Ahem

I’ve been meaning for a while to post one of my mixes up here, and on Friday night finally got round to a: pressing record and b: not fucking it up too much!

It starts off fairly subtly, before building to a level-busting climax. I quite like it when the recording gets distorted… gives it a bit more of a live feel. Well that’s my excuse anyway! I should really have posted this up on Friday, as it’s much more Friday night than Monday morning… however like a breakfast absinthe, this might just be what you need to kickstart your week!



So without further ado… for your delight and delectation… here is the first headphonesex mix. Called ‘The Cough Mixture’ since, well, i’ve had a cough all week. Damned drunken karaoke…

THE COUGH MIXTURE (1hr 1min - 62MB)

EDIT: REMOVED UNTIL I CAN FIX THE TERRIBLE GLITCHES ON THE MP3…. HOPEFULLY THIS EVENING.

Tracklisting:
1 Arpanet - NTT DoMoCo
2 Moodymann - Just Anotha Black Sunday Morning With Grandma
3 Ramiro Mendes - Angola (Carl Craig Mix)
4 Telex - Moscow Disco (Carl Craig Mix)
5 Global Communication - The Way (Secret Ingredients Mix)
6 DBX - Losing Control
7 Betty Botox - Can Can
8 Mocky - Micky Mouse Motherfuckers (Tiefschwarz Mix)
9 Marco Dos Santos - Not on the Guestlist
10 Franz Ferdinand - Matinee (Headman Rave Vocal)
11 Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To (Erol Alkan’s Glam Racket)
12 The Rapture - House of Jealous Lovers (Cosmos Remix)
13 Justice - Carpates

Let me know if you enjoy it…. if feedback is good I will probably try to do a new one every month (so expect the next installment sometime in May!). Actually to be honest i’ll probably carry on doing ‘em whether you like it or not.

Fun comes in 8 bits

Anyone for some Swedish Grime?

I get the boomkat new release mailout each week, which is great except that they tend to say everything obscure and electronic is fantastic and a must-buy. And that every remotely popular indie band they stock is crap (leave Maximo Park alone!!). Anyhow, something in the description of the new album by ‘Stacs of Stamina‘ got me clicking through to the site and listening to the sound clips there.

And I was impressed.

Blair at Music For Robots posted up another track from the album last week, however the one i’m liking most of all is the title track ‘Tivoli’.

The Swedish rappers have a slight Beastie Boys / Goldie Looking Chain thing going on, but the kick-ass backing track is the star, sounding a bit like Justice programming a Commodore64. It’s grime Jim, but not as we know it. This is very fun indeed, and sounds like it comes a long way from the estates of East London. Which of course it does.

STACS OF STAMINA - TIVOLI

You can buy the album from Boomkat - where you can also watch a slightly rubbish video of the track ‘Roll’.

The record is released on London’s excellent Werk Discs, which started out as an electro / IDM label but with this release and the Grim Dubs series seems to be forging a unique path through the grimey undergrowth. They were interested in signing my mate Jon Bontempo a while back, but he then emigrated to Australia & put all his equipment into storage!

Saturday Night’s Alright For Dancing

Crickey.

Saturday night (last night? this morning?) turned out to be a bit mental.

After Bugged Out I ended up going to the after-party at a club in Shoreditch, and.. well… let’s just say I spent about 2 hours doing ‘Toilet Karaoke’. Which was exactly as it sounds. A karaoke machine set up outside the toilets. Belting out ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, ‘All Day and All of the Night’, ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ (and loads more that I can’t quite remember right now) with a variety of loons, casualties, queers, Djs and friends. The fact that absolutely no-one had any pretentions whatsoever about being able to, or even trying to sing made it comedy gold. People who can sing are the bane of karaoke nights, and anyone taking it remotely seriously should be banned from ever participating again.

I’ve only really had a bash at karaoke once before, but I have to say i fuckin’ loved it! Think i’m gonna have to book into here for next weekend!

Then going upstairs to find the party absolutely rocking. Gay men vogueing whilst rolling around in the dirt on the floor. Or performing some strange kind of ballet funk. Ear splitting tunes. Bouncing on the sofas. I really didn’t want to leave. I finally forced myself to crawl out at 11am with the party very much in full swing. Bleurghhh… !

