silverdollarcircle

i've never heard a michael mayer track that i didn't love.

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go to www.stylusmagazine.com/ipod to download some of my favourite grime tracks for free [and read some little reviews of them by me]. you've only got 72 hours so GO GO GO!

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big up dripdropdrap for breaking the blogging silence on the phenomenon that is lethal bizzle's 'forward riddim'. it's the biggest grime track since eskimo, so get to know. if, for some reason, you want to know what i think about it then go to www.stylusmagazine.com and find the 'grime survival guide' and that will tell you. i've not got anything else to say about it really.
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my favourite bit of grime MCing, and MCing generally, at the moment is the bit in demon and kano's 'bring arms' where demon goes

'i'm the mc that loves the sex,
bare back wi' ya sis-tah
just love the sex
BARE BACK WI YA SIS-TAH'

it's all in the way he says 'yr sister'. it's so amazing. so perfect.

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oh- mondays, delight 103fm, essentials 8-10pm. so that's where you'll get to hear the latest davinche tunes, if yr into that sort of thing. i am, kinda.
and thursdays 8-10 delight fm, is dj cruiser and infrared i think.

ok, i'm off to finish me book, see ya luv ya...

perhaps i shouldn't talk about roll deep and wiley on here so much. may be it's getting tired. but right now their music just means so much to me. there's so much new music coming from them at the moment that it's overwhelming, and it's all brilliant. even when wiley isn't at his best, he's still unique and special to listen to. he has something about him when he's on the mic that no other mc has- there's an aura, an atmosphere to Wiley's MCing. everytime you hear him you know, you FEEL, that he's still the most important person in this scene right now. he's the one that started it all. the one who began this thing that i've totally fallen in love with. that's what's difficult to put across to people who aren't into grime in a major way- without the context of wiley's history and achievements, they just hear a good, sometimes very good, MC. but he's more than that, and always will be. once you've fallen for grime, you'll love wiley's MCing. and love doesn't always mean 'like'. yes he can sound awkward and yes he can sound like he doesn't care, but there's still that atmosphere, that presence on the mic that draws you in. he's got authority, and grime is his vision, and once you truly, vividly, realise that, you can hear it in every word. it's not always a matter of being good or bad. sometimes music can transcend all that- sometimes a piece of music is too important, too vital, for such categories to exhaust its value, its effect.

but aside from all that blah blah blah, wiley's putting out some incredible music at the moment. i think that his MCing talent has still to be fully appreciated. it's very original- these long, wordy sentences, stark and bare with few metaphors or other figurative elements, based around the repitition of the same word at the end of each line. often people complain that it sounds lazy, not thought through. but listen closer and some of his bars are breathtakingly intricate, dextrous, works of deadly accurate timing and lightning changes of pace and direction. he's blurring the lines between MC chat and conversational chatter; he's making words and lines which shouldn't be used by an MC, according to the implicit rules of the game, sound like they should. At his best, you don't see the joins- all the painstaking work is concealed from you, and he sounds like one of the most natural MCs around. there's a subtle, exceptional talent in some of his lines which, the more exceptional it is, becomes harder to hear. as he gets better and better, his style gets more elusive, shrinks into the shadows, surrounded by hidden layers of thought and preparation.



...which is all a prelude to telling you about 2 really, really amazing wiley tracks. first; the vocal version of 'ground zero', which is actually a full Roll Deep effort, rather than a solo Wiley thing. but Wiley's on the chorus, snapping out: 'you know what you just now told me? i didn't really like that much. and i think i'd be better off if. I. didn't. know.' it's so fucking deadly, and salty and cold blooded. it's the best eerie, alien and desolate verbal wasteland i've heard since 'birds in the sky'; there's the same sense of hearing a person's emotional life freezing to a point of creaking, crackling intensity, to the point where the cracks are just starting to threaten to shatter it all apart. but right now it's still together and it sounds like nothing can stop him. there's no passion; it's wiley's slow, steady, march OUT of the ground zero of passion. you know that it'll all end in tears, that no human can live that, or should want to. the (thin) ice will splinter and fracture and wiley will go sinking in to the messy world of humanity again. but everyone's been in a situation where they want to be like how wiley's trying to be here- to freeze all of humanity's risky , weak strengths out and just DO IT, alone. it's an admirable, foolish strike for a kind of freedom, however flawed. but so many flawed and foolish things are admirable.

