What's On The Hi-Fi Part $?

DJ Extreme - 1994 Jungle Volume 10
I can't seem to get out of 90s zones. This is a cracker of a mix. I've been working my way through DJ Extreme's mixes at Hardscore. Listened to all his 92 and 93 hardcore mixes and now I've reached Volume 10 of his 94 Jungle mixes. This is a fabulous trip into the 90s. We've got funky drummers, half-time bass lines, divas, ragga muffins, chipmunk traces, r&b dudes, sinister synth stabs, washes of ambience, drum splatters and just plain mental bass. This mix is worth it for the array of bass lines alone. You tend to forget that in amongst the euphoria of 90s hardcore a darkness lurked just as much. This mix contains big names like Dillinja, Ed Rush, Doc Scott and DJ Phantasy as well as 2nd and 3rd level playaz. Jungle was so good in 94 the B, C & D grade artists are fucking great too. The quality went deep and the beat science rewards were endless. Volume 10 isn't relentless with the beats, space has it's place here as well. Sometimes you think the darkness is going to envelope the whole set and the drums are going to conk out. That never happens though until the end, I guess. Big Ups to the Extreme.

DJ Extreme - 1994 Jungle Volume 9
Here's another DJ Extreme mix which is a bewdy too. This mix starts out with gold ie. DJ Dextrous & Rapid's Rapid. The House Crew, Tango, Marvellous Cain, Dillinja and D'Cruze all pop their heads up in this ace mix. I can't get enough of this shit and let me tell you there is a bounty of it at Hardscore. Time-stretching, remnants of hip hop, traces of 70s reggae, Ragga, Rave sirens, Amens, House, ethereal lulls, elastic booming bass, dubbed out divas, cymbal splashes, bleeps, mini ponds of euphoria, occasional swells of thick bass goo that leap into the drum n bass future and much more feature here. What's amazing is how different Volume 9 is from Volume 10 which is a testament to the genre's flexibility and breadth of vision and probably why the Hardcore Continuum would continue on for another decade before running out of steam. "They played that bloody Jungle music all night!" And why wouldn't you with choice tracks such as these.

The Church - Hologram Of Baal
Ever since Reynolds posted those Go-Betweens & Church film clips a week or two ago it has been hard to get out of these Aussie zones. You might have noticed I was/am quite the Church fan. I seem to have lost 1996's Magician Among The Spirits so I gave this another listen and wow what an underrated little gem this is. By 1998 they had probably lost at least half of their 80s fan base but that didn't mean they weren't still making legendary music. By this stage of the game we'd all ditched the paisley shirts and pointy shoes long ago but The Church continued on their merry way making druggy journeys into sound. I guess their only contemporaries at the time were Mercury Rev (a friend once described Yerself Is Steam as The Church meets Butthole Surfers), The Flaming Lips and Spiritualized. The Kranky label had been releasing psychedelic space rock for a while too by this stage but the Church weren't following trends. They just did what they did best and made one of their best LPs while they were at it. Hologram Of Baal is The Churchiest of 90s Church LPs. It solidified their 90s experimentalism while containing all of what made them great in the 80s making this an album of consolidation for the band. This LP is like a Church progress report of where they had come from, where they had been and where they were going. More gold.

BRICC BABY SHITRO - NASTY DEALER
Now this is a state of the art rap mixtape 2015 style. With most mixtapes you can usually tell which region of America it's coming from ie. Drill & Bop (Chicago), Ratchet (California) trap/weird (Atlanta/The South) etc. but Bricc Baby Shitro throws them all onto this mixtape making it hard to tell where he's emanated from. It makes sense then that he's from LA but now hanging out in Atlanta. Even though Bricc Baby's got a handful of producers here, the mixtape remains pretty cohesive. Having Young Thug on your mixtape is a blessing and a curse. Thugga will give your recording a higher profile but he's most certainly going to upstage you no matter who you are. That puts the starpower of Young Thug into perspective ie. no one in the rap game can come close to him and this has been the case since his 2013 classic 1017 Thug. Anyway this is a genre mixtape that considers the state of where hip hop is in 2015. You may not like having this plethora of rap sounds all in one place but it's almost definitive of the year or at least the decade in which it was made.

2015 Ennui: When's That Rainy Day?

OR WHAT I'M NOT LISTENING TO IN 2015

The unlistened to cds, LPs, mixtapes, net DJ mixes and soundclips are piling up. There's not enough time or energy in my life. I am in no way a collector for the sake of having things, being a completest etc. If something's shite to my eardrums it goes out of my life pretty quickly. Then there's the magazines, webzines, blogs and books that aren't getting a look in either. Oh.... and that circus in town that I haven't been to (Was I gonna go to that? Well there is the off chance that a lion may eat its tamer or an elephant running amok)......and I've got 7 unfinished blog posts that have been sitting in the draft box for a good while now.

Let's start with the new, old and new old LPs & cds that are piling up.

I finally got a copy of this like 20 years after it was compiled. This was one of the first things released on Soul Jazz. I think this is some kind of anniversary reissue. Nu Yorican Roots!: The Rise Of Latin Music In New York City In The 60s also on Soul Jazz was fucking gold, so I'm looking forward to listening to this....one day

This should be good...found it on a trip to Adelaide a month or so ago. This came out a few years ago on Soundway. I love a bit of cumbia. Soundway's previous Columbia! was great, as were the 3 cds in their Panama! series ..... should be good ..... one day.

Been looking for this for like 10 years. Warner Jepson's Totenantz arrived in the mail the other day. That cover is awesome! ....don't really know what to expect from this one, which will be a nice surprise....soon....maybe.

This one arrived with the above....can't recall when this was reissued but it was made in like 69 or 70 or 71 or 72. Sonic Youth obviously ripped off the Perspectives Musicales series (of which there 10 LPs, the EMI ones I'm talking about) artwork. Another surprise package.....

