Following on from the last post, here's Loefah DJing last night for the Boiler Room to promote Standard Place @ the Alibi this Saturday. Rest of the sets can be watched here: http://www.readplatform.com/boiler-room-13-wone-man-loefah-jon-rust/

ANOTHER UPDATE!!! Click HERE for a set Loefah did with Sgt. Pokes in Barcelona very recently...

Loefah Mix On Rinse FM

THIS [rightclickandsave]Instra:mental show off Rinse features a great mix from Loefah. Starts at about 41 minutes into the show. Tracklist =

footcrab vip - addison groove (dub)
tc - kryptic minds (dub)
tired light - instra:mental (darkestral)
beacon - ramadanman (dub)
claptrap - joe (hessle)
level crossing - joe (hessle)
tweaked - shortstuff - (dub)
IRL - girl unit -(night slugs)
work doc - addison groove (dub)
work it - addison groove (swamp 81)
hot raw sex - jimmy edger/instra:mental rmx (?)
battle scene - addison groove (dub)
sexual - addison groove (swamp 81)
woo vs glut - sx x ramadanman (dub)
work them - ramadanman (swamp 81)
glut - ramadanman (hemlock)
fall short - ramadanman (swamp 81)
tempest - ramadanman (hemlock)
Because You - faltyDL (panet mu)
night hunter - fis t (serial 502)

Got to take your hat off to Loefah, Swamp 81 is a great label both in terms of its music and look:



I would like to see Loe DJing again after hearing this mix, can imagine the drums absolutely pounding and the little samples triggering crowd ''RAYYYYY''s like nobody's business. Stand outs for me so far: Girl Unit ''Irl'' (those evil sounding synths), Addison Groove ''Sexual'' (little rhodes line that reminds me of super mario or sonic or something - SOMETHING sexual, anyway) and ''Work Them'' vs. ''Woo''. You can see the connection between Woo riddim and what Loefah used to do very easily. Most of the music on this mix is nothing like the half-step Loefah has always been so associated with (on account of making the best half step tunes around for a couple of years), and has quite a different feel to doomy mooded classics like ''Mud'' and ''Ruffage''. But actually, again, the links are clear - minimalist bass and beats with a sprinkling of vocal samples (from US hip-hop) makes up a large part of the mix. Almost like mid-late 80's style boom-bap beats have given way to the spiralling madness of electro/hip-house and all that stuff that led to bleep-n-bass/hardcore/jungle. Not making a direct comparison but... Anyway, good stuff. Big ups to Hessle Audio, Night Slugs and Hemlock putting out this kind of stuff. It's pretty ''tracky'' stuff I suppose, can imagine it being used for mixing in a similar way to jacking house/techno.

Apparently Loefah dropped this tune at DMZ, which makes me want to see him even more:

Beyonce - Video Phone [Extended Remix] ft Lady GaGa - Music Video Online

Yeah I know - Beyonce and Lady Gaga. But honestly, it won't make you want to wank with a cheese grater (the video will make you want to do something nasty to some swiss cheese though). The beat is by Bangladesh, who also produced ''A Milli''. I'll have a look at some of his other tunes and post up anything decent on here maybe.

P.S.

Optimum has alerted me to Bangladesh being behind this certified club banger



So I had to post it up.

Aciiiiiiiiiied Jazzzzzzzzz

I went to Egypt about six-seven years ago and got a load of pirate CDs from a shop with black and white photocopied covers. One of them was a CD called 'Acid Jazz'. I still listen to it pretty regularly. Missing two tunes here - ''Black & Brown - Never Be There'' and ''Queen Latifah - How Do I Love Thee''. But you don't know that.

More Ossie/Petchy

Ossie - Ossie Baba (Video) from Bedroom 26 Music on Vimeo.

Another Ossie tune, I think I might like this even more than 'Tarantula'. The synth's remind me a bit of Dam Funk - laid back and somehow wistful. The drums are amazing - clattering, full of percussive switch-ups. And the video is great too - personally I dance to this tune by doing a spinning headstand with my legs pumping in and out at a rate of 1 pump per second, but not everybody's got my skillz.

