WOEBOT

Best LP since, I dunno, 2001 at the very latest...

Kanye West: The College Dropout.

Legal?

Picked up the wicked "Salt Shaker" Remix. (scheming) If I stitch this together with the original then I can get it to last fifteen minutes!

I was complaining to the bloke behind the counter that it was a clean version. He explained that all the stuff on Killah Kuts, the notorious bootleg label who have put this out, is always Radio-friendly for more often than not it's been given to them by the artist behind the record company's back.

Apparently Lil' Jon leaked them Usher's "Yeah" cos the label were trying to steer Usher in a different direction and weren't intending to release it. "Yeah" ends up going to Number 53 in the charts as a radio-friendly bootleg (!!!) blowing up innit, and the suits have to get their act together and sort a legitimate release out. A legitimate release which then ploughs on to Numero Uno.

Puts a different complexion on illegal music doesn't it. On a similar tip I picked up "Decadanse" a very nifty collection by one DJ Gilles from a vendor in town (naming no names!!!) quite aware that it's just a fecking CD-R. Wait till Mark K-Punk checks out the tracklisting, he'll be beating down my door:

Look you can even drop DJ Gilles a line (snicker). Incidentally the other two comps he's pushing, "White Funk" and "Cold Wave" aren't as great, and if it was up to me the stuff wouldn't be mixed. If I'd had the chutzpah I'd have put my Launderette Compilation out like this.

Events.

Just picked up this flyer. I haven't done anything in the vaguest indie for too long, and this looks pretty seductive. Yeah I might go to this...

And shadowy legend DJ Wrongspeed (I've asked him what his connection was to this crew...) has given me the heads-up on the Red Zero Radio event. Eden had this posted chez lui, but a little duplication can't do any harm.

Booyacka.

The Original Gangster has dropped in to say hi! Giving him just enough time to have a little dig at me (stifles laughter, only joking Ian!), it's always an honour.

Penman's what you might call "the effortless hipster", he knows that something's crass cultural currency is the third generation manifestation of it's cosmic vibrancy. Yeah I did seem to give "Ingram" the band quite short shrift. There are (you'd be probably be exhausted to know) pre-echoes of some kind of revival of interest in this era. Reynolds going out of his way to tell anyone and everyone of his love for Vicki D's "The Beat is Mine" and Freez's "Southern Freez", Soul Jazz releasing their "British Hustle" Compilation (surely the benchmark of a viable revival when these cats sign on), Honest Jon's have put out a Candi Staton compilation (admittedly from a slightly different era), er, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Though strangely, while the Garage scene is often a key link to those heady Essex Soul Raves, it's never been less slinky or pink than right now.

In terms of the Mutant Disco era (the revival of which the Penster rightfully takes great glee reigning in), the hotly-anticipated "Calling Out of Context" collection of previously-unreleased Arthur Russell material must be the final act of barrell-scraping. I've withheld chiming in on this for the simple reason that I was waiting to get my grubby mitts on the difficult-to-find double vinyl edition of the Audika set (bloody typical!) I have to say I think this collection, in direct contrast to what I was hoping for it here, is a clinker. And everyone's afraid to say so, innit.

More often than not unreleased material is best left that way. If an artist hasn't managed to get past the hurdle of releasing their music, even on the tiniest limited edition run, then I say leave it be. Of course there are exceptions, like The Velvet Underground's fourth LP. There is in fact lots of of quite obscure Russell material, which was once available, which could do with being put out: Peter Gordon's 'That Hat", Peter Zummo's "Song IV", "Sketch for Face of Helen", the Tower of Meaning LP.

It's tragic to reflect that Russell sounds crushed and desperate on "Calling Out of Context" (the only highlight being "Wild Combination"), palpably depressed, you can hear it in the crack in his voice. Where "World of Echo" is windswept, iconoclastic and arrogant; "Calling Out of Context" is worn-down, lonely and courageous. I'm sorry, when I hear these qualities in music I just want to shut the blinds, make the poor dude a cup of tea, tell everyone the show is over and in this instance hand out free copies of Henry Flynt's "You Are My Everlovin'", Caetano Veloso's 1986 eponymous solo LP and Francois Rabbath's "The Face of the Bass."

So yeah 80's Soul. I'll be hastling Kirk Degiorgio again! Personal highlights include Mtume's "Juicy Fruit" (on a loop in my coffin), Chic's "Happy Man" (at my 20th Wedding Anniversary) and Maze's "Twilight" (when, and if he's even writing one, the Penster's book gets published).

Three Rock Records.

Three rock records have crept their way onto my deck, politely making their way through a crowd of scowling east-end raggamuffin white labels. If rock enables one to do anything these days it's to reflect. To slightly re-tool Simon's ZFI theory, it strikes me that the music he's using to illustrate the process of intensification is music whose modus operandi is...er...intensification. The thing about following a music like Grime or Crunk is that you find your head squeezed into a clamp. You're in a state of permanent breathlessness, constantly on the verge of an heart-attack. You're riding a car very fast through tunnels. You're pushing buttons as they rise.

My recent comments on Nouveau-Post-Punk's lack of engagement with a broader range of influences could be levelled trebly against the jackhammer static of the pirates, except in that instance the fixation upon here and now is virtuous in it's exclusivity, impossible to criticise in it's moronic intensity. I have a theory that the reason Back-to-1992/1994/1997 is a necessity is that the culture is so quick and unreasonably demanding that a cooling off period, an appreciation of what Luke calls "half-life-culture" is essential to extract pleasure from what is otherwise lost in a blinding white light.

Rock (whatever you want to call it) may not always have been the strain of music to enable a reflective mode of listening, one not so grindingly involving as the more commonly feted in these parts, but now it's distance from these axes of intensification bestows upon it a charmed calm. A cool space for exploring the romantic, the fey, and the lovely.

Quite to my surprise two of these records are Scottish-ish. While we've been insistently trying to keep alive the flame of 1997, or whenever it was that dance music exploded into the mainstream, in England the Scots have long-since lost interest. For instance register Simon at Silver Dollar Circle's surprise that Dance music is dead, that Grime isn't dance music. Yeah IT IS a surprise isn't it. It's like standing around at an open-aired rave and realising that yes the sun has come up and yes people are driving to work and yes the farmer's cows are staring at you and yes you're wearing ridiculous clothes. The Scots figured this out ages ago. Maybe they didnae have the mainstream presence of Dance music, maybe Ministry of Sound decided it wasn't going to be worthwhile perpetuating the myth up there. So it's been a case of smaller, possibly more fruitful stories gradually gaining their own impetus.

This Uter record is a case in point. This four-tracker is consistently excellent. The stand-outs being not the craftily chosen cover versions of "My Little Underground" (JAMC) and "Ohm Sweet Ohm" (Kraftwerk come Auld Lang Syne) but (promisingly) Declan Roney's quite lovely "Tomorrow's Clowns" and "Vibrato." These would have even the hardiest LSD-reconstructed bad bwoys crying into their beer; crying for the shimmering, androgynous, mute-love bliss-scapes of 1988. There's no getting away from the comparisons, here in the high-lonesome harmonies, to My Bloody Valentine. Those seductive basslines: New Order. That crystalline feedback: AR Kane. The utilitarian drum-machine pulse: JAMC. It's quite lovely stuff.

I'll admit to being a total sucker for ANY music whatsoever sold in art galleries. I was delighted to pick up this CD by Martin Creed in the shop at The Serpentine in London. Martin Creed, in case you've forgotten, won The Turner Prize in 2001 with (amongst other works) "Work No. 227: The lights going on and off." I guess like all Turner Prize Winners he's slowly slipped out of people's minds. I'd be surprised if he didn't feel a little like yesterday's man. Someone who something marvellous had happened to, and who now had to struggle through life settling for a lesser level of acclaim and attention. Don't think I'm being cruel by saying that, it's just that I know quite a few conceptual artists and it's a miracle if you make the big time like Scotsman Creed did. Often as not they have to settle for second-best. In fact, and this may come as some consolation to Sean Loaf, one very famous Saatchi-feted artist I know has decided that, in spite of being (on the face of it) enormously successful that the money was rubbish and that she'd rather be a mum. Incidentally while I'm in full hot gossip mode it might be worth mentioning that Catherine, Lulu and I walked past Saatchi and Nigella Lawson coming into the current Roy Lichtenstein exhibition at The Hayward as we were leaving. He eyeing me suspiciously. It's true!

