FLC - Round 4

A new round of the Ferrite Love Connection has been announced! To ensure that everybody who actually participates gets a tape, this time all tapes will be distributed from one central location. Sign-up here (ferriteloveconnection at gmail dot com) or over at the thread on dissensus. Check the thread for more info.

Deathwave

Received this tape through the post accompanied by a large cellophane food bag filled with sweeties. I devoured the gobstoppers and jellies while surveying the tape labelled ‘Deathwave: The Sound of One Hand Snapping’. Overjoyed at the free sugar and suspicious as to the anonymous sender’s luck with regards to the choice of bribe I placed the tape aside until review time and lit my spliff.

The first track is some crazy, indescribable music. One bit of sound in it reminded me of that rave hardcore vibe and then it drifted into something that sounded like Bladerunner Vangelis. After several minutes of listening I thought that whoever has put this together knows what they are doing as a soundscape began to form. Tracks are expertly faded together and the sound quality is good.

The music then changed to some funky electronic beat like I was now in the seventies. A synth layered in that connected this track with the previous and I sat back and chilled listening quietly for a moment. After a while glockenspiel and harpsichord elements broke the hypnotic beat and then kicked up into gear like some Akira dance. A male vocal joins the fray and now I’m tapping my foot along to a growling bass.

Wow, the first side ended with a skipping track that then got turned off at just the right moment. Impressive structuring. Flipped over to side two and the pace is kept up with a slamming guitar riff and fast pace drums. The music then goes quite dark and eventually we come to a sampled voice repeating the phrase “Please everybody if we haven’t done what we could’ve done we’ve tried”.

This is an intense mix. The second side drifts off into a group of songs that meld together despite their obvious differences. My tape player actually broke half way through this section and I had to stop the tape and turn everything off for a few minutes. There is a recurring fault which prevents me from using this machine much where it will start to add really loud static to whatever is playing. Switching it off for a few minutes and back on again will rectify it for an unknown period of time. Hopefully the end of the tape.

A cute piece of music has just broken the long previous section. Sounding like whistling birds in a crystal lake. A dramatic end approaches and my sender does not disappoint with a beautiful alien Indian ambient track that suddenly cuts off to finish.

Overall, I was impressed. Technically superb, expertly structured and with a strong set of tracks, I was entertained and amazed without getting bored. However, what shone most was the obvious time and effort invested in this tape and for me that is what really made it stand out.

Around The World at 33 1/3

In line with the traditions of the Dissensus Tape Swap this review is late. Apologies for that. Nevertheless, on with the music…

Being one of the more music obsessed of my friends, and having plenty of time on my hands, I’m more used to being the giver than the receiver when it comes to mixtapes, so it was nice to get this CD through the post the other month and listen to someone else’s compilation.


The tape’s title “Around the World at 33 1/3” pretty much sums up the breadth of music contained on the maxed out CD-R. A quick glance at the tracklisting revealed very few artists I was familiar with, short of The Beach Boys, Love, Lee Perry and Gal Costa, and to be honest I wouldn’t have expected any less from a Dissensian. Yet far from being an educational chore this is a lively trip through music from at least four, possibly five, continents, each track featuring a different language from the previous.


I’m not overly familiar with many of the styles of music on “Around the World…” and hence I’m hesitant to put genre tags to the contents, but safe to say it features film soundtracks from both Holly and Bollywood (David Shire and R.D. Burman), Krautrock (Krokodil), Jazz (Rufus Harley) and plenty of others. A common theme is the generally upbeat tone and all the tunes are very listenable. I’ve stuck this tape on pretty regularly for pure enjoyment over the last couple of months and it makes a good pottering record. I’ve found myself singing along to languages I don’t even understand on more than one occasion which is a good sign.

In terms of compilation, it flows well and sounds like it’s been recorded live straight off of vinyl. I’d like to imagine Peter Gunn surrounded by record sleeves, rifling through to pick out tunes as the previous one plays. In actual fact, the smooth progression and careful ebb of the atmosphere possibly belies more careful planning than the hastily written tracklisting suggests.

If I had to pick out favourite tracks, the Rufus Harley tune 8 Miles High is a definite stand-out. Even amongst the plethora of styles, this bag-pipe jazz tune sticks out a mile. There’s also a heavily funk infused Chinese tune with no name (“I can’t read Chinese”) which caught my attention and on a more laid-back tip a prog track, which I think is Insane by Mantis, which, well, goes insane at the end. The nameless Lee Perry tune is suitably space-out too.

So I guess "Around the World at 33 1/3" is the mixtape ideal - edutainment in the best possible sense. Beyond that its an enjoyable mixtape that's stayed close to my CD player since I received it and doesn't look like it'll be moving any time soon.

COMING VERY SOON....

If you made a tape and included a letter apologising for the Korean track that skipped, don't worry, review is coming very soon...delays caused by massive redundancy swoop at work that's shaken everything up, having to resolve a fraud case with the bank and general mishaps and mayhem, which hasn't given me enough time to do the tape justice...so hang tight, it'll be here soon....

Loads of Hardcore!

I’ve never got a mixtape in the post before. I wasn’t even aware that people used the internet for this sort of thing, although it should really have been obvious from the outset. I mean, as soon as those scientists had finished transmitting large parcels of data all over the north-eastern United States way back in the early days, the next thing they did must have been swapping mixtapes, right? Or something. Anyway, I had no idea what might be contained within the brown paper envelope that arrived in my letterbox. Could be anything, really, which is kind of the point. Turns out it was CD. A CD with ‘Illegal Rave’ written on it in magic marker. The cover was a basic plastic sleeve with a tantalisingly incomplete flyer inside. One side of the flyer informed me that from 9pm to 6am every Friday night, something went on at a place called ‘Milwaukees’. The other side of the flyer had a picture of a large crowd gathered behind a steel fence, as well as one of two guys clearly having quite a nice time, thanks very much. So I put the disc in my CD player and pushed the button. A voice springs out of the speakers…

Bloke A: “You got any hardcore?”
Bloke B: “ Whazzat mate, sorry?
Bloke A: “I said, you got any hardcore?”
Bloke B: “Hardcore?! Yeah sure, we got loads of hardcore! We got Reinforced Records, Moving Shadow Records, Strictly Underground Records….what you want, mate, c’mon, what you want?
Bloke A: “Have you got Trip to Trumpton?”

A-ha! So it’s hardcore! I’d been having what you might call tantalising brushes with this thing that people called hardcore for some time now, but I’d never actually managed to get around to listening to any, apart from lots of half-remembered pitched-up Kylie vocals and huge kick-drums in the closing stages of raves. I wasn’t sure I was going to like a whole CD full of that kind of thing. Thankfully, this wasn’t anything of the sort. This was completely mental. The music poured into the room, covered in a thick layer of static. Piano rolls, huge wobbly bass. Ropey mixing, weird pitch-shifts. Rhythms all piling in on top of each other. Bloody brilliant. I hadn’t heard anything this exciting in ages. I mean, it didn’t sound that great. This wasn’t yer hi-fi, buddy. It wasn’t melodically complex or even particularly ordered. It wasn’t conforming to a set of boundaries outside those imposed by the technology used to make the music, or if it was it made a very good job of hiding the fact. No, this was pure, unbridled, noisy energy and it sounded like dancing! It sounded like good times on the dancefloor with all your best friends and those guys standing in the queue at Milwaukees. The disc went on for about an hour, and the lack of track markers meant that there was no going back if I wanted to hear the end. The end came halfway through a really neat build-up, but I suppose that’s kind of appropriate, if a little bit disappointing.

So thanks, mysterious Londoner. It’s not every day you get to hear just over an hour of fresh, oddly resonant music that gets you dancing around your living room like a man possessed. I’ll be seeking out some more of this kind of thing, for sure.

SUPERSTAR DJS FUCK OFF! - From LDN to the Chi

I have so much Ferrite Love I cannot even describe how excited I was to receive my tape in the mail. And even better -- it came from the UK! Part of the reason I hang around Dissensus is to soak up all the lovely Brit vibes, so this rubbed my Anglophilic pleasure zones right before I opened the package! I did face some not-insubstantial disappointment, however, after ripping into the envelope -- in violation of established rules and long-held customs, the tape was not decorated!

However, in the charitable spirit of international mix exchange, I will dub this a deliberate aesthetic choice, and actually, now that I think about it, quite appropriate for the rough-around-the-edges contents contained therein.

