WOEBOT

2003+2004*

Some Bloggers. Photo Sufi. (Left to Right): K-punk, Silverdollar, Evergreen Daze, Heronbone, Stelfox, Kin, WOEBOT.

I didn't quite get the warm glow I was anticipating from this Resonance show. I was kind of hoping it was going to form a perfect requiem for times past. Don't think I'm criticising Magz for one minute, she did an excellent job with this, but somehow the excitement I felt for those two years isn't conveyed. It may be a question of media, the experience of blogging was so tautly introspective, of so much relevance to itself, that to explain it within another context, well the whole thing just comes across as a facile waste of time.

No, it's not JUST that I come across a complete cock (winces, please Matt don't say it, quivers) it's more that nothing could do justice to the intensity of the experience. I really believed that something was at stake, that it was of earth-shattering importance (pompous I know, but so what?), that even though I wrote about nothing but music, that it wasn't about writing about music. It certainly wasn't about wanting to be a music journalist. It just was.

Download the Resonance FM documentary here.

*As near as damnit.

The Inner Sleeve.

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(splutters) What is this crap? Inner sleeves advertising other records. I've met people who actually collect them, record shop owners who ask me if I'm happy for them to keep the original lining. Yeah of course mate. Whatever turns you on. But I suppose they're the mementos of a forgotten time, when the music business wasn't so hopelessly cynical, or perhaps when it was more cynical. Why wouldn't this be possible nowadays? Perhaps now each pop moment is swollen in it's own watertight concept. Companies have worked out that for the magic to really work, for the punter to feel like the band are whispering sweet nothings into their ears alone (Isn't that what The Beatles pioneered, a sense of total intimacy with the group?) then the illusion mustn't be so obviously ruptured. Today's covers are so fucking 'orrible that to tile them up like "thumbs" would be repulsive rather than seductive anyway.

Here's my obvious favourite. A whole sleeve devoted to Andy Williams inside a Mahavishnu Orchestra LP! How did the record company work out that selling William's LPs to heavy fusion heads was a cracking idea. Yet that's one of the things that these inner sleeves illustrate so clearly, how much smaller the market was, how it was arranged in an utterly different manner. UA is one of the best examples: Shirley Bassey on the bumper, and Neu! under the hood.

Nowadays the whole panoply is organised in a much more tribal fashion, so even if Sony do own Underground Resistance, the smaller cells remain autonymous. In the old days the vertical knit was much tighter, a colleague gave the example of Enoch Light (of "Persuasive Percussion" fame). The easy listening pioneer turned his hand to producing underground psychedelia on his Project 3 label. Bands like The Free Design got airy string sections. If there's one reason why underground music is less sexier than it's ever been this might be it. It's been allowed to drift away from the some of imperative, glamourous values of the market which the major labels insist upon.

Look at the Moondog LP nestled in amongst the Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan sleeves on this CBS liner sleeve! Oh and there's the Trees cover and Laura Nyro's "New York Tenderberry." That's quite a sewage flowing out of the gutter. But to foreground another condition of the "scene" take a look at this sleeve by Atlantic:

Wilson Pickett, Roland Kirk, Ornette Coleman, Dusty Springfield and Led Zepellin all sharing the same billboard.

Some wiseguys at CBS clearly thought that the Inner Sleeve was the future in breaking their artists into new markets. These three examples of the "Inner Sleeve" magazine taken from Miles Davis's "Bitches Brew" and a Edgar Varese LP even have an editor in the form of one Paul Merry! It's all so guileless. Nowadays we have music journalism which is insiduous "advertorial" Surprisingly, the blue "Inner Sleeve" throws up quite an interesting column in the form of a piece on "Black Composers Series on Columbia Records." Presumably no magazine would write about it so.....

The major labels had a bit of fun with the form from the mid fifties up until the dawn of the seventies, I guess those Island records sleeves with pictures of Robert Palmer sleeves beside ones by LKJ, John Martyn and the B52s are an anachronism, as are the appallingly tacky Rams Horn electro reissues with their voluminous lists of disco tracks available on the same imprint on the back cover.

It's quite charming to see how elephantine the recording industry was in adapting to the times. All the following records have their idiosyncracies, and this is another area which is highlighted by these Inner Sleeves. The following are amongst the oldest in my collection. The first is from Walt Dickerson and Sun Ra's "A Patch of Blue" LP, the latter the inner sleeve to Julie London's "Julie is her name" and so actually pretty representative of those eras.

