Listen: Charles Bradley live on KEXP

What an incredible voice. Live session from SXSW recorded by KEXP. Listen here.

Ring The Alarm playlist, BaseFM, May 7

James Brown - Stone to the bone
The JBs - 40th anniversary mix
Charles Bradley - No time for dreaming
Bo Diddley - Hit or miss
Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics - Chikk chikka
Amadou and Mariam - Coulibaly
Leroy Sibbles - Express yourself
Conroy Smith - Dangerous
Reggie Stepper - Under me sin tang
Barrington Levy - Why you do it
Junior Reid - Boom shak-a-lack 12" mix
Junior Murvin - I'll follow you
Joe Ariwa - The train
African head charge - Dobbyn joins the head charge
Delroy Wilson - Can I change my mind
Skatalites - Beardsman ska
The Wailers - Put it on
James Brown - Don't tell it
Booker T and the MGs - It's your thing
Oscar Brown Jr - Who knows what goes when the doors close?
Aloe Blacc - Green lights
Bei Bei and Shawn Lee - East
Smith and Mighty -B line fi blow
Arken - Step off
Unitone hifi - Sneeze off
Overwash vs megalon - Apopo
NSU - West coast dub - Dub asylum remix
Lord Echo -Blueberry jam

Get Carter: Shayne Carter and Dimmer

Shayne Carter is venturing round the country shortly, playing songs from his extensive back catalog, covering his time in Double Happys, Bored Games, Dimmer and SJF and more. He's playing at Bodega in Wellington tonight, and the Kings Arms in Auckland on May 14.

Clearly, Carter is not quite as precious as he was back in 2001, when he made me sit with him in the Sony boardroom and listen to Dimmer's debut album in its entirety, because he didn't want any prerelease copies floating round to media. Funny boy.  (Originally published in Pavement magazine, 2001.)



Shayne Carter is fiercely protective of his new baby, I Believe You Are A Star, the debut album from his band Dimmer. He won't let the media get their hands on any advance CDs of the album. Some may call this a little bit precious, but he has his reasons.

"I just wanted to keep it quiet. Ah, well, actually, I was secretly ashamed!" he laughs. "I just want to keep it under wraps, so when it comes out, it sounds really fresh."

He makes me sit and listen to it with him in the Sony board room, a rather sterile rectangular box with a well equipped stereo system but no natural light. The whole experience is slightly unnerving. Later, I politely suggest to Shayne that if I'd had an advance copy of the album, I could have listened to it before the interview and been better prepared. "Yeah, you could've asked me some pertinent questions about it, I guess". Hmmm.

It's been a long time since we last heard from the talented Dunedin rock god Mister Carter. His previous group Straitjacket Fits bid farewell in the mid 90's, and there's been a few sporadic singles from Dimmer, and occasional live shows. I put it to Shayne that perhaps people might have forgotten about him?

"Quite possibly yeah," he replies, nonchalantly. However, he doesn't seem, too worried. "I think I've been doing what I felt like I needed to do, really. make a record. I felt it was quite important to come out and make another musical statement; I didn't want the last Straitjackets record to be the last thing I ever did. So, I was working towards that, but as far as being out of the public eye, that doesn't bother me at all."

"It took me a while after the Fits ended to figure out what I wanted to do. I was sick of that format, and playing that kind of music, really. The biggest thing I felt towards the end (of the Straitjacket Fits) was it just felt quite choreographed, and everything is in its place. I was just aching for something that wasn't nailed down to the nth degree like that. So that when I went back to Dunedin. I just jammed for a couple of years, basically. I just got into those really great lost moments of rock, those things that happen in jams that you can't possibly write, you know? You ever heard Derek and Clive, done by Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore? They're totally pissed, and they go into the studio and come out with this completely surreal stuff; if you actually wrote it down and scripted it, it would be completely inane, but it's these guys freewheeling it, and its like a really great jam, it's not stuff you could possibly write, and that's the same way I felt about music, really."

The jamming process had a positive effect on Shayne's song writing, helping him to expand beyond the verse-chorus-verse-chorus regime that had previously constrained him.