I was further delighted by the tracklisting, handscrawled on a piece of notebook paper: I recognized barely any of the artists and NONE of the songs. Exactly why I got into this business. And the flippant description! I knew this would be something special.

I will refrain from narrating the entire contents, but I'll do my best to describe the music: PUNK AS FUCK without an overwhelming amount of punk. Really, the mixture of reggae, punk, jungle/breakcore, with the odd bit of grime/bhangra/pub chant made me think "AUTHENTIC UK CULTURAL PRODUCT" many times, and I said as much to my friends if they happened to be in the car with me: "Yeah, you know, I got this tape from North London... got connections on the interweb doncha know..." If I were a mixtape archaeologist (and Xenu willing, I will be some day), I'd say the fella who recorded this (on his "battered, 14-year old aiwa tape deck") is between 30 and 40 years of age, of Irish extraction but currently living in London (and probably a bit bitter about it), peppers his diction with liberal doses of "fuck" and "cunt," can drink me under the table, and has a box of 7-inches in his closet that pisses on my entire record collection from a great height. Some indications of at least one poorly made amateur tattoo from his teen years, but an all around clever guy. Apologies if I'm off the mark, this is practice.

Anyway, the MUSIC! Most of it I enjoyed greatly -- I've always believed track selection is 90% of what makes a good mix, and this one had it in spades. In fact, within days I had downloaded Lee Perry's "Dubbing Psycho Thriller," Z-Factor's "Fast Cars" (I am going to kill many a mixtape with this no-wave gem, don't let my secret out), and Salma Agha's sublime Bollywood funk, "Sote Sote Adhi Raat." Side A is practically perfect, except that the Resonance FM Midnight Sex Chat bit at the beginning is too unintelligible and basically sounds like someone watching television in the next room. My no-count friends (aka DRUNKS) also loved the punk songs and the overall working class atmosphere the tape provided for the Nissan, as frequently my car trips include too much gay dance music and too much rap in incomprehensible languages. The Slaughter and the Dogs track went over particularly well with this crowd.

Where my friends and I differed was on the prevalence of pub sing-a-longs and other Irish folky bits on Side B, and that's because I'm a nancyboy without a drop of Irish blood in my body. I fast-forward through the John Cooper Clarke every time. Give me more of the Tuff To The Bone, it makes me feel well hard (you see what this British culture does to me). HOWEVER, I forgive the tape all minor sins on established anthropological grounds -- I am not such a philistine that I can't recognize EXCLUSIVE AUTHENTIC CULTURAL PRODUCT when I hear it, and I continue to keep this tape close at hand. I just hope its Spartan decor doesn't let it get lost in my pile of FAR INFERIOR mixtapes which I have similarly neglected to label. Good sequencing, consistent volume, and shit-hot track selection makes this a treasured artifact in my music collection, exotic origins notwithstanding. And I'd trade your tape recorder over mine in a hot minute.

“All you freaky ass ho’s from the north to the south,
stick out your tongue
and get these balls up in your mouth”

DJ Deeon – Gimme Head

One thing that may always be a mystery too me is why girls seem to absolutely love Ghettotech. Lyrically it’s some of the most vulgar and misogynistic music there is; but hell when it comes time to drop ones booty to the floor it seems it’s ‘the dirtier the better’ as a rule. I’m sure not complaining though cause it certainly raises the temperature of a dancefloor on a Saturday night and really, I think we all know to take this with a pretty big grain of salt(no matter what Dj Assault’s true intentions are…). But I digress, for this is no ghettotech mix (although I just happen to know and love all 3 tracks here and only a few others on the rest of the tape), no it’s 18 songs and 45 minutes of relentless, energetic, eclectic, bass-heavy and sweat inducing peak-time tunes.

I’d go through each tune but I’d run the risk of sounding like an ignorant fool so I’ll stick with the 8 that I know for sure and gloss over the one’s that caught my ear that I don’t know. The three aforementioned Ghettotech songs help gets things warmed up, first with Aaron Carl’s seductive 21 positions, mmm I love sexy girls singing about dirty things…mmm that bassline, oo yeaaa…ahem. Next we have the previously quoted Gimme Head by DJ Deeon, hmm wonder what this songs about (songs got an undeniable beat though)…and then, a classic, Assault’s Dick by the Pound. This is the second Ghettotech song I ever heard, I know its second because it’s the song after Ass’N’Titties on Mr Mutha Fukha. I love this song because of the back and forth vocals which are strangely…err…do I dare say, charming?! (now that is not the right word…). Next up is a pretty epic female fronted Baile Funk track which I haven’t a clue about but if the author of this tape wants to spill the beans, you know...I’d appreciate it and stuff.


The next song is Dexplicit feat. Nana – Lost Control (wideboys booty juice mix) a bassline tune I didn’t know at all when I first got this tape, but the past month I’ve been poking my nose around the web(or mainly just Continuum’s blog and the Dissensus thread) and happened upon it completely by accident. It’s actually a pretty great song for some reason I can’t really put my finger on. In a genre where every song sounds the same, it’s one of the few songs that sounds different, but really it doesn’t sound different at all…ugh I have no idea how to describe this song, but I just know I like it(and pretty much everything else Dexplicit has a hand in).

The next song is by the mighty Blaqstarr (who I wish would release a whole lot more since everything he’s done is golden to my ears). All the girls around the world is simply a great B-more track, the signature stuttering beat, the androgynous vocal beckoning the girls to the dancefloor and the wonderful little descending guitar sample floating in the background holding everything together; pure bliss(yes that’s all it takes for me to achieve bliss). We then segue into another song I’m a big fan of, Akon’s Don’t Matter (Calypso remix). I’m assuming pretty much everyone’s heard the original, yea this version’s better, that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

There really is only one song on here that I can say I’m not a fan of. I don’t know who it’s by but it’s some weird reggaeton song sampling Europe’s Final Countdown. Yea the song’s the sample and some drums and some shouting in Spanish over it…meh. A couple of songs later tough Mr. (or Mrs.??) DJ makes me completely forget that hiccup and drops a song my roommate would always play when we were passing the bong around, but I was always too mashed to remember who it was. Anyways it queued up a whole lot of nostalgia (ah the nostalgia of two years past) and the first time I heard it on the tape I was so surprised I think I almost cried and I rewound it 3 or 4 times. Anyways I scrambled to finally figure out who the hell made this wonderfully bizarre politically charged Calypso tinged track. I guess it was a song called Wanted (Dead or Alive) by Manhattan Transfer originally, who I admittedly don’t really know anything about, but the version on this tape is a cover I think cause the beats a bit heavier, the vocalist’s different and there’s these bleeping noises over the top. The version I downloaded is good but not as good as the one on the tape.

Ok the next two songs gave me a shit eating grin because they were incredibly stupid (in absolutely the best way imaginable). The first is a fiery Baile Funk track, which is a genre which is always wacky. It opens up sampling the theme from Star Wars, queue angry Brazilian rapping and heavy bass, nuff said, awesome track. The next is a sped up dubbed out mix of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. This song does inexplicable things to people on the dancefloor, great great great track and if I don’t find out who did this song soon my life will be left incomplete. Anyways the tape pretty much winds itself up with the Cutty Ranks song A Who Seh Meh Dun(Wake De Man) which is a real pleasant end of the night tune ideal for those end of party L’s when everyone that’s not important has already left.

O’ I guess I should say at this point the A side to this tape is completely inaudible, maybe that’s why it’s called Is That All There Is? It’s quite alright I tested this one side at a house party a bit ago and you can’t give a better review to a party mix than to have 20+ people dropping it and making it sweat. That wraps up my horribly written slapdash review. Peace.

NOW REVIEW MY TAPE PLEASE!!

First???

My tape arrived much later than Herr Lepper had planned, months and months after I sent my tape out. My first problem was finding something to play it on. My old tape deck had died for the second time. I dug around in my attic and found an old Walkman.

I knew quite a few of the artists on the tape: Jap Noise exponents Ghost, blind beatnik jazzbo Moondog, Norwegian Art-Metal band Noxagt, UK Folk super-group Pentangle, obscure bruised American Folkster Jack Rose, US Indie Rock Comets on Fire (is that right?) and apocalyptic gimp Charles Manson. I think that gives quite a good idea of the flavour of the tape itself. It was quite a gnarly, depressing compilation of burnt-out sonics. There was however a very distinct palette that was being used and it was refreshing to not have to listen to any modern electronic beats, even if one track a kind of Avant-Undie thingummy with that Will Oldham’s cousin doing nasal rapping over occluded beats did make a showing.

