uncarved.org blog

1. SPATIAL INTERVIEWED BY JOHN EDEN

An interview I did with Hackney-based producer Spatial is now published exclusively and for the first time at The Liminal.

This piece was originally intended for issue 5 of Woofah, but has been fully updated. (It’s the last outstanding thing I wrote for Woofah, which makes me a bit smiley and a bit weepy!). Spatial is an interesting guy and is well worth checking.

2. MORE TURBULENT TIMES ACTION

Idwal Fisher did a lovely review of my Turbulent Times fanzine, along with other publications.

The zine now has its own page if people are interested in ordering it or knowing about distributors etc.

I have properly started work on the new issue but can’t say when it will be out!

3. AND FINALLY, SOME ADVERTS:

3rd Official Trailer for A Noisy Delivery, by Pete Cann from GX Jupitter-Larsen on Vimeo.

I raved about the Xylitol track a while back for FACT Magazine so can’t wait to hear it on vinyl…. lord knows what the LMG track will be like!

Get yourselves here for more info and ordering details:

http://libertatiaot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/spectral-set.html

http://xylitolmusic.blogspot.co.uk/

Some related fanzine action from me very soon.

release date: 20 October 2012. 68 pages

This looks like another great issue!

It includes an exclusive interview I did with industrial music superstar Jordi Valls about his work as Vagina Dentata Organ and The Valls Brothers.

Also a bunch of my reviews (including some of the lengthier ones intended for Woofah).

I haven’t stopped blogging. I’ve just got really really picky.

This is something worth writing about. Like me, Kek-W has been flung into a boredom-induced rage at the state of the world and the constant click click click of refreshing screens.

So he’s done this weird fanzine/pdf/not quite sure what it is lash up. And it’s great – there is something about the format which means that you can’t just scroll through it looking at the pictures – you have to sit down with it with a cup of tea (or whatever) and take your time.

It’s a breath of fresh air – you can tell Kek’s spent some time thinking about it and making it rather than just bashing it out (like we all have a tendency to do these days). Some energising musings on what has got him to this point, and some great features on Pete UM and Pariah Carey. The highlight for me was the Libbe Matz Gang interview which may confuse or enlighten those in search of clues, but either way – it’s a laugh.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE. FREE (obviously)

Meanwhile I amassing a stockpile of new and old words on little A5 pages myself…

LIBBE MATZ GANG – L.M.G EP available now from LIBERTATIA OVERSEAS TRADING.

Uncle Dugs meets Eastman at Rinse FM [ 25:17 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Uncle Dugs on Rinse FM with a blazing 1991 selection.

But even better than that, he gets Kool FM founder Eastman in for an extended interview. (interview commences at about 1:37:00)

Some proper history, covering North London reggae soundsystem, early raves, Jungle Fever, and the full story of Kool FM.

An amazing bit of oral history, loads of details and tales of scrapes. If you liked “Tape Crackers”, this is the side of the story told by the station crew rather than the listeners/punters.

Kool FM is about to celebrate 20 years in the business.

Thanks to Mikus for the tip off!

Many of you may have heard of BBC Lancashire’s “On The Wire” show already because you’re in the area and tune in. Others may be avid readers of presenter Steve Barker’s reggae reviews for (the unrelated but similarly named) Wire magazine.

Uncarved readers may recall the mix that Paul Meme and I did for the show’s 21st anniversary episode.

Or maybe you’re aware of the numerous tie-ins with people like Lee Perry or the On-U Sound crew.

On The Wire - archive flyer

For me On The Wire is the BBC’s only remaining manifestation of the true spirit of underground eclecticism once also exhibited by John Peel. I’ve heard a ton of the shows as podcasts and downloads over the years. The reggae and dub specials are amazing, but the shows where Steve and the crew shove everything in the bag are even better. Shackleton and King Midas Sound rub up against The Ceramic Hobs and LA Vampires. Raw blues cuts mix with slinky african business. All with impeccable wry northern commentary.

