micapam | j.l.b

Ten tunes I can’t stop playing over + over at the moment (or playing on the radio, with the exception of the DVA one, which isn’t radio-friendly) … no particular order …

Some Men - Mystic MC feat. Rebellion & Mandingo (Sky)
Hidden Treasure - Vadim feat. Sabira Jade & Kwasi Asante (Barely Breaking Even)
Bullet a Go Fly - DVA feat. Badness, Riko, Flowdan & Killa P (Keysound)
2 Far Gone - Kode 9 (Hyperdub)
Call Mi - Baby Cham feat. Santigold
Untitled - Mars (unreleased)
Groove A ‘K’ Ordingly - Karizma (R2 UK)
Six Months - Dub Pistols feat. Gregory Isaacs & Rodney P (Sunday Best)
Epilogue (Ramadanman Rerub) - F (7even)
Strangers (unk. dubstep rmx) - Portishead (white)

It wasn’t too long ago when it seemed like dubstep was in danger of being drowned in the output of enthusiastic but unimaginative tracks that all seemed to be clones of each other: what I called the “Look Mum I can use an LFO” effect: all cheap dancefloor thrills and no substance, about as far from the understated menace of, say, Loefah, as it’s possible to get and still be in the same genre. Living in Sydney I’m a long way from the action, but I think it’s the same old story: people sniff a bit of cash and start churning out “product” rather than really engaging with the music for the love of it.

Happily, dubstep is now evolving rapidly in many different directions. Sure, the crappy generic wobble is still with us, but there’s plenty of new styles cropping up. It’s an exciting time. Bristol, a city that time and again puts itself on the map with a new take on a genre, is leading the way with dubstep-techno crossover, a welcome development - people like Headhunter most obviously. Two-step is back as well, although it tends to be less dancefloor-oriented than it was in its first incarnation, more reflective, following in the footsteps of the inimitable Burial. The Martyn album Great Things is another milestone for dubstep’s maturity.

In terms of new tunes that will mash up the dance, though, any DJ would be silly to sleep on Akira Kiteshi, who have only released one 12″ so far that I know of, Pinball / Noglitch. It’s all about the A-side: a glitchy, Nintendo-inspired track with little J-Pop samples, building up a frenetic energy before a crazy gangster heavy drop out of nowhere, then going nuts with the edits. Mental. Looking forward to more releases … the other stuff on his MySpace sounds good also.

In terms of the underground, there’s a whole next generation of producers ready to take the sound in unexpected new directions. Check out the underground showcase we did - just a small sample of the stuff we’ve been receiving from people from as far as afield as Russia, Norwich, Finland, California and even over here in Sydney.

I need to stop blogging and get back to work but I can’t resist mentioning Starkey’s ‘Gutter Music’ (maybe it’s technically a grime track, but so what - it drops great into a dubstep set) - especially the vocal cut with Durrty Goodz. What a tune!

John Harris writes in today’s Guardian about the prospect of witnessing ’something once precious [music] rendered not just cheap, but pretty much worthless’, thanks to file sharing undermining the music industry; and that, deprived of a healthy income from record sales, music will in the future be ‘offered up as a vehicle for advertising’, with product placement inserted into lyrics, and tracks recorded exclusively for marketing campaigns.

What is it, though, that is being threatened by Soulseek, Bittorrent and the like? Music itself? John Harris suggests that ‘illicit downloading has created a generation who expect music for nothing’. According to Wikipedia, music is ‘an art form whose medium is sound organised in time’. Not that the medium is not CDs, or DRM-protected digital downloads. What is being endangered is recorded music, or more accurately, recordings of music. This is a significant development in itself, and may well deprive artists, not just label fat cats, of income they used to enjoy; but let’s not pretend it is a God-given right to digitally encode music and profit from its distribution. It was simply an accident of technology and economics. Mass production, in the days of vinyl, was well out of reach of the general public. Scarcity was therefore a given; of course people want to buy records, so demand was there: thus the record industry flourished. The humble cassette tape was a warning that this scenario would not last forever; file sharing on a large scale is upending the game.

