red bull music academy

DAILY N TE
THE DAILY NEWSPAPER FOR LONDON FROM THE RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY
05/24
STREET SOUNDS // HOW GRIME SHOOK THE SYSTEM
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
HOW CAN WE SAVE THE
MUSIC INDUSTRY?
HAS THERE EVER BEEN A MORE
DIVISIVE SOUND THAN GRIME?
ARISING FROM THE ASHES
OF UK GARAGE’S CHAMPAGNEAND-SKIPPY BEATS, ITS FRANTIC,
SKITTERING ELECTRIC STORM
AND HYPERKINETIC VOCALS
SOUNDED LIKE AN ALLOUT ASSAULT ON THE SENSES
BACK IN 2002. SINCE THEN,
IT’S MORPHED INTO THE
MAINSTREAM, BUT YOUNG,
HUNGRY TALENT FINDS THE
DOORS TO THE CLUB BARRED,
AS THE POLICE THROW UP MORE
OBSTACLES THAN AINTREE
TO ITS PUBLIC PERFORMANCE.
INSIDE, THE DAILY NOTE PUTS
THE CASE FOR THE DEFENCE
/// A BOU T L A ST N IGH T ///
DAILY NOTE ISSUE 5 / 24
RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY IS...
EDITOR ROBIN TURNER
DEPUTY EDITOR PIERS MARTIN
MANAGING EDITOR JUSTIN HYNES
CHIEF SUB-EDITOR STEVE YATES
STAFF WRITERS TOM HALL,
FLORIAN OBKIRCHER
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
EMMA WARREN, STEVE YATES
ALL-SEEING EYE TORSTEN SCHMIDT
ART DIRECTOR HELEN NILAND
DESIGNER RICHARD MURRAY
PICTURE EDITOR NEIL THOMSON
ARTWORK COMMISSIONER
DANNY MITCHELL
PHOTOGRAPHY THOMAS BUTLER,
RICHIE HOPSON, DAN WILTON
CREATIVE DIRECTOR MILES ENGLISH
The amps in the Academy studios
stayed warm ’til late last night. Tony
Nwachukwu (top left) enlisted
Romanian and Scottish cohorts to
create a new bass-driven genre with
the working title ‘UK hunky’, while
Australia’s Andras Fox hit the
recording studio for an impromptu
bass-led jam (bottom left). Channel 4
presenter Alex Zane also dropped in
to the offices of the Daily Note to ask
why he wasn’t on cover.
PRODUCTION MANAGER
ADAM CARBAJAL
PRE-PRESS PRODUCTION
LEE LAUGHTON
THANKS TO DAN HANCOX, LUKE
INSECT, TOM & BACON DESIGN, THE
CATERING CORE AGAIN
DAILY NOTE, C/O RED BULL, 155–171
TOOLEY STREET, LONDON, SE1 2JP
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PLEASE DISPOSE OF THIS MAGAZINE
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RESPECTED CONTRIBUTORS AND DO NOT NECESSARILY
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REGISTERED OFFICE: 155-171 TOOLEY STREET, LONDON, SE1 2JP
Since it began in Berlin in 1998, the Red
Bull Music Academy has fostered
musicians’ creativity by bringing them
together with a diverse and talented group
of peers. Here, aspiring artists from around
the world learn from and collaborate with
the musical pioneers who minted the genres
they themselves are now pushing to new
levels. It’s about mutual inspiration, helping
them to connect the dots and make their
own contribution to music. This year’s host
city is London. The Academy has landed.
SAMMY BANANAS (FOOL’S GOLD):
“THE ACADEMY IS LIKE
THE HARVARD OF HIP HOP”
REDBULLMUSICACADEMY.COM
REDBULLMUSICACADEMY.COM
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
/// FROM T HE AC A DE M Y///
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
///STA RT I NG NOT ES///
THE
BURNING
ISSUE
FROM HOME STUDIO
STRAIGHT TO THE CLUB
–TONY NWACHUKWU’S
CLUB-NIGHT
CDR IS THE FIRST PORT
OF CALL FOR MUSICIANS
WITH FRESH IDEAS
PARTICIPANT PASS NOTES
BESIDES PLAYING CHURCH ORGAN
AND CONTROLLING THE JUICE AS AN
ELECTRICAL ENGINEER, IFIEYA KPONU
PRODUCES GEMS FOR NIGERIA’S OWN
BEYONCÉ, MO’CHEDDAH. AS WELL AS
BEING AN HONORARY MEMBER
OF THE KNIGHTHOUSE, LAOS’ FINEST
HIP HOP SOUNDFORGE.
TONY NWACHUKWU:
“I’m close to a heart attack every
time, but that’s the appeal”
/// WOR L D PA RT Y ///
It’s a clubnight like no other. Take a bunch of
DJs and producers, some burgeoning
reputations, a fat helping of nerves and one of
the city’s best sound systems and you’ve got a
club in which musicians can talk to likeminded people, forge new alliances and
ultimately find out if their newly minted
tracks work in front of a crowd, whether
they’ve crafted a floor-filler or party-killer.
“CDR’s a place where musicians bring
their new tracks to the club straight from
home studios. Often it’s stuff that’s been well
produced, but equally often it’s just ideas.
And it’s the latter that we’re especially
looking for,” says Tony Nwachukwu whose
night at Plastic People has become London’s
most important venue for emerging talent.
CDR is the electronic music equivalent of a
battle of the bands.
Beat science, dubstep, house, soul, hip
hop – at CDR it’s all about new electronic
music forms. No style limits are placed on the
producers, which is often a challenge for the
night’s DJ, Nwachukwu. “I’m close to a heart
attack every time. Instead of playing my own
stuff, I’m putting on CDs I don’t even know.
But that’s also the appeal,” he says.
Since the former Attica Blues member
started the night in 2002, the archive of
tracks musicians have entrusted him with has
passed the five thousand mark. You can trace
the careers of producers like Red Bull Music
Academy participant Daisuke Tanabe back to
Nwachukwu’s collection. The Japanese
musician was a CDR diehard back when he
was studying in London. “He used to come
every night. I helped Daisuke to mix his track
for the first CDR-album, Burntprogress 1.1,
in 2005 ’cos he had never been inside a
studio before.”