And the club? Well Erol Alkan rocked the house as ever. Ivan Smagghe got the ravers going at the end with some hypnotic, dirty grooves - which sounded fantastic over The End’s amazing soundsystem. And Paul ‘Phones’ Epworth kicked things off with a great set, confirming that the key to being a successful DJ is to turn up with a box (or in this case a laptop) full of fantastic records. Nirvana’s ‘Territorial Pissings’ was a particular highlight. I didn’t half jump around to that.

Ah, I do love hearing great music over a kick-ass soundsystem.

So here are some of the evening’s electro-funkin’ musical highlights for you to gorge on:

SCOTT GROOVES - MOTHERSHIP RECONNECTION (DAFT PUNK REMIX)

I’d not listened to this for ages, and i’d forgotten how good it was. Daft Punk remix a track that’s itself a remix of Parliament / Funkadelic. The place went crazy when Erol dropped it… This is one i’m gonna have to dust off.

BENJAMIN THEVES - TEXAS

Yet another track from the Kitsune Maison compilation - that I heard 4 times in the course of the evening!

TOM VEK - NOTHING BUT GREEN LIGHTS (DIGITALISM MIX)

I’m not 100% certain this is the mix that Paul Epworth played, but it’s great anyway. I don’t know much about Digitalism but you may remember I posted the fantastic ‘Zdarlight’ a few weeks back - which is found on.. you guessed it.. the Kitsune Maison album.

FRANZ FERDINAND - DO YOU WAN’T TO (EROL ALKAN’S GLAM RACKET MIX)

One of the best remixes of the year, and another track that sent Erol’s crowd crazy. Only trouble is I can’t stop wanting to sing ‘My Sharona’ by The Knack over the top. I managed to pick it up on 12″ on my way home this afternoon.. which was a nice touch!

Erol also played a kicking remix of Primal Scream’s ‘Higher Than The Sun’ - but I wasn’t able to find out anything about it. Anyone know anything of this? I’d love to get hold of it. Ah - and he also played an incredible remix of the new Madonna single. Love to find out who that was by. Oooh - and waving my arms in the air to Liquid’s rave classic ‘Sweet Harmony’ was also great. Erol is the man.

‘Higher Than The Sun’ is one of my all time favourite records. Just check the lyrics…

My brightest star’s my inner light let it guide me
Experience and innocence bleed inside me
Hallucinogens can open me or untie me
I drift in inner space, free of time
I find a higher state of grace, in my mind

I’m beautiful
I wasn’t born to follow
I live just for today, don’t care about tomorrow
What I’ve got in my head you can’t buy, steal or borrow
I believe in live and let live
I believe you get what you give

I’ve glimpsed, I have tasted, fantastical places
My soul’s an oasis

I’m higher than the sun

Sorry for not having any pictures for you today. I really cannae be arsed.

Watch Movies With the Lights On

Thanks to my mate Steve for pointing me in the direction of this fantastic record by The Long Blondes - further evidence of Sheffield’s renaissance. I’d heard of them before, but the band’s name had somehow made me think that they’d be yet another turgid identikit indie rock outfit. How wrong I was. A girl singer, uncommonly sharp lyrics, and tunes that at remind me at various times of ‘Grease’ and Pulp. A touch of faded 50’s glamour with mixed with some modern day realism.

Needless to say this is quite brilliant, and impossibly addictive.

THE LONG BLONDES - GIDDY STRATOSPHERES

I’m off to see Erol Alkan & Ivan Smagghe at The End this weekend… if anyone else is going, feel free to drop me an email…

Encore

I’ve managed to upload the entire file to the ‘Encore’ video now… make sure you take a look.

I also realised I forgot to link to the last track I was gonna share yesterday.

This is more hip-hop, this time on the ever reliable Warp Records. Beans - a rapper also known as Mr. Ballbeam, was once a member of the Anti Pop Consortium. Since leaving the group he’s released 3 solo albums on Warp, which I must admit have escaped my attention. All I have by him is this incredible 7″ - ‘Mutescreamer’ - which was also one of the countless highlights of the glorious mix CD that accompanied Warp’s DVD compilation.

