Words from the dancehalls

Here's a couple of great dancehall related pieces - who cork the dance with a lengthy interview with Killamanjaro founder Noel harper, and a much more concise but enlightening Q+A with Penthouse legend Donovan Germain.

Belated Best Wishes

Myself, Slug and Naphta at Colz's birthday celebrations the other week. I think it went pretty well. It was nice to meet up with some heads I'd never really met properly and to chat to a few I had. We each had about 20-25 mins - I played a load of mostly old skool 2-step tunes that all featured samples from, or were remixes of jungle tunes. Naphta unwittingly played into the hands of my 'nuumfoolery by touching on some of the same references in his jungle set, and Slug played a blistering hardcore set that snapped even old Naphta out of his senescent musings for a few brief moments - but unfortunately it didn't get recorded properly.

Here's the setlists for the night and vids of the sets.

Droid (last 25 mins):

Naphta – Jungle Republic (Ramadanman Remix) - Ruff Revival
O.T.Crew & Mc Skie - Soundklash (Champion Sound) White
DJ Quest & The Yungsta - Rumble - Pulse
Chris Mac (aka Potential Bad Boy) - Set it off - Old Soul
Lenny D Ice - Weareie (Caspa and Rosca remix) - Distinct'ive Breaks Records
Anthony Johnson & Charjan - Everyday Is A Gunshot - White
F.O.S. Project - Check It! (Zed Bias Remix) - FOS
Naphta – Sounclash 1 (Ghost Remix) - Ruff Revival

Naphta:

RickJames - Horrorface - Ruff Revival dub
DJ Hype - Mash up da Place - Ganja
Naphta - Jungle Republic [Ricky Force Remix] - Ruff Revival dub
Smokey Joe - Shining Remix - Labello Blanco
Naphta - Fully Loaded - Ruff Revival
The Soul-Jah - Down With The Lights - Hardleaders
Scarface feat. Ice Cube - Hand of the Dead Body [Goldie/Rob Playford Remix] - Virgin
Photek - Rings Around Saturn - Photek

Slug:



DJ Hype - The Trooper (original mix) - Suburban Base
DJ SS - Don't come no Ruffer - Formation
DJ Red Alert and Mike Slammer - Ackers - Slammin' Vinyl
DJ Rap and Aston - Vertigo - Suburban Base
Scott and Keith - Deranged part2 - Reinforced
Kaotic Chemistry - Drum Trip 2 - Moving Shadow
Jungle House Crew - King of the Jungle - Formation
Acen - Trip to the moon part 2 - Production House

Finally!!

After an inconscionable delay, Woofah 4 is hitting the shelves in Dublin this week and in the UK and worldwide very soon. It is an absolute tome this time though - 92 pages and still no ads.

More details to follow.

Wearentie?

So, as you've probably noticed, things have pretty much ground to a halt here. I haven't really mentioned the state of weareie as John Eden has declared that apologising for a lack of posts makes Baby Jesus sad and is therefore verboten - but I think it's obvious that this place has been going down the tubes for a while. This has mainly been due to time pressure as a result of Droid Jnrs. appearance on the scene, time pressure as a result of changes in my workplace practices, time pressure due to other commitments (labels and magazines mainly), abandonment by the other contributors here (like rats leaving a sinking ship!), and general slothfulness and complete lack of motivation to actually write anything.

To top this off, I had a few technical problems with changing servers last year, as well as ongoing issues with RSS and Twitter, and now, Blogger are getting rid of their FTP support, the system that this place uses to run itself. Now, in theory it shouldnt be such a big deal to switch over to WP as I meant to do in 2008, but given the track record here I'm not sure that's going to happen, or, indeed if there's any point in it happening given that I spend more time fixing tech-issues than I spend blogging. I do have half a dozen or so mixes that I want to get up (a couple coming very soon), but to be honest, this place was never really a hub of industry and a return to even minimal levels of activity doesn't seem feasible at the moment.

So, this may just be another of those fake retirement post, and I would like to keep this place going, but is it better to just let it die with dignity rather than watch it slowly rot whilst hoping for a miraculous recovery which will probably never happen?

Barring intervention the estimated time of death is March 26th.

Smokeless Fuels Birthday Party

So, Colz has foolishly invited us to play at his birthday bash tonight alongside some of the best DJ's in the city and Irish scratch legend DJ Mek. We'll be there sometime after 10. You can tune in here.