Since then Tanabe has become a crafty
studio wizard, promoted by the likes of Gilles
Peterson, sought after by labels like Ninja
Tune and BBE. “The first time I went there it
was like a shock: so many talented people,
dancing, talking, expressing themselves. Just
amazing,” Tanabe recalls. Through CDR he
extended his production skills, but more
importantly, it helped him overcome his
natural shyness.
Tanabe joins Nwachukwu behind the
decks again tonight, presenting 30 minutes of
unreleased electronica and glitchy gems from
his hard drive. It’s music in progress. as
Nwachukwu points out again: “CDR is all
about ideas.”
FIXED
GEAR
The MPC 3000 is my
favourite piece of kit.
I’m not particularly
fluent in ‘Empeeceese’,
but every record I ever
made (up to 2003)
features that swing
and snap. I just love
the tactile nature of
it. It’s a totally different
experience to making beats
on any other piece of kit.
CHRISTOPHER TUBBS
IS HALF OF ATLANTIC CONVEYOR, CO-OWNER OF
UNTRACKED RECORDINGS AND IS DEBUTING ON BBC 6
MUSIC’S 6 MIX ON FEBRUARY 27.
DUMMY PORTAL:
SITES FOR SORE EYES
DJ History: They call themselves
“dance music’s basement”.
If by that they mean it’s a dusty
treasure trove where every corner
hides yet more archival genius,
then they’re pretty much on point.
Fit to bursting with interviews
with everyone from DJ Shadow to
Jimmy Saville, DJ Parrot to John
Peel, djhistory.com is by people in
the know for those who want to
know. Also highly recommended
– anything from their publishing
wing, including the Vince
Aletti compendium, The Disco
Files 1973-78, and the complete
collection of Boy’s Own fanzines.
The Red Bull Music Academy session at CDR takes
place tonight at Plastic People, 147 Curtain Road,
EC2A 3QE. Admission is free
DJ KLEM
Describe your place in the musical universe?
I am in some far away galaxy. Maybe on planet
Krypton! It will crash on earth soon.
What’s been the hardest part of your musical
progress to date?
The transition from “really good guy” to “really good
guy who gets paid”. In fact, it still is.
Where’s the weirdest place you’ve played?
Haven’t yet played in a weird place... but I have sung
on a bus.
Tell us about how your environment has shaped
your music, if at all?
The African element somehow always finds
its way into my rhythms and melodies.
If you could do one thing in music, what would
it be?
Score a movie, produce an album or write a song
that’s still considered a classic a century on. Like
Thriller or The Sound of Music.
THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER CARD
RAHUL VERMA REMEMBERS TO
SWIPE IN AS HE GOES GLOBAL IN LONDON
W
hen a Londoner speaks to a nonresident these clichés always surface:
“London’s a melting pot… You can find
every nationality of the world in one place… It’s the
most cosmopolitan city in the world…” The fact is,
clichés are often true and London is all of the above – if
you’re a foodie this means over a weekend you can grab
a Colombian desayuno (breakfast) in Brixton, get stuck
into Pakistani kebabs in Whitechapel or rip apart an
Anatolian Pide (aromatic Turkish pizza but better)
in Green Lanes. Similarly, if you’re into music, you can
access sounds from the farthest reaches of the global
village faster than calculating a carbon footprint.
Over the coming weeks this column will arm
you with enough crude generalisations to get you
slapped should you utter them out loud as you devour
music from all over the world, armed only with your
Oyster Card.
BHANGRA + BACARDI =
MOLOTOV COCKTAIL
What are you most looking forward to seeing in
London and why?
Double-decker buses and Beefeaters. Just because
they’re double-decker buses and Beefeaters.
ILLUSTRATION: BACON DESIGN/TOM CASLIN
What is your favourite word in the language or
dialect you grew up with?
I grew up with English but my favourite phrase in
Yoruba (the most common dialect) is ‘se nwa para
mi ni?’ It means ‘will I kill myself?’
Which cliché about your country or city is
true and which is totally wrong?
True: Nigerians are the happiest people on earth.
Well, when they’re not in traffic. False: every Nigerian
is a fraud/con/thief/’419er’.
Which Londoner would you most like to
hang out with?
It has to be James Bond. We’d never run out
of “war stories” at lunch.
Would you sell your soul for rock ‘n’ roll?
No!
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FOR THE
RECORD
WE ASK THE SAME QUESTIONS EVERY DAY OF YOUR FAVOURITE
DJS AND PRODUCERS. TODAY, WARP RECORDING ARTIST BIBIO
OPENS UP TO DAILY NOTE.
WHAT ONE RECORD WOULD
YOU RESCUE IF YOUR HOUSE
WAS ON FIRE?
LOVELESS BY MY BLOODY
VALENTINE. BECAUSE I HAVE AN
ORIGINAL LP PRESS AND IT TOOK
A LOT OF SEARCHING AND
OBSESSING OVER UNTIL I GOT IT.
THIS WAS BEFORE I DISCOVERED
EBAY, SO IT WAS A BIGGER DEAL
FINDING IT BACK THEN. I USED TO
GO “LOVELESS SHOPPING”,
WHERE I’D SCOUR CHARITY
SHOPS LOOKING FOR PINK
SPINES.
WHAT’S THE STUPIDEST THING
ANYONE’S SAID TO YOU WHILE
DJING?
I HATE REQUESTS. I TRY TO AVOID
ALL EYE-CONTACT.
The Asian (or ‘Desi’, meaning from the Indian
subcontinent) club scene has a longer history in London
than rave: I can remember my sister wandering off
to school with a bag full of clothes for the daytime
bhangra raves at the Hippodrome in Leicester Square.
Twenty-five years on and most Asian kids have more
freedom, so don’t have to bunk off school to go raving.
Bhangra nights are very much intact – but what is
bhangra? It’s primal folk music celebrating harvest time
in Punjab, built around what resembles abreakbeat –
or the sharp thwack of the dhol (drum).
