FWD Review

Check out my review of the last ever FWD at The End over at RA.

Taken from Time Out magazine a while back...

Also check my review of Skream's - Watch The Ride here.

JME Famous? Tour Commences

Tomorrow!

Love Is

I think the tracklisting speaks for itself...

CD – 1 Youngsta

1. Sholay – High Plains Drifter
2. Skream – Dutch Flowerz
3. Caspa – Rubba Chicken
4. Loefah – Mud
5. Skream - Rottan
6. D1 – Malfunction
7. Benga – Flames
8. Skream – I (Loefah RMX)
9. Skream – Chestboxing
10. Benga – Crunked Up
11. Massive Music – Find My Way (Kode9 RMX)
12. Distance – Traffic
13. Skream – Midnight Request Line
14. Benga – 26 Basslines
15. Magnetic Man – Alright
16. Headhunter – Decent
17. Kromestar – Kalawanji
18. Coki – Tortured
19. Hijak – Dally
20. Pinch – Punsiher
21. SP:MC – Trust Nobody
22. Mala – Left Leg Out
23. D1 – Give It Back

CD – 2 GEENEUS

1. Shackleton – Blood On My Hands
2. Digital Mystikz – Give Jah Glory
3. TRG – Broken Heart (Martyn’s DCM RMX)
4. The Bug – Skeng
5. Digital Mystikz – Anti War Dub
6. Horsepower – Golden Nugget
7. Conquest – Hard Food
8. Skream – Oskillatah
9. Distance – V
10. Unknown – Burning
11. Skream – Make Me
12. Digital Mystikz – Haunted
13. Benga – E Trips
14. Cays Cray – Fat Freddy’s Drop (Digital Mystikz RMX)
15. 2D – Skream
16. Benga & Coki – Night
17. Headhunter - Sushi Brain
18. 2562 - Kameleon
19. Kode9 – Babylon
20. DJ Abstract – Touch
21. TRG – Decisions
22. Burial - Archangel

Click here to pick up a copy.

Loaded With Meaning is an independent solo exhibition mounted by one of the UK's most colourful talents, T.Magic. It takes place from September 26, 2008, until October 5, 2008, at The Loading Bay Gallery, Old Truman Brewery, London and features over forty new works consisting of original paintings, photography, sculptures and silk-screens.

Pieces in the show explore Magic’s dark social commentary. His theme: the London Council Estate. Drawing inspiration from experiences growing up in what the 24-year-old street artist describes as ‘The Black Hole,' which he feels is a distinct and unknown territory isolated from the rest of society. “It’s a world of the displaced where no-one from outside enters and where the inhabitants stay; an area synonymous - in the public mind - with poverty, crime and ethnic conflict."

A pivotal aspect of the self-proclaimed therapists works is the idea of escapism from such harsh realities. His unique style of art exalts in the power of colour, contrast and composition.

After two successful exhibitions at The Air Gallery in Mayfair - along with counting Jay-Z and Pharrell Williams as fans of his art - T.Magic’s work is internationally recognized as some of the most interesting and thought-provoking contributions to the contemporary art scene of recent times.

Free Admission

September 26, 2008 – October 5, 2008 (11am – 7pm daily)

The Loading Bay Gallery, Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL

Nearest tube stations: Liverpool Street Station or Aldgate East

And it went a little something like this...

It's been a hectic couple of weeks with the bank holiday and new working commitments for moi but here's some highlights of the best stuff....

Dubfiles DVD Preview/Launch Party @ East Village - 20/08/07


The DVD is a comprehensive look at some of the big names in the scene such as N-Type, Skream, Rusko, Youngsta and Crazy D and comes with a bonus unmixed cd for all you non-vinyl buyers, click here to pick a brand spankin' new copy.

The night itself was an absolute stonker with the best sets coming from D1, who played a lot of 2-step influenced tracks and Benga, who's quick and effective mixing was great to endure. Rusko & Caspa did their wobble-filled set as expected while the night closed with a frenzied set from N-Type and Hatcha, very energetic but a bit too reload-tastic at times.

San Miguel Hidden Depths Presents... Chromeo @ The End - 21/08/08



A thoroughly enjoyable break from the dub came in the shape of Vice Record's Chromeo. A hugely packed crowd filled the main room to witness their overtly cheese lyrics, electric guitars and inexplicable use of the vocoder. Everyone's favourite guilty pleasure wooed the crowd by playing out most of the songs off their 2007 Fancy Footwork LP. Guys and girls alike swing and swayed to the ballady 'Momma's Boy' whilst 'Fancy Footwork' and 'Bonafied Lovin' kept everyone doing the 2-step, 2-step, 2-step.


