chicken and flicks

cH!cken
Originally uploaded by infinite.

you need some infinite vision in your life.

Ohmydiddy!

“You get smoked like Philly
Think you’re big but you’re just a little willy
Load magazines like Chantelle Fiddy
Make a man say ‘oh my diddy!’”

Skepta,
Meridian & Roll Deep,
LDN 2005

It’s late at Rinse FM station party. MCs, DJs and headz are rammed into a small (literally) underground east London venue. A scream goes up at the bar. Skepta’s just dropped his new bars that name-check Chantelle, and that scream says she’s feeling them.

When I first heard those bars, if I hadn’t been sitting down, I probably would have fallen over. I was in a hotel room in California, but even 5000 miles from home, their impact and significance weren’t lost on me.

Ironically I first met Chan in west London, at some waste showcase. She was smoozing some major label a&r. The PR I was talking to for some reason already had taken a severe dislike to Chan. It wasn’t the best beginning of a friendship.

Through Deuce magazine (RIP), we soon found we had common ground. More than that, we had a common mission. It was 2002/3 and 2step garage, in the eye of the industry and the media, was officially “dead.” Unaware of the efforts of a few co-pioneering bloggers, we looked around us at UK magazines. We saw a garage-free medium. Contrast that with the explosion of new sounds to be found flourishing around us on London’s streets, and you have the essence of what in effect became a full time quest.

Three years later and things look a little better. Sure, there’s an obvious glass ceiling to the majority of MCs’ careers and only a few will ever sign to a major, but at least grime artists are playing in New York, Brussels and Tokyo. Wiley and Skepta look out of place at V Festival, but at least they’re there. Lethal B, Roll Deep, Kano, Dizzee x2, Wiley and Statik have all dropped albums. Run the Road is on volume 2.

So what’s so special about a Skepta lyric name checking Fiddy?

Firstly freelance journalism is a thankless task. For ages MCs felt they didn’t need journalists, probably because their peers don’t read magazines (bar RWD or the Source), because on the whole they’re written by and for middle class white audiences. Also print criticism is, to them, akin to verbal on-road merkery – something to strike back against.

It’s also a thankless task because there’s no money or long term future in magazine journalism - I’ve never found a landlord that will accept rent paid in promo CDrs. It’s hard work: the only reason to do it, bar none, is because you believe in the words you write. All other motives are aberrations. All this considered, thanks from an MC is a gratefully accepted gift. Wiley said my name on the mic at FWD>> once - it made my week. But Skepta writing bars about Chan: that’s next level.

The second reason why that lyric is so big goes deeper into the essence of grime. Dizzee and Wiley, back in 2002/3, had the vital vision that grime would be about artists not MCs, about culture not DJs. But post the Rephlex “Grime” compilations, and with the snide Grimm Dubz series for sale online, a lot of people, especially the new Rephlex/IDM recruits, want to confuse a culture with a sound.

I’ve debated definitions of grime before. The grime scene, in the strictest sense of who that means, is a particular London generation. Their lyrics, their language, their reference points and their attitudes are distinct. Though it has changed a little in the last year, with labels interacting with grime artists than ever, on the whole to outsiders, the scene is remarkably impenetrable. You can have their digits, you can meet them and visit their studios or their estates, but largely over time, you won’t even register as part of their world. Just listen to all their lyrics: they’re about their acute local micro environment.

So when Chantelle’s name is being used, it means she’s crossed a line very few non-members of generation grime ever achieve. And that’s so big, it had to be said.

sounds like fumin

does anyone know the name of the playground game that Fumin appropriates on his new tune that inserts new sylables into the middle of words, twisting the English language yet further?

ya getme?

silverdollar otm re LDN language and the pirate radio experience

on road

crikey...

pitchfork 4

brand new pitchfork grime and dubstep column from me, inc my photo of riko and skepa at the Rinse party. go on then!

plasticman mix

Shout to Plasticman for this mix, first broadcast on the 1Xtra UK M1X show with DJ Q but exclusively available here for download. It's all about new dub A Walk In The Carpark. Deepness.

tracklist:

Plasticman featuring Shizzle, Fresh, Napper - Cha Vocal (Terrorhythm Recordings)
Plasticman - Cha (Benga Remix) (Terrorhythm Recordings)
Chase & Status featuring Roll Deep - Top Shotta (Dub)
Macabre Unit - Killer Bee (Dub)
Emalkay - Gut Feeling (Dub)
Wiley - Merkle Instrumental (White)
Wiler - Colder Remix (White)
Dexplicit - Bullacake (Dub)
Plasticman - Cha VIP (Terrorhythm Recordings)
Plasticman - Brassbeat (Dub)
M.I.A. - U.R.A.Q.T. (Plasticman Remix Instrumental) (XL Recordings)
Karnak - Flutes (Dub)
Unknown - The Low Riddim (Dub)
JME - Low Baraka (Dub)
Chunky Bizzle - Diss Me Like Dat (Dub)
Caspa - Home Sick (Storming Productions)
Wonder - Undertaker (Dub)
Wonder - It's All (Dub)
Plasticman - The Jackal Riddim (Dub)
Plasticman - Still Tippin Remix (Dub)
Plasticman - Export (Dub)
Wiley - Untitled (Dub)
Slew Dem - Grime (Slew Dem Productions)
Dreama - Stigma (Dub)
JME - Earth's Core (Dub)
Plasticman - Symptomatic (Dub)
Virus Syndicate - Slow Down (Plasticman Remix) (Dub)
Plasticman - A Walk In The Carpark (Dub)

Run The Road Volume 2

1. Low Deep Feat. Kano, Ghetto, Big Seac, Demon & Doctor – Get Set (Run The Road Edition)
2. Doctor And Davinche – Gotta Man?
3. JME – Serious (Run The Road Remix)
4. Big Seac – Nah Nah
5. Sway Feat. Bruza, Skinnyman, Pyrelli, Bigz & Triple Threat – Up Your Speed Remix
6. Ghetto Feat. Katie Pearl – Run The Road
7. Plan B – Sick 2 Def (Acoustic)
8. Kano Feat. Demon & Ghetto – Mic Check Remix
9. Crazy Titch – World Is Crazy
10. Lady Sovereign – Little Bit Of Shhh! (DJ Wonder Remix)
11. Klashnekoff – Can’t You See?
12. Mizz Beats Feat. Wiley, Jammer, Earz, JME & Sier – Saw It Comin
13. Trimbal – They Gave Him A Inch
14. No Lay – Unorthadox Chick
15. Bear Man Feat. Doctor And Fender – Drink Beer Remix
16. Dynasty Crew – Bare Face Dynasty

Compiled in-house by 679 Recordings. On road 5th September.

Jammer at FWD!!

This Sept! brrrap!

hotspots

Thanks to Ripley for the headsup on this reggaeton peice.

Also Reynolds otm re dance music.

dust and sun

I’ve been in the San Francisco and Bay Area for the last two weeks, being baked by a brittle sun in dry heat.

Despite two brief forays into US waters, I’ve never been to America before. Despite so much of it being comfortably familiar – thanks to blanket global media exports – there’s still so much to take in.

Naturally, Americans, particularly in shops (“stores”) and restaurants are as ludicrously friendly as expected. But contrary to expectation, the darkside Londoner in me doesn’t find it ridiculous. Or want to hit them. It must be the weather.

Their friendliness contrasts interestingly with their government, though not really California’s government, a point not lost on me while bashfully reading Philippe Sand’s Lawless World (America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules) in restaurants, hoping no one notices the cover. Sitting in the US I’m a little outnumbered. Outgunned too.

Over ten chapters, Sands – a respected international law expert – describes how in 1941 Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt built the cornerstones of global law as we know it by writing the Atlantic Charter, which the UN Charter went on to be based upon. As the chapters unfold, it describes how in recent years the US has cherry-picked the international laws it wants to honour. Trade agreements, Geneva Conventions (when US citizens are captured) and prosecutions of foreign ex-dictators like General Pinochet: yes. Kyoto Agreements on greenhouse gas emissions, Geneva Convention (when foreign citizens are captured), UN resolutions and the International Criminal Court: no. Doesn’t explain why people are friendly in shops (“stores”) though.

I do however understand why Bush starts war for oil. It’s a scale thing. One morning I walked from the local train station to an office in the same town. It took an hour. In that hour not one bus passed me. The road lead into an industrial park. With tech firms to the right and US Air Force and cruise missile manufacturers to the left, the road was five lanes wide. Each way. Dammit even the roads got supersized here.

When the first bombs went off in London this summer I was on the tube. London’s all about immersion but that was far too close for comfort. When it happened again I was out of the country. Expats kept saying they felt removed. To me it was beyond that, like it was happening to someone else’s way of life, while I was in a place where the lights had been turned on too bright, the hills bleached to dust and the weather gage jammed to “scorchio.”

Skanking round my hotel room to Skepta on Rinse started to feel weird. If you can’t feel the tube dirt in your lungs and your blood simmering down from some east London road rage, grime make less sense. Given this, how can grime have any US following?

As a teenager I dreamt of Detroit. Carl Craig and Robert Hood, Underground Resistance and Derrick May. But beyond the mournful melodic synths, my lasting impression is of a curiosity for a city far removed from my birthplace that had given us Motown and P Funk, Planet E and the Model T. Detroit wasn’t a sound, it was a narrative. Why else would I be daydreaming of deserted streets decorated with junk by local artists or of the white-flight phenomenon or decaying buildings? Like Kid Kameleon describes, I was an outsider looking in.