While I'm here:



This lineup is crazy - I would pay top dolla just to see Omar S and Petchy + Topsee alone. Will be a strange combination, though.

Facebook page HERE.

Vocal Supporter

Great tune this - crisp, light percussion and brilliant synth work. HERE's Ossie's Facebook Fan page.



Ill Blu are one of Tim F's favourite UK Funky outfits (see Tim's fantastic blog HERE for probably the best writing on UK Funky on the net), and here they are proving their worth by making me like something coming out of Cheryl Cole's mouth for about five minutes. Huge piano chords in the chorus really push it into anthem territory but all the little squiggly tricks and pumping carnival drums also contribute to the sense of being tied to a carousel and forced to eat MDMA laced candyfloss by Cherl Cole, who keeps pushing your lips together with her leather-gloved hands and telling you ''Don't tell anybody you saw me laughing at the disabled choir girl snivelling on X Factor last night'' with her fingers laced around your neck. ''You're GOING to catch me if I fall, and if you don't I'm going to stamp on your nuts.'' That kind of thing.

I've been listening to certain UK Funky mixtapes lately and I particularly love the vocal tunes on them - which to some ears may sound offensively bland/nice. But fuck you all, you're just trying to drag me down to your drizzly shopping centre level so I have to listen to 'gritty' techno all day and grow a beard. I'm going to wear a nice shirt and try and force down some wine.













Lately I've been really seeing dance music much more in terms of big hooks and vocals than any particular concern with rhythmic intricacy or experimental textures (not that there's anything wrong with that). HERE's a link to a mix Jackmaster did recently of some of his favourite 90's commercial house tunes which helps to emphasise this side of things. I suppose there'd be more vocals in electronic music if so much of it wasn't made by guys sitting in their bedrooms. The vocals on the DJ Gib Maximum Old Skool 3 mix (which I think I've posted here before, might do a repost though I can never explain how much I love it) is absolutely MADE by the vocals, too.



On this tune, for example, the piano, strings and crunchy drums are all great but without that ''You are on my mind. You are on my mind. You - you - YOUUUUUUUU'' what would it be? Not as much, that's what it would be.



I fucking love this too. I've got a pessimist's sentimental eye for upbeat tunes - they make me feel quite sad, like watching a duck attempting to run away from a tiger on Wildlife on One.

Here's another great vocal tune:



In a more or less unrelated note:



Big RNB tune produced by Timbaland protege The Dream. One of the guys on it doing a knock off of R Kelly without any of the lyrical wit (I mean 'wit' as in when Oscar Wilde told a girl he was going to 'Make her something saucy' when she came round his for dinner and winked at her about five times before sticking the ladle up her box) - but the beat is great and the hook is impossible to resist.

Hopefully soon will be blogging about my other recent obsession - Theo Parrish (and Omar S/Kyle Hall). Won't that be grand?

A Compendium of Modern Misery Part 1

- Being stabbed in the guts by a paranoid schizophrenic with a headphone on, which you took to be a hands-free phone but was in fact pumping the Teletubbies theme song endlessly into their contorted brain.

- Looking up from the sink having finished shaving, expecting to see a chiseled and tanned hunk with a beautiful woman draped over your seven inch thick shoulder blade, and finding instead the face of the sort of person of whom it could be said that to shave the face of is what they are is roughly analogous to polishing a turd with a j-cloth.

- Receiving a call from God on your mobile phone and missing it. And the message left on the screen is ''Number and Infinite Capacity for Forgiveness and Love Witheld.''

- Being propositioned in a bar by somebody who is old enough (by national mean standard) to be your dad, even though that person is a 10 year old virgin who likes riding his bike and eating crisps.

- Having one of those 'moments' while walking down a street when you realise the ultimate futility of existence in the abscence of a deific designing consciousness, causing you to stop short, sigh and almost give in to the overwhelming desire to shit yourself just to see if the sky might (hopefully) cave in. And you know somebody's watching you, but it's a security guard called Graham who doesn't care about your spiritual dilemma a whit because you haven't got big tits or a burkha on.

