June 2006 - October 2008
Quiet and hooded, his eyes stared out,
small hands make patterns on the window.
Body shifting on wood, dog outside the door,
flickering memories as trains manoeuvre
in old men’s eyes.
So, farewell to Blogariddims – retiring at the sprightly age of fifty episodes.
The whole thing was Droid’s project and the way he has managed to get it out on a regular basis and dealt with some, ah… eccentric people proves that the fine art of herding cats is alive and well in Dublin. He leaves behind him as a legacy an archive of over 50 hours of excellent, inspiring and engaging music. Respect is more than due.
Actually I’m a bit humbled by how many of these Droid let me contribute, what with my cack-handed mixing and lack of IT savvy and general grumpiness. Here is the rundown:
4: Dancehall Pressure – with Paul Meme (additional commentary here)
12: Office Party Mix (tracklist here)
19: Bounce Me Back To 98 (commentary here)
40: Grime In The Dancehall – with Paul Meme
In fact, looking back over the archives there are so many highlights it’s really hard to single anything out for newcomers – if you haven’t subscribed, you’re in for a real treat here.
Of course Heatwave’s “An England Story” is the obvious success story – a podcast so good that Soul Jazz turned it into a quadruple album. But alongside that you have some genuinely out there, thought provoking stuff from Soundslike1981 or Droid & Slug. Or Mr Bump’s Rude Interlude, or some actually pretty amazing stuff on the fringes of dubstep, or some more reggae biz from Matt B and Dave Stelfox.
Blogariddims is like a lucky dip grab bag of music which has all your favourites guaranteed, but also some stuff you never thought of checking before.
The final Blogariddims Brock Out Bonanza features the return of many contributors – Paul Meme and myself (but basically Paul this time, for reasons too tedious to go into) have contributed a mix up of instrumental grime, echoing our previous Grime In The Dancehall special.
We are preceded in the mix by the lovely Paul Autonomic, whose commentary on his selection is characteristically top notch.
Next in the chain of blogposts is Paul Meme, so I will let the Grievous Angel himself explain his mixing tricknology and tracklist more fully.
But I think this the point for me to say what should be obvious by now – I got into Grime because of the MC-ing and lyrical skills, but slowly got seduced by the incredible sounds and beats along the way. In some ways Grime seems much less hamstrung by formulae than dubstep. Sure there are particular sounds in the palette and occasionally the textures are predictable, but because Grime (like dancehall) has always been so MC focussed, the producers are more free to just chuck stuff around and see what works.
Details of the final (sniff…) Blogariddims here: http://www.weareie.com/2008/10/blogariddims-50-terminus.html
Go and download it at your earliest convenience. And then (re)check the other 49…