highpoint lowlife blog

worm

2008-08-26T22:07:00.004+01:00

shite, i've ordered way too many books now. it started with a discussion with max over the Pirate's Dilema, which led to me borrowing Heath and Potter's 'The Rebel Sell', Iain Sinclair's 'Disappearing London' and Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory Of The Leisure Class". The latter especially fitted into a couple of books i'd got from the library, histories of victorian london, a theme i'd begun to dug into. I'd also ordered Peter Ackroyd's 'London: A Biography'. So far, i've gotten through 'The Rebel Sell' and 'The Theory Of The Leisure Class', a quarter of 'London: A Biography', and a history of the London Underground which a guy at work lent to me. Then with Ruaridh's upcoming psychogeography themed peformance for the gig this sunday, it seemed to be the underlying meme to much of my recent reading material, so i just finished another book i had got, Merlin Coverley's 'Psychogeography' which provided a good overview of all the overlapping themes and ideas which fall under the umbrella name, plus a short bio/description of most of the notable names associated with the practise. From that I've ended up on an Amazon spending spree and now have before me a selection of books thats gonna take me weeks to get through:
Peter Ackroyd's 'Hawksmoor' (which i just realised is where Warren Ellis must take inspiration for his Jack Hawksmoor character in The Authority).
Robert Louis Stephenson 'Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde' (only 88 pages - surely thats not correct??)
Daniel Defoe's 'Moll Flanders'
I'm sure there is some Stewart Home and JG Ballard on they're way too. oh, and a copy of Bill Drummond's '17'!

I was gonna write some music reviews but i think i should stop procrastinating and get some reading done. Just a quick note then of three things i've been quite into recently - Growing's 'All The Way' album is pretty strange and noisey for a drone album, going pretty organic techno at points; The Ragga Twin's retrospective on Soul Jazz 'Ragga Twins Step Out' is fucking awesome, and today i picked up Madlib's new 'Beat Konducta Vol. 5 Dil Cosby Suite' which is sounding pretty good too.

pre-Singularity...

2008-08-26T16:39:00.007+01:00

hey! dang, long weeekends are excellent! been catching up on loads of reading and listening over the past few days, very relaxin'!

Been working heftily on the gig for this coming sunday - it's always stressful putting on a show, trying to get everything arranged in time, and most importantly trying to get people to come out for it, but hopefully, fingers crossed, this seems to all be going well. Even Warren Ellis might be coming!
The main thing is that the music is going to fucking amazing tho, so should all be good! We have Chris Dooks doing Bovine Life Support System to provide background music at the start of the evening, and i believe he's also gonna be doing his compere between acts too, so should be quite an extravagant art night i think! To tie in with Ruaridh and Bryan's psychogeography theme, i've ordered Patrick Keiller's 'London' and 'Robinson In Space' to use as visuals during some of the other acts too. I haven't yet watched 'London' but if its half as good as Robinson In Space, it should be amazing too.

It's going to be tight for getting the new Erstlaub release done in time as we still haven't quite completed the artwork for it, however i have the mastered audio disc, all the materials and the stamp is ordered, so i'm sure we'll be able to get a couple of copies together in time for the show. I've been listening through it quite intently today and it's excellent - a well worthy successor to "Becoming An Island".

Also - i just updated the rss feeds on the site here, to use Feedburner, so i can try to get some stats back from the feeds. You can keep using the current links as they won't go away, but if you'd like to be counted, you can switch to the new feedburners ones simply by resubscribing on the site with the new links (they look the same as the old one, but point to feedburner rather than just the local atom.xml files). If that doesn't make any sense, just ignore it! :)

thanks!
thor

art and geography

2008-08-21T17:12:00.003+01:00

dang, i just finished reading the comic of Persepolis last night - it's *really* good, quite heavy going at times being confronted with the amount of persecution and injustice, and one of those books that really opens your eyes to your own ignorance of matters.
It's very much up there with Joe Sacco's Palestine and Art Spiegelman's Maus as political commentary and a personal tour of troubled times and countries.

This morning I tried to start reading Guy Debord's 'Society Of The Spectacle' but have to admit i found it immediately annoying, with such paragraphs as

"To the extent that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessary. The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned society which ultimately expresses nothing more than it's desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep"

The central tenet i could gleam from it was how society holds illusion in greater esteem over reality, which at first i could accept as something similar to the Buddhist story 'Fingers Pointing at the Moon' whereby people interpret the sign instead of what the sign is pointing to.
However the more i flicked through 'Society Of The Spectacle' it seemed more like it was against all forms of abstraction. Yet, in my mind that is exactly what gives art or life it's meaning - things by themselves are dumb, buildings mean nothing except a pile of bricks, a drawing is merely a squiggle on a piece of paper - its the meaning we imbue in such things that give us context and a sense of history, why we attach emotion and feelings to objects, time and place.
I'm sure it's just me being overly simple - maybe i need to sit down in the pub with someone and have them explain Situationism to me with a more human voice than Debord's!