So yeah.

I was greatly saddened to be sent this email by Steve at the weekend:

The Future of On the Wire

My letter is in the post, but I think communications from people in Lancs will count for more.

Check out previous shows here.

Read about the history of the show here.

I’m skint and haven’t bought any records since July. Luckily my lust for new music is being catered for admirably by my friends. Another despatch from Mego HQ in Vienna has provided many enjoyable evenings.

Jim O’Rourke – Old News No. 6 2xLP

I used to own a fair few “dark ambient” albums, but I had to get rid of them. It wasn’t the fascist undertones, or the sheer satanic evil of the music – they all just seemed incredibly one dimensional when I listened to them again after many years’ abstinence. I think if you have to overload your record sleeves with extreme imagery and use vocal samples reflecting how incredibly sinister it all is, you’re probably doing it all wrong. (To know, to will, to dare, and to keep silent, right?)

Plus, I have less use in my life these days for such mono-emotional soundtracks. I rarely feel the urge to play “happy hardcore” or “uplifting trance” for the same reason. But mono-textural is fine – see my recent Mark Fell review.

O’Rourke is another of the pantheon of people I recognise from reading The Wire but have never engaged with. They stuck him on the cover dressed as a rabbit is all I know. Oh and he was in Sonic Youth for a bit. Frankly the cover of this doesn’t give much away. Which is all for the good because I approached it without any preconceptions. It’s strange – electronic and ambient and varied but not demanding that you interpret it in a particular way (even Autechre who I see as miles away from the legions of dark-ambienters still have a very clearly defined post-rave sinister boffin aesthetic).

Over four sides of thick black vinyl, O’Rourke pours gloopy drones, harsh interludes, urban field recordings and other elements that are even harder to describe. It fluctuates between calm and unnerving, bright and dark. These fluctuations allow your imagination to completely open up rather than being signposted in a particularly cliched sub-goth direction.

I don’t really know what it is, which is why I keep going back to it.

Mark Fell & Peter Rehberg – Zikir/Kubu 12″

I like both these people, but I don’t think I get this record.

Side A: BBC male voices document something seriously (possibly, the development of radar?). There is occasionally squidgy bass rumble, but mainly there are stilted breakbeats – running at about 70bpm. And let’s be clear, these are much more like drums than Mark’s martian surgical implements of UL8. There is a Cabaret Voltaire influence floating above this – and I’m not sure if they are trying to reach towards it or run away. Certainly the double, triple speed madness at the end suggests some kind of escape velocity being reached…

Side B: is Rehberg meets Fell in the echo chamber. A simple drum riff, some static crunchiness, elements slowly being added. Before you know it you’re nodding your head to a pretty complex drum pattern. Soon enough they’ve added almost baffling levels of complexity. A slow shift from minimal to overload.

I’m haunted by the feeling that this record includes elements of something else – another record I am very familiar with. That’s not to say that either track is generic, just that for a trainspotter like me there is a pleasure/pain aspect to not being able to pin it down.

Philipp Quehenberger – Uffuff 12″

The title track comes replete with a camp as fuck sinister bassline, right out of the Torture Garden or Slimelight in the early nineties. Plus nice stomping germanic beatz. Somewhere, someone in those stupid goth clown boots is mixing this in with KMFDM.

Then Patrick Pulsinger brings some mad diddly beats that make you wonder if you’re playing the record at the right speed. (No really, I had to play the thing from the start and then time it to see if was the right length as stated on the editions mego website…). Then about halfway through it morphs into an exact replica of the sort of tunes you’d get played in the mental room of raves -the spaces you’d peak into at about 4 in the morning and they’d either be empty or full of proper casualties going even more bonkers – either way you’d never actually go in, but probably regret it a little…

If you were fleeing the room-of-mentals, you’d probably be looking from something exactly like the Elin remix of “Hey Gert”. Absolutely lush twinkly synths and an only as rough as it needs to be bassline, with skippy beats. This sounds like the kind of gear Colin Dale used to play – and there are few compliments I can pay people in the techno realm. I don’t know if everyone did this, but there are some moments when you’d end up having a “smiling like a loon” partner on discerning dancefloors. Usually a complete stranger, you were forced together by the mutual recognition that “fucking hell, this is a REALLY GOOD BIT, isn’t it?”. This is one of those tunes.