It was around 2002-3 that I felt the same should be assembled for London (if jungle hadn’t done it already), and in particular for Croydon too, so that Londoners didn’t have to be the outsiders looking to other cities. That thought set me on the journey towards learning to produce, and ultimately, to launch Keysound Recordings, a label that in essence acknowledges that it’s our surroundings that influences the feel of our sound. An essence that explains why dancing round my Californian hotel room to Skepta on Rinse felt weird.

Gazing out of the Caltrain to San Francisco felt weird too. American buildings: they’re all so large, cubic and flimsy. Flat roofed, square, stocky industrial units spreading as far as the eye could manage in the bright sun’s glare. Impermanent. Modern. Different. How could dubstep or grime ever make sense here?

Part of grime’s importance is that it threw away the rule book. It was ejected from garage. It in turn rejected garage. Its one big “fuck you” to the establishment, a multicultural punk revolution. And within this movement of change, the life cycle is punishing. To its young fans, 2003 is “old school.” On the RWD forum the other day no one could remember Wonder’s anthem ‘What,’ only Wiley’s recently released cover version “Morgue.” The past is irrelevant to grime. It’s not where you’re from it’s where you’re at.

But staring out across rows of Bay Area dusty industrial units zipping by, it occurred to me grime, whether it overtly acknowledges it or not, might be nothing without it’s past. Grime owes the Victorians, for row after row of terraces houses, or experimental 1960s city planners for ugly concrete brutalist towerblocks. Dubstep owes Croydon too, for it’s flyovers and motorways. Grime owing the Victorians, well I never. Well I never thought I’d think that.

keysound radio

keysound radio
Originally uploaded by Blackdown.

DOWNLOAD: keysound radio



dusk + blackdown keysound radio
1 dusk + blackdown ‘keysound radio intro’
2 kode 9 + spaceape ‘ghost town’
3 random trio productions ‘indian stomp’
4 pinch ‘qawwali’
5 skream ‘sweetz’
6 dusk + blackdown ‘submerge’
7 blackdown ‘crackle blues’
8 digital mystikz ‘creeper’
9 kode 9 + spaceape ‘correction’
10 blackdown ‘keysound pirate radio refix’
11 roll deep entourage ‘me’
12 target + riko ‘hands up’
13 blackdown v crazy titch ‘dis/east v sing-a-long’
14 roll deep entourage ‘ground zero vox’
15 loefah v nasty crew ‘lightz se25 dub’
16 plasticman ‘funeral vibez’
17 lethal b ‘hitman’
18 dusk + blackdown ‘drenched’
19 blackdown ‘the danger line’
20 loefah ‘root’
21 blackdown ‘zgk’
22 digital mystikz ‘forgive’
23 dizzee rascal ft. breeze and flowdan ‘win’


dusk + blackdown 12”
‘drenched/submerge’
[keysound recordings]
]via baked goods[
)available from boomkat.com and all good shops(
out july 25th

pitchcontrol

my latest pitchfork column

"We don't want no war tonight..."

Sorry for the delay. Somebody bombed London on Thursday. I've never walked so much in this city in one day, probably four hours worth. I've never walked through a bomb zone before either. Twice.

It was touching to see how everyone in this city could get on with things in the face of adversity and how quickly everyone reached out to their friends and family. As a trivial aside, the bombings also ment that when my broadband also went down, there were no engineers to fix it.

The city's getting back to "normal" now, broadband service is resumed and dubstep must go on. Watch this space in the next few weeks for the first Dusk + Blackdown Keysound Radio mix. Many months in the planning, many exclusives in the mix.

In the meantime here's that much anticipated Hatcha CD:
Hatcha Practice Hours June 05

DMZeehehehee

the post-DMZ glow.
the after-bass smile.
someone should bottle this feeling, they'd make a fortune.

keysound recordings

myself and dusk are launching keysound recordings as a home for our productions. the imprint has been many years in the making, in the living, in the frustrating, in the struggling.

keysound thinking

the name keysound comes from the music itself, music which in turn reflects our London surroundings. a kick, a snare, a hat, a sub-bassline: in isolation, marked out on a clean sonic background, they’re sterile, contextless, adrift, culture free. “it’s just music”.

this is not just music. many dusk + blackdown tracks instead contain keysounds, a looped sonic keystone that underpins the whole track. tracks with keysounds are therefore build in a context: a constant sound that suggests an environment, a space, a culture, a city.

keysounds reflect our environment, not wistfully dwelling on the way things were, nor escaping towards imagined never-to-arrive future, but facing the pressures of today’s reality. they reflect the diverse multicultural micro-communities that surround us, and the spaces those communities live in.

keysounds are condensed shards of overheard conversations in heavy accents, hints of understanding of other cultures or keys to understanding different ways of living. keysounds are the echoes of decaying buildings, clanking trains, dirty streets and hidden urban communities.

reacting to that which changes, not that which is constant, the brain soon filters the keysound out as the track rolls on… but like the surroundings in which we live, its influence remains a defining one. this is keysound thinking.

dusk + blackdown
keysound recordings
LDN 2005

· dusk + blackdown ‘drenched/ submerge’ [LDN001] is out on keysound recordings via baked goods distribution late july.

