uncarved.org blog

Earlier this year Matt Woebot wrote an excellent piece for The Wire magazine on the musical deviants of Cambridge. Tomorrow night he and the various people featured will appear in London courtesy of the ever-generous Jonny Mugwump. More details below.

It will be good – see you there…

Woebot (DJ)
Former blogger supremo turned sonic dissectionist, Woebot’s latest album Chunks is one of the highlights of 2011. This event was inspired by Mat’s article for The Wire in March this year.

The Doozer
Joe Meek productions through folk ethnography. “Guitars reverberate; drums ebb; gamelan parts move like clockwork and hand cymbals tinkle”.

Man from Uranus
Cosmic junk-shop synth sci-fi – Sun Ra and Stockhausen via jean-Jaques Perry, Esquivel and Roger Roger. “I love to make sound a visible entity- to paint with it.”

Pete Um
Anarcho-poetic, comedic anti-music. “Imagine if Quasimodo was a Home Counties Vicar dispensing slurred homilies, or perhaps if 2 Live Crew’s Luke Skywalker were producing Position Normal”.

Nochexxx
moving dancefloor synthesis into a parallel universe as heard via his records on Werk and RAMP.

More info, links and ticket details at exoticpylon dot com

Mr Mugwump has posted some handy Youtube links to introduce the artists on his blog.

“Only Glenroy’s records get played on Glenroy’s soundsystem!”

Young ‘uns and those outside the UK may not know that Grange Hill was an eighties kids’ TV series set in a London secondary school.

It was hugely popular and responsible for lots of school children outside of London adopting comedy mockney accents.

I’d completely forgotten this 1984 episode featuring a reggae soundsystem, but here it is thanks to youtube and Ras Stan on the Blood & Fire Board. Glenroy flings down some raw rub a dub and lovers rock as a backdrop to the end of term shenanigins.

I’m amazed it hasn’t been sampled to death already, frankly.

Easy to forget how massive soundsystem was back then – this 1981 NME cover story featured all the big names – Jah Shaka, Fatman and Coxsone Outernational, alongside a directory of over 100 sounds from across London. Alas, no mention of Glenroy, though!

Reggae’s influence didn’t just appear in Grange Hill with Sir Glenroy Hi-Fi either – this reminded me of another episode in which a rasta pupil at the school did an exhibition about his faith which lead to a brief exchange with the Headmistress about Haile Selassie: “to us, he is Jah!”.

For a lot of suburban white kids these episodes of Grange Hill, and perhaps a 5th generation VHS tape of Babylon would have been splinters of light coming through doorways which lead to other worlds…

Nice looking night from the man like Cool Hand Luke:

Liking the “vinyl-only” vibes.

On the same night the mighty Jah Observer are playing out for the last time – next door at Mass.

(In other news: Jah Observer’s space at Notting Hill Carnival is being taken over by Stoke Newington’s own Solution Sound next year).

Well that didn’t exactly go to plan:

I fell for my own hype on this one – figuring an 11:30pm showing of a reggae documentary would only attract the usual fan-spods, if that. So I didn’t book tickets and we turned up to find a huge posse of London’s finest, all dolled up to the nines and queuing up excitedly to get in.

Easy to forget how much Lovers Rock still means to people who were actually there – this was a humbling reminder!

“The STORY OF LOVERS ROCK is a feature length documentary tells the story of an era and a music that defined a generation in the late 70s and 80s. Lovers Rock is romantic reggae that was uniquely British. It developed from a small UK scene to become a global brand through the likes of UB40 and Maxi Priest.

Lover’s Rock is a uniquely black British sound that developed in the late 70s and 80s against a backdrop of riots, racial tension and sound systems. Live performance, comedy sketches, dance, interviews and archive shed light on the music and the generation that embraced it. Lovers Rock allowed young people to experience intimacy and healing through dance- known as ‘scrubbing’- at parties and clubs.

This dance provided a coping mechanism for what was happening on the streets. Lovers Rock developed into a successful sound with national UK hits and was influential to British bands (Police, Culture Club, UB40) These influences underline the impact the music was making in bridging the multi-cultural gap that polarized the times. The film sheds light on a forgotten period of British music, social and political history.”

I saw a rough cut of the film a while back and wrote about it here. I am really looking forward to seeing the finished version at Hackney’s Rio Cinema on Friday.

It is also showing at the Brixton Ritzy and Peckham’s Peckhamplex on the same day, and possibly elsewhere – check your local indy cinema for details.

The official website has exceded its bandwidth, which is annoying but a sign that there is a lot of interest in the film!

A more general release and DVD are planned.