Given the provided artwork and the Northern England postcode I guessed, or rather imagined, that the compiler was once at something like Liverpool Art School. For my own part, and perhaps in direct contradiction to my last comments, I wondered how it was possible to make such a tape without a greater allusion to the dominant drive of 1990s music, dance. It was like that decade had never happened, though I’m sure many people are glad it has been brushed under the carpet. There was something markedly un-deconstructed about all the tracks, and that's always a quality I enjoy.

What struck me most however was the wonderful rich treacly sonics of my old Walkman. I subsequently made the pledge to move back to cassettes on a grander scale. If I had a tape-deck in my hatchback it wouldn’t keep getting broken into! There are some marvellous old tape decks, Nakamichis and Tandbergs, and using one would mean I’d keep a pure analogue pipeline from my old records. The mix-tape as a vehicle
can’t be beat can it?

The tapes are in the mail!

Watch this space for reviews in early January.

Third Time Lucky!

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The End of Round 2

Since there hasn't been a review posted in almost a month, I guess this round of the Dissensus Cassette Swap is over. Big ups to everyone who participated, and by participated I mean sent a tape and/or wrote a review.

In Round 1 we had five reviews out of twenty or so participants. In Round 2 we had six reviews out of fifteen participants, so I guess that's better.

Watch out for Round 3, coming soon.

FUTURE-RETRO FLAMBE

‘Cor what fantastic diy-futurist packaging’ I said to myself upon prising open the jiffybag that fell on my doormat.

Now, I never know whether, upon receiving a lovingly-hand-taped mixtape to look through the tracklisting before listening, or just to dive in there and read up later – it’s been a while since I received a tape, not realising fully that it’s a whole other way of listening – no convenient skipping of duff tracks or any of that stuff. Plus the fact that for me even the act of listening to a tape requires unpacking a huge and dusty late 80s midi-system and setting it up in the corner of the front-room, so casual listening is out of the window.

The overall concept of the tape, if I get it, right, is that huge swathes of groovy club music (LCD Soundsystem, Soulwax, etc) are hopelessly retrophile in their sonix, and likewise there’s the whole past of vintage tracks which sound like they’ve bypassed 20 years to be plundered. This tape, then, is the axis where the new-retro and the vintage-futurists collide. or summat.

The retro impulse is a tricky one to contend with, innit, and it’s all pervasive in our endlessly voracious culture with it’s deadening compulsion to repeat and repackage the exciting new things of the past as though they’re gonna unproblematically retain their shock-of-the-new despite the passing of – I dunno – 30 years. look no further than the Franz Ferdinand, or maybe more contemporaneously The Klaxons. In a way the fixation on an unending golden era of about 20 years ago doesn’t really qualify as a nostalgic impulse cos the ideology that there’s-nothing-new-to-be-done is so ingrained that all that can remain is a deferential forelock-tugging towards the canon of classic-rock /‘authentic’ soul / ‘real’ hip-hop / ‘raw’ garage rock (…) as a perpetual golden age whose values must still be adhered to: musicianship / soul / presence. The Hornby-esque ‘real soul’ problem is exactly what’s up with the execrable opening track from Mark Rae (of Rae and Christiansen) which throws into 5 minutes more smarmily soulful and groovy tropes than you could fit into a Westbourne Grove wine bar. I can imagine nodding off to it at The Big Chill, or maybe having Just Jack chuntering banal social observations and stoner armchair philosophy over it. I’ll be the first to admit, despite the glorious packaging* (I can’t get over the packaging!) it’s not a good start.

Mercifully, thanks to some extraordinarily deft mixing skills, this morphs quickly into the slightly less ‘classic soul’ fixated robo-funk of Soul Mekanik – and the chattering electro-grooves and burbling synths, are rather like slipping into a warm bath. I’ll check more of their stuff out – didn’t they get roped into producing Kylie or Madonna or someone like that? I can imagine that, if they haven’t already. Sounds very French, like the post-Daft Punkisms of Mirwais, etc.

And speak of Daft Punk & they shall appear – this time remixing Scott Grooves’ slightly lumpy funky house homage to the Mothership Connection, lending it some Zapp-esque bounce n squelch. I’m feeling better already. I should also point out that this tape features some exemplary mixing and cutting, and the mix ploughs on into more French retro-funk, via Falke&Braxe’s remix of Kelis’ also-ran track ‘Bossy’, rendering it into a pre-Marley Marl OldSkool hip-hop set-piece. While this is no less in thrall to a mythic ‘realness’ of a golden age (all the endlessly reiterated tales of the Bronx, birth of Hip Hop, Block Parties, Breakers, Good Vibes, etc etc.) this at least retains a sense of distantiation and irreverence leading to something more than a slavish facsimile. I hadn’t noticed the mix gathering tempo towards all things funky house, but before we know it Eric Prydz is in the mix (yup, him who did that Steve Winwood track which plagued the world (well, at least Western Europe) for several months last year (or was it the year before?), here with an equally mindless but slightly less irksome slice of funkiness.

While it has the benefit of not making you want to go out and throttle people with your bare hands if you ever hear its incessant refrain, it’s ultimately pretty nondescript. But then, it’s in the mix, right? Luckily now I’ve blinked it’s gone again. I think another track’s gone by before we roll into a new remix of OT Quartet’s mid-90s hardbag anthem ‘Hold That Sucker Down’ which accompanied many of my formative binge drug-abusing and raving days, I’ll make no secret. And if it’s found its way into the hearts of the new Hed Kandi generation via some au courant remix action then so much the better. The remix loses none of the amyl-nitrate fuelled epic grandeur and hypnotic arpegiattions of the original – I’m just glad Rollo didn’t rope in his sister (Sister Bliss of Faithless infamy) or ‘rapper’ ‘Maxi Jazz’ to lend it some wordly philosophical insight. Fuck, hearing that riff again has set my jaw aching. And with that we sail towards the end of a side of ecstatic highs snatched from the jaws of a couple of slightly drab lows.

Then we come to the retro-futurist side of the tape:

This side sits much more into the electrohouse vein, like the latter stages of Side One, with a nod of Ritzy winebar funky house biznizz. Some vintage discoid actions creeps in c/o Boys Don’t Cry and Lipps Inc’s exemplary ‘Funkytown’ – which is unimpeachably a stone-cold classic. The side is let down by the inclusion of Eric Prydz’ execrable reworking of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ which if you were really pushed you could say exudes some sort of boisterously cocky FHM swagger, but really it’s the nadir of modern civilisation. From here on the ElectroDisco/Funky House vibes are whipped into the thin sky-high atmospheres of helium trance, boomp-da-boomp-da whoosh as things skid to a dizzying halt leaving me spinning back to earth with a bump.

It’s been a dizzying trip. Partly fun, partly dire, partly just plain WTF??? Confusing. Overally I’d reckon the concept would benefit from more of a collision-course approach, maybe mashing up a juxtaposing retro future and contempo-retro in more of a jarring manner to get a grip on the continuities and ruptures, but overall I reckon this does what it says on the tin; plus it’s a good pre-going-out warmup tape too, or it would be if I ever actually went out. More than full marks for the packaging though, and the deck-proficiency skills. It’s an honour to receive such a lovingly crafted thing in every way!!

*Pics coming very soon!

From the Divine to the Ridiculous

Never really tried my hand at reviewing before but here goes I guess. Although this is a cd it’s divided in to two distinctive parts and titled from the Divine (the first “side”) to the Ridiculous (“side” two). The first broadly consists of religious or at least spiritual music while the second doesn’t have such a unifying theme at first glance – maybe it is just ridiculous. Great weird artwork on the front with men wearing strangely familiar masks and the theme is illustrated inside with a burning heart for the first side and a pentagram for the second. Anyhow, I can’t really think of a more interesting way to do this than describe each song bit by bit so that’s what I’m going to do.

The tracks on the first side are kinda overlapped without being mixed so the beginning of the new one fades in as the old fades out, something that works fairly well here I think.

First up is Howe Gelb with “That’s How Things Get Done”, it starts off promisingly enough with a kind of funky beat and slightly scuzzy guitar sound but to be honest it is only slightly scuzzy and really a little bit too polished. By the time his annoying voice kicks in I’m not liking this at all. Back the annoyingly nasal and not-rough-enough voice with some even more annoying backing singers (think Leonard Cohen) and if it wasn’t all one mix I’d be on the fast forward button.
Next up is Laura Veirs with To the Country, this is wimpy, watery folk that reminds me of the hold music on some number (which escapes me now) that I regularly have to ring for work. Without the insipid vocals it wouldn’t be too bad I guess but there they are, all over it.

