WOEBOT

Vinyl Amnesty.

Jeez I'm a saddo. This was a Promo which accompanied the second Network Techno Compilation. Nice wider grooves and fatter production than on the elpee. But Look! I've painted over the label so as to disguise from my brother the fact that I've nicked it off him.

My most excellent brother stumbled across this remark yesterday in the Detroit piece and proceeded to have a bit of fun with me, enquiring as to whether I knew where his Vice 12" had gone. I got in quite a sweat and confessed to it's theft and that, yes, I had also stolen another of his records, the 4Hero 4Track12 pictured above. This was no mean feat of honesty on my part, I'd hidden this record from him while we lived together and have subsequently steered the conversation away from all matters pertaining to Dego and Mark. Recently I've contemplated buying a copy myself and returning the goods, like a real man, but it keeps on getting pricier and pricier to replace. Last week I saw a copy in Reckless in Camden for twenty five quid! "Ghosts" is tune on this one.

Before I start congratulating myself I ought to say that stealing records is twattish. It's even worse than downloading mp3s! Toby has donated them to the "Woebot Museum" and reflected: "When it comes to records you are not the master of your own actions. The devil is. I understand this and pity you ;) " He's got a lovely turn of phrase my brother, and in this instance he's quite correct, and in honour of his outstanding generosity I'd like to spill my guts on all the records which have, by the process of osmosis, found their way into my collection.

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Early Thefts 1987-89

The Sex Pistols: Never Mind The Bollocks.
I stole my copy of this from one Edmund Nourse. He was a good friend of mine in the year above me. My deception was canny. I had a copy of "Flogging a Dead Horse", another Pistols record, and switched this leaving him with the original sleeve and an inferior recording. In 1995 I sold this record, and the Music and Video Exchange quailed at my botched swap, giving me a mere pittance for my trouble.

Dexys Midnight Runners: Searching For The Young Soul Rebels.
The Woodentops: Giant.
Both stolen from my best mate Freddy Elliot, and both returned years later, by which time I think he'd lost interest in them. I subsequently bought "Giant" again.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Everyone knows this is Nowhere
A record I still cherish, stolen from a boy in the year below me called James Bailey. It looked like it might even have been his Dad's copy.

Lenny Bruce: American.
Lenny Bruce: Ku Klux Klan.
I was mad about Lenny Bruce for years, read up all about him, still have lots of books on him and even gave a lecture to my school on him (preaching for years believe!) However I was unable to find any recordings of him in action (now I've got that Carnegie Hall gig tucked away somewhere on cassette too). Of all my thefts this one I am most ashamed of. Genuinely ashamed cos these two lovely records came from the collection of my friend's grandfather, a lovely man called Bob Dyk. Bob died some years ago at which point it became unfeasible, even offensive to return them. I made some kind of cosmic gesture by giving his youngest grandson my original edition of Lester Bang's "Psychotic Reactions and Carburettor Dung", my bible for a long time. I miss that book, but it's gift in no way makes ammends.

The Waterboys: This is the Sea.
I think I nicked this off a contemporary at school called James Herbert. Though it might have been Alex Balfour's copy. Sold it in 1993. 3 Hail Marys.

Mid-Period Thievery 1990-1994

John Cage and Harry Partch Joint LP.
The Roots of The Blues.
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Gesang Der Junglinge.
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Telemusik.

All stolen from my University Library. Once again a canny bit of theivery. I had coveted these records for the longest time, and plotted their relief intensely. I took some of my shittiest twelve inches into the library, substituted the vinyl (as I had done with The Sex Pistols record) and made a speedy getaway, perspiring furiously. Wonderful recordings all, I have regularily lamented their lack of sleeves, and may one day make good my crime and return them (by which point it'll be wall to wall CDs there).

A Purple Patch. Thefts 1994-1996

Vice: Constant Ritual.
4Hero: The Head Hunter.
Reese: Bassline.

All of which were stolen off my brother, the last of which (on green vinyl, drool) I only recalled I'd nicked when I scoured my collection last night (oops!). Of course he's welcome to them all back, but, simper, I'd really like to keep them. Slightly off the point but Toby doesn't do TOO badly off me. In recent years I have given him doubles of the following: A Guy Called Gerald's "Magical Musical Midi Machine", Trinity's "Chapter 2", Lady Stush's "Dollar Sign" and Marvellous Caine's "Hitman". He also gets heavy data bundles, so I do generally treat him with respect (and so I should).

Lost Entity: Bring that back.
International Smoke Signal: Warriors Dance 12".

Adore these. Shamefully nicked off my buddy Rafs. You can have them back feller.

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Lest you be thinking that I'm a man of few morals I should like to point out that I have desisted in this ghastly activity (since 1996), have never stolen from a shop (too cowardly, only close friends, family and worthy institutions!) and when I was entrusted with a box or so of Keith and Watty of Pure's records on my trip to Senegal in 1993, they ALL came back. Don't worry Keith. In classic hypocritical fashion I never lend out my records and lose sleep over my collections theft.

Should anyone discover through reading this (such is the power of Google) that I have (coughs) done them an injustice, I will gladly make ammends and then some. Sorry.

Ego Trippin'

Still chuckling after Simon's hilarious, surreal piece on the love affair between bloggs and grime, and excuse the tone if you will, I was prompted to pick up one of his points: "There is a latent grandiosity to blogging because there isn't actually any physical limit to how many people could tune in." Well exactly how many people are tuning in?

Sitting in the studio last night, though the vibe was high, the phone was doing anything but running off the hook. I'd tuned in to Resonance earlier on the week to hear two very human types (one of the London Electric Guitar Orchestra) complaining that no one ever calls in. They even detailed a scam which some renegade had run at the station. The person (blimey, sorry for sounding so wooly, don't know ANY of the names in question!) bought 20 packs of Walkers crisps, each of which according to the rubric might have contained a ten pound note. The scammer announced on air that they potentially had two hundred pounds to give away, and that people should contact the studio. They fielded quite a few calls apparently. I wonder if all this "That's 32 missed calls for that track" on the pirates is a load of spin? Come to think of it, when a friend ran a pirate station in, was it 1991, we were up to the same tricks.....

OK I've got the modesty bollox out of the way now. The fun thing about doing the blogs is that the feedback is excellent and very gratifying. I've had some cracking emails recently: Jassi Sidhu saying he was glad I enjoyed the album, one from Wm Marston AIA a self-professed "55-yr old white middle-class American guy", hilarious unpublishable behind-the-scenes stuff on Vincent Gallo from Stuart Argabright and club class analogue synthesiser drooling from Kirk Degiorgio:

It's not just the emails which are fun (I've now collated the addresses of 298 people who have contacted me through Woebot - juat wait for the spam people.....) it's also the stats. The very conservative daily average of hits right across the site is 10,000. This frequently goes up to 15,000. Obviously the amount of JPEGS I post here plays some part in this. However the daily figure for hits solely on the frontage has gone steadily up to 650! That's a lot.....isn't it? I'm sharing all this with you primarily to pump my ego, but if you do enjoy coming here you might be consoled to know that you're not alone. Natch other blogs are much more popular, go and have a look at Technorati's Top 100, and feel very small. But HA! I'd like to see them talk about skronky music!

Woebot on the Kosmsiche Show.

All London crew tune in to Resonance FM 104.4FM at 10pm GMT tonight. International massive can get the show streamed online here.

I'm going to be joined by Ninja Record Dealer Sacha Dieu, and he's been briefed to gently take the mick out of me. That's right folks we'll be TALKING this time, no more simpletext speak'n'spell bollocks.

The angle is Kosmische so don't tune in expecting a Desi-tastic Grime-iferous selektion. The guvnor, Jim "The Astral Bunny" Backhouse, the cool ruler himself, has instructed me to "explore my Beatnik tendencies." I guarantee it will be AWESOME.

Spring Cleaning.

Going through my backed-up files looking for old illustration to tout and came across a handful of JPEGS I've had stashed away.