Needy Girls


Chromeo - Bonafied Lovin'

Rinse FM 14th Birthday @ The End

As expected the heavy line-up brought everyone out on Bank Holiday weekend to celebrate 14 years of jungle, garage, grime, dubstep and house that Rinse FM has emitted from its various east London bases over the years. Skepta eased the night in whilst hosting on Spyro's topsy-turvy set and was later joined by Mak 10 and Ghetto who brought a late flurry of energy to the grime proceedings.

The Pay As U Go Reunion (minus Wiley obviously) stirred up memories of Sidewinder tape packs of yesteryear but after about 25 minutes with notable input from Godsgift, Major Ace and Maxwell D with their old signature lyrics, the nostalgia started to wane. A rusty Slimzee was a disappointment and strangely played 'Night' twice in quick succession, unfortunate to see his demise on such a big stage.


Not many 14 year-olds can claim to have this many friends


The Cartel reunited


New what?


Filth

Next up were best buds Skream and Benga who showed and proved why their booking schedule over the summer was so meaty. Tune after tune of unrelenting basslines was enough to send most people home with a smile on their face, and quite a lot of people did at around the 3am mark. Some had queued since 9pm (or even earlier) so there was a bit of an exodus but that funnily brought a lot of people into room 2 for a refreshing jungle set from Uncle Dugs. A less intense atmosphere than the main room allowed everyone to enjoy and appreciate the genre which Rinse FM was birthed upon and for some, I'm sure it was a learning experience too. Geeneus alongside host, Tippa finished things off with a mix of funky with some darker and dubby sounding house which capped off another good night of music from the Rinse familia.


Two opposites; mediating on bass weight and Ket


"I don't need say much, I just say 'A YO"

A big thanks to James on the Rinse pictures, for more of his brilliance click here.

To see some footage check out this from the one like Elijah

Skream's Watch The Ride Launch Party @ East Village 29/08/08

With a temperamental sound system another packed crowd (it was free) jammed the sweaty basement of East Village to see Skream hold down 2-hour set which varied from the low-end bass of 'Eastern Jam' to the dubby 'Steppin' outta Babylon' and outright unexpected interlude of Chromeo's 'You're So Gangsta'. The remix of '2d', one of my all time Skream favourties, was a treat to hear too.

The 'Watch The Ride' compilation is out on 29th September.
www.myspace.com/watchtheride

Ready For Da Wha?

It's all going happening now.... Bank Holiday Weekend looks something like this...


N-type at OI! ft RinseFM | vjlennart . com


Nice little warm-up for Rinse's 14th birthday two days later with some Hatca b2b N-Type, Benga b2b Skream and Rusko b2b Caspa which should be quite a treat givent he venues Plastic People-esque dancefloor and soundsystem.

www.myspace.com/dubfilesdvd


The line up speaks for itself but for those who need reminding here are some sets to refresh the old memory...

* The infamous Pay As U Go and Heartless Crew clash - classic.

* A short but sweet back to back live set of Pay As U Go & So Solid going back to back live in their heydey. If only they made a big tune together things may be a bit different now.


PAYG b2b So Solid

* This mix shows Slimzee at his peak in my eyes, tearing the rave down. With Wiley going back to back with Maxwell D for the duration of the set (Ace, Plague and co. make a very late appearance for some reason), it's sets like this that got me into the music in the first place.

* And finally here's a set taken from '05 with Riko and Uncle Dugs digging out some gems from the crates.


Uncle Dugs w/Riko

www.rinse.fm

Finally for the techy heads the secret's pretty much out...




Secret Sundaze

Special Delivery

Here's a piece I did for my final project on exchange earlier on this year covering a new web device to streamline the sending of music without using FTP's....

Lurking on the third floor of an old Postfuhramt (postal sorting office) in the East Berlin (Mitte to be exact) lie the minimal-furnished offices of Soundcloud, a new venture that has the authenticity and creativity of the city seeping from its pores. With this new music sharing online platform, Alex Ljung and the rest of his team are hoping to tap into a market of professional music users who see functionality, accessibility as crucial elements when it comes to using music file sharing website. By introducing a music specific professional utility for sending a receiving files on a regular basis Soundcloud is now trying to centralize all online traffic of legal music sharing, “That’s the core idea, in itself doesn’t sound very sexy, but because the current means to do to this is so bad it will be such a good thing to log in, press play on your inbox and just listen to the music from your network of people” explains Ljung.

The triggering elements of this concept all came as a result of travelling around Europe and the Atlantic on various research study projects. Initially they moved San Francisco to write their thesis about online trust and also to evaluate the online start-up community. But it was after a brief trip to Berlin in the Summer of 2007 Ljung and co-founder Eric Wahlforss realised that their destiny lied in the creative metropolis of the German capital, “We flew back to Sweden, sat down and talked and asked ourselves ‘What are we doing in Stockholm?’ So we booked the tickets and the next week we moved here [to Berlin] and from there we set up a temporary office in the conference room of a friends office and two friends from Sweden came over with us and we just got started right away” Ljung recalls.

