedings the aura of a vanity project. bizarrely the only way of getting this nowadays is by importing it oneself from japan. all of which above lends it the aura of a cult object.

the idea of a radical mor is, ive always found, quite seductive. its the self-conciously grown-up cousin of pop-entryism. its a less of a trojan horse than a kit-built bmw replica incorrectly parked in the management's demarcated bay. unlike pop-entryism (which is cool too isnt it? its a bit of fun. richard x, yeah he's cool- not that i see him as anything but a rockist.....), it's relationship with the mainstream is softer, but by the same token it's less likely to receive fantastic remuneration. off the top of my head other examples are scott walker's 3 and 4, tom jobim's "matita pere", van dyke park's "discover america', arto lindsay's "prize", richard and linda thompson's "shoot out the lights". the brazilian connection is an important one, because there softly-spoken ballads by the likes of edu lobo and caetano veloso aren't seen as being unradical just because the content isnt grating. actually this is why nick cave (who's been wanting to make a good radical MOR record since he nearly achieved it with "from her to eternity") goes on about brazilian music and the "suadade" (inkorrekt spelling probably).

also spending ridiculous amounts of money on production (roping in veteran r'n'b producer tom tom wotsit), and long periods of time "getting it right" must be lauded in the push-button climate of electronica. nowadays you get people putting out an lp every week. thats what the planet mu bloke the gasman boasts of being able to do. i've always admired anton webern and edgar varese for their absolutely miniscule musical output. take your time and get it right innit.

the problem with "fed" is that its a huge pile of steaming horseshit. the songs are unbelievably feeble, and the guy has the worst, meanest, thinnest most-out-of-tune voice you've ever heard. i actually had to switch it off as i found the experience of hearing him mangle and not-quite-reach notes with his mewl was so fucking painful.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:33 AM | Permalink

Simon tried to slip this in at the RIU&SA panel, claiming that of the post-punk brigade (and indeed beyond that in the entire field of music) only Bono and his gang have managed to keep alive the link between Music and Life. So cheeky! It would have made the perfect point for a spectacular flare-up, but strangely no-one rose to the bait. Bit of a mind-bomb that one blissblogger!

But let's face it, he's right. I've never once bought a U2 record but I'll concede (not even grudgingly) that U2 are alone in imagining a word where music matters outside the domain of sound. OK I admire Grime for something like similar reasons, it has ceased its own methods of production and created its own fantastic disorientating spectacle, but even though its politicised its politics (here in the broadest sense) appear to say a different thing. I wonder if i'll feel the same way about Grime when IT IS as big as Hip-Hop (aw, probably i suppose!)

But U2! You've got to give them credit. Its one thing to hate on the catholic church quite another to actually meet the Pope and level with him (though naturally some might see that as appeasement, but for my money having a quiet meeting with Murdoch would have a stronger effect of the direction and behaviour of the global media than bombing SKY, thats not compromise in my book). And say what you like about crass charity records, Bono's done as much as he could have done for Africa and the Third World Debt.

I reckon he's pretty bloody cool. And you know what, to boot, i thought they're latest single, the one where they're all standing on what looks like some desert flats and some vaste shapeshiting wind is smearing them downstream at 200mph while they churn a quite fantastic-sounding bit of Hero-era Neu! Well I thought it was excellent.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:47 AM | Permalink

Was listening to the new Ludacris track on the way home:

"I'm an explorer like Dora,
But Swiper can't swipe me"

Nearly crashed the car. Luda MUST have little kids. My three year old is mad for Dora the Explorer. In the UK you can catch it on Nick Jr. I just adore it. Dora's voice is, well you have to hear it, so perfect. The songs are great too:

"Come on, vamanos, everybody lets go!"

Dora is this plucky little 5 year-old chiquita who goes on ADVENTURES. She rescues the little Jaguar from the waterfall. She gets granny a chocolate tree. She finds a present for her baby puppy.

Dora has a pet monkley called Boots. Boots says "I love you Dora". Dora talks to the camera:

"What was your favourite bit of our adventure?"

__REALLY BIG PAUSE___ Lulu shouts at the TV.

"Oh I liked that part too!"

