Shutter music

Ever since we started Keysound Recordings, I’ve strived to make the label art and music part of a whole. So when it came to illustrating Starkey’s “Gutter Music” 12”, the first release on the label not from London, I wanted something that both tied into the track and to Starkey’s home town, Philadelphia.

On the wonder that is Flickr, I found this shot by Richard B Kohn, a US-based photographer and I reached out to him. As Starkey’s “Gutter Music” 12” finally appears in shops, this is the story behind the striking images you see on the vinyl.

Blackdown: Can you tell me a bit about yourself as a photographer, when did you start?

Richard B Kohn: “As a person, I have been one who wanted to observe the world, especially the interaction of people in public settings as opposed let's say to sitting on a beach or exploring the ruins of Manchu Pichu. A natural extension is the photographic medium. At first the image becomes a souvenir, then refinements, technology, brings you to a level of sophistication as your technique matures in parallel to life experience.

I would now define my images as photo journalism concentrating on photo realism. Very few are genre based. My subject matter most often are urban street images, most involving live subjects interacting within their own comfort zone, really, I'm an observer of events. My concentration has been people at the margins of society, so many images reflect everyday situations within this strata.

The introduction of the digital image (over a decade now) significantly exploded the output possible for street photography. As long as I'm able and have the time, resources I will continue to wonder what interesting interaction I will have around the next corner.”

B: Can you tell me a bit about this day's shoot...

RBK: “The two images illustrated on the Starkey 12" were taken in Kensington, Philadelphia , just North of downtown. Since the late 1970's the neighborhood has deteriorated into a working class ghetto when many industrial factories closed, leave unskilled laborers without means of support.

I chose to shoot the abandoned stolen car, 2001, to illustrate the surrounding structures with the usually bonus of the scattered but colorful toys all surrounded by some fresh snow.

I came across the boy, 2007, while observing a Puerto Rican Independence day parade. As an African American, he was just watching on the sidewalk. I was attracted to his self-assured cockiness, clothing, as good subject, the cheap fast food establishment, even the litter gave this image the urban ghetto id.”

B: How did you come to find yourself in this part of Philadelphia?

RBK: “I actually found this part of Philadelphia by accident, when I was trying to drive to the city center on business. I became intrigued by the urban-ism, the overhead rail line, -the El-, the mix of people in the street - white, black, Hispanic - the overall dynamics and access to various characters, said, 'Shoot Me.'

Interestingly the neighborhood with its famous row houses, store front, old factory building's was on an economic comeback recently. The brick building behind the car in my photo now is a loft condo. The new realities of recent events might have slowed this comeback.

If you are interested in seeing Kensington illustrated during it's most depressed time, I recommend Eugene Richards's ‘Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue’.”

B: What did you enjoy and not enjoy about shooting there? What was it like?

RBK: “What do I enjoy, well, life. In most of American, the automobile rules, suburban shopping malls are everywhere. This atmosphere prevents casual interaction. The streets of NYC , a world capital are vibrant, Philly's main streets still have some of that urban edginess, but there is danger as well, drug dealings, shootings, prostitution, robberies...all the urban ills. One of my better shots highlights a well-known gruesome murder that made headlines nationwide a few years ago.”

B: That shot is particularly striking. What have you been focusing on recently?

RBK: “I am lately meeting photographers from the East Coast that image UE or Urban Exploration. Most concentrate on structural ruins of the last century, such as hospitals, power stations, foundries, hospitals. I use these as props when I encounter subjects to shoot. Some fashion photography uses such locations as well.”

“I have had feedback from a number of sources on my images including the NY Times, various UK sources including the Belfast media. I have documented the lives of street children in Moscow. This same group was featured in a prize winning, Oscar nominated short documentary, The Children of Leningradsky, 2004. I just got feedback from video images from my subjects from 2 different Belfast shoots from 5 years ago. I may want to revisit the subject and do a yesterday and today follow-up. Photography does have it's rewards.

· Richard B Kohn has lots more amazing images of Philadelphia on Flickr. He also has images on Picturepush. Starkey’s Gutter Music ft Durrty Goodz is out now on Keysound Recordings.

Rinse March, WhyNot and FWD

Rinse FM this Thurs 11pm. You know what to do/get on the floor/do the do...

Then after that we're playing Why?Not on Saturday 28th @ Scala. On Sunday April 5th we're at the Roots of El-B launch party @ FWD>> alongside Kode9.

Dusk and I are kinda treating these two club sets as part of a whole and have been planning a strictly rollage set for FWD>>. The thinking is to play all the stuff from 2009 that comes from or is inspired by Ghost circa 2000.

As a consequence the Why?Not set should be built around the other elements of our usual set, namely grime, wonk and stripped back halfstep.

Dusk + Blackdown Rinse FM March 09

DOWNLOAD the set here

Shout to all the forum crew repping during the show...

Wiley "Ice Rink (Dizzee Rascal vocal)" (Eskibeat)
Wiley "Ice Rink (Kano vocal)" (Eskibeat)
More Fire Crew ft Dizzee Rasal "Still the Same" (Go! Beat)
Wookie "Battle (MJ Cole remix)" (Soul 2 Soul)
Bump & Flex "Long Time Coming" (Heat)

Durrty Goodz "Mr Street" (Ultrasound)
Starkey "Miracles (Jamie Vex'd remix)" (unreleased)
Zomby "Eskiwinter" (unreleased)
Ms Brat "Wheel ft Dizzee Rascal" (unreleased)
Gemmy "Rainbow Road" (unreleased)
Lava Unit ft Ms Brat, Badness, D.E.Velopment "What U Got Our Poket" (unreleased)
Noaipre "Hombre Bueno Pierde" (unreleased)
Ms Beats and Silkie "Purple Love" (unreleased Deep Medi)

Zomby "I Want You" (unreleased)
Tempa T "Next Hype (Starkey remix)" (unreleased No Hats No Hoods)
Vibzin "Digital Funk" (unreleased)
Trim "Titans ft Wiley" (Soulfood)
Desto "Disappearing Reappearing Ink" (unreleased)
Joker & Ginz "Re Up" (unreleased)
Blackdown "Beta" (unreleased)

Sbtrkt "Rekorder" (unreleased)
MRK1 "Magnetic Device" (unreleased Earwax)
Peverelist "Untitled" (unreleased)
VVV "Notice Luv" (unreleased)
Grievious Angel "Flu Virus (version)" (unreleased)
Kryptic Minds "Badman (aka Loefah v DMZ)" (unreleased)
Kryptic Minds "Dissolved" (unreleased)
Sbtrkt "Step in Shadows" (unreleased)
Kulture "Yes We Can" (unreleased)

Geiom "Eyl Booty" (unreleased)
Rapid "Report to the Dancefloor (Donae'o remix)" (unreleased)
Martyn "Electric Purring" (unreleased)

Rinse:08 Alexander Nut

Nothing stings like a sucker punch. Swung from out of nowhere it connects and leaves you reeling, wondering what the hell hit you? Well mix CD Rinse:08 sees Alexander nut you fair and square between the eyeballs. And guess what: you never even saw it coming. I barely even saw it coming, and I’ve DJed after the man twice (at The End).

But Rinse:08 left me on the canvas seeing stars. It’s a heavyweight, first round KO.

I go deeper into what’s exceptional about this mix on the CD’s sleevenotes, but stepping back I think one reason is a simple factor as “selection.” Alexander has an ear for quality, much of which is unfamiliar yet grabs instantly. Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, Morgan “Spacek” Zarate, Roots Manuva and Eric Lau all connect on a hip hop level. Then there’s Joker, Rustie, Zomby and Pinch woven seamlessly together. Dancehall and r&b go into the blend too, but Bullion steals the show.

And yes, I know, no one likes the term “w*nky” right now, not the artists concerned especially since Simon Reynolds’ K-clanger, but in many way this mix is the perfect encapsulation of what I saw when I first well-meaningly used the term: a seam of common innovation running through disparate multiple scenes: dubstep, grime, broken beat, hip hop and r&b.

In an era of access to unprecedented volumes of data, musical or otherwise, people complain the joy of discovery is being lost, that there are no more surprises anymore. Well all I’m saying is when you wake up with a purple bruise between your eyes don’t come to me looking all surprised. You’ve just been Nutted.

· Download Alexander Nut's Rinse shows from their blog. He headlines his CD launch party this Sunday at FWD>> with support from Mark Pritchard/Harmonic 313, Joker and Youngsta. If that lineup doesn’t somehow interest you, you’re on the wrong blog. Move along, move along, nothing for you to see here...

