P-fork

streatham common station
Originally uploaded by sensemag.co.uk.

Column time again.

Street politics

David Cameron

“David Cameron might have a genuine, genuine passion for young people. He might! I’m not saying he doesn’t, but the overarching principle of the day is, like, ‘let’s just be liberal and get everyone to join our party.’ That’s what I think it is.”

It’s a rare to find highbrow media coverage of street culture that doesn’t make the blood boil, so when it does it needs to be acknowledged. This Monday’s Radio 4 Today program broke from their usual editorial agenda to cover urban regeneration and in the process actually seemed to feature some voices and opinions from people in urban London that are directly involved. About time. How come? David Cameron was talking about ‘hoodies’.

OK so my blood’s boiling again.

Not because Cameron was talking about urban regeneration. But because the rest of the media were calling this speech “hug a hoodie”. Arrrgh.

Nothing illustrates the gulf between those who grow up in underprivileged conditions and those privileged few charged with making change, than the clumsy, offensive way the mainstream media grab the wrong end of some catchphrase stick and then use it to beat people with.

A hoodie is a piece of clothing, little more. Utterly ubiquitous since they came over from US street wear in the ‘80s, people of all walks of life wear them. Recently, of course, in the UK the word “hoodie” contains a class slur. Literally, “hugging a hoodie” means embracing a piece of clothing. Except that the intent of the cringe worthy alliterative media hook-line is to embrace people from marginalised inner city communities, only in the most patronising terms possible.

Nonetheless it’s good, if a little strange, to hear a Tory leader embracing tolerant leftist policies, not least when we have a Labour government that when it finds being tough on crime isn’t working, it recommends being yet tougher on crime, perhaps with a little extra hard punishment thrown in.

The problem is with David Cameron that he seems to have a new policy every week. Only recently he was attacking Radio 1 for playing hip hop. Somehow he seems to think this and his new inner city policy are not contradictory.

Hip hop culture spawned the hoodie. Their history is inseparable like punk and the Mohican. So either Cameron is attacking street culture or he’s hugging it? Which is it? And as for attacking Westwood and, after that, Lethal B, Cameron would be better to listen rather than lash out – these are two men that command respect and have genuine reach within the very communities Cameron is trying to help.

The reality is it’s just another example of a politician putting the cart before the horse when it comes to a culture he and his peers don't understand, yet need to if they’re to make positive change. An item of clothing no more causes anti social behaviour than hip hop or grime music itself causes violence at raves (what grime raves these days?). They are functions of a culture not causes of it.

If Cameron should be bashing any station, given he now cares about street culture, it’s Radio 4. There is no doubt this institution exerts a powerful influence over government and policy making units throughout the UK. There is no doubt that it exerts a powerful influence over the UK, educating and informing the electorate.

But give or take the infrequent inner city viewpoint on Today packages, the station’s cultural agenda remains so woefully narrow - be it bickering about whether to ditch its ancient theme or Melvin “inclusive” Bragg’s pretentious and inaccessible “In Our Time” - that it excludes the very people that could most benefit from its educational output. Does this not widen the divide between the haves and have nots?

LINKS

Podcast: Listen to the Today package from 10.07.06
BBC: David Cameron’s ‘hoodie speech’
The Times: “hug a hoodie”
BBC: Cameron attacks Radio 1 for playing hip hop
The Guardian: Lethal B replies to David Cameron
The Mail on Sunday: David Cameron returns Lethal’s fire

7/7 + 365

It's been a year since London living was shaken by terror. I remember the tube grinding to a halt several stops from Kings Cross, of a long long walk through the streets, mobiles jammed and only realizing something very serious has happened when dazed people with dirty, ashen faces started coming towards me.

I hope we never see the likes of these explosions in London again. I also hope the people of Iraq and other conflicts around the globe find the same peace Londoners enjoy.

I remember 8/7 and 9/7 - to use the nomenclature - well too. They were bright, sunny days. Friday the capital was uncharacteristically quiet, as people stayed at homes and indoors.

Despite the great weather I decided to use the time productively and turned to making beats. Ever since I swapped a copy of Creeper Vol 1 with Kevin Martin for his favorite dancehall riddims of 2004, I'd meant to refix Sizzla's "Obstacles." Frankly it was just gagging for it.

In contrast to the fear and insecurity of 7/7, 8/7 and 9/7 felt strange: it felt good to be alive; the bombs had reminded me of what I had. A lot of this feeling poured out into the Sizzla refix, completed quickly in two days (some kind of record for me). When I hear it I see the bright sunshine again, warming the streets.

I've spent the year wondering what to do with this refix. The original, 30 seconds of which I took for the intro, is on Germaica Records . I have no interest in financially stealing from them or Sizzla himself, so I don't want to bootleg this mix. But equally I like how it came out and how it came about.

So I've decided, a year on, to give it away for free as a 320 kbps MP3 and a .Wav. Take it, share it, play it out if you like it, cut it if you really really like it, but please no bootlegs. Deal?

DOWNLOAD Sizzla 'Obstacles (Blackdown refix)' 320 kbps MP3
DOWNLOAD Sizzla 'Obstacles (Blackdown refix)' .Wav

Tokyo reflections

"Welcome to the Offworld..."

Tokyo, by reputation, delivers the greatest possible culture shock. Visiting this vast, incredible megacity last week, it was less shock, more awesome sensory overload. It’s clean, safe, high tech, bright, new, busy and quite unlike anywhere I’ve seen in Europe, North America or Africa.

The longer I live in London, the more cities enthral me. How do they function? Do they function? Are they healthy, happy places? Are they places that produce unique cultures and people that can only exist in cities? Or are they places that produce unique problems? Discovering Tokyo with a mangled body clock, these questions remain – except with a whole new set of possible answers.

shinjuku

A few days after landing, some people who knew far more about these issues met in Vancouver to discuss them. (Check the BBC’s awesome interactive guide to the global megacity growth here for a wider view).

On scale alone, Tokyo is breathtaking. London has around 8 million people, Greater London 12 million – from a vantage point like the London Eye it sprawls as far as the eye can see. Tokyo has 12 million people but Greater Tokyo a staggering 35 million. From a vantage point – the Park Hyatt, Dentsu or Ebisu towers for example – you can’t even see out as far as where the sprawl of endless dormitory towns begins.

ebisu tower view

In the way that London feels like it has a centre in the West End, there is no one focus to Tokyo. Instead there are perhaps several delocalised major hubs like Shibuya, Shinjuku, bayside area and Ueno. Each of these areas lays claim to being some kind of centre of gravity in part because of some serious skyscraper action.

shiodome

So much of Tokyo is just up. How do you fit 35 million Greater Tokyo workers into a 12 million Tokyo space? You stack them. From the aforementioned vantage points the skyline is one jagged cluster of clean, 50 story skyscraper after another. One effect is to create a visually incredible landscape, especially by night. This is the city that inspired Ridley Scott to make Bladerunner and its clear why, although personally I couldn’t stop muttering the tanoy announcements saying “Welcome to the Offworld...” from, ahem, Total Recall.

