WOEBOT

Dancehall Rejection.

Every few weeks since, I dunno, March, I've been down to Silvertone Records in Brixton. It's quite a hike but I like the store. The owner is pretty relaxed and he'll play me all the latest 7"s so I can pick a few. It's a nice ritual. One has to be considerate however as the process is largely dependent on his patience. You won't get such a treatment at Red Records or any of the Dub Vendor Stores (Clapham, Ladbroke Grove). A couple of times I've trekked down there and it's been busy (usually over the weekend) and I've had to go away and come back in the week. I think they're a great shop, and they have a top selection of tunes. Turnover is pretty rapid too.

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Jiggsy King: Modelling

Magelling! What the hell is that! I've always wondered. Betcha Pete "Dr.Smile" Maplestone veteran of Afflicted Yard will straighten me out. That's it with patois, it comes over like a cipher, gets lost in your eardrum, opens the wrong door, barges in, steals a mountain bike. This track on Big Jeans records. I have one by Vybez Cartel on the same excellent squidgy bleepy riddim. Jiggsy King runs the Kingston Municipal Aquarium, his preferred hobby is table-tennis and his favourite artist is Bob Marley and The Wailers. OK I'll admit I know nothing whatsoever about him.

Assasin: Roll In

This got into the select ten by the film of plaque on his gold teeth. Not an outstanding performance but Lenky's Riddim does indeedy roll along nicely.

Sizzla: Mama Africa

I heard occult bad bwoy dub marxist Jon Eden giving Sizzla a fileting round at Uncarved the other day. I know he's rootically partial so probably prefers "Black Woman and Child"-era Sizzla. Though I love that track I have BIG problems with Roots Ragga. It seems like it must float on a huge tourist board grant. I followed Buju right up to his conversion to Rastafari, I bought "Batty Rider" the day it came out at a record store at Halfway Tree in Kingston (so tough!), and while he didn't die creatively overnight ("Oh God of my Salvation", "Murderer" both on Penthouse), it had to be a slightly cynical change of tack. A way out of the mess he'd made with the homophobic nastiness AND a rather canny marketing move. I've heard those Mercury LPs and I'm of the distinct opinion that they're clinkers. Anyone who doesn't think so hasn't been following the script closely enough.

As for Sizzla, well I'm rather intrigued by him. I bought both of these Sizzla 7"s entirely on their own merits and it's only now that I've connected the two performances. I think he's a fascinating character. Part of the intrigue I'll admit is of the most desperately cynical kind. Here is a guy who sounds like he's been broken, like he's tossed aside his ideals for crack and nasty sex. But is he emotionally bankrupt now he's turned Gangsta? Is this too some cleverly concocted act like Buju's Rastafarianism? All that writing round Robert Johnson was so 'orrible because it treated Johnson like some kind of mono-dimensional naif. I saw Buju in interview once and he was the most scarily intelligent dude I'd ever witnessed. Sizzla will be no fool.

Also Vbyz Kartel's take on this Riddim "Please" is wicked. You get some nice African chanting left on the riddim which is stripped out on the Sizzla version.

Sizzla: Oh Yes Baby

Oh yeeeeahhss baaaby. Sounding here like a drunken wretch.

Ward 21/Vybz Kartel: Nah Climb

"...like Michael Jackson's curls jheri, inna de Pepsi Ad." This rhyme is as inwardly revolving as the riddim. A flamenco guitar and Basic Channel pulse tango-ing together backwards down a spiral staircase. At the bottom, revelation...

Ward 21: Hey Gal

The radio edit of this is amazing. The dirty lyrics have been "cleaned up" with a whole mash-up soundscape of weird effects. This reminds me so strongly of the sonix on Mark Stewart's "Learning to cope with Cowardice." It's not as if the delivery itself isn't enough to welcome one's attention. The bloke with the deep voice in Ward 21 has a totally original flavour. I can't think of another voice plumbing such depths in Reggae. It almost makes me flash on The Specials it's so "off-island", quite what the relevance to Coventry's finest I dunno.

Fact fans! Ward 21 is the name of the high-security wing of Jamaica's mental hospital. Mad.....and a danger to society.

Wayne Marshall: I will love the girls

Egyptian blew up this year almost as big as Diwali. It was a delight to pick this up weeks before the Greensleeves comp hit the shelves. I can't be doing with 15 versions of the same track. I did adore Vybz Kartel's "Sweet to the Belly" on it too, the way the voice transmutated into that seesawing Indian violin line, that was bewitching. However I prefer Wayne's take, if only for the totally wunderbar intro. Wayne wails like the temple's pet dog. Oh and Blaxxx records have this great label logo (see above). A lady in a wheelchair, I think that's really genuine.

Vibes Kartel: Nobody No Dead

Everybody dead. Amazing bleeptastic riddim with ultra-logical delivery by this years hottest MC.

Ward 21/Bounty Killer: Badda than that

Bagpipes! Bounty Killer back from a de opera. Like a car with square tyres. Like a lightbulb hanging from a tree. Like a boat with one oar. Like a fish flapping on a pier. Like a goat tethered to a powerstation railing. Like a naked rasta in a drainage ditch. Like a policeman with a leather glove. Like a mud-encrusted crack-pipe. Like a bus which waits longer than it drives.

Mr.Lex: Face It

Nice!

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There were a load of other tracks I got on labels like High Society, Raggedy Joe, South Rakkas Crew, 360 degrees, Big Yard, Baby G, Hot-A-Tac and Purple but these 10 really stand out. I've also heard this years "hits" on the VP comps. I like the hits, but for the real flava you're best hewing out gems at the coalface.

Links.

Feel the love! Links bars are tricky things. I avoided them at the last gaff for precisely this reason. I promise there is no method to the order, I mean, look, Kin are at the bottom. Where's the justice in that? I'll admit a strong partiality to the oeuvre of Reynolds, so he's (nearly) numero uno. Y'all know what a parasite on Blissblog I am...and the gang sort of at the top bit might be a bit closer to my heart. I'm only human! I'm a music junkie, give me a break!

I was tempted to make a gag along the lines of "so and so" is above "so and so" cos they're just that teensy weensy bit more interesting, but then snapped to and realised the upset I'd cause. Sheesh! What a frigging minefield! If you're not on and you want to be, complain to the management.

Wanty wanty no getty. Getty getty no wanty.

Bootlegging seemed to die like the dinosaurs. Overnight. Mysteriously. Seemed like all the love on the net landed on Dizzy Rascal's lap. Of course The Junior Boys have squabbled for our affections too.

I thought bootlegs were ace. My fave being Soulwax's "Dreadlock Child", Freelance Hellraisers "Nelly-vs-Grange Hill" and (natch) Richard X's "Being Scrubbed." Often the best thing about them was the first two seconds. That delirious moment of confusion, misrecognition and fascination.

Then yesterday I heard Blu Cantrell's "Breathe" rubbed up against some Channel One or Joe Gibbs dub. You can tell it's by one of those studios cos of the clarity of the mix. The track actually works right the way through. Me and the dread at the counter were bowled over.

In store.

Don't worry it won't all be idle gossip. There's loads of great stuff in store. I'm planning on doing some *new* comics. That way Luka'll quit hastling me. I've a big new mix in the pipeline too. Basically it's going to carry on as usual. I'll not be posting photos of my arse or reviewing restaurants.

With the mix I've Marcus at Rephlex in mind. He did a request a while back, the only one from the TWANBOC era which I failed to honour. Funnily enough I've just seen him in The Wire. Apparently Marcus's Dad is "Hooked on Classics" like mine was. Marcus supposedly coerced into the cathedral choir!

My general feeling about my current position vis a vis blogging is that to some degree I've used up alot of old material (Echo, the old comics etc) and so now I'm gonna try and do some new stuff. Not that that means I'm going to want to write about new music all the time, just that I might be offering up potato-print renditions of my feelings about the latest Grime tracks. Also now I guess we (my tiny audience je t'adores) are past first base, you know what kind of cretin I am. Hopefully there will be less need for self-justifaction. Hopefully too (holds head in hands) anyone who wanted to have a pop at me has got it out of their system.

In short, prepare to be disappointed.