On the Origin of Scenes

Figure 1: Status quo

The musical scene is large and well established



Figure 2: Outbreak

Frustrated with the status quo, musicians migrate from the core

this could be any established genre



Figure 3: Shared values

Some of the musicians find common ground and create a new camp

this is the "what do u call it" moment, where the rate of change and posibilities are the greatest



Figure 4 & 5: Growth and influx

The new scene attracts an influx and grows

this is funky right now, dubstep three years ago, grime five years ago



Figure 6: Becoming the status quo

The scene becomes the status quo

And frankly, who wants to be Status Quo... only joking. ;)

Roots of El-B

Ammunition and Blackdown present... The Roots of El-B

1. Ghost "The Club"
2. Ghost "2000"
3. El-B "Express"
4. El-B "Show A Little Love feat. Simba & Juiceman"
5. Ghost "Lyrical Tempo"
6. El-B "Digital feat. Juiceman"
7. El-B "Buck n Bury (Original Mix) feat. Juiceman"
8. Zed Bias "Time Out (El-B Remix)"
9. Zed Bias "Neighbourhood (El-B Remix)"
10. Brasstooth "Celebrate Life (El-B Remix)"
11. El-B "Serious feat. Rolla"
12. El-B "Cuba"
13. El-B "Cruiser"
14. El-B "Amazon"
15. El-B "Among The Stars"

Nine years since it all began in Streatham, the king of new dark swing drops his longplayer. Tracklist and sleevenotes by me, design by Stu, hard graft by Soulja. Unfinished business duly finished.

Rinse Feb

Me and Dusk rolled through Rinse FM on Thursday.

Dusk + Blackdown Rinse FM Feb 2009

DOWNLOAD IT HERE.

Sovereign ft. Specialist Moss "Rose In My Garden "(Black Rose Mix)" (Bigger Beats)
Michelle Weeks "Don't Give Up" (Baffled's Midnight Mix) (Ministry of Sound Recordings)
Qualifide & Jason H "Get it Together" (Qualifide mix) (Qualifide Recordings)
Wildchild "Jump To My Beat Todd Edwards Jump Remix)" (Hi Life Recordings)
Double 99 "Rip Groove ft Top Cat (vocal club mix)" (Satellite Records)
Horsepower "What We Do - Remix" (Tempa)
Hindzy D "Target" (Slimzos)

Don Goliath "Freedom (Gravious remix)" (unreleased)
Newham Generals ft Dizzee Rascal and G Man "Violence" (unreleased)
Franz Ferdinand "Ulisees (Zomby remix)" (unreleased)
Stature "Gardeners World" (unreleased)
Fantastic Mr Fox & Rich Reason "Bleep Show" (unreleased Hemlock Recordings)
DVA "Bullet A'Go Fly ft Badness, Killa P, Flowdan and Riko (Dusk + Blackdown remix)" (Keysound dubplate)
Starkey "Gutter Music VIP" (Keysound dubplate)

**Zomby "Entropy Sketches"** (15 minute mix)

Kryptic Minds "Organic" (unreleased Swamp 81)
Kryptic Minds "Generation Dub" (unreleased Swamp 81)
Kryptic Minds "Hide the Tears" (unreleased Swamp 81)
Loefah "Root (Kryptic Minds VIP)" (unreleased)

Sbtrkt "Soundboy Shift" (unreleased)
Silkie "The Horison" (unreleased)
Pearson Sound "So Far Ago" (unreleased)
Peverelist "Bluez" (unreleased)
Reso & ID "Torvus" (unreleased Smoke)

Shed "Another Wedged Chicken (Martyn remix)" (unreleased)
Kode 9 "Black Sun" (Hyperdub)
Donae'o "Party Hard (vocal mix 2)" (unreleased)

Spyro

Blackdown: So let’s start with the Rinse CD, when did you get asked and how did you go about approaching it?

Spyro: At the end of last year. When I first found out I was going to do it I was kinda overwhelmed. So I asked people “what would you like to hear on a CD?” Vocals? Instrumentals? I got different kind of feedback, some people wanted to hear a little bit of old school, some people wanted to hear a CD they could enjoy. So I just kinda done that: stuck a little bit of everything in there.

B: So who was it you asked?

S: I would even ask ravers outside a rave. If I’d done a rave I’d ask them ‘if I was to put a CD out, what would you want to hear?’ Because on the radio I play kinda everything. And they’d say: ‘yeah man, just do you.’

B: That’s what’s interesting about your CD is because while you’re known for being loosely associated with grime, this is all styles...

S: Yeah it’s kind of a good look, because this is the direction I want to be in. It’s important because as me being a music man, I wouldn’t just like to be in one scene. I’d like to conquer a few things. Obviously I produce as well so me being just a grime producer wouldn’t fulfil my dreams. I’d rather try out other things.

B: It’s an interesting time with the 140 tempo right now. I remember watching garage when you could play DJ Zinc next to Todd Edwards next to 2step into DJ Narrows. It felt like within that tempo you could do anything. Suddenly it feels like that again when you’re mixing grime with bassline, dubstep with funky plus old school too.

S: Yeah it’s a good look, it’s definitely a good thing because when you go out, it’s all about the ravers really because they listen to the radio and they just want to have a good night. Even if they’re staying in they want to hear good music. It is a good thing to play everything so everyone gets to hear what they want to hear.

B: To me you were the first DJ I saw to really use the Pioneer CDJ1000 deck look like a completely different instrument. Were you playing vinyl before and when did you switch?

S: I was playing vinyl and dubplates before and I still do sometimes, I do take a few to radio. But I just wanted to try CDJ1000s out and I really liked them and I stuck with them really. This was end of 2006 maybe.

B: What is there that you can’t do with a record deck like a Technics 1210 that you can do with a CD deck like a Pioneer CDJ1000?

S: Well if I told you I’d have to kill ya!

B: Secret tricks of the trade!

S: Nah you know what yeah, there’s so much things it’s unbelievable.

B: To me it wasn’t even the mad tricks, it was that you could get the next track queued up so much quicker and this means you can change how you mix, or how fast you mix.

S: Yeah it’s a little bit quicker because what I do on the Pioneers I can still do on Technics. All it is that I’d have the record or the dub out of the sleeve, sat under the deck, waiting.

B: I almost don’t believe you but it’s big talk if you can. Because all you need to do to get the next track with CDs is press ‘next track’ there’s no putting the needle on the record or finding the start.

S: Yeah CD decks are definitely quicker but there are some people out there who can do it with vinyl such as Mak10 or Maximum on Technics. I’ve seen it done before, it can definitely be done.

B: Has that speed affected how you mix, because you can roll so quickly between tracks?

S: Yeah I wouldn’t say it’s improved it but it makes it more interesting.

B: So how long have you been on Rinse for then?

S: I’ve been on five years, it doesn’t feel like it though. I joined end of 2004.

B: I’ve just finished my first year, I hope I get to five years! So what does your Rinse show mean to you?

S: So do you know what, it means a lot. For me to start out 3-5am on a Wednesday and graft my way up the rankings to Saturday 7-9pm, it means a lot to me. On my show there’s dedicated listeners and I always give back to them: I’ll give away T-Mobile credit, Virgin credit. I’ll say the numbers over the air because there are people who are truly dedicated out there so I just want to give them back something.

[NB: Spyro has since moved to take 3-5pm on a Sunday the legendary Slimzee slot - Blackdown]

B: I know I’m biased but there doesn’t really seem to be anyone like Rinse...

S: No there isn’t. There used to be, back in the day: Déjà Vu 92.3, but now it’s like they are not in our league. There’s no station in our league. Kiss FM took some DJs from us, Target’s on 1Xtra but we set the pace and everyone else follows.

B: So how do you go about making each show better?

S: When I first went on there I played new people and made them recognised. That was my job. Now I’ve done that for so many people... like you see that Rebound X “Rhythm and Gash”? In 2004 I used to play that. 2004! And there’s a few Rudekid tunes I’ve played first. I’m just trying to get people known: now Rudekid is gone with the wind. Now I wouldn’t say that is my fault in particular but you know what I’m saying. I’m helping. If I can help someone new: that was my job. But now I just get on with my show, I get new tracks from all over. I even play tunes from people in places like Sweden.

B: And what is the best way for people to get you music?

S: MySpace is key. People think it’s dead but MySpace and yeah, my email. Or I might just do it the old school way and just go and meet them and flick through a few tracks.

B: It must be a different thing being a grime DJ now because when grime began there was much more balance between the DJs and the MCs/producers, but now it seems like a thankless task to be a DJ/producer because the MCs run so much of grime...

S: This is reason why you hear Spyro with no MCs on his show. Because the DJ can live without the MC but the MC can not live without the DJ. Because listen: I don’t really need an MC on my show. Why? Because I’ve got his CD in my CD pouch and I could just play it. In a rave I could just play it so him being there wouldn’t really make a difference.

B: So do you feel like you’re re-asserting the power of the grime DJ?

S: Of course man we need more DJs that can do a show or rave without the MC. If they can do that than they are setting the pace. It’s like, the other day I did Dirty Canvas with Tempa T. Tempa T is one of the most hype MCs you could ever get. You can not get no more hype than Tempa T. He’s good. But when he comes on my set, it’s all about him: people forget about me. But if I just play his tune, I get more recognition.

B: It’s funny because in the early days a lot of the MCs that shaped grime got big by being on Slimzee’s set. That was the thing you did to get bigger. But since then it’s been much more about the MCs, so it’s good you’re pushing back. So what other DJs do you rate?

S: There’s so many good DJs, you know that! I reckon there’s so many, undercover ones that’s so good that people don’t even realise are good. They don’t want to give them the time of day. Like me, some people did not give me the time of day. Obviously Maximum is there, he’s definitely one of the top 3. Vectra is there as well. There’s people coming up like JJ, he’s going to be one of the ones.

B: I’ve seen JJ’s name about a lot recently.

S: Trust me, he’s putting in the work, proper networking and stuff. But there’s lots, proper undercover DJs like Beezy’s DJ and stuff.

