Blood Red Sounds

The Hysterical Injury - 'Dead Wolf Situation' (Album - Crystal Fuzz Records)

2012-02-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, in the wake of Lightning Bolt's irrepressible onslaught, there was a wave of bass/drums duos who seemed to have missed the point. Super-fast drumming and thickening agent fuzz can trick the ears while the beer and volume are flowing. Take them home, and you're stuck with half a band.

On their debut album The Hysterical Injury do not sound like half a band. Annie Gardiner's bass fills the space of two or three less spirited instruments - its controlled abandon recalling Nick Zinner's driving-yet-expansive guitar on the early Yeah Yeah Yeahs records. Drummer Tom destroys skins with a similar combination of precision and fury - anyone would think they were related.

None of the that will surprise people who've enjoyed the band live, but the growing strength of their songwriting might. Rooted in classic-era alternative rock (Sonic Youth, early Hole, a generous slug of Throwing Muses), one thing that sets The Hysterical Injury apart from their peers is their embrace of melody. On 'Vex', Annie harmonises with herself like a scrambled disco diva casually inventing glam hardcore. On 'Maths', jerky indie verses give way to swooning choruses riding waves of noise. And then there's the monumental 'Cycle One', in which a sustained crackle of electricity sets the scene for a complex of conflicting emotions and delirious pop-grunge hooks. This morning I had to listen to it seven times in a row.

British rock has been comatose for years, and The Hysterical Injury are one of the few bands around that sound capable of waking it. If there’s any justice, they could well be making records on a bigger budget in a few years' time. They won't necessarily be better than 'Dead Wolf Situation', though - or at least they won't need to be.

The Hysterical Injury launch 'Dead Wolf Situation' at The Green Park Tavern, Bath on Saturday 11th February.

More info here

It's a Gas, Gas, Gas - Club Choke is back!

2011-11-25T06:37:00.000-08:00

On Thursday 22 December, Club Choke returns to its spiritual home for a one-off session of live music and DJs.

Originally an offshoot of Bristol’s foul-mouthed Choke zine (which I might have had something to do with) and web forum, the night launched in 2001 in the upstairs room of an unloved Bedminster drinking hole, swiftly followed by a gloriously messy run at Le Chateau on Park Street, and a two-and-a-half year monthly residency at The Croft.

The magazine has since gone into retirement, but the DIY music community around the forum is resurgent, with two collaborative albums – ‘Minutiae’ and ‘Verses For Vs’ – released in the last year to follow up the classic War Tunes compilation from 2002.

To celebrate this unexpected late burst of energy, Choke is coming back to The Croft for a two-room blowout, and the headliners alone will more than justify the journey. MADNOMAD are one of the greatest Bristol bands of the last decade, renowned for their confrontational yet highly infectious turns at Ashton Court and Hengrove Park and the disaffected alt-rock meets electronica of classic album ‘Tamper Evident’. This will be their first show for seven years, and for all we know, it could also very well be their last.

They’re joined by relentlessly bouncy Bletchley noise / improv loons ACTION BEAT (Southern Records), plus a massive haul of Choke favourites, with wonky pop maestro S.J ESAU (Anticon Records), arse-moving furies BIG JOAN (Blood Red Sounds / Deathucker Recordings), twisted balladeer WAR AGAINST SLEEP, slow grinding prog wonders ANTA, tortured industrialists GEISHA NOISE RESEARCH GROUP and art poppers GLIS GLIS, plus DJ sets from interstellar explorers BRONNT INDUSTRIES KAPITAL Vs ANTONI MAIOVVI and black hearted beat scientist SILENT SPRING.

The Club Choke 10 Year Anniversary Xmas Party, is at The Croft, Bristol. Thursday 22 December. Door tax £6.

Facebook event here.

Bristol Rock, St. Pauls Jammin'...

2011-03-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

The year is 1980. Margaret Thatcher is at Number 10, youth unemployment is exploding and the sound of the inner cities is about to change British music forever. As an uplifting bassline emerges from a nightmare cacophony of police sirens and smashing windows, an accusatory voice calls “OK, Babylon… who pay your earning to set Bristol burning?” The song is ‘Riot’ by 3D Production. You probably haven’t heard it yet, but you should. ‘The Bristol Reggae Explosion’ is an eye-opening release from Bristol Archive Records, charting the city’s overlooked contribution to reggae. From the authentic roots style of Joshua Moses to the dub stew of Restriction, this largely forgotten music stands up with the best of British reggae – bands like Steel Pulse, Aswad and Misty In Roots. “Before Massive Attack and Portishead, the M4 might as well have been on Mars,” says Dubmart’s Martin Langford, who wrote the sleevenotes. “The people on this compilation didn’t reap the rewards.” Ironically, their rare recordings are now in such worldwide demand that “a nice copy of the Joshua Moses 12” will set you back £100”. In most cases, this is the first time these songs have been released since their initial small runs on vinyl. The album opens with ‘Bristol Rock’, a 1981 masterpiece by Black Roots. Inspired by the grave of Scipio Africanus at Henbury, it relates the experience of black Britons to that of a West African youth who died in captivity 250 years earlier. Haunting and provocative, it can’t have been far from John Peel’s mind when he said: "If anyone tells you that there is no such thing as good British reggae, first tell them they’re a herbert, and then listen to Black Roots.”

“We came from Jamaica at a young age,” remembers Jabulani Ngozi, the band’s rhythm guitarist. “We went through the school system in Bristol. We tried to get work, but work was not easy to get.” The band grew out of a soundsystem that played unlicensed ‘blues’ parties in St Pauls, and the community’s support was crucial. “Without it we would never have made our first single,” says Jabulani. ‘Bristol Rock’ was funded by proceeds from their first concert, attended by 1,200 local people.

Black Roots applied reggae’s language of struggle to Thatcher’s Britain. “Everything was going against the mass of the people,” Jabulani says. “We wanted to rise up against all of that. The music was there to ease that depression away.” By 1981 they were playing to 2,500 people, supporting John Holt at Hammersmith Palais, and they went on to record 10 albums and numerous sessions for Radio 1 without ever signing a deal. “EMI had an interest in us at one time, but they wanted us to go a certain way. They wanted us to make the lyrics a little more conservative.” While their uncompromising attitude limited their success, it didn’t stop them becoming a live sensation. They played with everyone from Jamaican stars like Eek-A-Mouse and Toots & The Maytals to homegrown icons like Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Their challengers for Bristol’s reggae crown were Talisman, a band from Easton. While both groups were big draws on the student circuit, they never played together, and there was a bit more to their relationship than professional rivalry. “It never came to fisticuffs, but there was definitely an extended vibes,” says Bekele, Talisman’s frontman. Archive Records' Mike Darby has described ‘The Bristol Reggae Explosion’ as “a personal crusade to get Black Roots and Talisman on the same record”.

With influences from rock and African pop, Talisman had a wide-ranging appeal, but they didn’t pull their punches. Their classic ‘Dole Age’ describes Margaret Thatcher as “a criminal” who “dig out me belly and cut out me tongue”. Talisman were a multi-ethnic group at a time when – in Martin Langford’s words – “reggae was seen as an fundamental part of West Indian culture. I’d be looking through the reggae section in a record shop, and black kids would say ‘you shouldn’t be looking at that’, but it cuts both ways. My African friends would get spat at in the street just because they were black.”

Bekele agrees. “The thing back then was ‘white boys can’t play reggae’,” he recalls, “so for us to have two white band members, that was unusual. There were very few white boys who could mix with a reggae band, or go to blues.” The mix worked in their favour, though, combining with their hypnotic live sound to bring in a varied crowd. Soon they were playing with bands like The Clash and Killing Joke. “The punk crowd identified with our philosophy,” says Bekele. The band’s crossover success peaked with a support slot for The Rolling Stones at Ashton Gate – “our one and only stadium gig” – but Talisman’s success as a live band didn’t translate into big sales. “We didn’t think about the business side – we just saw the audiences and wanted to play to them.”

By the late 80s, live reggae was in decline, and bands like Black Roots and Talisman began to wind down. The new digital dancehall style drew Jamaicans away, while Britain was transformed by a crumbling of cultural barriers. “Reggae defeated itself by infecting everything else,” says Martin Langford. “Hip-hop, house, jungle, garage… black youths had a new British identity, and they started creating music to reflect that.” Bristol’s music was particularly transformed by the rhythms and dynamics of reggae. As half of Smith & Mighty, Restriction’s guitarist Rob Smith went on to be an architect of the ‘Bristol Sound’, while Talisman have reportedly been cited as an influence by Massive Attack.

It’s hard not to see ‘The Bristol Reggae Explosion’ as a timely release. “I don’t know what other forces are at work,” says Bekele, “but the Conservatives are back in power and their policies are throwing up unemployment again.” Talisman have reformed, and are playing The Fleece on Fri 27 May to celebrate the release of their ‘Dole Age’ retrospective (review coming soon – it’s great). Meanwhile, 2010 saw Black Roots play their first gigs in 20 years, culminating in an emotional homecoming at Trinity. “We seen a lot of old faces,” says Jabulani, “still running and jumping and singing along like we hadn’t gone anywhere.” He’s writing songs again, and hopes to have a Black Roots album out by the end of the year. The message from both bands is clear – if people want them, they’ll play. As Jabulani puts it, “music is what we do, man. To uplift other human beings, to show them what life should be.”

This article originally appeared in Venue magazine. The Bristol Reggae Explosion 1978 - 1983 is out now on Bristol Archive Records.

Mugstar / Thought Forms / Vertical Slum @ The Louisiana, Bristol, Friday 4th February

2011-03-16T02:49:00.000-07:00

Tonight’s three band art-rock pile-up arrives courtesy of Rocket Recordings. Vertical Slum’s Ian Green spatters volatile, Byrds-gone-garage guitar work over vacuum-tight rhythms in the style of Hendrix and The MC5. If Green’s singing packed the punch of his guitar playing, they’d be something else.

Superficially, Thought Forms recall My Bloody Valentine, but where that group used sensory derangement to connect with the world of dreams, the Bristol trio seem to be using it to invoke the spirits. Their stomp-box sorcery, ritualistic drum patterns and sparingly used female vocals bring to mind everything from North African desert music to the cosmic rock of Acid Mothers Temple. They could easily be Bristol’s best shoegazers, but they’re at their most thrilling when they kick off the footwear and wade into the deep.

Psychedelia of a groovier kind, Liverpool’s Mugstar were John Peel’s last great discovery, and they remain the best kept secret in British rock. Tonight they’re devastating – vintage psych guitar lines and whacked out Radiophonic synths probing deep into the universe; bass and drums locked in relentless forward motion. Irresistibly weird, yet fiendishly danceable –Mugstar are the house band at the end of the world.

Good news - Venue keeps buggering on

2011-03-09T04:35:00.000-08:00

Quick update to my last post. Venue will continue, but as a monthly magazine. It will be different, but the same. There are so many things to work out that I can't give you any more information than that, but it's definitely good news considering where we were a week ago.

More here.

NB: Blood Red Sounds will now return to business as usual. Extended version of my article on Bristol's reggae history coming soon.

What you can do to save Venue mag.

2011-02-24T15:16:00.000-08:00

Venue, the magazine I work and write for, is in mortal danger.

For those of us who work on the magazine, this is much more than just a job. As a teenager growing up on the outskirts of Bristol, Venue was the cord connecting me to the world of music. When I returned to Bristol in my early twenties, Venue was the first publication to review my band - something which still ranks only with getting played by John Peel as a motivational reward. Many thousands of other people have similar memories - maybe not a big deal in their own right, but collectively amounting to a definition of what it means to live in Bristol and Bath, and to get more from living here than a place to live and enough to pay the bills.

Obviously, I'm gutted, but it's also very troubling news for local culture, which stands to lose a uniquely supportive yet critical voice that has helped to sustain it for 29 years.

Please read this post by my esteemed colleague Eugene Byrne, explaining what you can do to help.

