Nabeel writes:
Winter seemed to descend on us this weekend. The sky wasn’t exactly crying (to borrow a refrain from blues legend Elmore James) but it seemed lower and more brooding. I don’t know if this weather or work was primarily responsible for my melancholic mood. I could just be a hemispheric determinist still partially stuck on the other side of the equator, expecting May to welcome more sunshine and dry weather. Anyhow, I was a little upset and unable to locate the precise source of that ennui. But The Basement soothed the sadness.
It was my turn to go first. I kicked it off with an instrumental so I could introduce the show: Lee Perry’s ‘Upsetting Rhythm #2’ from a recent reissue of Blackboard Jungle (on Auralax, a British label), one of the important early dub albums. Blackboard Jungle is not the first album devoted to dub, but after King Tubby’s LPs of The Aggrovators’ Bunny Lee rhythms in 1973-74, it is one of the most influential. This album has excellent sleeve notes by David Katz, the author of People Funny Boy, probably the definitive biography of the Upsetter. And Auralax uses these new CD cases that are more resilient and less flimsy than your typical jewel case. On the air, I described ‘Upsetting Rhythm #2’ as ‘a meaty rhythm’ (well, that bassline is definitely beefy) and then I apologized to the vegetarian listeners for the use of this epithet. I’m a carnivore, or should I say, omnivore, but my partner is a vegetarian and we keep a meat-and-fish-free household.
I realized it might be appropriate to follow with a one-minute spoken word recording by Ivor Cutler called ‘Vegetarian’. Ivor Cutler is this auld Scottish poet and surrealist performance artist. I listened to him when I was a teenager, ear close to John Peel on BBC Radio One from 10-12 p.m. every weeknight as a lad in Ilkley, Yorkshire in dear old Blighty during the late 1970s. Cutler must have been in his fifties back then. I’m not sure if he’s still alive. I trust he is. ‘Vegetarian’ consists of Cutler accompanying his spoken, almost sung vocals with an out-of-tune-harmonium. The piece describes a man who is out in the wilds and can’t find anything to eat and so eats a sheep even though he and his wife are vegetarians. He returns home and confesses his meat-eating lapse to his wife, who is upset and refuses to sleep with him for a week. He then goes off in search for another sheep to get him through the week of conjugal deprivations. I love Ivor’s sense of humour—black and off-kilter. I should hasten to add that the scenario of ‘Vegetarian’ is nothing like my own domestic situation. I often eat the flesh of beasts outside the house.
I then segued into a track by Theo Parrish called ‘Reaction to Plastic’. I’m somewhat mystified by how Parrish gets classified as ‘House’. He seems much more polymorphous-- a jazz groove, techno discipline and sometimes the house groove. In his live mixes, he plays everything from Fela Kuti to Luther Vandross and Kool & the Gang’s smooth disco pop classic ‘Take my heart’ as well as more familiar mid-level BPM Techno territory. I like his brand of funky minimalism, not as stark as Robert Hood, but insinuating and entrancing when he stretches out a leisurely groove that builds in small changes over 10 minute tracks. ‘Reaction to Plastic’ is from his Parallel Dimensions released on Sound Signature and is a little harder and more ominous than most of his more glacial offerings.
Two of Nick’s friends—Nikolai (donator of this blogspace!) and Karina—were now ensconsed in the cubby hole that is our radio studio. Lo-fi doesn’t do justice to the base electronics. Anyhow, it wasn’t planned for synchronicity but Karina is a promoter of Techno gigs in town and had been hoping to bring Theo Parrish to town next month. Instead some other dudes are doing it. He’ll be playing at Calibre on K’ Road in early to mid June
Spurred on by what seems a return to old school Jungle AKA Da Ole Droom and a Bass, my next selection was DJ Hype of the Ganja Cru with ‘Revolution’. This track from the Super Sharp Shooter EP changes tempos frequently, and incorporates sounds of Hong Kong martial arts kicks and lunges with Malcolm X declaiming on the failure of people to make a revolution.