From all my reading of historical London recently, my reading path has been guiding me towards some psychogeography reading, which should hopefully allow me handle my end of a conversation in the pub with Max or Ruaridh! i've started readin Merlin Coverley's 'Psychogeography' which seems pretty good based on the opening chapter, and looks to cover the origins of psychogeography from Debord (spit!) in Paris during the '50s; retrospective validation in the writings of William Blake, and Thomas De Quincey; and through into more recent work covered by writers and filmakers like Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd, Stewart Home and Patrick Keiller (whose "Robinson in Space" film is astounding - max owns a copy of this and it would often get put on as a surreal backdrop to our house parties or a strange post-club viewing experience!)

hangover lounge

2008-08-15T17:33:00.002+01:00

hello! ICA was fun last night, tho there is something rather dodgy with the sound system in the bar at the moment, so all our tracks had no bass and weird midrange. Should hopefully be sorted by next month's slot. Bar staff were all super nice tho and quite busy, so we had a fun evening!

if you're in London, you are heading along to Wifey on saturday, right??! Should be ace.

Well, on sunday, you're gonna feel rough tho - so get yourself along to the Hangover Lounge, where i'll be doing a laid back disco, soul, dub and indiepop afternoon DJ slot and eating a nice sunday roast!

beets

2008-08-13T16:28:00.003+01:00

i feel like i've been having a music dry spell for the past month, not finding anything new thats been outstandingly good or worth mentioning, although there were a few items i picked up on boomkat last week. Yesterday my emusic subscription renewed its monthly allotment, and rather than blow my 50 downloads on the first thing i could find, i decided to take my time and try to pick some things i knew should be good rather than just taking the attitude of download to try.

I downloaded two albums from emusic yesterday which I'm pleased to say are fucking outstanding, although not new, so good chance you might already have em..

Quasimoto - The Unseen
This has been in my saved items on emusic for ages, but having 24 tracks, thats half my download slots gone, so i've always hesitated to actually get it. Had a conversation outside FWD about a month ago with a girl who was saying how good the album is, and the sound clips i've heard were excellent, so yeah, i bit the bullet for the download. Released in 2000, this is another of Madlib's projects - supposedly after experimenting with rapping over his own tracks and deciding he didn't like his Barry White-esque vocals he decided to pitch them up, hence the helium-inhaling sound of Quasimoto. The wikipedia page explains more than i can be arsed typing, but yeah, the album is fucking ace. The underlying tracks are excellent in themselves, low-end simple bass, rolling beats and a slew of unidentifiable funk samples create a firm framework to drape the cartoon-like delivered rhymes over. Notable as well are the six tracks featuring Melvin Van Peebles vocal samples, Melvin Van Peebles being the director of the excellent Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song movie from which the whole blaxploitation genre grew.

Analog Brothers - Pimp To Eat
Again released in 2000, Analog Brothers is a group featuring Kool Keith and Ice T, alongside a few other bods . The production is quite heavily electronic in nature rather than the more organic sample based sound of many hip hop productions, and lyric-wise is off the fscking cuff, Kool Keith is just on a roll talking pure (amazing) shit, with Ice T providing the straight guy role in the comedy duo. Its quite Dr Octagon sounding in nature, both musically and lyrically. I've listened to this album about six times since downloading it yesterday, its that addictive!

One other album of note i downloaded recently is Cappablack's Facades and Skeletons on ~Scape records. Two japanese lads, iLLEVEN and Hashim B, are behind the band, according to the boomkat page. Production-wise, the sound palette is nothing like your normal hip hop, quite broken and at times coming close to a BoC sound, like on their track "Slide Around". Its strongest when the tracks are instrumental or rapping in japanese, as the tracks featuring California based AWOL One seem to be let down by the repetitive not-too inspired rhymes. Not an amazing album, but one i've been listening to quite a bit this past week and definitely worth a listen.

Another interesting one from the same boomkat shopping spree last week was AD Bourke's "A Trebelo Beat Tape". It's not really a full album, with only six of the eleven tracks clocking in over two minutes long, and the rest being little <1m skit/interludes. According to his myspace page, he's from Rome. The sound is very bleep instrumental hip hop, with sprinkled cartoon samples such as the He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe into on the first track "JJ Adams". Again, nothing unmissable, but quite a fun listen.

toosday

2008-08-12T17:01:00.002+01:00

yar! friday night was ace fun, thanks loads to Ed for having us along, and definitely go set up your own online store at http://peoplesmusicstore.com/ - now out of beta and open to the public. I think it's an excellent concept - basically allowing anyone to open their own download store, stocking it with their own choice of music from the catalog carried by the service, allowing you to completely customise and take away your store - anything you sell, you get a cut from, as does the label and of course, the people's music store get a little bit for setting up the infrastructure to allow you to do your own thing.

Highlights of the evening for me were Ikonika's DJ set, and then seeing I-F play after we had finished about 4:30am. Arthur Baker was pretty fun, just playing big disco tunes, and DMX Krew put in a lot of effort, doing cover versions of loads of classic electro. I didn't get to check out much of 808 State as they were on at the same time as Ikonika.