"It made me listen to what was happening, as opposed to being a slave to the song. It taught me a lot about musical dynamics and not having to put lots of words in there. I just found playing instrumental based music was quite evocative, and quite up to the listener to make up their mind what it was about. What I initially liked about the dance thing when it first happened, which is quite weird coming from me, I suppose, in that I was put into that position of being the rock star kinda thing, but I really like that ethos where the audience was the star, and that whole socialist principle behind it. You didn't have some buffoon up there dictating what it was all about, you know and giving you your guide for life.

" But then its quite ironic, that the DJ' is now the new rock star, which I think is really stupid. When I was going through that period, doing that free-form jamming, even though I came up with some really beautiful music, and it was really educational, in the end I was quite sick of the vagueness of it all. For all those great lost moments, there were several that deserved to be lost, you know? I eventually came full circle, and thought what I've learnt from that, I can apply to songs as well. I came to the realisation that I'm a guitar player and I can sing, and I can write tunes, and that doesn't necessarily have to be a dreadful thing."

Thankfully, this answer rather neatly saves me from incurring the wrath of Shayne. He'd asked me at the start of the interview, rather pointedly, "You're not going to ask me why the album took so long, are you?" Shayne then joked that he's been meaning to write out a standard answer to that one, photocopy it and hand it out at the start of interviews. His rationale is that journalists pick up on a certain theme, something he's experienced in the past when doing rounds of press. This doesn't change the fact that the album did take him a long time to make. And of course, he's entitled to take as long as he wants, just like any other artist.

Not only was he developing just how he wanted to write music, Shayne was also investigating other ways of recording it too. He decided to take it on board and record it under his own steam, not that far removed from the old four track in the bedroom/church hall ethos that once ruled Dunedin.

He describes the recording process as "torturous, painful, stressful. There's the joy of creating it, and when you come out with a tune that's finished and sounding good, yeah, that's one of the best feelings in the world. Going for that end result that you know is going to be worth it, but there's a fuck of a lot of pain and work actually getting there. Some of those tunes I went to the moon and back with them , before I got them the way I wanted them to be. One aspect I really did enjoy was writing tunes in a studio environment as opposed to a band. I found I could do lots of things with my voice, I could sing really quietly and get a good dynamic happening, all these aspects of my vocals that I'd never really used before. If you feel like you're stuck in one place, well, that's a dreadful feeling. I learned to put a record together, which I'd never done before, producing it. It's fascinating, dealing with sound, what goes where, and all that."

Not only has Carter taken the hands on approach to recording, he's also turned his hand to directing music videos. He helped put together the beautifully stylised clip for Evolution, a take off of Elvis's 1968 stage set, but instead of dozens of lights spelling out Elvis, Carter got them to spell out Dimmer. The video also featured Carter's father, who passed away since the making of the video last year. For his next directorial effort, Carter gets to live out a childhood fantasy.

"I shot a trotting video on Saturday [for the album's title track]. I got to be a trotting driver at Alexandra Park. I got to loop the field, three wide down the back straight, and I went for gold from the four hundred, flailing away on the rail. Superb, man. I went out for three weeks, training with Barry Purdon, a really sweet guy. He thought it was a hoot; he'd just sit around laughing at me the whole time!

"I was really obsessed with it (trotting) as a kid. I was really fascinated with the numbers beside the horses names, no-one else in my family was into it, so it was just a little freak-boy sideshow kind of thing. My first record was '20 years of NZ Trotting Cups'. That's what I wanted to be when I was a kid; a trotting driver. So, that's the best thing about this business, you know, man. You think 'Oh I've got to make a video, I know what I'll do!' I was 8 years old and wetting my pants again on Saturday, it was great. It's a life highlight, that kind of stuff,. When I draw up the top five, that'll definitely be in there, man. Looping the field at Alexandra Park."

Apart from being able to indulge in childhood trotting fantasies, Shayne has been lucky enough to be able to devote himself full-time to his music, thanks to the support of his record company, who've helped out with recording gear and so on. How does he survive?

