audio love / golden era grime

First, its MIX TIME again - my FAVOURITE time.



KINGDOM - Club Vortex Mix - May 2008

tracklist:
01. J-Roc - If Its Beef
02. Ben Hill Squad - U Gotta (Kingdom Remix)
03. James Nasty - You So Hawt
04. So More - What You Want
05. Shola Ama - Imagine (The Asylum Remix)
06. 1st Born - I Can't Take It ft. Joy Brooks
07. Bianca G. & TS7 - Come On Over
08. Kingdom - BANG (Vocal Dub)
09. ESTAW & A-Clay - Dope Boy
10. Lil Wayne - Lollipop (Kingdom Remix)
11. House Crew - Euphoria (Nino's Dream)
12. Krezy Ryan - Get Up (Kingdom Remix)
13. Deff Rhymz - Schudden ft. Dj Jean
14. DJ Blass - Reggaeton Sex
15. Kingdom - What It Takes (Instrumental)
16. Leif - Timbs (Ian Johnson Remix)


Kingdom is a recent addition to our FAVOURITE DJs EVER list. No joke. This is a promo for his new club night launching THIS FRIDAY the 23rd May in Brooklyn NYC. Flyer:



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Now a brand new mix by another of our alltime favourites mr DROP THE muthafucking LIME!


DROP THE LIME - Mix for Golden Pudel

tracklist:
00:07 KRS ONE - Step Into A World (looped)
00:35 Green Velvet - Explorer [Relief Records 1995]
2:43 Drop The Lime - Set Me Free [White Label 2008]
6:04 Herve & Drop The Lime - Are Secret Agents [Counterfeet 2008]
7:46 Drop The Lime - Hot Sauce Grillz [Tigerbeat6 2006] 10:40 2 Bad Mice - Strip Search [Sm:) Communications 1995]
12:37 Drums Of Death - Breathe (Curses! Remix) [Greco-Roman 2008]
15:33 Regina Belle - Good Lovin' (looped) [CBS 1989] 16:20 Curses! - This Is The Way (Drop The Lime Remix) [Institubes]
19:11 Drop The Lime - Fever Gasp [Broklyn Beats 2007]
22:08 Klassic - Let Me Love U (Herbzman In The Hood Rmx)
23:03 Drop The Lime - Hold On [Rag & Bone 2006]
24:48 Blaqstarr - SHake It To The Ground (DTL Remix) [Mad Decent 2007]
27:15 Paul Johnson - Get Get Down [Fuel Records 1999]
29:21 Paul Johnson - Get Get Down [" "]
30:20 Q - Walk On By [Mystical Dubz 2007]
33:05 T2 Feat. Sharnell & Danica - Why [Nocturnal Records 2007] 35:10 Boy 8 Bit - The Suspense Is Killing Me (DTL remix) [Mad Decent 2008]
37:26 Drop The Lime - E Lock [Tigerbeat6 2006]
39:44 Drop The Lime - Pump Up NY [Trouble & Bass 2007]
41:23 Party Crashers Unite - Bullets 4 Brunch [Tigerbass 2007]
43:18 Voicemail from Dad [2007]
43:30 Jr Walker & All Stars - Shotgun [Tamla Motown 1965]
44:48 Infants - Firetruk Theme (DTL Remix 2007)
47:04 DJ Pierre - Box Energy [Trax Records 1988]
49:17 Fire Camp - War Riddim [white label 2006] w/ The House Crew "Dance To The House" [Strictly Rhythm 1990]


The thing with Luca DTL mixes is that despite being packed with DTL productions (no bad thing in itself) they are so much more than just showcases. As with previous mixes, bits of this one will have you scouring the tracklist for tracks that just don't exist beucase of the unexpected way in which he blends and mashes together tunes on the fly. Some serious trax-between-trax magic here.


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Now I hate to even use the term 'golden era' for fear of sounding like a grime equivalant of one of those true school dickheads who think 'hip hop died in 1991' but it seems a lot of people are looking BWD>> right now. Maybe it was those Lewi White 'Back In The Day' productions that mashed loads of old tunes together that got everyone reminiscing, or maybe it was something else (the dismal state of current grime production perhaps?).