Quite a busy week for DJing - me, mat and max are gonna be along in the ICA bar on thursday night for the second HPLL night, which should be a laid back affair, and then on sunday, i'll be DJing at The Hangover Lounge, a sunday club run by a friend of mine at the Salmon and Compass pub in Islington.

nosehair pt II

2008-08-08T13:15:00.004+01:00

hello! slightly self-indulgent of me to be posting up these mixes, but here's part two of the Nasty As Nosehair mix, this is the more techny/dubstep end:

http://highpointlowlife.com/downloads/nastyasnosehairmixptii.mp3

tracklisting is:

1. Voltaic - Darkhaze
2. Funckarma - Nays Of Dight
3. Zomby - Liquid Dancehall
4. Joker - Snake Eater
5. Martyn - Vancouver
6. ASUSU - Bruwa
7. Timeblind - Wander The Earth Like Cane
8. Kit Clayton - Aspoket
9 Geoim - Reminissin
10. Surgeon - Whose Bad Hands Are These (Autechre Mix)
11. Young Bloods - Burning Up
12. Redshape - Steam
13. Maurice - This Is Acid
14. The Marcia Blaine School For Girls - Team
15. The Village Orchestra - 2562 remix
16. Chip E - Time To Jack
17. DJ Maxximus - Rms
18. Natasja - Ildebrand I Byen 2000F Dub Remix
19. Zomby - The Lie

nasty as nosehair

2008-08-07T15:37:00.003+01:00

yar, been kinda hectic with the Stray Ghost release and getting some promotion out for the upcoming Towards The Singularity gig - all good stuff!

Theres an excellent gig on tomorrow evening in london, Nitefreq with 808 State, I-f and Arthur Russel all playing in the main room. The small room is a party hosted by People's Music Store, where me and Mat/Fisk will be playing a 2 hour back to back DJ slot - it's gonna be a tough one to follow as we'll be on right after the amazing Ikonika (saw her DJing again on sunday at FWD - she's sooo good!!). I've been putting together a big set in Ableton for it. Heres a hip hop styled run-through i did last night and rendered as mp3:

Nasty As Nosehair Mix

tracklisting is:
1. Dev79 feat. Bezel - That Philly Shit
2. Flying Lotus - Robo Tussin feat Lil Wayne
3. J Live - The Upgrade (instrumental)
4. Ad Bourke - Flight Deck
5. Cappablack - Facades and Skeletons
6. Viktor Vaughn - Raedawn
7. Up Hygh - Acid
8. Busta Rhymes - How We Do
9. Bretzel Zoo - The Dunk
10. Frank N Dank - Spitkicker
11. Miles Benjiman - Chop That Wood (instrumental)
12. Kirby Ditko - Hulk Smash

(p.s the title "Nasty As Nosehair" comes from a line in the Viktor Vaughn track!)
(p.p.s theres one bit at the end of the mix where i seem to have forgot the delay is on!)

da return

2008-07-30T17:06:00.003+01:00

yar!
not too much to report at the moment, just a few bits and bobs..

Stray Ghost 'Losthilde' artwork is still being worked on, but should still be ready for sale by early next week. I'll get the mp3s up on the site for sale too and up on lastfm.

Got the flyers back for Towards The Singularity which look amazing! I haven't started promoting it properly yet, as i think i started too early on the Funckarma show - i think its best to wait till just a few weeks before hand. One of the bands who are playing, Fighting Kites, also have an upcoming show at Bardens on august 5th, supporting Nisennenmondai, a japanese noise band made up of three girls. Its an Upset The Rhythm show, so should definitely be a good one.

Got two tracks from Ruaridh/Village Orchestra for his upcoming split 12" with Konx-Om-Pax - they are truly fcking awesome! I need to mail Tom/Konx-Om and see what his timeline is for his own tracks and get a date together for that.

Been speaking with a couple of new artists about collaborating on projects - i'm *really* excited about them, but i shan't spoil the surprise until we have some more details worked out!

I haven't been buying any new music in the past week, so nothing much to report or review on. I should get some new stuff this week in preparation for me and Mat DJing at the 808State gig next week tho.

Ah, one musical thing to check out - my friend Lisa, from the Wire magazine, put together a mix in three parts for Steve Barker's 'On The Wire' show on BBC Radio Lancashire - check her blog post over at The Mire for full tracklisting and a link to listen/download..

chocky

2008-07-22T15:54:00.002+01:00

I've been throwing loads of design work at mat lately!
He's put together an amazingly nice flyer for our upcoming "Towards The Singularity" gig at the end of August, based up on a cover image for John Wyndham's Chocky. This crop on this post doesn't do the art justice (I use the Gimp at work for any image editing and it never seems to resize images without losing a lot of quality - prob due to my not knowing how best to use it). I'll post up a proper copy on the home page of the site next week.

He's almost done with the Stray Ghost artwork too, so we should be on track for a release date beginning of august.