Another one that's taken me like 10 years to get and I still haven't played it.....

Well at least I've heard this before but this is like the first proper reissue of Carlo Maria Cordio's classic soundtrack Rosso Sangue from 1981. Looking forward to hearing this in it's complete form....at some stage.

This one I know and love too....but I still haven't played it in it's full audio glory, having only had a crappy mp3 version previously.....oh well.....when's a rainy day?

I was very excited when this arrived but it remains unplayed....could be the first one to get aired. This is a 2015 archival release on Sonic Boom's Space Age label.

God I finally shelled out the cash for this only a few years after it's release. The Lost Tapes arrived a couple of months back..... how can a triple cd of lost Can recordings remain unplayed for so long?

Now this has been in line the longest. I bought it from Beatport when it came out earlier this year. The first Volume was in my best of 2014 list yet this 2nd Volume is yet to rack up any i-tunes stats. Is Deep-Tech still a thing? This has been on my phone for months.....geez....what's going on?

On it's way......another 2015 horror reissue. This one I've never heard but when it arrives it'll have to get in the queue.

Then there's the rap mixtapes...... OMG there are so many!

I'm surprising myself a lot since I started writing this absurd post. How on earth have I not listened to this? I don't even know if Barter 6 is rated or not. Young Thug featured so much in my Best Of 2014 list that I cannot believe the sounds contained within this mixtape have not reached my eardrums yet.

HBK Gang featured a hell of a lot in my Best Of 2014 list as well. Kool John's $hmopcity was one of the best albums/mixtapes of last year so like the above Young Thug it's totally unreasonable that this has had no airplay round at my place yet!!!

Cash Out, Young Dolph, Tink, Teeflii, Lucky Eck$, Boogie, Sauce Twinz & Sosaman, Denzel Curry, TM88, Katie Got Bandz, Bankroll Fresh, Snootie Wild etc. etc. have all released mixtapes/albums of note apparently. Downloaded, not played.

Don't even get me started on the DJ Mixes, articles, books.....

I could go on. My blog would be great if I'd listened to all of the above and written about them wouldn't it? Perhaps I should set myself the task of writing about every one of these releases once heard, surely that is why I started this blog in the first place.

Hang on....I almost forgot this one (below) from last year, which has been in the queue the longest....inexplicably I might not ever listen to it.

Heyday - The Church

Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock Part V

The Church - Heyday (1985)

Quite the befitting title right here. Cherished among fans of The Church, Heyday's full of great tunes like Already Yesterday, Myrrh, Tristesse, Columbus and the blistering live favourite Tantalized. On Night Of Light and Youth Worshipper they reach Forever Changes levels of sophistication with fabulous horn and string arrangements. The Church made the 80s version of the 60s awesome, hang on that's not really fair is it? Although this is probably their most 60s inspired set, it's those shirts that make you jump the gun to such stupid conclusions. There was a lot of 70s, 80s and future Church idiosyncrasies at play here too......... It was most definitely 80s music though, you know like The Smiths were an 80s band. They may have had influences from other eras but just because it didn't sound like Nik Kershaw doesn't mean it wasn't quintessential 80s music!..... er.....that goes for both bands. Still you can get out your pointy shoes and paisley shirts and relive this classic LP. Funnily enough I had a paisley shirt on today, and straight black jeans but unfortunately I don't own a pair of pointy shoes any longer, I had to just go with me brown suede boots. I'm sure Marty Willson Piper would have been proud of my outfit though as would Steve Kilbey, I reckon.

They were the coolest. No doubt. This makes you wanna roll a joint and enjoy your life.

In the classic tradition of AC/DC, playing on the back of a truck for your film clip. Priceless!

This video is sound and vision perfection, doncha reckon?

*A fucking phenomenal live version of Tantalized here. Talk about kickin out the jams, wow!

**I've written about Heyday before here.
***Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock series is taken from the HIGH CULTure website.

Seance - The Church

Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock Part IV

Séance from 1983 is the third Church album and, like their two previous LPs, it's a classic. This time they get Nick Launay to produce. This is a strange combination to be sure and some fans were shocked by the studio affects, particularly the drum sounds, on this recording.  About half of the record is studio trickery, strings and keyboards added to their usual dual guitar interplay. The other half is fairly true to their trippy jangling live sound. Séance is a moody and atmospheric affair. Steve Kilbey travels darker terrain than usual, which is fine because there isn't a bad tune to be found here at all.

*Track 5 Travel By Thought here.

The Blurred Crusade - The Church

Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock Part III

The second Church album is where they really hit their stride. Steve Kilbey (singer, songwriter, bass player & slide guitarist) even describes it as ‘an unimaginable leap forward.’ The LP title says it all. It’s a Blurred Crusade. The production here is warm and puts The Church into a lush soft focus. What’s striking listening back to it today is how much keyboard action there is, pianos, harpsichord, hammond and even a Celeste, all played by Kilbey. Nick Ward was replaced by the phenomenal Richard Ploog on drums. Ploog freed up the band to be more spacious and fluid. So began the classic line-up of The Church which continued for the next 8 years. This LP hit the top 10 in 1982 and went double gold in Australia. It opened with the definitive Church song Almost With You, a top forty hit which had a fabulous spanish guitar lead break by Peter Koppes (lead guitar, backing vocals, tubular bells & percussion) very 1982. When You Were Mine was next and what a rocking epic it was. Marty Willson-Piper (electric, acoustic & 12 string guitars) describes it as ‘a snarling beast.’ The guitars here are metallic and driving while the keyboards are eerie and cold. Willson-Piper sings lead vocals on Field Of Mars despite the lyrics being written by Kilbey. This is a wicked haunted trip, complete with the usual jangle, bent lead breaks, otherworldly keyboards and even some bells to top it off. Apparently it’s about a graveyard where a deceased friend of Kilbey’s resides. God that’s just the first three tunes. We’ve got rockin toe tappers (A Fire Burns), almost cosmic country sweetness (Don’t Look Back), sumptuous romantic janglers (To Be In Your Eyes), Hallucinogenic psych outs (An Interlude), mysterious lullabies (Secret Corners) and 12 string workouts (Just For You). Then there’s the all time classic 8 minute epic You Took which contains the lyric that would become the album title and the best way to describe this song. You Took is a band at the peak of their powers resulting in an astonishing display of rock dynamics. While The Church had a few things in common with LA’s Paisley Underground like a love for psychedelia, The Byrds, The Velvets, 12 string guitars etc. they were much more than that. The Church also loved the pop end of prog, recent British music of the time like John Foxx (solo & with Ultravox), Be Bop Deluxe (?), Gary Numan, quite possibly the entire history rock and god knows what else. Most of all The Church were an incredibly distinct unit whose intangible chemistry could never be replicated so their music was always original, never mere pastiche. Glorious.    