From threads on forums compililing favourite old skool productions circa 2004 ("no Movement beats"), to the new and highly promissing Grimetapes.com project, everyone's going oldskool mad. I haven't ever really got off that flex to tell the truth, and while a number of tunes over the years have emerged as modern classics, nothing will beat that era of Youngstar, Oddz & Eastwood, Black Ops, Hindzy D, Alias etc etc.

I'm gonna be getting out my old shoebox of Rinse and De Ja Vu tapes to rip for grimetapes, but in the mean time I'm gonna chime in with this showaman beat for your downloading pleasure:

J-Sweet - Gutter - (Alias remix)

Bruk Bruk / Night Slugs 3

We're teaming up with Prancehall's night Shoosh for our third installment, bringing your a big lineup across two floors. The Redstar has just had a new soundsytem put in. I was brucking out on my 1s when I went down there to test it out - NS3 is going to be seriously special. Try and make your way down there !

In the meantime you can get in the mood and snank out in your homes, cars and offices to the audio from my set on Sub FM this saturday, aka the NIGHT SLUGS SHOW:

BOK BOK - Sub FM Night Slugs show 17-05-08

featuring dubs and trax from Davinche, Drop The Lime, Tubby, Geeneus, J-Sweet, DJ Absurd, Ruff Sqwad, TS7, DeVille, Dubchild, TRC, Murkz, Screama, A Dot R, Nevamiss, Jon E Cash, Donna Deep, Kodak, Agent X, Merkury, Starkey vs Moves!!!, Sticky, Mr Figz, Kingdom, DS7, Piddy Py, Brett Maverick, Kanji Kinetic, Bok Bok, Apple, Whistla, Mario, L-Vis 1990

Reading that list you'll notice there's a few 'Funky' bits in there as well. I've made my first couple of 'UK urban house' purchases recently, and been acquiring what tracks I could find from that scene after seeing Marcus Nasty smash it at the Shoosh launch night. I've been skeptical in the past but there seems to be two sides to this scene, with the better stuff reminding me of a sort of early grime - meets brokenbeat hybrid. Some of this Funky business is sick!

That reminds me! - The last ever FWD on a friday has been and gone, giving way to Geeneus' new weekly Funky night Incognito out in Purple E3. FWD is moving to Sundays and with Slimzee appearing at the first one, I feel like it might be time to give the old Spasm favourite a chance again.

Microphone Champions

Just when you think grime is dead it opens the coffin lid and slaps you in the face.

For a while it's felt like Boy Better Know were an extraordinarily well-tooled marketing machine (Timmy Mallett? WTH??) in pursuit of a sound and an audience, rather than a grime crew. But fuck me if they haven't just come up with the best hour of beats and bars of 2008. Skepta and Jammer have great new bars, Frisco and JME show unprecedented levels of energy, Shorty and Slickman do their bits, and Maximum's selection and mixing is totally on point - I was convinced most grime sets now consisted (by necessity) of 10 different versions of Rebound X and nothing else.

This may be a post-radio era, but maybe these pre-recorded podcast-type sets can take their place: I still prefer 2005's studio-recorded Rinsesessions CDs to any one MC's 'mixtape' you care to mention. Download:

Boy Better Know - Microphone Champion

Big up Hyperfrank for the write/heads-up. As she says: "If you don't download then you clearly voted for Boris in the elections." You need this in your life.

Riko: building a bridge from Kingston to Bow

Riko albums are like buses: You wait years for one to come along, and then when it finally turns up it has too many half-arsed fillers, old riddims and live clips on, and could have been trimmed down from 32 tracks to a lean 12.

Okay, maybe the buses analogy doesn't quite work. It's still well worth buying: less than six quid for a double CD by a grime legend is stupidly good value. Here's one of the better tracks off 'The Truth', a Maniac beat with the forward-leaning momentum to match Riko's dancehall stylings:

Riko Dan - My Style
http://www.sendspace.com/file/toztvx

Further on the grime/JA linkage, check out The Heatwave's new track with Riko, 'Mind How You A Talk' (sound clip and details of where to buy). This bashy four-minuter restores the DJ/MC balance lacking from rave-less contemporary grime riddims; you get a sense that Riko is really following the pace and energy of the beat ('Piano Riddim'), rather than the other way around. Also, it's on vinyl! Which is just quite nice to see, in 2008.