Tomorrow night see's the start of a monthly Highpoint Lowlife DJ slot at the ICA bar in London. However - i'm not going to be there! Rather unfortunately, i need to head back to Glasgow for the weekend, but the ICA bar will be in the good hands of Mat/Fisk and Max. If you're in the area, drop in and say hello to them!

more from me next week..

more Oopdates

2008-07-15T17:56:00.003+01:00

yar! i forgot loads of exciting things in my HPLL goings-on yesterday!

release-wise:

The Village Orchestra and friends - MPD Pyscho live soundtrack
Dunno if that will be the final title, but a live recording made at this year's Triptych festival in Glasgow - Ruaridh/TVO with Erstlaub, Production Unit, Bovine Life and Konx-Om-Pax provided a live improvised soundtrack to the first episdode of Takashi Miike's groundbreaking 6 part drama 'MPD Psycho'. limited run CDR edition of 100. With extensive liner notes written by Ruaridh too.

Erstlaub - untitled
Follow up to his excellent 'On Becoming An Island' album from last year. Possibly out late August for upcoming London gig - see below for more details. Also limited run CDR edition of 100.

Mandelbrot - untitled
We've mentioned this for a while, an album of solo material Keung recorded last year - lo-fi and nasty as hell! will get cracking on it soon! I think Keung is going to re-record one of the tracks before release. limited run CDR edition of 100.

Gigs:

ICA DJing 24th July and 14th Aug 2008
Me and Mat/Fisk Industries will be Djing in the bar at the ICA on the evenings of 24th July and 14th August. Our job is to play background music which may or may not get progressively louder and dancier!

"Towards the Singularity" - August 31st 2008.
We have an upcoming gig at the beautiful new Dalston venue, Cafe Oto, which will feature The Village Orchestra and Beaker - TVO using MaxMSP and Beaker doing live A/V on Jitter, Fighting Kites, and Erstlaub and Mandelbrot Set (possibly collaborating).

Netaudio festival, October 23rd 2008
Not fully confirmed yet, but looks like HPLL will be curating DJs for the bar at one night of the Netaudio festival. Whole lineup looks ace, and Last.fm are curating the evening of the 23rd (hence me being able to blag the bar area! :)

upcoming HPLL projects

2008-07-14T18:32:00.004+01:00

I haven't mentioned any of the projects we're working on for awhile...

first new thing thats due is an amazing album by Stray Ghost, entitled 'Losthilde'. Its a digital drone/noise epic spread over four parts, and immaculately mastered by Mr Tigrics out in Budapest, really bringing to the forth some of the digitalis buried in the depths. We're currently working on the artwork for it at the moment, but hoping to have it all finished and ready by the end of the month. Its going to be released as one of our hand-numbered limited run CDR releases, housed in DVD case. I'll post up some art links when we have something a bit more to show.

Got a whole bunch of other 12" releases planned for the upcoming months - projects from Fisk Industries, Tigrics, Production Unit, and a split release from TVO and Konx-Om-Pax. Not sure what order they will be in yet, depending on what material i get first - i've been hearing bits and pieces from all of them, and i'm super excited about them all!

The Funckarma release just got a super nice review in the upcoming issue of The Wire magazine, courtesy of Joe Muggs in the Critical Beats section(thanks dude!). I don't have a copy yet - i think it just hits the newsstands today or tomorrow, but i'll scribe it up when i get hold of a copy.

aiight! later..

oddisee

2008-07-14T18:01:00.003+01:00

my emusic monthly subscription ticked over on saturday - didn't get anything too essential tho.
Got some more Frank N Dank - an album called 48 Hrs, but i think i'm on overload. I think when you get too many albums from one artist in a short period, you just can't take them all in.

The best of the downloads i picked up were the instrumentals of OlivierDaySoul - the artist name has turned up for me a few times on boomkat as similar to the Daru and Rena material i've been into. The vocal versions are very Prince influenced and i just couldn't get into them (i'm not a big Prince fan), so I've always passed on them even though the production was sounding pretty good, so yeah, i opted to grab the instrumentals. Very much (again) in the vein of Flying Lotus/Dabrye style of instrumental hip hop, the bump and swing of the tracks just jumps straight from the speakers.

After a bit of looking around on discogs, I found out the producer is called Oddisee - his Discogs link is massive!
His blog has a bunch of info and downloads, including an article about working with Hudson Mohawke. I've only just started reading it, but already found an excellent mixtape you can download from:
here

chiiiday frat

2008-07-11T12:33:00.004+01:00

ah! it's finally arrived - been quite hectic with people staying over the past few weekends, so i'm looking forward to two exceptionally long lie-ins in bed!

I'm prob gonna write off most of the weekend reading "The Atrocity Archives" by Charles Stross, as thats what has happened with the past three of his novels i've read. MartinD, from my work, turned me on to Halting State, a crazed near-future sci-fi novel set about 10-15 years in the future, about a security breach in an online world which has very real offline implications. Really good and addictive stuff - then Martin lent me a few others of Charles Stross - Glass House and Accelerando - both of which completely blew me away, with much more elaborate and completely believeable tech set in a post-singularity world.
"The Atrocity Archives" is his first novel i believe, about the meeting point between mathematics and alternative universes, with a firm tongue in cheek humour. I only started it this morning, but i believe one phrase from the book may sum up the contents - "the Turning-Lovecraft theorem".
His style seems quite heavily influenced by one of other favorite authors, Neal Stephenson, who is acknowledged in the opening credits, but Charles Stross very much has a voice and style of his own.

