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FACT Magazine have a good review of Lady Saw / Move Down Low up here.

Thanks Tam!

Rating: 7.5

“It’s no secret that the man behind both the edits on this 12″ is Sheffield-based dubstep producer/Woofah magazine co-editor/general blogger dun’ good Grievous Angel, and they’ve been a pivotal point of Kode 9’s sets for a while; usually played either side of his own ‘Black Sun’. The familiarity of both tracks might have detracted from their impact since that night at Beyond, and I’m not sure either are as great as Grievous’ UK funky edit of Wiley’s ‘Ice Rink’, but still – if ever there’s a track you’ll ignore when it finally comes out, then hear it a year down the line and realise how stupid you were and end up shelling half a week’s rent on discogs then it’s this one.”

Now in at Boomkat:

Now in at Sounds of the Universe – vinyl of the week:


Also in at RedEye, Chemical (where it’s number 21 in their sales chart!), UK Recordshop.com, BM Soho, Juno (where it is also NUMBER 1 in the Cardopusher chart! Thanks!).

So that’s pretty much everywhere except Rhythm Division and Rooted (which is a shame!).

Thanks to all the retailers stocking this!

I went to Jeremy Deller’s procession in Manchester the weekend before last. It was fantastic! Deller’s aim was to represent lots of people who don’t normally figure in civic processions, without breaking the concept of an actual civic procession. We thought it worked really well. Right up History is Made At Night’s street. And indeed Infinite’s – this post is a response to Georgina’s comments on her blog about her end of year show, which is a response to John Eden’s psychogeographical review of it.

Here’s the Guardian’s video:

And another official video about the marchers, including the marching bands – this one performing the Fall’s Hit the North, and the boy racers:

The front of the procession – this one’s just some guy with a phone I think…
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I didn’t video all the bet bits but you had:

– the few surviving Manchester mill workers

– various May Queens

– mobile libraries

– the crowd of goths who hang around a town square with a truck with their favourite local goth band laying

– a 60-strong troupe of Hindu bag pipers in full Scottish regalia (!!!!!!!)

– a collection of boy racers in souped up hot hatches with massive soundsystems, all tuned into a special pirate radio broadcast by the Blackout Crew

– a reconstruction of England’s oldest tea toom

– the African buskers and dancers from the city centre on a flat bed truck performing for the crowd
– best of all, a steel band playing various Manchester hits, especially Joy Division, New Order and Buzzcocks.

It was all absolutely wonderful. It was the sort of thing Sheffield should do.

Blackdown:
“When I look around the Rinse roster, as well as the funky selectors, it’s DJs like Oneman and Brackles, who share our Thursday 11pm slot, who I increasingly feel musical affinity with. Dusk and I take a different approach to how we use old school on our show, and I sure would love to mix like Oneman, but selection wise I think there’s common ground.

Hyperdub have been an incredible inspiration in the last two years, but it’s nice to now see a collection of likeminded producers/DJs like Ben UFO, Oneman, Brackles, Braiden, Alex Bok Bok, Grievous Angel, Shortstuff, Martin Kemp and Joy Orbison using Hyperdubs, funky and old school grime ‘n’ garage sensibilities to find a way that isn’t either wobble, dub techno or dull commercial house. To find a way that preserves the quintessential London elements of feminine pressure, rawness, rudeness and all the other nuum factors, without coalescing into just one thing or becoming something unlistenable or unlistenably dull.

In practical terms, this may be as much a question of bpms as selection. Funky rides at 130 bpm, 2step-badman Sully flexes at 134ish and grime’s at 140bpm still. I’ve seen harder dubstep DJs pushing 150bpm. To me, with the gravity of the mass creativity of funky right now, I feel an urge to drop the bpms and up the groove.”

This is absolutely where I’m coming from right now. That strange yet familiar middle ground is just where my head’s at. I am delighted to be included in Blackdown’s list. The new “Magic Dub” tune a few of you have got is about dubstep, it’s about keeping 140 a worthwhile tempo… but it’s a halfstep house tune. Just to make the point… and because the sample is so good. I want to do more “dark subby dubstep” that’s … good.

So in the next month I have two singles dropping. One, next Monday, is bashy funky. One is dubstep, 140bpm garage and wonky. The line between the two is where the flex is.

FROM the magnificent Dan Hancox:

lower end spasm.: 2 mixes for this week
Crazy Legs’ booking policy continues to impress me. I’m yet to attend one of their nights but judging by their booking policy and presentation, they’re definitely on a wavelength – Bristol’s answer to Night Slugs?
Anyway this is the 2nd of their mix series and it comes from longtime badman Grievous Angel. A lot of the GA productions Kode9 has been championing can be heard here, check it out.

Check the new single for Blackdown’s Keysound label on YouTube! Sounds massive…

And check out Mary Anne Hobbs show this week for audio of Soundclash as well – she dropped it as her first tune!

Who recognises the “light” image? Only for the headz who know…

Steven Wells is dead. This is a bummer. A great writer who I totally lost track of. I used to see him at gigs in the 80s and chat to him while buying his fanzine. He was a cool bloke, really nice. Now his dead.

The headline is one of the comments on one of his startling frank but incredibly funny stories about his terminal cancer for the Philadelphia weekly.

He is genuinely much missed.

Hollow Earth
“I suspect Zomby’s more recent stuff is using similar techniques, even if he’s using a controller to manipulate samples (as opposed to a Soft Synth) from within a PC. It’s the new face of electronic music and a weird flashback to how the control surface of the TB-303 was an escape route from the struggle of programming FM synthesis for DJ Pierre et al.”

Errr… I cannot recall a time when soft synths have not been controlled by external boxes, nor when this didn’t have a transformative effect on music-making. Not necessarily a GOOD effect, but a transformative one. Matt may not have been into music making long enough (his recent releases are great BTW!) to remember things like the Fat Boy controller, which mapped to rebirth and indeed all kinds of other things. Or indeed the original novation bass synth, which i have somewhere and whose knobs were often used to control  soft synths. I don’t think it’s that big a deal – I don’t dispute any of his empirical evidence, FlyLo etc, but I think a  lot of people have been doing that stuff for a long time.

But Matt is quite right to point to workflow as a driver of innovation. I think something like ableton and its open-ended triggering, re-sampling, synthesising and tweaking is also transformative. And what does that approach remind us of? Well, probably Orbital’s use of multiple Alesis hardware sequencers that they used to cut up the sequences driving their synths, live…

Sister Nancy live in London!
Info courtesy of uncarved.org blog

dark disco

The Starkbot, Mayor of Starkville, live in session: “limited edition 320 of Starkey’s stunning performance at Various in Portland, Oregon April 11, 2009.” I know I always rave about Starkey but he is a complete fucking genius. Live he is, quite simply, heaven. I just found this mix today, check it out – and buy the great mix cd he did for Lo dubs.

DOWNLOAD HERE:
http://www.pdxindub.com/files/audio/Starkey_Live at Various 4.11.09.mp3