Patrick Keiller is in conversation with Owen Hatherly at the ICA on the 14th of July. Tickets and more information are available here.
HOLY GRAIL |
‘Vessel’ from Zola Jesus’ new album Conatus, which is being released on Souterrain Transmissions this autumn.
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MINDKILLER |
Here’s the Lee Scratch Perry mix of ‘Mind Killa’ from Gang Gang Dance’s fantastic new album Eye Contact.
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COPELAND BOOK MARKET |
So we had a great weekend down at the Copeland Book Market, lot’s of gin, lot’s of fun, lot’s of books, and I’d like to draw your attention to two publications I picked up, The White Review and the Friary Road House collection of ten young poets work. Let’s start with The White Review, drawing its inspiration from Le Reveu Blanche, the French fin-de-siecle periodical that included contributions from the likes of Jarry, Toulouse-Lautrec, Apollinaire, Proust and Verlaine. They’ve just published their second issue, it’s pretty beautiful and includes a huge amount of brilliantly written content; from interview’s with William Boyd and Richard Wentworth to essays on Frank O’Hara and the politics of post-colonialism in French Literature, as well as fiction, poetry and features on art. Friary Road House Editions’ collection of poetry is equally gorgeous to look at. Run by Sofia Stevi, Bobby Dowler, Louis Eastwood, Edward Johansson and Olivia Sautreuil, the collection groups together work by young poets, with the aim to provide a beautiful and meaningful read.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of some of the work that was for sale over the weekend, we’ll be updating you with some posts about the people involved in our stall, as well as our new publication with KIOSK, titled Essays. Massive thanks to Guy and Tom from the Son Gallery , and to everyone who came down over the weekend.
REVISIONIST HOUSE |
The issue of remastering has never been a particular point of concern in electronic music. Possibly down to its more recent history and a generally more relaxed approach to machine aesthetics the archives of house and techno have remained primarily unaltered. Save for a few reissues that have looked to add volume to previously unplayably quiet pressings, the question of what constitutes a finished track has always rested with a combination of the artist, the studio mastering process, and the cutting engineer, with the end result being understood reverently as the completed artefact.
However the past few years seem to have brought several notable shifts to dance culture, firstly the development of dubstep and precision engineered bass music has created a wider attention to detail for what low frequencies can sound like. Equally D&M mastering in Berlin and Berghain’s affiliate label Ostgut Ton have effectively created a standardised benchmark of what constitutes a technically well engineered record in the public mindset. Then lastly there has been the emergence of the Funktion 1 soundsystem, a rig not sold on the back of a rave-era maximal kilowatt output but instead marketed on the basis of audio accuracy and sub bass reproduction.
This new network of preoccupations, a shifting away from musical feeling in favour of technical sonic range, has also coincided with the resurgence of interest in classic era house music from 80′s Chicago, particularly the output of the legendary Trax label, and the crossing of these two worlds for better or worse is starting to emerge.
The Dutch label Rush Hour’s recent House of Trax reissues seems the first serious conflation of these two agendas, taking a series of Chicago’s seminal releases and remastering them for the speculative needs of a contemporary audience. To place the stylus on a House of Trax reissue is not simply a case of hearing a louder or clearer version of an original. Instead listening to a House of Trax reissue is like hearing a Berlin style sound engineer re-imagining what an African American man in 80′s Chicago would have liked his record to sound like if he had access to a Funktion 1 system and a copy of Logic Pro. The records are soaked in bass, so much so that the interplay between sonic elements along with any sense of space is replaced by a resiliently dense low end, in line with what contemporary records sound like and theoretically what people ‘want’, but nonetheless remaining a far cry from the tone and expression present in the original releases.