"I don't man. I starve, and I really enjoy pumpkin soup, several times a week! No, I've been really broke, man. It's a full-time thing, and hopefully, when this record comes out I can sort out some publishing; that dribbles in, but not enough to sustain me. That's what living in New Zealand is all about, you know. There just isn't the population to support it, basically. You've got to get out into the wider world if you want to do that. I'm really keen to get the record released overseas, and that will reveal itself in the next few months. I'd like to get out there playing again, as well. I'm kinda known in America on a low key level, so it'd be possible to go there and do some gigs.

" I'm happy with the record, as happy as you can be. It's something I can take out there and stand behind. I've got no delusions about selling millions of records. The bottom line is if you want to sell a lot of records, its got to be radio friendly. I don't really concern myself with that stuff, you've just got to make a record that you think is good, and try and keep the faith in other people too."

Shayne chose to put his faith in Sony Music, which may seem surprising, given his past experiences with major labels, when the Fits were signed to US label Arista. However, he had no such qualms about signing on with another major, and putting his head back in the lion's den. Shayne felt comfortable dealing with Sony's A&R manager, Malcolm Black.

"He's a musician (ex Netherworld Dancing Toys), he's from Dunedin, he's a solid guy, and I respect him. Finding people you feel that way about in the music industry can be quite hard, especially when you've dealt with those over the top Americans who tell you whatever you want to hear. They've been really good, set me up with a studio, left me to it. There was no creative input, and they were quite patient, as I inched my way towards finishing it. The indie/major divide; you know, I think it's kind of irrelevant. Think of how many thousands of good records have come out on major labels, think of how many thousands have come out of indie labels, it doesn't really matter. The truth is in the grooves. I thought Sony were quite good, in that they've got lots of smaller labels round the world. They own half the world, don't they? I thought I'd have a lot more options with that kind of set up than with Flying Nun (his previous label).

" That was the weird thing about dealing with Americans, on Arista. They're totally into success, and ambition, whereas in New Zealand, ambition is a dirty word. I think that's stupid. Why should you not strive for something? There's that whole apologist thing about the New Zealand character as well. Why apologise, you know? If you've got something to say or you've done something good, don't be ashamed of it, you know? That's one thing you can say about Australians. They may be crass bogans and all that, but they support their sport and culture. They've got their sport institutes, and they're out there, leading the world."

Shayne's own ambitions extend to "selling heaps of records, make lots of money, and go and develop my own institute of sport, with a courses for trotting drivers!" After the laughter subsides, he continues. "I feel good about the record I've made, it's true, it's not faking. Music is one of the few transcendent things in life, really; a joyous thing to be lost in. It's really powerful, intriguing, all that stuff. It's fascinates me, you know: why does a song work if you take out 20 seconds, why do people react to certain sounds, why do kids under 5 like the Beatles?"

Yes, Shayne still loves making music, even if it's a long torturous process. I close by asking him if it's hard being such a perfectionist "Yes. Oh, it drives me mental, man!" I detect what sounds like a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Shayne continues, a little more seriously. "My only solace is, it always has. You know that it's gonna be worth it, when you eventually get there. You're not settling for the easy option, its hard work. But it's really satisfying when it comes off. It's almost like the song has already been written, you've just got to find it, and it's floating round in the ether. I've really found that with some of these tracks. Some have literally taken years; I keep coming back to them, and they're not right, and you know there is a way that it goes. When you unlock that, it's a great feeling. It's a lonely breakthrough; you're sitting in your room, and you go 'YES!', but the glitter doesn't start falling from the ceiling, the balloons don't start popping; it doesn't happen! So you go 'Oh well, back to the pumpkin soup!'"

And back onto the stage. The album is out, and the world awaits. The Fits were famous for their incendiary live shows, something that Shayne has managed to avoid, while shutting himself away to make this record, but he's keenly anticipating getting back on the boards and playing live.

"I've hardly done any of it, you know, just because I've been in the studio for so long. When you've been sitting around, pushing a mouse around, going 'oh, lets move that one tenth over there', its a means to an end, and you've gotta do it, but if you're a musician, its about getting out and playing some music, you know? I really want to do a big band thing, but its just a real pain in the arse to find the right people, and organise it. I want to have backing vocals, like Marvin Gaye, two chicks and a guy. That'd be excellent, I reckon. It's kind of two extremes; either do it as a big band, or do it really minimal as a 3 piece. We can do it that way, but I'd like to try the big band thing." Ambitious as ever.