Now that I am officially Hip-Hop certified, I can describe this using words like ‘Dope’, ‘Sick’ and ‘Ill’ while dancing round my backpack making shapes with my hands.

By tomorrow I will probably have resorted, using my usual lack of imagination, to saying ‘it’s fucking good’.

BEANS - MUTESCREAMER (EL-P REMIX)

So hip (hop) it hurts

All this talk of graffiti has turned me all hip-hop. I’ve surgically attached a rucksack to my back, hung my jeans so low my thighs are caught in the wind & rain, and i’ve fallen off my skateboard 8 times.

But most of all i’ve been listening to some angry fellas* rhyming some words over some beats.

First on the menu is Brighton’s DJ Format, who along with partner in crime Abdominal keeps the old skool spirit alive with unsurpassed verbal dexterity (in the UK at least).

Ch-ch-check out ‘Ill Culinary Behaviour’ - possibly the most extended metaphor in hip-hop history?

DJ FORMAT - ILL CULINARY BEHAVIOUR

As well as giving that track a listen, you must have a look at ‘The Hit Song’ - probably Format’s finest moment so far. Watch the video here.

Contains the immortal line ‘(i’ve got)…more hits than a German surfing a fetish website.’

For the main course, howsabout a track from one of the most eagerly anticipated albums of the year - Dangerdoom’s ‘The Mouse and The Mask’ - the collaboration between MF Doom (Madvillain / King Geedorah) and Danger Mouse (’Ghetto Pop Life’ / Gorillaz / ‘The Grey Album).

I must admit i’m a little underwhelmed by the album - certainly in comparison to work by the pair i’ve heard before - however there are plenty of worthwhile tracks on it. My favourite is probably this one, ‘Benzi Box’, which has both DM & Doom in top form.

DANGERDOOM - BENZI BOX (FEAT. CEE-LO)

This is from last year, but if you’ve not seen the brilliant video for ‘Encore’ from Danger Mouse’s highly illegal Grey Album, i’ll test my bandwidth & post it up here too. It’s astonishingly good considering it was a totally illegitimate release. If you want to see Ringo scratching & Lennon breaking - right-click right here. [22MB but completely essential]

Other highly recommended MF Doom / Danger Mouse tracks - ‘Fazers’ by King Geedorah and ‘Ghetto Pop Life’ by DM & Jemini.

I could post ‘em here if demand is high!

*Yeah, I know. These fellas aren’t very angry, but ‘contented’ didn’t sound so good.

Lastly… isn’t Ibuprofen the most incredible thing ever invented? 10 minutes ago I was suffering terrible, chronic, throbbing pain from a toothache I should have had seen to a fortnight ago. Against my manly instincts I popped a pill, and now - nothing.

What the hell is in that stuff?

It reminds me of when I finally managed to get hold of one on a 23 hour Bolivian bus journey I endured. I had struggled through 8 hours of unimagineable pain due to a leg infection i’d picked up in the Amazon, after being devoured by sandflies. My leg was twice its normal size. The pain was excruciating. A pissed-up Bolivian was dribbling on me, and several chickens had escaped their owner and were running loose on the floor of the bus. Even if I could walk there was no way off the bus to get to a doctor, and my bag containing the magical nurofen was on the roof - from where despite my pleading the driver wouldn’t let me retrieve it.

I had spent an hour seriously considering hacking my leg off with a penknife.

Eventually, at yet another stop, and with tears in my eyes and desperation in my voice I pleaded one last time to get my bag off the roof. Thankfully they gave in and I greedily swallowed a couple of nurofen.

10 minutes later I could have played football.

Unbelieveable.

That bus journey was also remarkable for going up what was supposedly the world’s most dangerous road. Thing is, we had two punctures en route. And only one spare tyre.

???

and a driver who survived on no sleep by frantically chewing on coca leaves for the duration.

Think the end of the Italian Job with dirt roads and no barriers.

