You and Me and the Continuum

 

https://www.jgballard.ca/criticism/jgblostnovel.html

RIP Chris Hill

 Reposting this blog from earlier in the year about the British funk scene of the 1970s in which deejay Chris Hill was a prime instigator

Fascinating 1980 program presented by Danny Baker, who fiercely argued in the pages of the NME at that time for jazz-funk as the real-deal music c.f. the constipated faux-funk of  A Certain Ratio and Gang of Four, and here takes the battle to the television screen. 

In the program, he just uses the word "funk", though. 

Bunch of things that jumped out at me

1/ The self-conscious organization of the scene around tribes - a local squad or crew like Frontline from Brixton - who then at the dances amalgamate into a mega-tribe, which deejay Chris Hill here describes as the Family. The tribes have their own regalia - sometimes T-shirts with the tribe name, sometimes some other goofy identifying element - and they also often bring banners that they drape over the balcony at the venue. 

2/ You would tend to think of  U.K. working class scenes oriented around black-music to be very much about style and elegance. What surprised me about the Funk All-Dayers captured here is how amiably uncool the dancing and the general larking about is....  It's very much not in the tradition of Mod, it's not about a Face dancing alone in this moat of personal space....  the deejays exhort and entrain the crowd to all kinds of daft behaviour that is collective and synchronised.... they seem to be consciously trying to create the crowd-body consciousness, like in spectator sports with the Mexican wave...  Then there's individual kids who take off all their clothes.... a wonderfully silly mass sing-along 'n' dance to the Ovalteenies theme (you'll recognise that from Mark Leckey's Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore - "we're happy girls and boys").  And perhaps most bizarre of all - a fad for building human pyramids on the dancefloor (something I've only ever seen at Enter Shikari shows).

As Hill explains - again it's interesting just how self-conscious he is about how it all works as a subcultural machinery - the get-away Weekends at Caister and other seaside resorts are about escalating this sense of the scene as a world unto itself. A world where normal rules of behaviour get suspended and overturned in a carnivalesque fashion (not to put too Bakhtinian a spin on it though -it is also rather  Club 18-30). "Pride and dignity", the soul-boy ethos, doesn't come into it. But it's also very different from how people danced and behaved on the Northern Soul scene.

3/ The other thing that came across was that the fervour seems to be somewhat out of proportion to the music...  Now I love funk, indeed particularly at this time (early 80s) I loved it with a convert's fetishistic passion - but while I wouldn't describe myself as a connoisseur, I always felt that the jazz-funk, especially the UK offerings but most of the US imports then too, tended to be a bit bantamweight.  There are some great tunes but there's a lot of slick 'n'  tepid.  I put that down to the same dynamic on the Northern scene where there's a fetish for obscurity. Instead of rare soul singles that were barely released in 1965 or whenever, in the jazz funk scene it seems to be about a deep cut on an import album, something tucked away on side 2 of a Tom Browne or Grover Washington Jr LP.  

But perhaps the music is simply a pretext for identity, a trigger for fervour, an excuse to mobilize. 

Still, it's a little weird when Hill says that after going to a weekend away in Great Yarmouth, the kids become fully committed, like "they've been on a campaign. And the music is a crusade". 

Once interviewed Randy Crawford, wouldyabelieve?

jump to 4.10 of Fiorucci for the Ovalteenies scene

and 19.18 mins for the Ovalteenies dancealong - singalong in Funk

Danny Baker crusading for the funk cause in the pages of NME - with "intro" from Chris Hill

Hi-Tension bringing the funk to the punks on Revolver

Punk discofunkafied by the Black Arabs, a scene  from Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Edmund in Comments directs to another film, from slightly earlier, about the scene - British Hustle -  tons of footage of fervid dancers and Chris Hill emceeing through echo FX

And isn't Isaac Julien's Young Soul Rebels a recreation of these times - what the Black British kids were into, as opposed to punk... 