You can also join this Facebook Group, which has amassed 2000 members in the last 24 hours, or follow #savevenue on Twitter for the latest news.

Most importantly, please go to your newsagents and buy the latest issue, or - better still - pledge your commitment to take out a subscription if the magazine survives.

Serious pledges only, please. No Clegging.

Choke presents...'Minutiae'

2011-01-14T05:05:00.000-08:00

I can't review this because I'm on it. I reckon it's well worth twenty-seven minutes of your time, though.

Here's a download link to 'Minutiae', a new release from Bristol's vaguely resurgent Choke community. It features 27 tracks - each of them exactly one minute long - in a wide variety of genres, from the dreamy indie-rock of The Sky Is Blue to the Wendy Carlos-goes-Happy Hardcore electronica of Alexander Thomas. All tracks were exclusively recorded for the compilation.

It's free. What are you waiting for?

Youngsta Interview: Venue Meets Dubstep Royalty

2011-01-11T01:35:00.000-08:00

Here's a little feature on dubstep don Youngsta, adapted from a Clubs preview I wrote for Venue mag last month.

Few, if any, have a better claim on dubstep’s throne than Youngsta. He championed the genre long before it had a name, and remains at the heart of the movement a decade later.

As his adopted name suggests, Youngsta started early. “I was 13”, he says, “playing garage on a pirate station called Freek FM'. Growing up in Essex, he was introduced to dubplate culture by his sister (Sarah Lockhart) and soon built a reputation for technical mastery he's enjoyed ever since.

Sarah went on to be a key behind-the-scenes figure in the evolution of the new sound, as head of Ammunition Promotions and Tempa Records. When she launched her club night – the legendary FWD>> - in 2001, Youngsta was an obvious choice to man the decks, and pairing him with Hatcha proved historic.

While other FWD>> regulars pioneered grime (and more recently UK funky), Hatcha and Youngsta gravitated towards minimal, bass-heavy instrumentals, tweaking the EQs for maximum low-end impact.

Before long, FWD>> and Big Apple – the Croydon record shop where Hatcha worked – became the focal point for a cavernous, dread-filled sound that rapidly outgrew its garage roots. “Dubstep was a bit darker”, explains Youngsta, with characteristic understatement. “I've known Hatcha and the Big Apple lot since day one. We've all been there from the beginning, watching the sound and the scene grow”.

Now 25, Youngsta remains one of dubstep’s most wanted. He is still the only person to have contributed two mixes to the Dubstep Allstars series, both of which were key releases in the genre's development. His forays into production include a darkside collaboration with dubstep producers-of-the-moment Kryptic Minds, which has already yielded the excellent 'Cold Blooded' / 'Surge', with more to come in the new year. A 12" with SP:MC (working title: 'Unidentified') is out now, while the buzz surrounding his next release – a mix CD for Rinse due “early next year” - is proof he's survived a decade in which dubstep has grown from an eccentric splinter of garage to the international phenomenon it is today.

If peers like Kode 9 have distanced themselves from the dubstep juggernaut, Youngsta remains passionate and optimistic. The genre's success “has not surprised” him, and he's as comfortable with “good jump up” as he is with “minimal and deep”. It’s this inclusive, discerning approach that makes Youngsta’s Thursday night Rinse FM sessions essential listening at a time when the scene sometimes looks to have fragmented beyond repair. Club sets see bedroom DJs crowd around his booth to learn from the master: “it’s nice that people show an interest”, he says modestly.

Despite expressing a growing interest in house and techno - "who knows what I will play in five or ten years?" - Youngsta says his priority is “the latest unreleased tracks of the dubstep scene”, adding “I don't play anything I don't like, and I don't play tunes for the crowd just because they're big at the time”. Listen, and learn.

Rinse (13?) mixed by Youngsta out early 2011.
Listen to Youngsta's show on Rinse FM, thursdays 9pm - 11pm.

Youngsta pic copyright Shaun Bloodworthy.

Anika - 'Anika' (Invada Records) - Best album of last year?

2011-01-05T14:18:00.000-08:00

Not that any of you should care, but right up to the end of November I was torn between Guido's 'Anidea' (which I reviewed here) and Darkstar's 'North' (which I didn't) for album of the year. Both are brilliant, but for me neither of them summed up the disorientating character of 2010, in music as in life. Then Anika showed up with one of those classics that always seem to arrive just as the year starts fading out...

On first listen, 'Anika' pushes an unlikely combination of retro buttons - 60s 'death discs', the existential dub-noise of P.I.L, E.S.G's schoolyard funk - but soon coalesces into something greater than the sum of its parts. Co-written with Portishead's Geoff Barrow and his band Beak>>, it's a throwback to the genre splicing of the post-punk era, and stands comparison with the best of it.

A large part of that is down to Anika herself, whose restrained vocals focus attention on the words. The album's largely comprised of covers, which combine to create a picture as bleak as the post-Iraq, post-crash, Cameron Age world outside.

The singer's precise diction and no-frills performance (recalling surreal New Wave diva Gina X) put her deliciously at odds with the mainstream, not least the karaoke wailing of stage school twats beloved of record companies everywhere. In this well worth reading interview with the singer, Julian Owen called Anika "the Anti-Nico", but she's also the Anti-Duffy. Both on record and in person, her performances are intense, ambiguous, unshowy - anything but a repertoire of hackneyed songbird tics.

While she and the band treat Twinkle's tragic love song 'Terry' with respect, the other covers are twisted until you can barely remember how they sounded before. Skeeter Davis's easy listening ballad 'The End of The World' becomes the statement of deranged grief it was always meant to be, while Yoko Ono's 'Yang Yang' - filtered through sound system dub and 90s Hip Hop - is transformed into an anthem for the new #solidarity. Or maybe that's just me. Whatever it means, it's one of the year's most exciting tracks.

And that's what makes this album so fascinating. It's pieced together from such disparate sources and performed so inscrutably that you're forced to explain it yourself. It begs a whole load of questions and answers none of them. It hints at a bigger picture, but never spills its guts. It might even be a joke at the expense of people like me who are prone to talking about things they should be listening to. It's a mystery, in other words - and that's what music's all about.

Blood Red Sounds rating 9/10. Listen to the album here.

Here's a review I wrote of Anika and Beak>>'s recent Bristol show, which included a cover of Nirvana's 'Love Buzz' that was definitely a joke. Wasn't it?

Geisha - 'Thre' EP (Splatterkore Records, Free Download)

2010-12-22T03:40:00.000-08:00

If you take pleasure in extremity, look no further. Geisha used to be one of the UK’s angriest, most intense noise-rock bands. Then their drummer quit and chief conspirator Anton (who I interviewed here) moved to Berlin – a situation that should probably have buried them. Well, nobody expected Geisha to come back with a set of wistful long-distance relationship songs, but ‘Thre’ is the sickest quartet of tunes they’ve ever produced. While the FX-stacked guitars and live drums have been replaced by gabba kicks and red hot synths, there’s no mistaking these punishing breakdowns and tortured off-mic screams for anyone else. They’ve simply found a brand new way of unleashing their beautiful brutality.

Blood Red Sounds rating 8/10

This review originally appeared in Venue.

Grab the EP here. Free download!

Various Artists: Worth The Weight - Bristol Dubstep Classics (Punch Drunk Records)

2010-12-18T12:15:00.000-08:00

Like every bass loving resident of Bristol (is there any other kind?), I was gutted to hear that the city's best vinyl shop, Rooted Records, is about to close. It'll be a huge loss to the local scene. Luckily, Rooted's Tom 'Peverelist' Ford is going from strength to strength, and as the head of the fantastic Punch Drunk label he's just released the definitive document of Bristol's bass music scene in the dubstep years. Here's a short review of it I wrote for Venue, and if you ever need to get nostalgic, here's a download link to the great Bristol dubstep documentary 'Living Inside The Speaker', which includes scenes filmed at the shop.

These are vintage years for Bristol bass music, and you won’t find a better overview than 'Worth The Weight'. CD1 mines the thoughtful dubstep we’re known for worldwide, unearthing speakerbox-troubling gems from Appleblim, Headhunter, Jakes and Forsaken. CD2 gives a broader context, drawing a line from the soundsystem skank of Smith & Mighty’s (recently re-issued) classic ‘B-Line Fi Blow’ to the glitchy future garage of Hyetal and Shortstuff.

There’s no filler, but the highlights are Pinch’s scene-defining ‘Qawwali’, Peverelist’s exquisitely poised ‘Roll With The Punches’, and the dizzying MIDI symphonics of Joker’s ‘Stuck In The System’ and Guido’s ‘Orchestral Lab’. For the bass-curious, this is a one-stop education with sleevenotes to match. For committed steppers, it’s a timely recap of a breathlessly evolving scene. It's 100% essential, either way.

Blood Red Sounds rating 9/10

This review originally appeared in Venue.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor & Dead Rat Orchestra, Sunday 12th December @ Anson Rooms, Bristol )

2010-12-16T03:19:00.000-08:00

It’s the night of ‘The X-Factor’ final, and a group of lads are yelling “Vote for One Direction!” as they drive past the Anson Rooms. Do they realise we’re waiting for the second coming of the Anti-Cowell? For tonight sees the return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the world’s most passionately uncommercial rock band.

Inside, Colchester’s Dead Rat Orchestra get things started with a set of folky improv. One bloke plays violin solos, while his two associates fiddle with an oddball collection of whistles, bells, and what appears to be a meat cleaver being sharpened on a length of four-by-two. They’re an eccentric but charming bunch, and the sounds they make are varied enough to keep things interesting.

And so it comes to pass that the venue fills with disciples, and Godspeed return to reign for what, at times, feels like a thousand years. The projected backdrop reads “hope”, although the accompanying din – a black drone overlaid with grey noise – suggests despair. Ten minutes of that, and another ten of chugging space-rock, lead eventually to a money shot in which the band hijack an arabesque melody and – gorgeously – ride it into orbit. That they follow it with a part that sounds like a pompous film soundtrack, and a couple of gratuitous false endings, is a source of no little frustration. Half an hour in, is it unreasonable to suggest the first song might have gone on slightly too long?

It sets a pattern for the rest of the show. Sections of blistering intensity lead nowhere, and exquisite melodies give way to long, treacherous quests for the fourth chord. Sometimes they’re tight as hell. Sometimes they struggle to stay in time. They’re like an eight-piece human aerial, tuning in and out of greatness.

This review originally appeared in Venue.

The Divided Circle - 'Nowhere’ EP (Lonely City Records)

2010-11-30T06:23:00.000-08:00

Jon Rees was the songwriter in criminally overlooked indie-rockers The Sky Is Blue, while Krystian Taylor - who I interviewed here - is best known for the dark, atmospheric dubstep of Forensics. Their first release as The Divided Circle is one of the year’s most striking debuts. Contrasting Krys’s rueful baritone with Jon’s fragile, expressive tenor, the title track is a real heart-stopper. It sounds like Depeche Mode, re-imagined by Brian Eno, after five years immersed in the soundsystem techno of Basic Channel. If the other songs don’t quite match that improbable standard, they’re never less than well crafted – this is an EP of ambition and imagination that suggests the start of something special. File under ‘Essential Futurist Pop of 2010’, alongside the Darkstar album, and not a lot else.

Blood Red Sounds rating 7/10

This review originally appeared in Venue.

Bambikill - Arachne (self released EP)

2010-11-18T05:17:00.000-08:00

Enchantingly packaged with a suitably creepy illustration of haunted woodland, this self-released EP is perfect for Hallowe'en.* The work of solo artist Christelle Rox, it consists of five heavily layered and processed guitar pieces, all of them apparently summoned from the darkest nooks of their author's mind. Drones are droned, strings are bowed, and spindly melodies career into the night sky on broomsticks of analogue delay. At a little under twenty minutes, ‘Arachne’ is just long enough to get under your skin, and best enjoyed as a single composition, with the eastern-flavoured ‘Forest Mantra’ and ‘Wolf’s Milk’ at its densely woven, trance-like centre. As the closing lullaby ‘The Eagle With The Sunlit Eye’ ebbs away, the listener’s left feeling as strung out as De Quincey after an unexpectedly torrid date with the poppy. Bambikill’s grown-up fairy tale soundtracks are compellingly weird, and weirdly compelling.