- Being plagued constantly by the conviction that somebody, somewhere, is having a better time than you. Then switching on TV and seeing that there is definitely such a person, even though that person is Simon Cowell.

- Being gang-raped, you quickly realise that, due to overpopulation and the alienating effects of communication technology, the gang that's raping you probably don't even really like each other and would probably prefer to just be raping a pixellated version of you at home on their Xbox.

- Having taken three viagra pills, you still lose your erection when you have a dog's vagina draped in your face. You grasp at last the meagre limitations of your sexuality and by extension freedom of identity.

- Having eaten 36 of the brand new ''Gob-Stopper'' baguette from Subway, you realise that they will probably never invent ANYTHING that can fill the gaping void that lies in the centre of your soul, and even if they do you will probably want to excrete your soul as quickly as possible as soon as the filling is complete.

- With the miracle of DVD, you can now easily access every one of Robert DeNeiro's films. Never before have you been able to literally watch the physical and spiritual deterioration of a man who steadily loses all his talent and becomes a craven parody of himself over the course of forty years in one week.

- When presented with a photo of a bloody massacre you are compelled to think: ''That's just ketchup, though, isn't it?'' and ''Those limbs are probably just rubber sticks.''


- You google your own name on the internet and find that the only result is a positive testing for HIV, which is the first you've heard of it. You ring up your Doctor and it turns out he emailed you about it, but it went directly into the spam folder because it contained a warning to ''never get your penis hard again''.

- You went into HMV to look for an HBO boxset, and found out that there is now a boxset of all the times you ever wet yourself as a child, with extras including a derisive audio commentary recorded by that girl you really fancy.

- You begin to cry outside the funeral of a loved one and your soul is scorched with an excoriating flame of utmost desolation - then someone walks past, points at you and says ''Fucking Emo.''

OOOARRRGHH OOOARRRGHHH

Ahem.



This is getting massively hyped and deservedly so. D Double sounds so good over big sub-bass growls (see also 'Frontline' and 'Hard') - aside from his voice and lyrics the rhythm of his flow/enunciation is so rapid and skippy (slightly off-beat at times) his flow over a more 'minimal' track is a bit like energetic/crazy breakbeats over 808s in jungle.

Anyway, no need to try and figure it out, D Double + a beat is one of those combos that just works, like shampoo and conditioner. I wanted to make that comparison cos I doubt it's ever been made before.

Back Once Again Its The Renegade Wanker

Hello chums. The blog's been down because 1) Twitter exists 2) I have completely lost the will to write anything remotely interesting or funny about anything ever again. This second point is probably related to the first point, and will become evidently true to the reader of this blog within this very paragraph.

First thing's first, DJ Petchy on Live FM. If you like funky and you like MCs you will like these sets:

SET 1

SET 2

If you don't like funky and you don't like MCs, why not check out some “post-dubstep” and pretend this blog is still defunct like it should be?

Let's face it, dance music is best when it feels like you've just snorted a line of it and you're going to have a heart attack. I don't quite get that sensation from these sets, but I'm sure if I snorted a huge line of coke before listening to it I would probably have a quickened pulse. Besides, you can tell that everybody in the studio is having the time of their lives, so even if you're a depressed and lonely loser like you there might be a chance of some of that joy rubbing off on you. They should really have a webcam set up on Live FM for Chat Roulette, so that 50 year old potential suicides with their penises out can feel like its good to be alive for once.