Dora is full of oddities. The Festival trio, a Frog, snail and slug who appear when she has completed each of her three tasks and play a little triumphal fanfare on tiny instruments (SOOOOO Jim Woodring!) Then there is Backpack who after he's produced the item Dora needs (for example, a spare tyre for Esa the Iguana!) eats everything else: "Yum yum yum, delicioso!" And Swiper the fox! "Swiper no swiping!"

Everything is spoken in a mixture of Spanish and English, which for us Brits is plain weird. Lulu, my baby girl is now always coming out with Spainsh words: Arriba, Abaho, Sienna. Even occasionally words which we dont know the meaning of! Woops!

At the end of each show Dora sings "We did it!" this charming little celebration song and does her little wiggly dance.

Seriously, if you havent clocked it, even if you're a hardened bad boy (like Ludacris!) do yourself a favour and check it out.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:35 AM | Permalink

I'm still only 200 pages in because I've been struggling for the past two weeks with an absolutely insane burden of things. Excuses, excuses! Though hear me out: the week before last I was writing late every night when I got back from animating all day. I did linernotes (two interviews), 5 singles reviews, a 7000 word column, a 1000 word feature (one interview) and a book review.

Then this last week I've been working even later in the evening and trying to care for my wife and two babies, all of whom have been struck by this vicious virus, thats involved all night care as well as doing what i usually do (cooking and putting away breakfast and dinner). Poor little Sam, you should have seen him crashed out, bogies everywhere, heavy lids. I only managed to represent at the RIU&SA panel thing at the last minute, and sadly had to miss the Friday night sesh with The Mover......

....but I've still found time to read 200 pages, not sounding so bad now is it! I've been keeping a little checklist for myself of things which having heard Simon describe I'm desperate to check out. Presumably it's all over the web by now, but if you haven't discovered the pdf discographies available at the Faber and Faber website you ought to check them out as soon as possible. So anyway here's just a few of the things I'm after:

Iggy Pop's: The Idiot

OK OK OK. Yes I did have it when I was kiddywink, but I sold it about 7 years ago. It and Lust for Life are just staples arent they. But LFL is a much less interesting record, very catchy of course but a bit trite and R'n'B-ish. The Idiot on the other hand was a record which always used to unsettle me, Iggy looked deeply unpleasant on the cover and the music was, well, nasty. Cruel. Obviously the vision of something without my ken. And cold. And all those synths....the whole vibe is very Deutsche Gabber. I reckon I probably sold it cos I was never properly reconciled with it. And then I find Ian Curtis listened to it the night he topped himself!

Thomas Leer: 4 Movements and Contradictions

I've already managed to find a copy of private Plane on eBay along with Rental's Paralysis http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1 which strikes me as one hell of a score for 14 quid. I did have Contradictions at one point, and I've no idea why I sold it.

Devo: The Booji Boy Singles

I think Simon gets justifiably frothy about Pere Ubu's early stuff. The Datapanik collection (heart flutters) is just to die for. And the Modern Dance, well it was just about the only thing I listened to for years darling. I even had that (quite poor) Tin Huey LP at one point, but Devo! Devo?!? Devo I completely missed. I reckon this may have been because they were, in 1985, when I started to get deeper into music, very much around. Doin the college tour thing, and generally reduced to shtick. Bit of a turn-off. I heard that "Are we not men?" for the very first time EVER last week. I turned to my colleague at work and said, "Hmm, this sounds weirdly....like....mid.....period....Eno." Dang, what a great single. (scratches head) Wonder what the LP is like. Blissblogger has some GREAT GREAT GREAT Devo stories, but you'll have to read the book cos I'm not telling you them cheapskate!

Minutemen Paranoid Time and Bean Spill EPs

Why would you be interested in records which I havent actually checked out yet...er I dunno. For some reason these two little blighters have fallen through the cracks in my Minutemen collection and I intend to remedy that. Yes sir I do!

The Fire Engines

Slightly jumping ahead of myself here, havent even got to the Scottish chapter yet. Is there one? Ive been scratching around Postcard alot recently (as is attested elsewhere on this f'rum) but this I must hear....

