LDN003

LDN003 promo pressure

Chantellebreakz

Chantelle and Gutta do me proud.

Feelin funky?

New Pitchfork column from me on funky house v grime and the return of El-B. That there column took about two weeks to write, trus. What with the epic packaging for The Roots of Dubstep - you'll know what I mean when you see it - it's been a busy month.

As for the photo above? El-B and Loefah in the booth at FWD>>. Lets call it "Martin's Moment II" (hold tight Infinite), the best FWD>> booth co-incidence since Wiley and Mala DMZ.

Next month my column will be co-written by Chantelle Fiddy and, back from retirement, Gutta. My normal drivel will be resumed in October. Also check Bleep/Road for Keysound 002. Watch this space for news on Keysound 003... this time there will be no long ting.

EXCLUSIVE: Mary Anne Hobbs Warrior Dubz

Mary Anne Hobbs’ Dubstep Warz show early this January left an unmistakable impression on the dubstep scene, bringing the bubbling scene to the boil and serving it up to a hungry audience. Ten months on, Mary Anne here exclusively unveils the logical extension of her show, a compilation of her own recipe. Check the tracklist and an in depth interview below.

Mary Anne Hobbs Warrior Dubz (Planet Mu)

Milanese Vs Virus Syndicate – ‘Dead Man Walking’
Benga – ‘Music Box’
Andy Stott – ‘Black’
Amit – ‘Too Many Freedoms’
Digital Mystikz feat. Spen G – ‘Anti-War Dub’
JME (Wiley beat) – ‘Pence’
Burial – ‘Versus’
Plastician feat Shizzle, Fresh & Napper – ‘Cha Vocal’
The Bug feat Flowdan – ‘Jah War’
Terror Danjah feat Mz Bratt & Bruza – ‘Give It To Em’
Spor – ‘Hydra’
Loefah feat Sgt Pokes – ‘Mud VIP’
DJ Distance & Crazy D – ‘Worries Again’
Kode 9 & Spaceape – ‘Kingstown (vocal)’

Blackdown: Are you ever personally able to comprehend the reach and impact having a BBC Radio 1 show brings?

Mary Anne Hobbs: My feeling about the show is that it’s a bridge I build between a global audience so tenacious and hungry... and the pioneering artists and producers I adore.

In my minds eye, that bridge looks like it’s made from dirty rope stretched across some devastating crevasse in the Amazon jungle… other times, it looks like a heavenly constellation built out of burning stars … and then again, it can often look like a crazy twisted Dr Seuss cartoon.

I always get a rush from e-mail and MySpace messages from places like Greenland and Brazil, Chilli and Israel. That people in such far-flung locations have even stumbled upon the show, let alone taken time out to tell me how much it means to them, that makes my heart burst. Our regular listeners come in so many shapes... there’s a barber’s shop in New York that pipes a stream to their customers every day. A Royal Navy ship’s crew stationed up in the Arctic at the North Pole. A blind boy and his guide dog Murphy who haven’t missed a show in 7 years… the actor David Hyde Pierce who played Niles Crane in the TV sitcom Frazier, he’s a regular... so is Loefah.

On-line forums are so important to me… DJ Distance put a post up at dubstep forum about the Breezeblock Dubstep Warz special back in January. Five days after that show went to air there were 20,000 hits on the thread and 28 pages of responses from people saying it had changed their lives forever... 8 months on, I still get e-mail from all over the world about that show every day.

B: In many ways the music and media industries are ‘a man’s world’. How does this affect you personally and do you think this will ever change?

