micapam | j.l.b

As is probably obvious, I’m not updating this blog anymore. All the action is happening at the main Inna Riddim website. Or you can catch me on Twitter.

My laptop died a couple weeks back. When I got a new one I had to find all the software I used to have, and install it … the one thing I couldn’t get is a little beat counter called ltjBPM. It works very simply, you just start it up and then hit the full stop key on the keyboard in time with the music. (I’ve tried automatic beat counters that analyse tracks and supposedly work out the beat, but they only seem to work on the most basic 4×4 type tracks, which is a small minority of the tunes I play).

It used to be hosted on this link, but that link is now dead, and the website itself just shows a bagel or a donut or something. Not much use if you want a beat counter.

So I dug up the application from my old dead laptop’s hard drive. I’ve put it online here:

ltjBPM.zip (removed: see below)

I’m not in any way claiming this as my own – it’s not. I’m just trying to make sure people can use this app, because I can’t find it anywhere online, and it’s very useful – I use it on every new track I pick up before the radio show – makes picking out tracks in Serato so much faster if they all have a BPM count .. and you can chance on genre-blending mixes that you might not think of otherwise.

If you are the developer of this piece, please get in touch if you’d like me to take down the link. (But if so, please put it online somewhere yourself!)

UPDATE: The developer contacted me and let me know he’s working on a commercial version of the app, so has asked me to take the link down, so I have done. Looking forward to seeing the new and improved version!

Q: why are South Rakkas Crew giving away an LP’s worth of tracks? Some of them are *proper* …

A: They must be losing the plot. Or it’s some plan for world domination by stealth and harvesting email addresses. Or … who cares, go grab the tunes!

Subzero atmospherics and hot caffeinated soul. Dubstep suffused with tech, house and 2step. Mostly new tunes, with an old skool wildcard (97) as reference point. New studio mix (i.e. on laptop – mid travels, no decks available) from Micapam. Enjoy. Download or listen here:

Talisman – Clubfoot (Lo Dubs)
Jenova – Ike Release (Infrasonics)
Hyph Mngo – Joy Orbison (Hot Flush)
Expansions – Sigha (Hot Flush)
Sweat – Untold (Hot Flush)
The Untitled Dub – F (7even)
Son de Cali – El-B (Soul Motive)
Stonecold – Groove Chronicles (DPR)
Miles High Dub – JLB (unreleased)
Moment of Truth (Spherix rmx) – L-ow (On the Edge)
Your Say – Headhunter (Tempa)
Revenue (Untold rmx) – Ramadanman (2nd Drop)
Just for You – Untold (Hot Flush)
Vancouver – Martyn (3024)
Darkboy – Geeneus (Soulja)
The Knowledge (Untold rmx) – Toasty (Hot Flush)
Ruffage – Loefah (DMZ)
We Both are Lost – Paradigm X (unreleased)
Quiet Riot – Likhan (7even)
Inhale – Synkro (Smokin Sessions)

New studio mix. 130BPM, lots of funky with some dancehall and grime excursions before getting deep, some bits from the dubstep/funky borderline, and then the Busy Signal tune we can’t get enough of to wrap things up. Listen on the player below, or download.

Tracks:

Israhell – DJ Maxximus
Bongo Jam (L-Vis 1990 & Bok Bok rmx) – Crazy Cousinz
The Power (Socafrica rmx) – Silvano da Silva
Bonfire – Enur & Natasja
Glitch Dub – Emvee
Pull It (Ill Blu funky rmx) – Shystie
Crew (Bok Bok rmx) – Secret Agent Gel feat. Coppa
Big Boi Spitta – Rubi Dan & Chinski
Gone Too Far (Rico Tubbs “ravehall” rmx) – Dre Skull feat. Sizzla
Give Them a Piece – Part 2 feat. Sandra Melody
Skanker – Lighter
Love Guide – 2Culture Clash feat. Ms Thing
Riddim Box – NB Funky
2 Far Gone – Kode 9
In to the Future – Geeneus
Epilogue (Ramadanman rmx) – F
Elden St – Martyn
Necessary Madness – Karizma
Praise & Worship – Busy Signal

I am not serious about the title – the last thing we need is another portmanteau name for a hybrid subgenre. But it seems to me that the most compelling new moves in music are happening at the margins: between dubstep and funky – F‘s releases on 7even Recordings, say, which inject funky’s percussive element to dubstep. Or the very different, yet both extremely stripped-back takes on dubstep from Ramadanman and Shackleton. At the same time there’s fruitful collisions between JA bashment and UK funky, and minimal techno-inflected dubstep from the likes of Headhunter and Blue Daisy, and 2-step is making a return (Martyn and of course Burial). Not to mention all the wonderful sounds coming out of Bristol.

The common thread running through all this is that the exciting places in music are happening in one or another musical no-man’s land – not quite one sound, not the other. Kode9‘s recent set in Sydney was a brilliant and eclectic demonstration of the swirling currents in today’s underground.

I agree 100% with Blackdown’s comment earlier this month:

I think it’s probably also pretty clear from my writing, which I’ve tried to keep positive, that I really can’t stand the direction the majority of dubstep is heading in. Mid range distorted heavy metal is a total betrayal of everything we tried to build as a scene, whether the DJs/producers in question invented it themselves or cloned it off someone else. I still believe deeply in what dubstep is and can be, but if that’s it, count me out.

I guess it’s become clearer to me recently where Dusk and I stand, musically summer ‘09, and that is some kind of intersection between dubstep, grime, funky, wonk and 2step…

This intersection is where great things are brewing. Check out Untrue’s recent mix for Fact Magazine, or the “Order of the Day” mix by my Inna Riddim compadre Slice.

The campaign for bass not midrange begins!

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’. Note 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.