Down with the kids, me!

It turns out I'm actually down with the kids. That is my fave song of 2012 is by Skrillex who is my (nearly 2 year old)  niece's favourite artist. This one goes out to Harry!

Wu-Tang Clan/Trace & Nico

*The whole point of mentioning Ol' Dirty Bastard the other day was the Wu-Tang Clan connection with a track off the Torque record. The song in question Damn Son by Trace & Nico contains a sample from Raekwon's Only Built For Cuban Linx LP....er which I forgot to mention. I thought yeah I know that sample but it took me a while to pinpoint it. I thought it was ODB but it wasn't then I put on Only Built For Cuban Linx and there it was. A funny bit to sample really. Whatever works I suppose. Here's the two tracks in question!

 

 

 

How could I resist?

Wu Gambinos

Fave track off that record!

 

friday night

 

EPIC

 

He really comes across as an arsehole doesn't he? Which if memory serves he was in interviews at the time. You know the usual misogyny and homophobia. That never stopped me likin Public Enemy, ODB or Snoop though. It's this video I find hard to watch. Great song, it can't be denied.

I'm Livin' In The 90s

Still in 90s zones, I pulled out ODB's debut record the other day. How fuckin' funny is he? Scary & hilarious! He died right? I must check that out. I'm pretty sure he'd already been shot by the time Return To The 36 Chambers had been recorded. He's one of a kind The Old Dirty Bastard. He had me laughing out loud on the tram the other day. Anyone who can make me smile whilst commuting is ok in my book and I do have a book.



Psychotically Hilarious!

The word commute always makes me think of Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus's peculiar opus on Johnny Rotten's voice and everything that could have possibly been connected to it. Commuting often in its loneliness and isolation reveals to me that I am part of a huge pulsating industrial monolith that doesn't necessarily need me and can spit me out at any moment without a care. Whoah!, that got heavy all of a sudden.

RE: Straight Edge/Torque & any old crap

*Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat/Fugazi & Dego & Mac of 4Hero were both at the forefront of Hardcore lineages albeit very different ones but funny that they were both straight edge. I didn't even realise when I was writing that the other day. Also both had a Mac in the group. Can I somehow get a Fleetwood Mac connection here as well? I fuckin' doubt it as they were the antitheses of straight edge.....er....all 3 had great rhythm sections. If you can call what 4Hero had a rhythm section?

**After purchasing Torque, the compilation on No U Turn from 97, the other day I realised that in fact I knew most of those tracks either from the radio, clubs, a friend of mine-some kind of osmosis anyway and hey me likey very much.

***Discussions among a few different people recently has ended up in this question: What ever happened to R & B? That lineage seems to have come to a halt doncha think?

****What about Hip Hop? A lost cause or what?

*****Indie Rock? Any life left in that? I doubt it.

******What about Exotic-Retro Psych/Funk/Rock and its Hybrids? Those compilations seem to be arriving less & less. I think I've only bought 2 this year. One from Iran and one from West Africa.

*******Is there anything out there apart from Skrillex & K-Pop?

RE: Techstep

To listen or not to listen?

I got off the hardcore train before techstep it's true. There may be some good stuff I've missed and I'm lookin' at that No U Turn comp Torque thinkin 'Go on give it a go!' Anyway I couldn't get into stuff that followed either Speed Garage, 2 step, Grime and only really liked a couple of things in the Dubstep universe. I didn't hate Big Beat but that was hardly part of that hardcore lineage. I kept half an ear on the experimental side of things in the electronic world but even Mouse On Mars were makin crap by 2001. I didn't really get back into underground electronic music in a big way until Ghostbox and it's Hautological friends arrived in the mid 00s. Then the strange Hypnagogic stuff caught my ear and the new Kosmiche/Ambient skool. I don't really think I'll be delving into old school tracks of 2 step and Grime when their time comes back around though.

RE: Interstellar Martians

Kowalski liked both types of speed.

*When I said in that previous post that Jungle "was for hopped up martians going interstellar!" I meant that's who it sounded like it was for. The reality was it was for druggy young urban jungle dwellers going nowhere except oblivion in their brains. This thought reminds of the film Vanishing Point and its subtext of a need for acceleration, to pioneer, to hunt etc. So Kowalski has all this instinctual energy but nowhere for it to go. The worlds been mapped out, we've even gone into space, all our food is at the supermarket etc. Did any women make Jungle? So Kowalski fills his desires with the speed (meth & going fast) and chaos of the road and being chased across America by the authorities. He makes the road his home. With jungle, the makers of and their followers wander a similar path. They enjoy the endless horizon that awaits in the music and their minds (usually drug addled ones) to escape the urban jungle's drudgery of daily life at least for a little while.....er.....discuss. Have your essays on my desk by Friday kids.