B: What about Marcus NASTY because you did a pretty amazing show with him last year?

S: You see me and Marcus, I’ve known him since when we were kids. So it’s a thing where we’ve got that kind of bond.

B: One of the things that made me laugh with the show with Marcus is when he was teasing you a bit about how you were “itching to do funky...” What did you make of that?

S: Now you see him yeah, he loves to make jokes out of everything. I’ve produced a few funky tracks and that’s why he makes jokes like “he’s itching to jump on this.”

B: So what is your take on funky right now because obviously there’s a lot of grime producers heading that way but also grime and funky are slightly different tempos and vibes. How do you feel about it?

S: I like it man, I like house too. I like it all man. I even like techno. There’s a few electro bits: I like music. If I like it and it’s good I’ll just listen to it and find out more about it.

B: You seem unbothered by boundaries whereas some DJs just try and do one thing.

S: I will never ever limit myself. It’s the way forward. Because if you limit yourself you end up... I wouldn’t say no-one I’d say no-where. And I want to be in Tokyo, where N-Type is. Every week. I wanna be there man. I wanna be everywhere!

B: The secret to them kind of gigs is booking agents. That’s a different story. But with funky and grime and the fact that with CDJs you can bend tracks so far they fit into one set, do you find this helps?

S: Definitely. You know there’s a button to normalise the whole pitch? Sometimes if I’m playing old school I’ll normalise the old school tune is not splatting so far.

B: More tricks of the trade! So how did you end up grouping the tracks on the CD? It sounds like you played more vocals at the beginning.

S: Yeah I just basically did four sample CDs but I picked this one because it sounded like me. The other ones sounded like a different DJ playing my dubs. It didn’t sound like me. The way I select I will select any way, any how. I will mix it in the middle of the tune, at the beginning of the tune. The CDs I didn’t choose had a tune and then me mixing one in at the end, then a tune and then me mixing another in at the end. It sounded like a robot. On the one I chose I just wanted to just throw them in the way I wanted to, because that’s the way I do it.

B: The way you got Joker’s “Retro Racer” out of Dizzee’s “I Love You” was pretty different, with the looping.

S: And you know what yeah, I didn’t even know I was going to do that, I just done it. I just done it, spur of the moment. I swear down...ha ha, I shouldn’t have even told you that! I don’t know... well obviously do know how I did it but I just pulled it off. I’ve never done it again, I just pulled it off first time.

B: I’m not 100% sure that final fragment is in time, but nobody is caring. It works because it’s such a small fragment. So tell me, why are VIP mixes important to you as a DJ?

S: It’s important that you keep a VIP to yourself forever. You’ve just got to keep it because if you don’t, it’s not a VIP. Some people ask me for my VIPs. “Can I have it?” I’m like bruv, it’s a VIP! I learnt from my mistakes when I asked Plastician for one of his tunes which I didn’t even clock was a VIP. And he was like “nah nah, sorry mate this one’s just for me.” So then I went off and DOK is my cousin so it’s not hard getting a VIP from him or a few other people.

B: I did wonder how you had DOK beats really early!

S: Yeah we’re family mate. Keep it in the family!

B: So VIPs just give your set the Spyro stamp?

S: You know what yeah, Slimzee can go for his whole show playing is dubs and VIPs, so you’ve just got to put the barrier up for someone to break, and then you put another one up. It’s the way forward.

B: So how did you choose these tracks?

S: I was messing around one day and I was like OK, let’s just find a tracklisting to see what went good with each other. And I narrowed it down from 60 to 50 and then down.

B: It’s good. Tracks like “Fly By” some of the youngers might not even have been around for some of those tunes.

S: That’s what I’m saying, that’s why I just wanna put the word out that I don’t just play grime. I just want to be known as internationally heavy. I swear I just wanna make it man, I just wanna be in and out of the country doing so many different shows. It’s like a dream to me.

B: A booking agent is you...

S: I don’t even think I would have one, you know that?

B: They open doors. They open different doors, there’s certain levels you can’t get to without one. But it looks like you’ve done some pretty cool stuff though, like Glastonbury. How did the Nas support come about?

S: That one I was just going to do with Tinchy Stryder, because I’m up and down the roads with him, doing tours. I’ve done like three or four tours with him up and down the UK.

B: And Tinchy was supporting Nas at the 02? So what was it like to play there?

S: It was massive. There was so much people it just looked crazy man. It was one of the biggest ones I’ve done.

B: It don’t get much bigger than that! I remember back the day watching Karnage come on with Dizzee, when he supported Justin Timberlake at Earls Court, and Karnage on that size of stage looked very small.

S: Tiny innit!

B: That’s why they have the big TV screens behind you.

S: Haha you look tiny innit! It’s true.

B: You need some stilts!

S: Haha.

B: So what does that feel like?

S: It’s crazy because if the DJ flops he flops the act. So it’s all pressure on the DJ really. If the MC flops he flops. It’s pretty hard with them big crowds.

B: So what was Glastonbury like? Because that’s another barrier that London/urban acts have struggled to get through over the years...

S: Glastonbury, I panicked. Actually I’ve never told no one this but when I started the set one of the decks was not moving off the middle pitch. Zero.

B: Shit.

S: And when I actually got it working I went mad. I proper regained myself. The first mix I’d done I was just flinging the side of the platter to get it in because I was panicking. There was so much people, thousands of people watching me and Ghetto. It was crazy man. I played on the Introducing stage.
I’m going back on tour again with Tinchy Stryder and N Dubz. I’ve been on tour with Tinchy Stryder and Kano and with a few rock and reggae bands as well. Have you ever heard of Bedouin Sounclash? I’ve been on tour with them and we’re really good mates with them you know. They ring up sometimes. They’re really cool people. And Jack Penate, he’s really good. He’s got so much fans. Sometimes you don’t know the people you’re going on tour with but when you see how much fans they’ve got it changes your whole perspective on them.

B: Course. A lot of these indie bands do have a lot of fans, I just don’t think they’re that good.

S: It’s true, it’s true. But for me to go and of my thing in front of all of them and make them like it, that’s another door open.

B: Can you tell me a little bit about how you got started?

S: I’ve been practicing for eleven years. I actually started on jungle. From there I just stayed in my room and practiced and practiced and practiced. And I’m here now.

B: Were you on radio before Rinse?

S: I was on Raw UK.

B: Is that before it was Raw Mission?

S: After.

B: Eleven years: it makes more sense to me now, if you’re also playing old tunes like “Fly By”...

S: Yeah I really do know every tune. I’ve got ‘em all.

B: Do you have a rivalry with Maximum? Because he’s another person who loves old school tunes as well...

S: You see Maximum yeah, I went to my cousin’s house one day and I met him. We were all mixing and we’ve been friends from there. This is when we were thirteen or fourteen. Not DOK, one of my other cousin’s houses. So we’ve know each other from then: quite a few years, so we’re from that same era.

Y’see, we used to proper collect records. My stack of records is ridiculous, and his one is worse than mine because he’s a rich boy haha. We’ve still got our record collections and I wouldn’t say we sound the same but we do go way back together...

Spyro plays Sunday 3-5pm on Rinse

Rough Trade East

Just some quick updates. We're playing an In Store at the mighty (new-ish) Rough Trade East shop off Brick Lane on Monday 23rd Sunday 22nd of Feb, supporting Gang Gang Dance The School and Opium Factory. This is off the back of "The Bits ft Trim" from our album being signed to Rough Trade's Counter Culture 08 compilation, which is selected by the employees of the shop. It also features Flying Lotus, Rustie, 2562 and a variety of other acts from myriad genres.

Elsewhere we've got Rinse on the 26th, and Dub Pressure in Brighton on the 27th, playing one hour upfront dubs and one hour "Roots of..." set. We don't do the latter often but they're usually alot.

Gotta say thanks to Starkey and anyone else patiently waiting for the "Gutter Music" 12". We've had several technicals with the pressing but trust me I'm on it, daily. When it's ready to drop, I'll put the word out. Following the Starkey EP there's a whole bunch of new Keysound releases ready. Hold tight for them.

The Roots of El-B 2x12" vinyl sampler is out now at Dubplate.net. This can only mean one thing: that Roots of El-B CD is dropping soon, which it is. It features the best of El-B's Ghost canon and extenstive sleevenotes from me chronicling the brief but influential history of the crew. I spent nights digging up my old interview tapes with Lewis, remembering what it was like sitting in Ghost Studios or in some cafe in Streatham and re-reading Kode's interviews with him. I'm really happy with how the notes came out.

Finally, out to everyone asking about my Pitchfork "Month in dubstep and grime" columns. The situation is that they've asked all the specialist writers not to contribute columns for Jan and Feb. I offered to write it for free - trust me, I've not been doing it for the money - but this didn't help. So, we'll see.

Haarlem, Rinse and Fabric

So Dusk and I got back from club Patronaat in Haarlem, Netherlands last night but the glow still hasn't worn off. I've been wanting a gig like that for some time and I found it. It was kinda like our DMZ or Dub War set from last year: just pure pleasure.

We could hear perfectly to mix and people seemed into what we were doing no matter what we threw at them, so we did. 2step, wonk, grime, techy stuff, soul refixes, jungly beats and this weird new roller I've just finished: everything seemed to be well recieved. Ingmar, Ramadanman and the Dub Infusions massive, we salute you.