Quite quiet online isn't it!

Everybody be progged out. Reynolds and Dale waiting for their paycheques. For a few moments there I thought I was going to be the only prog-poster, that it was all some elaborate prank designed to humiliate me. Never knowingly paranoid.

Apparently.

Tom "Freaky Trigger" Ewing also worked at the Music and Video Exchange in London. The store now looking less like a "Gutter Academy", resembling more the guild for online Illuminati.

Why the fuck hasn't he linked me?

Er sorry. There's gonna be a load more links going up.

The End of T.W.A.N.B.O.C.

This weblog was dedicated to the memory of my father Andrew Ingram. THAT WAS A NAUGHTY BIT OF CRAP were the words he typed into a lightwriter at a Mendelssohn concert we attended when he was in the late throes of Motor Neurone Disease. That evening was the best time we ever had together.

I didn't know my father very well. In fact no-one knew him very well. He was modest to the point of invisibility. The last 18 months we spent together were a race against the clock for both of us to get to understand eachother a little better. We succeeded.

My dad was a connoisseur of classical music. It was incredibly important to him. His best man recalled at the memorial service that dad was able to identify not just the opera and it's composer from a snippet overheard on the radio, but the singer too. Growing up I was surrounded by his records, as a toddler I would conduct my way through the Brandenburg. The first record he bought himself, aged 10, was Wagner's Ring Cycle. Dad would endlessly record programs off Radio 3 into stacks of green C90 cassettes. Occasionally we would even have the stars of classical music to stay with us, most notably once the tenor Anthony Rolfe-Johnson who was attending the local Three Choirs festival. Throughout my upbringing I was taken to, and struggled through, concerts of Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven.

My dad was also a devout christian. This was indivisible from his love of music. I have a hunch that my brother and my schools were in part selected for their excellent choirs. Dad would enjoy attending our sunday services in consequence. His spiritual home in London, St.Brides of Fleet Street, boasts what is arguably the capital's finest choir. I remember once a few years ago going to hear Handel's Messiah with him. For the first time I experienced a spiritual elation at the the hands of this music, a sweet and gentle feeling of lightness and finally I grasped what it was that attracted him to it.

I've never enjoyed classical music very much. I like some Bach, odd bits and pieces like Scarlatti (as played by Landowska), Bartok's third, some of the late Beethoven string quartets, Debussy's Faun, Stravinsky's piece for two piano players and small doses of Webern. I don't connect with it. It doesn't groove. It doesn't intensify me. My dad on the other hand HATED anything that wasn't classical music. He'd would outright dismiss it, even the most "respectable" Jazz or Indian Classical music. His assumption always was that one day I would grow up and listen to proper music.

As for this blog, well you might be surprised to know that (god bless him) he'd think it was a total waste of time. Doing this as a memorial to him is like Bill Laswell waiting till Fela Kuti was in jail before screwing with the master tapes. Pop Music! The Internet! Music journalism! He wouldn't have looked at it twice. Any rave I got (like Kodwo's for instance) would have to be pinned under his nose for him to take notice. Not that I mind that sort of thing anymore. In spite of all of this it is conceivable that he may have harboured a secret pride. I offer up all the love in my heart to him. I hope he is peaceful and happy.

I talk a lot of Crap.

Man like Phil Wilkins from LA says:

"We get freebies from XXXX*, and they always arrive with holes drilled in them, or the barcode in some way mutilated. Overstock is often marked in the same way (I believe they're called cutouts), and heavily discounted in bulk (usually without the artist knowing about it, remember rule 4080, record company people are shady)."

And this makes total sense.....damnit it's clearly the truth!

Falling Prices.

Quite why this would be of any interest I can't say. However I find these discarded minutiae of one's existence fascinating. I picked up a batch of 50 second-hand plastic sleeves from the Music and Video Exchange collectors department. One pound for ten sleeves. I like to protect my better records. These sleeves are a bugger to order usually. There is only one supplier I'm aware of in the U.K. who are located somewhere up north. Buying them like this seemed an easy option. If you were ever to break into my house to steal my records, be sure to pick up all the sheathed ones. They're more valuable.

I had to peel all the old M&V stickers off the plastic initially, from which I collated a page of them for one of my notebooks. Quite sad/glad to see all these tumbling prices. I once had to do this marking down process myself. Emerald Jim can tell you all about this too. He's another of the former alumni. In fact I think Simon worked there too. I know my good friend Ken Downie did a stint. When I was there I was with Tom, one of the guys from 23 skidoo and Bean who now runs Intoxica. Currently Sean P who was behind Strut's great "Disco not Disco" series and Richard Sen of Bronx Dogs are behind the counter. It's like a fookin guttah academy that place. Of course there are lifers like the legendary Hector Selecta, but he too has a past working with Cheb Khaled and The Blow Monkeys back inna de day.

Examining these labels caused me to reflect on the various manners in which record stores deface stock which they plan to consign to the bargain bin. From cutting off the top right hand corner, to making a vertical snip along the top of the spine, to drilling a hole though the bottom left corner of the sleeve. Quite why this barbaric practice was considered necessary in the seventies and eighties is anyone's guess. Consider your collection, and ponder how many quite lovely sleeves are wrecked.

Once I'd peeled off all the labels I had clean off all the mess. This is where this stuff comes in handy:

No self-respected record-collecting twat should be without a tin of this lighter fluid. All international crew, don't worry your local variety will do the job just as well. It's also great for cleaning vomit, dust, baby food and all manner of grok off the vinyl itself. Though don't be shy of sticking a record under a cold tap.

I got pleasantly high off the fumes at this point. Now I'm just figuring out which of my records deserve to be moved up to first class, and you'd be fascinated to know that quite a bit of obscure new-wave just got the nod and wink!

Don't do it kids!

Whaaaat! Could hardly believe this! Really liked Smith's stuff ever since I heard Mark Weber (once in Jarvis Cocker's backing-band...) play a whole lot of his tunes back to back with a selection of hardcore minimalism on one of the earliest 2-week-long incarnations of Resonance FM. I bought "Roman Candle" the LP which I can heavily recommend to those not averse to a bit of supremely tuneful yet bleak folk.

Damn what a shame! (repeat after me) Elliot I'm sorry I took you for granted.

Reynolds on Prog.

Running out of superlatives this week. That superbly florid title: "PROGMETHEUS UNBOUND a provisional cartography of progward tendencies through the last 40 years of music; a prototype taxonomy of prog substyles, prog-adjacent musics, and post-1976 prog sprog genres", set the tone for Simon's own hilarious and incisive prog missive.

Somewhere 5 minutes into the khaki jungle I realised I'd long lost sight of the gargantuan Blissblog links list. Yet the position of the browser's scroll bar led me to assume there were further delights. The joy of the work comes as one realises how Prog's spores, it's creepers and roots have continued to unfurl unchecked down the ages. I couldn't find a single misplaced example, and too many highlights to mention (though here's one which I loved; on Paul Weller whose Prog tendencies are "Dadrock-stifled and innately mod-restrained." Brilliant). Tremendously weird to consider that the progroll often ressembles a litany of what music has mattered in these intervening decades. Certainly dance music has done a great job in disinfecting the genre.

Reynolds has accurately nailed the problem with the whole anti-Prog angle, that it has tarred so many great achievements. So many invaluable contributions were "damned by proximity." Certainly this applies to the selection of records I put together which seem, as I've already reflected, distinctly un-Progg-ish. I've sent Simon some morsels to contribute towards the feast, and for once I've decided to shut my mouf and not post them here. What a splendid bit of fun I must say!

Traversons la Manche!

J'ai venu de lire les mots de bon mon ami Angus sur mon (assez mal) francais. Soudain j'ai un corespondance avec le grand grenoiulle lui-meme Gwanael Jamois* et je trouve cet article sur Monsieur le Dizzy Rascal par Morlu du celebre Harkenschub FTP. Salut tous le downloading massif!

Vive la France!

*a ce moment-la il travaille a IRCAM! Comme on peut dire? Le centre c'est dur!

The best review the Junior Boys will ever get!

