The Congos… There is not a lot I can add here to the realms that have already been written about The Congos’ classic 1977 debut Heart of the Congos. It is possibly the pinnacle of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s explorations in deep dubby roots reggae. ‘Open Up the Gate’ is a beautiful devotional hymn… …and […]
Read More The A-Z of Reggae: C is for… The Congos, Culture, Don Carlos and…B is for Dennis Bovell… and Blackbeard (same thing). A book could and should be written about Dennis Bovell and his journey through dub, reggae, post-punk and electronic music. In fact, I think those nice chaps at Sounds of the Universe said one was being written but don’t quote me on that. I might be spreading […]
Read More The A-Z of reggae: B is for… Dennis Bovell, Burning Spear, Junior Byles and…The Abyssinians… are as good a place as any to start a history of reggae. ‘Declaration of Rights’ and ‘Satta Massagana’ are two of the foundation stones of roots reggae. Bernard Collins and Donald Manning formed The Abyssinians in 1968 when they wrote ‘Satta Massagana’, which was recorded at Studio One in 1969 but did […]
Read More The A-Z of reggae: A is for… the Abyssinians, Aswad, African Headcharge…The latest issue of Electronic Sound magazine presents A History of Electronic Music in 75 Records to celebrate 75 years of electronic music from 1945 to 2020. It’s a personal selection (as much as a selection can be personal when selected by several people). “The records we’ve singled out aren’t necessarily the best or the […]
Read More Two histories of electronic music… and another charting 30 years in 30 recordsAndrew Weatherall’s brother Ian kindly shared two more tracklists from Andrew’s notebooks this week, so I spliced the songs together and uploaded them to Mixcloud. Following last week’s Songs for Swinging Subversives from 1982, we were given two mixes from 1985. They were less diverse than the 1982 tape, with one focusing on indie pop/rock […]
Read More More early Weatherall mixtapes: the indie one and the soul one from 1985Following last week’s blog, Ashley Beedle kindly got in touch to update us on his current manoeuvres. The good news is that there’s a stack of new material coming out including: a solo EP and LP; a debut album from Afrikanz on Marz (Ashley’s partnership with former Massive Attack keyboardist Darren Morris); and the first […]
Read More Ashley Beedle to release solo and Afrikanz on Marz LPs plus new Black Science Orchestra materialThis week, Andrew Weatherall’s childhood friend Paul McKee posted a track listing of a mixtape that Andrew had made for him back in 1982. I thought it would be nice to hear it in something like it’s former glory, so I stitched it together and uploaded the mix here: It gives a glimpse into the […]
Read More Songs for Swinging Subversives: Recreating the mixtapes of Andrew Weatherall’s youthThe first in a series of ‘down a rabbit hole with’ blogs. First up some cosmic jazz funk dub disco business with… Ashley Beedle There I was perusing the Weatherall-related delights showcased on The Flightpath Estate Facebook page, when I happened upon this rather splendid Aloof remix by Ashley Beedle. Who wouldn’t be enticed by […]
Read More Down a rabbit-hole with… Ashley BeedleNot many people would have heard of Andrew Weatherall (or Andy, as he was known then) before he played at Shoom. “While most of his contemporaries were black music fans desperately hunting down the indie and rock highlights of Alfredo`s Amnesia sets, Weatherall – “that bloke with the weird records” – had his own collection […]
Read More Andrew Weatherall: a short historySusumu Yokota is probably my favourite artist (today). I can think of nobody who crafts such delicate and beautiful sounds from such a wide array of sources. Yokota first attracted attention outside his native Japan in 1992 with the album Frankfurt-Tokyo Connection on Harthouse. It is a fairly straightforward selection of banging 303 trance that […]
Read More Susumu Yokota – 10 classic albums