Antipodean Urban Space

Three fucking great mental tripped out driving tunes. Psychedelic post-kraut/punk urban intensity that could have only come from one place and one time, New Zealand in the 80s.
*More on Scorched Earth Policy here.

Ghostface Killah - Twelve Reasons To Die II

ADRIAN YOUNGE PRESENTS TWELVE REASONS TO DIE II STARRING GHOSTFACE KILLAH
I kept seeing this cover everywhere on the interweb. It's obviously a homage to 70s Italian Giallo film posters and it got me intrigued so much so that I coughed up the dough to see what Ghostface Killah is up to now, plus I heard it was pretty good. The last Wu Tang Clan related release I bought was his very own Ironman from 1996 (can you believe that's 19 years ago?). I did have taped copies of Wu Tang Clan's The W and Iron Flag and those tapes were ok but they were nowhere near the magnificence of Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) from 93 and the classic run of solo LPs from 94 to 96: Method Man's Tical, Ol' Dirty Bastard's Return To The 36 Chambers, Chef Raekwon's Only Built For Cuban Lynx, Genius/GZA's Liquid Swords & the aforementioned Ghostface classic Ironman. Apparently Ghostface Killah recorded several other post-Ironman classics (during my rap blackspot era) such as Supreme Clientele (2000), Fishscale (2006) and the first volume of Twelve Reasons To Die (2013) amongst others.

I'm used to listening to modern hip-hop with its crisp drum machines, synth keys, electronic bass and general digital textures so it's weird to hear an album like this. When I first heard 12 Reasons To Die II I thought it was deep crate digging at its finest (Ala Paul's Boutique or Entroducing) with samples of Turkish psych bass lines, Allessandroni fuzz, old funk beats from obscure 45s, strange Euro easy listening, divas from Morricone/Nicolai soundtracks, scratchy dub singles, trippy Moog sounds from library records etc. So I thought it was a sampladelic record, but on about the 3rd listen when I started listening closely, it all seemed a bit too smooth and cohesive. Upon further investigation it was revealed that the backing tracks are actually all live instrumentation (I think) from retro arranger extraordinaire Adrian Younge. So Younge has replicated a sample laden hip hop album by playing all the instruments instead of sampling them. I'm not sure if there's a point to this strategy apart from the reactions 'Wow that's quite an effort!', 'Gee These are Strange days indeed!' or 'Is he following the kind of manifesto put forth by Daft Punk on Random Access Memories, whatever that was?' Anyway Adrain Younge seems to have swallowed a cool 70s pill. Several layers of retromania are at play here. Firstly we are put it in a mid 90s Wu zone with the propulsive and intense rapping of Ghostface Killah and his chums Raekwon & RZA and the return of the Tony Starks pseudonym who originally appeared on the brilliant Only Built For Cuban Linx LP. Secondly Younge's backing trax have a Finders Keepers/Lo Recordings/Now Again etc. vibe which is both 70s and post-millennial as most of us never heard this sort of shit until it got extensively reissued in the last 20 years by the likes of these and many other record labels. Thirdly it's a live instrument recording produced by a one man producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist harking back to the days when Stevie Wonder did this kind of thing. I'm not really sure what to make of these observations. It is what it is I suppose.

Anyway when Ghostface Killah's voice appears it's like an old friend showing up like nothing's changed since the mid 90s. Raekwon is a welcome feature on five of these tunes and RZA pops up on a handful of trax too. Twelve Reasons To Die II runs at half the time of Ironman and this leaves you wanting more. Which is better than wishing a quality control editor had been employed to get rid of the filler to keep the LP more concise. I'm not really into comic books and I'm not a 100% sure what he's on about on every track but it sounds so good, what does it matter? It all adds to the Wu mystique and there are no bad tunes here. Who'd have thought Ghostface Killah would be making one of the best hip hop albums of 2015? Dunno, but he has.

Antipodean Space Debris III

Strange and haunted. When I first heard this I thought this was a sound that could only come out of New Zealand like Pink Frost....er....and I think I was right.

Lovely

Strangely lovely

Nice

Strange and beautiful soundz from NZ once again. Peter was previously in the Great NZ band This Kind Of Punishment with his bro Graeme who released at least two masterpieces This Kind Of Punishment (1983) and Beard Of Bees (1984). I can't comment on their 3rd LP as it's never crossed my path. This tune is from his terrific debut solo album The Last Great Challenge In A Dull World (1990). This Xpressway tape features NZ underground rock royalty ie. David Mitchell (Goblin Mix/Exploding Budgies/3Ds), Bruce Russell (Dead C), Kathy Bull (Look Blue, Go Purple), Robbie Yeats (The Verlaines), Alastair Galbraith (The Rip/Plagal Grind/Solo etc.) and a few others. Quite a line-up eh?

Weird Antipodean space. These two were both in the fabulous rock band The 3Ds.

More beautifully askew soundz from the ends of the earth. This time Jefferies collaborates with Robbie Muir of The Rip and Plagal Grind.