Svengali Nick Kin was round my house the other night wafting this bit of vinyl under my nose. Couldn't give me one, needed it for the radio stations. What did I care, he'd already given me the promo of Birthday on CD? We rested it in the corner of the room and watched it. That night Nick also graciously gave me a CD copy of the Jbeez album. It's fookin great.

Birthday. I could have downloaded it off the web. The promo would have sufficed. But what did I do? I went down the shop, plonked 6 quid on counter and demanded my very own pristine black glossy EP.

Dale on Prog.

Holy Mother of Jesus!

Dale absolutely fascinating on this stuff and some choice tips for us neophytes. South American Prog! Boomshanka! I've always known there's a daunting universe of stuff out there. Check the Flower Travelling Band!

Spew.

Dug this out:

Is that enough Prog Rock for ya! Though in fact plenty of other cool stuff in there. Sadly I don't have the D-Z sections. Ragga in the wings!

Perhacs, Perhacs, Perhacs.

Just read Carlin lamenting his inability to find Linda Perhacs "Parallelograms" at the Rough Trade in Portobello. Jesus that guy writes TERRIBLY (wink).

The really funny thing is that I bought the last copy of the record off that shop. It was me, largely on Jon Dale's recommendation: "I have this ridiculous love for hippie girls from the late 60s and 70s. Vashti Bunyan, Anne Briggs from the UK. And then the soft rock renegades like Judee Sill from the USA. (Oooh I love Joni Mitchell! Quick someone crochet me a bag for collecting flowers.) Perhacs is one of the best of that ilk, her stuff's a bit more psychedelic than the usual, just really really beautiful stuff. totally awesome!" I listened to it and it blew me away...

Carlin (who somebody recently described to me as being my nemesis, er give me a break!) is right with his coy electronica references. Check Linda from the linernotes: "In those days we did not have the massive computers to help us create music. But that is what I was reaching for when I wrote "Paralellograms". I wanted it to be like a Japanese air painting in motion, with the sounds moving through space creating the shapes of the words being spoken or sung, and for the shapes caused by the throwing of sound and tones from speaker to speaker to do what we can now do with "surround sound."

It's cute to read the recurring references to the crochet-like qualities of this work (not just Dale but the girl who sold it to me) against Sadie Plant's theories of the evolution of the loom into the computer in Zeroes and Ones.

Idol Tryouts: Ghostly International Volume One (Ghostly)

Electronica. It's having a bit of a crisis I reckon. Stylistically fractured (Glitch/Electro/Spazz/Micro/Post) floating free of the kind of socio-cultural undertow that underpins scenes like (Grime/Ragga/Glitz). Rather than pin themselves down with distinct imagery and discrete releases they're washing out the market with endless minimally-designed 12"s, EPs, CDs with any micro-divisions within the genre a nonsense which the artists themselves ignore. Everyone turning a hand to a zillion different styles: "You see I am also very funky as well as (hand to brow) intelligent and (jumps up and down on the spot) sporty and (pulls funny face) abstract."

Ghostly International of Detroit came to my notice as a result of their Tangent 2002 Disco Nouveau Series, a very handy survey of Electroclash. The "Idol Tryouts" compilation is a label sampler of theirs. They may be the first Techno label of that city without historical connections to Detroit Techno. I'd say straight away that I favour the idyllic sounds vastly over the other offerings here. For example Charles Manier's "At the bottle" is a little "Electrocliche" (TM). Human League ahoy! Vintage drum-machines pock and chee. Also I didn't like Matthew (media darling) Dear's "Some New Depression." Which wasn't atonal enough to be thrilling. I checked the cabinet but just don't have the drugs to make this work properly. Ditto Twine and Kero and James Cotton's "Help me think of one" spazzcore. Would these tracks work innna de dancehall. Nah, I'd be kipping in the bass-bin.

Nicer by far are the contributions by Ann Arbor's Midwest Product. These dudes smell of rock. It's in their veins! They can't run from it. They don't want to run from it. "Laundry" floats on a synth-ated guitar riff (almost sounds like picking, almost like a sequencer) though at the spangly Pastels chorus it becomes clear which side of the tracks they hail from from. Their "A Genuine Display" a bit more curious, G Funk squiggles in a pastoral setting. Kiln's "Ero" was grown on the same farm, this could be off Springsteen's "Nebraxas" or a Steven Stills' b-side. Not exactly a flattering comparison, but nearly. This kind of post-rockery possibly more enticing when hailing from Germany. The rock thing also contributes to my least favorite track of the LP, which I heard first last year, Dykehouse's "Map Ref. 41º N 93º W", a hatchet job of a Wire cover version, adonyne where the original was gnarly.

The best track is outputmessage's "Bernard's Song" a masterpiece in fact, and on a constant loop here this Autumn. Reminiscent of Plaid at their most sublime and a real tear-jerker. Watch this man! Proving conclusively that electronica, while in a bit of a mess, is still capable of producing exquisite wonders.

Prog?

Edmund Torpey (gee that's some seriously mid-seventies name) weighed in with praise for King Crimson's "Red" LP (though he too finds them patchy elsewhere). It occured to me, crikey this guy is coming at me from the otherside of some gaping cavern, the fact that we both dislike King Crimson wouldn't console us on a desert island where we would quickly be camping at opposing ends. Ed (who's clearly a hardcore dude) also opines in favour of British Jazz:

"I know you shouldn't try and compare like with unlike, but a lot of prog is found seriously wanting compared with this stuff (ie, in terms of musical invention - which surely should be a matter of pride for any progger). "

Ed provided me with a handy napkin map of the territory:

British Jazz/Prog Crossover figure Marc Charig.
Centipede's "Septober Energy"
Keith Tippett's Ark Project "Frames"
The Soft Machine's Third.
Ray Russell's CBS LPs
Hugh Hopper's "1984"

This is actually the very point, genuinely sophisticated classical structures and virtuoso playing, Prog makes me want to vomit. I'm with The Soft Machine (ahem, sort of, right up to the point at which Ayers and Wyatt debunk).

Old sparring partner Phil T on the other hand comes out fighting Henry Cow's corner:

"what about Henry cow, then??? everyone in this progosphere seems to want to live on the margins but disregard the most marginal of all. every single henry cow album is considerably more interesting, more succinct, more left field and more progressive than anything you've discussed."

Sure enough Henry Cow should have got a passing mention, but I'm embarrassed enough to admit that I can't stand them. I so desperately wanted to like "Legend" and "Unrest", those awesome covers, but once again straining to hold down my food when I hear the stuff. Leading me to conclude that when it comes to the thumbnail caricature of Prog, I'd happily never hear any; that my Prog selection was kind of as un-Proggy as I could reasonable make it BUT ALSO that there is more to the genre than the dominant stereotypes suggest. Ayers' solipsistic symphonies, Coyne's curmudgeonly non-blues, The Groundhogs uncomplicated rock, etc.

Both correspondents love The Hatfield and The North LP. What do I know eh! My own mind at the very least.

Prog(ish).

Er yeah, hi it's me. Just for the record Carlin and I are best of mates now. I invited Mr.Grumpy to join "the boys" for our Gloomcore night-out, and that seemed to go down quite well. He'd vehemently deny this, but I'll bet he felt a bit excluded, and now he's got a "ladyfriend" (Have you seen photos of Gail? She's a right foxy chick!), a book deal......and, er, a duck; he probably feels he has the emotional resources to take on all-comers. To be frank I hope he's finished tearing into everyone and everything, we're just a bunch of losers struggling to do our own thing and though a bit of constructive criticism (of course framed within the context of greater love) shouldn't go amiss, a full on onslaught, character defamation and generally breaking bottles over people's heads like your Sid "Blinking" Vicious (Sid Viscous anyone?), well it's not so genteel, not REALLY so palatable. So cool it Carlin a'ight! Smack wrist!

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Prog.

(ploughs hand through fringe and pulls strained face) Christ how did I get myself into this situation! Surveying the 3 metre stretch of long-discarded Prog-Rock in the bargain basement of Notting Hill's Music and Video Exchange was like being on the diving board at the rim of a gigantic tank of cold baked beans. Hold your breath! I was surprised that there wasn't a larger collectors Prog-Rock bin in the fancy first floor of the shop. It seems that this stuff is losing it's status as commodity. Upstairs it was mainly what looked (to the untrained eye) to be deep obscurities and one-offs. Names I can't even begin to remember. Every record I picked up this week was reduced in price, and once I even got to the counter to be informed a further 25% had been slashed off my chosen item. Yikes.

