Harlem natives, Vast Aire and Vordul Mega came straight out the box in 2000. First introducing themselves on the classic double 12", split with Company Flow's final release.
The following year would bring this, the debut Cannibal Ox album produced entirely by Co-Flow rapper/producer El-P. It remains El-P's best work (including Run the Jewels) all these years later.
Strange to think that at the time this seemed futuristic in both it's advanced slang editorials and progression of hip hop breaks into industrious, skull cracking, dystopian funk. Now however, it's clear that this was a last gasp of NY hip-hop in it's original minimalist beat and gristle form.
A linear progression from Jam Master Jay to Juice Crew to Public Enemy to BDP and RZA's dusty sampling. El-P's concussive boom-bap, if 'The samples is the flesh, and the beats the skeleton', well the flesh is all sirens, wheezing respirators and Darth Vader gurgles.
New York and it's hip-hop culture would soon be irrevocably changed and shaken by 9/11, just around the corner, and it would never fully recover. The axis was already shifting South.
Perhaps Cannibal Ox reached one possible logical endpoint of hip-hop, with their dense slang riddles and head scratching metaphors, zooming into view and away faster than a cubist train graffiti burner, colourful and complex, the tags only revealing themselves after detailed investigation. The rewards are great for those who want to go.
Cannibal Ox describe Harlem in detached terms of the observer, themes of separation from the physical ('soul from the shell'), horror and science-fiction are common. So called indie or backpacker hip-hop from this era often suffers from being knowingly clever and irritating, or having tricksy rhyme flows which are essentially awkward and unfunky. Can Ox are never less than finger snapping funky and repping Harlem world hip hop with addictive and distinctive flows, Vast Aire is the Q-Tip to Vordul Mega's Phife Dawg. When moments of clarity come among the lyrical stanzas it hits even harder.
Iron Galaxy opens the album, mapping the dimensions of the ghetto. 'You were a still born baby, mother didn't want you, but you were still born/ Boy meets world, of course his pops is gone/ What you figure?/ That chalky outlined on the ground is a father figure?/ So he steps to the next stencil, that's a hustler/ Infested with money and diamond cluster'.
Ox out the Box, has a freestyle feel, with Vast boasting his mic prowess 'I grab the mic like "Are you Experienced", But I don't play the guitar, I play my cadence'. Two posse cuts, 'Atoms' and 'Battle of Asgard' showcases the extended Atoms family of MC's and sounds like a hip-hop episode of Game of Thrones.
A B-Boy Alpha is about growing up around the birth of hip-hop culture.
Raspberry Fields is one of the best cuts, a weird tune which may be semi improvised with a great chorus. The cocky Vast, 'Oh my god, I said a word twice'.
Vein is in my top 10 hip hop tunes of the 00's. It's wears it's anxiety like vintage Geto Boys, the vocal tense, sometimes stuttering and overlapping to emphasize a loosening grip on reality. Desperate to escape the ghetto but bound by inequalities real and imagined. Vordul dreams of 'Ghetto acapellas in cathedrals' but is 'lost in this ghetto population, just another face that's facing all types of, like stereotypes and hatred', Vast then takes over telling a chilling narrative of meeting a local teen, bragging, waving a gun. Vast lectures him and says 'Peace, keep breathing' before vividly detailing the crew who hustles guns to kids, naming names, and observes, 'We're all from the same ghettos, and these are the same hollow tips that knocked Milly out of stilletos'. Vordul then delivers a panicked rap
where he's 'Off of this earth to return to my nature'.
The F-Word is a new spin on Biz Markie's' Just A Friend'. More heartbroken than it first appears, just like Biz! Even if it's couched in anger.
Stress Rap is wrapped in shrouds of honks, bells and train brakes and Painkillers is a nauseous lopsided organ and barroom piano funk about addiction.
Pigeons are used as a metaphor throughout Cannibal Ox's work for human kind and especially the Harlem ghetto (now battling gentrification!). 'Most of 'em, would rather expand their wings and hover over greater things/ that's what we call inspired flight/ But the pigeons gotta eat pizza crust every night'.
Cannibal Ox are from a NY of graffiti on trains, breakbeats and cultural isolation. They can symbolize the vast distances of imagination needed to reverse the negative forces of the ghetto, but to reach this precious plain, they walk the razors edge of reality. Others; Coltrane or Sly for instance have stepped over that edge, but this rarely in hip-hop, as artists are too grounded to 'the real'. Well 'realness' is overrated, and hip-hop needed to take that step, to realize it's psychedelic potential.