Another tangential effect is that with all the tall buildings Tokyo’s airspace is closed, removing the constant drone of flight path noise pollution you experience in London and any additional Al-Qaeda plane crash paranoia (Japan just pulled its troops out of Iraq which should help).

Talking of paranoia and malevolent urban undercurrents, on first impressions, Tokyo has none. Tokyo is safe. Now to be fair, London is safe. If you know what you’re doing (“yes bro, safe, safe...”) London is fine. Keep your wits about you, don’t act like a dick in the real danger areas (y’know: Ikea store opening nights, Hammersmith high street at Skool Disco chucking out time...) and you’re fine. But still it’s a serious place.

Tokyo is virtually crime free. Drugs are totally taboo. Not that it’s an empirical measurement of anything but the two clubs I went to (Unit and Bullet’s) I saw not the slightest hint of weed or any substance abuse. Talk is that there are fairly large organised crime syndicates in Tokyo, but in civilised fashion they all have respectable offices in the same district. I wandered around Kabukicho, near Shinjuku, which has some sex industry, and it was just as concealed as Soho’s, if not drowned out by a hundred thousand neon lights plus the ear piercing rattle of Pachinko pinball slot machines ( a massively popular game played with hundreds of falling ball bearings) and the shockingly bad Japanese-Euro-pop-trance that accompanies it.

The only slightly gully place I got into in an entire week of exploring was Shomben Yokocho (aka "Piss Alley") not far from Kabukicho. Ducking behind Shinjuku station tracks, I found myself in a tiny alley full of exposed, tangled dusty wiring. Sunlight dripped through the narrow passage to the sky. To either side were tens of tiny thin bars, each no more than three metres deep and one wide, stacked one after another in this twisty alley. Some were closed off by curtains, others had grills where bartenders cooked yakitori over tiny charcoal fires; all were full of locals. It was the only place as a 6’6” conspicuous gaijin (foreigner) I didn’t feel welcome in a whole week in Tokyo. So yes, 35 million people and pretty much no drugs, litter or crime? It’s nuts.

nagatacho

One anecdote relayed to me describes perfectly both the safety of the city and the cause of it – Japanese society. Travelling home on an otherwise rammed underground train, one seat was strangely left empty. On closer inspection someone had dropped their wallet. But not only did no one steal it, everyone was too polite to touch the wallet, for fear of being accused of stealing it.

Japanese society is a wonder. Ex-pat residents in Tokyo say even six months of contact with it reveals only the surface. It’s deeply, deeply reverent. “Face” is everything. Public humiliation the ultimate punishment. The Japanese bow, not shake hands, (though amusingly when I first met Masamitsu, the club promoter who booked me, it was the international garage ‘yesbruv’ handshake we used hehe). But you don’t just bow when you first meet people. Hotel staff will bow every time you enter the front door. Shop staff don’t bow, they sing ‘welcome’ to you! In busy department stores (the Japanese are obsessed with massive department stores like Tokyu and Seibu) where scores of people enter and leave a given area, the chorus of ultra high pitch ‘welcomes’ becomes overwhelming.

One massive difference between London and Tokyo, is the racial mix. Even when you head out to suburbia or provincial UK towns, you’re aware of London’s rich melting pot. Tokyo has none of this. 99.9% of the people you see on the street seem to be Japanese nationals. Watching tens of thousands of people, if not more, flood towards you on the subway or at Shibuya crossing, you see one or two black people a day. The only concentration of any note of black faces is in Roppongi, the expat nightclub district, where you can see them working for the clubs on the streets trying to entice punters (pretty much everywhere else, from the markets of Ameyoko-Cho to Asakusa, if anyone speaks to you on the streets its to be friendly, not to give you the hard sell Europeans are so used to at home or abroad in places like Africa).

towards roppongi

In relation to the black guys who work Roppongi crossing, residents explain that parts of Japanese society can be fairly racist, and that this is some of the only work black people in Tokyo can get. Certainly the Japanese are very nationalistic, but it’s hard to work out if the suggestion of racism is true without spending extensive time in Tokyo. On the issue of nationalism it would be interesting to know more about the details of the Japanese-North Korean-Chinese relations, given the suggestions of pre-emptive strikes by the US on North Korean missile tests going on while I was there. (Remind me where a pre-emptive strike stops and an unprovoked attack on a nation’s sovereign soil starts again?)

Nationalism or not, it’s clear that both Tokyo isn’t the multicultural melting pot London is. It is also well accepted that in Japanese culture, no matter how long you stay there, you’ll always be a gaijin (foreigner). The latter must be pretty depressing for long term immigrants, and hardly what you call cultural integration.

People watching on the incredible tube system was a joy (check a pdf. of the tube map here - this doesn’t even include most of the train networks!). On some clumsy sexual scale, in Japan it’s like there’s been a mass shift to the feminine side. Women are most definitely women: high heels are the norm, as well as petite miniskirts, trainers rare. Men however, standardly don fashion they’d risk ridicule for back in the UK (however much that matters…), the pinnacle of which is the handbag – not man-bag – yes handbag. The buffont 80s rock mullets are worth a mention too, ubiquitous amongst the Japanese men who try and entice girls into the ‘host bars’ of Kabukicho where, in a nice sexual roll reversal from much of Western culture, the men are paid to entertain and serve the women.

How Westerners interact with Japanese sexual politics is interesting. Japanese women, when they get married, largely give up their jobs to serve their husbands. So when they encounter Western men with more egalitarian views on relationships, some jump at the chance. The dynamic produces the phenomenon of the Western male “LBH” (loser back home) who suddenly becomes a sexual magnet abroad. By complete contrast, Western women experience near indifference from Japanese men, given their likely unwillingness to conform to traditional Japanese relationship dynamics.

But to describe Tokyo as all skyscrapers and neon lights, high technology and future culture is to miss half of the city. With its rich heritage and unbroken historical legacy that stretches back on the same location to before 1457, Tokyo – originally known as Edo – is a city of contrasts, both of which are worth absorbing. At the geographic centre is the Imperial Palace, still the residence of the Emperor the longest reigning dynasty in the world and someone who the Japanese, until the end of the Second World War, considered a living deity who could not be seen nor heard.

Nowadays the Emperor has no political powers. Two religions remain: Shinto and Buddhism. In modern Japan religion seems to play more of a social role than one of faith, as people often happily engage with both religion’s key ceremonies throughout their lives. Between the Emperor and the two religions, they provide the city with much of its precious green spaces. New York and Paris have 29 and 26 square metres per resident respectively; Tokyo has just 5.3 – and much of the Emperor’s gardens remain off limits. But the Shinjuku Gyoen garden, the Senso-ji temple and the Meiji-jingu shrine (nr Yoyogi-koen park) all respectively provide peaceful escapes from the sensory overload of modern Japan. They also seemingly provide somewhere for the homeless to rest.

homeless people in yoyogi-koen park. can no society eliminate homelessness?