Give us a twirl

 

Those Horny "Horns"

If I was to make an inventory of My Favorite Sounds in Dance Music....  high up would be the horn sounds in UK garage. 

"Horns" - because they are nearly always done with synths.  The timbre is obviously ersatz and the "action", in terms of playing, is not quite right.  

But in this case, they are vastly preferable to the Real Thing. Imagine how awful it would be to have actual saxophonists or trumpeters playing on UK garage tracks! 

Oh I know there's the odd example of real soloing  and indeed the main one that springs to mind - the musky, languid sax on Groove Chronicles' "Stone Cold" -  is great. 

But generally the horns in UKG are completely synthetic and all the better for it.

It's one of the defining features of speed garage and 2step, right up there with the woody drum sounds and  those xylo-bass percusso-riffs.

I think what I like about the sound is precisely the sophistication-on-the-cheap quality. 

They also contribute to the sultry sexiness of the genre. 

But because they are played on a keyboard, they have a particular function:  parping vamps that propel the groove along, just like every other single musical element in the mix. 

But what is he talking about, you are saying? 

Well, here's a primo example: Chris Mack's "Get It", flipside of "Plenty More"

Another good one is the parp-riff that kicks in about 38 seconds into New Horizons' "Find The Path" - it's meant to be an alto sax, I think. 

There's also a two-note horn vamp in their "It's My House (The Bashment Mix)", from about 48 seconds in.

Another example: the Steve Gurley remix of Baffled Republic's "Things Are Never" - again, just a micro-riff, kicking in about 1.31, Really just a kind of thickening agent to the hyper-syncopated stew. 

In this immortally insane track by Stephen Emmanuel presents Colours, a single shrill note of horn -  more a beep than a parp - punctuates the madness repeatedly. Jump in at about 47 seconds. And it's particularly clear from 1.50 when the track strips down.

Talking of madness... in KMA Productions' "Kaotic Madness", the pseudo-sax  - it kicks in around 1.23  - has slightly more of a melodic trill going on but is still very much a sequenced pattern.

 

Here in Echo Ltd 9's "Happy Times", there's more of a developed melodic role - starting at about 2.14 -  but still mechanistic

Conversely, Dreem Teem's remix of Amira's "My Desire" is largely horn-free but then there's an odd little stunted solo at around 3.56

The Ramsey & Fen remix of Fabulous Baker Boys' "Oh Boy" has an almost-solo coming in at 3 minutes on the dot - and then 3.44, recurs with some slightly different vampige. 

Sort of makes me think of an animatronic jazz band... 

This Grant Nelson production starts a parpin' at 47 seconds...  the horn is basically doing the same sort of job as the "organ" pulse

A modern example, ominously titled "Sax", does indeed deliver at cheesy solo of sorts at 4.30

Can't tell if that's a real horn or still the keyboard approach...  A keyboard, I think.

Either way, yeuuch

See, what I like about this kind of thing is that it gestures at jazz but doesn't deliver it

"Jazz" in air quotes. 

"Jazzy" is good in Nuum... actual jazz, not so much. The methodologies don't gel.

In all these UKG tunes, the jazziness is subordinated entirely to the groove function. 

It's also almost always a chirpy, cheerful, extrovert sound. There's none of the blues aspect of saxophone, the sensual melancholy. It's a brisk, get-busy sort of feeling.

Another thing is the eerieness or just off-ness that occurs when an instrumental sound is played on a keyboard, rather than the sounding mechanism of whatever instrument it is meant to be: strings and horsehair with a violin, brass and fiddly little stops and fingertips with horns (not forgetting the embouchure of the blower). 

With the UKG horns, the attack and decay of the sound is wrong. ("Envelope", is that the term?)

But this wrongness then becomes its own kind of rightness.

