uncarved.org blog

…is a short film by photographer Shaun Bloodworth.

It was commissioned by Mary Ann Hobbs for Sonar, and has a soundtrack by my man Grievous Angel.

All three protagonists live in Sheffield as do the various clubs featured. It’s good – some nice energetic positive vibes.

Click the link to have a look.

Cooler Man – Kanjiwatanye

I absolutely love this tune. I like how it manages to be catchy as fuck – even though I have no clue what any of the lyrics are. Full marks for the rockstone delivery also.

The video is great, just random stuff that he and his mates are up to in the hood. Also some nice UK t-shirts on show, a couple of guys in football garms, whereas Coolerman himself opts for the bizarre choice of a Keep Britain Tidy tee – and rocks it!

Not to mention the re-appearance of all Ugandan rudebwoys’ favourite tipple – Bell Lager…

I can’t seem to turn up any info on Coolerman, leave a comment if you can find anything out – the people need to know!

I don’t spend enough time with my records (who does?). Most of my music listening is done on the walk to and from work.

Sitting at home in my cupboard the other night, I discovered that the ace Dug Out label were re-releasing “Hole Up Your Hand” by legendary north London reggae MC Raymond Naphtali on ten inch. Awesome news!

Then I thought about the pile of records in the living room, sitting there. Not exactly unloved, but certainly not attended to very well. And yes, eight quid plus postage is a reasonable amount of cash to lay down for such an item, but it seemed like quite a lot for something I wouldn’t hear that much and would play out even less (if ever – this is the first year for a while that I’ve not taken to the decks. And actually that is OK).

As TIm P over at Dancecrasher pointed out, Honest Jons are doing Dug Out mp3s for 60 pence a pop. Which is frankly a bit of a no-brainer, even for an mp3 sceptic like me. You get them straight away, for cheap, and you are still supporting a great shop and a great label (and presumably the artist/producer as well).

I splashed out on a whole bunch of Dug Out releases, including the stone cold classic “He Was A Friend” by King Kong, which I had also baulked at buying on wax a little while back. It’s a digital lament to the late Tenor Saw which has been much in demand (I think it was even on the notorious Boomshakalacka “Best 100 tunes of the eighties” list?).

All the tunes are great and I have been listening to them repeatedly on the commute. There isn’t the same visceral thrill of holding the vinyl in your hand and lowering the needle, but this lot will do me fine as a compromise.

Then comrade T-woc pointed out on the Blood & Fire forum that Boomkat has bundled up a bunch of “psyche-dub” mp3s as part of their weekly “14 tracks” special. 14 tracks for 7 quid. Seems about right to me.

I’ve been listening to a fair bit of mad stuff recently, so this fitted the bill nicely: some droney, some noisy, some abstract. But all tied together in a bassy, echoey package. Mostly artists I had never heard of – or had heard of, but not got the chance to investigate properly.

Again, high quality stuff for the most part, that I am enjoying wading through. It reminds me of the seminal Macro Dub Infection and Isolationism compilations that Kevin Martin put together for Virgin in the nineties. Dub as process (rather than a genre) which links the outer fringes of all sorts of mindwarping musics. It’s a great bit of curation in fact – something much needed in the avalanche of new things to check out… I’ve now got some new things to investigate and some future purchases to make.

If people keep doing good stuff like this, then I’ll keep supporting it. Hopefully I’ll not be alone in doing that – which means we might have turned quite a significant corner in terms of our little zone of the music industry surviving.

This week’s selection is brought to you by Sweet Kid:

In which our hero puts an alarming amount of amorous activity into wooing said Brenda. But she seems almost catatonic in her lack of enthusiasm for his efforts. Give it up mate, she’s more trouble than she’s worth!

Sweet Kid is a great name for an artist, I’m half sure there’s a grime “Sweet Kid” or possibly a mid-90s UK ragga version. This Sweet Kid is known to his no doubt proud Mum as Moses Sserwada, and she brought him into the world in 1982.

There’s a good article on him over at UG Pulse, which gives some more information – including the unfortunate come-back this tune had on his relationship when it became a number one hit.

Vagina Dentata Organ
THE LONDON PUNK TAPES
Exhibition
15 JULY – 26 SEPTEMBER, 2010
ARCHIVE

La Ramblas 7, Barcelona 08002

During 1976 and 1977 Jordi Valls recorded live on nine audio cassettes some of the early punk gigs in London. These tapes, featuring The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Subway Sect, Billy Idol & Generation X, The Slits and Buzzcocks, capture the true sound of punk — raw, countercultural and subversive — as a phenomenon that had a radical impact on popular music and fashion, first in Britain and America, and then worldwide.

Arguably the most interesting aspect of punk is its vital, visceral energy, and the demonstration that the only thing that really matters is the intention, the power of the imagination, and nothing more. Sound, photographs, an audio-visual with punk iconography by Franc Aleu-Urano Films and an installation combine here to profile a rebellious attitude firmly committed to its time.

More information

Vagina Dentata Organ on Uncarved

Unknown by Unknown. Pah. (Remember when Mixmag or Muzik would have those ridiculous DJ top tens every month, and one of them would always be some drum ‘n’ bass guy boasting about how he had loads of white labels of unknown providence? I swear that’s where Origin Unknown got their name).