Then – we return! To the room of mentals! For the last track! Remix by Altroy! Who are either a “business advice and marketing services” company in Ruislip, or some guy from Harlem who rocked up in Vienna with a pleasingly small internet footprint.

Bill Orcutt – A New Way To Pay Old Debts CD

Peter is most amused by the fact that the most extreme release he’s put out this year so far is a blues record. OK, so it’s not really a blues record as the old coves who turn up to the jam sessions in your local boozer would understand it. Very few vocals, mainly some guy pummeling the living fuck out of an acoustic guitar. A repaired acoustic guitar that has two strings missing. It’s a raw recording- you can hear the room alongside the music, which works. There is some distortion around the edges too, which definitely works – this is one gnarly performance.

Actually I’m not entirely sure that there are any vocals on this. On first listen I thought there was a bit of piano too, but now I’m convinced they are just strange fret-board resonances. Hey, maybe even the room-ambience is just something Orcutt can conjur up with his fingers and guitar, I dunno. It sounds like there is much more than one man and a guitar here, anyway.

I’ve previously said that “A New Way…” is what Seasick Steve would sound like if he was really some outsider dude on the fringes of society and sanity. That provoked some mixed reactions, so it’s definitely in keeping with the album. Whatever Orcutt has the blues about, you get the impression that it’s more than waking up in the morning to find his woman done left him.

Audio and more information on all of the above and more available at: http://editionsmego.com/

Stamford Hill is right at the northern end of the London Borough of Hackney, bordering Haringey/Tottenham. I’ve lived around there for about 15 years now and have always had an interest in its history.

Last May, Richie (Maharishi Hi-Fi / Musical Fever) hosted another one of his excellent nights, this time at the Mascara Bar (previously Panagea Project, opposite Morrisons Supermarket). I’m no die-hard Ska or Rocksteady expert, but Richie’s nights are always excellent (see reviews here and here). I’ll happily leave the selections to Richie and his favoured DJs any time – an amazing night for the old and young is standard.

Riche also has an uncanny habit of organising great events within about 2 minutes of my flat, which is most definitely to his credit. This time one of my favourite reggae writers of all time, Penny Reel, was on the bill – and there was a local history angle. I was sold.

It was an education, musically and socially. I had the pleasure of meeting Nick Kimberley, who published the world’s first reggae fanzine, Pressure Drop, with Penny Reel in 1974. I get very excited about things like that and the connections/differences with Woofah. Before that night I didn’t know anything about the R&B Records operation. Naturally there were tunes aplenty and further help was on hand in the form of a text produced especially for the night by Malcolm Imrie, who has kindly allowed me to republish it here:

R&B Records
1959-1984

Bunny Lee: “The main t’ree people was when I come a Englan’ forty odd years ago, right, was who now. . .? Mrs King. . . and. . . husband name Benny. Benny use’ to come a Jamaica too, yunno, an’ put out — a get record. Him use’ to put out anyt’ing wha Ken Lack [Caltone imprint] make, Rita an’ Benny, y’understan…”

Rita and Benny King, R&B Records?

“Yes, Rita an’ Benny, right. Them did ‘aye a big distributing place from — dem was powerful people inna the business. Mrs King was a force to reckon with. Them use’ to have a place inna Stamford Hill. If she na sell the record is better yu come outta the business.”

Chuckles.

“When she talk everybody jump!”