Many many many bars by Topsy, Dream and Shanty have already been etched into my head – ''After the rave we can have a gangbang'', ''She said 'Dream you're an arsehole', I said thanks for the compliment but I wouldn't touch you with a bargepole'' ''I don't care about deemmmmm!'' etc. etc. As you can probably tell, the lyrics aren't exactly Sage Francis couplets and thank fucking fuck for that. Most of the best MCs in UK music have outrageous/stupid voices/styles and catchphrases such as ''It's the merkle man!'' ''Oooahrrrghh Ooahhrghhh'', ''Swinnnnnnnnnnng! BANG 'IM!'', ''Am I bovvered?'' and ''Loadsa money''. It's all about the delivery – especially when all the MCs have a singalong to each others bars. It's like listening in to one of the stands at a football match on a Saturday – except with no racist banter and no songs about bumming John Terry's mum. The only way these MCs can possibly improve now is to start including both these things. E.G. ''She said ''Dream you're an arsehole'', I said thanks a lot John Terry's mum but I wouldn't touch you with a bargepole'' and ''After the rave we can hang a rag-head''. Perhaps not.

On a serious tip, just listen to Dream smashing up Sami Sanchez ''What'' at 53 mins into the 13th Feb set – and Petchy cutting in after the reload to accompany him like fricking EZ or something. ''It's a par for them, uh oh man are writing bars again, TELL EM TELL TELL EM pass the pen...!''

Get very drunk and play very loud. If you want pristine sound quality suck your gran.

[Big up Andy/Big Nose on Dissensus for the link up...]





I've been off dubstep for a long time now, pretty much for the last year but especially since I've moved to Bristol, where even the ketamine addled crusties who don't know if they're wearing pants underneath their ponchos know the name and catalogue number of the latest Borgore release. Recently though I've been getting a little back into it – taking a step back from all the sub-genre/scene bollocks has made me almost able to return to the music itself without worrying if it sounds ''too [X, Y, Z]''. I don't really give a shit anymore. This will probably change as soon as I go to a dubstep night again and the first DJ plays a Loefah Remix of Westlife. One thing that made me return to the fray was going to Day and Night (basement club, looks like laser quest/a 1980s action film's idea of the blighted urban metropolis in the year 2000, but very small and so vulnerable to bass vibrations) and seeing Darkstar drop ''Level Nine'' by Mala. As soon as it dropped I remembered how important it is to FEEL the sub in dubstep. This was underlined for me seeing 2562 on Saturday, too – all these tunes which sound a bit boring and 'coffee table' at home sound fucking DIRTY and propulsive when you're stood next to a speaker with shots spilled down your sweater. Mala does get a lot of cringe-worthy man-god hype around him through no fault of his own but he really is the dubstep master. His tunes are the best in the genre, for me (give or take a few Loefah tunes). Album should be at least 50% good, at least.



The other tune that killed it that night which I've been loving off ever since it dropped is ''Hard''. Having been surprisingly won over to ''Eastern Jam'' after hearing P Money/Badness/Blacks absolutely slaughter it at Crazy Legs a few months ago, I hereby declare that from now on dubstep producers should work with MCs a lot more. Failing that, force D Double and Trim to record endless dubplate versions of 2005/6 classics so I can listen to them and feel like a big man. D Double absolutely murders that tune Skream's done with the Newhams recently, although without him it would be fairly standard wobble... which is the point, really. The tune below is one of my favourite grime tunes and showed years ago that grime MCs + stripped down sub + sound FX dubstep can be the sort of combination that makes you want to clothesline a clothesline.





This has got to be the most hyped tune in dubstep since ''Hyph Mango'' and just like the latter tune, the hype has made me suspicious of it, just as I just KNOW that i-phones are really just fancy-wancy abacuses for pricks. However, I bought Footcrab the other day because it's actually really good (like Hyph Mango, I-Phones, The Sopranos and Iraqui Beheading videos). If you want to hear some chicago juke and see some ridiculous juke dancing, watch this... watch it anyway, in fact:



This is a bit like the way I dance when I'm trying to impress girls. That's why I'm able to listen to juke at home, because I live by myself and am forced to fuck a hole that I've torn into a print-off of this picture – but where?