No one wants Prog anymore. On one occasion I came back to a store a second time a week later (this venture took me to multiple stores in Notting Hill, Camden, Soho, Old Street, Brixton and Islington) to pick up something which I thought upon further consideration was probably worth investigating, looked in the same bin to find the record had gone. Vanished! You mean someone has actually bought it this week! I couldn't believe it. Closer inspection found it filed in the next-door rack.

No one wants it and also it has no cultural currency whatsoever. What the hell does Prog mean to anyone under 40? Absolutely fuck-all. Your over-40s (and I don't mean to be age-ist here) get all nervous round Prog because they fear some spiky-haired tossbag in a leather-jacket and tartan trousers is going to jump out from behind a rose bush and yell "Hippie!", at which point they're going to have to struggle to explain themselves, hide the offending long-playing al-bum. Come to think of it, what the flying rock has Punk got to do with anything either? What does Punk mean to anyone under the age of 30. Absolutely zilch. I'm 32 and I started in on my particular path into music aged 15 with The Velvet Underground. Before that I liked chart hits. At that time, in the mid-eighties Punk still had some kind of charge, some ghostly emanation, but it had largely vanished. It ought to be clearer than daylight that Post-Punk has an immeasurably larger presence today than punk does. The places one feels Punk's musical influence are almost uniformly dire, all that Blink 192 nonsense. This isn't to say that Donna Summer and Kool Herc (to bounce Marcello's pointers back to him) don't have a big/bigger influence today, just that within the field of Rawk, and other whitey noodling Punk means nothing. Again, Acid House! What the fuck does Acid House mean these days? The revolution is long-overdue innit. We're definitely plateau-ing.

And if we have reached a plateau what's to stop us checking out this Prog thing? This shabby behemoth de-invested of anything that made either an anathema or attractive? It's pointless to continue to read it against Punk, something which is patently as irrelevant. I'm surprised Prog hasn't a greater cult, though come to think of it with Kodwo Eshun listening to it on the sly, Vincent Gallo endlessly thumbing Yes, and I'm not going to spool out the myriad of examples that surfaced in the Internet's own Prog Month, perhaps it's bubbling under. In no particular order, ten groovy Prog records:

Kevin Ayers: Whatevershebringswesing.

Ayers is a great character. In fact I'd always wanted to find this record, but hadn't the stamina. I believe it's been reissued recently on CD. It slinks along at a lugubrious pace. Starring the full panoply of horns, string quartet, gently felt wah-wah guitar, grand Piano, and vibraphone but the soundscape is sparse, not an overplayed note in site. Great sample food in fact. Loverman Ayers is incredibly relaxed, there's none of the chocolate box intensity and misery-without-a-name of Nick Drake (dunno why I said that, I DO like Drake) Kevin Ayers was, a former Soft Machine alumni and like Robert Wyatt (who guests on this) was purged from "The Softs" in the drive towards goofy austerity. This is a Canterbury record. You CAN hear vestigial trace of hashish jollies, which as the decade wears on turns into a bad trip, but Song from the Bottom of the Well is pretty dark. Lovely record. Biba Kopf likes it too.

Kevin Coyne: Marjory Razorblade.

Double LP from former Social Therapist and Drug counseller from Darby. I love that career path! So un-glam! So British!? Kevin Coyne like the Third Ear Band got unlikely props when John Lydon played his record on Capital FM. I'd never heard anything by him before, and took it on trust that this was his best record. It's a bloody masterpiece. It has the melodic richness of Dylan circa Blonde on Blonde with sly touches of Beefheart's seventies LPs (The Spotlight Kid in particular). What makes it INTERESTING and SEDUCTIVE is Coyne's Darbyshire croak smack in the middle. Like the very best rock records there is nary a hint of the blues, all the tonalities and shadings seem to come from somewhere quite else.

The Mighty Groundhogs: Who will save the world?

Which applies to this too, the a-side of which (Earth is not Room enough/Wages of Peace/Body in Mind/ Music is the food of thought) is one flowing rock suite. The tuning is distinctly un-blues, "not-Rock" like Tom Verlaine's Television. This I got on recommendation from Julian Cope's mate The Seth Man. Indeed I like Cope's lateral approach to the whole Prog/Punk shebang, seems to reinvigorate both histories. People rabbit on about Prog's overplaying (and fo' sure this is true in many cases) though the playing on this is very streamlined and uncluttered in a Stoogey kind of way. Gorgeous harmonies and delightful clean refrains. Though the lyrics can be bit pompous and leaden, they're truly heartfelt. There's rather a beautiful elegiac aura surrounding the entire proceedings. Again, lovely.

Once, in the course of making a pop promo, I had a Black Dog suit made for a video. The wife of the puppeteer winked to me and said, you won't believe what band my husband used to be in! Queen it turned out. The poor guy had bailed out very early because he thought the future of pop music lay in snazzy instrumentation, better played music, and Freddie and his gang, well they weren't delivering that as far as he could ascertain. On reflection that's a classic Prog thing to do. That era from 1971-1975 (at which point unfussy Pub Rock began to make itself felt as a presence) was one heavily marked by this weird fetishisation of instrumental prowess. I'm certain alot of people were made to feel real daft cos they couldn't play well. In spite of Robert Wyatt being able to sing Charlie Parker's beat-bop solos note-for-note quite early on, he was by his own confession a terrible musician at the start of The Soft Machine. I'm sure this must have played some part in his alienation from that crew. Who even thinks about this nowadays? Everyone's a non-musician now!

The Third Ear Band: Music from Macbeth.

Part Anton Webern, part plainchant-styings (via Leonin and Perotin, if you haven't heard Perotin check him out, real birth of minimalism shit), part naff court of King Henry the Eighth's square-dance, part prole at the homestead folk musings, oboes on overdrive. All very eldritch! In their favour this is a soundtrack to Roman Polanski's Macbeth, and so some of these 15th century trappings do have a calling. I've often nearly bought their earlier Alchemy LP on the strength of the cover, but I'm glad I didn't now. The worst aspects of Avant-Folk find their pre-echoes here.

Hatfield and The North: The Rotters Club.

I did spend alot of time sifting through records, trying to only pick up quality stuff. In the name of this I heard alot of truly dreadful music, groups who I'd be glad to never listen to again: Yes, whose "Close to Edge" is probably the definitive Prog LP, I thought were truly appalling, and here Mark Fisher's comments at K-Punk with regard to Genesis seemed to also apply: "...what strikes me about their music is its lack of nuance. It is either quiet or loud, - no middle ground, no eddying flow or ebbing undercurrents, just a stuttering study in jerky contrast. Isn't that jabbing masculine jerkiness, that anti-plateau jumpiness, what is so much of a turn-off about Prog?" Worse than this Yes's music seems so deeply uncentred (am I contradicting myself here?), possibly due to the amalgam of these 5 very uncharismatic characters. I did buy Yes's The Yes Album this week (so cheap it almost seemed rude not to) and it's really dreadful, horribly bland, and yet I have a fondness for that "Owner of a Lonely Heart" tune. However no-one should be under impression that that constitutes Prog Rock. That would be like calling Starship's "We built this City on Rock'n'Roll" Acid-Psych-Folk Rock. Was Trevor Horn involved with them early on? I don't think so.