But look at this one from the inner sleeve of John Coltrane's "Coltrane"!!! Er hello! The Black and White Minstrel show! The Band of HM Royal Marines "Beating Retreat and Tattoo"! Trane must have dropped like an atom bomb into this environment.

Here's a few more major label efforts. The green Warners one is a complete time capsule.

And the smaller imprints got in on the act too, and funnily enough with greater efficacy. I can quite believe that people purchasing records by Nonesuch, Motown, Elektra, Impulse and Vanguard would be interested in getting hold of other records on those labels, be curious to scope out what else was on offer.

Blah blah blah. Bor-ring. Even worse, deliberately so.

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I quite specifically wanted to round off this auspicious post with a few ruminations about the state of blogs, the state of the network if you like. It's with great sadness that I reflect that that small part of my brain where I'd go looking for the blogging thrill, the part of my cortex which glows in excitement when I ponder the fun I'm going to have writing here, feels like a spent ember. If this particular neck of the woods had a demi-semi-historic moment it lay between the dominance of NYPLM and the ascendancy of the mp3 blogs, pretty much coinciding with the rise of blissblog.

I haven't really remarked on the passing of heronbone, in part because I thought Luke was probably driven away by bloggers praising him to the skies, treating him like a poster boy (even going as far as posting pictures of him!!!!!), that and people biting his style when he's just a punk kid like you and me. I did a fair amount of that myself, praising the dude, but I do believe with a certain amount of tongue in my cheek, and even though I held his writing in as high esteem as anyone else did.

I miss engaging with Luke, likewise I miss engaging with Mark K-Punk who now has such a strong coterie of theorists around him that he doesn't have to muck in and talk music in order to join the party. Sad to report but at the moment I feel like I've had my moment, that at least right now it all seems pretty wearisome. I'm not asking for entreaties to continue (please please no) I'll probably just keep on posting boring shit without much theoretical backbone just for the hell of it. You wonder why bands split up, why scenes crumble, then you find out for yourself.

MP3 Blogs.

Who gives a shit what I think about the ethics of offering up mp3s for download? I mean, REALLY, it's none of my business! Practice your own ethics I say. However, not being an mp3 blog myself, I do feel able to evaluate these things in much the same manner as I might offer up a critique of a record store. Commenting on one's fellow blogger's blogs (not mp3 ones that is) is altogether stickier. It's easier to just be nice, and praise their strengths, rather than focussing on their manifold weaknesses (tee hee, only joking!) I do believe the same cloying chuminess which many people say ruins "The Bloglom" hampers the mp3 blogs. It's most obvious side effect, in my humble opinion, is that the quality of some blogs is inordinately less than their online profile would lead one to imagine. Some mp3 blogs are clearly at the top of their own links bars.

I've looked at in the region of 100 mp3 blogs and on balance I was pretty appalled by the lack of care and thought that went into the process of offering up other people's music for free. Blogs seemed, in the main, terribly designed with little or no thought going into the attached writing. The music offered up seemed at once pretty ropey and poorly assembled. It's a condition with these things that the writing seemed a pretty pointless exercise anyway, I mean, what's the point in reviewing music which is (thanks to you) instantly available. On the other hand, I don't go with Mark Fisher's argument that reading writing about music you haven't the opportunity of hearing is a waste of space one iota. That renders most music journalism a redundant exercise (er, pretty much like it is, grin). It's the job of the music critic to impart his enthusiasm, to MAKE you want to hunt down sounds, to stroke your lobes till they fizz with uncontainable desire.

For these reasons the best mp3 blog of the lot, gabba pod, almost entirely dispenses with writing, cuts to the chase and hits you with the stuff; not a skanky remix in sight. Obviously this is manifoldly disproved by some music blogs which use mp3s merely to illustrate a written theme. Here music blogs which have crossed over into being mp3 blogs are a case in point. For instance both Oliver Wang and Nick Gutterbreakz have both run eminently readable blogs up until a few weeks ago, and now they carry over their discerning taste and eloquence into this new medium.

The thematic approach to presenting mp3s, a whole bag of tracks from a similar area of music, is another useful trope for the mp3 blogs. The point here is to know your strengths. One of the most awful things I've ever witnessed on the Internet was some witless coot's mp3 guide to Reggae, a fucking embarassment, a travesty even. Some pull this approach off with real flare, like for instance Christopher Porter at The Suburbs are Killing Us others choose wisely to stick within a certain remit, like the truly excellent 20 Jazz Funk Greats mp3 blog (strictly perverse noise) and the superb Cocaine Blunts site (Hip-Hop old and new skool). Still others power their offerings through an extremely intense, exquisitely personal idea of what music should be. Music lovers and their sites like Jordan Himelfarb's Said the Gramophone, Stuart Buchanan's Fat Planet and Loki's An Idiots Guide to Dreaming.