The Albion Band and Martin Carthy

I'd really appreciate it if someone could reccommend me some good stuff (the best stuff) by these candidates. The Penster is on record saying this is what they were listening to at the Scritti squat. And I know the Albion Band LP was massive, but (again scrathes head) which was THE ONE? On a related note I've been digging a little deeper into UK folk music of this era. The Pentangle "Basket of Light" LP (which I know I'm the last person to hear) is just splendid also on the trail of some Bill Fay, though it looks like I'll have to surrender to buying it on CD.

Vic Godard

This guy I thought just sounded great. The quote of his I liked which I recounted to the panel at RIU&SA was this: (Vic) told Melody Maker that he viewed "Rock" as "potentially a really good secondary education system...Teaching (people) to educate themselves." I wanted to know why that would just be an unthinkable remark for a musician to make nowadays, why it seems (tragically) completely irrelevant these days. Gina spluttered something, which I didnt get , about how Vic Godard only had about 100 fans (yeah didnt understand that remark at all, was that supposed to mean he was irrelevant, unlike The Raincoats who had 500 fans...and you cant really answer back at these affairs, winks) and Morley, quite graciously I thought, cos it was kind of an ill-formed lackadaisical question which seemed to generally fail to ignite the panel's ardour, that with the internet knowledge is at everyones finger tips (nice of him, but i suppose potentially prompting the reply, then why the hell dont people fucking use it to enlighten themselves!?! and wasnt it better in the old days!)

I liked Vic's idea enormously. Truth be told thats EXACTLY how i used "Rock". Like an alternative secondary education system. When I was at my posh public school, I just couldnt begin to understand what the hell use ANYTHING i was being taught was. It wasnt that it wasnt conceivably interesting stuff, Latin, Geography, English Literature and all that, just the starting point, the assumption that lay beneath the reason you were being taught these things was so crooked that I just felt like I was autistic. It just seemed so weird. Rock education superior. Cut with the personal stuff.

The Swans "Filth"

I suppose largely because it's on Glenn Branca's Neutral label. Kind of sexy slice of vinyl. My bruv used to have "Cop" and that was good as well. Actually I regret not having that still as well.

-------
One of the truly great things about RIU&SA is that you get to hear the blissblogger talking about really quite famous records like Talking Heads "Remain In Light" and Wire's "Chair Missing" while usually he's writing about something deeply obscure (c'mon Simon, you know it's true!) And you're just overpowered by the need to check them out again.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:49 AM | Permalink

As I think I may have mentioned somewhere else, i had the good fortune to see Bruza MC-ing live the other night. Yet more exciting I actually greeted the dude and passed on my compliments.

I think Bruza is ace, but some people clearly disagree. I have a suspicion that these folk are perhaps traditional hip hop heads (OK don't beat down on me just yet! Hear me out aight!) What Bruza seems to has grasped is that Grime requires a different style of delivery. You need to be audible over this very loud music. If you cast your mind back to HipHop, the noisiest group was possibly Public Enemy c.Fear of A Black Planet. Chuck D and Flavour Flav weren't really operating in the "funky" sonic context of most MCs, not to say that the Bomb Squad's squall wasn't funky, just that it's dynamics weren't so focussed on the inter-relationship of beats, more on that of volume. And appropriately Flav and Chuck _declaimed_. They used pungent slogans, they hollered, made as much as they could of weird vocal tics, like Flav's "Yeah boyez".

Bruza definitely took the lesson at the heart of D Double's "Mui" sonic to heart, which is i suppose that of the sonic slogan. He's built his style, less on the sinousity of flow, less on the "cleverness" of his lyrics but more that of his audio signature sonix and also crucially that of his brazen audibility. Bruza must be the only MC whose every lyric i can actually hear. OK (winks) I may fumble a little with the local slanguage, but at least i can hear it! Compare him to someone like Kano, who it strikes me all the traditional Hip-Hoppers like, Kano is both a lyrics-man and someone with an exquisite (bordering on prissy if you ask me) flow. The general crispness of his diction kind of attepts to take on the same "problem" of Grime's crazy loud beats, but I always to feel he's lost amidst the volume.

But Bruza's lyrics aren't bad either. The other night he did an accapella with something approximating this hilarious line:

(addressing a girl he'd brought home who seems resistant to his charms)
"well you better be off unless you want to watch me mash the bishop"

....well i laughed.......

