WOEBOT

Totally T for tremendous documentary about Nu Groove records. Music sounds fucking fantastic.

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I just discovered this very entertaining interview John Prancehall did with Lee Perry. Mad crazy props to John for that.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:05 PM | Permalink

I'll be here now.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Shanty House - Friday 3rd November 2006, Whitechapel Art Gallery, from 8.00pm

"Shanty House brings a range of global urban music to the Whitechapel – from Baile Funk emanating from Brazilian favelas, to Kwaito the house-influenced sounds of South African townships and Desi, fusing traditional Indian music with Bhangra, hip hop, garage and reggae; from the Hip-Hop of the Deep South Crunk, to Jamaica’s dancehall and London’s Grime.

The opening night will include a performances from Tetine, a Soul Jazz signed Brazilian duo fusing baile funk with electroclash. DJs WOEBOT, Stelfox, Bun-u playing the best in crunk, grime, desi, baile funk, reggaeton, dancehall and hyphy. The night will kick off with a special screening of Resistencia: Hip Hop in Colombia, followed by a Q&A with Director Tom Feiling.

Resistencia: Hip-Hop in Colombia Director: Tom Feiling, 51 min, UK, 2002
Resistencia offers a rare look at the Hip-Hop street subculture in civil war-torn Colombia, while at the same time exploring how traditional Latino music is being infiltrated by rap. Following a summer in the lives of some of Colombia's finest rappers, DJs and break-dancers, the film explores how young Colombians feel about the crisis afflicting their country and the impact it has on their lives. Caught between left wing guerillas and right wing paramilitaries, these youths turn to rap as a way to express their points of view on the realities forced upon them by long-running violence, cultural crisis and the global cocaine trade. Youthful and entertaining, but also angry and enlightening, Resistencia bears witness to how the Hip-Hop culture has a major impact far from the "bling bling" of the U.S. music industry.

Tetine
Eliete Mejorado and Bruno Verner, both native Brazilians who have since relocated to London, created Tetine in São Paulo in 1995 by combining various cultural and artistic currents. Lying at the intersection of performance art, video, and dirty electronica, a Tetine concert comes off as a Latin American version of Fischerspooner, with the raw sounds of baile funk infusing the squelchy beats.

Tetine has also increasingly incorporated the aggressive beats of baile funk into their own more rock-oriented music, which Verner dubs "punk carioca" ... Tetine's forthcoming album, L.I.C.K My Favela (on Slum Dunk Records), draws even more heavily from baile.

DJs WOEBOT Stelfox and Bun-U
Have been DJing a variety of musics at London venues and on radio, with WOEBOT and Stelfox also making huge contributions to discourse through printed and web-based media."

Shanty House on myspace

Posted by WOEBOT at 01:55 PM | Permalink

This is the story of a record dealer called Soufriere1 from Canada.
He's obviously something of an expert.
Possibly a nice dude.
Almost certainly a little flakey.
Maybe something of a rip-off artist.
However things went belly-up.
Maybe owing to personal problems.
Maybe mounting debts.
One can track the fallout across the net:

He defends his use of patois here

More kvetching about the patois and then on...

This is his old eBay feedback where one can see things going wrong.

He gets himself a new eBay alias.

The winning bidder here fucks up his auction of an item. Clock their name.

People complain about his attitude here.

The full tale of woe, some people defend him, but many present tales of being burnt.

Where is he now?
It's a matter of time before his latest eBay alias is cracked.
Certainly if he presents his sales in the same way.
The story is interesting in the way in which it opens up that tension between anonymity and reputation.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:31 AM | Permalink

Ripping Reynolds's classic "Pirate Madness/Ardkore's Firin'" cassette onto a CD last week for artist Matt Stokes gave me the opportunity to check it out afresh. It consists of Simon's favourite bits of Pirate radio lunacy circa 1992. Nutters rushing out of their heads babbling inanities, phone-ins that go disastrously wrong, appalling almost surreal microphone placements and choons which slipped between the cracks. As an item it's somewhere up there with Hugo Ball's Dada manifesto.

What struck me most about it, and this relates to my remarks about Spaceape's MC-ing I suppose, was that the voices of the Disc Jockies and the MCs sounded a million miles different to how people talk today. Compared to today's pirate MCs they sound like medieval rabble. It's not just a case of shifting slanguage either there's something unplaceably foreign and alien, ruff and grimey about the voices. It made me quite emotional, almost in the way of them belonging to a "gone world", in a way that the just the music itself would never do.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:30 AM | Permalink

I was listening to Radio 3 the other day and it was some kind of Desert Island discs. I got hooked in by this fantastic bit of Opera by Donizetti. The man being interviewed was a high court judge who was a key member in an amateur orchestra. The interviewer asked him if he ever enjoyed any contemporary music. I sat on the edge of my seat. The high court judged took a deep breath and said, in all seriousness, that he would occasionally listen to post-war stuff. I dunno, I thought he was going to say he liked Glen Miller or something at the very least. Quite heartened by it actually.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:29 AM | Permalink

Following on from my previous round-up of stuff "wot i got sent" here's another seven CDs which got through the stringent WOEBOT selection process and which are all thoroughly deserving of your attention. It struck me that there's a strong post-dance music thing going on with all these records.

1. Belbury Poly: The Owl's Map

How on earth do Belbury Poly wind up with these extraordinary tunings? I swear you had to actually have lived and made library music in the early 80's to master the zeit-timbres they conjoure up. What no-one has pointed out about Belbury yet (er, at least to my knowledge, gulp) is that they make Techno. Zooming forward into the future as fast as they spin back in to the past (more Wicker-man here than ever before) both axes spinning like gears on a children's toy gyroscope. My Ghost Box tattoo hurt like hell, but now the scabs are falling off it's looking brilliant.

2. A Guy Called Gerald: Proto Acid

This A Guy Called Gerald release on Andrea Parker's Lab Instinct label just made me sigh. It's called Proto-Acid, when as Gerald is at pains to point out, it has no 303s on it. Why the hell call it "Proto-Acid" then? I know as well as anyone else that the early Detroit and Chicago crew were making music at the time of Acid which was factored into what was termed Acieed when it didn't use that particular Roland machine, or more complicatedly used the 303 but didn't tweak it for the corrosive lysergic frequencies which it became associated with after Pierre's defining opus. I suppose the Musique or Gherkin labels would be the archetypes of this. Even if as Gerald remarks: "It’s how I feel house/techno music would have sounded if the whole rave thing hadn’t happened in England" this is a convoluted reading of the history.

Y'see straight away one expects both a retro-tastic adventure and banks of squiggly frequencies; but one gets neither. There's nothing backward looking about this disc at all, this isn't one of those absurd Vibert-style stylistic re-runs, rather it's Gerald rather bossily showing the likes of Villalobos and Hawtin that he can do what they do. In terms of propulsiveness, efficiently and drama he does it better. Gerald performed a similar kind of ram-raid on jungle last year, surely putting numerous backs out with hilariously abusive PR about the scene which needed him to salvage it, but with less successful results.

"Proto Acid" is a curious thing. Twenty four individual tracks, seemingly designed with the mix's arc in mind, are segued seamlessly into a mix just over an hour long. I can't think of another long-player like it in concept? Tracks are just that. One doesn't get locked into individual eddys before being passed downstream to the next, the flow is more akin to being jettisoned at velocity through pipes of different material. As if in brutal contrast to his more recent song-led work there are no verse/chorus structures, the drama is entirely created through dynamics internal to the groove. To switch metaphors to one of driving: we glide through breathy tom-tom-ised gloom of "Auto Rebuild", past the plunging electro chords of "Space 1999" into the trebling percussion of "Droid" never pausing or regrouping. My personal highlight is the quite magnificent, sublime "Merlot Brougham" for which I'd trade all Aphex's dreary Analord stuff (from which same vein it emerges). "Feel the heat" is nearly as exquisite. One just has to flash on "Voodoo Ray" to remember that no-one passes energy around around a static groove with quite the same elan as Gerald.

Remember Gerald's reputation within house music has been tainted. "Voodoo Ray" brought him nothing but misery- he never got paid*, Automanikk was a flop for him at Sony, and it was really "Black Secret Technology" and break-beats which brought money with the fame. However my favorite AGCG moments have almost all been of that rottweiler-packing, uzi-toting brand of house he's peddled in his down-time: "All Night Baby" on Juice Box, "Universe 2000" and "Forever Changing" from 28 Gun Bad Boy, Inertia's "Nowhere to Run" on Carl Craig's Retroactive. So great to hear him rocking at 4/4 with the confidence of a don. U must check this. I swear blind you'll love it.

* Though before he dredges this up again I'd like to remind him that he owes me a couple of hundred quid...