· dusk + blackdown present the keysound recordings mix vol 1: watch this space.

'drenched'

‘drenched’ is a snapshot of urban underground living, spread wide across one 12”. tense, intense, compressed, it begins on a south London train, reflecting the rhythms and textures of our surroundings. the train heads south through some of dubstep’s birthplaces: streatham, norbury and norwood, ending of course, in croydon. the recording was made late on a sunday night, heading for one of Digital Mystikz’ Dub Sessions parties.

the name ‘drenched’ comes from London’s rainy experience. constantly under bombardment from sound, sights, information, fellow citizens ... rainfall like is a metaphor for London living. just keeping your head above water is a struggle. under pressure, you exhale to unwind… then inhale fumes. ‘north, south, east ...’ - a local MC marks out garage’s tribal regions, interlocked groups that seldom mix.

‘drenched’ was written in east london. It ends with more rainfall, recorded during a storm in turnpike lane, north london. rudeboys shelter under the park furniture, car breaks squeek down Green Lanes, police sirens wail. the tube station is located across the park, anecdotally said to be the focus of the most multicultural square mile in Britain, with over two hundred languages spoken.

'submerged'

’submerged’ is a testament to uprising. the first kick rises out of a ‘submerged’s’ keysound: a merky, bubbling, primordial soup. the kick coalesces into a live, organic rhythm, leading onwards. at first tiny shards of light filter through the mire, before a weak sun breaks through the grey clouds.

’submerged’ is dedicated to everyone who has dreamt but never acted; wished but never tried. no long ting rudeboy: what are you waiting for? if you want something done: do it yourself. not later. now. do it. grasp it. make it …happen. make the music you want. not the music they make you want.

dub for dub

This evening I participated for the first time in one of urban music’s great rituals: I went dubplate cutting.

You turn east out of Forest Hill train station, deep in south London and head into a sprawl of houses. Transition Studios is tucked away down a terraced street. You meander around the side of pebbledash building hemmed in by people’s back gardens , until you enter the barred front door.

When your time in the waiting room is over, you enter a tiny, and in this current heatwave, sweltering room. There you present your CD to the cutting engineer - and the ritual begins.

He’s sat at an analogue desk. A stack of outboard equipment, valves, EQs and a tiny quaint flashing green oscilloscope, tower above him. Underneath the desk , exposed wires and curious exposed cables snake and writhe. There’s even a telephone, just like in that classic dub photograph (Augustus Pablo is it? Or King Tubby?).

To the right there’s the cutting lathe, part precision engineering tool, part sonic magic-maker. It’s littered with bizarre discarded tools, gas cylinders, a selection of lubricants and is built with three aluminium drawers, complete with green flashing lights.

The process from digital CD to analogue vinyl is not trivial. It’s part art, part science. Part experience, part emotion. After “pulling the tracks apart“ a bit with EQs, the cutting process begins. Soon – I say soon but it’s a process that takes a while and can’t be rushed – you have a freshly cut dark black 10” dubplate. It smells funny, like it’s soaked in some kind of solvent.

I’m not obsessed by tradition: just because something has been done one way before, doesn’t mean it has to be done that way again. I’m open to change: Ableton, Traktor or Final Scratch, I’m excited by them. But I can’t describe the buzz from having a pile of freshly cut exclusive dubs. This might be a routine feeling to Hatcha, Youngsta or Transition’s biggest customer, Jah Shakka. But tonight it’s anything but routine to me. Bring on DMZ03.

Transition Studios are on +44 (0) 20 8 699 7888

pitchfork 2

second edition of my monthly column is live-o.

Don't call it a comeback...

yesyes it's true: DMZ03 will feature me pon decks.
many thanks to DMZ for spreading the love.
in the meantime get ready for some fresh new dubz.

DMZ03
Originally uploaded by Blackdown.

Digital dubz

Digital downloading isn't the future, it's the present. Over the last six months I've been busy putting together a legal download page with Bleep, Warp records' sister site.

Right now you'll find high res downloads from Digital Mystikz, Loefah, Kode 9, Skream, Plasticman, Macabre Unit, Reza, Vex'd and Mark One. Expect many more artists to follow.

Find it here: Bleep/road. If you run a label and want to get involved, email me.