Blood Red Sounds rating 7/10

This review originally appeared in Venue magazine.

*I wrote this about a month ago. It made sense at the time. A Bambikill isn't just for Hallowe'en.

Subloaded 6th Birthday. Friday 29th October @ Motion Ramp Park, Bristol.

2010-11-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

Subloaded isn’t just a club night - it’s part of dubstep history.

When Pinch staged the first one in 2004, this music was the preserve of a small clique around FWD>> and the Big Apple record shop in Croydon. The early Subloaded dances triggered an explosion of local creativity, and within two years dubstep was a global movement, with Bristol rountely referred to as its "second city". Subloaded is where we started, then. Is it still where we're at?

After a typically modest, musically inclusive warmup from Peverelist, the answer comes from Digital Mystikz, as the night’s first plunging bass drop unleashes the sound system’s weight. If you’ve never heard dubstep at battle volume, you’ve never really heard it at all. There’s nothing like the physical shock of this music through a serious PA, and this one is serious. It shakes your teeth, your bones, the fabric of the building. It sucks air from your windpipe, and inhibitions from your mind. Within seconds, the head-nodding is consigned to history.

Brixton’s Digital Mystikz [pictured left, with Loefah] work a ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine that sums up the genre’s contradictions. In theory, Mala’s hypnotic percussion and psychoactive subs explore dubstep’s reflective side, while Coki’s doomy horns and cocky, abrasive synth riffs channel its aggression. In practice, they’re two halves of the same unstable personality.

Ice well and truly broken, fellow DMZ man Loefah steps back from the abyss, and steers a course between the extremes, riding the tension.

Heavy on material from his fine Swamp 81 label, it’s the most satisfying selection so far. Stripped down and austere, but with pain-staking attention to detail, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Loefah – after all, his own bass sound is the only man-made structure visible from space.

As always, Bristol receives Pinch rapturously, and as always he earns it. His style is less minimal than Loefah’s, but no less powerful for it. Tribal drum patterns and eerie half-melodies add colour and texture, but they don’t soften the blow - the pressure barely drops for a second.

Dubstep isn’t the only music on offer tonight. There’s a rootsy vibe in the tunnel, peaking with a live PA from men-of-the-moment Dubkasm, while Dub Boy and Atki 2’s karnival house (or is it UK Funky?) brings rays of tropical sunshine to the cave. Even the main room lets off steam eventually, as Metalheadz legend Doc Scott tears off a spectacular string of 90s classics, including the ricocheting snares of J Majik’s ‘Your Sound’, and the claustrophobic joystick jungle of Jo’s ‘R-Type’.

He’s followed by Breakage, whose restlessly inventive set finally tears down the walls between genres.

We all know why we’re here, though. Dubstep’s purest form is often its most powerful, and the music at Subloaded’s heart is as pure as it gets. With this lineup, and that sound system, it has rarely sounded as deadly as it does tonight.

This review was originally published in Venue magazine. Thanks, as always, to Ellen Doherty for the pics.

Mongrel Vs Agro Part 2. Sat 23rd October @ Lakota, Bristol

2010-10-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

We were promised a beast of a party, and tonight’s three ring circus was just that.

Room 2 is the first to come to life, and two hours of minimal techno from Pupfish & Waxmouse gets bodies moving early. Meanwhile, after a bruising set up from Svengali’s low-punching dubstep, Room 1 takes off with Point B. His woozy, sunlit UK garage is like locking on to a late 90s pirate station on a radio with dodgy batteries.

Next – and packing enough machinery for a pre-laptop Kraftwerk - Neil Landstrumm blends austere warehouse techno, starry-eyed 8-bit melody, and bumpy dancehall bass. Landstrumm has been around since the mid-nineties, but he’s making his best music right now. Despite serious competition, he proves impossible to beat.

At 2am, Boxcutter’s addictive bass medicine goes up against the attack dog breakcore of Kid 606. It’s a clash on paper, but in terms of depth there’s no contest - I’ll take Boxcutter’s heady light and shade over one-paced aggression any day of the week. Meanwhile, local legend Parasite brings ragga-jungle delirium to Room 3.

The headline slot goes to crowd-pleasing Bogdan Raczynski, whose hard-jacking 4/4s and rampaging breaks are upholstered with tonight’s plushest synths. Raczynski strikes a rare balance – his music is bloody clever, but it has a hard-headed logic that’s hard for a raver to resist.

Tokyo assassin Goth Trad does punishing and meditative in equal measures, and tonight he proves he’s among the dubstep greats, but it's Panacea that finally reduces Lakota to rubble. The gold-toothed Berliner's vengeful scum & bass may have "outsider status" written all over it, but it's the perfect rinse-out for a night like this.
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Three rooms, as many continents, and 57 varieties of sickness. Bristol electronica lineup of the year?

A shorter version of this review appeared in Venue magazine.

Melt Banana / Exit International / The Big Naturals. Thursday 14th October @ Thekla, Bristol

2010-10-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

first caught Osaka tech-punks Melt Banana back in 2001 (my uncomfortably breathless Choke review is here). Nine years later, I was forced to watch them again, this time on behalf of Venue, and was pleased to discover they're still one of the most thrilling and innovative bands in the world...

Supporting a band as inventive as Melt Banana is a mixed blessing, but Big Naturals make a good fist of it. Jesse drums like Dave Grohl after a weekend drinking Bitches Brew, while bassist Gareth's fancy fretwork is driven home by a trio of Marshall stacks. They occasionally slumber into hard-rock clichés, but at their best they're pulverising and hypnotic. Note to the curious: don't even think about typing 'Big Naturals' into your browser at work - it could well result in disciplinary action.

Exit International are surprisingly upbeat for a band named after a pressure group for assisted suicide. Their industrial strength party rock is like a night out with the lads – good fun at the time, but somewhat hard to recall in the morning.

Osaka's Melt Banana have scanned the punk rulebook, warped it beyond recognition, and deleted the original from their collective hard drive. Rika [left]'s upfront basslines are informed by acid house, while the punishing double-time beats - courtesy of whoever's drumming for them this week - owe more to gabba than Black Flag. Meanwhile, Agata's Hendrix-meets-Public Enemy lead playing marks him out as the 21st Century guitar hero to beat, and the perfect foil to Yasuko's surreal, channel-hopping lyrics.

Melt Banana's debt to non-rock sounds is made explicit in tonight's opening section, as Yasuko and Agata summon a firestorm of electronic noise. After three songs, some of the audience begin to show symptoms of confusion, but the main set is just what the doctor ordered. 'Shield For Your Eyes' is Chemical Brothers re-imagined by Thor, while the fractured punk-pop of 'Call of the Vague', and shredded Pixies of 'Cracked Plaster Cast' inspire havoc in the moshpit.

The encore's “ten short songs” showcase Agata's shock and awe imitations of lasers, sirens and controlled explosions, before the blistering ‘Blank Page of The Blind’ - with its thrashing breakdowns and samples of barking dogs - propels us reluctantly back to Earth.

Melt Banana are ecstatically, brutally, impossibly entertaining. It's such a shame there's only one of them.

This review originally appeared in Venue magazine. Thanks to Tim Alban for the pic.

New Venue website

2010-10-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

Good news! Venue - the magazine I work and write for - has a new website.

Venue's been going since 1981, and its old website was developed some time in the pre-cambrian era. It didn’t have much useful content, and the navigation was a bit mad.

The new one's a big improvement. It will include most of the reviews and features from the weekly magazine, although you’ll still have to buy the print edition for gig and event listings (please do buy it, or I’ll have to go back to working at the mushroom farm).

In other words, it’s a proper website at last – one that will grow into a valuable archive of Bristol and Bath’s music, art, theatre etc.

In the meantime, here's what I got up to at Brisfest.

20 Years Of 2 Kings: Blood Red Sounds meets Henry & Louis Uptown

2010-09-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

Extended version of a feature I wrote for a recent issue of Venue, celebrating the 20th anniversary of 2 Kings Records. I caught up with Andy Scholes - half of Henry & Louis - to talk Jamaica, dubstep, and the enduring appeal of roots reggae.

Reggae's influence on British music runs deep, especially in Bristol. Few people know this better than production aces Henry & Louis, otherwise known as Jack Lundie and Andy Scholes. They’ve been associated with drum & bass, trip hop and dubstep, without ever straying far from their roots.

Jack and Andy started making music together in 1988, forming 2 Kings Records two years later.

Both were steeped in the sound system culture of St Pauls. “Bristol's always had a big roots following”, Andy remembers. “If you went to St Pauls in the early 80s you could go to Sam’s Blues, Green Street - those shebeen blues things were massive in Bristol. Going back further you had The Bamboo Club. The Wailers played here”.

Inspired by dub pioneers Scientist and King Tubby, the fledgling producers used their heroes’ analogue techniques as a starting point. Their first single was ‘Too Late’, with Jamaican singer Prince Green. “It was hard to sell reggae back then”, says Andy. “There were only a few shops, and we had to go to London to press records at Jah Tubby’s. Distribution was practically non-existent”.

2 Kings struggled on, but when they finished an album Henry & Louis decided to turn elsewhere. ‘Rudiments’ - a collection of sure-stepping dub versions - came out on More Rockers, the imprint of Bristol Sound pioneers Smith & Mighty.

“Rob Smith was a mentor from day one. He’s a very humble guy”, Andy recalls. “He wouldn’t say ‘that’s wrong’, even when it was definitely wrong. It was always ‘have you thought about trying this?’ ” Jack and Andy also spent time at Smith & Mighty’s studio, 40 Ashley Road, contributing to their low end classic Bass Is Maternal. The sessions also led to some timeless jungle-dub collaborations, like ‘Rwanda’ and ‘How Can A Man’, which ended up on 1994’s ‘More Rockers Dubplate Selection 1’.

Bristol’s first great drum & bass album - arguably its best -, it was a health and safety nightmare. “Rain was pouring down the wall”, says Andy, “and Rob’s got electrical equipment everywhere. He’d say, ‘don’t worry, it’ll be ok…just don’t lean on the wall’.” He remembers Ashley Road as “a legendary studio” though: “the people who passed through there - Roni Size, Krust, Die. Rob had every analogue machine you can imagine.”

Next stop, Jamaica. Andy spent a year on the island, hunting down the best reggae vocals he could find. Packing ten dubs he’d made with Jack and another nine of Rob’s, he moved to Duhaney Park in downtown Kingston. “I went to see Sugar Minott”, says Andy, “who set me up with Johnny Clarke, Willie Williams, Tony Tuff…” The vocals were recorded at UB40’s studio in Port Maria - previously owned by Bob Marley.

“If I’d mixed it in England it would never have sounded like that”, Andy believes. “In Jamaica you live and breathe reggae. It’s in the food you’re eating, the smoke you’re smoking”. The singers were respectful that he’d gone to live downtown, “because it’s rough place, but I’d never have got vocals like that anywhere else. I recorded twenty-six, and used nineteen. There are still vocals I’ve done nothing with. There’s more to come.”

The resulting album, ‘Time Will Tell’ is a contemporary roots classic, combining the U.K sound system styles of the 90s with timeless reggae vocals. Dub legend Augustus Pablo liked it so much that when Andy returned to Jamaica in ‘98, he was invited to stay at Pablo’s house. “There I was, on Tangerine Hill, looking at him with that thing in his mouth…” His melodica? “No, the big smoking chalice”. Sadly, Pablo passed away six months later: “he had cancer, but like Bob Marley, he wouldn’t take the treatment”,

Andy remembers. “He couldn’t eat. He just sat there drinking this thing called bitters, and smoking. When I left, he gave me these boxes with ‘Rockers 1’ written on them, - ninety 7” singles, all his own productions. They’re probably worth thousands.”