I remember seeing a very good documentary made about Creed and his work, and it featured footage of his band Owada. At the time I thought, gee that's interesting if not brilliant, cos they were very fucking dry. If you read some of their lyrics you can see that Creed took the conceptual angle a little too far. Counting to one hundred, my yes, very minimal...attention wanders. He'd taken the same equation Rhys Chatham* had: Ramones + Steve Reich = Minimal Rock and ended up producing quite similar sounding music to Chathams. I am surprised in retrospect that his cause wasn't picked up The Wire (who went as far as putting out Chatham's music on the short-lived Wire Editions label), of course any music on this art-punk axis is blessed by the spirit of Andy Warhol**. Creed even got David "Flying Lizards" Cunningham to produce him and with the Owada record coming out on Cunningham's Piano label he was crying out for the right kind of attention, but still no bites...

So presumably Creed is "reduced" to putting out limited edition CDs in small galleries. It's some kind of tragedy then that "I don't know what I want", the one two minute fifteen second song on here is a bit super. For one musically it's built on a logical, rather than artificial rotation. Quietly shambling and genuinely touching, i love it. What's quite funny is that when you put the CD into your PC, CDDB recognises it as an album by a band called "APOTHEOSES" the song (erroneously titled?) "Orff's Carmina Burana Piece." This is either gentle self-reflexive prank or confusion writ accidental.

Bit of a flashback here. Ever since reading Dave Lang's excellent piece on SST at Perfect Sound Forever, I've been hunting for this record. The Tar Babies are definitely a very minor bit of history, but when you consider that the most fruitful and important strand to come out of that label has been not the Huskers or The Meat Puppets but The Minutemen then maybe The Tar Babies (the other funk-inflected act at SST) deserve more attention. Certainly I recall my big chum Sasha Frere-Jones singling them out for quiet praise and Dan Bitney one of the three member of The Tar Babies ended up in Tortoise. I rest my case.

So, at last, as is inevitable (records can't evade one forever***) I found it the other day. And was pleased to discover that "Fried Milk" (their first LP) is a little gem. Sloppy, fun, original, generously tuneful and something one comes back to for repeated listens.

Can I take my leather trousers off now?

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

* Chatham had tuned pianos for La Monte Young and had his head turned by hearing "Beat on the Brat" at CBGBs, Creed describes his music as "Steve Reich meets The Ramones."
** Just like he blessed Curiosity Killed The Cat ;-)
*** Still searching for The Meat Puppets "Up On The Sun" incidentally.

Fa Fa Fa Fa Fashion Part 2.

FCUK have filled their shop windows with pseudo record-sleeves. Do they want my custom? I was taking photos on the pavement and an assistant ran out of the store and informed me angrily:

"You can't take photos here, it's not allowed!"

To which I replied:

"Yes, I can. Try and stop me!"

Blood rushed to my head. This was what stealing cars must be like. I'm getting more and MORE pugnacious in my old age. Anyway, why would people want to tune into to FCUK FM on their mobile? It's like that bizarre victorian practice of listening to concerts on the telephone!

Oh and I also wanted to draw people's attention to this:

This Holly Vallance bird wants us to know her favourite ever female artist is Blondie. Right! Elsewhere she's in a red wig trying for Anthony Kleidis's market-share. That last sentence sounded just like SFJ! I came off my bike pulling away from the bus-stop.

Ingram.

I first discovered this record in Paris in the late eighties, and was very close to buying it, cos of course my name is Matthew Ingram. I imagined it'd be fun to have it leaning on the mantelpiece. I came across it once more recently at Uptown Records in New York. It's never been particularly rare (on reflection I must have crossed paths with it half a dozen times and given it the nod) and it's never been particularly expensive. Other Ingram records I've spied have more psychedelic sleeves, and higher prices. I happened to see it again the day before yesterday. Only this time it was up on the wall, and sporting a semi-serious price. Cor!

The only vaguely interesting thing I know about this cool, slickly-dressed family with their immaculate afros (sorry no reverse sleeve here!), is that Arthur Russell used them as his band on tracks like "Is it all over my face?" The stuff I've heard by them however is polished disco-funk, a million miles away from the Killer Whale's stripped-back atonal disco; so don't be getting ideas...

Lots and lots of laughs. Belly aches. Ribs straining at the sheer hilarity of it all. Of course every time this record and I meet I wonder how this bunch of Afro-Americans ended up with the name Ingram! The horrid truth must be that one of their ancestors was once a slave* for a man with the same name as me, maybe a relative of mine...

-
*Clarification 30/3/4

Rinsin' Bare Dubz.

My man DJ Cameo told me I should check his Pirate Sessions on the 1Xtra site. He's got this *GREAT* intro and the set is chocka full of the most wikkid pre-release dub-plates all streaming on the site. Too many highlights to mention...

I've known Cameo for a year. Man I had know idea he was busting out so large! Respect feller! All international crew, you know the ku.

A Brit Raps.

"It's almost as bad as that recent issue of VICE (they think they're SOOO cool!) where they talked about Wiley amidst a round-up of UK Hip Hop."

After I slagged off this piece in VICE (groan) I got an email from John Vanderpuije who writes the Beats and Rhymes column for VICE. It must be under the alias of Mike Gatting, cos thats who the column is attributed to. Anyway John, who says he loves Woebot (presumably to make me feel even worse ha!), has also written the Grime Scene Investigation article for Dazed & Confused. Why the hell are all we bloggers engaging so fruitfully with ourselves and not the outside world? Why didn't Simon, Tim, Luka, Jess or I manage to get a similar article published? It's a fucking shambles! Putting feelings of stomach-wrenching jealousy aside for a moment I was pleased to find John's article was, if not exactly pushing the boundaries of Grime knowledge back very far, a handy and faithful starters guide for the general public.

However, however, there's a few things in there that rankle. Firstly amongst Wiley, Tinchy Stryder, D Double E, Kano and J2K there has been inserted one "Taz." Taz who apparently produced "Just a Rascal" for "Boy In Da Corner." Taz is, I'm sorry, clearly NOT part of the Grime scene as we know it and tellingly now has an album about to be released by Def Jam UK. Like Jess I have immense problems with "Brit-Rap redux." I don't think this is a puritanical position at all, it's just Grime is a totally different ting.

There are other points in the piece when alarm bells ring, where I sense the same "rolling together" than I rather stridently criticised John for in the VICE piece. On D Double E: "Dee's passion to evolve his own sound beyond existing genres has seen him grow into an acclaimed MC with a solid work ethic who can ride tempo after tempo" Actually D Double himself says: "When you're on the radio by yourself you can't repeat the same lyric over and over again. So being solo made me a better MC." Oh, and here's John on Kano: "Whether it was Bedford, Amsterdam or Ayia Napa, his smooth flow, lyrical dexterity and verbal bite made an indelible impact on the audience, rising above par quality of the scene." This way of talking about MC-ing is exactly the same which blights all that backpacker stuff. You know (paraphrases traditional Hip-Hop fan): "the lyrics are rilly great on this and the production values are excellent."

I guess I'm guilty as hell when it comes to imposing bourgeois values on Garage, the first thing I did on Garage at the other place "A Potted History of UK Bounce" had me holding out for a slowed-down Grime. What I was after was more room for textural beats and more space for the MC, though it amounts essentially to the same thing, a more "listenable" experience. I guess "Birds in the Sky" was a tune I thought might herald a shift to a slower pace. In subsequent things I've done on Grime I've even praised (in a self-concious way admittedly) the production values on "War Wid" and "Popadomz." Then as if to add insult to injury I did that Old Skoolish thing, really attempting to cement the relationship between Old Skool Hip-Hop and Grime. So me taking John to task is like the pot calling the kettle sooty. In my own defense I do believe I was having fun drawing an equation because there didn't appear to be one there. Now it seems that the crossover is so easily digestable and acceptable I'm less keen on on the idea. In fact I HATE the idea. If Grime came to be understood as UK Hip-Hop it'd be a disaster.