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I saw these records in the Moroccan quarter of Barcelona. The shop owner, who was selling carpets, wasn't offering these for sale. Infuriatingly they were just on display! I'm not even sure if I haven't blogged this up before? The Spanish-to-Islamic North African-to-Middle Eastern-to-Indian continuum as represented here looked kind of fascinating.

Aw! I always thought the Badly Drawn Boy was an example of a wasted opportunity. An avenue which got closed down, the music made safe(r) and homogenous. The third EP and that 10' were great, fraught with possibilities. There was a motorik, deconstructed, machinated, ghost folk thing going down. Points westward to John Martyn's "Big Muff" and East to This Heat's "24 Track Loop". Of course a whole heap of people have sprung into the same gap: The Animal Collective, The Books and Vincent Gallo. But none of them have the gift of being able to pen a great tune like Damon did.

Of course I'm pretty much all alone in holding Badly Drawn Boy in high esteem. That first LP was ruined by it's terrible sub-Intro sleeve design (Why didn't the makers of the Blood & Fire covers sue Andy Votel?) but it's still got some great moments, even if the spookery is relegated to daft interludes. It looks like The Beta Band, who it always cheers me to see Jess Harvell applaud, have gone and made precisely the same fuck up with their latest LP, a pointless concession to straight rock. Woe.

For the record I don't own either of these 7"s but fetishism dictated that having JPEGS was the next best thing !?! Would the mp3s of the music not have been a more useful item to hoard? Evidently not.....

Holy shit Neu! were cool. This quite rare snap of them might have come off the back cover of the Black Forest Gateaux sleeve, but I found it in an old inspirational copy of the Strange Attractor Zine and scanned it for safe-keeping. Notice the little Neu! stencil on the bed-side cabinet.

Cor! Don't know where on the net I found this, but (salivates) gee! I have Volume Two of this, which is the home to Arthur Russell's "Cornbelt", and that's pretty easy to find. I have never seen this in the flesh however!

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Back to work!

Burning Up!

Matos
A great blindfold test Matos performed with the curiously maligned DJ Rupture. I thought Gold Teeth Thief was *amazing* (Ed Blogistan and Jon Eden you know this right?) It takes someone with Matos's breadth of vision to take in all the geezer's reference points.

Rambler
Rambler's excellent second installment in the "Music since 1960" series, here tackling Ligeti's "Atmospheres". I'm glad someone knows what they're talking about!

Silver Dollar Circle
"PHILOSOPHY AND ALT. COUNTRY LYRICS CONTINUED." A lengthy essay on the burning issues as to the differentiation between Humean and Kantian views of motivation in the lyrics of Bonnie Prince Billy. For the people who failed to register it first time round. Respekt to Simon Silver Dollar!

Disgraceland.

0000-0243 "Umculo Kawupheli" - Mahotella Queens.
0243-0534 "Bayizigidi" - The Cockerel Boys.
0534-0926 "Holotelani" - Nelcy Sedibe.
0926-1153 "Demazana" - Mahotella Queens.
1153-1538 "Awungilobolele" - Udoktela Shange Namajaha.
1538-1759 "Mkhulu Lomkhosi" - Mahotella Queens.
1759-2059 "Amazimuzimu" - Dilika.
2059-2436 "Phumani Endlini" - Jozi.
2436-2931 "Motshile" - Malombo.
2931-3047 "Radio Freedom Sign On"

(Hit the Wadio Woebot icon you Chumps!)

This stream at Wadio Woebot comes without the attendant ham-musicological spiel. Instead (leans over lectern) I'd like to return to refer readers to this entry. Yeah I came across pretty bitter there, railing against closed minds with my brimstone and fire. I'm aware that people might see me as in some way a proselytiser for unusual music. They might think I'm doing what's now being described as "cheerleading", a most repugnant term which posits the useless wastrel of a music fan as a worthwhile link in the music industry foodchain, selflessly drumming up grassroots support for dem poor folks wot can't afford proper PR. Vomit.

At the launch party the zydeco-band/electronica-one-hit-wonder lean into the mic: "Of course we wouldn't have made it thus far were it not for the sterling support of xxxxxx at xxxxxx.com" Crowd cheers. Failing that xxxxxx gets a mention somewhere deep in the liner notes and a confidential phone call assuring him of the importance of his contribution.

Really, and I'm sorry to have to break this news to any musician friends of mine, I couldn't give a shit about advancing their careers. Atop of that I should add that I couldn't give a toss whether anyone finds any of the music I've written about interesting. I just couldn't care less, I spent years without sharing any of this with a soul. Sometimes I wonder why I bother divulging my opinions on the subject with other people at all. I've come to the conclusion that the reason is twofold. It appears to be good for my mental health not have all this information bottled up. Secondly in the process of "shedding my load" I can have a bit of creative fun, and acquire some pint-size celebrity. Occasionally I enjoy the company too.

There is a point in my bringing this up in relation to World Music. People who promote World Music can be an evangelical bunch of tossers. Quite often they start out with the best intentions (a naive love of the music) but pretty soon you'll find them wearing tie-died cotton pantaloons and turbans, slaves to a belief that in some way, by spreading the music, they're making the world a better place. They're breaking down barriers, doing their bit for the Third World debt etc. Almost without exception, they're died-in-the-wool beatniks.

(sighs)

Check this Umbaqanga. It's hard as fookin' nails. At once sweet and stern it's the ultimate rocking party music. At the last do I played, Dani Siciliano was begging me, pleading me, for more of this stuff. I said Dani; Dani please! It's not klutsy and fake like most funk (bar The Meters) and it's not pretentious and long-winded like Afro-Beat. I dunno why Hip-Hop hasn't had more fun with Mavuthela's railway-sleeper breaks. Seems like Malcom Mclaren was unique in spotting their potential within that context. It's bonafide AvantYob music, as heavenly and disposable as a sun-warped Channel One 7". When these tracks came out in the early eighties they must have been quintessentially Urban and Modern.

South Africa hasn't been sleeping either. There isn't the political context to add yet pressure to the music any more, listen to "the sign on" of Radio Freedom which features Tambo and Mbeki amidst a collage of machine gun fire, threatening to overthrow their oppressors, THAT'S Pirate Radio! However Kwaito has been burning planet-sized holes in my conciousness over the past month. This little retro-ting is intended to constitute some kind of interim report before I can burrow deep enough into Kwaito till I'm satisfied. Stay chooned.

I got snowed under by requests for CDs of the Disco Mix, all of which will be honoured. Cos I'm feeling really grumpy I'm not going to make anyone a CD of this stuff. Download RealPlayer. Listen to the stream. Stop whingeing.

When it rains it pours!

Just picked up Alex Petridis's review of the Wiley Album in the Guardian. I shouldn't read the papers, it's not good for me. Mr Petridis has decided that in his really lightweight (read: "nothing in the way of tantalising data or interesting thoughts") review of the record it'd be fun to have a go at the Bloggers:

"Instead it's fanbase is comically polarised. At one extreme, it's sonic experimentation has attracted the kind of people who run music Blogs in which records are referred to as "texts" and lengthy essays are posted on such burning issues as the differentiation between Humean and Kantian views of motivation in the lyrics of Bonnie Prince Billy. At the other extreme, it is favoured by inner city teens who appear to communicate in an impenetrable mix of street slang and patois. "Gial like me can be flossin' of dis rite 'ere." offers one participant in a chatroom discussion about Grime" Another informs us that Wiley in "Nang standard no doubt", well of course he is."

And he goes on:

"You can only wonder what the conversation would be like if grime's two groups of fan's met up. There is such a gulf between the Bloggers and the the gials who can be flossin on dis rite ere, where mainstream acceptance lies."

Jesus wept! I dunno which cartoon-thumbnail-of-a-group would be more likely to torch Petridis's bicycle after reading this. Speaking from the perspective of the blogs I'd like to say of the Bloggers I've hung out with, who Mr Petridis is IMPLICITLY REFERRING to, that they're all open minded people. They've got messy fascinating lives, they're the sort of people who "get stuck right in there" be it at street level or otherwise.