I followed this with Lady Sovereign, from Ellowen Deeowen, with ‘Cheeky (remix)’ where she initially comes on all My Fair Lady like, before clinking and kerchinging ch-chinging over some minimal electro beats. I’ve only heard about four or five of her tracks but she’s already established herself as the shorty with the sharpest unfussy flow. Why aren’t people buying this stuff by the truckloads instead of hanging out at the Candy Shop with Fitty Cent? I love the production on these poppy less crime-related grime records. I tend to be skeptical of journalistic hype declaring the next big thing or musical movement. But the good Lady and fellow Londoners on the grime compilation Run the Road show a real variety of new production styles that are informed by hip hop, electro, dancehall, jungle, timeless JA riddims, and ye olde music hall, but go off on their own terms.
I must confess (though don’t dob me to the authorities) that I’ve been downloading a stack of those 1980s twelves that I sold ages ago or didn’t manage to nick back from my younger brother. Not to mention other tunes from that era that I’ve read about—mixes by Walter Gibbons, Francois Kevorkian, Larry Levan and others—but never heard. The whole dub disco house confluence at West End and Prelude Records resulted in some amazing soundscapes. So even without a thin leather tie and mullet, I’m happy for us to revisit and revivify the 1980s. So the next track I moved into was the brilliantly named Duran Duran Duran and their tune ‘I hate the 80s’ a legit selection from a CD that came free with The Wire magazine this month. Simon Le Bon and his frilly Birmingham boyz couldn’t copyright the name Duran Duran because they took it from a character’s name in the Roger Vadim sci-fi flick Barbarella starring pre-Hanoi Jane Fonda. ‘I hate the 80s’ repeats that synth motif from Yazoo’s ‘Situation’ again and again until it ascends briefly into drum and bass meets glitch terror frenzy. Not a long track, it gets to the point without any necessary bother.
Finally for this 30-minute set, I played something I hadn’t heard before. It had the intriguing title of ‘Politicians & Paedophiles’ which somehow seemed apt in a week of Tony Blair coming back for a third term of lies and faith-based bollox. The Bug AKA Kevin Martin produced this dubby dancehall number with Daddy Freddy rhyming in rapidfire Patois. I haven’t heard DF for ages. I vaguely remember him as one of the Fashion stable of deejays in London who took fast chatting to a new level in the mid 1980s. I’ve been looking for Philip Levi’s ‘Mi God Mi King’ for ages (also on Fashion), but haven’t had any luck tracking it down. Any leads would be appreciated.
Then Nick stepped up to play the following. I wanted to jump up and shout, ‘We call it Aci-ee-id!’:
Aphex Twin—Window licker (acid mix)
Boom Bip—The Unthinkable (Venetian Snares mix)
Squarepusher—Venus 17 (Acid Mix)
Luke Vibert—I love Acid
Madvillain—Money folder (Four Tet mix)
Prefuse 73—Shaolin finale
Dark Tower—No competition (instrumental)
Towards the end of Nick’s first set, a guy came into the studio to report that he had misplaced his bag or had it stolen somewhere between Auckland Backpackers, K Road, Mayoral Drive and Grey’s Avenue. The distraught guy’s name was Jason. He described his missing goods as a Janome sports bag with black and grey carry straps with yellow on the bag itself. It contained his passport, ID, a digital camera and travel documents. He had just returned from Thailand without his girlfriend who had decided to stay behind. Jason’s number is (021) 111 4961. There is a reward for the retrieval of the bag and its contents.
Then I came back on the air, discombobulated by Jason’s misfortune. His distress exacerbated my own downbeat mood. I realized I hadn’t brought much stuff to play on CD and vinyl. But I decided for a change that I’d play some tunes I had borrowed but not actually heard yet. This may be a cardinal sin in radio, but that uncertainty can be fun and cause a bit of a tingle.