second is wiley's response tune to dizzee's 'hype talk', in which dizzee dropped the line 'is it true that wiley skipped the country, left him?' regarding dizzee's stabbing in ayia napa last year. wiley's response is done over the same rhythm and lays his own side of the story out . which is, briefly: dizzee got really drunk and pinched lisa mafia's bottom. this annoyed so solid. wiley arranged a meeting between so solid leader Mega Man and dizzee to sort things out and reconcile the two camps. at the meeting, dizzee went straight up to mega man and punched him in the face. a fight ensued with wiley protecting dizzee. wiley eventually went to bed in the early hours, leaving dizzee drinking in a bar. a few hours later, some affiliates of so solid stabbed him. as soon as wiley found out, he tried to arrange for dizzee to leave the island for his own safety, but that proved impossible.

ok, that's the scene politics dealt with. to be honest, i think they're the least interesting thing about this track. far better is just the SOUND of wiley's voice. he sounds HUGELY urgent and angry. he sounds like he's going to burst into tears at any second, so hysterical is he with feelings of bitterness, betrayal, injustice and rage. it sounds momentous, even heroic: wiley frequently snarls (and i think that is the right word) about the importance of truth, of straight answers. it doesn't matter, though, which side of the story is correct. what matters is that wiley's vocals sound like they he NEEDED them to be heard- it's almost shocking to hear such total belief and commitment in someone's voice, to hear just how important it was for wiley to make this track. you know when you hear it that this was the only thing in wiley's world when he recorded it- for a few minutes, you're hearing everything that wiley had at that point, everything that he needed to be at that moment in time. which again, is not necessarily to say that it's a track that i LIKE [although i do, lots]. rather, it's to say that there's something more important for me here than whether i like the track or not- there's something in this track that's like the distilled essence of all art, of all creative moments. it's rare to experience that, and i do feel really lucky to have heard this track, and that it had that effect on me.

WE GOT LONDON LOCKED.

big up everyone ruling the airwaves last night, representing the blogging massive. my favourite bit was where mark k punk said that today NME is 'just smash hits for students'. so true, so true...

and you should buy The Independent today so that you can learn about women in dancehall from the wonderful Dave Stelfox. [actually, people should buy the independent every day, i think, but that's a different matter]


and to complete a day of great culture on the cheap, you should buy planet mu's 'ammunition' cd, which has 4 remarc tracks and one bizzy b track and only costs £2.


what else is really good*? woebot's grimeo4 mix, for starters. it's cured me of my scepticism regarding lady sovereign- ch-ching is SUCH a great track. the mix is a superb overview of where grime's at right now.

[* the greatest grime meme ever is the lyric 'what's reeeeally good, i reeeally could...' which is in loads of MCs rhymes. dizzee does it on his new album and crazy titch seems to base whole tracks around it]


and also todd burns' new schaffel mix, 'die neue riddim'. this is just what i want at the moment- macro, macro, MACRO!
and with a certain sexy swing about it.

what i don't get is why butterflies are beautiful and nice, but moths are shit scary.

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trim, trimothy, taliban, trimson, trimble, trim trim tra-roo.