3. Kode9 and the Spaceape: Memories of the Future

The first time I heard this it really rubbed me up the wrong way. Mainly down down to Spaceape's MC-ing. I'm convinced that patois has evolved since the mid-seventies and that no-one actually sounds like this. In One Drop for instance, the MCs manage to sound different to vintage toasters. There must be a degree of quotation in, not so much his lyrics, but in the tenor of his delivery which is defiantly classicist.

Reynolds is right to point to LKJ, Spaceape is very much in his mould, his intellektual bass-heavy delivery pitched up a quarter between MC and mellifluous singjay. I did find this retro element a little off-putting because the chat's covert effect, dread, became a little mannered. I didn't "buy" it. I much prefer the tracks like the excellent "Quantum" when he reigns in the stylisation, stops rolling every "hole" opening every "gate" and sounds, well, natural. It's almost as though expecting one to swallow the Ballard-ian poetry *and* the yard threat is too tall an order.

But recently I've picked it up again and it does work nicely as a mood-piece. It's rich in tone and atmosphere and full of lovely touches like the depressed accordion on "Glass" (like Danny Weed's signature sonic drunk and broke). Also I dig the The Specials overtones as much as the next man. It's a worthy successor to the Burial LP and in twenty years time the two will undoubtedly be remembered as the sound of 2006. Thanks to Steve for sending me a copy, especially given my misgivings about Dubstep.

4. Mordant Music: Dead Air

Baron Mordant has been sending me stuff for a couple of years and each time the results surpass the last. Last year's "The Tower" was good, but in its drive towards austerity was a little thin on detail. Dead Air which I've had since May (gulp) and which has lingered on my desktop like a marshland mist, is on the other hand tailored to perfection.

Interesting how some of the best things this past year (this and the Various stuff) have been faux-dubstep. In the past things like "Fungle" and much Intelligent Techno, in other words where self-styled artistes/auteurs have claimed to better an original genre, it has always been a turn-off to me.

5. Xylitol

Clenching it tight to his bosom. I'm their biggest fan. If I had a label I'd sign them.

6. Sacred Selections

This project was great fun. I got hold of Matt Stokes the artist who did it and he very kindly sent me the sumptuously packaged CD. Qua music its a strange thing, on the one hand the slightly elephantine organs struggle with all needlepoint dynamics of the music (Northern Soul, Happy Hardcore and Black Metal), and on the other the orchestration doesn't really do justice to the breadth of the instrument's sound. Also I'm afraid to say that the recording is very distant (a whole heap better than my dictaphone though) and you really want to have microphones down the pipes to get the volume up-close.

Matt did include an archive recording for the St Matthew's at Westminster performance on the 4th of May, the one I attended, and it's a much better recording and a more confident performance. I sent a copy of this to Simon and I sent Matt a copy of Reynolds's old "Pirate Radio Madness" tape (which I ripped to CD) and also Dj Wrongspeed's "Pirate Flavas". It's all art innit. If I remember rightly Mr. Wrongspeed was at the concert as well.

7. Si Begg: My Style

I don't really know anything about Si Begg, but he sent me this and it's really good Reese-bassline/breakbeat madness.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:46 AM | Permalink

I'm not exactly certain how I ended up checking out so much Italian Prog this year, and at moments putting together this piece I wondered what the hell I was doing listening to this often difficult music. I suppose I was fascinated with how such an intensely creative, individual music came into ascendence in such a short time-frame (1973 and 1974 if one's being harsh), I also have a missionary desire to redress the disproportionate celebrity Krautrock enjoys in the UK and US but in the process of immersing myself in it I came to really dig it and its nuances.

I wish I knew more about the background to the music, about the "anni di piombo", the Red Brigade, the radicalised campuses, the power of the unions. I suspect that youth made a concerted effort to channel violence in more constructive ways, but I'm afraid (like my German) my Italian is non-existent. I do know from reading interviews with musicians that these years were marked by an incredible degree of cooperation and "healthy competition" between groups. On the other hand with the context melting away, and as a foreigner both in time and geography, one is free to enjoy the music on its own merits. After a good deal of research I cherry-picked these records as being, perhaps, the absolutely best examples of the genre.

Alphataurus: Alphataurus

Alphataurus were either from Genova or Milan. No-one seems to be able to agree. This stunning one-off LP came out in 1973 in a triple gate-fold sleeve. I dig the absurdly portentous imagery but then my taste has been corroded by exposure to all things Prog. Part Black Sabbath with a dash of early King Crimson like a lot of Italian Prog it's probably better to describe it as, get your pen's ready, Symphonic Hard Rock. Amazing crescendos full of bravura, extraneous gamma-ray synths and some of the crispest, most satisfying drum-fills ever committed to tape.

Area: Crac!

A NWW record. Area must be the most typically "Prog" of all the Italian groups, on Crac! they even bought into the classic Prog "egg" motif. That they were theoretically "an international pop group" like wot it says on the cover, with members from Greece, Belgium and France, may have something to do with this. Their self-conscious focus on instrumental prowess (singer Demetrio Statos had a voice which spanned four octaves) and a dalliance with Jazz (later collaborating with Steve Lacy and Paul Lytton) make them appear somewhat like Henry Cow. However, unlike Henry Cow, as well as noodling with the best of them, Area could also write cracking tunes like on this record the insane vampire-funk of "La Mela di Odessa" and "Gioria e rivoluzione".

Balletto Di Bronzo: Ys

Which came up recently in reference to the Joanna Newsom LP of the same name. I first laid ears on BDiB in a double pack of delights which my friend Francesco sent me. The track "Eh eh ah ah" pretty much blew me away. Like a semi-acoustic Slade with floral pretensions there's a mascara'd moonboot stomp to their music which is exquisitely dread, traces as well of Canned Heat's "On the road again" churned into a tremulous fuzz-bass riff. That track isn't actually on this their classic LP. From Naples, "Ys" was released in 1972, my favorite here is the superbly depressed sounding "Introduzione", Gianni Leone having a unplaceably eldritch quality to his desperate vocals. This record is on the famous NWW list.

Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso: Darwin!

Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso: Io Sono Nato Libero

The giants of Italo Prog. I prefer the gentler sounds of "Io Sono Nato Libero" their third LP above "Darwin!", particularly "Non Mi Rompete", though all of their first three records are very good. Banco are still together, still touring and releasing records.

Franco Battiato: Sulle corde di Aries

One can half imagine at Progressive rock meets they have heated discussions about which of Battiato's LPs are the most superior. It's probably a toss-up between this from 1973 and Clic (1974) which garnered a reissue on Island records, one of the very few feats of cross-over that Italo Prog achieved. Clic is a little too anti-septic for my now hoary tastes, and I'm suspicious of anything like Bill Bruford, Peter Gabriel or Robert Fripp's work which dons a smart suit, tidies up the synth parts and saunters into the post-punk vanguard pretending it was now trendy.

Like those mass classroom scraps you had when you were a kid, the lame thing to do when the teacher showed up was to tuck your shirt in, loiter at the back pretending you were just examining the poster with the frog-spawn on it, that in no way were you involved in any kind of debacle. The stupid kids on the other hand didn't notice the teacher had come in, might have still been brawling, perhaps one holding a dustbin in his hand. Clic is a little bit too clean and thus, even though ten years ago we might have applauded it for being presciently new-wave, now I sort of despise it for its sleek textures.

My friend, the scholar Jon Dale gets plenty of props from me, so he can field the occasional catty swipe; he loves it! Jon is something of an authority on Battiato, indeed he was the first person to play me any, but in some way I suspect this may in some way be to do with the fact that FB survived the blood-letting that was punk and went on to do records such as "Cafe-Table-Musik", which Dale incidentally loves. Dale veers away from the unacceptable horror that these Italo Prog records represent and indeed some of the stuff he recommended I check out was rather too tasteful for me. Stuff like Prima Materia recordings and the Die Schnatel label. Ah, the meta-critical, nitty-gritty, bitch-fest that is music blogging! Doncha just love it.....

This record is one I'd dearly love to have an original vinyl copy of, I have instead a 1980s reissue of it bundled with Clic- both LPs tonsured to fit- the cover of which I'm too embarrassed to upload here. I saw a copy recently for $250 and baulked. Of these records I only have the Area, the two Banco Mutuo Del Soccorso, the PFM and the Goblin on vinyl. All the rest are CD reissues. You just couldn't afford to buy this stuff otherwise, but it's also fantastic that they are still available.

"Sulle corde di Aries" is a masterpiece and an essential purchase. Franco's singing is almost in the style of a Franciscan monk layered over these harpsichord and hand-drum grooves which are drenched in echo, hand-triggered bass pulses reverberating over freely-plucked mbira. In many ways it follows the original hairy impulse of minimal music as manifested in Terry Riley records like "Persian Surgery Dervishes" but Battiato's feel for melody and harmony is infinitely superior, one finding oneself adrift on these organic, divinely lyrical tracks is as though one was drifting down-river on a makeshift raft encircled by swallows.