Antipodean Space Debris II

I thought we'd have a little Church trip with some of their most epic tunes through the ages. This is from the first record Of Skins & Heart (1981). I suppose then this is their first epic. I still love a very lot (sic).

I've never seen this video in my life. Anyway this is the biggest epic on their epic laden 2nd LP The Blurred Crusade (1982). Still a live killer to this day.

This is from the 3rd LP Seance (1983) and would be their most experimental tune up to that point in time. Still very fucking cool

Trance Ending was actually a b-side to Columbus a single off Heyday (1985). Great middle eastern trip out. Nice.

One of the great things about The Church was their album opening tracks and this is one of their greatest. You have to keep in mind these guys were on major labels throughout the 80s and they really didn't give a fuck about trends. They had top 40 singles in Australia and America so that was a problem for Indie people but The Church were also doing their own thing alienating them most of the time from the mainstream. They really didn't fit anywhere making them true cult outsiders. They also inspired a legion of groups who were obviously enamoured by their talent and artistic vision not to mention their fashion sense. You could never recreate that unique synergy though and those acolytes must have soon realised being as effortlessly cool as The Church wasn't quite as easy as they made it look. Starfish (1988) was their 5th classic in a row and their most popular and successful LP of their career. It even went gold in the US.

Let's forget about album number 6 shall we, Seve Kilbey's been trying to ever since 1990. Here's another great opening tune this time to their 7th album Priest=Aura from 1992. Kilbey claims this LP to be the true follow up to Starfish. If it had been perhaps they would have been as big as their contemporary The Cure, in The USA at least. America is still their bread and butter though as well as Australia. Having said that they were quite a cult band throughout pockets of Europe during the 80s and remain so to this day. Funnily enough I think after Johnny Marr and Stephen Patrick Morrissey had a meeting and decided to form The Smiths they went out that night to a Church concert. I reckon you can tell Marr must have loved their guitars and was influenced by them. Priest=Aura was probably their last consistently excellent LP until 98's Hologram Of Baal and their recent classic Untitled #23 (2009).

With this opening 1994's Sometime, Anywhere I thought we were in for an absolute killer album. The LP was ok but contained a couple of naff tunes and was perhaps a little long. It did have many other excellent songs though but this is the most memorable one for me. 

Another choice LP opener this time for their 9th album Magician Among The Spirits from 1996. Jesus I've forgotten how good this is, must dig out the cd. Surely this is the only place to you'll hear Jeff Kennett, Ida Lupino and Milli Vanilli mentioned in the same song. I always thought Kilbey said Alan Moulder (the legendary engineer/producer of JAMC, MBV, The Boo Radleys etc.) at the end of this tune but disappointingly the youtube uploader reckons it's Alan Muller* whoever he is? This is a phenomenal trippy spaced out improv (shhh!) psych jam. Steve's answer to Madonna's Vogue, doncha reckon?

*Uh huh, Alan Muller painted this! Great painting of SK. He must have painted the cover for SK's 4th solo LP Remindlessness (1990) as well. Actually looking at them together now it's the same picture just zoomed in, I think, maybe....

More on this classic double LP in a future blog post.

Antipodean Space Debris - A CardrossManiac2 Tangent

Hardly Baked has a few clips here of The Church & The Go-Betweens. Steve Kilbey is not only a brilliant songwriter/musician but he's a massive music fan. He loved The Go-Betweens so much he coerced Grant McLennan into collaborating with him on the Jack Frost project. This was recorded, after The Go-Betweens had broken up, in 89 or 90. Number 11 is the tune that stuck with me most from their debut LP. Anyway see below to see how much of a fanboy SK was and still is of Australian rock.

Of course as pointed out in this speech by a heckling ex manager Kilbey wasn't always a card. He was quite renowned for being a sullen bastard in the 80s. So much so that after Kilbey did a poetry reading in Melbourne one night I refused to get my book of his poetry signed in case he was not particularly nice. I think his drug change up from pot & heroin to uppers has made his true personality come to the fore. He's become an all round entertainer. This is a guy who wouldn't appear on Australia's most popular 80s variety show Hey Hey It's Saturday. Now I reckon he'd love to be part of that show's dodgy repartee. As Julia Zemiro points out, at the end of this crazy off the cuff speech, he really could host his own show. This is the best speech I've ever heard without a doubt and I fucking hate awards shows and speeches in general. It's true gold like many Church albums. He's a national treasure and we are blessed by his continuing fabulousness.

I mean here's some evidence right here. The Church released one of their best songs ever Space Saviour in 2009 like 30 after they started.

Kilbey loved The Triffids too. I once saw The Triffids 5 or 6 years back in Melbourne obviously sans one Dave McComb but they had a bunch of guests taking over vocal duties. The highlight of the show was when Steve Kilbey came out with no guitar, just a mike, in a sleeveless truckers shirt and made four Triffids classics his own. By that I mean 10 times better than the originals. The peak was when he did an incredibly intense version of Field Of Glass, one of the most memorable live rock moments in my life. So incredible this was that my wife wife can't listen to The Triffids anymore because Steve changed those songs forever. Of course he's the coolest guy on the planet so that's totally understandable.

This is the original which was recorded at the BBC in November 84 for a Peel Session.... I think. Overwrought to the max. Weirdly this could almost be a Bad Seeds tune from 1994. The late Dave McComb was a Nick Cave fan and at the same time Mick Harvey was a Triffids fan. Then of course in the 90s The Bad Seeds gained ex-Triffids bass player Martyn P Casey who remains an integral part of that band to this day.

To complete the circle here we've got the late Grant McLennan introducing The Triffids Raining Pleasure on Rage circa 1999. Which was kinda weird as we were led to believe that The Triffids and The Go-Betweens were arch enemies in the 80s. That was probably a media beat up but a good story none the less Now this tune is evocative of Antipodean space.