Interview with Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee by Pete I on www.reggae-vibes.com

******

In 1959, Stamford Hill was a lot livelier than it is today. A good place to be a teenager. Full of cafes, like the popular E&A salt beef bar on the corner of Clapton Common and Stamford Hill or Carmel’s kosher restaurant a few doors further down on the other side of the street (oddly, the newish shop there is still called Carmel). Even Windus Road (just round the corner from the Mascara Bar) had three milk bars — you can still see the sign of one of them outside what is now a Hassidic pizza takeaway.

A lot of people would hang out and play pinball in “the Schtip”, the Yiddish name (I think it means ‘taking money’) everyone used for the amusement arcade almost next door to the E&A (it’s still there, with a different name and no pinball). As well as the grand Regent (where Sainsbury’s now stands), soon to be the Gaumont and finally the Odeon, you could take your pick of around eight other cinemas within half a mile.

Three years earlier, ten-year-old local girl Helen Shapiro was singing in a group called Susie and the Hula Hoops, along with a boy called Markie Feld, later to change his name to Marc Bolan. Two years on, in 1962, she’d have two number one hits. In ’59 she and Markie were both members of Stamford Hill Boys and Girls Club in Montefiore House (now replaced by a block of flats just south of Holmleigh Road), as were Alan Sugar, one day to get knighted for services to himself, and Malcolm Edwards, soon to become Malcolm McLaren.

And in only a few months’ time, they are about to get the first ten-pin bowling alley in Europe (watch its gala opening here or below)

Exciting times.

All that was missing was a good record shop, and in 1959 a Jewish couple called Rita and Benny Isen who had just changed their surname to King decided to open one. Rita and Benny: R&B Records. I read somewhere that earlier they sold records from a stall in Petticoat Lane but have no idea whether it’s true. For the first ‘few years the shop was at 282 Stamford Hill (now a builder’s merchants), and then it moved a few doors up to 260 (now Top Pizza). By about 1963/64 they weren’t just selling records, they were releasing them on their own labels — first the parent label, R&B, and then a whole sprawling family of others, including Giant, King, Ska Beat, Hillcrest, Caltone, Jolly, and Port-O-Jam. Their most bizarre label was surely Prima MagnaGroove, devoted exclusively to the output of the Italo-American swing artist Louis Prima (slogan: Stay on the Move, With Prima MagnaGroove). That’s Louis singing ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ in Jungle Book — the king of the swingers.

At first their catalogue was an odd mixture. Their only big hit in the UK was Irish c&w Larry Cunningham’s ‘Tribute to Jim Reeves’ in 1964. They did a bit of gentle pop, including “His Girl” by the Canadian band The Guess Who? which managed to get to number 45 in 1966:

It’s been claimed they even released surf music but I haven’t found any trace of it.

But that isn’t why they were so special. What was really important about R&B Records was that Rita and Benny were among the very first to release Jamaican music in Britain. Ska and rock steady. Scores of great records on pretty much all their labels, from 1964 onwards. Artists included: Laurel Aitken, Dandy Livingstone, Jeanette Simpson, Junior Smith, The Itals, The Wailers, The Wrigglers, Jackie Opel, The Maytals, The Skatalites, Lee Perry, The Blue Flames, The Clarendonians, Delroy Wilson, Derrick Morgan, Don Drummond, Stranger Cole… and many, many more. You can find the (incomplete) catalogues of some of their labels on www.discogs.com [and Tapir's site - JE]. While Benny looked after the shop, Rita traveled to Jamaica to meet the musicians and buy the tapes.

Until the late 1960s there were very few places in Britain where you could buy records of Jamaican music, and R&B on Stamford Hill had all the new releases, and not just on their own labels. So their shop became a mecca for young blacks, not just from Hackney but from all over London and well beyond. Barry Service, who worked in the shop from 1970 to 1980, says that when he started there the place was packed on Friday evenings and all day Saturday, with people buying music and listening to music — it seemed like a club as much as a shop. And Rita, with her beehive haircut, presided over it all, like a queen. The shop also became very popular — because they liked ska — with the early Mods. Penny Reel, who grew up here, convincingly claims that Stamford Hill was the birthplace of Mod:

“The grandfathers of these young stylists [Markie Feld and his friends] toiled in the tailoring sweatshops of Fashion Street fifty years earlier and their fathers own small outfitters in Kingsland Waste, so it is not at all surprising that their clothes are at the forefront of fashion and in the most modern Italian and French styles. In fact, this crowd refer to themselves as “modernists” and they are the forerunners of the gentile “mods” who emerge over the next few years with their sharp bri-nylon anoraks, scooters and op art imagery, and cause headlines at the Easter weekend holiday in Clacton in 1964.”

