Big Yard mix

I get sick of all the purism exhibited by people who know a little about reggae and are desperate to defend their cred. In their clamour to appear hip, they make a completely false distinction between “real” reggae and artists such as Sean Paul, Maxi Priest and especially Shaggy.

At the bottom line this approach fails to understand that most reggae is (and has always been) pop music. It also misses the point that each of these artists is versatile and cannot just be dismissed as a top 40 crossover act.

Shaggy is perhaps the best example of someone who is able to produce the odd top 40 hit but whose output is mostly tunes which are released on seven inch, on riddims which also feature versions by his less pop JA contemporaries. His Big Yard label has also released a stack of great tunes by other people.

Last year I did a little mix of this stuff for my own amusement and then promptly forgot about it.

I was reminded of this all recently when yet another thread appeared on an internet discussion forum slagging off Shaggy and decided to unearth said mix. It’s about half an hour long and is quite rough and ready. It was done before the release of Big Yard’s wicked take on 007/Shanty Town so that is not included. It also misses off the bonkers acid-ragga tunes which appear as the last few tunes of my Bounce Me Back To 98 mix for blogariddims.

That’s Not My Name

Roughly a decade ago the seminal breakcore and experimental label Praxis produced some t-shirts. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary there, you might think. Except Praxis were committed to creating a counter-culture (or “sub-net” network) of people who didn’t wish to become celebrity DJs or producers.

Instead people were encouraged to adopt pseudonyms and to find new ways or working collectively. To not play the “business” game. The use of the “DJ Jackal” multiple name was one example of this. Inspired by the Luther Blissett and Karen Eliot phenomena, DJs were invited to adopt the same name for flyers, records, projects.

The t-shirts themselves were not designed to promote the Praxis label. They had the label logo printed on them, for sure. But printed on the inside of the t-shirt where nobody would see it. Printed on the outside of the black t-shirt, in black ink, was the slogan “Visibility Is A Trap”:

“It’s actually a quote from Foucault, from ‘Discipline and Punish’. It refers to surveillance, ie. being controlled through being visible to the authorities. So it has that meaning from the original quote but it also has what I think is important, that what I do is part of a collective and there is a certain degree of anonymity, so that it’s an invisible situation.”
Interview from Deadly Type zine

Burial photographed by Georgina Cook - drumzofthesouth

Burial photographed by Georgina Cook / drumzofthesouth

I was thinking about this earlier today when ruminating on last week’s chicanery regarding Burial’s identity. Burial (for those who don’t know) is a producer operating at the more atmospheric, less “dancey” end of dubstep. He’s released two albums on Kode9’s Hyperdub label to much acclaim.

Burial has gone some way to refuse the role of being a “star” by not revealing his name or being photographed. He is interviewed rarely, and then only by trusted journalists. This has lead to some speculation about his identity, with most agreeing that the lack of a face or name to pin the sounds on makes a refreshing change in the days of flickr, facebook, Hello, DJ Magazine, myspace, and all the other DIY-surveillance which is now all-pervasive.

But then Hyperdub put Burial’s “Untrue” album forward for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize. Whilst this was a courageous move, potentially catapulting the music to a vast audience (and creating some interesting opportunities for collaborations…) it was obvious to everyone that this drift towards mainstream conventions would necessitate a compromise about Burial’s anonymity.

Sure enough The Sun, in the form of tedious knob-end Gordon Smart and his “Bizarre” column began sniffing around:

“Help me dig up the real Burial

A MYSTERY is rumbling through the music world which could threaten one of the biggest nights in the showbiz calendar. Mercury Music Prize nominee BURIAL is the chart equivalent of graffitti artist BANKSY.

Hardly anyone knows the true identity of the producer, widely tipped for the gong in September. […]

Conspiracy theories are rife as to who is behind the tunes, with producers NORMAN COOK and APHEX TWIN in the frame. […]

Know who he is? Get in touch by calling…. email …. or text BIZ (space then message) to …”

Burial responded to this by posting a photo of himself and stating his real name on his myspace.

Kode9 seemed as sanguine as ever, posting this entry on his blog.

This, you would think, would be the end of the matter. But it’s easy to forget the frenzy the media gets into over identity. Smart managed to pad out the Burial non-story into a further four episodes.

Gordon Smart considering his next groundbreaking expose. Photo by Stuart MacKenzie

Gordon Smart considers his next earth-shattering expose. Photo by Stuart MacKenzie.

William Burroughs pointed out that in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the only way you can progress through the afterlife is by knowing the names of the correct spirits. Smart’s obsession with uncovering Burial’s name (and promoting his own by association) shows us that the world of tabloid journalism stinks of death. It is a very real form of Zombie Culture. Subsequent writing by Smart has even latched onto the names of people who emailed him to criticise his first piece, such is his mania to traverse the underworld.