So many classic Forster lines in this one - " it's not my cup of thrills"

Spring Hill Fair is definitely The Go-Betweens LP I've played the most and is my favourite, I don't get why it isn't everybody else's. I mean the first four Go-Betweens LPs (Send Me A Lullaby, Before Hollywood, Spring Hill Fair and Liberty Belle And The Black diamond Express) are pure fucking gold aren't they? While the last 2 (in their original 80s stint) Tallulah & 16 Lover Lane are quite patchy and in 16 Lovers Lane's case way overrated. I mean it got it's own episode on *Australian Classic Albums??

*Perhaps more on that absurd and problematic show another time.

I remember hearing an interview with drummer Lindy Morrison who was Robert Forster's romantic partner up to this point in time. Anyway when she first heard this tune she knew it was his way of saying goodbye to their relationship. Only Forster could be hilarious, scathing and so fucking poignant at the same time. What a bittersweet song if there ever was one. 

All of this is reminiscent of my brother and I sitting around listening this record and the joy it brought us. Of course Forster was a funny bastard with great comic delivery. He was just as funny when he was serious as well. Forster was also a sterling songwriter. Then there was Grant who we thought was funny too but for different reasons. He seemed a little too earnest, over confident, serious and very uncool. There was no denying Grant's gift for songwriting though. The juxtaposition between these two personalities was strange and sort of comic as well. I guess they complimented each other though. Later on in my life I met them both and they were absolute gentlemen as you would imagine.

DJ Mustard - The Mixtape Volume 1 (10 Summers)

DJ MUSTARD - THE MIXTAPE VOL 1 10 SUMMERS
After the disappointing 10 Summers album of last year I didn't think I'd be going back to DJ Mustard at all. I thought his time was up and it was time to move on but after listening to RJ & Choice's Rich Off Mackin my mind was swayed to believe he still had something to give. You would have thought he'd have distanced himself from the 10 Summers title though, so it's a little odd that he recycles it for this much improved release. I assume Choice who turns up here is the same man as Royce The Choice of the great Midnight Run which was my favourite tune from DJ Mustard's brilliant Ketchup mixtape from 2013. Anyway Choice along with RJ dominate this mixtape appearing on a third of the tunes. Mustard's old mates Teeflii, Ty Dolla $ign and TC4800 pop up on a tune or two each. YG is is conspicuous by his absence. Iamsu! from the HBK Gang is a fabulous new Mustard trump card. Iamsu! should be as big as Kanye and perhaps he will be. He's got the pop smarts with a delivery that's 2010s rap perfection. Broke Boy is soo good, surely it would be a no 1 smash if released as a single. Mustard is upping the R&B dosage and cutting back the banger intake but that's not a bad thing at all. There's nothing worse than a tune wanting to be a banger but not working. RJ & Choice are pretty much killing everything they do in 2015 and somehow Mustard leaves room to let their idiosyncrasies ferment even further. Dijon (Mustard geddit?) surely realises he's struck gold with these two artists and compliments RJ & Choice with his beats rather than upstaging them. Previously it sometimes sounded like Mustard's rappers had been given a completed beat where they had to try to fit their raps to it, no matter how unaccommodating it may have been. Now it feels like Mustard is more flexible, organic and collaborative. I don't know if he's changed his working methods but it sure sounds like it. Last year I thought DJ Mustard had reached some kind of sonic arrested development but here he proves, with a little perseverance, that he is still mutating. Regression is part of this move ie. several tunes go further back than his past retro-activities ie. some songs reference stuff earlier than Dre circa 92/93 or mid 90s Three Six Mafia. Some of this stuff has got 80s R&B, funk and slow jam vibes. I guess he was always tipping his hat to these zones but perhaps not as deliberately or explicitly as he does here. Then you would swear Shooters was an instrumental outtake from Tricky's Maxinquaye. Actually come to think of it a few tracks have a Massive Attack/Trip-Hop feel. I haven't counted but there seems to be less military chanting on Vol. 1. which is probably a good thing as that started to seem a little formulaic and stale. I don't know who Justine Sky is but fuck she gives Cassie and Tinashe a run for their money on Love. This mixtape ain't no Ketchup but it also ain't no bloody 10 Summers either ie. I'm not deleting this off my computer, I'm about to give it another spin. Dj Mustard is transitioning. Let's hope he continues to in a good direction.

On The Hi-Fi Part ??? - Jungle/Tech-Step Special

DA INFLUENCE MIX PART 1 - BASIC RHYTHM

I can't really remember how I found this mix. I'm not even sure who Basic Rhythm is but this is a mix of some choice mid 90s jungle cutz. Dillinja is in there and DJ Krust. Plus a whole bunch of stuff I've not heard, heard and can't necessarily id. 

TECHSTEPPIN - VARIOUS (EMOTIF RECORDINGS) 1996

Keeping the hardcore vibes going, I finally got a copy of Techsteppin. After re-appraising Tech-Step a while back when listening to the excellent No U-Turn comp Torque, I thought I'd check this out. While it's still got very faint traces of jazz (the darker side of 70s Miles Davis) there no lightness like there was was in in intelligent or jazzy jungle. Distress, claustrophobia and paranoia are at the heart of darkness in these tunes. Torque, released a year later, would pummel out any source elements of jazz in Tech-Step. Actually by the end of this cd that's pretty much what's happened anyway. This is Drum & Bass that's all about the bass. While the beats keep to an almost military-esque stringency like industrial but vaguely funky, the bass is like subterranean scud missiles breaking through the earth's crust. This thick bass goo hits you like a vengeful blow to the body. Techsteppin contains tracks from No U-Turn luminaries Ed Rush plus Trace & Nico under the aliases of Skyscraper and Rollers Instinct. I guess Doc Scott is like the godfather of Tech-Step who was from the original milieu of Darkside Hardcore (NHS EP, Here Come The Drumz etc.) and he shows up here with a sterling performance on Machines. His Tech-Step swarms, buzzes and drones with astonishingly ominous dread. Techsteppin's harsh urban nowhere reached a bleak dead end and I mean that as a compliment. This is another reason to prove that getting off the hardcore continuum around 1995/96 (which is what I did) was wrong. Get numb.