A similar thing happens with the Mellotron and the Chamberlin (its precursor instrument). Brief swatches of instrumental timbre - brass or woodwind or strings or whatever - are on loops of tape that are triggered by a keyboard. So you have a trumpet or a cello sound but they are played pianistically. Very much proto-sampler, except it's like a Fairlight that only has the preset, built-in timbres, it doesn't have the ability for the user to make new samples.

The classic example of this natural-sound-made-denatured, as heard in all sorts of dance music is vocal samples arrayed on a keyboard and played in a clearly not-what-a-mouth-and-lungs-would-do way

But the estrangement effect works just as well as with instruments that aren't made of flesh and sinew, the external instruments as it were. 

See also that other hallmark of the nuum:  pizzicato "string" parts. 

Even more horny horn examples.

Actually this one, by Doolally, "Straight To The Heart", at 1.46, is different. It's much more like 2-Tone and the trombone sound in ska. With a bit of dubby reverb on it at points. 

Actually the Doolally track has the other kind of parping sax vamp in there too - the whole track is, along with everything else delicious about it, an intricate arrangement for horns

More in the classic UKG parptastic mode: Nu-Birth, "Anytime", from 2 minutes in.

Exact same plaintively parping riff pops up in Somore's "I Refuse (What You Want) (Industry Standard Club Mix)" at about 4 minutes in

Maybe it's sampled, not played? 

In the Somore, a voice seems to be saying "blow your horn" - sampled from some classic American garage track, maybe? 

See, I had been hoping that this was some unique UKG invention, but of course it turns out that the first to do the fake-sax are your American maestro progenitors, like Masters At Work

Okay, then, like always, the Americans start it. 

But, like almost always, the Brits take it further. 

That would apply to the vocal cut-ups, the hard-swung woodblock snares, too.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And of course - American sourced, yet a UKG cornerstone, and saxy - there's this 

That, I'm almost certain, is real saxophone - there's a lightness of touch to it, and inflection, that's entirely absent from UKG hornery,

Which is usually sort of stubby, is the word I would use to describe those parped toots. 

It's real sax in "Gabriel" but I wonder if it is sampled or whether Roy Davis got someone in to play it. 

^^^^^^^^^^^

Started pondering the mystery of the UKG horn and what it connotes while watching this objectively poorly executed doc that is just about worth sitting through for the snippets of old footage...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Late breaking example suggested by Mark Kenosist in comments - at about 1.15 in this

More of a trill than a parp - a sort of amputated flourish. GIF-like. 

A History of Hardcore (the Other Hardcore)

 

This looks like a good read - a history of gabber and all its 21st Century extensions and mutations by Resident Advisor's Holly Dicker. 

https://velocitypress.uk/product/dance-or-die-book/

Refreshingly for a music history, the focus is not the far past but recent history that has barely ceased to be the present - dispatches from the frontline of a living subculture. 

Here Dicker blogs about the genesis of her book:

2017 was my flashpoint. From second wave British industrial techno acts like AnD and Bleaching Agent pushing “Reaktor’s most hard-lined techno concept” Unpolished into the red (in the same venue where Amsterdam gabberhouse hardened into hardcore); to hearing my first OG Rotterdam gabber set in the plush Koninklijke Schouwburg theatre in the Hague, of all places, during TodaysArt; to finally witnessing Dutch hardcore history unfold in a human-hive of Australians (tracksuits) and undercuts at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht for the resurrection of Thunderdome: 2017 felt like a seismic year for hardcore, and I was at the epicentre, living in the Netherlands.... 

I had moved to the Dutch harbour city in May 2015...  after escaping Berlin, where I consumed – and was consumed by – techno (and breakcore) for four strobing years. I experienced diehard club culture beneath the streets of Köpenickerstrasse in Kreuzberg and Gerichtstrasse in Wedding, spending every Friday to Monday – but usually starting on Wednesdays during Boiler Room Berlin stream days (where I interned) – shuffling between repurposed reinforced concrete wombs, feeling truly liberated in the crush of human bodies synched up to sound.... 