All of this goes some way to explaining why I couldn't find a truly decent Pop mp3 blog. NYPLM doesn't count I'm afraid as it's only one tenth an mp3 blog. Lest you think I'm biased to "dead" music, I'll admit to being a little disappointed at this shortfall. Maybe Pop fans are too busy having fun to labour in this deeply nerdy way, presumably they're all too busy surfing Limewire and Soulseek sourcing their instant highs to bother with the hastle of collating and documenting mp3s, perhaps it takes the monomaniacal collector's ethos to weld together an mp3 blog which plays to the medium's own strengths. Without further ado...

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...THE TOP 11.

Gabba Pod
The clear undisputed winner. Incredible and painstakingly sourced tracks from the foamy edge at the tip of the wave.

Boom Selection
The home of the bootleg mash-up now offering up fantastic looking mixes.

Fat Planet
Beautifully collated catholic selection.

Gutterbreakz
Drool! Real underground stuff. Recent highlight being Nick's LFO compilation, the Moog special and Nick's excellent Robert Rental special.

Said The Gramophone
Flava in your ear. Currently plumbing the fathoms of post-rock.

Cocaine Blunts
Dedicated to Hip Hop, and lets hope it stays that way.

Soul Sides
Nourishment stylee. This man knows the deal.

The Suburbs are Killing Us
Authorative and free-ranging without being pompous.

20 Jazz Funk Greats
Close to my heart.

An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming
Ace. Invisible hand of Kek-W (of Kid Shirt fame) in evidence.

Stypod
Stylus wrestles profitably with it's student audience.

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I might even download an mp3 off one of these sites one day!

Brazil 10.

Reeee-wind! The phone has been running red since I posted that little rap about Caetano Veloso, so I've decided to play to my audience and bash up some more sleeves from the archives. Scratches head. This looks frighteningly like the "specials" of yore! Firstly apologies for not listing all the 5 records in the holy quintet of Tropicalia classics. I omitted to mention the Gal Costa LP (which I have and only really like "Baby" off) and the Gilbert Gil record with him in the admiral's suit (which I have and is very good). I have all these on vinyl (with the exception of the Smetak, sobs) and while it's a pretty random selection from the vaults, all these are unreservedly reccommended. Spiel to a minimum.

Baden Powell/Vinicius Moraes: Afro Samba

Swee-eet. Here with a slightly dodgy cover, not the reissue you see. Vinicius is essentially a poet, as I discovered to my chagrin when I bought an impenetrable record of his on the the strength of this classic. Also in the vaults Baden Powell's "Tristeza" on the German label MPS. It's safe to say magic is wrought here by legendary arranger Guerra Peixe.

Jorge Ben: A Tabula Esmerelda

I also have "Africa Brazil", "Ponte de Lanca Africano" off which is the killer cut. I'd like to take that track out for a walk on the dancefloor (never had the opportunity to play it out) The guitar on it SLAYS. Also Jorge Ben "1969". "O Bidu" is supposed to be excellent and is swilling around on reissue. This is the winner for "Zumbi" which sprouts impossible new layers of harmony and melody. Kind of like a favela dwelling with improvised bamboo loft extensions. And of course the occult-ish cover. We like.

Jair Rodriguez: Orgulho de um Sambista

A recent discovery, as plangeant and straw-strewn as "Afro-Samba."

Edu Lobo: Cantiga de Longe

Anything with Quarteto Novo on it. Here they're fresh from the Miles Davis "Live Evil" sessions. Edu v.dread.

Tom Jobim: Matita Pere

It took me ages to work out that Antonio Carlos Jobim and Tom Jobim were the same man. Many factors complicated this. His hugely varied look, his trans-continental presence, the gulf of years he was active, the polarity between his pop persona (Sinatra and Astrid Gilberto) and his more underground work. As a rule if you're a groovy cat like me, you refer to him as "Tom." I reckon he's been slightly dismissed, completely left out of Ben Borthwick's excellent "Tropicalia" primer in The Wire (which again though it purported to be about Tropicalia, was more or less a whistlestop guide to Brazilian music) This could be owing to his strong 1950's American barbecue profile. "Matita Pere", which also comes in a brown cover with a photo of him on it (I gave my other copy to Reynolds) is his masterpiece, and I know one of David Toop's favourite records too. Words can't do it's aching windswept orchestral score and Jobim's brooding portuguese justice. I also have "Urubu" (which has it's moments) and have often been tempted by "Stone Flower" (good vintage).