If Grime came to be understood as UK Hip-Hop it'd be a disaster. Why? Because, put simply, Brit-Hop has never managed to get over being a inferior version of American Hip-Hop (Grime on the other hand seems mercifully oblivious of America). More than that it's never even escaped the orbit of that critical comparison. Even a brilliant Brit-Rap record like New Flesh's "Understanding" LP. Now John Vanderpuije reccomended this lot to me. This lot have received huge critical acclaim, witness this review Boomkat: "Too powerful. Brain twisting science. Seriously I can't remember any other UK hip hop album to have had this impact on us. Believe!!! A classic in the making." Well that's pretty euphoric innit, but of course lodged within in the same problematic discourse. I went into a store in town and picked up the record and held it in my grubby hands:

Turned it around. Looked at the back. Inspected the sticker on the front which proclaimed that the record featured appearances by members of Anticon, a cameo by Rammelzee and Gift of Gab of Blackalicious. Then I put it back in the bin. Half an hour later I came back, picked it up, and then returned it to the bin once more. No deal!

This may be a great record, in fact some of the things said here have piqued my interest further, but sorry I can't get with it. It's all seems so worthy! The appearances of all these luminaries intending to legitimise the validity of Brit-Rap only end up making it appear a very poor third cousin. OK unity of the diaspora yawn yawn, but do you see the Americans getting UK Hip-Hoppers to appear on their records (Slick Rick excepted natch)? Added to which why on earth is Brit-Rap stuck in this mid-period phase, endlessly mimicking DJ Premier-style beats? OK so Anticon aren't acceptable to the UK Hip-Hop purists, and thus neither are New Flesh as I found out on my visit here:

Mr. Bongo, where you'll find more backpackers than J&D Sports. Where New Flesh were described to me as "not our kind of thing. Actually I volunteered "not your kind of thing" and the dude just nodded. So what is your kind of thing lads? What UK Hip-Hop can you recommend? I went through a small pile of suggestions. The new Ritchy Pitch 12", Secondson's "Taskforce" (not bad actually), The P Brothers latest release, and their "stand-out" Jehst's "Return of the Drifter." Yeah it was all very nice, very faithful, but sorta slightly bor-ring. I asked them if they had anything, well, a bit bashier. "Ooh, now you're scaring me!" remarked the patient dude behind the counter. This vein of Hip-Hop seems to be perpetuated so as to underline the classic canon (Mobb Deep etc) Don't even ask them if they carry this sort of thing:

I bloody WISH they did. It's impossible to get crunk over here. The Ying Yang Twins CD cost me a fortune on import! There's almost no point in even trying to play catch up with Simon and Jess. "Salt Shaker" though, that is a vere vere cool tune. Yeah, anyway, not much in the way of fascinating things to say about this...er, I own it, thus I am cool.

So, carrying on, thwarted by Bongos I went off to find this:

Which I regretted not buying last year. I think John included this in his list of "rated UK Hip-Hop" too. Under the name Fusion. Well it's Fusion feat Fallacy innit! I loved that Big'N'Bashy single, and should have really stuck my neck out and bigged up the LP (coughs) important tastemaker that I am, tooo hip darlings! Yeah this is more like it. If Hip-Hop proper is ever going to work in the UK it needs to be more like this. Highlights include the "The Groundbreaker" (this is really old now!) and "Square Beamer" (a masterpiece). I guess all of this points to a massively fractured micro-market of hangers-on, with the only strong hegemonies being Big Dada (who've put the cLOUDEAD record out over here), Roots Manuva, and actually shops like Mr. Bongo (shops whose lifestyle you can buy into). It's a shambles! Worse than that it's lifeless and fairly devoid of inspiration. No wonder they want a bit of Grime's tang.

So if Grime isn't Hip-Hop what is it? Wot do U call it? Har de har. The thing about the white label scene as it's existed thus far, is that you're able to pretty much project anything onto those blank records. It's driven by the motor of Raves/Pirate Radio/Grassroots enthusiasm. For instance (aah you're gonna LOVE this!) look at this photo I took in the back of the 55 bus today:

Yeah! That's garridge, seen! It's the kind of music that makes you want to get out your red marker pen and deface public transport. It's still just a massive uncontainable energy source, and that's the way I'd like it to stay. And I guess that's why the idea of it being co-opted in UK Hip-Hop bothers me. That and the fact that I'm still clinging (maybe erroneously) to the idea of an Ardkore Continuum!

Besides the way UK Hip-Hoppers picture American Hip-Hop is so wrong, and I'm not just talking about them being stuck on that certain era of music deaf to the power of the brash, evil, mainstream incarnation of their blessed form. I'm talking about the fact that in the US the mixtape and the radio show are at the core of the culture, not the hallowed double LP. This:

Which SFJ kindly copied me into, and which was supposed to be the mixtape of 2003, is case in point. Ghostface Killer freestyles over a whole range of riddims, big tracks and old Wu-Tang classics. It's great. An inspired fucking mess. Such fun and just exactly what one finds in the Grime experience (without even the slightest whiff of emulation).

Have you heard this "Cha Cha Slide" thing by DJ Caspar! Ha! Everyone hates it! But I saw it on the telly recently before it was climbing the charts (it's about five years old actually!) and I loved it. It's Hip-House innit! All that Mr. Motivator stuff, I love that.

Oh and this is great! Love that soft-rock sample.

(reclines)

So many great Garridge tunes out at the moment. Durrty Doogz "Back to Skool" Awesome! Hey that's a slow tune! What else is there? Um. There's "Top Boy" by MC Narstie, the amazing Str8 riddim by Mundi (one 2 watch), Riko's "The Chosen One" (at last!) and there's a brilliant new Wiley tune too which doesn't have a title. I even picked out the Payback EP on Aftershock, the best riddim tracks I've heard in ages just to get away from all these chatty bastards.

Gothic Futurist.

Stuart Argabright looks like a villain from a Die Hard film. He parts the staff in the bar we meet. They’ve been bitching at me to move on, and now tiptoe around. He addresses me with the ease and grace of someone not used to being messed with, his a demeanour of soft dread, part Southern Gent, part Austrian count. Perhaps it’s a result his army upbringing. His father worked for US Intelligence on the military’s precursor to the Internet, his brother on F-16’s. It’s difficult to know where to start with Argabright. History’s been bent out of shape with the post-punk revival. We’re supposed to be more interested in some chapters of his story more than others. He’s been ploughing the same furrow since he left Washington DC, and his early band The Rudiments (captured on the obscure “30 Seconds over DC” Compilation with other punk contenders like the Slickee Boys), and left for New York under the spell of Tom Verlaine’s Television.

I had propped a copy of the Dominatrix record “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” (Streetwise/upRoar 1984) on my table. We’d failed to work out beforehand how to identify one another. I reasoned it’s lurid pink sleeve would catch his eye, then it seemed a valid entry point for our conversation. Argabright is heartily sick of the track: “Dominatrix was the anomaly in my scheme of things, but if most people know me at all, they think of that record.” Having been released recently on Andy Weatherall’s “Nine O’Clock Drop” (Nuphonic 2000) and at least 4 other compilations previous to that, it’s just been put out again, in the original sleeve with accompanying re-mixes, by DJ Hell’s International Gigolo label. It’s perky chiming synth riff, crisp drums and playful lyrics made it a surprise hit for Stuart in the mid-eighties. He ended up playing it for the disco crowd at Studio 54 and the Paradise Garage wedged between Robert “D.A.F” Gorl and Run DMC. This was ironic turn of events. The crowd Stuart emerged from HATED the disco scene and it’s “…frivolous mirror ball sensibility.” It’s easy to forget that despite today’s re-imagining of that era, disco and punk were sworn enemies, with the Mudd Club and it’s progeny structuring themselves as a response to the 9-5 Weekender attitude of the disco crowd. We’re soon to be treated to the first bonafide history of the era at the hands of New York-based Academic Simon Reynolds' eagerly anticipated Post-Punk book. “None of the disco people went to The Mudd Club. You got the Bianca Jaggers thrown in once in a while, but if we saw those people we'd trip 'em up, kick 'em, and if they came dressed all disco James Chance might just mug them on the dancefloor. The strata of people was pretty pronounced. When you say Disco people I think Studio 54 people, that was a whole tribe of people. More power to them, but it jusn't wasn't our scene.” With Dominatrix he was trying to engineer transgression, not homogeneity: “Its good to have boundaries because then you can say “this” and “this” get together, and its not just a pool of musicians.” This boundary breaking was echoed in the track’s subject matter. “I'd been hanging out with Dominatrixes, they were my good friends. I wanted to do a thing which showed what they were about…these women in power who were beating and peeing on the top music business lawyers in New York.” Stuart clearly in awe of these girls and the down-up inversion of power they practised.

