Category Archives: MUSIC

Japanese Dubstep Guide Book ダブステップ・ディスクガイド|国書刊行会

ダブステップ・ディスクガイド|国書刊行会.

I have some photos in this new Japanese Dubstep Guide Book; alongside words by the brilliant Laurent Fintoni! Available on Amazon. (I have no idea what the title characters mean)

Music Maestro & psychic alignment

“People do meditation to find psychic alignment. That’s why people do psychotherapy and analysis. That’s why people analyze their dreams and make art. That is why many read Tarot cards, cast I Ching, dance, drum, make theater, pry out the poem, and fire up the prayer. That’s why we do all the things we do. It is the work of gathering all the bones together. Then we must sit at the fire and think about which song we will use to sing over the bones, which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn. And the truths we tell will make the song.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés from Women Who Run With The Wolves 

There’s a great musical director inside my head. She gathers tunes without my conscious knowing, playing certain ones at certain times and providing a continuous, changing soundtrack to my changing interior weather system. Sometimes my amateur emo artist self calls on her to illustrate the way I feel (be it good or bad or something else), often to kick it out of my system. Then we rifle through the archives together pulling out songs. Music as detox, music as therapy, music as creation, or re-creation hymns, songs to sing over the bones with. Today, the maestro and I searched for hymns for the leaving of a situation, character and a longer term, annoyingly cyclical part of myself; internal and external predators as Clarissa Pinkola Estes (quoted above) might say. In short it’s a patch that’s ushering in a much needed personal revolution and, like all good revolutions, it needs a soundtrack. Enter Digital Mystikz, whose name is ever more apt in these days of techno-nature; and Mala in particular.  I moved through as many of his tunes as I could find on my laptop; allowing the frequencies to penetrate and pull bits of me out like string, a feeling comparable to a recent acupuncture experience. The more I dug, the more I felt relieved; lighter, tweeting (another form of creation hymns perhaps) the tunes that were pulling out the energies that a few years ago, I would’ve stamped into the floor at DMZ at Mass.

It’s no coincidence that I found an affinity with some of their titles also:


Blue Notez.

Changes.

Shake Out The Demons…

L*** letter to…

I was given a blast of Red String, I won’t say it’s tied me up, cos that implies possession or pain, or devouring, none of which is occurring. Wrapped in red string is perhaps more suitable, and apt for this week; a woman wrapped, softly in red string. This shade , I imagine.

What is happening in fact is that I finally have an excuse to write a letter that I’ve been wanting to write (with the small chance of me doing / reading anything with any real focus or merit right now being another excuse).

Prior to sitting down to do this, my red string spider friend had suggested that I make a card for “somebody special.” I smiled and knew that I’d already decided to write a letter to South London.

Now I’m doing it, I realise it’s actually also to friends, family, place & the things that link them. Isn’t it always?

Where to begin?

————————————————————–

S.LDN

6.  _Thing_

The Story So Far

After 2010 Par LDN.

13.02.13

Dear S. LDN

6 months after 2 final weeks in Paris spent drifting, wrapping up loose ends in my head and pencilling new ones on a piece of paper around the word “café,” I’m back.

Apt that it was written in a bubble, as that what I’ve been in since returning; a bubble which occasionally bumps into others- one called “College aka MA in WTF with New Extended Family” and a smaller one named “The Overground aka Norwood J-CP-New Cross-Dalston-The Wick.”

Funny how they all interact, these bubbles, just like the 3 ecologies – environmental, mental & social. Which one is which in this instance? It could be debated; undoubtedly all are all; yet there’s “Café” announcing it’s the environmental – where I spend most of my time, being, talking, doing, thinking, listening, tasting, sensing. (working implies wear & tear.)

Between a large long wooden bar and a mirrored Palace. It’s a curious position.

I’m faced with anybody you wish to send into the room; truly faced with them and repeatedly, be they – looking for the studios next door, or neighbouring book palace; delivering parcel or object, on a defined quest for chocolate cake, recalling the going-ons of the time since the last time I faced them, the going-ons of the triangle; flirting gently, sadly with palm glued to forehead; comically (“FYI: I’m snorting a marshmallow up by nose”) or cloyingly with questions about the meaning of l***. Sometimes, it’s business meetings, sometimes bleeding fingers picking heart strings, with stories of x’s; with those in search of counsel, those willing to counsel; those who buzz.