Ricardo Villalobos creates wide vistas of engrossing rhythm and noise, often labelled as a minimal or micro strain of techno/house. He has, over two decades built a reputation for epic DJ sets which have been known to last up to 8-10hrs, and is a major draw at the world biggest dance festivals. Enviously straddling both populist energy rave and underground experimentation, his music is quite hard to write about, lacking subject matter and being all about kinetic energy and interlocking percussion. But here we go... Ricardo Villalobos was born in Santiago, Chile. The Villalobos family fled Pinochet's dictatorship in the 1970's and landed in Germany. The young Villalobos became obsessed with early synth pop, particularly Depeche Mode who he followed when on tour in Europe. Villalobos' family settled in Berlin, a city with a substantial displaced Chilean population, and as such house parties involving South American music and rhythms were common. Berlin then became the European capital of techno in the 80's-90's. Young second generation Chileans were attracted to and instrumental in this scene, and a good understanding of where Villalobos' style evolved from would include imagining the percussive congas and shakers of samba projected into a technological future, whilst retaining folk elements of the homeland. Looking into an imagined past to project a Utopian future. There is also a strong political edge, simply in the fact of glorying in a tradition, and partying in a way that would have been impossible under Pinochet. Alcachofa was Villalobos' first full length, but he had a long string of 12"s and remixes behind him at this point, the ideal format for this music really. Unlike most techno full lengths though this one does really work as an album you want to listen all the way through. It begins with Bahaha hahi, a typically onomatopoeic title, and a warm up for what's to come, introducing the palette of textures familiar in much of Villalobos' work. Glitches, squelches and other wet sounds, dry compressed percussion, busy fleshy detail and muttered vocal snatches, all in the service of dance-able rhythm. Next is the one-two hit of Dexter and Easy Lee, also released as a 12" single. Pared back from their massively extended versions. It is not unusual for his tracks to be 15-20mins long and the 2006 release Fizheuer Zieheuer stretched to 37mins. When Villalobos was asked about the running times, he simply said that this is how long he liked to listen to them for. Like all the best minimal techno, the appeal lies in the magic that can be created by following your ear as the music almost imperceptibly changes, focusing your attention of different sonic elements, playing tricks with time and space. Dexter, essentially knits a static electricity beat, bass pulse and kick drum around each other, until a minor chord, Cure like bassline comes along to play. These few ingredients can keep my rapt attention for 8+mins. The minimal tag is really a misnomer. Although there may be few elements in each track, there is nothing minimal about the way the tracks build in momentum, or the deceptively complex patterns which are weaved, the effect can be quite busy. Easy Lee swaggers along with a neat robotic cowboy melody, sung above watery percussion and nautical congas which build and build. Fool Garden (Black Congas) again uses few flavours, flitting between a vocal ululation, and a twinkling keyboard sound. I Try To Live (Can I Live) uses a snatch of reggae vocal with bangin 4/4 kicks and fearsome swathes of acid. Theogenese has a skipping, major key upfull vibe, before Wawomao gets dirty with a post punk, ESG like bass riff and chicken scratch funk guitar. What You Say presents a series of shiver inducing timbres, which must sound incredible through a loud PA, and the finale Y.G.H. plays out as a perfect outro, with John Carpenter like synth washes and a pulse which holds back from the rush of release. Unlike many techno albums which play out like a series of tracks, this one feels like a journey, but with tracks which also work in the club.
Boards of Canada are brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin, and Geogaddi was their second album following the success of their debut Music has the Right to Children (1998) and a handful of EP's.
The brothers themselves have always given very few interviews and personal appearances preferring, as the cliche goes, the music to speak for itself. This then has allowed an obsessive fan base to fill in the gaps where information was lacking and create rumours and myths surrounding Boards of Canada's activities, in particular suggesting occult and esoteric meanings behind much of what they do.
In fairness BOC, and certainly Warp records have done little to deny any of this, surely enjoying the cult that has built around them.
The music and artwork provides recurring themes and motifs inviting listeners to search for hidden meanings. Numerology is often invoked with sampled counting, timings of albums (66mins6secs), 23 track albums (a numerologically significant number) geometric shapes (hexagons), and hints that tracks were created using mathematics formula. Colours are also significant with intensely visual yellows, reds and turquoise skies.
BOC are named after a Canadian film company, and the brothers themselves were raised to pre-teens in Canada before moving to the outskirts of Edinburgh, where when a little older they became part of a electronic rave type scene outside of the cultural centre; much like Richard James was doing at the same time in Cornwall.