Talking about rave culture is much much easier than writing about it. And I really miss my radio shows with Red Light Radio and PRSPCT, which inspired the chatty informal style of the book. I hope when you read this, it feels like you are backstage at a rave with us, eavesdropping on the stories – or around the kitchen table at the inevitable after. This history of hardcore has taken years to complete, and it’s still not finished. It will never be finished because hardcore cannot be tamed to a page or forced into a single narrative. It’s too rich and rebellious for that...

Hardcore isn’t for everybody, but everybody is welcome in this enduring phuture rave movement. And once you’re in, you’re in all the way, diehard and dancing to the death. Dance or Die!

Funny that she says 2017 is the flashpoint, given its significance in the Acardipane cosmology...

MAXIMUM BOOST (MADE IN LONDON)

"Marble Mix"?

 

"Woking Cru"

Initially read "Mc BRISK" as McBrisk -  as in a Scottish name, rather than MC Brisk as in an MC

plenty more fish in the sea for meeeeeeee

 

Sourced in "It's Over" by The Funk Master - main sample is at 1.56 - "not a little girl anymore / used to be the one I adore / but there's plenty more fish in the sea / for meee".

Also used is  "too many times you made the plunder by tellin' me / You'll be with me"

Amazing how Chris Mack turns that "be with me" into this sensually sinister loop... 

Vocal science! Vocal sorcery! 

The mood and feel of the original is completely transformed

The track's slinky-and-twitchy production is incredible: a sort of sublime fussiness, a palsied panache.

Those dramatic slashes of.... strings? .... are like intensifications of the way staccato strings are used in Chic to slice across the soundscape. 

It's avant-pop where the avant and the pop are equally strong

Flipside also fabulous 

What do you know, the Funk Master tune was actually a Top Ten hit in the UK

Chris Macfarlane, true hardcore hero and Exhibit A in the Case for Nuumological Continuumity 

A playlist I made of his entire uuurrrvvvv (near as dammit anyway - 164 tunes + remixes) running through hardcore, jungle, UKG, 2step 

Wonder what he's doing now...

Love Island as Outpost of the Nuum

Another series of Love Island  reaches its finale - and finally it's time to unfurl my "Love Island as Mainstream Outpost of the Hardcore Continuum" thesis. 

For starters, there is the theme tune.

An instrumental that lies somewhere between UKG and Deep Tech - it sounds a bit like if an Eski-era grime producer decided to make a house track. 

Then there's some of the musical guests on the show, who have either been pure Nuum - Craig David - or Nuum-adjacent (Katy B, Tinie Tempah). 

The guests chosen often seem to come from around that 2010-2011 moment - which must be when the typical contestant on the show would have been 9 or 10. Perhaps there's a sort of nostalgia appeal for the contestants, a flashback to watching Channel U or listening to your older brother or sister's music. Although quite a few of these artists would have been on the Top of the Pops. 

And then there is the fact that Chris & Kem, from the third season of  Love Island, revealed an ability to rap in the Talent Show episode of that 2017 season. 

This resulted in their recording a not-bad-at-all grime-ish single that incorporates Love Island-slang and which reached #15 in the charts. 

"Little Bit Leave It"  came out on Relentless, the UK garage label. Nuumtastic!

Stormzy also made a non-musical appearance in the 2017 season, with a video clip apologizing for a tweet about one of the prominent female contestants. He also gave tips to Kem & Chris about their MC-ing technique: "I can give you advice about the raps - you can't use the phones".

Certain contestants over the years have actually been performers in "urban"  bands as singers or backing dancers (e.g. Cach, from the winning couple this year). 

Well, Marcel - who's been in it twice, through being in an All Stars season - was in Blazin' Squad, a British rap group who scored a bunch of hits. They started out as a garage rap group: their debut release "Standard Flow" came with remixes from DND and Ras Kwarme and Horsepower, on the label Weighty Plates.  You can't get much more Nuum Nuum Nuummy than that. 

