Sunday, 11 August 2019

Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984 - 1992

Acid house is often portrayed as a movement that came out of the blue, inspired by little more than a handful of London-based DJs discovering ecstasy on a 1987 holiday to Ibiza. In truth, the explosion of acid house and rave in the UK was a reaction to a much wider and deeper set of fault lines in British culture, stretching from the heart of the city to the furthest reaches of the countryside, cutting across previously impregnable boundaries of class, identity and geography.
With Everybody in the Place, the Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller upturns popular notions of rave and acid house, situating them at the very centre of the seismic social changes that reshaped 1980s Britain. Rare and unseen archive materials map the journey from protest movements to abandoned warehouse raves, the white heat of industry bleeding into the chaotic release of the dancefloor.
We join an A-level politics class as they discover these stories for the first time, viewing the story of acid house from the perspective of a generation for whom it is already ancient history. We see how rave culture owes as much to the Battle of Orgreave and the underground gay clubs of Chicago as it does to shifts in musical style: not merely a cultural gesture, but the fulcrum for a generational shift in British identity, linking industrial histories and radical action to the wider expanses of a post-industrial future.

Wednesday, 10 April 2019

Damo Suzuki - Live @ Laugharne Festival 2019

Improv 1

Improv 2
Featuring Damo Suzuki, Julian Hayman, Euros Childs, Richard James, Ed Mugford and Stephen Morris

Thursday, 4 April 2019

A Certain Ratio - Houses In Motion

A cover version of Talking Heads’ ‘Houses In Motion’, using Jez Kerr’s guide vocals (pre to him becoming the band’s singer). Grace Jones never completed her vocal take, after attending one of the recording sessions with the band.

Friday, 15 March 2019

Roots Manuva & Doug Wimbish - Spit Bits

Via

Thursday, 14 March 2019

Curtis Mayfield by Jason Heller

Curtis Mayfield’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Curtis Mayfield - Beat Club, Bremen, West Germany, January 19, 1972 Part 1/2
Via

Back in London in the early eighties I had a friend who put a funk band together called 'Work Party' and I went to see their debut gig at Covent Garden's Rockgarden. They were really good and a short while later when I was working at Dingwalls in Camden it was announced that Curtis Mayfield was to play and I managed to wangle my friend's band the support slot. Somewhere I may have still have recordings of those two gigs, I certainly do still have their first demo tape in storage. A great wee combo who I believe had another demo produced by Fritz Skidoo. Interestingly enough Fritz has no memory of this but I am sure that my friend, gerry Murphy, told me this just before I moved to Australia in 86

Talk Talk - Eden (Rehearsal Cassette)

A late-stage rehearsal straight to cassette for reference. Recorded shortly before going into the studio, probably at John Henry rehearsal rooms. This is Mark on guitar, Lee on drums, and myself on piano and organ (the bass was always addressed in the studio once the basic track was down, which is why it doesn't feature here).
It's best to take the 8 minutes out and listen to the end, preferably in headphones, and in a quiet space
Thanks Stan