Blind Boys of Alabama with a version of Ol’ Time Religion follows, this is more like it! BBA always remind me of going to visit my girlfriend’s parents because her dad is a fan and they’ve soundtracked many a (lost) game of scrabble. Gotta love the power of the vocals here, the conviction and the way they do that thing where they all sing different bits at the same time with only an organ on the offbeat to keep time. The song itself always reminds me of that Russ Meyer film where the girl with the big breasts (you know the one right?) keeps singing it on the radio – also Captain Beefheart uses a snippet I seem to remember, either way this is great.

Sacred Harp Singers – I’m Going Home, not quite so keen on this to be honest. Just a bit too straight and reminds me of the kind of thing that I would probably hear if I went to church on a Sunday in the village where I grew up (except slightly better done).

Now another gospel tune, strangely enough when this cd plopped through my door an album featuring a version of Jesus On The Mainline was sitting on the turntable, that take (by the Hopson Family) cannot compare to this barnstorming version, it’s absolutely fucking rocking and for me possibly the highlight of the whole cd, reckon I’ll have to get myself a copy of this. Just crazy, frantic and tight brassy gospel that rises to an absolutely bonkers finish while still holding it all together. Brilliant brilliant tune. Oh yeah, it’s by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. (Also reminds me of Alabama 3’s perversion of this song – Shoot Me Up In The Mainline – which I kinda like).

The cd is really hitting its stride now, following on from that last one there is no let up with Marion Gaines’ take on Grandma’s Hands, beautiful gospel-soul perfect for a sunny Sunday morning (which is just what it is now as I type). This is an ace and emotional version and another highlight of the thing.

Son House’s version of John The Revelator next – it’s Son House; it’s John The Revelator; it’s wicked. Such a powerful rough voice carries this with nothing else except some background clapping to keep time. I love this. Never really understood the point of “revelator” though, do you really need to make up a word for something if it only applies to one person?

I’m not really a Bob Dylan fan (nothing against him either mind) but I was pleased to see that the track that features on this cd is the one that a friend once played me to trick me into liking Bob Dylan – the reason being that there is no way you would know it’s by him. The track is All The Tired Horses (here re-named All The Pretty Horses, a McCarthian slip?). It’s a kind of euphoric sun-coming up kind of song with a repetitive refrain sung by a group of women over a string-type background. When the cd finishes it’s this one that’s in my head so it must be doing something right and a few listens through reinforce this as it definitely grows on me. Very nice tune.

As for the next one from Aretha Franklin (How I Got Over), it’s good and everything but I’d been enjoying those last few so much this one doesn’t seem quite up to the previous standard.

The next three tracks are all reggae which I thought was a pretty clever way of staying with the religious theme yet totally changing the style of music. Unfortunately though, while all of these tracks are ok none really grabbed me by the balls or left any kind of real impression on me to be honest. The first is African Head Charge and Somebody Touch I which I found mildly irritating due to its repeated “I” chorus, the others are VC – By His Deeds and Jah Jah Promise by Johnny Osbourne, neither of which are quite melodic or heavy or unusual or anything enough to be particularly memorable I’m afraid. After a few listens I find myself singing along to the Osbourne one but only in the way that you do if you hear anything enough.
At this point are a number of silly samples (Orbital and KLF I seem to remember) which break up the tape and, I guess, signify the change from divine to ridiculous, the Satan bit being particularly appropriate.

This second bit starts off nicely with a cunning reversal of the spiritual imagery that has dominated the first part in the form of Paradise Don’t Come Cheap by New Kingdom. This is a dramatic slice of soundtracky hip-hop with lyrics spat out in a style that reminds me in a strange kind of way of Tom Waits (though don’t ask me to explain why I think that, perhaps something to do with the way it sounds kind of hard but also as though he has a lisp – not that Tom Waits has a lips but sometimes he sounds as though he ought to have or something). Slow crashing beats and exciting (and equally crashing) string stabs all combine well with the vocal to make this great fun and a welcome change of pace from the last few nondescript tunes.
Keeping with the same angry (yet, to me at least, humorous,) style as the last, Team Shadetek’s Brooklyn Anthem is also a great rabble rousing shouter and in my book you can’t find fault with someone who uses the word “cantankerous” in their tune especially when it’s over a fast bubbling ragga-style rhythm with lots of weight on each beat like this one.

Oh yeah, should say that the tunes on this “side” are overlapped more subtly or else cut in right on the beat and there are a couple of points where I had difficulty working out exactly which bit was part of which song, if there are any errors later on or right now for that matter then that’s why. The next tune, DJ Rupture’s Rumbo Babylon it says, is all bass and pummelling, yet funky and swinging beats with industrial grinding noises and the occasional echoed snippet of vocal over the top. Works very nicely and is surprisingly easy on the ears for something made out of such harsh sounds. Then this is where I get confused, towards the end of this tune (or maybe the start of the next) a stupidly catchy melody suddenly appears on top of this beat, it sounds like a sample from Chris Rea’s Auberge (remember that?) although sadly I don’t think it is, either way I like it. I’m going to take a guess that this is still the same tune because of the way the quick cuts in the Aubergey bit mimic the beat so well.

That all grinds to a halt, there are a few funny noises before a heavy reggae beat with more mechanical crashing noises and booming noises appears with the archetypal whipcrack sound on the offbeat. Yet more vicious break-beat banging noises of various types and a nasty pulsing bassline that drops in and out make this one both stop-start and yet immediately appealing. The track is Soundboy by Kovert.
Some crying and ravey stabs introduce DJ Scud’s No Love. I’ve got an album by Scud and I have to say that it’s not exactly glued to my turntable (ie I haven’t listened to it for about three years) but I was pleased when a quick check revealed that this tune is not from that. In fact compared to that album this track of (yet more) reggae swings and random flat beats, screams and machine gun sounds is positively friendly. Those last three electro tunes have all been quite similar but all good enough in their own right so fine by me.

Staying with the lilting (if that can really describe dj Scud) sound but a definite change in feel next for Born Jamericans with Yardcore. The sounds are a lot more organic and there is a real mc really (sort of) singing but in comparison it sounds a little weak. Not bad, not good, I won’t remember it tomorrow. I suppose I can see the logic in including it as it makes a nice bridge to the next tune - Guns are Drawn by The Roots, nice melodies and all but again fairly forgettable. I’m sure by the title (and ‘cause it’s The Roots) that they are on about something important but I can’t be bothered to listen closely enough to find out. Same goes for Nightmares on Wax with 70/80s (Upbringing Mix) except that this is worse, in fact I actually find this irritating, it’s obviously going for that sunkissed, mellow, blunted, headnodding etc vibe but I reckon that there is a fine line between that and being smug whimsy and for me this is on the wrong side.

New Flesh – Wherever We Go suddenly kicks it up a bit with a welcome change of pace, a dangerous, wired bassline and fast chatting start it off well but I find that the chorus (as so often) doesn’t match up to the verse and leaves you kind of treading water until the verse and bassline force their way back in. Still a good enough tune though and that bassline is growing on me more as I listen.
Finally back to the electro sounds of a few tracks ago though this time more straight ahead than the “swung” feel of the previous tunes. Another killer bassline, that insistent percussion that graces so many electro tunes to great effect and someone who sounds like Mark E Smith. In fact, I dunno why I said that, it obviously is MES, speaking slightly more sense than usual he demands “give us the fucking cod”. More boingy noises that increase the excitement followed by some screechy sounds in the higher registers for good measure and this is great even without the stupid lyrics that add that extra dimension. It’s Ghostdigital (featuring Mark E Smith I assume) and In Cod We Trust, this seems to ring a bell somewhere in the back of my mind but I just don’t know why.

That’s the end and I have to say that even if I didn’t like all the tunes there were a lot that I did like (and quite a few I really liked) and I really appreciated the thought that had gone in to it what with the themed sides and the progression from track to track not to mention the artwork. The person getting my tape won’t benefit from anything like that and whoever did this one has made me feel that I ought to have made more of an effort.
Thanks a lot anyway, hope the review wasn’t too harsh.

...progology...