Milton Nascimento: Milton

This is great. But better, indeed possibly one of the 10 greatest records of any genre, is "Clube Da Esquina". I discovered this three years ago in what was a bad time, and it's food for the soul. Indeed it was for me then, almost in defiance of music that was being made then, my "Record of The Year." When you first hear it, it can be easy to miss it's wholly unusual unique qualities. I don't tend to be one to reccommend sticking with a record, a knock-out first encounter should lead to time spent together, but here's one exception. White chapels by the sugar-cane. Also have "Minas" which is nice.

Novos Baianos: Acabou Chorarc

Repeating myself here, but can't avoid including this babe.

Quarteto Novo: Quarteto Novo

Damn I LOVE this group. It's Hermeto and Airto's first outfit and they are SO hot. What could be mistaken for bossa nova were it not well-deep and entirely devoid of cliche, the rhythm here overpoweringly conduisive. I've always thought "Algodao" sounds like Led Zeppelin, and I also bet that The Beatles must have heard this record (whether that's any kind of recommendation I'll leave to you to decide). A classic.

Gilberto Gil: Refazenda

Gil here along with the "Refavela" LP (which I have and don't think is as good) plying a vision of pan-africanism. "Refazenda" off this is such a superb tune, the way that accordian starts, like a clockwork policeman spinning backwards anti-clockwise. The whole record consistently excellent, and what a great cover!

Walter Smetak: Smetak

A recent discovery, almost the skeletal other to these well-endowed raptures. Oblique, endlessly inventive but warmly engrossing.

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A big holler to Seb Morlu, Jon Dale and Nick Wrigley.

Caetano Veloso.

This superb mid seventies Veloso record has the most sumptuos cover. Catherine said it was nice to see a man relishing in his sexuality. Go "Open Image In New Window" to witness the gatefold in a bit more detail. They're quite disorientating these images, his narcissism is so extreme here, it seems like only gay men allow themselves to pout and preen like this. What is fascinating is how this lavish self-love is paired with the experimental bent of the music, it's almost as if self-indulgence is conjoined not with closeted masturbation (well that's the critical trope for solo avant-garde wank isn't it!) but with public self-exposure. That is an altogether rarer collusion.

The record is a collision of ethnographic-style recordings of Brazilian folk, tape loops and Veloso's gourgeous balladry. Traces of Garage Rock too. I've always been intrigued by the relationship Arto Lindsay has with Caetano. Lindsay, fluent in Portuguese and with a Brazilian background, was roped in to translate Veloso's biography into English and evidently they've remained friends. He'd also done liner notes for David Byrne's "Tropicalia" compilation (a classic case of compiler thrashing around in the dark, incorrectly curating the document of a scene, misrepresenting it with tracks recorded nearly a decade after the collective activity it purports to depict). To us in muso-land Arto looms large, he's an underground celebrity, but Veloso is almost obscure. Conversely Veloso is, in fact, practically a superstar in Brazil. So you see it's all intriguingly bent out of shape.

Other completely wonderful Veloso records are: his peak period "Caetano Veloso" (Phillips 1968) (which along with the first Os Mutantes record, Gal Costa's debut and the collective Tropicalia record "Ou Panis et Circensis" is *definitive* Tropicalia), his 1986 acoustic record on Nonesuch and apparently his 1969 "White Album". In keeping with my earlier observations most of his records seem to be eponymously titled.

Pete Frame.

Rediscovered Pete Frame's "Rock Family Trees" via a secondhand omnibus of them. This kind of completely pointless, lunatic scholarship is generally absent in dance music. Dance music bods *can* get excited about catalogue numbers but there are boundaries to their nerdishness. The nearest thing is probably something like Freddy Fresh's recent 'The Rap Records', but that didn't entail the same kind of turgid engagement with the raw facts. It must have taken Frame AGES to synthesise these awesome (also in the sense of terrifying) charts. In the preface he says: "On an average, I'd say each chart takes about three weeks of solid graft- including research, interviews, transcriptions, digging, checking, plotting, drafting and drawing." Blimey.