I got quite a lot of new music this week which should see me through the weekend too:

Grievous Angel - Belief Is The Enemy
Received my copy of this yesterday - its a double CD with full versions of the album on disc one and a mixed second CD using dubs of the tracks. Had it on quite a bit yesterday, and its really fucking good. Its dubstep kinda, but just feels more for some reason. The sound palette makes me think more drum 'n' bass, bringing to mind Remarc for some reason. That prob gives the total wrong impression about the album if you haven't heard it - the tempo is way slower than d'n'b, but has more energy than yer average half-step, utilising quite a lot of break-beats and rolling basslines. It just seems really original - taking a bunch of influences from dubstep, d'n'b, bassline and ragga techno, and outputting just a really good electronic album.

Voltaic - Abyss EP 12"
Rustie's electro project alongside Martin Patton. I don't know enough about the history of this project to write any background on it, and as i only received it this morning can't comment on the music yet - its two tracks written by Rustie and one from Martin, and also meant to be their last under the Voltaic name. Their last EP, Oxidize was excellent, and from all reviews this one should be pretty ace.

SND - 4, 5, 6
Mat/Fisk turned me on to this the other day, and I'm well impressed. I expected a sort clicks and cuts glitchy record, and it does start off that way, bring to mind Oval's 'Do While' on the opening track, but soon getting into some very off-kilter rhythmic craziness. I was surprised by how berlin-techno like it sounds, and easily going to appeal to fans of the Berlin/Bristol axis style of dubstep, tho not perhaps to the dancefloor as such. Some of it sounds familiar from their recent support slot on the Autechre 'Quaristice' tour, which all sounded excellent at the time but it's good to be able to delve in for repeated listen on headphones.

aiight - laterzzzzzzzzzzz

complicated man

2008-07-09T18:15:00.003+01:00

top marks to Mat/Fisk for finding out where the Dr Dre XXplosive sample comes from!
The song it's from is called "Bumpy's Lament" by Soul Mann & The Brothers, and its from the Shaft soundtrack. You can have a listen at:
http://www.last.fm/music/Soul+Mann+and+The+Brothers/+videos/+1-O8PN4v-Lud0?b=1
quite funny to hear, as the original is super slow in comparison.

I received that Samiyam "Rap Beats Vol. 1" this morning - had it on about twenty times already. I mentioned how the Hyperdub release was like small vignettes, well that one is nothing compared to Rap Beats - made up of 24 tracks, with the longest track being 1min 46. They average around the 1min30 mark, but surprisingly it holds together really cohesively. Too many of them for me to pick out any highlight tracks at the moment, but all of them sound excellent.
You can buy from Warpmart if so inclined.

I also received the Bomb It! DVD which i've mentioned a few times in the past. recap: global graffiti culture documentary, covering origins of graf from trains in the Bronx (i believe is also covers historical graf up to that point) up to and including all the current hotspots from tokyo, berlin, sao paolo, nyc, barcelona and so on. I'll post more fully a review of it after we've watched it. Mr Spendlove has generously allowed us all to head round to his house to watch it there!

There will also be an official London premiere coming up on August 16th at the Tate Modern - should be good to see it on a big screen!

green eggs and ham

2008-07-08T16:59:00.002+01:00

when i was four years old and graduating Play School for the heady world of Primary School, i was given a leaving present of Dr Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham". It was my first Dr Seuss book and always remained my favorite because of it.

This fact has absolutely nothing to do with music of course, but whenever i see Samiyam's name, i can't help but think of the book.

i had seen his name listed a few times just before the recent Flying Lotus Brainfeeder gig here in London about a month ago, and with him on the bill for the show i wanted to download some stuff to check out - the only thing i could find to purchase online at the time was a remix EP for Pattie Blingh & The Akebulan Five, which featuring two Samiyam mixes and a 2562 one.

Just yesterday he released an EP on Hyperdub called "Return EP", which i've been enjoying. He has a strange style, whereby each track is more like a vignette rather than full blown composition. He has an interview over at xlr8r from november of last year, which goes a ways to explaining how he hooked up with Flying Lotus for their FLYamSAM project.

After having the EP on repeat yesterday i was doing a little more digging around online for other material of his and came across a self-released album/mixtape he's done called Rap Beats Volume 1, which you can buy direct from his myspace page. They also have copies over at Warpmart, which i where i ordered it from. Should hopefully arrive this week and will post a short review of it.

Interesting move on Hyperdub's part, as this will be their first full-on non-dubstep release, although their past few releases have been moving away from the dubstep sound. Does this signal a sea-change for dubstep? I kinda hope so, as its once original sound is becoming heavily aped and easily imitated. Theres the Bristol/Berlin strand of dubstechno and another strand moving back in a 2step direction, but i've much rather see moves in a more blunted evil hip hop direction.