Well 1st thing to say about my cassette is that it took a circuitous route to reach me, via the downstairs neighbours of my x-roomy on the other side of town then dropped off by hand by his kind partner, all of them apparently charmed by the polite hand written cover letter accompanying the tape, as was i, which courteously explains that the tape itself also had a circuitous route to compilation, involving travelling to another whole city to access appropriate equipment, which in turn affected the selection by way of limiting the available discs for the compiling

(& i'm not even gonna mention the trials & tribulations involved in making the cassette i sent off on a trans-continental journey to my brave recipient, (as i indulged in a lengthy moaning diatribe in my tracklist/cover note) in the end the best way of making this accessible to me would have been to just rip the whole lot onto mp3 - i hate to say it, & i won't reveal now whether i restrained myself due to purist ferrite love principles or just that it didnt occur to me til later.ok?)

i am very happy to report that all tracks on cassette were 100% new to me, as well as almost all of the artists - this is ideal, so i made sure to listen a few times without referring to the track list, let the sounds merge and the sonic rinse wash thru my brain 'dolby no' on C20 'personal stereo cassette player' off my mum down in sunny piltonistan... later on i sought a 'sanyo' equipment from my good colleague marcia which has facilitated me to listen to the tape a good few more times, checking the tracklist and paying a fair amount of attention ... enough to get a clear idea of my favorite moments (& those to hit the old >>ff button) find myself occasionally humming songs to myself at inopportune moments far from the venerable 'cassette playing apparatus'

some highs and lows:
some lovely moments and some persistent earworms there ... the zombie drumsong has been rotating around my brains today with a flavour of rotting calypso and echos of slavery and sickly sweet sugarcanes - my vision of a foetid Belafonte was not so far from reality as it turns out the song is by a yankee soap actor

the tape opened extremely well - it hit me with a bit of droning zurna that discordant pipe that always starts my juices swilling o yes - the first track comes up like a turkish grimly fiendish - very taking themselves seriously sounding vocals over baroque hevvy metalesque groove, (gratifyingly when I checked out this track the auteur was 100% EXACTLY as my minds eye visualized him….)

o yeah
now, getting down to the nitigriti of reviewing brings me face to face with my own wilful ignorance about musicology, i've always enjoyed music that is amorphous and somehow approached it with an aggressively anti-trainspotterish attitude. what i always preferred was a mixtape compiled by my mate with a tub of ja 7" - no popstar pictures on the covers, untraceble versions, producers without oeuvre so that the id of any actual 'author' just dissolves and is left irrelevant by glorious and mighty confusion of riddims and dubplates, obscurity as strength (his handwriting more indecypherable even than my beloved compiler of this tape). Later on in the irresponsible music voyeur's career i loved the house mix tape from down the market; shouty mcs sprawling over beatmatches without end or beginning... nextly came cassettes ripped off pirate junglist fm: nameless tracks that break in the charts 18 months later, bigshoutouts but no bother of trackid & certainly noones getting any royalties…
into the 21C in this favored planet of mankind we encountered the mp3, the mp3blog and the scourge of p2p - further anonymising tracks into luscious muddles of inconsistent & incompatible id3tagging, wholesale looting of catalogs introduces another motive for assault on authorship and ownership, disruption of decades of discography in favor of whatever you can find on demna, 6arab, matsuli, mazika, bennloxo, barefiles - slsk's bland interface rendering track id down to:
filename.mp3
yumyum. burp

scuse me

so, after my initial impressions of some nice bits (and some sore points) i followed up by delving into google...where I was quite ambushed by a musicological revelation: it seems that the selection is mainly from the genre known as 'prog'.
interestingly i have up til now zero acquaintance with 'prog' at all, but this inspired & intrigued me, i was particularly impressed by the age of the music which was all a lot older than what i'd thought; some tracks i'd assumed retro actually were in fact futuristic,

having browsed several prog resources (via guru woebot) &updated& backdated my prog ology after this rude revivalist introduction to the new/old world of prog, i dug up my cassette player from 1995 in the hope of new insights re-visiting the selection thru the lens of prog vision (marcia's apparatus having been reclaimed) but the tape decks are hopelessly clogged & the machine is good for nothing but pirate radio :)

another high
was what i sounded to me like afro funk mixed to afropop on side one mmm lush - one of them includes one of the few female vocals in the selection, (erm why no girls in prog? a mustache thing??) the geographical distribution of the artists impressed me as i'd no idea of the internationalist scope of the prog konspiracy. these tracks turned out to be from Indonesia & by son of asha bhosle.

a theme of nostalgic not quite gothic and not quite psychobilly-ish flavour thruout, always sounding modernist, often using drum machines, electro rather than guitar, some synth and some solid electronica beats, some rocking theremin, peppered with some few tracks of standard soulful blues/r&b that sounded older than the rest & a bit incongruous

one track which made me feel strongly ambivalent opened with a heavily u2 sounding vocal (=cha!) moving along over some very cheeky fluting, side 2 starts with a very suicide-sounding black safari with some satisfying animal sounds uh uh then the selector comes thru with some longer more houseical tracks - one particularly agreeably sleazy number dribbles me right back to tha 90s with a very moist 'just for tonite baybeee' chorus that almost got to italo, moving to some sounds that are rather zappatistic, a classic can style blisssed out explosion leads us into an espanol version of nancy sinatra's bangbang - yes we liked that mix thankew

definitely the low point was that grim vocal on 'leave the driving to uuusss' that song brought me dooown, with it's failed teen hollywood diva yuppie nonsense vocal - it did however drop me into a deep reminiscence down a memory-rabbithole as follows:
a very early memory of the dawn of home video culture watching the wiz of oz and some oldskool dizney kartoons on what i can remember as gurt chunky cassettes in some type of wall-mounted playa type gizmo - this fragmentary recollection of the early 70s cutting edge techno before the vhs/betamax format wars the re-surfacing of this long-suppressed intrusive prog recollection is somehow an interesting meditation in terms of this project marking the ARES END OF KASSETTE KULTURE.
cheers'en

A Cocktail of Arabic Musical Joy

At least, that’s how the letter accompanying my tape translated the Arabic title. Certainly an apt description for a cassette boasting tracks from Egypt, Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and even Syria. I must confess a shocking lack of exposure to Arabic music. The only remotely middle-eastern flavoured examples that come to mind are from adventure movie soundtracks like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Bladerunner, and The Cell, the latter of which contains the startling and beautiful sufi music of the Jajouka, a Moroccan hill tribe. This is one time, though, when my ignorance is a good thing. There is nothing more exhilarating than the first listen to a fresh musical discovery, and we’re not taking about a new band here; we’re talking about a whole new genre of potentially untapped artistic genius. And I am all about the art.
The letter also apologized profusely for the sound quality, or lack thereof. Evidently the tape was recorded from downloaded mp3s and satellite TV rips. Ordinarily, I would be very critical of the use of mp3s, but given the efforts of the sender (‘cause you know he had to beg to use that stereo) to make the tape, I can only chuckle and shake my head.

Frankly, I counted myself lucky I was able to listen to it at all, the package was so beat up (Did you forget to tip your mailman at Christmas?). Apart from the sound being mostly in one ear (a problem I solved with a flip of the mono/stereo switch on my mixer), the quality of the recording was actually pretty good.

On first listen, I quickly realized that I was going to have to review this tape based on sonics alone. Other than the notes kindly provided by the sender, I have no clue as to the lyrical subject matter and Googling Arabic track titles and artist names using the Latin alphabet is an exercise in futility. It was a challenge, to say the least, and I can only hope that I’ve done it justice.

Side 1 kicks off with a surprisingly sexy Egyptian number by Sa’ad Al-Sghair. Recorded from the (movie?) soundtrack to Qissaat al-hai al-sha’bi*, I expect that this is an example of the pop end of the Arabic music spectrum. The track features cut-up samples of what I presume are ethnic instruments like the nasal-sounding ney (although I swear I hear an accordion in the mix) over lush synth pads and a sinuous rhythm. Vocals are performed by Amina*, who’s smoky voice effectively sells lyrics that the sender describes as “the filthiest I’ve encountered.” “Jump up on the carriage, oh yeah, ride it…” and, “various remarks about cucumbers and houmous…” sound like they might be the most lascivious I’ve ever heard, too. It’s a great start to the tape and really wet my appetite for more.

The next two songs, both by Yemeni artist Abu Bakr Salim, are what I imagine represent a more typical, traditional approach to Arabic pop music. The second of the two, Gesher min Al-Moz (Sweet As Bananas*), is the superior song. With a gentle, laidback rhythm and a call-and-response between male and female choirs, “Gesher” puts me in mind of a cast musical number like “Summer Nights” from Grease (could be way off on that one, but there you go).

