you know what’s not so good about writing for an increasingly popular and undeniably brilliant blog?

professional jealousy, that’s what.

when my compadres keep hitting the sweet spot with the dopest posts this side of, well anywhere really (and jez’ extended hiatus ending with another triumphant mixtape) the pressure’s really on.

i get all ainsi, frantically rifling through my itunes for something post-worthy. hitting blogs and myspace pages like a woman possessed just aching for a prize to drop on your doorstep or for some idea i just can’t shake to take a hold of my brain till i can exorcise it into the latitudes.

And perhaps i shouldn’t push for it too hard, i should just let it happen. but the boys raising the game keeps me on my toes so i have been doing some digging around and here’s what i’ve come up with. finally.

i have to thank morgan at yer bird records for this, as its totally pilfered from his blog. not only is yer bird the kind of record label we love, coming at things from precisely the right place but they’re putting out the new j. tillman record cancer and delirium, just after easter too.

morgan described what capitalism was as what would happen if Paul Simon went through a big Daniel Johnston/Mountain Goats phase (in his twenties) which i absolutley get though i’d add its what bright eyes might sound like if conor oberst had his adanoids out and liked baking. the fact is what capitalism was sounds just like what capitalism was and you’ll only know what that’s like if you listen to this…

what capitalism was - dream at a quarter to nine

oh and one more thing, beady-eyed readers of both the hl and the mighty mighty gorilla vs bear will note that we had the paul duncan track red eagle a full month before they did… now who’s best, huh?

Feeling super edgy today.

Had a couple of really disrupted night’s sleep, which has set my bodyclock way off-kilter, so even though I’m tired as hell, I can’t get seem to be able to get any proper shut-eye. As a result every thing is a little wierd and alien today, like someone has changed the colour settings on the tv of my life.

My brother has this theory that the best time to watch films is when your feeling like this, all your senses are slighty raised and that can help you get more involved in the experience. Reminds me of those scenes from Insomnia, where Al Pacino’s character’s perception becomes more and more distorted and hallucenogenic, the longer he goes without sleep.

I thought I’d try and post a track that feels like the soundtrack for this kind of mood. Taken from Photek’s heavy 1996 ep, Hidden Camera, It’s just about my all time favourite drum and bass tune and among the few that truly justify the jazz moniker, which was bandied around all over the place in the mid-nineties (any track with a saxophone or double bass sound was jazzy at one point).
It also perfectly captures the paranoid feelings of always being watched, so it works really well as a soundtrack to walking round the city, headphones on, seeing the world through sleep deprived lenses.

Photek-K J Z

I’ve had my head in books about the late 60s and early 70s recently. I fully recommend Trips by Ellen Sander if you can get hold of a copy. She was there…with Joni & Graham at Lookout Mountain…in the room when Stills belittled Young…at Altamont when the bad wine and bad acid was going around and started to create the bad vibes. She floated around the Laurel and later Topanga Canyon sets and her book is real analysis from the inside. I’m With The Band by the Grandmother of all modern groupies - Pamela Des Barres - talks more about the scenes and rock stars in general, as she was over in a different part of LA with Jimmy Page and his special suitcase, but she was a big part of Gram Parsons life until his OD and was a founder member of Frank Zappa’s GTOs…
Finally I recommend Barney Hoskyn’s Hotel California. Looking down the barrel of history at a time we all now know was doomed to consume itself, Hoskyns tells the story cleanly, giving air the dreams of dreamers - of how it could have been.

Reading about all this music I needed to get in and listen to some of it. So I tracked down as much as I could. Trying to piece together the fractured stories and backgrounds of the musicians and bands I was reading about with an aural map. It led me to discover some beautiful music which I felt compelled to put together and share with my friends. So here it is…put your headphones on and sit back - imagine that wherever you are is actually a veranda in Laurel Canyon late 1975, and you are flicking around the radio until you find Miss Lorelei on WKLA…

sounds of the canyons mix

I try to make a habit of not paying too much attention to celebrity culture. Despite this I think it’s hard to ignore Britney Spears’ continued descent into personal disaster. It’s the dark side of the obsessive culture of fame we live in; someone breaking down before our eyes played out as entertainment.