Grievous Angel and I did a Lovers Rock megamix a while back to get you in the mood. A second installment is in the can and will be available in due course.

I’m skint and haven’t bought any records since July. Luckily my lust for new music is being catered for admirably by my friends. Another despatch from Mego HQ in Vienna has provided many enjoyable evenings.

Jim O’Rourke – Old News No. 6 2xLP

I used to own a fair few “dark ambient” albums, but I had to get rid of them. It wasn’t the fascist undertones, or the sheer satanic evil of the music – they all just seemed incredibly one dimensional when I listened to them again after many years’ abstinence. I think if you have to overload your record sleeves with extreme imagery and use vocal samples reflecting how incredibly sinister it all is, you’re probably doing it all wrong. (To know, to will, to dare, and to keep silent, right?)

Plus, I have less use in my life these days for such mono-emotional soundtracks. I rarely feel the urge to play “happy hardcore” or “uplifting trance” for the same reason. But mono-textural is fine – see my recent Mark Fell review.

O’Rourke is another of the pantheon of people I recognise from reading The Wire but have never engaged with. They stuck him on the cover dressed as a rabbit is all I know. Oh and he was in Sonic Youth for a bit. Frankly the cover of this doesn’t give much away. Which is all for the good because I approached it without any preconceptions. It’s strange – electronic and ambient and varied but not demanding that you interpret it in a particular way (even Autechre who I see as miles away from the legions of dark-ambienters still have a very clearly defined post-rave sinister boffin aesthetic).

Over four sides of thick black vinyl, O’Rourke pours gloopy drones, harsh interludes, urban field recordings and other elements that are even harder to describe. It fluctuates between calm and unnerving, bright and dark. These fluctuations allow your imagination to completely open up rather than being signposted in a particularly cliched sub-goth direction.

I don’t really know what it is, which is why I keep going back to it.

Mark Fell & Peter Rehberg – Zikir/Kubu 12″

I like both these people, but I don’t think I get this record.

Side A: BBC male voices document something seriously (possibly, the development of radar?). There is occasionally squidgy bass rumble, but mainly there are stilted breakbeats – running at about 70bpm. And let’s be clear, these are much more like drums than Mark’s martian surgical implements of UL8. There is a Cabaret Voltaire influence floating above this – and I’m not sure if they are trying to reach towards it or run away. Certainly the double, triple speed madness at the end suggests some kind of escape velocity being reached…

Side B: is Rehberg meets Fell in the echo chamber. A simple drum riff, some static crunchiness, elements slowly being added. Before you know it you’re nodding your head to a pretty complex drum pattern. Soon enough they’ve added almost baffling levels of complexity. A slow shift from minimal to overload.

I’m haunted by the feeling that this record includes elements of something else – another record I am very familiar with. That’s not to say that either track is generic, just that for a trainspotter like me there is a pleasure/pain aspect to not being able to pin it down.

Philipp Quehenberger – Uffuff 12″

The title track comes replete with a camp as fuck sinister bassline, right out of the Torture Garden or Slimelight in the early nineties. Plus nice stomping germanic beatz. Somewhere, someone in those stupid goth clown boots is mixing this in with KMFDM.

Then Patrick Pulsinger brings some mad diddly beats that make you wonder if you’re playing the record at the right speed. (No really, I had to play the thing from the start and then time it to see if was the right length as stated on the editions mego website…). Then about halfway through it morphs into an exact replica of the sort of tunes you’d get played in the mental room of raves -the spaces you’d peak into at about 4 in the morning and they’d either be empty or full of proper casualties going even more bonkers – either way you’d never actually go in, but probably regret it a little…

If you were fleeing the room-of-mentals, you’d probably be looking from something exactly like the Elin remix of “Hey Gert”. Absolutely lush twinkly synths and an only as rough as it needs to be bassline, with skippy beats. This sounds like the kind of gear Colin Dale used to play – and there are few compliments I can pay people in the techno realm. I don’t know if everyone did this, but there are some moments when you’d end up having a “smiling like a loon” partner on discerning dancefloors. Usually a complete stranger, you were forced together by the mutual recognition that “fucking hell, this is a REALLY GOOD BIT, isn’t it?”. This is one of those tunes.

Then – we return! To the room of mentals! For the last track! Remix by Altroy! Who are either a “business advice and marketing services” company in Ruislip, or some guy from Harlem who rocked up in Vienna with a pleasingly small internet footprint.

