Jake Thackray - La-Di-Dah (1991 collection)

A real treat for yuz here. To celebrate my purchasing of the Jake In A Box retrospective, I present here a 22-track compilation of Jake Thackray recordings, taken from his tenure at EMI in the late 60's and early 70's with a couple of live tracks from later in the 70's. To my mind he's at his best as you see him on stage: solo with an acoustic guitar; but I was pleasantly surprised by the producers' restraint in embellishing his songs in the studio - all of them are gold. So - no flies on me!

Thackray's bawdy, verbose and often hilarious folk songs don't at all betray his reputed stage fright, a fear which eventually led to his premature retirement from performing. However this wasn't before he completed many sessions for the BBC, played the Royal Variety show and recorded his debut in 1967, a door down from the Beatles at Abbey Road... (although he's not always exactly wholesome family entertainment).

'So, what makes him so damn great?', I hear the voices in my head cackle.

Over an idiosyncratic finger-picking style, Jake tells quirky and satirical stories with whimsy, wit, raunch (always in good taste) and the occasional dash of absurdism, all in an exquisite Yorkshire brogue. Not unlike Nick Drake with a sense of humour (Nick was a fan apparently). He's been called 'the North Country Noel Coward', but this doesn't do him justice at all. Thackray taught in France for many years, and was essentially responsible for introducing the chansonnier tradition to these shores. The video below is his translation of George Brassens' 'Le gorille'.

I was introduced to the songs of Jake Thackray after seeing a 2006 BBC Four documentary aired to mark the revival of interest following his death in 2002. Shamefully, it's taken me this long to properly exploit my curiosity. He is all the more appealing for his detatchment from that contemporaneous music scene of psychotropics and Eastern mysticism; right up there with 60's traditionalists like Ivor Cutler and the Kinks circa 'the Village Green Preservation Society'.

'The Thack' just wrote great down-to-earth songs with a mastery of the English language we don't often see in this day and age; his pastoral songs always put me in a rustic frame of mind and almost make me proud to live in the countryside (see: 'North Country Bus', probably the most impenetrably colloquial song on here, or not? Non-Brits leave yer feedback!).

Ripped@320 mit artwerk
Supplement the first
Supplement the second

Sergei Rachmaninov - Piano Concertos No.2 & No.3

No fancy-pants titles here, just a clearly-labelled tin from one of the great composers (and one of the greatest pianists the world has ever seen). These pieces come from classical's late Romantic era - right at the turn of the century; so it's like armies of butterflies waging war in your gut, with the benefit of centuries of musical development and compositional trends. The perfect access point into classical music if ever there was any.

It's not my intention to patronise in the slightest, but here is the wikipedia definition of 'concerto' if you can't quite put your finger on it:
The term Concerto (from the Italian: concerto, plural concerti or the anglicised form concertos) usually refers to a three-part musical work in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.

This recording is performed by Bernd Glemser and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. But don't worry if that sounds dodgy, this is from the Naxos label, which always comes up trumps with a no-nonsense approach, it's like the industry standard.
Rachmaninov completed No.2 in 1900, No.3 about a decade later:

Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
&
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
('Op.' stands for 'opus', or 'work')
Ripped@320kbps

Resurrection

Oh, sorry - I mean REBOOT. The 'rebooting' of the Substix franchise is still being shot by a fat-arse Hollywood sycophant, except now the lighting director has been dismissed and we are officially DARK and GROAN'D-UP.


The blog fell in to quiet disrepair because I was saying nothing to nobody. It was a dead duck.
So the new remit is just the music - with links to streaming movies and other dribs and drabs. All the files will be hosted on another server blablabla, but more importantly it's all 320kbps all the way (No FLAC, my connection is shit) and artwork where possible. There will be genre tags, there will be no-nonsense titles... Why, I can hardly contain myself!

Why should you download or watch what I post without question? Because I have maintained a near-jobless existence for at least three years, let 'friends' fall by the wayside and at times attained reclusive status; but in all this time I've been listening to shit, reading shit and watching shit. Most of it was good shit. Now I will share the best of it.

Gravediggaz - 6 Feet Deep

Gravediggaz - 6 Feet Deep (Europe)/ Niggamortis (US) (1994)
link


Whiz back to '94, the year Wu Tang burst onto a scene that was never the same again. Wu producer and figurehead the RZA has been smoking alot of dope and staying up all night; wired by flickering TV light to gore-flecked, video-nasty marathons. He's gone a bit mad.

