Datacide: Introduction Nemeton: Infiltration and Agent Provocateurs; Vision Tech; Endless War; Surveillance, Control and Repression CF: NSU Update Two in London: UK Anti-Fascist Round Up Comrade Omega: Crisis in the SWP, or: Weiningerism in the UK David Cecil: Confessions of an Accidental Activist Neil Transpontine: Spiral Tribe Interview with Mark Harrison Neil Transpontine: ‘Revolt of the Ravers’-The Movement Against the Criminal Justice Act in Britain, 1993-95 Split Horizon: What is This Future? Fabian Tompsett: Wikipedia-A Vernacular Encyclopedia Howard Slater: Shared Vertigo Dan Hekate: Crystal Distortion Howard Slater: Cut-Up Marx Howard Slater: EARTH ‘A RUN RED Marcel Stoetzler: Identity, Commodity and Authority: Two New Books about Horkheimer and Adorno Nemeton: Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency (book review) Christoph Fringeli: One Night in Stammheim. Helge Lehmann: Die Todesnacht von Stammheim – Eine Untersuchung (book review) Christoph Fringeli: Anton Shekovtsov, Paul Jackson (eds.): White Power Music – Scenes of the Extreme Right Cultural Resistence (book review) CF: Press reviews John Eden: Emencified Shrill Out: Nomex at the Controls Alexis Wolton: Vinyl Meltdown, Prt. 1
Record reviews by Zombieflesheater, Nemeton and Kovert
DJ Charts Matthieu Bourel: Rioter Sansculotte: Overdosed
Plus: The Lives and Times of Bloor Schleppy
This piece was originally intended for issue 5 of Woofah, but has been fully updated. (It’s the last outstanding thing I wrote for Woofah, which makes me a bit smiley and a bit weepy!). Spatial is an interesting guy and is well worth checking.
It includes an exclusive interview I did with industrial music superstar Jordi Valls about his work as Vagina Dentata Organ and The Valls Brothers.
Also a bunch of my reviews (including some of the lengthier ones intended for Woofah).
CONTENTS
Datacide: Introduction Darkam: The Art of Visual Noise Nemeton: Political News Christoph Fringeli: Neo-Nazi Terror and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany Cherry Angioma: Communisation Theory and the Question of Fascism Christoph Fringeli: From Adorno to Mao – The Decomposition of the ’68 Protest Movement into Maoism (extended book review) Split Horizon: Control and Freedom in Geographic Information Systems Riccardo Balli: “Bolognoise ain’t a Sauce for Spaghetti but Bologna’s Soundscape” Polaris International: Documents and Interventions TechNET insert:
- Noise and Politics – Technet Mix
- No More WordS
- Listener as Operator
- The Intensifier
- No Stars Here
- Techno: Psycho-Social Tumult
- Dead By Dawn – Explorations inside the Night
- Psycho-Social Tumult (Remix) Dan Hekate: Kiss me, cut me, hurt me, love me Howard Slater: Useless Ease John Eden: The Dog’s Bollocks – Vagina Dentata Organ and the Valls Brothers (interview) Neil Transpontine: Spannered – Bert Random Interview LFO Demon: When Hell is full the Dead will Dance on your iPhone (Review of Simon Reynold’s “Retromania” Christoph Fringeli: “Fight for Freedom” – The Legend of the “other” Germany (extended book review) Nemeton: “West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California” (book review) Datacide: Press reviews terra audio: 2023: A Spor remembers ‘Reclaim the Streets’ John Eden: Christopher Partridge: Dub in Babylon (book review) terra audio: Jeff Mills: Violet Extremist terra audio: Keeping the Door of the Cosmos open – on Sun Ra’s Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen
Record Reviews
The Lives and Times of Bloor Schleppy (12)
Comic by Sansculotte
ORDERING
1) “You can order it now for just 4 euro which includes world-wide postage. We can only offer this super-cheap price by shipping the copies in bulk, meaning if we ship something like 50 copies it costs about half of the normal price of 3 euro for postage per copy (which obviously would make no sense). We will do the first mailout on monday or tuesday, and won’t do another one for at least another 2-3 weeks.
So to get your copy hot off the press, please either send 4 euro via paypal to datacide@c8.com or take out a subscription, which costs only 10 euro for 3 issues. You can also include back issues 10 and 11 in the subscription deal – in case you don’t have them yet – so you wouldn’t even have to worry when the next issue is coming out!”
I haven’t stopped blogging. I’ve just got really really picky.
This is something worth writing about. Like me, Kek-W has been flung into a boredom-induced rage at the state of the world and the constant click click click of refreshing screens.
So he’s done this weird fanzine/pdf/not quite sure what it is lash up. And it’s great – there is something about the format which means that you can’t just scroll through it looking at the pictures – you have to sit down with it with a cup of tea (or whatever) and take your time.
It’s a breath of fresh air – you can tell Kek’s spent some time thinking about it and making it rather than just bashing it out (like we all have a tendency to do these days). Some energising musings on what has got him to this point, and some great features on Pete UM and Pariah Carey. The highlight for me was the Libbe Matz Gang interview which may confuse or enlighten those in search of clues, but either way – it’s a laugh.