Unlike the digital electronica of Aphex or Autechre however, BOC go for the more aged sound of analogue equipment and samples from 70's sources, perhaps deliberately aged, but just as technically astounding and detailed as any electronic boffin type.
What was massively influential about the BOC sound was the way it invoked memories of 70's- 80's childhoods simply due to the quality of the sounds and samples (often children playing or old TV documentary voices). It would be hard to imagine the existence of Ghost Box, folktronica, Animal Collective or Oneohtrix without BOC.
Although BOC came from the future music of techno, they create a kind of pastoral electronica, looking back to grand interior statements like Incredible String Band, The Beatles White Album, Robert Wyatt or My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. The rhythms are less techno than a precise downbeat hip-hop like DJ Shadow with Sheffield's bleep and bass production values.
Any music that deliberately evokes memory will always be tinged with melancholy, as BOC have said, 'any music about memory is music about a time that can never come back'. Music has the Right to Children still managed to sound happy and warm, the memories of child's play and summer holidays.
Geogaddi however (the 4 year gestation explained as being due to the exacting perfectionism of the pair al la MBV) was much darker, although it does seem less dark now following the evolution in spooked electronica since!
Geogaddi then, evokes darker memories of childhood. Whereas ROYGBIV from the debut had sampled children counting as if part of a game, Gyroscope on this album seems like a reversal with a more anxious voice counting but seemingly unable to get beyond 9 without finding itself back at 0 again, the funk beat clipped too short to be traditionally groovy.
Music is Math's vocal sample 'the past inside the present' sounds like a spell, with phantasm vocals unable to escape the squelchy beats containing them.
Sunshine Recorder references EP track Beautiful Place in the Country, but the weirdly timestreched vocal and cool reverse spin has the effect of distancing the beautiful place. One persons beautiful place remember is another's Father Yod style sex cult.
Alpha and Omega features some great sampled congas.
The Devil is in the Details could be described as that Chris Morris phrase 'disgusting bliss' which he used for the black comedy series Jam, about the same time as this record and both connected to Warp records. What sounds like a hypnosis session is punctuated by ominous wails and a munching that reminds the listener of what a heavily LSD dosed Brian Wilson must have heard in his head when he recorded Paul McCartney munching celery for the recording of Smile.
Dawn Chorus remains probably my favorite BOC track; blissful funk, an MBV psychedelic swirl of off-colour organ melody and an vocal sample like that bit in Purple Rain where Prince plays Appolonia the tape and she can't tell whether the woman is laughing or crying.
BOC's next album The Campfire Headphase is almost equally as good as Geogaddi and uses more live instrumentation especially strumming and folk sounds.
Yeeeeeooohhhhh! Teeth, Gums, Can U see 'em? They alright? Lissssssseeeeennnnnnn!!!!
Grime lost it's way following it's initial rush of success 04-05, with Dizzee's Boy In Da Corner, The Streetsand Lethal Bizzle on TOTP. Record companies hesitated to understand and sign artists, club nights closed down amid institutionally racist police concerns; and leading lights of grime were imprisoned (Crazy Titch), the movement lost confidence. Grime artists who got signed to majors found themselves with less artistic control, with their releases stalled. Some successes like Tinchy Strider or Chipmunk branched into crossover territory, and are now remembered for guest spots on pop records.
One Grime MC however thrived in these adverse circumstances and produced a fantastic series of mixtapes building his reputation, and nowadays he's viewed as one of the most poetic, adventurous and skilled British MC's.
Trim was there at the inception of Grime, being in garage party crews, but always viewing himself as a lyricist. Raised by a Rasta mother, Trims languid baritone flow reflects his love of reggae and dancehall, he flows over Turbulence and Sizzla riddims on these tapes. Unlike the majority of the Grime scene which hail from Bow E3, Trim was brought up in Tower Hamlets E14 and he proudly reps this, perhaps he also knows this adds to his outsider reputation within grime. Trim was 15 when Damilola Taylor was stabbed and left for dead in this area, and Trim's black comedy raps will often depict a grim, melancholic environment.
Trim joined Roll Deep, one of the biggest garage crews (not yet called grime), as they were already up and running, spotted by local scene catalyst Wiley. He contributed to the Creeper comps, the In At the Deep End debut album with the Grime high water mark of When I'm 'Ere, and released the solo Boogieman 12". So far, so promising, however it's here in the story that things start to unfurl.
Maybe it was the sheer amount of personalities and egos battling to be heard within Roll Deep. Wiley, Footsie, Riko, Flowdan, Scratchie, Breeze plus others passing through. Shortly following the release of the debut and a group trip to Ayia Napa, a beef developed between Trim and Flowdan and Trim left the crew.