Amid this clean, functioning, safe, drug-free, polite and ever so slightly effeminate but very unique city, I couldn’t help but wonder how my brand of ruffneck dark garage was going to go down. It seemed a very long way from the dark suburban decay of south London dubstep, or the innercity urban rage of east London grime. Will it get lost in translation?

roppongi

Finding Bullet’s was amusing enough itself. Beginning by walking away from Roppongi, a fairly key club hub, I followed a massive raised freeway (Tokyo is full of these: local traffic at street level, national traffic cruises through 10m above uninterrupted. What traffic jams?) until the din of Roppongi faded. Suddenly it was right down a non-descript residential side-street, left down another until you came to, um, a massive English mock-Georgian terrace house. Yes it was like Regents Park’s Park Crescent, except in Tokyo. Anyway, opposite this was a posh yet slightly sterile bar. Round the back of it, down some concrete steps, was Bullet’s, less a club, more an underground community art space. There were paintings on the loo walls, a budgie in a cage at the bar and there were two beds, one of which had its headboard bolted to the wall. The speakers were in the dark, unlit half: basically it was Plastic People if the art school crowd got to do the decor. If dubstep is to take a hold in Tokyo, it’s in early adopter places like these, so shouts to promoter and DJ Masamitsu and my interpreter for the night, Eric.

blackdown at bullets

Reviewing your own sets is bait, but lets just say playing the new bits I’d cut at Transition (Horsepower’s “Traitor remix”, Mala’s “Learn”, Kode 9’s “Fat Larry remix” and Zombie’s “Memories”) alongside some of my own productions like “Lata” and all parts of the “Mantis” trilogy was, like Tokyo itself, a fucking lot of fun.

EXCLUSIVE: The Roots of Dubstep tracklist

Ammunition + Blackdown present... The Roots of Dubstep [Tempa　CD]

1. Steve Gurley "Hotboys (dub)" [Allstars]
2. El-B "Express" [Ghost]
3. El-B ft. Juiceman "Buck + Bury [original mix]" [unreleased]
4. Roxy "Breakbeat Science" [Bison]
5. Phuturistix "551 Blues" [Locked On]
6. Horsepower "Gorgon Sound" [Tempa]
7. Horsepower "Classic Deluxe" [Tempa]
8. Benny Ill v DJ Hatcha "Highland Spring" [Tempa]
9. High Planes Drifter (aka Benny Ill) v Goldspot "Sholay" [Tempa]
10. Menta "Snake Charmer" [Road]
11. Artwork "Red" [Big Apple]
12. Benga v Skream "The Judgement" [Big Apple]
13. DJ Abstract "Touch" [Tempa]
14. Digital Mystikz "Pathwayz" [Big Apple]

Tokyo touchdown

Catch me DJing in Tokyo on Friday 23rd of June at Bullets.

Pitchfork: the new producers special

Croydon from under the flyover

new pitchfork for june

Recognise?

Loefah and Mala effed up FWD>>: recognise.

Which manor?

The Manor, originally shot inna citizen journalism stylee on his phone, edited and uploaded by Blackdown.

I was out of London over the weekend. I love this intense, pressured, multicultural city but sometimes escaping is good for the soul; for mine at least.

Driving through twisty rural lanes, the hedgerows bursting with prima vera, I was struck how odd the usually familiar recording of Roll Deep on Rinse felt. With JME hosting and Maximum dropping choice vocal cuts to begin with, even familiar bars jarred.

Now I know I’ve banged on about the link between environment and music, surrounding and sound, a lot – keysounds and all that – but internally I keep coming back to it since its proven such a profound revelation to me.

Its baffling how the same recording of JME and friends can sound sick in the car to FWD>>, cruising down dark, damp east London side streets, yet jar like an uppercut to the jawside while out in the sticks?

To add to the experience jungle/d&b made more sense again. On the same CD as the Rinse recording is a copy of Bailey’s recent ‘All Photek’ mix. I’ve never really recovered from Photek, if truth be told, even in the light of r&b and grime’s subsequent elegant rhythmic consolidations. More is more when it comes to Photek’s beats, unlike for me Squarepusher/Boxcutter/Amon Tobin/breakcore/all infinite Amen edits crew et al.

As well as Photek’s early jungle, Calibre’s recent d&b album finally made more sense cruising through fields at sunset than it had done in London. One of the key sonic signatures that differentiates d&b from much of grime or dubstep, is that spacious ‘e’ vibe. Synthetic synth pad washes that soar through your brain like the rushes of MDMA. Inherited from hardcore and acid house, d&b has yet to lose this vibe, whereas dubstep and grime reflect more fully the grounded ‘control culture,’ where raving is about being seen to be in-control, not lost, out of it, a trait that’s reinforced by the lack e sonic signatures in urban sounds like r’n’b, dancehall and desi and the culture of the rewind: if the track’s so unbearably good it might, just might make you lose control, well “quick rudeboy you mus lick dat back.”

To me it was this ‘space’ in the Calibre album that made some more sense surrounded by fields, not closed in by decaying buildings. The Calibre album is also pretty clean (caused perhaps from his upgrade from a shitty hardware sampler to Logic), so maybe that makes more sense when your lungs are full of fresh clean air, not pollution and tube dust.

Perhaps it’s a leap, but maybe this is why d&b has travelled, whereas in relative terms grime hasn’t? Of course I’m not comparing like with like: the music industry is massively different from the mid-90s to mid-00s (no way would producers – not artists – like Photek, Alex Reece and Goldie get signed to majors in this day and age) but perhaps one element of the reason could be that e-fuelled inclusive ‘unity’ at the centre of acid house has mass appeal, regardless of people’s urban, suburban or rural backgrounds. Conversely it’s harder to ‘get’ grime’s inner city anger unless you’ve walked through it a few times. (To qualify this, I’m not saying isolated rural yet determined headz can’t ‘get’ grime, I’m merely talking about scale: why aren’t legions of fans demanding to see grime MCs at Homelands (a dance festival held in a green rural bowl) or putting on their shows in medium sized count(r)y towns? For a full State of Grime nation debate go read the Dissensus thread…)

Later last weekend I found myself in a tiny rural village. One road in, one road out. Gorgeous wooded valley, no mobile reception. One stone church, two babbling brooks, one stately home (no, not that manor), few deer: the lot. Bar a few satellite dishes, I doubt the general appearance of the village had changed in decades, perhaps even centuries.

It would have been hard to find a more picture postcard vision of classical ‘Englishness.’ It’s the kind of lifestyle right wing newspapers expend a huge amount of energy defending. It’s the kind of setting left wing newspapers spend a huge amount of time eulogising in twaddly novels or indulgent arty ‘think pieces.’ And standing there it’s hard not to appreciate the lush beauty of it. Those kinds of places are the very definition of England as a ‘green and pleasant land.’

The problem for me isn’t with the place itself, it is with the place in contrast to others.

Take the concept of ‘Englishness.’ Yes these villages are in many ways the definition of ‘Englishness,’ but perhaps it’s an Englishness as it was. Personally I’m more interested in a more modern, multicultural vision of UK identity. A racially integrated, equal opportunity society – rural, suburban and urban.

It makes total sense that people who immigrate to the UK, and those who are born to parents who’ve immigrated, live in cities. At least communities can form, clustered around the few who share a common background with you. The problem is that perhaps this means the cities become increasingly more concentrated with people from multiracial backgrounds, and the countryside gets less so. The gap widens, the differences grow, the intolerance and misunderstandings increase and where does that leave the future of multiracial UK?