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:57 AM | Permalink

I came across this really funny thread on the RWD forums the other day. I've tried to track it down again, but I'm afraid I can't link to it. I nearly split me sides over this one.

A punter started a thread asking if anyone would be able to post a picture of JME. The moderator descended on this (quite young looking dude judging by his avatar) and generally took the mick out of the guy for being a "poofta" Saying was he going to be spunking all over his monitor if he posted the image? A few other people chipped in and had a go too. The guy seemed to take it quite well and it basically ended with all parties having a joke together.

I'm presuming the young guy was just curious to see what JME looked like, and of course so what if he DID fancy JME, but it did make me think that the new MC star-led culture, which in the UK is a break from nearly 20 years of practically faceless street music, does present a sexual problematic. These big MCs have "problematic" charisma for men. It was well funny, on the other hand to see all these girls going mad for the MCs the other day at Stratford. Blissblogger commented at the time it was like Beatlemania.

More broadly it strikes me that male charisma usually prompts extreme squeamishness these days amongst other men, particularly among white men. Perhaps this is the reason that electronica and dance music have come to thrive. Their unproblematic facelessness is kind of comforting and unintrusive. However this strikes me as a real shame. I like all the "tribal" trappings of clothes and hair and make-up that go hand-in-hand with actually presenting people. Furthermore it always amuses me that girls can be so casual about looking at images of other women. Elle, Vogue etc are literally directories stuffed full of pictures of other women, and yet women don't necessarily question their sexuality when it comes to (quasi-objectively) appraising other women's attractiveness, and crucially charisma.

Poisonally I feel quite comfortable with my sexual orientation and it seems sort of weird that one can't reflect that another man has "a look" or "charisma" without being afraid of what other people will think about one. I mean, maybe I'm letting slip some repressed feelings, but truly I don't think so.

So anyway, I had a quick rummage through my records and came up with these two images (one of Edwyn Collins, the other Edu Lobo) which I thought one couldn't possibly but reflect upon: "Hmm he looks like a cool dude."

To be henceforth referred to as WOEBOT's "Gay Post"

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:56 AM | Permalink

Maybe this bloke's artistically disastrous career hasn't been totally in vain! Thanks to GMaster for posting this to me.

I'd absolutely idea that Robbie had been turning his hand to this kind of thing. It's your typical dilettante popstar ego-trip at the end of the day though isn't it, but yes I'd have to admit I WAS a little surprised. I wonder if his record company leaked this bootleg, though it seems unlikely......dinner jazz is more his thing int?

What's it like? A bit flabby, some quite tepid "ululating" C'mon Robbie Entertain me! The chances of him doing a Scott Walker seem quite unlikely. He'd even be stretched pulling of a Paul McCartney

Head over here to download the title track which I've ripped off the CD.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:59 AM | Permalink

Definition One: Pop = Music in The Charts

No really! It's catchy I suppose, but then so can music which isn't popular be. It has no exclusive grip on the memorable, marketing power puts many tracks which aren't memorable, even hummable, in the charts. A great deal of those tunes by Jennifer Lopez. What puzzles me even more, in finer detail, is why so many people on the Internet hold pop music in high esteem. Why do people collect it? Why do they write about it? Why does it interest them? I'm genuinely mystified. Pop doesn't need them, they're definitely surplus to requirements. Smash Hits suffices.

Some people I know argue that Pop is the true barometer of the times. Like Sociologists they analyse the political currents of the times and draw (often very convincing) parallels between what's happening in the Charts at a particular time and that which is happening in the broader culture. I suppose the apposite example may be The Specials "Ghost Town" (coughs, good tune, coughs) and the urban riots of that year. But, forgive me for this, isn't this always a bit like those crummy TV Dramas in which Arsenal's Victory/The Miner's Strike/Tony Blair's coming to power is compared to the existence and travails of John Doe that very same year? How he overcame his fear of social exposure just as Naomi Campbell defeated The Mirror in a lawsuit. I always find themes such as these, well I find them to be a bit wobbly. Even in novels they're more strained and far-fetched than they are illuminating and engrossing.