Whilst we should pity Smart for being trapped in such a barren landscape, a more pressing issue is the need to build an arsenal of techniques to resist Zombie Culture. My colleague Boris Karloff has made some suggestions here, but in these days of instensified speculation about our private lives, there is a great need for more.

Footnote 1: Comrade Joe Muggs has written a fuller account of the debacle here. It includes details of Smart’s advanced state of zombified degradation – with the full symptoms of pissyness, plagiarism and pique. By now he will have latched onto some other “story”, but be careful not to reveal your name should you have any dealings with him.

Footnote 2: In the late 80s I had cause to visit the legendary London body-piercer and tattooist Mr Sebastian on a few occasions. He was a lovely man, entirely unaffected by his towering status in that world as far as I could tell. Seb unfortunately (and through no fault of his own) became embroiled in the Spanner Trial, in which various consenting adult S&M practitioners were had up for assaulting each other. Essentially he was charged with assault for conducting a piercing on a paying customer who was entirely happy with the results (more info on this at the wiki link above).

The case came to trial at the Old Bailey in December 1990 and I got a call from someone I didn’t know asking if I could help. I was delighted to be able to do so and managed to rally a few friends to turn out. Watching the trial was a completely bizarre experience, but that is for another time. Our most important contribution came at the end of each day when the judge (Judge Rant, he was called!) had retired.

Our aim, through a variety of tactics, was to get Mr Sebastian home safely and without being photographed by the paparazzi who were lieing in wait. I use the word “safely” advisedly. One of the other defendants in the trial was knocked to the ground by a mob of photographers and suffered a broken arm. It became a bit “cat and mouse”, but we succeded in our objective and no recognisable contemporary photo of Mr Sebastian appeared in any of the newspaper coverage of the trial.

Whilst Mr Sebastian ended up with a suspended sentence on those bullshit charges, he was really happy with the support and solidarity he’d been shown.

I think the main lesson I have learned from this is that you need to surround yourself with people you can trust – you can’t battle Zombie Culture on your own.

moving around like a human flood

It’s been an anxious few weeks.

I found myself standing in a room, talking to my Dad about moving into this new flat in Dalston. He didn’t look very impressed, giving it the old “Well if that’s what you really want to do, son… But what about that big hole in the ceiling?” I looked up and there was this massive, huge, tower of air going up 30 stories, like about 20 foot in diameter. “Oh… I never noticed that before…” I said, shuffling my feet uneasily like an eleven year old.

Outside we were packing up for a holiday, but before I managed to get the first bag into the borrowed car, the wheel-clampers had turned up. “How are you today sir? That will be £170 please. Cash.”

Under canvas watching the globules of water coalesce, run into each other, divide like amoebas. Drumming on the ceiling. “Part of me thinks he’s putting it on”. There’s a weird mash up going on in my head of every song off the first Macka B album (except the girl one, mercifully) and every single song I have ever heard about rain. As you can imagine it takes quite some time to come to an end.

At some point I was transported to a room which resembled my local from the waist down and Brixton’s legendary 121 Centre from the waist up. I seemed to be dj-ing but had brought the wrong box of records with me. It didn’t go too badly, I just had to make choices between tunes like The Adult Net’s “Waking Up In The Sun” and that Jonathan King gold flexi disc. Brix Smith was on that Gok fashion-psychosis programme on the telly the other night, so it was a no-brainer.

Then I found myself standing in a room, talking to my Dad about moving into this new flat in Dalston. He didn’t look very impressed, giving it the old “Well if that’s what you really want to do, son… but what about that big hole in the ceiling?” I looked up and there was this massive, huge, tower of air going up about 30 stories, like about 20 foot in diameter. “Oh I never noticed that before” I said, shuffling my feet uneasily like an eleven year old, thinking “Hang on, this seems familiar.”

We visited a village which seemed entirely ordinary, but not really for us. There was a vast Conservative Club which looked like a Greek temple, that sort of thing. We got odd looks, especially those of amongst us of darker hues. One of the charity shops boasted a copy of a tome entitled Hitler – The Victory That Almost Was. I placed it back on the shelf carefully. Across the road was a seemingly innocent shop selling souvenirs and beach tat.

Inside, hundreds of pairs of eyes stared at me. Garish white smiles. The shop sold a lot of things, but a lot of the things it sold were Gollywogs. Pens, fridgemagnets, badges, massive cuddly toys, little cuddly toys – everything you could conceive of was present in the form of a racist caricature. It was like a scene out of Darius James’ Negrophobia.

Suddenly everyone around me started throwing up. The air was awash with the sounds of paper sick-bags being opened up and then filled. I was oddly transfixed by it all, trying not to think about my breakfast. Macka B toasting “Beans and Egg, between two thick slices of bread” into my ear was not helping matters very much. Good tune, but y’know – give me a break Macka! I tried to sleep.