Uncle Dugs on Rinse FM with a blazing 1991 selection.
But even better than that, he gets Kool FM founder Eastman in for an extended interview. (interview commences at about 1:37:00)
Some proper history, covering North London reggae soundsystem, early raves, Jungle Fever, and the full story of Kool FM.
An amazing bit of oral history, loads of details and tales of scrapes. If you liked “Tape Crackers”, this is the side of the story told by the station crew rather than the listeners/punters.
Kool FM is about to celebrate 20 years in the business.
Many of you may have heard of BBC Lancashire’s “On The Wire” show already because you’re in the area and tune in. Others may be avid readers of presenter Steve Barker’s reggae reviews for (the unrelated but similarly named) Wire magazine.
Or maybe you’re aware of the numerous tie-ins with people like Lee Perry or the On-U Sound crew.
On The Wire - archive flyer
For me On The Wire is the BBC’s only remaining manifestation of the true spirit of underground eclecticism once also exhibited by John Peel. I’ve heard a ton of the shows as podcasts and downloads over the years. The reggae and dub specials are amazing, but the shows where Steve and the crew shove everything in the bag are even better. Shackleton and King Midas Sound rub up against The Ceramic Hobs and LA Vampires. Raw blues cuts mix with slinky african business. All with impeccable wry northern commentary.
So yeah.
I was greatly saddened to be sent this email by Steve at the weekend:
The Future of On the Wire
Everyone has heard about the cuts that are about to be made by the BBC in the “Drive for Quality” initiative. What is not so well known is how these cuts will impact the specialist shows hosted by local radio.
Effectively there will be no “local radio” after seven o’clock in the evening. Shows will be shared between groups of stations. In the North West this group will be the Lancashire, Manchester and Merseyside stations. At this stage it is understood that BBC Radio Lancashire will only be responsible for shared programming on a Sunday afternoon. The high probability is that any output in this slot will be in an “easy listening” format. Therefore. sometime between now and April 2013, by which time all the agreed changes will be implemented, On the Wire will disappear from the airwaves after over twenty eight years of continuous broadcasting.
The proposals are subject to public consultation by the BBC Trust – so you can have your say and, hopefully, make a difference. Go to www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust and look for the “consultation” button or write to Lord Patten, Chairman, BBC Trust, 180 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5QZ. You could also write to your MP and local paper.
Failing all this being successful, we will be aiming for On the Wire to continue one way or another, preferably still within the BBC where the programme was identified as a unique BBC product by the BBC Board back in November 1991 when the show was last under threat.
Thanks for your support
The On the Wire team of Steve Barker, Jim Ingham and Michael Fenton
My letter is in the post, but I think communications from people in Lancs will count for more.
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.
Stamford Hill is right at the northern end of the London Borough of Hackney, bordering Haringey/Tottenham. I’ve lived around there for about 15 years now and have always had an interest in its history.
Last May, Richie (Maharishi Hi-Fi / Musical Fever) hosted another one of his excellent nights, this time at the Mascara Bar (previously Panagea Project, opposite Morrisons Supermarket). I’m no die-hard Ska or Rocksteady expert, but Richie’s nights are always excellent (see reviews here and here). I’ll happily leave the selections to Richie and his favoured DJs any time – an amazing night for the old and young is standard.
Riche also has an uncanny habit of organising great events within about 2 minutes of my flat, which is most definitely to his credit. This time one of my favourite reggae writers of all time, Penny Reel, was on the bill – and there was a local history angle. I was sold.
It was an education, musically and socially. I had the pleasure of meeting Nick Kimberley, who published the world’s first reggae fanzine, Pressure Drop, with Penny Reel in 1974. I get very excited about things like that and the connections/differences with Woofah. Before that night I didn’t know anything about the R&B Records operation. Naturally there were tunes aplenty and further help was on hand in the form of a text produced especially for the night by Malcolm Imrie, who has kindly allowed me to republish it here:
R&B Records 1959-1984
Bunny Lee: “The main t’ree people was when I come a Englan’ forty odd years ago, right, was who now. . .? Mrs King. . . and. . . husband name Benny. Benny use’ to come a Jamaica too, yunno, an’ put out — a get record. Him use’ to put out anyt’ing wha Ken Lack [Caltone imprint] make, Rita an’ Benny, y’understan…”
Rita and Benny King, R&B Records?
“Yes, Rita an’ Benny, right. Them did ‘aye a big distributing place from — dem was powerful people inna the business. Mrs King was a force to reckon with. Them use’ to have a place inna Stamford Hill. If she na sell the record is better yu come outta the business.”
In 1959, Stamford Hill was a lot livelier than it is today. A good place to be a teenager. Full of cafes, like the popular E&A salt beef bar on the corner of Clapton Common and Stamford Hill or Carmel’s kosher restaurant a few doors further down on the other side of the street (oddly, the newish shop there is still called Carmel). Even Windus Road (just round the corner from the Mascara Bar) had three milk bars — you can still see the sign of one of them outside what is now a Hassidic pizza takeaway.