“We were working at Unique studios, which was the hot studio at the time, by Times Square”, The group had laid their hands on Peter Baumann’s studio (of Tangerine Dream, interesting for his “Skin Diver” record with Nona Hendryx) the synth, mixer and podium made for Kraftwerk. “While me and Ken Lockie were in there doing the record Ivan Ivan the co-producer was out playing video games in the hallway and in the next studio was Arthur Baker... Arthur was like "What's this record? I gotta have it!" The record at that point was being produced by Joel Weber’s upRoar recordings, Weber the man behind the hot music biz conference of the day the NMS, but a deal was struck and Dominatrix consequently came out as a joint Street Wise and upRoar production. In a depressingly familiar scenario Stuart never managed to properly collect for the record, a grim parallel could be made with Liquid Liquid’s treatment at the hands of that other R’n’B empire Sugarhill. He doesn’t have a nice word to say about Arthur Baker.

Ike Yard was the foundation for all this activity. The group was put together by Argabright (Drums) and Kenny Compton (Bass). These two spent months locking patterns before inviting electronics wizards Fred Szymanski and Michael Diekmann on board. With the “Night after Night" EP (Les Disques Crepuscule 1981), they made a cultural leap by being on the forward-looking Belgian label, as opposed to a homegrown NYC one. The only similar deal centred on transatlantic Post-punk axis was brokered between Ed Bahlmann (99) and London’s Dick O’Dell (Y) yet never bore fruit in the export to Europe of New York’s Music. Ike Yard were trailblazers. There were predecessors mining similar sonic territory (Suicide) and contemporaries (Liquid Liquid and Gray) but Ike Yard upped the ante in the abstract ferocity of their sound. Their true musical kindred spirits were German; D.A.F. and bands on the Atatak label like Der Plan and Pyrolator. Argabright was keen to point out that their “angle” came as much from literature, notably from J.G.Ballard’s “Crash”, from Japanese author Ryu Murakami (especially his novel “Almost Transparent”, which was the inspiration for the lyrics of “Half A God”), and William Burroughs “..for his cut-up technique.” It’s music which speaks of the intense alienation of cold water flats in the Lower East Side, seductive in its frosty hauteur but also plying hefty rhythmic ebb.

With their second record “A Fact A Second” (Factory 1982) Ike Yard were delighted to be on the same label as Joy Division. This time Fred Szymanski and Michael Diekmann, both of whom had an academic background in electronics, truly made their influence felt. Argabright recalls his introduction to Xenakis and Stockhausen and the electronic music issuing from IRCAM at their hands: “We bathed in it”. Argabright describes the nascent electronics scene: “Here in Manhattan there was this place called PASS, Public Access Synthesiser Studio, where you could go for $3 an hour and there was this synthesiser, a Buchla which was as tall as this wall. A phone patchbay thing which took you half an hour to get any sound out of it. Then came the suitcase sized EMS synthesiser which Brian Eno had, but also that Fred in Ike Yard owned. Suddenly we were able to have a thing we could walk around with...and wow we can set this thing on top of an old ironing-board on stage and we can do a live thing with it. OK!” A Fact A Second” sports a “purely electronic” sound with synths and drum machines all triggered through midi. Tracks like “Loss” and “NCR”, the latter audible on Gomma’s excellent “Anti-NY” (Gomma 2001) compilation, are quite stunning not just for their whispering iciness, but also their low-slung electro-funk. Suicide, who Ike Yard had also supported (others included New Order, A Certain Ratio, Young Marble Giants, Non, and Lydia Lunch’s 13.13), may have been prodigally in advance, but possessed an unmistakable rockabilly sound. Hearing what Argabright terms these “ones of a kind” of Post-Punk, is fascinating. Twenty years on this music is bang up to date, and it’s heartening to know that thanks to the Troubleman label, who recently brought us the hotly-tipped New Wave upgrade of Erase Errata, both these Ike Yard records will imminently be available once more. As a footnote to this era, note the impact Ike Yard and Dominatrix may have had over the birth of New Order’s “Blue Monday”: “Factory America’s Michael Shamberg was always hanging around the scene and making connections. With Dominatrix on Street Wise, it was just a jump away in the club to go from talking to the Street Wise guy (Baker) to the New Order guy (Tony Wilson). I would venture to say that in whatever vaporous way the connection with Ike Yard and Factory, and Ike Yard and Arthur Baker somewhat smoothed the way for the New Order Arthur Baker thing.”

Gomma, who also reissued “Exterior Street,” Stuart’s collaboration with Rammelzee which came out on Death Comet Crew’s “At the Marble Bar EP” (Beggars Banquet 1984) have just, after Argabright’s suggestion, put out Rammelzee’s first LP. “Ramm”, as Stuart affectionately refers to his colleague, and he have forged a persistent collaboration since that record. It’s an unusual partnership, founded on their mutual “Gothic Futurist” aesthetic. They first met at The Gallery in Berlin in 1983. Argabright had fled New York after being stabbed twice in a mugging. Since then Rammelzee has also contributed to two tracks on Stuart’s Black Reign record on the Industrial Label 5th Column in 1986. Argabright has taken the role of producer in the project; he’s recorded all the vocals in New York with Rammelzee, Shock Dell and K-Rob (the first time they’ve worked together since “Beat Bop”). He has marshalled contributions from the German Hip-Hop crews Quanuum and Terranova and added his own production on one of the tracks. He’s aiming to help “Ramm” on tour, as the Ikonoklast Panzerist can often have his plate full when performing in his beautiful trash assemblage outfits. Stuart joked: “Ikonoklast Panzerism, a great buzzword unless your talking to Jewish toymakers....he was trying to get his toys out there and people were all excited and he went "Gothic Futurism and...Ikonoklast Panzerism" Jaws drop, eyes bug out. "What do you mean by Panzerism?" End of meeting!” Not that it’s his place to apologise for his friend’s iconography, but Argabright is quick to explain the phrase has nothing to do with “the forties”. A remix by El-P of the original Death Comet Crew record, whose lovely vintage 3D cover Stuart and I fauned at over at his apartment, is also mooted. Stuart holds the Def Jux crew in high esteem, and also singled out the No-U Turn Tech-step label for praise.

Argabright has been busy with a consistently inspiring stream of activity between these earlier records and the current offerings. Amongst other things he’s been heavily involved with the author William Gibson, who he contacted the week after Neuromancer’s release, telling the soon-to-celebrated cyber-punk that HIS music was the soundtrack to that book. Highlights of this partnership include Stuart being asked to do the music for the 10th Anniversary Audio Book of Neuromancer by Time Warner in 1994, and his score for the Robert Longo/William Gibson movie “Johnny Mnemonic” (“a bust”). His improbable avant-thrash outfit Black Reign who mixed The Misfit’s three minute pop songs with equal parts Einsturzende Neubauten metal-work pounding played GG Allin’s last concert and the notorious anniversary of the Tompkins Square Riots at Tompkins Square Park, surrounded by a phalanyx of police. Yesterday he was the on the phone to Bachir of The Master Musicians of Jajouka with whom he is co-ordinating a project with Judy Nylon, another long-term collaborator. This is the kind of restless activity it’s heartening to see in an old dude. On our way to his flat, in the mysteriously perfect Stuyvesant Park public housing estate, Stuart described his vision of electronic music: “…I envision a cable jerking around spraying out sparks” danger, in a word. It’d be good to see more threat of rupture in some of the smooth surfaces of modern electronica.

Special Thanks to Paul Kennedy.

DeMeDo
Gomma
International DeeJay Gigolo
Troubleman Unlimited

Yikes!

Woebot's comments boxes have been ramraided with spam over the last forty-eight hours and Mark Sinker is only responsible for a fraction of it. The new batch of Movabletype spammers have also worked out a way to overwrite existing blog posts via open boxes.

I've been stemming the flow, banning IP addresses, upgrading the MT application, repairing posts which were once celebrating (ahem) me and my fascinating record collection and now are advertising drugs with names like Vicodin and Levitra, and closing down all comments boxes which I've left open.

Yes that's correct non-technical person closing down comments boxes, which is a terrible shame as left open for all time they provide me with little shards of joy, like this recent contibution to an old post by Rolo who used to be in The Woodentops.

