The Rain...

As the monsoon season kicks off properly in my grimey quarter of the capital, the natural soundtrack would seem to be rain-themed street raps over the pop and hiss of sweet soul licks...



This is something random I stumbled across on Youtube a while back from relative obscurities the East Side Hustlas. Love those strings, which KRS1 also nabbed for his remix of Mad Lion.



I first heard this remix (by Diamond D) on the Stretch Armstrong/DJ Ev mixtape which my good buddy Sam of Allez Allez (formerly DJ Deven Miles) was wont to stick on 'of a sesh' or when we were cruising round the mean streets of the Four Heatons in my beat up Citroen 2CV. Word... Gotta love those strings and echoey seventies "boowe" sounds.



Off the the album Da Storm, this sees the Boot Camp Click's charmingly named offshoot Originoo Gun Clappaz in a video shot on a beach, by a lighthouse wearing full-on yellow fisherman's cagoules with their obligatory nineties Timberlands. Kinda reminds me of the video for Big L's Put it On, where he's walking down the street rocking Helly Hensen dungarees. Fisherman fashion... Who'd a thunk them rappers would have beat the whole current obsession with 'rugged workwear' to the punch by a full decade?

Hootchie Cootchie

Friday night, at a friend's instigation, I headed up north to Camden. I don't normally get up to Camden much as, A: It always struck me as more of a hangout for rock types (and I'm more of a techno suede-head at heart) and B: I don't really want to buy a t-shirt some chancer's ripped off Threadless to hawk on their stall. Still, Camden's a cool enough place, if you dare to pierce the veil of incense smoke hanging over it.

The night's destination was 'Hootchie Cootchie' night at The Jazz Cafe. Kinda lame name, I think, but actually quite good fun. The Jazz Cafe is actually a venue of some pedigree, I'm aware (like the Band on the Wall in Manchester) and my mate Jules, eyes glowing, later related going to see Pete Rock and CL Smooth there in about 2002 (before they fell out, and started slagging each other off, again) I'd never been though, so was keen to check it out.

The remit of the night was 50s Rockabilly, with a DJ spinning 7 inches and a live band with a luscious singer who looked like she'd just stepped off the set of South Pacific. All of which was fine, but I was mostly absorbed in staring at the sartorial pageant surrounding me.

Whenever I go to nights like this, eg: Northern soul events, I'm always struck by the amount of effort people put into their get-up. And I sometimes wonder, aside from the obvious nostalgia inherent in people affecting modes of fashion from a specific era, whether it represents a certain yearning for a time when people belonged to identifiable tribes, rather than that generic hipster melange of tight jeans, plaid shirts and PE pumps we see strutting round our city centres today.

Here, there were plaid shirts in evidence, but they were mostly tucked into wide legged chinos, or crisp wide-legged selvage jeans with turnups, over oh-so-shiny boots. Leather flight jackets were in attendance, as were immaculately Brylcreamed barnets, a la Mark Lamar (or even Mark Kermode). Chain wallets were in effect, as were Hawaiian shirts, and, I would hazard a guess, polyester.

And the girls... again lots of sculpted hairdos, and the much deprecated high waisted skirt, along with more leopard skin on display than your average safari. Ranking a close second in the swatch stakes were polka dots (followed by stripes), but the big cats stole the show, definitely. Some of the girls were also wearing those glasses you generally only see in Gary Larson cartoons. Awesome.

Of particular note were a triumvirate of angular-looking girls who stood by the bar staring waspishly about and boozing, who sort of resembled 50s Super-villainesses in mega-tight leggings, and beehive hairstyles that probably actually contained bees. One of them even seemed to have sculpted her hair into cat ears. Any single one of looked like they could, and would, have scratched Amy Winehouse to bits for a pair of nylons.

So, all in all, fun anyway, though the three buses home were less so.

Saturday night, after watching an incredibly misconceived Kenneth Branagh adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like it, (whose sole redeeming feature seemed to be squeezing Brian Blessed into Samurai armour) me and a flattie ended up in The Funky Munky in Camberwell (which incidentally has the worst name of anything, ever). We just wanted a beer, basically, and the Hermits was shutting. The guy who's been DJing there for the last four years or so (DJ Dazzle) always plays pretty much the same set every time I see him – ie: tried and tested funk/disco/pop numbers – and he didn't disappoint in this regard. The crowd certainly seemed to be loving it, though I really wonder how he manages to play the same records so often without A: going clinically insane, or B: coming to loathe them utterly. Perhaps he's succumbed to both eventualities.

I watched the last X-Men film tonight, which was OK, I suppose, if a bit of an overblown FX fest. Another week looms, anyway. Bought a load of Tria markers the other day, which I'm going to enjoy some spending time with.

