Freska All Stars - We Come To Rock

Wow. I remember when the Freskanova label started, the records sounded so sharp, fresh, fly, funky, of the moment. The Freestylers were on Freskanova (I think?). 1997. Big Beat. Hip hop and dance. It was some sort of UK interpretation of the cool kookiness of the Beastie Boys, melded with the reckless abandon of the UK clubbing scene.

I remember buying their first release, cat. no. FNT1, and thinking how lucky I was to have got in at the start of this label, and promising myself to buy everything they put out, a bit like Wall Of Sound. Their label was the mark of quality. Given that this is FNT5, their 5th release, I think I might have the first five twelves.

This reminds me of the end of my degree, the start of my PhD, running around Leeds trying to get DJ gigs, MCing, playing in clubs. Red Stripe. A brown Carhartt beany that I loved. A big brown leather jacket that I'd customised - I'd ripped out the lining as it was a bit cumbersome and snug, and cut another buttonhole into a lapel so that I could fasten it right up under my chin. In fact, that's it - this record reminds me of the smell of that brown leather jacket. 

In fact, maybe the brown leather jacket is more interesting to me than the record. I loved that jacket, it really pulled my look together.

Young Fathers Live - Manchester Academy, Saturday 28th March

So much has been written about Young Fathers that I didn't think I had anything else to add, but here we are, 3 days after the gig and still trying to figure out what the fuck happened.

I'm not going to pretend to be a huge fan - I've listened to everything they've released, but not obsessively, and the production sounds weird to me (more of that later). But like a lot of people, after seeing them at Glastonbury (no, via the TV, silly), I knew I had to see them live.

The scene was set with Nadine Shah supporting, who cranked out a muscular and groovy set of tunes, coming across like a Krautrock PJ Harvey - sexy, dark tunes you could dance to. And then, fashionably late to their own party, Young Fathers strolled on and cut loose. Pummelling dub bass. Chants - African chants, football terrace chants, playground chants. Slogans. Kinetic mayhem on stage, mayhem in my ears, mayhem in my brain. It's not an original thought to say that they don't sound like anything, because they sound like everything.

They are a gang, and not a totally friendly gang. There is a lot of extended eye contact, and it feels challenging. They have opened up the door to their world and allowed us to look in, and it's an ecstatic mess of writhing noise. We are tempted, but scared. They are outsiders, genuinely appearing not to give a fuck. Sonic attack is their best form of defence.

The songs obviously start and finish, but they sound as though they have been in motion for hours, settled into a groove, and we get to see a short excerpt of the peak of the composition. Daniel Barenboim in The Reith Lectures talked about a piece of classical music that was supposed to start "as though the music is already in motion, and you are climbing aboard a moving carousel", and this is what happens tonight. The songs, the noise, the emotion, all exist, constantly seething within the band, and a door is opened into them. The knot of microphone leads by the end of the gig is testament to the abandon and energy (have they never seen a cordless mic?)

In the same way, it feels as though we've been granted an audience with the band, rather than merely going to a gig. The whole thing is a celebration, a modern assembly or communion for a better world. It's a rave. There's a plea for a ceasefire in Palestine over a rupturing bass feedback loop. We are asked "are you still with us?" - mate, we have never been more with you, or anyone.

So going back to their recorded output, the weird (to my ears) production makes total sense - it's the sound of revolution that is already being fought and won, the feeling of being up all night and not being able to go to sleep. It's living iconoclasm, it's all your heroes being flayed alive and trampled on. I will never be the same again, and I will never see a gig like that again. The door has been opened.

Snoop Dogg "From Tha Chuuuch To Da Palace"

In DJing, as in life, you sometimes have to do stuff you don't want to do. What I wanted to do was play a set of music that I liked, that would make people happy, make people dance, make people have fun. If they thought I was a good DJ as a result of that, well, bonus, but my music tastes always tended towards the basic and the obvious. Actually, they were basic and obvious to me, in the sense that I mostly played records that people recognised, rather than trying to weave an intricate musical journey out of dirty electro, scratch weapons and chutzpah.