‘Time Will Tell’ was finally released in 2001, on the American label B.S.I. Meanwhile, 2 Kings continued to grow, as cuts such as ‘Love Like A Diamond’ benefited from a new explosion of roots awareness in dubstep’s wake. “It was already building for us”, Andy says, “but without dubstep, it wouldn’t be selling as well today. Kids want to know where their music comes from, and that turns them on to roots and dub”.

2 Kings released treatments of ‘Answer’ and ‘Rise Up’ by Bristol dubstep mainman Pinch, and RSD (their old sparring partner, Rob Smith). “Pinch has something special about him”, thinks Andy. “Every time he drops something it’s like, ‘Oh my God’. He’s a humble guy as well - he reminds me of Rob Smith 20 years ago.” Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs called her two-hour showcase of the local scene ‘Bristol Rise Up’, using a sample from Henry & Louis' track throughout the show. "Yeah, where's our money? Where's our royalty for that?", jokes Andy, adding, "It's flippin' hard to get on the radio. We've been lucky with Mary Anne Hobbs."

A third Henry & Louis album - ‘Increments’ - followed in 2008, and this time Jack and Andy released it themselves. A production masterclass, it pits contemporary roots rockers like ‘Lion’s Den’ against seismic steppers such as ‘Revelation Dub’. At twenty years old, 2 Kings is still in the vanguard of the UK Roots movement, with releases planned for Prince Jamo and the late, great Mikey Dread. A ‘20 Years of 2 Kings’ retrospective is due for release this autumn, packed with previously unreleased tracks from the label's archive.

Their next move is 2KD - a sister label with dubstep producer KDub. “We started putting dubstep out on 2Kings", Andy explains, "and people were getting confused, because we're a roots label. We're starting 2KD to prove you can have a roots-conscious thing on dubstep tunes”. The new label’s first release will be Pinch and RSD's remixes of ‘Love Like A Diamond’.

They're not just playing it safe, though. A big part of the 2KD plan is to work with Bristol’s next generation. Aware that good reggae vocals are hard to come by, they've handed theirs out to young producers like Rogue, Superisk and Widelows. If the results are as good as they expect, 2KD will release them next year.

Their priority is 2 Kings, though. “We’re not going to stop putting out roots”, says Andy Scholes, putting reggae’s long-lasting appeal down to “the message. It’s the experience of life - the reality of life”. Having seen sound system music mutate through dub, trip hop, jungle and dubstep, they’re more aware than ever of the value of the music that started it all. As Andy puts it: "We’re giving the dubstep thing a go, and we hope it will work - but this - roots reggae - we know this works.”

Prince Jamo - ‘Dance’ and ‘Lord’s Prayer’ are out now on 2 Kings Records.

‘20 Years Of 2 Kings’ is due for release this autumn.

Skjølbrot - Maersk

2010-09-08T13:59:00.000-07:00

Skjølbro t is Daniel Bennett, sometime guitarist of the inflammatory rock band Hunting Lodge. His debut solo album Maersk is a more contemplative affair, evoking a horror far removed from the slapstick violence of Energy Czar.

The opening track, Rue Victor Masse to Gare d'Austerlitz, brings to mind a valedictory stroll through the streets of a dying city. Its mournful piano chords toll amid a gathering storm of demented church bells and melting machinery. Migrated is an exercise in pure tension, as massed bird calls ring out over ominous drones and rumbles of bass. Both pieces suggest that it's time to get out fast.

The most conventionally beautiful two minutes are provided by I Am Better Now - a sanctuary of soft, wordless vocals and meditative ambience. It's a teasing intake of breath before the jumpy, Sci-Fi terror of Shipbreaking and morbidly wasted Idle Fleet. The album's highlight is the 8-minute Ballad of Windfarming, a rousing din of Velvets-style cacophony and mutant folksong. It might be a tribute to the techno-pastoral future, or the soundtrack to a Maoist propaganda reel, or possibly both.

Such uncertainty is immediately laid waste by the segue into Emma, a sort of purification by burning. It's the catastrophe that's been hinted at throughout, and when it comes it's a relief. Here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. Return to track 1.

No doubt Skjølbrot's music will please Wire-reading aficionados of that sort of thing, but it's also humane enough for lovers of thoughtful electronica - sharing ground with Global Communication, Burial, and Ben Frost. You won't hear another record like this in 2010, but it's not an exercise in clammy-pawed experimentation. Maersk is recognisably a product of the urban environment, circa now.

Blood Red Sounds rating 9/10

Various Artists: Avon Calling 2 (Bristol Archive Records)

2010-09-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

This raid on Heartbeat Records’ vault captures no-budget Bristol in the fertile years 1978 – 1980.

Heartbeat was the city's first proper indie label, releasing the original Avon Calling compilation in 1979. It was described by John Peel as "the compilation all others should be judged by”, (possibly the reason it's taken thirty-one years to release a sequel). Hats off to Bristol Archive Records for unearthing this loot before it was lost forever.

It's a diverse affair. Social Security's Self Confession is a minor snot classic celebrating the rock 'n' dole lifestyle. It's so debauched that it doesn't even bother to rhyme.

Sneak Preview’s offerings are out there in a truly Bristolian way. Mr Magoo meets the ghost of Andre Breton in an afterlife of freak-out organs. I Can’t Get Out confronts a predatory tranvestite before escaping into a fog of dub. Both are surprisingly catchy.

Equally fine are the two Apartment tracks - the slasher atmospherics of Broken Glass, and hurtling panic of Retrospect. Apartment share DNA with The Only Ones and early Joy Division: they're the post-punk heroes you’ve (probably) never heard of.

A smattering of generic power-pop aside, the music collected here is playful, individual and proudly uncommercial. Songs begin with tape-phase effects, and end with reverb explosions. Essential Bop’s woozily portentous Audition Room sounds like a Doors album track played at 45 RPM. Not all of it stands up today, but it's surprising how much of it does.

Avon Calling 2 is alternative history, from which the mysterious Sean Ryan emerges as the Gary Numan that never was. It comes highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the early years of the UK underground.

Blood Red Sounds rating 7/10

A shorter version of this review appeared in Venue.

For further information on Bristol's punk / indie history please visit this website. No really, do. It's a goldmine.

Forensics Interview

2010-08-20T08:30:00.001-07:00

Krystian Taylor, AKA Forensics, is best known for his work in dubstep, both as a left-of-spectrum producer, and tireless champion of the scene through his imaginative (and generously circulated) mixes. He's also the man behind the slowburn indie-electronica of A Bridge Far Away. Blood Red Sounds caught up with him to talk about Forensics' "retirement", his new project The Divided Circle, and what on earth he means by the "111 Movement".

BRS: You were involved in the dubstep scene early on and were pretty evangelical about it. How did you get involved?

Krystian Taylor: The first dubstep records I bought were DMZ001 & DMZ002. I’d say Horrorshow by Loefah was the track that began my transition from onlooker to consumer and participant. Seeing Plasticman (now Plastician) play at the first Subloaded in Bristol also had a big impact. I started recording mixes, posting on the dubplate.net forum, and running a club night - Ruffnek Diskotek – with a friend (Dub Boy).

BRS: Dubstep has fragmented a lot since going global in 2006-7. Do you still feel a strong connection with it?

KT: I still feel connected, although my finger's a long way from the pulse when it comes to the commercial end of things. I just ignore the things I don’t like, and keep pushing those I do through my mixes.

BRS: Is Forensics still a going concern? You announced that you’d retired the project a while back but you keep posting mixes, and new tracks have appeared from time to time. What’s going on?

KT: I retired Forensics about a year ago, and then picked it back up around six months later - mainly in a DJ-ing capacity. I did record a few tracks, which have since been released on Methodology Recordings – the ‘In Shadow’ mini-album & ‘Lament’ on a compilation. I’ve also done a few remixes more recently, but Forensics is definitely more of a DJ entity now.

BRS: One of your recent tracks is an unofficial remix of Alex Reece’s ‘Pulp Fiction’. Was jungle / drum & bass a big influence on you?

KT: I was into jungle for a fair while. It was the first form of electronic music I took a real interest in, having only really been into ‘guitar music’ prior to that. I’d say early, minimal drum & bass has influenced my productions.

BRS: A Bridge Far Away seemed to evolve out of Forensics’ collaborations with vocalists, like Indi Kaur. Did you consciously re-brand your music to distance it from straight up "dance" music?

KT: Not sure I’ve ever made straight up dance music, but anyway!

BRS: That's true, but the Forensics stuff fits well in your your dubstep mixes. Dubstep is still typically designed for club systems rather than home listening isn’t it?

KT: A Bridge Far Away is an outlet for my non-140bpm stuff. I guess it was born of an urge to collaborate more, and to get back to making ‘proper music’. I'm not claiming to have achieved that, but the urge was there!

BRS: There's an implication there, however tongue in cheek, that dubstep isn't as "proper" as some other music.

KT: It's just how I've viewed things. I started off writing songs, and then went on to view electronic music as an escape from the emotions associated with songwriting, which resulted in me making a lot of completely soulless music for a while! I've been slowly heading back in the other direction since realising my mistake. A major turning point was recording Forensics' 'All to waste' with [Pinch collaborator] Indi Kaur. It definitely put the idea of writing songs firmly back into my head.

I'm not saying dubstep can't be 'proper music', but as you've said, it's principally dance/club music - which perhaps isn't something I have in me production-wise. I've always been on the margins of dubstep, and never made tracks with a dancefloor in mind. I enjoy DJ-ing a lot more now that I'm not really producing dubstep - I can play a set more as a consumer, and enjoy it as such.

BRS. Your new project The Divided Circle is described as a '111 band'. What does that mean?

KT. 111 is a new music/art project, info on which can be found at one11bpm.com. It essentially means that our tracks are recorded at 111bpm, for the time being at least. We’re actually the first 111 band, most 111 music has been electronic so far, so we’re pioneers or something! The Divided Circle is definitely my main focus at the moment. It's really good to be writing songs, and working with my good friend Jon Rees [of The Sky Is Blue / Dusk Ensemble] again.

BRS. Is there an aesthetic to 111, or is it just a good tempo to work with? The manifesto on the one11bpm site suggests there's more to it but doesn't give any specifics.

KT. We call it "the divine tempo" - it's great to work with! 111 is a particularly vibrant movement because it covers such a range of styles: anything goes in terms of genre. The constraints come into play in terms of approach - a large emphasis is placed on meaning and artistic value. The "Rules of engagement", which spell things out in detail, are also on the website.There's more to it than music - it's also art, photography, film, words...111 is going through a bit of a rebirth at the moment, so watch this space!

BRS. If A Bridge Far Away is a natural progression from what you were doing with Forensics, this new project looks like a radical change of direction - the brooding atmospherics are more at the service of the song than before. I can hear Joy Division and Eno in there, but what are the key influences?

KT: I suppose it's quite a radical shift. I'm back to where I started really, writing songs with Jon. And what's coming out isn't all that different to what we were doing as youngsters. We're both fans of downbeat indie music - people like Sparklehorse, Low, early Grandaddy, the various Mark Kozelek projects...I wouldn't say we have any key influences as such, though. We're not writing with anyone else in mind.

Forensics plays at Subharmony in Riga on 10th September, and Knowledge Magazine's night at Fluid, London EC1 on 1st October. His 'In Shadow' mini-album is out now on Methodology Recordings. There's a free limited download of the original instrumental version of killer Forensics track 'All To Waste' here.

Here's a mix he recently recorded for Dub Concepts Radio, which stresses the unity of UK bass music, bringing together the deep, atmospheric dubstep of his 'Pulp Fiction' remix, the Mancunian rudeness of Virus Syndicate, and Smith & Mighty's classic 2-step inspired 'B-Line Fi Blow' (2002). I LOVE this.

There are no plans for Bridge Far Away gigs, but you can download the very lovely 'Killer Bees' here. The second ABFA album 'Reverence' is out now, also on Methodology.