-just some of the names that roll deep's Trim likes to go under, as lovingly listed in a new song of his.

that's the thing with roll deep -you can really tell that they just love words. i know talking about 'love for words' can sound rubbish and wanky, but in this case it's true. [best bit of alan bennett's slightly disappointing play for me was when the teacher despaired of what happened to his pupils as they grew up; ' they end up talking about how they 'love words' in a way that somehow always sounds... ... welsh'. obviously, nothing against the welsh. i just found it funny.]

wiley was on the radio again tonight. he's inescapable at the moment, everywhere. he wasn't that good tonight- back to that weirdly disjointed weariness that he had for much of last year. with MC shows on the radio, if you catch them on an off night they can be really awful. even the best MCs are like that- i've heard sets from Stormin where he's been mediocre at best, and sets where he's been absolutely captivating. it's such a fine line. if you happen to hear someone on a bad night, it can be impossible to see what all the fuss is about. but you've just got to keep on listening- if they're big, they're big for a reason, and you've just got to try to work it out. in grime, only the best make it through to the top- the audience is too knowledgable and discerning, the competition too open, for it to be any other way

...saying that, never really seen why so many people are so into crazy titch...way too SHOUTY for me.

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buffering...buffering...buffering

fuck it then.

can't remember who exactly, but i'm sure there's a famous quote from some 20th century british socialist academic on how the difficulty with conservatism is to try to find any way of seeing it as a political morality, rather than just more or less naked self interest. [Laski, may be? Chris Brooke help me out here!].

anyway, that sums up my thoughts on the recent aristo-retards invasion of the house of commons and attacks on police officers, and the Daily Mail's coverage of them, quite well. you could sense the indignant rage that had consumed these people when they realised that laws could stop THEM, rather than just 'the rabble', doing just as they wanted. [as Joe little dogs day also points out in his great post]. cf. the daily mail's resistance to speed cameras and speed bumps.

these people are without morality as it's commonly understood- they simply will not accept things that are not to their advantage. People always talk of there being today 'two americas'. but just look at the amount on people that read and sympathise with the amoral far-right nonsense of the Mail and the Express:- britain is a divided country just as much as america. the only difference is that britain's morally wrong, selfish, death-obsessed* and downright nasty right-wing petty bourgeoisie are, luckily, stupid enough to think that they want a centre-left party to win elections.


* another quote from saul bellow's 'Ravelstein', which is Bellow's memoir of the political philosopher Allen Bloom:

'How can you tabulate the endless dangers of tobacco, of food preservatives, asbestos, the stuff crops are sprayed with- the E.Coli from raw chicken on the hands of the kitchen employees. "nothing is more bourgeois than the fear of death", Ravelstein would say...He had a line on each of the neighbours- little bourgeois types dominated by secret dreads, each one a shrine of amour propre...nothing to live for but foolishness, vainglory- no loyalty to your community, no love for your polis, devoid of gratitude, with nothing you would lay down your life for."

sorry, that last post was wrong. 'are you really from the ends' was put out by The Ends, not musical mob. i dunno why i wrote musical mob. but while we're on the subject, let's have some grime nostalgia for the mob's 'pulse x'.
BONNNG!A clapclap clap BONNNG!... etc.

can you have nostalgia for something that never went away? well, maybe you can, cuz i definitely feel a kind of nostalgia for pulse x- But a sound like that lends itself to such feelings, cuz not only does have huge historical importance within grime, but those old, bitty 8bars always sounded kind of archaic, eroded, decayed:- gritty, grimey sediments of sound. they sound very mechanical and digital as well of course, but it's a weathered, rusty kind of futurism. there's none of the sheen and steel of the 21st century there. and it's just that which target, terror danjah and davinche have put in to grime recently- their music sounds like the future surging forward in crystal clear, glinting digital definition. in contrast, early 8bars, by focussing on just how scrappy, murky, indistinct and fragile computer-noise can be, sounded like a vision of what the future will be like when the rot sets in, when digital technology looks quaint, obsolete and clunky. they made computers sound antique.


which is why you can be nostalgic for pulse x.
and may be also why i like listening to grime and the anthology of american folk music back to back.

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r i p johnny ramone.

SOLDIERS, FALLEN PART II.

time again to pay tribute to those who have called it a day-

farewell heronbone, it's been an absolute pleasure. wouldn't be doing this now if you hadn't done it first.

helsinki station- meant to ask this ages ago; what happened? the brightest stars sometimes burn for the shortest time, i guess...