*"It's too purple. Reading that felt like someone doing a bad impression of you."

*Special comments from Mrs Space Debris. She doesn't pull any punches does she? She didn't appreciate me describing the bass as 'like underground thick pools of mutant goo'. So I rewrote it. Is she my new editor? I don't necessarily take purple as a criticism. I mean the best part of reading Melody Maker in 87/88/89 was the purple prose they used to excite me about the likes of Young Gods, AR Kane, My Bloody Valentine, Loop, Butthole Surfers etc. I was never disappointed when I got my hands on those records either.

PEARSALL PRESENTS SURGICAL SOUNDS - DOC SCOTT

Continuing on with the hardcore........Pearsall presents a mix of the aforementioned Doc Scott. This set includes Scott's remix work for the likes of System 7, Spring Heel Jack and Goldie. Then we've got his own solo tunes plus those under the pseudonym Nasty Habits. Pearsall points out Doc Scott never phoned in his remixes, he makes them his own. Doc's own trax are even more outstanding. Another mix that's a bewdy from Mr Sonicrampage!

Eva Luna - Moonshake

UK POST ROCK TOP 14: PART 3

Moonshake have got to be one of the oddest bands ever. Not in a 'hey look at me, I'm freaky!' way though. They were kind of really normal which gave them an unsettling edge. You could see yourself in these guys and perhaps what you saw wasn't quite right. You felt like the daily grind of urban life had taken a toll on these people. A duality was at play here with two singer/songwriters tag teaming at opposite ends of the rock spectrum. Dave Callahan was kind of angry and on a vociferous rant while Margaret Fiedler was muttering to herself disturbingly. While Callahan and Fiedler got all the notoriety, this band wouldn't have been half as good without the most underrated rhythm section in rock history. John Frenett was on bass and his style was a marvellous intersection between dub and funk. Possibly the most awe inspiring element of the group though was the drumming/percussion of Miguel Moreland. It is hard to ascertain though how much of this dizzying percussive display is him or sequencing/sampling. I couldn't really give a shit because whatever it is, it's fucking great! Moreland made this band worthy of being named after a classic Can tune. Has drumming on an LP ever captured so much of the percussive spectrum? Moreland's playing can be really fucking heavy but he's also very nimble and can be light as a feather. The percussion here is all that and everything in between. Moonshake created this music which was an incredibly idiosyncratic expression of who, what and where they were at the time. Not only that, this must have been what they saw as a possible future pop template. It was all about strange blends and weird paradoxical amalgams. Moonshake were shouting out against the world and wanting to hide from it at the same time. They had a No Wave-esque negation happening and yet they embraced current state of the (pop)art technology. Reverence for music's past and musicianship was part of the equation too. Moonshake could only ever sound like Moonshake. Imitating this motley crew would be fucking impossible.

Ultra funky deep bass, groovy congas, surreal guitar squalls, flute, layer upon layer of sampled noise, taught guitar lines, saxophone squiggles along with Callahan's classic post-punk snarl are all jumbled into this kitchen sink mix and that's just on the first tune Wanderlust. Disconcerting atmospheres, black holes of dissonance, guitars bent way out of shape and Fiedler's cloying yet creepy vocals battle it out for a piece of centre stage action on Tar Baby. The title of Bleach & Salt Water says it all as this track is an ambient underwater urban dub whiteout. The beat here is whirling through a vortex to a startling degree. Moreland makes 3 minutes 40 seem like an eternity and I reckon I could definitely go another 20 or 45 minutes of this incredible groove. Little Thing meanwhile is rhythmic psychedelia, that's spaced out to the max. Only Moonshake could make a tune so ambient yet so tense. City Poison is like a history lesson in underground guitar noise. This is like a tribute to all the Posts ie. Post-Psych (cf.Krautrock), Post-Punk, Post Hardcore and Post-MBV. The beauty of this tune though is that it only really sounds like Moonshake. How the fuck did they do that? Spaceship Earth's clangorous guitars fly into an intense slide frenzy, then keep infinitely spiralling. Jesus, even Callahan gets melodic here! Beautiful Pigeon finds Moonshake at their most pop. Massive drums tumble wildly amongst the rest of the noise, while the bass stalks threateningly trying to hold things down as Margaret's eccentric whispers reach melodic levels as well. It was the grunge era so this could have easily been a hit but.......(?). They save the best till last, Mugshot Heroine closes this classic LP on a triumphant note. Horns go haywire, the rhythms get incredibly funky, discordant horror soundtrack strings jolt you out of your seat, ghost(town)like trumpets appear and all hell breaks loose.

Moonshake arrived at a sound (jam packed layers of samples that are piled up to bursting point that still feels like a mine field listening to it today) that was nearly pop. When you had a closer look at its dense layers of detail though it was all, well... quite bizarre. It may seem like an almighty chaotic mess but this LP is meticulously crafted down to every last microscopic sound. Producer/engineer Guy Fixsen is probably to be thanked for that. I've listened to this record hundreds of times and trying to write about it has got to be one of the hardest tasks I've ever set myself. Whatever I write will never do Eva Luna justice. You never know what's going to pop up or which turn it's about to take. This is a trip where the turbulence becomes so disorientating it sort of becomes beautiful (sort of....not really....I dunno....does it?).

Stupendous. 

