tufluv/// blog archive

Introduction by Mike Carhart-Harris

Tufluv (written as tufluv///, the three forward slashes being a pretentious signature device used to mark the end of posts) was a music reviews blog that I published anonymously (sometimes with the ridiculous moniker of Mickey Tufluv) between October 2003 and July 2024. I’d been made redundant from my first proper, full-time journalism job as reviews editor of DMC Publishing’s dance music weekly 7 magazine (and editor of the relaunched Seven Update, alongside editing reviews for the monthly more lifestyle-based SEVEN) a year earlier, aged 23, and had been trying, not quite hard enough, to make it as a freelance writer while living in north London. Thanks to former 7 mag colleagues Sean Bidder and Antony Hill, I’d become commissioning reviews editor of their newly launched FACT magazine, then a 7-inch 45-sized printed magazine distributed via record shops. I also somehow managed to write irregular album and live reviews for the NME (for which my 4/10 review of middle-of-the-road indie lads Athlete’s debut album justifiably earned me the scorn of the band and its fans) as well as features and reviews for Muzik, Jockey Slut, Sleazenation, Knowledge, Deuce and others.

My first love as a journalist was the record review. Tufluv was an outlet driven by boredom, frustration and the free promo 12s and CDs I was being sent by record labels and PR companies. I reviewed these alongside some of the records I was buying, mostly grime, garage, proto-dubstep, house, techno and electro. The name tufluv was a bit of a self-pitying reflection on my non-existent love life while living a fairly lonely and not very hedonistic existence in flat shares in London (where I’d moved from Bournemouth in 2o02) more than a nod to UK garage innovators Tuff Jam, whom I reviewed on the blog. During its nine-month existence, tufluv briefly became a peripheral part of the nascent blogosphere centred around largely UK-based blogs including Mark Fisher’s K-Punk, Simon Reynolds’ Blissblog, Woebot, Heronbone, Skykicking and others, whose writing offered an open-minded and community-spirited alternative to the snide and snooty music press, in which I was also struggling to build a career.

I chose to draw the shutters on Tufluv in mid-2004 when, for largely financial reasons, I relocated back home to Dorset and got a full-time job as Deputy Editor for DVD Review magazine, turning my attention to film and TV (as well as aspect ratios and surround sound specifications, of which I knew nothing) rather than music. I tried vainly to keep up my music writing but signed off on Tufluv aged 24 feeling increasingly jaded and out of touch with the music scene (throwing the towel in far to readily, you might fairly say), changing the strapline to ‘irrelevance’. The original Blogger blog of tufluv has long since been deleted (I recently found to my disappointment) but thankfully the Wayback Machine has enabled me to recover the contents and belatedly archive them here. I have shared the blog chronologically with a few small updates – adding the paragraph breaks that I foolishly ignored K-Punk’s advice to include, which made the blog wilfully dense and difficult to read, and inserting a few notes where the passage of time has not served my sometimes immature and snotty-nosed writing well, or I was just plain being a dick.

T.RAUMSCHMIERE ‘RABAUKENDISKO (THE BUG REMIX)’ (NOVAMUTE)

That ‘Rabaukendisko’ translates as ‘Hooligan Disco’ should come as little surprise… the ‘hooligan’ part more so than the ‘disco’. Taking a thick, brutish electronic punk riff (all badly-wired fuzz-static giving off shocks and sparking like a hacked-off Van Der Graf generator) in one hand and then mashing it together with flat, quasi-rock 808 beats in the other would be enough, but Raumschmiere then decides an overload of skreeeeing, skronking, abrasive, ear-splitting, metallic, razor-teethed, wiry, intertwining noise-eels are what’s lacking. The subsequent electro-scrawl is something for masochistic goth dancers or suckers for atonal electro-wank punishment alone and at the moment my annoyance threshold is rather low as far as atonal electro-wank punishment goes.

The B-side is much more interesting – two mixes by The Bug (vocal and version) – The Bug being the ideal candidate to fuck this bitch up, especially after the nasty pleasure that was his job on Mike Skinner’s Grafiti 12”. Kevin Martin, it seems, doesn’t remix records, he cudgels them repeatedly with a noise-stick, pokes them with a ragga-cattleprod, runs them through with a white-hot bashment bayonet (a kindred spirit of Dillinja’s perhaps?).

And if the mega-gnarled, acid-flayed, flame-throwered riddims weren’t enough, he had to unleash Ras Bogle on it, a pitbull inna de dance, tearing at the track’s carotid artery with teeth of ire and a Babylon-torching larynx of hellfire. Oh, and sirens! Gotta love ‘em. ///

JIMMY EDGAR ‘ACCESS RHYTHM E.P.’ (WARP)

Warp are keen to point out that their latest catch is young (19), prodigious (has DJed alongside the Detroit techno aristocracy) AND good-looking (6’1”… and tons of fun, presumably). Whether there are enough geeky girls (although girls into Warp are probably considered ‘arty’) and closet-case backpack types to make this work remains to be seen. If Edgar’s debut E.P. is anything to go on, his sound is pared-down binary hip-hop of sorts: all diamond-tipped synco-beats, low-down digi-bass and re-ordered Herbie Hancock keys like shattered crystal over ice. The wicked ‘No Static’ employs a familiar-sounding, grubby-mouthed rap hook (“Motherfuckin’ no concentration/It’s like rock the nation/You don’t know what you facin’/It’s like all you ho’-ass n****s is chasin’”) for understated effect while ‘Morris Nightingale Theme’ trips off on glassy, higgledy-piggledy jazz keys placed over precision-edited beats. The feeling of stylised restraint belies a punch that sound systems should enjoy. There’s promise there, but Edgar’s a tad too conservative to be rocking the firmament just yet. Let’s wait and see if he can bust out a few different moves. ///

SEAN SMITH ‘THE OBSCENE E.P.’ (CLASSIC)

… fuck it, I was just about to write how ‘Latin Love’ was a very-fucking-ordinary-indeed salsa house cut with no-brainer Buena Vista samples when the A2 (‘Insania’) comes on, which is pure acid-sex right up my murky alley of ‘88-eternal iniquity, with a subtle burble of analogue bass right deep in there, cock-hardening girl shrieks, head-whirring little inserts of fluoro-coloured synth‘n’sample here and there plus beats that jack you hard up against the wall with an insistent regularity.

True, I was nine years old in 1988, but I have this strange fascination/affinity for acid house, possibly because the memories I have of it (police warehouse party busts on the 6 o’clock news, tapes made by much-older cousins, having weird images of an ‘Acid House’ where brainwashed teenagers are dunked by evil drug dealers in a vat of sulphuric acid) are twisted and scary, second-hand and ultimately vicarious – of a nightclub in my head that’s a mixture of real, live memories and complete fantasy. Which, when you think about it, is the same as people in 1983 being obsessed with 1968.

OK, so this is nothing that special. But a bit of acid-dipped insania is the perfect tonic for a touch of deep house ennui, reminding me that while house is a dull idea on paper, it can be as intoxicating and otherworldly as a mad sex dream in realisation. It’s music that requires imagination. ///

BEN MONO ‘PLASTIK PASSION (JOHN TEJADA REMIX)’ (COMPOST) 

I’m a sucker for John Tejada, who’s one of the very few producers that makes ‘tech-house’ that is anywhere near the trippy, sexy, tuff, liquid fusion that a mating of house and techno should be (rather than another word for dickless, soulless, chugging cokehead DJ fodder).

Here his beats feel pneumatic and rubberised, or perhaps that’s the spongy, foam-rubber bass that gives them a spring. Plus there are a few weird atmospheric samples that you’d not notice on the dancefloor but sound like snatches of a second or less from an office environment or photocopy room, temporarily letting the thing breath with gasps of strange distilled reality.

Perhaps I should say more about the Landslide mix which is also here. It’s fat as hell; round and gorgeous like seeing a rather overweight girl with a beautiful face and getting properly turned on. Or is that just me? Anyway, he’s still on that 2-step tip, which garage producers seem to have gone off recently, but all beefed up by masses of that lovely bottom-end. Perhaps I shouldn’t review this with headphones and the bass turned up? ///

Thursday, October 02, 2003

ALBUMS//

LUKE VIBERT ’YosepH’ (WARP)

Weirdy-beardy Cornwall bloke (as Mixmag would call him), Vibert, like his chums Aphex, Squarepusher and Paradinas has his head screwed on right. Because while they’d all probably get their collective freak on to Phillip Glass dropping cutlery, they simply never lost their ‘ardcore, being avid lovers of dance music’s purest, seemingly most inane yet vigorously thrusting genius moments – music ridiculed by those who don’t like to get their shoes dirty, embraced by those wot know the score. The mighty, all-embracing rave.

All of which is fairly irrelevant here, because whilst Vibert’s crazed hyper-abstractions of jungle are left to his Amen Andrews alias, under his own name and with (strangely) his first album for Warp he’s penned a thirteen-part ode to that little grey box, the Roland 303 Groovebox, bless it: not exactly unfashionable at the moment and a thing of subtle refinement compared to hoover bass and helium vox.

