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Brainfeeder London part 3 – The brain food matures

Last night Fabric hosted one of the last sessions from the 2010 London edition of the Red Bull Music Academy (which ends this week) with a showcase from the Brainfeeder label – the (brain)child of Flying Lotus.

Since Brainfeeder first appeared in the global music consciousness nearly 4 years ago it’s come a long way. Back in 2007 Brainfeeder was a radio show, something I haven’t really seen mentioned anywhere strangely enough. This radio show, hosted on the legendary Dublab, was a showcase of both Flying Lotus’ work and that of his L.A and worldwide peers, most of whom at the time were still mostly ‘unknowns’ outside of beat/hip hop nerd circles – Ras G, Gaslamp Killer, Nosaj Thing, Hudson Mohawke and Samiyam to name a few of those who appeared on the two shows that took place in 2007 and then 2008. That last show was a precursor to the Los Angeles album released a few months later in June ‘08 on Warp Records and which propelled Flying Lotus, and his cohorts, to worldwide fame in both underground and even overground circles (the man will be supporting Thom Yorke for the tour of his new band this year – that’s definitely pretty overground).

Around the time of the second show I remember an interview with Flying Lotus on Benji B’s show where he first hinted at Brainfeeder becoming a label – a vehicle for the release of music, and soon enough also art, made by his friends and peers in the L.A scene. That became a reality in late 2008 and the label soon moved from an mp3-only, releasing-the-work-of-friends approach to a much more ’serious’ one. It now boasts an eclectic roster of artists from across the U.S.A, has worldwide distribution and has been putting on some of the most interesting parties in America, Europe and Japan. Which brings us nicely back to last night.

If memory serves me right the first Brainfeeder event was in London in June 08, to celebrate the launch of the Los Angeles album. I remember being on the other side of the world at that time in Japan and drooling over the line up, wishing I could be there. That event marked the beginning of Brainfeeder as a live event, an event that connects the music and online ties of the label and artists with the real world and a public eager for fresh, new sounds performed live in a variety of set ups: from straight up DJ sets from GLK to laptop sets by Fly Lo, 303 bass beatings by Ras G and insane microkorg fuckery by Dorian Concept (to name a few). In June 09 the second Brainfeeder London event returned to its East London car park roots to much love from a surprisingly diverse audience – you can read my review of that one here. Since its beginning in June 08 Brainfeeder has hosted events in Barcelona, Tokyo, Korea, New York and of course its hometown of L.A with a new regular session at the Downtown Independent which combines the new visual element of the collective with its music side as well as a much-deserved nod to L.A’s original beat scene-founding night ‘Sketchbook’ (reborn and hosted on the rooftop of the venue where the main shows take place).

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Original Cultures London 2010 is over…

Photo by Charlie Whatley

Last week was the second edition of Original Cultures, this time taking place in London. I worked for about 8 months on this, with the last two months a solid 7-day a week affair juggling 9-5, radio shows, writing and preparations and logistics for the whole thing. Let’s just say I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the show ended on Friday!

Much blogging, photography-ing, tweeting and assorted on the fly documentation took place – check the round up of links below in case you missed anything. Videos and audio are incoming, most likely over the next two months. We’re definitely aiming to have the documentary for London ready by early summer instead of the 8 or so months it took us to get the docu from the first event ready.

The whole thing was amazing for me, and I won’t repeat what I’ve already written in the blogs but it has really been another great experience, with so much learnt and so much more to take forward for the next event. Ideas are already buzzing in my head again and I can’t wait to get started, despite how happy I was for it to be over, even if just for a week.

Big big thanks to the artists, the crew and all those who helped us and supported us. You know who you are and you have my eternal gratitude. Until the next one. Peace!

Original Cultures London 2010 – online documentation
Tumblr blog – featuring photos, videos, and other media taken on the fly as it happened
Daily blogs – from artists, organisers and editors
Photos – including opening and closing party from exhibition, daily workshops and final showcase
Videos – currently mainly on the fly and joke videos shot throughout the week, proper ones coming soon
Audio – from our exhibition and soon audio from the showcase too
Facebook – fan us and read up on all the madness in one place

Posted in Music, Online Portfolio.

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Best of mid-90s French hip hop aka back in the days when I was a teenager…

Growing up in the south of France in the 90s I was caught in French hip hop’s wave of popularity which saw the ‘genre’ appropriated by artists across the country and turned into one of the most vibrant and popular local versions of what was by then already a global culture. While it’s true that Paris was the central nerve of French hip hop for much of the 80s, alongside Marseilles in the south, it wasn’t really until the 90s that French hip hop really exploded countrywide leading to even more localised versions, with dudes rapping in local slang and dialects among other things.