In 21st-century London, Punjabis (like myself) like
to respect our traditions, particularly the hard drinking
bit, and at every bhangra rave you will find groups of
tanked up ‘Bacardi boys’ hitting the dancefloor: arms
flail, legs are hooked and boys spin round, shoulders
are mounted and perspiration drips before the boys
either fall over or career into another group of lads. Cue
the inevitable fighting between packs of drunks.
Desi-Licious takes place on March 4 at Ministry Of Sound
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PRISSY PRINCESSES
Most Desi kids like to think they’re above such
loutishness and move onto the stush hip hop/R‘n’B with
a dash of bhangra nights which take over city bars, boat
parties and the Gherkin. This is where Jay Sean, Juggy
D and Ms Scandalous would perform and you would
also hear any US hip hop/R‘n’B with an Asian vibe
(Missy’s Get Your Freak On, Timbaland’s Indian Flute,
the Jay-Z refix of Panjabi MC’s Mundian Te Bach Ke),
and MIA’s Paper Planes.
Chiselled goatees, private school-educated middleclass kids styled on rudeboys and well-heeled, snotty
Indian princesses – think the brown-skinned equivalent
of wannabe WAGs with impossibly straight hair, Jimmy
Choo heels, Prada purses and wearing too much black.
These nights are about looking fly and keeping up
appearances. Outside there will be a fleet of tricked-out
BMWs and Mercedes because Asian princesses DO NOT
do the tube, and certainly not grubby night-buses.
Desi Disco takes place every Friday in West
Kensington and Indulgence is on Feb 27 in the city
(chillitickets.com/voodoo)
BOLLYWOOD PANEER
Bollywood club nights are a riot of glamour and
silliness: how moody can you be as you re-enact
chasing a girl round a tree while thrusting your hips
and rotating your hands? This is where you’ll find
frisky Indian Indians (as in London Indians working in
IT). These guys have a geeky charm, with glasses, sideparting, pressed shirt, trousers and polished shoes. At
the other extreme are camp, buff boys with slicked hair
in tight jeans and lairy shirt, undone to reveal gold
chain, in homage to their beefy Bollywood heroes.
Smiling, coy Desi girls dazzle in saris, langhas,
salwar kameezes, kurtas (short shirts), while British
Bollywood-philes (and there are lots) wear jeans and
twinkling tops rounded off with bindis.
Kuch Kuch (kuchkuchnights.co.uk) is on February
27 at The Livery EC2V, with a one-off at the Whitechapel
Gallery on March 5
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
GIRL
PROOF
9CFF;P?<CC
Mexico’s Teri Gender Bender rocks the girl-withguitar-and-gore look at the Old Blue Last
WHILE DJ CLINIC RANG OUT A LETHARGIC FOURFOUR BEAT TO THE GROUNDED, UPSTAIRS THE
CROWD AT THE OLD BLUE LAST WERE DIGGING
THEIR HEELS IN FOR LADIES NIGHT: THREE
PERFORMANCES DRAWN FROM THE ROSTER OF RED
BULL MUSIC ACADEMY PARTICIPANTS. AND IT GOT
JUST A LITTLE BIT WILD...
U
PHOTO: REX
p first was Sound of Lucrecia. Winding up the volume and dialling in
effects wirelessly from her iPhone touch-screen, the Barcelona girl’s
guitar built to endless cascades through a cranked delay pedal.
Indecipherable lyrics, reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser,
harmonised in echoing loops. Lucrecia’s post-punk took on a new twist as she
picked up a bass and plucked out notes of wandering melancholia to a Múm-like
blizzard of pops and clicks.
A short break later and a slim figure in a red dress took centrestage. As
ghostly music swirled around her, not a hair on her head moved. With pursed,
deeply-rouged lips, May Roosevelt barely seemed to breathe, her only concession
to movement (beyond that of a waxwork) being the ultra-controlled gesturing of
her hands. The stillness made her electronic music all the more unsettling, her
Theremin’s otherworldly whines spiralling out in washes of quiet beauty.
Wandering back upstairs after checking out Parisian DJ Kool Clap’s easy
grooves, the night’s previous serenity was abruptly broken. Encountering Teri
Gender Bender’s set was like a punch to the gut, albeit in the best possible way.
Musically, Teri bridges the gap between White Stripes minimalism, Russian
Cossack stampede and Kate Bush’s lyrical wailing. She started her second track
with a stiletto in her mouth and ended it all but swallowing the microphone. A
few seconds later the cry rang out: “Do you want to see my armpit hair?” “Get it
out!” barked back the excitable audience.
One minute she was all over the stage, the next she was scampering through
the audience on all fours, clambering onto a window ledge, smearing red paint
across her face. “That was a song called The Dance of the Lady of Distress,” she
insisted. Of course it was.
She made way for the night’s closers, a DJ set from Golden Silvers. But it was
Teri’s performance that the crowd will remember. That alone was worth the price
of entry... even if it hadn’t been free.
LADIES ROOM
Colombia’s Sound
of Lucrecia (above)
ponders a tricky
diminished ninth
chord, while Greece’s
May Roosevelt makes
ethereal waves of
old-school electronic
via her Theremin
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DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
FROM ROOFTOPS TO CHART-TOPPING, THE
MUSIC’S NEVER BEEN MORE POPULAR, NOR
HARDER TO HEAR IN PUBLIC. DAN HANCOX
ON THE MET’S ATTEMPT TO BANISH GRIME
FROM THE CAPITAL’S CLUBS.
PHOTORAPHY JAMIE-JAMES MEDINA
G
rime has always been the most
local, the most London of genres. In
2003, in a pirate radio studio on a
high-rise rooftop in east London, Dizzee
Rascal and Crazy Titch battled each other on
the mic, and the ferocity of their egos resulted
in them squaring up to each other in that
crowded box-room. They were prised apart by
Wiley, as Tinchy Stryder, D Double E, and
about a dozen other phenomenal talents
stood centimetres away. That’s how intimate
the genre that now tops the charts was at the
beginning; so much flair confined into the
tiniest of spaces. Ruff Sqwad’s MC Fuda Guy
recently told me just how small a world it was
in the early years: “To go to another youth
club in another area, and for people to know
about Ruff Sqwad there was mad. Then for
people to actually hear us in other areas
outside London, like up North, was just
insane – we were like, “How did you even
hear our music?!’”