And how about this with rrrrrrrginal junglists Origin Unknown?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

How about that season finale then? 

They should really have bent the rules and allowed two girls to count as a couple, given that Toni and Shakira were clearly the stars of the season and theirs is the true love story here. 

Toni has the best tone and cadence since Liza Minelli.

In another era, some impresario would have spotted Shakira's incandescence and whisked her off to Elstree - or more likely, given her gumption, she'd have made her own way to Hollywood, like Cary Grant and other Brits did did. There she'd have been screen-tested and put through the studio system finishing school (what a shame though for elocution to override that delicious accent) and emerged as a star. 

If she can half-way act, it could still happen. 

More likely, in this day and age, she'll be famous for being herself, a public personality. 

With any luck, she'll drift from entertainment into politics and sort out all our problems.

deep deep inside (Hardrive Continuum)

 

Barbara Tucker diva loop - brilliantly stuttered and ghostified - is taken from what might well be my favorite house track that isn't by Todds Terry or Edwards

sourced deeper 

top ranking two-step

 

Lover's jungle!

Yeah yeah I know "Uptown Ranking'" is not Lovers 

It's more like Swaggers

Why on earth would you wanna dirge this out?  What a silly man he is

The True Oasis (Hertscore Continuum)

Unfortunately they are the Shed Seven of ambient jungle, but below is something of a classic

Oaysis - from St Albans!

Part of the Hertscore Continuum!

Outposts in Stevenage, Hertford itself, Hitchin ... 

Labels like Moving Shadow, Candidate and PM Records....  

Photek, Source Direct... 

Omni Trio obviously

2 Bad Mice / Kaotic Chemistry....

Gappa G and Hypa Hypa, from Luton

Who played on a pirate called Perception FM, out of Luton / Hitchin area

As did DJ Concrete 

And to my surprise there were other pirate radio stations in Hertfordshire

Via RollDaBeats forum, ancient post

Mad FM

freq: 90.6

area: Hertfordshire

broadcast out of Hertford town centre

known years running: 1990/1-1993

basic style genre: Oldskool

known dj's: 2 Stoned crew (2 bad mice in disguise), dj lucky, dj active, dj duffy

 

Frequency FM

freq: 101.4fm

area: Hertfordshire

known years running: 1991-1993

basic style genre: Oldskool

known dj's: DJ Legacy (myself), DJ Twist, DJ Nitemare, DJ Donny P, DJ Shiva

Got bust when the aerial got blown down in high winds.

(and this one, shrouded a bit in non-knowledge)

Unknown FM

freq: 108.0 fm

area: Hertfordshire (not 100% though)

known years running : no idea

basic style genre: no idea

known dj's: no idea

And what do you know, just this morning Droid alerts me to this release by Justice and Metro, a mini-LP  titled PRESSURE 101.5 FM-Luton Pirate Memories. 

It's actually from a few years ago and is woven out of old pirate adverts and jingles - info about long-lost record shops and club nights in the Luton and Dunstable area.

"J and M takes us on a journey back to the 90's and compile Pirate radio adverts from their local station Pressure FM. The flip is a track inspired by the sounds being broadcast around the rave era."

Hark at the well spoken voices in the adverts...  big up the bourgeoisie! big shout going out to the  middle class massive!

"Right of admission is reserved - and this is a drug-free zone" - yeah pull the other one, luv!

1. Pressure EZ 03:41

2. 101.5 Skit 01:04

3. Last track from me..... 00:32

4. Soul Sense 00:26

5. Mad Dog Birthday Rave 00:49

6. Soundz Wicked 00:37

7. Gatsby's Hair Dressing 00:32

8. Pressure Zone 00:43

9. Ozone 2 01:15

10. 33 studio 00:38

https://modernurbanjazz.bandcamp.com/album/pressure-1015-fm-luton-pirate-memories

Got No Room for Ravers

Samples Small Faces's "Lazy Sunday"! 