Trim has not been shy in vocalizing this beef on record, the track Lowdown seems to suggest that he felt Flowdan was not looking out for him and may have been actively undermining him. Trim also says he looked up to Flowdan as an older MC he admired, making the perceived slight hurt deeper.
You do wonder though, whether two deep voiced MC's both with dancehall influenced flows was one too many for the crew. Maybe Flowdan was worried by Trim who hasn't quite got the dread delivery of Flowdan, but is certainly more lyrical and funny. Trim is also one of the best free-styling and battling MC's, unafraid of any competition.
Don't look for a classic album among these mixtapes, there's no Revolver or Nation of Millions, and there likely never will be. Like a classic Reggae DJ e.g. Dr. Alimantado or Big Youth, the point is to make great tracks, and to fire up the rave. You will have to trawl through these tapes to find the classic tracks among the skits, remixes, guest appearances and tracks cut short. Trim has been promising an album 'Crisis' for about 6 years now, but it seems no closer to release now than it did 6 years ago!
After leaving Roll Deep, Trim took Roachie, another Roll Deep alumni with him and proceeded with the Soulfood mixtapes.
Roachie then went to jail until 2008 and a 'Free Roachie' theme runs across all of these tapes. Trim uses producers from all across grime, Wiley, Target, Jerzey, JME, Mega, The Streets, Danny Weed but is also unafraid to look at more experimental areas of electronica and dubstep.
Soulfood 1 has the great Lowdown, Liar Liar (I'm a liar, I need help from More Fire) and Taliban.
Soulfood Vol 2 contains Confidence Boost (United we stand, divided we lose) later versioned by James Blake.
Soulfood Vol 3 is perhaps the most consistent tape, with the majority of tracks presented in full.
Trim is full of catchphrases; Middle finger up, index with it, the way he repeats his punchlines a second time with a chuckle, in case you missed them the first. On Signal he raps 'if you didn't catch my name i'll throw it to you, and for those who can't catch i'll roll it to you'.
Ask For Trim runs through some local E14 spots or The Bits, with a foreboding air 'Tower Hamlets where we help people get badges for disabled parking'.
I'll Do Me is a possee cut with a great snaking flute and shaker riddim, indebted to Missy & Timbaland, with a no biters theme.
I'm Not is Trim defining himself against what he's not, 'If you're a bad boy, then i'm not'.
Inside Looking Out is an introspective realization of Trim's outsider status, and seems to come to a sort of peace with the fact that he could never be part of a crew.
The Low-Dan expands upon part 1, Trim claims he should have been called Flowdan, and accuses Flowdan of trying to get him arrested over war like pummeling bass kicks and lazer synths. It's here that we get our first promise of an official album!
I Can C U is Radioclit produced UK Garage clip clop funk, and It's A Cold World demonstrates Trim's talent for twisting everyday catchphrases much like US rapper MF Doom 'United we stand, divided we're like odd socks', 'eye for an eyewitness'.
Gave Him An Inch is produced by The Streets and is the punt at a hit single release, but seems to be inbuilt with the problems which mean the charts and Trim will always be at arms length. 'Is it me or am I different, In at the deep end but water resistant' and Mike Skinners assessment 'Too greasy, you can feel the ape in his bars'.
Trim sees himself as a mix of Old Dirty Bastard and Dennis Brown, and this is not far off the mark. Grime MC's have always had the problem of standing out from each other, with similar flows and voices. Trim has never had this problem, he's a natural and makes the whole thing seem effortless, his persona is his act with all of it's eccentricities.
If Grime has a Captain Beefheart or a Kool Keith then surely it's Trim, Trimothy, Shankvan.......
Ariel Pink, real name Ariel Rosenberg is really where the new Millennium started. Some of the albums at the top of this list (oh the anticipation!) in retrospect now seem like great end of 90's pieces. Whereas Ariel belongs squarely in the new millennium, with a whole shtick that is so post everything. Haunted by an enormous musical past which Ariel seems to have swallowed whole. Previous practitioners who borrowed from older styles, even when they are good can come off like either pastiche (Strokes, White Stripes), or wacky and ironic (Beck, Beastie Boys). Where Ariel differed was that you could hear his love for 80's indie and pop, but you never felt like he was taking the piss out of it. In fact on his first run of records he often sings and beatboxes with a passion that can be intensely moving; sometimes channeling the narcissism, self-obsession and self pity (all good things in pop life) of characters like Morrissey, Robert Smith and Elizabeth Frazer.