Mr Bradley and Mr Brenneck

Charles Bradley. Photo: LA Times

Tommy Brenneck is a guitarist with Sharon Jones and the Dapkings, and also runs the Dunham Records label, an offshoot of Daptone records. Their latest release is a fabulous soul album from Charles Bradley and the Menahan St band, led by Brenneck.

The LA Times had a nice piece on Brenneck and his collaboration with Bradley. Brenneck lists some of his favourite artists, and lets slip that he may be producing the third album from Rodriguez, who's first and second album were produced by Motown legend Dennis Coffey way back in the early 70s. They were reissued recently on Light In The Attic.

“You could tell he [the 63 year old Bradley] was just in this shell,” said Brenneck, who continues to work with the Dap-Kings in a studio-recording capacity. “He was a James Brown impersonator and he was dressing like him all the time, rocking a James Brown wig, full time. He had not found himself as an artist.”

About four years ago a collaboration between Brenneck’s own Menahan Street Band and Bradley started to take shape. “The music came, and then he slowly crawled out of his shell,” Brenneck said. “I think he’s finally casting off that James Brown mask. Even if he does do a James Brown spin or mannerism, he owns it now.”

Dub dub dub

I posted this last week, but just want to remind you folk to check it out. Enjoy! Thanks

This past week saw the release of Rescape, a remix collection from local producer NSU and I've got a remix on there of his tune West Coast Dub (listen here). I've pulled together a collection of some of the remixes I've done as Dub Asylum, kinda like a demo tape, and a few of them are available as free downloads, including one that is previously unreleased.

The first remixes I did were for the Midnights and Kolab - I hit them up via Myspace, how old fashioned is that? Funny thing is, I did the Kolab remix without ever talking to the guys - did it all via email and IM. Even though they live in the same city as me.

Devine No 5 - The Onleung remix was done for a proposed remix collection of Onelung's 2006 album Binary Pop Songs, but that never happened due to record company stuff. Have a listen and download it for free. Thanks to Onelung for letting me make it available.

Sideways - I did a remix for Kolab when their debut album, What Comes Next dropped in 2008. You can download it for free too. Thanks to Kolab for letting me make it available. They are also available for download from http://soundcloud.com/dubasylum

Outside looking in - The Midnights, a tune that appeared on their debut album, Outside (2010) This remix was done when this tune was knocking round student radio in 2007. I'm currently working on another remix for them.

Hiding - The Hollie Smith remix was for a remix competition she had in Oct 2010. Some cheesy House mix won. Sucky, that. Still like it, tho. Do more reggae, Hollie!

West coast dub - The remix of NSU is off the album Rescape, a remix collection of NSU, out April 25, 2011.  That's the cover below.

Kog turns

Seeing as it's New Zealand Music Month, I thought I'd dig out some old magazine articles on local musicians that I wrote a while back. They give you a snapshot of artists earlier in their career...

Coming up, Shayne Carter, Dawn Raid and a few others, written for Pavement, Real Groove and Lava/Selector magazines. This is the first of several posts over the next few weeks, keep your eyes peeled for em.... This article was originally written for North and South magazine in 1999, but they never published it.


Kog Transmissions is the name of a collective of enterprising young long haired musicians, who specialise in making and releasing dance music.

Within an astonishingly short space of time, they have established themselves on the local music scene, with little or no help from the music industry. They have done it all their own way, setting up their own recording studio, releasing their cds on their own label, and selling them at their own cd launch gigs; you pay $15 to get into the gig and get a cd to take home with you.

It's great value for money, and a great night out. The business equation reads like this: they manufacture 500 cd's, get 500 people along to their gig, and hey presto, their cd sells out in one night, rather than sitting in record shops for months and months.

Last year the Kog team released one cd a month, a very ambitious plan, but one that paid off handsomely, rapidly building a loyal following for their musical activities. This clever technique bought them to the attention of major record label Universal Music, who offered to step in and help with the distribution of their cd's around the country.