Certainly there were a lot of Mods, Jewish and gentile, in and around Stamford Hill. They would go to music venues further up towards Tottenham, like Loyola Hall (now some sort of Christian mission centre) where The Who played early on, and the Club Noreik at Seven Sisters, as you can see at the end of this clip of Unit 4+1 playing there in ’66:

Rita and Benny’s shop lasted for 25 years. They finally closed it in 1984, partly, it seems, because of ill-health. Barry Service kept in touch with them for a short while but doesn’t know what became of them. Nor do I. There’s only one photo I’ve found of Rita, thanks to Penny Reel, and one of her and Benny with Larry Cunningham in Billboard magazine’s archives. I’d like to know more. Black music in Britain owes quite a lot to them, and it is about time they were celebrated. Stars of Stamford Hill. One day there should be a Blue Plaque outside Top Pizza…

Malcolm Imrie

Mark Fell – UL8 (Editions Mego CD)

Peter Rehberg occasionally chucks great wads of CDs at me. This makes me happy.

They are incredibly varied and whilst it’s hard to for me to love all of the Mego output, there’s always something interesting going on.

The pinnacle of the recent batch for me has been the work of Mark Fell. This was described to me as being “total disco”, which it should be abundantly clear is WAY off the mark. But it’s probably what disco sounds like inside Peter’s head…

Fell’s roots are in Sheffield (pirate?) radio and then as half of Snd, a group who get lumped in with minimal glitchy techno, but I’m in no position to judge whether that’s accurate or not. Ian from Autotoxicity interviewed them I think.

UL8 is inspired by the speakers owned by the Fell’s older brother when he was about 11:

This project takes its name from the Celestion UL8 speaker. My older brother bought a pair of these when i was starting comprehensive school, and between his 10cc and Supertramp records i first encountered electronically synthesized sound at high volumes. I soon noticed a pattern emerging in my musical tastes which excluded guitars or drums. Instead I favoured almost exclusively the electronic textures and rhythms of The Human League, Fad Gadget and other synthesiser based music of that period. I was quite curious about this prejudice and would try to work out why Kraftwerk sounded so much better than a rock band of the time.

So began my interest in the texture of synthetic sound – there was something much more beautiful (and perhaps more emotionally charged) about a sustained square wave than any guitar solo. I began search out and replay sections of music which dropped to a single sound – these, for some reason, were the best.

I like speaker fetishism, it’s obviously a big part of reggae soundsystem culture. To me it represents a devotion to the physical side of sound, conjuring up visions of the spaces and places where music is listened to. Increasingly I’m giving up on my ipod earbuds and am trying to carve out special moments at home so that I can hear music through my fab new speakers (and an amp kindly donated by Mr Grievous Angel) instead. Recently a bit of Mark Fell has often been the last thing I’ve played at night…

UL8 operates with what seems like an incredibly limited palette, a practise that intersects nicely with what I was saying about Ekoplekz recently. If you can use every single sound in the universe, the skill is no longer about what you select, but what you leave out.

The opening track on the album seems to consist of two noises, sounds, waveforms, whatever you want to call them. One might loosely be described as percussive, one might be a synth line. But they are both so synthetic, so glassy, so technical that it all feels a bit like an uber minimal slice of computer noise – the soundtrack to a ZX Spectrum game loading is positively funky in comparison. But the stripped down nature of it all forces you to engage with it and slowly clears the room of anything else.