The bit about his grumpy next-doors objecting to the noise of loud fun - "wouldn't it be nice to get on wiv' me neighbours? / but they make it very clear they've got no room for ravers"

Features the phrase "mustn't grumble" - the soul of Englishness (pre-ravers, at any rate) quintessenced

There is also a blink-and-you'll-miss-it  comb-and-paper quotation of a Stones song - "Satisfaction" it says at Wikipedia, although it sounds almost more like "Let's Spend the Night Together" to me

I should have put "Lazy Sunday" in my list of Greatest Number Twos 

The album as a whole I've never quite clicked with except for the opening title track with its amazing colorized bass and phased drums and keyboards.

And of course enjoy the Stanley Unwin element

Got this album 

"Lazy Sunday" is very much rooted in the same oh-so-English world as Carry On

A-wouldn't it be nice to get on with me neighbors?

But they make it very clear they've got no room for ravers

They stop me from groovin', they bang on me wall (what's going on in there?)

They doing me crust in, it's no good at all, ah

Lazy Sunday afternoon

I've got no mind to worry

I close my eyes and drift away

Here we all are sittin' in a rainbow

Gorblimey, hello, Mrs. Jones

How's old Bert's lumbago? ("He mustn't grumble")

I'll sing you a song with no words and no tune

(Tweedle-dee bite) to sing in the khazi while you suss out the moon, oh yeah

Lazy Sunday afternoon, ah

I've got no mind to worry, ah

Close my eyes and drift away, ah

A-roo-dee-doo-dee-doo

A-roo-dee-doo-dee-die-day

A-roo-dee-doo-dee-dum

A-roo-dee-doo-dee-doo-dee

There's no one to hear me

There's nothing to say

And no one can stop me from feeling this way, yeah

Lazy Sunday afternoon

I've got no mind to worry

Close my eyes and drift away

Lazy Sunday afternoon

I've got no mind to worry

Close my eyes and drift

Close my mind and drift away

Close my eyes and drift away

 You could probably essay an, er, essay that claimed for Ogden's Nut Gone Flake what Greil M claims for The Band, i.e. the ravers (Sixties version of) generation mending the breach with the parent generation....

Which (despite "She's Leaving Home") already started happening on Sgt. Pepper's, to some extent. "Penny Lane", certainly.

Or perhaps simply that for all the trips and the dabbles with Eastern spirituality and all the other Sixties neophiliac adventures breaking loose from tradition.... you still wake up in England, embedded in centuries of history... 

Tale "Itchycoo Park" 

Spiritually hungering Ronnie Lane got into Sufism by 1968, but he lifted the melody or part of it from a 16th Century hymn, "God Be In My Head"   while "the theme to the words" came from "a hotel in Bath or Bristol. There was a magazine in the room with a rambling account of some place in the country and it was about ‘dreaming spires’ and a ‘bridge of sighs’ – there was a write-up on this town – and I just thought they were nice lines.”

Steve Marriott meanwhile said lyrical inspirations come from stinging nettles and an actual park in Ilford:

"Ronnie Lane and I used to go to a park called Itchycoo Park... We used to bunk off school and groove there. We got high, but we didn’t smoke. We just got high from not going to school. Itchycoo Park is the nickname of Little Ilford Park in London. An “Itchycoo” is slang for a flower found in the park called a Stinging Nettle, which can burn the skin if touched.”

"Life is just a bowl of All Bran"

Talk about Englishness - Marriott as the Artful Dodger for the album-of-the-original-stage-musical Oliver! He was in the original stage production playing various boys roles.