Indulge me and imagine this: ‘YosepH’ (WhaT’s WitH ThE CapitaL ‘H’?) is like an archeologist sometime after the next Ice Age drilling into a block of permafrost. Within it he finds encased a perfectly-preserved acid-box, with it its once-owner cryogenically frozen with his fingers stuck to the quaint little machine’s knobs (It must have been one of those ‘flash’ ice ages, you see). Once they’ve thawed him, the guy is unable to do anything but tweak his knobs, making these fucked up, funky, squiggly noises that amaze the future people. Only, the time in the ice has sorta slowed his whole motion down a gear – it’s kinda fatigued and frosty yet sorta tender and loving.

You still with me? To illustrate, the single and key track, ‘I Love Acid’, is Mr Frosty-luminous-lysergic bliss; mild brain-freeze soothed by a warm, fuzzy glow that rises up its middle. It’s not an acid house track, but a sub-110 bpm breakbeat shuffle, the resonant 303 line coiling around and smothering its brittle skeleton as plumped, feathered bass pads it out.

‘Acidisco’ is a venomous, lowdown crawl – all slow-rolling bass at the bottom and spirals of mid-Eastern synth-lines and sherbet-sour acid at the top: part sinister, part seductive, utterly groovy. ‘Synthax’, too, which I overlooked as the A-Side to ‘I Love Acid’’s AA, is a tune, something of a throwback to early Warp by way of a nod at the door on his way in; all distorted steel-drum noises and falling-down-stairs bass.

‘Freak Time Baby’ is pitched-down acid clashing with a slo-mo breakdance troupe performing in a fish tank, a hairdryer thrown in (literally) for a few sparky laffs. In all it’s like film footage of clubs slowed right down: light trails weaving slowly and magically, spaced-out strobe pulses highlighting the freeze-frame moments long enough for you to take a good hard look at the dancers rather than fleeting, impersonal hyper-snapshots.

It’s bewitching… and probably best taken in small chunks, returning to one track at a time and soaking it up, otherwise it gets just a little samey ( just how many bags of pear drops can you get through in one sitting?) I Love it, nevertheless. /// 

DAVE CLARKE ‘DEVIL’S ADVOCATE’ (SKINT)

Things have changed since you’ve been away, Dave. There was this whole electroclash business, which you really could’ve made a lot of money out of seeing as you were playing all those records ages before any fucker thought them fashionable. But you see, Dave, you just didn’t look the part. I mean, the leather trousers? The Monte Cristos? The Range Rover? The fucking bloodyminded opinions? You just didn’t fit, Dave. Were you are Trotskyite or a Tory, Dave? I forget, although I assume it’s the latter. You were the most yuppy techno DJ, ever, Dave. Techno? It’s still here. It’s fairly boring. But it’s good to have you back, Dave. I mean, it’s been seven years. You think you’re still The Baron? So here we go with ‘Way of Life’: way to kick off. Big drums. And the stabs. And DJ Rush chatting about ‘freaks in da club’. So everyone ripped off ‘Red One’ and you’ve decided to hit us back. It’s every techno cliché going, right there. What year is it again? Now, ‘She’s in Parties’… with Chicks on Speed…? That’s electroclash, Dave! And a vocal about how tragic these trend-chasin’ fash-drone-girls are? Get a different subject matter please girls, we already know how much you despise the people you hang out with. It’s a Bauhaus cover? It sounds like Adult.’s ‘Hand to Phone’. Now ‘Blue on Blue’ – this I like. Reminds me of Massive Attack and Mos Def’s ‘Eye Against Eye’: metal-plated tech-hip-hop. And about the war, too: with all those flying bullet noises it’s like being Keanu Reeves or summink… and the bit where Mr Lif pleads for his life, pure evil. ‘Deo Gratias’ – fuck me, bit Detroit, innit? Bit Kraftwerk. But it’s all amped-up and super-stereo like it was made by the people who do those Dolby noise tests for the cinema. Three minutes and still building… the strings, the Derrick May keys really stabbing… but it doesn’t kick in; something of an anti-climax. ‘Stay Out of the Light’: with a thick ol’ sweeping blacklight bassline like that you’ve been listening to GoodLife, haven’t you? Not Bad. ‘Just Ride’… hot damn. That little wibbly sample’s a real voodoo headfuck. And the booty chant – very nice, and without the whole overdone rude-ass ghettotech schtick. ‘Dirtbox’ – fuck me, punk-funk techno! ‘Disgraceland’ sounds like you’re ripping it out of all the trendies, Dave: “Johnny Rotten’s a nobody”? Get you. ‘The Wolf’ is great – a bit like Pigbag-meet-Jeff Mills in a funny way, Dave. And ‘Addendum’? Like a staggering electro thing Orbital might have done, only slightly more Germanic, more fucked up. “We are the adrenal people. We need action.” Too fucking right we do. It’s been a long time, Dave, you really shouldna left us. Just don’t keep us so long in the waiting next time you big ol’ bastard. ///

[Editor’s note: Apologies to Dave Clarke. I’m a big admirer and was a total prick in this review.]

The ‘other bloke’ with Karl Tuff Enuff is El-B. Cheers Deuce mag. ///

Bienvenue, wilkommen, welcome… I’m gonna put loads of reviews up here – albums and singles I buy or get sent. It’ll all be fresh stuff due for imminent release or out in the shops now. You’ll find my preferences tend to be in the electronic, but not exclusively… there is a place for guitars in tufluv’s heart, too. The reasons for doing this vary. Partly because I was having a bit of a dry patch work-wise and have a load of good pomos lying around. Partly out of a disaffection with the music press and a pipe-dream that got stuck in the U-bend of late to start a fanzine… which may still happen, who knows. And also partly because I recently had brought to my attention this whole blog thing and as a die-hard johnny-come-lately decided to get in on the act. You probably won’t find the kind of searingly on-point elucidations and generally clever mumblings you’ll get elsewhere and I’ll get things horribly wrong, but I will try and say what I think about records and maybe some other shit. From me to you, tufluv///

Friday, October 03, 2003

On the right [below] is a very unoriginal list of things (sometimes) worth looking at and people who’s writing I respect, most of whom I’ve just recently discovered and put here in an attempt to bask in reflected glory/make this thing look ‘proper’/look like I actually read The Wire (I just like the pics of old men with beards). In reality I’ve just nicked ’em off a bunch of other people. I don’t know them (well, I know Dave – alright Dave). Have a look anyway and get crunk in the mental. Tuf///

• Playlouder
• Metacritic
• Hyperdub
• Drum & Bass Arena
• Tranzfusion
• RWD magazine
• Big Apple Records
• dubplate.net
• Boomkat
• KIN Records (Junior Boys)
• All Music Guide
• Skrufff
• Rephlex
• Warp
• heronbone
• Blissblog
• Philip Sherburne
• Dave Stelfox
• Skykicking
• NewYorkLondonParisMunich
• Woebot
• Technicolor
• I Feel Love
• K-Punk
• Somedisco
• Gutterbreakz
• Hackneyed Central
• Worlds of Possibility
• Emerald Daze
• Uncarved
• silverdollarcircle
• The Original Soundtrack
• Auspicious Fish
• Crumbling Loaf
• I Love Music
• The Naked Maja
• DJ Martian
• The Demolished Man
• Sasha Frere-Jones
• Die Acid House Die
• Peking O
• A Time For Fear
• Cozen
• Grievous Angel
• Microshore

ALBUMS&COMPS//

LOTEK HI-FI ‘LOTEK HI-FI’ (BIG DADA) 

Like rastamen in snakeskin trousers, Lotek Hi-Fi slink and jive, pass skunk fumes by osmosis, make rootical coversation, soothsay and master vibes over barrelling bass that rolls and ripples low and slow. ‘Voodoo Boogaloo’ ducks its shoulders in time to a rum-soaked organ, dark-alley jazz keys flitting eyes left and right, all with a kind of low-key jiggy, an in-jokey joviality.

They’ve got all the Big Dada trademarks: the reggaefied lilt, the gruff patois, the rootical/cosmic/street sensibility, scoping a Brixton-Kingston-Venus axis with red eyes and a full sack of superweed. Lotek bring a mellowed, slow-matured vibe: oaky, rootsy, dry and airy/dank and fusty in turns. ‘80s digi-skank keyboards squirt vibes on ‘Different Style’, with its talk of “smokey old blues filled with ganja fog”.

For dancefloor thrills check ‘Percolator’ – a broken beat-styled bashment-wriggler of stuttering, highly-sprung beats and ‘Strings of Life’-style staccato stabs, pitched perfectly between Fallacy, Timbaland and Seiji. ‘Inner Storm’, meanwhile, watches sombrely from a window high up in the same towerblock as Massive Attack’s ‘Protection’; a dub pendulum swinging ominously back and forth like a razor-edged watch over the protagonist’s destiny, the image of “the rain falls down on my Rizla” tinged with pathos as a spartan piano makes icey rivulets down the grey glass.