In future (sighs) only comments boxes on the index page will be open. End of announcement.

Love.

Yet more additions to the links bar, and kind of by way of addressing the massive proclivity of "Da Phenomenon," I'd like to shower a little love on some of my favourite bloggers, be a little selective for a change. Somewhat ruefully I was reflecting that doing one of my pictorial bloggers break-outs again is now becoming increasingly unlikely. Ladies and Gentlemen a big hand for the following (in alphabetical order):

::::......::::...:::::::::.....
You know him as Luka Vandross, the improbably porous poet. You might not know that that the medja continues to heap garlands upon the youthful Vandross's slight frame. Luke 'Eronbone has recently starred in articles in Scotland's "The Herald", featured prominently in Michael Tufluv's excellent FACT article on "Da Phenomenon" (the only blogger discussed, though links in evidence), been interviewed by Resonance FM, and has appeared in a small walk-on part in Mel Gibson's biopic "Jesus." More than this he's the best fookin writer on the net. A big round of applause for LD.

Blissblog
OK, so we don't hear as much from him as we'd like, but as Luka recently remarked in his trademark lowercase: "the funny thing about simon is, he's always right. uncanny." Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to echo those words. It's scary how on the money Reynolds is, he's like a shining light illuminating the bullshit, detonating the easily-hyped (after a lukewarm comment he made about the Linda Perhacs record I found myself questioning it myself!) and honing in on the culturally vibrant with penetrating alacrity (Crunk ahoy!). Blissblog will never die!

Evergreen Daze
Jim makes no pretense of being the world's greatest writer, or the world's greatest authority on anything. Me neither. However Evergreen Daze, the graphically lovely upgrade of that hardy perennial Emerald Daze is a prize bloom. Always a pleasure mate.

Grievous Angel
Here's one for fan's of my discomfort. Paul has also done some first-rate digging on the subject of the effects of file-sharing and the results are worth a read. Nice to see so much going up big feller.

House at World's End
Robin seemed to have a bit of a rough ride recently at ILM, part misunderstanding on the part of some, part gross hooliganism on the part of others (you fuckin' monkeys). Learning his age came as a huge shock to me, I'd been offering posts up in deference to him thinking he was in his late sixties, when in fact he's but a toddling 23. Carmody is a fascinating, erudite and acerbic pundit, a man with his own vision. I raise my glass to you sir!

k-punk
Outstanding stuff as usual. Mark's absolutely charming manner and gentility combined with his gracefully incisive, theoretically-informed writing make k-punk a veritable jewel in the crown. So many highlights! The Cafe Wars, The Poptimism debate, the recent celebration of British Superhero comics (replete with beautiful stills). I spend my days scheming of ways in which to drag him into conversations so that he might lend his keen critical eye to proceedings. Bravo!

Naked Maja
Naked Maja has been absolutely essentially reading since Marcello's bollock-busting 1985 break-out. Carlin is on absolutely tearing form, writing with wit, charm and pugnaciousness. In my humble opinion, Naked Maja is shaping up to be a more a playful and (yeah I know I'm superficial) FUN read than COM ever was. I've examined my conscience (this took 2 minutes) and I can vouch this opinion has nothing whatsoever to do with our welcome patch up of relations, at least not on any mundane level. Naked Maja rocks!

Uncarved
Pithy and unfailingly stimulating, it's been great seeing Jon branch out on a few subjects.

-

So there you have it, my current TOTB. Others, most notably my man, the ever-brilliant Jess Technicolor would have been in there but for a slight dearth of new stuff. Anyway, not everyone is a sad fucker like me and chooses to waste time on it. A huge big up to everyone on my links bar. (blowing kisses) I love you all dahlings!

Rant.

At the weekend I picked up one of Earthworks samplers of "Umbaquanga" South African township innit. It's dated 1983. There's a whole lot of great records Earthworks put out in the early 1980s, and they managed to find interesting interfaces with the bleeding edge music of the day. Dubwise there are the awesome Tony Allen "NEPA" Dubs and the thrilling Dele Abiodun "Confrontation" Dub LP. There's also the stunning "Duck Food" LP which is tracks Malcom Mclaren used on "Duck Rock", that's a brilliant compilation, rocks the dancefloor. You can still find all these records easily, and they're never more than a fiver, in part I'm sure owing to their cheap (punky) packaging.

Anyway it got me thinking. A lot of people spun out of Post-Punks orbit into mad crazy shit like Free Jazz (you meet Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry on the road out of PP), Dub and Roots (Prince Far-I and Scratch) Improv (Tristan Honsinger, Toop and Beresford), Electro (Tommy Boy) and most importantly World Music (Sunny Ade, South African Jive, Fela, etc) People like Mark Stewart, Jumbo Vanrennan, Jah Wobble, Ari Up, Neneh Cherry and Adrian Sherwood succeeded in exploding the perameters of insular white indie rock. I don't even think the syncretic music this PP crew made is what's important (some of it's great, some not) it's just that their actions opened up different universes, created possibilities.

Now think of the Post-Punk revival for a minute. Like it or not it constitutes one of the freshest things happening today (still!) in part owing to it's sexy fashion energy. But there is NO TRACE of it spinning out of it's concentric orbit. Can you picture a World Music sampler coming out of the !!! camp? Can you imagine the Animal Collective compiling a Free Jazz record (droll, that'd be GREAT!) Elsewhere (beyond the PP revival, straw-man here) apart from The Bug's pretty good dalliance with Ragga there are no routes out. Like I say I'm less bothered with the quality of music being made than with signposts in evidence. Actually I guess the African music reissue thing has been pretty healthy, but it's all been keyed to the mid seventies era. Hip Hop and "Urban" isn't so fussy mercifully, but bizarrely have been banned from the bourgeous indie spectrum (cLOUDEAD, AntiCon er no thanks). Where are the samplers of modern South African music on the shelves? There's a whole world out there!

On a similar groan about cultural insularity I thought I'd have another bash at the Rough Trade shops (brought into focus by a chat Marcello, Mark Fisher and I had last night). This is supposed to be the most exciting store for new music in the UK! Last weekend I was in there and on the wall they were reccomending some electronica 12" as: "Really dirty, one for fans of I Monster and Dizzy Rascal." I can't explain how rubbish I think this is. It's almost as bad as that recent issue of VICE (they think they're SOOO cool!) where they talked about Wiley amidst a round-up of UK Hip Hop. OK now I am being a snob, wink. The Rough Trade store has become such a ghetto. They managed to pick up on Jungle circa 1995, that wasn't too bad. Anyway I despair. It's not anyone's fault, I'm just picking on them, but beatnik kulcha (electronica and rock) is at it's lowest ebb, it's most insular. Makes you want to set up your own frigging label.

C90 Roots.

A Reggae tape I made four years ago. Hit the Woebot icon above! Let's go!

00.00 Jackie Mittoo: Hi-Jack
My first exposure to Studio One at a party in Manchester in 1991 where I was DJ-ing Bleeps in the cellar. The bass on the Coxsone tracks was in an entirely different range of the frequency to where I'd previously found bass in seventies rockers. Kinda punched you in the chest. I love a bassline you can hear being clipped.

02.07 John Holt: Ali Baba
Holt's phrasing and timing on this Treasure Isle classic are spectacularly sensitive. Mime this, it's fun!

04.46 Joe Higgs: Hard Times Don't Bother Me
Didn't Higgs have a hand in tutoring Bob Marley? This from the quite lovely "Life of Contradiction" LP.

08.13 Harry Mudie/King Tubby: Where Eagles Dare
Tubbs had meaningful relations with a whole heap of producers. This is almost symphonic. And looooong...

14.30 The Wailing Souls: Real Rock
I SO rate this lot. Like Leroy Smart's vocals they're not glutinous in the least, something quite unique in their delivery I can never put my finger on.

17.31 Zap Pow: The River
My fave roots track period. Lee Perry at his absolute apogee. Harmonies seem to happening on about eight plains.

20.58 Jackie Mitto: Hairy Mary
Much later Mittoo, again psychedelic without being dubbed-out. Ever so slight jazz tinge to this. Shimmering organs.

