Dark Horses

Ctel posted this at Acid Ted the other day (but it’s easy to miss stuff there as he posts several times a day). I thought I’d re-present it here as it’s a good ‘un and it’s very much in Bagging Area territory. Justin Robertson, dressed in his Deadstock 33s clothes, remixes Dark Horses and their song Boxing Day- lengthy with drones and crisp motorik drums, ‘krauty’ as Ctel noted but pretty clubby and direct with it- I like it very much and it’s a free download. Get it from Soundcloud.

I Wasn’t Born So Much As I Fell Out

Ctel at Acid Ted has recently done a mammoth series of posts on the GYBO bootleg/mash up scene with interviews with a whole host of people involved. It reminded me about the London Booted album, an lp of bootleg versions of London Calling songs released in 2004. The album was a watershed moment for me, being the point where I really started using the internet for music. My gateway to this kind of thing. I hadn’t thought about or listened to London Booted for years. The mp3s perished in my hard drive disaster of 2007 and although I burned them all onto cd, it’s buried somewhere. Ctel’s series led me to wanting to hear them again- obviously I didn’t go physically hunting for the cd. I just poked around the internet a bit and re-downloaded the whole thing.

The tracklisting for the London Booted album was

1. Blo_Up – Burnin’
2. Dunproofin’ – Bubba’s Got A Brand New Cadillac
3. Agent Lovelette – Burning Hot Jazz
4. Stevie Mac – Hateful
5. Eve Massacre – The Power Of Rebelution Can’t Fail
6. Instamatic – Spanish Bombs (Over Baghdad)
7. Manriki – A Good Profile
8. McSleazy – Lost Souls In The Supermarket
9. DJ Riko – Build ‘Em Up, Clamp ‘Em Down
10. Loo & Placido – What About Brixton?
11. Miss Frenchie – Fuck ‘Em Boyo
12. Jools MF – Death Or Glory (Zeigeist Mix)
13. Cry On My Console – Koka Kola (Tizer Remix)
14. Jimmi Jammes – The Girl Wants A Cheat
15. Pop Razors – 40 Lovers
16. 10000 Spoons – Four Hoarse Men
17. E-Jitz – I’m Not Down (Hold Your Head Up)
18. Poj Masta – Rapturous Revolution
19. Ez Lee – Vain Mistake
20. Allen Smithee – Street Profile
21. Dr Helix – Super Sharp Card Shark
22. Faultside – Hysteria In Vain
23. Freed – Birmingham’s Burning
24. Freed – Rhythm Of The Dub
25. LazyTramp – Funky Guns Of Brixton
26. BONUS: Eddy TM on XFM – London Booted on the Remix
27. BONUS: Manriki – Fuck The Right Profile (The Clash vs Peaches)

Some of these are works of brilliance. I’m going to post a few of them starting with McSleazy’s Lost Souls In The Supermarket, a beautiful version of Lost In the Supermarket. To call it chilled out would be to miss the paranoia and unease that is all over this track.

Lost Souls In The Supermarket

Our Own End

Sorry to spoil your day with a picture like this but…
…this is what a fuckwit looks like.

If lots of people sit an exam, and are aware in advance what the criteria are for success in that exam, and then many meet those criteria, then those people must all be successful in that exam. They have reached the standard asked of them. The exact numbers do not really matter, % this for A, % that for C. Success is measured by reaching the criteria set in advance, not by how many people fail. Which is why this man fails to understand education. His rationale is that there must be exam winners but more importantly there must be exam losers. So education must be divisive and elitist, not about teaching people to learn and improve. There are other aspects of Gove’s fuckwittery I could go into but let’s move on.

Acid Ted brought a song called Our Own End to our attention back in March. Its a breakbeat-fuelled thing of beauty, with apocalyptic overtones and the voice of a girl. A kind of beautiful apocalypse. I love it. The artist, Slighter, has released the song as part of a download package with various mixes (you can listen to a remix by Reef Project here). You should then go and buy the whole package here. This is the March version.

Our Own End

Apologies to Slighter for linking his song to Michael Gove.

Let’s Go Somewhere Quiet

Teabags, tears and tunes to heal the soul.

Some of you who come here will know Ctel’s story. Ctel runs Acid Ted, the best dance music blog on the planet. He lost his son to a brain tumour. Ctel and Thee Pause have put together a compilation album, Let’s Go Somewhere Quiet, 14 unsigned artists from a range of musical backgrounds from Detroit techno to acoustic. All profits go towards brain tumour research and treatment in the UK and US. It was released yesterday (August 20th) and you can get it at iTunes and Beatport. This is important (and close to my heart due to my own experiences with life-threatening childhood illness with IT). What are you waiting for?

Artists- Alex Zalenka, Little Manitou, QTheSuit, Sugar Glider, Sam Levine, Stylusboy, Coolio Franco, niceFingers, yournewmachine, Larry Jefferson, Alice Love with Johan Bengtsson and Baruch Thomas Kozak Cooke, Boy Meets Machine, Felix Da Kat and Thee Pause.