Oliver! creator Lionel Bart appears in this delightful Georgia Brown (Nancy in the original stage version  - did she share scenes with Marriott?) conceived and presented investigation of the Jewish East End and the question of what makes you a Cockney

I was just thinking that Georgia looks the spitting image of Marc Bolan, another famous Jewish East London singer, and then at 19.28 she says "that's a gas" 

Another amazing time travel capsule, a BBC report on Cockney idiom from 1976

"The First Worldwide Big Beat Newspaper"

 No, not a shortlived end o' 90s publication devoted to all things Skinty and Wall of Soundy...  at home with Monkey Mafia profiles... Portrait of the Propellerheads as Consumers.... an advice column from Lindy of Hardknox

No, we are talking much, much earlier than that... 

Based out of San Francisco 

World Countdown was the creation of a fellow called Charles Royal  - and his brother Mark.

"Big Beat" being a phrase, a concept, a vibe, that harked back to the 1960s 

As was the term "beat group", meaning an imposing drum beat rather than "beat" as in poet or beatnik.

The magazine dropped the "big beat" bit from its frontal boasts, perhaps reflecting the shift from beat-y energy to a more "heads" oriented sound, especially in San Francisco, which I would never have thought of as a hotspot for big beats in the Dave Clark Five sense. 

It ran for 29 issues and at the end was simply billing itself as This Earth's Leading Music Newspaper.

Before that it claimed, absurdly, to be the World's First Music Newspaper

It was only 40 years behind Melody Maker, which I doubt was the first weekly periodical about music anyway. 

"The Voice of Music" my English arse

Yes, there was a certain grandiosity to the World Countdown operation, as with the incorporation of the surname Royal in the title  on the front cover - Royal's World Countdown. 

If your surname is Royal, does that mean you end up with a "King of All I Survey" complex?

Also - what is with this repeated sales pitch of it being a "souvenir" issue? 

Or "collectors edition"

"You will cherish our magazine forever!"

Now I have been obsessively following music for decades, with a particular interest in the history of music magazines, the underground press, and especially the early days of rock criticism - and I'd never heard of this publication until a few days ago. 

It's been pulled together as a compendium. 

Back to the other Big Beat... I am surprised in that late '90s Boom for Dance, when publications were springing up all over the shop, there wasn't a Big Beat dedicated magazine. Perhaps there didn't need to be since it was well covered in the big three dance monthlies, Mixmag, Muzik and DJ. 

I seem to remember that at the absolute peak glut of dance and dance mags, someone tried to launch a dance-dedicated weekly music paper. But then the bubble burst... 

Special Request (Labello pt 2 - the samplige)

Ooh Macka Brown sampling the Pirates Anthem

4 Meg Soundboy with some nifty usage of "Can't turn me away" by Sylvia Striplin

Then there's Smokey Joe with a famous vocal lick

The "Special Request" vocal licks are sampled from Shut Up and Dance's "Rest In Peace" - but where did they get them from? 

Another iteration of that vocals lick - as well as another, different "special request" -  in this Reinforced tune 

Those reggae vocal licks from Smokey Joe's "Special Request" et al recur -  alongside JVC Force "Strong Island" riffs - in DJ Double G's UKG classic "Special Request" 

Ah (bit nuum nummy this) DJ Double G turns out to be DJ Gunshot as in No U Turn, making the same shift as No U Turn becoming Turn U On, but not sticking with the label

Real name Gordon Gummer, a veteran deejay on Don FM and Flex FM

a different "special request" occurs in this track - and the "special" recurs passim

A title-becomes-artist-name homage 

More Smokey Joe

Posse and crew

Two of my most cherished 'Mystery Tunes' - 'Do the Right Ting' identified a while ago by a knowledgeable reader, and 'Honey Love' I only just spotted myself

Artist name comes from a Queen Latifah album

But who is Princess of the Posse? Answer to come in a minute 

Now Labello Blanco did some fun things

Also the tune I insist on calling "Sexual Feeling Is Mutual" - as 'slow jam' lyrics go that is some clunky writing

And Labello put out some great things - mostly those involving Rogue Unit

Like this unofficial, only-released-on-a-Jungle-Massive-comp Steve Gurley rmx of  UK R&B micro-star Princess

And this gorgeous dreamy wistful remix

Labello Blanco - wouldyabelieve I only just twigged it's a play on "white label"!

