mudd up!

british brown/white/black grime & b plus Mr. Beats’ string quartets made of plastic. Cool? Ice cold.

Lauren Mason - Hold Me (prod. by Bless Beats)

Wiley - Spirit in the Beat ft. Flowdan & Bless Beats (prod. by Bless Beats)

the first tune is on Bless Beats’ new mixtape, Hard Days Graft. The 2nd is on both Wiley’s new mixtape, Umbrella vol. 1, and the Bless Beats one. Avalanche Music Hut is Wiley’s new online shop, btw.

Skepta - In A Corner (from his debut album Greatest Hits).

Audio & photographic evidence that Skepta owned grime in 2007…

[Skepta returning from Tel Aviv gig, from hiphoppick]

it’s that time…

British contemporary art magazine Frieze asked me to write an essay on the year in music. Results can be found in the Jan-Feb issue on newstands now (or soon), and it’s viewable online.

my Top 10 List for WFMU contains RealAudio links, functioning as a kind of dispersed soundtrack to the above piece.

tonite’s radio show can be listened to. Expect a few killer Low Deep tracks (see below), an exclusive remix by Sonido Martines, new tunes by DJ C, The Bug, Michelle, and - always - more.

My OiNK piece is being translated to Italian and will be republished soon, details on that as they come. I’ve been busy doing heaps of writing for various ‘real’ publications — expect a wave of articles in 2008. Plus a followup to the OiNk post soon here on MuddUp!

The Low Deep instrumentals album is gorgeous instrumental grime and grime/r&b hybrids, showcasing his distinctive take on time and melodic orchestration. Self-released, purchase links on his myspace.

i first heard ‘Straight Flush’ years ago and was floored. happy to say that a handful of cuts are as good as that or even better… this mp3 wont be up for long. seems that, outside the grime scene, folks aren’t checking for Low Deep, which is too bad… i could see him making serious waves in the mainstream R&B world:

Low Deep - Never See Me Fall

i first bumped into bassline via Dexplicit, a producer i knew from the grime scene who also creates powerful 4-on-the-floor tunes. If you’ve caught me playing in a club in the past year or so, chances are you heard at least one bassline track by Dexplicit.

i’m no genre cop, but i think of bassline as 4/4 housey stuff wrapped in (obviously) elephantine basslines with grime/dubstep synth programming, ravey fx & vocal cut-ups, some MCing, and, deliciously, those triplet breakdowns that Wiley throws into his riddims. (Check ‘Eskimo 4×4 on DJ Murkz MySpace to hear a grime anthem rebuilt by bassline logic)

Wordthecat’s new post on bassline sketches the genre’s UK geography & offers a bumpin’ Dexplicit-heavy mix. “It’s interesting to see a style that is popular all over the north of england making inroads into the capital,” writes Chris, “(Londoners like to think) the currents usually move in the opposite direction.”

the two mixtape excerpts below come from Bassline Flava vol. 6 by DJ Total (buyable). They contain a lot of what i find thrilling about bassline… The first flips a triplet time-shift (then the mix throws in a Jay-Z vocal on hyperspeed), the second hits that rare elegiac / unrequited love thing (the heart-stricken diva) which gets me every time…

DJ Q - Tea Bag (remix)

DJ Murkz - Dark & Grey (special)

the lactose intolerant may denigrate bassline as cheesy, but its dancefloor power is undeniable.

Low End Spasm ups a basslinely mix (which i havent heard yet), noting that, “our 4×4 obsession is a reaction to dubstep’s flatlining rhythm (not to make sweeping generalisations or anything - tunes like Night by Benga & Coki still totally destroy the dance and there’s more). But in many ways 4×4, especially niche bassline house, is the anti-dubstep. Huge banging blines that buzz and wobble like the best of em, but also no reserve on the drums, no holding back, just euphoric breakneck tempo all the way.”

The great part about having a thing & an anti-thing is that, if they have similar tempos (and they do), you can mix them together, bend ‘em into both and neither on the turntables…

But then you go to Italy, not a ‘nice’ city but Milan - expensive and user-unfriendly - and you find Crookers. Sound leaks, no matter how carefully you package it up. Bass travels through any wall. Although what you hear on the other side might not be…

The Bug on dstep, d&b, and the asphyxiation of influence:

Because for me the beauty of dubstep were the producers that I met in the beginning, the fact that they were influenced by a lot of different music; Kode 9, Mala, influenced by jungle, influenced by dub, influenced by classical music, soundtrack music. That’s brilliant, I could hear that on the tracks but now i think that there are new producers that are coming into dubstep and they only listen to dubstep and for me that’s when jungle became drum n bass, that was the problem then. Drum n bass producers were just listening to drum n bass producers so there weren’t as many interesting influences on the music and I think of course with dubstep now, its amazing the progress in the last year but I don’t see why I should say everything’s positive when its obviously not really.

from a thoughtful two - part interview with Kevin.