DJing at an intro level - as a weekly job in a small, cheap club - is a weird thing. You're playing records mostly to people who are, shall we say, in the process of throwing off their cares, and as a result can be a bit disinhibited. I remember being asked by a British Asian girl if I had "any Indian beats", which after a split second pause was followed up with "actually, look at you, of course you haven't". You can't please all of the people all of the time. 

But in an effort to please all of the people all of the time, I made a rule - if someone asked for the same record 2 weeks on the trot, I'd buy it and play it on the third week. That HAS to be how I ended up buying this, because it's not the sort of thing that I actually like. It's got all the elements in place for a great record - Snoop at peak dillywizzle shizzle bizzle, Neptunes on production (that's yer actual Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), languid rhymes about fourteen inch rims, puff and pass, and corn rows - but it just never really gels. Mind you, two years later, the Snoop and Neptunes released "Drop It Like It's Hot", a Certified Banger, and you can certainly hear elements of that track in here.

Do I ever remember playing it? No. Do I ever even think about it? No. Oh well. On, on, onto the next one.

The Smiths "Hatful Of Hollow"

I was never a rabid Smiths fan, which I have to say on reflection was a massive failing on my part. I've no idea why I wasn't. Maybe it was the earnestness, the honesty, the celebration of the everyday. I was way more of an escapist. It's odd that I only connect with these things about 30 years too late.

I remember This Charming Man being on a compilation tape that I had, and that I played it to death, but at some point I've undergone a Huxleyean conversion to the infinite, timeless greatness of The Smiths (perhaps through Morrissey's later solo work, of which I'm a huge fan). It also reminds me, inevitably, of the late great John Peel.

I've no idea when or where I bought this, or why I haven't played it every day since, but that's life.

Beastie Boys - "Check Your Head"

This was the album that cemented their place in all of our hearts. It's the sound of them growing up, finding themselves musically, and laying down the future direction for what they would do. It's the most live, organic-sounding album they did, and although they went back to more sample and loop-oriented tracks, it seems to me that this album enabled them to break free and listen to the music inside themselves.

And that, no doubt in common with millions of others, is what this album did to me too. It reminds me of a time in my life when "in my sleep I'll be thinkin' 'bout beats and gettin' on the mic and bustin' some treats". Yes, I was a slavish imitator of their white-boy rap styling, and as Superwack (I know, what was I thinking?), we were a bit of a low-budget copy, but damn, we rocked, hard, and didn't give a damn. Wearing an absurd oversize Carhartt work cap, 48" waist jeans and worn-out Vans. Carrying a spiral bound notebook and Bic Crystal pen for when inspiration struck - you can't properly write dope rhymes with anything but a Bic Crystal.

Essentially, this is the soundtrack to that part of my life when, in my mid-twenties, I was lucky enough to be able to do whatever I wanted, to please myself, to be idle and creative all at the same time. To me, this record is the soundtrack of an intelligent mind being taken off the hook and allowed to run riot. It's a reminder that nothing is an end in itself, and that everything is but one small point on a long journey. This record sounded like freedom then, and it still sounds like freedom now.

RIP Adam Yauch.

Oasis - 'Definitely Maybe'

It's odd, but sometimes music can evoke the strangest memories.

Everything that this record brings back has nothing to do with Oasis, and everything to do with me. Being a student, living in a shared house in Leeds, playing this record after excitedly buying it, and wondering if it was just me, or whether it really did sound like Status Quo with a bit more attitude. Would it be the second record I'd taken back on the basis of simply not being good enough (the first one was the debut Lionrock album, which I took back and theatrically demanded a refund for 'for just being shit').

I remember playing the whole album through, and then going back and trying to find the good bits, desperately dropping the needle on the record increasingly randomly, then just giving up.