I also heard records by Caravan, Family, Sweet Smoke's "Just a Poke" (one of those German records that's too like Canned Heat to be Krautrock), Paladin (who I've been curious about for years, and who are stodgy blues-merchants), and a few whose names escape me. Being selective was the name of the game. Both Simon and this dude rated Hatfield and The North and on the strength of that I picked it up. I very nearly gagged on the cover. What is it with hairies that causes them, at the drop of a shilling, to don a tailcoat and tophat, like it was the funniest fucking joke in the world? Who cracked it first? Cream on the cover of "Goodbye Cream" probably, in those ridiculous white suits. I swear I've come across so many whiskered stoned grinning idiots dressed up like this on record covers in the last week. You goons! EVERYTIME the gag backfires backfires, and they look like sweaty dopey privately educated morons. And of course formal and stuffy to boot! This thirties filmstar on the cover was enough to set my alarm-bells ringing. If the cover is pants, don't buy the record. This is a lame record. The Soft Machine without the fuzz bass. It's too clean, too anemaic, the vocalist is a Robert Wyatt rip-off, while you could make a case for it as a Lonnie Liston Smith/Bob James inspired endeavour at the end of the day it sounds like wet jazz funk. I had been hunting very hard for records by The Egg (The Civil Service and The Polite Force) but on the basis that they're a retread of this, what John Peel would have referred to as "The Hatfields," then they're well worth avoiding.

Quiet Sun: Mainstream.

This I've had for ages, and it is a Prog record despite the presence of Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, Brian Eno, and Charles Hayward (later of This Heat). It's the "suite" approach that is the hallmark. I remember Bill Drummond had slated the third KLF album as a Prog LP. He liked the fact that as kids they'd all crouch round in living-rooms and listen to entire albums, really concentrate on the lyrics, ponder the guitar solos, and after the whole record everyone would lean back and go "Far fucking out! Wow" and make like they'd been sucked into another dimension and had communed with Sir Arthur, Guinevere and hoary trolls. Drummond's feeling was that was a great way to listen to music. It would be nice indeed if one did invest more in music, really did spend a few months with a bit of music like one did when one first bought records. I remember my far-out uncle giving me a tape with Morodor's "Midnight Express" theme on it when I was 8, and my playing that tape (which also had The Beatles "Flying" and some ELO on it) nearly a million times. That and The Police's Zenyatta Mondatta. (I've no shame!)

This LP, which I'm now listening to on headphones, and of course that's how to listen to these records, is fucking great. It's weird and it rocks. Not gonna do a track by track breakout, I'll leave that to the masters! (wink)

Steve Hillage: Rainbow Dome Music.

A favourite of Alex Patterson's. The record he was playing at one of those early chillout sessions at which Hillage showed up and said "Oi mate I made that." (Cue much backslapping and ensuing Ambient high jynx) Pretty, lots of bubbling water and rippling synths. Verging on the tedious. From 1979 so shearing into New Age. A poor man's La Monte Young. I imagine Ultramarine also rated this along with Mike Oldfield's "Hergest Ridge" which I was unable to stomach. My friend Mike has a clear vinyl version of this! (Yawn)

Dashiell Hedayat: Obsolete.

An obscurity! Prog is the absolute elysian fields for obscure albums (I didn't say obscure 7"s!) I once bought some Russian Prog LPs from Ultima Thule which is the spiritual home for this music. They weren't very good LPs and we've since parted ways. In fact I apologise from the well of my heart that this selection isn't more obscure. What can I say? I'm new here too. I was delighted to find this record this week for loads of reasons. It's on the godlike Shandar label. It sports a cameo by William Burroughs , who was lurking in Paris in 1971. It features Sam Wyatt, Robert's 5-year old son. Also it has Daevid Allen on it who I delightedly informed you played on that Francois Bayle Concrete track on "Electronic Panorama." It enables me to include Allen here without recourse to mentioning Gong, who I've always found TOO MUCH. I also couldn't deal with Genesis. Ditto King Crimson. Ditto Jethro Tull. Ditto Gentle Giant.

This is almost a Psych Prog record, as epitomised by the Hard Rock output of Japan since 1971, Lost Araaf innit. This is Jon Dale(k)'s territory, and since we've swapped notes I know he's tackling it head on! Psych because the guitar has a Hendrix-ian flavour. I find the French vocalists seem to narrate and decant, never really sing, and Dashiell is no exception. Even their rappers fail to lock gears with the music, it's just a different approach I guess.

Prog was a europe-wide phenomen, a world-wide phenomenon. Like Metal in that way, the meme spreads. Dale tells me he's got some Peruvian Prog Rock! And Prog was huge in France. I would have touched on Magma, indeed I had a copy of Magma’s “Köhntarkösz,” but I sold it.

Cielo Drive on this record is awesome. Awesome, like the best of the Cosmic Couriers stuff.

The Plastic People: Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned.

Again international Prog. One of the hippest bits of vinyl I own. Been reissued on CD. One to check. Though it's reference points are Zappa, The Fugs, The Velvets, Faust and Tony Conrad its a Prog rock record through and through. Vaclav Havel started here amazingly enough. (punches air) Rock matters! The recording wonderfully barbaric and raw, brutally metronomic and pulsating with a vicious energy.

Van Der Graaf Generator: Pawn Hearts.

And finally, in my Prog odyssey, VDG's "Pawn Hearts", stirringly described by Seth as "...the crowning achievement of English progressive rock." The thing with VDG, and I did have Godbluff at one point, is that like or hate 'em you can't TOTALLY ignore them. This is, to return to Fisher's handy prog put-down, not entirely "quiet or loud," though Godbluff does hinge on that axis. Hammill can be quite an off-putting presence too, his vocals are so absurdly mannered, somewhere between lord of the manor and man from the shed at the end of the garden. However there are some quite sexy themes, some groovy passages and with half an ear shut you can block out David Jackson's oboe-esque saxaphone. No it's interesting AND impressive, and would no doubt repay close listening (ha ha!).

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I must say I've thoroughly enjoyed my grand experiment. Picking out this stuff was about a million times more fun than ALWAYS buying old Ardkore 12"s, and treading into an empty arena like this, well it's a fookin' laugh! A challenge! Some of this music I found fresh as a daisy and utterly thrilling. So what if it wasn't made yesterday! (adopts demeanour of wizened old man lurking in a hut on the moors) "My children, in a blink of an eye your Belle and Sebastian and Pitman LPs will too be old records!"

Pin-Ups.

East Connection: Double O, Nikki Slim Ting, Demon, Prefhus, Jookie Mundo 21 and Diesel.

Durrty Doogz and Kaya Bousqet (assistant at Modus Operandi).

From N.A.S.T.Y: Dee, Hyper and Kano. (not pictured Jammer, DJ Mac 10, Lewi White, Marcus Nasty, Shortee Major, Stormin, Armour, Monkey and Terrah Danjah.)

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Much as I like RWD and deuce, their photos do leave alot to be desired. It's just that with Grime there's a surfeit of the real and while I can handle ear-bleeding Playstation riddims, white labels, and static on the pirates, a little gloss as evidenced in these photos from The Face is quite nice. I do reckon they've been had by a stylist, but at least they all look ace. Poor old Dizzy in his yellow leather jacket and aviators looking thoroughly uncomfortable. When I came across Dizzy in February he was wearing a white wooly hat and a C&A anorak. Dahling I was horrified!

All this conspired to make me reflect on the parallels between bloggers (naturally our particular blogipelago, not the politics crew, or the "my little pony" crew) and the Grime scene. OK, hold on with your laughing!

Mainline to the Ether <------> Mainline to the Ether.
(The Pirate Airwaves - The WWW.)

The Crews <------> The Crews.
(Roll Deep, N.A.S.T.Y, So Solid - Freaky Trigger Massive, The NYC Rhizome, Les Francais, London Whimsy, Q.A.M.)

The Beefs <------> The Beefs.
(Doogz-vs-Wiley - Penman-vs-Ingram, Spizzazzz-vs-Ingram, Carlin-vs-Ingram.)

Too Many Blokes. <------> Too Many Blokes.
(Aw what the hell! There are still awesome chicks about: Stush, Lisa Mafia - The Original Soundtrack, Phenotext)

Computer Nerd-ery <------> Computer Nerd-ery
(There's no getting round it, Wiley MUST be a craven knob-twiddler.)

And when you think about it the threads which run between the networks are actually quite strong. Reynolds being contacted by deuce, I'll be they were chuffed when he mentioned them and of course there's the big man being interviewed by The Guardian on Dizzy Rascal and the bloggers. Luka's gangsta connections via Scobee and his crew. The whole Grime scene has a strong online presence too (Don't the Aylesbury All-Stars run the RWD online chat-rooms?) and every station worth it's salt has a RealAudio feed. I reckon the relationship is like that between Punk and Reggae. Er, well nearly.....

