Soul II Soul vs Wild Bunch: Test Pressing

Head over to the excellent Test Pressing for a wicked live clash from NYE 1987 featuring heavyweight selectors Soul II Soul vs. The Wild Bunch (featuring the original line up of Massive Attack) Old School Soundlash Bristol/Camden style recorded live.

There was a Wild Bunch CD out a few years ago mixed by DJ Milo that was a pretty straighforward heavy weight disco, hip hop, reggae selection which is also the business.

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore

Have a look at this- I cant embed it but its a great little film.

"Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore uses found and original footage of discos and raves across Britain during the 70s, 80s and 90s. Details of clothing, technology, music and other cultural references surface briefly like uncanny folklore as the film explores a culture of collective leisure and consumption"

http://www.ubu.com/film/leckey_hardcore.html

Get It On -Josef Fritzl Goes Disco

Nice Picture- Shit Record

Half an hour of my time I will never get back, review for 3 Bar Fire....

Rasmus Faber-Where We Belong

Farplane

Somewhere in the deepest bowels of Hades lies a “nitetclub”, little known to all but the most cretinous of sinners.

In one room the entertainment is provided by the worst remains of indie trust fund rockers, pumping out insipid guitar anthems to moronic middle aged sinners; the other rooms bounces to the sound of ‘funky house’, and it is here that Rasmus Faber plays on rotation, for eternity……

A turbulent mix of ‘dance music’ and R&B, funky house manages to strip the only worthwhile elements of both genres and distil them down to a base torridness of plodding beats and detached vocal clichés.

Rasmus Faber has seeming picked up this baton, turning his attentions to creating “Where We Belong” an over polished, under nourished collection of vacuous funky dance pop.

It’s difficult to pick out highlights, as a succession of female vocalists implore you to ‘get down’, and ‘get with it’ in tones so detached they appear to be singing through from inside a locked bank vault.

Meanwhile on another continent Mr Faber pumps the identi house grooves, occasionally flecked with Latin percussion or over filtered pianos for that ‘authentic’ vibe.

These ‘tunes’ are destined to turn up on a double pack mixed CD adored with scantily clad females, or pumped through inadequate sound systems in suburban wine bars for perpetuity.

File next to the smell of burning flesh.

Toby Hemming

You know the score.....

After flicking through the superb cartoontastic Suburban Base cover art yesterday, I also came across a new (ish) post on music critic Simon Reynolds blissblog. Reynolds is participating in an event called The Hardcore Continuum, linking to a selection of his writings in uber music geek magazine Wire.

Reynolds is one of the only writers to discuss the idea of a UK hardcore heritage, most famously though his book Energy Flash, where he argues a case of UK rave and hardcore music as a genuine artistic subculture. In the process Reynolds intellectualises it with a critique that draws as much upon academic critical theory as rude boy ramblings.

The articles are great, and its bloody good to see a considered approach taken to music that doesn’t traditionally fit into the four white boys playing the blues school of rock journalism.

However there is a stage where it’s tempting to criticise Reynolds as slightly missing the point. Talking about The Aesthetic of Disappearance, in relation to a home grown youth culture does go someway to legitimising the backroom knob twiddling of the network of misspent youths who made it happen. However, the music has existed and evolved precisely because of its lack of media spotlight and legitimisation.

At what stage does a critic like Reynolds become the cultural big game hunter, on safari in the badlands of the jungle?

DAVE NODZ- SubBase

Check out the superb Woebot blog for an online exhibition of cover art from 90's hardcore/jungle pioneers Suburban Base. Apart from being visually stunning, the art captures a real moment in time, and sums up the tunes inside perfectly. Its blindingly obvious now to spot the hip hop and cartoon infulences in both Dave Nodz cover art and the rolling ragga and beats influenced scene. However at the time the whole thing was a big infulential Fuck Off to the tastemakers who ruled clubland with a Gaultier clad iron fist..