“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?/Who wrote this first, the critic or the dread?” asks ‘Under My Bed’, equally struck with deep-seated London ennui, rhyming: “I make beats on my PCs/Couldn’t give a shitbag, turd or faeces”. For an ‘upbeat’ track, ‘Hey Yeh Yeh’ has a sluggishness that suggests they’re being sarcastic – or maybe just a tad too stoned – although the fug is lifted for the closing ‘See It Coming’; all crystal pianos floating upward like balloons into the sad distance, looking back down on the scorched grey below. At nine tracks they call this a ‘mini’ album, which seems to diminish it as on over-long EP. To my ears it’s just about long enough – check it. ///

*COMPILATION OF THE NOW** FABRICLIVE. 12: BUGZ IN THE ATTIC (FABRIC) 

The Ladbroke Grove broken beat mafia are apparently sore for not getting the attention they feel they warrant. In the main part they’re justified. But as yet, as a ‘movement’ they remain insular and forbidding to newcomers. Is broken beat really that inaccessible? Not on this evidence, with rhythmic shapes so loose it seems all the joints are double – yet, at the same time, controlled – everything grooving around a central pivot.

The perception of broken beat being wildly freestyle and all over the place is misleading. Like early jungle, if your question is ‘How do I dance to it’, the answer’s ‘don’t’. But if you’re in need of help, this here CD should get you into the groove – the best yet in FabricLive’s series of mixes coming from of West London’s mob-handed, multi-hued collective of wired jazzers, ex-junglists and renegade soulboys.

‘Umod’’s ‘Tromboline’ leads us in with a sombre, jazzy stuck-loop slowly forming itself into a crisp, prickly beat; chopped loops and layered samples filling out the groove with oozing colour. One of bb’s critics biggest bones of contention is that the scene is low on ‘tunes’ – as few as two bona fide anthems by many people’s reckoning: the Bugz’ siren-happy remix of 4 Hero’s ‘Hold It Down’ (not here) and Seiji featuring Lyric L’s acidic, hyper-elastic tongue-twister ‘Loose Lips’. The latter is easily one of the most invigorating British dance cuts in years, sandwiched brilliantly here between the darkside garage of Artwork’s voodoo-touched ‘Red’ and Daluq’s ‘Oriental Express’ – both from the Ammunition promotions camp, both keeping it ruff, scuffed and undiluted.

The fusion’s intoxicating; the sound of genres bleeding into one another, borrowing rhythmic tricks and basslines, creating something fresh, dark and deadly. For those of a dubstep persuasion there’s Zed Bias’ sinister ‘Time to Skyank’ as Nu Design – all humid rain-forest atmosphere, polished steel and brutish bass physicality. DKD’s bleep-wrigglin’ ‘Future Rage’, meanwhile, makes like electrified water under a Sun Ra/Funkadelic-style chorus/chant (becoming a recurrent theme with Dego and his 2000 Black label; it’s that afro-futurist malarkey).

Afronaught (Orin Walters) is another who doesn’t mess about with flimsy nu-jazz, sticking a raft of bass under Alison David’s ‘Dream Come True’ augmented by Afrobeat percussion and horns. The Neptunes even get a look in with their remix of Daft Punk’s ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’: the title almost a battle-cry for the Bugz as they fulfil of the above and then some. This is ACID jazz that means it: 21st century jungle boogie and the guerillas are marching. /// 

VARIOUS ARTISTS: CHICKEN LIPS – DJ KICKS (!K7) 

Artist ‘inspiration’ compilations are getting overly abundant and unimaginatively tiresome when they should be surprising, exotic and revealing – like this. Chicken Lips really do seem to have a fantastically varied record collection with a noticeable amount of time and money spent on it. It’s also completely bonkers mad. With a few exceptions they focus in on an esoteric and concentrated time-span (post-punk, post-disco, pre-house early 80s electronic boogie), opening dusty record boxes and unleashing kaleidoscopic shards of dubby experimentalism, lysergic psychedelia and funked-up sensuality.

Take Nina Hagen’s ‘African Reggae’ – a cosmic-roots-disco showdown teleported to the alps, where rastas in lederhosen chant “I want to go to Af-ree-kah” as she yodles like a drunk and horny Heidi. Larry Levan’s mix of Gwen Guthrie’s ‘Seventh Heaven’ is stripped down to just a bassline, a drum machine and the scantest of outer trappings; Colourbox’s ‘Shotgun’ fills a gap between 23 Skidoo’s post-punk dubby wasteland, Arthur Baker’s electro and the house scream-ups of the Hacienda; Carl Craig’s rarely heard mix of the Congos’ ‘Congo Man’ is a liquid-cool song to Jah, whilst Rhythm & Sound’s ‘Music A Fe Rule’ is given only 19 seconds before the camp Kraftwerk/Elvis oddness of Tik n Tok’s ‘Crisis’.

If there’s method to this madness, Francois K is the teacher – so too Arthur Russell, Jellybean Benitez and Shep Pettibone. The Lips live in their own parallel world where early ‘80s NY megamixes are continually on the radio and glitterballs are mandatory fixtures in every living room. I want to go there and dance all weird. ///

Saturday, October 04, 2003

SINGLES **ALL-GIRL SPECIAL!**//

LADY FURY ‘MERK DEM’ (MUSKETEAR RECORDINGS) 

Don’t think you’re way too real/I’ll eat your flow with pace and skill/And don’t think you’re way too ruff/I’ll snatch your heart and drink your blood/’Cos I’m I thug, and I show no love/I spit acid and I melt your dubs…” 

So goes the opening verse of Lady Fury’s ‘Merk Dem’ (gotta love the word ‘merk’, another of these newspeak terms like ‘bare’ that are making old cockney obsolete, keeping the American blingisms at bay and baffling the likes of me).

The ‘Lady’ bit may be dubious but as for ‘Fury’, she’s got it piping out of her ears. With all this talk of vampirism and mutilation, she probably has little horns-buds concealed beneath her hair-do. When she rhymes, gruff and boyishly: “Merk ‘em quick and merk ‘em slow/watch their souls go straight below” it’s more or less a cert that she’s sold her soul to the darkside Lucifer for a mic demeanour to flay skin at fifty paces. Listen up boys: the girls are taking over, and they’re much scarier than you.

Of course, all this could be a put-on: puffed-up bravado necessary in a scene where machismo is the prevailing force and if you don’t have a dick to grab it’s assumed you’re not fit to hold a microphone either. But when Fury issues threats like “I’ll put a plug in your arse… I’ll put your arm in a cast,” don’t think for a second that she won’t follow through with it. An ordinary sublow string’n’bleep bounce at the bottom of it, but Fury’s got sharp teeth and she’s not afraid to use ‘em. ///

ELLEN ALLIEN ‘ALLES SEHEN (REMIXES)’ (BPITCH CONTROL) 

First up are Martini Bros, who stutter the vox, drop a regimental house beat and lay down a bassline as wriggly as Mr Fingers on laughing gas and as undulating as a motorcross course, making the old balls vibrate before a deluxe silky string breakdown makes the second half as smooth and satisfying as slightly-melting ice cream. Safety Scissors strip it down to a live bassline, twangy keyboard noises and toytown bleeps in a kind of Jolly Music style.

But seeing as this is the all-girls’ special, we’d better get onto the B-Side where Ms Allien herself goes for cosy, snowstorm static-loops – slightly prickly in a good way – over beats that are as satisfying as thumping a well-stuffed sofa. And in a match that was always meant to be, Miss Kittin delivers a remix of soft brainwave calm and clouded icicle chords, introducing a deep, moody, resonant bassline that seems to want to build to a dancefloor climax but remains beatless, brooding like an Icelandic winter (or something). Fucking brilliant, it is. No longer is Caroline Herve simply ‘the voice of electroclash’, but a producer of refined, emotional clout. Preconceptions, be gone! ///

DANI SICILIANO ‘WALK THE LINE’ (!K7) 

This has thrown me a little. I expected some faded, gracious ballroom number with a cobwebby Herbert-style backing. But no. No. It’s all mean and wobbly, comic and badass. Like Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots…’, Sugarbabes ‘Train Comes…’ (or whatever it’s called) and possibly something by Peaches or Alison Goldfrapp. “You slipped your tongue out one too many times,” she begins over a drunken quarter-speed d&b; rhythm, as a naughty sub-bassline shudders the floorboards. Sometime Plaid collaborator Mara Carlyle’s Ukulady mix delivers an 1930s-style weeping jazz vocal over a dusty doo-wop lament, dropping in a bit of ukulele (as the title suggests), totally making it her own. And if proof of Siciliano’s nerve is needed, on the B-side we get her cover of Nirvana’s ‘Come as You Are’, done in a whiskey-doused, after-hours jazz style where the band are struggling to remain consciousness and Dani’s slumped at a table simpering bitterly about “memories”. She swears that she “don’t have a gun” but you know it’s really tucked down the back of her skirt as she pouts at you with smudged lipstick with murder on her mind. ///

PATRICIA MARX & 4 HERO ‘SUBMERSO/DONA MUSICA’ (NOVA VIDA)