Then we returned to play Fabric with Luke Envoy and Kutz.

UPDATE: check Dub Infusions own videos of the night here and here.



RINSE

Dusk + Blackdown Rinse FM January '09 - download it here.

Es-G "Roll London City" (Shelflife)
Ghost "The Club" (Ghost)
The Henchmen "Funktion" (Sidestepper)
Jammin "Kinda Funky (Wookie remix)" (Bingo)
Ghost "Express" (Ghost)
Horsepower "Classic Delux pt 2" (Tempa)

Sticky and Ms Dynamite "Bad Gyal" (unrelased)
Sarantis "More Than Money ft Warrior Queen (Starkey remix)" (unreleased)
Ruff Sqwad "Bring Ur Crew" (unreleased)
Nocturnal "Old Style" (unreleased)
Tempa T "Next Hype" (unreleased No Hats No Hoods)
Joker "Psychedelic Runway" (unreleased)
Starkey "Club Games" (unreleased)

DJ Mujava "Township Funk (Ikonika remix)" (unreleased)
Blackdown ft Durrty Goodz "Concrete Streets (Zomby remix)" (unreleased)
Computer Jay "Distance" (unreleased Ramp Recordings)
Kotchy "Sing What You Want (Rusko remix)" (unreleased)
Joker and Ginz "Purple City" (unreleased)
Grievous Angel "Harpy" (unreleased)

2000F ft Riko "Copenhagen Big Murderah" (unreleased)
Naptha "Soundclash (Grievous Angel VIP)" (unreleased)
2nd II None "Custard Pie" (Heavy Artillery)
Horsepower "Kingstep" (Tempa test press)
Untold "Sweat" (unreleased)

DVA ft Badness, Riko, Flowdan and Killa P "Bullet a Go Fly (Dusk + Blackdown remix)"(unreleased)
Skream "A Dark Light" (unreleased)
Joe "Rut" (unreleased)
Starkey "Gutter Music VIP" (forthcoming Keysound Recordings)

Donae'o "Party Hard" (unreleased)
DZ "What You Wont Do For Love" (Slit Jockey)
Double Helix LHF "Blue Steel" (unreleased)
Pangea "Mosaics" (unreleased)
Faulty DL "To London" (unreleased Ramp)

Derelict London

I got this book, Derelict London by Paul Talling for Christmas. And while that already seems like a long time ago, this book increasingly feels of the moment. While every other advert seems to tenuously mention the credit crunch before going on to try to sell you something painfully unrelated, Derelict London was probably written during prosperity. It will soon have a whole new books worth of failing buildings to document.

I first found the Derelict London site when searching for images to illustrate pieces about decay. But good on Talling for actually converting the site into a cool, pocket size book. Each page shows a different abandoned building within London: the facing page provides the context and some interesting, anecdotal history. Some buildings are ordinary, some are extraordinary. Some are familiar, others sit hidden in familiar places. The book is grouped into nine chapters, which aligns the buildings along themes.

Derelict London is a wealth of nuggets. There’s a building in Whitechapel where Stalin stayed the week the Bolshevik’s consolidated their power. There’s a bricked building Dusk and I walk near on the way to studio that I must have seen hundreds of times in the last 15 years. I had no idea it was a Second World War bunker for 8,000 people. There’s disused Tube stations, dumped Russian tanks and abandoned railway lines that was the site of an accidental First World War TNT explosion that killed 400 and damaged 70,000 properties. Then there’s the reason why the Arsenal football team are called Arsenal and why they play in red. And I discovered why the skyscraper I saw on 2007 London Open House weekend had to be demolished floor-by-floor from the bottom up.

Lots of the histories of the buildings are added to with anecdotes and folklore, part from interviews at the location and part from the community on the Derelict London site. In this way Talling was told how in 1977 someone at the bar of the Tidal Basin Tavern was shot dead by a shooter who just stuck his head through the doorway. Similarly on site at Kings Cross’ distinctive Lighthouse Building (you can’t miss it from the Scala, where the recent Why? Not dubstep rave we played at was held), squatters relayed to Talling how if you go into the basement and then down a staircase of the Lighthouse, you found yourself on a disused tube platform.

Ultimately though, many of the pages end with the words “converted into apartments.” The economics of redevelopment have become an all pervading force in London this decade, as the relentless growth of the housing market continued. Club after club closed under the pressure of the profits to be made from converting music venues into flats. In recently memory London’s lost The End, the Astoria, Turnmills and literally dozens more.

Yet the credit crunch, which happened after this book was written, might just have stopped the developers in their tracks. There’s talk of the funding for The End’s redevelopment having run out, as lending in between banks and creditors dries up. High unemployment is undeniably bad, but it often means passionate, heartfelt music is created. Who knows, maybe London, starting with The City, will become a ghost town, all the clubs closing down? If so, at least Paul Talling, originally himself a music promoter, will be around to record it.

2008: thank you and good night

Well, 2008 is nearly over. Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you all! So I thought a little present might be seasonal, scroll down for more.

Looking back it's been a pretty amazing year for me and Dusk. "Margins Music" got finished and came out as the same time as a 12 page booklet and 6 minute video and I didn't quite have a total mental breakdown. I dont think I have ever put so much of my heart and soul into any one thing before, so thanks massively to Baked Goods (distribution), Transition (mastering), Charles Nomad (PR), Stu Give Up Art (art), Shaun Bloodworth (cover shots) and Jonathan Howells (video). Thanks to everyone who put it in their end of year charts (Simon Reynolds, Starkey, The Observer, The Wire, Time Out Chicago, T++, Boomkat, Melissa Bradshaw and more).

DJ-wise it's been amazing too. Highlights were definitely the album launch at FWD>> and any time we played for them at Plastic People. Joining Rinse was a total honour: having Trim show up unexpectedly was a total buzz. Playing DMZ and Dub War in New York were both pretty incredible. Clashing on Mary Anne Hobbs' Radio 1 show was a lot (audio here and here). Emptying the room after Ghetto's Dirty Canvas album launch was remarkable. Going out onto the main stage of The Big Chill was hillarious for that "what are we doing here?" vibe. Hold tight Fabric, The End, Scala, Ministry, Herbal, Bristol, Belgium, 93 Ft East and Plan B.

So what does 2009 hold? Onwards and upwards I think. More blogging: if there's stuff I'm inspired enough by to want to share I'll give it coverage here. More Rinse shows, trying to maintain the standard of the beats we select. More Keysound releases, of that there is no doubt. Starkey ft. Durrty Goodz EP is next. More comps: Roots of El-B is done, expect samplers v soon. Musically I want to keep pushing at the edges, in multiple different directions and styles be they 2steppy, percussive, beatless, funky, wonky, grimey, instrumental, vocal, MC-lead, masculine and/or feminine but mostly bassy. 2009 should be a make or break year for dubstep: it's time to ride on through, or indeed past, the darkness. Let's roll.



So yeah, a little present, as tis the season. I recently scanned in my 2004 Deuce magazine interview with Digital Mystikz and my more in depth piece featuring Loefah from Dummy in 2007. I'm pretty sure the Deuce piece is the first ever DMZ interview, commissioned when "Pathwayz," their breakthrough track, was on dub. You can either download them all here or check them on Flickr. They're upped as hi res, just click on the image and "all sizes" for the largest version. Enjoy.

• Download them all here or check them on Flickr

Merry Christmas. See you on the other side.

Martin

Going on differently: grime meets the YouTube refix

From the moment Dizzee and Wiley decided they were “artists” not MCs, grime has presented itself as a culture rather than a musical sound. Moving beyond the UK garage legacy of being just one-dimensional DJ-hosts in clubs, this shift suddenly enabled new directions of creative possibilities. One of those was, naturally, the visual angle.

For a while grime specialised in gritty realism. The grime DVD, be it Lord of the Mics or Conflict was, before the mixtape took over, one of the dominant mediums. A classic example of this is the fallout between Crazy Titch and Dizzee, from Conflict. As they spill out on the twilight of the Déjà Vu roof, the contrast between their respective fates couldn’t be larger: Dizzee began the new phase of his self-signed career with a number 1 single. Titch is inside for murder.



There’s no shortage of gritty grime footage on YouTube, moving from rave footage and roadside DVD slewage to increasingly professional music videos, like JME’s Serious Remix or Ruff Sqwad’s “RSMD”.

But as the audience of YouTube grew, so did it’s potential to become a front door for exciting new video talent, allowing grime to move away from these two styles into new avenues (check Newham Generals viral "Violence" video).

This post highlights two video directors not central to the core grime scene but taking it in an entirely different visual direction. Starting from a sampling and refix mindset and applying it to visuals, these videos combine manga and cartoons to provide both free promo for grime MCs and exciting new visual/audio contradictions to boot.

DR. SMOOV

Plastician featuring Skepta- Intensive Snare
Directed by DR. SMOOV



The first interview is with DR. SMOOV, who by his own admission isn’t steeped in the grime scene, but was definitely the first visual artist I noticed working with grime in this style.

Blackdown: Can you tell me a bit about your work, how did you get into making videos? how long have you been doing it?