But most simply South LDN, I’m faced with serving you a drink.

It all starts with a drink. That, or directions. (“Through the car park, up the top of the lane and then right or left and then right,” / “It’s just here, I’ll show you.”)

I’ve lost a thread or two.

Another ecology. The mental. The masters. Hmmm. Sometimes it looks like this in my head

image sometimes like this:

DSC_0058

& this .

Occasionally, it’s some old dead white dude called Ranciere (fuck.off), sometimes agonism, sometimes anarchism (wanted, needed); the Heygate Estate:

Garage Typography

DSC_0080

Sometimes New cross & Deptford; a football head man un-selling you tea or hot chocolate at a free café (below) ;an un-customer-customer called “G.” who has “a very massive sound system,” clashing, subtedly with “A.” from Iran who came here for his girlfriend whose teenage daughter got pregnant by a man that A. eventually got in a fight with & thus ended up in prison.

Free Café

It’s Coco, (the café cat), sitting at the end of the bar, gently, her head in nature; Donny Sunshine helping to build a den; making me long to learn or even be Italian, pondering life and sound, affirming & testing my “capo” abilities; Christina, listening and questioning words with a look of confidence which earns her the title Auntie; Youngheehee giggling, Isa walking through Soho telling a man to Fuck Off, leading us astray, to Haringey (O Hai North, there you are). It’s the others, less present (so far).

The social? Well, that’s a large part of the last paragraph; the bubbles overlapping. And Hackney:

DSC_0118

and scraps & pubs of Crystal Palace triangle:

Loveoui. (Numidie)

There’s something missing, no? A fourth ecology?

http://vimeo.com/31513791

Spirit?

There’s some behind me. “Organic” rum, gin and vodka, Breezy’s black cherry bourbon, JD, brandy, absinthe. I tasted a stronger absinthe at Numidie a few weeks ago, willingly spiked with hot sugar and dark, black in fact. I didn’t realise until some time after that it had kissed me before knocking me over, leaving me with a headache & laughter in my core, 16 bruises and wanting more.    I didn’t intend on that rhyming, I promise.

rhyme

Pronunciation: /rʌɪm/

Translate rhyme | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish

Definition of rhyme

noun

[mass noun]

  • correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words, especially when these are used at the ends of lines of poetry:poetic features such as rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration
  • [count noun] a short poem in which the sound of the word or syllable at the end of each line corresponds with that at the end of another:Harriet sang Ben little rhymes
  • rhyming poetry or verse:the clues were written in rhyme
  • [count noun] a word that has the same sound as another:‘gravel’ can be interpreted as an absurd rhyme for ‘travel’

verb

[no object]

  • (of a word, syllable, or line) have or end with a sound that corresponds to another:balloon rhymes with moon(as adjective rhyming)rhyming couplets
  • (of a poem or song) be composed in rhyme:the poem would have been better if it rhymed
  • [with object] (rhyme something with) put a word together with (another word that has a corresponding sound), as when writing poetry:I’m not sure about rhyming perestroika with balalaika
  • literary compose verse or poetry:Musa rhymed and sang

Red string.

How complicated it must seem to others, but to me it’s one of the simplest existences we’ve had so far, LDN. Freedom and space to fill and only one night of boredom in 6 months:

image

+ one or two wobbles, one leading to a wobbly map and the other to affirmations:

Express the mind

Don’t get stuck

Be direct

Instincts are not to be ignored

Own yourself

NON COMPLIANCE.

Nice one.

Anyway, this was meant to be a l*** letter to you, South London. I don’t know how to write l*** really but it’s all here, somewhere.

With Parakeets,

GC xxxx

P.s. Quote of the day: ”I love my wife! Why would I buy her a Valentine’s card?”

Currently Feelin’ (music)

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Since Twitter, Facebook & Tumblr, make it so easy to shout about likes and dislikes, my currently feelin’ posts are fewer and further between, but it’s always nice to gather them all in one place aint it? Also, there’s either an absolute harvest-like glut of good music out there at the moment, or as a result of being back in South London & organising events again, or both, I’m particularly tuned in at the moment.