As any good scientist will tell you, you can’t make a trend out of a single data point… but here goes.

So I walk into the pub in this quintessential ‘old English’ village. It’s made of stone, the doors are about 5’ high, it sells funny named ales and they’ve got a beer festival on during England’s world cup games with amusingly named local bands. It’s old mans pub-tastic.

Where’s the old git chewing straw then? Oooh arrr.

Two details however, suggest a little bit of hope for a multicultural, modern Britain. One is that there’s a black family having a pint in the beer garden. At this point I’d suggest a gag in a yokel accent about ‘yer not from round ‘ere are you,’ but I sincerely hope they were. Two: guess what are the old gits at the bar talking about? Dodgy home brew? Fishing? How things aren’t what they used to be, oh no, that’s for sure?

Nope. They’re talking about the dangers of flipping eBay addiction, that’s what.

After four days surrounded by greenery so damn green it looked like it was on steroids, or some kind of mutant crack/compost, I returned to London. As the first familiar houses rose up around the car and the sense of ‘space’ contracted, I’m not quite sure, but I swear I felt that pressure return. Home sweet home, as Kano would say.

Pitch/fork

Kros - Originally uploaded by georgina c.

some words...

Flickr desi dive and beyond...

desi wedding Originally uploaded by ryanoceros.

Flickr: it's a such beautiful thing.

When the blogs and forums ain't doing it for me, I Fickr-dive; just add a tag like 'desi', 'Iraq' or 'hackney' into the search box on the homepage and just fall deep into into new worlds and people's lives. I find places I will probably never visit and see people I will probably never meet, yet experience them both in such vivid technicolour and in such a rich way - unlike the experiences of say reading a thousand empty one-line responses on forums or scanning the fractured image shards displayed search engine results.

The image above has no real connection to this post, beyond the fact that I instantly felt strongly about it while searching for the tag 'desi.' Coming home on the tube last night the carriage went overground just as I clicked on a 1Xtra radio rip of Bikram Singh ft Gunjan "Kawan (Jay Dhabi Reggaeton Remix)". Her vocals exploded into my ears as the sun poured over greater London and I felt a rush, that buzz I hadn't felt in a long time - perhaps since Mala's FWD>> set. Its felt like recently I've spent a long time listening to empty angry grime, second rate token cod-reggae dubstep and soulless dark, halfstep wannabe-Youngsta material - and it's not moving me.

On the point of digidub it's perhaps interesting to revisit Jamie Vex'd prophetic comments last year at grimemusic.com.

"...with dubstep, if it isnt halfstep, isnt minimal, and doesnt have blatant dub referenes, then some say its not true dubstep. How restrictive is that? Real dub is very organic, digital sequencers aren't. It takes alot of understanding and studio technique to go down the dub route. Without that knowledge, you can end up making Digidub. Im not in that."

Jamie OTM. It's not like I don't like real Jamaican dub, but as he says unless you understand how its done right it sounds cheesy. Drum & bass last year was full of hundreds of tracks that threw reggae samples over any beat and they sounded so token. And even if you were to get the sound right, how can cloning something made 30 years ago be better or more original than the original itself? Sure it gets a response on the dancefloor but mostly it's a creative cul-de-sac, unless you can add a fresh, original twist in the way the Mystikz can. To me applying the sonic ideas of 1970s dub to a 2006 dubstep context is a far more promising direction than sampling Lee Perry's back cat.

And as for dark empty halfstep, I guess I feel impulsively right now that I want more vocals in my life - I'm planning a new Keysound Radio: vocals edition. Part of me fears the dubstep pendulum has swung too far towards dark halfstep and is in danger of homogenising the scene. Dubstep does not equal bad clones of Loefah or copies of Youngsta's selection - don't get it twisted. Loe seriously knows what he's doing when it comes to minimalism; his clones don't. And furthermore what's the point of cloning anyway? Do you think Loe built 'Horror Show' by copying other producers? Find your own way.

But returning to desi, or more specifically desiton - the mutation of UK Asian desi with Latin American reggaeton - I posted a link on Dissensus about the Punjabi Hit Squad's pioneering of this sound. Since then I recorded the two stand out tunes last week. They are:

Bikram Singh ft Gunjan "Kawan (Jay Dhabi Reggaeton Remix)"

Alyssia ft Dee (PHS) "Pyar Hogiya (Desiton Remix)"

You can download them both on the same MP3 from those links, just as long as someone out there can tell me where the hell I can buy them from now AsianSounds.com has gone down.

FLICKR-DIVE UPDATE: Seems like the Flickr-dive effect isn't acutally limited to Flickr shots. Check this blog for jaw-drop shots of god knows where, well beyond my world. Afganistan?

You can't chat to Infinite...

Nature, Nuture Originally uploaded by georgina c.

A new set of sick photos by Drumz, all seemingly shot at Keysound O'Clock: neither day nor night ... dark nor light ... just out there stuggling, lost somewhere in the city. Find your own way gyal.

Garage story

[a history of writing]
Originally uploaded by windscreen fly.

This a revival story, true garage story,
This is my story, real garage story.

I remember those days when TPL was my home,
When me and Dusk went to Velvet Rooms alone,
An El-B should have had his own throne,
When Hatcha sets made grown men groan.

I remember when Dizzee made beats in Bermondsy,
An the Boy in Da Corner went and won the Mercury,
I remember meeting Wiley in 2002 star,
An Wonder changed my life with a Eskimo Devil mix from the boot of his car.

I remember when me and Chan spread the grime word,
Deuce magazine shouted, but nobody heard,
Kode 9 dropped “Subkon” and nobody cared,
Skream basses warped into places nobody dared.

I remember getting the tube to DMZee,
When Al-Qaeda had just bombed carriages not far from me,
And Mala dropped Anti War long before it was on TP,
And all you could feel was positivity.

I remember Dubstep Warz changing the rules,
The Burial album came armed with big tools,
Loefah’s mixdowns left blood dripping in pools,
An all the garage haterz looked like fools.

We run the roads now,
Dem outta luck now,
We make our sound and the majors dem play catchup now,
We have whole heap a extra box a dubs cause we nuh bruk now,
Rah... rah... rah ... rah.

Keysound Radio: 4Bristol mix

http://photogl.blogspot.com/
.

The Dubloaded set that wasn’t: this is for you Bristol

1. Kode 9 ‘Ghost Town’ dubplate
2. Burial ‘Distant Lights’ dubplate
3. Blackdown ‘Crackle Blues’ dubplate
4. Dusk + Blackdown ‘Submerge’ Keysound Recordings 12”
5. Burial ‘You Hurt Me (version)’ dubplate
6. Dusk + Blackdown ‘Mantis VIP’ dubplate
7. Blackdown ‘Mantis VI3’ dubplate
8. Digital Mystikz ‘People Unite’ dubplate
9. Blackdown ‘Lata’ dubplate
10. Blackdown ‘The Danger Line’ dubplate
11. Skream v Distance ‘Political Warfare’ dubplate
12. Skream ‘Deep Concentration’ dubplate
13. Blackdown ‘ZGK’ dubplate
14. Dusk ‘Mantis (Blackdown remix)’ dubplate
15. Sizzla ‘Obstacles (Blackdown refix)’ dubplate
16. Digital Mystikz ‘Forgive’ dubplate
17. Newham Generals ‘Mic Centre’ dubplate

Download the Keysound Radio: 4Bristol mix now

So here it should have been, the mix I’d spent months building from the very kick, snare and crackle upwards, from loop to track, mixdown to train south journey to Transition and three times more to collect some 10” press … only to get a slapdown from MC ‘flu virus and his shifting friends.