It's such a seductive idea isn't it, that the micro mirrors the macro? But isn't it a comforting fantasy? Granted, sometimes clever artists capitalise on this, moulding their content so it fits with people's erroneous notion that there is indeed such a flimsy cosmic organisation. Like Bob Dylan. "There's something going on here people" (counts money). I'd argue that more often than not anachronistic music can shed more light on a time, show it in its true hue, than current music.

(scratches head) What other reasons could people give to find pop interesting? I guess old Pop is geist-y, but then so is any old music. Perhaps to laud it as some surreal index over which you have no control? On to the next defintion......

Defintion Two: Pop = A Marketing Term

I've been quite honest about this since day one. When I discovered that by Pop music people meant "music for imaginary rather than real communities" I was depressed for about a month. That people could consume Grime as "Pop", that they could do the pick'n'mix shake and vac ting and "consume" something oblivious to its source, well for me it just didn't bear thinking about. That all music could be subjected to the whim of the consumer like this, that there were people out there for whom all music was essentially reducible to a quotient of it's entertainment value (a mark out of ten, an "A" minus, a four star rating in their iPod ratings menu)...... sad innit. Each song becomes a unit, an equal unit, stripped of anything approaching life. How murderously void.

Though to just live an everyday life and get pleasure out of music like this must be fine, but to theorise music under this banner, to attempt to shroud this approach in a gossamer skein of intellectualism, well it's a travesty isn't it? Isn't it? Is it? I don't know, I mean I'm obviously horrendously out of kilter. Like a miserable old Jehoviahs Witness cunt.

Post-Modernism hasa lot to answer for here. It made these clean surfaces theoretically acceptable. Pop was "interesting", being a hard headed grey persistent twat, loyal and dogged was "boring". This is going to be a brutal reduction of theoretical thought, so apologies if I loose some finesse here, but Modernism, Modernism wasn't ahistorical. Andy Warhol, Le Corbusier and Jung were ruptures but they weren't abandoning history. Warhol with his tondos, Le Corbusier's fanatical love of ancient Greek Architecture, Jung steeped in Alchemaiacal lore, none of them simply wrote clean of the past. Furthermore it's a corny adage, but without embracing their past they couldn't have been free. To turn this on the mechanics of Pop appreciation: meaning is always dwindling in Pop, it's never accreating in the way it does in the underground rhizomes.

A friend I met at the weekend told me a story of how a colleague of his, not aware of the history of Typography, used a font designed under the Nazis for a poster for a museum for the Holocaust. It's a very extreme example but it does sort of encapsulate how I feel about the barren landscape of culture. Look into your font folder on your computer, how many of those fonts mean anything to you? Yet you'd be amazed how enriching it is to understand a bit about them. Check this out about Eric Gill (http://www.linotype.com/7-391-7/ericgill.html).

I suppose everyone's wary of history. I've begun to blush a little at my rampant indexing of music in relation to it's sonic precursors. But isn't it a good thing? From a Marxist point of view of course its really important not to abandon history, to let Capitalism consign it to the waste bin marked progress. I suspect my "Online Pop Straw-man" is timorous of exploring history. He is afraid some self-appointed old-fart-at-play will castigate him for his ignorance (me I've never pretended to be an authority on anything, I can't even work out the difference between Dogzilla and Durrty Doogz) He is cautious about aspiring to belong to subcultural groups (like, er, Grime) on the basis that he's Middle Class, White and Old. But really no-one gives a toss and what's the alternative anyway? To accept something less-threatening and fake in some compromised quasi-ironic manner. To give up on the real because it underlines the uncomfortable reality of one's own situation?

Defintion Three: Pop's charm = The Drama of High-vs-Low

Is High-vs-Low even an issue here? I dunno. I think not. It used to be quite a thrilling notion to me. It still is. I love it when I find out things like the fact that Bernard Parmegiani designed the sound for Charles De Gaulle airport. It's always sort of exciting when improbable "underground" things stray into the pop landsacpe. Like More Fire's "Oi". Or even to roll back to point one, when The Specials are number one. But this isn't my issue really (besides isn't this just folk music swelling in grandeur prodigously?). My issue lies with the reception of Pop, with people taking that Pop tack. Explain the appeal to me. I'm genuinely curious.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:51 AM | Permalink

Rapidly coming to the conclusion that the only place to buy records is online.

