A dispatch from Tony’s cafe

Though my corner of Hackney has yet to attain a Middle-Earth level of cosmic grandeur, the ongoing battle between local people and the forces of regeneration has been growing in stature.

We’ve got our very own Dark Lord, in the shape of a property developer called Dr Roger Wratten, who has an underground island base in Tunbridge Wells and a henchman with a glass eye.

Ranged against him is a hobbit-like band of local people, who since late November have been barricaded inside Francesca’s cafe at 34 Broadway Market, blocking Wratten from pulling it down to build a block of flats.

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Communities | Hari Kunzru: A dispatch from Tony’s cafe

Plus see also coverage in the Evening Standard, La Republica, Der Spiegel, Hackney Gazette, you name it…

Best of 2005 mix

Download from: here.

2015 Edit – now here:

John Eden – Rough and Ready Best of 2005 Reggae mix by Johnedenuk on Mixcloud


PLEASE NOTE THIS IS NOT A ZIPPED FILE! Don’t unzip or decompress it, simply download it and then change the “.zip” at the end of the filename to “.mp3”.

This is a selection of my favourite tunes of the year – mainly new releases, but there are a few tunes off retro-compilations that came out in 2005 as well. Plus the odd tune which I bought in 2005, but have no idea when it actually came out. It starts quite chill and gets progressively more banging. Roots, bashment and dub, comrades!

The mix is dedicated to Gladdy Wax and the staff of the Wax Unlimited shop, which will be closing at the end of the year. A fundamental part of my reggae education, and a pillar of real culture in the increasingly gentrified Stoke Newington. I’d like to believe they’d still be there if I’d given them more of my money, but I certainly did my best…

29 tracks, 71 minutes, 100megs. This is a live mix done in one take, so don’t expect any of the top of the range seamless perfection you get when me and Paul Meme do a mix together. My mixer is verging on completely useless these days as well…

Tracklist? Ha ha. That’s where the fun starts. Me and Paul have noticed that there are a load of people who download our mixes (which is great) but who never leave comments or get in touch (which is a bit depressing and not the reason we do this). And not only that, there are a few sites and message forums which seem to delight in linking directly to the file so that people hear our mixes without even seeing the context they appear in (i.e. the rest of the site/blog/etc).

Therefore the following conditions apply:

1) If you want the tracklist, send me an email at “spotter [at-sign] uncarved [dot] org”. AND include someting in the email about the mix which proves you’ve already given it a listen.
2) If I see people linking directly to the file, I will take it down. (Link instead to https://www.uncarved.org/blog/2005/12/best-of-2005-mix/)
3) If my bandwidth goes ballistic, I will take the file down.
4) If I see anyone putting the tracklist on the web, I will take the file down.
5) A very limited number of CDs are available for dial-up people who have already been in touch with me (or who I know from internet forums, etc) – email the address above.

The mix will be up for about a week, all being well.

It’s been a great year for music. Despite vowing to listen to things other than reggae, that’s still been my staple diet. For all its faults it’s still the only genre which consistently excites me, and 20o6 easily has the potential to be even better.

It should go without saying that people should seek this music out – and buy it – if they like the mix. There won’t be any more of these tunes if the producers, labels, singers and players don’t get a fair wage for their work.

34 Broadway Market – they thought it was all over…

Local people reoccupy Tony's cafe

Local people reoccupy Tony’s cafe

Website for the community occupation of 34 broadway market.

On Boxing Day morning, a new group of supporters of the campaign managed to enter and re-occupy the cafe.

We have now undertaken an ambitious reconstruction scheme and are rebuilding the cafe almost as fast the wreckers smashed it down. (We plan not one but two floors – but no exclusive penthouse apartments or concierge on this development!).

We are loath to describe this as regeneration but it’s probably closer to it than anything Wratten or Hackney Council have been capable of so far.

Pressure & Slide

Never was a blog better named than Matt’s Idle Thoughts for Idle Moments. He could never be accused of being an obsessive blogger (which is to his credit) but instead just bungs up the odd interesting post now and then.

He’s been unusually prolific of late, with posts covering his trip to New York and a piece on a new mid-price compilation of George Phang productions (which was already on my list to get!)

Also a superb Invasion riddim mix. Fantan Mojah’s “Hungry” is one of my tunes of the year, so it’s great to hear it with a bit of aural context.

In terms of the history of the riddim Matt points out that the most famous cut is “Oh Mr DC” by Sugar Minott. Tho like many of the riddims the granular one used at Studio One, he was treading ground already covered some years before. Anyway, it’s a top tune about a ganja dealer begging a lawman not to take his stock because he has to provide for his family. It was inexplicably left off the Soul Jazz Minott compilation, so you have to track down the seven really.

This has the advantage of including a great “part two” which retains a lot of the vocals over a minimal backing, plus harmonica solo. On the downside, my repress sounds like someone frying bacon whilst turning up the static on their malfunctioning telly to the max. Whilst a family of 18 simultaneously put milk on their rice krispies.

Sometimes reggae trainspotters’ obsession with getting the original press of records makes perfect sense to me. It’s been asked a million times before but how can vinyl produced in the 21st century sound so much worse than records which were pressed 25 years ago? There was a classic thread about this on the Blood & Fire Board a while back where someone was advertising a “Studio One” plug-in for Soundforge – make any record sound like Studio One represses by adding skips, warps, incorrect b-sides, hissing, etc. We have a lot to thank Soul Jazz for, really – perhaps their reissues aren’t done with enough “reverence” but in terms of sound quality they are a bloody sight better than the stuff old man Coxsone released himself. Er… anyway… a bit of a digression there I think.

Of course Mr Minott wasn’t the last person to use the riddim (and indeed returned to it himself with none other than George Phang iirc). Yellowman’s “Mr Yellowman” album from 1982 includes the MASSIVE “Two Two Six Supermix” on Junjo’s charateristically sparse, funky and pounding version.

Winston Riley got in the act in the 1987. Super Black’s “Nowadays Girl” sits on top of a genius downtempo electronic version which always does it for me, especially when it rolls into the super-spacey ambient dub. This is on the crucial Maximum Pressure “Dancehall Techniques” compilation, along with a Cutty Ranks cut. But yeah, ner de ner, I’ve got it on 12″ as well. High time I had some reggae label scans on here again, it doesn’t feel quite right without them…

1987 was also the year Germain Donovan released a shedload of his cuts of the riddim, including Audrey Hall’s cheeky “One Dance Won’t Do”. Audrey dances with a guy and then confesses “I was dancing with you – just to see what he would do.” – she’s been holding this bloke close while watching her boyfriend all the time to wind him up! She is so out of order, but it’s clear she can get away it due to being a sexy minx. Them’s the breaks!