I found myself standing woozily in a room, talking to my Dad about moving into this new flat in Dalston. He didn’t look very impressed, giving it the old “Well if that’s what you really want to do, son… but what about that big hole in the ceiling? I looked up and there was this massive, huge, tower of air going up about 30 stories, like about 20 foot in diameter. “Oh for fuck’s sake!” I said.

The bar is arranged for midgets. If I stand up to my full height, everything from my nipples upwards is obscured. This makes ordering a drink very difficult, so I stoop like some crazed hunchback. I still don’t get served but at least I can now make vague eye contact with the barmaid and wonder how come I am the most sober person in the place. Everyone is dressed as cowboys and they all seem to be drinking vodka out of test tubes, mixed with chocolate. Lots of cowboy midgets, ripped to the gills on vodka, dancing to “Boom Boom Boom” by the Venga Boys. Fair play to them. The last time we were here there was a guy dressed in vast purple wig going by the name of Alvin Sawdust. Singing the old time songs.

I went to the toilet and then stepped outside for some air. Someone asked me to lie down in a trench. They were pretty friendly about it and had all these kids with them so I was happy to oblige. Then everyone started covering me up with stuff – shells, seaweed, sand, you get the picture. I wasn’t able to move, so I drifted off.

When I woke up I was standing in a room, talking to my Dad about moving into this new flat in Dalston. “Jesus, look at that big hole in the ceiling”, I exclaimed. “I’m fucked if I’m moving in here!”

Babylon System

You wait 28 years for a Babylon DVD release (factoring in the invention of the DVD during that time, of course), and then what happens?

Icon Home Entertainment are releasing a UK DVD of the classic film in October, which is great.

What is really great is that this release will feature “fully restored and remastered image and audio (personally overseen by Chris Menges – Babylon’s Director of Photography) plus Audio Commentaries and Interviews”. These are exactly the sort of things which were missing from the recent Rarovideo release (as was pointed out by Stewart Home in his review for Woofah issue 2).

More information when we have it – updates to the uncarved Babylon subsite will also follow.

Toe Cutter interview part one

I got a bunch of free records off my friend Aphasic about two years ago, all of which were great and some of which ended up getting played on RSI Radio volume 2. A couple of them were so mental they had to be played towards the end.

Of those, Toe Cutter was arguably the maddest. From the “drinking lots beer and fucking shit up” end of breakcore (rather than the ultra-left avant garde one), Toe Cutter mashes up house music, blasts of digital distortion, pissed off people from the TV and anything else which is to hand. It’s not pretending to be clever or innovative or even “good”, which is why maybe it always brings a smile to my face.

Where are you from, anyway?
Sydney.

“Toecutter” is slang, right? I can’t figure out what it means, though?
It has many resonances in Australian culture, in the 1920’s and 30’s there were gangs in Sydney called razor gangs (they used straight razors as weapons) and there was one called the Toecutters. From there, a Toecutter came to mean a criminal who steals (by standover tactics / violence) from other criminals; eg. a crew robs a bank, the Toecutter hears about it, finds the gang before the cops and cuts off their toes until they give up the cash. Then in the late 1970’s, George Miller wrote and directed Mad Max, and the leader of the outlaw motorcycle gang was called Toecutter.

When did you start making music and are there any very embarrassing pre-Toecutter projects we should know about?
It was 1999 I started cutting and sampling sounds. Before then I was DJing about 5 years, mostly hard techno then DHR and related.

You mention in the sleevenotes for the “We Topia” double LP that you’ve had some grief off recording engineers and other people – is this common? Why do you think it freaks people out? I remember Scud and Aphasic taking an early Ambush record into a drum ‘n’ bass shop and the guy behind the counter just put the needle on the record for, like, 2 seconds and said “nah mate!” What is the strangest response you’ve had?
Very common. “It’s just not the way music is meant to sound” is the kind of attitude I come across all the time. The sound guys are actually getting more relaxed about distortion than they were when I was playing DHR before the turn of the millennium. I guess one of my favourite responses was in Holland where the guy in the shop listened to my record and just kind of gritted his teeth and said “I’m sorry, we only sell one thing here…” I guess my record wasn’t that one thing! Oh, another great one was “off, off NOW!”

What’s the first piece of music you heard which made you go “huh? wow!”
Probably the soundtrack to Beat Street when they used some digital editing like “Dancin-, Dancin’, Da-Da-Da-Da-Da-Dancin’- All night long!” and I couldn’t get my head around it, so I used to rewind it over and over again to in part relive the impossible and try to understand it. I have since sampled it and used it in one track already, but it needs a bigger feature, especially in my new house project.

(There were more questions but we were chronically unable to get our respective acts together over a long period of time, so here it all is, as is!)

http://weetopia.sevcom.com/

http://www.myspace.com/toecuttersyco