At grime’s inception, it was a physical,
real-world community – and nowhere is this
more obvious than in the Jamaican-derived
‘clash culture’, where lyrical betterment
comes through competition, much like
8-Mile-style freestyle hip hop battles. “Lyrics
for lyrics, come”, was the gauntlet thrown
down in the legendary onstage clash between
early grime outfits Heartless Crew and Pay As
You Go. The changes the music has
undergone – forced away from the public
domain, even as it tops the charts – is
reflected in the death of this fiercely
competitive culture.
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DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
In 2010, clashes between rival MCs take place
on Twitter or YouTube. Instead of lyrical
contests, UK MCs have taken to making
epically long, epically boring ‘talking dubs’
for each other, where they are interviewed at
extraordinary length about why they consider
themselves better than their peers. 2009’s Big
H versus Wiley ‘drama’, ought to be on a par
with the great battles of grime’s early days: an
underground favourite taking on the
godfather of the genre. Yet after a few
wayward comments in interviews, it
culminated in a parodically long, profoundly
dull 43-minute YouTube clip in which Big H
outlines his position – without once resorting
to anything close to music.
The wet genre-paint dried on ‘grime’ at a
point when the internet was coming into its
own, when MP3 recordings and live online
streams of pirate radio could instantly
explode the narrow London geography of the
music. Benny Scarrs, the A&R who made
Tinchy Stryder a number one star last year
and used to DJ on pirate radio himself, told
me he knew back in 2003 that Tinchy was
going to be a big deal, just because his name
had traversed the capital: “I was from west
London and they were from east – but I’d
heard of them! East London
felt like the other side of the
world to me back then,” he
laughs.
Thanks to downloadable
mixes and internet radio, the
London underground has
been broadcast to the world in
the last few years. But while
this democratisation is a good
thing, in London itself
underground black music has
been forced into the private
sphere, away from the clubs.
Grime was always meant to be
club music: inheriting its BPM from garage, it
was that bit too fast to simply be the British
hip-hop. Yet in 2010, the music has been
relegated from clubs to be heard mostly
through the pale grey beehive of PC speakers,
or in the solitary isolation of headphones. In
this context, common experience, enthusiasm
and debate occurs globally on internet
message boards, but not communally, locally,
in the bars and clubs of the capital. Grime has
been banished from real, physical London.
Part of the reason grime exists on the
internet now, and not in the real world, is the
infamous police Risk Assessment Form 696.
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
“EAST
LONDON
FELT LIKE
THE OTHER
SIDE OF
THE WORLD
TO ME
BACK THEN”
It’s no exaggeration to
suggest that the period
2004-09 represents a
systematic and deliberate
attempt by the Metropolitan
Police to remove music
performed largely by young
black men from the public
sphere. Form 696 is a riskassessment form used by the
Met when trouble is expected
at a gig or a club. At the
potential cost to license
holders of six months in jail
or a £20,000 fine, it requests ridiculously
specific information about performers and
likely audience members.
To take one recent example, in August
2009 Urban Affair at the Indigo2 was shut
down, deemed ‘high risk’ because their 696
paperwork had the dates of birth for two
artists missing. The organisers had booked an
all-star cast of performers, headlined by
Wiley and Tinchy Stryder, forked out for tens
of thousands of flyers and a cross-media
advertising campaign, and were offering to
put on a supplementary £4,500 worth of
airport-style security to assuage any safety
concerns. Legally, there was even plenty of
time to resubmit the form with the missing
details included, but the venue, panicked by
the Met’s interference, had already taken the
decision to cancel. It’s bureaucracy as a
weapon: blunt, stupid and pretty terrifying,
piles of paperwork used to bury license
holders, to browbeat them into just not
bothering with grime.
The Met’s racial focus was not even
concealed. “Is there a particular ethnic group
attending? If ‘yes’, please state group,” ran
one question, and it wasn’t the only leading
question on the form. “Music style to be
played/performed (e.g. bashment, R’n’B,
garage)”, reads one, while another asks for
examples of the types of artists performing:
“e.g. DJs, MCs, etc”.
The other authoritarian absurdities
carried out in the name of 696 have passed
into legend. In 2007, Dirty Canvas promoter
David Moynihan’s passport was locked in
a safe overnight (“I think it’s so that the
promoter can’t skip the country if something
happens at the event,” the venue’s rather
confused head of promotions told me at the
time), and that same year MCs were stopped
and searched by plain-clothes police as they
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left a night at Rich Mix. Sometimes the Met
cut to the chase and just tell promoters and
venues ‘no grime’ at the outset.
And what happened after all this furore?
After the pieces in national newspapers, the
petitions, the lobbying by UK Music and
finally the judgement of a Tory-led House of
Commons committee that last year deemed
the form to be “draconian” and “absurd”? The
Metropolitan Police retired to consider their
verdict: they would have to be seen to do
something to revise this racist bureaucracy.
They went away. They came back. They
announced that actually, sorry chaps, they
would stop bothering live music fans across
the board, instead narrowing their focus to
“large promoted events between 10pm and
4am which feature MCs and DJs performing
to recorded backing tracks”. Or ‘grime nights’,
as they are sometimes known.
In doing so, the Met gambled that the
institutions established to protect the live
music industry would stop their crying; and
they were right. “When the form was first
introduced, it suggested it was for all live
music events,” Assistant General Secretary of
the Musicians’ Union Horace Trubridge told
the BBC in response to the announcement.
“That was something we were opposed to.
We believe now that the form is much more
focused and that the vast majority of our
members are never going to come across
Form 696.” Hooray, cried the union, they’ll
stop bothering our members and only close
down grime nights! Grime MCs don’t join the
union, see.
A new grime night called Reloads at the
Rhythm Factory in October 2009 was
cancelled because the Met didn’t like the fact
it was headlined by MC Ghetts, a man with a
criminal record (never knowingly a problem
for Pete Doherty or Amy Winehouse). The
week before, I’d seen the same MC perform at
The Albany in Deptford, at an Arts Councilfunded event, to a cross-age crowd of bright
young students and local middle-class arts
dilettantes, along with noodly jazz tooter
Soweto Kinch and 50-something poet Jean
‘Binta’ Breeze. Apparently Ghetts’ criminal
record – a non-violent conviction for which
he’d served his time – will lead to an
inevitable bloodbath; but not if there are jazz
saxophonists on the bill. It’s not even fuzzy
logic; it’s not any kind of logic – it’s a
systematic attack on a genre of music and the
people who follow it.