It's an unlikely story, Ariel a lonely outsider into all kinds of music, popular and obscure, works at record store, the Jewish son of a gastroenterologist inspired by outsider artists particularly R.Stevie Moore. Moore has released hundreds of albums with little attention to promotion or sound quality but the music itself often brilliant rock and pop deserving of a massive audience. Ariel thus embarked on his own outsider pop career and in the early 00's, alone in his room with an 8-track and a few instruments recorded hundreds of songs that he would then pass around locally on cassette. These were called Haunted Graffiti and comprised many volumes, some of which have been officially released. One of Animal Collective who were then on the rise as the new psychedelic thing was handed one of these cassettes, The Doledrums - Haunted Graffiti 2 and vowed that it would be the first release on their nascent label Paw Tracks. Ariel, although very different from Animal Collective, fitted in well, and there were similarities, both acts are psychedelic and both often look back to the innocence of childhood in their music.
The first thing you notice when listening to Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti series is the super saturated sound environment; tape hiss, echo and reverb give the impression of listening through a poor radio signal, a result of the DIY equipment used. Wobbly keyboards, and what might be 80's electro beats are actually Ariel's close miked beatboxing. All the drumming is done by mouth, and lots of it is great, nothing like trad hip-hop beatboxing at all. Mick Fleetwood and Funkadelic spring to mind.
Ariel has no qualms about harsh jumps from minor verse to major key chorus, reminiscent of 1980's pop cheese like Split Enz, Flock of Seagulls or Tears For Fears, no act from the 90's would've dared try it, far too corny. Ridiculous falsettos, out of range but maximum effort given and incredibly moving.
There so much pleasure to be had from immersing yourself in this music and 10 years later it still sounds just as good. Tracks like For Kate I Wait, with the repeated yearning verse, which is never resolved, Oh she's never coming back to you, by the end when Ariel's in his room weeping and moaning, you seriously doubt whether Kate was there in the first place, just a masturbatory fantasy.
Haunted Graffiti the track itself from Doldrums has some great vocal effects akin to sound poetry, sheeeeeesh, pfffftttppph, chhhhhhhh! and is massively catchy. A whole scene called Chillwave developed as a result of this sound during the late 00's, just as shoegaze had following the innovations of MBV a decade earlier. Relatively straightforward songs are hidden beneath this new psychedelia which dismantled the song in a way which was more than just slathering distortion over everything.
Often the tracks on the Doldrums contain a fug of indulgent depression, similar to The Cure in the Seventeen Seconds era, sometimes he uses a deep robot Gary Numan voice, What does it mean if you can't see the Sun.
Songs like Let's Build A Campfire There, contain a surreal darkness beneath the childlike themes, like that scene in Twin Peaks where Ben Horne reminisces about a time he and his brother watched an older girl dance in their room, fascinated from their bunks, all through a distorted gauze of impending puberty and shaky memory.
There are two epic pieces on Doldrums and Worn Copy; The Ballad of Bobby Pyn and Trepanated Earth. You will hear expansive funk jams using mouth and organ, scissor cuts and Zappaesque misanthropic interjections, overreaching emotional outbursts, rock riffs and balladeering. Budget yacht rock and just as bitter under the surface. Both these tracks would work well as soundtracks to a really weird movie. In fact Ariel has made an attempt at a Trepanated video, but so far only an excerpt exists.
Juelz Lost His Jewels is a hair metal song about cat castration, CREDIT is a thunder funk with jangling REM guitars and Life in LA covers one of Ariel's favorite subjects the emptiness and loneliness of living in the most glamorous city in the world, down and out in Beverly Hills, and contains some great mouth trumpet.
Horror is another influence of Ariel's, particularly 80's horror movies he would have seen as a kid. Both Fright Night and Creepshow evoke zombies, werewolf's and Bronx gangs fighting in luminous socks. Sometimes he paints his face in tacky horror make up. I vividly remember films like Creepshow and the 80s Twilight Zone seemingly watched by all children at the time. Ariel himself says he was brought up by these movies and MTV as a child.
Everything in Haunted Graffiti land feels perverse, an open and mischievous sexuality.In One On One he puts himself in a spin the bottle situation, encouraging orgiastic fun. Ariel seems like the kind of guy who lost his virginity to the topless girl who gets killed first in the horror flick. Ariel's perversity has become even more apparent since with gender bending and more blatant sexual posturing.
One year at ATP festival 2011 Ariel had put together a crack band who could play these tracks successfully live, ushering in the next phase of his career which would bring success, he now used a proper studio and band, but never lost the strange haunted vibe behind his pop music. Outside the main building one night we stood next to J Mascis and his band quietly chatting, then along came a drunken young girl wearing a huge fur coat, she was looking for Ariel's chalet as apparently that's where all the best parties and drugs were that weekend. J shook his head disapprovingly.