To briefly reflect, the circumstance of 80′s Chicago and the influx of Roland drum machines from Japan created a period of radical innovation in American music, harnessing technologies latent qualities and transforming them into a raw rhythmic soul. The emphasis was on energy and feeling with production and fidelity being a secondary concern. The end result being an unquestionably primordial and emotive vision, which generally emphasised mid-range frequencies on the kick drum and acid lines over technical bass production. It was essentially this focus, the chesty frequencies resting on the top of the kick, that generated that trademark ‘jack’ sound, and it’s this that primarily seems to have been lost in the process of a contemporary bass heavy revision. The Rush Hour reissues have undeniably brought the history of Trax to a new audience, which is unarguably a positive thing, but whether they needed to be re-engineered for the Panorama Bar crowd is definitely a point of debate.
McQuaid’s Music Week – Dancing About Architecture |
I saw Bob Dylan this weekend, and he was crap, like Mum Ra playing boogie woogie in a Sydenham fun pub. I took my mind off the horror on stage by thinking back to Stylo G’s performance at Cargo earlier that week, where I heard his track ‘Call Mi A Yardie’ for the first time. I think a young Bob would have loved it. Whoever’s produced it* has sampled the rave vamp sounds from early 90s Belgium nosebleeder ‘Dominator’ and stuck them in a bashment banger. Over this Stylo delivers some daytime radio gems along the lines of;
“Call mi a yardie / Call mi a yardie / we love the guns when they come from the army”
To be fair, he drops this kind of thing with a cheeky grin, and its treble rum and red bulls all round. After the show he was handing out copied of his mixtape, so cheers to the man’s generosity here’s a download of the excellent & hard to find Yardie
*I think Russian, who recently scored big with the creep show minimalism of Chan Dizzy’s ‘Nuh Strange Face’
Over in the USA, two veterans have stepped up with some vintage hard hitting hip-hop. First up, Rampage from Busta’s Flip Mode Squad has renamed himself Remington Steel (what is it with rappers and aliases? It’s like their on a constant dole scam) and gone back to a tougher than leather golden age beat, I’m thinking Run DMC, Ultramagnetic MCs, classic KRS ONE, all that kinda thing. Lyrically ‘Countin Stacks’ ain’t anything to lose your mind over, but the beefed up ‘Think’ break sounds hard as hell and straddles the divide between old skool aesthetics and 21st Century digital boom like a playground bully looming over his battered victim.
Peep the instrumental here, vocal version download below
Staying in New York, former best-rapper-in-the-world-ever Nas seems to have woken up to the fact that he hasn’t made a decent tune for about as long as the Black Eyed Peas have been cutting Fergie cheques. Yikes! That feels like fucking forever! To everyone! So it’s blinding good news that his new track sees the return of his Nasty Nas alter-ego (those pesky name changes again…) and more of the Golden Age breakbeats turned massive by machines. Unlike Rampage though, Nas delivers some real MC virtuosity, with great one liners and a killer flow. My favourite couplet comes near the end, as he spits contemptuously
“I never see the whips niggas be claiming they drivin / I guess entertainment means blatantly lying”
Remember kids, like the day Biggie was born, like the day Chuck D met Flava Flav, and like the day Westwood caught a chamber in the leg, any day that Nas releases a wicked new record is a GREAT day for hip hop.
Downloads Rampage – Countin Stacks | Nas – Nasty
Back to the UK, and relatively new grime/funky label Undisputed are building on their impressive roster of releases with a few new MC led rave tracks. Dappa comes with ‘Shut Your Mouth’ which comes from the JME school of conscious grime, dealing as it does with mugs kicking off at raves, as Dapz spits: ‘It’s time to start acting your age’. Having seen a horrible kick-off outside a recent event I gotta agree with him. It’s the first time I’ve heard Dappa and he’s got a lot of potential and plenty of killer lines. If only his name wasn’t a letter away from that clown in N-Dubz.