“APPARENTLY
GHETTS’
CRIMINAL
RECORD WILL
LEAD TO A
BLOODBATH;
BUT NOT IF
THERE ARE JAZZ
SAXOPHONISTS
ON THE BILL”
This mixture of
paranoia and prejudice
sits perfectly in the
context of the ongoing
marginalisation of young
people as ‘hoodies’, ‘feral
youth’ and even ‘chavs’ –
all of which are recently
coined phrases, all of
which malign young
people, playing to adults’
worst fears and widening
the social gap between
the two. The widespread
media panic about a
youth knife crime
‘epidemic’ in the summer
of 2008 marked a new peak in Britain’s
hysterical fear of its young people. It should
go without saying that even one youth
murder is one too many – but when the dust
settled on ‘the summer of knife crime’, and
the statistics were released in spring 2009, it
transpired that there had been one more
teenager murdered in London in 2008 than in
2007. A rise of one, year-on-year, is
emphatically not an epidemic – particularly
when violent crime has consistently fallen
since the 1990s. “Kids
are calling it the latest
fashion,” began one of a
thousand sensationalist
articles in the British
press, without troubling
to supply any evidence.
And where Broken
Britain and feral youth
are being discussed, farfetched hypotheses
blaming pop culture are
rarely far behind. At the
height of the impotent
hand-wringing over
knife crime, The Sun
published an article by
BBC presenter Dotun Adebayo adorned with
the sober title, ‘After 12 hours of gangsta rap I
could have knifed someone’. The only proof of
this causal relationship between music and
violence he could cite in a lengthy feature was
that he “wanted to kill someone” after
listening to grime. But don’t worry, Adebayo
reassures us: “I wouldn’t, of course, because I
don’t have a violent nature.”
Grime kids may have been locked off from
their raves – and even, thanks to the luxury
REDBULLMUSICACADEMY.COM
“gated communities” springing up round
grime’s east London heartland, parts of their
local areas – but the riddims are rolling faster
and fresher than ever. The likes of Dizzee
Rascal, Tinchy Stryder and Chipmunk have
been topping the charts with a watered-down
electro-pop form of grime, but this success
seems to be having a trickle-down effect.
Grime DJs like Magic has commented
recently that the quality of new tracks they’re
being sent is higher than it has been for years.
Rinse FM’s grime DJ team of Elijah and
Skilliam have showcased some of this bright
new talent – producers like Swindle, Silencer
and Royal T – in their new decade-launching,
free download 01012010 Mix. Despite
everything, grime keeps pushing forwards.
DAN HANCOX WRITES
FOR THE GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN. DANHANCOX.BLOGSPOT.COM
Dizzee Rascal redbullmusicacademyradio.com/
shows/2233/
Skepta redbullmusicacademyradio.com/
shows/1163/
Goldielocks redbullmusicacademyradio.com/
shows/1644/
Sway redbullmusicacademyradio.com/shows/2175/
M.I.A. redbullmusicacademyradio.com/shows/1315/
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
FIVE JOE BATAAN
RECORDS
YOU MUST HEAR
JOE BATAAN (MELBOURNE,06)
“THEY SAID: “WHAT DO YOU
WANT TO CALL THE LABEL?”
I SAID: “SALSOUL RECORDS:
SAL MEANING SALSA,
SOUL MEANING SOUL”
GYSPY WOMAN (1968)
pantyhose, anything that made money - the record
label was just a side thing. I wanted to start my own
production, work for the record company. They said:
“What do you want to call the label?” I said: “Salsoul
Records: Sal meaning salsa, soul meaning soul.
Incredibly you were also at the birth of rap. How
did that happen?
I was working at a community centre and one day
all these young kids are coming in, setting up
turntables. This was 1978/79, and it’s packed.
Everybody’s clapping, someone’s talking on the mic.
I said: “What the hell’s going on here, I don’t see no
band playing” Someone said: “They do it all the
time.” So I talked to these guys, Jekyll & Hyde, and
said: “How would you like to put this on records?”
They said: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I went out, got RCA
Studios, got everybody ready, waited three hours,
they never showed up. I guess they just thought
I was bullshitting them.
So you made Rap-O, Clap-O, one of the first hip
hop records, yourself.
I thought about Jocko Henderson, a DJ back in the
’50s, and he used to talk on the mic, things like:
“Whoo whappa-do, how do you do?” I tested myself
in the back, I didn’t want nobody to see. Then when
the music played I just sort of walked through it, the
girls started clapping. Boom, the rest is history.
EXTRAORDINARY
Daily Note You’ve been a giant of Latin music over
the last four decades. What were you like as a
child in Spanish Harlem?
Joe Bataan: I was the neighbourhood tough kid with
aspirations and, of course, being from New York, you
always try to find short cuts. I did five years for being
a bad boy, but I could do harmony before I could
even read. We grew up listening to the Saturday hit
parade: Patti Page, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett;
once in a while we’d get a bit of Nat King Cole. My
first influences were with white singers, that
influenced my diction.
How did you get your first band together?
I got a group of kids, 11, 12, 13 years old, they were
the youngest band in Latin music. I was 19, the
oldest. I walked into that auditorium, stuck a knife
into the piano and said: “I’m the leader of the band.”
They all said: “Yeah, you’re the leader, no problem.”
I said: “If you follow, I’ll take you onto achievements
you’ve never dreamed of in your life.” I had the spiel,
the gift of the gab. The only problem was I had to
convince their parents; no one wanted their kids
with me, so I walked them home every night after
rehearsal. I’d tell their parents: “Look, let them play
with me. I don’t do that stuff any more, I play music.”
You were making boogaloo in its ’60s heyday.
How did your first hit come about?
I took Curtis Mayfield’ song Gypsy Woman, and put
JOE BATAAN’S HAS BEEN A LIFE WELL LIVED.