On the Swamp 81/Loefah tip, THIS show wot Instramental and D-Bridge done done on Rinse FM features a cracking Loefah mix and generally a big selection. The tunes Instramental recently did on Applepips are both fanfuckingtastic [E.G.]. Another guest they had on recently was Actress, who I was going to write about on here but I'm far too tired to now. Here's a few tunes in case you don't know by now





Finally, I went to see Alex Nut, Fatima and Funkineven the other night at Attic Bar (at a DONUTS night for Eglo records - a documentary about Eglo HERE on the Donuts website) and they all killed it – esp. Funkineven. Here's a few tunes off his EP he released recently, which you should all cop.





This tune features Fatima and is alot:



I'm gonna try and start doing the blog on music/elseshit more often from now on, will probably be written in this slapdash and barely legible way though. After wondering what the point of writing about music is for ages I have been led to think that for me it just comes down to recommending and hyping things I really like which people might not have heard. So there it is.

OH.


[should really blog about Rockwell soon - new DNB that I actually like...



]

Summer Evening...

why not?

R.I.P. Baatin

Was in Amsterdam last weekend and caught Benji B and Pharoah Monch in Oosterpark. Good news for Pharoah fans - he's doing his new album entirely with Alchemist. Very Bad news about Baatin, though. A tragic end to a (sometimes) tragic life - apparently he had schizophrenia and was living on the streets for a year or so before he was welcomed back into the Slum Village fold very recently. I think 'Cloud Nine' was probably Baatin's (as well as S.V's) comeback single.

I thought/think that 'Cloud Nine' could have blown up this summer, a summer sunburst of clattering cymbals and toms, soulful harmonies, mournful brass and joyous piano, not to mention a performance by S.V themselves (T3, Elzhi and Baatin, if I'm not mistaken?) full of an appropriate energy and swagger (not to mention quotables for days (''frontin' like they diamonds when they cubic zirconias'', for example). The MCs on 'Cloud Nine' exhibit the same quality that made them so perfect for Dilla's sultry, thumping, hypnotic beats on 'Fantastic' vol. 1 and 2 - the ability to FIT in with the beat, an innate understanding of the rhythmic role a rapper plays over a particular rhythm. All those little pauses and breaths and hiccupy stop/starts on the Dilla stuff, and the almost incantatory chanting and back and forth interplay between the MCs - these intimately replicated the stuttering, syncopated swing of Dilla's beats, their hypnotic bump, the misty/foggy quality of the samples. And on 'Cloud Nine', while the replication of rhythm is largely restricted to the characteristic 'thinkin' bout ya, thinkin' bout ya', the delivery is all excitement and enthusiasm, quite dissimilar from the majority of S.V. material I've heard, and fitting the concept of being high on love (for a girl/for music...) to a tee.

Now, you could hardly say that S.V. were the best lyricists in Hip-Hop (not that their lyrics were BAD), but in an underground where obsession with lyrical content often makes people forget the importance of voice/flow (that's 'flow' not in the sense of thousands of multisyllabic words, though that can fall under it), Slum Village's best work is a potent reminder of the voice as rhythmic instrument. It is this characteristic of their music which, along with Dilla's boom-bap + filtered jazz-loops, that made them the heir to ATCQ in a lot of people's eyes/ears. Listening to 'Cloud Nine' it seems obvious to me that there was life after Dilla for them, and presumably there'll be life after Baatin for them too... but still, R.I.P.

Thinking of doing a top 20 favourite dilla beats in the future, but not sure about it. For now, look out for Slum Village's new album 'Villa Manifesto' (22nd September) and DL 'Cloud Nine' legally so my dream of predicting a shock summer hit can come about 3 downloads closer to a reality!

Fact Magazine Top 20 Belgian Hardcore Ting

Original article posted up HERE on the Fact website, now with an accompanying MIX. I have been a right little nerd and found all the tunes on you tube.... HERE YOU GO, STUPID!

Some bits

wot i'm feeling

i've got to post up some mixes soon cos there's too many around

jackmaster/oneman/brackles/blackdown+dusk etc...

MAKE THAT PUSSY WHIIIIIISTLE

Official video HERE.

You might hate Weezlo and em, but would Nas or Sanctified Mic Mastas or Introvenous XL or Proff. Punchline ever bust that line? Nozzir.