I do believe at the core of his programme there is a healthy dose of humour. In fact I'd like to see a similar chart drawn up for the Grime scene, detailing God's Gift, Doogz and Riko Dan's various trajectories through different crews. It'd be particularly funny in fact as it would wind up people who complain about rock-ist readings of dance music. I was going to post the Roxy Music/King Crimson history (which shows the intertwining of those two bands through the ages) though feared Mark Fisher might think I was taking the mick. Here instead is the "Resolving The Fairport Confusion" history, which I particularly like because of the absurd amount of incarnations the band went through. 14!

Download it here...

More Sunny Ade.

The Nigerian graphic designers who worked on these Sunny Ade sleeves were truly masters of the form. I'd attempt to spin some pseudo narrative around these like I did the previos batch but Matos would almost certainly catch me out like he did last time. "Check E" I read raved over by Robert Christagau in a Village Voice column I picked up whilst over in NYC last year (maybe I'll manage to come over again in the next few years). Unlike the Juju Music/Synchro System/Aura Island records it's a peak-period domestic Nigerian issue. Almost as great as "The Message", and that's saying something, the steel guitar as predictably electrifying. I paid c$10 for this at the Music and Video Exchange! What is it with people's failure to see beyond Afro-Beat? Doh!

This one is definitely a few years younger than the rest (catalogue number SALPS36), is lavish and spacey sounding with drum machine to the fore. Widely touted as his classic recording. Got this for $15 from cdandlp.com (which is great if you haven't checked it out) On the strength of these sleeves you'd think all the Sunny Ade records were lovely looking, but no, there's a whole slew of white covers with bad typography and ropey photography; records like "Jealousy". I'm tempted to think that those releases aren't up to the same standards as the ones shown here.

Jazz Memoires.

Been slowly going through the select list of stuff that Kirk Degiorgio gave me, tracking down records, appraising them, stroking my chin deliberately, thinking. I've found Donny Hathaway's "Extension of a Man", Linda Lewis's "Lark", Eugene McDaniel's "Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse" (thanks to Luke's extreme generosity), Weldon Irvine's "Spirit Man", and Jon Lucien's "Rashida" None of which are exactly obscure or rare, more kind of "classic" well-rounded LPs in a Jim Clarke stylee (Jim is a connoisseur of the LP form, his round up of 100 British records turned my head in a major fashion). The thing is, I was au fait with 75% of Kirk's Jazz Funk Greats list already, because I have a shady background as a Funk afficionado.

I know! Now he tells us! Just the other day in fact Derek Walmsely was chastising me for saying that the DJ Spooky mix record I reviewed in The Wire (yeah that was OK) was marginally more Cecil Taylor than Horace Silver. But sir, opined Derek, Horace Silver is a genius, dontcha know. I laid my circumspect knowledge on De'ek and he appeared to be satisfied. I DO enjoy Horace Silver, cherish my copy of "Song For My Father" and yes I guess I was being sorta glib. I can appreciate Kirk's depth of respect for the Blue Note label. In the past I've had Wayne Shorter's "Juju", Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder", Donald Byrd's "A New Perspective", Bill Evan's "Undercurrent" free records by Ornette ("The Empty Foxhole") Cecil ("Conquistador") and Eric Dolphy ("Out to Lunch") as well as (consults Google to refresh memory) Monk's early sides. The Jazz Funk stuff I picked up later than the free stuff, that was accrued largely as a result of slavishly following Lester Bangs's lines of flight, thanks to Lester I have a copy of Archie Shepp's "Fire Music" and Albert Ayler's "Spiritual Unity" which truth be told, don't hit the decks all that often. But we're talking Funk, or Jazz Funk here, and the period when I picked up those more accessible Blue Note records was in the early nineties.

(Stokes his pipe with the finest Golden Virginia, rests the brandy on a small leather-topped mahogany table aside his shabby winged armchair and gazes into the lambent flickering flames of his calor gasfire. A harpist strums descending variations in C)

Jazz Funk was a university thing thing, a student thing. My first year at Glasgow was spent in a state of such insane abstraction it's almost comic. Weighing in at a princely seven stone, dedicated to taking all my course notes in my left hand (naturally right-handed, I thought my mental balance needed correcting, the notes subsequently illegible), wandering around with my right eye shut, wearing either red or green from top to toe and talking to no-one at all. Scary, and I guess my trajectory out of lonely travels through the Third World and experiments with hallucinogenics. Wasn't the counter-culture supposed to be fun? Somewhere along the way, I'd pretty much lost touch with the laughs. That's the thing about dionysian "mob" culture when it involves drugs isn't it? So often the paths lead away from the comfort of the herd at steep tangents.

