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graves of bad people
Between Dogs and Wolves is no more. But don’t fear! We have moved to a bigger and better site: check us out here. We are now Night Listeners. Its much, much catchier and does loads more stuff. Please follow us there.
Mala of Digital Mystikz
Digital Mystikz’ ‘B’ is the first dubstep record I ever bought and the first dubstep record I fell in love with. Mala was the man who made it, the man who was and still is utterly instrumental within the genre and, arguably, without him dubstep would lack much of its musical soul. He’s a big thinker, a quiet talker, a genuine gem; I had high hopes for this hour-long journey with the legend himself through his streets and sights and sounds of his London via Red Bull Radio.
The programme kicks off with Mala back in his childhood ends of Norwood and runs through some of his earlier musical memories & local hang outs. He rattles around a couple of record shops and south London markets and winds up in Forest Hill, where he gets technical about cutting dubplates. He plays us a few of his favourite tunes, old and new, we meet some of his collaborators, he tells us how cool Red Bull Academy is etc. etc. etc.……Ok, so I’m a huge fan and I know a fair bit about Mala already, but given that he’s such a central figure in such an urban scene, even my Nan could’ve guessed that he probably used to listen to pirate radio in his room, that he hung out in Croydon at Big Apple Records and that Blackmarket is something of a spiritual home to him. Quite frankly, Wikipedia could’ve done the job.
Look, there are bits of this programme I loved- Mala on the phone to Coki and the subsequent chat with his long time friend and label mate, the nods to fellow Londoners Jehst & Roots Manuva, the bits about him using every penny of his overtime money on that precious first cut of a track. I get that it has to be about Mala’s connection with London, but I just felt that this programme didn’t entirely do him justice. A lot of the time, there’s little link with what he’s talking about and the music in the background. Who were his favourite artists growing up? Which nights did he go to? Where in London did he meet his fellow dubsteppers? Where did he work before he made it? There’s not even a mention of Brixton, the home of his DMZ night- the biggest dubstep event in the capital, which is rammed to capacity every month.
You very much get the impression that London is something of a disappointment to him, not somewhere he feels totally at home. At one point he says that he in no way feels patriotic to its cityscape and grey concrete, but that it probably has shaped him. And maybe that’s the problem. Get him on the topic of music and he’s away, talk to him about his current locale and he has less to say. However, for the tracks played along the way, for Mala’s insights into dubstep’s evolution and to get a beginner’s guide to where it all began, you still need to tune into this. Personally, I’d just like to skip to the sequel.
south african radio
There are moments when you only truly arrive somewhere when what you see from your window conspires with the sounds eeking from your transistor.
You know the drill – you’re driving down the motorway and then in a moment of madness you flick to Radio Shropshire, Donegall FM, or the Pulse of West Yorkshire. Accents and adverts suddenly connect you to the area and landscape that your comfy car has kept you insulated from.
This most excellent moment hit me like a piledriver crossing the Orange river – from Sith Ifrica to Namibia.
Two things conjoined to make crossing a tangible moment. The first is that – unlike most land borders, where one despondent cabbage field reaching to the horizon gives way to another – the orange river is a real physical, geographic change. It’s as though God had looked down and said “I’m not leaving this up to those stoopid poeple,” drawn the line across the ground, and said “let there be two different places”. The rocky Mediterranean scrub gives way to Jabba the Hut’s back yard. Luminous sand dunes and desert outcrop stretch from the curb to horizon.
We’d had our passports stamped in the border hut, and were crossing the bridge when, for no discernable reason the stereo which all through the veldt had been happily playing CD’s, decided no more hip hop, you Hafrica now boy.
From the static hiss emerged some weird juju Ndebele dude talking pops clicks and whistles to the sounds of jangly gee-tars recorded in a mud hut with a pair of 1960’s headphones.
Low fi from the beyond.
Awesome.
The Breezeblock was a radio show on BBC Radio 1 a few years ago, a mix show for freaks late at night hungry for electronic music. The show featured a bunch of different DJs and producers from Matmos to Bjork, but Jace Clayton AKA DJ Rupture always occupied a very special place in the show’s pantheon of pornographically good knob-twiddlers. A firm favourite of John Peel, he was The Breezeblock’s daddy.