The best thing about them is you're confronted with stuff you didnt think you wanted, that which you never knew about, but you can engineer chance encounters like that online. I suppose also there's the psychogeographical thing, but can't one just do a lit bit of flaneur-ing on the side to compensate.

The main problem with record stores is that the stock is nowadays picked clean, for one the staff ensure this. Furthermore all the interesting records now never come anywhere shops. Dealesr take them straight from the kind of diggerati sources you and I have scant time to explore and sell them on eBay or GEMM.

Obviously I'm mainly talking about second-hand records, but for my money something like Independance outperforms any of the high street stores and while not to insult London's greatest stores (lets face it there are no contenders) Honest Jons, Rough Trade and Soul Jazz more and more I suspect their hearts aren't in it (all three have their own labels as there is no money in retailing) and also they're stylistically hamstrung (Rough Trade which tried to keep up with Jungle has given up in the face of Grime (says a lot about their approach in general). Besides you can get all this new stuff cheaper online anyway.

Accordingly here is a snapshot of the new letterbox i'm getting fitted:

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:54 AM | Permalink

I was in this absurdly trendy and expensive fashion boutique in Covent Garden buying a present for my wife and I tuned into the music they were playing.

What the! It was this bizarre mash-up of old ardkore and No Wave skronk. Way too drugged-up and freaked out for an emporium such as that. Then I heard a snatch of what i decided HAD to be the Langley Schools Music Project (bunch of Canadian kids singing out-of-tune Carpenters cover versions) and resolved to finally check it out in a bit more detail.

In Glasgow I slipped down to Mono (nods to Steven) and was surprised to find the aforementioned record in the racks. Even more to discover Keith from Optimo in the store. Keith wanted to see what I'd picked up. I showed him the Langley Schools thing and told him about the mix I'd heard which had piqued my interest.

As though he was some kind of visiting salesman (it was incredibly weird) Keith stretched his arm one metre to the wall of CDs on the shop and plucked from it his "Kill the DJ" CD, and proceeded to explain to me that it was his and Johnny's mix. Praising the LSMP version of "Space Oddity" to the skies.

Cool mix innit. I think Keith'll be lurking so people be nice svp

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:03 AM | Permalink

This is Luka's idea, but it got stuck on the end of some thread here ages ago, so I'm bringing it back with the hope someone can help fill in the gaps/plump up the theory a bit more.

His assertion is that what differentiates Grime in the history of UK Dance Music (OK, lets be explicit, the Ardkore Continuum) is the high percentage of second generation Africans who constitute its ranks.

Luka's observation is that the African community is possibly more ambitious, more deliberately self-motivated and aspiartional than the historic Afro-Caribbean community here. OK this may be contentious but I think there must be a lot of truth in this. The Afro-Caribbean population came here en-masse in the 50s and early 60s to fulfill a shortage in low-paid work; they volunteered for a better life in the UK, only to be gradually disillusioned. Its this nature of their arrival here that many people have argued qualifies their relationship to the host country, less troubled than that of the Africans who were enslaved and brought to America, but still not exactly happy (even at points miserable and opressed).

The first generation Africans who came here on the other hand came looking for a better life entirely of their volition. They're determined to "succeed" here, and here I'm just guessing, I suspect they may even represent the higher ranks of their own middle classes at home, or at least those whose ambitions are frustrated by the status quo in their own original countries.

The Afro-Caribbean community in London has traditionally centred on the West of London, certainly up untill the eighties in Notting Hill Gate, though that community has been shattered by the rise of house prices. The rise of Newham and E3 (the East) must surely be significant as a re-orientation in the orientation of UK Black Street Politix, and the theory goes that (at least within the framework of Grime) this is because the African community makes up a large portion of the population there. The fierce East-West battles internal to London may be better understood within this context, as a tussle between two hegemonies, the old Afro-Caribbean one and the new African one (though I may be reading too much into things here)

Luka's sleuthery centres on the high proportion of second generation Africans within Grime. I know Lethal B (Maxwell Owusu) is one such character, we locked horns as to whether D Double was a second-gen African (Luka, probably correctly insists he isnt, family hails from St.Lucia, though I could have sworn he says something which contradicts on the AIm High DVD). I cant remember which other examples Mnsr. Bisto gave, though I'd be grateful if he refreshed my memory.