The Divided Circle will release their debut EP shortly on new label Lonely City, with live performances to follow. Listen to them here.

For more on the 111 movement, see one11bpm.com.

Government cuts - an exclusive preview

2010-08-20T06:03:00.001-07:00

[Above] A government spokesman

A Whitehall memo including advance details of public sector cuts has been leaked exclusively to Blood Red Sounds. It includes a raft of cost-cutting reforms to be included in the autumn spending review. Some of them are very sensitive, but I'm at liberty to share a few of the less worrying ones with you.

A radical approach to taxation. VAT will be increased to £95% on all purchases, while children's clothing and baby food will be subject to an additional levy of 50% to discourage feckless reproduction. The top rate of income tax will be abolished on the grounds it's "practically unworkable".

A “two strikes and you’re out” policy on crime. The Conservative manifesto recommended “three strikes”, but one of the strikes is to be removed for being unnecessarily bureaucratic.

Taking waste out of the education system. "Mickey Mouse" qualifications will become a thing of the past, as the government removes everything from the national curriculum except maths, cricket and military history.

"Health & Safety nonsense etc." to be abolished. In what will no doubt be seen as a populist move, the government plans to boost enterprise by revoking any previous legislation that promotes safe working conditions, trading standards, equal opportunities or basic common decency.

"Pest control revolution". Huge savings to both agriculture and social housing are expected from a move to put pest control "in the hands of communities". However, Liberal Democrat backbenchers will be pleased to hear that participation in money-saving blood sports will be "actively encouraged" rather than "compulsory".

This is pretty exciting stuff, I think you'll agree. I'll post more as soon as I've finished filling out this visa application.

Silence In Court: Could the Bristol Community Festival ever return?

2010-08-20T03:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a recent article I wrote for Venue magazine, looking at Bristol's much mourned Ashton Court Festival and whether anything like it could ever happen again.

For 33 years, the Bristol Community Festival - as it was known for most of them – was the centrepiece of the Bristol hedonist’s year. Everybody went, it never rained (well, almost never) and most of the acts performed for nothing because, like us, they wouldn’t have missed it for the world. For a long time the entrance fee was whatever loose change you had in your pocket as you walked up that tease of a hill.

Growing purely by word of mouth, the festival was drawing around 60,000 people by 1998, the year Portishead and Spiritualized played and everyone agreed they’d had the best time ever. Then, three years ago, disaster struck. The site became waterlogged and the event was cancelled halfway through, immediately scuppering hopes of recouping losses from previous years. It never came back.

Not least because of its beautiful location, it’s been held up as an ideal ever since - the “bring back Ashton Court music festival” Facebook group claimed 20,000 members in 48 hours. Could it be revived? “I’d never say never”, says Jennifer Crook, who co-managed the festival in its last four years.“I really hope it will be back, as does everyone who was ever involved”.

The Ashton Court Estate remains the venue for big events like the Balloon Fiesta and Kite Festival, and there have also been some smaller attempts to bring music back to the site. Last year's bijou Summer Fayre, which celebrated the Estate's 50 years in the public domain, was true to the spirit of the Community Festival with sets from local talent like Get The Blessing, Rose Kemp and Health and Safety At Work Act from 1974", (the year of the first Community Festival). Since then, "there have been clarifications and minor amendments", but the main thing that’s changed is public opinion, fuelled by disasters like Hillsborough and the death of two fans at the 1988 Donnington festival. "It’s easy to rage against a ‘safety culture’”, Tim adds, “but if people died against the pit barrier the press would demand to know why nothing was done" - a fact made all the more unavoidable by the horrific events at this year’s Love Parade.

The law can be ambiguous, though. “The 2003 Licensing Act was really designed for pubs and clubs, not outdoor events, which is why so much can come down to local interpretation”, says Jennifer Crook. “It’s a very vague piece of legislation”. An extreme example is that of the 2008 Moonfest, which lost its licence after police cited the Act, claiming that Pete Doherty could cause a "whirlpool effect in the crowd". Less surreally, "licensing complications" were recently blamed for the cancellation of the 'Summer Nights' concerts at Ashton Court. The 2003 Act’s call for "adequate security personnel" is also open to interpretation. "It's common to find quirky and illogical licence conditions which may stem from inexperienced local government officers", says Tim Roberts, adding, "I DO NOT suggest Bristol City Council are guilty of this".

Will David Cameron much trumpeted “war on red tape” help? Ben Hardy thinks not. “There aren’t any signs that the new government will change anything – other than the fact that local authorities will be subject to further budget cuts.” He also points out that the current climate tends to make things even tougher for would be promoters: “there are less sponsorship purses available and members of the public have less disposable income”, he says, “with less money being spent, smaller traders and caterers tend to be fewer on the ground which affects the revenue that an event can generate.” Not, perhaps, the news that shoestring Eavises want to hear.

Despite these obstacles, the sprawling, carnivalesque Bristol Festival shows that community events can still thrive in the city centre. Poppy Stephenson, its formidable co-ordinator, says it would cost five times as much to hold at Ashton Court. “It’s the remote location”, she says, “There’s no street lighting, water or power points, and expensive metal tracks are required so that emergency services can reach all areas.” To make things worse, a quirk of geography means that promoters need licences from two local authorities.

Now in its third year, the renamed Brisfest is a community festival in all but name - the product of thousands of hours of unpaid work by a 77-strong volunteer force. “The reason we got involved in the first place was to save Ashton Court and that is what we've been trying to do”, says Poppy, “with local acts, reasonable prices and true Bristol style”. Sensitive to the public’s aversion to concrete, the team will consider moving to a greener space if this year’s festival is a big enough success. “We would love it to be in a beautiful park”, she adds. “Next year, who knows!” As if to prove their commitment, they plan to turf part of the site for Brisfest 2010. There will also be nine outdoor stages, a casino bus, beer garden and something called a “recursive function dome with 360 degree visuals”. Factor in five hundred performances, club nights, boat parties, a ton of workshops and zero council funding and it’s hard to believe it can be done for a fiver a day.

It’s a huge task. In the run up to to the first festival in 2008, Poppy slept for an average of 3-4 hours a night for the best part of a year. It’s got slightly easier as new volunteers have joined the team - each of them putting in between three and ten hours a week. “We’ve had several people splitting up with partners and actual hair loss”, she says. “You lie awake worrying about disasters, worst case scenarios and emergency situations”. Then there’s the money, a tightrope walk between value for festival-goers and making ends meet - “There was just a couple of per cent in it last year”. Poppy’s research suggests that people are simply not ready to pay the £18 or £20 per day it would cost to stage the festival at Ashton Court.

The issue of what people are prepared to pay for their entertainment is clearly decisive . “We struggled hugely with the legacy of being a free event when we had to increase charges”, says Jennifer Crook. “In Bristol, we are spoilt for choice with free events. It’s one of the city’s selling points but it raises expectations”. Tim Roberts agrees, saying that Ashton Court’s biggest challenge was “massive popularity, coupled with a strong desire on the part of the public to get it for nowt. If punters had stumped up £10 a head then we’d probably still all be trekking up that hill”.

With that in mind, whether ‘Ashton Court’ has a future depends on what people want from it, and how much they’re prepated to pay for the privelege. “As we always used to say, it’s not 1974 anymore”, says Jennifer Crook. “Is a community event one which thousands of people from all across Bristol can go to, or one with little or no entry price that fewer people can attend?” In the current climate, it looks increasingly like a two way choice between a commercial festival with a big name lineup and a truly local one built on the talent and passion of the city. If it’s the second option we want, we already have Brisfest and it’s getting stronger each year.

If the stress, risk and sheer hard graft involved in organising a community festival sounds a little daunting, it’s refreshing to hear how upbeat the organisers themselves are about the experience. “It’s so rewarding when you see it all come together” says Poppy, “and think 'Wow! this is what can be created when everyone pulls together’”. “It was exhausting and it took over my life for four years”, says Jennifer, “but when it ended I felt like my best friend had died. If I could bring it back to life this minute, I would. It was the best job I ever had”.

Brisfest 2010 takes place from 24th - 26th September. For more information, see www.brisfest.co.uk

David Wrench & Black Sheep - 'Spades & Hoes & Plows' (Invada Records)

2010-08-11T02:51:00.000-07:00

Stretching four songs over 65 minutes, this album is guaranteed to provoke a reaction.

Casting aside the synthpop mischief of his last record, Welsh maverick Wrench turns to radical folk, with its cast of clubbed peasants, lynched priests and mutilated strikebreakers. His sleevenotes are worth the asking price alone.

Backed by Black Sheep – a mob of musico-political subversives marshalled by Julian Cope - Wrench tackles revolutionary ballads with an irreverence that’s perversely sympathetic. War drums march funereally beside blasted guitars, while Wurlitzers and Mellotrons summon ancient melodies to eerie half-life.

At their best – as on the gripping ‘The Blackleg Miner’ - the group’s outsider theatrics force the listener to confront the Otherness of political struggle. Through them, we glimpse a world in which collective action means “freedom and blood on our bread”, not a Rick Astley singalong in a public space.

Blood Red Sounds rating 8/10

This review originally appeared in Venue.

See Head Heritage for further information.

It's My Property

2010-08-03T05:33:00.000-07:00

The image above shows a typical group of young British users. The high is written all over their faces, but the long term effects of "property" can be devastating.

I don’t make a habit of linking to F.T articles but this one is well worth a read. It’s the clearest explanation I’ve read of the UK's addiction to property speculation, and how a Land Value Tax could prevent it from damaging the economy again.

Land taxes shift the balance of taxation from wages to assets, so this is basically required reading for lefties.

More fun stuff soon, I promise.

In the meantime, here are Mooz with a brilliant song about property.

Antoni Maiovvi - Interview and free download

2010-07-14T06:15:00.000-07:00

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of "Spaghetti Dance"

Five years ago Italo-Disco enjoyed a double revival. Crate diggers re-discovered its influence on House. Hipsters squealed at its camp machismo and lost-in-translation lyrics. The movement’s pioneers started coming out of the woodwork, among them Torino legend Antoni Maiovvi, whose limited edition comeback album Maiovvi Vice sold out so quickly that nobody's quite sure it ever existed.

Since then, Maiovvi’s worked at an impressive rate - hooking up with style icon Fortuna for a series of live PAs, before releasing solo sets Electro Muscle Cult, Shadow Of The Bloodstained Kiss and The Thorns Of Love. Maiovvi’s mature sound revisits the aching synths and 4/4 kicks of his 80s cuts, adding low budget cinematics, deadpan Euroticisms and the occasional agonised croon. The results are compellingly eccentric; curiously beautiful.

Antoni Maiovvi is also the alter ego of Anton Maiof - the prolific experimentalist of My Ambulance Is On Fire and howling anchorman of Geisha.

BRS: You recently left England for Germany. Is it going well for you over there?

AM: It's been interesting. I'm not sure of the sense in moving to a country where I don't speak the language. But it's been good. There is a nice community of weirdos making excellent work, you can always get a drink and life is cheap...and the girls, man, the girls.

BRS: You’re not the only producer connecting Berlin with Bristol. Pinch, Appleblim et al have forged links with German techno. Digital Hardcore was an inspiration for the anti-establishment breakcore of Death$ucker. Do the cities have something in common?

AM: There's a similarity in the pace of life. Berlin is pretty laid back for a capital city. Not much closes and you can party all night. People are in less of a rush. There are social problems because of that, of course - there are a lot of burned out people. Bristol and Berlin are both transient towns - both have big universities and people will come here to study and have a good time and then leave to go get a job somewhere else leaving music scenes to get glossed over. Techno is king here - most other things get ignored.

BRS: Who is Antoni Maiovvi? What’s the idea behind the alias?

AM: Antoni Maiovvi is a composite character - equal parts Harold Faltermeyer, Giorgio Moroder, Philip Glass, Maurizio Merli, Jeffrey Dahmer and David Duchovny. With hindsight I should have thought of something easier to spell.

