Blogariddims NZ
Strange how a publication on the other side of the world seems to have more insight and information than those right on the doorstep eh? ;)Though it is many things to many people, the ubiquitous term podcast is fast becoming a valuable signpost to assist music discovery. Like mixtapes, there’s an awful lot of dross to contend with, but, when they are well curated, annotated and presented, they can take a lot of stress out of perusing new sounds.
One of the very best is hosted by Irish website weareie (www.weareie.com), and, as the name Bloggariddims suggests, it draws upon the knowledge and passion of fellow bloggers to supply monthly hour-long mixes that are generally far more involved and detailed than anything you could actually buy in the shops.
Over 36 predominantly crucial episodes, they have delivered everything from terrifying office party hits to deep ambience with an astonishing strike rate, though the most consistent thread is reggae and its myriad offshoots. A little over two years ago, London sound system the Heatwave Affair put together one of the very best, An England Story, which focused entirely on UK MCs from 1984-2006. Now, in concert with the Soul Jazz label, the 21 finest and most licensable tracks have been culled down from the original mix’s 40 and delivered on a double CD with extensive liner notes.
Thanks to Stinkyjim for the heads up on this one.
posted by droid at 3:50 PM
8 Comments:
I'm confused Droid. What is your relationship with Blogariddims?
Are you the inventor?
I need to know
The originator and the dominator! ;)
It was meant to be a side project though - not a blog consuming monster!
I have tracks for you for that other thing btw.
He's rougher and tougher so other words brother,droids the one and only dominator, droids the one and only dominator.
Respect my wigga, respec
Great, put them aside and I;ll holla when I wants them. can ye give me artwork also.
cheers
out to all terrified NZ office party listening cru! Your time!
nice one droid, ur massive in NZ!
These two articles also appeared in NZ publications recently ...
Real Groove magazine April 2008
THIS IS ENGLAND
THE HEATWAVE CREW REP FOR THE LESS-CELEBRATED BRITAIN By Stinky Jim
Out now: An England Story is out now on Soul Jazz
Website: Check www.theheatwave.co.uk for more info and mixes
It's hard to keep up with the London/Bristol four-man army that has been building up a serious rep under the name The Heatwave. With the Scandal Bag, Punchline and Heatwave labels to their name and a highly regarded monthly, they are part of the new breed of crews who are attempting something more interesting than identikit JA soundsystem business. Their mixes, on their own superb site and for the unimpeachable Bloggariddims series, are a testament to the open-minded approach with the Spanish language scorcher La Ola De Calor and the UK MC tutorial An England Story particularly outstanding. Now that Soul Jazz are issuing a stripped back version of the latter, Real Groove caught up with the London connection Gervase de Wilde and asked him about why no-one had done it before and the burden of responsibility.
"I think we do feel that the history of Jamaican immigration to the UK and its impact on British music and cultural identity in general is something which is under-represented," Gervase says.
"Where I live in London you can hear the impact of Jamaican speech and music everywhere, but it's not something which is necessarily recognised that much, so you do feel some sense of responsibility to try to represent it faithfully. In the end though this is just one set of tunes which all have that patois/soundsystem influence and it's important to recognise how much music, like hardcore, jungle, bhangra, two-step garage, we hardly touched on in the compilation. It's just 'a story' not 'the story' of how dancehall reggae had its own tradition in this country, which led to the evolution of sounds like UK hip hop and grime."
Cutting the selection down from over 40 to a slim 21 must have been some task!
"The main thing was space, and we had to think about which were the tunes we felt would give a sense of this ongoing narrative. We also tried to pick out ones which were not so readily available."
Also on the comp is a specially recorded cut with the evergreen Warrior Queen on Heatwave's own Piano riddim, is this the start of yet more activity?
"We have more riddims in the pipeline for this year and we are going to release some more cuts on the piano from Roll Deep's Riko and (Heatwave vocalist) Rubi Dan on our own label in the next month." RG
Sunday Star*Times April 13 2008
Pitch Black
Black on white - music transplanted from the Caribbean - adds a unique voice to the British sounds scene
by Grant Smithies (Qantas reviewer of the year)
VARIOUS ARTISTS
An England Story (Soul Jazz/Southbound)
The sound of black Britain
****
ONE MIGHT be excused for believing Britain's musical history is as white as a new sheet. Ponder, if you will, the pale faces hovering above the drums and guitars of the key bands associated with most British musical movements.