With this perspective in mind, I kicked off my second set with Sun Ra’s ‘Disco 3000’ a noisy romp with Moog on full power. This is part of a reissue plan by the label Art Yard to re-release some of the weirder excursions of the Man from Saturn. Admittedly, this was a little too abrasive on first listen. I dropped in a very brief Malcolm X speech excerpt. Something about This government has failed you’, then segued into an RJD2 instrumental called ‘Fuck soundcheck’. It wasn’t as dirty and full of sonic phlegm like Kid 606 which I expected with this title. And so I segued into Maulawi’s “Street Rap” on the New Thing compilation on Soul Jazz Records. This collection looks at funk, free jazz, and other noise, mostly from the black nationalist moment of the late 1960s and early 70s. Maulawi’s track anticipates the funky lower end synth frequencies of Bernie Worrell and Funkadelic along with a lot of jive and chat recorded like a street documentary. I overlapped this with Afrika Bambaata’s mix of The Micronawts, ‘Let’s smurf across the surf’ which sounds like smurfs with boogie boards bouncing on waves of a Kraftwerk-meets-Arthur Baker-and-John Robie-beats.
Every week we review a DVD from our sponsors the DVD Lounge at 623 Great North Road. I had planned to review Brad McGann’s 2004 local feature In My Father’s Den but I hadn’t had time to watch the entire DVD extras. And talking about yet another Kiwi film that includes dead children and water was only going to bring me down further, so we’ve put it on hold. I still quite like a lot about the film but thought I’d save the review for later. I borrowed this DVD from a friend and colleague and not from our sponsors so I felt less guilty about postponing the film review.
Instead, Nick reviewed a short film made by the great Chris Morris—My Wrongs #8245-8249 & 117. Unusual title. Still haven’t seen it. I was none the wiser about the plot after Nick’s review, though he didn’t want to give away too much of a movie that’s only 8 minutes long. The film features a man, his dog and a double-decker bus. Warp Films released it. It’s heartening to see that the top electronic label is now producing films. Nick, who is a Warp completist, lent me the Warp-produced Dead Mans’ Shoes directed by Shane Meadows and its terrific soundtrack that is really understated and moving. It includes Calexico who I hadn’t heard before but want to track down. Calexico sound(s) like Astor Piazolla (the late tango and bandoneon master from Argentina).
While Nick was chatting about the Chris Morris short, I was desperately going through my iPod trying to find a Chris Morris recording to play. I ended up with ‘Unflustered Parents’, which is on his Blue Jam album for Warp. Dark or sick, depending on your point of view, the track is about English middle class parents whose son doesn’t come home from school. They find out that he’s been raped and murdered but don’t seem that bothered, only annoyed that finding a spade to bury the kid will be a pain. Chris Morris is best known for his Situationist comedy current affairs program Brass Eye on Channel 4 several years ago, including a very controversial, briefly banned special on paedophilia and one on the fictitious drug ‘cake’. He’s a serious media prankster whose work informs TVNZ’s Eating Media Lunch, but the Kiwi show doesn’t have the smartness and subversion of Morris’s program and tends to go for easy bloke-ish laughs too often. Morris also did the amazing late-night radio show Blue Jam (available here) for BBC Radio One with odd cut-ups and strange comic skits as well as a fantastic soundtrack. Imagine Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Bunuel doing a DJ mix together.
I then played with Savath & Savalas’ ‘Te Quiero pero per otro lado’ from the album Apropa’t. Prefuse in Espagna was followed by Ernest Ranglin’s smooth Studio One single ‘Surfin’. That was me done for the week.
Then Nick played:
DM & Jemini—The only one
Prince Po—Social distortion
Buddy Peace & Zilla—Track 2 from A Friendly Game of Chess
Aesop Rock—Holy smoke
Madvillain—America’s most blunted (Koushik remix)
AntiPop Consortium—Ghostlawns
Malcolm McLaren—Buffalo Gals (Count Bass D remix)
3rd Bass—Pop goes the weasel
Towards the end of the show climatic compensation came in the form of a beautiful red-purple sunset over the Waitakeres. The BMW’s on the Ponsonby Road billboards were gleaming.