Let's just hope a little of our glamour rubs off on them eh!

Tazartes.

If I seem a bit quiet it's because between knocking on doors for work I'm masterminding a Prog-Rock 10 special. I hate these specials of mine, they're becoming a bit too didactic. In fact I'd felt I'd put the whole thing to bed, I mean I could carry on like that FOREVER, but as a rule something which is a strain to write is a strain to read.

Actually I have precious few Prog-Rock records, something like 4 prog-rock proper. There's alot of records and bands that aren't quite Prog-Rock. You see King Crimson, that's Prog, whereas Fripp and Eno, well it's not REALLY Prog Rock is it? Lots of things aren't quite Prog-Rock: Zappa (Freak-Rock), The Incredible String Band (Folk Rock), Kak (West Coast Space Rock), Amon Duul I (too folky, though Amon Duul II, that's Prog-Rock), White Noise (too early), The United States of America (too early, too beat), Led Zepellin (too heavy), Tim Souster and Trevor Wishart (too electronic). One very interesting thing which I came across combing through the racks at home, and which falls into the "Not-Prog" category is this Tazartes' "Transports", being held in the photo above, by...........a woman!

This record was sold to me by a friend. I know very little about it. Google Tazartes and all you'll get is this guy who has it on his wants list. That's quite some wants list though! It has been reissued by Italy's New Tone label recently on CD though the vinyl is beyond rare, only 100 pressed. It's from Paris circa 1973, some crackpot (possibly North African) electronics wizzard. It's all ancient drum-machines and rolling pre-acid synth patterns laden with muezzin flavours, bells, insane cracked chanting. Very dark. Very cold. My friend knows his daughter and apparently (kisses pursed fingers) she's a peach.

I've always thought Chris Morris would find this fascinating, maybe Nick will take it along on one of his sessions.

(smirks)

OK I'll admit to being a wee bit wicked posting up the Marcello thing, though I palmed it off innocently enough...(let the remarks speak for themselves, use your own head etc)

However it turns out that Marcello has a new blog and far be it for me to rain on his parade! He's even emailed me with a request: "Mr Harris, my good lady and I much appreciated your welcome spinning of Jethro Tull's "Life Is A Long Song" on last night's programme; can we have some Linda Perhacs next week, or perhaps Howard Werth?" I'll see what I can fix up for you, you swinging scamp you! I must check that new Belle and Sebastian long-player, it sounds absolutely t'riffic.

So there it is, Marcello has a new blog! Delightful to see him weave with inimitable style around a whole range of topics. No links bar at present, one can but hope, the odd hit is always welcome!

In case you missed it...

He has a few good points, though he's rather harsh on me.

If I might be a teensy weensy bit didactic, I'd say two words in my defense, "Diachronic History." That's the past that happens behind your back.

More prog next week!

I draw badly too...

It's been blown all out of proportion {No I wouldn't call it Techno/I never thought he had it in him} Being the third part of my "epic" IDM Satirical Trilogy of 1996. This SHOULD have dated! The title has a (pompous) formalist twist, comics are always drawn large and then shrunk down to give them punch; this was drawn the size of a postage stamp and.....follow me?

I may be a donkey, but at least I'm not an ass.

Sub Lo Hip Hop.

"Westside" Black Ops/Johnny Cash.

I wonder if this is the tune Harvell heard streamed off some pirate? Dunno. Picked up it before I read that, and then made the connection. Actually everyone can get their laughing gear on, cos when I talk about Grime I'm greeted with nothing but derision. That's alright I think it's funny. When it comes to this music I feel confident; you see we make the canon. (sticking out chest) I've been buying London tunes like this for a decade. Ears don't fail me now. You hear a tune, you like it, if you've the courage of your own convictions that's all that matters. There's no guide to help you, you make your own heros, you don't have to wait to read who's hot in some urban magazine. Buying this stuff on vinyl! Who's that for anyway? Records per se are a bit anachronistic when it comes to Grime, I know this. At the end of the year I'm gonna burn a CD of all these tunes, and throw it off a tall building. What's with this sudden Nu Breaks thing? Mmm don't go there! Nu Breaks isn't some kind of "frowned on" musical ghetto, that's no tactic to win props either! It's middlebrow guv, safe garage innit.

Crackling B-Movie samples off some cherished VHS: "I want black ops assigned to this case." Sloppy yobs: "Westside be our side. WHAAT. Don't you know!" Hell this is some FUTURE tune: "The future, that's how we're rollin, dirty stinking." It's genuinely grimey. Centre-stage is a cavernous bass-stab, a foghorn tuned to C and played with alacrity. Drones patched in from The JB's "Blow Your Head" over those big floppy breaks. Definite Wu-tang influence, indeed this would play nicely beside the Ghost Dog Jap import (the Instrumentals). I've mentioned this everywhere but here that I see the Roll Deep thing going the way of the Wu. 5 great solo albums. The connections between Wu and Grime should be pretty darned apparent. Some rat-infested corridor stretching between the Bronx and (in this case) Acton. I like these guys attitood: "Fuck a Car, I'm a ghetto superstar." No it's NOT hip-hop.

"I can C U, U can C Me" Crazy Titch.

Another massive track. The MC-ing on this doesn't have the superb local color of the Black Op's ("I open up a shop on anyone's block"), more like a straight pitch, battle lyrics. What excels is the back-track, "Crazy Twitch on Crazy beats" indeed, it's got girth, it's got rabbit-out-the-hat splashes of electro, some staccato clockwork swaggering hip-hop inflected sample. Wah Wah wha! One of the best things about it is the intro which has a recording of some paunchy Blackpool Pier comedian (Norf ferreal!): "Don't make me laff...you fancy a song...alright get yer ears round this." Comparisons to Biz Markie have been over-made, but this one holds water. Titch remarks: "OK You can stop skanking now!"

"Pick yourself Up" DJ Target.

Bought this, then later found a review in Deuce. So for once I have some info about the record! Incredible! It's not just DJ Target as it says on my label, but Danny Weed (Cooper Bethea tells me "Rat Race" is a hot tune I missed by Mr. Weed), but also Wiley, Riko, J2K and Breeze. Supergroup! Once again art-lovers it's a down-tempo tune. (Congratulates himself by cracking open a jeroboam of Champagne, renting the Pink Lady stretch limo and smoking a fine cuban cigar). Down-tempo Grime rules cos (a) It's grimey (see "Westside") (b) Middle-class tourists like me can actually hear what folk are saying.

This is a dead depressing record, and very powerful for it. Some of the lyrics here cut straight to the heart of this struggling under-employed loser (Hankys out!) The riddim a stop/start struggling pattern with a medieval synth riff straight offa Jethro Tull's "Aqualung." Thats a dopey song-idea, the message being left on the mobile, but when the message is nasty as this! A bitching pigeon berates her boyfriend: "Get a fuckin' life, get a fuckin' career, you're not even motivated, get up off your arse and do something." Wiley hops in line behind the hunched inchoate beat: "Get up and move forward." A woebot. The chorus: "Pick yourself up. Don't be lazy. Wake up. Make yourself move. Life is moving faster now." Sounds like Crumbling Loaf! Elsewhere" "I am broke right now." Elsewhere: "Stuck in the hustle from around 16." Elsewhere: "Remember the days when you could go through on a five pound draw and that was you." (Yeah I remember. Now I need at least half an ounce of crack to get outta bed!) Elsewhere: "All you see is downward thumbs."

"I Done Told You Before" Dizzy Rascal.

An old tune this but apparently this is the original Wiley mix, different to the version on the More Fire LP. Grimespotters! Wiley evidently clearing out his attic. Not the sort of thing Dizzy would probably sanction a few months of celebrity down the line. Especially now he's officially split with Roll Deep. Front of The Financial Times that. It's a decent tune. Damn Rascal sounds so distinct. If you see any of the Wiley stuff around word is buy it as he's threatening not to reissue anything. Eskimo already a collectors item (yikes). There's a rumbling in the gutter, wonder if this kid can keep his crown? Disappointing Social Circles records this fortnight.

David Em.