Labello had a bunch of sub-labels including Urban Gorilla, who did this beauty

Did not realize that  Labello was the precursor label to UK Garage stalwart Public Demand (as in Artful Dodger, Steve Gurley, Sticky feat Ms Dynamite etc)

Some serious Nuumy Nuum stuff there, history fans!

There was a 2steppy sublabel called Absolute Corruption

Add that to this long list of Erik Satie "Trois Gymnopedies" rifling tunes

For a second there - in a feat of absolute nuumtinuity - I thought this might be a cover of Goldie's "Kemistry" / "You and Me" - but it seems more inspiration / homage

Labello / Public Demand / etc is-was a tightknit operation clustered around the Low family 

Key figure is Jimmy Low,  who set up Labello in 1990.

Also known as Macka Brown and MC Kann aka Bug Kann (as in Bug Kann & The Plastic Jam, Labello's most successful act with "Made In Two Minutes") (although Macka's "Go Down Baby" was a big tune too)

But there's also younger brother Dave Low and sister Patti Low

Patti is Princess of the Posse - at least it says that "all tracks created by" her, but "all tracks produced by the Plastic Jam"

Which is Grant Bowden, the key non-family member of the operation. 

An interesting distinction - what is the difference between "created" and "produced", in this sort of music? 

Nuum nuuumy alert -  Bowden became the UKG artist Gass,. Named after the UK garage club I  assume. 

Back to Princess of the Posse

The other two tracks on the Pun Project EP are solid ruffige with squeakified raggavox

One of  Grant Bowden's aliases is Payback, as in "Eastenders' and "Dope" 

Huge bass on this tune and nice clangy beat

Monster tectonic rumblizm on this 

I'm guessing Bowden's got the lion share of responsibility for the label's early classic "Made In Two Minutes"

1990 and this is almost ambient jungle ahead of schedule - the main lick is a dreamy, chilled version of the 'rave signal' melody-riff

But it also came out as Reel To Reel?

Now is this the same as the Original Bleep version or slightly different?

The famous incarnation of "Made In Two Minutes" is very UKrappy in the Criminal Minds / Genaside II / Rebel MC mode.  And presumably that's sister Patti cooing over the top. 

And there's raggamuffin bizness at the start (ALLCRU - mouth-mangled it sounds more like ARDKORE) and at points throughout....

Many remixes

Foul Play - a remix by them I missed

And many other versions, including second go's by Gachet and others

And keeping it nuum nuum nuumy here's a coupla UKG remixes from 97

Talking of the UKG era....

It says at Discogss that the younger scion of the Low clan  -  Dave Low - is "the DJ in Artful Dodger"

But this was achieved in an unusual way

In 2001, Hill and Devereux parted ways due to creative differences and the trademark, name and usage rights of Artful Dodger was purchased by Blessed Records.

Capitalising on the significant live demand for the group, the owner of Blessed Records DJ Dave Low accompanied by MC Alistair adopted the name, in essence creating a cover band. They continue to tour under the name Artful Dodger to this day, performing the music of Hill and Devereux frequently in their sets.

Hill and Devereux reunited in 2017 but were unable to release new music or perform under their own name so formed Original Dodger.

I wonder what the market value of the Artful Dodger brand was in 2001-ish?  

They had had a run of Top 10 singles - five of them - and two of those were #2 smashes. 

And they must have done a million remixes.

But as a performance outfit...  how much would someone pay them for that, as the UKG-goes-pop bubble bursts? 

As for Princess of the Posse, it says at Discogs that Patti Low is a

"session singer from Essex, England based in Marbella, Spain.

Now works as a vocal coach and songwriter and performs in an ABBA tribute act."

So both of them ended up in nostalgia acts.... 

A snippet on Labello at 18.30 in this doc