The mix is as exactly as I would have played it, from intro to outro. It contains fresh Mala, in ‘up’ mode, an exclusive Burial cut – the original, warm summery 2steppy mix of ‘You Hurt Me’ – and some new dubs from me. ‘Mantis VI3’ was finished and mixed for the occasion, more excursions into gongs and offkey Chinese melodies. ‘Mantis VIP’ was written by Dusk and myself and goes deeper, stranger and darker than we’ve gone before, completing the Mantis trilogy – an exploration of Chinese and Arabic offkey melodics.

My Sizzla refix was written two days after 7/7, in the same bright sunshine this mix happened to be recorded in. It’s riddled with a happy-to-be-alive vibe – I was at Archway on the tube when the bombs went off, five stops from horror. I was lucky.

Finally on another note, the mighty K Punk has weighed in with two two epic posts on the Burial LP, sparking a tasty Dissensus thread. So great to have some of the heavyweights returning their gaze to dubstep.

The Roots of Dubstep EXCLUSIVE

Brand new Pitchfork from me on Mala's lush polyrhythms, so-so grime and exclusive news of The Roots of Dubstep compilation I've been working on for Tempa.

sick

Thursday 6th April
7:00pm head to Transition to collect final dubs for Dubloaded – the third long trek south in two weeks.
11:45pm Reach FWD>>

Friday 7th April
3:30am get home from Mala smacking up Forward>>
7:30am outta bed again.
7:00pm back in bed with full on ‘flu. Hello death, you seem like a good option right now!

Given these events I just wanna properly say sorry to the city of Bristol, all Dubloaded Crew and DJ Pinch who made the effort to book me, only for me to catch a vicious strain some virus that kept me in bed for 72 hours. It’s Monday and I still feel rank. One of the symptoms even seemed to be mild tinnitus, which is nice. There’s no way I could have driven anywhere, let alone somewhere very loud! Ouch.

It’s gutting because the truth is I’ve spent three months planning my Dubloaded set, written several new tunes, mixed them down, collected exclusives from some tasty producers and spent a small fortune on dubs at Transition. Only to get the effing ‘flu! Hopefully Pinch will have me back sometime.

As a sorry to Bristol when I’m better I think I’m going to record the mix, dub for dub, that I’d planned all this time and release it from my blog. It’ll be for you Dubloaded crew, I had a few things I wanted to share with you.


In other news I know most of you have seen the BBC Collective’s dubstep documentary, but I just wanted to big it up publicly as James Cowdery and everyone involved put the scene across really well. It pains me when I see journabizmalists stagger into somewhere they know nothing about, write what they think is happening and then crash out leaving the scene fuming. Instead the BBC Collective represented.

If you check the link above, you’ll also see George Infinite’s gallery. Perhaps two of my favourite Drumz shots are of Loefah, on the link above there’s Loe and his lady Staffy pup Vinton, shot from Vinton’s perspective. The other favourite shot of mine is published in an exquisite and long overdue collection of George’s work in Slang magazine, co-ordinated by Portuguese dubstep soulja Conspira. The shot in question again uses insane perspective - visible on the mag’s website - with Loe holding his Croydon mug centimetres from the camera lense. This time however, there’s extreme light contrast too with half the image in dark shadow. The text by the image does it credit, as George skilfully sets the Croydon scene. Track this down if you can.


Keysound Recordings 001 is finally available on Bleep/Road for all the iPod/anti-shipping costs crew. Don’t watch the hyperbole about me, I sure didn’t write it.

People seem to ask why it takes so long for tracks to reach Bleep. The answer is because the artists/labels want them to. The reality is vinyl – by sales – is still the dominant medium right now. And though I don’t think this will last forever, as long as vinyl is in demand this delay will probably exist.

The process of putting a record out costs the artist/label money. There are flat and variable costs that have to be absorbed upfront, which mean that only when you sell say half or three quarters of your pressing run – which is doing well for dubstep – do you begin to break even or even make a profit. So the delay in reaching Bleep is a natural reaction to protecting their investment costs, in case digital cannibalises vinyl sales (which is debateable, but quite possible).

Comparing the two mediums right now, it currently looks like a label with say 7 big releases can make enough money off of the whole back catalogue in a year, to pay for the pressing of one release, though of course there will be exceptions. If you’re a digital evangelist the best thing you can do is vote with your mouse. The more MP3s you buy the more the labels will take note.

tokyo calling?!

I'm going to be in Tokyo this June, from 19th-23rd. I could easily pack some dubs.

Does anyone out there know any promoters who want an upfront dubstep or dubstep + grime set from me?

email me on martin_clark7@hotmail.com innit.

soundboy burial

Martin: So for the record, I’d first like to ask you to state: are you Basic Channel…?

Burial: No.

M: … Kode 9?

B: No.

M: … The Bug?

B: I’m not The Bug.

M: OK so in terms of ‘who’ you are, you’re Burial, let’s just leave it at that. Instead, tell me how did the link with Kode 9 come about?

B: I’d been making tunes for a few years, literally just for me and my brothers. That was it. I never thought outside that. There was a wall between the tunes and ever remotely thinking they would come out. For ages I couldn’t believe I could even make tunes on this shit little program I had.

B: I became obsessed with El-B and garage. Those drums. I’d been into jungle but then heard that stuff and loved it. Looking for those records I found the Hyperdub website, so I emailed Kode 9. I sent him some budget first tunes and he played one of them on Groovetech, which was so funny. For a year I had a break and didn’t send him anything. Then I sent him a CD that was a big step up to see what he thought – and we went from there.

B: It’s just wicked: I like the name “Hyperdub”. It sounded dark. That website – which is down now – was quite important for me. I’ve never sent tunes to anyone except Kode 9.

M: When did you start making beats?

B: At school I just loved jungle/drum & bass, I fell totally in love with it, just at the time when people other people didn’t. I realised my brothers had all these old d&b records, so I was going back into the older stuff and loving it. When I started making tunes it was an attempt to get that vibe like Foul Play and Omni Trio. Photek drumz … listening on headphones on the way to school. This must have been 1997, when the metal Metalheadz boxset came out.

M: Haha that’s when I stopped buying Metalheadz…

B: There was a tune on there by Digital called "Special Mission." I just thought ‘fuck - this is for me’ … but I’m not a musician, and I’m still not, in any way, but when I heard those tunes I realised you could make tunes without being ‘a musician.’

B: So to me garage sounded the same: it was also just sub and drums. Rollage. Pirate sounding… like early jungle before it became regimented and boring. MJ Cole: I love those drums just as much as I love “Hidden Camera.” He’s obviously a badman: his sound is a bit slicked out, but I still love it.