On the flipside it’s been a great week for east london producer and cosmic voyager, Joseph Quaid ,with his deep new track ‘Feel’ being playlisted on Gilles Peterson’s all conquering ‘Worldwide’ radio show and big getting blog love from the superb Grooveprovider.

This track therefore is not only a freaky slice of jazzed-out dark-soul, but a reminder that a you’re only ever one track from the top and a haircut away from the gutter.
Britney Spears-Slave 4 U (quaid’s pitchdown edit)

firstly, apologies for our mildly flaky hosting whatnot - it appears to have given up working consistantly for lent, here’s hoping we sort that one before easter, but do bear with us and if you find the ‘out to lunch’ sign up when you next pop by be sure we’ll be back terribly soon. anyhoo…

jakson’s frankly transcendant choice for a thursday reminded me of a joe tex track i’ve long loved hollering my heart out to - and in turn, that got me to thinking about the last great movie soundtrack i really got into. the ost for movie of cult denis johnson short story, jesus’ son - a it’s collection as well researched and stacked together as robbie robertson’s best work with scorsese or tarrantino’s heart felt seminal reservoir dogs/pulp fiction chart toppers. Read more »

 

Trammps - Rubber Band

Been getting really into The Trammps recently.

My deejay compadre, Illa, has been playing the Editions Disco version of this track for ages and it came up again last week in connection with the dilla anniversary (it was sampled on Dilla says Go). Disco Jesus gave me a copy of the joe clausell mix of the tune ‘when the lights go out’ which I’ve been playing to death recently as well. There’s something about the classic Philly production and those 5(?) part vocal harmonies that just seem perfect.
I am really into the idea that ‘dance music’ (whatever the hell that phrase means), or music you can dj with doesn’t have to be all upbeat and friday night. That djing at it’s best is about playing around with complex, subtle moods as much as it is about getting people to dance. And this record - a track about a relationship breaking down- is as good an example of that as any.
I almost went off on another Theo monologue there, anyhoo enjoy the tune and if you are looking for some more detroit/philly soul deejay action-check out this mix by hl pal I Love Okra - It’s a killer.

proir to our theo outing, this weekend saw part two of la reunion (part one being a pie and ale fuelled hair of the dog mini session at the lock tavern earlier in the week) as we hooked up with some wasters i went to university with fellow academics for the coming together of two musical power houses.

london’s lo-fi slacker darlings finlay (who rode out the whole finlay quaye thing with remarkable ease) and all the way from the US of A, sprightly bean-towners mittens (though as the majority of the band are straight outta phoenix i get to call them damn yankees apparently) presented a double header at the buffalo bar in highbury (which might or might not have to do with finlay drummer ani being a gooner).

with both outfits well past the difficult second album mark and running wild with their dreams and visions, it sort of makes me feel both old and happy that we’ve all got this far, not least considering our shady south east london roots. the gig itself was suitably shambolic and a whole bunch of anglo-american fun though i’m assured both sets of troubadours really raised their respective games with their following dates in Brixton and Brighton when they’d warmed to playing in different time zones (brixton being deep south and all).

anyhoo, this was a very short tour of duty for mittens and they’ve since boarded planes bound for europe and the states, (and apologies to finlay for not being foriegn enough to get posted about today) but here is a piece of their nick lowe-esque tasty popiness lifted entirely from their eponymous first album. catchy enough to have been ringing round my brain since last week, and suitably melodic that it reminds me of summerteeth era wilco and with dirty pretty things’ anthony rossomando on bugle duties its just right for keeping your fingers warm.

mittens - belinda

I was fortunate enough to see Theo Parrish at Plastic People last night.