Troy Bar

Headed up East yesterday, to Shoreditch, to meet Al.

Everywhere was abuzz with people spending their paychecks on overpriced alcohol, spilling out onto pavements in the torpid evening air. Pretty much most of Shoreditch seemed to have convened at The Foundry, including a pleased-looking contingent of fixed gear bike-riders, who had aggregated against the nearby railings like trendy flotsam.

From there we proceeded to The Legion, where some DJ was playing good tunes in a fairly incomprehensible order, by agency of maniacly scratching them in – with nary a blend in sight. Just to confirm: Apache by The Incredible Bongo Band into Fix Up Look Sharp by Dizee Rascal doth not go (and that was one of the more compelling mixes). Spotted 'Mickey' from Eastenders in the bogs, who was chuckling at the ubiquitous human pez dispenser as he yelled at people trying the out of order cubicle at the end.

Troy bar next for some jaaazzzz. Al stepped up to tinkle the ivories, along with a bassplayer called Rick James, and an African saxophonist in a dapper brown corduroy suit who apparently toured with Fela Kuti in the 70s. Then I went home.

Flat looks a tip today because the rota's not been done, though I'm the only one in which is nice. Popped out to get some bacon from Somerfield and en route spotted my favourite supermodel waiting for a bus at the top of Camberwell Church Street, looking swish in a tan belted mac.

I'm now off to trawl charity shops on the Walworth Road, in my futile quest for anything worth owning.

Hackney Techno Robot

London can be really exciting sometimes, in terms of the sheer volume of stuff going on, and its accessability. Quite recently, when I arrived in Central London half an hour early for a meeting one evening, I popped into the National Gallery, and found myself almost giggling with glee at how fun it all was, wandering round looking at these huge old paintings, checking out the tourists on the quiet, listening to a duo on cello and violin who were playing in one of the rooms.

In terms of more contemporary art and culture, London is always going to feel closer to the throbbing pulse of what's considered 'contemporary' and 'relevant'. In fact, the universal quest to be 'really fucking post modern, man' and 'edgy as fuck' has attained such a pitch in areas of the East End and Soho, that it's almost passé, oh irony of ironies.

I have to say though, I'm usually quite up for a bit of pretensious 'Über wank', as long as it's all in the spirit of fun. I come from Stockport y'see, where for me, the most 'underground' I could ever hope for on a Friday night was a lock-in at The Whistling Jig on the A6, with its flypaper-like carpets and seats whose upholstery was waxy with filth (though on karaoke nights there was certainly something quite 'challenging' and 'abstract' about the punter's renditions of poular hits).

Last night was really enjoyable. Sort of unexpectedly so too. I went up to Shoreditch to meet my friend Sam, and was anticipating a pretty standard evening boozing in the East End, perhaps spiced up with some techno, but ultimately wandered into something much more interesting – twice actually, the first time being when we nearly wandered into a face off between two groups of Hackney kids lobbing bottles at each other, but I won't go into that.

Firstly we caught a pizza (not literally) at Furnace, just off Old Street, which was really good – pizza express-ish with a wood fired oven. I'm constantly bemused by how crap most pizza joints are. I couldn't care less about the authenticity of pizzas – nobody talks about authentic, 'British' sandwiches – but like sandwiches, it can be a pretty unforgiving medium if you stint on ingredients. It's never going to be absolutely mind-blowing food, but extremely tasty if made well. These were really good, and I'd go back.

After that we hiked to a studio up in Hackney, where we were told, there was a gig. It was in a performance space on the second floor of an old office/factory complex, which doubled as someone's flat – a bit like a down-at-heels arty version of The Loft. There was a load of keyboards and the ubiquitous powerbook DJ, and we basically stood about jawing and swigging Heineken until, about half an hour later, the performance began.

The first act was a guy dressed as a robot in silver-painted boxes and tubes, who wandered out of the bathroom to play industrial noise on a pair of bust up keyboards, whose guts were spilling out in loops of cable. I couldn't quite work out what he was doing, but apart from playing the odd snatch of melody on the keys, I think he was largely manipulating the sound by altering the connections between these and the amps, and soldering them live. Ocassionally, amidst the grinding cacophany, he'd break off and wander into the audience to hand out fizzy sweets and affix springs to people.

Oddly, though it all appeared quite humorous and sweet, the overall effect was actually slightly unsettling – like having a mute 1980s Doctor Who monster in our midst.

After that, there was a break, where I ran to the offy, and returned just in time to catch a guy in a tie-dye jacket playing a solo set of African music – some traditional – on an electric guitar. He also had some kind of effects pedals, and marracas taped to his feet. Sounds kind of cheesey, but he really won everyone over as it was generally quite lovely, accessible music.