MAH: Why should gender matter? Surely a person should be judged solely on their ability to do a job... Passion, commitment, degrees of knowledge and the drive to deliver something genuinely valuable as a professional, lie deep within the fabric of an individual character, and as I see it, have nothing at all to do with gender. That said, let me just take a minute to big-up some of the seriously inspirational girls in my world: Sarah & Amy who run FWD>>, Tempa and Ammunition, grime queen Chantelle Fiddy, Melissa Bradshaw from Plan B magazine, Reju Sharma producer of Bobby Friction’s show on the BBC Asian Network, John Peel’s daughters Flossie & Danda and his wife Sheila, Georgie from drumzofthesouth and my riot-gals Steph, Leah, Charlotte Gemma and Sarah, DMZ simply do not have a party without ‘em up in the place ;)

B: Judging by the selection on your show you’re pretty eclectic in your selection within a remit of dark, underground music. Is this a deliberate policy to avoid a narrow, purist agenda?

MAH: Here, I would quote Woody Allen from the film Annie Hall: “A relationship, I think, is like a shark… it has to constantly move forward or it dies”... and Artist Damian Hurst is the only man I know who’s done anything real with a dead shark. The Breezeblock has been 8 years on-air... The core axis is made up of dark electronic music in all forms, but it’s a show that exists without boundaries or prejudices of any kind. I spend almost all my time just looking for something total elemental. Something that will leave us all slack-jawed and drooling.

John Peel is my greatest hero. His playlist was boundless. I simply do not know how he found the time for all the writing he did, the DJing, TV, Radio 4 and World Service broadcasting and to raise four incredible children simultaneously. I can’t remember listening to a single show of John’s without hearing the most extraordinary and arresting pieces music he’d found, the like of which I will never encounter again. In this life or the next.



B: You’ve got a background in metal as well as underground urban/electronic music. Are these strands just different parts of your (musical) life or do you see some kind of core overlap or correlation between what appeals to you about them?

MAH: Remember, I am the girl who was so profoundly influenced by a snap shot of Metallica, I sold all my worldly goods one afternoon and bought a one-way ticket to the West Coast of America, where I lived in a garden shed for a year and went to investigate...

Seriously though, the ghetto spirit and energy that drives a truly brilliant piece of music will touch you at the same emotional level…no matter what genre that artist may operate in.

I guess there are very obvious parallels between, say for example, metal and dark drum & bass. Mike Davies who hosts the Radio 1 Rock Show and punk show the Lock Up would agree with me. He has also been Fabio & Grooverider’s producer at Radio 1 for 5 years!

DJ Distance and Jamie Vex’d are big metal fans too, and you can hear those influences, principally a storm-chasers sense of drama, twisted into their work…

There are also artists who are masters of drawing down the concentrated power of metal... compressing, warping and pressurising it, and then re-applying it in other musical fields. Mike Patton’s work, for example, with Fantomas, Mr Bungle, Tomohawk, Bjork and Exceutioners never fails to leave me breathless... I would love to hear him do something with Burial.

B: I’m currently in love with Cassie’s “Me & U” (Badboy). What’s the most overtly poppy track you’ve truly loved – perhaps even from the playlist – yet haven’t played on your show and why?

MAH: This week: Pharrell & Kanye West - ‘Number One’ (Virgin)... a proper honey-dripper... so very sweet... I’m toying with playing on the Breezeblock it right now... I’d love to hear Darqwan remix it...

B: People just take it as a given now that you can’t hear an instrumental tune like Digital Mystikz’ “Anti War Dub” played on, say, the breakfast show. The Radio 1 playlist meetings have a massive influence on UK mainstream music sales. Can you ever envision a time when the playlist would be consistently open to underground/independent, instrumental or non-PR backed music?

MAH: The playlist is always open to crossover tunes… Last year, for the Breezeblock it was Pendulum - underground drum & bass producers who delivered an instrumental titled ‘Slam’ on the Breakbeat Kaos label. Radio 1 playlisting happened after 18 months consistent support from me (admittedly for earlier and much darker beats), also from Fabio & Grooverider and latterly Zane Lowe… and, crucially, after Pendulum came with a pop record with a hook as big as Brazil.

B: One of your other passions seems to be motorcycling, surely a sport who’s key drug is speed, um... in the velocity sense of course. Dubstep, grime, alt hip hop etc – many of the styles you play on your show eschew any sense of ‘rushing.’ Is momentum important to you, both musically and physically?