I've been totally into a lot of this instrumental electronic hip hop thats coming out, but i feel a tad cautious about it, as it just seems like such a big hype bubble behind it all, with anyone who releases an off-kilter hip hop beat being snapped up - Warp seem all over it at the moment, and theres something feels slightly desperate about the marketing ploy of it all, but fuggit, so far all the music has been worthy of the hype, so i guess start worry about the dross when it starts appearing.

(Hopefully someone's going to come up with a decent name for all this off-kilter electronic-leaning instrumental hip hop soon, cos thats a long ass description to type every time, and i'm not wanted to use the term "wonky" cos its a shit name).

also on the Flying Lotus tip, i received the LA EP 1x3 through the mail yesterday - all good! nothing unexpected about it, just more good beats. "Rickshaw" is a total stand-out track.

xxplosive

2008-07-08T11:37:00.004+01:00

I downloaded The Glitch Mob remix of Matty G 'West Coast Rocks' which you can grab from:
xlr8r.
The mix itself is fine, not amazing, but the standout part is the slight sample from the opening sequence of Dr Dre's 'xxplosive'.

Xxplosive may just be one of my favorite tracks ever. Couple of months ago i heard it used as a ringtone on someone's phone, that opening guitar noodle that hooks itself in yer brain and stays there literally for months. (anyone know where the guitar sample comes from?)

I kept singing the line in my head for so long, that i eventually caved in and set it to my own ringtone. i still smile everytime someone calls me now, and usually take a few seconds longer to answer so i can listen to the melody for a bit.

The lyrics are totally misogynistic and gangsta lifestyle promoting, but they're just so funny its more like pantomime, with lines like "You're more of a bitch than a bitch" during Kurupt's verse.

the only hip hop track with funnier and just as infectious lyrics must be Digital Underground's "Freaks Of The Industry", ably carried along on teh bassline from Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby"

Check em both at:
http://www.last.fm/music/Dr.+Dre/+videos/+1-_4vKWFCWw04
http://www.last.fm/music/Digital+Underground/+videos/+1-WalE8hYzONM

full & paid

2008-07-02T10:50:00.003+01:00

That Cool Kids mixtape "That's Stupid" went live last night - grab the free download from their myspace. I only started listening to it this morning, but sounds pretty good. Got that same old skool hip hop sound, with phat 808 slow beats, first track has a sorta "Slow and Low" sound, and "Full and Paid" is a pretty good Eric B and Rakim inspired track.

Another excellent discovery, which Roel Funcken introduced me to, was Bretzel Zoo, friends of theirs from Belgium, who also do a really crunchy electronic project by the name of Herrmutt Lobby. I've been listening to these Bretzel Zoo tracks on repeat - on quite a similar sound path as Hayzee, who i posted about yesterday, nintendo inspired lurching hip hop.

dang, so much good stuff going on in hip hop at the moment!

back to the blog!

2008-07-01T11:23:00.005+01:00

this past weeks been a bit too hectic to scribble much on here, but back to work now, tuesday morning, things are ticking along and my boss is on holiday, so i'll have a lazy start to the day while penning about a couple of things i've been listening to this past week..

Frank N Dank "Xtended Play Version 3.13"
When we were doing the Plastic People gig last week, i got talking with the sound man, Slim, about J Dilla, and he asked if i'd heard of Frank N Dank - he described it as hip hop mixed with detroit techno. I hadn't heard any of it, and downloaded an album to check out. The one i grabbed is "Xtended Play Version 3.13" which is excellent, but on further investigation, its not all produced by Dilla, and actually some of the better tracks are done by different producers.
I'll need to find some of the earlier Dilla produced Frank N Dank still, but i would highly recommend Xtended Play. Check the full list of producers at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xtended_Play_Version_3.13

Hayzee - Next Level
Slightly Dilla related - i joined the DILLA group on last.fm, and found a recommendation to check out Hayzee. Their myspace doesn't list the members, but from the photograph, its three guys, from Amsterdam, doing an excellent take on 8-bit hip hop. Easily falling within the current batch of producers from Flying Lotus to Rustie, with skewed tumbling hip hop beats, big midrange synths, and bleepy Mario-style melodies. They have a full 8 track album for free download linked from their myspace page, and its pretty infectious stuff. Some of it is a bit too close to the formula you can imagine just from the description "8bit hip hop", but other tracks are total standout productions, such as "Press Start" and "Last Boss/Final Form".

Mike Dearborn - DJ set from the Smartbar, Chicago, march 2008
Just found this mix this morning via Fun In The Murky. 2 hour deep dubby techno set, starting out pretty mellow and basic channel sounding, working up into some classic old chicago and detroit techno. I wish i had a track listing for it, as theres a bunch of old stuff i recognize but couldn't name, some old classics i remember from Glasgow's Tin Pan Alley, back in '90/'91.
excellent stuff!

Phantom Channel Presents - Part 2
Second release from Phantom Channel, who i've written about a wee while back. 13 tracks of really sublime organic ambience, drone and experimental recordings. Still delving into this one, but so far, all sounds excellent!