One of the remarkable things about The Fall is how they always bounce back from an under par record (still better than your new favorite indie band's best album), to create something quite astounding. Long time Fall watchers have learnt never to write them off. Think about it, after Room To Live came Perverted by Language; after Curious Orange came Extricate; after Are You Are Missing Winner came Country On The Click.
So it was with Imperial Wax Solvent which came after Reformation Post TLC. IWS was a real reformation if you think about it, showcasing a new line up which is pretty intact to this day. Peter Greenway, Keiron Melling, Eleni Poulou, Dave Spurr, MES, and always a mark of quality - Grant Showbiz on production.
This new line up hit upon a darker seam of the country'n'northernkrautgarage than the previous US group were able to muster, unafraid to experiment and bringing more to the fore Eleni's keyboards which were starting to shade the tracks with a grotty sci-fi mood.
The album starts with Alton Towers an attempt at a Mansion style intro with a foreboding ghostly keyboard line, although not quite epic enough. MES sets the dystopian scene where 'The spawn of J. 'Loaded' Brown and L. Leverne are laughing, and their sons are singing songs'. Sadly that future has now come to pass. James Brown as the editor of Loaded mag once infamously interviewed MES, which resulted in MES trying to stub his fag into J.Browns face for asking stupid questions, Lauren Laverne however interviewed MES briefly on TV and made a joke about sacking his wife, MES was visibly put out and she's been on the shit list ever since.
Incidentally on Bronx in a 6 from Sleaford Mods latest Key Markets, they rant 'Lauren Leverne keeps playing Tumbling Dice', and manage to make it sound the the saddest line going, choked me up when I heard it first live.
Wolf Kidult Man perhaps concerns some mollycoddled child man, but who knows. A great garage racket nonetheless, maybe the deep crunching bass synth and sinister samples point at a deeper meaning. All Fall lyrics resist easy interpretation, just look at the scholars of http://annotatedfall.doomby.com/ endlessly decipher meanings into these words.
50 Year Old Man achieved instant Fall classic status, perhaps one of two tracks from here that would make a best of the Fall tape. An 11min epic of hammering garage trance, MES utilizing his growl in the paranoid vision, 'Steve Albini is in collusion with Virgin trains against me'; which compliment 2015's claims that Pierce Brosnin is selling MES bed wet pills. I mean who among us can honestly stand up and say this is not true! The track then seems to dissasemble before our ears, MES tells us he pisses on hotel towels, and before you realise it you're listening to a banjo hoedown and MES is laughing at you. Cut back into an even fiercer riff and fade out to MES 'I'm an inferior product man'.
Eleni takes lead vocal on I've Been Duped, opportunity for MES to take a rest when played live. The topic being shit TV, a favorite of MES. Contains the memorable line about 'two hairy men digging up Scotland', Hey I saw that episode!
Strange Town is a cover of an early 70's Groundhogs tune from highly recommended album Thank Christ For The Bomb, an under recognized band. You can't beat the original though.
Next come two less appreciated but great tunes, Tureg and Can Can Summer. Tureg is a short instrumental piece, but with a lovely driving synth melody. There was an even better version with some whispered MES lyrics used as an intro tape at gigs, available online if you look hard enough. Can Can Summer is one of my favorite Fall tracks of recent years, rarely played live, presumably due to the tricksy funk rhythm and abrupt cuts. This track is like funk in negative, an itchy groove demanding that you sit still, MES barking orders to resist dancing 'change back', 'stop twitching', 'turn the radio off', 'you are no dog' The meaning remains vague, but I always think of this as an attack on groups like LCD Soundsystem and Talking Heads who MES dislikes. MES's anti showbiz heads down funk, that shouts in your ear every time you start tapping your foot.
Tommy Shooter is another great track, perhaps the best on this record. A strumming choogle supports dread filled evocative lyrics, one of his WW2 tracks with dire warnings, darkening sky's and the brilliant line 'Reduce your knees to noodles, your Doberman Pinschers to Poodles'.
Thereafter the album tends to tail off a bit, Latch Key Kid, Is This New and Senor Twilight Stock Replacer are solid and fast paced but inessential, the latter too similar to the unbeatable Guest Informant. In 2008 The Fall appeared on US live in the studio show From the Basement and bettered the versions of some of these tracks, sad that we'll never have a radio session from this period, this is the closest to that.
