| #669 |
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2003 |
Perilous 669 Last column I mentioned a little label called Br0klyn beats. This label, w4r3z-style misspelling and all, have been putting out a series of nasty 7”s for a while now exploring the noisy end of breakbeat, or as it is now called ‘breakcore’. Their latest compilation, Brtual Police Menace is a collection of appropriately brutal harsh tracks targeting police violence around the world. Garth Vader opens the compilation with the upfront Pig Pop which revolves around a reggae sample “run citizen run run the police man has got a gun” before exploding into a distorted amen mash up. Elsewhere things are slower, dark and grim – Nettle’s The End Of Public Space is effectively claustrophobic, Huge Voodoo’s NYPD Blues use Mike Ladd’s freestyle on the other end of a telephone. With the world collapsing around us this sort of punk/industrial throwback is likely more important than the cocooning effect that a lot of laptop electronic music has on the listener. And as the liner notes from label owners Criterion & Heather write of electronic music, “a little engagement with the real world . . . would do wonders for a whole subculture too obsessed with conceptual abstraction and its own minutiae”. I concur. On to musical activists of another type. Melbourne’s Curse Ov Dialect have been one of the most unique Australian hip hop crews for several years now. Originally working with Ollie Olsen, their early shows had more in common in terms of theatrics with Throbbing Gristle than anything hip hop, and perhaps fortunately they existed and grew outside of the politics of Melbourne’s hip hop scenes. Then came the whole Anticon/Clouddead wave and suddenly weird hip hop was all in vogue (albeit for a short while). In 2001, Curse were signed to US label Mush, home to Clouddead, and Lost In The Real Sky is the outcome of this exciting partnership. Having seen Curse live it is difficult to imagine it working well on record, their first self-released album lacked the dynamism of their shows, but on Lost In The Real sky they have managed to make a record that not only captures the spirit and energy of their live sets, but also has audible lyrics (!). Whilst everything radiates a strong psychedelic surrealism, at the core there are strong anti-racist, multiculturalist themes – which give the record a very specific Australian-ness. Likewise the beats are drawn from literally everywhere (but firmly rooted in their suburban reality) – Arabic, medieval English, and of course Macedeonian - Pasobionic’s immense production skills (often buried in a live mix) are proudly on show. Having seen this record in the shelves of Hardwax in Berlin with a ‘recommended’ sticker on it, is a great sign that Australian hip hop can be both unique and global – regardless what the haters in the US reckon. Certainly another sign of the rude health of the fringes of hip hop is the forthcoming Prefuse73 outtakes simply titled Extinguished Outtakes. At just on 40 minutes this is a mini-album in a mixtape style format of tracks that didn’t make it on to One Word Extinguisher. Apparently Heron prefers the Outtakes to the real thing now, and there’s something in that as there is a very 70s warmth to much of this ‘unfinished’ material that refutes some of the claims that this finely chopped hip hop is soul-less. Onto Frigid and there is a Clan Analogue double launch on September 7 with Deepchild, dark Network and Kazumichi Grime to celebrate two new records out through Creative Vibes. Then looking ahead, Sound Summit on the long weekend in Newcastle has just confirmed a huge lineup including ComA (Tigerbeat6), Sutekh (Context), Portable (Background), Dabrye (Eastern Developments), Machine Drum (Merck) as well as the inventor of a three armed turntable, Janek Schaefer who will be working with New York’s DJ Olive. www.soundsummit.org for more info. Keep an eye out for special collaborative shows at the Sydney Opera House with these artists on Oct 11 and 12. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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