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Mosca’s comment on my Durrrty Goodz post:

dubstep is still so studiously documented and recorded in the annals of bass history that it needs decent artwork to accompany it like monarchs’ portraits in history books, but grime exists mainly on mp3/ phone/ whites and is accordingly easy to delete from memory. most grime producers are more concerned with bringing out new beats than accumulating a ‘respectable’ archive to be remembered by.

this is a good point. i drafted a post on something similar when Andy sent me 2 or 3 clips to dubstep documentaries on YouTube. but we shouldn’t overlook Risky Roadz and all the grime DVDs! These are thrilling, self-produced documents both from and of a scene, completely visible but hardly a ‘respectable’ archive.

the subject of a grime DVD is a whole lot of things - lyrical beef, strutting, DIY cameraboy aesthetics, skyhigh testosterone levels, etc., whereas the subject of a dubstep documentary - any documentary - is ‘dubstep’ itself (the integral objecthood of the docu’s subject); not the content of the scene but only its most obvious, exterior shell, the part of it which has hardened into visibility and no longer moves (maybe the dead part). Once people outside your scene recognize your scene as such, (talking in money terms here) they recognize you as a potential market, something they can invest in or advertise to: you exist.

London dubstep documentary

I’m not criticizing (dubstep) documentaries at all, i simply feel that these are interesting ways to think about the way scenes get remembered or forgotten or overlooked, the durability of its artefacts - cultural visibility - and how well (or poorly) these aspects of a scene can flourish as mainstream media narratives.

and then there’s another thing, about the way ‘quality’ (usually a long-term consideration) and ‘newness’ are very different production goals.

Roll Deep in session

Nearly everybody in the docus (big respect to all involved!) talks about dubstep’s diverse and hard-to-pin down nature, but the nature of a documentary is that by the time that we see it, the subject’s been killed a bit. Things move on. And self-conscious diversity rarely stays diverse for long. In the interview above, Kevin says:

I cant really help but take a look back as well to try and assess what’s sort of going on in the scene because when DMZ had its first anniversary, when it moved upstairs, that night was a turning point for me and not just a positive one. Its great for Mala and its great for Digital Mystikz for all the hard work they’ve put in these past three years but for me, at that night, suddenly the audience seemed more like a drum n bass audience, it seemed more white, it seemed more male, the formula seemed to be almost there then so that was the first night I really noticed there was emerging a really strong formula like in drum n bass, like all the tracks were starting to sound a bit like Coki or Skream. And Skream also that night was rewinding every track which i thought, well the crowd weren’t even generating so much interest for him to do that, so it seemed like a lot of hype and an audience that I thought were maybe a little too closed.

Bristol dubstep documentary trailer

…but it’s true: scenes need anthems, they just shouldn’t become formulas. (I’ve enjoyed watching Team Shadetek’s Brooklyn Anthem become itself, a Brooklyn anthem! - even the crowd up in Denmark knew it when i dropped Ghis’s rmx last Friday).

You can think about Risky Roadz as grime’s Pyrrhic victory in translating itself across media. It is much better at being itself on YouTube then dubstep is (massive physical bass weight doesn’t translate across YouTube clips; instead dstep vids give us people explaining what we’re missing). But grime videos’ success at, well, being grimy means a lot of shouting, a lot of confusion & swears, angry artistic city kids, no voice-over or talking-head explanation since there’s no assumption of curious outsiders looking in who should be catered to or created…

Risky Roadz freestyle clips

but who cares about dialectic when we’ve got this?

a popular guide to unpopular music

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if you haven’t been paying attention to the Genre Known as Grime lately, i’d recommend checking Durrty Goodz’ new 9-track EP, Axiom. It’s shockingly good. (Has he always been this on-fire?)

As a grime MC, Durrty’s taste in backing beats is unbeatable: riddims by Bass Clef, Coki, Fireworkz, and more. haven’t had time to absorb lyrics & digest his mic-persona-aura, but there are some virtuoso, challenging flows around those beats. Case in point:

Durrty Goodz - Axiom

blubber!

while i’m an advocate of self-released music — don’t eliminate the middleman, become him/her — my brothers in grime should either spend more time with photoshop or hire a designer. Goodz loses points for his X-Files / Star Trek cover, which feels like wack German techno from 15 years ago:

Yes, that is a red fingerprint in outer-space.

some battles, they’re bait… i’m highly skilled, rudeboy, what’s going on?