Campo Di Marte: Campo Di Marte

This is a pleasantly gentle record of essentially instrumental, folky suites. Bedecked with flute and coloured with Faust-ian bier-keller scat, CdM's never hard-rocking use of electric guitar reminded me of Television in the way it's even-handed, groove-addicted and textural. Another Italo Prog one-off, by the time UA got round to releasing it in 1973, the band had split up.

Goblin: Suspiria

Nastay. Though occasionally lumped in with the rest of the Italian Prog rock of this era, Goblin are a different creature, though with "Roller" and "Il fantastico viaggio del "bagarozzo" Mark" they made a couple of good Prog LPs, they're not regarded as a Prog act in Italy but rather are associated with Dario Argento's films. What's more Goblin are obviously a studio band, their super-slick grotesquely synth-laden sound wouldn't be possible to execute any other way, while the rest of these bands are almost like live-music vehicles who assembled in the studio to transcribe their performance, a classical music trope that's broadly in keeping with their influences. Still "Suspiria" (1977, way outside of our 1973-74 timeframe) is a great record, and if I didn't include it, about the only record in here that's well-known, everyone would bleat at me.

Le Orme: Felona E Serona

Le Orme whose "Uomo di pezza" is also supposed to be very good, enjoyed something of a profile. Unlike many of these one-shot wonders they had a career. Like PFM they flirted with the US/UK rock machine, for instance "Felona E Serona" was translated into english by Peter Hammill and released on Charisma. There's this very fascinating fetish the Italian bands (and indeed practically every European nation apart from Germany) have with Genesis and Van Der Graf Generator. Someone I'm sure will pull me up on this, but I don't think Genesis circa "Tresspass/Foxtrot/Nursery Cryme/Selling England" were that huge a commercial proposition. It was Zep and Floyd who were the real behemoths. Looking at old interviews with them in the NME they appear to be quite like an aggrandised indie band in stature, nothing like your proverbial Arctic Monkeys though. Equally as regards to VDG, realistically how large an audience could there have been for a band like that, one so deliberately obscure? Yet certainly in Italy VDG were absolutely massive, an export on the magnitude of The Beatles. A recent interview I read with Hammill attests to the ferocity of their adoption. Genesis's reputation on the continent seems undinted too. I believe the Italian bands mapped their image of these groups onto their own expectations. Many tried to crack this market, thinking perhaps they were knocking on the gates of filthy lucre, and the story of what happened to these bands, how they succumbed to disillusion is at once pathetic and sobering.

"Felona E Serona" is a lovely contemplative rock record with a moving ecclesiastical bent. The singing, akin to the Battiato is like a canticle, the organ very often haunting and church-ical, the guitars usually acoustic, the bells on Felona too implying a connection to religious music. Again Prog, in the sense that it denotes the obfuscated ornate sound of bands like Henry Cow and Van Der Graf is a misleading classification. There's no getting away from the influence of Classical music on this record, most probably 19th century Romantic music like Puccini, Rossini and Verdi. That's dead Spinal Tap on the one hand, but there's so little here derived from the blues that there's nowhere else these sounds could have originated from. Actually it's the same nationally-determined musical sensibility which makes Krautrock so fascinating.

Metamorfosi: Inferno

I found this suite themed on a trip into Dante's Inferno quite hard work. Not dissimilar at times to Goblin but less slick. A lot of these Italian CDs have been made available via Japan, often in box-xets of mini-LP CDs (never came across this format before-square card cases with CDs in them) and the similarity of this very noir-ish heavy rock to Japanese things like Lost Araaf and Acid Mothers Temple is unmistakable. More than Sabbath, the Italian Symphonic Hard Rock (titters love those words) is the font of that sound.

Museo Rosenbach: Zarathusa

"Zarathusa" is the definitive Italian Prog album. Correspondent Francesco amused me by saying he absolutely hates it, and in many ways it's truly appalling. Portentous, flashy, emotionally over-wrought, the first time you hear it you're struck by Stefao Galifi's ridiculously over-the-top vocals which conjure up package-holiday nightmares of Joe Cocker sound-a-likes fronting bands rocking Italian bars. But given time, and having fully absorbed the context of Italian Symphonic Hard Rock, you find yourself grokking on it. Driving around town with this blaring out of my van I'll confess to feeling like a righteous dude.

Palepoli: Osanna

A furry, long-form freak-out with medieval trappings like Metamorfosi's "Inferno". Terrible flat sound slightly ruins it, even so I reckon Kid Shirt would like this.

Premiata Forneria Marconi: Storia di un minuto

PFM went on to have the largest international profile of all these bands with a brace of records with the most appalling covers imaginable. I think they must have connected with the Italian diaspora. Their early "Storia di un minuto" may be my favorite of all these LPs listed, it's a very lyrical, accessible record with lovely harmonies and melodies, each side put together like a suite. If I told you it reminded me of ELO and Wizzard would that put you off dreadfully? It would. OK.

Quella Vecchia Locanda: Quella Vecchia Locanda

The maxim goes that Germany was filled with bands copying Black Sabbath then Italy was full of bands copying Jethro Tull. Translating as "that old inn", QVL were from Rome and their flute passages apparently give lie to the influence of Jethro Tull upon them. I have a very scratchy copy of Tull's "Aqualung" which I bought for two pounds in the process of researching this piece and I was quite appalled by how conventional it is, like a gruesomely leaden pub-rock band with the most pedestrian third-hand folk flavors. Conversely QVL's "Un Villaggio, un'Illusione" is a masterpiece of prodigious mind-fucking hard-rock with one of thee "ur" churning guitar riffs and fabulous heroic impassioned vocals.

Semiramis: Dedicato A Frazz

Another one-off. Apparently Semiramis were teenagers, a fact which blows my mind given the degree of co-operation necessary to make this music. It's one thing to dole out "Louie Louie"-style 4/4 rawk, quite another to work up a music which ebbs and flows like this, though perhaps I'm being unfair to teenagers? I suppose the Michele Zarrillo's fruity vocals must be a chief attraction, and it looks like he's still got something of a sophisticated, Euro-Pop career going on. To describe the record: plangent acoustic guitar, hard-riffing electric guitar, almost junglistic revolving drum patterns (!), bells and an occasionally off-putting cheap "ballroom" synthesiser.

Tilt: Arti E Mestieri

Thanks to the be-shirted kid for sending this my way via his West Country Progressive alliance. It was on my shortlist, but unavailable to buy. I showed our kid the sleeve which I googled and he quipped: "It's the jazz museli funnel...!" I thought that was very funny. Almost entirely instrumental in a Jean Luc Ponty (here be violins!) and Zappa/Duke fusion-y vein it's not exactly my cup of tea. The drumming is super-human though, birds-wing flurries like Billy Cobham's stuff with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, who would also be an obvious reference point. The synthesiser with the grand piano pre-set a particular low-light, but you have to admire the artistic consistency of this stuff. I think appreciating a sustained palette of sound is probably the key to digging Prog. It often sounds like turd, but if you cut that turd in two and there are no hazlenuts secreted within it, then you've just got to stand back, stroke your chin and admire it.

Un Biglietto Per L'Inferno: Un Biglietto Per L'Inferno

Another NWW record. I never went through that list until recently and was surprised to find how much stuff I recognised in there. Un Biglietto Per L'Inferno is yet another one-off release and it's a super LP, not finicky at all, just righteous rocking grooves assembled fluidly and not with one ear on creating deliberately jarring contrasts (that famous prog cliche). Highly recommended.

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In the course of exploring Italian Prog I found Augusto Croce's excellent Italian Prog site completely invaluable. Also crucial was the peerless Gnosis database. Queerly and synchronously some time in the middle of my investigations I noticed this excellent ilm thread started I believe by the critic Mark Prindle. I came across the dealer Doug Larson through eBay where I made some purchases, and he was very helpful in sorting me out with CDs of this music, and bursting with recommendations.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Walking up Whitecross Street I saw this record in the gutter. I didn't pick it up.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:03 AM | Permalink

This is a very crude mock-up of a record I dreamt I found in the back of a rack upstairs in the collectors bit of the Music and Video Exchange in Notting Hill. It's by Liquid Liquid's Dennis Young. There were three in the set but I only picked up the first one.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:01 AM | Permalink

If there's one record that'll be huge this year it's this 'un. It's already got something of a history attached to it without having been released. At first Pitchfork made a cock-up and left their promotional copy up on a easily-reachable part of their server. Lots of people downloaded it. Then some online outlets made the CD available before its official release which is in November. It was then subsequently made "unavailable" but some of the released copies have found their way onto eBay. I found a dealer offering up a copy but then found the sale terminated before the auction had run its course. I approached the dealer and he told me the record company had asked him to remove it from sale. Yikes. I wonder who in the hierarchy gets the job of net snoop? Is it the office boy or is there a new category of employee to deal with these situations?