HE CONNECTS THE DOTS FROM PRISON
TO SALSA, GANGSTERS TO DISCO, AND FROM
RAP TO A EUROPE-WIDE SMASH IN RED
SUSPENDERS. SAY IT IS SO, JOE
a cha-cha beat to it. I was really gearing for the Latin
audience, but I got a big black crowd too. People
loved Latin music, but they couldn’t understand it;
so singing in English allowed them to listen. Some
people called it boogaloo, I preferred Latin soul.
What reaction did you you get from the
established Latin artists, the ‘Mambo Kings’?
They chased us off the radio, but the boogaloo saved
Latin music. A lot of Jews and black people would
come out dancing when the boogaloo came out.
It was so tremendous it was like the twist, people
would come and see people dancing, stomping their
feet and clapping their hands in harmony. Back when
it came to prom time and they’re having their
graduations, the black kids would say: “We want
Kool & The Gang”. The Latinos would say: “No, we
want Tito Puente.” And because they couldn’t agree
they’d get Joe Bataan, because I could do both.
You were working with people like Morris Levy
(owner of Roulette Records and reputed
inspiration for the character of Hesh in The
Sopranos), some of the most notorious for their
exploitation of artists.
Morris Levy was a gangster. I walked in there with
José Curbelo, a band leader. Morris was sitting there
with his big cigar. José said: “Mo, the kid wants to
record, but he’s scared.” “What’s he scared about?”
“Symphony Sid (New York’s biggest radio DJ) says
REDBULLMUSICACADEMY.COM
“I ASKED
JERRY FOR
MY REVIEWS,
AND HE SAID:
“YOU’RE
STILL IN THE
RED.” I SAID:
“KISS MY
ASS, I AIN’T
MAKING
NO MORE
RECORDS”
he won’t play his records unless he signs with them.”
Morris phones him up. “Sid, you faggot. You told this
young kid you won’t play his records because he
won’t sign with you? Well, you little fuck, you work
for me, you do what I tell you, you hear me?”
a revolutionary and formerly a feature of the
FBI’s most wanted list.
It was 1973 and I guess I was naïve politically – the
Young Workers Liberation Party asked would I like
to go and play in East Berlin. Of course, people said:
“Joe, if you go on this trip you’re going to be
blackballed, people will follow you.” I said, “Get out
of here with that cloak-and-dagger shit.”
West Berlin was very colourful, just like the US, but
when I went through Checkpoint Charlie everything
was drab: there was no red, no blue, only grey, but
everyone was so warm. I guess the East Berliners
hadn’t seen so many blacks, not with afros. They’d
come out and touch my hair, I was signing
autographs, man, not because I sing, but because
of my afro.
You ended up recording for the Fania label. They
had Willie Colon, Ray Barretto and you and the
three of you were the top sellers consistently.
What was it like for the three of you being the
Latin kings of New York?
We were young, fresh and wild, like one of my songs
says. We did everything under the sun and at that
time what you’ve got to understand is that the
Vietnam War was going on and there were girls left
behind in the neighbourhoods. So there was an
abundance of sweethearts because everyone was
over there fighting.
When did people start using the term salsa to
describe music?
Well, the term hadn’t been coined when we started.
We called it the mambo, the cha-cha-cha, boogaloo.
Salsa means a sauce, but somebody coined the word,
then everything that followed with Latin
connotations was called salsa.
Salsa became the sound of a new generation of
Nu Yoricans, expressing brown pride and all that
kind of thing. And this led you into other work,
like going to East Germany with Angela Davis,
PHOTO: DANIEL MAHON
JOE
RIOT! (1970)
After a while you had a lot of issues with Jerry
Masucci, Fania’s owner.
I found myself having to change a flat tyre in East
Harlem and I didn’t have the money to pay for it.
What the hell? I asked Jerry for my reviews, and
he said: “You’re still in the red for the recordings.”
I said: “Kiss my ass, I ain’t making no more records.”
He thought I was joking and he made me starve
for a year, but he eventually settled.
You set up your own label that became known
as Salsoul Records.
There was a little label called Maracana, they did
LATIN LORD
JOE BATAAN HAS BEEN
AHEAD OF THE CURVE
FOR 30 YEARS, FUSING
MUSICAL STYLES WAY
BEFORE IT WAS THE
NORM. HE WAS AMONG
THE KEY PLAYERS OF
THE SALSA BOOM, HIS
BREAKTHROUGH TRACK
GYPSY WOMAN
PROPELLING THE
EMERGING MOVEMENT
WHILE HIS SALSOUL
ALBUM REMAINS A
PIVOTAL LP, MIXING
FUNK AND LATIN WITH
ORCHESTRAL
MANOEUVRES. HE WAS
ALSO IN ON THE BIRTH
OF RAP, RELEASING
ONE OF ITS VERY FIRST
SINGLES.
INFLUENCED BY:
WILLIE COLON: MAINSTAY
OF THE NY SALSA SCENE
INFLUENCE ON:
KID CREOLE & THE
COCONUTS: GOBBLED UP
JOE’S POLYRHYTHMIC STEW
Rapping on record was still virtually unknown.
What reaction did you get?
I took it round all the labels and they all said, “Get
the hell out of here, Joe, you don’t sing no more.”
Then I took it to a guy named Luigi. He said: “OK,
I’ve got to give it to this guy here. He listens to
everything we do and we listen to what he says.”
I said, “I don’t want no little kid judging my music.”
But it turned out to be Larry Levan from the Paradise
Garage. Still nobody for music like Larry, to this day.
He played the record, started jumping up in the air
and he’s smiling at me. I thought this might be good.
That’s practically the royal seal of approval.
Larry sold 20,000 copies through playing it in a disco
- people didn’t know discos could sell records, but
they all know it now. The label called me: “Joe, they
want you to go to Holland, fly over to do TV. That
record’s a hit. If Holland says so, so goes Europe.”
So I went and bought myself a black t-shirt, put on
a disco model of a girl dancing on rollerskates, which
cost me $3. I got a gold star which cost 50c and a fake
diamond. I found this old pair of tracksuit bottoms
and I pasted on a pair of red suspenders. I put those
suspenders on and I went to Holland. It became the
rage of Europe, everywhere I went it was Rap-O
Clap-O. It was selling in the millions, I stayed in
Europe for six months. I lived off Rap-O Clap-O for
ten years, I’m still living off it now. It’s the biggest
record I ever made and it’s one I’m not known for.
