He produced ‘Ghost Town’, sired some of the UK’s first ventures into electro dub and ran the peerless Local Records; John Collins’s career is notable not only for its diversity but also the quality of his output. Here Spice Route profiles the man behind the mixer…
Read More
Professing To Be The Sound Of An Iceberg Cruising The Jamaican Coastline The Whacked Out Digi-Dub Experiments Of Froid Dub Have Stood Out As Some Of The Best Of The Current Crop Of Productions That Sip From The Cup Of Dub. Here Spice Route Profiles The Two Veteran Producers Behind The Project As Well As Their Gloriously Idiosyncratic Label Delodio.
Read MoreFirst, a confession: I am writing this review eighteen months after it happened. Hot off the press, eh? I was going to lie and pretend it was written the next day and that you, dear reader, only stumbled on it now, thereby making you the Johnny-come-lately rather than me the… tragically unprofessional “reviewer”.
But then I thought I could spin this astounding contravention of usual journalistic practice into a uniquely dick-ish positive: namely, what is the truest review? The head-swirling one, all aflutter from the ambush of the moment? Or the one that stays with you for life - the one that gets repeated for years… the lasting, monolithic record?
Read MoreIn the last couple of years we’ve seen the 40th anniversaries of Joy Division’s two hugely-venerated albums ‘Unknown Pleasures’ and ‘Closer’. These are two of the most important records of my life, so I’ve probably read more about this band than any other, and that got me thinking: what single discovery always stands out for me? And can I add any observations to the existing mountain of study?
Perhaps the insight I find most fascinating - and pleasingly ironic - is that this band, so heavily-scrutinised for over four decades, apparently never dwelt for a moment on what they were creating.
Read MoreThe imminent arrival of a ground-breaking documentary - ‘Free Party: A Folk History’ - about the British free party scene of the late 80s/early 90s, has stirred some stark memories and buried feelings within me; for I was part of the DJing and music-making side of the DiY sound system, based in Nottingham.
DiY were renowned for organising free parties in diverse rural settings: “new age” travellers’ sites, disused airbases, quarries and woods; but, unlike some of their contemporaries - like Spiral Tribe - they eschewed fast, raucous break-beats in favour of the sparser, more melodic stylings of deep house, usually imported from New York or Chicago.
Read MoreIn this age of grand stupidity, birds seemed increasingly clever to Adam. In fact, across the whole history of human folly, they had carried on doing pretty much the same thing.
The revelation of what it meant to watch them had come to him shortly after he’d moved to LA. A favourite relative had visited, an eccentric uncle whose taste in books and wine Adam admired, but whose birdwatching habit he’d always considered faintly amusing. They’d driven to Santa Barbara to visit a distant cousin – a gentle, diffident widower who lived in an upscale apartment block on the edge of town.
Read MoreI’d heard the recent BEAK> single, ‘Brean Down‘, on 6 Music and liked it a lot – a noir and squalid atmosphere rendered invigorating by delicious choppy drums, with vocals that sounded like they were recorded in a bus shelter between gasps of butane. All I knew was BEAK> was Geoff Barrow of Portishead’s new outfit, although they’d actually been around ten years. So it was an easy decision to see them live, instead of staying in, as usual, to do the slo-mo hop-scotch around the creaky floorboards outside our toddler’s bedroom.
Read MoreGrime first emerged in the early 2000’s, from the streets and council estates of East London, a new generation creating a new sound, one that provided them with hope, so they could escape the harsh reality of their background.
The music developed from existing UK genres, jungle, garage and bashment, whilst also taking inspiration from hip-hop, ragga and dancehall. The style consists of loud and aggressive lyrics with accelerated breakbeats generally around 140bpm which in certain ways represent the sounds of the estates.
Read MoreAmidst the existential backdrop of fetid idleness and degradation, us human beings of the Anthropocene live happily with a thief close at hand. Given the mass writing on the topic it’s almost tautological to name the thief, but nonetheless we’re nothing but thorough here, so…
The smartphone is one of the most artful chronological embezzlers to have entered human consciousness since time immemorial. We thought we were in a bad place when…
Read More1982 was a very difficult year for me, one of the hardest of my life, but it was also a year in which the most astonishingly potent and unprecedented music avalanched forth from all directions. There’s something about being around 13 that makes everything you encounter cut so deep. You are like fresh, wet concrete and the imprint of any hand remains for life.
My inner world was already being sculpted, via my Walkman, by unorthodox talents such as Japan, Ultravox, Visage, Soft Cell and, by way of contrast, Dexys.
Read More