In slight contrast to the above, Marx’s voice is like a cool offshore breeze, lilting and undulating like currents of air; feminine and graceful but with that grain of Latin earthiness. Marc Mac and Dego (alongside keysman Kaidi Tatham) turn in separate mixes. Mac’s has an extended percussive build-up holding a tight, gyrating rhythm, subtle cowbells and congas bringing a sinew-stetching, capoeira feel before Rhodes and tremulous strings creep in. Normally such sophisticated fare will drift by these ears, but this is neither overdone nor overly coffee-table, with the kind of soulful efficiency that 4 Hero are masters of. Dego’s mix of ‘Dona Musica’ is more ‘grown up’; a duet with Wilson Simoninha that greying Straight No Chaser types will dig. The live mix of ‘Submerso’, though is wicked – it’s a total cliché but you can really feel the sunshine. But I don’t want to start turn into jazz bore just yet so I’ll move onto… ///

GINA X ‘NO G.D.M. (REMIXES)’ (INTERNATIONAL DEEJAY GIGOLOS)

…which is a really old electro-cabaret-no-wave classic from 1981. I know little of Gina X except that she was a dominatrix German type and Weatherall’s a big fan, so this is new to me. It’s come at the right time, trendyness-wise, sounding like a warmed-up Kraftwerk with a Bowie-style melodicism (and I’m not just saying that because Gigolo are now using his image on their promo labels), all fuzzy chords over a steady lapdance grind, going off on little synth and vocoder tangents. The lyrics, about ‘great dark men’, ‘red-haired queers’ and lesbians, are dripping with the dark degeneracy and sly, camp humour that you might expect. That it’s also on the new Nag Nag Nag compilation should come as no surprise. That – having already revived the memory of Lydia Lunch and Tuxedomoon – it’s taken so long for Hell to put this out should, it being one of the most apparent influences on the Gigolo aesthetic (which is much more about the subversive, marginalised dark-zones of pop as is the obvious Sex Pistols-80s synth-pop axis that journalists always mention). The Psychonauts and Headman both provide predictable and disappointing dubby-disco interpretations, whilst the 1992 Cat O’ Nine tails mix is a squall of nasty Goth-metal guitars throwing up images of club scenes from films like Terminator – all pseudo-bondage types in leather caps and Bauhaus clones flapping their frilly sleeves in the air. ///

AMY WINEHOUSE ‘STRONGER THAN ME’ (UNIVERSAL) 

I’ve been sent about three copies of this for some reason so I suppose I oughta listen to it. Amy’s the British Nelly Furtado, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Good, ‘idiosyncratic’ voice – if increasingly annoying – and a bit of a nothing of a song, although it does include the intriguing line, “feel like a lady and you’re my lady boy”. There’s a pop-dancehall remix, too, which is somehow a bit sinister. Knocked out by Siciliano in the first round… ///

[Editor’s note: How wrong and stupid was I? RIP Amy x]

SINGLES// 

OXIA ‘A SPECIAL E.P.’ (GOODLIFE/PIAS) 

The Hacker’s lesser-known label partner, Olivier Raymond, makes techno tracks like meteors entering the atmosphere – gathering intensity, burning brilliant white before impact. What sets him apart is his fondness for massive fuck-off synth-lines: swathes of sound like beams of solid light that emerge from the dark heart of his grooves, smother it in glory then take off somewhere into the stars. ‘Return’ lives up to the reputation, resplendent in gilt-edged chords, luxurious and layered over a hard, adrenalised beat – like a midway-point between the slow-evolving melancholic symphonies of DJ Rolando and a highly-concentrated epic house. Actually, this is pretty much trance if you cut the crap… and, well, hooray for that! With an album on the way the current movement (if you could call it that) of high-drama, boredom-destroying,girl-friendly French techno can only get stronger. (Afterthought: What this man could do with a decent pop song…) ///

JEHST ‘RUN HARD/HISTORY’ (LOW LIFE RECORDS)

And from the galaxies, to the sewers… Jehst’s return in the shape of ‘Run Hard’ wades with a candle through the murk, skin-crawling noises like animals in the dark meeting the spatial edginess of ESG’s ‘UFO’. Surrounded on all sides by swampy bass, it sounds dirty an self-disgusted. Jehst’s flow is a pacy vagabond’s rant; the wisdom of a weather-worn bench-dweller, albeit one in baggy jeans. ‘History’ sinks deep into an opium haze; thick and fragrent, clashing eastern symbols and Indian drones: a dark Aladdin’s den of mahogany artifacts and oriental ephemera where the poet in the corner is mumbling alone and unheard. Who knows what it’s about? It’s maybe enough to assume that it’s something about despondancy and self-doubt and being lost in daydreams without having to take in all the words. Little wonder they call him the High Plains Drifter – he’s lost in his own little world. ///

VENETIAN SNARES ‘EINSTEIN-ROSEN BRIDGE’ (PLANET MU)

Three minutes and I’ve nearly gone stir-fucking-crazy with all this hectic insanity. Zombie toys with machetes go on a frenzied blade attack in a drum shop. On speed!! If a you’re of a cassical/musical bent, keeping 7/8 time probably isn’t much of a problem, but hearing Venetian Snares for the first time is an utter, utter headfuck. You have to work it out in your mind, finding the recurring points and assembling them together into a coherent pattern. Gradually it begins to make sense; you’ve got the groove. After that it all seems perfectly right and natural. Naturally insane. If the time signature weren’t enough you’ve got cartoon jungle-tekno raggamuffins brawling with a marching band of Duracel bunny-drummers and lunatic 1950s kids’ TV show voices chanting maniacally: “It’s about time/It’s about space/A lot of strange people in the strangest place”. So this is how feels to be demented! On the other side, the comic mind-melt is replaced by no-less schizoid beats that lunge into Miami bass terrain, low-riding subs and snatches of beat-boxing sprinkled with soft wind-chimey melodies like due on a spider’s web. Is it comforting to know that inside some people’s heads these sounds make perfect sense? As long as they’re not left unsupervised with powertools, yes. Will I ever listen to it again? Actually, I might. ///

Monday, October 06, 2003

Fuc me, people actually seem to be reading this. Thanks Simon and others for cheking tufluv on your blogs – not even a week yet and the peeps are showing me luv like I was Robyn S. Welcome the new dawn of the bored ignoramus: victory will be ours. This week Tuf will be mostly reviewing painfully self-important records by anally-retentive wiggas from Canada and the new one by Ultrabeat. Look out for: Psychonauts, Nag Nag Nag, Alias, Einoma, Sascha Funke, H-Foundation, Adam F & DJ Fresh, Foremost Poets, Clones, Minotaur Shock, Four Tet, James Holden, Underworld, Roy Ayers, Aesop Rock, Zoot Woman, Nicky Blackmarket, Her Space Holiday, Kamerakino, Matmos, I:Cube and anything else that I can waste a few hours on. But that’s not a promise. Hang tuf!///

I think I ought to re-iterate just how good Miss Kittin’s remix of Ellen Allien is. It’s the first remix/production she’s done without the aid of a co-producer – not that it’s a case of chauvinistically saying “Wow, she’s done that all on her lonesome”, but just because it’s totally not what you might expect. Virtually disregarding the original she’s created something between Mum and John Beltran circa ‘Earth and Nightfall’; fragile ambience that’s gauzy and dreamy yet dramatic. It’s not revolutionary in itself, but whether she’s consciously distancing herself from the assumption that she’s some simpering Euro-vamp who only appears on other peoples’ electro records or not, it’s a gorgeous piece of music and an indication of what lies beneath. Look out for it. In fact, the whole package is great. Proper Girl Power. ///

Just to show that I only do my research after I’ve written something…

Dance Conspiracy – Dub War

Written By Sponge / DJ Pulse / Stretch
Produced By Sponge / DJ Pulse / Stretch
© XL Recordings 1992
Originally on Metamorphosis, when re-released on XL this tune finally got the full backing it deserved. Kicks off with a slowed down Sax solo sampled from a Public Enemy tune before moving into a mass of girly vocals, strings and cut up drum loops. Remixed again in ’94 and released as “War For ’94” by Badman unfortunately minus the vibe of the original. Currently the most expensive 12″ I have bought thanks to only buying it on CD when it originally came out.

http://www.backtotheoldskool.co.uk/dub_war.htm

COMPILATION// 

AUDIO BULLYS: BACK TO MINE (DMC) 

Like I was saying about the Chicken Lips mix, this type of compilation is getting increasingly frequent and decreasingly imaginative. There are now probably about six or seven different titles based around the same idea, some artists having compiled more than one. and each time you feel you’re learning less and less aout the people involved and their own personal musical worlds.

Now, upon receiving this latest one from concept originators DMC (merely weeks, it seems, after ones from Underworld, Ian Brown and Tricky) I scanned the tracklist and it all seemed fairly predictable – like Simon and Tom Audio Bully had waded back through all the interviews they’d done in the past year and highlighted all the reference points mentioned by journalists (Madness, The Specials, speed garage, etc). It began to seem a futile exercise, all pretty shallow and with no surprise inclusions that made you think “So, they like that?!” (I mean, everyone likes the Beach Boys and Marvin Gaye, don’t they?)…

But playin it struck me that it could’ve, with a few alterations, been compiled by me. I mean, last time I read something abot them, the Audio Bullys were 22 and 24 (though being pedantic, they could now be 23 and 25). I’m currently 24, at which age I feel both old and at the same time too young to be feeling so old.