Finally, more essential listening: John Eden and Grievous Angel have put together a captivating, truly original Blogariddims mix, 'Grime in The Dancehall', exploring the musical ties between JA and LDN. I don't even know where to start with this one: it had to be done, and who else was going to be able do it but the Woofah fam? Just download it, and listen.

introducing KINGDOM

NYC DJ and producer Kingdom's self-confessed first love is r’n’b. His own tracks as well as his DJ selection are drenched with sweetness and soul, yet his unique take on bassline, rave and ghetto trance will destroy the dancehall with an amazing mix of rough and smooth.

We're very pleased to have Kingdom coming over to play at Night Slugs and to celebrate he's given us some mp3s to put up:

Lil Wayne - Lollipop [Kingdom remix]

Kingdom - Bang (snippet)

Also check out Kingdom's amazing second mixtape, me and Manara have been playing it on loop for weeks. There are tracks on there that make me wanna weep in my headphones, its a lot to take in.

You can buy the mixtape and find out more at kkingdomm.com/ and myspace.com/kkingdomm

Check him out alongside Dexplicit, Zomby and Girl U No Its True this coming Friday the 25th April at NIGHT SLUGS 2. Manara is celebrating her birthday, do I need to spell it out: V Y B E Z !

Time Out on Night Slugs

For the record I didn't mean to diss FWD>> publically and wanted that bit to be off the record. But oh well its not like any of their army of regulars will notice or care so its no biggy, right Sarah?

NIGHT SLUGS 2 on the 25th OF APRIL, CAMMONNNN

Venom's about

Our cousin DJ Venom is playing at our favourite Coventry night Vinyl Is soon. Check it out if you're about, they play end-to-end bangers in a very up front way, its serious fun. Should be pretty special, Manara and I are hoping to be in attendance.

In other Venom news, Maximum Carnage volume 2 is officially under construction and it's sounding big.

Duppy movements:

Woofah Two is OUT NOW

After a resoundingly successful debut issue (available only on eBay these days), Britain's ONLY magazine about grime, dubstep and reggae is on the shelves. Want some more Badman Commandments? You got em. Want a piece written by me and illustrated by Bok Bok about The Police taking grime promoters' passports, stop-and-searching the Murkle Man, and trying to kill our dances? You got it. Want serious interview time with everyone from Tippa Irie to Chipmunk? You got it.

No adverts, no PR-dictated bullshit, no writing about indie bands 'to appeal to advertisers' (hello RWD) - just the best writing, photography, and artwork in a beautiful, shiny package you can hold in your hand. This ain't gonna be online, so get a hard copy before it's too late!

Buy it here, now! http://woofahmag.com/

DJ Total April mix

Underground bassline is a crazy scene - For the avarage DJ the music is almost entirely out of reach, with mostly only older stuff making it to vinyl. On the flip side, the the avarage bedroom / iPod listener there's SO MANY freebies out there that they need never draw for their wallet. So - with no real buyable product bassline is, as far as business model is concerned, a 100% club/street scene at this time. Except the street is the internet/your mobile phone.

Here's the latest and hottest of the free Bassline mixtapes, DJ Total's April mix:

http://files.filefront.com/DJ+Total+April+2008zip/;9933802;/fileinfo.html (nabbed off JP yet again, gwarn bruv)



BTW these all come cut up into tracks like propper mix albums, rather than the mp3 promo mix format we're all used to in the blogsphere. So make of that what you will!

The Sun sends for Wiley

Saying he's scared of foxes.

You won’t see the grime pioneer in [the Wearing My Rolex video] as he refused to take part after spying dancers with animal heads.

The producer and MC has such a severe case of vulpophobia – the technical term for a fear of foxes – that he left the shoot before a single frame with him in it could be taken.

When did Prancehall start working for The Sun? Amazing. According to Blackdown Wil has now issued the following statement to 1xtra:

"I'm not scared of no animals, i could be in the desert with lions and tigers and i would not be scared..."

goons vs geezers

JP makes the vital distinction between old skool bassline house and the new school 4x4 sound. The former is a a chart-friendly Ministry Of Sound type sound responsible for most of the comments about how 'bassline is just rehashed speed garage', whereas the later is the grime of tomorrow.