Re-Entry - Techno Animal

UK POST-ROCK TOP 14: PART 2

This is a fucking out and out (there) classic of absolute epic proportions. Jesus, was there ever a band name and album title more fitting? Never has a band sounded so primordial, cyberdelic and interstellar at the same time. What was happening sonically here was a journey through the stars that eventually reaches the atmosphere and crashes back to earth. This was infinite yet restricted all at once. Re-Entry was a hell of an artistic feat. Here we had Fourth World music taken beyond the stars and its limits. Techno Animal didn't just reference Jon Hassell (like MBV) they got him to play on two of the album's finest tracks. Real time playing was at a bare minimum here with only Hassell's trumpet and a couple of other instruments used. Then Justin Broadrick and Kevin Martin abused those source sounds by pummelling them into shapes barely resembling their origins. The rest of the soundz come from samples that are so deformed there is no way of telling where they came from. Techno Animal get so lost in their machines that it feels like a miracle that they ever make it back out of them.

Today this double cd is still soo irresistible I can barely believe my ears. Re-Entry starts out astronomical and ends up depleted. While on paper it may seem like an absurd and potentially clunky smorgasbord of aural debris, somehow it comes out sounding fucking amazing. It's like they've stolen the soundtrack from a parallel universe. Jazz funk permutations, gonzoid sirens, buckled noise, malignant trumpets, bent hip hop, acid squelches, unsettling frequencies, out of shape drones and nightmarish mutant gamelan are all put through a demented cyber dub echo chamber. Phew...and that's just the first cd. Then on the second cd the beats slow down and dissipate into the polluted air of this vast desolate terrain. Tainted bells appear and a peculiar shape shifting tense ambience takes over. This is where dubbed out contaminated drone-ology reached perfection that remains unrivalled 20 years later. This is undoubtedly a masterpiece and quite possibly the best album of the 90s. 

Evanescence - Scorn

UK POST-ROCK TOP 14: PART 1

Someone once niftily described Evanescence as Metal Box meets Bernard Hermann. That's way too neat a summation of the panoply of sonic experiences contained within this cd though. Evanescence was an incredible solitary sonic document of what musicians were attempting within these musical spheres at the time. Sure there is deep dub bass and spooky horror motifs but a whole lot more was going on here. While other UK Post-Rock groops like Stereolab, Pram and Laika were influenced by the great fluid Krautrock beats of Neu and Can, Scorn's beats were informed by hip hop. Along with darker ambient vibes they had traces of metal (Mick Harris & Nick Bullen were ex-members of the ferocious and funny metal band Napalm Death), goth, post punk, industrial, techno and drone-ology. The grooves are infectious and even sometimes mellifluous. Getting lost amongst these deep and heavy riddims is all part of the attraction of Evanescence. I recall being rather confounded upon first hearing this LP due to its musical juxtapositions and I guess, what I saw as contradictions, but that didn't last long as I kept coming back for more. The occasional vestige of a riff even drifts in now and then. Dread was a major part of original 70s dub reggae and on this recording Scorn certainly captured a unique British gloom. A doomed feel permeates the entire record. Unlike other ambient dub acts of the time this was not good time E-head chill out music. It had mysterious lulls into nightmarish worlds containing all the colours of the dark. Scorn at this stage were like a lethargic cousin to UK's darkside hardcore scene and a precursor to future genres like dub-step and hauntology. On Dreamspace Scorn even give us a bit of bass drum girth gabba/gloomcore style, which is fucking wicked. Exodus, one of the stand out tracks, was like a forlorn My Bloody Valentine with an ominous didgeridoo instead of an ecstatic flute. The lost generation of original UK post-rock were trying to push things forward and this LP stands as a testament to that vision to this day. It was quite an achievement and I kinda can't understand why a hundred groups didn't take up this as a blueprint but I guess the future was still up for grabs at the time and bands were forging their own identities, not wanting to be mere Scorn acolytes. The copyists and clones were gathering together over near or in the charts under the banner of New Wave of New Wave and Brit-Pop, nowhere near these outer regions.

Scorn's Evanescence is magic from the margins.

UK Post Rock - The Lost Generation

In keeping with my recent recent posts about Main, Ice & Techno Animal I thought I'd go into a bit more detail on UK's Lost Generation of Post-Rock. Good ole Professor Reynolds was writing about these groups in the pages of Melody Maker from at least 1991 onwards. There's was an article in the 91 Christmas issue of Melody Maker with no byline that I assume was penned by Simon. It documented the first stirrings of a new (non)scene that included a bunch of disparate musical units committed to taking their music to the limits well away from the commercial alternative business of the time. Cranes were the hot topic with their 91 classic Wings Of Joy but they weren't what was soon to be called post-rock. They were a one off post-goth/industrial band with, and I quote 'a lush Scott Walker/Euro cabaret grandeur.' Anyway AR Kane's (forefathers of UK post-rock) label H.ark get a mention with their roster containing Papa Sprain & Butterfly Child. Kevin Martin's label Pathological rate a mention too with his own great band Techno Animal plus Oxbow (whatever happened to them?). Avant Yanks Cop Shoot Cop and Twin Infinitives era Royal Trux get thrown in the mix as well. But it was future post-rock icons Disco Inferno, Bark Psychosis and Main who were the most celebrated/anticipated in this article as some kind of future saviours of what was still being called Avant-Rock. Two years later in 1993 the lost generation were still dubbed as Avant-Rock along with the speculative term Cyborg-Rock, which never really gained any traction. I guess weird non UK bands like Young Gods and The Boredoms would have fitted this category with relative ease. In the UK though more and more groups like Insides, EAR, Moonshake Scorn, Ice, Seefeel were displaying un-rock tendencies in a beyond rock context so this wasn't a classification that was to properly fit. Avant-Rock still implied that the genre was still rock'n'roll at its core despite innovations and modern tendencies. While half of what ended up being called Post-Rock still rocked in some mutant form, the other half was not so rockin. Hence the term Post-Rock making perfect sense.

