Grievous Angel

Band of the year: Scissor Sisters. It’s all about TUNES!

Record of the year: anything on the Pepper Seed rhythm

Mix of the year: the Soundmurderer Live in NYC mix, or Bailey’s Old Skool sessions on OneXtra, or the Kid Chamaeleon one

Album of the year:
MJ Cole — Back to Mine: didn’t come out in 04 but it’s what we’ve been listening to (and dancing to) more than anything else
Lila Downs — Una Sangre: amazing Mexican folk singer with extraordinary emotional range

Surprise of the Year:
Goldie Looking Chain. A good joke well told. No, they don’t irritate me.

Tech of the year:Pioneer DV-575 DVD player, absolutely as good as it’s cracked up to be, flawless reproduction, makes Oceans 11 and the West Wing totally enjoyable. Tough choice between this and the G5 plus OSX plus LCD screen combo, which has been a dream to play with. I’m looking forward to SX3 too. But I’m still looking for decent speakers — good for reggae and surround sound, but child-friendly and TV-safe.

Highlights of 20041. You can’t beat a new baby — and Malachy’s begun to smile, and let me stop him crying sometimes, so things are definitely improving. No more for us though!
2. Getting played on the radio, reviewed in the Wire, and getting emails from cool and / or famous people bigging up my music
3. Seeing John loads (and working with him on a forthcoming mix which you’re going to love!)
4. Not working for a good portion of the year and spemding loads of time with my family but still making enough to get by, and having a LOT of fun when I am working
5. Being involved in the Dust label — Sheffield techno at its finest. It’s so close now, first release — from the Black Dog! — in January.
6. Hearing THE BEST DANCEHALL RECORDS EVER MADE while staying at John’s house. Night after night. For months.
7. Not buying any records, at all

Lowlights of 2004
1. Failing to enjoy as much as I should the experience of not working — cos when the work happens, it’s all-consuming
2. Still addicted to nicotine
3. Being away from home, night after night, for months
4. Not buying any records, at all

Interesting to see the backwards looking pronouncements coming through. Matt talking about the Resonance retrospective on blogging. As Eden said to me the other night, the crucial literature of the early nineties is found in TWANBOC / Woebot, K-Punk and Heronbone. But I think the centre of gravity has moved away from blogging and back to forums. There are too many good blogs to keep up with, and people are going back into communities where there’s enough audience to feed off, and where the networking and inter-communication thing can work better. Dissensus is the obvious example and very good it is too. In fact the limitation of Dissensus is that it’s just a forum, when most of the members are experienced bloggers; a new kind of forum might be needed to better exploit the assembled talents.

But this isn’t the end of blogging; it’s just a natural dialectical process. Blogging will reassert itself when people balance the long-threads + chit chat of forums with the chunky personal statements only a blog can do. There are too many blog entries and not enough that are really substantive.

Funnily enough I think the blogs that are leading the way here are the ones that got it right in the first place; they are expert in set pieces, while also specialising in the personal and the ephemeral that fall between the cracks of forums.

I was meaning to talk about this when Woebotnik did, but unlike Matt I’ma huge fan. Just an ace little garage tune. I’m so pleased they were number one. And I just drove Felix to nursery school while it was playing, and we both sang along, and he seemed to know at least half the words, and it was one of those fantastically beautiful life-changing experiences that I seem to have every two minutes at the moment. So it gets a thumbs up from me.

Fantastic discussion of this issue over in the Uncarved comments boxes. Get in there.

The question I’m asking is, does the coverage of the issue which Outrage’s tactics elicit in the Jamaican and British media, and the possible resultant impact on the awareness of the issue in Jamaica, justify both the (probably minor) economic impact on the artists concerned, and the (probably major) impact on the economic and artistic health of the broader reggae community in Britain?

The baby came through OK.

Birth took from 11AM induction last Sunday to final delivery by ventouse (with one cut) at 7.58AM on Monday, at the Jessop wing of the Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield (which is fantastic). Pain relief was gas and air, one shot of diamorphine, arnica (homeopathic remedy). We were back home 7PM on the Monday.

Baby was an eight pound boy, named Malachi. He’s in fine form, and was breastfeeding happily within an hour of birth. My wife is doing fine, and I love her with all my heart and I am massively proud of her. Our three year old, Felix, loves his new baby brother and just wants to cuddle him and coo over him, as we do. Malachi looks a lot like a sixty year old east end gangster, all serious grimaces and rolls of skin. He snores too.

During the birth I was naturally mainly focused on my wife, but when I felt the need, I mentally called out for the help of ancestors. When I went back to see them in the ward later on the Monday, I had a sudden vision of vast sets of ancestors arcing away into the sky above each of the cubicles where the new parents and babies were, with each set of ancestors having a vast party to celebrate the new arrivals.

I feel like I’m just coming up, all the time. My head and heart are twisting into new shapes to encompass this new life and this new love.

Thanks to everyone for all their love and support, it really made a difference.

paul

If you haven’t noticed already, K-Punk is in raging good form right now. It’s rapidly mutated from being “just a blog” to, not so much a forum as an endlessly uncoiling serpent of clashing incantaory voices. It’s been called “the new ILM” by Simon, but it’s stranger and more beautiful than that. Get in there now; it won’t last forever.

Latest up is a cracking analysis of Burroughs — tough subject, artfully dissected (by K-Kollective member John Effay, though I hesitate to undermine the unauthorship of the scene by naming names).