BRS: A lot of your work with Geisha and My Ambulance Is On Fire was dark and nihilistic. The Maiovvi project is inspired by Italo-Disco, a naïve, hedonistic sound. Pure escapism on your part?

AM: Some Italo stuff could fit in a horror movie I think, some stuff is just agressively gay, some of it is so cheesy and bad it's like a bad joke. The amazing tracks are truly amazing; psychedelic and sexy - just like Whitehouse.

BRS: There's another aspect to Maiovvi - a sort of diseased longing, thinly disguised by the plastic heroics. Are you a hopeless romantic?

AM: There's this theory about the writer Philip K Dick. His twin sister died after they were born prematurely. He went through his life knowing that there was another part of him that was gone forever. I can understand that - I've no idea what the other part is but I miss it. In short, yes.

BRS: What’s happening with your other projects? Are the rumours of new Geisha material true?

AM: Everything is still going. Geisha will never die until one of us does. Circumstance has been the bane of that band, but we're going to keep going in whatever form just to spite it. Also we like working together.

BRS: What I've heard of the new Geisha material is very different from anything you've done before. Did you leave your guitar in Bristol?

AM: Well, it was time to experiment but I did leave the Geisha guitar in Bristol, yes. I have a guitar here but it's not the same. We keep losing drummers is the short answer to the change. I've a general disgust for most rock music these days.

BRS: The Russians are coming and the train leaves for Paris in an hour. There’s enough space in your luggage for two records and two films. Which do you choose?

AM: Movies are easy. The Thing and Robocop. For the records it would probably be more useful to get some lathe vinyl that has been sharpened for ninja dj action...you know, just in case.

Antoni Maiovvi's 'The Thorns Of Love' is out now on Caravan Records.

Free Download! Antoni Maiovvi, Live at the Italo Elite club, Amsterdam.

Finesse - Summer Bass Mix Vol. 1

2010-07-07T02:15:00.000-07:00

Here’s fun. Bristol’s DJ Finesse is best known as a champion of the liquid tendency in drum & bass but he’s certainly no one trick pony.

Summer Bass Vol. 1 sees him immersed in the deep end of dubstep and future garage, dropping selections from local legends like Forsaken, Headhunter and Komonazmuk and recent classics from Joy Orbison, Martyn and El-B.

It’s the perfect soundtrack to a dyspeptic crawl along the A38, as the weekend glows seductively from the eyeholes of Monday’s burkha.

Finesse – Summer Bass Vol. 1 [download]

1. Martyn – Broken (Revolve:R)
2. Ramadanman - Humber (Apple Pips)
3. Hyetal - Neon Speech (Soul Motive)
4. Claude Vonstroke & J Phlip - California, Julio Bashmore Remix (Dirty Bird)
5. Addison Groove - Footcrab (Swamp 81)
6. El-B - Son De Cali (Soul Motive)
7. Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo (Hotflush)
8. Headhunter - Prototype (Modeselektor Rmx) (Tempa)
9. Kouros Ft. DRS - Tears (Estate)
10. Komonazmuk - Miss Her (Hench)
11. Forsaken Ft. Joker & Ben Blackmore - Last Saloon Swagger (Soul Motive)

Labour leadership candidates - Who are they and what do they want?

2010-07-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

As a card-carrying Labourite, I'm in the enviable position of helping to choose the next leader of the opposition.

Many will assume this is a pointless exercise; that whoever wins can only become Prime Minister by tugging a forelock at the markets and Mail. I take a less cynical view, of course. Politics without optimism is like a pub with no bogs.

So who are these brave souls, selflessly gambling their reputations on a shot at greatness? More importantly, who is likely to win?

David Miliband: The former Foreign Secretary and "heir to Blair" is distinguished by an unshakeable faith in his own genius. Miliband isn't completely self-obsessed, though - he famously took one for the team when he gave Hillary Clinton a good seeing to on a diplomatic trip to Helmand. Leadership potential 8/10.

Ed Miliband: With his mild manners and puppydog eyes, Ed looks more like a history teacher than the future of socialism. Don't judge a book by its cover, though. Wrestling his own brother for the party leadership shows a contempt for the natural order that could kill a Tory at twenty paces. Leadership potential 8/10.

Ed Balls: The Phil Mitchell of the centre-left, the former Education Secretary is a balloon-faced psychopath who shits 24 hour tribal politics and cites Suge Knight and Cardinal Torquemada as heroes. Balls allegedly convinced Yvette Cooper not to stand for the leadership by threatening to cut her face. Leadership potential 4/10.

Diane Abbott: A lifelong contrarian, Abbott’s early onset Alzheimer’s has led her to believe she’s still fighting the battles of the '80s. The Hackney MP can often be seen wandering aimlessly around Greenham Common, or chanting “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, Out, Out!” on late night discussion shows. Leadership potential 3/10.

Andy Burnham: A diehard party loyalist who looks like George from Rainbow, Burnham joined Labour after reading an NME interview in which Noel Gallagher referred to Thatcher as a "Tory twat". He claims the current clamour for constitutional reform is "a sideshow for people who read books”, and that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are, “toffee-nosed Southern ponces, up to their arses in rugby and croissants.” Leadership potential Nil.

I'm still not quite sure to vote for to be honest. Anyone got any advice?

Workers' champion Clegg squares up to the markets

2010-07-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

Here's what our esteemed Deputy PM had to say about public sector cuts back in March (conveniently, some months before he had a say in the matter). It's from an answer given at the Yorkshire Post Question Time.

The decisions about how we govern this country shouldn’t be decided by fear of what markets want. Let’s say there was a Conservative Government and they announced, in a macho way: ‘We’re gonna slash public spending, slash this, slash that. We’re gonna do it tomorrow because we have to take early tough action.

Just imagine the reaction of my constituents in south-west Sheffield. I represent a constituency that has more public servants as a proportion of those working than any other constituency in the country – lots of people working in universities, hospitals and so on. They have no Conservative councillors and no Conservative MPs as far as the eye can see in South Yorkshire.

People like that are going to say: ‘Who are these people telling us they are suddenly taking our jobs away? What mandate do they have? I didn’t vote for them; no-one round here votes for them.

If you want to check Clegg's man of the people act out for yourself you can enjoy the speech in all its retrospectively surreal glory here.

At least he didn't mention Forgemasters. Poor Sheffield.

Thanks to Teacher Talks for the link.

Plaid & Southbank Gamelan Players / Peverelist, Arnolfini, Bristol, Thursday 10th June

2010-06-30T04:55:00.000-07:00

The meeting of musical traditions is fraught with danger. Too often the result is a well-meaning compromise or unholy din.

Luckily, Southbank Gamelan Players are well versed in it. Trained in Indonesia but based in London, they’ve worked with people as varied as Bjork and composer Symon Clarke. Their collaboration with electronica duo Plaid aims to reconcile a 2000-year-old tradition with one that only dates back to the 1980s.

The first half hour belongs to the ensemble alone, using xylophones, gongs and chimes to create cyclical melodies from interlocking parts. Their set takes in ceremonial pieces, sung poetry and contemporary music for gamelan. To the delight of electronica fans, it ends with a beautiful version of Aphex Twin’s Actium, its timeless LFO bassline recreated, impressively, on a pair of three-foot gongs.

Plaid’s involvement starts with an anticlimax – initially their cosy synth textures dull the mesmeric effect of all that struck brass. Thankfully their second piece - written with composer Rahayu Supanggah - is less polite. Rubber Time gets right to the heart of cultural exchange as genres flirt and clash to dramatic effect. In the closing section techno and gamelan become indistinguishable as studio effects transform ancient instruments and western rhythms submit to the fluidity of the East.

As owner of the world’s best record shop (Rooted) and one of its more interesting labels (Punch Drunk), Tom Peverelist Ford is a major player in Bristol. His intricate, reflective take on dubstep should compliment the headliners perfectly but tonight he suffers from DJ Support Syndrome, whose symptom is being ignored by an audience who’ve come to watch rather than dance. Even the epic push and pull of Circling fails to stop the chatter.

For all the distance between London and Jakarta, the chasm between live music and DJ culture seems harder to bridge.

This review originally appeared in Venue magazine.

Free 2hour Luke Vibert set!

2010-06-18T06:32:00.001-07:00

Click here to download a 2 hour set from Luke Vibert. It was recorded at the massive Mongrel Vs Agro night at Lakota (Saturday 6th June).

Thanks to Sven at Mongrel for sharing!

Sleigh Bells / Kites & Flags / Drunk Granny Tuesday 25th May @ The Louisiana, Bristol

2010-06-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

It isn’t Drunk Granny's day. Drummer Edie Pain has spent the afternoon vomiting and guitarist Debi Withers gets electrocuted twice in the first three songs. If Young Ones-style calamity explains their stilted performance it's no excuse for material so thinly sketched it might have been written in a free period between P.E and double Maths. Still, there's knockabout relief to be enjoyed in closing number Big Hairy Lesbian Sex Beasts, whose two minutes of angry grunting are the closest this duo get to an articulate statement.

Competence isn't an issue for Kites & Flags - they're studio-slick. Their bitcrushed synths and dub effects suggest fingers on the pulse but the songs are more Crowded House than Electro-House. While the indie-dance moments are well executed enough the two-piece are at their most affecting when their rich vocal harmonies and arpeggiated guitars are allowed to breathe. It’s then that these traditional pop-rock craftsmen are revealed beneath their hipster clothing.

Brooklyn's Sleigh Bells are hair-raisingly intense. In almost total darkness they unleash a pincer movement of disarming art-pop and pulverizing industrial hardcore. Derek Miller’s guitar throws fierce, atonal squawks and slamming power chords at a backdrop of psychotic disco beats and booty-troubling bass. Singer Alexis Krauss moves so relentlessly she defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics and her vocals are no less dramatic. Incendiary punk-rap verses give way to operatic hooks - placing Sleigh Bells in a lineage of infectiously mannered pop from Sparks to Kelis.

Extracting honey-coated violence from new wave, metal, rave, R&B and all styles between, songs like Infinity Guitars and Treats are as refreshing as anything you’ll hear in 2010. Sleigh Bells are what happens when two people inhale the last 35 years of radical sounds and blow the whole lot in your face.

This review originally appeared in Venue Magazine
Alexis Krauss photographed by Ellen Doherty

Bronnt Industries Kapital / Jasmina Maschina / Squeeze Me Macaroni @ Bristol Folk House, Friday 30th April

2010-06-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

Gig-goers may recognise Serena Cavalera from irrepressible art-punks Yoshy! but it’s her sensitive side on display tonight. As Squeeze Me Macaroni she serves up a warts and all post-rock that’s all the more beguiling for its imperfections. By turns menacing and melancholy, layers of delayed guitar create a glorious muddle that often threatens to turn violent. Her voice, used sparingly, brings to mind Stina Nordenstam at her most spooked. With no backing track to pin it down each song is constructed in the moment, lending a rough physicality to even the dreamiest sections. When she lets rip it’s truly unsettling.

Jasmina Maschina is easier on the ears but less compelling. Prozac-sweet vocals meander around nursery rhyme chord progressions and a laptop full of ambient textures. The arrangements are prettily atmospheric but many of the songs are so light they’re in danger of floating away in a cloud of whimsy. While this would no doubt be charming in small doses, over a whole set it can get a little numbing.

There's always been a soundtrack aspect to Guy Bartell's work as Bronnt Industries Kapital. Even his most straightforward electronica is informed more by the mysteries of cinema than those of the dancefloor. Tonight's selections are drawn from 2007’s Haxan, Bartell's soundtrack to a controversial early Swedish film about witchcraft. Fortunately, the music speaks for itself, evoking moods from creeping unease through gut-level horror to a sort of pagan rapture. The four piece band offer up synthesisers, french horn, flute, guitar and drums as sacrifices to Bartell's bonfire of sonic treatments. The result is subtle, powerful music that’s equal parts intricate melody and thrilling cacophony. As always, Bronnt’s vision is unique. They bring to life the repressed folk memories bad dreams are made of.