Come the second year I'd started to fluff out at the edges a bit. Someone told me where the student union was! I visited it a few times! I also found a couple of friends who were interested in records, both of whom were into the Talking Loud strain of Acid Jazz, and dutifully I joined in. It seemed to be more fun than the extremes of noise and nihilism that were my tastes at the time, indeed there were a few amusing cross-over incidents: a DJ in Edinburgh extolling the dancefloor power of Miles Davis's "Rated X" (my eyebrow raised) ditto the appeal of Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Innner Mounting Flame". Then crucially there was the presence of A Tribe Called Quest's "Low End Theory" and Massive Attack's debut. Both the latter two, whilst on the one hand hardcore Hip-Hop (though Jazz inflected that's an extravangaza of rock-hard Bass'n'Drums) and the other a post-Rave lacuna, were also signposts to J_A_Z_Z. The Tribe record especially was seized upon by Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge as validating their experiment. The first Rebirth Of The Cool compilation featured the cymbolic downbeat mix of "When the Papes Come" (seems to have been subsequently excised) and also Stetsasonic's "Talkin All That Jazz". This early the whole thing seemed like a good idea (I never made it as far as Volume Two), and The Dream Warriors "My Definition (Of A Boombastic Jazz Style)", Gilles Peterson's mix with samples lifted off Quincy Jones even gave it a chart spin. Gang Starr also made an extremely good case for the cause with "Step In the Arena", which along with The Ragga Twins "Reggae owes Me Money" was my soundtrack to Summer '92. At the time I even interviewed the Dream Warriors when they were in Glasgow such was my brimming over with unfocused enthusisasm.

I also interviewed Galliano when they made the trip across the border. You wouldn't find too many apologists for Galliano these days, though I cocked a wry glance when I noticed Simon's enthusiasm for Rob's recent Earl Zinger record. The Galliano interview was a complete debacle (I've mentioned it whilst blogging once before) I managed to completely cock up the huge clunky video camera so that my "technical accomplice" Fraser and I became aware just before the start of the interview that we weren't going to be able to record anything other than _w*h*i*t*e_n*o*i*s*e*_. Such was our intense embarassment that we decided to proceed regardless. The band were surly and defensive and when I (gently) challenged them about the Acid Jazz movement's uncritical omnivorousness, it was meant to be a talking point, ("So Freez are now a Jazz Funk outfit!") Galliano became enraged. At the concert later on he stopped mid set to rail at the audience about the idiotic journalist (cough splutter) who had interviewed them beforehand. A proud moment.

The chief delight of being a Jazz Funk afficionado came in the past treasures one discovered. Billy Cobham's "Spectrum" (caned by Massive Attack), Aaron Neville's "Hercules", The Blackbyrds "Rock Creek Park" and the "Flying Away" LP (both since sold!), Donald Byrd's "Blackbyrd", Johnny Hammond's "Gears" (the last four all Mizell Productions), Hustler's Convention's "Sport", Deodato's "Thus Spoke Zarathusa", Leon Thomas's "Shape Your Mind to Die", Roy Ayer's "We Live in Brooklyn", Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man", Leroy Hutson's "Hutson", Bob James's "Nautilus", Allen Toussaint's "Touissant" and "Southern Nights", everything by The Meters, Gabor Szabo's "The Sorceror", James Brown's "Pass The Peas" and all the People productions, Charles Rouse's "Hopscotch", David Axelrod and Shuggie Otis's records, Chocolate Milk's "Action Speaks Louder Than Words", Al Green's LPs (right up to but not including "The Belle Album") and the Winley Breaks compilations. Just a slew of awesome stuff essentially, and hearing these monsters for the first time was quite a rush. It's strange to see how the same pillaging that collectors of vintage Reggae practise has somehow remained hip, remained current, while the jazzbos are slated for being retrogressive. I guess at the time the main impetus behind the rediscovery of these records was galvanised by Hip-Hop's voraciosness for breaks, indeed if A Tribe Called Quest sampled it, it was usually marked down as instantly desirable. Funny too how one of the prime machines for disemmination of this stuff back in the day, namely Soul Jazz, has subsequently become indelibly associated with the reggae reissue programme.