Suffice to say it was an incredible night; quite simply one of the world’s best djs at the top of his game playing on the best soundsystem in London. Musically it spanned a massive variety of black musical forms from disco-through jazz, hiphop funk and acid. But it’s not like those kind of lazy musical tags really apply to someone like theo, with different styles effortlessly brought together to create a richer, greater whole.

This combination of the fantastic soundsystem and the otherworldly-ness of his crazy, intense, sometimes 20 minute + productions, made it feel like we were witness to the deejay, not as superstar, but artist; at once uncompromisingly new yet direct descendant to a black musical heritage increasingly under attack from a culture that wants to steal it and twist it for it’s own commercial ends.

One man diggin deeper, sticking to his own distinct vision and providing powerful inspiration to those willing to take the time.

Next time you get the chance, you should really try and check him out. In the meantime thanks to the power of the internets and to a new found friend, here is a excerpt from last night. It’s a bit rough and ready but you can kind of get an idea of the seriousness of the vibe. I’m guessing it’s some new theo edits (sounds like a marvin gaye sample in there somewhere)-either way it’s damn heavy.

Enjoy.

Theo Parrish-Unknown edits (Live at Plastic People 18/02)

If I’d been a bit more upfront and way more attentive, I would have posted this little clip about six years ago (it would have taken the form of a little video of monsuier gondry showing me a few concept sketches as we both drank lattes)

It’s the trailer for ‘Science of Sleep’, out today in the UK and it looks ace.

By way of musical distraction, here is a killer track to get you in the mood for the weekend. It’s classic mid-nineties deepness from Blaze, which I think I first heard it on the seminal ‘blue note’ club compilation and was reminded of the other day hearing a friend’s beats. It’s one of those trax that just gets better with age (which is more than can be said for alot of house music). It the perfect soundtrack to a night-time journey through the city on the way to/from some vibey little session.

Have a good weekend.

blaze-moonwalk

So I’ve been thinking about music today and worrying about all the compromises I am willing to make for it . We just got so much access now, music blogs (which I love), online record shops (which I both love and hate), downloadable mixes, myspace players etc etc. It’s all too much.
And some of this music (alot of this music) we can get for free, or we can hunt on google, or we can bitorrent it or buy some russian website, or get from a friend on cdr, or bluetoothed from a phone. It’s the same feeling I had when I was in thailand and there was just about every film, every album, all there so little money. I remember feeling this weird combination of greed and guilt. All this pent up consumer lust when confronted with this incredible all-you-could-eat super cheap media buffet. At the time I was just a bit overwhelmed and didn’t buy anything cause my frames of reference and all sense of the value of things was suddenly in freefall.

The same thing is happening, less dramatically, each day. More and more music I listen too (and dj with) I’m getting for free. All these amazing music blogs (see below) fill up my hard drive and my listening time. I still by 12″ and albums of course, cause I love it-but somewhere along the way the link between music as a commodity and the importance of paying an artist properly has gone astray.

Alot of the stuff I buy is second hand or some dirty re-edit, either way the artist doesn’t get paid and I get music online from a million different places all of varying degrees of legitimacy, all with varying degrees of self justification and the associated guilt attached.

Poor me.

Well not really poor me, more conflicted me-cause the more I think about it the more it does my head-so I don’t-I just keep ‘doing it cause it feels good’.

So here’s my solution.
Get some clever computer dude to write a plugin for itunes which will make a note of every track I play. I pay £50(or something) a year to have a ‘pirates license’ and the money gets divided fairly between the musicians/record labels/rights holders of the music I’ve been enjoying.

I sleep easy -everyone get’s their piece and if there are enough honest music heads out there (which I reckon there are) it starts to add value to music again.

Anyway here’s a track I bought (second hand mind you) cause Ithe cover was so freakin cool and it became one of my alltime favourite jazz albums. From the amazing The Awakening;
ahmad jamal-stolen moments