Oasis have written some great songs, but have also released some crappy albums.

Sugarhill Gang - 'Rappers Delight'

There's no doubt that this record is an icon, but it's also a great example of how the line between iconic and ubiquitous is perilously thin.

Of you've only ever been a consumer of music, that's to say you've never made music or played records for money regularly, it's hard to convey the idea that even greatness can pall with repetition. There's no getting away from the fact that this record is 15 minutes of history in the making. The problem is, it's also the record that, if you're a DJ, you stick on when you need to go for a piss and keep people dancing at the same time. This record is both so ace and so long that you can start it playing, go for a piss, get a beer, return to the decks and still have plenty of time for a bit of wiki-wiki before dropping the next record, which if your playing the odds will either be Deelite's 'Groove is in the Heart' or Mantronix 'King of the Beats'.

One other personal horror I attach to this track is having experienced a karaoke version of it on a mate's stag do. I'm uneasy with karaoke at the best of times, but seeing a bunch of mates hammer this out, pissed, took the shine off it in the same way that a sheet of sandpaper takes the shine off, well, almost anything. Of course, my note-perfect rendition of Johnny Cash's 'Ring of Fire' earlier on that evening merely served to underline that a karaoke version of 'Rappers Delight' is, as the French foreign secretary said when asked what he thought of Eurodisney, 'a cultural Chernobyl'.

Mixed emotions, I guess.

Run DMC - 'Christmas in Hollis'

What a record. No, not the cheeseball title track, although that does have a certain swagger that demonstrates Rick Rubin's ability not only to polish a turd, but also have it mounted and displayed in a gallery and have people coo at it like the Damian Hirst of hip hop.

And not the track that follows it either, although 'Walk This Way' is a track that still hasn't lost it's visceral thrill despite repeated listens. If ever I'm lying unconscious, don't take my pulse or hold a mirror over my mouth. Just put on 'Walk This Way', and if I fail to purse my lips and do the angry pigeon head-nod, then finally I have found peace.

No, the star of the show here is of course 'Peter Piper', a track so simultaneously raw and full of life that every time you play it, you run the risk of B-boy zombies besieging your crib, screaming 'BEATS! BEATS!'

What does it remind me of? So many things. My first job. My first DJ set. The first time I managed to drop the opening acappella lines over another record (clue - the word 'piper' falls on the second beat of the bar). But most vividly, I played this at Dust in Leeds the week that Jam Master Jay was murdered. As I dropped the opening rhymes, someone walked up, choked up with emotion and cheap beer and reached out to shake my hand. As he did so, his sleeve caught the head of the stylus and zzzzzzzzzipped it of the record. Everyone turned and looked, and I screamed 'Jam Master Jay was killed this week, show some love people', dropped the needle back onto the record, and everyone went mental.

This record totally kicks ass.

Freq Nasty feat. Pheobe One - 'Boomin' Back Atcha'

Bask in the day, I used to be really into vinyl hunting. Partly it was crate-digging - listening to loads of old records in the hope of finding a forgotten gem - but it was also the belief that, as a DJ, that was part of my job. I wanted to go out and dig out funky, groovy records that would make everyone shake their asses to a tune that they'd never heard before.

I don't know why I bothered.

But this is typical of the records that I bought in that spirit. It's a great big slab of bass-heavy hip-hop breakbeat, great production, great vocal, and in a just world, it would be the perfect transition from warming up the crowd to people actually shaking it. But I played this to blind indifference, and after half a dozen tries gave up on.

But when I put this on the other day, not only did it still sound fly and fresh, but my three year old son started dancing and having a stab at the vocals, which demonstrates to me that if only we could find our inner child a bit more, we'd not only have more fun, but I'd also look like a great DJ.

