A marvellous Jazz record produced by Madlib with classy artwork. Heavily influenced by late 60s, early 70s Jazz, some groovy and more experimental tracks... just great! A beautiful product and wonderful noise coming from the house of Stones Throw! Available exclusively from the label's website until worldwide release in April 2010.
Young Jazz Rebels 'Slave Riot' 18 Tracks produced by Madlib. CD: Thick cardboard, tip-on, gatefold, and inner sleeve. Vinyl: 2/LP, duo-tone sleeve.
The Lonelady vinyl album arrived today. Regardless the vintage touch this is really fresh music. Minimal instrumentation, great songwriting, an urgent voice... Following up on her three 7" releases, Manchester's Julie Campbell produces one jewel of a debut album.
The single 'Intuition' I received earlier was accompanied by a peculiar but fitting postcard promoting the 'Manchester Modernist Society'... Class!!
If he weren't too busy because of his newborn son, music writer Joe Muggs would probably think I'm stalking him. Truth is, I've been following him on Twitter for a while and realized we approve/disapprove of similar things in music (i.e. the music industry). I started looking up on stuff he'd written and music he'd recommended earlier, which turned out to be a very satisfying endeavor. It resulted in me listening to loads of new tunes, getting more background info on stuff I had heard before, learning new things and indulging in plain reading pleasure. The most impressive is maybe his Mary Anne Hobbsinterview... If it were in my power I'd bestow on him a prize for "best music interview" for said piece.
Luckily Joe Muggs is making some of his best work accessible on his websiteververymuch.com. Check this extract from his interview with Rob Gordon:
Rob Gordon: ...a good sound is hard to obtain these days. I’d like to hear a good soundsystem these days – there’s a lot of loud ones, but we have a few problems. The first problem was that Mosfet amps came in, they came in in the late 70s, and they were really loud and really cheap and whatever, but they had no warmth in the bass. Then the next stop was the disco mixer. The disco mixer had a crossfader on it but it was never going to sound as good as that custom pre-amp that you used to use, but everyone had to have one because it was the fashion. Then the next thing was the CD, that killed it. Each step you’re getting less emotion, and when you turn it up loud it sounds like a noise instead of beautiful music like you’re in heaven. It sounds like… earplugs! You see people in clubs now with earplugs! Back then you’d see people hugging the box – it’s different sounds!
What Joe Muggs does for us is a bit like digging through dusty records and reporting from cutting edge club nights at the same time. Urban UK music has been at the heart of my interest for over 15 years now. To impress me it takes someone with the ability to take in new movements and sounds with an open mind, while reporting those findings with knowledge and respect for what came before, - be it in 140 characters or across five pages. Joe clearly masters both.
I was struggling to stay creative and productive after the birth of our son, let's hope Joe has the energy to keep it up – and that he will get the sleep needed to stay on top of it! In that sense (but by no means limited to) I wish him all the best! ~
Ras G's 29 minute show for BTS Radio is on heavy rotation with us since it was 'aired' on February 2nd. Ras G presents a super heavy freaky bass laden Hip Hop, Abstract, Sci-Fi, Dub journey you mustn't miss!
Infos and and download is available from the BTS Radio site.
Also check out his wicked album 'Brotha from Anotha Planet' released on Brainfeeder.
An other outstanding collection from Honest Jones is the "London is the place for me" series. We have all of them and keep listening them again and again.
"When the Empire Windrush, an old troop-carrier, arrived at Tilbury on June 21, 1948, and inaugurated modern Caribbean immigration to Britain, it also supplied calypso with its best-known image — on Pathe newsreel, Lord Kitchener singing his new composition London Is The Place For Me.
Kitch had boarded with Lord Beginner at Kingston docks, Jamaica, on Empire Day, May 24. In London they joined a milieu of fine band musicians familiar with Caribbean musical forms, and already represented on numerous recordings crucial to the development of British swing and jazz music.
Travelling with their own core audience, the Trinidadian calypsonians brought with them the vocal music of Carnival. Traditionally this ranges from social satire to sexual double-entendre, from voodoo to the most pressing issues of the day, from sporting events to competitive insult. The experiences of Britain’s growing Caribbean population were to be fabulously rich in raw material.