Track 4 is by Kuwaiti artist Nawal (not to be confused with the Lebanese singer of the same name*). “Tamen Qelbi” (track title) is how I imagine Arabic club music; traditional instruments over 808 beats. Again, strings are at the forefront of the song, usurped only by the vocals. However, instead of being sweeping, the strings repeat a hooky little minor chord motif in much the same way synth loops are used in European dance music. The string-loop effect allows the listener to focus more on the vocals while maintaining the authenticity of the Arabic pop sound. It’s a tremendously successful tactic and I wish I had this track in my DJ bag.

The next three songs, one by Nawal and two from Mohamed Abdou, are from live sets. Alas, I’m not hearing anything new in these tracks. As with all of the previous tunes, strings are the instrument of choice. I understand why stings are so popular in Arabic pop; bowed instruments lend themselves very nicely to the ululating nature of the Middle Eastern vocal. As a fan of the Pet Shop Boys, it can never be said that I don’t appreciate strings in pop music, but by this point I’m getting tired of violins overshadowing the far more interesting ethnic instruments. I suspect that the string quartet has the same stranglehold on Arabic pop that guitar & bass has on European and North American pop. It also occurs to me that I’m not steeped enough in the genre to discern the subtle differences in these three compositions.

Happily, the tape’s compiler obliges my short attention span and drops a lovely triptych of tunes by Emirati singer Hussein Al-Jesmi. The first, “Al-Shaki”, is a short a cappella study of the Middle Eastern vocal. Clocking in at only 1:21, the track sounds like a singer warming up, complete with comments from unnamed bystanders. The appeal is perhaps a bit voyeuristic, but there’s something deliciously raw about hearing the different attempts at perfection. The two tracks that follow are versions of “Fegadtik”, one live and one polished. This is an old mix tape trick of mine, too; start with a live version and blend into the version released on CD (or vice versa). The transition is abrupt, but that’s to be expected given the rudimentary recording set-up. “Fegadtik” is a haunting lament featuring only vocalist and piano (no strings, thank god). The vocals are startlingly effective: Despite the fact that I can’t understand a word he’s saying, I can feel the singer’s pain. As an instrumental the song(s) evoke a piano bar or jazz club, a lone pianist at the keys. Adding the Arabic vocals to the mix jumbles that image with one of “The Blue Parrot” from Casablanca. The fusion of east and west has produced something extraordinary. It’s the best thing on Side 1 and is the perfect climax to the first half.

Side 2 opens with a pop track similar to those on Side 1. “El-Leila Helwa” (“Night is Sweet”*) is sung by Madonna Al Lebnania, whose vocals are indistinguishable from Amina’s (Side 1, Track 1). Again, the ubiquitous strings make an appearance. Fortunately, they are used sparingly as stabs and blurts. What makes this track stand out is not the instruments or the vocals, but the frenetic rhythm section. The drums are nuts! The complexity of the rhythms would leave many a breakbeat producer standing stunned with his mouth open in the middle of the dancefloor.

Tracks 2 and 3 blend into an intense, live a cappella by Egyptian songstress Sherine. The range of this woman is astounding. The songs, both titled “Garah Tani”, sound to me like a songs of worship, but not in the dire, dry style typical of western hymns. I would describe it more in terms of black gospel music from the southern United Sates; joyful music, a surrendering of yourself to the beauty of belief. I’m far from religious, but by the end I was cheering along with the crowd.

Sherine’s songs lead perfectly into 23 more minutes of live a cappella brilliance. No, really. I love every minute. The two a cappellas are credited to “Anon ?”, which could be the man’s name or an abbreviation for anonymous, and bookend a mostly instrumental soundtrack snippet from the film Ghazlan fil Ghaba Il-Dieb. Both a cappellas are titled “Mawai”, so I am unsure whether they are two parts of the same piece or separate performances. Regardless, the first 13 minute portion is the highlight of the tape. The song builds from a drone through a relatively sedate vocal to a crescendo where the singer is practically screaming. The crowd reacts in a similar manner, both men and women urging the vocalist on to greater and greater heights, setting up the feedback loop that is the cornerstone of all remarkable live performances. At one point, the “band” cuts in with an uptempo mixture of drums, flutes and strummed instruments, only to be cut off seconds later. You can almost hear the vocalist waving his hand to shush them, knowing, perhaps, that the connection he has with the crowd is fragile. Like the preceding songs, the sense that the singer is worshipping is very strong. As the track’s energy wanes, the tape switches to the soundtrack segment.

Judging by the syncopated strings (again with the strings!) and the electronic instruments, I expect it was chopped out of the middle of some action movie or spy thriller. In fact, if it weren’t for the choirs of male and female Arabic singers, and of course the title, it could have come from any film at all. With this relatively minor ethnic inclusion, it merely sounds as if it would be right at home in the middle of an Indiana Jones chase scene. While the track may be a bit common sonically, it is effective at maintaining the pressure generated by the first half of Side 2.

The third and final part of this section feels like a rewind. It’s the same song as the first part, and sounds very similar in terms of crowd noise and instrumentation. That’s OK, though. I’m happy to get another listen. Astonishing vocals, simply astonishing.

The tape closes on a melancholy note. “W Kaberna” by Najwa Karam opens with a full orchestra before downshifting to a downbeat duet. The orchestra sits low in the mix, rather than front and center, and eventually develops into a drone, leaving the focus to the male and female vocalists. The back and forth between the singers reminds me of Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up", where Peter and Kate Bush go back and forth in a he-said-she-said. It’s a dramatic finish to an eclectic mixture of ethnic sounds.

It must be said that it takes great courage for all of us in the Ferrite Love Connection to put our tastes on display. All it would take is some Neanderthal with no interest in anything other than his/her own insular opinions and your carefully constructed analogue masterpiece is cut down in a blaze of scathing blog text, if it gets reviewed at all. Even compared to the rest of us, it had to take some set of stones to compile, record, and send A Cocktail of Arabic Musical Joy to some anonymous member in the wilds of eastern Canada, a place where Celtic and Country reign hand-in-hand. But the gamble paid off. It may be blasphemy to say it on a blog dedicated to analogue glory, but if the compiler could just put them on a CD and send it to me at the same address…?

Side 1
From soundtrack of Qissaat al-hai al-sha ‘bi – Sa’ad Al-Sghair [Egypt]
7an Waqt Al Lega – Abu Bakr Salim [Yemen]
Gesher min Al-Moz – Abu Bakr Salim [Yemen]
Tamen Qelbi – Nawai [Kuwait]
Ana Be Kheir (Live in Doha 2007) – Nawai [Kuwait]
Darb Al-Mahaba (Live in Doha 2007) – Mohammed Abdou with Abu Bakr Salim [Saudi]
Ayooh (Live) – Mohammed Abdou [Saudi]
Al-Shaki (Live) – Hussein Al-Jesmi [Emirates]
Fegadtik (Live) – Hussein Al-Jesmi [Emirates]
Fegadtik 2006 – Hussein Al-Jesmi [Emirates]

Side 2
El-Leila Helwa – Madonna [Lebanon]
Garah Tani (Intro) (Live 2006) – Sherine [Egypt]
Garah Tani (Live) – Sherine [Egypt]
Mawai – Anon ? [?]
From soundtrack Ghazlan fil Ghaba Il-Dieb – Unknown [?]
Mawai – Anon ? [?]
W Kberna – Najwa Karam (&Wadi??) [Lebanon]

*As noted in the sender’s letter.

DJ Negative Skillz

I had a go at the art of reviewing a long time ago and decided though I had an interest in music and writings about music I decided I wasn’t really much cop. So while I will try my best to give this review a good shot, apologies in advance for the shit prose – I’ve also compensated for this with some photos capturing my actual reactions to all of the songs on the tape.

First of all some of the circumstances of this tape. The paperwork states the tape was

‘mixed on 1 turntable with nuff pause button edits and rewinds by the one they call DJ Negative Skills'.

It was hand delivered to my place in East London on a Tuesday early evening (20th March). We get a lot of door-to-door sellers so I don’t always answer the door (figuring friends will bell me), so I’m glad I did this time. We had a brief but pleasant conversation, where I immediately broke the tape-swapping code by giving my dissensus name and asking for (and getting) his.