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GRIME NOSTALGIA PART II.
who remembers musical mob's 'the ends'?
"are you really really from the ends?
are you really really from the ends
too many boy dem
wanna
pretend"

with that beat like gunshots. and that melody of string stabs that makes me think of the bit in pulp fiction where uma thurman's femme fatale wakes up from her OD after the sudden injection of adrenalin.

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tv: if you haven't already, check out Channel 5's 'cosmetic surgery live'. as the title suggests, tv [or, at least, terrestrial tv] has never before sunk so, so low. there's a perverse delight in seeing just how trashy popular culture can get. the show is in large part, and quite unashamedly, about the risks involved in cosmetic surgery. as vanessa feltz frequently reminds us in her grating warble, 'this surgery is LIVE and ANYTHING can happen. a lot could, possibly, go wrong here tonight'. if you have ever, in your most speculative thoughts, considered having cosmetic surgery, even a little bit, this programme will put you off the idea for life, without a doubt. it's the only tv show where i've actually had to turn off because i knew if i continued watching i would certainly either vomit or pass out. the offending scene in the case was the feature on liposuction. have you ever seen liposuction done? if not, ok, here's how they do it: to remove fat from someone's neck, say, they cut an incision behind the ear. they then take a stainless steel tube, just under a foot long, and insert it into this incision, right up to the hilt, so to speak. they then attach this tube to a vacuum device, and vigourously move the tube back and to INSIDE the neck, so far down that it's almost touching the collar bone. the action is very similar to how one would hoover the stairs if one was in a particularly bad mood, or a real rush. and of course, the vacuum device has to have transparent bits in it so you can see the blood soaked fat come hurtling out of the body. and the noise- this hungry, obscene gurgling and squelching. i feel like i'm going to be sick just writing it.
to be a cosmetic surgeon for a living would give you such a warped view of the human body, i think. seeing the surgery done is so sickening in large part because of the way the body is presented, and dealt with, as JUST another object- the surgeonss hack and suck and tear bits out the body with an astonishing, nauseating, lack of delicacy. i've seen people treat scrap metal with lighter touches. it's the body presented as an unkempt garden that needs a someone to wade in and rip the weeds up.

it's absolutely horrible, yet strangely compelling, like a lot of horrible things are. and it's kind of fascinating that people will voluntarily subject their bodies to this- to what is, in a sense, degradation.

that can be the flip-side to a 'my body is a temple' ethos, i guess: it can be a degradation of the body as much a glorification of it. it can objectify the body- if the body's a temple, and the temple's looking a bit shabby, then tear it apart and build a new one.

.

STUCK LIKE GLUE.


oh lord, that bass in dizzee's 'graftin' ! it's sheer, delicious evil + deviancy. so addictively sinister. but it's not gothy and cartoonish, not at all; it's genuinely, straight-up nasty + horrible. love the way it's just an aimless swarm, sounding like it's hovering, ready to strike. But it never does- the tension never breaks. And so glutinous! thick as tar- a stagnant, bottomless pool of sub-low. icky and sticky like new brandflex would say. like some insane cross between a meditative ommmmmmmmm, a massive drunk wasp, and the biggest computer in the world slowly dying.


wicked!

i love the fact that i live in a time when there are machines around that can make noises like this, i really do.


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loads of people i spoke to during work today were just a little bit crazy.
it was like being in a david lynch film or something- you know where everything is quite banal but just slightly out-of-joint and otherworldly. an example- a phone conversation that i had:

caller: hi, it's______, is the owner there please?
me: no, she's out at the moment. she'll be back in about 5 minutes- can i take a message?
caller: Ok, can you ask her to call me back on 0207_____
me: ok, will do.
caller: you're cool.
me: er, sorry?
caller: you're brilliant.
me: right, thanks, bye.
caller: thanks a lot, bye.



it was odd. i think those kind of really routine conversations often are cuz no-one's paying real attention so you end you saying slightly crazy things. which can be fun.