Funky Junky

This tune's too much! Prefer it to 'Do You Mind' I reckonz.











Wishy washy or Bishy Boshy, funky is saying things right now...

Mates' Plates Vol 562

Out July 6th on Brackles and Shortstuff's new label Blunted Robots, two tunes that have been killing it on Brackles' Rinse shows along with being played by DJs like Geiom, Oneman, Bok Bok, Untold etc. Martin Kemp's woozy wonky percussively bubbling 'No Charisma' is my percy ingle on the plate (see HERE for previous semi-slobberings). Everybody with ears and decks should buy this 12. Audio on Blunted Robots Myspace HERE.



I think I've talked about Wigflex before on here, dunno if I plugged their last EP though but I should have. The new one is equally as good, full of bleeps, clicks and chirrups but not slacking on the party-starting front either - sort of combining headspace with elbow space, the kind of tunes you could have a right knees up in a club while off so mangled on ketamine that you think your knees aren't their anymore to put up... Go HERE for more info.



Also I don't think Geiom really needs a plug from me but his new funky influenced stuff is running ('Hard Downs' especially) - go to his Myspace for clips. He's also recently done a mix for Fact magazine (''providing Corpsey with lazy blog content since 2008''), which you can find HERE (article HERE).



Anyone into their UK Funky at the moment should check DSF member Hackman's funky tunes on his Myspace. Percussively solid and rattling with big Roska-esque b-lines and a lot of nice soulful/psychadelic-funk vibes riding the drums, fucking superb stuff. One to watch.

Right, well if I don't get any blow jobs or eight-balls out of that I'll be steaming.

Rants N Bullshit

Speaking of the Jacksons...



this tune, a certified (erring towards certifiable) banger, features on THIS mix which is associated with the So Bones blog/night.

Natasha (feat Clipse) So Sick
Richgirl Honeycomb
Britney Spears I Got A Plan
Chris Brown Flamethrower
Janet Jackson So Much Betta
Ryan Leslie Addicted (feat Cassie & Fabolous)
Common Universal Mind Control
Electrik Red W.F.Y
Rich Boy Drop
Nicole Scherzinger (feat T.I.) Whatever You Like
Usher (feat Ludacris) Dat Girl Right There
Ciara Work (feat Missy Elliott)
Mims Move If You Wanna

The mix/blog/night all concentrate on contemporary RnB, which it turns out is full of robo-vocalists singing about shagging over populist avant-garde techno-crunk, as opposed to Boyz 2 Men harmonising (about shagging) over the soundtrack to the Red Shoe Diaries. Of course, everybody knows that producers like Timbo and the Neptunes have been outclassing a lot of dance producers in the innovation + perspiration stakes for a long time now, and I'm pretty sure that both of them are involved in one way or another in some of these tunes - for example Danja, who produced the Britney tune, is a Timbaland understudy who helped the master create tunes such as this



There's also a huge influence from chopped-and-screwed stuff - vocals are slowed down or pitched up fairly consistently, as well as being looped and reversed and (of course) autotuned/vocodered to fuckery. In fact, it strikes you listening to this mix that vocalists in this sort of RnB have become almost synthesised - as in, say, a Todd Edwards tune, vocal lines are as chopped up and manipulated as any other sample/synth might be, employed for textural or rhythmic purposes primarily. Of course this is what vocals always HAVE been employed for on some level, but this sort of music really brings that aspect to the fore.

The vocals on a lot of these tunes leave me a bit cold - I don't find them that memorable or emotionally engaging (in the case of the latter perhaps that's the point?). It fits with the ruthlessly functional (though mind-bendingly experimental and liberated) production, the massively expensive digitally enhanced videos etc... the dehumanised (anti)personalities of the singers/dancers. Actually, even leaving aside the Janet Jackson tune, the spectre (erk) of M.J. seems to hang over all of this music - M.J. the weird, almost mechanically precise dancer, with all those strange vocal tics and yelps and screeches. I know fuck all about RNB/soul music in general but perhaps Jackson's move from Motown soul to bizarro post-human POP was influential in dragging a large sector of the RNB world along with him?