You have the 1960s' pop of the Beatles, The Kinks and The Rolling Stones; the gender-bending glam of Bowie and T-Rex; the snotty punk of Sex Pistols, The Jam and The Clash; the art-damaged post-punk of Joy Division, The Fall and Wire. There's those gloriously hazy "shoe-gazing" bands My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Ride; the "Madchester" sound of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays; the Brit-pop of Oasis, Pulp and Blur; the Brit-metal racket of Motorhead, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.
Even today, most British guitar music still seems an almost total honky-fest, if you exclude the black lead singer of Bloc Party.
But British music has always been a far broader proposition than just white guys with guitars. From the late 1940s onwards, successive waves of wide-eyed and shivering black immigrants arrived to England from the Caribbean. These new residents brought with them a deep appreciation of ska, rocksteady, calypso and reggae from the West Indies, and R'n'B, jazz and soul from the United States.
Over the decades, reggae sound system culture transplanted from Jamaica flourished in its new home, with hundreds of British sound systems springing up to meet the needs of the immigrant population and then- British-born children. To feed this new market, tiny back-street studios began cranking out locally made reggae, funk, soul and R'n'B.
Slowly but surely, the music changed to reflect the experiences of its makers. While hip-hop and dancehall reggae arose in America and Jamaica respectively, both genres were comprehensively altered by practitioners in Britain, who used local accents, tempos and lyrical references to create a cunningly customised sound rather than merely a slavish imitation.
More recent genres such as jungle, garage, grime and dub-step, meanwhile, are uniquely British forms, paying homage to the monster basslines of Kingston and the hefty breakbeats of New York, but piling on punk and rave sounds that have a distinctly English pedigree.
Based on an earlier podcast by London's Heatwave sound system crew, the latest offering from London's superb Soul Jazz label is An England Story, a compilation celebrating 25 years of urban black music. In particular, the focus falls on the many strands of British music built around a social commentator known as an "MC" in the US/UK and a "deejay" or "toaster" in Jamaica.
Making, the point this is perhaps as much about style as skin colour, the collection kicks off with title track "England Story" by YT (ie, "whitey"), a white dancehall MC from Ipswich who name-checks the predominantly black leading lights of British MC culture who have inspired him. Tracks follow from most of the artists he mentions, and there's barely a dud among them.
Included are key singles by Top Cat, Tenor Fly and General Levy, men who made their names fronting British sound systems during the 80s and early 90s. Their tracks still sound as fresh as the day they were minted; weaving together politics, sex and self-promotion and sparkling with a stoic ghetto wit honed by their parents' generation in Kingston but now applied to their own lives to working-class, black British communities such as St Pauls, Toxteth or Brixton.
Also included is Papa Levi's "Mi God, Mi King" from 1984, a mind-boggling showcase of the Saxon sound system's innovative "fast-chat" style, and the first song by an English MC to hit No 1 "back a yard" in Jamaica.
These dancehall pioneers were a substantial influence on early British hip-hop acts such as London Posse and contemporary rappers such as Ty, Roots Manuva and Blak Twang, all of whom favour reggae-influenced basslines and flip effortlessly from Cockney to Jamaican patois on their tracks.
Some British dancehall toasters enjoyed a second career when rave culture created an unexpected market for fast-talking microphone controllers to the early 90s, and a new breed of young MCs arose to recent years to have their; say over grime and dubstep instrumentals.
Key tracks from each style are included here. There are, however, some significant omissions. This collection should feature work by Tricky, who acknowledged his roots on Massive Attack's Blue Lines album as "English upbringing, background Caribbean", and Birmingham's Apache Indian, who pioneered a mix of Indian bhangra music, Jamaican ragga and Brummie humour in the early 1990s.
For me, the song that has the most to say about the frequently uneasy relationship between white and black British citizens is Tippa Irie's "Complain Neighbour", from 1985. Rather than deal to abstractions, Irie personalises cultural collision in a South London street, situating a Cockney family next to a family of Jamaican immigrants, the former drinking beer and watching EastEnders and the latter smoking spliffs and blasting loud reggae records. After complaining that "this reggy wot they play is worse than opera", the Cockney bloke heaves a few bricks through his black neighbour's window, narrowly missing their baby daughter. "Dem coulda committed murder," muses Irie. "All because the bass was high 'pon the amplifier."
grant.smithies@star-times.co.nz
Thanks for those Anon.
Hey Droid,
Would you checkout my site and give me some feedback?
www.sweetsalone.com
It's the new film about the growing music culture in Sierra Leone, West Africa. I think your blog audience might be interested!
Thanks
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