Eskiboy (Wiley) - Levels from Tunnel Vision vol. 6

a post-retirement Wiley approaches Weezy levels of productivity (ok, maybe not), but Eskiboy is nonstop making beats as well as rapping. Tunnel Vision vol. 6 — released 3 weeks after his album hit stores — contains a couple sweet grimey string arrangements (like ‘Levels’); 2 replies to Dizzee Rascal’s diss track ‘Pussyole’ — one confident, one thoroughly uncomfortable; and a bonus beat called Apocalypto. Eskimos. Mel Gibson. The Mayans.

Taliban Trim Trimbal Trimothy Trim Trim Tcheroo’s new — first? — mixtape is real hot. It’s better than Wiley’s upcoming Big Dada album because a sizeable chunk of the heavyweight Wiley tunes on it were previously released, and Eskiboy’s always around, whereas Trim isn’t around nearly enough. Soul Food vol. 1 suggests that that will change. His leftfield nonchalance and confidently off-center flow come wrapped in quality beat production. Trim’s parameters are wide open.

Tall, Dark, and Gothic / oatmeal, dumplings, and porridge.

Includes a Turbulence-Notorious refix and the Radioclit chopped & screwed version of When Im Ere. Best grime CD in recent memory! Buyable. (if you’re gonna spend money on a CD, independently/self-released ones always a good place to start.)

cover artwork riffs on Wiley’s album title & 12 Monkeys which riffs on La Jetée, pulling us into French cinema & The Ectasy of Influence (a lively essay by Jonathan Lethem on plagiarism). At the same time, a photoshop filter softens & simplifies Trim’s face, contrast up. But enuff talk– time for a banger

Trimbal - Get With It

and here’s a short piece, staggering into triplet-time and the MCs dont stop

Trim - Wot (part 2) ft. Frisco & Proof

this Saturday’s National Free Culture conference at Harvard is real! and it got boingboinged no less. Not sure what I’ll be speaking on exactly, but i’ll keep it innerestin’ & brief, plus i’ll be participating in a digital music workshop later in the day.

ok.

i was gonna write about Wiley’s new album, but that should wait for a week or two until the U.K. MC/producer’s latest work is buyable. so i’ll reach back — six years! — to Wiley’s massive chilling ‘Ground Zero’ riddim.

“I made “Ground Zero” on September 11th,” he says, “It’s a bit weird: it’s got feeling to it. I just felt like my towers had crashed down. I’ll tell you the truth: I made it on that day because I felt down - on the floor.” Because of a woman it turns out, but “The Americans I really want them to hear “Ground Zero” to see if they relate to it. When the towers fell down, the newspapers had a face in the dust.”

i was just gonna post the devils mix, then i realized you should hear the original to understand the full subtractive power of the devils version of it. so here’s both. With Henry Flynt squeezed between.

Like screw music, Wiley’s devils mixes/bass mixes are radical, philosophical in their simplicity and implications.

Wiley - Ground Zero (devils mix)

Henry Flynt - Guitar Rebop (from Hillbilly Tape Music)

Wiley - Ground Zero (main version)

Q. How did the idea for the beatless “devil mixes” come about?

A. Nah it’s not “devil mix” you know? I called it that because it sounded evil to me innit. But I don’t call it “devil mix” anymore because when I started calling it that I started to get lots of bad luck, if you understand. I called it that because it sounded evil but really, why didn’t I call it “god mix” then? Because I don’t believe in the devil. The more and the more you say his name, believe it or not, he’ll come closer to you. And that is the truth, I swear I am not joking. “Bass mix” I call them now, cos it’s just bass. The devil mix brought me too much luck. I was selling the devil mix of Eskimo and they were selling so fast. I bought stuff with the money, bought a car and crashed it. So it just turned me off.

announces Bohagon, a rapper with a name from a sci fi novel.. or something. And, as screwed and chopped by DJ Michael Watts on the Swishahouse Before Kappa 2k6 mixtape, you can kinda believe it. Vibrating spaceships with too many lights & alien observations.

Watts’ sense of restraint as a DJ is phenomenal. It’s harder to not touch a record than to touch it. Harder still to touch it with inertial haiku. Why escape the gravity? Spaceships are here, unearthed. courtesy Quieto.

Swishahouse – Bo Hagon – Wuz Up ft Crime Mob and D4L

so in Houston they slow things down. some people come from places where they speed things up. London grimesters Ruff Squad crank up Fantan Mojah’s heartbreakingly beautiful acoustic ballad one-drop ital-liturgical megahit “Hail the King” into…

Ruff Squad – It No Take Nothing

Rinse radio rip courtesy of Brooklyn’s Mode Raw (who designed Timeblind’s Ghostification EP, among other things). M. Raw tidied & indexed Ruff’s recent show (dec 15), two more excerpts

weighty

Ruff Squad – I’m from a place ft. Maxwell D