'... a witty and joyous testament to the creative power of popular culture and a document of more innocent times. It constitutes one of the best starting points for that rich, unfinished history of the black British diaspora and its intricate interweaving with British life that remains to be written' (Stuart Hall, The Guardian).
'... Not only is it a momentous record of real historical significance, but it comes in a finely produced sleeve with evocative photographs, background notes and recording details that bring the performances on the disc to life even more... a unique and marvellous compilation that lays open a whole era' (Chris Searle, Morning Star)."
Honest Jones is one of the most interesting labels of our time. Among new stuff they re-release vintage recordings and make wonderful compilations. Perfection from the music to cover artwork to the descriptions.
Africa Boogaloo?The Latinization Of West Africa
Rocking the party and ramming the dancefloor is the first priority of this review of Latin styles in classic West African dance music, as it emerged with 1950s anti-colonialism, and ran on gloriously into the 70s.
Drawn from exceedingly rare records, mixing the celebrated and unknown, this is the sequel to The World Is Shaking.
A fantastic album.
The World Is Shaking?Cubanismo From The Congo, 1954-55
The new music grew in concert with a burgeoning night life — especially in the twin capitals of Leopoldville (today's Kinshasa) on the Belgian side, and Brazzaville on the French, where humming factories lured increasing numbers of rural Congolese with the offer of a steady, relatively well-paying job. Brazzaville had its celebrated nightclub, Chez Faignond, but most of the action took place across the river in much larger Leopoldville. There, Avenue Prince Baudouin, a ribbon of pavement connecting the white ville and black cite sections of the segregated capital, afforded easy access to a giddying number of bars. Labourers and clerks, fresh from work, jostled with thieves and dandies and a few adventuresome whites in the thicket of the Avenue's cross streets. Music wafting from hangouts like the Kongo Bar and Congo-Moderne, the pungent scent of cooking fires, hawkers' cries — Chewing gum! Cigarettes! Roast meat! — bombarded the senses and enfeebled self-control.
I thought shops like this one had all closed down. What a relief - there's one in Berlin, just off Nollendorf Platz - and its excellent!
All the best in Brit Pop, Indie, Punk, Soul, Rock. LP's, CD's, a few 10" and a nice selection of 7" Singles.
Kind of like a small Rough Trade store. A friendly place run by Mrs Free and Mr. Dead. Great!
We bought a Gossip 10", Bill Withers Live at Carnegie, The Wombats 7", Glasvegas LP, a rare Young Knives 7", Santogold LP on Vinyl, The Last Shadow Puppets 7" and more... :-)
MR DEAD & MRS FREE SCHALLPLATTEN
Volker Quante - Katharina Winkels - Tim Schneck
Lustfaust & Schneider TM are playing an exclusive gig for the opening of the Haunch of Venison Berlin space on September 13th from 21h (CEST). The event will be streamed live on www.lustfaust-live.de. This is part of the Jamie Shovlin Lustfaust retrospective (first shown at the I.C.A. in London early 2006).
Lustfaust was an experimental noise band active in West Berlin during the late seventies and early 1980s composed of a group of session musicians. Featuring a Japanese jazz drummer, Matsushita ‘Bobby’ Kazuki, a Belgian guitarist/multi-instrumentalist, Guido van Baelen, a German bassist, Hans Berger, and the California-born, German/American Peter Kruger, the band was a curiously international mixture, initially formed through a mutual distaste for the inoffensive music that it was for the most part their job to produce. Their combination of an aggressive on-stage presence, instrumentation through found objects such as cement mixers and pneumatic drills, and the use of an anti-capitalist community-based model of distribution (if you sent the band a blank cassette, they would return it with their latest release) spawned the Dadaist Geniale Dilettanten movement of the early 1980s and pioneered the burgeoning cassette culture of the late seventies.
There will be a Lustfaust & Schneider TM 7" record released at this event, put out by MirrorWorldMusic (MWM), which is the label of Dirk Dresselhaus (aka Schneider TM) and Michael Beckett (aka kptmichigan).
The cover was designed by Mick Larkin who was responsible for a series of Lustfaust tape covers in the late 70`s.