Undisputed ft. Dappa – Shut Ur Mouth by DJ RSI
Also from the label is Slick Don & LJ’s ‘Been There, Done That’, which has a beat with a high bang/buck ratio, accompanied by somewhat less conscious lyrics about how some girl’s a hoodrat skank who everyone’s pressed. It’s heads down party grime shit, and getting loads of deserved plays.
As with the other Undisputed cuts both tracks have an emphasis on traditional song structure in the verse-chorus-verse approach that keeps the energy hyped, and delivers satisfying hooks. More fire from a label going from strength to strength, def worth a download so go BUY and support your UK crew.
Finally, some good news for morons; Doctor P’s pipped the world and his dog to the post. Yep he’s only gone and combined the Tetris theme with headbanging duncestep and a bloke shouting ‘fuck’. Yeah, I know, I know, that’s Patrick Wolf’s new single plans scuppered. This tune is on a next, next, next level of stupid which pushes it right out the room, round the house, down to the bottom of the garden, then finally back in through the actually-quite-a-laugh door. No good if you’re sensitive or partial to thinking. Very good if you’re thick as a brick, or at least like to pretend to be once in a while.
The worlds first meteorological eight-channel DJ set? |
We blogged Made by Martian Labour’s film of Variable 4′s first incarnation in Dungness back in March. Since then James Bulley and Daniel Jones have taken their twenty-four hour generative sound instillation to Snape Maltings in Suffolk. It’s impressive when a group of artists follow through a project meticulously, investigating it’s potentials and encouraging it’s discussion in different environments and that’s why we’ll be attending their showcase, discussion and post-snape maltings celebration at the book club tonight.
Daniel Jones and James Bulley will be presenting their piece and showing audio and video excerpts, demonstrating how it works under the bonnet and introducing some of the musicians and technicians involved with the piece. Alongside this will be an informal panel discussion on Sound in Art, featuring some luminaries within the field: producer Joana Seguro (FasterThan Sound, Lumin), curator Cecilia Wee (Sound and Music, Rational Rec), writer and curator Daniela Cascella,and BAFTA award-winning sound designer Nick Ryan (The FragmentedOrchestra, Papa Sangre).
The evening will open with the world’s first (?!) meteorological eight-channel DJ set featuring some of the spatialisation methods devised for the piece — controlled with a windvane and anemometer interface.
Things kick off at 7pm and end at midnight at The Book Club, 100 Leonard Street, EC2A. Act quickly, 7 pre-sale tickets remain.
COVER ME |
R.I.P C.C. – In tribute here’s an Arthur Baker mix of the classic Springsteen track ‘Cover Me’.
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PARAKEETS |
‘Parakeets’, the third single from London’s Fiction, arrives this week. It’s all echoing, precipitating guitars and falsetto refrains, we love it. In fact we love it so much, we’re releasing it digitally through Off Modern Records, and it’s available to purchase from iTunes here.
SAM BAKER’S ALBUM |
LA based beatsmith Sam Baker aka Samiyam, is to release his sophomore album on the Brainfeeder label, a pioneer of his style, Samiyam, has takes glitch to a whole new level, literally with earfuls of NES samples, self released beat tapes on CD-Rs with DIY Album art, and 80s funk inspired throbbing synth basslines.
Where Am I?,
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“Sam Baker’s Album”, 27/06/111
“SMASH THE WINDOW AND STEAL IT” via @samiyambeats
My Panda Shall Fly – “Injury” |
We’ve shown you the video for ‘Yoyo’ and then ‘Xerox’, third and finally we give you the video for ‘Injury’ the premier track on the debut EP from South London’s My Panda Shall Fly. Our guy Suren has done it again, coming up with the concept for the video with director Jeremy David Hunt this cat-narrative is the final reminder from Sorry I Took So Long that interesting videos can be created with little budget.
Beyond The Bridge |
Here’s the A side from Future Islands new 7″, ‘Before The Bridge’. It’s the Baltimore three piece’s first release of 2011, and is out on Thrill Jockey on July 18th.
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