silverdollarcircle

a respite from the usual grime and techno blogging here to talk about what is, or should be, the next scene to get excited about- Tripwire. i first heard of it from Martin, of the now defunct Beyond the Implode blog. in between stirring words of praise for 70's thai rock and roll, and 80's squat-punk, martin made a few brief, tantalising references to this recent development from the former eastern bloc- mainly the ukraine, i think. basically, it's speeded up gangsta rap samples- NWA seem to be favoured sound-donors-, with crazy, chopped up rave stabs over the top. this is punk-rave, finally. at its best, tripwire has a mentalist, feral energy to it, with shards of treble-noise roughly stitched together into a sprawling, but danceable, glorious mess. apparently the drugs of choice in the tripwire scene are Base (like speed, but totally head-fucking) and poppers (rumours abound of tripwire kids taking to using amyl nitrate suppositories!)and, listening to it, that sounds like a pretty perfect music-drug interface. cheap, nasty and fun, tripwire's a much-needed shot of mindless teenage thrills and violence. Its not hard to see why revolutions have shook both the ukraine and georgia recently- the youth are seething with nihilistic rage if tripwire's anything to go by.

now the bad part. tripwire's pretty impossible to get hold of if yr not within convenient travelling distance of a dodgy ukrainian market stall. however, a bit- ok, a lot- of trawling through Limewire has unearthed a few bits and bobs- such as the MP3 posted below, by dj Cuntfinger (!), who seems to be the founder of the scene, kind of like wiley. and like wiley, he has a younger, dizzee-ish prodigy in DJ 2 Phat-2 Fly- i'll post one of the latter's mp3s soon.
anyway, here you go- enjoy!

dj cuntfinger- 'she got da beef'.

THE REALISATION SLOWLY DAWNS- PETE DOHERTY IS JUST ANOTHER FUCKING ROCK STAR...


apologies for the recent quiet. i've been on my summer holidays. the destination this year was Orkney. not orkney mainland though. we're more hardcore than that. so it was one of the northern orkney islands for us- Eday. there's nothing there except a shop. not even any trees. it's just grass and sky, green and blue. the minimalism of the landscape really grows on you. the kompakt lot would love it. may be. we saw seals and lots of rare bird life. we tried to fly a kite. we cooked for each other every night. we went to beaches that were like little slices of the carribean transported to the north sea to slowly freeze. it was lovely. however, Eday seems to have little or nothing in the way of a grime scene.

we also stayed in inverness to break the journey. inverness is a crazy place, full of ultra-exaggerated gestures- a person clearing their throat can be heard 50 metres down the street. people staggering around drunk at 3 in the afternoon- i was kept awake in the hostel at 4 in the morning by what sounded like a joyous riot outside. it seemed like a place on a knife edge, and i don't fully understand how it functions. but people were having fun.

now, however, holidays are over so i'm back, refreshed and happy, feeling better than i have for some months. a change is as good as a rest innit.

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it may be a little known fact, or a well known one- i'm not sure- but the Tawny Owl's call of 't-wit, t-whoo' is actually a call-and-response. the male says 't-wit' and his female partner replies, 't-whoo'. so some people find this sound creepy, or scary, but really it's just a conversation between lovers.
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we live in infantile times. this much is obious from the dire, contrived nostalgia of those 'i love the 80s' TV shows, and the remakes of starsky and hutch and Dukes of Hazzard. Adults dressing up as schoolchildren for nights out, and reading children's books on trains- whereas a glance through an undergraduate's bookshelf in the 60s would likely have thrown up some Sartre and Camus, now you'll find harry potter and phillip pullman.
This strangely desperate and sad infantilism seems to have taken a new turn recently, though, with the rise of TV shows based around parental figures taking over someone's life and explaining to them where they've gone so terribly wrong in their misguided attempts at independent living... THIS is how to eat, what to wear, how to recycle, how to save money, how to spend money- can you not do ANYTHING right? and we love this stuff. it seems that now, for whatever reason, what we really want is a good bollocking.

What worries me most about this development is that it could pave the way for another Thatcher-esque politician to emerge, ranting at us lazy and degenerate masses for decades, as we find it oddly comforting and lap it up.
'Just rejoice in the news i am giving you...' etc.

PHILOSOPHY AND ALT. COUNTRY LYRICS (CONT.)

yes, it's time to reprise that infamous role.

"The meaning of the world lies outside the world"
-Silver Jews on Carnap's rejection of metaphysics.


BONUS: PHILOSOPHY AND GRIME LYRICS.

"Everybody's talking but nobody's listening"
-Dizzee on Heidegger's concept of 'idle talk'.

"I'm no longer human- i've become an investment"
-Wiley on the Marxian concept of capital fetishism.

if i was an astronaut, and the cables attaching me to my space station were somehow cut, and i was beginning my endless spiral through glittering, dark Space, i'd like to be listening to Villalobos' 'dexter', just have a little bit of perfect music + situation harmony before the oxygen ran out.

