Oh Happy Day!

This turned up in the post today just after I'd been to the dentist and had a filling. It feels like I've been waiting for over a year for this to come out. Was Fisher trying to recreate old skool anticipation of pop culture with its delayed release? Can't wait to read this. Mark Fisher as K-Punk was one of the original music bloggers alongside Woebot, Gutterbreakz and Blissblog. I think out of all the Zero Books I've read this one has the most pages at a whopping 232!

Then I discovered this! Only been waiting 20 years. Aphex Twin's alter ego Caustic Window finally has this LP available to the public. I'm sure this was reviewed in Melody Maker in 93 or 94, but it never got released. It has since gained mythical status. Anyway here it is and man it sounds bloody good so far. I'm in the 90s now.

Marc Acardipane On Me Bike

These tunes came up on my Fuck Yeah! Mix on the i-pod whilst cycling today. These tracks really get your legs moving. Is it illegal to ride with your i-pod in your earballs? It does feel unsafe. I was definitely riding into the future and possibly could have ridden front on into a truck and wouldn't have cared. These are still incredible soundz.

RIP Alexander Shulgin

Simon Reynolds tribute to Alexander Shulgin here. Well I didn't know much about him until today. He rescued MDMA from historical obscurity in 1976 and is now a legend. Somewhere along the way MDMA became known as Ecstasy. I'd like to thank him for the hits and the memories. In my teens I remember first reading about Ecstasy in The Age (Melbourne equivalent to The Guardian/New York Times) in an article that featured S'Express and 70s fashion. I recall being fascinated by this drug and the subculture surrounding it. I'd probably only ever been pissed previously and never even been stoned. I think I cut this article out. Then a few months later there was an entire expose on Ecstasy and it's effects on its users in like The Age's weekend magazine (probably sourced from The Guardian actually). It had all these great modern fried psychedelic graphics of people being wasted on E. I cut that one out as well. You'd think I was well on the way to being a total E head but I reckon it would have been five years at least until I tried it. Maybe Shaun Ryder and Bez, from The Happy Mondays, put me off trying it any earlier. I was a very infrequent user of the substance but I gotta say I enjoyed it every time.

Then there's the music it helped create. Wow, Shulgin couldn't have foreseen such a flourishing musical movement being created for and by this drug. Ecstasy has been the catalyst for some of the greatest genres of the modern music era of the last 30 years and still continues it's influence today. MDMA was revolutionary and that's an understatement. I've possibly listened to more music created for and by Ecstasy than anything else. It's a testament to the drug that you don't even have to be on it to enjoy this music. Rest in Ecstasy Mr Shulgin.

I could go on probably forever posting E related tunes. Oh hang on this captures something about E-ing. That moment when you think you've been ripped off and bought a dud. Then minutes later it kicks in big style.

Come With Me 2 Hell - DJ Paul & Lord Infamous (1994)

HIP HOP I IGNORED PART 3

Come With Me To Hell wasn't hard to ignore. This was a self released tape from rappers DJ Paul and Lord Infamous (who is also The Scarecrow, I think) with production by DJ Paul and Juicy J. It was released in 1994 with no cover apparently. I found it a few years ago in MP3 form from one of those great sharity blogs like Mutant Sounds (RIP). I was unaware of its Three 6 Mafia connection until I played the first track. Triple 6 mafia get mentioned in several of the songs but I don't think they used that moniker as an artist name until the following year. In 1995 Three 6 Mafia released their now cult classic Mystic Stylez album which I didn't hear until 10 years later. I had been led to believe underground rap was shite. How wrong I was. Rap was like supposed to be the opposite to rock, you know mainstream rock (Hair Metal, Stone Temple Pilots, Nickleback) bad! But underground rock good! (The Fall, The Clean, The Smiths, Slint, Royal Trux etc.). The theory was that the good rap rises to the top and you get to hear it. Another case of don't believe the rock crit consensus. Sure some of the people involved on this recording ended up winning an Academy Award but that was after spending a long time in the rap underground.

Come With Me to Hell begins with Intro. It's psychedelic as hell with kids singing a haunting lullaby reverbed to the hilt with great horror synth and pounding drums. While the rappers tell you to "Come with me to hell." and "Triple 6 Mafia may we burn forever." This should be used as a horror film theme. 1000 Blunts puts us in typical hip hop territory. They're bragging about how much pot they've smoked ie "I think I smoked a thousand blunts." This ain't no slick Dre style production. It's very lo-fi with a little toy organ loop keeping the vibe spooky. Long & Hard is their pornographic tale of fellatio. A great crackling trumpet sample echoes throughout while a languid guitar line flows in and out of the mix. It's minimal and repetitive. Drop It Off Ya Ass dives into the criminal underbelly of hip hop. It's all Glocks, Infra red and dead cops. "Come with me to hell you little bitch and see how we live in the land of the 666." The backing track's got keyboard sounds that could be straight out of a horror flick, John Carpenter Stylee. Lick My Nuts is a reprise of Long and Hard. The title says it all really. Pass The Junt sounds so 2014 it could be DJ Mustard on the beat. It's another ode to one of hip hop's favourite pastimes smoking drugs with classic blunted horn samples that could have come from a 70s dub track.