Until now most of these compilations have come from people older than me – people in their mid-late thirties who’ve been around a bit. And, generally speaking, you’re more interested in the musical tastes of people older than yourself (I mean, are you interested in hearing a CD of S Club 8’s ‘influences’?). It’s like digging around in your older siblings’/parents’ record collections – a bit of wisdom to rub off on yourself, records passed down the lineage like folk tales.

So this is the first ‘inspirations’-style comp that’s actually included tracks that are resonant for me personally. Which causes a few problems. The tracklisting struck me as obvious when I read it. Now, let’s eliminate the main suspects: (Madness ‘My Girl’, The Specials’ ‘Blank Expression’, for some reason two songs by the Stranglers, ‘Peaches’ and ‘Golden Brown’, Marvin Gaye’s ‘Mercy Mercy Me’ and the Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’). We can also get rid of others like the Kinks’ ‘All Day and All of the Night’ and Squeeze’s ‘Up the Junction’; both of which I love but have blatantly been selected to emphasise the quintessential English lad-ishness of the Bullys who, we’re told, follow in the great tradition of suburban whiteboy chancers infatuated with black US music, etc, etc.

Of the remaining tracks we’re left with bits of music that trace the evolution of my own tastes through mixtapes, friends, early musical purchases and clubs. I find that at least I’m not the only person for whom the Prodigy’s ‘Out of Space’ was a life-changing moment. I have sometimes wondered whether I’m a bit shallow in that rave music, with all its connotations of white gloves, Vicks and whistles was what got me ‘into’ music (which I hadn’t been bothered about at all pre-puberty) rather than the soul-scarred humanity of grunge, or even hip-hop’s ‘realness’ and intensity.

Equally important are tracks like Wildchild’s ‘Renegade Master’, that got me ‘into’ house music, or Dee Patten’s ‘Who the Bad Man’, that first confused me about genre specifications (was it house, was it hardcore?). But most importantly, Dance Conspiracy’s ‘Dub War’, which if you don’t know it is an amazing hardcore track from around 1992 that uses the same saxophone sample as Public Enemy’s ‘Show Em Whatcha Got’ over a fuck-off breakbeat and a dubwise bassline with an enormous hands -in-the-air, girl-vocal breakdown that I never considered for a second to be ‘cheesy’. I was 14, it was euphoric… and no, I wasn’t doing pills. It was on all my favourite tapes at the time – Ellis Dee, Mickey Finn, Jumpin’ Jack Frost – and it was probably another year or two before I found out what is was called (I still haven’t found it on vinyl, and if anyone could tell me who it’s by I would be most grateful).

Because that meant more to me in my adolescence than Love, or Stevie Wonder or Carl Craig, does that make me a shallow person? Do I have the right to be writing about music, as if I actually ‘know’ stuff? I don’t know if it matters. I spoke to an ex-colleague the other night who’s 31 or 32 and has lived his whole adult life in thrall to acid house. I told him I was 9 in 1988, at which he looked genuinely disturbed and seemed to shun me for a bit. When I realise I’ve spent a considerable amount of time and money in looking for the records he was dancing to when he was 16 or 17 I have to wonder why, and whether younger people will care about BBE’s ‘Seven Days and One Week’ when I’m 32. But perhaps nostalgia is a complete waste of time after all.///

Thursday, October 09, 2003

ALBUMS//

SASCHA FUNKE ‘BRAVE’ (BPITCH CONTROL) 

A tight sense of flux. A love-struck heart. The wide-eyed fear of a child. The tenderness of a touch. The bloodrush of arousal. The increasing pulse. The groin-centric throb brought on by the gentle tug-tugging of dance/sex temptation.

So it goes with east Berlin’s Sascha Funke, whose music is dipped in sugared romance and pastel-coloured melancholy, set to a disco groove oiled with love. It’s clean-lined and scientific but with layered depth and a feel of restraint where the emotion might burst out unceremoniously like a held-back laugh or torrent of melodramatic tears.

Simplicity, electricity and emotion are the building blocks: it’s like a rudimentary, economical means have been employed through which to channel feelings that run deep – like a symphony composed on a stylophone or a masterpiece attempted with crayons: childlike and plastic yet no less inscrutably and mesmerisingly human.

The bittersweet ‘Forms and Shapes’ could ostensibly be a lovesong to polygons (mmm, rhombus, I love you), Fritz Kalkbrenner’s faltering, inelegant voice forming enigmatic half-lyrics that dissolve into the watery chord-drift – melodic like perfumed smoke stinging your eyes – riding a bullfrog-croak bassline and chunky electronic house groove, it wants to put you to bed with sweet dreams of geometric loving.

‘Strassentanz’ is a gentle, tender epic of tiny coloured lights flashing on/off in sequence with the melody, raspy organs rising and falling, overlapping, (s)welling up with heart-burnt emotion, tingling and sensitive, parping for joy like a little toy-town orchestra.

With ‘Now You Know’ the Fisher Price tinky-tonk synthetic melodix play at being grown-up cello and harpsichord; a gorgeous sad-and-happy song with no words until the final few seconds where Kalkbrenner’s naked-sounding, near-breaking voice suggests a case of unrequited love.

On ‘I Just Can’t Wait’, the clunky house beats are like clockwork cogs turning into place. On the Detroity ‘Saso’, the groove is supple and sinuous, stretching out and piping softly-lit chords. Whilst this is maybe the prettiest 4/4 album you could hear without it falling into that abyss of nothingness that is deep house, there is a dark flipside: the muscle-clenched techno throb of the title-track that nudges into trance territory, the cold, Warp-ish edge of ‘Twingo’.

‘Quiet Please’, meanwhile, is a swimming, Luomo-style hypno-groove; cloudy and trippy with Funke’s own voice not unlike Bernard Sumner cooing “I wanna… tock to you” menacingly down the phone at a stalking victim, whilst the blippy ‘Semi’ keeps the mood shadowy and seductive; chord patterns criss-crossing one another, everything paring down slowly to an ambient pause until the whole thing kicks into action again, shaking away the sleep.

Where Teutonic functionality, basic house naïvete and the melodic sensitivity of the classiest synth-pop collide, there is Sascha Funke, making honest, vulnerable, confused, gutsy paeans to anglepoise lamps and shoelaces and goldfish to dance to in your own private fantasy. Cynicism be damned. ///

TUFLUV MEDIA RAM-RAID!///

US hip-hop bloke Peanut Butter Wolf on broken beats (Touch magazine): “Hearing the music on a booming soundsystem at places like Co-Op was unlike anything else we’ve experienced in recent memory. The DJ Rels album* was made in the US, but it’s kind of a tribute to what we heard when we went to London. Kinda like when Quincy Jones went to Brazil in the 1950s and was blown away by the music and incorporated it into his own.”
(*PBW’s Stones Throw associate, Madlib, has recorded a broken beat album under the name DJ Rels)

Madlib on broken beats (Jockey Slut): “… [it’s] soulful, diff’rent, weird programmes on the drums, like some advanced Herbie Hancock…” (Madlib has also recorded a house album: “That shit’s easy”)

Dave Clarke on techno (DJmag): “I got into house music because it was funky, I got into techno because it was funky in a leftfield way and because the music was predomiantly black. I miss that there’s no blackness in the scene any more. Techno has become too white, too sanitised. I wanted to get the jacking feeling back in, get the girls’ hips moving and my hips moving, too.”

Deuce magazine on techno (in response to a German readers’ enquiry as to why the don’t cover it): “Techno? Techno! Erm, this is anurban music mag (garage, hip-hop, r&b;). Deuce despises techno and would like you to have a free subscription to help you understand why.”

Kelis on rock and ‘urban’ (Touch): “I think rock is black music that was taken from us and urban to me just means city, so I don’t used that word when referring to myself or my people’s music. I’m an artist point blank, I make music, I love music, I am black, very black.”

Luke Vibert @ Plastic People last night: Acid slo-jamz, sub-bass knee tremblers, box-jacking sanity bending and a hefty wodge of hyperspastic, lung-crushing, throat-grabbing, limb-jerking, mind-imploding ’93 breakbeat science for the never-say-die jungle tekno crew. The thrill of coming inches/decibels aware from blowing out an ear drum. The body-brain short-circuit of remebering how you do actually dance to pre-steppa jungle (it IS all over the place; an exploded sound, not regimented rhythm-lockdown for ‘soldiers’). ‘I Luv Acid’ = Jean-Jacque Perrey-meets-Phuture/the equivalent of a radioactive lava-lamp on meltdown. Could this be stoner-acid? A healthy night all-round, but maybe London needs to learn how to jack again?///

Friday, October 10, 2003

ALBUMS//

MINOTAUR SHOCK ‘RINSE’ (MELODIC)

What is with this certain type of bedroom boffin that makes them so resistant to growing up? It’s there in music by Pilote, Lucky Pierre, Minotaur Shock and others, where the melodies are those of childhood memory – music boxes, nursery rhymes, lullabies – but what makes the best of it compelling listening rather than sentimental chill-out rubbish (see Lemon Jelly for that) is where the comfort-zone is invaded by darker, threatening forces: dark, oppressive basslines, confused, broken up rhythms and discomfitting sounds at every turn; the refuge in innocence haunted by the frightening realities of the adult world.