One of the main reasons why the Bloggers have engaged with Garage is that the mainstream press (as represented here by Mr Petridis) is so hidebound and conservative that it has to wait for a major label release before it can justify picking up pen. It might surprise Mr Petridis that the connections between these two circuits which he takes such glee in opposing is infinitely closer than the one the mainstream will ever enjoy with Garage. Socially, structurally and politically.

Misery.

I found this and this very depressing.

What annoyed me most was three things:

1) The bloke starts off by saying:

"I downloaded "Taakre" on its recommendation and am impressed."

It's not a fucking mp3 guide.

2) While he meticulously sublinks images off the site, he can't be bothered to put in the only link that matters:

This one to an online store where you can actually BUY the music.

3) If I'd wanted to post it on those forums I bloody well would have done it myself. None of the people who actually read it there seem even half interested in it. The sublinking screws with my bandwidth also.

I did my best to sabotage the thing, really out of wilful perversity. This sort of crap makes me HATE the internet and the respectless attitude to other people's work it seems to engender. People assume everything is free and ripe for pillage. I can even see this in my own stuff online and it makes me want to pull the plug.

Dizzy and The Duchess.

Caught someone reading this in the park out of the corner of my eye, and it was so irresistable I went and bought a copy of The Daily Mail. I don't buy it usually, honest guv!

The Duchess says:

"It is for this reason that we need role models such as Dizze Rascal, the rap star, whose success from humble beginnings is to be so admired - as are the teachers who who encouraged him along the way."

(removes plum from mouth)

Well it was only one teacher who stuck by Dizzy wasn't it:

Mr Tim Smith formerly of Langdon Park, who deuce magazine quite cheekily interviewed last September. Tim was taught harmony by Andrew Lloyd Webber's father.

Dizzy said of him rather nicely:

"Special thanx to Mr. Smith, da best music teacher Langdon Park ever let go (you fools). I'll never forget da way you kept faith in me, even when things looked grim."

On the 55 bus last week I was sitting amid a bunch of really rowdy kids. They were talking about all the MCs. One was at school with Nasty's Armour. Another was explaining that Wiley, D Double and Doogz (I think it was those three, I wasn't taking notes at the time...) were all excellent, nearly professional quality sportsmen. Reminds me of that "Headmaster's Log" joke which usually comes with funny snapshots of a kid becoming scruffier and scruffier:

1) Year One: Good at sport.
2) Year Two: Likes music.
3) Year Three: Needs surveillance.

Did anyone catch Doogz's awesome righteous Grime track "Back to Skool" ("Stop acting the fool and go back to skool")? Love the Grime MC as old testament prophet/font of wisdom that one also gets in Riko's "The Chosen One."

You're all in deep shit!

Breaking News.

The Mothership.

I'm jumping for joy! Thanks a to feat of knuckle-headed persistence and by pushing a lot of buttons I've managed to move the TWANBOC Blogger files, the Wanking Tramp Reviews AND the earliest TWANBOC posts to Woebot. It feels great to have them all in the same place, now generations of future schoolchildren will be able to ZZZzzzzzz.

To mark this auspicious occasion I've put together a really rather marvellous teeny-weeny document. In it are all the fruits of my insights into the wonderful world of coding for blogs. I have a similar txt file always on my desktop which I use to copy and paste code out of. I would post it here, but in the HTML environment it would render itself invisible. Seriously, you've GOT to see this!

Desi.

Last year Desi blew up, I guess as a consequence of two things. Firstly thanks to it's strong connection with what we might call "The Bashment Phenomenon". The Bhangra-tinged samples of Missy Elliot's "Get UR Freak On" (tumbi and tabla on a r-r-r-roll), the Bollywood samples on Truth Hurt's "Addictive" (the Dre production) and Errick Sermon's "React", and the Sufi-inspired hand-clapping weirdness of Lenky's Diwali Riddim put Desi squarely on the map. Subsequently Jay-Z's (come on, totally useless!) version of Panjabi MC's "Mundian Te Bach Ke" led the forces of Hip-Hop to a make-shift camp outside Desi's city walls. Even Grimey Jammer got in on the act with the Biggaman produced "Step to the Beat". Secondly, and this is what might ensure the music of the NRI making a continued impression on the mainstream, Desi music has truly found it's own voice and sense of purpose.

Observers might want to draw parallels between Desi and The Asian Underground Scene of Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh, Asian Dub Foundation, Badmarsh & Shri with it's spiritual home of the Anokha club, but really the comparison is flimsy. As RDB's Kuly Singh remarked in the pioneering Desi cross-over article by Kevin Braddock in The Face Dec 2002: "People talk about Asian Underground and it gets boxed into this Talvin-Singh-Nitin-Sawhney-type-thing, which is really good, but it's serious. It's not Sharon and Tracey. You've got to be Sharon and Tracey...We don't give a shit, we're only interested in beats and basslines. We know how to party, yeah!" The Asian Underground Scene was a resolutely beatnik affair, essentially art music without strong roots within the Asian UK community (crossing-over with palpable ease into the mainstream). That's not to say that it didn't have it's moments, just that it lacked any real socio-cultural energy. I did visit Anokha once in 1995 and was pretty disappointed by it's watered-down, weirdly naive vibe. Having said this, some of the fusions which you can find on the Talvin Singh curated "Anokha Soundz of the Asian Underground" and "Calcutta Cyber Cafe" are more mature than those at the original grass-shoots of Desi.

Case in point being RDB's debut album, No.1 in all the UK charts for over 7 weeks, and a massive landmark for the Desi scene, today it sounds a little on the lame side, it's Garage beats wooly, fudged and dated in a manner that Garage from that era isn't. However with "Patlay Patlay" their bootleg remake of "Get UR Freak On" they pretty much grasp the consequence of Missy's track to Bhangra's future. Other earlier Desi like that on RDB's fellow Brum crew Tigerstyle's debut "The Rising" sounds really quite close to the Ambient Junglist fusion that we expect to hear from Talvin, breaking out in parts in a more traditional Bhangra style flecked with electronicisms. Tigerstyle's more recent gun-toting classic "Taakre", a brilliant bristling militant take on classic Bhangra might be seen as them engaging with the power-source of Desi rather than pimping off the dance scene.

Incidentally Bhangra is a traditional form practised in the Punjab since 300 BC, originally the music of Sikh's it has been adopted by the rest of the Indian diaspora. In Bhangra at least one person sings Boliyaan Punjabi lyrics and others beat the Dhol (those waist-mounted, deep-sounding drums) and play other instruments like the mandolin, banjo and harmonium. Desi is the modern form of Bhangra.

In spite of all this barrier building between Desi and "The Asian Underground" it would be cynical to declare Outcaste's recent "Essential Asian Flavas: The Future Cutz", about the only Desi compilation in the big stores and available to the mainstream, to be nothing but an attempt to cash in on the Desi's new-found glamour; even though the non-Desi tracks stick out like a sore-thumb and strain the patience. Oh no, another flavourless downtempo "joint"!

Wondering how to start my investigation into Desi on disc, "digging" as opposed to putting together the scenic overview which constituted The Face's aforementioned ground-breaking article, I rooted around to try and work out where I'd best be going to actually buy some Desi. Asking the question to myself why was there no follow through after that piece in the broader media, I was confronted by the stark fact that this was certainly owing to Desi's total independence from the mainstream circuits of music distribution. You just CAN'T buy Desi in a shop with any ease! With this in mind I first contacted RDB through their website, and when after a month I got no reply I rang them up and spoke to them. Where did they recommend I buy Desi in London? The answer was Southall's "Metro Music". So on February 12th I got on the train to Southall, a suburb in the far West of London, west of Acton town.

Walking into Southall from the train station was one of the weirdest sensations of my life. Suddenly, in my own country I was a conspicuous minority. I walked for miles through busy streets, and I'm not exagerating, encountered only one or two other white people with whom I exchanged rather nervous smiles. There's no sense of hostility towards white people in Southall and in this manner it differed from Black "Ghettos" I've been in in San Francisco and New York. In the process of looking for other Desi to complete my "survey" I also visited Green Street in Newham, London's other famous Asian community. Green Street is, conversely, located at the far east of the capital, and there (again while greatly outnumbered!) I found the ratio of Asian to Black/White less steep. I could have simply popped round the corner to Brick Lane, but my instinct is that the community there is equivalent to the Afro-Caribbean community in Notting Hill, essentially an historic relic, and largely eroded by the area's gentrification.