Side 2 starts off brilliantly with some of the grimiest and most dense sampling I've ever heard. You Ain't Mad Is Ya is truly psychedelic hip hop and wouldn't sound out of place on a New Kingdom LP. "We're gonna take you deeper than 6 feet." All Dirty Hoes lays on a kind of sleazy slow jam vibe but the lyrics are no where near as romantic as the sweet sounds. 187 Invitation is a homicidal poem set to some of the coolest horror soundtrack samples you're ever likely to hear. Some of these sounds remind me of Ghostbox groups like The Focus Group and The Belbury Poly.  It's unique, no one sounded like this, that I knew of, in 94. Its Cummin is another ode to the joys of fellatio. It's quite a catchy tune but you probably don't wanna be singin this one around your mum and dad. "Try on some real nigga lip gloss." Its Cummin keeps the minimal haunted keyboard loops coming, along with scratching and the world's most raw brittle drum machine. Back Against The Wall is like an ultra violent gangster film. All hell breaks loose sonically and lyrically. In between there is almost respite with more ominous synth lines. There's a sample from Ice T's Colours which may have been a sample from a slasher movie, I'm not sure. Back Against The wall is truly terrifying and demented. Shout Outs is just that. They shout out to all their mates in Memphis while unashamedly plugging upcoming tape releases. Takin No Shorts ends the tape and it's like a whole other band with a beautiful backing track that could be off Sesame St. "Layin some pimp ass shit" 70s style. They're still rapping about motherf*%#ing guns but then they start hanging shit on rappers trying to be like Menace II Society (the 93 hood film), possibly even being a little self deprecating. This is entertainment after all.

Come With Me To Hell is an awesome journey into the early 90s Memphis tape/mixtape underground. This isn't some slick state of the art expensive studio shit. It was probably recorded in their mom's bathroom. Not many of these tracks would get you out on the dancefloor. Instead of being funky these tunes creep like a stoned stalker. DJ, Lord and Juicy don't really use overexposed breaks or cliched samples. They tore up the hip hop rule book and made a truly original masterpiece and didn't even bother with a cover! This tape sounds totally relevant and influential today. Lord Infamous died last year of a heart attack, finally in hell.

Remastered cd reissue.

Illmatic - Nas

HIP HOP I IGNORED - PART 1

Illmatic was released in 1994, a particularly fertile year for new music. This is the year two classic trip hop LPs were released Portishead's Dummy and Massive Attack's Protection. Then there were so many UK jungle trax, too numerous to mention. There was also a shitload of British experimental (dare I say Post-Rock before it became a term of derision for American noodling turds) rock happening Laika, Disco Inferno, Bark Psychosis, Stereolab, Pram, Scorn, Flying Saucer Attack, Main and O'rang. Then there was electronic and ambient music Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol 2, the Virgin comp Isolationism, Mouse On Mars, Orbital, Autechre, Global Communication's 76.14, Paul Schutze and the list goes on. Nick Cave, Pulp, Boredoms, Peter Jefferies, Polvo, Kristen Hersh and Burzum all released classic records. Then there were the reissues on Blood & Fire Records and Esquival's Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. Plus way way more. Geez that was a good year for music. The two hip hop albums that did get my attention were The Beastie Boys Ill Communication and Snoop's Doggystyle. Along with Illmatic, I also missed Warren G's Regulate.., Jeru The Damaaja's The Sun Rises In The East, Ice Cube, PE and whoever else.

I had already heard Nas albeit without my knowledge on Live At The BBQ, a track from Main Source's classic LP from 91 Breaking Atoms. By the time of Illmatic's release in 94 he was 20 so he'd been a bit of a child prodigy. The line up of producers here was the cream of the 1994 crop. Main Source's Large Prof, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, DJ Premier and LES all had a twiddle of the knobs. This was a new era with the classic old school of PE, NWA etc. and the daisy age fading away and the beginning of Wu Tang Clan's stranglehold in the east and G funks commercial dominance. Nas's timing couldn't have been better, making the LP old school, of its time and somehow timeless all at the same time.