STUCK LIKE GLUE.


oh lord, that bass in dizzee's 'graftin' ! it's sheer, delicious evil + deviancy. so addictively sinister. but it's not all gothy and cartoonish; it's genuinely, straight-up nasty + horrible. love the way it's just an aimles swarm, sounding like it's hovering, ready to strike, but it never does- the tension never breaks. and so glutinous! thick as tar- a stagnant, bottomless pool of sub-low. icky and sticky like new brandflex would said. like some insane cross between a meditative ommmmmmmmm, a massive drunk wasp, and the biggest computer in the world slowly dying.


wicked!

i love the fact that i live in a time when there are machines around that can make noises like this, i really do.


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loads of people i spoke to during work today were just a little bit crazy.
it was like being in a david lynch film or something- you know where everything is quite banal but just slightly out-of-joint and otherworldly. an example- a phone conversation that i had:

caller: hi, it's______, is the owner there please?
me: no, she's out at the moment. she'll be back in about 5 minutes- can i take a message?
caller: Ok, can you ask her to call me back on 0207_____
me: ok, will do.
caller: you're cool.
me: er, sorry?
caller: you're brilliant.
me: right, thanks, bye.
caller: thanks a lot, bye.



it was odd. i think those kind of really routine conversations often are cuz no-one's paying real attention so you end you saying slightly crazy things. which can be fun.

FRESH FM [104fm] is my new favourite pirate. i get the impression that roll deep are involved in it somehow cuz all the djs [even the oldskool and hiphopo ones] give shout outs to roll deep. it's not chiefly a grime station, more station playing a little of the best of everything- old skool garage [the proper stuff, not that boring frothy 4/4 deal that gets so much play on most other pirates], crunky hiphop, and grime- roll deep have a set monday nights, and i caught a set by young offenders the other day who vocally are ok, not bad, but you can tell they're young and inexperienced, but production wise they're fucking excellent. they have that really stutter-y, rickety sound, blasted with atonal bass blare, the kind of sound that feels like it could fall apart at any minute, the kind of sound that's been missing from many grime productions recently [check terror danjah's, target's and davinche's recent tracks to hear how the grime centre-of-gravity is moving towards more a flowing, solid-sounding, *professional* style]. i like both approaches, but there's a unique excitement in hearing the very brittle, under-produced, raw kind of grime. [and it's interesting that despite his presumably fairly sizeable budget, dizzee's new album still sounds like that]. grime used to be predominantly a music of holes, gaps, framed by sparse, fragile beats and blurting synth lines. gradually, the holes are getting filled in, creating the thicker, richer sound that predominates today [which might very well be due to the producers getting richer...]. listening to the biggest grime tracks today, although they're still breathtakingly raw, unhinged and disjointed to compared to everything else apart from may be crunk and jungle, it's sometimes hard to recall how grime once sounded almost like an ANTI-music- a total rejection of conventional popular music codes, a rejection of groove and melody in favour of clattering energy that sometimes seemed to spiral apart in wonderful, alien chaos. but productions like young offender's [among others] remind you of that great feeling again. and that's lovely.





you know, i really like Taliban trim from roll deep. he's one of the newer members, but he's already probably the second biggest one to wiley- you get the impression that wiley's hoping trim's gonna be the next dizzee. i didn't like him at all when i first heard him, on a nasty crew set early this year. he has this slow, laconic, rasping flow, that sounds like he can't really decide whether he's gives a fuck or not, that's quite difficult to get in to first time round. and on the nasty set he was going back to back with Stormin which will make just about any MC sound witless and dull. but now...yeah, i love his stuff. like a less clown-ish bruza, he's all fragmentary phrases, words picked out and rolled around, played with, set to a see-saw, woozy rhythm. imagine a gentle, endless vortex of sandpaper. [ha! sorry, i love these ridiculous metaphors, i really do...sorry]. he's got that thing that Kano used to have, where his flow is hypnotising- it circles and twists around, sounding so natural and unforced, swaying like a pocket watch, like a snake charmer's tune, and you think you could listen to it for hours, and you want to.