I guess the sad truth is that very little that was recorded in the name of this music in the UK has stood the test of time. Hand on heart (ha ha) the only records I bought back then by were The Young Disciples, quite easily the cream of the crop. Groupie that I am I was really excited to pass Femi Fem in the hallway of the house he shared with an ex-girlfriend of mine. Aah such naked proximity to the beating heart of Acid Jazz. Their "Road to Freedom" LP was a gem, and I'm gonna find a copy tomorrow if I can. K-Creative, The Brand New Heavies etc etc ALL SHITE. Returning to pick up the thread of this stuff briefly was enjoyable, though in some ways the records I've been hipped too by Kirk, who has travelled much deeper into this territory, all lack what I'd describe as terror. Terror is something you need in music. Funny also to remember, kind of elliptically, that I drove my two Jazz Funk friends completely up the wall by being a paranoid obsessive (ha ha ha).

10 African Ethnographic Records.

My usual rejoinder: "I don't know much about this music" is really (really) true this time. I've been collecting choice ethnographic records for ten years and I really couldn't tell you much more than the next man about them. I have to confess too, that often as not I'll pick these artifacts up because their sleeves are beautiful and other-wordly. In a similar spirit I wanted to offer these spectacularly beautiful images up for your perusal, and found myself a little stuck for spiel. Rather than beating my chest and dribbling on interminably about music you aint gonna get to hear I thought I'd keep it short and sweet.

When it comes to Ethnographic Recordings the French have it, and this may (for better or worse) have something to do with their approach to their colonies. The British governed their colonies in a remote calculating fashion, examples might be Cromer's 75 year long "protectorate" of Egypt, in which the British skimmed the cream from the Nile economy, suppressed the Egyptians with the consent of their own ruling classes and showed little interest in the culture. Cromer displayed no inclination in educating the common Egyptians, imparting to them the benefits for instance, of Britain's technological advancement. Cromer believed that any education at all would just generate a class of radical discontents. They (we) did pretty much the same thing with the Raj in India.

The French on the other hand liked to get stuck right in there. You only have to look at Napolean's commission "Description De L'Egypte" with it's fanatical detailing of Egypt's ancient legacy, ream after ream of (actually quite remarkable) etchings and lithographs of the land of the Pharoahs, for proof of their voraciousness. I think I'm right in describing the project and resulting tomes as representing the most typical act of "Orientalism" for Edward Said. Unsure because it was so long since I read that book, which if you haven't come across it, details how one culture subjects another to a psychological tyranny by the act of subjectifying it through study and scholarship. The French took a similar tack in Algeria too, where they undertook to teach French culture, language and values. It's ironic to compare the French's vision of what they were doing (surely some deeply misguided generosity, after all they could have done what the British practised and not bothered!), with that of someone like Frantz Fanon's view of it whereby speaking French means that one accepts, or is coerced into accepting, the collective consciousness of the French.

France was home to the greatest Ethnomusicological labels in the world. I say was because the time window during which the practice of inscribing these sounds was relatively narrow. I have a cut-off date of 1975, after which I treat these documents with a degree of scepticism. The world has shrunk now to the point whereby the cultures which stood in such infinitely stark contrast to the mores of Western Capitalism are now effectively engulfed by it. The original music of the Central African Rain Forests, Tibet, Papua New Guinea and the Amazon has either vanished or been mothballed for tourists. Actually I'm not such an enemy of Globalisation, it's still possible for peoples to forge specific sounds, just that if you go looking for "purity" or "the other" these days you're wasting your time. Thankfully (I guess?) down to the work of the French (and others...) we have plenty of documents from that vanished world. Labels like Musée de l'Homme, Harmonia Mundi, Musiques du monde, BAM, Chant du Monde and (the finest) Ocora all published quite superb recordings made in the field.

Naturally Ocora deserves special mention. You can almost pick up any of their recordings and come away laughing. Probably the greatest Ocora recordings are the holy triumvirate of Musique Gbaya, Musique Aka Pygmees and Musique Burundi. The Aka pygmy set is the one which famously prized open Jon Hassell's skull, though for my money the greatest is the Gbaya set. If you're a fan of Minimalist music or Krautrock or Acid House you have to hear this. I'd be proudly boshing the sleeve up here if I owned the original Ocora edition however I have some early 80s cut of it with inferior artwork. That record, which is freely available on CD too is superior to all of these below.

See what I mean about the covers! What a stunner! Split 50/50 between recordings made in Guinea and those made in the Cote D'Ivoire. You often find the earlier recordings are more generalist and cover a broader terrain.