I suppose its one of those assertions that, while it doesnt change anything, throws an interesting light on proceedings. I'm also intrigued by the ramifications it might have for my "Shanty House TM" theory. Certainly one couldn't even begin to align something as parochial as drum and bass within a Global Ardkore community. It might also shed light on Desi's inclusion within the schema, perhaps some kind of gutter post-colonial cosmopolitanism (scuse the expression), an 'off-world' non-local perspective is what characterises these musics vis a vis Desi's still-strong links to Bollywood consumerism, even Dancehall Ragga's now pan-Caribbean aspect (strong flavours of Mento/Reggaeton/Calypso/The Clave etc).

Also makes me ponder whether this trans-Global Cosmopolitanism, while once the preserve of the ruling classes, is now quite the opposite essentially that which binds the post-colonial proletariat. You could even argue that the ruling class now aspires to a super localism.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:02 AM | Permalink

Been skirting this one. I only heard the LP today, I heard Piracy funds Terrorism ages ago and was totally underwhelmed, but this one (which has undeniable strengths) actually needs a good kicking cos its the more seductive version of that.

Amazing how little in the way of pronouncements i make these days in my guise as (primps himself) forum leader! anyway my "shanty house theory" was quoted in the original article, and SR polled me for my opinion before he unleased it, so i reckon i'm allowed my 5cents.

Button down the hatches.

------------------------------------------------------
(extracted from email converstaion with simon reynolds, the big boss man)

simon in red only

>>just found my blood boiling

>interesting!
>cos you felt it was derivative, or faux?

wrote a whole page of stuff about it at work. its broader than that. thats the rupture position innit (yawn). hes alright though rupture, its pleasing to see him wrap himself up in knots. we like people who get all screwed up.

i guess i'm one of a type (what sometimes feels like a dwindling handful) of person who are incredibly uncomfortable with who they are, or at least tries to figure out ways of being that arent contradictory. who JUST HATE it when they sense theyve compromised their integrity. and this stupid woman (can you imagine a a bloke being allowed to get away with a line like "i am a soldier") just couldnt seem to give a toss/is so brazenly dense to any contradictions, it just makes me writhe with anger, ha ha ha. its JUST like you said in that bloke's comments box. there are many ways of communicating your love for baile/desi/grime which dont rely on making poor carbon copies of the records. you can blog for starters, lol.

> it's weird, you can tell there's
> nothing behind it, in the same way that a grime record or dancehall or____,
> even a second-div one that on some level's not as good as a better MIA
> track, it'll still excites because there's all this stuff behind it-- a
> whole culture. it's a minor fragment of a greater whole. for me it's not an
> intellectualized response, though, it's something you can just feel,
> auditorily, as a presence or a lack.

my irritation with christagau is that he represents a huge majority of people who (horrible to say) just will never ever get whats special about something like grime. you say "whats behind it", and i one hundred percent concur, but the expression i came up with was that some people fail to connect with the genre's higher frequencies. there is a sound there that only speaks to a certain type of person, like a dog can hear high-pitched whistles....... you listen to that maya record in five years and itll sound like shit whereas the grime'll sound "zing"

was infuriated the other day by a friend who dismissed the grime comp i gave him as rubbish. and i just knew that he couldnt connect with its ugly tonalities. i wasnt bothered that he didnt like it, just pissed that he dismissed it in such a cavalier fashion. hes kind of masquerading as an underground hipster, is exactly the sort who put on the MIA and breathe a sigh of relief, "at last a grime/dancehall/desi/baile record i can listen to. i will thus defend its authenticity at all costs" which again is christagau's secret agenda.

i know its practically a calvinist position, and lord knows i look at other peoples laid-back/harmonic collections of music and wonder just what the fuck is wrong with me, but only for about a split second (i promise ;-)) whats wrong with a bit of hard-headed anti-pop righteousness every now and then? people seem extremely reluctant to take a violently anti-pop position online. stelfox was just about the strongest anti-MIA thing i read, and it practically amounted to "shes a bit a meh" i do dig your indifference angle, but i just find the record so cloyingly insiduous, so (again v.protestant) seductive. i dont want be seduced by that! same way i dont want to be seduced by a shitty jingle in a nestle ad.