After that, more music, and I boozed and chatted, with some people I kind of know, and some I didn't, until around two, when I bounced, to read the last of Robert Harris's period ripsnorter Pompeii on the 35 home.

It was a really cool night... low key, but exciting enough to remind you why you'd want to live in London in the first place. I need to get involved in more stuff like this, so if anyone's running any under-subscribed 'happenings' round these parts, holler at me and I'm there.

Retro Kicks

Todays retro fix is brought to you by Sesame Street, and the 70s. Yes folks, it's the 'Number 12' pinball song.

This is pretty much my childhood right here. Just look at those gorgeous illustrations! but then, I'm a sucker for many things seventies, from graphic art through to vintage tan leather 'funk coats', and the drawing style feels reminiscent of Seymour Chwast and Pushpin to me. Anyway, I think this is sung by the Pointer Sisters, and it's not bad in a kind of disposable disco jingle style. I seem to recall Ninja Tune releasing this on 12 inch as the B-side to a Larry Levan remix of a song by the Cookie Monster. Can't say I've heard that, and I'm not actually sure I'd go as far as playing it out but hey.

Anthony Wilson, The Dulwich Horror, Flock

While nosing through the Observer on Saturday I read the obituaries section and did a double take when I read that Factory Records supremo Tony Wilson had passed away.

Growing up in Manchester Tony Wilson was someone who always seemed to be lurking in the wings on programmes like Granada Tonight, and even before I properly understood his part in the modern (read the) Mancunian music scene, he was a person who you were inevitably aware of.

My personal experience of the guy ran to when an ex-housemate was running the Manchester chapter of the now defunct NoWax night (a housemate who later, Ironically, turned out to have a very Anthony Wilson-like opacity with regards to all things debt related). The night had taken over a bar in Liverpool for an evening during an electronic music conference, of which Wilson was an attendee. Me and my brother were in the DJ booth dropping 90s boom-bap, when who should appear at our elbows but the man himself, clutching an iPod preloaded with what I can't quite remember, but was probably Factory related.

He was certainly an idiosyncratic character, and coming from a city where any affectations outside of the basic templates of plastic gangster/real gangster/working class hero could catch you lumps upside the head, certainly had his detractors. The casting of a prattish Steve Coogan as him in 24 Hour Party People seemed a masterstroke, but was, for all Wilson's flamboyance not the whole story. Manchester certainly owes him a debt of gratitude for making it a more interesting place, and helping put it on the musical map .

Art

Also in the Guardian in the listings was a paragraph on an exhibition at Space Station Sixty Five Gallery in Dulwich called 'The Dulwich Horror – H.P. Lovecraft and the crisis in British Housing'.

The name of the exhibition is a play on the title of one of Lovecraft's stories – 'The Dunwich Horror' and on paper this sounded almost too good to be true. Ever since my teens I've been mildly obsessed with the writer, so an exhibition welding his bizarre pantheon of alien gods to the current rampant housing market certainly demanded investigation. So I jumped on the 40 and headed off.

Unfortunately, it was all distinctly underwhelming. The gallery itself was shut and the exhibition merely consisted of a few posters tacked in the windows, showing the artwork itself in situ. The art itself consists of a few paintings of Deities from Lovecraft's Cthulu myth cycle (Cthulu himself, Azathoth etc) which had been attached to estate agent's 'For Sale' signs.

The posters and photography were a bit naff, the paintings so-so, but beyond that, for all it's cuteness, I couldn't quite see what the marriage of the current British housing shortage to the writings of a 19th century horror writer was trying to articulate, and nor could I quite kick the suspicion that the starting point for the whole endevour was the wobbly titualar pun.

I actually went and checked out one of the paintings close up, where it is attached to a sign outside a pet shop on Camberwell Road. It's of the cephalopod-visaged lord Cthulu, and it hasn't weathered the elements very well, having warped and cracked. Anyway. Quite charming, hardly essential.

I also went and scoped the new exhibition at Camberwell's Great Expectations gallery. Entitled Flock, it's worth investigating, as it represents something of a departure for the venue.

Great Expectations usually deal in more traditionally representational art and prints, and I have in the past found the portfolio of artists they represent slightly patchy; veering as it seems to between the engaging and/or contemporary, and the chocolate-box-insipid. This is I suppose an inveitable result of the identity crisis between the actual gallery out back, and the one-stop frame-and-card shop up front.

By contrast this show has a decidedly conceptual thrust, with an eclectic profile of young, hip artists. Helene Kazan's almost vorticistic architectural meditations are fascinating, Richard Cramp's hallucinatory vignettes humorous and unsettling, and James Lee's bling black and gold vinyl halftones make for slick eye-candy. There's some other interesting stuff in there too.

I'm working out east this week in Shoreditch. Looks to be quite a patchy one. All quiet today, then potentially stacked out tomorrow. Time will tell.