Still, at least alongside all this Jacko had an unmistakable personality and passion/soulful quality, and extremely good songwriters crafting unforgettable melodies/choruses etc. His voice was so good, and the songwriters too, that he could convincingly sound like a horny sex-bomb when actually you wouldn't be all that surprised if the autopsy revealed him to have a Penis Pan between his legs (the willy that never grew/got up heh-heh-heh). Justin Timberlake doesn't of course have anything like the talent that Jacko did but a tune like 'Rock Your Body' absolutely slayed because the Neptunes production was matched by an extremely strong song (which was presumably written for Jacko himself and rejected?)

Anyway, the real stars of this show are behind the boards. Download the mix, it will blow your pants off (on a decent system - check the 808s on 'So Sick' and go from there). Incidentally, the sample source for 'So Much Better' is this



How very Kanye.

On a side note, my favourite commercial RNB vocalist (aside from Kels, obviously DUHH) is probably Ne-Yo, although that is only based on a few tunes like this one



which was produced by a Norweigan production duo called Stargate who used to make shite like 'One Love' by Blue and 'S Club Party'. On Dissensus the other day, somebody posted up this tune



I'm now not entirely sure if Stargate nicked a riddim and changed it for Ne-Yo, or vica versa. Perhaps I should ask. Big tune though.

and go to So Bones for the real knowledge innit

R.I.P. Jacko

GOODIES

Hello Hello Hi. It's been a while so I thought I'd post up a trio of mixes that have been giving me brain erections over the last few weeks. Every time I listen to them in the office where I'm ''working'' I have to cross my ears over my skull just to hide the bulge. Failing that I just concentrate very hard on data entry and my brain begins to shrink to a manageable size - say, that of a tennis ball.

The mix I've been listening to the longest is Ben UFO's Fabric Promo Mix (right click and save). It's intesting that the kind of 'dubstep' Ben's playing nowadays is so percussively led that there isn't a very obvious point where he moves from stuff like Omar S and Karizma to Peverelist and Mala. It's all mixed up, and it BANGS the whole way through (not the way a porn-star bangs, more like the way Seal probably bangs if he's pissed). Worth a special mention are the tunes by James Blake and Joy Orbison - both fucking bootiful and full of happyweird vibes.

Greena - Maracay (Forthcoming Applepips)
Omar S - Busaru Beats (Sound Signature)
Aphrodisiax - Unfinished Business (Jus House)
Karizma - 33rd Street Anthem (Defected)
Unknown - Unknown (Unreleased)
Altered Natives - Rass Out (Fresh Minute)
Pearson Sound - Wad (Unreleased)
L-Vis 1990 - Hey! (Unreleased)
Brackles and Shortstuff - Sutorito Faita (Forthcoming Planet Mu)
Deep Cover Inc. - Deepin' Side [NYC dub mix] (FX)
Ramadanman - No Swing (Unreleased)
STP - The Fall [T++ remix] (Subsolo)
Peverelist - Teachings (Unreleased)
Shortstuff and Mickey Pearce - Tripped Up (Unreleased)
Untold - I Can't Stop This Feeling [Pangaea remix] (Unreleased)
Bump and Flex - Promises [Hardstep dub] (Urban Heat)
Untold vs. Tempz - Nextaconda (Unreleased)
Youngstar - Bongcat Riddem (White)
James Blake - Air and Lack Thereof (Unreleased)
Untold - Flexible (Unreleased) Ikonika - Unknown (Unreleased)
Mala - Hunter (DMZ)
Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo (Unreleased

Next up is a mix by Alex Bok Bok for Lucky Me (right click save) which is, barring the most tasteful (but good) thing I've ever heard from Doneao, approx. an hour of veiny sausage meat riddims.