Weirdly in Glasgow, where I also took in a batch of CDs at the store "Bollywood", the Asian community is much less segregated than in London. The stretch of Glasgow running between the foot of the University and the M8 Motorway, between Woodlands Drive and the Great Western Road (SMACK in the middle of the city) is predominantly Asian, and one can find posters for Desi nights affixed to the lamp-posts on the Byres Road (the heart of bourgeois Glasgow!) Woebot reader Craig Macalister Combe even informed me of Bhangra parties (at least they play Asian music...) which were happening at The Halt Bar (another essentially beatnik Glasgow venue). I was as heartened to hear this, as I was as horrified by Baal's description of the recent BNP march in the city, a protest against a gang murder for which they were holding the Asian community responsible, and remarks heard elsewhere in the city about the supposed connections between the community and terrorism!!! I should very much like to visit the right parts of Birmingham and Bradford and take in the scenery.

Of the twenty or so CDs I picked up this one stood out in remarkable contrast "qua" album. This came out last year, but is still a massive presence in the shops, where Desi turnover is not what Dancehall's is. Dr. Zeus gleaned a bit of "Urban" bandwidth from his collaboration with General Levy "Shake (What Ya Mama Gave Ya)", that's not a bad track, an update on the Apachi Indian trope and interesting as evidence of the bleed between the Indian and Jamaican diaspora. However the LP is a different story, quite stunning, I've listened to it more this year than any other.

Zeus has fashioned an overwhelmingly powerful "sound" which digitises and virtualises the Bhangra template, gone is Bhangra's sonic compression instead we have huge building-high canvases of bass-space, widescreen vistas of rolling tumbi, liquid midi, dancing mandolin lines disappearing into the dub. Everything is placed "just so" in a mix as studied as those Cold Rush Gloomcore classics. Even more astonishing is the fact that these aching, supremely impassioned Boliyaan chants with their vaporous after-trails are incredibly tuneful. Zeus employs a Rocafella sound-a-like, name "Little Lox", to give him the Jay Z edge that Panjabi MC was lucky enough to garner for free, and (gasps) he's BRILLIANT! It's all far too good to be true! In a fairer world this record would be accorded coffee table status, damn you could even make out to it!

RDB, standing for Rhythm Dhol Bass are THE power of Desi. Last year they put out "Unstoppable" their second CD as a collective. I say CD, not (as I'm wont) LP because in Desi there is no vinyl to speak of. Having said this I have tracked down (eye blinks uncontrollably) a Desi DJ-only-imprint "Vinyl Club" called "The Kismet Vinyl Club" in Leicester! You know I'm hardcore! "Unstopabble" is NOT the trounce all-comers classic that "Unda Da Influence" is. Zeus's key innovation, beyond his startling production know-how (rumours were he was to do a mix for Liberty X?), is that he's grasped that Desi, to really rock and shock, HAS to be pitched in pace somewhere between Hip-Hop and Techno; that's to say near it's traditional velocity. RDB seem to want to muck around at a load of different speeds, turning in versions of Hip-Hop, Garage and Jungle replete with MC-ing in Punjabi. It can end up a right dog's dinner. It's the same conundrum which all fusions face, assuming that the successful subsection between the collision of genres is somehow larger by reason of the multiplicity of inputs. Wrong! The sonic domain open to a creative collision is in fact inverse in scale. The amount of useful elbow room available to a producer, without wanting to damage the power of what he's fusing, is tiny. Indeed sometimes the "straight" more traditional Desi Bhangra (as epitomised by the solid Jassi Sidhu "Reality Check" CD) can be all you need.

The best RDB tracks, and there are 3 TOTAL STUNNERS on "Unstopabble": "Nachdhey" by Ranjit Mani, with it's in-yer-face martial Dhol, LFO-come-fairground bleep, "RDB Valay" by Manak E and the steamrolling "Buleeain" Featuring Nee2, work at Bhangra's classic walking pace speed. Dhol and Banjo are cleverly meshed and impacted with splintering breaks and bass. All these tunes will have me wracked with goose-pimples. So I don't mean to diss RDB...

And tread carefully I might because their Untouchables imprint, the home of the peerless Desi compilations Danger (Volumes 1-3) and Urban Flavas (1-2) is the all-defining Desi label. Any of these comps will yield 3-4 killer tracks a piece. It's fruitless going into my favorites in any detail, but "Yaar Mil Gai" (Danger 1) spacey and wistful, "Dil Naeeyo Laghda" by Sanjeev (Danger 3) curiously reminiscent of some of the crushing mantras Loop once perfected, "Na Toro" by Lembhar Husianpuri (Danger 3) Rhythm and Sound meet Asian Nemesis, "Billo" by Gubi Sandhu feat G.I.Jatt & Lightning MC (Urban Flavas 2) which splits, folds and stutters Jatt's divine chant into rhythm-defining arcs and finally (this could go on forever) "Nachna" by Bikram Singh (Urban Flavas 2) which proves that up-tempo Garage-style speeds CAN work are all divine. The idea that RDB as a unit stands separate from the material on these collections (Danger Vol.1 somewhat confusingly ascribed to MCs Metz and Trix) is misleading. The RDB CDs proper are the fruit of collaboration between the same crews whose work fills these compilations. Better to view RDB as, not so much a production team, as Desi itself. They're an empire, Wiley could only dream of the kind of scene-wide domination these fellas practise.

I was a real slouch to get this, the Coventry-based Panjabi MC's cross-over LP. It's made up of material he has previously put out on a whole host of recordings. "Mundian Te Bach Ke" is the tune y'all know, and it's the killer, though the LP is, I was surprised to discover, consistently good. Punjabi MC seems happiest at Dubby/Hip-Hop paces which veer close to Trip-Hop at times (not good) BUT the music always manage to comprise some X-factor that keeps things heavy and street. At it's peaks, on the quite spine-tinglingly evocative "Challa" (storms gather, distant Bollywood choirs gesticulate, flutes, strings and harmonium vie and duel) it's scarily powerful. Also lovely is the lean tabla-driven "Ghalla Ghurian" with it's bewitching female vocal (much of the Desi I've encountered is righteously testoserone-fuelled).

It's necessary too to mention The Panjabi Hit Squad (I'm unclear about their relation to Panjabi MC, actually I suspect they may not have one). Since they've got their show on 1xtra they've been pumping the UK airwaves full of Desi on Tuesday nights 0000-0200. Alot of what they play is just straight bashment, you can listen to their show right now streamed off the site! This CD pictured above is 50% big Urban hits, the other 50% Desi. Whilst they're excellent cheerleaders they haven't, in my opinion, produced much in the way greatness, bar Ms. Scandalous's absolutely storming "Hai Hai", another example of a Garage-styled tune which rocks the joint. From their position at the interface with Urban culture it's a short distance to "Bootleg" Desi.

Compilations like "Bootleggers" (Bootleg) and "Streetbeats" (Ruthless) offer up R&B rhythms, often with the yank Rap drawl still intact, versioned over by wicked Punjabi MCs. For example "Ais Jawani" is an insane take on the Diwali Riddim (replete with Sean Paul chorus) "Chumka Te Lengha" a versioning of Beyonce's "Crazy" (aaah joy!), the best ones (sighs) I don't even know what the original is called! Of course the shady re-titling acts to obscure the original version from too much scrutiny. It's interesting to see that Asian music is faced with an even greater crisis at the hands of CD-copying and mp3-pirating than the mainstream industry, and is locked in identical chaos with regards to legality, provenance and originality.