23.52 Fred Locks: Black Star Liners
Bit of a classic. Super spooked tuning.

26.32 Dillinger: Truth and Rights
"Dillinger entered looking dapper in a blue track suit with a pair of shoes tied by the lace slung round his neck, Dillinger greeted Jammy who looked up and remarked on whether or not the footwear was new, Dillinger sharp as a ratchet blade replied, "Yeh man, me got me new shoes and the talking blues." Dave Hendley.

32.34 The Wailing Souls: I've got a burning fire.
Another AMAZING track from this lot.

34.38 Winston Scotland: Buttercup
Brother Jess might recognise the hook off this as used on the Brainkiller's "Screwface." He might even know this track! My copy here on the genius Pama imprint.

37.04 Tapper Zukie: Viego
Clement Bushay's production on "Man Ah Warrior" is sweet, crisp and light. Recently reissued, the "Music of the Most High" release masterminded by Lenny Kaye with its beautiful cover photo of a lockless Tapper by Robert Mapplethorpe is rare as hen's teeth. Zukie is sometimes dismissed by Roots afficionados, I lurve his singjay tone.

39.44 The Agrovators: West Dub
Mash up vinyl here. The bottom note on this, where the rudderless melody swirls into an impossibly involved pool, before snapping up into an euphoric high echo, is one of my all time favorite musical moments. Just goes to show how Tubby could make a track.

42.04 Pablove Black Bagga and The All Stars: After Christmas
I play this to everyone. Apparently Shaka used to mash up this old Studio One dubplate all the time.

46.04 Treasure Isle Dub: Dub So true
Very early Tubby, but a towering monster. Lovely vocals here too.

48.10 Jo Jo Bennett: Leaving Rome
An early Harry Mudie track. The super soupy string undercut by the bath-time bird whistle. Like the Mittoo stuff here, instrumental Reggae that's crazy without being dubbed out.

50.41 Scientist: Bad Days Dub
Scientist off the "Scientific Dub" LP. Brad Osbourne's riddim. I like the Clocktower riddims, why Bullwackie gets all the hype I dunno.....

54.55 Cornell Campbell: The Sun
Lovely. Nice to hear him still working, the Rhythm and Sound thing he did was the best of the series. Like Horace Andy he has a high open voice that's rough yet tender.

58.02 Burning Spear: Creation Rebel
The Spear's first record is essential.

1.00.32 Alton Ellis: Set a better example
Punchy rocksteady. Keening vocals from The Flames.

1.03.07 The Royals: Sufferer of the Ghetto
Roy Cousins' recordings are really crafted, quite different to most Reggae of the period where the artists are shuttled in, do their thing over pre-ordained backing tracks and leave by the back-door.

1.06.28 Dennis Alcapone: Dancing Version
Adore the way Dennis leaps into the blue with his "Yeah yeah yeeeeeeaaahhhs."

1.08.37 Linval Thompson: I Love to smoke Marijuana
Classic innit. I used to love to smoke marijuana ;-)

1.11.53 Keith Hudson: I broke the comb
He's a really weird character the dark dentist of dub. How the record companies ever thought they might have another Marley with him is impossible to understand.

1.14.29 Tapper Zukie: Ital Pot
Something deeply unworldly about this Yabby U riddim (U under-represented here, along with a whole lotta folk, it's just a fekkin' mixtape, it's not the best of reggae you loser!), the way the chorus springs from the abyss of the mix. From the LP Jon mentioned here Penny Reel writes the notes on this, didn't you get in trouble with him Jon?

1.17.28 Nicky Thomas: Lonely Feeling
A Joe Gibbs Amalgamated-era production. I've always liked this. Really crunchy.

1.19.51 Prince Jazzbo: Pepper
He's no I Roy. However, in one of his "routines" Mark E Smith's goes on about how rubbish Jazzbo is. Bollocks! Jazzbo is great! Smith doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

1.22.50 Glen Brown: Black Dub
Godhead.

1.26.10 Big Youth: Dreadlocks Dread
Never gone a bundle on live Reggae recordings (totally beside the point innit) though check THIS! Dem's lungs! First four rows flattened.

Stop.

Final thoughts.

This'll be the last time I talk about this here (blimey, sorry for being so boring!) However, with mp3 file-sharing it seems that the initial act (as in offering it up on an mp3 blog) counts for 0.1% in the eventual dissemination of that bit of data, because the file's availability across the p2p networks will always grow exponentially. Consequently this "initial act" ought to be viewed (in my opinion) as one trebly fraught with consequence, and thus trebly considered. I'm hoping my loathsome RealAudio feed will go some way to allaying this.

I followed the link through to Down Hill Battle, and was really alarmed at what they're up to, which seems to be a "rolling together" of an antipathy to the big five labels with a tactic of encouraging file-sharing. The idea being that in file-sharing one is engaged in a resonant political act which will undermine an unwelcome staus quo. I think this is preposterous. The two processes (attempting to undermine the major labels AND sharing files) should be entirely separate. I think if you don't believe in the major labels you should get off your arse and demonstrate, or set up your own independent record label, or like dance music in Britain has done (which sadly seems to be withering on the vine) set up your own circuit of distribution. To think that sharing files, a profoundly muddy gesture, is going to herald a new era of more healthy consumer relations is horseshit. It's the lazy man's politics, and presumably the slightly euphoric tone of some of the mp3 file-sharers in part stems from this.

Actually,*even* in the light of Down Hill Struggle's faintly absurd championing of "families affected by RIAA suits" (I mean, what a cynically emotive bit of phrasing, "familes"), I'm quite sympathetic to the major labels. I've heard plenty about record companies "evil" tactics (go and read the Albini article at DHS, though hang on a minute, Albini is hardly a struggling pauper!), and for sure they've shafted some very brillliant and worthy musicians, but they're not the manifestation of single evil geniuses. Without wanting to seem too politically impotent, and too accepting of them, people ought to consider that they're the product of the risks and travails of selling music. Selling music is somewhat like drilling for oil, a label will sign 50 artists and only one will make them any money. Often as not that one successful artist will fund the others.

If the current set-up of exhibition and distribution of music collapses (it wont ENTIRELY), and y'all have the "joy" of package-less dematerialised music, then it might be worth pondering the future. If lived experience and the specifics of geography make up 75% of music's power, what would music bereft of these things sound like? It would represent a music which doesn't have recourse to people's understanding of life, but which works solely in signification to other music without signification. Like Techno innit!

Not Downloadable.

I reckon the Merzbow Mercedes must be the opposite of a downloadable Mp3.

More Ethics.

Bishi bashi! My word some of these arguments in favour of file-sharing are extremely lame!

Tofu Hut.

Who runs the high profiling Tofu Hut Blogspot, and who may be an mp3 evangelist. We should be grateful for his comments.

Time to start looking to the future. Today's generation of thirteen year olds are going to see a computer to be as necessary an appliance as a television and internet service to be as basic as a telephone line. Any voice will have the potential to sway popular taste if the QUALITY is there.

Yeah, I mean, lets not underestimate the importance of what we're doing here ;-)

With my own blog, I'm excited about the potential of disseminating "lost" music to britney youth. Smart labels will recognize that potential and start hiring people to run "official" musicblogs. I can't believe that this isn't the right way to sell your content: WITH content.

And we'll all be riding around in hovercrafts?

Having said all that, I understand what you're getting at RE: blatant ugly artist-disrespecting piracy, but lumping Sean and Matt into those that practice that kind of behaviour is counterproductive. Obviously, that's not their (or my) tactic. It's important that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

No I don't think ANY of the mp3 blogs are intentionally disrespectful. I never said that. I sort of struggled to give Matt P crazy props whilst owning up to my own "squeamishness" about the whole thing. I just hope no vicious label decides to make an example of you dudes, cos you represent a very bold pro-file-sharing attitude and (as clearly-defined individuals) would be PERFECT targets for an organisation bent on making an example of people. (shrugs) That seems to be their chosen tactic.

Anonymous Woebot Correspondent.

Loves ya!

the current frustration is that file-sharing allows for access to music that the market has failed to provide: there's a legal term called 'market failure' which actually involves indemnity for offenders of trade agreements in cases where the offended company has failed to provide a means of legitimate transaction (see wendy j. gordon's article on the sony v. betamax case if you're insanely curious, it's hardcore legalese but she's arguing on the right side). it'd take an incredible lawyer and shitloads of money (upwards of several million) to push a case successfully through the courts, and who's going to volunteer to do that?