"We started the studio about three and a half years ago", says Chris Chetland of Kog, "when we moved into this warehouse [situated in Kingsland, Auckland]. Back when we started the studio we had a Metal band at the time [the delightfully named Raw Meat For The Balcony], and we wanted to record our own album, and were getting more into the technology side of music. All the people here knew each other for quite a few years before that, because we all went to school together, and had been in bands together."

They mostly went to Sacred Heart, aligning them with a musical legacy that includes such local music luminaries as Dave Dobbyn, Tim and Neil Finn, Rikki and Ian Morris, Peter Urlich, who also attended that school.

Fellow Kog member Andrew Manning says that "Kog is a place to pool talents; we try to enjoy what we're doing as much as we can, we don't work with anyone we don't like. It's a group of friends, basically." Chetland notes that "By the fact that you're enjoying doing something, you do far better at it." The Kog collective is comprised of six people, most of who live and work together in the Kog warehouse.

Overseas dj's who have visited Kog have been amazed to see them doing everything in-house, unlike the standard methods where the tasks of music production get farmed out; recording, mastering, cd-rom, artwork, video etc are all done on site at the Kog warehouse, hence, they have a lot of creative control over what they do.

Also, having their own studio means never having to pay for studio time, which usually costs up to $150 per hour. Chris estimates that to set up a computer based recording studio would cost $10,000 for new equipment and software, or under $3,000 second hand. This is where computers are making it much easier for musicians to have their own home studio, bypassing the traditional methods of recording in expensive studios, where your creativity is hampered by constantly watching the clock, as your money ticks away.

Musically, the Kog releases have been exploring various musical styles within the dance genre: Chris says "Every release we do is in a different style, which from our point of view is interesting, because you get to learn a different style of music each time, and you get to meet people out of that particular scene. And if someone likes say one of our releases that is in the House style, then maybe they'll trust us and try another one of our releases, like Pitch Black, so it breaks down a lot of those barriers."

That diversity runs from Mark de Clive Lowes jazzy dance to Pitch Black's reggae/techno, to Epsilon Blue's melodic trance, to Baitercells drum n bass. They have also ventured into commercials, doing music for Sky TV, Saatchis, Telecom, and tv shows like Havoc, Queer Nation, and even reworking the Holmes Show theme for their feature on dance music.

Chris has studied complex systems theory and philosophy at university, which has influenced their business approach. "It's like looking at it more from that angle, rather than the standard, strict hierarchical business structures that a lot of businesses operate on. It's like the elephant and the mouse; one is big and lumbering and can squash you, but if you can keep on moving around, you're always evolving, continuously and and quickly there is never a fixed point, you never become a dead state. being able to offer new angles means you can offer a fresh perspective.

"It's the number 8 wire approach; you might not have all the super slick gear, but you just find different ways of doing it. We're putting it (the music) out there in the first place in ways that are unconventional, but also getting really good placement in that environment.

"We could've done it the standard record company way, where you do one release a year, put huge amounts of money in, and wait for it to trickle back in over the next year, or you can pay it all off in one night. We just reconfigured the rules to suit ourselves, rather than just do it like any other record label.

"When you look at any system, you assess what anyone else has done, then you look for different pathways that you can bypass the things that don't fit what you are doing. We wanted to get lots of music out there, and there was no way we could do it using the standard mechanisms that record labels operate under, or most businesses, in fact. By treating it less mechanically and more organically, it grows itself."

Kog are currently putting together a cd for The Gathering, an annual dance party held on Takaka Hill out of Nelson. This is the second year they have compiled a cd for this event, highlighting some of the leading lights in the local electronic music scene, who have also played at The Gathering. The first cd was supported by tv advertising from Universal, and sold over 3,000 copies.


Read more: Kog Transmutations, from NZ Musician, 2003.

The Don Isaac Ezekiel Combination – Ire

Free download from the new Nigeria 70 compilation, out very soon.

Bola Johnson & His Easy Life Top Beats The Don Isaac Ezekiel Combination – Ire  (soundcloud) (mediafire)

From: Nigeria 70- Sweet Times Afro-Funk Highlife & Juju From 1970s Lagos (May 10th, Strut)

Strut announce the return of their pioneering ‘Nigeria 70’ compilation series with an exclusive new third volume: ‘Sweet Times: Afro Funk, Highlife & Juju from 1970s Lagos’ compiled again by series curator Duncan Brooker. 