 

 

Two more classics from the Reinforced label for speeding into endless chaotic wide open vistas and dark futures. Having said all that stuff above it is interesting to note 4Hero were as straight edge as Fugazi's Ian Mackaye. Weird huh?

RE: The Beach Boys & The Rolling Stones

*Don't get me wrong about the Beach Boys. Many LPs that followed after Pet Sounds are classics in my book and I do have a book. What I meant was the general rock crits concencuss of Pet Sounds. I read that book Heroes & Villians way back in the late 80s and a couple of times since. The author didn't rate anything after that at all. So I was quite suprised when I tracked down the latter LPs in the 90s to discover some underated classics. Sunflower and Surf's Up are just as good in my opinion. Not far behind would be Wild Honey, 20/20 and Friends.

 

 



**Sure The Stones had a run of classics leading up to Exile and some good ones after like Some Girls and Tatoo You. Anyway you know what I'm getting at doncha? 

The Sopranos/Nostalgia for the future

Funny that I mentioned Tindersticks in that last post. I've just started rewatching The Sopranos from season one and I'm gonna watch the lot. Anyhoo in an excellent episode towards the end of the first season  called Isabella The Tindersticks song Tiny Tears appears during one of Tony's meltdowns. I was surprised and thought 'yeah! they had some great songs and were a bit of a funny band.' I'm intending on pulling those first couple of records out of the closet maybe. The first one and that live one were pretty good stuff. Were they Boz Scaggs fans? Their other influences were pretty obvious though Hazlewood, Van Zant, Scott Walker, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Triffids etc. It was funny having this British group with all these Australian influences. I guess Gallon Drunk were a bit like that as well, you know sounded a bit like they could have been from Melbourne.

Good tunes for panic
attacks on the toilet!

The Dreamy Isabella.

                                                                                                                                                             

Been loving the music on The Sopranos. There were so many good songs used and put to good use as well. Kasey Chambers turns up on one episode where Ralphie becomes a captain with the song...er...The Captain. Her voice may sometimes be grating but there is no denying her talents as a formidable songwriter.

Anyway I'm still obsessed with the whole hardcore/darkside/jungle/ambient jungle etc.90s timeline thing. I must admit though I can't bring myself to listen to possibly my favourite record of the 90s Tricky's Maxinquaye. I think this was pretty much the only record I listened to in 1995. In Energy Flash's Trip Hop chapter Simon Reynolds waxes lyrical about the record and with good reason, it's fucking brilliant. It is a dark record though, dark times personally too and perhaps I just played it to death. It was a bit of a shame though that his debut was his Pet Sounds or Exile On Main St...... er ..... meaning his peak, his Masterpiece, his piece de resistance. Then again who cares it's one of the all time great records!

MAXINQUAYE
Best LP of the 90s?

After tracking down a bloody lot of the great tracks from the hardcore etc. era I'm now onto AOJ. Album orientated jungle. One of the few other records I did listen to in 95 apart from Maxinquaye was Omni Trio's The Deepest Cut and 4Hero's Parallel Universe (that was originall released on vinyl in 94 but the cd which I had didn't come out til 95). Also getting back into A Guy Called Gerald, Spring Hill Jack and Jacob's Optical Stairway. Jungle's twistedness was starting to be straightened out and I didn't go much further with it after that. I couldn't get into Roni Size/Repazeant and all that. Maybe I missed some things by getting off the train before tech-step. Now I'm supposed to mention MC Esher (no he wasn't a rapper) and how jungle parallels the impossibilities, confusion and illusions that he created. Kodwo Eshun summed it all up nicely with the often quoted "rhythmic psychedelia." K-Punk says "temporal delirium" What more can I add. This was in no way nostalgic this music (ironically talking about it now is), it was speeding into the future with no map or coordinates and with unprecedented vigour. This was twisted, elastic, sharp, slimy & shapeshifting music for hopped up Martians going interstellar.

Friday Night - Rowland S Howard