Yeah this is a sexy argument.....but it's nuts.

Rambler.

Yo Rambler! Rambler tried to get away with posting this chez lui, rather than in the old Woebot comments box, it's rightful home! (wags finger) Cheeky, cheeky!

Really, the thing to remember when having discussions of this sort is that it is always the artists who we should be thinking about. They're the ones who do all the work, they're the ones who do stuff no one else can or has thought about; they're the ones who excite us. But it's almost always the record companies who do the complaining: we have to be absolutely precise about distinguishing the two. The problem that the record companies complain about is one entirely of their own making, I believe.

The thing is Rambler, as I remarked in your comments box, I quite agree. It's all about the artist. Let's for one minute strip away all the bullshit. You're a mad crazy fan of John Lee Hooker's, so you decide to do a little special on John and his music, and as an adjunct you post an mp3 of "Boogie Chillun." Six months pass. John Lee Hooker decides to Google his own name and hey presto he comes across funkychicken.blogspot.com, and, we'll I be damned if some youngster isn't offering up my music for free. Hooker scratches head. Well, you know, if he'd asked I'd probably not have minded, but he didn't ask. And he got my birth date wrong.

It'd be very fucking embarrassing wouldn't it, to get an email from John Lee Hooker saying: "Excuse me son, but would you terribly mind removing that file from your website?" It's not even that improbable! I mean, for example, Carlin gets emails from Lindsey Buckingham and John Cale.

If they were serious about selling MP3s, they'd cost maybe 20p a track. Half that could go straight to the musicians (and they'd still be better off than they are), and the record company would still make money.

Well that is true. In the rush to big up the iStore (desperate to get that link off the Apple Website!) I should have thought that through. If mp3s (or AACs!) were reasonably-priced it'd help. Somewhat elliptically I'd like to interject this:

I know everyone hates my RealPlayer feed. I don't care.

And those twinges of guilt, anyway. Look at what people feel guilty about: they feel guilty about hurting the artists' pockets. An argument that is the record companies' own first line of defence - and a pretty flimsy one at that.

BTW the Hooker scenario. Run that scene again with a white middle-class electronica artist. Yep it still works doesn't it! I don't think it's about money, it's possibly about respect.

Eppy.

I thought Eppy was lavishing me with compliments in my comments box, hence my threat to strangle him, but found (after closer-inspection, rather crest-fallen) that he was praising Matthew Perpetua.

...however; the other thing folks seem to post, i.e. obscure, out-of-print stuff, would have a wholly different legal and moral justification.

Yes, but then their widows email you. That's happened to me. Very shaming!

But I do honestly think that many MP3 blogs serve the record industry far more than they do damage to it, however. P2P's a different story, though.

I think you may be right. But to my mind it's all very simple. Downloading mp3s=A transaction.

Matt Perpetua.

We'll give Matt P the last word, cos he's lovely.

I think MP3 blogs can be a valuable way of promoting records on a volunteer, grassroots level.

Grime it is.

Image of Roger Gray used without permission.

Wow! Everybody feign interest! The time has come for one of my half-arsed poorly researched Garage Breakouts! Yay!

I got a really interesting job the other day editing a film about gun culture for a pitch to the government. I managed to sneak "Cockback" onto the soundtrack (snicker). One of the people who was interviewed in the course of the project was a white-haired gentleman called Roger Gray. Gray is a hugely influential gentleman who advises the government on issues affecting urban youth. He sits on about every quango and wotsit you might care to unearth. Important dude...

Anyway here is a comment he made I've rescued from the cutting-room floor:

"There's no doubt there's a genuine vacuum in the youth community now especially among the core alienated youth who themselves have kind of "gone cold." They've lost the feeling at the centre of them because for years they've been abused by their parents and other adults who've neglected them and leave them outside what they feel is the warm cosy world in which everyone else lives."

Hmph. Sobering stuff. When I heard him say it in the edit my heart skipped a beat; here was a figure endorsed by the government who was saying the same thing as Wiley was saying in Martin Clark's interview with him at Hyperdub. I felt as distant a satellite to this culture as I ever have.

-

It's been a mighty slow start to the year vinyl-wise. Word is that the pressing-plants have been slow to get up-to-speed. I've even resorted to picking up last year's tracks which are still in the racks.

More Fire/Lethal B: Roll Wid Da Fire

Like this stonker, built (I believe) on the same riddim the Neptunes made for Busta Rhymes's "Light Your Ass on Fire," you know the one with splintering cheap-sounding pitch-shifted drums. Lethal B and the boys are gradually picking themselves up and rebuilding their confidence after being dropped by a major. On the "Lord of the Decks" interview they give (Lethal B performs this track after it in the cheapest-looking pop video I have *EVER* seen) they seem a bit "sotto voce" as my Dad would have said.

Platinum 45/More Fire: Lava Riddim

More recent More Fire bizness. (thinks, this lot are on top form). This has the eyeball-bulging intensity of slightly unlistenable tracks from last year like Jammer's "Destruction." I was really pleased to see Marcello talking about the joylessness of Garage. He IS right, but there's no underestimating the uncontained excitement these tracks manifest. As I've said before, Grime (for "Wot Do You Call it?" arf arf arf) functions along the axis of intensity. The more intense the better. Lethal B outing his "Lethal B got a Colt 45" lyric here.

Beenie Man: Dude (Sticky Refix)

Dear oh dear! What HAS happened to Sticky. He's definitely lost the plot, chasing record company remixes and thriving on a kind of down-market respectability, lots of R'n'B vocals lacing his tracks. I keep waiting to hear a bit of shock-out from the Social Circles camp, but alas... However this is easily the best thing I've heard from him in ages, and the only thing I've picked up. Though will that Ms.Thing puhlease shut it!!! Can't stand her moany voice...

Highly Flammable: Charge

What the hell's going on here? A twelve inch with.....a cover! Artwork on this reminiscent of the DJ Trax Infinite Hype cover on Moving Shadow (that'll get Simon salivating!) An all-star line-up: D Double E, Meridian, More Fire, Heartless, Roll Deep, Ruff Squad (Tinchy Stryder rising high), Boyz in Da Hood etc. And an extraordinary polemic on the rear sleeve note by Highly Flammable announcing: "Highly Flammable are now in full effect, we've been dealing with issues outside music but now we're ready to give 100% apose (their spellung) to 50%." Mysterious stuff. Nice track.

Ruff Squad: Pied Piper Riddim (feat RS, Riko and Escobar)

Ruff.

Unknown White: Get Over It.

Aaah! Saving this best to last! This is some kind of classic. The riddim is a cut up of Mephis Bleek's "Is that your Chick", which must surely set the standard for most frozen bit of Hip Hop evah, a tune I heard caned at Eskimo Dance last year (reeeeeeeewiiinnndddd!!!!!!!) But it's spliced together with these phantasmic uncoiling mentasm mirages straight out of The Mover's songbook. Truly breathtaking riddim, the MC-ing with shades of Kool Keith-style surgical imagery. "Stripped to the bone" etc. Awesome. No idea who did it!

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Everybody laughed at me when I said Google Eskimo Dance and see what you get, but ha! The last laugh is on me. One of my most continually updated comments box threads is this one. Bloody hell some of these comments are coming from the other side of the tracks! Maybe I'm not such a distant satellite after all...

Slinky Garage Edit.

00.00 Y-Tribe: Enough is Enough
05.49 Operator & Baffled Featuring Colour Girl: Things Are Never (Steve Gurley Mix)
10.19 Large Joints: Thinkin' (Leg Up Dub)
14.16 Steven Emmanuel Presents Colours: Hold On (SE22 Mix)
17.23 Unknown: Almost (Smoothed Up Dub)

All recorded at +4 on a Technics for that authentic pitch.

To launch the mix in RealPlayer, click on the Woebot graphic at the head of the main page. Download RealPlayer Basic here.

Download Ethics.

A few weeks back I had what might be termed (cough) an internet-related crisis. I came across, at about the same time, three instances wherein mp3 files I had encoded from vinyl and uploaded onto one or other of my sites had been re-tagged and served up anew.