Bill Orcutt – A New Way To Pay Old Debts CD

Peter is most amused by the fact that the most extreme release he’s put out this year so far is a blues record. OK, so it’s not really a blues record as the old coves who turn up to the jam sessions in your local boozer would understand it. Very few vocals, mainly some guy pummeling the living fuck out of an acoustic guitar. A repaired acoustic guitar that has two strings missing. It’s a raw recording- you can hear the room alongside the music, which works. There is some distortion around the edges too, which definitely works – this is one gnarly performance.

Actually I’m not entirely sure that there are any vocals on this. On first listen I thought there was a bit of piano too, but now I’m convinced they are just strange fret-board resonances. Hey, maybe even the room-ambience is just something Orcutt can conjur up with his fingers and guitar, I dunno. It sounds like there is much more than one man and a guitar here, anyway.

I’ve previously said that “A New Way…” is what Seasick Steve would sound like if he was really some outsider dude on the fringes of society and sanity. That provoked some mixed reactions, so it’s definitely in keeping with the album. Whatever Orcutt has the blues about, you get the impression that it’s more than waking up in the morning to find his woman done left him.

Audio and more information on all of the above and more available at: http://editionsmego.com/

Ekoplekz – Intrusive Incidentalz Vol 1 (Punch Drunk LP and digital)

More vinyl promo goodness from the Ekoplekz camp puts a big stupid grin on my face. The many moods of Ekoplekz are becoming slightly more apparent over time. This is much more aggy, more urgent than the Live at Dubloaded LP I reviewed last month. (And the standard disclaimer still applies – I am biased. Pro-Ekoplekz.) The tracks are shorter, generally denser, and less spacey. The lo-fi improvised electronic signatures remain.

Punch Drunk’s press blurb says that Nick’s “retro futurism” is tempered with a “post-dubstep sensibility” which makes me cringe a bit and I think is oversimplifying things (although I fully understand that is what a one-sheeter is supposed to do). Intrusive Incidentalz is less about influences and homages and more about intersecting paths in a maze. Bits that recall vintage Throbbing Gristle to an old fart like me will conjur up something completely different to a teenager just falling under the spell of dubstep or (and you can scoff all you like, but they are out there – I meet their parents!).

One of Richard H Kirk’s best contributions to the Synth Britannia documentary was saying that Cabaret Voltaire were trying to soundtrack the extreme political climate and paranoia of the era they were working in. For Kirk, the Brixton riots were inspirational – finally someone was kicking back. Only the most ardent anarchist would say that the recent riots were inspirational in the same way, but they are a good indicator of where things are headed – of the desperation (and desperate opportunism) the UK is soaked with right now.

Making tracks for the dancefloor is an entirely honourable pursuit in these circumstances and will provide that flash of release during hard times for lots of people. But for me, the wonky pummeling of “Clodsteps” or the woozy splinters of “Psionik Trance”  are a more apt soundtrack for September 2011. The sonic continuities with previous eras mesh with the political and social continuities – but so do the variations and innovations. Things are not exactly the same this time around, it’s different – we’re still working through what those differences are and what they mean.

Or perhaps I’m projecting? Nick seems much more down to earth and well balanced than me. Maybe he’s just so well rounded that he’s gone to the trouble of making an album that sounds like how I feel when I have to walk down those grey corridors with a nagging hangover, again. Sometimes I find this album hard to listen to, sometimes I find it hard to write about. Sometimes I sit at my desk, blinking along with the striplights and look forward to submerging myself in it all.

“Intrusive Incidentalz vol 1″ is out now on Punch Drunk. Order vinyl direct from the label and get a free digital copy.

Great cover again by my man 2nd Fade

Ekoplekz plays Cafe Oto in October in collaboration with Bass Clef as Eko-Clef

Ekoplekz interview at Sonic Router

Mans like Abu Zaki and Woebot hipped me to this. A nice relick of the Stars riddim by Mr Benn featuring Champion on deejay duties. I’m assuming this is the same Champion as the microphone veteran at London’s Tighten Up nights. That Champion (aka Champian) has proper heritage – MCing in London back in the eighties and making what I think is his vinyl debut on Part One of the (still obscure, but can a reissue be long now?) Live At DSYC LPs on the Raiders label.

The vid was done to promote the rather fine artwork and animation of David Cox. There’s also this one:

I think they both show a nice flair for doing idiosyncratic animation, which I love – I was a big fan of Vision On and Sesame Street as kid, largely because of the short cartoon clips that I later realised were quite trippy…

It takes quite a lot to tempt me out of DJ retirement these days, but Heatwave have very kindly asked me to return to the decks for their 8th Birthday Party. I could hardly refuse although it’s a pity I’ll be without Droid at my side this time – our last encounter at the same venue is now the stuff of legend:

A cruel depiction of my last time playing at the Big Chill House by Martin of Beyond The Implode

I would hazard a guess that with a line up like that I’m going to be on early, so come down and grab a beer for some warm up skanking.

