Heatwave & Warrior Queen/Baby J refixes Ronson

Ok so I'm super late on Heatwave & Warrior Queen, but better late than never, and it is a bad tune. Cheers to dancehall don dada Gabriel Heatwave, for the MP3.
Check The Heatwave's website, for nuff free music, mixes and fascinating info.

Second tune here is UK hip hop producer extrordinaire Baby J actually improving on a Mark Ronson and Paul Smith (Maximo Park) track by injecting it with some rowdy MCing. Baby J has done his own remix version of Ronson's Versions, which is probably going to come out via SonyBMG in the not too distant future. A remix of a remix or reversion album: how very post modern. In this day and age nothing is original, it's all about the REMIX. Big shout to Matt @ Dat Sound for the Baby J info and music

Dirrrrty Canvas & Bling comedy

Mr Wiley's supposed to be playing The Great Escape in Brighton that night too. Will he make both? I'd hope yes, as The Great Escape is early doors (8pm). If anyone is heading down to Great Escape in Brighton - it's supposed to be our answer to SXSW - holla at me, coz I'll be there...




Great value comedy in the totally unique and slightly scary Masonic lodge/temple of Andaz - formerly Great Eastern Hotel in Liverpool Street - which is where Mark Ronson stays when he's in town.

Flying Lotus remixes Madvillain

Just about two of my favourite artists of the moment - rapper Madvillain, aka Doom, and Warp's hiphoptronix don, Flying Lotus on the remix. Flying Lotus has been in the UK in recent weeks and loves my South london hood, namely Brixton and er, East Dulwich, where he's been hanging out with Kode9. The nephew of Alice Coltrane has good taste, ya dun no.

Next Friends & Fam

Addictive TV remix Iron Man

VJ collective Addictive TV remix Iron Man, find out more about them here

London For Free

After a heavy night meditating to immense bass at DMZ on Saturday night, yesterday I dragged my sorry arse (note to self, tequila is never a good idea) out of bed and went for a wander to check out Cans Festival (Banksy, 3D's street arm jam in a disused road/railway arch underneath Waterloo station). Except half of London under the age of 25 did the same and there was an hour queue to get in, so off I wandered onto the South Bank proper...

Where I found the spirit of hip hop alive and kicking: these guys were performing street dance and breakdancing with a one speaker set up and enthralling the masses with a combination of theatre, panto, street dance set to hip hop, pop, and disco. I happily gave 'em a nugget for their work.



The boarders and bikers were out in force too, turning the brutalist concrete of the South Bank into a buzzing arena for physics defying, self expression, against a backdrop of graffiti. This dude is actually travelling the other way - as in he's going this way >>>>>>>>>>>>>> at high velocity - I managed to get him as he's doing a 360 mid air, or a pirouette on his BMX.

After a couple of freebie exhibitions at NFT and Royal Festival Hall, and signing up for a campaign to commemorate soldiers lost in Iraq on postage stamps (great idea!), and a quick refuel at the Slow Food festival I went back to Cans Festival, where the waiting time was five minutes. Reeeeeesult.

Cans Festival was inspirational and teeming with slogans and images that show people are peeved and care about what is going on around us: whether Boris Johnson, war, rampant reckless consumerism. At times I despair if anyone cares, this restored my faith in people, humanity and London. Not everyone's obsessed with shopping, material goods and trapped in a bubble of conspicuous consumerism.





The Pope literally meets Marilyn Monroe.



Half of London's original graf writers are in their late 30s with kids, so suddenly this makes sense...









My pix capture about 2% of what was going on at Cans Festival... It's more than apparent to me that there's a DIY creative revolution happening, facilitated by the internet, social networking and cheap technology. This festival was all about stenciling, easy, straight forward, lo-fi art, that speaks volumes. Warhol might be considered the father of 'pop art' but in the truest sense of the two words, we're experiencing it right here, right now.

All of the above cost me nothing, and is why I LOVE London (despite fellow Londoners either not bothering to vote or voting for that racist cretin, Boris Johnson)!

Carl Cox - the smiliest superstar DJ ever?

An interview with Carl Cox that I done for Newcastle Metro. He appears at Shindig's 16th birthday celebrations this weekend. I went to his first London date in three years a few weeks back, and he smashed it. It was proper arms pumping, foot stamping, driving hard dance music - tech house, and techno. Took me back to Bugged Out at Nation, Liverpool in my uni days in da mid-1990s, and raving in the annexe with The Birds, while most of Liverpool got down to fluffy house in the main room.

CARL COX

Superstar DJs are so last millennium. Yet Carl Cox is as popular now as in the superstar DJ era a decade ago, and when he started in the UK’s acid house revolution 20 years ago. Why? Because Cox’s a supreme DJ, purveying pummelling techno and tech-house who’s moved with the times; he’s charismatic with a perma-grin and hasn’t bored us into submission by turning out every week. Cox’s current UK tour are his first DJ club dates in Newcastle, Liverpool and London, in three years.

In 1988 ‘Coxy’ (dancefloors often chant this in a football-terrace style), was famous for mixing across three decks. Twenty years on and turntables are almost redundant in clubs, what does the ‘three deck wizard’ think of this? ‘I’ve gone from DJing with one turntable to using CDJs, which enables me to DJ as I’ve always DJed but with 50 hours worth of music. I’ve always enjoyed having a massive selection of music, and the choice is so immense that every single record is of the highest order,’ says Cox

Cox feels CDJs have put the emphasis on music and stimulated creativity: ‘The focus has shifted from the DJ to what’s coming out of the speakers, which is always what I’ve wanted - stop looking at me and get dancing,’ ‘Many years ago you’d have trainspotters standing at the front not dancing and writing down every record- you don’t get trainspotters any more,’ he explains. ‘It’s very creative - before people would go to the studio and remix, now you can do that live which is amazing, that new beat, or sound, you’re going to hear it in a club for the first time - I’m really looking forward to what the next generation does with it.’

Cox believes the next generation experiments’ should ferment organically on dark club dancefloors away from the harsh mainstream glare: ‘Our movement has gone underground, which is no bad thing, when it was over-ground the expectation was too high: where’s the next Prodigy, Moby, Leftfield? Actually what we had was what we had. Now we’re going back to the underground to find these people - it’s a transitional phase and it’s going to take a few years before we get a Prodigy or Leftfield.’

Cox, who’s spent the last three years DJing across the globe and every summer in Ibiza, thinks dance music’s next big thing the next could well come from one of its new frontiers, such as Eastern Europe or Asia.
‘I played in Romania and Bulgaria two weeks ago, in Bulgaria there were 7,000 people and the lighting and sound was better than anything I’ve seen. They’re having the time of their lives and only started five years ago, whereas we’ve had it for 20 years,’ he says. ‘Their ears are 21st century and they’re making music for now, not what it used to be like back in the day. This is where it’s really interesting, and where a lot of the refreshing, exciting music, DJs and producers are coming from now.’