Midst all this Prog-Blog reverie (and the joke's turned sour as I've started to salivate at the thought of having a number more of these records, anyone heard of Paladin?) it's worth noting that Prog was probably the apex of the LP sleeve as self-conscious "art-form." As a teen I had Roger Dean posters on my walls, indeed without knowing what they were, simply cos at the school I was at these kind of things (drapes etc) would be sold from one boy to another for generations. Which in a round about way brings me to these.

Early 3D art has something really fantastic about it. There's a feeling that the practitioners were reaching out into an unknown world, exploring the possibilities of the form, delighting at their discoveries. All the while their offerings are kept in check by the technical limitations of the medium, kind of like a proficiency cap (the sort Jazz Funk should have had. "No Pastorius! You can only use 3 fingers!"). David Em was one of the masters of the form, and I'm cur-azy about his stuff, particularly the three sleeves he did for digital-era Herbie Hancock.

From 1983. One of Bill Laswell's better things. Not just "Rockit" but "Earthbeat" on this.

From 1984. Don't have this one. But what a splendid cover!

Which was originally entitled "Transjovian Pipeline", here is a close-up from Cynthia Goodman's excellent book: "Digital Visions: Computers and Art."

From 1988. Not so keen on this one. But forms the trilogy.

In fact Herbie's covers are a pretty good guage of the flavour of the day. I believe the good Kirk Degiorgio was making the same point in connection with Hancock's sartorial taste with his LP named "The Message in Herbie's Shirts."

Fear and Loathing.

Other blogs are wonderful (fr'instance "I Feel Love") but I'm watching this lot like a Panda on heat. The last few weeks have been tense. I reckon the blog phenomenon is now entering it's own early 1970s: bad vibes and long solos, triple albums with gatefold sleeves (look no further...), supergroups and solo albums, reclusive old skool icons, muddy festivals, quaaludes and mandrax, syndication and cynicism. Music to my ears in fact. Massive respekt goes out to Simon "Don Dada" Reynolds and Mark "Dr.Wu" K-Punk both on blisteringly good form. Delighted to make the acquaintance of Gutterbreakz and The Original Soundtrack. Special fanx to Eden (nice idea mate!) and Meme. It's not over.

The End.

If you're ever in The Rough Trade shop in Portobello in London, look beneath their wall-mounted record-sleeves and you'll see the promo posters I put up there ten years ago. Weird that they're still there. I tried to sell the Documentary on Video through Rough Trade and Fat Cat. Two copies bought! It's been truly great to be able to do the project some justice, and to that end thank you to everyone for hearing me out, thank you to all the downloading crew for giving me your bandwidth and thanks for all the generous comments around the nerdospere.

Before I shed this forever (shield your eyes as this might be painful, like watching the little bloke climbing to the top board at the swimming pool before pulling a spectacular belly-flop); I just wanted to touch on the meaning of what I was trying to do. I always liked Brian Eno's maxim that pretentiousness is in fact a good thing. Seems like everywhere one looks these days there is a dearth of meaning, a terror of making grand pronouncements. The thing about "meaning" is that you don't HAVE to buy what the person is saying; you don't HAVE to agree with it. With the African trip I was trying to imagine a world in which the West wasn't a fortress, where there was no stigma attached to the colour of one's skin and where cultures were in true dialogue. Speaking personally, for a few weeks all those years ago everything felt possible.

Questions and Answers.

My esteemed colleague Paul "Parkinson" Meme, the Dick Dastardly of UK Dance, and Acid House Legend (some of these rumours!) wanted me to answer a few questions about the trip here. I was in two minds as whether this was a good idea, feeling a wee bit precious about this week, but this is a blog, and part of the fun of blogs is being in discourse with your peers, not always setting one's sights for one's naval. Gosh it's all VERY flattering! I've managed not to repeat myself too much, and in any case a bit of repetition might prove useful to ram some points home. I look lovely in blue.

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Can you clarify what must be the biggest question – DID AFRICAN PEOPLE LIKE TECHNO? Did they get down to it? Did they “get it”? Did they think you were a bunch of crazy whiteys who were there to be indulged for the entertainment value but not to be taken seriously, musically speaking?

Techno was no big deal, the Africans we met were totally unfazed by it. Had heard it before. The little kids loved it. A bit older (over 18) and people had a slightly cooler reaction. Hipsters! The only shame with the encoded film as it stands is that you can't see the INCREDIBLE dancing people were doing. That's the best case for showing how people liked it. YES, in short.

Were they hip hop fans and if so did that mean they had a good grasp of techno – or did they understand it anyway?

Definitely into Hip-Hop (you heard Trikont's Africa Raps Comp?) Hugely into Ragga. They knew Techno, but were mostly interested in beats as a setting, so we got drafted into their way of things, in effect providing the riddim.

Which records went down best where?

People liked everything, though the "harder" euro stuff, like that track Mike played on the beach didn’t really go down too well, and the Detroit and Chicago tracks were basically more popular than anything else.

Didn’t they find all this instrumental wibbling a bit austere compared to the vocal-centric warmth of much African music?

No. The more traditional African music is "emptier" and “weirder” than straight African Pop. Bouba was of the Bambara tribe who inhabit Mali, Senegal, Guinea and The Gambia and performed in a big traditional troupe. We used to listen to tapes of his outfit. I think he had the same relationship to it as we might have with going to Church at Christmas, does that takes the sex out of the "Techno-Primitive" angle?

Did any of this dance music stuff make sense without, like, the drugs?

Well we WERE smoking weed and drinking. Yeah of course it made sense! The thing is about the mass ecstacy abandon thing is that there's no real place for that in the culture. The way our crew INSISTED on running things, form a big circle and people take turns dancing in the middle, was the form. That's how things are done out there "traditionally." What was weird was how the whole cultural imperialism angle collapsed when we were out there, we were slotted into their way of doing things both in the way the dance was run and with the music, which was effectively substituted for djembe (drums) in the equation djembe+singers+crowd=party. Though of course on the other hand, Bouba and Waya were like our MC cheerleaders, opening people up to the experience. In the clubs things weren't organised "traditionally" like that, but clubbing per se was a very cosmopolitan and smart thing to do, only available to a mere fragment of the population. You'd dress up, and wouldn't get too "messy."

Did any of the locals want to have a go on the decks? (I assume Africa has DJs…) If so did you let them?

There are quite swish clubs in Dakar. El Hadji Ndiaye, who was the other superstar in Etoile de Dakar alongside Youssou N'Dour showed us his club outside the city, and it was very smart indeed. We played another very chic club in Dakar (with an AMAZING record collection!) but it was empty. They mucked about a bit on the decks though largely people were much more interested in taking the mic, singers and rappers, everyone had a bash. I think Jamaica's way with "hi-tech" is the way it will go/has gone out there. Electronic music as a backing for vocals, not necessarily as a stand-alone, though that would be thrilling.....

What was the biggest crowd you played to?

About 200-300 at the street-rave in Dakar.

Did you pull?

No. I was going out with the DJ’s sister.

Did you REALLY look like SUCH a miserable fucker all the way through the trip?

Yes. Though inside I was grinning.

The Music We Played.

We played lots of records in West Africa. We had records from Mike's collection (which was jointly owned by Mike, Lloyd and Nick Beryl), records which Mike borrowed from Keith* and Watty (who were Pure) and my own records.

We played records from Detroit (see my 29 Detroit records breakdown) not just obscure stuff but all the classics "It is what it is", "Wanderer",The Bango E.P, 4 Jazz Funk Classics, "The Sound", "Take Me Away", "The Beginning", "War of the Worlds", "Wiggin", "Beyond the Dance", "All for Lee Sah" etc. We played New York records like Beltram's "Codes", "Energy Flash" and "Major Problems", Bobby Konder's "Rydims" and "The Poem", the Gypsymen's "Bounce", and Royal Orchestra Ltd's "Get Down." We played Arty European Techno like TSFOL's early Principles of Motion EP, The Black Dog's "Apt" and "Parallel", ART 2.1 and 2.2, Orbital's "Chime" and "Belfast", amazing Eevo Lute stuff like Wladimir M's "Evil" and Florence's "Vineyard" and The Diceman's "Polygon Window." We played early DJAX beats records like Morning Glory Seeds and Like A Tim (Mike LOVED these). We played weird house like Bang The Party's "Release your Body" and, of course No Smoke's "Koro Koro." We played ALL the Murk records, bitchin' Miami house, "Together", "Reach for Me", "U Got Me" and "Release Myself". Then there were the strange tracks that didn't fit any category remixes like Moby's mix of Fortran 5's "Heart on the line", oddball Italian House like Girls on Pills "Na Copessa Nini", Sasha's "Heavenly Trance" (don't knock it till you've heard it), and Nexus 21's remix of Paris Grey's "Don't Lead Me."