B: I discovered EL-B and garage at the same time. I heard his Brandy remix, then “Buck n Bury” and “Passage of time” - and I hadn’t even heard “Stone Cold” yet, though I’d heard of Groove Chronicles on something else I didn’t like. Then I heard “Stone Cold” and I was just like “fuck…”

M: The name says it all.

B: It's dark. That tune’s never left my head. That tune is still going around my head from the first time I heard it. And the thing about those drums: they’re still the future. It’s not a lost art – people still don’t know how to do those drums. It’s an unknown thing. It’s like the last fucking secret left in music: how you do those drums. I’ve tried. I’ve locked myself away and tried. And the thing about garage is: the more you look at it like some tech-boy producer, the less you get it.

B: It’s not the drums, it’s the impression of the drums. I’ve done bare drums I love – but then they fall apart when some studio boy says “oh your snare’s too loud.” But that’s the pirate sound… just rollage. Not an individual drum sound, it’s something else. It’s just the spirit of it, the roll of it. The drums, they’re slinky. Cold sounding. They could go anywhere. And I know some of that stuff sounds well dated, but I love it.

M: El-B’s drums are a disease - and if you understand how good they are, you’ve caught it. I had to stop trying to understand them, stop trying to re-make them. The first two-to-three years of my producing were spent trying, and only after the rhythmic consolidation of grime drums and halfstep came along did I accept there must be other better ideas, because I can’t do this better than El-B.

B: What I realised is I don’t know what he does … quantised them… he’s got kit I don’t have so I started covering everything in crackle, to hide it, bury it, so I could do those drums I love. I didn’t have the equipment to make it sound like Photek-fucking-sculpted, proper heavy, El-B heavy. So I had no choice but to put the crackle on it and get away with it.

M: I was noticing with your album today how complex the drums are. You know drums are like a language you can learn to follow? And yet even when you learn it, at their best, most brilliant, drums blur, they move in patterns beyond your brain’s ability to think or follow? I noticed with your album, your drums are sometimes indistinct, like they’re blurring into the crackle. I couldn’t tell where the drums were ending and the crackle was starting.

B: When I started sending music to Kode 9 he sent me CD back all this music with glitches and crackles. And I was like ‘aw fuck.’ He played me Rhythm and Sound, and told me about Basic Channel and Pole and I thought ‘fuck it sounds like I’m making some kind of electronica’ and I fought so hard against that because I wanted it to be just vibes, urban, that sound I love, proper UK. No genre, just a sound.

B: That’s why I like dubstep now because that’s when you know the music is in good shape because everyone’s in splinter cells. They’re in the ditch – there’s no highway to attract the rubbish producers. The lights of the highway – that’s when it goes shit. But right now it’s all ditch, just darkness, everyone’s just off, off wandering. That’s what I love and original jungle was like that, before it went shit. I mean I like a dark bassline like the next man, but you can’t have ‘male rage’ music. It’s good to have girls liking it. I want that slinky drums to come back, not bigtime but I love it in a Hatcha or Youngsta set when you suddenly hear the ghost of that sound come back.

M: Lemme play devils advocate. The club’s called FWD>>, dubplate culture is progressive, the sound moves relentlessly forward and it never looks back: how do you feel that a lot of what you do is looking backwards when everyone else is looking forwards?

B: It’s more of a thing that I tap into when I want to. When I listen to an old tune it doesn’t make me think ‘I’m looking back, listening to another era.’ Some of those tunes are sad because they sounded like the future back then and no one noticed. They still sound future to me. El-B’s stuff is still ahead of the game. I’ve heard plenty of halfstep tunes that are just a Reese bassline and wannabe glitches – they sound dated to me. That swung sound, that real vibe – I’m aware maybe the scene might move away from that, but I’m still obsessed with what the most hardcore future sound would sound like. I can hear it in my head and it hard not to go back to the goodness you like when you make a tune.

M: I’m really uncomfortable with ‘futurism’ in dubstep. Detroit techno was talking about ‘the future’ in 1988, drum & bass did it in 1997 too - and neither have brought us the future yet, it’s a false prophecy. Dubstep to me isn’t some cyber future sound, it’s now music, that ‘UK London vibes’ you talk about.

B: We’re lucky that there’s loads of producers around now who are real vibes producers, not tech-boys. They’re the real thing.

M: So what producers do you rate?

B: In terms of ‘production’ I don’t really know what that means.

M: Yeah exactly, so who do you feel?

B: I love Digital Mystikz. Similar to this whole scene, I couldn’t have dreamt them up. Their tunes go beyond other tunes straight into the heart of something else. You can’t fake that, it’s the real shit. I love Loefah’s stuff. Digital Mystikz and Loefah’s stuff is so good they make me want to stop making tunes. Some of those tunes are so good I can’t even listen to them, like “Misty Winter.”

M: You sample a lot of female vocals…

B: I’m not a big r&b fan but I love the way my favourite jungle and UK garage records use samples. Instead of having a girl sing all the way through, they just used one line and kept on circling it around. I love the way whatever it said in the vocal – that’s the name of the tune. Chuck them on some drums: that’s the sound I love, the sound I hear on pirate radio. And I’m obsessed with echoing vocals.

B: With the vocals, because I have no equipment and no studio or anything, I like putting tunes with vocals on because they give it a hook. I haven’t got kit good enough to make the music instrumentally stand up to itself.

M: But with the r&b vocals, a lot of dubstep is very masculine and you often sample women…

B: It makes it a bit more sexy. I like that. I think people are afraid of that sexy garage slinkyness. Those rhythms. I love in FWD>> sometimes you’ll just hear one of those tunes. I’m not saying girls only respond to sexy Twice As Nice music, that’s bullshit, but there’s vibes to be had there. But there’s plenty of people who if they were given any room, would make dubstep sound like slowed down drum & bass. And those people are terrified of those sexy vibes I’m talking about. They don’t want this music to have come from garage.

M: It’s almost like a fear of inner city black culture.

B: But it’s also white culture, anything from the suburban rave culture that went into drum & bass. People’s sampling video games, films. They’re scared of all that history. They just want it to be tech…. Drum & bass was a mix of all those things, so was garage and so is this.

B: I was brought up listening to drum & bass. The thing that was scary for me was when I started liking club tunes that were a bit sexier. I was tempted over to that, totally.

B: I’ve got this amazing old Foul Play tune that I love called “Dubbing You” - it sounds just like an El-B tune. I dunno: all my favourite producers came out of no-where and then went back underground. That’s what I want to be like.

M: you know the link between Foul Play and dubstep right? That Steve Gurley, the early proto-dubstep producer that El-B rated, was half of Foul Play?

B: Yeah man definitely.

M: Your album is full of reverb, that gives it the sense it’s made in a space, like it’s echoing off London walls and coming over the pirate ether. Was that deliberate?

B: If I’m making a tune sitting in my room with a cup of tea, I’m not making a tune about sitting in my room with a cup of tea, it’s like I’m out there somewhere. That’s how I started listening to jungle, going through the lightless neighbourhoods, the districts.

B: I wanna make tunes that are like a space in London but also a space in a club or in your head. A club is not that dissimilar to sitting on your own with headphones.