DR. SMOOV: I'm an artist, I reside in Los Angeles, CA, been working as a freelance Producer/Director/Editor for about 9 years in the industry. I have hundreds of videos on the internet, and have worked professionally for all the major American television networks at one time or another in the last decade. In the past couple years, my web series of GiJoe and Transformers cartoon mashups have been gaining significant popularity. DR. SMOOV has a long history. Between film school, producing cable access programs in NY in the 90's, and working professionally in LA, I've logged about 18 years total making videos- I started when I was 13 and have never stopped. (nor will I ever) It's just what I do.

B: Can you tell me about how the Plastician video came about?

DR. SMOOV: I was contacted by Plastician in early 2008 about the possibility of commissioning me to cut a video for a track off his upcoming "Beg to Differ" album. I had directed and edited professional music videos in the past, and Plastician expressed that he was particularly a fan of my mashup music videos using GiJoe cartoons. He wanted me to custom craft a video to his track using retro cartoon footage. He sent me a track called "Intensive Snare ft. Skepta." After hearing it for the first time, I knew I wanted to do it.

I had a lot of ideas right off the bat that I pitched him like using some of the black characters to represent Skepta and using some of the "computer tech" characters to represent Plastician. I wanted to incorporate cool action sequences, images of technology, and feature some of the badass characters like the ninjas: Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow, and also tool on the lame characters like Lifeline. But more importantly, I wanted to create a video that would have that retro 80's cartoon feel and be relevant to the song regardless if the viewer was familiar with the original cartoon or not. I think he chose me because he was familiar with my style and knew that I could pull off a video that would deliver that and appeal to our fan-bases respectively.

B: Your video for intensive snare seemed to be almost visual sampling, how do you go about finding all the relevant clips?

DR. SMOOV: Because I'm familiar with much of the material, I usually have a ballpark of where to look for certain subject matters. But the process takes a long time. I scroll through hours upon hours of footage and make detailed logs. I am quite thorough. The video for "Intensive Snare" features footage from approx 30 different episodes of the 80's GiJoe cartoon by Sunbow. For this video, I wanted to use a lot of footage of computers, sound equipment, cars, satellites, and technology, so I would pull as many of those clips as I could find.

The next step was carefully placing them and manipulating them appropriately. Every image in my videos is placed where it is for a reason - everything you see is pre-meditated. In any given instance, I try to capture the essence of the lyric, or the feel of the hook, or in some cases provide a literal example of what's being said (which can sometimes be quite humorous like "Are you stupid in the face?" and a woman pulls her face off) And that's the point - each image is a commentary or makes a statement based on where it pops up in the video. So yes, it is like adding an extra level of visual samples on top of an already massively brilliant track.

B: How do you feel about remixing, appropriating and re-using copyright content in general?

DR. SMOOV: Being an artist first, the challenge of using "found footage" to create something new and interesting is the goal, and the results can be quite rewarding. You can take something that was already cool in the past and make it cool in a whole new way - sometimes better than it was before. (unfortunately the flip side of making it worse is far too common amongst certain artists these days.)

But using familiar material can be a way to connect with audiences on a common ground. I am continually amazed at the diverse cross-section of people throughout the world that connect with the GiJoe cartoon (or Action Force in the UK.) and are willing to give something new a shot if it has anything to do with it. But in general, I think "sampling" is an excellent vehicle for both presentation and re-introduction.

Anyone who's sampling from the "old" is usually doing it because they like something about the material. By freshly re-appropriating it you're sharing it with new audiences, vouching for it, and making it relevant again.

The footage from cartoons I tend to use is 25 years old already. For many, they are nostalgic images that rekindle the excitement they once had for it. For others, it's their first time seeing it. I think it exposes a lot of younger viewers to the material. I receive a lot of feedback from younger people that say they became interested in Transformers or GiJoe after seeing the footage in my videos - it peaked their interest enough for them to learn more about it. I personally became a fan of a lot of classic 70's funk/soul/jazz due to all the sampling I heard in early 90's hip-hop. Made me want to find out where all that great music came from. So I think that re-use and re-appropriation is a major way in which older franchises receive new exposure. It's essentially free advertising for them. The entities that are smart about it and can recognize that, seem to reap the benefit of longevity.

B: Have you watched many other grime videos?

DR. SMOOV: In the grand scale of things, I have not seen that many. Working with Plastician on this video was my first exposure to the grime/dubstep scene overseas. I did some initial research on the web and watched a handful of videos on youtube trying to see what was already being done and familiarize myself with the style and some of the artists. The most informative video for me however, was a documentary on the London grime/dubstep scene which told about the evolution of the music style and the characteristics regarding unique tempo, the electro sound, and the innovative ways the synths are being used. Being a fan of both hip-hop and electronic music (I grew up listening to a lot of Kraftwerk as well as being a fan of great lyricists like KRS-1 and Big Daddy Kane) the sounds of grime were quite appealing to me right away. Not to mention the clever vocals and lyrical flow of the MC's - Skepta and JME stood out to me in that respect. When taking on the video for "Intensive Snare," I wanted to be just as intricate and meaningful with the visuals as the work that Skepta and Plastician had put into the lyrics and tracks.

B: I'm interested in the fact that visually your video doesn’t use the same old grime narratives, was that deliberate?

DR. SMOOV: I think Chris (Plastician) is responsible for some of that in terms of the vision he had for what this video could be - If he wanted to shoot a typical grime video, he could have hired me or anyone else to do that, but that's not what he wanted. He came to me because he was interested in letting me "do what I do" to his track - knowing that I would be able to find visuals that would compliment his music and put it together in a way that was unique. He's a true artist and innovator in that respect. He wasn't interested in trying to do what everybody else was doing in their videos, he wanted to take this video to another level entirely and I think we achieved that with this piece.



TENCHUASSASSIN

AMV-Wretch 32 Ft Ghetto - Ina Di Ghetto
Directed by Tenchuassassin




Blackdown: So, where are you from?

South east London, New Cross

B: Can you tell me a bit about your work, how did you get into making videos? How long have you been doing it?

Tenchuassassin: At first I just watched other peoples videos then I asked a friend how can I do that he told me window movie maker then I started making videos. Anyway I’ve being doing this for about 5 years on and off. I use to make hip hop & rock vids but then I said why does everyone make hip hop & rock vids so then I made my first grime vid skepta autopsy

B: your video for Wretch 32 seemed to be almost visual sampling, how do you go about finding and choosing all the relevant clips?

T: I just listen to the tune over & over then remember what anime I just watched and take the clip from there.

B: In practical terms if you hear a word like "stripe" or "flame," how do you and find a scene from another video to match it?

T: When I hear stripe I think of gun grave a gun anime & flame that will be naruto

B: How do you decide when to match the visuals to the words and when to deviate?

T: Well when it comes to matching words I have about 3 or 4 choices and I just pick the best one. The only time I deviate is when I can’t find what the person is saying

B: How do you decide how many different sources to sample from, in each video?

T: I don’t limit myself I just use as many clips as I have to.

B: How do you feel about remixing, appropriating and re-using copyright content in general?

T: It’s not like I’m selling them I just do this for fun

B: Have you watched many other grime videos? What do you think of them?

T: yeah I’ve seen some good ones by:

ELITE1010, Ozyboi and Coolkavi.

B: have you had any feedback from the artists you make videos for, like JME or Wretch 32? What do they think?

T: Yeah 3 artists have contacted me Nappa, MC Ribz and Faith SFX they were saying what I’m doing is sick and they will contact me to do future songs for them.

JME - Ju Ju Man
Directed by Tenchuassassin



From Dizzee’s “Street Fighter” beat to Wiley’s “Crash Bandicoot” riddim and Bashy’s recent Superhero’s video, you can see a proximity between grime and computer games, animation and CGI but it is perhaps is tied the strongest through its audience and their shared interests outside music.

What makes Tenchuassassin and DR. SMOOV’s videos so compelling is the contrast between when the visual and audio elements converge and diverge. What grime and manga have in common is that they are both youthful and violent mediums. In these videos, lip synching and clever choice of visual themes ties the soundtrack and the visual subject matter further together. Yet in the face of these similarities are the massive differences which make for such a striking contrast. Manga and GIJoe’s cartoon textures are a million miles from the gritty photorealism of “Lord of the Decks.” And while the directors have worked hard to find synergies, in essence the heritage of US cartoons or Far Eastern manga have little in common with UK street grime. Yet though the clever editing and direction we see here, they find shared space with the end result an opportunity to expand grime’s fan base beyond its heartland.

Looking at the stats, Tenchuassassin’s view seem to recieve up to 9,000, except for “JuJu,” thanks to the endorsement of JME, who’s inclusion on his main MySpace page has pushed the views up to 44,000. It'a a size of figure that competes favorably with a monthly magazine circulation.

This success owes so much to the rise of YouTube. Just as grime can be attributed in part to the ubiquity of cracked digital music production tools (Sony Playstation Music 2000, Fruity Loops…) and the democratizing effect the ability to share them had on young garage fans circa 2001, so is it also hard to imagine these videos being popularized without the massive YouTube audience.

It can surely only be of benefit to grime artists. Ever since the birth of MTV, labels decided to see videos as a marketing expense not a primary commodity to sell (like music), and as such they bore the brunt of these costs, costs that can prove debilitating to independent acts. With a Darwinian pool of talent competing to make videos for artists for free, the survival of the fittest in the YouTube elemental pond should only serve to naturally select the best new generation of video directors. If artists see common ground with hungry new directors, they both stand to gain.

The man who cycles through glass walls part 2

In the second part of my interview with photographer Nico Hogg, the first part of which is here, Nico takes the time to talk though some of his shots...

Blackdown: The Thamesmead estate. This is the first shot of yours I ever encountered and it was my laptop desktop for some time. A black south London-born friend of mine saw it and shuddered, explaining that for someone who remembered the 80s, the Theamsmead Estate was synonemous with anti-black racism. What were you doing there at this time of the night? How long did it take?

Nico: "I think I'd been out in Central London one night and come the end I decided to jump on a night bus out here to see the place under the cover of darkness. I was amazed by the concrete madness of Thamesmead straight away - I don't think there's anywhere else in London that has that sort of urban chaos quite like this.

"One thing I learned from coming back to this place is that appearances can be deceptive; it isn't nearly as rough as first impressions give out, and there's a lot more to the Mead than just the grey estate here. It's still growing with new bits springing up every few years, and it's one of the few places a family might be able to afford to move to from inner London to raise a family – name a cultural group and they're here with their children, London's next generation.

"It's about people trying to get on with their lives to the best of their means. (And some of it is going amazingly, spectacularly wrong – blocks of flats built in New Labour's time sitting semi-derelict with weeds flourishing in pavement cracks.) The games are played out, new lines are drawn, new territories defined as the new streets arrive. It must've been the same every time a new bit of Thamesmead was built, from the sixties to today and it'll probably stay that way into the future as more of the place appears. That fascinates me, warts and all. I think perhaps this photo marked the beginning of coming to see the special in the place."

B: Becontree Heath. This is just pure light...

N: "A spot few Londoners know about, but one I felt like it was worth giving a bit of exposure."

B: Broadwater Farm Estate. This just looks epic, cinematic...

N: The other way round! A well documented place, difficult to get a shot of that could count as unusual. I was just riding through the rec on my bike when I saw the skate park flooded out and saw a rare opportunity. I wanted to try and get the tower blocks reflected in the water and it sort of worked, but I was kicking myself for leaving my tripod at home – I was balancing the camera on a bench for this.

B: South Kilburn Estate, NW6 - do you research the estates before/after you shoot them? Do you think 'estates' as a housing concept are successful?

N: "Yeah, I do a bit of research, especially if they're going to be coming down soon. I like to bring some background to the pictures, and some of these photos are already history in themselves just a few years after they were taken.

I think the view, the popular one, that dictates that estates should be pulled down, that's highly politicised. Some of these estates that are going really have failed, an entrenched rot that can't be shaken off, but sometimes I think the authorities are too quick to come to that decision to demolish, and that falls back to ideologies and agendas on their part.

I think basically speaking they work – and I like the extra layer of identity that coming from a certain estate has over, say, living in a terraced house in a street in a grid of streets.

But in a way the perception of that identity comes from the same sort of misty thought that says estates have failed, estates need to be pulled down, flamed in some sort of witch-hunt ritual. If you strip that layer of thought away, on the basis of it, people could (and can) live quite ordinary, happy lives within the estate – many do, and for them there's no reason why an estate isn't working for them. But the loudest get heard. It's about mindsets. Really though, it's hugely complicated."

B: This is North Woolwich, what can you tell me about this shot?

N: "This is one of my own favourites. You get a sense going to North Woolwich that it's a very different place to the rest of London – elements of an earlier time, shabby union jacks, graffiti that looks like it appeared in the 80s – some racist, some of it to do with class warfare. It's cut off on three sides from everything else by water, probably one of the hardest places to leave on many levels. It can feel pretty miserable."

B: Kurdish march, Stamford Hill: who and what were they marching about?

N: "They were marching for the leader of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party serving a life prison sentence in Turkey. It was a pretty major march, there were a lot of people there. That part of North London has quite a large Turkish Kurd population, and they're in strong support for his release as far as I know. But it's a seriously complicated and contentious issue along ethnic, historical and political lines, and I really don't know enough about it!"

B: Sundermead Estate, Lewisham. Do you know anything about the fire damage?

N: "I don't think there was any fire involved here. The estate was being demolished and it's normal to have hoses running in to douse the rubble as it comes down, to stop any fires breaking out."

B: Looking west. Don't you think sunsets paint a very rosy picture of London? Is it a 'true' one? What about West London, how do you feel about it? It's different to the other quarters, right? And not one you choose to shoot much...

N: "I surprise myself at how few pics I have of West London, I'm across there a lot but it feels slightly alien to me in a way I haven't got to grips with yet. London is probably as different West to East as it is North to South, but there isn't a big river cutting down from the top of the city to the bottom to define the divide in the same way that the Thames does, so there's less debate.

But still, taking a trip on the Hammersmith and City Line west from Paddington gives one of the best pictures of the city you can get. It never loses its magic for me – out alongside the Westway, over the terraces around Ladbroke Grove, between the tower blocks round Latimer Road, over Shepherds Bush Market and the cranes of the new Westfield centre, stasis and change, success and failure sitting as two sides of the same coin. But it's all the same city, good and bad and I think it deserves to look beautiful sometimes, even if it is in a cheesy sort of sunset way.

"But eh, if there's a great sunset sky there's something reassuring in knowing that, even in a divided city, there are probably thousands of people from all different walks and minds seeing and thinking something at least similar to you for a few minutes. We could do with a few more unifying moments like that. It doesn't have to be sunsets – thunderstorms, raining tea, locusts, a good riot, anything [carnival? - Blackdown]. Just no more bomb explosions on the tube."

B: Do you use reflections in your work? Is the reality of the photo inevitably much less glamorous?

N: "It is, but this one is best seen in the context of all the other photos I have of that area. I feel a sort of personal responsibility, it's home to me and I was beginning to feel at the time that I was taking a lot of photos of the place in too much of a negative light. This one seemed to make a bit of a compromise on that. The opportunity was there and I jumped at it."

Read the first part of the interview here. The next parts of this interview will follow on soon...

Beak tuff

The Zomby parrot quiz

Blackdown: I hear you're a parrot fan and owner, what kind of feathered friend do you have and what is his name?

Zomby: yeah he’s called rebel after rebel mc, he’s a Senegalese, I’ll buy a Congo African grey soon and call him Natty.

B: What is keeping a parrot like?

Z: Pretty fair-to-chillin, they demand a lot of attention and I mean you have to feed them and clean them out and tolerate being shit on and stuff but really it’s bless, like having a monkey with wings.

B: I love how you describe him just pottering around your house, twittering to himself. What kinds of noises do they make and which is your favourite?

Z: There’s various parrot noises as stock but then also like dub siren whistles and space fx twitters, he growls too if you vex him, my fave is the wonky shangooli lead he whistles.

B: What roughly different kinds of parrots are there and how are they different?

Z: There’s a few you know, hyacinth macaws are probably top of the tree for brains and size, they look pretty fucking rad, Congo African greys are good too, they’re bright and talk a lot, the Macaws are generally pretty arsey but they’re good fun too, and the Senegal which is like the Marmoset of the parrot world I suppose.

B: Parrots are reportedly very intelligent, have you seen this in action? Which type is smartest?

Z: The Hyacinth Macaw are the smartest. They’re fully switched on, but the average parrot isn’t a fool, mine seems fairly busy a lot of the time,

B: Parrots are reportedly emotional, have you seen this in action?

Z: Yeah kinda, he’ll get excited if your excited, like if I see a record on Discogs cheap and I’m buzzing, he’ll sqwawk with enthusiasm for the bargain.

B: What do you think Rebel thinks about mostly?

Z: Getting it on with Rihanna's parrot.

B: How does Rebel feel about your aquabases/aquacrunk/w**ky?

Z: He’s kinda into it I think, I mean he’s comfy enough to sit on me and crap while I’m playing synths... maybe he’s not feeling it actually.

B: How does Rebel feel about the Rebel MC?

Z: Yeah he’s a big fan you know. I know he likes a tune cuz he’s quiet as it plays. Otherwise he’s sqwaking in disapproval.

B: How does Rebel feel about YouTube?

Z: It’s a lot for him, he’s feeling a few vids. Lots of old skool and jungle mostly of course.

Zomby's top three parrot YouTube videos:

1. Einstein
2. Python
3. Kaja

Margins Music makes Observer albums of the year

"Margins Music" has made The Observer 50 albums of the year. We're officially bigger than Guns & Roses!

Shout to Emma Warren, without who's advocacy, this would never have happened. Shout to Charles/Nomad too.

UPDATE: We made The Wire top 20 of 2008. Rah.

Also look out for "The Bits ft Trim" on Rough Trade Shops's compilation "Counter Culture 08" out in Feb.

UPDATE 2.0: Out to Dusted Magazine, who put our album in their list not just once (in the top ten) but twice.

UPDATE 3.0: Out to Simon Reynolds, who puts our album in his top 16!!!

UPDATE 4.0: Time Out Chicago put "Margins Music" in their top 10 Dance/Electronic albums of the year. It's an album about London, Time Out London where are you?! Par.

UPDATE 5.0: It's made Melissa Bradshaw and Jonny Mugwump end of year round ups too.
As well as Boomkat's top 100, Starkey and T++'s top 10.

UPDATE 6.0 It's South Africa's The Weekender's album of the year.

Woofah 3

Woofah magazine volume 3 is out now. Out to John Eden, Grievous Angel and everyone else who put in the hard slog.

If you're able to ignore the inane waffling by me and Dusk, you'll find great features on Soulja and the Bomb Squad by Mel plus Flowdan, 2562, UK Dub and of course, my personal favourite, the Badman Commandments.

Badman nah miss nah copy of Woofah. Seen?

Rinse November

RINSE

Dusk and I were back on Rinse last Thursday. Since it's was the last show of the year, we were...

...only going to play slowjams and lovers rock, some country with a mid section focusing on tuba solos. Lock in for Dusk's live countdown of just how quickly our career is being ended

...going to get half way through the set when we get sucker-punched by super surprise guest, TRIMBALE!

"I heard my tune and some weird beats so I decided to run up here..." - Trim.

Then, it was ON!!!

DOWNLOAD the set here...

Rinse FM: Dusk + Blackdown ft Trim November 08

Wonder ft Kano "What Have You Done?" (Nu Era Music)
Basement Jaxx "Jus One Kiss (Sunship mix)" (XL)
Abacus "When I Fall In Love (El-B bootleg mix)" (White)
Ghost "Gritty" (Ghost white)
The Beard "Someday (Phuturistix remix)" (Inspirit Music)
Nude "Wake Up" (On Course)
Kode9 "Ping" (Rephlex)

Joker "Do It" (unreleased)
Keisha Cole "Should Have Let You Go (Rustie resmack)" (unreleased)
Rudekid "Spaceman" (unreleased)
Starkey "Gutter Music ft Durrty Goodz" (Keysound Recordings unreleased)
Zomby "Gloop (Starkey remix)" (unreleased)
Wiley and Bless Beats "Where's My Brother" (unreleased)
Joker "There She Goes" (unreleased)

Trim "Say It Aint So" (unreleased)
Zomby "Be Reasonable, Expect the Impossible aka Firefly Finale" (unreleased)
MC Trigga "A Little Darker" (unreleased)
Zomby "Earthbound" (unreleased)
Starkey "Strikenow VIP" (unreleased)
Zomby "One Foot Ahead of the Other" (unreleased)

Mount Kimbie "Maybes" (Hotflush unreleased)
Kuma "Mine" (unreleased)
Kryptic Minds and Leon Switch "One of Us" (unreleased)
...

**STUDIO DOORBELL GOES. SPECIAL SURPRISE GUEST TALIBAN TRIM IN THE VENUE! TIME TO ROLL WITH THE SUCKERPUNCH AND SWIIIIIIIITCH. NORMAL SERVICE WILL NOT BE RESUMED...**

Solar Constant "Phidiana Indica" (unreleased)
RSD "Accepted" (R8 unreleased)
Starkey "Gutter VIP" (unreleased)
DOK "Bigbang" (Aftershock)
DOK "Crossover" (Aftershock)
Joker "Digidesign" (unreleased)

Gemmy "Johnny 5-0" (unreleased)
Ikonika "Please" (Hyperdub)
Starkey "Pressure" (Planet Mu)
Jerzy "Outside Looking In (instrumental)" (unreleased)
Jerzy "Datski" (unreleased)
Wiley (Target & Danny Weed production) "Pick Ur Self Up (instrumental)" (Aim High)


I think we just had our "Kode9 v Wiley moment". I still feel dazed and giggly with hype. Given Trim's sucker-punch surprise visit, we have half a show's worth of upfront dark, percussive and rolling dubs. So time permitting, Dusk and I are going to put these together a mix for download. Hold tight for that...

Dirty Canvas 2009 Calendar

Ohmydays this is too much...

"London's leading grime night Dirty Canvas has teamed up with photographer Will Robson-Scott to bring you the first calendar of grime music's biggest and best loved stars. This limited edition A3 calendar features Wiley, Skepta, Tinchy Stryder, Trim, JME, Roll Deep, D Double E, Ghetto, Jammer, Chipmunk, Griminal, Tempa T, Badness, Ice Kid, Frisco, Double S, P Money and Lil Nasty.

With 500 copies printed available online at www.dirtycanvas.bigcartel.com this unique piece features never seen before photos, capturing your favourite grime stars in the studio, performing live, backstage, jamming on road, in the chicken shop, getting a haircut and even assaulting an 80's TV Star!"

What more needs to be said?

Dusk + Blackdown v MAH

Our mix for Mary Anne Hobbs' Radio 1 show went out late on the evening of Tuesday 18th. Here's the tracklist. Out to Ramadanman and Geiom for a nice clean fight.

Dusk + Blackdown mix

DOWNLOAD the mix here.

Starkey ‘Gutter Music ft Durrty Goodz’ (Keysound)
Starkey ‘Gutter Music VIP’ (Keysound)
Geeneus ‘Knife & Gun’ ft Riko, Wiley and Breeze (Blackdown remix) (Keysound)
Geeneus ‘Knife & Gun’ ft Riko, Wiley and Breeze (Blackdown Devil mix) (Keysound)
Blackdown ‘Beta’ (Keysound)
Blackdown ‘deFocused’ (Keysound)
Dusk ‘Focus (Blackdown VIP)’ (Keysound)
Geeneus ‘Knife & Gun’ ft Riko, Wiley and Breeze (Dusk & Blackdown remix ft. Farrah) (Keysound)
Badla Lata Ka ‘Badla Lata Ka’ [unreleased]
Starkey ‘Gutter Music VIP (cont.)’ (Keysound)

(Thanks to rob booth at electronicexplorations.org for the hosting).

PS Geiom and Ramadanman had had the cheek to start slewing us on the Dubstep Forum. Check the banter there.

Keysound Recordings 008

geeneus ft. riko, wiley and breeze "knife & gun"

a) "knife & gun"
b1) "knife & gun (blackdown remix)"
b2) "knife & gun (blackdown devil mix)"

**Out on 12" NOW.**

listen to the tracks audio on our myspace

keysights by Nicobobinus
mastering by transition
vinyl distribution by baked goods

The man who cycles through glass walls

The search term "Big Ben" into Flickr yields 134,706 results. By contrast the term "Crossways Estate," (aka east London's "Three Flats"), yields 23, three of them about maypole dancing at a village fete. It was in this way that I first found Nico Hogg, aka Nicobobinus' photos.

It was around two years ago, when the first ideas around "Margins Music" began to coalesce that I found great resonance with Nico's photography. Time and time again I would search on Flickr only to find a visual representation of the sounds I'd heard in my head or the environment I'd been inspired by. At first I don't think I clocked it was always Nico's shots I came back to, but then one day Stuart from Give Up Art, who designed our album artwork and does all the Tempa, Rinse and Applepips art too, emailed me a photo. On the surface it said "No Spitting" but, written in two languages, it also screamed "grime" and "London", while tugging at the respective definitions of those two words.

People talk about glass ceilings in UK culture caused by race and class, but London has glass walls. Throughout this decade I've found myself coming back to the realisation of how insane it is that people so densely geographically located in a city can pass so close without any meaningful sense of understanding of each other. People pass each other without contact, like planes stuck in parallel concentric holding patterns above Heathrow, unable to converse with those just a few hundred feet away from them. On the ground, the glass walls of class and race cause peergroups defined by vocation, education and affluence, forming pockets of self-reinforcing values (in analysis of how the London tube bombers were radicalised, experts point to the participation of training camps, not because the camps particularly gave them extra skills, but because by isolating them from the population, they were able to self-reinforce yet-more extreme viewpoints). "It's a small world," people say, acting surprised at finding commonality with a "stranger" who also happens to be their age, race, class, vocation and live in the same city as them. But is their world only small because the glass walls make it seem so?

Nico Hogg is a man who can cycle through glass walls. For me I have Wookie's remix of Gabrielle to thank for opening the door in the wall, because discovering garage taught me a shared language and showed me I had the appetite for finding common ground in places I didn't belong and in which my peers don't go to. But Nico, he just rides on through. His Flickr account is littered with Google Maps screenshots of east London cycle paths, locations he rides pro-actively into, shattering the glass, to take shots of. And by locations I don't mean Westminster.

I think it's safe to say that Flickr doesn't need any more photos of Big Ben. If you're the 134,707th user to upload a shot of the central London landmark, what incremental value are you really adding as a photographer? But by contrast, as serendipity threw me into Nico's photographs time and time again, it became clear that here was a man doing something, going places and recording areas precious few others were. "Three Flats" (above) was one of the first ever locations for Rinse FM. Who else has taken a shot of it though? For these reasons, long before I'd found a Keysound release by Rinse regulars Geeneus, Riko, Wiley and Breeze to use the "No Spitting" image on, I'd begun a long process of interviewing Nico about his shots.

In the first post, Nico explains in general about his approach to photography and his chosen subject, the margins of urban London. In a second post, to follow, I've presented him with his shots, often grouped in themes, and asked him to explain a little more about how he got himself there, why he took it.

Blackdown: So tell me a bit about you as a photographer: how long have you been shooting?