This one’s dedicated to fellow music blogger Martin Blackdown Clark, cos he used to appreciate my Currently Feelin’ posts AND he’s released a new album called Dasaflex with his partner in Grime, Dusk that I’m definitely feelin’. So much so, that when I received it, it was pumped out very, very loudly in my café, boings and all. Which is great since as the café is part of Antenna Studios, nobody really minds, but also, a bit risky as we’re on a very quite road and Blackdown & Dusk’s edgier tunes such as Hypergrime have the ability to scare our milder-eared neighbours into never returning for a slice of good organic, locally made cake again (I promise, this is not a sneaky way of advertising the café, merely the truth!).

That sad, the LP’s opening track Lonely Moon feat. Farrah is outstanding in it’s beauty and delicacy and would hopefully entice them back again. What I like particularly about this album and funnily enough some other bits and bobs I’ve been listening to recently, is that it sounds very much like a culmination of a good few years spent living in LDN, dancing to various underground genres, absorbing the vibes of the city, so for me it’s full of recognisable sounds, things that remind me of the likes of Wiley and early dazed DMZ, albeit with a heavy dose of House and Techno vibes, something that I’m personally not quite as familiar with but definitely appreciative of

Mala in Cuba and LV’s Sebenza are two more albums that have been pumped out of the café system; the latter of which I hope LV don’t mind me saying, is incredibly sexy and make me want to dance seductively in a club in front of a man that I fancy. Would be quite cool if that man was Okmalumkoolkat actually, who voices eight of the tracks on the album and who I’ve had a distant crush on ever since he got his belly out in the Boomslang video. There are so many good tracks on this album, all of them made even more interesting by the team of South African MCs such as Spoek Mathambo, Ruffest and the aforementioned Okmalumkoolkat, who introduce to my ears, a whole vocabulary of words like the title Sebenza (“work,” in Zulu) and Pantsula (which as this article explains is a type of dress, a cultural expression and a dance).

Mala in Cuba is an incredible album from a consistently solid producer; like most of Mala’s production, it’s both astoundingly deep and really edgy- some of then tunes, like Changuito have got the marching style of many of Mala’s productions, making you wanna bounce and contort your face at the same time  others, such as Calle F are sunnier and percussive and are clearly made in Cuba; as Laurent Fintoni described somewhere on t’internet, the whole album is very much South London meets Cuba via Belgium, where Mala currently resides. What’s more, it’s been getting Mala lots of press and attention (my own Mum was happy to see him in the Sunday papers a few months back) which is well deserved, being that he has always kept his music fresh, pioneering and unstuck. Very much looking forward to the Mala in Cuba Live event in November:

Other Current Feelin’s come from acts that have or are due to play at the Café Thing @ Antenna Studios; putting on a fortnightly live music event takes quite a bit of research, being that we’re striving to offer original music from musicians who may not normally play in Palace. There is of course, an element of luck and synergy involved in finding acts to play, Cloudier Skies who played our 3rd Café Session for example, did so because one half of the duo, David, came in for a coffee one day and gave me their Sound Cloud link. Their live set, surpassed all expectations and was, for a number of reasons, my favourite act to play a session thus far.

This Saturday’s (6th October) Jono McCleery gig, came about also, slightly through chance, myself and The Antenna crew bumped into him at a party; I’ve since been listening to his tunes a lot, trying to work out exactly which one is my favourite and trying to pin his style down so that I can write about it correctly. I haven’t managed to do so and I’m still undecided. Sometimes it’s Stand Proud, sometimes Gymnopedist and sometimes Tomorrow (above), the album version of which has an almost celestial introduction.

Quadron 2

Quadron are on the list because, I had the privilege of seeing them live at The Jazz Café last week; where Coco (the singer) performed an outstandingly beautiful acappella that had us all on the verge of tears before launching into the gorgeous motown sounding Pressure, lifting the whole audience up into a whoop of relief.

And last but not least, of the music that I’m currently feelin’ are South Londoners Yola Fatoush whose music and website are ridiculously interesting and ever so mysterious and Chet Baker, who I’ve never otherwise listened to before and whose voice is compellingly spooky. The contrast between his singing style and the lyrics of the song, My Funny Valentine (above), absolutely kills me.

“A few blokes from Croydon…”

 

were mentioned in Idris Elba’s How Clubbing Changed the World – Channel 4 ,  which I was passionately laughing, singing and hollering along to last night. An absolute must for anyone interested in the history of electronic and dance music .