Here, the toddlerish clumsiness of some of the ynt [?] and beat patterns belies a refined sensitivity: the naïve and the complex cohabiting in harmony, jaunty and melancholy by turns. On the opening ‘46 Tops’ a cascading jazz jam of hungry drums chomp out a groove, the melodies all smoke-rings and ice-water. ‘Let Me Out’ has a ghostly, mournful breaking-down cello sighing and huffing a big, empty room. ‘Albert Park Music’ is a sad rainshower lament, piano drawing patterns on a misted window pane. In contrast ‘Don’t be a Slave…’ and ‘Motoring Britain’ revel in galloping, chopped-up drum breaks, dissected rap samples, rolling rhythms interspersed with plaintive yet uplifting guitar like sunbeams through parting clouds. It could only be because it’s autumn that this feels right, right now. ///

VILLALOBOS ‘ALCACHOFA’ (PLAYHOUSE)

Any genrefication of music is repressive: imposes straitjackets, tramlines for others to slavishly fall into until the template wears out and we call for another. We see it all the time, moan about it all the time, it generally goes without saying.

It’s great, then, to have Ricardo Villalobos giving us (in a very generous sense) an album that wriggles free of the lassoes of the genre-rustlers and escapes the nimble filing-fingers of the Orwellian pigeonhole fascists. Not because it’s ‘eclectic’, but because it’s just what it is.

If you’ve had enough of the Tundric drift of Force Inc/Kompact/Trapez microhouse, then you should really get your teeth into the fulsome, meaty flesh of this. The name means artichoke (in Spanish, I presume), the bizarre plant-cum-foodstuff being a perfect metaphor for the music (or vice versa), which is lush green stuff, pulsing with life and vivacity, intoxicating, melifluous and full of strange, fruity flavour. All gristly beats, hypnotic singing vocoders and dense, bass-heavy layers pulling you under with a head-swimmingly amaesthetic undertow before hitting you up with such flushed, swoonsome melodies as ‘Dexter’, like Bola underpinned by a spritzy four-to-the-floor.

Senor Villalobos will be a regular visitor to Fabric next year, which is at least one reason to anticpate 2004 like a salivating fool. ///

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Don’t think that I’m proselytising on behalf of broken beat – for some reason I’m still reluctant to do that for fear that it might not live up to the promise. Its shapeshifting vibe is definitely one of the big appeals – not least the lack of a regimented rhythm stated there in the name (the best anyone’s come up with), meaning it can be what you want it to be, within reason – but also that it doesn’t really know what it is itself. From the get-go it has always set itself up as almost militantly insular, and ‘insiders” network, although perhaps this is a misgiving on my part and that of the wider media (I have still yet to go to Co-Op after 2 or 3 years of mming and ahhing and not finding many takers, though now it’s at Plastic People I suspect I will go down and give myself a bit of bodysonic treatment – good for what ails ya).

The times i have danced to it are when it was mixed in with other things (namely deep US house; Theo Parrish, Masters at Work) but I liked what I did to me – provoking a kind of loose sexy groove with a central grind; the black, sexual essence, if you’ll forgive me – which is there in all good dance music from house to drum & bass. You’re not simply flailing like a rubber-limbed loon or ‘jazz’ dancing or getting all avant garde on the good foot, but it’s certainly well, loose. I suppose that’s the key word… or perhaps the conflict of loose and tight hat forms the dynamic, hmmm…

Anyway, while we’re on the subject, I’m kinda choosy with it too – not keen on anything that reeks to much of ‘nu-jazz’, being a staunch, unreconstructed noodlephobe, as is only healthy, so I’m not altogether keen on the continental, Composty side of things. The afro-futurist angle, too, is a tad suspicious. I don’t know what Kodwo Eshun make of the scene, but it would seem that most of that Ladbroke Grove/Dollis Hill contingent (IG Culture, 4 Hero, Kaidi Tatham, Domu, Seiji etc) have probaly read More Brilliant Than The Sun and taken its themes on board – last year’s ‘Blacktronica’ tour by Attica Blues & Co would certainly suggest so, if you read some of the blurb on their website.

I kinda like the stuff that’s dark and acidy with flecks of Detroit melody and jungle sub-bass and sounds like a new sound inventing itself as it goes along; evolution in motion. The most obvious ‘soul’ references too – to Rotary Connection, Funkadelic, Sun Ra, etc – kind of tickle me when bled into with this dark liquid flux… the best music being about motion and movement and soul, it begins to make sense. And as for suggesting it goes down a 2-step path, that’s not what I’m suggesting at all, merely that it sounds great when Artwerk’s Red is mixed into Seiji’s Loose Lips into Zed Bias, when tracks would appear to be taken out of their immediate contect and put adjacent to something different – not a very extreme example here, but I’d love to hear a few acid jack tracks, some Transmat or Wiley thrown amidst some 2000 Black or Bugz in the Attic remixes, some real creative jaxtaposition at work. They’re probably already doing it. Been doing it for years. I should probably get down there… might be missing the boat as fucking usual! ///

Friday, October 17, 2003

ALBUM//

TWO LONE SWORDSMEN ‘PEPPERED WITH SPASTIC MAGIC’ (ROTTERS GOLF CLUB)

If you believe what you hear, the Two Lone Swordsmen spend hours in a daylight-less fug of genetically hyper-modified skunk smoke – red-eyed, choking and yellow of skin, ratcheting and cranking their behemoth-sized machines in a Frankenstein’s lab-style Cold War bunker a mile below the streets of London’s East End, where lightening conductors power giant analogue funk generators that angrily spit and shower blue sparks as offensive bass frequencies are physically wrenched from their innards with spanners, welders’ masks are donned and ingenious rhythmic frameworks are hewn from crude iron and scrap before being brought to life with devilish belly laughs that rumble and crack the pavements above. Some bring their dead there; Texas, Starsailor, Stereo MCs – their festering carcasses imbued with radiation, mutated via dark, scientific practices whose secrets lie in the lock-bound leather tomes of the Chairman’s book case, defibrillators applied as a charge of volts tapped from subterranean power cables is applied, sending a power surge through the city that blows out street lights and neon signs. “It’s a-liiiiiiive!” roars the Radioactive Man, his green-glowing flesh distorted in a rictus of wicked satisfaction, before wringing his hands on an oily rag and sparking a post-coital blunt.

With their distinctly Victorian brand of antique futurism, crackly 1920s sci-fi, spoof chivalry and ultra-secret gentlemen’s smoking clubs, the self-mythologising Swordsmen have created an aura of obscurity that’s barely necessary if you let yourself venture into the murky caves of their sonic fantasy world. Without such wickedly tongue-in-cheek yarns you’d spin the same kind of images yourself. Andrew Weatherall; the brickie turned inspirational fusioneer of a generation, the man who remade Primal Scream in the image of ecstasy. Keith Tenniswood; the squat-scene raver turned lab boffin extraordinaire. Two ordinary-but extraordinary blokes whose shared love of proper electro, Krautrock, PiL, twisted disco, dub voodoo, rare herbs and amateur chemistry has not only turned out a string of fascinating, perplexing and perversely funky albums but a constant flow of remixes that have taken the grease-monkey ethic of rip-it-all-out-and-start-again and applied it with the bloody artistry of a surgeon, turning out a bundle of floor-cracking electro club bombs, created scarred beauty out of anodyne pop fodder and demonstrated that, while you can’t polish a turd, you can smear it against a wall and call it art. Peppered with spastic magic, one and all.

St. Etienne’s ‘Heart Failed’ pulses with liquid electricity, the beat a shuffle of sandpaper and metallic parts, an airy vapour of melody coursing slowly through it. Starsailor’s ‘Good Souls’ slopes along on a battle-wounded hip-hop beat, lugging a Jah Wobble-style bassline through the mud with it, the only hint of vocal clattering around dub style like a lunatic in a padded cell – any traces of the soppy indie drivel of the original have been either obliterated or corrupted and corroded with acid. Primal Scream’s ‘Stuka’ is given an old-school electro backbone, albeit one pecked at by vultures, Morse code blips and 808 snares beating out a dry, merciless funk as a bass growls hungrily and Bobby Gillespie’s voice is put through a grate-y vocoder, whiplashing laser synths making out a strange eastern disco lament before it descends into dry-bones dub, a female vocal coiling mournfully through the reverb.

A ten-minute indulgence on a band with such a close personal connection you could understand, someone like Texas you’d expect to be given a quick once over before taking the money. Not so, the Electric 4 Bird mix goes at it with the same wilful artistry, Charlene Spiteri’s vocal reduced to a slathering groan as sweet melodies whisp around snappy beats and sharply scalpeled edits. Away from the elctro/machine-funk theme, Calexico’s ‘Untitled 3’ is made a desert death crawl, a painfully slow rattlesnake hip-hop beat baked in the sun, a desolate ghost-town haunted by the spectres of dead banditos. On the flipside, Slam’s ‘Visions’ is remodelled into a fizz-popping nugget of prime electro funk, precision-lathed beats and rasping synths cavorting playfully in one of the best dance remixes of the last year and a half. As the hip-cats continue to slavishly drop the DFA’s name into any old article or conversation, it’s apparent that they’re still a tin-pot operation compared to the flashing sabres and tarnished genius of the mighty Swordsmen. Spazz on, you rotters. ///
(This isn’t out till December, but I couldn’t help it…)

Saturday, October 25, 2003

I love strawberry smoke. LOVE IT!