[he's got a prominent role on all the new roll deep tracks i've heard- watch out for Wiley's creeper volume 1 mixtape to hear him]

"His intellect had made a millionaire of him. It's no small matter to become rich and famous by saying exactly what you think- to say it in your own words, without compromise."

-Saul Bellow, 'Ravelstein'.






ok, back to work!

there's a grime primer piece by me at www.stylusmagazine.com [click on 'grime- a survivor's guide'.]

as a result, i'm a bit grimed out at the moment, so let's talk about other stuff i've been enjoying-

matthew dear mix cd courtesy of Cheeky Banter of drip drop drap. lushy. very...*clever*. i don't mean that in a derogatory way, like you might if you said, say, that yngwie malmsteen was clever. rather, it's clever in an elegant, unshowy way. it's very neat, and graceful. it's like when people talk about the beauty of some mathematical proofs- there can be excitement in feeling things all fit together just-so, in a perfect structure being revealed, in seeing how subtle, previously unnoticed nuances fit into a wider scheme. and seeing/hearing someone make that happen can be a disarming, emotional experience. isn't there a bit in david byrne's film 'true stories' where the computer programmer says something like, 'solving problems, inventing...IS a rhythmic process'?

-and also radio clit's 'screwed up clit' mix cd. it's so much fun and it's got so many great tracks. it just carries you forward on this wave of energy and surprises like only mixtapes can do- makes me think of 2 many djs but with a better taste in music and less of that boring 'bastard pop' business. and that bit where 'i luv u' segueways in to 'love with tear us apart' is GENIUS. you should get a copy + invite some friends round and then have a party. it'll 'go off'.

-and also wasteland's 'vulture culture' mix cd, done by dj scud and i-sound. a mix cd which perfectly reflects the wasteland aesthetic through the tracks of others, including neptunes, lil john, Wonder, mobb deep, and loads more. a shadowy, alienated refraction of street pop sounds and idioms, twisting them into a broken, flickering, witching-hour haze of the sounds which form a pretty much constant backdrop to town and city life all day every day. like how the city changes at night: well-known buildings become alien, mysterious structures, brutalist forms hanging over you, or intersecting slivers of grey-black that seem to shrink from view. it's both more calming and less obtrusive, and more frightening, unfathomable. and that seems to be the wasteland aesthetic- making you hear all of our common musical life's sounds as profoundly weird, darkly incomprehensible slices of difficult, disjointed noise.

and also:
dizzee rascal's new one. only got this yesterday so can't really come in with any proper critical comment apart from first impressions. which are:
1] it's brilliant
2] dizzee has got so verbose! [in a good way] he's like the henry james of grime!
3] a fair number of tracks are at hiphop tempo. but that's ok. being a grime purist is as boring as being any other kind of purist.
4] he seems a bit less vulnerable on this one
5] seems to be no mention of wiley on his own potted history which he gives us on the opening track, which suggests the grudge still runs deep.
6] i LOVE the bit where he goes, 'if you can't back the arms house, who the fuck are you?', with his voice going higher and higher. makes me want to be cockney.
7] not convinced the collaborations are the best choices he could have made. imagine dizzee and demon on the same track, pushing each other on to more and more high pitched energised squealing avalanches of verbal dexterity. that would be amazing. better than margaman anyway, hey.
8]SPIKE JONZE did those photos of him in bow, it seems. how weird is that?
9]wiley's album is gonna suffer by comparison innit
10] that song about him playing a club full of people dancing instead of people with screwfaces standing around staring each other out is really touching. cuz it's lovely to hear him say how 'delightful' it is that there's no trouble and only good times, but also it sounds like it's the moment where he started to leave his roots, and play big clubs to older, more middle class people [might be about him playing Fabric?]...
11]...and that dilemma is really at the heart of 'showtime'- dizzee's trying to reconcile his desire for a less stressful, easier life away from the streets where he grew up, with a worry that this will cause him to lose a vital part of himself- in many ways he IS his fierce loyalty to Bow. Dizzee openly tries to deal with the classic problem faced, but rarely confronted by, successful rappers. and it's a problem which strikes a chord with most people in some ways, cuz as a band which i grew up with once sang, 'doesn't everyone want to be somewhere else?'.