M: Tell me about “The Car Test.”

B: ‘The Car Test’ started with me boring the fuck out of my mates, trying to play tunes. The car test was ‘do they sound good on the car stereo at night time, driving through London?’ That’s ‘The Car Test.’ Some Detroit tunes have that too, that distance in the tune. The ‘thousand yard stare’ in the tune.

M: On the album what’s the vocal sample in “Gutted” about? “Sometimes you’ve got to go back to the ancient ways…”

B: For ages I’ve wanted to do a tune with a spoken sample in it, sound like an old hardcore tune, ‘Lord of the Null Lines’ thing. And that sample is like it could be talking about El-B or any of those producers.

M: Explain about the production set up you use…

B: I’m not a ‘musician,’ no training, nothing. So I was always scared of people who had studios. Heroes of mine like Photek suddenly became Rupert Parkes in his studio, telling everyone how he did it. The magic got a bit lost.

B: So I thought to myself fuckit I’m going to stick to this shitty little computer program, Soundforge. I don’t know any other programs. Once I change something, I can never un-change it. I can only see the waves. So I know when I’m happy with my drums because they look like a nice fishbone. When they look just skeletal as fuck in front of me, and so I know they’ll sound good.

M: So you don’t use a sequencer?

B: No.

M: So does that mean your drums are not necessarily in time?

B: My drums are definitely not necessarily in time. When I try and do drums that are too regimented, they lose something. But the moment I put drums where I think they sound good, rather than in time, they seem to have that roll, the swing of the jungle and garage tunes I love.

B: Some of the elements in the drums that make that swing are the ones that don’t fit in to a time signature and that are out. The little bits that are wrong. If I used a sequencer my tunes would sound rubbish.

B: Because I don’t have a sequencer I can’t really mess around. I can’t noodle, at all. I got to shove it together and vibe off it. I make the tune, fucking quick. Not a single tune on my album took more than a few days to make. They come together real quick and then I spend some time on the details so they’re alright to listen to.

M: So once a tune has been started how do you go back and change it?

B: I can’t. I can only affect it. I have to fade bits out or fade it if I don’t like it or replace it and hope it’s in time. It’s budget. It’s not perfect.

M: I like your music and find it refreshing because it’s about the vibe and not about the science of the sound. It’s emotion not studio engineering, which is what music should be about, primarily.

B: There’s no ‘musicianship’ in my sound, that’s the enemy of my tunes. Fuck Rhodes chords, fuck that noodle stuff. There’s been a lot of times when producers I’ve liked have gone all ‘musician’ on me and just produced shit, not underground.

M: It’s the difference between some ruff Rodney Jerkins or Timbaland production of Destiny’s Child – which is this perfect balance between sweet and sour, hard and soft, male and female – and then hearing Destiny’s Child live in a stadium backed by a session band complete with some fat drummer with too many 80s toms, a poodle-rock guitar player and some jazz-y keyboard player drawing for the presets.

B: Fuck that. If my tunes sounded like Herbalizer or some shit, I’d shoot myself. I’d throw myself under a train at Clapham Junction.

M: The LP has strong vibe of sorrow…

B: That’s the vibe old records have and I just can’t shake it. And once you’ve got a vocal sample over sub and drums, you don’t have much choice with the rest of the elements. It’s basically a Source Direct thing: it’s pure darkness but all the elements circle. You hear something and you know at another point in the tune it’s going to circle back around.

M: You also do that thing where you use a key element only once in the tune, like when you pitch up ‘now that I’ve found you’ just the once on ‘Distant Lights.’

B: All my favourite tunes ever - “Being With You remix” by Foul Play and Lonely by D’Cruze – are just rolling drums, no bullshit and just killer vocal samples. You combine that with circling stuff, it’s an ambient thing, the opposite of riffage.

M: you did your own artwork for the LP, what is it of?

B: That’s south London, from high up. The signal, like a pirate signal above London, just floating in the air. That’s what I wanted. Epic… distant lights. I love this film called Nil By Mouth by Gary Oldman because it’s the only film I’ve ever seen anyone get London properly in it, which is just distant lights, down the end of your road. That vibe, but then sometimes I don’t love it.

M: London’s a struggle, if you don’t love the struggle even to keep your head above water, you shouldn’t be here.

B: It’s a big deal. If you’re a Londoner you join some big history of people who’s lived here but are long gone. So the cover is south London, and when I’m making a tune that’s what I’m thinking of.

M: The interesting thing is that people might go ‘oh look he’s just another south London dubstep producer following on from Skream, Benga, DMZ, Loefah, El-B, Horsepower, Artwork etc…’ but the difference is while there definitely is a scene in south London, you’re not part of it, as much as you don’t know any of them or hang about with them, at all, apart from Kode 9. None of them have ever even met you. You just share an environment with them.

B: I don’t know any other producers. I don’t know anyone who makes tunes. I’m just out there. I’m not part of the scene and I can’t get up and DJ. I’m proud of this music but I’m not a fully paid-up member of the board. I’m none of those things.

M: A DJ/blogger in the US called Kid Kameleon and I talked last summer about the relationship between scenes and outsiders, how they interact and it made me think about exceptions. One example is Joe Nice, who doesn’t live here, so should in practice be an outsider, but totally isn’t, he’s completely inside and gets it 100%. You’re the opposite example, you live here and make the music, yet are an outsider.

B: To me it’s about tunes. That’s what’s reached me and that’s what I’ve put back in. I first got this when I was a kid, listening to pirate radio in my room at night and buying records. Even the internet ruins that a bit for me, the hunt to find this. I imagine other kids like this with all types of music all over the world who are also margin walkers. They’re on the outskirts. They don’t know where it’s from, they just get the music.

M: Margins are so key. When has there ever been a good record from central London? Streatham, Bow, Romford, Croydon, Newham, Thornton Heath… it’s all margin music.

B: Maybe that’s what I mean when I talk about the vibes music I love.

M: Also it’s interesting to think about pirate radio, which is local community broadcasting. Yet radio waves can’t be contained by community, they spill out inspiring people for whom they weren’t initially broadcast for and becomes part of our lives.

B: Where I live now, I can’t get a good pirate radio signal – and that to me sounds better. Sounds badder. It’s more like I can’t figure it out. The track on the LP called ‘Pirates’ is the one I always wanted to make. Fithy, dirty tune. A couple of the tunes on the LP have Rinse on in the background, playing.

B: Now I’ve finished my little DIY rave album I always told my brothers I’d make, it’s the end of a little era for me. I wanna follow it up with something really dark that this scene, whatever it is, doesn’t divide them, unites them. Not in an anthemic way but I wanna make a tune like my favourite tunes were back then. The tunes you can make and then disappear happily because you know you made that tune. That’s the tune I wanna make.

M: Serious.

B: I’ll probably never do it. I’d like to make a summer tune. I’d like to make the ‘Metropolis’ of dubstep. There’s a tune I’d like to remix, but I’d probably never will get the chance.

M: Why don’t you say which one that is?

B: I really want to remix Misty Winter by Digital Mystikz. Please. It’s the baddest tune ever made.

M: What about your remix of Kode 9’s ‘Ghost Town?’