What Rupture has always done exceptionally well is play stupid music for clever people, and mix it up with clever sounds for those who want it stupid. Sure, a lot of it is electronic with beeps and bass, but he manages to keep a live, analogue, human feel to proceedings that is all his own.
DJ Rupture’s radio show, Mudd Up is available on WFMU and on iTunes as a podcast. If one week’s isn’t enough you can go to his show page where every single show is archived complete with guest information and playlists. Fellow BDAW’s blogger Matt put me on to the show and I can safely say it is the most surprising and rewarding music podcast I currently subscribe to.
Mudd Up! is made with a lot of love. Guests frequently pop up from all continents and disciplines (musicians, poets and more) and the show is full of genuine exclusives. Jace describes his musical sweep as ‘Cumbia. Dubstep. Gangsta synthetics. Sound-art. Maghrebi’, but in reality this is a DJ without respect for fashion, with a thorough disdain of musical genre, audience demographics or conventional broadcasting norms.
Rupture creates sound collages of mystery and drama that consistantly challenge every synapse in my brain. Subscribe immediately.
Big Up Radio on your iPhone
In the first of a series of posts with radio from the iPhone it seems righteous to kick off with something incredibly Ronseal—that does what it says on the tin. When you are lying in bed at night there are some moments when only uninterrupted reggae will do. On some occasions this leads to my default evening FM station Conscious FM or—on a Wednesday night at 11pm in the UK—the absolutely incredible 50-50 Soundsystem show on Resonance FM (post coming soon). However an alternative for the technology fetishists amongst us is to download the free Big Up Radio app for the iPhone.
Big Up is, according to its page, a loose collection of reggae enthusiasts in the California area that started broadcasting together in 2000. Their website looks like its been put together in a long, democratic committee meeting (just toooo much to read / listen to / click on for anyone with a job) but their iPhone app is the bomb.
It may only be a music jukebox service, but sometimes simple is great. Boot it up, spin the wheel to the station you want to listen to and plug it into your speakers. Cue a non-stop reggae music mix. I know that for the musically literate Last FM can do something similar (you do have to know what artist’s station you want to start with), but Big Up proves that there is life in the no-presenters idea. The skill with all of these things is picking the right music, and Big Up do this very well—check the ‘Lovers Rock’ or ‘Steady Rockin’ Roots’ channels for the sweetest prelude to sleep.
Something a little different for you today. Mixcloud is a new audio streaming site, currently in beta, which is hosting a nice variety of DJ mixes, podcasts and radio programmes. It says it’s ‘rethinking radio’, which is a nice line, but not quite true. However, it is a really good place to listen to interesting mixes and radio shows. It’s nice and clear to use – you can search on a variety of tags underneath each mix, by style, location, popularity and also date or DJ if you’re looking for something specific. And there’s a good playlist and comments facility, which might well lead to a good community swapping comments on each other’s output.
The quality can be variable – I’ve been checking out some really good reggae and jungle sets that are better for the content rather than the execution, while the mixes posted by Clash The Disko Kids, a Singaporean DJ team that push the button marked ‘acid’ until it breaks, are fantastically put together. On top of that there’s also death metal and punk, rock and random tracks thrown together by people who like playing and talking about music, including ThisKID, who puts up his Italian radio show, the excellently named Electric Underwear
And, although it’s in beta and is currently members only, they’ve sorted out an invite only log in for the Between Dogs & Wolves. If you point your browser here
And use the invite code ‘dogsandwolves’, you can explore the site and all it has to offer. And, if the mood takes you, post up some stuff yourself.
Back again with another station Francais – and this one might not be such a secret, at least if you live on the South Coast of England.
FIP is one of the stations run by Radio France. Founded at the start of the seventies, it’s a very simple, yet very unusual, format. Mixing up jazz, world music, reggae, classical and the occasional bit of hip hop and seventies rock, it keeps presentation to a minimum and threads music together like one of your mates’ mix tapes (remember them?) It follows themes and moods through in a manner most radio stations would never, ever dare.
So this morning we had Blossom Dearie’s spikely twee jazz, then David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ , followed by Flight Of The Conchords ode to the Dame himself, with Tom Jones and Santogold snuggling up beside each other shortly after. Not to mention half a dozen tracks from Africa, France, Jamaica and further afield that I’ve never heard of before. All within the space of half an hour.