Spiky Records - 'Pi EP'

There was once a time when I was quite the dude. I managed, in February 1998 (I think it was) to snag a single of the week in the Vibes section of the NME. Notorious hyperbolist Steven Wells said something like 'this record will make you piss blood and blaspheme in Spainish. Like me, it is strong and clean and perfect'. I'm certainly not going to refuse that praise (if praise it be), but I am aware that Swells may not have been in his right mind when he wrote that.

On the back of that, my bandmate/partner in crime Aidan and I went down to London to be interviewed by Ben Wilmott, a journo on the paper. Spiky Records was his label, not that there was anything even vaguely nepotistic or narcissistic about a music journalist having a record label. Actually, I thought Ben was a very sound guy - he liked my band Speakerfreaks - no, not the ones who released 'POS 51', we were the ORIGINAL Speakerfreaks.

Anyway, the Pi EP sits somewhere between early era Art of Noise, and late period Kraftwerk. It's OK, but it doesn't particularly grab me now, which makes me think it diddn't particularly grab me then.

Flipping it over, I note that Osymyso's name is on the label. He was quite cool for a bit, wasn't he?

Collapsed Lung - 'DIS MX'

After the warm reception my previous post received (mostly, it has to be said, from former members of the band), I was a little worried about how this would sound. And it's perfectly of it's period, in that the opening track is that elusive beast, the extended dance remix.

After a couple of minutes of looping drumbeats that pay more than a passing nod to the works of Depth Charge, the funky trumpets start up, and I swear you can hear the actual fertilisation of the egg that went on to gestate and become Collapsed Lung's world conquering anthemn 'Eat My Goal'.

Overall, it's a pretty standard romp, with some nice lyrical action, and fairly dirty production. The standout bit for me is the couplet 'Liberate the decks, liberate the decks, give 'em to the people who would least expect access'. Wise words indeed.

What does it remind me of? Oddly, nothing much. I remember playing this quite a bit, but it doesn't have that flashbulb eidetic moment for me.

Collapsed Lung - 'Down With The Plaid Fad'

It's funny that this should turn up on the weekend when Channel 4 is showing it's 'How Hip Hop Changed the World' weekend, because this is a particular slice of British hip hop that is very dear to me.

One of the central tenets of hip hop culture is 'keeping it real'. Exactly what that means is open to debate. KRS-1 would have you believe that REAL is an acronym for 'Rhymes Equals Actual Life'. Modern commentators seem to agree that hip hop hasn't been in a good place for some time now. You don't have to wait very long on Kanye & Jay-z's new album to hear Kanye brag about how has two big-faced Rolexes. Nice one Kanye - I'll loot Argos and steal an armful of Swatches in ironic homage. As Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip point out, 'guns, bitches and bling have never been part of the four elements, and never will be'. The four elements of hip hop are breaking, MCing, DJing and grafitti, as any fule kno.

The four elements conspicuously don't include sloppy, culturally accurate grunge-hop, but if you want an an example of a band keeping it REAL, look no further than mid-90s Collapsed Lung. I saw them in Manchester in 1995, and they were hilarious, and in a good way. A bunch of guys, playing tight, funky rocky grooves, two rappers trading rhymes over the top. It was like having the whole of global musical culture condensed into 3 minute snippets, lyrically tight and culturally smart, thrown back in your face with a cocksure swagger that said 'yeah, we know, it's all a bit mad, but you know what - we're kicking ass, and you're loving it'. It's the very antithesis of where hip hop is today, either a global sell-out or a ghettoised artistic statement.

Fresh stoopid rhymes, sloppy loud guitars, distorted vocals, hell yeah, I still love it today like I loved it then.

Earthling - '1st Transmission'

Wow, this is almost Proustian in it's ability to vividly transport me to a particular place and time.

It's a Saturday afternoon in Leeds, 1994, and I'm round at Rob's old house on Brudenell Road. I lived in Manchester at that point, but moved to Leeds a year later. Ali was there too. We'd been record shopping at Jumbo Records, and I'd picked this up.