As is very well-known, the record has arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, is engineered by Steve Albini and produced by Jim O'Rourke. Er, talk about over-egging the production talent. Presumably Jack Nitszche would have been asked to contribute were he alive and they couldn't get Phil Spector cos he was tied up in legal proceedings. They don't ruin it though. Simon and Carl have had a few words to say about its five, lyrical, symphonic suites. My feeling is that it's dead proggy, which is certified in triplicate and then rubber-stamped by the cover. Kind of like an ever-so-slightly more melodic version of peak-period Genesis.....yet acoustic. The problem with that being that it's a bit long on mewl and thin on hooks. The LP even shares a title with a classic Italo Prog LP by Balletto Di Bronzo. Ys was a mythical city in the Douarnenez Bay in Brittany which was built below sea-level and protected by a dam but which was subsequently flooded. There are clearly resonances here with the levee breaking on New Orleans.

I did prefer single tracks off "The Milk-Eyed Mender" and I miss her sounding like a demented eight-year old (alas we get older) but the suites are growing on me like moss and even though it won't necessarily be my record of the year, it stands an excellent chance. In fact although I have reservations about Devandra, the twin-pronged assault of this and "Cripple Crow" put their nexus at the critical fore-front, in front of Dubstep, in front of Grime, in front of Minimal Techno. Who'd have thunk it?

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Visual post-script:

Have a quick butchers at these two earlier Newsom CDs (not mine I hasten to add), "Walnut Whales" and "Yarn and Glue" which she sold at her early shows.....

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Steve Wright can't resist making a total prat of himself on the introduction, and what's the weird voice-over in the middle of Bartos and Flur's exquisitely funky drumming? It's as though both voices are embarassed by the stark emptiness of the music. By-the-by, just like you, I've always loved the eddying trans-lingual puns of "Fahren, fahren, fahren" in relationship to The Beach Boys (Kraftwerk's avowed adoration) "Fun, fun, fun". Kraftwerk, sighs.

Posted by WOEBOT at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"The Edit"

When did the remix become the "edit"?

"Er yeah man, we just did an "edit" of weird-disco-staple/improbably-funky-krautrock-track/post-punk-frug-oddity (delete as appropriate)..."

Why this horrible new form? Why does every reissue have to come attached with Such'n'Such DJs "edit"?

The logic is that they're supposed to be inherently more respectful to the original; edits are flushed with neo-rockist sanctity. The DJs seem to suggest they're doing a reel-to-reel-style cut-and-paste of the source material (deprived as they are of the spearate tracks) yunnuh in an "old skool style". Shades of Ron Hardy/Grandmaster Flash. Even when often they're coercing rough old tunes into the 4/4 Ableton Live grid. Yawn.

It's all so pointless, pious and un-inventive.

On DJ Screw

A client asked me to slow down some audio today and upon doing it it really brought home some of the, perhaps under-acknowledged, aspects of what Screw was doing. Within the digital realm, in which I was editing the sound, the waveforms immediately became steppy, the sound taking on the hollow corrupted quality of machine noise. We're all familiar with the occasionally ugly, cheap sound of digital processing. Jungle quite often managed to make a merit of it: "Ba-by-lon-a-fa-all" but usually rubbing it against mountainous drums.

Screw of course, made all his messes in the analogue realm. If you slow a record down, or a tape, or a reel-to-reel, even as the sound becomes weirder and weirder the waveforms still maintain their integrity. You might think I'm pimping some audiophile purism here, but can you imagine wanting to listen to a Screw-tape that was made out of aiffs/wavs/mp3s slowed-down? Gah, it's sound horrific!

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

(This entry has had a re-edit owing to a severe case of oeuf-sur-le-visage.)

In a year in which I've bitterly complained about the reduction in horizons for music there has been a considerable amount of good stuff to listen to. It's almost as though auteurs thrive in those times when a central drift, the absence of which I'm lamenting, is not apparent. We've had notable long-playing wax from Ghostface Killah, Matmos, Hot Chip, Scritti, Scott, Various, Johnny Dark, Villalobos, Luciano, Burial, Lily Allen, Devandra Banhart and The Arctic Monkeys, but they've all been distinguished by their distance from each-other, working apart in different scenes. It's been a year for the Neo-Rockist Pop picker.

It's been a good year for re-issues as well. Floating my boat have been the two exquisitely packaged Music Box records, fully-endorsed and taken directly from Ron Hardy's stash of reel-to-reels, great stuff on the Trunk label, the second No-Wave Sampler on Soul Jazz (hold tight for Argabright's Vol.3), the Broadcast collection of rarities and Martin's "Roots of Dubstep" compilation.

There have been other interesting records as well, and I just happened to have been sent them in my capacity as hob-knobbing blogger. I get tied-up in knots over the promotional stuff I recieve, and let me assure you this is the merest fraction of it. I do listen to everything, but I'm super-conscious about being co-opted or steered (making me the publicist's worst nightmare) so rest assured if I say it's interesting I believe it to be.**

Ike Yard: 1980-1982 Collected

Massive respect to Dan at Acute for making this stuff available once more. I suppose I was a bit-player in the story of the reissue of this material a fact which I find pretty blimmin exciting. Given that the Ike Yard stuff is so spectacularly moribund and bleak, frothing up with enthusiasm about it seems like a direly misplaced reaction. Yet froth I do, even when I could be accused of already having said quite enough on the subject. My feelings about Ike Yard in a nutshell? This was the real No Wave. I get the argument about No Wave desecrating Rock by mimicking it, but had Lunch and Chance jacked into JA dub and NDW they'd have been far more menacing and threatening to the corpus rockisticus. Also I'd like to go on the record to say that New Order quite obviously copped Argabright's moves. This is an essential purchase for 2006.

Tazartes: Check Point Charlie

Morlu's reissue of Ghedalia Tazartes's thrillingly obtuse 1990 record splices in two recently recorded tracks. It is fair, I think, to say CPC is not quite as madly-errant as "Diasporas" "Transports" and "Une Eclipse Totale de Soleil" all classics, but given that Tazartes discography over the past thirty years only amounts to these four and 1997's "Voyage A L'Ombre" well you'd probably ought to check it out. Anyway if you like Tazartes it's all gravy. The drum-machine/accordian/mumbling bits here are brilliant.....

The Beauty Room

Ha! I've always kept faith in Kirk Degiorgio and this utterly bizarre Soft Rock mini-opus sees my stock soar. Yunnuh if it's like okay to use a metaphor borrowed from finance around all you pseudo-commie cunts? I'm gonna fall back on the references game just because this a record you really need to get a handle on and this may be the best way. Here goes: Bee Gees with the tiniest flava of Van Der Graf Generator (honestly!), Nazz, CSN, Donald Fagen and a whole heap of Steely Dan, 10cc, Sergio Mendes "Togetherness", that hinterland between Chicago/Peter Cetera and Soft Soul with commercial ambition aka Withers/Womack/Earth, Wind and Fire, also nuff British klassik loser-MOR with soul-boy ambitions ie Level 42. Suffice to say to make a record like this is a stroke of genius, especially when it's done without even the slightest irony and real class. The chutzpah of the man!

Grizzly Bear: Yellow House

This is nice enough I guess in a breezy Van-Dyke-Parkian/Feelies-Good-Earth sort of way. If there's one record this year that it seems people are desperate for me to like, to tow the line on, it must be this one. I'll admit that kinda made me stick my donkey hooves in the dirt. But it is nice and an improvement on Grizzly Bear's last stuff which man like Derek Walmsley very kindly sent me last year. I think there's some elliptical connection to Animal Collective here, though I can't quite remember what it is, something to do with the producer or summat. Anyway if I'm wrong who gives a fuck anyway? It's a poorly-researched, badly-punctuated weblog and I reserve the right not to read the press info sheets and searching Google for information just bores the shit out of me.

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* Outdoor sleeve photos taken in my local park which has been redesigned by my neighbor and acquaintance Peter Saville!
** I'm still eagerly awaiting the completed Focus Groop's LP dropping and Xylitol's latest offering.

Posted by WOEBOT at 03:20 PM | Permalink

I went to The Green Man Festival over the weekend. The line-up was, to be honest, pretty unremarkable. I just wanted to go to scarf up some excellent food, check out the beautiful countryside and sleep in the van. The festival itself is problematic in loads of ways, most obviously because it is so bloody "civilised", so comfortably comfortable. Most of the people in attendance were in their thirties or forties. There were no pile-driving bpms, no fires made from plastic cider bottles, no proper travelers in squatting out of converted lorries like I remember from festivals I'd been to in the past, no dogs on strings, no day-glo-attired freaks rushing on bad amphetamines, hardly any gross drunkenness.