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"you had your go, it's my go now. i spoke to you on the blower. fair's fair bruv. oh he's from Plaistow? East Ham, Plaistow, all the same..."

one thing i love is to hear MCs on pirate radio. not talking about MCs as in spitting lyrics here, but MCs as in hosts. there are many reasons i love hearing them. on one hand, i love the context they provide, with all these allusions and brief references and shout outs to other artists, djs, fellow MCs, station owners: you get the impression that yr listening to the milling hub of the scene. and you are, of course. i love the easy chatter of a good radio host- humanising the sound with stories of football in the park in the weekend, barbecues, girlfriends, school days. there's something compelling about unfiltered, comfortable addresses to an audience. this is partly why markets can be exciting. i love the exhausted, elated voice that ardkore MCs still have at the end of sets, reaching out through the airwaves like one huge "do you want a sip of this mate?". i liked it a few weeks ago when MC Twilight, who's with dj genocide freeze 92.7fm wednedays 6-8 pm, signed off with a happy sigh of, "London, it's been wicked." I found that moving. resolutions to journeys often tend to have some pull on the heart. the embrace and smile at the end of an 80s teen movie. i also liked it when Bossman on his Rinse FM set ruled approvingly, 'Shouts to the taping crew- you're VERY SMART'. that's funny.

i love the sheer weirdness, or at least lack of self-consciousness, of much pirate radio MCing. Riko talking about football scores for over 10 minutes with slimzee; that Real FM MC i was talking about the other day who twisted his rice and peas recipe into an extended analogy for the pain he would inflict on haters; MC Twilight conducting some kind of text-sex with his girlfriend on air; L-man deciding that that the miss-callers weren't doing their job properly and fucking off to a barbecue instead; someone on Delight FM challenging the DJ to play the worst song that he could, over and over.

mostly, though, i just love the sound of it. i love the new London accent- London's teenager's are the only group in Britain that i know of that have a radically different accent to their parents and grandparents. and it's such a good accent, the best accent in the world. one of the greatest British cultural innovations. i wish every day that i had it, but i never will, and obviously trying to acquire it would be grotesque. now, when i listen to grime or ardkore instrumentals without that accent over the top- generally punctuating the music with short streams of 3 digit numbers that are strangely soothing- it just sounds wrong. something important's missing. the music needs that accent. it's like it was made to sound good when the two were together. it wasn't, but it sometimes seems that way.

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this is an important song that i can't stop listening to- if you don't download the MP3 then you're in the wrong, sorry to say. it's by a top-boy gentleman and squire and it's a little bit like what would happen if a Victorian gamekeeper decided to make rave pop.

Vegetables- Butcher's daughter.

i'm back.

there's a little bit of a Mac 10 show i want to tell you about. for the final track on a typically frenetic mix, he decides to play a new track by chunky bizzle, who's going to be the big grime producer of the last third of 2005 i think. the track is called 'reaching out for your love' and it could be a big paradigm shift. it isn't really an MC tool- there's hardly any beat or bassline to it. all it is is atmospherics. a disembodied old soul singer groans 'ohhhhlll' like his heart is ruined and bleeding. there's a few slivers of sonar-ish bass but they quickly drop out. a speeded up vocal sample whips in; 'reaching out for yr love, reaching out for yr love'. ardkore lineage etc. the beat, such as it is, is just a few cymbal splashes and stilted, slowed handclaps. a pathetic beat, in the good, true, 'pathos', sense of pathetic. then comes the 'chorus'. the 'reaching out for yr love' sample is slowed down to it's true speed and looped over this weirdly waxy, translucent lapping wave of melody that undulates louder then more quietly but always sounds like it's buried under some thick, but clean, fog- you never hear it quite as clearly as yr expecting to, or want to. Ghost-grime: it's not about rhythms or basslines, it's about tense, romantic little sound poems. this owes a lot to the hazy decayed ardkore of Ruff sqwad but in it's sheer lack of interest in providing anything for MCs to latch on to, or even try to counter-weight them with syncopated rhythmic tricks, it's something else entirely.

and then comes the really eerie bit. the show is from 8th july this year. the day after. and the MC goes :'my condolences to all those who lost loved ones yesterday. RIP charlotte' just as the old singer wails 'ohhhhll', in real pain, and the track keeps pleading away, reaching out for your love, reaching out for love.

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big up poplife blog- back and totally on fire. check out the imaginary wu-tang scenario especially.
derek- chestle!

generator thieves fi dead.




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no reviews of the mizzlefizzle #7 on here cuz others do it better
but i'll just say that dancing in our mini rave, wearing dust masks and white gloves was IT. and Ruthington 'perry' smythe and joseph 'joe' tooker as Vegetables was even more so.

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back in london, sun going down, stroking zooey the cat, listening to wiley instrumentals, wearing a suit for no real reason. big posts come soon cuz this is the good times...

BEFORE, NONE OF THIS SEEMED POSSIBLE, EVERYTHING WAS IMPOSSIBLE...

i'm too busy with this at the moment to feel like writing much here, but i'll write a little bit, just to keep my hand in, like.

big grime tunes:

that one that sounds like a clappy and cracky dexplicit beat, but with this weird retching sounds at the end of each bar. like, GRUUUGHHHNNHN. a massive computer slowly dying by throwing up everything inside it, then eating it again, and then throwing it up again. (someone should make a film based on that idea. actually, don't. obviously). anyway, the tune. it's wicked and queasily exciting. it'll make you feel ill, but in a good, satisfying, refreshing, wholesome way. AVANT!

yeah. when i heard The Entourage on this, god's gift seemed to suggest that this track is something to do with him, but that may be hearsay. don't trust me.

ALSO check out slimzee's new dubplates! rinse fm, sundays, 3-5pm. etc etc. he's playing crazy stuff at the moment, kind of breaky and grimm, but with this superfun hyperactive old skool Belgian vibe. this is the NEW SOUND, get to know. monstrous, evil + fun basslines going on like cartoon robots destroying cartoon cities. in the future. i think these tracks may be by geeneus aka wizzbit, but again, don't trust me on that.


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also loving: triple r mix of My Best Friend releases. the mid point between expansive cologne techno and tight, claustrophobic Berlin electrohouse. and it's not afraid to get silly, which is a lovely trait. if i was in one of those volcanic spas in iceland, where yr really hot, but surrounded by icy mountains, i think this would be the perfect music to listen to. it's also great to drive to tho. and cook to. and dance to.


ok, i'm off. i'll do some long posts as soon as the dust settles from the MizzleFizzle...i've got lots i want to write about.