The tape is carefully crafted, with as much interest going on ‘in the mix’ as there is in the official tracks. For the whole of the tape it feels like DJ Negative Skills has his hands next to the record lining up another signature sabotage. This has the effect of making it feel like he’s sat there listening to the music with you, which feels kind of creepy but also gives you the discipline to listening properly and not being able to dismiss anything without giving it a proper listen.

I’ve listened to the tape around 10 times in the three or so weeks I've had it. Sometimes I've spun it in my spare music/work room (where all the pictures are taken) but it has also soundtracked my cycle ride to work ( though I got some funny looks pulling out my clunky walkman at work).



Onto the sounds, Side A starts with ‘For your love’ by the Yardbirds where we get a turntabalists re-reading of the song – the song dipping out of right and left channels, slowing down, stopping, the needle thudding against the record, before the tampering ends and we hear the whole if slightly slowed version of the record. This seems to work, a good start.



A change of tack up next with Salt N Pepa’s ‘shake your thang’ (featuring E.U) a slice of late 80s pop rap…which doesn't particularly move (Push It still cuts it but this is just meh) – lot of needle feedback creep in at the end, but I think this is all part of the compiler letting me know their on the controls



Then we have Rammelzee versus K. Rob, leftfield hip-hop from about the same time I think or just later. Rammelzee’s the strange looking dude adored by the Wire isn’t he. This is okay but nothing special. My ill-advised attendance at Shoreditch bars between 1999-2003 killed the vibe of anything 'old school' like this for me. Some more random turntabalism sneaking in at the end at the track cuts between channels, the turntable is unearthed, it cuts and fades, fades some more, cuts back in (I’m hoping this is all very deliberate).



Then we get a couple of slices of The Bordeoms ‘jungle taitei’ track, the second being labelled as DJ Let’s Try & DIY Drum Machine Mix, which sounds like an in-house job rather than any formal mix. Again we get some channel hopping – the first one spends a while just coming out of the right channel. The remix starts with a throbbing Aphex-like pulse going through it while the singer appears to be drowned. The drumbeat becomes more complex and rhythmic. I'm enjoying this, despite having to chase the sounds around the room.



Next is Nobukazu Takemura’s ‘a lost treasure’ a lovely solemn track with vocordered vocal. This is the first artist I’ve not heard of before but sounds worth looking into though I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d discover something in Schneider TM territory.



Next some plinky plonky business with The Remote Viewer – here it was difficult to tell if the glitches, speeding up and down was the author’s or curators italics. Quite a pleasant tune though, if nothing particularly different



Finally Dry Hustle ‘do it sloppily’ is a turntablists or VVM-style version of Missy Elliot’s ‘get ur freak on’…not really doing an awful lot for me.



Side B starts with Pram’s ‘eltopo’. I heard a lot about Pram during the post rock era, but never really bothered checking them out. This has an obvious Morricone influence, with a central (almost Casio sounding) whistling melody backed by occasionally epic strings. Then we get come radio fm searching (again not sure if this is part of the pram track or our compiler’s doing)



Then we get Dexy’s Midnight Runners ‘burn it down’ with some intro volume tampering and cutting out and slowing down by out turntablism champion…. I suppose this is kind of wearing for me now – particularly the switching from left to right channels. Great song though.



Then it’s Quickspace with ‘rise’, whimsical indie stuff – pleasant enough, but not particularly rousing in any way. I’m starting to think the flitting between left and right channels might be a cassette fault – only also the other turntablism antics is making me think otherwise.



Next it’s the more rocky sounding The Yummy Fur with ‘supermarket sounding a bit like Wire, which is quickly followed Neotropic ‘ultra freaky orange’ – filmic mid-90s sounding electronica/lounge/trip-hop…. though it is quite a dense sensory overload, these ears aren’t quite ready for a return of these type of Mo Wax/Vadim/Luke Vivert style soundings.



Then we get a blast of Merzbrow/Gore Beyond Necropsy with ‘a horse named rectal anarchy’…and blast is the right word, sounding like a high-speed train hurtling past. Again some confusion whether the tomfoolery in the mix is from our compiler or the track artists. Somewhere in there we also had Hijokaidan (another artists unknown to me) with ‘ferocity of practical life part 2’ though I didn’t spot exactly where!



Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ‘blue shadows in the street’ is an aptly named mournful swinger of a tune.




Next have Georgia Moroder’s fantastic thumping ‘call me’ instrumental. The tape closes with some distant radio signal beeping away for 15 minutes or so interspersed with some more gadgetry play from the compiler, including a 5 or so minute false ending.

I can't remember the last time someone gave me a handmade, uniquely compiled tape. It must have been my ex, from years ago. We did a tape swap once - bad, bad idea. She taped me a load of stuff that I wasn't very keen on, like 10,000 Maniacs and Kristin Hersh. One day, I revealed that I'd taped over it, I think I'd discovered some pirate station and instinctively chucked her tape in the deck to capture a piece of South London Jungle history (which I later lost). She went completely fucking apeshit - "Do you think I wanted to listen to that punk crap you taped me?" she screamed. "You just don't get it, do you? You NEVER get rid of tapes someone's made for you". At the time, I thought she was being ridiculous, but now I look back through the frozen wastepipes of time, I concede she had a point - but, as usual, it took me years, and until it was too late, to spot the obvious.

Anyway, a few words before I start my review. I've listened to the tape I was sent about seven times now, in various conditions. If I was to create a psychological profile of the compiler, I would guess that he is Australasian, has a pretty Mediterranean girlfriend, has DJ'd (professionally) in the past - oh, and that he wasn't at home on the 5th March when Hackney Homes attempted to conduct a Tree and Grass Inspection. Before Chef Napalm starts yelling again, yes, this tape is very well mixed and obviously hasn't been burnt off at random from MP3s, etc - are we all clear on that? Also, I deliberately haven't Googled any of these artists or tracks, to keep the 'review' as honest and unbiased as possible.

I didn't enjoy the beginning of the tape so much - "Pump" by HE SAID is a placid sort of Alabama 3-style jam, except it doesn't really sound like Alabama 3. It sounds OK if you're drifting off to sleep, I suppose....this is followed by some guy called BILL FAY, who sounds like an Aussie. "Sing us one of your songs, May" he urges, in what seems to be a song about a girl whose soldier boyfriend's been killed in action - maybe with the ANZACS? It's nice enough, but years of smoking must have hardened my heart, as I ended up wishing Fay would shut up and leave the grieving kid alone.

Then we get DAVID BANNER, with "Cadillacs on 22". This is the first of two tracks which the compiler has marked '(C&S)'. I don't know if this related to 'screwed' rap, as discussed on Dissensus, but the song title feels appropriate - this sounds like a R&B platter played at 22 rpm! To be really honest, I can't see the point of it, it sounds stupid. Next up are the ALIEN PORN MIDGETS - I was expecting some hardcore thrash band with wacky lyrics, but "High Altitude Over An Eastern Shore" turns out to be a genuinely 'screwed' instrumental, sort of like Martin Denny sniffing paint and knocking out some ragtime-exotica crossover tune for a 1940s black and white Tom and Jerry cartoon. I found this quite enjoyable, especially after I'd had a few drinks.

HOLGER HILLER's "Waltz" is next, which sounds a bit like one of those old BBC2 music workshop programmes from the 80s - you know, the ones where impeccably well-behaved kids would be split into groups and trained to play separate parts of an overall musical piece - one bunch of kids on glockenspiels, the others bashing triangles - oh, you get the point. I know this bloke's a bit of a cult Kraut legend, but I thought this track was excessively long and was a bit too tidy and conservative.

I've spent years avoiding the music of CAN, as, like Faust and Neu!, I figured it was boring shit for hippies. After nearly 30 years of resistance, I decided to check out the latter two bands this year, and was pleasantly suprised by Faust (I think Neu! suck though). However, this tape's forced me to seriously re-evaluate the situation: Can's "Transcendental Express" is a gloriously fucked-up experimental piece. If you've ever seen that episode of "The Prisoner" where Patrick McGoohan is slipped a powerful hallucinogenic drug and tries to cross a ballroom full of leering, melting faces, this song's a bit like the audio equivalent of that. Strangely beautiful with a hint of menace, at times reminiscent of dead souls wailing through a wind tunnel, it's completely made me change my mind about Can. The muso-critics were right! I've been a bloody fool!