I thought I'd miss all that more than I did but I was too busy enjoying not being kept up all night by jabbering teds, loos which weren't caked with shit, the aforementioned nosh and the peaceful and unassumingly friendly air of folks. Of the set of festie characters: goths in fancy dress, screw-face pikeys, studded-leather-jacket-clad trad punks, and righteous, drunkenly pontificating students I only had to tolerate the latter (though technically speaking she wasn't a student...)

The Main Stage

The first thing I caught was the last third of Donovan's set. The hits bit. God Donovan is such an eedjut! If you haven't seen him being interviewed on telly, well you've been spared I guess. He has the most absurd, fey, supercilious manner. He almost seems to revel in his own plummy ridiculousness, in the middle of "Hurdy Gurdy Man" breaking into a spoken word skit about his time in Rishikesh with "Four Beatles, A Beach Boy and Mia Farrow". It was (still cringing) one of the most embarrassing things I've ever witnessed. It's almost as though he was trying, by force of character and tenaciousness to his idiot-savant pose, to break through his own bullshit to some transcendental post-societal mores, to some new progressive trope for talking and walking. Let me assure you it wasn't happening for him. But only a fool would diss "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and as for "Season of the Witch" and "Mellow Yellow" we-e-e-l they're rather lovely. Even if his Crown Prince of UK Folk shtick is wrong-headed I really enjoyed seeing him.

That night the DJ Tent was absolutely kicking, courtesy of the brilliant Gareth Cherrystone. Gareth is the veritable boondog, the king of the library breaks bods. Gareth's obscurely-sourced grooves actually emote and connect. He was tearing the house down with these unfeasibly funky hard rock tunes. The only one I recognised being Sabbath's "War Pigs", lord that (brum) drum and bass backing is phenomenal. Other tracks I could only fumble at identifying: a Dylan-meets-New-Orleans hoodoo rock number called "Me and Mr.Horner" something which sounded exactly like The Rolling Stones title vaguely suggested "Smiling Faces" (could have been The Undisputed Truth?). I wish to god I had a tape of his set. Flashos and I speculated about what other tunes he could have spun on a World tip: Quella Vecchia Locanda's "Un Villaggio, un'Illusione" and Gilbert Gil's "Aquele Abraco" tunes which might have really set the fox amongst the chickens.

John Renbourn

John Renbourn's set the following evening was also magnificent. In his early seventies, Renbourn (UK folk stalwart, Pentangle member) busted some fantastic moves. His acoustic guitar sparked like a mountain brook. Raining, ranging and ringing. Renbourn was hugely charming, curmudgeonly, tender. His oeuvre revealed a journeyman's enthusiasm for all manners of music: blues, shanties, hymns, calpysos, bluesgrass all digested with his critical ear but presented so casually within the frame of "here's something an old boy taught me". The crowd adored him like an errant grandfather, loved his stories like the one he told about his neighbor in Scotland. Renbourn: "The weather has been lovely these past few weeks Angus!" Farmer Angus: "Ay, but we'll pay for it..."

...in the rain

There was a glut of disappointing music. Lots of the sort of bands who get saddled with the epithet "Really Good Live Bands", Levellers-a-alike who were plain atrocious. Plenty of worthy but dull things like the woeful Jose Gonzales. This guy sounds bored to sobs. Bored with himself, his own voice and with his leaden guitar work (like pylon cables to John Renbourn's proverbial country stream). Jose's music sounds similar lots of things: Bill Withers, Arthur Russell, Nick Drake circa Pink Moon all with with a dose of flamenco. It's a unique enough fusion but lacks any intensity from Gonzales himself. Reports that he hates performing at festivals only compound the image I have of him as a reluctant (and thus undeserving!) star.

Steve Reid and Kieran Hebden

Something that snuck up on me was Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid. Marcus at Dissensus told me their collaboration was worth checking out and he was not wrong. There's an unusual empathy these two have with each-other, separated as they are by a gulf of years. Their quasi-harmolodic pile-up of heavy synth fx and martial, often Hard Bop-esque drumming is bracing like a storm in the mountains. Hebden, who I've never had much time for, only because he seems like a nice middle-class boy like myself, has acquired something like a midi-patch virtuosity wringing violent abruptly-conjoured stabs from his array of powerbook, mixer and key-pad. Reid, on the other hand, a veteran of the peerless Strata-East stable really sweated and pounded, heavy riddim shaking his tiny wirey frame as he rolled out Liebezeit-esque tom-tom salvos*, delicate hi-hat filigrees and positively thunderous kick-drum. These cats jammed! And the crowd (amazingly) seemed to lap up this near-improv sonic white-storm. Old head that I am the highlight had to be Hebden's almost unexpected hijacking of Rhythm is Rhythm's ambient mix of "Strings of Life", I say almost unexpected because it sort of made explicit the connection running from the Strata East cosmic heavyweights through Defunkt, James Blood Ulmer, Jamaaladeen Tacuma into Detroit Techno and beyond.

In the way of things it might have been that my most cherished musical memory of the weekend was leaving The Green Man behind, setting off up across the Black Mountains in the van to visit an old friend (dare I say hermit?) high in the peaks in his wild hill farm to Led Zeppelin III. Weaving through impossibly beautiful scenery to the tune of "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp".

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*Note the back-of-Ege-Bamyasi quality of my photo ;-)

Posted by WOEBOT at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've always liked Boy George so I come not here to gloat. My, this man's career in the spotlight has been tumultuous! Even since the spectacular fireworks of Culture Club and his very publicly denounced Heroin habit we've had a number of George O'Dowds, the George who slipped into the Acid House slipstream and gave us the More Protein label and MC Kinky, the comfortable, suave, middle-aged man ensconced in his palatial home off Hampstead Heath and finally the New York-based, slightly-deranged, gonzoid individual behind a Broadway flop, the bizarre investigation into a misplaced call to the police (shades of mental instability) and subsequent photo-call street sweeping.

I can't help but wish George, for his own sake, had pushed the pause button five or six years before and didn't go to the States. I know Culture Club were massive over there but that was in the nascent days of MTV, at the height of New Pop and probably the last time British Music made a sizable impact in the USA. As it seems everyone but George knew, the mid-eighties backlash against the supposedly quasi-homosexual values which his era of pop embodied was irrevocable and total.

Even more than a band like REM whose earthy, heterosexual-masculine* Byrds-revisionism came to define the underground (you could even argue the SST school was subsumed within its vision), that Bruce Springsteen encapsulated this return to "real" values. When I see George being made to sweep the gutters of Manhattan I flash on both his failure to understand that America will always seek to punish him for leading it aesthetically astray and also on those early publicity shots of Springsteen walking the streets** of his hood Asbury Park, New Jersey.

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* Ironic in the light of Michael Stipe's sexuality perhaps?
** Notice the guy stooping in the background.....

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I'm an animator, though I don't often get to flex my skills with characters. I'm working on that. Somebody once asked me whether I was down with Disney or Warner Brothers. Without even a moments hesitation, Warners, though Shere Khan in the Jungle book you can't knock that!

I picked up these excellent Tom and Jerry DVDs for my babies and I've been getting as much pleasure as them from them as Lulu and Sam have. This scene from "Puss N'Toots" (1942) is definitely WOEBOT material.

Download it here. You'll need the latest version of QuickTime.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:52 AM | Permalink

This just in from Gwen at iueke who appears to have recently restocked. Apparently Leslie hand-painted each copy.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:43 AM | Permalink

I know I've been really skeptical about Dubstep, Martin and Steve must be sick to death of my moaning, but in the past couple of days the output of the DMZ label has been socking my rocks. I have listened to a man-sized share of Dubstep in the past, I don't take a deliberately pugilistic standpoint just for kicks, mine has never been an ill-informed perspective; but nothing with the exception of the tiniest fragments of the music have ever really got me going.

It's like back in the day when I was spliff-toting Jungle evangelist, anything whatsoever within the form, anything with rolling amen breaks at all, I thought was brilliant. The friend who I was living with hated jungle, he used to attend those awful TIP parties where a brand of very electronic Goa Trance ruled the day. Our mutual friend Simon Posford aka Hallucinogen was the ruling lord of the scene. I just thought it was a striktly Public School affair, for LSD-deranged trust-fund kids only, and I was really disparaging about it even as I had to endure my friends mixtapes every night. I got dragged along to one of their raves once, sat screwing my face up in the corner.

The only trance music I could tolerate was by this, I think German outfit, called Kox Box. Really amazing stuff. My friend had to concede that this was indeed, probably, the best thing the scene had to offer. He on the other hand was only really struck by Ruffige Cru's "Terminator", and I guess it had to hand it to him right back...