and there are those awful awful moments on the record, like the start of "sunshowers" where you can just see the cracks in the fantasy part cockey/part patois/part ____ voice showing. you can just see her with her cup of tea round justine flats with her slippers on.

more things i hate:

- any lyrics which rely on the -tion ending. revolution/segregation/pollution.
- the rubbish poney gun firing sounds
- the clash's sandanista, the clash's idiot 3rd world sloganeering is just like this.
- MC Kinky (Ok i dont hate MC Kinky but doncha think SHE is the 'riginal Maya, not Neneh?)
- famous music journalists effectively turning their periodicals into blogs!!! Keep up at the back Grandad!

things i like:

- i was unsure whether diplo was referring to deise tigrona or the compiler of the slum dunk carioca record as being an asshole http://sfj.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005026.html I have a feeling he meant bruno verner of tetine. if anyone wants a lesson on how to transform your love of a music into powerful original art they'd do as well to check out www.tetine.net and see what crazed antics these dudes get up to. compilations, performance art, wearing wigs etc we love you tetine!

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:35 AM | Permalink

Could have sworn I heard Paul Young's voice on some advert's music the other day.

And then at the week end I saw this at the MVE:

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:52 AM | Permalink

I've searched my soul about posting this so I'm going to phrase it quite openly and see what people think.

I just picked up the new Lethal Bizzle/Dexplicit track "Backwards" (heard on the Sama show about 6 months ago). Its a diss tune based on what is for the most part the Forward rhythm playing backwards. That tactic of playing the riddim backwards is musically identical to Creation Rebel's "Starship Africa" (the final track of which Sherwood reverses) or perhaps semiotically something like 4Hero's "Journey from the Light". Furthermore in terms of 'moving backwards' the track (with its endless micro-political attacks on Riko, Wiley and Gods Gift) seems graphic evidence that More Fire are unable to move any further "Forward", that they are mired in the grassroots scene in the worst way possible like the characters Dizzy criticised in "Trapped".

"Journey from The Light"!!! What the fuck is he talking about? I dunno, its crazy, but it seems like everyones estimation of the commercial potential of Grime is not so much putting it on the par of the heady commercial heights of UK Garage a few years back (don't laugh!) but, maybe absurdly, more in the territory of Eminem or Jay-Z. I'm up for this boundless enthusiasm, i fully endorse it in fact, but it does worry me a bit.

"Forward" stands along with "Oi" (feels like a century ago) as the absolute limit of the genres commercial potential singles-wise to date, and I'd be very surpised if they charted outside of the UK. (I havent seen the figures but "Boy in Da Corner" must pretty much be the largest-selling LP, and maybe if the scene is to grow it will be as an LP-based phenomenon) Looked at like this wouldn't Grime's international potential be more closely compared with Roots Reggae's circa Althea and Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking", though even that strikes me as a generous comparison at the moment.

Obviously this is no criticism of the energy or talent on offer, but I cant help but feel that alot of people's expectations are going to be crushed. As to whether the usual pattern we've seen over the fifteen years will come into play, whereby the currently vibrant scene becomes severed from the underground (vis a vis Drum and Bass floating in a cultural bubble), well thats a whole other question.

Original Thread Here

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:37 AM | Permalink

A mate asked me for some advice about starting off in the biz, and rather than just email him back i though i'd post my thoughts here:

a) Forget CD-Rs.

Pool all your resources, select your best material and put out a record.

b) Make an EP.

Be they 7" or 10" or 12" put out 4 track EPs.

c) Make limited runs.

Press 1,000 copies and leave it at that. Never, ever, ever reissue your three first EPs. Work up a sequence of at least 6 before talking to a major.

d) Put out a constant flow of records.

Try for at least 4 a year. Keep this up for as many years as you can.

e) Get great cover art.

Have a friend who is a hot budding designer? Let him do you an awesome cover. Stick with the same guy. Don't let a major touch your artwork.

f) Group together with like-minded musicians

With mates or within a "scene" you stand a MUCH MUCH better chance. Who really cares about the lone genius musician?

g) Make the majors beg.

I promise you, you're better languishing in obscurity. Forget the cash advance, y