blissblog: “Why only the other day I had to listen to ‘Fat Man’ by Southern Death Cult: truly atrocious”
No doubt. But at a party in a church hall in Brentwood in 1983 or whenever it was, it was an exciting relief.
New ragga jungle track
So I’ve taken a deep breath and I’ve uploaded my new ragga jungle track, recorded under the Grievous Angel moniker. (Bonus spotter points for anyone who identifies the secondary source for the name…)
It’s Grievous Angel Vs Scotty: Watch This Sound (Vocal Mix).
You can find it at:
http://www.bassnation.uk.net/sound/Watch%20This%20Sound%20Vocal%20Mix-01.mp3
(Should work — just checked it.)
In the classical tradition of ragga jungle, it’s essentially a jungle
boot of a dancehall tune. Bonus spotter points to anyone who can
identify the DJ mix it’s taken from. Oh, and I’ll try and cover myself
up front by saying the production’s got a sort of punk attitude!
WOEBOT: “Brick Door Mix.”
This is a fucking WICKED jungle mix Matt, one of the best Christmas presents I’ve had this year. Fabulous. Sounds great too!
WOEBOT: “1. First bit of nonsense:”
Don’t trust that man Ingram! He’s a chide and a scold, even when he’s right. A blog is no place for excuses, but that last project at work turned out to be a doozy…
Anyway, it’s good to see Ingram focusing so clearly on his bid to turn the offal-in-posh-restaurants bandwagon into a bona fide craze. The last time we were at La Gavroche he nearly reduced Marco to tears with his insistence on having it added to the lunch time menu. A la grecque was his imprecation, as I recall. It was all a different story at the opening party for La Petrus wasn’t it Matt? We both devoured the quails eggs, and you don’t get more Old Money than that, even if they were a bit stingy with the toast.
Next time we dine we plan to try to equal the excellence of the East London Psychogeographical Society annual dinner Luka hosted at Harry Hausens in early November. It was a five course coup de grace, with French starters, Italian mains, and German afters — as Luka said at the time, it was Harvester at Glyndebourne! Only 65 quid a head plus wine (we made for it with a very good pair of 82 Sacre du Temps and a few Armagnacs) which as you can imagine represents just half an unlistenable classical electronica LP to blogdom’s most committed restaurant critic.
Dizzee Rascal in Bed
So Dizzee Rascal is doing his thing with Justin (BIG pals, sit around together listening to old Greenslade albums) and the show comes to Sheffield… and WE, the beautiful people of South Yorkshire, get a one-off club date? Why are we so favoured? Cos Dizzee’s album — widely revered as the sound of Bow — was ACTUALLY recorded here, in Sheffield. Round the corner from me in a studio in Nether edge, as it happens. Well, mixed, anyway. (Cue rapid re-appraisal of Grime as the true inheritor of Industrial’s sacred genes… not such a stupid idea come to think of it!)
Anyway, Bed is Gatecrasher’s venue, which means little other than that there are huge bass speakers under the floor, which make yer knees wobble. It was an “urban” night, seemed to be full of regulars, no aggro, and lots of people were noticeably dressed up to the nines. Sheffield women are gorgeous. This month’s hot fashion tip — trilby hats at a jaunty angle right over the face. Modtastic. The music was all hip hop and r&b with a few bits of UKG, and most tracks somehow sounded like jungle over that system. But by far the biggest sound of the night was dancehall. Whenever the energy dropped the DJs would play some and the crowd would go wild — I was really surprised by just how far dancehall has taken over the hip-hop / r’n’b axis. As you’d expect there was lots of scratching and cutting, and records generally didn’t get played to the end — good stuff. There was also absolutely no compunction on the part of the DJs about playing big hits, so Sean Paul got a good airing. This did get on my tits a bit when I was waiting for Dizzee to come on — the last DJ before him was playing solid ToTP fodder which I could have done without. I got a bit bored.
Then Dizzee came swaggering through the crowd with his fairly modest and polite entourage, wearing an outfit like Elephant Man — oversized jacket covered with huge badges. Semtex took the decks and Wiley (I think) started hyping the crowd, a real show man, bigging up the ladies, talking about the 8 hour drive to come up, giving people the mic so he could hear some sexy Sheffield accents… Then Semtex dropped I Luv U and Dizzee bounded on stage and the place just erupted. There were a *lot* of people who were seriously into him, crews from Manchester and Leeds, and the first 20 rows or so were jumping. Dizzee did a pure MC set just like he does at Eski dance or whereever, rapping over his own stuff and other records, doing prepared raps as well as Freestyle, bounding across the stage, dancing, jumping on the speakers… Semtex couldn’t always keep up, with Dizzee occasionally telling him to move on with the next track, always two steps ahead of where the crowd wanted to be, and displaying impressive empathy. Wiley and (I think) some feller from Roll Deep were up there too adding their flow to his so you got the whole rap tag team thing.