"showtime" is about the love/hate relationship we all have to where we come from. often you want to get away from it all but you know that you can't, and it wouldn't really help anything anyway.

12] i said i was all grimed out, so i better stop now.

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and joe at littledogsday.blogspot.com has got a nice piece about the pre-carnival Soca night that me, him and man like stelfox [ha, i've always wanted to write that!] went to the other week. it was INSANELY fun. i've never seen a more up-for-it crowd, and to think that they probably weren't on class-a drugs is both inspiring and terrifying. if you haven't already, you should DEFINITELY try to get to a soca night if you've got the chance. it's relentless joy. 'infinite euphoria' like a rave flyer i saw the other day said...

here's an amazing grime lyric, from female MC Maihem:
"i'm like a frigid chick: i don't give a fuck"





maihem is wicked. she sounds a bit like shystie but better. actually, like shystie crossed with an angry Kano-she has the same kind of ice cold, confidently amused charm about her. and she swears loads and says 'fuck' in such a great way. she's on the 'aim high volume 1' cd that target did, versioning 'milkshake' as, 'my big flow brings all the boys to the club, and they're like, 'mine's better than your's'. Yeah right, 'mine's better than your's', with yr swag flow you better stay indoors'. she's also on j2k's recent mixtape which is a very, very good UK hiphop album, and which i'll write more about soon.


just one more Miahem lyric [i could do this all day];
"maihem will knock your block off. if you don't like it then fuck off"

it's all in the way she says fuck. i guess it loses something written down, no?

----------------
big up scott somedisco and his sly peter kay references. [i'm right aren't i? i hope so, or my increasingly shaky claim to be a proper northerner may take a real battering].

----------------
last week, i was despairing about the state of grime pirates to anyone who would listen, and plenty who wouldn't. by the end of last week, i could find NO grime stations on the dial- no raw blaze [which hasn't been on for months], no rinse, no delight, no freeze, no heat. not even the small, obscure stalwarts like xtreme or flava.
but fear not, today it's all come good again. rinse is back on, as is delight [103fm].

but best of all is BRAND NEW GRIME STATION- FRESH 104.0 FM. i'm hoping it could be just like what deja used to be- crystal clear reception, big names and heavily committed to grime, but it's only be on for 2 days so it's too early to tell. ROLL DEEP are on as write [8-10 mondays]. wiley's really good tonight. the weary determination which swamped the fun out of his album has gone and recently he sounds like he's really enjoying himself. and he's sharing a gimmick with lethal b once again- he's saying 'bang bang bang' like lethal bizzle says 'pow pow pow' [lethal and wiley also both used to do lyrics based on a repitition of '...got one of those'. like wiley's 'black t-spark, got one of those'].

roll deep played a track about half an hour ago [grime news as it happens!], which sounded like a new wiley track, with this totally maddening and ace cut-off sample that sounds like a Nokia telling you that a message has been received. the first few time it came in, i instinctively started rummaging excitedly to find my mobile. what a clever, pavolovian trick to make yr listeners prick up their ears. and even when yr instinctual mind's finally learnt that it's not yr mobile, it's still a lovely little touch, a brutally pure pin prick of sound that's a bit like alva-noto.

LISTS LISTS LISTS LISTS

Top 5 favourite adjectives i like to use on this blog [although not necessarily the most frequently used]:

1] lush
2] tingly
3] sparkly
4] lovely [which IS the most frequently used, he he]
5] gabba-fied


Top 10 favourite expressions + exclamations commonly heard on pirate radio:
1] trust me, trust me
2] private callers, you get air
3] this ain't no long ting
4] don't get it twisted, london
5] this is a big boy riddim
6] big up lady chantelle
7] i'm sending for [insert name], i'm sending for you man
8] london, gimme some signals
9] big up the [insert 3 digit number], yr large.
10] this is MERKERY! [although i think only d double and footsie say that]