Tracks 4 and 5 are a bit more beat driven and have some pixellated hiss going on in the background, the clean minimalism being slightly eroded.

Tracks 6 to 12 are entitled “Vortex Studies” and go darker. Track 7 sounds like a computer rolling some ball bearings around one of those maze games and is especially excellent. 9 is mainly buzzing and is also ace. 12 is getting on for industrial.

Tracks 13 to 19 are entitled “Acids in The Style of Rian Treanor”, a reference to Hecker’s”Acid in the style of David Tudor” also released on Mego, which was itself a reference to Art & Language’s “Portrait of V.I. Lenin with Cap, in the Style of Jackson Pollock” (1980).

13 sounds like a dot matrix printer going down a plughole. The rest is as per previous tracks but more messy and harsh – these are shorter pieces and the gaps between them are less evident. 16 is almost getting into gabba territory. 19 could almost be power electronics if you included someone earnestly swearing over the top of it.

The final track is entitled “Death of Loved One”. It includes a bit of light relief in the form of an ambienty synth wash that is very 3AM under the strobes. Or at least it would be, but for the presence of a harsh squeaky noise several notches louder spoiling your reverie.

“Most of the tracks on both UL8 are procedures implemented on a computer to generate patterns and timbral data that I will typically mess about with as they go along. It’s all dead simple, I have no real interest in technical complexity. I find the best systems are the very simple ones, where it’s just a very few linked procedures. They sound complex, but could be summed up in a couple of lines of text.”

There’s a lot of technical language in Fell’s work that goes over my head – stuff about alogrithms and frequency modulation. I am not perturbed by this in the slightest – I enjoy the work on its own terms even if I don’t understand them. In my mind Fell becomes some kind of techno scientist mashing up strange equations to make freakily geometric music. Which is great. For all I know it’s all made up anyway, like that pretend professor that The Hafler Trio invented to give their sounds a gloss of academic respectability. Fell seems to do a lot of installation work, that probably means it isn’t all hype – I’d certainly be interested to check out his stuff in a gallery or similar space.

This interview in Fact Magazine seems to suggest that he’s wrestled with and resisted his engagement with academia and is still a raver at heart.

Mark Fell – Manitutshu* (Editions Mego 2×12″)

This is subtitled “*Ritual Songs From The Spirit Mountain”. Which sounds quite hippyish, but reading between the lines, said spirit mountain may be the rubbish tip in Rotherham (or an installation somewhere else?) which is photographed on the cover and the massive glossy full colour poster insert. I’m probably reading my own biases into his work, but it seems to me that beneath Fell’s boffin exterior lies a pisstaking northerner with a sense of humour that’s drier than a millstone.

Manitutshu* seems to be sort of a UL8 remix album, but also involves some rejected soft-synth presets Mark designed for Native Instruments.

The tracks here have a bit more light and shade to them I think, with the perhaps the slightest hints of funk creeping in here and there. You even get a female french spoken word vocal going on about various bits of hardware. It’s still minimal, digital to the core and messed up as you like though.

The track times and titles are still bonkers. Side B kicks off with “Acids In The… razor experiment” (51 seconds of buzzing and stuff), and ends with track of truly wonky beats lasting 1:47. The 6:23 sandwich filling in the middle is entitled “Manitutshu… parameter set 2, Linn Hi Tom, JazzOrg, vortex study performance overdub, and synthesis reminiscent of Duet Emmo”. This is engagingly rhythmic, though probably not one to request by name in your local discotheque.

Side D is one long track, a remix by Mat Steel, Fell’s partner in Snd. It commences with a simple loop that I find incredibly uplifting whenever I hear it, but that is very far from being shared with other people in this flat. There’s an incredible relief when the very simple loop starts being tweaked about and arpegiating (is that even a word? is it the right word?) a few minutes in. This final track is 15 minutes of very few things happening, in exactly the right order, and is brilliant.

When I play these albums I get asked if they do my head in. They do…