Nice bit of female vocal anyway – not the best quality, but vibes galore (as they used to say when flogging you yard tapes). Seems like the last part of the tune is a series of shout outs to various districts, which is always good.

[listens again and googles a bit]

Actually, she might be Nazizi? Not sure who the guy is.

LOL at this curtailed interview – what a great opening question!

Ah, right “Necessary Noise”. And they’re from Kenya, not Uganda. OK, I’ll change the tagging on the clip. Phew!

Myspace.

It’s Noise with a “Z”? Right, then – wiki entry. Which reveals that the boy  is Kevin Wyre.

Hello Kevin and Nazizi – good tune!

Swedish Massive!

Droid and I are interviewed about Woofah magazine in the new issue of Reggae Galore.

(English massive – Kvalitet lönar sig translates as “quality pays off” – damn straight.)

This week’s selection from the man like Bobi Wine, the self-styled “President of Uganja”!

A tune called “Bam Bam” which isn’t the Toots or Pliers or Sister Nancy ones. Echoes of TOK or Ward 21 with the low backing vocals. Echoes of many JA videos with the visuals. Still a nice track, though – kind of thing you might hear Heatwave playing, maybe…

Hmm, he has a barely working Myspace.

Looks like he is up there for ragga swagger also, check this recent news story which features disrespect to dignitaries and also getting into trouble over weed smoking!

This interview gives the lowdown on his upbringing and career so far including forming the Fire Base Camp which Master Parrott was also a member of. He also has a pragamatic view of HIV/AIDS and its prevention.

But he’s obviously something of a (ahem) complex figure. In this interview he comes across as a bit of a mental primadonna, bigging up Idi Amin and saying he had to build a stupidly massive house because of some beef with another artist.

But then you get some raw stuff like this:

“I don’t hate poverty,” Wine said, as if the word hate was not strong enough.  “I.  Fear.  It.” The words seemed to tremble in his mouth.  [...]  “I was reading Milton Obote’s writing, and he said it’s good to die a bit,” he said softly.  “So you live longer.  There was a time…when I never existed.  I died—in poverty.  I didn’t have slippers, breakfast or lunch.  I had no hope.”

Other online sources go into his early days in music:

“Underground shows with a Walkman, a borrowed amplifier and a speaker was how I used to make ends meet. I would spread the word and after school charge students fifty shillings (less than half dollar) per head and we would jam! I got into trouble with the school administration but that was the way I made my pocket money.”

So he’s a mixed bag. Top tunes though, which I guess should be the main thing.

Thanks to Droid for alerting me to this surprising addendum to the Papa Levi story.

So this is an undisputed classic UK MC tune, OK? If you had a Papa Levi acapella in the early 90s, you’d seriously consider doing a jungle relick, right? No brainer!

But… would you make it a lounge-jazz version with completely pointless Malcolm X samples? Well, these guys did. And they also pitched up the acapella so it goes all Minnie Mouse. Which is probably par for the course, but not helped by the crappy bitrate here.

Sounds like the vocal is taken off Levi’s own ragga relick of the original, which was released on Birmingham’s Spider Ranks label – probably around the same time. That cut is wicked and I think I played it on RSI Radio vol 3.

I’m pretty sure Spider Ranks was allied to the Luv Injection soundsystem, so I guess this jungle tune (credited to “The Link (Love Injection Music)”) had something to do with them. There was a fantastic TV documentary about Luv Injection clashing Ricky Trooper in Birmingham in the 90s, which I have on a VHS tape around here somewhere.

Anyway, Papa Levi is still tearing it up. Check the most recent RSI Radio for a wicked 2010 tune by him on a grime tip, produced by Saxon-affiliate Dot Rotten.

See, people go on about how the youth of today are all horrible, but one of my teenage neighbours just helped someone else on the block get into their flat (possibly just to end the horror of me attempting to post my daughter through a tiny window).

And earlier today 17 year old Grime producer J Beatz asked very nicely if he could send me a promo of his latest EP. So of course I said yes, even though most of the music I get sent these days is rubbish.

I’m not the world’s hugest fan of instrumental grime, but I’ll definitely take that over generic wobble-step if given the choice. This is good gear, thank fuck.

Dutty‘s beats are exactly the correct combination of swing and stiffness and all the freaky growling + airy synths over the top of them do some nice things to my head. Cash Point is a bit more full-on and ravey (i.e. exhausting, for old gits like me) with some good video game type sound effects.

Tazer really reminds me of grime beats circa 2003 – plucky strings, weird bubbling beats, sinister b-line. Top stuff – almost like a Jon E Cash / Black Ops joint!

Ragga Muffin obviously piqued my interest. Am I just biased or do grime people make reggae pastiches a million times better than dubstep people? This is great – some UK Dub-style skanking going on, lickle sample of a soundman and soundsystem effects. It works precisely because it isn’t a really obvious mahoosive bassline over a really obvious reggae vocal. I definitely want to hear an MC over this one…

Anyway, I reckon this is well worth investigation, but don’t take my word for it – there’s a youtube promo clip up here. (Ragga Muffin starts at about 4:35)

J Beatz: 1 Dutty EP – out on digital and vinyl on Crown Jules Records on July 19th.

http://www.myspace.com/jbeatzproducer
http://www.facebook.com/jbeatzmusic
http://www.twitter.com/jbeatzmusic