Ikonika
Just wanted to say a few words about her DJ set at Plastic People last week - absolutely top notch! Really excellent selection of tunes, hefty bass-weight, but leaning more towards 2step than dubstep, really uptempo and dancefloor friendly, and almost completely stuff i didn't recognise. Her mixing skills are tight as hell and she was constantly working the decks. Everyone was up on the floor for her set and loving it. She's playing Plastic People again at the end of the month for FWD>>, and i'll definitely be along to see her play again.

Ramadanman and Pangea
The day after our Plastic People gig, I took the Funcken brothers out around london to see what was on, and I had spied a free Hessle Audio night down at Cafe1001, off Brick Lane. I usually hate that venue, its so overly crowded with hipsters and scenesters (is there a difference? painfully fashionable anyhoo!), and tonite wasn't much different, but it well worth checking out, as Ramandanman and Pangea's back to back DJing selection was impeccable, lots of their own productions being played leaning towards that same outside-genre as Martyn's productions - elements of techno, dubstep, 2step, mixed together effortlessly and really enjoying themselves.

The Cool Kids - That's STUPID
And.. haven't heard it yet, but The Cool Kids, recent XL Recordings signing, release their new mixtape, That's STUPID", via their myspace later today.

dilla-gence

2008-06-16T12:56:00.002+01:00

rar, what a pretty good weekend...

Friday went along to the Jahtari/Werk nite at Plastic People, which was pretty ace. When i first arrived Lukkid was just starting and did a pretty good chopped up soul/hip hop set. Some other decent stuff over the evening, one guy who i *think* was Newworldaquarium, played an excellent detroit-style set with loads of little recognizable snippets of tracks including a Nexus 21 track which me and Matt/Spendlove got excited about. The total highlight of the evening, and the reason most everyone was there, was for Disrupt - fuck, by that point the volume was up so loud i was almost feeling queasy with the bass thud - it was perfect for his set and everyone was skanking to his 8-bit-videogame-dub.

Saturday i was recovered enough by the evening for the Warp Brainfeeder night which has a massive lineup - Ras G, Samiyam, Rustie and Hudson Mohawke, Kode9, Flying Lotus and Mala. Quite a decent crowd of us out for it, and the whole evening was excellent. That venue, Hearne Street Car Park is great too, spacious enough to relax and not feel cramped, with external areas to the main dance-room, and somehow escaping the non-smoking laws - my guess is that its classified as a private party, judging by the use of drink tickets and the setup.

Finished off sunday with some light-weight movie action to see the new Hulk movie, which was actually better than i expected, sort of in the same league as the latest Iron Man movie - not amazing but tied in enough with the Marvel comics universe to appease comic geeks and enough in-jokes to keep you amused.

Feels like a slow start to the week today though, but i found a few new free downloads to be start the week right:

Theres a download of Flying Lotus' live set for radio one last year, shorn of the radio one bits. Link found via his myspace blog:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VSR24FW5

New mix went online over the weekend from DJ Synflood featuring an excellent mix of the hip hop such as Flying Lotus, Daru, Dilla, Madvillain and more.

Best of all - via J Dilla's wikipedia entry i found a free mixtape of unreleased Dilla production with Busta Rhymes. Grab is from here. Via mickboogie.com

mighy praise

2008-06-13T10:58:00.004+01:00

Warren Ellis is perhaps the best writer in comics these days, certainly one of the most creative and out-there storytellers, with themes and ideas more akin to those explored by the minds of technologists and contemporary sci-fi writers like Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, than your usual comic book author.
Apart from that, he's very into his music, which is a constant topic of his excellent blog postings.
I sent him over a copy of Funckarma's upcoming Dubstoned EP, and was mightily chuffed to receive an email from him yesterday saying that he loved it, and that he posted this review:.

"It's an evil, lurching, jagged piece of science fictional noise that shoves about eight different kinds of music into a centrifuge in order to spit out a life form configured for life in the last city on earth when the next ice age comes. Or something. Any fifteen second stretch of any one of the five tracks can include hip hop, crackle, 1983 videogame noises, industrial grind and dubstep mutations. It evokes the image of mad scientists doing live mixing with DNA. I like it."

Check out some free Warren Ellis goodness at Freak Angels, a weekly webcomic set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk London. its fuckin' great!
Theres a load of his work to recommend, but some of my favs have been his runs on Hellblazer and the Authority, his superhero stuff Ultimate Galactus, Iron-man: Extremis, some of his own creations like Desolation Jones, Fell, and his recent novel Crooked Little Vein. Check his wikipedia entry for even more info..

bristol style

2008-06-10T17:23:00.004+01:00

Had an excellent weekend up in Bristol for the Venn festival. I was fighting a cold off for the whole weekend, but still managed to catch some great music and have a really good time!

Me, mat and lisa all went up on saturday afternoon, and came back on sunday at 6pm, so didn't get to see all of the festival, really just saturday's events.

Philip Jeck was the highlight of saturday afternoon, really nice sound in the auditorium and quite a captivating set. Hauntology seems to be the buzzword of the moment, and i guess Philip Jeck's scratchy records found in second hand stores which evoke all sorts of strange times and places may well fall under such a categorization. Caught Infinite Livez vs Stade shortly after that, which was pretty entertaining too - a very funkadelic inspired sound and look from the whole band, and a lot of onstage energy. In fact that reminds me to try and find some recordings of theirs - its someone whose name i've seen loads but hadn't actually heard - the set was fun enough that i'd like to check out some recordings and see how they differ.

Saturday night was the main reason for going up to the festival - Peverelist and Mortiz Von Oswald, and neither disappointed. The venue for the evening was the Motion skatepark, which as venues go, and being an ex-skater, i thought was fucking excellent. It has a nice outdoor patio garden on the bank of the river, plus three of the rooms were setup for music tonite. Peverelist's set started off slowly with a classic dub skanker, almost just an introduction to get everyone's attention, before dropping into some really good dubtech sounds, from the more familiar tracks such as his own productions, his work with Appleblim (who was dancing around very happily during the whole set), and some 2562 tracks, plus a load i didn't recognise.
He was followed directly by Moritz Von Oswald who had a massive stack of classic dub 45's. Fighting off the cold, i was starting to fade a bit by then, and moved through to bar where you could still hear and feel the bass from his set. Wandered around checking out most of the other rooms after that, but we called it a night around 3am and went back to the hostel to play some pool!

Almost over the cold now i think, and been finding a good few records and downloads these past couple of days..

One of my recent obsessions has been Daru and Rena's 'Turn It On' which i mentioned briefly before on here, i think my description was something like 'flying lotus producing En Vogue' which still kinda fits, but Daru has a load of projects on the go and working with loads of different people. Last night i came across his blog - http://darujones.blogspot.com/. One of the best finds from the blog was a free mixtape you can grab from here and actually, quite a few other places round the net - if for some reason that link doesn't work just google "daru spirit soul-hop sampler". I do warn you tho - its quite on the neosoul tip, not something i go for often, but i dunno, the production is just so good you get sucked in!

Was out with Matt Spendlove recently, and he informed me about the Jahtari and Werk showcase at Plastic People this friday which looks so good! Its got disrupt, Rootah, Mikey Murka, and Actress all playing live. I visited and downloaded quite a load of releases from their site months ago, but went back today to re-explore, and grabbed a bunch of excellent free download releases - been particularly enjoying the Blue Vitriol release. Well worth an explore!

Hessle Audio

2008-06-06T13:29:00.003+01:00

Hessle Audio is a label i've just come across recently - out of Leeds and run by Ramadanman, Ben UFO and Pangaea, according to Discogs.

Those recent downloads i had bought, the TRG ones, and then the Martyn and Ramadanman remixes of TRG, were both on Hessle Audio, however i hadn't actually paid attention to the label. Yesterday i bought another wee batch of new downloads from boomkat, two of which also are on Hessle Audio: Untold's "Test Signal" EP, and Pangaea's "Coiled". Both are super good and show a nice advancement in the dubstep sound, with off-kilter rhythms more akin to 2step than the standard halfstep plod, and I've had both releases on constant repeat for the past 24 hours. Untold's 'Kingdom' is a particular standout, nice low-end sound palette, a slow motorik beat and undulating hypnotic bass, sprinkled with a smattering of on-safari-style samples. Thats definitely in my set for the Plastic People gig coming up!

Check em out on their myspace page

dubTechno2StepAcidBassline mix

2008-06-03T23:55:00.002+01:00

while preparing for DJing at the upcoming Funckarma release parties, i've been assembling a set in Ableton Live. I made a recording this past weekend of the more uptempo tracks which beat-match. I was pretty happy with the results, it seems to have turned out all right - from 2step to bassline via some 303!

Download here.

Tracklisting is:

thorsten's dubTechno2StepAcidBassline mix

1. Ramadanman - Kablammo Eleven
2. Appleblim - Vansan
3. TRG - Broken Heart (Martyn's DCM Remix)
4. 2562 - Enforcers
5. Peverelist - Infinity Is Now
6. Kit Clayton - Aspoket
7. Plastician - Cha
8. Voltaic - Darkhaze
9. Acid Jack - Mookie (Curses! Making You Nervous Mix)
10. Boy 8 Bit - Fogbank
11. Surgeon - Whose Bad Hands Are These (Autechre mix)
12. Ron Hardy - Welcome To The Club
13. Theo Parish - Falling Up (Carl Craig mix)
14. Blaqstar - Shake it to the ground (Drop The Lime remix)
15. DJ Pierre - Box Energy
16. Ron Carrol - Walking Down The Street
17. Ramadanman - Carla
18. Lethal Bizzle - Mr (produced by Dexplicit)
19. Adonis - No Way Back
20. Gescom - D1
21. The Village Orchestra - 2652 remix

dubstoned EP preview

2008-06-02T16:59:00.002+01:00

i have a wee Funckarma mp3, sort of like a megamix of their current Dubstoned project, including the upcoming EP1 plus stuff from EP2. Grab it from here.