Fortunately for all the 'heads the result was a record that defies you to stop nodding; one for my personal top 3 hip-hop albums O.A.T, easy.

Gravediggaz were a 'supergroup' side-project who conceived the tongue-in-cheek horrorcore micro-genre over two albums; and 6 Feet Deep is their cult classic. Within: RZA and Native Tongues don Prince Paul adopt Mr Hyde alter-egos and enlist Poetic and Frukwan for a surreal rap blitz.

The wordplay is frequently hilarious, the rhyme schemes always ingenious. Our friend the RZArector takes a production backseat to spray demented over Prince Paul's eclectic and obscenely catchy beats (the producer of De La Soul's groundbreaking 3 Feet High and Rising seems possessed by an evil presence...)

Positive Energy Activates Constant Elevation
xxx

Grime 02

Some mixtape cuts from the last four months for the hype-deficient.
A bit of everything, some pure aggy, some bashment skankers, skewed beats, 'the youngers'... sick productions this year. Track one is cheating (late 2007) but Skepta demands a rep. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeelll!!!!

>>Grime music in 2008 so far...<<
Tracklist -


1. I Spy - Skepta ft. Jammer
2. Rude Kid - Badness
3. Inside Looking Out - Trim
4. Switch - P Money
5. Skankin' Ting - Jammer ft. Skepta
6. Mayhem Freestyle - Griminal
7. Par (Sending for Griminal) - Tempa T
8. Sorry U Are? - Tinchy Stryder ft. Chipmunk
9. Mountain - Ghetto
10. Breathe - Frisco ft. Cookie, Chipmunk
11. Taliban - Eskiboy (Wiley)
12. Kill Off Killy Pt 2 - President T
13. Badman Ting - Doctor
14. Zumpi Hunter (Freestyle) - Double-S

Wiley's 'Wearing My Rolex' not included... Support the scene, get it off iTunes now are you stupes???

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return to the 36 Chambers: the Dirty Version

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return to the 36 Chambers (the Dirty Version)
link


For the next solo debut, ODB (so called because 'there ain't no father to his style') yanks us across the water to Brooklyn Zoo. Cousin of RZA and one of the Wu-founders, ODB is a one-off MC that needs little introduction - coming like a demented, drug-addled hybrid of rapper and soul singer.

RZA produces again, as he does for all the early solo projects, and the murky beats combine with the Drunken Master's off-the-wall, profoundly entertaining meanderings to produce a macabre banger. Tracks like the cautionary 'Snakes' and the minimal 'Cuttin' Headz' are haunting and almost prescient of events to come...

Russell Jones died in late 2004, after years of custodial sentences and eccentricities now bordering mental illness; an autopsy discovered a plastic bag full of coke and prescription painkillers in his stomach.

Method Man - Tical

When the Wu-Tang Clan signed their first recording contract for 36 Chambers in 1993 they made sure it covered the respective members as solo artists. This exemplifies the Clan's business-like approach and the creation of hip-hop's first franchise and dynasty...

This is real beats and bars, every verse saturated with the Clan's personal mythology; every beat, sample or malevolent instrumental touch riveted with Shaolin (Staten Island) and Brooklyn street corners. The heat bearing down, ever-vigilant, murky undergrounds, darkness begets dark deeds... All this permeated with the Clan manifesto - master yourself and enlighten the '85%' in darkness.

So, here is a whistle-stop tour of the Wu-Tang member solo albums that myself and generations of popstock believe to be essential mid-era hip-hop, in six parts. I will only be looking at the the first, universally acclaimed, slew of Wu albums unleashed on the industry; all pre-'Forever' (the Clan's 1997 sophomore double LP).

Turn it up and take heed.


Method Man - Tical (1994)
link


The first Wu solo album. The title? Let's say that 'tical' is to Meth as chronic is to Dre...
RZA is on the switches of course, steering Meth (the Clan's dynamic, versatile, substance-fuelled MC) through a dark and gritty soundscape that was responsible for kicking the Wu into commercial overdrive.
We're still in early Wu-Tang mode here, with 'Bring the Pain' being a classic example of the quickfire sampling and minimal beats; RZA still using relatively basic samplers and mixers to poisonous effect.