Excavating another choice batch of rare grooves from Nigeria’s label archives, the new edition places the spotlight on some of the deeper fusions happening across the country during the 1970s as traditional guitar highlife blended with jazz and funk, hypnotic juju grooves became more progressive and young Nigerian bands came through with their own heavy West African take on U.S. soul, funk, disco and rock.

Party at ground zero

Party at ground zero, by Fishbone, 1985.



Party at ground zero, by Americans on hearing of the death of Osama, last night. NYC.


Quick cut of footage from Ground Zero - May 2, 2011 from Dewi Cooke on Vimeo.

Dennis Coffey interview

Last week, the Hit It and Quit It radio show,hosted by Recloose and Frank Booker, ran a special on Dennis Coffey, including an interview with the man. Both Recloose and Coffey are from Detroit. Check it out.

"... Before recording his solo work Dennis was a member of Motown's surest house band 'The Funk Brothers', featuring on soul classics such as the Temptations' 'Ball of Confusion' and 'Cloud 9', Edwin Starr's 'War' and Freda Payne's 'Band of Gold'.


Little did Dennis realise that as he jammed, experimented and recorded his music that he was inadvertently laying down the bedrock for dozens of hip-hop and jungle classics to ensue over the following forty years. Some of Dennis' biggest hits were heavily driven by their infectious breakdowns, quickly becoming rhythmic fodder for the earliest hip-hop DJs and later producers of the 1980s and beyond.

We checked in with Dennis in Detroit just before the release of his brand new record, self-titled 'Dennis Coffey' on the mighty Strut Records. The album hit shelves April 25 and features collaborations with Mayer Hawethorne, the Dirtbomb's Mick Collins, Fanny Franklin, Paolo Nutini and Kings Go Forth. Also be on the lookout for a Dennis Coffey remix project in the very near future featuring 14KT, Apollo Brown, Dabrye and yours truly (Recloose)."

Listen to the show here. Also features 'Constellations: The A - Z of Dennis Coffey' mix by DJ Houseshoes.

Where's Biggie and Tupac?

President Obama suggests that now that Donald Trump has solved the 'issue' of his birth certificate, he can get onto more pressing questions, like what really happened at Roswell, and where's Biggie and Tupac? The Donald got schooled.

Dragon

Little Dragon have a new album on the way, called Ritual Union, out July 16. Here's a live preview of the first single, Little Man (hat tip: Potholes in my blog)

This track sounds kinda familiar, I think Little Dragon may have played it in their opening set before the Gorillaz show at Vector Arena last December. I really hope Little Dragon come back and play their own show, I'd love to see em in a club setting.

Bonus DL: Little Dragon remixed by Unknown Mortal Orchestra (ex Mint chicks)


Yourstru.ly Presents: Little Dragon "Little Man" from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

South

Here's an interesting history of Christchurch record stores... written by Paul Gilbert.

"In post-earthquake #2 Christchurch (2011), the number of independent record shops sits at a precarious five with a question mark still remaining over four of these. Galaxy Records , Selwyn Street and Radar are all in premises hit badly by the quake. The week before the second quake ‘Evil Genius’ opened a shop in Lyttelton. The timing and location could not have been worse. I hope they all make a Lazarus like resurrections."

Read it in full here.

PLUS photos of Christchurch record shop ads/flyers.

Diamonds

US hiphop producer Oddisee is currently working on the new album from his group Diamond District, due out later this year. Their debut album dropped late 2009, and you can download the instrumentals from that album now for free. Preview them below, nice dirty hiphop drums with jazzy samples....

High Noon Tea playlist, KiwFM, Sunday May 1

Show replays on KiwiFM on Fridays 2-4pm, listen online.

Salmonella dub - Mercy - Mu's remix
Mighty Asterix - Sweetest girl - toughest dub
Katchafire - Sensi dub - Pitch black remix
Tehimana Kerr - At three
Fredericks Brown - