uncarved.org blog

I don’t spend enough time with my records (who does?). Most of my music listening is done on the walk to and from work.

Sitting at home in my cupboard the other night, I discovered that the ace Dug Out label were re-releasing “Hole Up Your Hand” by legendary north London reggae MC Raymond Naphtali on ten inch. Awesome news!

Then I thought about the pile of records in the living room, sitting there. Not exactly unloved, but certainly not attended to very well. And yes, eight quid plus postage is a reasonable amount of cash to lay down for such an item, but it seemed like quite a lot for something I wouldn’t hear that much and would play out even less (if ever – this is the first year for a while that I’ve not taken to the decks. And actually that is OK).

As TIm P over at Dancecrasher pointed out, Honest Jons are doing Dug Out mp3s for 60 pence a pop. Which is frankly a bit of a no-brainer, even for an mp3 sceptic like me. You get them straight away, for cheap, and you are still supporting a great shop and a great label (and presumably the artist/producer as well).

I splashed out on a whole bunch of Dug Out releases, including the stone cold classic “He Was A Friend” by King Kong, which I had also baulked at buying on wax a little while back. It’s a digital lament to the late Tenor Saw which has been much in demand (I think it was even on the notorious Boomshakalacka “Best 100 tunes of the eighties” list?).

All the tunes are great and I have been listening to them repeatedly on the commute. There isn’t the same visceral thrill of holding the vinyl in your hand and lowering the needle, but this lot will do me fine as a compromise.

Then comrade T-woc pointed out on the Blood & Fire forum that Boomkat has bundled up a bunch of “psyche-dub” mp3s as part of their weekly “14 tracks” special. 14 tracks for 7 quid. Seems about right to me.

I’ve been listening to a fair bit of mad stuff recently, so this fitted the bill nicely: some droney, some noisy, some abstract. But all tied together in a bassy, echoey package. Mostly artists I had never heard of – or had heard of, but not got the chance to investigate properly.

Again, high quality stuff for the most part, that I am enjoying wading through. It reminds me of the seminal Macro Dub Infection and Isolationism compilations that Kevin Martin put together for Virgin in the nineties. Dub as process (rather than a genre) which links the outer fringes of all sorts of mindwarping musics. It’s a great bit of curation in fact – something much needed in the avalanche of new things to check out… I’ve now got some new things to investigate and some future purchases to make.

If people keep doing good stuff like this, then I’ll keep supporting it. Hopefully I’ll not be alone in doing that – which means we might have turned quite a significant corner in terms of our little zone of the music industry surviving.

At the Guardian of all places!

“Waiting For You” is out now on Hyperdub.

King Midas Sound

An interesting development – some exclusive bits of artwork, linkage and lyrics. Oh and the full text of “Scientist Meets The Ghost Captain”, Kevin Martin’s excellent sleevenotes from the seminal “Macro Dub Infection” compilation.

King Midas Sound perform their London debut at Corsica Studios this Saturday as part of the Hyperdub “5″ event:

After writing a bit about Wordsound here (and enjoying their skunked out dubby hip hop for years) I finally got around to watching the label’s feature film Crooked last night.

Crooked was shot, written and produced on an ultra low budget by Wordsound’s guru and Chief Executive Skiz and released in 2002 on DVD. The storyline is an (almost?) fictional account of an idealistic hip hop head starting a label in NYC with a deranged but massively talented rapper and producer by the name of Sensational. Who is played by deranged but massively talented rapper and producer Sensational.

A whole downpouring torrent of Wordsound ‘heads’ make guest appearances including Anti Pop Consortium and Ras Kush, who plays a wise rasta dishing out wisdom and vinyl at legendary NY store Jammyland (which eerily seems to be in a twilight zone “between locations” dilemma as I write this).

The film suffers from, and is buoyed up by, all the usual limitations of low budget films – the plot is shaky, some of the camerawork and sound is shakier, the dialogue made my better half cringe in places and she wasn’t even in the same room. But despite all this it’s good to see somebody having a go at something ambitious – trying to put their vision out there in different ways without pandering to expectations, coolness or whatever.

The portrayal of dedicated people getting by, and venal record label personnel and drug dealers is pretty effective and Sensational lives up to his name I think. Plus there is a slightly noirish atmosphere to all the NYC shots which I like.

The first mix I ever did kicked off with Spectre vs Scotty Hard’s The Joust from Wordsound’s second “Crooklyn Dub Consortium” compilation. So I was especially pleased to see him in the film, playing a cop. Scotty is aka Scott Harding, a founder member of New Kingdom – a point of regroupment in the early nineties for people who liked their hop to be hip, but also fucked up and experimental. He seems to be pretty at home in the studio – his discography is pretty impressive.

Check this out, for example:

During all this I was reminded that Scotty had fallen on hard times recently, a car crash in February leaving him paralysed. His friends are rallying round and maybe people reading this could as well if they like his stuff:

SCOTTY HARD INFO

As some of you may or may not know, Scott Harding (a/k/a Scotty Hard) was in a bad accident this past February. The road to recovery is long and hard and as has been noted before, “Legal resolution of insurance settlements will take a long time, and there is no way to know what the long term financial picture will look like. In the meantime there is rent due, mixing console payments to be made, a myriad of bills to pay to keep creditors at bay etc, not to mention medical and legal bills that will start to come in.”

If you wish to make a donation or just to keep abreast of the various benefits that are going on for Scott, please go to http://www.ScottyHardTrust.com

Thank you for your support.

If you ever downloaded his stuff or liked that mix I did, I think now would be a good time to do the right thing.

WOEBOT: Illbient

Matt’s halloween post on illbient was an interesting read for me because I’d just started getting back into that end of things myself during the change of the seasons.

I was never really into DJ Spooky and don’t own any Asphodel records, but did spend considerable time melting into Kevin Martin’s compilations for Virgin like Macro Dub Infection and Isolationism. These lead me down so many paths that it’s worth another post in itself, but one of them ended up at an alleyway in downtown Crooklyn where I’ve always imagined the Wordsound HQ to be.

WordSound is not a record label in the traditional sense. We are not concerned with hitting the charts, breaking groups, or making hits. WordSound is a guerilla think tank banded together for the purpose of continual creativity…

WordSound was started to harness the energy of the underground–those creators whose radical approach to the word, sound, and vision has been suppressed by the domination of the corporate overlord.
We are here to provide the people with a true alternative to the commercialized arena, and hijack institutions that choke free expression….

Our name comes from the Rastafarian expression: “Wordsound have power,” which acknowledges the spiritual energy emanating from the combination of words and sounds, lanquage and rhythm, text and ambience. WordSound is the word of sound–how the music speaks to us subliminally, and what it says…

Wordsound albums were never that easy to get hold of in the UK, but I did eventually managed to grab a complete set of their Crooklyn Dub Consortium compilations. Dark dubby downtempo hip hop for outernational heads, they were a bit of focal point for a certain post post post punk experimentation which took off from where sections of Macro Dub Infection began.

Wordsound managed to seamlessly absorb, predict and dub out whole swathes of musical mythology: rasta, Wu-tang, cut ups, dubplates, Hassan I Sabbah, soundsystem, Moorish Science Temple, occulture, a wilting daisy age, Sun Ra, afronauts, you name it.

The bewildering roster uncovered unknowns as much as it covered up the pseudononymous monikers of the famous. Like a soup kitchen for Control Agents worn out by contracts, paperwork, bills, overheads, spreadsheets, demographics, meetings, ass-lickers.

Ex-members of SWANS rubbed shoulders with De La Soul collaborators as if it was the most natural thing in the world…

After a while the Crooklyn vortex sucked me in like Burrough’s Interzone. I felt a bit suffocated by it all, but still vowed to return. Another wave in the global capitalist crisis paved the way for my re-entry. Two things, really. The pound’s strength against the yankee dollar, and the hardship of independent record labels.

Wordsound have a sale on right now, with most of their albums marked down to six bucks. That means if you buy one it will cost you a fiver UK money, including shipping to your house. Five quid – to your door! Yes they got sound samples, yes they take paypal, yes shipping is speedy. Grab them while you can – put some food on Skiz’s table so he can carry on with his thing.

http://www.wordsound.com

Reviews to follow.

The other thought I had about Burial in particular, and dubstep in general, is that it’s basically
Macro Dub Infection meets Isolationism, if you think about it.

Crooklyn Dub Outernational: Certified Dope Vol. 4 is now out!

The first three volumes did my head in for most of the early part of 2003. Seriously moody and dark stuff – kind of claustrophobic in places but all the better for that in small doses (i.e don’t play it all back to back for a week like I did – messy). As I’ve probably pointed out before, one thing I like about reggae and dub is the interplay between tradition and futurism. CDO is up there with Burial Mix and The Bug in terms of people trying to push the envelope, IMO.

The label, Wordsound, is also a possible candidate for Matt’s “Un Ra” list, judging by the bit of their website titled The Other Side.

Looks like vol 4 is another must have if this review by my man Greg Whitfield is anything to go by.

Crooklyn Dub Outernational – Escape from New York (1999) – wicked Wordsound avant dub stuff. Difficult to think that they would get away with the New York and terrorist references today. Damn fine stuff.

DJ Scud – Ambush (2003) – twisted! You know the koo, mate!

The Bug – Pressure (2003) – suprisingly varied (yet twisted!) industrial ragga bizness. I expected this to be full on 100% shouty ranting, but actually it’s nice and poetic in places. More on this soon…

Also been trying to choose what to play at the UK-D party tomorrow. A few nervous twinges as well