Let’s Go Somewhere Quiet

‘Let’s go somewhere quiet’ are pretty much the last words a parent wants to hear in hospital.

Ctel at Acid Ted has put together a compilation album with a variety of unsigned artists to raise awareness and resources for research into childhood brain tumours, a sadly too common cause of death among the under fives. Ctel lost his own son to this foul disease over four years ago and has written brilliantly and movingly on it many times. My own experience with our disabled son I.T. mirrors some of what Ctel has been through, especially long periods of hospitalisation, the strain of dealing with the diagnosis of serious diseases in children and the invasion of one’s life by something dreadful and unasked for. When I.T. was diagnosed with Hurler’s disease in the summer of 1999 we were ushered into an office at Manchester Childrens’ Hospital. A nurse lowered the blinds as we were seated with a consultant. As the horror sunk in and the world swirled around us and the ground disappeared beneath our feet, we were dropped into a place where nothing would be the same again. Some friends of friends of ours are currently dealing with exactly what happened to Ctel. This is important and you can do something to help.

The album, Let’s Go Somewhere Quiet, will be released digitally and physically this month. You can keep updated over at Acid Ted. On Monday he featured this song, Never Forget, as a free download. It’s by Lena Katina (formerly of taTu) and remixed by Thee Paus3. You know what to do.

The 14th Minute (And Man Ray)

CTel at Acid Ted blog is having a month off, and having posted several thousand dance music posts in the last few years who can blame him? Since exhausting the A-Z of his record collection he has mainly focused on new dance music for the last two years, often posting several times a day. I discovered this through him- The 14th Minute, who make upbeat disco-house, not big room, pump-yer-fist stuff, just uncomplicated, smiley-face dance music. Lovely.

Spoken (Original Mix)

In a completely unrelated way I’ve been into the photography of Man Ray recently, who more-or-less invented modern photography as an artform, though he denied that photography was art. Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921 and was on the fringes of the surrealist and Dada movements, and hung out with most of the 20s and 30s European movers and shakers. He invented the process of solarization and spent the 1920s creating surrealist photography and taking striking portraits of the great and good, the beautiful and the damned, including the one above of model and muse Nusch Eluard. I might put some more Man Ray portraits up to accompany posts- they beat some of the band pictures I use hands down (such as yesterday’s Lemonheads shot).

Surface Noise

Acid Ted featured Two Lone Swordsmen’s remix of the Kenny Hawkes’ track Ashley’s War on Monday, a new one to me and very nice it is too. This is the return leg- Kenny Hawkes remixes Hope We Never Surface by TLS, a good length piece of electronic funk. Hope We Never Surface was on the Stay Down album (the one with the painting of the deep sea divers on the cover), which I listened to over the Christmas holiday and was struck by two things- firstly, it was much better than I remembered, full of lovely bass, weird noises, laid back sounds and drums, and a load of depth I’d not noticed when it came out- really good understated electronic music. Secondly, the sleeve was crinkled where the cat had pissed on it.

Hope We Never Surface (Remix By Kenny Hawkes).mp3

Happy New Year And Lend A Hand

Happy New Year. My head hurts. Bagging Area is One today.

More importantly you need to go over to Acid Ted. The mysterious Error: Operator has given Acid Ted an exclusive mix. Error: Operator made one of 2010’s most interesting albums, low key electronics and vocal samples, including Arthur Miller, and Eisenhower talking about D Day.

You can have the exclusive mix by donating to Acid Ted’s chosen charity, The Samantha Dickson Brain Tumour Trust. Ctel lost his son three years ago to a brain tumour, and wrote a poignant and honest account about the illness and it’s effect on his son and him and his partner. Speaking as someone who has spent huge chunks of the last twelve years on childrens’ intensive care wards, cancer wards and in childrens’ hospitals I know how important fundraising is, so get over to Acid Ted, cough up a couple of quid, download the mix, and have a good New Years’ Day.

This is Error: Operator’s Follow, remixed by Wing Commander.

Follow (Wing Commander Remix).mp3

A Is For Acid Ted

Acid Ted (link on the right) has shut up shop. For the last two years he has blogged an encyclopedia of dance music, A to Z, 1300 posts from acid house to the present day. Ctel’s blog was one which I visited on a daily basis. He responded to requests for tracks and reposts, gave me my own post (S Is For Swiss Adam, when I asked for the Weatherall remixes of Jah Wobble’s Visions Of You, wherein he provided a not entirely accurate biography of me) and sold some very nice t-shirts. He supports charities for seriously ill children. His site was one of the main inspirations for this one. A gentleman, all said and done.

This is Jah Wobble’s Bomba, remixed by Mr Weatherall. This one’s for you Ctel.

05 Bomba (Club Mix).wma