On the one hand you have Surj from RDB explaining the secret of the sound: "(We) nick things, nick Bhangra records from India, nick other people's beats and put them together" and on the other Zeus remarking in RWD magazine on Desi's scale in the US: "It's so big in the states at the moment, but they're all downloading the tunes off the net and they don't know who we are!" There is an hilarious interlude on the RDB "Unstoppable" CD in which one of the members of the RDB crew breaks into a boy's bedroom with the boy's mother in tow (don't mess with this lady!), and proceeds to berate the poor sucker: "We did that album! Hard work man." The Danger 3 Compilation is actually the first CD which I've come across which employs the new copy-proof formatting! It's impossible to rip it to mp3 from it on a PC or a Mac! I was quite impressed! All the Untouchables CDs come emblazoned with heavy warnings against copying and sharing on the net and security stickers. Personally I'm in total sympathy, I love the way they're so up front about it too, none of this pussy-footing around and doublespeak which (post-Metallica) musicians believe is necessary. On the ground the reasons become quite clear, the whole exchange network for these CDs is grass-roots and amazingly haphazard. All the shops I've bought CDs from have sold other stuff; stuff like clothes, watches, DVDs, mobile phones! The opportunities for piracy are rife in such an unregulated environment. In one remote shop towards the north end of Green Street I asked if they had any Desi (and tellingly) the proprietor produced from under the counter the most rudimentary colour-photocopy created CD of RDB's first record. Another CD I actually bought looks on closer inspection to be a bootleg. Very dodgy!

Why do I love Desi so much? Well sadly, I do nurse a suspicion that my interest might not be sustainable. Sourcing this music has turned out to be an adventure in it's own right; an adventure, more spectacular, though along the same lines as procuring Dancehall 7"s was for me last year. It's a bit of a mission innit! It'd be a shame though because the sheer quality and power of this music is totally undeniable. As for getting hold of it yourself, well as usual I'd caution against using Woebot as an slsk/mp3 guide (please people, I HATE THIS!). The nice people at Untouchables have recommended this online store as the best place at which to acquire stuff. Just be sure to say you came from Woebot.

I can't think of any other genre where you'd get an advert for a firm of solicitors on the inner sleeve of your CD:

Desi. Check it out.

Wikkid!

Mr Agreeable
Mr. Stubbs with an once supremely laid back and sound reflection on "ABSTRACT ART VERSUS ABSTRACT MUSIC". Stubbs muses why Avant-Garde Music has failed to attract the audience which Avant-Garde Art has before proceeding to nail the conundrum with this reflection: "Sound is more insidious, circumambient, less easily shut out, permeates deeper into our heads, subliminally, perpetually. Which can be distressing. A painting you can take in, move around, move away from."

Abstract Art seems to benefit from the containment implicit in it's form. It's worth musing that the most outre, least containable forms of Modern Art are invariable repackaged for the gallery: Land Art in the form of Photography (is Land Art not a strain of Photography?) and Performance through the medium of poorly-shot badly-lit video (ha!) I wonder if the mutant strains of the Street Avant Garde (Darkcore, Sampladelic Hip-Hop) could be seen as a digestable formal recontextualisation of Avant-Garde music; not a workable parallel really...

Elsewhere Mr. Stubbs provides a stout defense of "Calling Out Of Context." Raining on the Russell reissue parade was a mean thing of me to do. People who haven't heard "World of Echo" might not be aware of the sheer power and enormity of that piece. An equation with it is possibly the stiffest comparison any recording could have to undergo. It's the best record EVER by quite a clear margin, and folk should be extremely excited that it'll soon be available again. Funny how Mr. Stubbs makes a case for Russell's removal from the Disco canon while here we were arguing precisely the opposite! Incidentally (plug) that RealAudio feed is working splendidly now, the channel is clearer than it has been and the comments box is open again.

Search and Delete
An excellent piece by one of my fave new-links: Don at Search and Delete. "Ten of the Best: Sleng Teng" is an cute breakout of Sleng Teng's history. I mean to rifle through the racks and dig out some more Junglist uses of the riddim for Big Don.

Derek Walmsley's Poplife
I permalinked Deek rather shadily a while back. Here he picks up the Vincent Gallo thread with his usual aplomb and grace. Note to Reynolds, Ewing, Clarke: Look! Another MVE Alumni!

Oliver Wang's Poplife
A recent behind the scenes scuffle between Luka and me foundered on my wholly innacurate claim that Souls of Mischief had a brilliant small-circuit release before their classic "'93 Til' Infinity" LP. My principal belief in this record's existence stemmed from having (I believed) found reference to it the excellent compendium Classic Material which I'd thumbed through rather greedily in an East Village Bookstore. Googling the web provided no break-out of the LPs listed in the tome (really, excellent) but I discovered to my glee that the editor, one Oliver Wang had a feckin' Blog. Soon I put two and two together and realised this was thee O. Wang who graced the permalinks at Catch Dubs and SFJ. Doh!

I emailed Oliver and he got back to me to inform me that...................the Souls........first........LP........was.....in fact.....indisputably....."'93 Til' Infinity". And I was having such fun confusing heads behind the counter in Hip-Hop shops demanding a copy of this record! Since that auspicious day I've been checking in at Wang's regularily and it has rapidly become one of my favorites. It's his unusual tone which hooks you at first. Permalink on the way Oliver!

Silver Dollar Circle
Simon, who must have escaped appearing in my vote-winning breakout of fave blogs the other day by a whisker. Great stuff.

Random Guff.

1. Splutters.

Notice the little safety pin! Unbelievable! The most Golf Punk I've ever got is getting drunk in the bunker on the ninth hole at school.

2. Vincent Gallo Live!

First rate seat as you can gauge by the intimate view of proceedings I got.

Ambling in with colleague French Vinyl Deity Sacha Dieu I spotted his friend Andy Weatherall hiding out in the stalls. Sacha wandered over with me in tow and proceeded to chat to Weatherall for upwards of fifteen minutes without introducing me! Me sitting rather uncomfortably on an arm-rest, trying to look blase, seething. I don't care who he is (ultimately), when I'm in company I like to be introduced. Rude innit! Shame on you Dieu you slipshod import you! I've never been a fan of Weatherall's incidentally. Perhaps in direct consequence I spent the first hour of Gallo's set trying to stop myself from barracking him with oaths. They would have sailed with such force across the pious atmosphere of the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

What is it about Gallo that inspires this weird mixture of devotion and irritation? In the end I just kept quiet, largely out of consideration for the man who seemed to be dieing slowly on stage, apologising to Alt_Rock poster boy Jim O'Rourke for his totally out-of-tune singing and to the crowd for his jittery nerves. Vincent is essentially a righteous dude, as one might infer from this his rather spectacularily positive eBay profile. Hey, I'm a fan!

Gallo usually works on his own, tending the fragile scapes of his recordings like Derek Jarman's his garden amid the desolate shingle beneath Dungeness Power Station. It's all about context isn't it? When you supplant the elegant weed growth it can end up wilting in transit. In spite of this it was cool to hear the mildewed tones of his Mellotron and relish in the dank spacious underplaying of "Honey Bunny" and "Laura." Occassionally Vince was so off he was ON!

One thing which grated on me however was the idiotic celebrity star-turns of Polly Harvey (Who the hell is this useless woman? Why has she not disappeared yet?) and John Frusciante (I've more sympathy for this RHCP guitarist, he's about the only semi-good thing about the band, quite a startling intense history he has...). Why doesn't Gallo realise these people are pygmies, and yet the crowd go bananas as the "supergroop" perform an extremely rote cover of "Blue Moon". You sad people! Next time Vincent get an interesting guest, like er I dunno, Casino-vs-Japan or The Books. Even Weatherall might have been useful on tambourine, though hang-on, he filed out rather noticeably mid-show.

3. Mystery Record.

I'm a diehard fan of the French Label BYG/Actuel and came across this LP a few weeks ago. I was *so very close* to buying it on spec, but at the last minute decided against it. I wonder if anyone knows anything about this rather cool looking French Rock group signed to the label. I remember that Gong and another rock group also released recordings on BYG.

4. Quelling Revolt.
"Yeah but back to Kanye and pushing sampling to limits ... it's noticeable how when people get to raving about his tracks, how it often turns into a list of the things he sampled ? "i love that Luther bit, it's so gorgeous"... it just makes me wonder, yunno?"