B: Yeah I’ve done one where I’ve pitched up Spaceape’s voice a bit. My one’s more uplifting, though it’s a sad tune. That tune is to me is the real thing.

M: Do you ever have that thing where you fall asleep and when you wake up you realise the idea of one particular tune has been burning itself into your head? ‘Ghost Town’ has been in mine for months. I see the pair of bass notes, forward and reversed.

B: There are certain tunes that haunt me when I wake up. I don’t find melodies catchy, I find drums catchy. When you have a bassline in your head for a day, you’re fucked. You can’t think. Big sub slugs. I get them a lot. Because I work with waves I can write them down.

M: you’ve developed your own kind of shorthand?

B: Yeah. I can draw a fishbone and remember it later. I also used to get thrown out of class for drumming on tables, so sometimes I have to record myself drumming in case I forget a beat.

M: How many sources of crackle do you use?

B: Pirate radio crackle, vinyl crackle – I like. But most of all I like rain. Fire. I’ve got recordings of rain and fire crackle that would put most electronica producers to shame they’re so fucking heavy. That crackle sits over my drums, hides the space between them. When I started making music I could see through it and I was disappointed because it destroyed the mystery for a bit. But when I chuck crackle over it, it hides it under layers, it’s no longer mine. And you get a feel of a real environment.

B: There’s one tune on the album, ‘Prayer’ that has a recording of one dude walking down the street and the walking into a church. You can’t analyse what the change is, there’s just some change in the air, the air in the tune.

M: it’s insane because your use of crackle is exactly the reason why about two years ago I started using sonic “keysounds” in tunes and why I started Keysound Recordings, because I felt I could see ‘through’ the space in the tunes between the percussion into empty space and because I wanted to fill that space with an environment, my urban environment and consequently to place my tunes in that space. Hence I use looped “keysounds” in my tune – which is what you were doing, but without each other knowing it.

Burial “Burial” is out on Hyperdub in May. Album of the year anyone?

· Burial “Distant Lights”
· Burial “Gutted”
· Burial “Pirates”
· Burial “Prayer”
· Burial “Spaceape ft. The Spaceape”
· Burial “Wounder”
· Burial “You Hurt Me”

Also by Burial:
· Blackdown “Crackle Blues (Burial remix)"

Dubstep Allstars 3: sleeve notes

Dubstep Allstars 3: sleeve notes
Originally uploaded by Blackdown.

Dubstep Allstars Vol 3, mixed by Kode 9 and hosted by Spaceape, is the dubstep mix CD re-imagined. Armed with a mic and the same 10” dubplate weapons, but approaching from a completely different trajectory, this is a creation greater than the sum of its parts. Observe how the line gets twisted out of all recognition.

First there’s the selection, a crucial element in any DJs arsenal. This defines the range of emotional spaces likely to be encountered along the way. For this mix, Kode 9 drew from his London surroundings, taking south London dubstep and east London grime and heading into uncharted waste ground.

The majority of the material is unreleased; fresh and upfront, it’s carefully selected for its strength and potential. The effect of this is twofold. It ensures the listener is receiving the very latest sounds, the very edge of the expanding dubstep sphere as defined by the collective imagination of a self-sustaining musical community. The second effect is internal: by selecting the best tracks that fit his vision, and not simply big tracks from the most established names, it feeds back creative energy into the very community from which it they are drawn by suggesting a production meritocracy.

Given the six year history of dubstep, this is key. Evolving out of an unsympathetic early ‘00s 2step garage scene, the dubstep community has been built by the collective efforts of committed and determined individuals, without the support of major label or other financially lucrative scenes. And within that community reward and recognition are essential for long term growth.

His selection made, Kode 9 then cut them to dubplate. Not out of historical reverence or status statement but out of love for the medium’s inherent properties. Responsive and tactile, dubplates allow a DJ who wants to shape a nebulous selection of unreleased music into a coherent whole. Scraped, nudged and blended together on dubplate, individual tracks blur, while pitches and tempo interact with each other to produce new tones, keys and cadences.

While most electronic production equipment encourages composition in fixed keys or intervals, DJing makes a mockery of this. Within the +/-8% pitch range of most decks there are an infinite number of tonal subdivisions. Beat matching a given pair of dubplates often means abandoning one or both of the original tempos, and as a consequence, the original keys or tones. The mix is thus volatile and singular, not least because it’s also encoded with a unique background of decaying pops and micro-crackles from the dubplate’s fading surface.

But the mix is yet more volatile. Beatmatching is an imprecise science, the iterative art of aligning two tracks by ear in realtime. As mixes ebb and flow in and out of lock, the DJ corrects them with little nudges. These in turn produce transient flickers in the key of the riddim, a live reproduction reminiscent of grime producer Terror Danjah’s pitchbent synths or Kode 9’s own off-dissonant, mystical melodies.

Though predominantly dubstep in selection, this mix is further informed by grime’s rapid-fire DJing style. A great deal of dubstep is built from linear instrumental tracks that both evolve iteratively to give a sense of progression and are designed for precise and smooth beatmixing. By contrast in grime, where the propulsive momentum comes from the MC, riddims are often constructed in interlocking blocks of 8 or 16 similar bars. Consequently sharp switches or even gaps in sets are possible, just as long as the MCs’ bars continue to flow. DJs like Plasticman, NASTY Crew’s Mac 10 or Roll Deep’s Karnage have perfected a rapid-fire DJ style to capitalise on this.

Here Kode 9 ventures into similar territory by mixing swiftly, long before the tracks fully evolve. This both ups the sense of momentum and narrows the listeners’ field of view, blurring the line between grime and dubstep by seldom giving enough time to observe the longer progressions of dubstep tracks, nor time to appreciate whether the grime riddims are repeating their variations. At this resolution, they are one.

The effect of this kind of mixing is also to mutate the boundaries of the tracks, so production and mix decisions are blurred. Repeated listens imprint the mixes in the listeners’ memory, so that when one of the 28 tracks is subsequently heard in a dance it leaves the listener also craving for the track it is mixed here with.

Kode 9 also blurs the line between dubstep’s predominantly instrumental nature and grime’s focus on lyrics. During the first half of the mix, once dancehall MC Warrior Queen has vented her anger at London being bombed last year, Spaceape’s vocals begin to dominate the mix. Unlike a grime MC however, there’s no momentum through aggressive, percussive lyrical fury. It’s far closer to dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson in style, yet the spirit of frustration remains embedded in the lyrics. Spaceape questions social progress and gives bittersweet hanks for his own existence, despite a happy-go-lucky childhood.

By the second half of the mix Spaceape’s voice becomes far more of an instrument, bouncing around different parts of the stereo spectrum, descending from different spaces and places, to complement rather than dominate the mix. Yet it remains a welcome addition, a reminder of the Anglo-Jamaican heritage that surrounds modern urban music and the voices of ghosts lost amidst dark electronic textures.

• Dubstep Allstars Vol 3 is out next week on Tempa

LDN002

Blackdown

·'Lata'
·'The Danger Line'
·'Crackle Blues'
·'Crackle Blues (Burial remix)'

Keysound Recordings 002 out May '06 via Baked Goods Distribution.