I don't know why it's taken me so long to discover the DMZ label? Until recently I've had a microscopic Dubstep collection on vinyl: The first Rephlex Grime LP, Kode 9's "Kingstown", Scream's "Midnight Request Line", Martin Clark's "Roots of Dubstep" LP, some stuff that Skull Disco sent me, and the Burial CD. That was it. Small but perfectly formed. But then I started stumbling across this Loefah and Digital Mystikz stuff. I don't like all of it, my favourites are Loefah's "Horror Show", Coki's "Mood Dub", Digital Mystikz "Neverland/Stuck", Loefah's "Goat Stare/Root" and his latest "Rufage/Mud". But that's quite a lot isn't it? Totally eclipsing the amount I previously owned.

I heard "Mud" when I went out with kek-w and I really liked it, though completely gave up the idea of ever being able to identify it. Such a lopsided rhythm and a really unusual feel for space. Unfortunately the rest of the night left me pretty cold, actually colder and colder until boredom set in. People have told me the DMZ night is better, but it's a bit late for all that now isn't it? The vibe probably isn't what it was.

If you'll tolerate an outsider's perspective I'll tell you what I think about Dubstep. It's caught between two "rhythmic pleasure tropes", on the one hand there's the satisfaction inherent in repetition. This is obviously something that the Rhythm and Sound posse excel in, them and Steve Reich. The repetition is lulling and narcotic. On the other hand, a vestige of Two-Step, it's locked into the vertical drama of funk. The problem being that in terms of pleasure-centre rapture ne'er the twain do meet*. The music can't be vertical and autobahn-motorik-horizontal. Therefore the best of this music, and the quality of the DMZ label's music has slowly improved, has in time made a pact with the infinite.

From what I understand the DMZ crew (that's Coki, Mala -together Digital Mystikz- and Loefah), came from slightly outside the scene. I suspect from the Aba-shanti Digital Steppers part of the world. Their tryst with Dub-proper has them keyed into the value of horizontal music. It's funny cos I've always remarked how Dubstep feels empty to me, but this doesn't matter in horizontal music, it's not an issue, vacuity is actually an asset. Furthermore the presence of song-form devices like chorus/bridge/intro only clog up a good riddim. From what I've heard though it doesn't seem like anyone else has a handle on how to create those fascinating, trickily-poised rhythmic patterns that lope inexorably forward like an unstoppable mechanical elephant. From what Gutter played me only the geezer Bounty Hunter can match the DMZ stuff.

Buy DMZ mp3s here...

*Detroit Techno also had the same issues with vertical and horizontal rhythm which it best resolved through rhythmic density (something like Rhythm is Rhythm's "The Beginning" or texturally in the barren timbres of "The Art of Stalking").

** To anyone left in the world who doesn't know by now....

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

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Posted by WOEBOT at 04:34 PM | Permalink

1) Richard Hawley "Cole's Corner". This is really nice in a Jake Thackery wordy Northern gloom, delated Morissey, Chris Isaac at the end of the pier kinda fashion.

2) Lily Allen. This is actually half OK. There must have been lots of Reggae in their household. It compares quite favorably in spirit to The Slits and unlike MIA who conjured up roughly the same mirage with a load of bullshit attached, is quite palatable. I wouldn't buy it, but I'd wrap it up nicely and give it to Tom Ewing for Christmas or if my baby girl was seven and I was one of those kinda self-consciously stylish Dad's I'd slip it under her door.

3) Some of the comments here amongst the most inane ever committed in the name of music journalism.

On Yossou N'Dour's "Immigres":

"Without this ... N'Dour wouldn't have met Peter Gabriel, there'd have been no African presence at Live 8. In fact, 'world music' would not exist as a section in Western collections."

N'Dour would never have met Peter Gabriel? And? Yes? Your point here precisely?

Who gives half a flying fuck about the African presence at Live 8? Musically speaking I was quite glad there was almost no African presence at Live 8, because if there had been it would have compromised the event's utter shiteness. I'd have had to taken the whole thing seriously, rather than just outta hand dismissing it like I did. The first time I saw any footage was this year, and boy was I glad for the 365 day buffer. If I'd been able to watch it on Pluto that'd have been slightly more agreeable.

World music existing as a "section" in Western music collections? Clearly fatuous and wrong-headed. I don't know if this makes me detest the Observer's relentlessly middle-brow aesthetic or just people in general.

On Massive Attack's "Blue Lines"

"Without this ... no Roots Manuva, no Dizzee. In fact, there would be no British urban music scene to speak of."

Jesus wept. The very idea of one LP having anything whatsoever to do....actually I give up with this one. Possibly thee most stupid thing I have ever read.

4) Quite a lot of this amounts to Observer bashing, and I thought I'd leaven it with a few words about Paul Morley. When I went to see Chris Bohn at The Wire to try and talk him into running my NDW Primer (back in the day when I gave a toss), he told me I referenced too much other music in my reviews. I always really liked it when you read a review and the reviewer said "like such'n'such rare interesting thing". Sometimes I thought that that was the only good thing about reviews, that and being told whether the record was worth investigating. To be told this was a bad thing, well it went right over my head to be honest. Bohn also seemed to think that this was me copying Paul Morley. Again I was totally baffled because I've never seen anything Morley has written. I've read one very recent piece he wrote about Brian Eno's music being used for a commercial, how we should applaud that, and that is it. I never read the NME back in the day, I was playing with my chemistry set.

I know what Bohn is referring to though because, "Words and Music" (which again I haven't read) is famous for its lists. For eventually dissolving into lists. Also I suppose the rhizome-like thing about references, who knows maybe that passed into the body of Rock Crit via Morley's influence? Maybe I've been unwittingly influenced? Nothing to be ashamed of at all in that, I suppose I may have picked it up as a habit secondhand via Simon Reynolds (who I copped practically everything off I didn't copy from Lester Bangs).

But just for the record, even though I pretty much despise the Observer and Guardian's music coverage I'd like to say that I think Paul is a righteous dude. Frankie was a supremely insane intervention and (the meat of this ramble) he has excellent taste as is visible here in this list, which Tim Finney at ilx amused me by saying was very like my own, if just a shade more middlebrow. I got some cool things out of Paul's list. I found a copy of Kevin Ayer's "Shooting At The Moon" and also Fairport Convention's "Unhalfbricking" which is indispensable. Though Neutral Milk Hotel, which I also picked up on his recommendation, was I dunno, really gruesome and Middle-American in the most banal way. And he was great on Simon's RIUASA panel. And you can see him on the telly.

Posted by WOEBOT at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I think I've mentioned the dudes behind eBay's hottest and heaviest Bollywood deals, the legendary Bombay Beat before? Well, you could have blown me down with a feather when just the other day I got an email from Holland's Edo Bouman, the man behind the alias, alerting me to two CDs he's putting out. I suppose they amount to recordings of the absolute cream of the Indian Soundtracks that have passed through his hands. I usually automatically delete music industry spam, but trust me people this is extremely different. As soon as I get my shit together I'll be buying these two lavishly packaged, impressively organised babies.

Get them here.

Posted by WOEBOT at 05:44 PM | Permalink

When you have children you find that you listen to their music quite a lot of the time. At home on television, in the kitchen on CDs, on their little tape recorders in their bedrooms, in the car especially. Never buy your children CD players by the way because the CDs get mashed to fuck. I learnt this the hard way. C90s are the only way to go because they're so sturdy, OK the tape can jam in the player but you can always thread it out of the machine and if needs be splice the ends together in the event of a breakage. This is the same reason they're still big in the harsh climatic conditions of The Third World. I expect everyone will be able to cast their minds back to gluing or sellotaping cassettes back together and the ritual of correctly disassembling and reassembling the case itself, each element having to be in precisely the right slot or the cassette will fail to work and the satisfaction of a correctly repaired cassette.

My babies have always had well-stocked collections of music, it's the least I can do, right? But I've resolutely avoided pandering to my own tastes, so no Classical Avant-Garde Music. I've always tried to think what it would be that they'd like. Subsequently we listen to lots of Disney music, the divine Mary Poppins Soundtrack was a big favorite of ours, the Jungle Book Soundtrack, but also lesser drek like songs from Beauty and The Beast and The Lion King. There's a CD by this lady called Vanessa King who runs the London Symphony Orchestra Discovery Workshops which runs out of the converted St. Luke's church beside our house called "Jemma's Journey and Abi's Adventure" which they love, and which is (if you can get past the kiddie flavor) exceptionally musical and charming. Actually if you know someone with small children, or have them yourself I couldn't recommend it highly enough. The furthest I go towards indulging myself is HMV's excellent two CD collection of Children's Classics. Funnily enough the most randomly persistent emails I've got since the dawn of WOEBOT was about these songs, at least until I edited the entry.