What colour is Techno? What a stupid question? The whole point is that it has no colour at all, even though we were at pains to point out that, as we saw it, it was essentially an Afro-american ting. I would say that 40% of what we played was from Detroit, 20% was the stuff described above, and a very healthy 40% was music from Chicago. Dat's right deffo, Chicago!

I made a big play of poor ol' Detroit in my rampaging vinyl break-out in July. But Chicago? Short of one reissue on Rephlex, this music has been pretty much ignored. There was the ABSOLUTELY AMAZING "Influences" Compilation which came out on WARP, and which spun me round in the shop when I first picked it up; "You mean these tracks which I've only come across in a word-of-mouth fashion are actually the accepted classics of the genre?" It was a bit like the experience of picking Simon Reynolds' "Energy Flash" and finding one's 1990s laid out like it had been the place to be, like it had actually meant something, as if it wasn't a disjunctured collage of free-floating random experiences.

People talk about the suppressed-identity nature of Detroit Techno, but Chicago's musicians are swathed in mystery, and it's not some media-construction, no-one knows the slightest thing about them. Well I don't anyway! Look at all these bare utilitarian labels, they tell you what you absolutely need to know, but nothing else. I believe this era of Chi-town music, that's to say after Acid and before the glossy more knowing Prescription Underground and Relief labels, is the bollocks. One listen to Superpitcher's "Mushroom", Matthew Johnson's "Typerope" or Ricardo Villalobos's "Dexter" (the best Microhouse, in short) and if you're not firmly of the opinion that Steve Poindexter is their daddy, THE DADDY, then you need your ears cleaning out. I couldn't help but notice a Chicago remix project just got released on Kompakt in the vein of "respect the originals." And what's more Chicago Trax of this era aren't super-polite, ever so nicely compressed super-naff coffee-table muzak like Microhouse can tend to be. This stuff is the most vicious, brutal, tinittus-inducing, ugly and raw music you'll ever hear. It's monotony is thrilling, it's as if the raw essence of JACK has been discovered, all the trimmings stripped-away.

All Steve Poindexter. We CANED these tunes. All brittle micro-inflexions, drums punching too loud, his signature whistles (as if in honest reflection upon the zone of consumption, a sweaty drug-fucked dancehall, eyeballs on stalks), quasi-acid noises, rolling bleep patterns like on "Computer Madness" sucking the riddim behind them, my absolute fucking favourite the grumbling, paranoid, utterly self-absorbed bassline of "Mental Problems." This man is a god.

What do I know about Da Posse? Absolutely zilch. All these three classic tracks. My favourite being "It's my life." When I first heard this I was totally sold on the deeper vein of Chicago music. Before I turned onto these tracks I'd been into Hardcore. Things like The Criminal Minds "Baptised by Dub", Rum & Black, The Scientist/DJ Hype's "The Bee", those were tunes I had as early as 1992, but this Chicago stuff was so empty, so thoughtless, so unaffected. I switched camps. In fact "It's my life" always made me think of Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" LP, same nihilistic beauteous logic.

Lil we all know from French Kiss. "Blackout" omitted here, don't have it anymore. Lil's tracks are thoroughly odd, not remotely like anyone else's. "Frequency" almost sounds like an electro throwback, the rhythmic structure doesn't fit in with anyone else's. Indeed there's quite alot of rhythmic heterogeneity with all this music. Quite like Jungle pre-amen in that respect. With Chicago it's probably a hangover from Disco, and the DJs comfort with odyshape rhythmic patterns (a result of having the chops to mix drums played by human-beings). If you didn't know (give me a minute and I'll tell you) the Detroit "tradition" comes direct from Planet-Rock via Cybotron. Detroit Techno is in fact a mutation of Hip-Hop. Chicago House descends from Disco, specifically things like Patrick Cowley. Chicago and Detroit, totally different things. The linear thing in Chicago trax? That's a disco thing too, trance dance! "How I feel" is a beautiful tear-stained ambient track.

We did play alot of Acid! Armando's "151" and "Land of Confusion", Jamie Principle's "Baby wants to Ride", "Fantasy Girl" etc. Acid is great. The thing with it is it's so elastic, "Reck the Joint" off the Enter into Fantasy the perfect example of this. You hear things like the excerable Hardfloor "Hard Trance Acperience" record and it's so locked-down, also claustrophobic. I wish I had all the records we played in Senegal. (sighs) I do see things we had from time-to-time in second-hand shops and the feeling of connection is astonishing. My records which I took out there I inscribed with a tiny "M" on the label so as to avoid fights with Mike when I got home, and of course ten years later I still have them. Cradling them is so strange, they were there in the dust and heat. I'm sure I'm boring the tits off everyone with this African trip, but it means alot to me. It dates from a time when people REALLY thought music revolutionary. It was totally, wonderfully, bonkers but the rhetoric around Acid House was massively punky and over-optimistic. Real "we're gonna change the world" style. People don't seem to get that worked up these days, it's all style and retrenchment. Let's hope all that changes again soon...

Exquisite pre-ambient house. Virgo and ME the same outfit. I think the Basic Channel sound owes an enormous debt to Virgo. The only thing I thought cut through the bullshit in their recent Wire interview was a reflection that Acid constituted a "year-zero", everyone sold ALL their records and dug deep into piles of anonymous 12"s. Seems like everyone's forgotten, or no-one gives a toss, that Larry Heard's drumless mixes of Finger Inc. were the primary inspiration to Alex "The Orb" Patterson, and it was that wave of ambient-techno which leveraged into IDM and electronica. It was the escape-route. These two records are stunningly beautiful.

This dude seems to have got a bit slagged off. I've no IDEA why? "Ambulance" and "Circus Bells" as tracky and evil as they could be.

Weeps. Made when he was 14 I think? Felix the Housecat something like 13 when he made "Phantasy Girl." I'm only sorry I don't have this on Muzique, which if you don't know already, is one of THEE great labels ever. Period. Up there with Studio One. This 3-tracker possibly the greatest record of this era of Chicago. "Making Love" my favourite. Ron Trent went on to make soul-inflected house records. We actually played Joe Smooth's "Promised Land" alot in Senegal. That's a beautiful tune too. I have that somewhere.

While we're on the Muzique tip. Two more GREAT records. Mike Dunn had a bit of success with "God make Funky" (which I didn't like) and successfully linked up with Tresor. Instead of reissuing Lloyd Barnes why doesn't Maurizio put out a bleeding Muzique compilation. I dunno, I'm forever giving these people hot tips. Where's my commission?

And of course "The Jungle" too. One of the other auteurs.

Larry Heard. The comeback king! "Can you feel it?", yes we can! These are superb. The Jack Trax double LP "Another Side" is cool, I have that somewhere, though "Feeling Sleazy" is by far and away the best track on it.

Cajmere, who soon after these records had a big hit with "Brighter Days" and Clubhouse transformed into Relief. I have another one by Dana on this label, but that didn't come to Africa with us. These two are amazing. "Jouse" is totally weird, a bassline sampled from a double-bass, a flute loop and no drums. "I'm a dreamer" features a Charlie Parker-style saxaphone as a hook. It's all VERY Arthur Russell-ish. Quite unlike the electronic textures in evidence on all these other records. Clubhouse, shh, whisper it!

Damn I love these records! Mention must be made to other Chicago tracks that I missed here which we played particularly Armando's "100% of Dissin you" and "House music all Night Long", the latter of which is a Hip-House track with an MC who sounds like 90s British TV exercise guru Mr.Motivator!