A lot of people would hang out and play pinball in “the Schtip”, the Yiddish name (I think it means ‘taking money’) everyone used for the amusement arcade almost next door to the E&A (it’s still there, with a different name and no pinball). As well as the grand Regent (where Sainsbury’s now stands), soon to be the Gaumont and finally the Odeon, you could take your pick of around eight other cinemas within half a mile.
Three years earlier, ten-year-old local girl Helen Shapiro was singing in a group called Susie and the Hula Hoops, along with a boy called Markie Feld, later to change his name to Marc Bolan. Two years on, in 1962, she’d have two number one hits. In ’59 she and Markie were both members of Stamford Hill Boys and Girls Club in Montefiore House (now replaced by a block of flats just south of Holmleigh Road), as were Alan Sugar, one day to get knighted for services to himself, and Malcolm Edwards, soon to become Malcolm McLaren.
And in only a few months’ time, they are about to get the first ten-pin bowling alley in Europe (watch its gala opening here or below)
Exciting times.
All that was missing was a good record shop, and in 1959 a Jewish couple called Rita and Benny Isen who had just changed their surname to King decided to open one. Rita and Benny: R&B Records. I read somewhere that earlier they sold records from a stall in Petticoat Lane but have no idea whether it’s true. For the first ‘few years the shop was at 282 Stamford Hill (now a builder’s merchants), and then it moved a few doors up to 260 (now Top Pizza). By about 1963/64 they weren’t just selling records, they were releasing them on their own labels — first the parent label, R&B, and then a whole sprawling family of others, including Giant, King, Ska Beat, Hillcrest, Caltone, Jolly, and Port-O-Jam. Their most bizarre label was surely Prima MagnaGroove, devoted exclusively to the output of the Italo-American swing artist Louis Prima (slogan: Stay on the Move, With Prima MagnaGroove). That’s Louis singing ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ in Jungle Book — the king of the swingers.
At first their catalogue was an odd mixture. Their only big hit in the UK was Irish c&w Larry Cunningham’s ‘Tribute to Jim Reeves’ in 1964. They did a bit of gentle pop, including “His Girl” by the Canadian band The Guess Who? which managed to get to number 45 in 1966:
It’s been claimed they even released surf music but I haven’t found any trace of it.
But that isn’t why they were so special. What was really important about R&B Records was that Rita and Benny were among the very first to release Jamaican music in Britain. Ska and rock steady. Scores of great records on pretty much all their labels, from 1964 onwards. Artists included: Laurel Aitken, Dandy Livingstone, Jeanette Simpson, Junior Smith, The Itals, The Wailers, The Wrigglers, Jackie Opel, The Maytals, The Skatalites, Lee Perry, The Blue Flames, The Clarendonians, Delroy Wilson, Derrick Morgan, Don Drummond, Stranger Cole… and many, many more. You can find the (incomplete) catalogues of some of their labels on www.discogs.com [and Tapir's site - JE]. While Benny looked after the shop, Rita traveled to Jamaica to meet the musicians and buy the tapes.
Until the late 1960s there were very few places in Britain where you could buy records of Jamaican music, and R&B on Stamford Hill had all the new releases, and not just on their own labels. So their shop became a mecca for young blacks, not just from Hackney but from all over London and well beyond. Barry Service, who worked in the shop from 1970 to 1980, says that when he started there the place was packed on Friday evenings and all day Saturday, with people buying music and listening to music — it seemed like a club as much as a shop. And Rita, with her beehive haircut, presided over it all, like a queen. The shop also became very popular — because they liked ska — with the early Mods. Penny Reel, who grew up here, convincingly claims that Stamford Hill was the birthplace of Mod:
“The grandfathers of these young stylists [Markie Feld and his friends] toiled in the tailoring sweatshops of Fashion Street fifty years earlier and their fathers own small outfitters in Kingsland Waste, so it is not at all surprising that their clothes are at the forefront of fashion and in the most modern Italian and French styles. In fact, this crowd refer to themselves as “modernists” and they are the forerunners of the gentile “mods” who emerge over the next few years with their sharp bri-nylon anoraks, scooters and op art imagery, and cause headlines at the Easter weekend holiday in Clacton in 1964.”
Certainly there were a lot of Mods, Jewish and gentile, in and around Stamford Hill. They would go to music venues further up towards Tottenham, like Loyola Hall (now some sort of Christian mission centre) where The Who played early on, and the Club Noreik at Seven Sisters, as you can see at the end of this clip of Unit 4+1 playing there in ’66:
Rita and Benny’s shop lasted for 25 years. They finally closed it in 1984, partly, it seems, because of ill-health. Barry Service kept in touch with them for a short while but doesn’t know what became of them. Nor do I. There’s only one photo I’ve found of Rita, thanks to Penny Reel, and one of her and Benny with Larry Cunningham in Billboard magazine’s archives. I’d like to know more. Black music in Britain owes quite a lot to them, and it is about time they were celebrated. Stars of Stamford Hill. One day there should be a Blue Plaque outside Top Pizza…