Thought I'd better address this humorous elbowing (ouch!) I just got from Reynolds, who incidentally has loads of excellent new stuff up.

1) Firstly. Pray oh master, what exactly are you driving at? All this gentle "wondering" appears to be in search of a punch-line, perhaps one along the lines of: "Write a proper sentence you imbeciles!" Lol.

2) Why do people (and I'm guessing here that you're including yourself amid the spotters, such is your largesse!) list Kanye West's samples? Surely this isn't such a Yeti? It has to do with with the foregrounding process which the speeding-up of said samples creates. Samples in Hip-Hop tend to be mulched, made transparent, obscured for the means of disguising their provenance, made brief so as avoid heavy taxation by their originators. Kanye wants his samples to stand-out, he wants to milk them for all their period wonder. No surprise then that people comment on them. West's modus operandi seems to mimic that of the original Ardkore producers, who sought with samples to create weird juxtapositions and bizarre new contexts. In fact you'll notice the same sample-highlighting when people talk about them in Ardkore: "Oooh I just love it in Trip II the Moon when those John Barry/James Bond strings come in."

3) Why did I (rather gratingly) list ALL the sample in the Kanye West LP. I thought it was funny in a kind of obsessive/goonish way, and I was served rather well by the record sleeve insert which had them all listed. Bah!* I spent ages getting them correct!

5. It's a Family Affair.
Lulu my daughter has just learnt how to put features on the people she's drawing, not somewhere two inches from their face. Last night Catherine was sitting with her while she was drawing and remarked: "Oooh Daddy's got a nice smile!" To which Lulu (only two) replied: "He's been record shopping." They (and Granny) all thought this was hilarious, which I guess it is, but I was a little sad.

------------------
*Bah! is a Trademark of the estate of K-Punk and is used here pending permission.

Shoes.

With the amount of attention I devote to what I listen to, you wouldn't be surprised to know that what I wear is the subject of a considerably lesser degree of thought. In fact until recently, for a few years, I had two identical sets of grey sweatshirts and blue jeans between which I alternated (until it drove me fucking insane, grin) However, in spite of spending less time devoted to it, I am fairly particular about what I wear, and of course the kind of decisions we make about (for instance) our footwear are (arguably) essentially motivated by the same concerns which affect our "consumer choices" when it comes to music.

That might sound both superficial AND narcissistic, well hear me out! The day before yesterday in Glasgow I bought a pair of Converse All Stars, and it struck me that this was quite a significant purchase for me. While the archetypal shoe threshold many people cross is the one in which they abandon trainers (your youth) and don black shoes (get a job), I'm sure that many Woebot readers' lives are measured by a multiplicity of "shoe-shifts." What prompted me to buy the Converse was an old Jesus and The Mary Chain publicity shot which recently caught my eye. Yeah, I thought they looked pretty ace on the Reid Bros, and whilst you could argue about the merits of their music, they had their look down pat. I guess with the decontextualisation of Converse All Star from its skater/west-coast-scruff source into the neo-goth/indie arena they played a pretty nifty style card. Somehow buying the shoes in Glasgow, home of the JAMC, and dance-music death-zone seemed exceptionally apt.

Walking up Buchanan Street my mind underwent that wonderfully psychedelic remapping it does when you get new shoes; grey matter in the saddle. My fading smelly Nike in the bright clean shoe-shop bag. Nike represent dance music in excellcis don't they!?! That pair, which I've worn solidly for a year and a half, were actually an Old Skool revival design. That's pretty much how I've felt about thrusting myself back into Grime over the past couple of years, because between 1996 and 2002 I abandoned trainers. I was picking up the tunes (interest in Garage dieing out sometime in 2002), but didn't really engage with the same level of intensity. It's quite ironic to think that when I went down to Eskimo Dance I was obliged to wear the smartest black shoes I own, a pair I bought for my Dad's funeral.....

My epiphanous burn-out point with dance music came in 1996. I guess, on reflection the heat went out of Jungle, the last Rave music underground, at roughly the same time. This particular timeline posits UK Garage as already a caesura of a kind, a withdrawal into the pre-existing club circuit. Though we talk about Grime as not being dance music, Garage was already not Rave. At this, my aphelion of immersion and insanity I was wearing Nike Air's.

I've always thought the symbolism attached to the Nike Air range is one of pure dis-substantiation. You're walking on air for christ sakes! When the starry dynamo was working at full-tilt and I was being crowded in on by sublime coincidence this suddenly felt of intimate import. I had been hanging out with professed Space-Time Magician Ken Downie of The Black Dog, some of whose insights finally pulled the carpet out from under my feet and sent me spiralling loose into a void of zero reference. One of the first things I did when struggling to grip onto reality was ditch the Nike Air's. I remember the name of the next shoes I wore was incredibly significant to me, a bland black rubber and natural leather brand called "Rockport", with all it's attendant poetic associations of doors in the earth plugged with granite batholiths. From thence I had a brief dalliance with Timbaland boots, trading up to a fragile detente with "street". It chilled me to the bone at the time that Nike's next range turned out to be modelled on Goat's hooves! The Lord of the Air! Devilish stuff!

The Converse feel really nice, you'd be delighted to know. Maybe they signal some kind of shift in my listening patterns/tribal alignment?

ART AT ILM.

Here reporting back from "Album covers redrawn from memory in MS Paint Parts 1,2,3 and 4". Link Courtesy of Nate at Hipster Detritus. This has to constitute my all-time fave ILM thread, props to all involved.

Here are a selection of my favorites. Now no whingeing cos everyone gets a correct attribution, I'm not sublinking, I haven't altered the files and I've provided links to them in their original context. On the other hand, if you've not been included don't give up and we apologise that work submitted can't be returned.

(Cue music Tony Hart's Take Hart "The Gallery")

Firstly it was amusing to see the same cover done by different artistes:

Particularly amusing:

Mark P

Dave M

Lovely renders of this:

Don at Search and Delete

Kenny

An underground one and I was surprised to see two takes on it:

Myonga Von Bontee

ddb

Then I noticed a few auteurs:

All four above by the very talented Zappi. Bravo sir!

Then these two:

(very topical!)

by the formidable Sean Carruthers.

These two above by the maestro 'My name is Kenny'.

Then there was a stream of loveliness, all one hit wonders:

OleM (Lots of Kraftwerk stuff incidentally...)

Curt (SFJ will be pleased!)

Andrzej B. (Is this the Andrzej B. I know?)

Kent Burt

Kurt (I loved this, such brut force)

Dan Selzer (Hilariously blatant self-promotion! Good on yer chum!)

Dave 225 (Exquisite, funnily enough I did a huge painting based on this when at school!)

Alex in NYC (Great! And also to prove that I'm not (too) taste-biased here, I HATE The Stranglers)

Aaron A (Genius!)

Rock Hardy (Very funny! The best ones were quite simple...)

and there's no getting away with not mentioning my own (coughs) humble contribution somewhere at the end of the fourth thread, four days after the whole thing kicks off, drawn from memory of course:

A huge round of applause to everyone.

DISCO.

00.00 Yazoo: Situation (Francois K Dub Mix)
Francois K was hired by legendary Disco DJ Walter Gibbons as a drummer to help him segue between records* and also to enable Gibbons stretch the music into yet weirder shapes. Kevorkian proceeded to build a rep of his own and well as turning in some excellent imaginative interpretations of tracks like Bohannon's "Lets Start to Dance III" and Michael Wilson's "Groove It To Your Body", acting as in-house re-mixer at Prelude (I have 12" mixes by him of L.A.X.'s "Fight Back", D Train's "You're The One For Me" and Musique's "In the Bush") he also crossed over with elan into to the Electro-Rock arena. As well as this awesome mix of Yazoo he was responsible for the legendary remix of Kraftwerk's "Tour De France" and collaborated with Jah Wobble on "Snakecharmer."