(and it is a bloody dangerous road - some friends i’d met out there went over the edge in their bus. They were only saved from a fatal tumble down the mountain by some thankfully sturdy trees…)

You Dirty Rats

I visited Banksy’s new exhibition “Crude Oils” at the weekend… if you’ve been visiting here a while you’ll know i’m a bit of a fan, and i’ve got quite a collection of his screen prints.

This exhibition, however, was shit.

Or should I say covered in shit.

If you’ve read anything about the show, you will probably have heard about the rats. Nearly 200 of them are living on the gallery floor for the duration of the exhibition, and even outside there was quite a stench from the substantial quantity of rat shit covering every surface the rodents had managed to reach. The poor gallery attendant in particular was covered in the stuff.

They were mainly piled up in the corners when I visited, but a couple of the persistent beggars insisted on charging me every time I looked away. I wouldn’t normally mind too much, but they were seriously filthy!

Banksy of course has an ongoing thing for rats with his street stencils, claiming that “If you feel small, insignificant and dirty they are the ultimate role model”.

Unfortunately I think that the vermin became the focus of the exhibition, distracting attention from the work on the walls. You weren’t allowed in for long anyway, and for the time you were in there it was hard to devote as much time looking at the paintings as you did checking your feet. Having one of them climbing up your trouser leg doesn’t bear thinking about!

As for the work itself, well unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera, so wasn’t able to take any snaps. If I have time I may go back next week & get some pictures….

For the time being the two photos above and one below are lifted from the excellent Wooster Collective site. You can see most of the other pieces on this site

This Edward Hopper ‘Diner’ pastiche was the only piece still available to buy. A cool 40 grand to you. It is bloody huge though. Ah, an Englishman abroad in traditional dress offers up his customary greeting….

A couple of Warhol pisstakes also featured. The Kate Moss as Marilyn Monroe canvas was new (this is a scan of the postcard given out)

Looking at this made me realise that Kate Moss isn’t nearly as iconic as she’s made out to be. To be honest if I didn’t know it was her I probably wouldn’t have recognised her.

The Tesco Value Soup tin has been around a while as a screen print (you can still buy ‘em from Pictures on Walls). This was also the canvas he sneaked into the New York Museum of Modern Art. It’s simple, but I like this a lot.

“Crude Oils” was the title of the exhibition though, and most of the room was filled with corrupted oil canvases. One side were adapted from existing paintings bought cheaply at markets, and half - the Van Gogh, Monet and Jack Vettriano pastiches - done from scratch. The following are on Banksy’s website, however they’ve been there for a while and from what I can remember the versions in the exhibition were new (but similar).

The best two were probably the Guantanamo Bay prisoner kneeling on a beach, and the guardsman sitting on a pantomime horse. Bear in mind if you’re looking at the pictures on that site, that the rats were considerably filthier, and there was significantly more shit around when i visited!

So it was definitely worth a visit, but not the greatest showcase of Banksy’s work i’ve seen. Having missed the ‘Turf War’ exhibition, it was good to see a good collection of his work at close quarters. Although there wasn’t a lot of genuinely new material or ideas there. I have a sneaking suspicion the sole purpose of the event is to qualify for inclusion in next year’s Turner Prize shortlist. Despite his ruthlessly anti-establishment ethos, I think he quite fancies winning the prize as a raised middle finger to the art world.

For me, Banksy still works best when placing his stencils in unexpected or subversive places. It’s a joy to turn a corner and find a pissing guardsman, or snogging policement…. or to be greeted on the M4 into London by the huge ‘Welcome to Hell’ bunny. There’s a huge archive of his graffiti here if you want to check it out…

The exhibition is only on for another week or so at 100 Westbourne Grove. If you’re thinking of going, i’d practice holding your breath… I suspect that by next weekend it’ll be really grim!

The Real Peel

I suppose I should be out at some gig somewhere or other celebrating the life of John Peel as part of Radio 1’s self-promoting ‘Peel Day’. But something about the whole thing hasn’t sat very comfortably with me. If a lot of people go out & see some live music today, that’ll be great. But I get the feeling that Peel himself wouldn’t be a bit bemused by his ongoing canonisation. He would probably be the first to say that it’s all a big fuss over someone who just played a few records on the radio.