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

7 INCHES OF TUFLUV//

UNKNOWN ‘HIDDEN LIBRAY 002’ (HIDDEN LIBRARY

Unknown my arse – this is the work of TLS on their until-now cloak and dagger Hidden Library label, the premise of which being that you could only buy its releases via a Sherlock Holmes-style hidden passage-way located on the Bi-Wire (Weatherall-affiliated online record store) website.

Limited to 500 copies these are desirable items on a cult/collector level before even getting to the music; beyond that it’s above-average fare if a little sketchy. More reminiscent of their deeper TLS album material than their oft-brutalistic RGC ‘machine funk’, the untitled A-side rides a skipping, almost broken beat-style rhythm, augmented by those familiarly coruscated FX, like wind rattling through an industrial air duct, a lukewarm, sombre edginess tingeing the brittle beats, making the rigidity of it buckle a little.

The other side is a claustrophobic hip-hop affair redolent of murky attics – any indications as to how Tenniswood and Weatherall might apply themselves to a hip-hop project never fully emerging. For some reason, however, TLS unwieldy sonic girth with its slashed ribbons of decayed emotion doesn’t lend itself well to the flimsy 7” format, but worth checking if you’ve got the inclination and swiftness of feet. ///

SHADOW HUNTAZ ‘THIS AIN’T WHERE IT’S AT’ (SKAM)

Indie hip-hop very rarely grabs me by the vitals but this is tugging on something. Weighing in with a grandiose Bruce Lee-meets-his-arch-nemesis-style string intro, the beats have the dazzling quality of whirling nunchucks, lulling you into a confused daze before the king cobra kill. The rhymesayers, meanwhile, sound like jaundiced lowlife skulking and conspiring in a rubbish-strew US alley. ‘Razbar’ has the desolate industrial/post-apocalyptic atmosphere of 23 Skidoo’s dub-funk battlefield, the beats that there are scampering around like crippled dogs sniffing for bones in the dark (or something). ‘Stay True’ is much lighter, however, a post-cloudburst mind-trip with sweetly corroded keys. ///

TUFLUV’S FULL 12 INCHES//

JOHN TEJADA ‘WESTERN STARLAND’ (PALETTE)

A nice touch indicating his fondness for both garage and drum & bass, Tejada’s ‘VIP mix’ strikes a chord somewhere between Todd Edwards and Stacey Pullen, with a sinuous yet smooth house groove that keeps the bottom end bumping and soulful insertions of string/synths creating a playful Todd/Akufen vibe (with a Detroit rather than New Jersey leaning) and little one-second pauses that make you hold your breath before it all bumps back in. Play this alongside the new Tuff Jam/Qualifide 4/4 garage joints and it’ll work like a charm. //

MARTIN JARL VS GUS GUS ‘MOONSTRUCK’ (RESOPAL)

The Gus Gus remix here is a gem; future acid that’s sparks at the touch. A sizzling acidic bass riff buzzes along with enough hints of 303 without veering into Josh Wink dentist-drill mode whilst the drums are lively and restless with late-80s-style percussion driving the temperature up. It gets increasingly frenetic with dark fuzz-bass surges pulsing away as tribal toms beat out an old-school tattoo. It cumulates in a decidedly trancey, melancholy chord line that subsides after several bars. I like this tune a lot. ///

SUBTONAL VS FRESH MOODS ‘SEMITONES IN DARKNESS’ (MIKROLUX)

Fluid electro-funk with a haunting, heavily-reverbed Middle-Eastern female vocal somewhere between a belly-dancer’s siren song and Muslim call to prayer floating eerily above sparky laser-zaps, Space Invaderz fx and pulsing acidy bleeps. Brilliantly sounds like something both John Digweed and Dave Clarke might play, and its not often you could say that nowadays. Deep like the Dead Sea. ///

THE YOUNGSTERS ‘CONFIDENTIAL MUSIC VOL.3’ (F-COM)

‘These In My Arms’ on the B-side begins with an angular refrain like 808 State’s ‘Cubik’ or LFO’s ‘Probe’ before a conga-ripping thump brings us right back into galloping Gallic Youngsters territory. One of their raviest cuts yet, reverse synth riffs slicing through the air like kung-fu chop hands performing some abstract dance, a European voice repeating the cryptic title. The riff is chopped up, whirs like a propellor then the track slams back in, the cheeky use of Pacific State-style bird of paradise calls bringing flashbacks rushing to the mind’s eye. The French, it would seem, know the score. ///

MEEKS & BONDURANT ‘AUTISM READING EP’ (CHATEAUROUGE)

Four snap-popping Parisian grooves. Like John Tejada, the A1 cut takes the cut-up sample approach of early ‘90s US garage and weld it to a techno bodykit as termulous male soul-voice seems to yield under the funk-thump of the groove, building with flashlight stabs and deep-throated vocal inserts. The B-side is strictly back to the Warehouse; Chi-town given a Metro Area boogie swing, becoming increasingly acid-fried until a deep electro-bass breakdown with the sounds Godzilla-movie screams and madening repetitive vocal samples. ///

CARL CRAIG ‘TRES DEMENTED’ (PLANET E)

Like the illegitimate offspring of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (God knows he had a few) and Sleezy D, this is tribal voodoo techno of the highest, strangest calibre that sees Craig revisit the bizarre vocal acrobatics of Paperclip People’s ‘Throw’. But whereas with ‘Throw’ he was playing the role of histrionic gospel diva/drag-queen screaming like an black castrato about a “good man” and throwing your hands in the air in sexual/religious fervour, here he’s the witchdoctor; a bone-shaking shaman stomping the ground, thrusting his groin and salivating madly in trance-like delirium as he lets out a series of animalistic squawks, shrieks, howls, groans over layer upon layer of rollicking tribalistic drums, sky-strafing synth flares and funky, guitar-like bleep patterns. It’s The Funk distilled to a pungent, narcortic elixir, inciting wild aggressive sex on the dancefloor. Three acidy bonus beat tracks reaffirm Craig as a class-A trackmaster as well as an artist of subtle melodic nuance. ///

LUCIANO & QUENUM ‘ORANGE MISTAKE’ (KOMPAKT)

A trippy, characterless bass pulse drives an urbane groove deceptively before a ravey, descending glissando ripples through it, continuously chopped and edited as wobble-board effects bring a queasy, sea-sick funk, bubbling like brightly coloured molten plastic in a pan, splattering over the sides. White gloves seemingly go with tailored business suits down in Koln, where the DJs look like architects (and often are), but know how to ‘ave it nevertheless. ///

ENVOY ‘NIGHT MOVES’ (SOMA)

Wicked soulful re-make of the late-80s Rickster track from dreadlocked vocalist/producer stalwart Hope Grant, rolling out a big old 303 line like an uncoiled anaconda and a slightly cliched (but wonderful) starry eyed breakdown, wherein Grant’s vocal skills are plainly evident, working brilliantly with the kinetic surge of the track to spine-tingling effect. Unabashed revivalism well done with bang-up-to-date production. Are the pills getting better these days? ///

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

LEMON D Q&A

This is the raw transcript of an interview I did with Kevin King aka Lemon D last week for a somewhat niche magazine. The original idea for Tufluv being reviews, I’m not altogether that it works to post interviews here. But until a print or web format becomes a reality you may be able to expect intermittent Q&As, like this one…

Tufluv: Has your sound system become your mission?
Lemon D: It kind of was, but I think the main part at the moment is getting our residency (Big Bad Bass) up and running so there’s a base for people in London, because we’ve done the whole country over the last couple of years but we haven’t had a London thing for a little while and I think it’d be nice to come back and do something at home. So, we’re concentrating on promoting that and we’re working on a new album which has nothing to do with the dancefloor whatsoever, it’s us making what we wanna make, an experimental album – downtempo, hip-hop beats, the whole thing.

Where’s the residency?
Studio 33 in (Vauxhall) London. It’s a nice little club and what we do there, we’ve got two rooms and one month we have completely different music in the other room, so one month we’ve got pirate radio DJs and the next month Skitz and Rodney P and some hip-hop guys and then the next month we’ve got maybe breaks producers and DJs. We’re changing it each month and what we’re also going to have is like up-and-coming DJs and stuff and we’re gonna give them regular spots down there – all they’ve got to do is just basically send a tape in and then we’re bringing through new talent down there as well.

How hard is it for new talent to break through right now?
It’s really hard at the moment and we just want to bring people through, because we know that we’ve got something associated with what we do now – like a name-brand sort of thing – so if we can bring through new talent, new DJs and new producers; it makes their job easier, it makes hope for them, really, because in this scene, like any other scene, you’ve got work cut out for you. And it’s harder just to be a DJ and not a producer, so what we’re going to do is give them the chance (to produce), because it’s needed out there, that new talent coming through.