I think I really started to listen to hip hop properly sometime around my 11th birthday but it didn’t become a serious addiction until a few years later and for most of my teens I devoured tapes from Paris’ Radio Nova, rips of US albums my friends and I would circulate between us, albums of crews from the South of France, primarily based around the Marseille scene that IAM helped start and grow, and most importantly tapes from Cut Killer and HH DJ Crew (which included at various times Crazy B, Pone and other legendary French DJs). Those last ones were for me instrumental in spreading the sound and style of French hip hop as Cut Killer would invite rap crews to guest on his tape, freestyling over US beats and dropping their own, often unreleased at the time, tracks. I used to have a box filled with those tapes which unfortunately got robbed after I moved to London in 98 – out to the crackheads in Essex who either had good taste in music or not a fucking clue the gems they were grabbing.

After moving to England in 97/98 I stopped keeping up with French hip hop and within a few years I’d started discovering UK hip hop and re-learning my US classics, many of which I knew by heart but with French lyrics instead of the original American ones.

About 6 or so years ago, while I was still deep in the scratch thing I remember a guy called Ahmet, a DJ from Switzerland, posting two mixes on a French scratch forum which were basically home made best of French hip hop classics from the mid to late 90s – a time many agree was the golden era of French hip hop. It all started going downhill around 98 following the passing of a law that forced radio stations to have a minimum of 40% French music on the airwaves. And despite what many outside of France saw as a great move this instead turned out to be the death kneel for the ’scene’ as bigger labels and radio stations went fishing amid the very healthy underground rap scene and turned local rappers into ’stars’.

Anyways back to the point, this kid Ahmet posted these two mixes and it totally blew my mind – not only did it send me back on a total memory lane trip, he also obviously had very similar tastes to me as his mixes included a majority of the groups I’d been a huge fan of as a teenager from Parisian mainstays like NTM, X-Men and 113 Clan to smaller crews from the south, north, east and west of the country. I remember bumping these mixes for ages back then, and since then always going back to them whenever I feel the need to revisit what was a fundamental part of my musical education and make up.

I ended up digging those mixes out again for someone last week, and considering they’re on my server and I can’t find any info about Ahmet or the mixes anywhere I thought I’d share them with the world wide web. There’s no tracklist, the mixes are rather rough round the edges but as I said absolutely packed with classics for 3 or so hours.

If anyone has any info on where Ahmet is these days do let me know and I might summon the energy to do a tracklist one day, for now though it’s a straight up trip down memory lane for those like me who grew up on this and for those who haven’t here’s an introduction to why 90s French hip hop was the freshest shit around bar none.

Download Ahmet – Rap Francais vol 1 (right click and save as)

Download Ahmet – Rap Francois vol 2 (right click and save as)

One thing though: the mixes definitely lack a lot of the Marseille classics from that era. Here’s one of the all time classics for me from that time, IAM and all their Marseille affiliates rhyming about smoking hashish. Those were the days.

Posted in Mixes, Music.

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Welcome to LDN – leave your originality at the door please

For anyone involved in the alternative London music scenes the recent news that Plastic People, the legendary Shoreditch club, is facing closure by the Met will have come as not just a surprise but also a real blow to the creative heart of the city. And considering London's recent hyper-gentifrication ahead of the Olympics, said creative heart is starting to shrink more and more by the month it seems. Over on the Mr Trick & Wrongtom site, Tom has made a very good case for how surreal a move this is. I'll just copy what he said below and urge everyone who's ever been to the club or cared about London's creativity and real club scene to join the FB group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=312688015977&ref=ss&v=info) and await details of how we can all help which should be coming in later today. Suffice to say that if we the people do indeed have a voice as we are often led to believe it will be heard loud and clear in this case – #saveplasticpeople is London's top trending twitter topic today and will continue to do so I'm sure until the council and police realise the enormity of what they are thinking of undertaking.

Wrongtom – Plastic World (http://www.mrtrickandwrongtom.com/2010/02/22/plastic-world/)

Kool Keith once asked “is the world made of plastic?” but as far as I can work out the world’s made of shit these days, and I’m sorry to be so crass but for those in the know London’s clubland is facing very sorry days to say the least.

It was announced at the weekend that the East London institution that is Plastic People is facing possible imminent closure at the hands of Hackney’s police force who wish to revoke PP’s license to prevent “public nuisance” and “crime and disorder”.