I agree with many of the sentiments of this article in The Times. If Radio 1 wanted to celebrate Peel properly, they should do so by throwing some excellent unsigned bands in amongst their playlist… not just repeating his name endlessly and playing ‘Teenage Kicks’ once an hour in the hope that some of his cool will rub off on them.

I had the misfortune to listen to radio 1 a fair bit today. The songs I heard played in his ‘honour’ were:

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
Underworld - Born Slippy
New Order - Blue Monday
Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
The Undertones - Teenage Kicks (of course)

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to hearing any of those on the radio, but that’s hardly representative of what you’d hear on an average Peel show, and certainly not what he’d choose to play given free reign of radio 1. Why is everything they play when mentioning him done by white guys with guitars? Where’s the Malinese Reggae? or the Happy Hardcore? Or more importantly, where’s the Napalm Death?

I can live with all that though.. what really made me reject this whole thing completely was seeing this story about a tribute single. Recorded by Robert Plant!? Roger Daltry!!?? Dave Gilmour!!!??? and ELTON FUCKIN’ JOHN!!!!!!!!!????????

So I will attempt to put things right by posting something noisy, something nice, and something by The Fall.

Enjoy….

APHASIC - THE JACKAL
‘Did I ever tell you about that man.. .who changed my life’ Awesome breakcore on the Rephlex-affiliated Ambush Records. Now THOSE are drums.

RELOAD - THE BIOSPHERE (GLOBAL COMMUNICATION MIX)
Timeless and achingly beautiful. An ambient techno masterpiece. I’m thinking of having a week dedicated to Tom Middleton & Mark Pritchard soon….

THE FALL - MR PHARMACIST
The Fall track Peel chose to include on his Fabric mix CD. One of their best.

Sorry for being a miserable bastard. Feel free to comment if you think i’m being too cynical. Or just feel free to comment anyway. I won’t bite.

In the course of my ‘research’ I came across Jamie’s Runout Groove - an excellent British MP3 blog that had somehow escaped my notice. Check it out.

I AM DAMO SUZUKI

Some more awesomeness for you today…

You may have heard of a recent album of re-edits by Glasgow glamour queen ‘Betty Botox’. It’s been causing a bit of a stir.

What was a big secret, but now seems only to be a small secret, is that Betty Botox is an alias of JD Twitch. Who’s JD Twitch? Well does the word ‘Optimo‘ mean anything to you? If not take 5 paces back and click.

Well the album was preceded a few months back by a superb 12″, which I happened to recently pick up in my aladdin’s cave of a second-hand shop. And one of its 4 tracks has been locked onto my turntable and fixed in my brain ever since.

Since Betty Botox specialises in re-edits, and the EP is called ‘Kraut’, you can probably make an educated guess at the source of this fantastic track, ‘Can Can’.

Yes, it’s Faust of course.

Nah, not really. It’s Can.

Although endlessly being namedropped as one of the most influential bands of all time, I must admit they’re a band i’m not particularly familiar with. However a quick google of the lyrics revealed that this track ‘Can Can’ is a remake of a song called ‘Hoolah Hoolah’, from their 1989 album ‘Rite Time‘.

I’ve not heard the album, or the original of this track, but this is so fucken excellent it’s untrue. This will never ever leave my record bag.

BETTY BOTOX - CAN CAN

Although you won’t find ‘Can Can’ on it, Boomkat have just got another consignment of the album in. You can also pick up an mp3 from the album at Big Stereo.. a re-edit of ‘Is It Love You’re After’ by Rose Royce… the song that will forever and always make you think ‘S-Express’.

New Links

While waiting for me to compose my next post, why not check out some tracks from the new blogs i’ve linked to….

To Here Knows When has the superb ‘Unighted’ by Lo-Fi Fnk for your delectation. Along with loads more quality gear. (Tiga, Test-Icicles, Bloc Party, (The Mighty) Justice, Zongamin…).

Bookmark.

Clitspit has the new singles by Felix Da Housecat and Tomas Andersson, and a new Richard X mix of New Order’s ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’.

Oooh!

Greanpea-ness has a kickin’ remix of ‘Do Me Bad Things’, and also the skillz to host his own files rather than rely on the annoying rapidshare or yousendit.

Yessssss!