Like many other young people who I came into contact with during my stay in Berlin the general feeling from Alex was that this could happen ‘only in Berlin’ and this was clearly apparent for Soundcloud’s development, “We were looking at a few different cities but we moved to Berlin because it has the great combination of thriving cultural scenes with extremely low prices and really easy attainable apartments. In our situation we’re starting without any money whatsoever and have big plans, to do something like this in London would have been impossible.”

Co-founder Wahlforss’ connections with Berlin’s electronic music scene (he has had several records released on a Berlin-based record label) made the integration into the cities vast network of musicians that bit easier into Berlin’s scene, “The city itself is not so structured. In most other European cities you can have elitist events and it’s really hard to get access if you’re not on the inside. Whereas in Berlin it’s really different because the high profile activities are still accessible if you want to; both in price and in attitudes of the people.” Ljung says.

Having lived and operated in the music scenes of Stockholm and Berlin, Ljung can clearly see the benefits of the move to the German capital, “Stockholm doesn’t feel that creative to me but on the other hand the creative output that comes out of Stockholm is pretty amazing. In Berlin I’d have to say that I feel the creativity more it’s is very visible in Berlin and you can really see and feel it everywhere”

With income not being the main motive of this operation there is no word of finance (or the lack of it) being an obstacle in starting up a prosperous venture, “Of course you need a salary here [in Berlin] but general life is easier to balance with less money so that makes living easier. Erik and I stopped receiving salaries this month [May] but hopefully we can start them again soon!”

So how is this different to the myriad of other music networking sites out at the moment? “It’s not a competitor to Myspace, it’s something that can integrate instead. The major problem that we want to fix is people sending music via Yousendit links. It’s a situation where you are receiving a piece of music from an artist you really like and your first reaction would be like “God, oh no” instead of “Ah nice, a new track, let me check this out”. That was really a signal that something wasn’t right” says Ljung.

Unlike Myspace the focus is on the music itself as opposed to the artist(s) who made it, which one hopes can give a bit more exposure to up-and-coming musicians as there will be less promotional tools available to take away the attention from the music, “There are other services in which you can do similar things as you can do with ours but they cater to any type of media file, and that’s where I think their weakness lies as they don’t provide any additional features for the musicians. They don’t know what content people are sending so they can’t present it in that way that makes sense for that particular content.”

Following suit from the likes of Google’s Gmail, Soundcloud is currently operates on an invite only system but over the coming months the website will be launched into the public domain, “We wanted to focus on getting the [music] professionals in at first, not just something that gets overly crowded by people who aren’t that serious about music. We wanted to signal to people that this is something for serious musicians, some whom already have record label deals and by using the invites we can control this a bit more.”

With already an impressive array of the music industry signed up, the interest will climb at attainable rate due to the precautionary use of the invitation system, “It’s a kind of quality control and also to make sure that the social norms that have already been established don’t dramatically change due to a huge influx of people” explains Ljung. Soon it will be possible to start an account with Soundcloud from the instant someone sends you a track using the website, “It means that every person that gets in, gets in through a piece of music. That’s how we hope to bridge the gap from it being completely secret to eventually free sign ups for everybody.”

Still being influenced by his surroundings on a daily basis it seems that the exact same things that attracted Alex to Berlin are still evident, “When I walk home from work there is no point along the way from the office to my house where I can’t see maybe two or three art galleries, there’s not one single place where there isn’t an art gallery around this area.” It seems as though Alex is just the latest in a long line of creative ex-pats to have been struck by Berlin’s bohemian thunderbolt. The phrase ‘only in Berlin’ is no longer a sexed-up cliché but a self-fulfilling mantra that people of Berlin believe in more than anything.

For Those Who Don’t Know – Case Study Example - Yousendit

• YouSendIt is a web-based digital content delivery service and is considered to be part of the ‘Web 2.0’ phenomenon

• It lets users send, receive and track files on-demand. It is an alternative to sending large e-mail attachments, using FTP, and sending CDs or DVDs or tape or USB flash drive via courier.

• The sender can enter the recipients’ e-mail addresses, attach the file and send it; the recipients receive an e-mail notification with a URL that lets them download the file

www.soundcloud.com

100 pieces of...

100 bottles of beer IN the wall

Here are a couple of shots from Havana Rum's '100 Pieces of Havana' exhibition last night at the Truman Brewery. The concept was that each of the 100 selected artist had to make their own interpretation of Havana Rum - nothing too exciting there eh?

With some skewed attempts at making something plausible there were only a few that garnered an inch of attention...


Phallic Purple




Nike's sweatshop mantra


The 'Macrocosm' had a poor mans' Nemo 'swimming' at the top of the bottle.