THE BOTTLE (1974)
SALSOUL (1970)
INTERVIEWER JEFF CHANG, MELBOURNE, 2006
VISIT THE LECTURE ARCHIVE
AT REDBULLMUSICACADEMY.COM
Listen to Joe Bataan live at Broad Casting, London
at redbullmusicacademyradio.com/shows/1603
REDBULLMUSICACADEMY.COM
RAP-O CLAP-O (1979)
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
DAILY NOTE 11.02.10
TODAY I WANT...
THE THINGS WE’RE AFTER MOST FOR WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10
PURE
GROOVE
A place full of dreamy echoed
memories, melancholic pen-pals
and slow-motion car crashes.
Brilliant, in other words.
PIT ER PAT
THE FLEXIBLE
ENTERTAINER (THRILL
JOCKEY)
TODAY’S ESSENTIAL
NEW RELEASES FROM
THE SHOP FLOOR
ACTIVE CHILD
SHE WAS A VISION
(TRANSPARENT
RECORDS)
There’s a slightly hazy, delicately
fuzzed-up sound here that hints at
fragile humanity more than
fashionable fidelity. Imagine I’m Not
In Love by 10cc or Nothing
Compares 2U, listening to this is like
reminiscing of times gone by oh too
fast. Released, on brilliant white
vinyl, it’s so atmospheric it should
be awarded its own solar system.
SURFER BLOOD
ASTRO COAST (KANINE
RECORDS)
Rarely does a band encapsulate that
great summer feeling so perfectly,
like the surge of good times you felt
the first time you heard Weezer’s
Blue album. Possibly from a ghettoblaster at the back of the local park
one July afternoon while skiving
school... possibly. Surfer Blood
actually make us want to surf (even
though apparently the band
themselves do not), punch the air,
wear denim cut-offs with backward
baseball caps and go chatting up
cheerleaders. This album rides a
wave (pardon our punnery) of
proper ace melodies and nifty guitar
work. The artwork and sea-blue
coloured vinyl are also incredible if
you’re into that sort of thing and we
dare you not to feel young, cool and
happy when listening to this.
Traveling light years ahead of their
earlier, less accessible material, this
comes fully formed like Telepathe’s
alchemy and Gang Gang Dance’s
dirty groove, a refreshing musical
journey into polytempo beatbox
rhythms and exotic soundscapes.
Fay Davis-Jeffers’ half-spoken vocals
and Rob Doran’s geek-hop beats
are all squeezed into a fruity bunch
of three-minute cutting-edge pop
songs with electro-trickery and a
couple of wig-outs in between.
Flexible entertainers indeed!
French girlfriend you always wanted
but never had? Well now you can
temporarily recreate what might
have been in the form of catchy pop
ditties. Clemence Freschard purrs
and croons her way through a
collection of kooky numbers with the
kind of lo-fi ease that only
nonchalant French musicians can
pull off. If you want a Nouvelle Vague
that isn’t annoyingly middle aged or
pop that isn’t covered in
unnecessary frills, this is the one for
you. Not just gone for the convinced
Francophile, this sounds simply
wonderful on a sleepy Sunday, with
or without croissant. Or that special
mademoiselle.
WE ARE THE WORLD
CLAYSTONES
(IAMSOUND)
CLUES
LEDMONTON – RARE
TOUR 7”
(CONSTELLATION
RECORDS)
FRESCHARD
CLICK CLICK (CONKY
RECORDS)
You know that super-sexy, well-read
as a tankard swinging shout-along
anthem, the likes of which have not
been seen since Arcade Fire invited
us to their funeral. Hope-filled,
urgent music from a place bursting
with the magical.
The trouble with a lot of amazing live
bands (and these guys are seriously
amazing live) is that they just cannot
cut it on record no matter how much
you cross your fingers and crank up
the volume. Thank the devil then for
Clues, because they rock up with an
unmistakably massive drum sound
married to what starts as a secret
polka music-box melody and ends
As far removed from Lionel and
Wacko’s ’80s charidee epic as you
can possibly get, We Are The World
are all dystopian beats and futuristic
meltdown electronics. Imagine
The Gossip if they were being
electrocuted and made to try
killing the whole room using nothing
but sonics. In fact, don’t imagine
that as it’s a very unpleasant image
and this double-header of visceral
electro rock is far from that. On the
IamSound, label who’ve released
everyone from Florence & The
Machine to Little Boots, this single,
released in conjunction with Pure
Groove, is the one to put
a bit of buzz into your weekend.