Nico: Years... maybe since I was about 8, but back then it was different – I'd drag a 35mm compact around with me and take photos of anything, anything at all. I was racking up these massive bills for developing reels of film containing, say, 25 wonky pictures of a reservoir on the outskirts of Edinburgh, shot straight into the sun so hardly anything came out properly. My family were going mental. Then I went over to digital when I was 16, got the internet, met other people taking photos and started taking it a bit more seriously... still working on that last point though!

B: what makes you want to pick up a camera? Why did you choose light as your medium?

N: I just wanted something I could pick up and use to express something. I can't play an instrument, I had a brief spell of writing when I was about 15 but didn't feel it was worth going on with, I can draw stick men but no more than that. It seemed like the best thing to go with. It's that easy, more people should do it. It's the days when I want to show people something new that I want to go and shoot most. Sure, in London people can be quick to match up tower blocks with poverty, inner London, but there are towers dotting the skyline in Twickenham, Kingston and Kew Bridge too. If the Brentford Towers were closer to Central London they'd be icons. I can see them on an album cover now, but that's off people's radars looking from the centre of town. Most of all I enjoy taking pictures of the things other people might overlook – try and show people something new, even if it is very ordinary. The internet is good for that, giving a bit of exposure.

B: Do you feel like you are documenting London? Is there also an underlying theme of social comment to your photography?

N: If I am, it's a funny sort of London. When I started I don't think I was doing it consciously, I just went for what took my interest, but as it unfolded it started to look like a documenting of sorts. The social comment aspect is not one I've actively pushed, but I have my own views and they must have leaked into it over time. It's as much a process of coming to my own understanding of London as it is the pictures telling a story.

B: I'm most excited about your coverage of the margins of London - you seem to cover a disproportional amount: east, south, north east, north. Do you find yourself in these areas or seek them out?

N: It's a bit of a mishmash of both. When I started travelling out to areas with the camera I picked on the places I'd spent time in as a young child: inner south London - Walworth, Burgess Park, Peckham. That was a bit of a personal mission, really. I've only got memories to go on from that period as there were few photographs and none of the people involved in my life at that time are in touch anymore. I wanted to try and grasp a sense of how things were at that time and get a better understanding, so I decided one day to just visit, to try and catch the essence of the place, see how it made me feel. I brought the camera to see how a photo would be influenced by that, and I was pleased with the results so I started broadening out to other areas I knew well; I live in north east London and have friends scattered all round that area, so that's where I've tended to wind up.

I find outer London interesting, heh, maybe too interesting. I think looking at the city by dividing it into travelcard zones is a good way of doing it – round the outside the zone 5/6 areas with their own identities separate from London, especially the ones off the tube map: Romford as Essex, London is somewhere 'that way'. Most of these are settled in themselves, in the grander scheme of things. In the middle, Zone 1 looks at itself, in a mirror, a self aggrandising project, while eyeing up zone 2 – inner London - with hungry eyes. Somewhere new to colonise, to the point that it becomes more akin to 'central' London in the classic sense, where there is this huge wealth, the towering office blocks of the Docklands and the penthouses that come with it. But the time has come where they're pretty stable now too – so expensive to live in that they only attract the wealthiest, while the scramble for council housing is so intense that nobody in their right mind gives up a flat once they've got one.

That leaves the middle belt, these 'ordinary' areas, and I think that's where the true London is now – where the 'old' inner city has been pushed out to, that's where the change is happening. And like the old inner areas that were given short shrift and ignored by the arbiters of hot-or-not 15 or 20 years ago, these areas further out now are too often forgotten, for their better and worse attributes. When the people with money to burn arrived in areas like Whitechapel and Bethnal Green they were force-fed words like 'vibrant' and 'diverse', a showcase model of how London came to be the melting pot that it is, but it's these suburban areas that are seeing the process being repeated now: Walthamstow, Woolwich, Barking, Thornton Heath, Edmonton, and it's like nobody is noticing. And it's worth doing so, because sometimes it isn't a pretty sight – friction between old and new communities, sometimes within the new communities, issues of the sort that the BNP jumps on in Barking & Dagenham, does its scaremongering and gets council seats out of it. But there's something worth celebrating in there too – above all, the fact that the diversity of these areas hasn't had a price tag slapped on it yet by estate agents. Yet. And that's why I like to go and see these places as they are now before it happens, because I think eventually it will.

B: In practical terms, how do you get in and out of these sometimes quite serious areas, often in the middle of the night, while carrying a camera?

N: The camera just sits in my bag until I need it. I like to get a good sense an area before I start going around taking pics of it at night – at least one or two daytime visits first, as much to know where I'm going as it is to see whether it's worth a trip at night in the first place. A good knowledge of where the night buses go from helps too. But most of all, knowing exactly where you are and what's round the next corner makes all the difference with how you carry yourself.

B: Many of your photographs are taken after dark. Do you like being out at night? How does it make you feel? How does it make your shots feel?

N: It's my favourite time to do it – the smallest hours and into dawn. There's something about an empty city, being the only person in such a vast, urbanised space that is very special. Even the scent in the air is different, there's that dewy pre-dawn moisture in the air. You hear more in the silence, you see more in the dark, all the senses are heightened, you become so much more aware of your surroundings, I like to see how that affects me. It's made me realise that the chaos of the daytime city can dull your senses from overload, that London can
be two completely different cities. Compare riding a bus at 5pm to sitting on a night bus coming out of the West End at 3am. Even if people are out of their heads and making dicks of themselves, it's a certain trueness you don't get with the hundred impermeable bubbles sitting around you on the way home from work.

B: Lots of your photos of are of signs, defaced signs, details of local identity, key signifiers: tell me about this theme in your photography...

N: I've always enjoyed exploring what counts as a key signifier for an area – a street name, a mural, a building, that signifies a whole wider area, the one thing that everyone will have an understanding of. The 50p building in Croydon. A pub, a kebab shop! A point of agreement in a divided area, or symbols of the fact that an area is divided, tags on signs. But more interesting is when there aren't any. Is it because the idea of defending a local identity by drawing on signs never caught on, or because it's passed beyond that and it's being done some other way. But what? A balance of power between two different groups built on spoken words? I think things like defaced signs are just a 'stage' in the maturity of a local identity, it isn't the ultimate point.

B: Many of your shots are either signs or buildings, but seldom people. I find myself doing this too, but it eliminates the whole side of portrait taking and of the myriad emotional/gender/age/cultural/racial nuances of the human face, leaving the surroundings to imply the culture and people. Do you consciously shoot this way?

N: One day I really want to get into taking portraits of people, but it's just something I've never really tested the water on. In principle I'd like to get more people into my shots, but I instinctively wait until there's nobody in the frame before I shoot – not sure why. But I like to think someone will look at a picture of a properly grotty tower block, look past the emptiness outside and put on hypothetical x-ray specs, and see the hundreds of people inside doing ordinary daily things, but it's up to them to form their own views.

B: To me, much of what makes London fascinating is not just the highs and lows, but their proximity and inseparability. Is this something you see too?

N: Yeah, I see that. It is the rule rather than the exception now, I think. The city is a pressure cooker of a million different causes and interests, slotted into a thousand different sorts of environments. But it isn't completely harmonious, and barriers are going up all the time – not just gated luxury developments, but regenerated council estates that get fortified round the perimeter with massive fences, and a concierge hut at the entrance monitoring all-seeing CCTV. Who are they keeping out? Who are they keeping in? It doesn't matter whether Londoners are willing to tolerate their neighbours or not if the authorities keep putting up things like that, because a new generation is going to become used to living one side or another of a fence.

B: Given London has both rich and poor, What draws you to the less affluent edges of london?

N: I don't find much of interest in the more affluent areas. I grew up on a council estate in Tottenham, so what happened in Muswell Hill or Highgate was of no interest to me as a child, and to a point that's still true now. I like visiting the parts of London that feel like home, where things are actually in the process of happening, the blatant playing out of different views and opinions, rather than places that are trumpeting about what has already happened, where it is done and dusted, mission accomplished – and they tend to be the more affluent areas. There is a voice in those areas, but it's an energy busy keeping things the way they are so you don't see much obvious evidence of its existence. There's very little different
to see in, say, Highgate from one year to the next, so I don't find myself there often.

B: Crossways estate, Broadwater, Stonebridge, Aylesbury - estates being demolished. You seem to have been to pretty much every estate with a reputation in the capital. These are very territorial places, such that people who live there feel very safe to repel or confront locals or outsiders. How does this affect you when you visit?

N: I've never had to deal with any confrontation! I tend to stay low-key when I'm visiting an estate, especially one with a reputation, but when I have ended up talking to people it's always been pretty amiable. At the end of the day, if you don't put up a front to people then 95% of the time they won't put up a front to you, and that's as true on an estate as anywhere else. But if I do see a situation coming from the distance, I will melt off round a corner... practically speaking though I like to get onto an estate early in the day so I can hit the 'tradesmen's button and get into the blocks, and it tends to be a lot quieter then. On a basic level, if I'm visiting an estate I want to respect that space and not rub anyone up the wrong way while I'm there, because I know I'm an outsider. On some estates, though, they must be used to people wandering in and out with cameras – I was visiting one in Poplar a couple of years ago and took a photo of a multilingual council sign of some sort, when a load of kids came up to me. "There's another sign over there!". I thought that was a nice touch.

The second part of this interview, where Nico talks through some of his shots, will be published shortly...