There’d been a few rappers on during the night and they were OK but Dizzee really is something else. His flow is intensely syncopated, very much like the skipping, hiccuping beats of UKG, and the lyrical ideas just fly out of him like a shower of sparks. There’s always piercing diction yet his accent means he sounds like he’s gargling with golf balls all the time. He’s totally hyped and confident but there’s not a trace of the turgid gangster braggadoccio that blunts the attack of so many rappers, instead there’s a constant volley of ideas and images – he’s got so damn much to say he doesn’t have /time/ to collapse into cliches. His beats, naturally, make SO much more sense and have SO much more groove heard live too. That stuttering, plinkety-plonk doodling transforms itself into something like jungle’s hyperkinetic breaks, but in bullet time, slowed to a stop yet endlessly oscillating. In other words, what sounds a bit ropey on record is funky as fuck live.
I was too knackered to stay til the end, but the standout of what I heard was Jus a Rascal, which was a blitzkrieg-like, its overwhelming, massed-voices monstrosity had everyone screaming. Quite fantastic. Though his freestyle over the Diwali rhythm was also excellent. I left when Semtex tried to get him to rap over PIMP — I don’t think Dizzee was much into it, and three times in one night for that track was too much for me, so I wandered off.
k-punk: “What became slightly irksome about Dr Who in the Pertwee phase when it continually ‘borrowed’ this move from Kneale was the Doctor’s airy waving away of the supernatural in the name of science.”
Quite right. It’s just electromagnetic chauvinism combined with arriviste arrogance.
silverdollarcircle:
liking talking heads so young means i always enjoy those ‘what was the first record you ever bought?’ conversations, cuz buying ’77’ at the age of 8 is pretty much unbeatable compared to the usual admissions of buying whitesnake/billy idol/mc hammer etc etc as yr first entry into music.
Shit. That’s hardcore. I’ve trumped almost every record collector I’ve ever met by saying that I got Talking Heads’ Remain In Light as my first record at 12. But 77 at 8? Unbeatable.
WOEBOT: “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion”
Big up Matt Woebot, as he henceforth shall not be known, for writing about fashion. Him espectially — for it is a powerful counter weight to his uber-spotter credentials. Writing just about music is a somewhat hermetically sealed and as we all know, potentially borderline-autistic pursuit. Music writing needs to be grounded in life to avoid sterility and, above all, that wretched refusal to engage with icky emotions and perceived naffness which is the tragic fault of the fanboy persona. And writing about fashion — or rather the wearing, enjoyment, and meaning of clothes — is an excellent antitdode to music nerdery.
Matt is nothing if not an emotional writer and he glides gracefully from dusty-record-rack investigation to reflecting on his love for his wife. His piece on fashion therefore puts into perspective the demise, or rather the fulfillment, of his TWANBOC enterprise. This came as a huge surprise to me — I had it on good authoritiy that it would be around until Christmas at least. I read his blog with awe as he churned out brilliant expositions on what was, to me, almost totally unfamiliar music, reaching a shattering climax with his pieces on experimental and classical Indian music. And then, suddenly, it was gone, leaving me asking, Is that it?
And it was. That was it.
Artful and intelligent as ever, he let us have a self-photographed silhouette, thereby creating the archetypal image of the blogger, and revealed the purpose of the cascade of intensity that so many of us shared with him for the last year or more. It was a paean to his deceased father.
Now that, as a few of you know, is something I can identify with.
Matt’s sequence of epistles comprised a complete framework for musical taste in modern music which must surely match, inter-lock with, and perhaps echo that espoused by his father in classical. Or at least, it created a means for his exchange of frameworks, feelings and thought processes with his posthumous father — a way of making sense of his father and of his relationship with him, a way of re-engaging with the personality of his father after the wrenching division of death. A way of bringing him back to life in his heart, almost. Dealing with death by making emotional sense of life.
I suppose. At least, that’s what I would have been doing if I’d been writing it.