I've a suspicion this is (slightly) one for the tourists. From the collection of legendary tropical DJ Dave Hucker.

There are a whole series of these records on the UNESCO label. I've seen one for Greece! One can ponder the relationship between the United Nations as an organisation and the ethnomusicological drive (as per Said).

Stunning modernist design.

Hugh Tracey recorded some lovely stuff in the fifties and sixties. His Music of Africa series of which I have a number collate stuff not geographically but by their execution. This one is quite superb, and it's interesting to note that Tracey (an amateur British expat who later tarnished his reputation) was a conoisseur of the Mbira. He even devised his own version of it called the Kalimba which (oh dear!) has a traditional western tuning.....

Another beautiful looking Tracey recording.

It's sort of shambolic of me not be able to talk about these recordings in the way one might the latest Garage "joint." I guess the point is with Music like that of the Pygmies, there aren't the same kind of trans cultural conduits plugging them into other musics. They defy this kind of analysis because they're the product of isolated unique societies. One's not really equipped to comment on them because they're so alien and self-contained. Having said that in Colin Turnbull's liner notes (the same Englishman recorded the Rainforest Pygmies singing 'Clementine' which I discussed here) he says the Ituri dwell on the edge of the forest and thus are more open to influence.

One can't avoid discussing sexuality with a cover like this. Sometimes this can be quite brazen in this territory (shearing off into the Lyman/Denny/Baxter territory where it runs rampant). I have a recording of South Sea Creole Pidgin songs which features a semi-clad maiden (Gaugin style) reclining in a stream which I picked up in San Francisco. That IS quite a fruity one, though in general, speaking personally, I don't understand how people could get their kicks off this kind of thing. I've never found the National Geographic that stimulating, though one hear's voices assuring one of the impact these images of bare-breasted, ferocious looking tribeswomen had on the Victorian male psyche.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Shopping in Soho in more Detail.

Prompted by my good friend Job de Wit I thought I'd delve a little deeper. Marks are given on a scale of one to ten, with ten in London held only by the Notting Hill Music and Video Exchange branch of Soul and Dance and their Collector's First Floor. Apologies to people with lives and people who buy CDs.

Oxford Street Area.

1. HMV Oxford Street (7/10)
Excellent Dance music and some choice reissues. How do they do it? The best major by a mile.

2. Out on the Floor (8/10)
Tucked behind Virgin on Hanway Street a grimey ally-way. A diamond mine in the sense that one has to dig a lot to find scant but valuable gems. And you get your hands mucky. And you need a boliersuit. And one of those hats with lights on them.

3. Virgin Oxford Street (1/10)
A very handy short-cut through to Tottenham Court Road.

Berwick Street Area.

4. Wotsit (2/10)
Not it's actual name. Never been in there, never actually been tempted past the Blue Peter/Trade cut-outs in the window. Not my kind of (hard) bag.

5. Selectadisc (5/10)
Boring. Nearly mainstream. Nice selection of magazines.

6. Reckless Dance (8/10)
Slightly over-priced (collector-speak for "they know what they're selling"). Always nice to gaze up at the racks on the wall and see what the staff deem serious kit. The alumni here are almost as hardcore as the Notting Hill M&V crew, but not quite. Often playing very ropey Jazzy Techno in the background for some reason.

7. Reckless Rock (7/10)
Managed by my friend Fred. A bit scrappy and the collector's basement has been neutered recently with stuff being siphoned off to the Dance Store, but a respectable outlet.

8. Soul Jazz (9/10)
On Broadwick Street. Aren't you surprised!?! Nine out of ten! I think this lot have come a long way from Sounds of The Universe in it's previous incarnation. This store is now a better bet than Rough Trade, which is sliding into a bit of a ghetto. Their Disco, Electronica and Rock sections are almost as good as their Jazz and Funk. Formidable.

9. Koobla (6/10)
Quite a recent discovery for me last year. I was pleasantly surprised. Basically a DJs shop but shearing into the "eclectic". Nothing to write home about.

10. Daddy Kool (6/10)
Run by Keith, the big white bloke with the red nose, who must be one of the most miserable characters alive. Keith has been regularly rude to me since 1989 when I first started visiting the shop. I don't think he works at the counter any more, but he's always on the phone whingeing at the dude who is. Daddy Kool are in the basement now, a more generic dance shop having taken over the top floor (3/10). Oh