This review appeared in Venue Magazine on Friday 7th May
Guy Bartell photographed by Matt Collins.

Guido - Anidea (Punch Drunk Records, 2010)

2010-06-02T14:22:00.001-07:00

If dubstep was the kick up the arse Bristol’s bassheads needed, they continue to return the favour. One of the most exciting sounds of the moment is the vivid urban psychedelia of Joker, Gemmy and Guido. Guido is the first to put it to the album test, which Anidea passes with flying colours.

While Joker's Digidesign was an anthem in 2009, Guido's Orchestral Lab / Way U Make Me Feel twelve (released the same week) was just as impressive. Anidea proves it was no fluke - Guido's music is more than just another mutation in the long fallout from jungle. Forgoing dubstep's austerity and grime's aggression in favour of melodic excess, Anidea sounds like the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

The key to Guido's accessibility is balance. While the alien arpeggios of videogame music have inspired countless producers, (not least Ikonika, whose delirious Contact, Love, Want, Have is effectively a gaming concept album), Guido compliments them with conventional sounds. For every circular bleep melody or otherwordly synth swell there's a horn, string or piano hook that evokes 70s orchestral soul or ornate 90s R&B. Cat In The Window sounds like Isaac Hayes gone Italo (via the theme from Out Run). It's stunning.

Second single, Beautiful Complication, is just as good - pairing the breathlessness of Aarya's voice with brain damage bass and slamming kicks, it's a perfect synthesis of imagination and accessibility. If the world worked properly it would have been a massive hit last year.

The other big vocal tune is a re-edit of Way U Make Me Feel, showcasing Bristol's go-to girl, Yolanda. A voice as strong and rangey as hers should be a challenge for a producer as melodically dense as Guido but the slow-building arrangement does her proud.

If all that wasn't enough, the vicious snares, staccato squelches and big room strings of You Do It Right reveal fearsome dancefloor skills. Likewise Tango, which updates the heady latin-dub of Sabres Of Paradise's Wilmot for a new generation. Shades of Blue is a brooding stepper lit up with technicolour raindrops in the vein of DJ Wonder's grime classic What. All of these sound great on headphones but will slay through a Function One.

The album closes with Tantalized, a synthesiser masterclass that takes in Curtis Mayfield strings, synapse-shredding guitar and just enough wobble to win over the students. Gemmy and Joker both have albums due out this year (on Planet Mu and Hyperdub respectively). It remains to be seen whether either of them will match Anidea's ambition, confidence and emotional power.

Consider the gauntlet thrown.

Blood Red Sounds rating 9/10

Mos Def / Cheeba / Kners / Lazy Habits @ 02 Academy, Bristol. Wednesday 14th April

2010-04-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

Expect to catch Lazy Habits at a festival. Their formula of riffing horns, familiar breaks and mildly subversive lyrics would go down well after a few ciders. Tonight's relatively sober setting doesn't do them any favours though. There's little sign of Hip Hop's cutting edge and the jazziness is window dressing. The Roots they are not.

With debut album 'Bristol Grammar' about to drop, K.Ners is a rising star of UK Hip Hop. He has a commanding stage presence and a sackful of decent tunes - it's a shame he doesn't play them through. Guests vocals from Blacksmith, Misha B and D Gritty mean there's plenty going on but it's a stop / start affair. Beats are pulled up when they've barely started - it's like watching edited highlights of a good show. There are no such issues for local legend Cheeba, though, whose precision-tooled turntablism aims straight for the dancefloor and explodes on impact. It’s the most convincing set of the night.

In jeans, braces and a flat cap, Mos Def looks like he’s auditioning for a big screen adaptation of The Waltons. While 2009's 'The Ecstatic' is his best solo album in a decade tonight's set is a bit of a let down. Stripped of his excellent backing band, the music suffers from a bass-heavy mix which buries detail and leaves vocals floating in space. While the spiralling guitar hook of 'Supermagic' flies fast enough to hit its mark, subtler productions fall short. Even classics like 'Ms Fat Booty' and 'Umi Says' sound a little throwaway in this context. The warmth of Mos Def's personality and some great vocals prevent the show from tanking - he even hands out flowers, Morrissey-style. Hardly a vintage performance, though. Next time, bring the band.

Photography by Ellen Doherty.
This review originally appeared in Venue Magazine.

Hang ‘Em – Great campaign, TERRIBLE name.

2010-04-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

Nutwood North MP, Dr Rupert Bear.

Before anyone assumes fatherhood has destroyed my mind, I still don’t believe in the death penalty.

More importantly, despite leaving Easton for the land of dairy farms and miniature Nuremberg rallies,* I have yet to take up lynching as a way of making friends.

Disclaimers aside, I'm writing to flag up an interesting campaign called Hang 'em, which is working for a hung parliament in the UK General Election.

The idea is that a workable Tory or Labour majority won't deliver the change this country needs - in particular reform of the voting system and the House of Lords. While the Lib Dems and some of the smaller parties are committed to electoral reform, there's little chance of them forming a government under the present system. The best way to get these issues onto the agenda is to do what you can to achieve a hung parliament in which the largest party will need to do deals with the minority parties.

Happily my 'Hang 'em Candidate' is Brian Mathew, an impeccably liberal candidate I already planned to vote for as the candidate most likely to unseat foul, expenses-snaffling Tory uber-hawk Liam Fox.

Here's an excellent article by Hang 'Em founder Anthony Barnett. It explains the aims of the campaign much better than I could.

*Note to fellow pub-goers in North Somerset: I understand The Bungalow has recently come under new management. This is almost certainly good news.

Bloc Weekend 2010

2010-03-30T14:13:00.000-07:00

Now in it's fourth year, Bloc Weekend is the discerning raver's blowout of choice. It's not the biggest, hardest or messiest dance festival but it's definitely the most thoughtfully programmed. Bloc is a sleepless, bassbin-hugging cousin of All Tomorrow's Parties; it's Sonar relocated to a resort with the cheaply futuristic look of a motorway services. The Bloc team are evangelists for quality dance music: if you need your faith restored, look no further.

Suited and booted, Roots Manuva looks as authoritative as he sounds. The quality of his beats is variable, though, and early hits like 'Juggle Tings Propa' and 'Dreamy Days' get the biggest reaction until the pneumatic 'Witness' takes the room apart.

Friday's revelation is Ms Dynamite. She's at a rave, not a tea party, and has ditched the awards fodder for hard-nosed garage and dancehall that works perfectly with her frantic, ragga-coated delivery. When pirate radio anthem 'Boo!' crashes in, Bloc begs for rewinds. A slow moving queue keeps us from Joy Orbison who, by all accounts, lived up to expectations raised by last summer's euphoric 'Hyph Mngo'. We console ourselves with East End dubplates from the boy Youngsta and lean, intense techno from Stockholm's Adam Beyer.

N/E/D Vs Punksi kick off Saturday's Overkill lineup. Their set reflects Bloc's inclusive outlook, switching neatly between soca-inflected house, shimmering electro, crushing dubstep and piano-battering hardcore. Punski shouts something about ice cream while Lewis Carroll characters punch beach balls around. It's 6pm. Elsewhere, Subloaded hold court as Peverelist & Appleblim's sublimely spiritual dubs prepare the way for the apocalyptic bass sermons of Pinch & Distance.

Then comes a three horned dilemma as actual pop stars Salt & Pepa clash with Joker and Flying Lotus. DJ Spinderella cuts shamelessly from S&P hits like 'Shake Your Thang' to crowd-pleasing breaks like 'Crazy In Love' while the rappers theatrically trade lyrics and bump 'n' grind with their male dancers. Joker's mixing has finally caught up with his production skills. His cocksure set marks territory between swaggering G-Funk and heads down UK pressure. Easton should be proud. California's Flying Lotus sets Hip Hop loose in a hall of mirrors to mind-bending effect.

Kode 9 b2b Martyn is a real highlight; glueing deep house positivity to rattling garage beats and enough bass to sink a battleship. Kode 9's alchemical Black Sun is as good a definition of the infinite possibilities in UK dance music as I've heard all weekend.

Back at Overkill, we're treated to a masterclass from a true legend of UK electronica. Luke Vibert has always worked with a dizzying variety of styles but tonight he bins the boundaries altogether. It makes for an hour of electronic bliss as wild acid lines scrawl dementedly over the tuffest breaks. In contrast, Berlin's T++ is purity itself - exquisite, icy minimalism with a warming undercurrent of dub. Then it's right back into the storm with artfully punishing techno from UK titans Surgeon and Luke Slater.

Festivals like this shape the music scene in a vital way - breaking down barriers between genres and championing the bravest sounds. Bloc will continue to thrive as long as there are ravers with open minds.

Pics (top to bottom): Roots Manuva, Ms Dynamite, Peverelist & Appleblim, Luke Vibert.
Photography by Ellen Doherty.

A shorter version of this review appeared in Venue Magazine.

Tectonic Plates Vol 2

2009-05-24T04:59:00.000-07:00

If dubstep was Croydon's gift to the musically obsessive, it soon found a home 130 miles west. Commercial indifference and bass culture are deeply ingrained in Bristol. As the movement spreads and splinters, this second volume from Pinch's label couldn’t be more timely. It’s as good an answer to the question, "What is dubstep?", as you’ll hear in 2009.

Tectonic defines Bristol’s role in two ways. As well as pushing local talent, it reaches out to dubstep's South London homeland and international frontier. Volume 2 kicks off with two Dutch masters known for fusing UK bass music with the emotional pull of European techno. The skippy breaks and washed out synths of Martyn's Yet are followed by the darkly atmospheric halfstep of 2562's Kontrol. 2562 also gets a welcome second showing with the minimal Greyscale from last year's superb Aeriel.

Founding father Skream is one of dubstep's most prolific producers but his output has varied in quality of late. On Trapped In A Dark Bubble, with its questing strings and frothing bassline, he's back on form but it's techno-influenced Precression that's the real departure - its mechanical ribcage and ricocheting organic snares closing in on the tightly wound style of Bristol's own Peverelist. His best mate and sparring partner Benga shows up with Technocal, which mines similar influences less reverently (and slightly less successfully). You can take the boy out of Croydon...

Closer to home, Joker's sleazily melodic grime manoeuvres have made him Bristol's hottest property in years. If Untitled_rsn sees him coasting slightly that’s only in comparison with shockers like Stuck In A System, Gully Brook Lane and the recent Digidesign. It’s still the work of an outrageous talent. Before long every scene jumper in the business will be beating down his door. Meanwhile, Pinch himself contributes two of the strongest tracks - the dancefloor dynamite of Joyride and creeping dread-noise of Moving Ninja collaboration False Flag.

Now operating as RSD, Rob Smith’s contribution is more a return to form than a change of direction. With Smith & Mighty and More Rockers he did as much as anyone to define the 90s Bristol sound. A driving, hypnotic dub workout, the way 'Forward Youth' sits comfortably amid the work of a new generation is testament both to dubstep’s fluidity and the timelessness of Smith’s vision.

Perhaps the most interesting track of all is Glendale Galleria from Flying Lotus, mainly because the Californian is the one producer here you wouldn't strongly associate with dubstep. It's a peach of a tune, though, substituting an exquisitely programmed garage break for the queasy Hip Hop beats he's known for. Likewise, Shed's remix of Peverelist's Junktion - essentially Thomas Fehlmann-style ambient techno with a cheekily placed kick and snare. The inclusion of tracks like these is fuel for an argument running through Tectonic's DNA: that the music we call dubstep is defined more by feel than any set of rules.

Blood Red Sounds rating: 8/10

Tectonic Plates Vol 2 - out now on Tectonic Recordings. The CD version comes packaged with bonus mix from Pinch including a killer track from Loefah and the RSD remix of Pinch's Get Up (HIGHLY recommended).

The Bristol Sound (Slight Return?)

2008-04-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

[Bristol, yesterday]

It has come to Chokecentral's attention, via a handful of slightly annoying articles in the national press, that the Bristol Sound is "back!".

