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this is now a MAJOR section |
may 2k
Godammnit, this year is just evaporating before our eyes once again, and as the legal tug'o'war continues to attempt to put something long term in place to guarantee that YOU get to hear our music, we continue to plod along in the Luna Module, tinkering with bits & pieces, with a view to getting the whole thing off to a flyer when the green lights say yay. Outside, the gentle clink of builder's tools send tiny sounds clipping through the thick & humid London air - it's been unseasonably warm here for a couple of weeks now, and whilst it'd be churlish to complain about a bit of warmth, London isn't a city built to stand heat. The houses can't cope, offices break down, car-drivers rage even harder and everything winds up in grumpy, sweaty gridlock. Worse still is being surrounded by dozens of heat-emitting musical machines, lights blinking angrily and wretched beats assaulting the air. This is how reggae music comes about.
Climate has a massive effect on the music you choose to make and on the social impact that music has in the community. No one in their right minds is going to hang out on the streets of London (except for on the handful of unusually warm days per year) and collectively share in the consumption of sound - but the key to successful living in London is to be prepared. On a regular trip through the darkside junction of Coldharbour Lane en route to Brixton this Saturday, a side-street had been spontaneously cordoned off, and there, in the middle of the road, were a host of people with a huge barbeque, a massive old skool soundsystem and huge, broad, sunshine smiles. They were ready, prepared. It's crucial living in London because the moment will never last [such are the shifting seasons], and there will always be at least an equal number of people who have critically misjudged the day's weather conditions and will trudge by you smothered in thick winter sweats, topped off by trench coats and puffa jackets.
The fact is that you expect the unexpected in London. Were you to be guaranteed five months of firey summer, the sounds of the city would be goverened by a light, airy soundtrack that would ease the city's folk through these long hot months. Were you to be guaranteed five months of brutal cold in the winter, perhaps we would settle in to a soundtrack of woolly jumper folk music to keep us warm by the roaring fireside. No. With the unexpected comes the unexplained...the rich pot pourri of musical outpourings, the lack of citywide sonic cohesion, the uncertainty that denies the creative community the chance to make mood music. Instead people write for themselves, they write to survive [witness the endless egomania of the uk garage pirates], they write because they have to, and they write because it's their way of putting down a marker, of claiming a tiny corner of London for themselves.
Long may it continue.....
sHack
february 2k
So, bang goes February and we're tearing down the walls of March already....damn that shit moves on apace. There's been a lot of wheeling and dealing going on over the past month or so, a lot of behind-the-scenes-style stuff that's really not very interesting to anyone other than ourselves, but it's all part of the deal working in this wretched industry, and simply essential in order to get back into releasing music once again. After all, that's why we're here. The upshot of it all is, that within the next couple of weeks we should be able to make an announcement as to exactly when & how we'll be releasing not only the forthcoming album, but also when you can expect singles from us too.......
In the meantime the Beatflow.com remix competition (to mix Basement Level) was an unqualified success, with no fewer than 26 remixes landing on our doorstep a couple of weeks ago. This was obviously good news, until we realised that we'd have to somehow go through them all and pick a winner....and then suddenly the very mention of the words "Basement & Level" in close proximity became something of a nightmare. I invited a bunch of mates round & whilst we supped an unhealthy amount of cocktails, began the task of playing through each and every mix that had come our way. The results were a real mixed bag (as you might expect), but we were able to pick a clear winner [who will be notified within the next few days]. Thanks again to everyone who took the time & trouble to enter.
sHack
january 2k
Everything has existed in the digital domain this month, absoleutly everything. I've been waking up, cold-sweating at the crack of dawn, gibbering like a fool about "co-efficients", "drag & drop", & mumbling about strange random acts of being "hotwired to the dataflow". I even invented a new means of e-mail browsing, where your entire life was wrapped up and packaged into a three-dimensional anvil-shaped texture. It seems like a great idea at the time (rather like flexible terracotta - which clearly isn't) and it made me laugh out loud to such an extent that I woke myself up. Really MUST get out more.
January is always a crucifying month for everyone in London. It's cold (but not bitter), it's quiet (but not quiet enough to get around without madness swallowing you whole), everyone is skint after Christmas and New Year, and there's next to nothing happening in clubland. January should be about hibernation, recouperation and planning for the year ahead, but instead I've been jacked into the mainframe for weeks on end, monitoring the happy progress of the new website, and filling my head full of stats that are, in the final analysis, quite useless.
But there has been activity over the last week in the Luna Module. Whilst Howie grinds out the hours elsewhere to make ends meet for the next couple of months, I've been continuing putting together the ELITE FORCE album I'm releasing later this year on my Fused & Bruised label, and also getting on with the job of A&R'ing the acts we have. There's a Surreal Madrid album in the pipeline for an early summer release, and my good friend and top-notch breakshead, DJ Scissorkicks has been down at the Cooler doing a fantastic production number on finishing the record. It's gonna fly.
Went down to Sonic Mook Experiment at the Scala a couple of weeks ago, and for mid-Janaury it was a bang-up night all-round, aided and abetted by mass consumption and the chance meeting with a couple of old friends I hadn't seen for years. The Kingsize boys were in town, and a special shout goes out to both Mark Pember (who played some killer teck-breaks gear) and Rhythm Division, who did a kind-of live set with some atom-splitting bass action that made my eyeballs shimmy round my face and sent me home feeling rather giddy.
February's now just around the corner and things are starting to warm up, with a whole glut of meetings with prospective record companies for the release of the Lunatic Calm album, BREAKING POINT later in the year....more at the end of February.
sHack
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