Listening to songs like the woman's hour choir singing "All things bright and beautiful" and "The Laughing Policeman" one feels an unbearable nostalgia for times before Rock'n'Roll when life was simpler. I mean, when would a Policeman ever laugh these days? When he busted your big sister's prostitution racket or found that tiny rock of crack you tried to secrete in your shorts? That innocence is long gone. It was funny reading through Joe Boyd's excellent "White Bicycles" recently and his account of Dylan's electrification at Newport, a moment Boyd not inaccurately believes to be the birth of Rock (even if that account hardly does his own reputation any harm...). Boyd remarks that though the crowd, who until that moment had been innocently righteous folkies, were thrilled by Dylan's racket, there was apparently a strong sense in the air that something that something had been lost. I guess I think lyrical obscenity is a good thing and as for sonic barbarity, bring it on baby, but yunnuh a little piece of me would be quite happy without the likes of Chamillionaire (bad example I guess cos it's just so fucking formulaic)

We have lots of tapes by The Wiggles. The Wiggles TV show goes out on Nick Jr in the UK and we've watched it with the kids lots. I like to watch TV with my babies, I don't want to just plonk them in front of it like k-punk's archetypal pot-smoking parents plugging their children into Teletubbies. Consequently I know all about all the programs, Dora, Diego, Little Bill, Little Bear, Charlie and Lola, Boogie Beebies, Bob The Builder, Tikabilla, Balamory, The Tweenies (a personal favorite, it seems I enjoy The Tweenies more than my children), Lazytown (unbelievably catchy Euro-Trance-Pop tunes), Pingu, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Brum, Big Cook Little Cook. I know my shit, I'm telling you. The Wiggles are an Australian invention and Tim Finney and Jon Dale will be able to tell you all about them. It was as though someone re-scripted The Monkees for the under sixes but was sure to leave out anything even vaguely sexualised or culturally surreptitious (we all know what happened to The Monkees right? Head etc)

Conventional post-teen wisdom (which actually I suspect Jon and Tim don't subscribe to...) would have it that The Wiggles are a travesty. But actually I think they're wonderful. Greg, Murray, Jeff and Anthony are so unremittingly good-humoured, so cheerful in such a uncalculated manner, their songs so daftly hooky that I find them irresistible. When we found out in January that they were coming to London I was even toying with getting FACT to let me interview them for the magazine. This morning we all set off in the van to the Hammersmith Apollo to see them play their one and only UK show on their world tour. The last time I'd been to the Apollo was in 1987 when I broke out of school on my own to see The Fall on their Frenz Experiment tour and was sick on booze in the bushes. Funnily enough my wife buys underwear off Brix these days.

The place was packed in a ratio 8:4:1 (children:mothers:fathers) The band were their charming beatific selves and played all the big hits you don't know and I love. Opening with my personal favorite "Rock-A-Bye-A-Bear" and trotting through "Wags the Dog", "Quack, Quack, Quack, Cockeldoodle Do", "The Good Ship Feathersword", "Dorothy The Dinosaur", "Hot Potato". Lulu was having a wail of time, wiggling like crazy. Sam seemed to wail mostly. I sensed the adults around me were surprised when I knew all the words. My own personal highlight came three quarters of the way through the performance when Murray and Jeff ventured into the audience to collect roses for Dorothy the Dinosaur to eat (Ah ha! Your intertextual Rock knowledge just deserted you!) Catherine raced downstairs to the stalls with Lulu to meet Jeff.

Murray, who dresses in red, is about seven foot tall and plays the guitar, started to make his way through the circle. Sam is too young to really appreciate their celebrity, but I used him as an excuse to schlep over and accost him in my usual star-fucked fashion. Up close Murray seemed gigantic, his hands looked like paddles, he was sweating profusely and looked unbelievably stressed-out, a very empty grin plastered on his face, his eyes, bent at the edges speaking volumes. The best I could manage was a very heartfelt: "Welcome to London Murray" to which he replied: "Thanks cobber" (actually he just said "Thank you.") I'll be honest I felt kinda disappointed. This evening I put myself in his shoes. Jet-lagged, far from home, alone in the back of a theatre he wasn't sure how to escape from, without his entourage (the legendary Big Red Car was left at home and they were working a pickup band), unsure as to the degree of cynicism of the adults around him, dressed in his standard-issue red sweater, clutching multiple huge bouquets of roses. Jeez mate, I'd be pretty fucking stressed out as well.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm in an extremely strange place vis a vis blogging at the moment. I'd even go as far as describing it as screwed-up. This may have started with my slightly nutsy decision in the Spring to ration my reading of one or two of my favorite blogs as I found I was checking in to them far too many times. I've gone as far as completely weaning myself off one particular blog I was finding too compulsive, and at once punitive to me as a reader.

At the same time my own output for WOEBOT has become crippled by my expectations for it. These days I only ever seem to write (relatively in blogging terms) deeply researched pieces which require reading books, combing the internet and tracking down impossibly hard-to-find records. The form of these conceptual essays gets more and more convoluted, I've noticed a pattern which revolves around concept pieces grouped around sets of ten exquisitely-curated records. You'll not believe it, but I have (no exaggeration at all) SEVEN of these gigantic pieces in the wings. But as soon as set out writing them, I find myself procrastinating, usually in search of greater detail, more background information, more useful theoretical tools, and ultimately (drools) more vinyl.

More worryingly, I keep finding myself drafting quite large think-pieces (this is over and above the aforementioned SEVEN) but as the weeks go by I fail to have any time to concentrate on writing them to a sufficient standard whereby they're "publishable" I gradually come to the conclusion that it'd probably be more sly and hipper not to venture to comment on their subjects at all. This is compounded by the blogosphere malaise of everyone trotting out their opinions on certain subjects with a intensely competitive desire to be, if not the first to comment on something, then at least to have the definitive opinion about something, the stragglers indulging in meta-critical sniping at the first through the gates. I've even read people attacking other people along the lines of "What right do you think you have to comment on such and such?"

This slightly stifling atmosphere has also driven me into the position of covering terrains which on the one hand I feel people maybe ought to be more interested in, but on the other kinds of music I find my way into precisely because they're unspoiled pastures, and which I then (this really is ridiculous) struggle to connect with emotionally, even as I appreciate their qualities. As a listener this is often an exhausting position to find myself in.

There's another dimension extraneous to all this. I've just worked on the core graphics systems for a certain Music Television Video brand's British *and* American forthcoming "Interactive" Cable channels. This convergence between TV and the web is often fascinating to watch close-up. I left one company where I'd done one, and was hired by another company to do the other. I've been in the thick of discussions with senior executives talking about how they can leverage the kind of hobbyist devotion that this blog represents to drive their channel. I heard a great new phrase at one meeting: "The Reputation Economy", yikes that's scary isn't it? I mean would anyone blog if some idea of their own reputation wasn't at stake? But what if you start to wonder if you care what anyone thinks about your opinion? The whole thing is kinda horrific from the perspective of the Music-Theorist-as-UNIX-programmer shtick.

From my own experience as a writer I'm beginning to suspect that both the career-led drive of "Professional" Music Journalists (I've met one...) a drive founded on the need to put bread on the table, and the accompanying apparatus of an editor to convince and practical deadlines to meet are actually central to the discipline. I already have a job, and I packed in my writing gigs because I didn't have the time, so where does that put me?

Yeah, it's not a pretty sight. At the moment WOEBOT is like the metaphorical Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, at once ever more intensely devoted to its own program but at the same time time finding that program impossible to navigate, subsequently threatening to vanish into itself. I'm not actually going to pull the plug, just wondering how the hell I'm going to get myself out of this predicament. Hoping maybe somehow to get some time to actually get all this accumulating garbage off my chest.

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I was hipped to Battiato by my friend Franceso at Dissensus. The seventies stuff is amazing, but I'll be going into that in some detail on my forthcoming "Italian Progressive Rock Mini-Primer". However, his eighties work is not without its highlights. "Up Patriot to Arms" is brilliant, but my absolute favourite is the stunning "L'era del Cinghiale bianco", which I was delighted to find a video of on YouTube. YouTube, I mean who needs television?

I can't do the funky YouTube link supported by Blogger and LiveJournal but you can watch it here. Franco must have the most remarkable profile in Pop. You thought Pete Townsend had a big hooter.

Posted by WOEBOT at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

k-punk

Blogistan

The Original Soundtrack

Worlds of Possibility

Blackdown

I wanted to stretch this into a links bar extravaganza, but really how often is it you come across this kind of thing? To do it comprehensively would be artificial. These three on the other hand I stumbled upon quite unconsciously in my day-to-day and reminded me of some of my favourite bloggers.

-

*News Flash*

Just found a couple more of these on my phone. Maybe this post is going to be work in progress. I had a great mpc one squirrelled away somewhere.

Posted by WOEBOT at 01:41 PM | Permalink

“It Is What It Is.”