Is the drum & bass scene open to new talent?
Yeah, I think it is, yeah. I think anything that’s new, anything being brought to the table and you think ‘Oh, yeah’… And it’s better for us now because it’s like these kids have grown up on… whereas as when I was growing up it was hardcore music, they’re coming from drum and bass, like ’94 to ’96, and it’d be interesting to see what their take is on the music now. That’s why I want to bring them through, because a lot of people just don’t see the big picture, they just see it from their point of view, they don’t realise that there’s like loads and loads of musical kids out there, people that have got their own take on the scene and the music, and we need that.

Is it a lot different now to when you started out?
Yeah, everything’s different now. Even when you go to a record shop, you don’t get people, like, on it, coming to buy (all different kinds of) records. People are very particular. It’s like in drum & bass, or whatever, you’ve got people that are following, that are like sheep; they’re not really doing what they want to do because the dancefloor dictates what’s going on, the DJ dictates what’s going, so there’s no freedom. It’s completely changed.

How was it for you trying to come through?
It was hard; it was hard, but I still got gigs and I played on pirate radio stations and stuff. Then, it was very hard to get in but if you did have a bit of talent people would still notice you, you just did your own thing, really. But now it’s like, if you don’t make one big tune you ain’t getting through.

How did you get your break?
I just tried to work on doing beats and doing things a different way from other people. Like, if I was doing an ‘Amen’ tune, I’d just cut the ‘Amen’ up as much as I could cut it up.

So, you think it’s about finding your own style and being different from other people?
Totally, yeah. It’s needed, man. I get millions of tapes sent to me… CDs. We’ve just signed up three new acts and what (attracted us) is that they’ve got their own little styles and that’s what we’re looking for. We’re not looking for people that wanna sound like a Valve-sounding tune – it’s gotta be their own sound.

What was your experience of working with R&S like?
Well, that was alright but it was just hard because they were in another country. They gave me complete freedom, so that was good. They folded, so there was no album, but with other labels and stuff it’s very straightforward. What they did was just put the track out, we never did any mass marketing or stuff like that, like your Vs and Prototypes, it was just put out, it was simple, there wasn’t any big pressure. They were just like mates, really, it was like working with a friend. With a major it’s just a completely different machine. It’s alright as long as they’re not going through a changeover, but majors are a different ball-game. We were working with Phil (Howells, formerly of FFRR/London, now of City Rockers) for a year and a half and then they changed the whole department and he left. You become good mates and then they get taken over and he’s gone and they get another person in but they’re not into that music and not into what you’re doing as a product.

How does that compare with running an independent like Valve?
Right now they way we work it at Valve is we do it like a major. What we do is we get an artist and his track’s really good we’ll promote it and spend the money on it and get the big full sheet posters out, adverts in magazines, adverts on radio, you know, you’re not necessarily gonna get your money back, but after your third or fourth release people know about your stuff that might never have known about you before. In terms of putting out a track in drum & bass and selling a certain amount of units, fair enough, but you can’t crossover the artist to other forms of music, you know what I mean? Like getting it into your X-Rays and your NMEs and whatever. We don’t actually make any money but like I said, we spend the money that we would have made on promotion.

Is that stuff you’ve learnt by experience?
Yeah, totally, ‘cos that’s what all the majors do, apart from the fact they give you 17 pence out of every pound they make – or ten pence – this way you’re getting more money back but might not sell as much; you’re promoting yourself totally differently – and it looks like a major product – if you look at ‘Killa Hertz’ it just looks like a proper product, you know what I mean?

What advice would you give to someone starting up a label?
Just make sure that with your first release you’ve got a non-mediocre tune, have a tune that is working out there and people instantly know and recognise that tune. It’s hard, but that’s the thing that I’d say. Not even a top tune but just have something that people are gonna buy, because you’re gonna lose money and you can’t really lose money in this day and age any more. Another way of doing it is go with the label that you think has got something there that can help you as a platform for yourself, give it to the label that will work your tune and put it out and from there make your name and then put stuff out on your own label.

Do you believe in a DiY ethic?
Yeah, totally. You have to be, because it’s not a great big scene and everything could be a hundred times better, but people aren’t letting people expand and if you don’t do it yourself then no one’s gonna do it. Everyone wants to be a DJ but there’s not enough DJ spots; everyone’s just making tunes but then they’re making tunes that sound like other people and it’s just like. At the end of the day, what we’re doing is completely different to what everyone else is doing because we’re trying to bring new talent straight in, give them a chance, give them the opportunity and doing it ourselves. I mean, the only other thing I’ve seen lately is the Movement competition. I don’t see anyone else doing anything, it’s like they don’t wanna bring no one through, it’s like they just wanna roll along like it’s all great, but it’s not great, the music could be a hundred times better, and once the music’s better the clubs are better and everything’s better. I just get a bit bored when I hear the same old thing rolling around. Everyone’s got heir style and people have got what they do, but then it’s like you got too many sheep, and that’s what spoils it, because you’ve got 20% of the tunes that are original and then you’ve got 80% of the people that flood the market trying to be like that, but if they all did they’re own thing it’d be much better. All I’m doing is doing it myself by going out and trying to find the new talent, because I don’t wanna be doing it for another three, four years, I wanna be concentrating on just developing things, that’s why we’ve got the sound system, you know, ‘cos if you don’t it’s gonna die a death, like garage, you know what I mean? If you keep sucking it dry that’s what happens. If you look at it there aren’t many key producers out there – I mean, if you took away certain producers from the scene and they said ‘Look, I’m not making any music anymore, what would you be left with? Producers that are trying things slightly differently, you take out the key producers then you’re left with hardcore music, really, I think – a lot of them are just making rubbish, not one bit of originality. And it’s like Photek’s not really making any (drum & bass) stuff because of how the music has changed and it’s a shame, you know. A lot of producers have kind of gone, and if they all go it’s gonna be a bit annoying. That’s why I’m doing this, building foundations for new guys to come through, school ‘em up so that it doesn’t matter if Karl (Dillinja) or myself or whatever weren’t making tunes, it’d stand up. We’ve got to look to the future.

How much time and effort have you put into the Valve Soundsystem over the years?
Well… to the point where it affected everything – life, everything. No time whatsoever, you know what I mean? It’s just, literally, one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done in my whole life.

Did it become an obsession?
Not even that, it just became a nightmare, because we had no time or sleep or anything and it had to be done – if it weren’t done it wouldn’t work, you know what I mean? It became something hat was literally playing on your brain, mentally. There was a lot of physical work involved, financially and everything, you know? Every penny we earnt what we put into it, and then everything suffers along the line. I mean, if you’re a multi-millionaire then fine, but if you’re not and your just trying to stay in the black it’s a major, major risk.

Has it been worth it?
Yeah, because every event we do they’re always packed out and everyone’s screaming for one more track, people throwing things at the security because they don’t want to go home! And everyone talks about it and everyone has experiences, but yeah, it’s better than I actually thought it would be. Everywhere we go, you go to Scotland or anywhere, it’s the same thing and most promoters say it’s the best party they’ve ever done, so it’s good, you get the feedback. People keep ringing us up – we get a lot of sound system companies, like big companies without mentioning names, that come down to our events now and we’ve got loads of interest from different scenes, I’ve had like big producers put on the guest list for our parties, it’s branched out in a way that it’s gone beyond drum & bass, which we wanted it to, like not within it’s own barriers, it’s gone beyond that. It’s about dance music, it’s not just about drum & bass, sound-system’s the whole thing really, whereas now it’s expanding and in dance music their ears are pricking up to the whole thing now. You notice how you get a lot of flyers now and the first thing they put on there is this sound system and that sound system because they know there’s something out there and they’re trying to get the punters in by saying ‘bla, bla, bla soundsystem’, but they weren’t doing that a couple of years ago, and now the effect of what we’ve been doing for two years has made a lot of people change the way they’ve been working, because you see ‘sound system’ turn up on a lot of flyers now, even if it’s just the in house soundsystem, or they might hire a sound system, which is good, I think it’s good, because at the end of the day if you’re gonna say that you’d better give punters value for money, that’s another reason why we did it. If people are going to a club and they get a crappy sound system, no lighting and the same DJs that are playing all round the country, playing the same music, what are they getting for their dough? As I said, we’re not monolpolising anything because we’re just doing what we’re doing but also bringing through new talent. /// October 2003

Thursday, October 30, 2003

Wiley interview here.

Incredible stuff. Love this bit:

Martin Clark: “Ice Rink,” “Eskimo” etc What’s the reason for the ice theme in the track names?

Wiley: “I’m a winter person but the cold… sometimes I just feel cold hearted. I felt cold at that time, towards my family, towards everyone. That’s why I used those names. I was going to use “North Pole” but I didn’t even get that far. It was all things that were cold because that’s how I was feeling. There are times when I feel warm. I am a nice person but sometimes I switch off and I’m just cold. I feel angry and cold.”

Respect to Mr Clark for getting Wiley in the Slut. ‘Ground Zero’ – phenomenal; review next week, when my post finally gets here… ///