If you believe the broadsheets you'd think the city had been silent for ten years - its musical heroes either drowned in the Severn Estuary or buried under the weight of their spliffed-out indolence. As melody and rhythm wafted from the streets of Hackney and Sheffield to international acclaim, it seems the only sound coming out of Bristol was a row between city elders over which imperialist atrocity to name the new shopping centre after.

This is bollocks, of course. The British press and music industry have ignored every interesting thing to come out of Bristol for the last ten years because none of it matched their prejudice about what our music's meant to sound like. That's why hardly anyone knows who Madnomad were and why Mooz split up without a mention in the music press; why SJ Esau is signed in America and Chikinki play most of their shows in Germany. It's also why Gravenhurst have yet to appear on Later..., why Geisha can't get a proper tour and Team Brick can't afford to buy his own shoes. It's also probably why the only vaguely succesful act to come out of Bristol in the last decade are Kosheen, a coffee table product as cynical and contrived as Nestlé's "fairtrade" brand.

But the Bristol Sound is "back!". Alongside a brilliant new album from Portishead this means releases from the likes of Massive Attack, Tricky and Roni Size Reprazent (who never had much in common with the other three anyway). And that's where the revival idea collapses. All of them have strayed from their original blueprint except Size, whose latest release is a remix of his Mercury winning 'New Forms'. Meanwhile, long-lost boy genius Tricky was last seen jamming with The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Massive Attack's 100th Window was as far from their sound system roots as can comfortably be imagined. Still, at least they're not repeating themselves.

But while Bristol's 'Big Three' are busy doing their own thing there are continuities. Pinch's 'Underwater Dancehall' - a smart fusion of techno-influenced dubstep and urban reflection - is closer in spirit to the template laid down by Smith & Mighty than anything I've heard in years. Unfortunately, a double CD format that makes the weightier instrumental versions look like bonus tracks has probably scuppered its crossover chances.

Still, it was a spirit of adventure that reigned here in the 80s and early 90's and I think that holds true today. With labels like Tectonic, Punch Drunk and Deathsucker flying the flag for uncompromising dance music and the Venn festival an annual reminder of how many people round here like their heads to be fucked with, it seems the city is still a home for challenging sounds. Meanwhile, a generation of bands from Tractor to Countryside are ploughing their own furrow, seemingly ignorant of the lifestyle soundtrack the media are hoping for. We've moved on.

Doctor Who [Warning: Contains spoilers!]

2008-04-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

The First Doctor, Davros and Captain Jack Harkness in happier times.

Doctor Who is back on the box and everything is ok. Or so series head honcho Russell T Davies would like you to believe. However, Chokecentral has had a tip off from one of the catering staff at BBC Cardiff, suggesting that the published list of episodes for Season Four is a red herring.

Here’s what she says is coming up later in the series. I’ve left one or two episodes out because they don’t sound very plausible.

Episode 3 - Doctorz 'N The Hood: Two Doctors meet with consequences for the future of the music industry, but only one of them is a Time Lord! Dr Dre co-stars, wielding his "Chronic Screwdriver". Introducing Snoop Doggy Dogg as K-9.

Episode 4 - The Paris Dilemma: The Doctor and Sarah-Jane Smith head back to the 1970s for old time's sake. After a series of misunderstandings at a New York disco, The Doctor finds himself holding the balls of property magnate Richard Hilton. Suddenly it dawns on him that a single massive squeeze could prevent a terrible fate for all mankind.

Episode 7 - The Dalek Invasion Of Essex: Having failed to take over the cosmos, The Daleks decide to invade London via the back door. Landing on Southend Pier, they are forced to abandon their terrible plot when the Hall of Mirrors convinces them that the local Daleks are much taller, wider and more ruthless than they are.

Episode 8 - Carry On Doctor: An outbreak of outmoded suburban stereotypes and agonising double entendres threatens to destabilise the entire universe. With Charles Hawtrey as Davros.

Episode 10 - Quo Tardis: The Doctor and new companion Dawn French crash land in Wembley, Earth during the opening stages of Live Aid. Francis Rossi has been reduced to the size of a walnut by The Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator. Can The Doctor's sonic plectrum save the show from catastrophe?

Episodes 11 & 12 - Three Doctors & A Baby [extraordinary two-part series finale!]: When Rose Tyler leaves him to go hunting Cybermen with ex-boyfriend Mickey, The Doctor calls on two of his former selves to help with the childcare. It's their greatest challenge to date...but who is the father? Answer: they all are! Co-starring Tom Selleck as the space-time continuum and Shirley off Eastenders as Rose.

How To Make It In The Music Business

2007-04-19T05:22:00.000-07:00

With the South West Sound music convention returning to Bristol this month, every man and his dealer is going to be in town giving helpful advice to the kids on how to "make it" in the music business.

While the very idea of a music 'industry' gives Blood Red Sounds terrifying visions of a kind of machine-woven prolefeed doled out to undermine the democracy of free expression, clearly some of you would rather be part of the problem than the solution. Well, either that or you're not as paranoid as I am.

Anyway, if you do fancy yourself as a stitch in the boot that's stamping on the face of humanity, here are a few ways your career as a lifestyle accessory might turn out.

Unfortunately, as if to illustrate the protean mass of contraditions that is Chokecentral's existence, I've named each option after a song you probably wouldn't even have heard of without the evil machinations of those dirty little men in suits, thereby seriously undermining my whole point.

The 'Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’
1. Get signed
2. Get dropped
3. Kill yourself
(NB: the second stage isn’t really that important)

The ‘See You On The Way Back Down’ (with apologies to Hacksaw)
1. Get signed
2. Get dropped
3. Hit the ‘revival’ trail. Have all your hopes and dreams crushed by the mocking laughter of the fickle public.
4. Kill yourself

The ‘Crossroads Blues’ (aka Living The Dream)
1. Have the time of your life making ground-breaking, thrilling music
2. Stop taking yourself so bloody seriously. Invent unit shifting pop act with a nod to underground credibility
3. Make $$$hitloads
4. Start your own label to support new talent and ‘give something back’
5. Sell out label to the majors, retire on the proceeds and try to appear nonchalant as they destroy everything you ever worked for when you were still recognisable as a human being
6. Kill yourself. Or get killed. Or possibly kill someone else.

The ‘Wannabe’
1. Form band
2. Create press pack in which the prominently displayed phrase ‘interest from a number of major labels’ actually refers to the number of your CDs that have been binned by record companies. After all, they only gave you their postal addresses to get your dad off the phone.
3. Change the band’s name and look every couple of years in a vain attempt at appearing to be relevant
4. Repeat stage three until you realise that your friends have all deserted you and that even the most imaginative of A&R scum can’t find a use for your worthless life. Even as a drug mule.
5. Attempt to kill yourself but fuck it right up
6. Repeat stage five until you die, penniless and unloved, some decades later. Of natural causes. Unsigned.

‘The Great Escape’
1. Get signed
2. Get dropped
3. Go back to your day job
4. Grow up

Good luck!

TWOCSINAK – ‘Art’s Equivalent to MFI with his Rolls Royce of Builders’ Skip’ EP (Clean Cut Records, 2005)

2007-04-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

This review of Twocsinak's debut EP was originally written for Choke issue 13.5, otherwise known as the issue that we never got round to publishing, sometime in 2005. Incidentally, since this was written Twocsinak has released an equally fine album on Shitmat's Wrongmusic label. I wouldn't hold your breath for a review though.

The lengthy title is just the start. At forty-five minutes long, this is not only one of the longest EPs I have heard, it also possesses the most extensive self-penned sleevenotes you are ever likely to read. And that’s before we even get to the cartoons. Twocsinak is clearly a man with creative diahorrea. Luckily for us, his shit is a taste worth acquiring.

A handsomely arranged buffet of twenty-two sample ‘n’ paste morsels, ‘Art’s Equivalent’ is a bizarre mixture of wide-eyed musical experimentation and pop-cultural collage, bringing to mind a bootleg mix of ‘The Faust Tapes’ and St. Etienne’s ‘Foxbase Alpha’ with added indie-boy shambling. Taking in pretty much every contemporary style of music and a bewildering array of instruments, its unique style is the seemingly inevitable product of a truly scatterbrained imagination.

Poignantly delicate one minute and winningly silly the next, Twocsinak’s debut is a children’s playground of abrupt mood swings. Creepy music boxes segue into euphoric rave stabs. Chirpy human beatbox patterns give way to lo-fi self-examination. A telephone conversation about where to buy Hip Hop records sits close by a hilarious deconstruction of the UK style press. You also get bits of jazz, folk, jungle, some lovely piano melodies and some cracking home-recorded jams with collaborators too numerous to list here.

The last song contains the line: ‘I know it’s indulgent to write songs in first person but it seems I’m the only person I know’. While this may or may not be the case, a couple of listens to ‘Art’s Equivalent to MFI’ and you’ll know Twocsinak like a childhood friend. This is the weirdest, loveliest and most surprising object I’ve picked off the doormat so far this year. It’s also as DIY as hell and chummy as fuck. Rejoice.

Genius Devalued

2007-04-10T12:11:00.000-07:00

News just in.

Since Johnny Borrell of Razorlight started using it the word 'genius' has been significantly devalued.

It is now provisionally defined by the OED as 'A talentless, no good shit for brains with the ego of Jeffrey Archer being lapdanced by God Almighty while snorting cocaine off Helen Of Troy's tits backstage at The Delusional Narcissists' Pollwinners Party.'

Cheers Johnny.

David Irving's Revised History Of Pop

2007-04-10T10:33:00.000-07:00

Hi, David Irving here.
As a world famous maverick historian, I'd normally be too busy to contribute to this blog. Unfortunately, I am currently stuck in a prison cell in Austria with only a copy of The Residents' 'Third Reich & Roll' for entertainment. A lifelong fan of rock music, I have come to suspect that the received view of its history has been distorted by a liberal bias imposed by the victorious powers of the Second World War. In my forthcoming bestseller, I identify a series of persistent pop myths and do my best to set the record straight. To whet your appetite, here are some examples of the fruits of my tireless academic research.

The Birth Of Rock & Roll.
Open any 'official' history book and you'll be told that rock and roll was invented in the 1950s by black Americans. This is a lie! It was in fact developed by Chinese serfs in the middle ages and exported around the globe by spice merchants. Ironically, America's isolationist foreign policy meant that it was the only country in the world without a proud rock tradition by the late nineteenth century. Rock & Roll finally arrived on American shores when Chuck Berry was deported from Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution.

Dylan Goes Electric.
Boring, grown up music magazines like Mojo, Uncut and Rolling Stone endlessly re-tell the story of Bob Dylan's conversion to the joys of rock but I have it on excellent authority that this never happened! On a recent lecture tour of midwest rifle clubs, I met a cousin of Dylan's who insists his famous relative is still strumming away at coffee houses in Greenwich Village under the name Mossy Datsun. The figure we now know as Dylan is in fact a Gorillaz-style animation invented in 1962 when the CIA thought protest singers were planning to bring down the military-industrial complex by getting their tits out and singing about hammers.

David Bowie: Chameleon of Pop.
Rock superstar Bowie is famous for changing his identity. What is less well known is that his early 'Ziggy Stardust' persona was a highly sophisticated double bluff. Bowie is, in fact, an actual space alien from space. If you want proof, check out the irrefutable documentary evidence I taped off BBC2, in which 'Bowie' is seen arriving on Earth to fetch water for his dying planet.

M-People Win The Mercury Music Prize.
Incredibly, this did actually happen. What is less well known is that their 90's smash 'Search For The Hero' was a work of plagiarism. Originally a poem by Friedrich Holderlein, it was set to music in the mid-thirties by a hack composer from Dusseldorf and soon became a popular singalong on Hitler Youth marches. My source, currently resident in a Brazilian retirement home, assures me that this shocking fact has been hushed up by a Yankee-Zionist music industry determined to undermine the achievements of National Socialism.

'It's Like Punk Never Happened' by David Irving is out in June. Its author is expected to follow some time in 2008.