It's basically 4 mixes of the same song, but the first version is so strong, such a fat, trip-hop, of-the-moment production that it just sucks you in. The rudeboy sound-system swagger contrast with Earthling's naive, almost childish vocals in a way that found totally captivating at the time. So much so that I listened to all of the mixes one after another, much to the obvious annoyance of Rob and Ali. I think I might have been going back to flip the record over and repeat the A side when someone mentioned that, perhaps, that might be enough of that for now. I was a bit bemused by that then, as I am now.

This track combined everything that I loved about music and lyrics - fat production, someone with their own flow, lyrics that sort of told a story and sort of hinted at someone immersed in their own world. It totally inspired me to start writing lyrics and rapping, and I remember one night waking up and having to find a pad and a Bic biro, the rhymes tumbling out in an unstoppable torrent. Well, maybe not an unstoppable torrent, but a couple of sides of A4 written down as fast as I could manage.

Damn, I'm really happy to hear this again! To me, it's the sound of possibility, of performance without fear of pretension, of music production marrying with an emotion behind a set of lyrics, or vice versa. Happy days.

Schizoid Man - 'Karate Juice EP'

What's amazing, looking back, is that this record was distinctive and different enough for me to pick it up in a record shop (Jumbo in Leeds, the price tag says), listen to it, and think 'cor, another slab of funky, beat-driven sampler music, I'll have some of that'.

It's a decent enough tune, the sort of thing you play early in the night just before you want to get people omto the dancefloor. It signifies a move from taxi-ing trip-hop to ass-shaking hip-hop. I remember doing just that one night at Leeds' Elbow Room, playing head-to-head with Moose (aka Paul Curtis, founder of a lot of things, but www.symbollix.com is his latest thing).

To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, worth hearing, but not worth going to hear

Phrack R - 'Catch 22 EP'

God bless John Peel. Right up until the point he died, he was still playing utterly bonkers music, and being totally, passionately, sincerely committed to it.

I bought this after hearing it on his show. In fact, this is the first record that the label Fused and Bruised released, and I've got it packed away in a sleeve with the second one that FaB did, the 'Bus, Dinner, Jam' EP by Futurecore. The more alert amongst you will have noticed that 'Bus, Dinner, Jam' sounds the same as 'Bustin' a jam', something I only realised when I went and asked for it by name in a record shop in Leeds. I forget what it was called, but I'm sure it was behind what is now House of Fraser. Was that Crash Records - surely not?

Of this EP, it's the track 'The Beatfreak' that I loved, a really minimal, over-compressed slab of electronic instrumental hip-hop. I used it for ages as a track to build rhymes around. I think I played it out a few times too, mostly when I did anything as an artist on the now defunct Soundclash label - 'The Beatfreak' is just such a dirty, swaggering slab of sonic 'shut-the-fuck-up-and-listen-to-me' that I think I used it as an opener to a DJ set a few times, and I'm pretty sure that one time I even rapped over it, plugging my headphones into the mic socket of the mixer and really cutting loose for a couple of minutes. I remember nobody took a blind bit of notice, but for those 2 minutes, DJing and rapping through headphones, I felt like a the bastard offspring of Grandmaster Flash and KRS-1. Happy days.

Papoose - 'Thug Connection'

Notable perhaps for starting with a punchy synth cover version of the A-Team theme, this actually kicks some serious arse, due in no small part to a guest appearance by Kool G Rap, who turns up, curses like a drunken uncle on Christmas day, and then leaves.

Another New York purchase, and bizarrely I think that I forsook the kickass A-side for the alphabetically arranged B-side, which is a great example of why trying to be clever isn't always a good thing. Sure, each verse/stanza is built around rhymes that start with the next letter of the alphabet, but it's actually rubbish. Tiring to listen to, impossible to dance to - so what's the point?

Give me a dumbass track featuring Kool G cursing over the A-team theme anytime.