The album ends with the scabrous and short Exploding Chimney, possibly about venereal disease. A true lost classic which to be honest I had forgotten about but must rank amongst their recent best.
Imperial Wax Solvent would start a run of top form leading to the also great Your Future Our Clutter
Sometime in the mid to late 90's I became very despondent about rock and indie acts. I had always liked hip-hop, techno, global stuff, equal to white boy rock. But following the petering out of Britpop into embarrassing dadrock and the retro rock puritanism of The White Stripes and The Strokes, the balance tipped heavily towards non rock sounds.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed Peel, and there was some guitar music I could dig, Royal Trux, Flying Saucer Attack and Belle & Sebastian spring to mind. However much of what I listened to and spent hard earned cash on during the '96-'02 era was Drum'n'Bass, hip-hop, electronic and of course Reggae. These musics simply seemed to be innovating and steaming ahead of the competition on a week by week basis. Culminating in the millennial situation where characters like Missy Elliot, Roni Size, Wu-Tang, Daft Punk and the dancehall reggae producers of Kingston Jamaica, had the charts sown up and pop artists borrowing heavily from their styles.
Dancehall reggae had been steadily developing since Prince Jammy first switched on his Casio for Under Me Sleng Teng back in '85. You can trace the development using the budget priced Greensleeves samplers which began in the early dancehall era, they take you through the classics of the genre: Tiger, Ninjaman, Cutty Ranks, Yellowman, Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Capeton et al. fiercely competitive, each new track aiming for the next level.
It was the opposite situation from 4/4 indie rock which wanted to ignore 40 years of progress and multiculturalism in rock, batten down the hatches and party like it's Hamburg 1960. In '97 the NME even declared hip-hop the new rock'n'roll, although they shied away from putting say Wu-Tang or Mobb Deep on the cover and opted for an anonymous drawing of a beanie hatted youth instead.
Every month the new dancehall 7"s from Greensleeves, not to mention the imports , showcased new rhythms voiced by both big DJ's, veterans and upstarts. The 7"s eventually stopped and the new tracks were compiled exclusively on Rhythm albums and mix CD-R's. I preferred the 7"s as you could mix them up, the albums could wear a bit thin after listening through 20+ tracks all on the same rhythm.
There are so many great rhythms from this era, but they seemed to culminate around '02 with the Diwali rhythm, whereby the feedback loop of dancehall, hip-hop and electronica seemed to be reaching the same conclusions. Finding rhythms in the most unexpected and inventive places. Syncopation taken from Jungle, Bollywood and Arabic music, the rise of the internet suddenly making all this stuff available worldwide. For the size of the country Jamaica produces more music than any other nation in the world.
To the uninitiated perhaps dancehall might seem impenetrable, with the Jamaican specific references, fast chat and patois, but repeat plays pays dividends, and even if you can't understand what they're on about (which is sometimes for the best) you can feel the rave energy, vocal skill, personality.
Diwali was when the public seemed ready, there were major hits utilizing the rhythm, which kept coming way after the initial run of 7"s. Even greater is that each rhythm album is a snapshot of it's time, you might not get all the big shots (no Buju, Capleton or Sizzla on Diwali), but you get one shot DJ's doing their best to stand out (Egg Nog, Bling Dawg, Zumjay).
Maybe the competition is what makes this music sound so fresh, without the funds for artists to use live bands, producers create a rhythm and DJ's compete to provide their vocal. A situation that would be criticized in the UK as being like an Xfactor style treadmill.
Steven 'Lenky' Marden created the Diwali rhythm from his 40/40 studio, and this remains the work he is remembered for.
Bounty Killer kicks of proceedings with Sufferer, a conscious selection reminding listeners of his ghetto roots. Bounty Killer had at this point been in the top echelon of DJ's from the mid 90's. After being shot at 14 he decided on the Bounty Killer epithet and a musical life reflecting the realities of ghetto life back at the world in the most dazzling way possible.
This is Bounty Killer at Sting festival Kingston, JA 2002. Hardcore!
T.O.K. are next up as the male boy band trio, who slavered everything in auto-tune way before Kanye. Wayne Wonder then does his No Letting Go, which became a huge tune in it's remixed form, it's a great love song and summer anthem, making Peter Andre seem even more of a twunt.
Assassin then brings the ragamuffin fire with Ruffest & Tuffest, always reliable for a banger. His vocals gruff like Buju with a clever flow, good luck at picking out any lyrics. His career has been a slow burner, although always considered among the best in dancehall circles but never had that crossover success like yer Shabbas, Beenie Man or Elephant Man. However perhaps now his time has come. After a name change to Agent Sisco he was featured heavily on Kendrick Lamar's The Blacker The Berry single.