Also, some of this:

More info about the event here, as well as some great Heatwave mixed and radio shows to get you in the mood.

Venue details here

Heatwave are soon to release a DVD of their epoch-defining Stageshow event, filmed by Rollo Jackson who did the Tape Crackers film I raved about earlier this year and also has a nice write up by Dan Hancox in The Guardian. I’ve seen a preview copy and it’s bloody great – live footage of legendary UK MCs tearing the place up, deftly mixed in with a whole bag of interviews.

Here’s to another 8 years of The Heatwave!

UK reggae has seemed increasingly detached from current affairs in recent years, but anyone who’s checked my eighties mixes will know it hasn’t always been this way. I guess the focus has moved to a more international market which means the particularities of life in specific areas of London or Birmingham don’t get a look in.

Plus of course, music is shaped by the society and economics around it. Perhaps Dan Hancox’s excellent article about Grime and the riots marks the beginning of a cultural shift (or perhaps it’s wishful thinking by youthful lefties like Dan, and knackered old ones like me).

Either way, I’ve been looking out for songs about recent events and have collected some of the better efforts below for your delectation. These are mainly thanks to the good people of the Blood and Fire board. I’ve not had much luck looking for things myself, but there do seem to be a bunch of people re-tagging their tunes on Youtube to tie them into the recent disturbances.

(Any further tips on 2011 riots tunes would be much appreciated, especially if they are any good – leave suggestions in the comments box if you find any…)

So here goes, in no particular order:

1. AMPASOUND – RIOT!!! FWD – London Riots!!! (Reggae Mix – Preview)

A skippy upful roots stepper, with suprisingly incisive lyrics (dissing Cameron for being on holiday), some good Darcus Howe samples and pretty great video.

2. Dub Investigation – Fire In The Town

Dub Investigation – Fire in the Town by Dub Investigation

Mournful, and melodic with a nice xylophone thingy. Reminds me a bit of Manasseh’s recent productions, which is a high compliment. Some different Darcus Howe and an articulate member of the public get sampled.

Dub Investigation are from Dublin, incidentally – a city with worries and troubles of its own. Indeed, the fucked up economy of the Republic of Ireland is one of the main reasons for Woofah not coming out and for its esteemed editor having to paddle twice as fast just to keep his head above water.

3. The Blackstones – Heat In The Streets

Languid one drop, in which the youth are instructed in no uncertain terms not to disrespect their culture or skimp on education. I think the Blackstones were a UK group who recorded at Studio One, but not entirely sure. Please note I have avoided googling them to bolster my credibility!

(Apparently this actually came out two weeks before the riots, so cue lots of “prophecy fulfil” type of talk… don’t call it a cash-in!)

4. Big Youth – London’s Burning

Mad Professor production – nice to see some legends stepping up but this isn’t my favourite by any means. Looking forward to checking the dub though!

5. Fresharda – 2011

Some contemporary dancehall, complete with vocoder! I actually quite like this – consciousness wins though I guess.

Dan Hancox linked to this from his ace Guardian piece, but I’ve included it here for completeness. I think Fresharda was probably first out of the blocks in terms of riot songs, but the lyrics are quite general so he may have had it in the can already…

6. King Hammond – Riot In London Town

And finally, the ridiculous King Hammond with a tune recorded in March. A perfect pastiche of 1969 Skinhead Reggae which gets huge points for namechecking Clissold Park, Stamford Hill and Manor House as well as many other London haunts. Well cheeky, this one makes me smile a lot.

Bubbling under

From the not quite as good, to the downright cringeworthy. Includes some jaw-droppingly bad lyrics, but also the occasional genius moment.

Incidentally, that old William Burroughs quote “riot sounds produce riots” – that’s been rendered a bit redundant in the era of 24 hour media overkill, hasn’t it? Old Bill reckoned a group of you could wander about with cassettes of riot noises playing and people would get so agitated that they would actually riot themselves. But everyone in the UK has now heard more riot sounds than they know what to do with on the telly, with mainly zero result.

In the more innocent days of 1989, some courageous souls tried out Burroughs’ idea every day at The Festival of Plagiarism in Glasgow, “with mixed results”.

I was up there, but the experiment was too early in the morning for me, so I missed my opportunity to see it all for myself, as did the wonderful people I was staying with. But this did have the unexpected bonus value of us all being slagged off by Stewart Home for being “bohemians”, the first and I think only time that word has been used in connection with me.