I'll confess I was aghast. However it soon occurred to me that the reason I was so annoyed was that I had been taking credit for these pieces of music, and now I had been deprived the pleasure of presenting them as my own. Hang on a minute I thought, surely the musicians who put these tracks together are those who deserve adulation for this music, not me? As it happens they'll never get a penny for having afforded me the pleasure of offering them up so magnaminously! I got in a terrible funk and you might have noticed I wiped all the mp3s I was hosting off my sites. I was going to have to clear them off sooner or later (before July) because occupying the web-space has ended up being dear, but this "crisis" forced my hand.

It may have escaped your attention that the "hot boys" of the internet right now are none other than Fluxblog, Popnose, and Said the Gramophone. They represent a new hybrid of the FTP collective and the blog. They're calling themselves mp3 blogs. I must say it's a cool idea, these gents have iron balls. I've always been very nervous about hosting mp3s myself! The mp3 blog is markedly different from the shadowy cabals which make up the hardcore mp3 clubs. Upon admission to two of these organisations I was sworn to deadly secrecy. In the case of one I'm not even allowed to type it's name, pursuant my own expulsion and the possible closure of the operation. The aforementioned mp3 blogs on the other hand, presumably through claiming to be the endeavours of single people, seem to have slipped under the corporate radar which causes outfits like Gabba Pod to be shifted from server to server to survive.

Ethically speaking it's a grey area isn't it? I'd be loathe to come down on one side or the other, but I am slowly forming clearer views on the rights and wrongs of mp3 file-sharing. I got a powerful view from the musician's perspective when yesterday I was sent a batch of 4 CDs which one legend of dance-music is set to re-release. I've been asked to concoct liner notes for the reissue (I was stoked) which is going to be an exciting event. Reissue of the year stylee. All the CDs provided for promotional perusal have been been fed through some mash-up codec so the sound is thinned out and clipped. The reason being, presumably, is to protect the music from bootlegging at this early stage. On reflection I think that's fair enough. The big problem with mp3s (as I see it) is that, in spite of what people say, they do perceive owning the mp3 as being (in some measure) the same as owning the piece of music. Furthermore many of the arguments which people proffer about the validity of mp3 file-sharing don't hold water to my mind:

1) Aw it's just the same as when C90's took off the music business thought it would kill the industry but it ended up stimulating the market. Remember those "Home Taping is Killing Music Music" notices, aw how quaint!

The same parallel could be struck between blogging and fanzines. But, and this isn't just my pride talking, there's a whole lot of difference between a fanzine and a blog. With a fanzine you're lucky to shift 50 copies, with a blog (potentially) the world is your oyster. Fluxblog is HEAVING with punters! That Perpetua he's profiling!

2) People just use mp3s as a means to check out music which they then go on to buy.

I've been downloading mp3s for 4 years. I buy shed-loads of records and CDs and I reckon I've probably bought about eight tracks after hearing them as mp3s. That's quite a shocking realisation...

3) You'll find people who download mp3s are propelled into music and buying music.

Slight twist on number two this. Actually I think this ignores the growth of a new kind of music-fan. This fan is quite happy to only own music as an mp3, indeed he/she ONLY has mp3s. I reckon these folk, and I'd hazard a guess that they're more often than not they're in their teens or early twenties, are becoming practically the norm.

Pointing out all of which is almost designed to make me unpopular online. I don't care. We is the Metallica of Blogs! More positively, I do think the argument that being exposed to music you wouldn't normally come across can turn you on to it. But for me at least the mp3, as a bit of discrete "ownable" data, is not the form with which to achieve that end. I've been rooting around for methods to enable me to present music here in a manner that will mean that what is served up can't be objectified and turned into a commodity. I looked at Weed Tunes, a Windows-based method of encoding which only lets you listen to a track 3 times, but that seemed a bit too harsh. I thought QuickTime Server would be the answer to my problems (Apple has done great work with the iStore in "cleaning up the Karma of mp3 downloading" as Steve Jobs put it), but I can't install it on a remote server as far as I know. I've always been pretty suspicious of RealPlayer but examined it again and realised that reasons I didn't like it (no malleable downloadable files) were precisely what made it strong in terms of copyright protection. Added to which under Mac OS X Real have done a super job on restyling the interface (it was HORRIBLE under OS 9). So I've settled with it. One can do insane things with RealPlayer like record the playback sound and then convert it into a WAV then into an mp3, but this is strictly the terrain of techie nut-jobs (I've done it myself natch!) Under Windows it is possible to trace and convert the original .rm file into an mp3 (the sound quality would be truly terrible), but not if, as here at Woebot, it is lodged in an encrypted webspace.

Of course this is a load of self-righteous nonsense! I'm STILL going to be offering up copyright material for free, but at least now the buck stops here. I'm quietly smug about the whole thing, in fact I'm looking forward in consequence to putting more music out there, starting tomorrow with a cute 5 track sampler of slinky 2-Step wonder.

Brighter Days.

A few events have conspired to make me reflect on the glory days of Garage. One of Simon's offhand remarks was the catalyst. He noted that it was only a few years ago that Garage was ram-raiding the charts, an event which is always mirrored in my mind with Ardkore's Toy-Town Techno triumphs ("Smart E's", "Charley Says" etc), yet now the scene struggles to sell a handful of white-labels. Crikey, I thought, that pop incursion is still fresh in my memory but feels at once distant.

Thumbing through newly-acquired back issues of Deuce magazine served to bring this sensation into closer focus. The mag sprung to life at the tail-end of that boom in mainstream interest in Garage. Ms Dynamite's "Boo" and the So Solid LP must have seemed like (marketing speak) "the birth of a new demographic" whereas in reality this was the beginning of Garage's slide into obscurity. Of course the scene has a very powerful cultural currency, but in music industry terms (Raves and Pirate Radio is all black-market biznis), it must count for nothing these days. No units.

I can't help but pin the scene's demise on the vector of our worsening economic situation in the UK. Big companies with their PR budgets can prop up the impression of a perpetuating "pop" market, even though the figures tell a different story, one of shrinking sales in music; but a cottage industry like Garage's doesn't have recourse to such tactics.

What mathmatical equation is it that defines the acceptable amount of time before a past wave of the Ardkore Continuum is deemed ripe for revival? "Back to 1992" raves and "Back to 1994" raves are now jostling with "Back to 1998" raves. The pirates are still pumping with the slinky sound of 2-Step. (thinks, wish I made it down to Twice as Nice back in the day, it would have been a whole heap more fun than Eskimo Dance. I WAS buying the tunes mind, and rocking the FM dial more than I do at the moment).

One track I heard in a retro speed garage set perfectly caught the cheerful champagne optimism of the day. The lyrics went like this (and who knows maybe this is a modern tune, the sort of thing in Norris "Da Boss" Windross and MJ Cole's sets, it may even be a re-rub of new R'n'B tune, bear with me!):

"Monifa.....she was the girl with a Mercedes,
Jennifer.....she was the one in the Gucci,
But what was the name of the girl in the taxi?"

This cracked me up. Posit that sentiment against "Cockback"! What an endearing contrast! Where's that gentility and goofy upwardly-mobile optimism vanished to?

Shopping in Soho in Scary Detail.

Tim

Bought: Red Astaire 12"

Brian

Bought: Monkees CD (apparently includes rare stuff among the hits), The Animals Singles CD, Keith West "Excerpt from a Teenage Opera" 7", Paul Jones "Thinkin' Ain't for me" 7".

About Brian: Brian is trying to launch his own AM radio station and is passionate about Mono recordings. He got ripped off to the tune of $5700 by someone in the states who promised to build him an AM transmitter and is now building his own ("should have built it myself straight away") The cost of setting up an AM pirate legally is substantially lower than an FM station. Brian reminisces fondly about the days of Radio Caroline.

Mel

Bought: Ani Di Franco CD.

Tom

Bought: Vintage Dread Volume 2 Double LP.

Milo

Bought: A vintage New Wave Compilation LP (festooned with old stickers), Greasy Rock'N'Roll Compilation LP.

Julian

Bought: Salsoul presents Disco Funk Flavours LP.

Coilin

Bought: Winleys Disco Breaks Vol.3 LP, Densel Williams LP, Eryka Badhu 12".

About Coilin: Over from Ireland. He can't find these things over there. Apologies to Coilin for not putting the correct accents on his name.

George

Bought: Starsailor 10"

Peter

Bought: Some Heavy Metal CDs, including the Sworn Enemy CD.

About Peter: Peter is a Heavy Metal DJ from Oxford.

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Many thanks to the above. Keep shopping dudes!