This is one of his big tunes, albeit not on the Diwali riddim.
If Assassin was up and coming in '02, then Spragga Benz had peaked in the late 90's. Audiences in JA are faithful, to their homegrown artists so there will always be a place for Spragga, he still voices the rhythms and can do conscious and gully styles, although tends towards rasta message music these days.
Tanya Stevens is fantastic on this comp as always. Up and coming in '02 and mentored by the legendary Lady Saw, she more than redressed the gender inequality with always intelligent lyrics.
Check this beauty out....
Egg Nog & Danny English - Party Time on the Diwali riddim. See the hands clapping at the party.
Anthony B is a Bobo Ashanti Rastafarian and spits angry righteous fire like Sizzla and Capleton. Perhaps not best represented by the tune on Diwali, heres a clip of him at Sting with Sizzla. This is what those little emoticon flames were invented for.
Crissy D is up next with an R&B flavoured version adding simple zips and stepping synth chords to the riddim,
Hawkeye is up next, most active from 95-05, he voiced a string of great tunes, but perhaps suffered from a voice not as distinctive as Beenie Man whilst having a similar flow. His lines and choruses are catchy. I'd love to see a single artist compilation of some of these DJ's like Assassin, Buccaneer or Hawkeye. Your move again Soul Jazz.
This is Hawkeye on the Orgasm riddim, and Go Rachel on the Mud Up riddim which I have on 7".
Quite rightly the most unhinged version of Diwali is saved for the 'Energy God' Elephant Man, adding another video with much clapping dancing going on. Hoovering mentasm sounds are perhaps supposed to sound like an elephant? pissicato synth strings and a horn noise following the whole melody creates a suitably unhinged atmosphere for the lunatic of the dance.
Wayne Marshall is a singjay who was breaking out in the early noughties, releasing loads of singles followed by his debut album in '03. Overcome is a good tune with a g-funk style pitched up synth line, however he got overshadowed by Wayne Wonder with his No Letting Go. Marshall released a Jamaican album encouraging good manners in children in 2014 called Do Good Jamaica.
General Degree is shortened to Degree for this album and provides Inna. Underrated and reliable for a banging catchy tune, this is his classic dancehall smash Traffic Blocking.
Zumjay had a short career with a string of singles at the turn of the millennium, he moved to US and joined the army in 2005. This video is great.
Mad Anju also peaked in this era. Wha Dis Fadda on the Ants Nest riddim was his big breakout tune. Got this on 7" too. Sweeet.
Beenie Man then does his War Is Over the first of several tunes he would cut on Diwali. At this point Beenie Man was a veteran of dancehall even though still young. His supreme mic skills developed as a child star DJing alongside the likes of Shabba Ranks, Admiral Tibet and Ninjaman. Until 1994 when he released the clash album Guns Out with Bounty Killer, the rivalry has continued since. Beenie Man has put out tons of great tunes and is worth investigation in his own right, Maestro from 1996 must stand as one of the greatest albums from this era of any genre.
This film explains some of the on/off rivalry between Beenie and Bounty.
Cecile does Respect Yuh Wife, redressing the flagrant misogyny elsewhere. These subjects would not even be covered by white rock music. I've always found it strange how hip-hop and dancehall can be accused of egotism and misogyny, when these are also rife in a rock music filled with big babies. Why can't ghetto styles be seen as a reflection of the truth and potentialities of how men and women behave to each other, good and bad, too ugly too real for some, they would rather black music was preserved in a more acceptable past 1950s Memphis, 1970s Kingston, 1980's New York. But it will keep moving on, that's the point.
Bling Dawg was upcoming in '02 and has been having big hits in the last few years, he has connections with another of the biggest artists who started in this era Vybz Kartel.
Mega Banton was a veteran with a gruff voice like Buju Banton or Burro Banton, his biggest hits were in the 1990s out of the Black Scorpio stable.
That completes the original album. Diwali however would not die. Wayne Wonder was the first to travel and spawn hits both sides of the Atlantic. This was quickly followed by other vocalists who wanted their piece of the Diwali magic. Sean Paul on a rapid rise to stardom with his laid back and addictive flow hit big with Get Busy, then Caribbean pop empress Rihanna with Pon De Replay.
Diwali the unstoppable riddim, the right riddim at the right time,
This list includes albums, singles, joint entries, and basically anything i feel like doing in the interests of storytelling or representing my taste and the decade.I intend to post each entry one at a time in reverse order, whenever i can. This may well take us into next decade.Enjoy!