To the casual spectator Techno’s raison-d’etre looks to be relatively uncomplicated. Its sleek surfaces appear to communicate with great clarity. Most saliently Techno seems to be a music defined by its own production values. The “classical” electronic sound of the contributors to this compilation resembles nothing so much as the exquisite car design of Italian stylists Bertone and Pininfarina or perhaps Marcel Breur’s and Eero Aarnio’s stylised retro furniture. Techno’s sonic palette approximates materials such as quartz, black silicone, titanium or borosilicate; quintessentially hard and cold. Its sound, like these substances, beautifully sculpted into practical form. This concept of the music posits the musician as “Master Designer”, at heart a craftsman. Upon talking to the musicians it appears the truth is somewhat different. Shakir of Detroit’s The Stranger is “programmed on the K2000 as though I was riding the music”, straight off the bat in other words. Equally Balil’s lovely “Glass Dual” is built from an old midi pattern.

On the face of it Techno’s prime historical moment has passed, its futurity partially eclipsed by Drum and Bass, even as today futurity in music is perhaps no longer as important it once was. Degiorgio seems to agree, but his agreement problematises this: “With Jazz, in the early seventies, there was less money to be made, artists would be playing in smaller clubs and recording for independent labels. Labels like Strata East.” Strata East could hardly be conceived as cul-de-sac and it would be churlish to suggest that this later music means less to us today than that of its forebears. Ed Handley remarks: “We never really cared about being cutting-edge, we didn’t even perceive what we were doing as cutting-edge.” Indeed what kind of music would pride itself as being definitively contemporary? Conversely Shakir claims that all he cares about with his tracks is that, “they’re in key and that I’m going to be able to enjoy them in 5 years time.”

It’s ironic that such a “timeless” music’s finely wrought moodscapes seem to describe memories and romantically recall long-forgotten emotions. Are these tracks designed to evoke? Ed Handley concedes that the music can perform a cathartic function, voicelessly expressing melancholy, but Shakir and Kirk quite austerely conceive it as formal expression. One’s tempted to conclude that here is evidence of what must be Techno’s defining characteristics: its inscrutability, its opacity and its mysteriousness.

Matthew Ingram.
London, 5th May 2005.

Kirk Degiorgio/ART

Posted by WOEBOT at 03:13 PM | Permalink

Even if you occasionally struggle to listen to Avant-Garde music it can make a fascinating read. It struck me recently that these two books are conceptual twins. Both written with the close co-operation of their subject (a unique qualification in both their cases). The Oulette, which came to me via a recommendation of David Toop's, is almost certainly "OOP". However the Matossian, which is absolutely fascinating, gripping even, i've noticed has just been reprinted. Definitely worth picking up a copy if you come across it.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:20 AM | Permalink

Super-nice elegantly-styled email from R Stevie Moore (scroll down for the scoop on the saga)...

    ·.·´¨ ¨))  -:|:-
       ¸.·´  .·´¨¨))
           R. Stevie Moore
      ((¸¸.·´  ..·´
     -:|:-  ((¸¸ ·.·

...reminding me of Penman's occasional missives (both parties flattered? ok good...)

I herewith make this special offer. The first ten people who buy RSM's classic Phonography CD and produce the requisite Paypal receipt get a free copy of my Noir Desire Mix in the mail to boot.

Posted by WOEBOT at 02:39 PM | Permalink

I asked Lloyd for the track listing of his earth-shattering Mix 2, but all he'd give me was this succession of deliberately obscured-by-crop scans (which I've shrunk down and rendered into a gif).

Once again for the slackers. Here is the URL for the dl. Believe the hype.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of the things that bugs me about the web is how it attracts congenital cowardice. There's a load of people out here (not you naturally dear reader) who haven't really taken the bull by the horns, who are lurking out here, making their claim on turf no-one in their right mind would want.

A distinct strain of internet-approved music has emerged over the past few years, a music which gets the seal approval from your Pitchforks and Styluses is feted on the blogs. Take for instance the new Carl Craig remix of Delia and Gavin's "Relevee", I've been whipped up into a froth of expectation waiting for this by net-related hype. It arrives this morning and I slap it on the decks, and man I feel nothing whatsoever for it. Partly, I'll freely admit, because I've heard a million old records like this before- could compile a whole CD of similar retro-synth throbbings from the seventies and eighties (this time with feeling...). Why are people working themselves up into a feverish excitement about this? The answer, because they haven't done their own fucking researches and they haven't the hard-bitten soul to feel what it is they're missing out on. They don't begin to grasp the connection of the ear to the third eye. They're a bunch of pussies in short.

All of which brings me to the crudely constructed website of my dear old friend of fifteen years Dr. Lloyd Beryl. It's one of those isolated occasions when I sense something overwhelmingly other entering into the gene pool. Lloyd is, I'm sorry to tell, a man with pain in his heart, a man who can hear at a deeper frequency. Listening to his Mix Number Two, which comes in two parts is one of those salutory "Thank-Christ-I'm-not-alone-in-this-world" moments. It's not the tunes so much as what is communicated in the assemblage's pretzel logic, in the cracks. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is true scholarship.

What Lloyd wants out here in this desolate place I don't know.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Oi Lata! That's no way to treat your vinyl, lady!

An unapologetically random selection of records. A bunch of the earliest 1960s ones I found in a job-lot in Spitalfields market about ten years ago. Apparently this era stuff is what all the big guns and hipsterati collectors are now looking for.

I keep my eye out for tasty looking primers because this is such a vast uncharted territory, the excellent "Golden Voices from the Silver Screen compilations", a three-part collection compiled by Ben Mandelson for Globe Style records to accompany the "Movie Mahal" Television series narrowly missed inclusion here, but it's obviously a Western concoction, not the real thing like these records.

I picked up my original copy of the legendary "Hare Rama, Hare Krishna" (India seeing itself through a glass onion...) in Frome in Gloucestershire for a pound. Shalimar is not an original, and its awesome, though I've actually seen the reissue go for loads of money on eBay. The Nav Keetan I found in Glasgow for two quid. Bobby is a seven inch that my good friend Flashos gave to me (genuflects).

One thing that always strikes me upon finding this sort of material in the UK is that if wasn't any good at all, no-one would bother importing it, hence my old attitude of "buy-on-sight" upon encountering it.

Posted by WOEBOT at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What with the issue of download ethics blowing up left right and centre (for the umpteenth time) I mopped the sweat from my brow when it transpired that my Noir Desire 2Step mix, which I've only been offering as a CD to mates, contains a tune by Luke's friend Lee of the Anything Can Happen blog who I've had a pint with in the past. Begging a copy of the mix Lee said:

"You've got one of my tracks on your mix! Big up for the inclusion. I did that track with Recki B (the other young offenda) and a guy called Lingo who was a mate of ours and a DJ on Passion 91.8. CKP came on a DAT tape from Ramsey (although I did meet CKP a couple of times, thoroughly nice chap)."

I'd scooped the track up on the basis of this review by Tim Finney at Dissensus:

"Young Offendaz - Flava: There's this idea that goes about that in the year before grime coalesced 2-step got really tired or conservative or uninteresting. I don't have a sufficiently encyclopaedic knowledge of the scene to confirm or deny this categorically but in late 2001/2002 I did hear heaps and heaps of tunes that I loved, lots of them with a really warped and druggy vibe. My favourite was Babu Stormz's "Electricity", which came out around the same time as "I Luv U" and which I've never heard since, but this track from late 2001 is a handy substitute: rough and riffy, with these disconcerting eastern twangs and the James Brown tic from the Think break, cut-up female vox and a slightly unhinged dancehall DJ whose chatter phases in and out, stereopanning unnervingly."

Lee was chuffed with Tim's description:

"Is Tim F Tim Finney? If so it's also great to have a lovely description of the track from him."

The Ardkore Continuum coming straight back at ya via Australia, lands on your lap.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks to being linked by the excellent Voltage Controlled Technicolor I've stumbled into a netherworld of really extraordinarly high-class "whole LP" mp3 blogs. A million miles from the established, tired circuit of mp3-blogs with their piecemeal single-track offerings (Ha, neo-Rockist to the core I'll always love the long-playing 7+ song configuration!) these museums of arcana have grown spontaneously out of the esteemed Soul Strut Boards (a similar turf to the Wax Poetics journal, hip-hop breaks and then some) and the also excellent Vinyl Vultures Forum, in a similar way that ILM spawned authoritative "heavy" blogs like Church of Me and Skykicking.

The phenomenon is extremely recent, most of these sites are only one or two months old. While one's guaranteed some will fall by the wayside quite quickly, with the obscurity and excellence of the music they're sharing it doesn't seem to matter, like the appearance of manna in the desert one is simply grateful. Again unlike most mp3 blogs, where the content is copied from CDs which are commercially available or repackaged from Soulseek forays, these blogs tend to offer music which has been ripped from vinyl from their owner's cavernous record collections and uploaded onto Rapidshare. Nine times out of ten this is music which simply isn't available in any shape or form so how illegal