It would be a shame if the best writing that came out of TWANBOC did not find a permanent home. The big set-pieces undoubtedly deserve hosting somewhere that is easy to refer to. I don’t know if that’s going to be possible. Yet Matt made of the fragile material of the blog an artefact of some gravity. His slight little site engendered both a host of imitators and many real-world and online friendships, changing minds, hearts, and most important of all, record shopping lists. TWANBOC will be remembered. So will Matt’s father.
Nervous Ragga
blissblog: “really feeling
grievous angel soundsystem vol 1: nervous ragga “
Why thank you very much Simon, I’m glad you like it.
It’s called Nervous Ragga cos that’s the vibe. These tracks don’t make me feel all relaxed and chilled out. No, they make me feel nervous, hyped up, excited. This CD is propulsive, muscular, but constantly in spasm. Like deep funk, the grooves are densely packed, clenched, yet also like funk, the release comes from the vocals, alternately sweeping and stuttering but always hovering at the furthest edge of the beat’s swing.
The first rhythm, The Flip, eases you in. But the Threat rhythm that follows it, just hurls itself at you, all rave pianos and tubthumper bass. I tried to get a lot of call-and-response between male and female vocals on theis CD and this theme starts here. A recurring theme in the mix comes in here. The Highway rhythm is faster but gentler, but it’s very wiggly. It raoidly turns into a pounding ragga take on R&D on money with sweet female choruses being slammed into Lady Saw’s ruffness. She shouts us into Tanya Stephens’ Strange, over my favourite rhythm ever, Hard Drive. It sounds like world war three going off in a sound system, just vast gobs of massive bass and booming toms. I love it. Lots of cutting on this one, and a really nice mix of Lady Saw’s In Your Face Again and Cecile’s Backstrett Kettle at the end. The last rhythm, Bollywood, is a ragga version of throbbing p-funk. Despite recent criticism Sizzla is in top form on this rhythm. with a bit of politics at the end.
If you’re interested you can get an mp3 of Nervous Ragga at Marc Dauncey’s excellent Bassnataion site at http://www.bassnation.uk.net/sound/nervousragga.mp3. Many thanks to Marc for hosting this — if you want it you’d probably get it sooner rather than later cos who knows how long Marc will be able to keep it up. As it were.
Here’s the tracklisting.
The Flip
1 Ward 21 Style
2 Madd Cobra Bring It On
3 Kiprich Nah Waste Time
4 Tafari & Ava Monet Round And Round
5 Tok Girlz Girlz Girlz
6 Mr Vegas Gi Dem Wine
Threat
7 Tok Where I¹m From
8 Redrat Wine Your Waist
9 Sizzla Doin It Right
10 Kiprich Pickaside
11 Redrat Wine Reprise
12 Lukie D Woman With Shape
13 Shaddu Fi Real
Highway
14 Ward21 Reverse
15 Risto Benjie Right Now
16 Danny English Hang Dem
17 Lady G & Cutlass Chop It Suh
18 Chuck Fender & Fiona Money
19 Mr Vegas & Cecile Get Yuh Tonight
20 Lady Saw Follow Me
Hard Drive
21 Tanya Stephens Too Strange
22 Lukie De & Lexxus Hot Like Fire
23 Harry Toddler Doom
24 Action Check Fa
25 Alozade Ghetto
26 Sean Paul & Dutty Cup Crew Dutty Cup
27 Hollow Point Got You Deh
28 Famous Face & Tornado Jamaica
29 Lady Saw In Your Face Again
30 Cecile & Tanya Stephens Buss Back Skettel
Bollywood
31 Sizzla Heat Is On
32 Tanya Stephens Addiction
33 Determine More Fire
34 Frisco Kid More Marijuana
35 Captain Barkey Buss A Shot
36 Ward 21 Roll Up
37 Future Troubles Drunken Master
38 Wickerman Come Out
39 Elephant Man In The Streets Mega Mix
40 Mr Vegas War
Welcome to www.rolldeepcrew.co.uk – Roll Deep Crew Music, Roll Deep Audio, Roll Deep News and MC Wiley, Dizee Rascal and MC Flowdan: “Dizzie clashes with So Solid’s Asher D on Choice FM then the audience call in to vote for the winner”
I assume you’ve all been banging the realaudio on the roll deep site like I haven’t been, but for those of you who missed it, check it.
Good stuff and I’d just like to mention that a lot of the riddims are actually pretty fast, pretty much UKG speed. Grime isn’t sooooo different from its antecedents.
BTW the “mix” I’ve linked is actually accapella and arguably all the better for it. Now as soon as I figure out how to record RA files into the pc I’m doing some techno-speed ragga with it…