I could be completely mistaken and maybe there’s something more sinister at play here but in a town littered with what seems like an endless array of soulless drinking dens frequented by shit-faced city-boys and “going up London Gary” weekenders, why would one of the few venues dedicated to the cause of pushing new music face closure?

Remember The Spitz? Only a few years back you could have been one of a handful of people watching anything from outsider punk rock to Restiform Bodies wrestling both nasty hangovers and their Gameboys live on stage but sadly not any more because now Spitalfields, thanks to a mediocre makeover, is now a lifeless sack of nothing out of the ordinary. Has anyone noticed there’s now a tex-mex restaurant bankrolled by depressing hen night’s on Brick Lane? What’s really happening to this part of town?

Just to set some records straight this isn’t self centred gushing, I’m by no means bias, and will be the first to admit that Plastic People could often attract a cliquey crowd who to quote a nameless patron “would show up to the opening of an envelope” but I’d hardly associate rowdiness with the place or the people. Anyone that’s been to CDR can vouch for a crowd gathered together to explore the wonders of music so fresh it might have come off the mixing desk barely an hour before it was aired, in fact It’d be hard to name an event held there in the past decade which wasn’t solely about the music. So put simply, what on earth are the Met thinking?

Have the slew of strip clubs been issued with such an order? What about that BNP pub up Hackney Road? There are so many places which clearly contribute to the piss and vomit stained pavements of shitty Shoreditch that pointing the finger at the one place which doubtfully contributes to the local stench seems downright ludicrous.

As I say though maybe I’m gravely mistaken and there’s something we don’t know going on behind the scenes, or maybe the council for some mad reason want a Walkabout in it’s place, either way if you give a damn about one of the last bastions of creative clubland then get involved over on facebook.

On a personal level I’ve enjoyed many a night there from Big Dada’s Gosh! nights to testing out tracks on their amazing rig at CDR and hope this wont spell the last of these People and their fantastic Plastic.

Posted via email from Laurent’s pot of randomness

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New Music Weekly – Feb ‘10

We’re back for February and a round up of new/forthcoming musical goodness as well as internet freebies worth checking.

Playlist of the week

5 tracks this week on a varied tip with Prins Thomas, Monkfly, Jose James, Epstein and Rudi Zyglado

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I didn’t know about Rudi Zyglado two days ago when a promo for a forthcoming release on Planet Mu landed in my inbox. The name intrigued me as did the claim that his music ‘maybe to pop for some of us’. This track is probably the least pop sounding one of the 2 on there though it definitely has some pop sensibilities in the melodies and rhythmic switches. It’s growing on me the more I listen to it. Definitely a name to keep an eye on, and I recommend the single which drops late March with Starkey and Slugabed remixes to boot.

Prins Thomas is someone I discovered a few years back thanks to the homie Uncle Lew who put me onto his collaboration with Neil Landstrum. This track is taken from the Norwegian’s first solo album, self-titled and out late March on Full Pup. The press release talks about cosmic disco styles but I really like the more dubby elements I’m hearing in there too. This track is long but rewarding, a proper trip. It’s a strong album too which manages to pull off being fully instrumental without relying on too many gimmicks.

Jose James is a New York-based jazz singer with a rather amazing voice. For his new album on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood recordings he’s got a fine selection of producers on board, including Flying Lotus, Moodyman and Mitsu The Beats, giving the LP a varied feel without falling into the swampy pitfalls of guest-produced LPs that sound incoherent. ‘Love Conversation’ is one of my favourite tracks on there, a mellow ballad with guitar twangs featuring female vocalist Jorda. Album is out this month and is heavily recommended.

Monkfly is an Australian producer who I’d never heard of until Dave Mochipet dropped me a promo for his new release on Dave’s Daly City Records label. This is the first track on the EP and shows a nice take on the current global beats/electronic hip hop wave, blending deep bass with squiggly synths over a rather blunted riddim. EP is out now in digital via the label’s site.

The last track this week comes from Epstein, a name I discovered a while back I think through Waxfactor. According to the press release for this new album, released under the name Epstein Y El Conjunto, this is his first non-Japan-only release and preceeds an entire re-issue of his back catalogue for the ears of a worldwide audience, not just discerning Japanese heads. I chose this track featuring School of Seven Bells, another mellow trip, hazy and laced with beautiful vocals. I’ve got a feeling this album is gonna get some airplay.

Musical round up of the week

Freebies and others found online for your aural pleasure.

Continue reading “New Music Weekly – Feb ‘10″

Posted in Mp3s and videos, Music, New Music Weekly.

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