Saturday night was my brother’s shindig at the cosmo bar in clerkenwell. The bar was a little on the shabby side but had a killer soundsystem (complete with wonderful Rane rotary mixer).It was a strictly third floor selection which was great for me and jimmy (probably not great so for everyone else).

It’s become a bit of a thing to spend sometime ‘in the studio’ for our closest and so my saturday afternoon was spent looping and tweaking for the big night.

No time for anything to clever-it was all about getting a track together that was heavy on nostalgia, but not too inclusive.

The result….

well listen for yourself.

jaksoul-hiphop jim kelly

Heading back to my old stomping ground tonight.

It’s been a while since I’ve had any reason to return, so it’s gonna be weird seeing how much things have changed (and how much things have stayed the same).

Behind my house there were these garages, they ran parallel to the street and then went all the way round behind the shops on the high street. We could climb upon to them from our garden and so made ‘the roofs’ our own personal territory. It was were we could escape, do our own thing out of the eyes of any kind of authority. Where there was just enough freedom, mixed with a little danger and ever present sense that we weren’t supposed to be there.

Pretty much the perfect adolescent playground.

The friend I’m going back to see has just bought a place that overlooks these very roofs. Who knows maybe we will sneak out onto the pitch and gravel, have a cigarette and a tinny (and pretend we not allowed).

Urban Tribe-Covert Action

Although strictly speaking from down the road in high wycombe, MCM (on the left in the pic above) went to amersham college so we could justifiably claim him as ‘hometown homeboy’ number one.

He used to come and hang at some of the nights we used go to at ‘club stages’ and was generally a very humble, chilled out dude. It seems like a far away time when a uk hiphop track could make the charts-I can still remember watching the super low budget video to ‘I’m Ready‘, (with an even then ridiculous westwood cameo) over and over.

It’s strange in our rush to embrace all things ‘golden age’ how it easily we have overlooked such a seminal album. Local connections and rose-hued nostalgia for summers on roofs have no doubt blunted my critical facilities but I rate this as the equal to any uk hiphop before or since.(and I don’t care how good the observer thinks the new dizzie rascal album is gonna be) Classic breaks and a great flow, it’s as closest thing we have to a ‘step in the arena‘ and should be talked off in similarly hushed tones.

If you aren’t already acquainted, may I present…

an introduction to a caveman

Had a beautiful and unexpected night on Saturday.

It was the opening party for a new bar, LIFE.

Ex UFO member, Toshio Matsuura was djing and there were rumours of free beer, so Mr and Mrs Quaid and I headed down to check it out.

When we got there the place was rocking. A heavy jazz-dance selection played on this great soundsystem. Downstairs, the basement room was packed out with a crowd seemingly bussed in from tokyo’s hippest club; no moody east london attitudes,just this amazing mini-warehouse party.

After about 45 mins of killer music (including this deep jazz workout of inner city blues) a trio of japanese jazzers came on stage and started playing these dubbed out herbie hancock-style jams. It wasn’t until they were halfway through a version of ‘Billie Jean’ I realised I was actually watching HL fave Ino Hidefumi !!

It was a special night, so many friendly people, a space with loads of potential, great music (and an ace little goody bag)-just wish jezzy could have been there to get into it as well.

Since we’ve posted on Ino before, here is a UFO track we used to go crazy to back in the day.

楽しみなさい!!

UFO-Dig that Beat!

Hustles of Culture-Flipjack
This track could also be a 3rd floor classic-it’s got the heavy drums, the upbeat jazzy break, the early 90’s vintage.It reminds me of a time when I could listen to tracks without instantly trying to pigeonhole them (probably because it didn’t know enough about music to be able to). We used check out a night called ‘funkin pussy’, when we were just getting into clubbing-they played all the classic funk stuff and would occasionally drop in tracks like this-it was a little on the obvious side, but nights would always really kick off. Soul2Soul used to play it as well as some of the more edgier house deejays and all the jazzheads finally had a jazzdance track for people who couldn’t dance to records in weird time signatures!.
I pulled it out the crates for last saturday’s basilika which turned out to be an a) an absolute stormer b)a bit of a kelly -classic selection (my bro and some mates were in the house, so it all got a little self indulgent)

I am learning that the less I deejay the more I enjoy it, especially if it means being able to regularly drop tunes this heavy.

Have a great weekend.

If I could sum-up the definitive ‘third floor classic’ sound, in two words, those words would be ‘jazzy breaks’. Of course there was a broad spectrum of styles that rocked our world back then, but it was that house tempo/ break driven sound that we really made our own.

The excellent ‘Another night on Earth‘ posted ‘Blacker‘ by the (Eccentric Afros vs) Ballistic Brothers, earlier this week, which is a good example of the style I’m talking about. (might have to put the marden hill version up here later in the series). It’s got that soulful, break influenced sound of hiphop but it’s tweaked upbeat for extra dancefloor pressure.
This track is a tune called ‘Le Voyage’ by Mighty Bop-it’s from the second of their eps (the green one) and was recommended by pete and simon , when they worked in the basement of the mighty ‘rockin sarah’ in soho and were primary taste makers for my nascient record collecting.

It’s quite a simple tune really-spacey keys, a jazzy vocal sample, nice breakdowns, all underpinned with this enormous drum break (and lets face it that’s key ingredient). It’s one of those records that sort of defies easy labeling and maybe that’s why we love it so much-it just sounds golden.

Mighty Bop-Le Voyage

When I got to art college I was lucky enough to fall in with some like minded muso dudes. ‘Stevie B’ Bruno, Joe ‘Baron Samedi’ Lashbrook, Farooq ‘Faz’ Khan and I formed a heavy beats and smokes ‘collective’ named ‘Voodoo’, spending days and weeks planning our schemes for world domination. Cut off from the entire cultural world in leafy surrey we obsessed endlessly over gilles & norman’s radio shows and over music mags like Straight no Chaser, rigorously compilling epic ‘want’ lists. Such was the power of our nascient musical fervour that we would literally be running to Universal Sounds/Mr Bongos/the basement of Daddy Kool on our monthly record buying visits. Of course none of the records we wanted were available- all floating seductively out of reach in the ether of exclusive promoes and cdrs.

One of these unreachable tracks was the by a guy called dj shadow. Leaking from the jazz pages, hype about a track called influx had started to penetrate more traditional music press. It was nowhere to be found (of course) but this track was. Pre-dating the influx 12″ by a few months and trickling to London on import I picked it up in blackmarket or somewhere similarly off the beaten path for mowax beat junkies.
Coming back home to the Third Floor in the holidays I would be armed with stacks of vinyl goodness (and eventually my own 1210s), like this. Of course I had no idea that DJ shadow would eventually be a big deal. Listening to it with my bro, all we could muster by way of critical appraisal was ‘damn those drums sound amazing !’

DJ Shadow and the Groove Robbers-Entropy (parts C/D/E).mp3

When I was growing up my brother and I were fortunate enough to have our own floor in the house we lived in. This meant our house became the defacto hang out venue for our mates as we could smoke fags and listen to music without being disturbed.

They were good days.

ribena/chocolate slices/and the first beginnings of a lifetime love of music.

third floor classics are a collection of tracks from those halcyon days-not all of them have aged that well, but all retain some element of what it is that really excites me about music-in this case a decending acoustic jazz bass loop.

Jon Hassell-Personals(organized konfusion mix).mp3

ps check out the amazing another night on earth-most blogs I check out I only really like about 40-50% of the music they post,with this guy it’s more like 90/95% !!!It’s like having a musical doppelganger on the otherside of the world.