The thing is this music was already under my skin so by the time Simon Reynolds came up with the term Post-Rock for these bands in an article for Wire magazine's May 1994 issue (reprinted in Bring The Noise pages 186-193) it kind of didn't really matter. I've never really thought about it before but I guess it was named in hindsight as the scene had been going for 3 or 4 years already. As is usually the case with these things a demise was on the way with only a few classics of the genre to be released after 1994. Post-Rock now also included the likes of O'rang, Laika, Flying Saucer Attack, Pram & Movietone. Parallels were being drawn to other artists on the outer musical limits like Paul Schutze, Jim O'Rourke, Thomas Koner, Aphex Twin, Eddie Prevost, Zoviet France etc. In an article in Melody Maker in July 1994 past artists were retroactively inducted into a post-rock hall of fame lineage from The Velvet Underground to Krautrock legends Neu, Faust & Cluster to Brian Eno to Post-Punk groups like PIL, Cabs and The Pop Group to 80s UK noise/bliss rockers from JAMC, MBV, Spaceman 3, Loop, The Cocteau Twins, AR Kane etc.

Post-Rock was all about samplers, drum machines, studios, effects, sequencers, jettisoning the guitar as a riff apparatus and integrating the techniques of dub, 70s Miles Davis, Can, hip-hop, ambient & techno into rock. Guitars were still sometimes used but in more of an unfamiliar and un-rock way. Mixing real time instrument playing with sampling was the raison d'etre for some which gave the recordings a really strange edge. Others opted for a wholly synthetic approach. This bunch of groups rarely sounded like one another, they were on the outside, went out into these zones alone and wore that status like a badge. Some were beat scientists, while others severed beats altogether and space was the place. Anyway that doesn't really sound like Explosions In The Sky does it? This UK shit was the shit! This was the sound of my bedroom in the early 90s while your more accessable rock/pop stuff (Shoegazers, Breeders, Pavement, Mazzy Star, Portishead etc.) from the era made it into the lounge rooms of the share houses I lived in at the time, Post-Rock was not embraced by all and remained in the ghetto of my bedroom (along with strange septic tanks like Slint, Trumans Water, Thinking Fellers Union 282 et al.). This parallelled how Post-Rock was pretty marginalised in the outside world too apart from Stereolab who were quite the cult band.....I suppose.

I think a top 14 of the original UK Post-Rock is in order. This is when the term made sense, meant something and the music was bloody great.

THE TOP 14
Hydra-Calm (compilation) - Main [1992]
Eva Luna - Moonshake [1992]
May - Papa Sprain [1992]
Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements - Stereolab [1993]
Iron Lung - Pram [1993]
Under The Skin - Ice [1993]
Quique - Seefeel [1994]
Hex - Bark Psychosis [1994]
Evanescence - Scorn [1994]
DI GO POP - Disco Inferno [1994]
Silver Apples of The Moon - Laika [1994]
Herd Of Instinct - O'rang [1994]
Further - Flying Saucer Attack [1995]
Re-Entry - Techno Animal [1995]

*The top 14 has just one record per artist.
These are in chronological order.
This list is by no means comprehensive.
Each of the top 14 will be featured in a future blog post.

**Stereolab, Flying Saucer Attack & Third Eye Foundation all released gems after 1995. I must admit I didn't really follow the next wave of  Post-Rock groups from the UK. I'm actually struggling to come up with any of their names beyond the Flying Saucer Attack affiliates Piano Magic, Crescent and Amp.

On The Hi-Fi (in brief) Part 43

Walberswick - Jon Brooks
Brooks is back just 6 months after Advisory Circle's 2014 classic From Out Here (which I'm still listening to on a weekly basis) with another bewdy. He's keeping up his batting average and getting better with each new release. This starts off in weird electronics mode with Mr Brooks I Presume before settling into synth ambience in excelis.

Songs Of Gold, Incandescent - Dolphins Into The Future/Lieven Martens Moana
Classic themes here from Lievens. This is actually a compilation of rarities from 2010-2014. I mean isn't all his stuff rare. We've got waves, bells, jungle sounds, Pacific Islander choirs, strange electronics, underwater soundtracks, Casio vibraphones, submarine drones and the inevitable scuttling sea creature soundz. Songs Of Gold makes you realise how much sonic territory Dolphins Into The Future have covered over the years without you even realising.

Machines Are Obsolete - Pye Corner Audio/Pathways - Pye Corner Audio & Belbury Poly
(Ghostbox Other Voices Series 05)
A-Side: "Easy listening dystopian sounds. 80s attempts at futuristic soundtracks."*
B-Side: "Future Sailor but not as good like Howard Moon has found the new sound but no he hasn't it's just an old one. It sounds like every single song from 1983!"*

*Special comments from Mrs Space Debris.

Pathways is reminding me of a John Foxx tune I can't quite put my finger on. Chuck in a bit of Kraftwerk and a Giorgio Moroder synth guitar lead break and you've probably got it in a nutshell.

Murder For Hire - Kevin Gates
I was really looking forward to this but there's just way too much screaming dj action on this one. Kevin Gates gets buried beneath all the extraneous racket here. I hope he didn't put any classics on this 7 track datpiff exclusive mixtape because I don't think I can put up with dj holiday for one more second in my life. Why does he have to show up on like every 4th rap mix-tape and why doesn't he shut the fuck up and let Gates do his thang.

Livonia - His Name Is Alive
Who would have thought that this would still sound good 25 years later? My 90s trip has gone back to my 4AD records and sure the 80s was 4AD's decade but they still had some gems in the 90s like their last Cocteau's record, Throwing Muses The Real Ramona, The Breeders Pod, The Pale Saints, Red House Painters and the first 2 LPs from His Name Is Alive. Livonia was their first record and yeah it's really pretentious but fuck it sounded good today. I was expecting to want to turn it off after 30 seconds but I played it twice in a row. This is a strange album. It's sort of outsider folk/loop-ology/random electronics and noise guitars. I wanted to play their 2nd LP Home Is In Your Head which I recall being even better but it's on tape and sadly me house no longer contains a tape deck!