02.17 Smokey Robinson: And I don't love you (Special Remix by Larry Levan & Benny Medina)
Peter Shapiro, who now seems to writing less at The Wire because he's working a book on about Disco, brought this to my attention. It's a very minor Smokey Robinson Motown twelve inch from 1984, but Larry Levan's Dub mix of it is great. I've found Levan's mixes are among the most conservative of the disco crowd, this may be in some way a reflection of the fact that he had the highest profile of all the DJs and consequently moved in mainstream circles. The atmosphere on this is quite similar to Dionne Warwick's "Heartbreaker", neuromantic soul. I picture this in the soundtrack to some pink and blue neon-lit mid-eighties brat-pack B-movie, rubbing shoulders with Tangerine Dream.

06.25 Bruce Johnston: Pipeline
I've mentioned this track by former Beach Boy Johnston before and now y'all get to hear it. I was stoked to find this in Bleeker Bobs in the West Village (of all places!) Notable for the way the drums "star" in the mix and how the instruments fade into the sound of crashing waves and seagulls, must have made for a transportative dancefloor experience. Traces here too of the "Manhattan Disco Sound" that fullsome almost Broadway-Musical-cum-1950s-Dance-Craze-RKO-Radio-Transmission sound. (shrugs) Maybe you don't know what I mean? It's the sound of yellow cabs, prosperity and decadence.

10.20 Universal Robot Band: Barely Breaking Even
Patrick Adams, who produced this, has a serious Disco rep which I've always considered surprising given that he's very much a "workaday" producer. Probably most famous for Musique's "In the Bush" and Black Ivory's "Mainline" he also turned out some great fucked up synth-led grooves like Cloud One's mind-bendingly awesome "Atmosphere Strut" and their "Flying High" (the latter which I have a debt of gratitude to Dan Selzer to introducing me too). The Universal Robot Band track stands out by merit of it's bonkers percussion.

15.21 Class Action: Weekend (Dub Mix by Sergio Munzibai and John Morales)
I always play this and the next track at parties. I've had them both in my bag since 1992. The M & M Dub Mix is to my mind preferable to the full vocal version, what distinguishes it from some of the "too-spartan" dub mixes you can find in Disco is that here they keep all the best parts of the vocal line, and through the process of stripping away extraneous clutter the track grooves a mile better. The ladies love this!

22.05 Forrrce: Keep on Dubbin' (With No Commecial Interruptions) (Francois K Mix)
Astonishing that this towering monster of a track, about the best argument on wax for the viability of dub disco isn't more celebrated. I'm also confused about it's relationship Konk's "Baby Dee", essentially the same tune but transparently vastly inferior, has to this. You want to see people lose their minds on the dancefloor, well put this on a 10K rig, the whiplash on that bassline is devastating.

26.25 Kebekelektrik: War Dance
A Tom Moulton Mix. I'm permanently alluding to this project which seems to be Moulton's take on Kraftwerk. "War Dance" and it's lolloping synths is defiantly, engrossingly minimalist. I think this is Moulton, a "classical" Disco producer at his most eccentric.

33.21 Klein & MBO: Dirty Talk (European Connection)
Which must stand as the definitive Italo track. I've once again be surprised that this hasn't been more visible in the reissue of the Italo stuff. I think the assumption on the part of people putting this stuff out once more is that everyone knows it, but I'd have to disagree. The link between this (deprived of the giggling woman on this mix, maybe I should have spun the flipside...) and Rhythim is Rhythim's "Nude Photo" is indelible, making it a key document in the "Detroit-Techno-stems-from-European-Music" argument.

37.15 Raw Silk: Just In Time and Space (Dub)
A classic mix by David Todd and Nick Martinelli. I love the way the slinky Manhattan fanfare slips out of the "jungle" beat.

40.47 The Jammers: And You Know That (A Shep Pettibone Mix)
Shep's roots were in Hip-Hop, he worked on Afrika Bambaata and the Jazzy Five's "Jazzy Sensation" but crossed over into Disco. I've always thought his stuff maintains some of Electro's anti-linearity, his tracks can be arranged quite vertically. The squiggly bassline on this and the next track (another of his mixes) must be one of his trademarks.

44.04 Sinnamon: He's Gonna Take You Home (To His House)
This goes on forever! Just amazing, and I think benefits from being pitched up quite speedy on the twelve tens. I imagine disco would have often been faster when played out at clubs, it's wrong to pussy-foot around at lower more "faithful" tempos with the assumption that they are in some way more authentic.

50.55 Matsubara: S.O.S.
Don't know much about this. Lovely tune though.

55.13 Betty Lavette: Doin' The Best That I Can (Walter Gibbons Mix)
This, gulp, eleven minute mix of "Doin' The Best That I Can" is widely regarded amongst cognoscenti as Walter Gibbon's tour-de-force. Gibbons whose working relationship with disco god Arthur Russell (this is the context for all those tunes people!) produced "Let's Go Swimming (Coastal Dub)" and Indian Ocean's 10.11 mix of "School Bell/Treehouse." He practically chucks the kitchen sink in here, it's quite preposterous. I used to make the mistake of only using the last seven minutes of the track in my sets, but the full wide-screen splendour of the thing is only appreciable with the (once again) "Manhattan Sound" vocal bombast of the intro. Spine-tinglingly lovely stuff.

-

A big shout out to Angus at "I Feel Love" and Phil "Big Daddy" Sherburne. This one's for you, dudes!

*I couldn't rent a drummer for this mix (winks), so some of the cuts are verging on the messy/abrupt. Mixing disco is difficult people, but essential to understand the way the music works.

Graffiti under Bridge on Bow Road.

Kanye West+++

We don't tend to go in for much in depth album analysis here at Woebot. In fact you don't see much formalist texture-talk either. We leave that to Simon, Tim and Marcello. Them fellas do it better. I guess I tend to concentrate on the Geo-political, the Rhizomic Span TM, the interface with kulcha, being essentially what excites me. Also because, as Mark K-Punk remarked to me, it can be somewhat confusing hear people eulogise music YOU'RE NEVER GONNA HEAR in great detail. Sometimes I wonder that I have any material at all to post here, that I manage to pluck this endless stream of guff out of thin air, without recourse to deep-listening and elaborate description. However I thought my proclamation of 31st March was verging on the bald, and realised I still had time to properly nix Marcello's big review of the LP (grins, he'll be shaking his fist at me! Respekt as ever to MC), though of course Simon's shared his feeling with us about it already. Damn it's annoying always having to rely on the shops for this material. I was pissed to see that on the CD of this there was a sticker with glowing reviews from a whole bunch of half-life journals proclaiming it to be a masterpiece, cunts who got sent this as a promo probably last year where it sat gathering dust in their in-trays beneath the Amy Winehouse rekkid. Boo hoo!

I'm not really jealous, it's just fun giving the inkies a bit of a boot in the arse! Ha!* Did anyone else see the "Face off with the net" article by an Owen Gibson in the New Media Section of The Guardian. I'm going to have to type out a section cos the twats have made it impossible to read stuff online without being a member of the website. The context is the collapse of The Face:

"...few commentators have mentioned the simple fact that for anyone under 21 today, the internet now performs the job that culture-performing magazines once did. Only far more effectively. When teenagers from Abergavenny to Ayr are downloading music by bands that have yet to grace the pages of any magazine, tapping into global culture from Tokyo to New York and writing about their own lives on their own blog or fansite, a monthly magazine telling you what's hot and what's not soon becomes redundant."

So they trot out a whole bunch of hopefuls like Neil Boorman at Sleaze, Paul Mardles at Jockey Slut and Andy Capper at Vice in the UK who believe the website versions of their magazines will help save them from extinction. Wow look I just alienated three powerful magazine editors! Well not really, I mean if these mags can loosen up a bit (half-joking, and hire the likes of y'all on my links bar!!!) then the future might not be so bleak for them! Certainly Vice appears to be flourishing. Of course this plays into the recent suggestion of Mark K-Punk's that this particular blogipelago should coalesce and start a magazine. Unfortunately that would be the precise way to kill whatever energy is left in the circuit. Also why a magazine? That's like taking five steps back, though even a website would be turd-like. Can you imagine having to hastle Luka to deliver his copy on time! C'mon young Heronbone, we need that piece on caterpillars Monday morning sharp!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the Kanye West LP. What pushed me into doing this wee thing was reading the following review in my favorite beloved journal The Wire. And fingers-crossed this won't get me in any trouble:

Dejected bear mascot thinks college is a bunch of ho/frat hooey and a Cosby sweater so he samples Michael Bolton and turns a nail file into a Trans Europe Express hi-hat. Spat clever rhymes through a busted jaw (talk about suffering succotash) over Chaka Smurf. One line about Mercedes and mayonnaise was pretty much all it took for Chicago's Kanye West to convince Roc-A-Fella he could rap, despite wilfully mispronouncing Versace. "We don't Care" reactivates Monster Magnet's "School Free Drug Zone" campaign as a kiddie chorus taunts "We weren't supposed to make it past 25/the jokes on you we're still alive".