Primal Scream - 'Kowalski'

Primal Scream are such an enigma that I can't actually tell if they're arch zeitgeist-surfers, producing of-the-moment highbrow pop music that is meant to be discarded like used tissues (as Freddy Mercury memorably described Queen's output), or are just tedious bandwagon jumpers of the highest order.

I've no idea when or where I bought this, and I'm pretty sure this is about the third time I've played it. Maybe it's the Automator remix on the b-side that drew me to it. It certainly wasn't the shite-awful cover of '96 Tears', a laughable attempt at garage-punk-electronica fusion, that caught my ear.

Piss poor, tepid, emotionless. Oh well.

Arsonists - 'Blaze'

I remember where and why I bought this - I was in New York in about 1999, and a mate was about to open a new hip-hop night in Leeds. It was called Loophole, and was notable for being the worst paid gig I ever did.

I don't remember how many weeks I played for nothing, but it was more than one or two. I should've known better, but hey, I'd just dropped a shedload of money on fat joints when I was in NYC. That's got to make me cool, right? When James, the promoter, started turning up telling me that he'd said a prayer before he came out, I should've known better, but you'll put up with endless nonsense from you mates, won't you?

I went to all the cool record shops in New York, bought all the hypest joints, and then flew home with them, happy in the knowledge that I was going to tear it up on the ones and twos in Leeds. I went to Fat Beats. I went to Discorama. I was on a mission.

Except actually, this is utter toss. Boring. Not totally without merit, but hip-hop as a slightly over-earnest art form. I'm all for trying to dance about architecture, but I refuse to dance to a record that is in any way trying to maintain some sort of artistic distance from the dancefloor.

Music is meant to move you in a primal way - if I want something thought-provoking, I'll read a book. If I'm listening to hip-hop, I want it to make me feel like I'm about to uprock, throw a windmill, whatever.

The worst bit is that this tune samples the War Of The Worlds theme. I pray to all that is holy that I never thought that was a good idea. And if I did, then count me guilty of overthinking what might make people shakes their asses on a dance floor. Oh well, it was only $4.49....

Run DMC - 'Down With the King'

Run DMC are total hip-hop heroes of mine. Whenever I hear any of their records, they totally portray to me how the macho swagger of hip-hop can have a transformative power that operates outside of the usual hip-hop cliches. Or to quote Scroobius Pip from his awesome track 'Thou Shalt Always Kill' - 'Thou shalt remember that guns, bitches and bling were never part of the four elements [of hip-hop], and never will be'.

I've no idea when or where I bought this, and I'm sure it was just for the track 'Oooh, watcha gonna do' on this disc. But it never really got any asses shaking on the dance floor. In fact, it just got moved earlier and earlier in any set that I played, and althought people would come up to me and tell me how great they thought this track was, and how I was the only DJ they'd heard play it, nobody would dance to it. It's the musical equivalent on a dish of lambs tongues in a restaurant - even the people who know that it's a brave choice don't want to know.

I played it for a year or so, on and off, and then gave up. The rest of the album is OK, although Run DMC were going through a bit of a pseudo gangsta phase at this point - they look like Onyx on the cover, ferchrissakes.

But still, on the opening track, they sample themselves, from the track 'Down With the King' from the album 'Tougher Than Leather', and it sounds awesome. Hip-hop legends - believe it.

The Charlatans - 'Some Friendly'

This immediately takes me back to a freezing bedsit in Salisbury, late 80s. I can even remember buying this from the now defunct Our Price chain. I was a fanatical NME-reading music fan, fascinated by the exotic notions offered by the paper. Manchester, that far-off land of baggy, where everything was groovy, and everyone was on one.

It's a OK record, just sort of slightly limp-wristed retro-futurist 60s revivalism. Was it obvious from this record that they would still be around in 20 years? No. Is it a classic first album? No. Will I ever think 'ooh, I must dig out 'Some Friendly' and give it a listen for old times sake'? Sadly, the answer is, again, no.