BREAKING MY BALLS:
clubbing’s gone glitzy
and lost its shine
THE LAST WORD ON… CLUBBING
DECKS IN THE CITY
CLUBBING AT THE MOMENT? IT’S LIKE THE NOUGHTIES
NEVER HAPPENED, NOTES PROMOTER FONTEYN
01 / BURIAL
01 / NICK CHACONA
01 / DJ HELL FEAT. BRYAN FERRY
Be Like Olive (Levon Vincent Remix)
[Moodmusic]
U Can Dance (Carl Craig Remix
2) [International DeeJay Gigolo
Records]
Sun [Naif]
02 / ADONIS PRES. LATE INVITATION
03 / UNKNOWN
The Late Invitation Theme
[Mathematics Recordings]
Belzunce [White]
04 / MATHEW JOHNSON
Ghosts in the AI [Wagon Repair]
05 / RYAN CROSSON & GUTI
Your Got Me feat. Don Fuego
[Supplement Facts]
06 / WAREIKA
Riders on the Storm [Tartelet]
02 / MONTY LUKE
Art Love War (C2 version) [Planet E]
03 / PIRAHNAHEAD
03 / PSYCATRON
The NGTVNRG EP [Third Ear]
Deeper Shades Of Black (After Dark
Mix) [Planet E]
04 / TELEFON TEL AVIV
Immolate Yourself (Ben Klock’s Jack
remix) [BPitch Control]
05 / ROMAN LINDAU
Souligner EP [Fachwerk Records]
06 / KERRI CHANDLER
04 / KENNY LARKIN
Vibin [Planet E]
05 / DJ HELL FEAT. BRYAN FERRY
U Can Dance (Carl Craig Remix
1) [International DeeJay Gigolo
Records]
07 / GUILLAUME & THE COUTU
DUMONTS
The 11th Hour [Downtown]
06 / ETIENNE JAUMET
Walking the Pattern [Circus
Company]
07 / JASON FINE
For Falling Asleep (Carl Craig Mix)
[Versatile]
08 / DOP
Many to Many (Ben Klock remix)
[Kontra-Musik]
Wiper Law [Get Physical Music]
08 / JUNIOR BOYS
09 / AQUARIUS HEAVEN
Work (Marcel Dettmann remix)
[white]
Universe[Eklo]
10 / SEUIL
Saxyback [Welcome to Masomenos]
09 / TEVO HOWARD
Crystal Republic [House House
Is Your Rush]
07 / KIRK DEGIORGIO
Isidora [B12]
08 / ANTHONY ‘SHAKE’ SHAKIR
Mr. Gone Is Back Again [Rush Hour
Recordings]
09 / OMAR-S
Flying Blind [FXHE Records]
10 / JEFF MILLS
10 / MORITZ VON OSWALD TRIO
Sleeper Wakes [Third Ear]
Pattern 2 [Honest Jon’s Records]
REDBULLMUSICACADEMY.COM
B
CARL CRAIG
TOP 10
Archangel [Hyperdub]
02 / EFDEMIN
EACH MONTH, RA
COMPILES THE CHARTS
OF TOP DJS FROM
AROUND THE WORLD.
WITH NEARLY 2,000 JOCKS
HIGHLIGHTING THEIR
FAVOURITES, THERE’S NO
BETTER WAY TO FIND OUT
WHAT’S ROCKING THE
WORLD’S DANCEFLOORS
DJ DEEP
TOP 10
ILLUSTRATION: LUKE INSECT
DOP
TOP 10
ack in 1986, journalist Dave
Rimmer wrote a book called Like
Punk Never Happened. It was
inspired by a swanky backstage party at which
he witnessed former teenage faces from the
punk club days (Boy George et al), now
international pop stars, swanning about
quaffing champers and generally lording it
like bloated, glittery businessmen (though all
caked in inches of slap). They had become the
people they had set out to destroy. They were
the establishment. The edge had left the
building and it was, he observed, like punk
never happened.
London’s current underground club scene
draws a lot of parallels, with the electric,
eclectic and quite frankly eccentric vibes of
the first few years of the last decade all but
a distant memory now.
So what happened? Well, cast your mind
back to the capital of ten years ago. Clubbing
was simply huge back then. Over the 1990s
it had swollen into a lowest-commondenominator cash cow and people like me
couldn’t bear it. “I-beef-ah”, “’Avin’ it”,
“Tuuuuune!” – all ghastly expressions that
were a far, far cry from the Eurodisco
sophistication of Giorgio Moroder’s late ’70s
and early ’80s, or even the sultry, surly tones
of early Chicago house and Detroit techno.
Instead, fake-tanned birds in bikinis and
blokes in Mr Byrite shirts, reeking of Lynx, all
piled into giant sheds to listen to formulaic
house ad nauseum. This wasn’t what the likes
of Kraftwerk or even Gina X had in mind when
their futuristic pulsating electro first pumped
out of speakers in seedy clubs to cool, welldressed new wave crowds.
So the 2000s started with a lull ,but over
the next five or six years started heating up
fast. Things got exciting again, it was like the
DIY punk ethic had returned. Basically, it gave
a lot of people the chance to run about town
(OK, maybe just east London actually) dressed
as their favourite character from the New York
new romantic film Liquid Sky. This alone was
a very good thing indeed, but it didn’t just stop
at fashion. Amazing retro-futuristic electronic
pop was the order of the day and could be
heard at the small, killer nights that had
begun to spring up in all kinds of quirky,
unconventional places. I personally can just
about remember amazing parties in art
galleries, Chinese restaurants and one secret
palm tree-lined Shoreditch rooftop club.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end,
and before you knew it, it had all gone ‘a bit
Mylo’. A slew of ’80s-tinged electro-house
arrived to make the fun digestible to
the man in the street.
Other factors too, such as the arrival of
free, late-licensed bars have, in the long run,
both challenged people’s need for nightclubs
and attracted a different type of clientele.
Shoreditch on a Saturday night slowly became
host to baying packs of boozed-up geezers and
hen-night girls spilling out of stretch limos.
The West End moved in.
Towards the end of the decade the
re-emergence of Shoreditch clubs – now
inhabited by nu-ravers wearing their (DayGlo) sunglasses at night – offered some
respite. But that was the last decade. Now it
really does feel like we’re back at square one
again, with a distinct lack of cutting-edge
“parties for outsiders” pushing new sounds
and styles. I’ve just today been informed of the
apparent death of minimal (anyone notice?).
The Italo-disco revival’s getting a bit long in
the tooth too now, and drum‘n’bass and
dubstep don’t really count (they’d still be here
REDBULLMUSICACADEMY.COM
after a nuclear fallout). So where does it all go
from here?
My DJ agent tells me it goes to BRIC.
Where? Well BRIC is an abbreviation of Brazil,
Russia, India and China. With so many of our
capital’s mid-sized venues now closed and UK
clubbing on a general downturn, BRIC is
where a lot of DJs are heading as that’s where’s
paying these days.
All this doesn’t change London’s perennial
status as a hotbed of ideas and pioneering
underground culture, though – you’ll always
be sure to find some of the most ridiculous
parties in the world here, just maybe smaller
than before. There are some clubs still
bucking the trend, however, including
Caligula, Aztecs On Acid and, of course,
my own bonkers monthly, Nuke Them All!
So I’d like to think that this current
clubbing climate is a good thing, a calm before
a big scary zeitgeisty storm, if you will. Who
knows, maybe a whole new way of partying is
waiting round the corner and will wake
dancers from their slumber.
As long as that doesn’t mean a lame future
condemned to ‘sensible’ partying (hello silent
discos!) or something, I’m all ears!