I was looking forward to the LEGENDARY PINK DOTS track, as I was sure that I'd once bought an LP by them when I was living in Camberwell in 1995, which I'd really enjoyed. It was only when "Closet Kings" kicked in, though, I realised I'd actually been thinking of Pink Industry. This sounds like one of those jaunty, jangly, folky things that are splattered all over the "Messthetics" series of CD-Rs. Are they Australasian? I don't hate it, but it doesn't move me in a massive way.

Christ knows what to make of EXUMA's "Metastophalise" - the music's quite sombre, with a tragic, epic feel and scraping strings, but the guy delivering the rhyming soliloquy had me rolling round the floor with laughter, especially as he sounds like he's trying to come across as really sincere and anguished. Maybe I am just a heartless cunt - I always used to crack up laughing at that Tindersticks song about the kid who falls down the well, too - but I quite enjoyed this in the same way I like William Shatner's, er, 'cover' of "Elegy For the Brave". Exuma sound like they (or sounds like he?) could be a contemporary of Comus, part of that deviant 70s folk scene.

Then POSITION NORMAL's "Bucket Wipe" bleeps into action, sweet and hypnotic echoing intergalactic signal noises reverberate over a slightly phased guitar riff. It's got a Radiophonic Workshop feel, and harks back to the good old days when everyone thought that, come the year 2007, schools would be teaching subjects like 'space station communications' and we'd all be riding flying giant squids to work. I really dig the next track, "Stornello" by EUGENIO PILA, because it reminds me of the bloke who used to play his flamenco guitar in the backroom of the Camden all-night kebab shop, Marathons. I can't tell you the amount of nights we'd end up back there after gigs, especially during winter when, soaked in beer, we'd seek warmth, overpriced cans of Guinness and small donors until the tube re-opened at 5.30am - sod hanging round in the cold waiting for a night bus. Marathons is a bit of a London institution like that, I don't know anyone who hasn't been in there at 4am at some point in their lives. Whatever happened to the skinhead bloke who used to wear the plastic policeman's hat? I haven't been for ages, but this track sounds EXACTLY like Marathons used to, even down to the drunken conversations and laughter in the background.

Then WILEY delivers "Doorway", which manages to get across a positive message without sounding too preachy, and proves why grime is about 3,493,748 times more relevant and interesting than any of this Hed Kandi crap my workmates keep telling me about. FAUST's "Psalter" sounds immediately familiar, I've actually got this track on the "Faust 4" LP but it's got a different title there. I particularly like the handclaps on this track. MALACA's "Atola" has an imposing drum beat, though I couldn't really get into it - something about it annoyed me, particularly the vocals. EXCEPTER's "Whirl Wind" starts off with what sounds like a treated xylophone or steel drums sample, before a noise reminiscent of TG's later gigs kicks in, with low frequencies, echoing vocals and distorted electronic cornets zipping in and out of the mix. I liked this, but the one criticism is that the vocals were a bit too mellow - I think it'd benefit more from ripping off the early SPK /Ramleh style of metallic yelping and howling. LIGHTNING BOLT work for me occasionally, when they manage to lock into a spikey groove and keep it going. They do this on "2 Morro Morro Land", which ends Side 1, but there's a bit too much axe-wanking halfway through for my liking.

Side 2 begins with DJ SCREW's "21 Swishahouse" - right, so was this recorded at 21 rpm then? (PS- I'm not joking, I really don't know!) More slowed down rap business, awful. RUFF SQWAD have a bit of a soppy moment on "Motherland", and at risk of offending any Ghana-based readers, I thought this was terrible - twee tune, really wack 'rapping' - I just couldn't shake the image of fat policewomen trying to dance to this at Notting Hill. VITALIC's "Polkamatic" sounds like the theme tune to a really bad 70s Bulgarian religious TV series. Seriously, I know some people go bananas for this baldie DJ, but it just sounds to me like a rotting corpse playing on an organ in a dilapidated cathedral. Though that actually sounds alright....

Then we're up for three bits of unadulterated DANCE FUN. I'd rather have heard CROOKERS' "Buzz Beat", DJ COONE's "Love" and the untitled track from the BOOTLEGGER BEATS 2 white label in some brick-walled basement club, being lashed by flying dreadlocks - the smell of cigarettes, poppers, perfume and sweat blending into a warm fug - than on headphones in a flat in North London. I'd especially be interested in obtaining the latter record, on the strength of that track alone, purely for old skool nostalgia reasons.

Sadly, this cloudburst was shadowed by ARIEL PINK's "House Arrest". I'm glad I never checked this bloke out when he was hot shit on Dissensus. With the opening chords to this song, I honestly expected a voice to pop out, crooning Ooh, you make me live...well, if your idea of fun's a Mark Stewart imitator groaning behind some flanged Radio 2 granny-friendly gush, you're welcome to it. HAVING SAID THAT, I did actually quite like the ending fade-out of this song. Unfortunately, it was followed by RED CRAYOLA, whose "The Mistakes of Trotsky" is up to their usual, abysmal standards. To be fair, the only other RC I've heard is the "Soldier Talk" LP from '79 - I really liked the sharp, clanging guitar sound on that album, but it was completely wasted by the band's insistence on establishing their 'cleverness' and 'experimentalism' by farting around with time and tune changes every 30 seconds, instead of locking into a potentially devastating groove. This song's folkie shit with spindly vocals, as wet and slimey as seaweed.

I have a lot more time for LE ORME's atmospheric and evocative "All'Infuori del Tempo" - again, I'd rather have been strolling around Genoa's Old Town section in twilight than stuck in London when playing this. At least they (or he?) know what they're doing and they do it very well. I hate the term "life affirming", but this is definitely "soul rousing" at the very least. It sounds like it could be from the 70s, though has a timeless quality, and it makes me wish I had some tasty, raven-haired Italian vixen with wraparound shades to spend the summer with - having violent arguments, eating gnocci and drinking too much red wine.

On a 'soul rousing' theme (god, that sounds even more pretentious than 'life affirming'), NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL's untitled instrumental piece is another winner. I think bagpipes are involved? It's like a march over some dewy glen at sunrise, and sounds better the louder you play it. Kind of gave me a warm feeling, like winning the lottery.

Another band I checked out for the first time ever this year was the Pretty Things, brilliant UK 60s psych-garage beat, a genre that's still pretty 'new' to me. So I was pleased to hear "Imposters of Life's Magazine" by THE IDLE RACE, which conjures up images of collar-length hair and mod suits, dropping black bombers and Picadilly shebeens, better than anything the Stones or Beatles ever cooked up. Like the Pretty Things' "Death of A Socialite", the lyrics seem to viciously mock the lameness of fame and celebrity culture, over a twisting and turning beat.

"Air" by INCREDIBLE STRING BAND is fairly dull, sounds a bit like something Thora Hird would have listened to on the bus on her way to Sunday evening mass, but it leads into what, for me, is one of the gobsmacking tracks on the tape. If you'd told me 2 weeks ago I'd really enjoy a piece of music by a brass band, I'd have laughed in your mug. But I found "Bradford" by BESSES O'THE BARN BAND a genuinely potent and moving piece, easily equalling any experimental piece you'd care to mention. Despite being anti-nationalist, I quite enjoy regionalism, but although I was born in the Smoke, I've always had a soft spot for Yorkshire. I like their attitudes towards life. Maybe it's also because my mum was sent from Ireland to live in York when she was 6, resulting in a bizarre mongrel accent. "Bradford" is strong and passionate, but there's also a strange sense of keen melancholy, as if shouldering the woes of this city, shaken in the 80s by unemployment, the imbecilic Yorkshire Ripper and the football ground fire.Bizarrely, I got a lump in my throat.

Side 2 ends with OG RON C's "DSR" - more slowed down rap, give it a rest! - BUCCANEER's "Kill A Sound" - not bad, but not really my favourite dancehall MC, a bit too laidback - and PEOPLE LIKE US' odd "Music Alone". Though, personally, it was going to take something SERIOUSLY extra-special to shift the powerful spell cast by "Bradford".

Well, there you go. I'd say I liked at least half of it, which is certainly good going in my book. At its best, some parts reminded me of listening to John Peel back in the old days, and there's not many compliments you can pay a DJ to top that, really. I'd also like to thank the compiler for breaking down my anti-Can prejudice, and for introducing me to some freaky folks who I'm now gonna Google after hitting the PUBLISH button for this post. And as yr based in Hackney, give us a yell on Dissensus, you ought to come along to the next NE London drink-up. Unless you're still waiting for Hackney Homes' garden unit to turn up with their chainsaws. Cheers! MARTIN