MAH: That’s a very astute question... I’m a thrill seeker for real. I ran away to London at 18 to live on a car park in a bus with a hard rock band… moved into a shed in Hollywood to write about the dark underbelly of the LA scene at 21... chased down Ice-T at the height of the ‘Cop Killer’ controversy for NME, when he feared assassination. Moved undercover in Soho sex clubs and with drug dealers to the stars for Loaded magazine. Filmed with warrior biker gangs in Russia, Japan, USA and India for my TV show ‘Mary Anne’s Bikes’ which was broadcast to 120 million people worldwide by the BBC... and in 2006 I build the Breezeblock for Radio 1... I say, charge at your dreams and never look back.

B: For music headz, the power a truly great piece of music can have on you is profound. Do you think it’s possible to maintain this engagement with music throughout your whole life?

MAH: Yes... what is life without music? To me it would be as melancholy and meaningless as the Shipping Forecast…

B: Given they’re culturally very different, what do you think about the interaction between the grime and electronica scenes?

MAH: Very healthy. Check Virus Syndicate’s new night ‘Grunk’ up at Herbal on the third Thursday every month. You’ll find electronic heathens such as Cursor Minor on the same stage as the Manchester grime kru. Skepta and JME missed their slot with Plastician up at the Tyke night at Rhythm Factory just recently, so they got up to spit with Vex’d instead - devastating set... The FWD>> kru are creating real opportunities every week now for the grime and dubstep scenes to move in harmony... The Bug and Flowdan have just recorded a dazzling exclusive for my new album ‘Warrior Dubz’ titled ‘Jah War'... and my boy Plastician is coming loaded with the rudest melt of grime and dubstep to his Radio 1 Residency show...

B: As a BBC broadcaster, is it more important to maintain audience figures or reach a diverse or uncatered-for audience?

MAH: Just had the official new RAJAR listening figures today from Radio 1 and word is we are UP UP UP!! So I’m buzzing, and I hope the management will be too! Even though we are truly global and we continue to grow and to flourish, the degrees of separation between everyone involved with the show, the artists, the fans and myself are so very small, that we feel like a family … that is at the heart of my agenda… it’s a family thing for real.

B: In interviews, do you long for more trivial questions? ;)

MAH: lol! My favourite ice-cream is an old-skool whippy, single cone, no flake ;)

Mary Anne Hobbs’ show moves to a Thursday night 2am-4am on September 28th and it will be simply titled Mary Anne Hobbs. If you can’t listen live you can rewind it any time for one week at www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/maryannehobbs/index.shtml click ‘listen again’

The album ‘Mary Anne Hobbs Warrior Dubz’ is released on the Planet Mu label on October 16th. London launch party and UK to dates to follow. For more info check www.myspace.com/maryannehobbs

The Best of Newham Generals

Dem no ready yet...

Primary sources

Back in the day, co-founder of Ammunition promotions, Tempa, Shelflife and Forward>> Neil Joliffe - the man who coined the word 'dubstep' - drew a diagram to explain a little 'istory. Three years on from April 2003 and the page provides a unique document of a time when garage was in flux and dubstep was begining to find its own identity. Recognise.

No longtings: Lata's out

Lata is finally out at Boomkat. Double brapple. Expect copies in Blackmarket and other quality vinyl emporiums soon.

Dusk and I started talking about this release in September of last year, so it's hardly an impressive performance that it drops on July 20th. I'm really sorry if there's people out there that wanted it before this date.

The background is we had bare technicals with the pressing. Producing vinyl from a .wav isn't a simple process, it's a delicate artform that requires a master craftsman. After four TPs we found one: Jason at Transition, one of the scene's unheralded souljahs.

Truth is we could have put "Lata" out before, but I was adamant that quality vinyl a bit late was better than sub standard vinyl sooner... especially in the long run.

So there we go, lessons learned ("get your sh*t cut at Transition"), job done and all that. Thanks for your patience, I hope it was worth it.

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.