The album begins with the splendid trippy funk beats of The Genesis and Nas is introduced and then it's quickly into the creepin intensity of NY State Of Mind. This tune travels the decay of the NewYork underbelly with drugs, guns, crime and violence. This journey through urban hell is state of the art 94 hip hop where "The city never sleeps, it full of villains and creeps.". Life's a Bitch is a glorious ode to hedonism that features AZ guesting on vocals. This backing track is so fucking smooth with its Gap Band sample and a trumpet comin on like something from Miles Davis's Big Fun. The World Is Yours features, apart from the the usual peerless rhymes, some awesome scratching. Halftime closes side one with its mentions of Jackson 5 and watching Chips (hey I used to love that show, even had Chips pyjamas). His rhymes are astonishing as is the backing trak with its dubby horn samples floating in and out of the mix like puffs of smoke.

Side two or 41st Side South starts with Memory Lane and it's a Premier production containing a Rueben Wilson sample of We're In Love. Choice turntablism blends perfectly with this sweet soul jazz jam. One Love be a daisy age throwback and that ain't no bad thing here. This is a message to his incarcerated bros that's grasping for optimism amongst the darkness and the rhymes keep flowing like nothing before. Large Prof gives One Time 4 Your Mind  a sweet minimal mellow vibe to show off Nas's def rhymes. Represent is another snapshot of a day in the life in the projects of New York, the every day crime and casual violence of it all. Premier gives this track hypnotic psych beats that you'd be happy to keep listening to for an hour. This is the trippiest of hop. It ain't Hard To Tell closes out the album with MJ and Kool & The Gang samples. The dub inflected beatz are a heavenly haze.

At one stage on Illmatic Nas claims he has so many rhymes and its hard to disagree, they just flow and wash over you. You catch new snippets each time you listen. You could listen to this album a hundred times and still not know all the words. This is part of its charm, longevity and timelessness I guess. Illmatic only goes for 40 minutes thus there is no time to really get sick of it. Other artists at the time should have taken note of his quality control. Cds gave rise to too much wasted time and filler. Ironman by Ghostface Killah is a favourite of mine but a minute or two of editing may have had everyone thinking that was the best rap LP of all time but Illmatic is the one most often quoted as that. With a few more listens I might be sayin the same thing but probably not. He's just not mad, smooth, funny or charismatic enough for me. I would however love to hear an instrumental or dub version of Illmatic, that'd be wicked. I haven't heard other Nas records but I feel Illmatic maybe similar to Tricky's Maxinquaye. They were both debuts and both considered masterpieces. So how do you top that? Retire after your first record? Then tour it live 20 years later? That would have been cool. Rappers gotta eat though and apparently he's put out some other good records but Illmatic was always there to haunt him. Luckily now he can tour it for the 20th anniversary and probably make a small fortune. Nobody back then would have dreamt of this concept, let alone it being quite viable and even almost credible.

Don't Touch That Stereo Part I

Millie & Andrea - Drop The Vowels (2014)
This is one of the dudes from Demdike Stare and some other bloke. For some reason I'm really enjoying this record which I didn't really expect to. I don't think anything much new is happening here. There a bit of post dubstep, some gamelan vibes, isolationist type ambience, a dose of Basic Channel, hardcore continuum styles, drum & bass pops its head up, tech-house (that was a thing wasn't it for a minute there in the 90s?) and I dunno it's all a bit zombie rave (that should so be a genre). Not really hands up in the air more like your arms fall off as you try to raise them above your waste. Is it undeconstructed or reconstuctured deconstruction or constructed unreconstruction? More to the point does anyone give a shit at this point? More nails in the coffin for rave in the best possible sense.

Clouds - Ghost System Rave (2013)
A bit late on this one. Ghost System Rave was only hipped to me in early January by Reynolds via Energy Flash. This is far and away the best album I missed last year, the only other contender being Holden's The Inheritors. It most certainly would have made my top 9. As far as album titles that describe their contents go this is perfection. Whilst the ingredients suggest the 90s, something pulls this away from mere retro-activity. Perhaps Future 1 is the only exception to that rule here as it soundz like an obscure 91 grimey 'ardcore gem that Blog To The Old Skool might have dug up. Ghost System Rave is not just techno micro-genres revisited. Its like you're hearing an early 90s rave through a ghost's ears. You feel like you've heard it before but you haven't, not like this. This is a delightfully askew musical experience. It sounds/feels like you've already dropped the drugs and you're occupying an inbetween dimension. This is an incredible musical achievement. Rave from the otherside. We just had Zombie Rave and now this is Ghost Rave.

The 90s Again....

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