The next interlude ("Graduation Day") talkboxes with Jesus amid gospel wails of clap and strings. Then there's the corny Daft/Chromeo talk-box on the even cornier "Workout Song". The dope to wack ratio of innovative talk-boxing songs here is 2:1. Not Bad. "Last Call" is a Source interview in search of a song, Ikea shopping trip included. This unrefundable 11 minutes is better spent doubling up with electric sliding granny of "Family Business". The piano almost gets stuck in the sappy seats of Hornsby's Range Rover, but Nopac, it's much better than THAT song. A swaying hymn, "Spaceship" finds West with the retail blues and the self-deprecating consequence sort of at peace at being recognised as an extra in an old Busta Rhymes video."

I can't fucking believe I just typed that out. That was WORK! Dave Tompkins, who wrote this, is one of the big boys so as far as I'm concerned he can put up with a likkle sniping. I thought this was the WORST, most unsympathetic, cranky and pinched record review I have ever read. I think what's at stake is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Kanye West is up to. As I see it, "The College Dropout" is some kind of cultural tabula rasa. It's like someone standing up, and saying with wit and charm "Yo chill with the studio gangster bullshit!" The fact that it's on Roc-A-Fella, not some crappy independent label ought to make this doubly significant; you know *everyone* is going to buying it. Kanye West has forged some totally improbable detente between backpackers like Dilated Peoples, and the Neptunes' club banger crowd. It's a really heartfelt record that has one finger in a sympathetic understanding of ghetto life and another in that of the middle-classes (notice the shifts in "Family Business" between the black family beleagued by cockroaches and the family eating apple pie).

1. We Don't Care.
What I like about this song:
•The catchy chorus given by a bunch of under-tens: "Drug dealing just to get by, stack your money till it gets sky high"
Why:
(Smirks) That's inspired, using kids to do the lyrics. More than that, pitching them up against a gospel choir.

2. All Falls Down.
What I like about this song:
•Syleena Johnson's tortured hopeless vocals.
•Lyrics: "She's dealing with some issues that you can't believe, single-black female addicted to retail"
Why:
You can half hear Linton Kwesi Johnson railing against the "Black Petty Bourgeois" when listening to Kanye West. I guess BPB was big in the seventies, but I don't think what Tompkins dismisses as "retail blues" on evidence here and in "Spaceship" is an insignificant thing. Surely "Bl*ng" has meant Black America is consumed with capitalist desire? Are these not the problems which affect everybody?

3. Spaceship. (8/10)
What I like about this song:
•The twinkly bells and sped-up "Whoos" from "Distant Lover" by Marvin Gaye.
•Lyrics: "Working on this graveshift, and I ain't made shit, I wish I could, buy me a Spaceship and fly"
Why:
...also Kanye's tale of character quitting a job, sinking to the street, hustling, anger and fear creeping into his voice.

4. Jesus Walks. (6/10)
What I like about this song:
•The Stokely Carmichael intoned "Niggers!" textured sonic punched in the mix
•"You can rap about anything except Jesus, that means Guns Sex and Videotapes, but if i talk about god my record won't get played"
Why:
Kanye's God-thing, like the Slow Jamz aesthetic seems to some from that same place wherein Al Green made a confluence of sexual desire and the holy. It's about the only spot at which I can tolerate Christianity in music. Maybe this God is Asase Ya, the Ashanti deity for the Earth *and* Fertilty. Though of course the God of the Black Gospel is less frozen and austere than that of the High Anglican Church I grew up with. But respek to Kanye for rapping about "the big fella". That's bold.

5. Never Let Me Down. (8/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "Never Let Me Down" hook from "Maybe Its The Power Of Love" by Michael Bolton.
Why:
We saw Kanye West recently on TOTP and he was saying words along the lines of Britain is my most important market, the folk who will appreciate my artistry. It was, on the face of it, typical bullshit, exactly what you'd expect from a smooth-talking industry player. But damn, all these sped-up vocal lines. They're pure Ardkore, pure 2-step Glossa-Garage. Sure there's the Smurf thing in Hip-Hop but that's long dead. The drug-addled acceleration of voices is a UK ting. They're right through the LP.

6. Get Em High. (9/10)
What I like about this song:
•Drums.
Why:
...also it's a choon.

7. The New Work-Out Plan (6/10)
What I like about this song:
•Violins.

8. Through The Wire. (8/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "Through The Wire" hook from "Through The Fire" by Chaka Khan.

9.Slow Jamz. (7/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "Gonna be, well, well" hook from "A House is not a home" by Luther Vandross.

10. Breathe In, Breathe Out. (9/10)
What I like about this song:
•Wicked Stax/Willie Mitchell loop.
•"But now I'm rapping about Money, Hoes and Rims again."
•Ludacris on the chorus.
•"I always had a phD, a pretty huge dick."
•The dub echo on hiccoughing Kanye at the end.
Why:
...also it's a choon.

11. School Spirit. (9/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "Can you feel it, People do!" hook from "Spirit in the Dark" by Aretha Franklin.
•Particularly the "People do!" bit super quavery gospel innit!**
•Kanye West: "I feel a couple woofs coming on cuz"
•Hoods: "Woof! Woof!"

12. Two Words (7/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "And it's bloody on these streets." from "Peace and Love (Amani Na Mapenzi)- Movement III (Time)" by Mandrill.

13. Family Business (10/10)
What I like about this song:
•Everything.
•Exquisite Gospel vocals (I'm not a fan as a rule) pitched against that melancholy piano riff, crackly radio preacher and just to nail it that 6 year-old in the background.
Why:
Deffo the centrepiece of the record. I found this unbearably moving. I cried after hearing it on Thursday. Pussy!

14. Last Call (10/10)
What I like about this song:
•Lovely wide rolling groove. Like an empty five-lane motorway you can just drive your call all over it.
•Ridiculous super banale monologue (genius!) about Kanye's progress in the industry, Highlights include:
•Musing about the drums on Dre's The Chronic 2000.
•Kanye gets to meet Jay-Z who has just spat rhymes on a riddim of his. Jay-Z says: "Oh you're a real soulful dude." Listening to the track Kanye reflects to himself: "Man, I'm one for like the simple type Jay-Z, I ain't one for the introspective complicated, in my personal opinion." Jay Z asks him what he thinks about it and Kanye says (adopts goofy voice) "Man that shit tight!" That's well funny.
•Moving out of his old flat with his Mum's help. Like a fucking normal human being.
•"They're looking at me like I'm crazy, cos I ain't got a jersey on."
•When he drops a rhyme he was going to use, and then tells the listener not to steal it cos he might use it later at some time.
•The groove drops out when his deal with Capitol falls through.
Why:
Kanye's throwaway attitude to his raps is one of the things that seems to infuriate Tompkins, dismissed here as a "Source interview," but surely this is what marks them as inspired, they're offhand. They don't sound like they've been sweated over. Why the fuck shouldn't he rap about visiting Ikea? You want him to pretend he steals his furniture?

-

But seriously, what other better LPs have there been in the past three years? Dizzy's? Forget it. It's up there with De La Soul's "3 Feet High and Rising" and Tricky's "Maxinquaye." I don't have to wait 5 years till someone "trendy" tells me so.

*The plosive "Ha!" is a Trademark of the estate of Luke Davis 2003. Used with permission.
**The offhand "Innit" is a Trademark of Woebot Inc 2003. All rights reserved.