Ahoy there, me hearties (pirate encounters)

Well, a dream comes true - I appear on a pirate radio station. Except it's legal now, but still - Rinse FM!

I am talking - alongside Martin Clark aka Blackdown - about Burial's debut album, which came out 20 years ago - on Eclecticist's show on Rinse.  

Now I think about it, I have been on a pirate before - twice in fact. 

The first time was inadvertent: BBC radio (I think Radio 4) had done a report on jungle, then emerging, in the summer of 1994, and the reporter came around to our flat to get some quotes from me. And immediately after it aired, one of the pirates - Kool FM if I recall right - pirated it. Played the whole program a few times on the radio. So there I was, coming over the airwaves of the station I most  frequently tuned into at that time. (In 1994, after 8 years living in South London, I had finally made it North of the River and was living in Belsize Park, slipping out of range of my beloved Don FM but in compensation able to pick up Kool and other pirates that had mostly been out of reach when living in Brixton). 

Another time I actually deejayed on a pirate - but this was not a nuum pirate, it was a sort of hipster pirate in Williamsburg.  Sometime in the early 2000s. I played gloomcore and stuff like that, but the guy before me played Anthony Braxton and such. So the station was a bit like The Wire on the air.  I have no idea if anyone listened. Still, a buzz to do. 

A few times I have been inside an actual functioning London pirate station - Flex FM at the height of 2step in 2000, that was in South West London, a big if delapidated house, when reporting on UK garage for Spin. Deekline was spinning.

And then in 2005, again reporting for Spin, this time on grime, I got to go inside Rinse FM's HQ, a basement of a building near Whitechapel. It had once been a travel agents and it was surprisingly smart looking still (compared with Flex FM). They even had a sort of ante-room with a sofa in it, and then the actual room where the deejaying took place - the Ruff Sqwad followed by Roll Deep - was quite tidy. And actually now I recall it was Martin Clark who made the connection for me and came long to the session (thrilling to watch close up - the young Skepta was there). So big up Blackdown. 

Here's what I wrote about Burial in 2006 when I reviewed it for The Observer Music Monthly

Burial

Burial

(Hyperdub)

The mystery-shrouded artist known only as Burial is affiliated to the dubstep scene, a  sister-genre to grime that this year looks set to eclipse its waning sibling. Running in parallel for the past half-decade, both these London underground sounds rely on the same pirate radio infrastructure and share a common history in UK garage and jungle. But dubstep is a largely instrumental style bigger on mood than personality (no shouty MCs here). It’s also a site-specific music, its bass-heavy menace achieving full impact only through a massive sound system in a dark, crammed club. Burial’s self-titled debut is the first record from the scene to transcend that context. It evocative atmospherics and enfolding  ambience make it a perfect lose-yourself soundtrack for headphones or lights-low living room listening

“Distant Lights” blueprints the basic Burial sound: an ominously amorphous bass-rumble and a frantic-yet-subdued 2step beat are countered by the slow-motion mournfulness of the track’s other elements, a yearning vocal sample and a reverb-blurry trumpet, like Kenny Wheeler wilting in a Temazepam swoon. Titles like “Night Bus” pinpoint Burial’s subject as the melancholy and anomie of city life, while “Southern Comfort” localizes the vibe further to South London. But the feeling this music creates--imagine The Blue Nile of “Downtown Lights” but with the euphoria turned to sorrow--is something any metropolis-dweller anywhere on the planet will understand: sensations of  grandeur and possibility battling with desolation and entrapment.  There’s a simmering, suppressed violence bubbling inside Burial’s music, hinted at in titles like “Wounder,” which conjures images of a city full of damaged people ready to inflict damage on others. But there’s also a hovering grace and tenderness that makes me think of Wings of Desire, a quality that emerges most clearly on “Forgive,” a beatless ache of sound threaded with the sounds of cleansing rainfall.

This album actually comes complete with a concept (it’s a sound-portrait of a near-future South London submerged under water, New Orleans-style) while the most persuasive readings of the album hear it as a requiem for the lost dreams of  rave culture. But the non-specific sadness that shimmers inside this music ultimately transcends attempts to pin it to a place, period, or population. You can imagine Burial’s tremulous poignancy reaching out to hurt and heal all kinds of listeners--fans of David Sylvian and Harold Budd, Massive Attack and Boards of Canada, Radiohead and Joy Division. This music can go far. 

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I am reading Moby Dick at the moment - it's incredible, but it's taking me a long time - and one thing that surprised me is that seafaring men of that era did actually address each other en masse as "me hearties" e.g. "pull hard, my hearties" when rowing a small boat in pursuit of a whale

Dom at Musings of A Socialist Japanologist with a really interesting post on the sound that's usurped (yet also evolved out of) bassline in the North -- and which he characterises as the nuum (South Yorks/West Midlands division) ruffing up electrohouse as the nuum (London division) did with funky house

more detailed response to it over at Blissblog 

(seems like Bassline-fiend Continuum did start a Dissensus thread on it a while back, but the response was disinterest / derision from the assembled Dissenserati)

(what is the etymology of this term Electroline then?)

love the MC element, reminding me of those bassline-meets-grime (with a Northern accent ) tracks by people like Bonez

("hands in the air if you think you're hardcore")

and also the MC-ing (live on the set and also as featured artist on some of the tracks) in this bumpin mix by Marcus Nasty




some ace tunes dug up by Dom/MoaSJ including this one



and this delish bootleg refix of Chaka's Ain't Nobody

here's a couple of others I really like

in a funny way reminds me just a bit of moombhaton, in the sense of fresh/buzzy yet also a reconfiguration of known elements where it's hard to spot the newness. and also with the slip down in tempo c.f. the precursor sound, bassline.

and finally SWAG - a hilarious Jackin' House and Bass blog that Martin Blackdown spotted, which at first I thought had to be a spoof of some kind...

what's with all the references to ket and cat?  do people really wear little spoons around their necks? if so, puts a different angle on bumpin beats

SWAG AS FUCK takes me back to my youth this un getting ketty ont dancefloor cos the girls love bass lol ;) x

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here at swag HQ we are all still onit from weekend. been having a reyt time like, one of us mates went under and lost his clothes, cat, geebs and his spoon! hes proper gutterd... you can even see his cat dick on pic...hate it when that happens but its orite we used our new special program to hide his identificaton.

We all gettin off sesh soon so we save some dollah to get him a new spoon

Nuff luff swagsters!!! 

Keep it swag and Sesh on xxx

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We bet you cant wait to wrap your noses round these unreleased beautys, solid gold and look how shiney they are (wont be shiney when they are brimming with my boom cat :P) we have been busy makin these spoons over the past 2 weeks sorry if we havent been around much bt spoons come first as u all know, whats the point in going out if u dont have a spoon on?

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KET, SEX & DC10 NEED I SAY MORE!!!

What a sick tshirt - 3 of our favourite things here at SWAG blog! For those who do not know what DC10 is, its the home of jackin electro house in Ibiza. Its got red walls and fit lasses walk around in bikinis giving out free cat all night long while you dance the night away to mucky wobblers and deep bouncey chicago electro house beats. Its just round the corner from Cafe Del Mar (Where that song was made from kevin & perry) and the world famous OK Kareoke Bar. Personally i've never been to ibiza but me and the boyos plan to smash openings this year, tom's gonna put half oz of cat up his arse before we get ont plane so we can join the mile high cat club hehe naughty :P

I cant wait for all the ket, sex and kareoke, this lass has got it nailed on with this tshirt, if your wearing something with DC10 on it then you are the definition of SWAG...