Yep yep!

Night Slugs 1 report

the Night Slugs launch party on Friday really felt a lot like the beginning of something, or a consolidation of something that was up until now a bit intangible. A movement begins here! It was a bit of an experiment but due to its overwhelming success, we're going monthly!

Everyone present on the night agreed there was something special in the air. It took me a few days to calm down enough to sit here and write this post. This might all read like wild hyperbole, but honestly it feels like a sea change in London right about now...


Here are some photos from the night, taken by myself, Kate Moross and Ollie BNTL / Vinyl Is.


Your host for the night mr MC ASBO of Standard Place.


This is me and Venom looking like mongs. After me warming up the system he came on and played a bunch of Freestyle and hi-NRG records. Everyone was pretty much ignoring the music until he played one of the new Crookers tunes, at which point the whole club jumped up. Ridiculous what those guys' tunes can do TBH. Venom then dropped some bassline heat from the Heatseaker camp, warming things up nicely!





When the lights got turned down and Tomb Crew came on the decks, that was it - the whole dance POPPED OFF !!!! They came super tight with an unfront party set that nobody could really fuck with. Serious! Special shouts go out to their MC BB Manik who - unlike most British MCs who give you the shank eyes if you drop anything they're unfamiliar with - drop hot 16s all over anything the Tomb Crew guys played, be that bmore, bassline, grime, fidget or old skool. Totally relentless set that I'll remember for a long time!







Next up was Oneman DJ aka the best garage DJ this side of EZ aka the human blender. Like Asbo likes to say, "Oneman producing tunes between tunes". Absolutely incredible, deep set that had everything straight up vybzing for the whole duration.
The sound cut out a few times for some reason (the venue is still having some teething problems, understandably - especially considering I got a huge rig in specially for the night, pretty much untested). But our crowd just rode it out and waited, without any heckling or bad mindedness. Really, really amazing phenomenon that kind of patience in the dance.



Bigboy DJ Prancehall killed it by dropping Sensual Seduction after all the garage Oneman played. A perfect moment!
In fact all the DJs seemed super aware of just b-lining the night to death, and gave the raving crew a bit of relief during the first part of their sets only to build the hype back up again each time - a formula that worked a lot better than if we'd banged and banged solidly all night. True united vibes going on here!


L-Vis 1990 played a mucky set of exclusively his own material, debuting some new tunes and even a few large profile remixes. Hyperbass - get to know the sound of 2008! Bap Bap Bap!!!!


Sweat Sweat Sweat drippin off!!!

It's not really about taking the peak slot at your own night for yourself, so we humbly played at the end to the stamina crew, which was pretty satisfying anyways as loads of people were still raving at the end. Manara killed it with a juked up selection, and I finished the night off with my biggest bassline tunes - I specifically went for ones with amazing girly vocals and huge drops. Wifey by DXP still doing it for me, as well as I Can Love you by Burga Boy. Pretty much every tune in this set got wheeled - hype till the end!



We finished the night off with a bottle of champagne and Dexplicit's remix of Lady by Modjo - BIG LOVE VIBES!!!!!


Here's some more photos:










SOUTHSIDE.






NIGHT SLUGS 2 aka Lady Manara's birthday bash is on the 25th of APRIL. Lets keep this thing going!!!!

bass in the mainstream

biggup L-Vis for putting me on to this:


Sounds like Pharrell's been listening to old skool Agent X or nu skool Distance - check those wamp wamps! It's official - 2008 is the year of bass. In NYC, DJs are playing music that sounds like stripped down fidget house with LFOs, and calling it 'bassline'. But surely this video will be a peak for public bass exposure.

I'm worried though. If this is a reaction to the dominance of Justice and electrohouse with their riffs of middle-driven distortion, then how long before the public get over this latest bass fad too?

NIGHT SLUGS Allstars

NIGHT SLUGS ALLSTARS - A 5 minute promo megamix / mission statement for the launch of our new club Night Slugs ( if you read this blog you might have noticed me mentioning it )

London crew see you then and in the meantime those planning to reach and everyone else can vybz with the sound of 2008.




oh, and hold tight everyone who came out to Vinyl Is in Coventry. A lot is going on!!

28th March

is gonna be the one!

add NIGHT SLUGS as a friend?