Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Saturday, 31 October 2009
Monday, 19 October 2009
Love Letters To You. And You. And You.
Love Letters is a graffiti/mural project by Stephen Powers in Philadelphia U.S.A. Check the site for more pictures, here are just a couple of my favourites.
Monday, 12 October 2009
Sometimes learning is fun.
Having to write a presentation for a french class has meant I've rediscovered all the french hip-hop I listened to on my numerous trips to France. Groups such as IAM, NTM, MC Solaar and many others fly a high standard over the channel. Enjoy some of these classics.
IAM - Tam-Tam de l'Afrique (Spot the sample)
Finally to end this french moment, one of the best mixes ever, La Haine - Nique La Police. You can stop watching once you see the cow....
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
A Remix to See You Through.
Perfect for trudging on a rainy day or alternately just sitting at home with a brew. Could The XX want me to love them anymore?
Friday, 11 September 2009
Friday, 4 September 2009
Saturday, 22 August 2009
Home Alone On A Saturday Night.
Mariah I love you.
Plus in the videos for Emotions and Heartbreaker the clothes are pretty awesome.
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
Mysterious Kinds.
I was introduced to The XX about a year and a half ago by a friend of mine and first fell in love with their devastatingly sad cover of the the Womack & Womack classic, "Teardrops" and then I saw they covered Aaliyah's "Hot Like Fire" and I was all their's. Since then I have been keeping a close eye on them and am happy to report that their debut album is out next week. And from the snippets I've heard it won't disappoint from the initial sucker punch of "Teardrops". Check out the myspace http://www.myspace.com/thexx for more songs and videos and tour dates and all the usual stuff myspace generally supplies. New single "Basic Space" is out now.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Shake and Pop
I swear I'm never happier than when listening to R&B and watching sharply dressed good looking men with nice trainers on bounce to the beat effortlessly. I play hard to get with a soul obsession and a low maintenance appearance but there's still a part of me that's only satisfied by cleverly produced beats, a good sample and a bit of autotuning. One day I will dress like a girl in one of those videos, all shiny hair, lip gloss and acrylic nails.
I've had a lot of time for these numbers recently:
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Heaven and Earth.
On sunday I went to see the Richard Long exhibiton at the Tate Britain. Despite the exhibiton being slightly disappointing his photos were utterly beautiful. His work is based around nature and he walks a lot creating sculptures outdoors and then photographing the finished product. The result is often breath-taking.
Bus Beauty.
Coming home on the bus the other day this song came on my headphones on a long forgotten mix. In the dark, driving over waterloo bridge with a true london drizzle it couldn't have sounded better. It made me want to create the perfect travel mix cd which I am now in the process of doing, I will let you know the fruits of labour but for know listen to this and imagine you are on a 168 or perhaps for old times sake the good old 59.
Monday, 27 July 2009
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Miss Simone, 1969.
As Woodstock nears it's 40th anniversary, footage has surfaced of Harlem Festival from the very same summer of 1969. Artists performing in this free, six day concert included Stevie Wonder, Sly & The Family Stone, B.B. King, Gladys Knight and, shown below, Nina Simone, who was at the peak of her civil rights activism. The organisers could not sell footage of the festival for almost 40 years, though it's now being edited into a documentary by the film-makers Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon. Watch Simone's performance and you'll wonder why it's taken so long to become commercially available...
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Sublime Frequencies
The Sublime Frequencies project was founded by a collective of explorers in 2003 as a bid to sidestep the 'controlled' presentation of foreign culture, traditions, and spiritualism in today's West, providing alternative perceptions of the great traditions and their hybrids that still remotely exist across the globe.
The label is dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia (modern and traditional, urban and rural) via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music and 'other forms of human and natural expression'. From the 'forbidden gang funk' of Rio de Janero to the 'insect electronica' of South-east Thailand the releases, like scrapbookish travelogues, could be bought for their kitschy artwork alone. However, they are produced in such limited quantities (usually just 1,000 copies) that it's incredibly fortunate they have now been made available for download.
SF claim 'the world is changing so quickly that cultures and ideas from less-developed countries will soon be buried and replaced entirely by the export of western-styled culture' and as such they are presenting some of the greatest, expressive music in the world with only one agenda in mind: that it needs to be heard or seen, respected and recognized.
Crazy In The Coconut
The Avalanches released their debut album 'Since I Left You', a seamless mosaic of over 3 500 samples, almost ten years ago. The only creditable CD bought in my early teens (some of my 'musical memories' have been firmly suppressed...), it is decidedly one of my favourites. There have since been countless times when I have laid back in the sun/on a bus/all over the world, closed my eyes and with the opening "Welcome to paradise" sample, been launched into a blithe, daydreaming kaleidoscope of horses, flutes, discos, fairgrounds, seagulls and static electricity.Details of a second album have been sparse and shrouded in speculation for years, so you can imagine my anticipation after reading in a recent press release that production is now finished, the samples are being cleared of copyright and that...
"It's so fuckin' party you will die, much more hip-hop than you might expect, and while there is still no accurate estimated time of arrival, we're sure you're gonna love it when it arrives ... It's ended up sounding like the next logical step to "Since I Left You", we just had to go around in a big circle to get back to where we belong. And one day when you least expect it you'll wake up and the sample fairy will have left it under your pillow."
Monday, 20 July 2009
Monday, 13 July 2009
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