It’s music radio like you wish it could always be. Inventive, entertaining, exciting, always giving your ears a treat. And more often than not it’s music you either haven’t heard before, or something you know really well but which is framed in a way that makes you look at it afresh. Earlier I heard Elbow’s ‘Days Like These’ followed by some Puccini, and I had to stop what I was doing to catch my breath at the brilliant simplicity of the juxtaposition.
It’s a glorious listen, and David Hepworth explains some of the reasons why (much more eloquently than I’m able to) here. The station’s fame has spread far and wide, and specifically to Brighton where, apparently, it was relayed by a not for profit pirate and developed quite a following. The Man (a/k/a OFCOM) took the pirate off air, but hey, now we’ve got the internet no one can tell you what to listen to, right?
Ross Allen
Firstly, in the interests of full disclosure I need to make it clear that Ross Allen is a mate, and we worked together back in the last century on GLR, when I produced his ‘Destination In’ evening show.
However, if I had no knowledge of the man and his curious taste in quality knitwear, I think I’d still be flagging up his latest radio incarnation. Hailing from the eclectic end of Dance Music Boulevard, The Meltdown’s content is pretty much dependent on the mood Ross is in when he hits the studio, the music that’s excited him while he’s been playing out that week, and the MP3’s and white label CD’s he’s been passed while out and about in nightclubs far and wide across the globe.
Managing to play a mix of exclusive super cool previews, current leftfield remixes and classic old tunes without coming over (like some radio DJ’s we could mention) as trying too hard, there’s always a sense of the crate digging fan boy about Ross’s presentation. It’s a feeling that he’s playing the music because he loves it, and he wants the listener to love it as well. Combined with the ability not to take himself too seriously, it makes The Meltdown one of the most enjoyable shows on the Ministry platform. Hell, one of the most enjoyable on radio, period.
Ross Allen – The Meltdown, Ministry Of Sound Radio Monday nights 6-8pm GMT and listen again.
While not an especially big fan of online radio music streaming formats – they can be an excuse for a cheap way to pretend you’re running a real station, as anyone who’s heard the same seven tunes constantly looped on Chill can tell you – there’s much to be said for the idea of creatively programmed web streams as the new mix tape, a 21st Century glimpse of one obsessive’s vision.
In the nicest possible way, that’s exactly what FRUKie is.
Beginning life as Indie Folk, an offshoot of the longer established Folk Radio UK, the recent name change has resulted in a loosening up of the format. It’s now an intriguing blend of classic folk sounds and music from the more relaxed end of the spectrum. Put together in the none-more-folk environs of Clevedon, Somerset, and with a playlist that includes everything from John Martyn, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Nick Drake to Martha Wainwright, ancient scratchy blues and Nick Cave, it’s one of those carefully thought out selections which plays you stuff you’ve never heard before, while throwing in the occasional ‘hit’ to give the listener that all important sense of connection. The lack of presenters means that, for a newbie or someone not completely across the music played, there will be lots of dashing to the computer to check the constantly updated playlist, but that’s a good indication of the quality of the music played. Definitely one to check.
UPDATE; In what we sincerely hope isn’t going to be a regular occurrence to stuff featured here on BD&W, FRUKie has ceased streaming, due to ‘increased costs’ and the amount of time it takes to pull it together. A real shame, but totally understandable. Full statement here.
The French have given the world a lot to be grateful for. Pleasant service stations, Serge Gainsbourg and brandy are just three things that spring to mind. To that list should be added Radio Nova, the music site that’s been the mainstay of Parisian broadcasting for the last couple of decades.
Playing a selection that mixes reggae, funk, jazz and hip hop, it’s pretty much the kind of station that the people who put together the ‘Rebirth Of The Cool’ compilations would have created, if they’d owned Nova magazine and spoke French. Aided, to non French speaking ears, by the DJ’s impeccably cool links, and a regular speech free music spot introduced with stings announcing ‘Le Grande Mix’, it’s the perfect station for those laid back occasions when you want to hear something different without being boxed around the ears by ‘difficult’ music.
One thing – Nova seems to be able to get away with completely ignoring the French broadcasting authorities rules on Francophone pop. Or do those restrictions not apply to stations with Gang Starr on the playlist?
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