01 - REFUGE - U Best Believe

02 - DONAEO - Love To Happen

03 - MOSCA - Square One

04 - DRE SKULL - I Want You (BOK BOK remix dub)

05 - ALISON HINDS ft MACHEL MONTANO

06 - DJ CLEO - East Rand Funk

07 - R1 RYDERS - Rubberband

08 - DORIAN CONCEPT - Trilingual Dance Sexperience

09 - SHORTSTUFF & MICKEY PEARCE - Tripped Up

10 - ZOMBY - With Lasers

11 - ELECTRIK RED - Drink In My Cup

12 - JOKER & GINZ - Purple City

13 - TERROR DANJAH - Sidechain

14 - BOK BOK - Crew dub

15 - DJ ASSAULT - Vandalism

16 - MR DE - Time Space Scrilla

17 - BASUTBUDET - Take Them Out To Eat (BOK BOK's sundown edit)

The tunes on this mix are nuts, I don't even know what genre a lot of them belong to - but it's in the area of funky/garage/dubstep/grime/soca/rave... Remember this post? All the mixes in this post wot I'm doing here mix up different genres, but there are also quite a few tunes in each mix which are spanning genres on their own - margin tunes which are forming a new and turbulent centre in this kind of mix.



Last but by no-fucking-means least is Untold's mix for Fact Magazine (Link HERE). In Blackdown's recent interview with him, Untold talks about how he is interested in combining cliches from various genres to see what will happen to them - 'mongrel' beats. You'll see what he means as soon as you hear this mix. His tunes feature recognisable synth/bass sounds from Grime/8-Bar, jungle, hardcore etc. placed together in rough harmony - and whether or not the combination always works, you can't deny the energy and excitement that such a scattergun approach provokes (to both the listener/dancer and the budding producer/DJ).

These tunes are mixed down perfectly well, and will no doubt devastate a dancefloor, but they don't sound at all slick or tasteful: you can see the joins. In this respect, they do justice to the references they make to early 90's hardcore music in using certain sounds in exhibiting a similar sort of 'chuck it in if it works' quality. I don't want to go overboard on the chin strokery analysis which the use of 'nuum' samples invites, because really the achievment of this music is to make you twitch around in your chair like a human hamburger leaving death row.

Stereotyp - Uepa (feat.Joyce Muniz) - Man Recordings

Untold - Just for You (Roska remix) - forthcoming Hotflush

Hot City - No More - forthcoming Infrasonics

Untold - Never went away - unreleased

Untold - I can't stop this feeling (Pangaea remix) - forthcoming Hemlock

Untold - No one likes a smartarse - unreleased

Untold - Gonna work out fine - unreleased

Untold - You didn't win the holiday - unreleased

Untold - Stop what you're doing - unreleased

DJ C - Jump Up and Bounce (ft. Ms. Thing) (LV remix) - unreleased

Littlefoot - Sell my soul - unreleased

Mount Kimbie - Esasub - unreleased

TRG - Siberian poker - unreleased

Ramadanman - Bleeper - unreleased

Ramadanman - No swing - unreleased

Joe - Perculate - unreleased

Untold - Flexible - unreleased

Shortstuff & Mickey Pearce - Tripped up - unreleased

LV - Crossfire - unreleased

Generally speaking, this is raw and 'shallow' music. There's not much depth (there's no room for it - it's surface orientated, sounds jostling for position... it's too ADD also - warping, pitch-eluding synths, rhythm evading drums and almost childish: ecstactic, restless, joyful... emotions as unambiguous as in rave music...)... but who cares? It's rave music. Dance music. It's fun music, not po-faced: but not a joke either. Being taken away from genre, from specific places, is a double edged sword - certain things are lost but the focus becomes more about the sounds: how they're used, how they can be clashed and mashed together etc. And the lack of deference to generic rules results in things you haven't heard a hundred times before (if you're me, at least).

I've clearly got too much thought on my brain.

That Roska RMX is raw, and his remix of Neighbourhood (see HERE) sounds even better.

5 For Sunday

Ying/Yang

Think this is from 2008, HERE'S the myspace...



TEMPZ is from NOW. Out on No Hats No Hoods July 1st with remixes and free blood stained bottle to the nugget.