Is the game such a good thing? The record industry is not equal to music; it is a parasite that leeches (to use a file sharing term) from people’s love of music, allowing some of the vast sums of money it makes, or used to make, to trickle back to the artists. The industry itself has already changed music a lot; in the case of pop music, undoubtedly for the worse. Music as product is a horrible concept; just take a look at Billboard to see what the mass production of music has created.
Every change has its victims as well as its beneficiaries. Before we took for granted that the most natural way to listen to music was to turn on a machine and listen to a recording, people relied on local musicians within their community to provide them with live music. The record industry itself destroyed a lot of livelihoods.

I am not suggesting that file sharing will herald the return of troubadours and minstrels plucking quaint stringed instruments on every street corner. But it may well bring about a change in emphasis from record sales to live performance. It is an ill wind that blows no good; and anything that shakes pop music out of its sales-driven artistic vacuity cannot be altogether bad.

Another dubstep + reggae blend, along similar lines to my earlier Witchdoctor and Lion mixes. More lovers rock this time but there’s still some roots tunes on there.
Tracks:

Biggest Chopper (intro) - Rusko
Cool Rasta - The Heptones
Shake Ur Solarplex - Cotti
Raving Tonight - Gregory Isaacs
Rambo Style - Antiserum
(some random old reggae tune I forget who or what)
Poussiere d’Ange - Raggasonic
Sound Biz - Antiserum & Ripple
Up in the VIP - Tes La Rock
Monkey Style - Cluekid
Rude Boy - Johnnie Clarke
Night - Benga & Coki
General - Ini Kamozi
America B (tease) - Jazzsteppa
Rudebwoy VIP - Ruf
Crazy Soundboy - Sugar Minott
Killer Riddim - Dubchild
Truly Dread - Loefah
Love Got a Hold on Me - Dennis Brown
Milk and Honey (Moody Boyz rmx) - Prince Fatty
I Want to Eat You - Shackleton
Politician - Kora
Holly Brook Park - Joker
Step Out - Benny Page
Fire (Sunrise) - The Prodigy

You can download the mix from GotDarker (if that mp3 deep-link doesn’t work try the hosted page for the mix).

Tune in to Bondi FM (88.0 or web stream) on Fridays 6-8pm AEST where Slice and myself will be rinsing the airwaves with enuff reggae, soul, dubstep, underground hiphop, dnb and whatever else …

Inna Riddim sound come to ruff up Home, 5 September, on the top floor.

Two rooms of bass infused music: Kobra Kai, Firehouse, Percussion Juntion, Ritual, Murda 1.

LOUD!

I’m playing the Loft at UTS tomorrow, 6-7 … few reggae tunes … supporting Kobra Kai.

The Freesound blog has a discussion on audio codecs and the high bandwidth problems they’re facing.
The most sensible solution seems to be use of flac instead of wav format. FLAC is lossless, unlike MP3; and it’s specially designed for compression of audio files, unlike zip or bz2 or other general-purpose compression formats.

The problem is lack of user-friendly tools. The ones that are available have various drawbacks …

Surely it can’t be that hard to write a thin GUI wrapper for the command line that can convert back and forth?

I’ve been listening to the Dub Sessions podcast. It’s great afternoon listening …

South Rakkas crew are coming to Sydney!

They’ve produced some great, unique riddims (Clappas, Chinkuzi etc) .. I interviewed them back in 05 - there seems to be a problem with the old Inna Riddim site but you can read the interview on their website (linked above - click on “articles”).

The Sydney gig is at the Oxford Arts Factory, Friday 7 March. Get down there. I think Void and Koncrete Jungle are on the same night - club hopping is in order! They’re all within spitting distance of each other on Oxford St so that should make it a bit easier.

Tickets from Moshtix or Jimmy Sing’s.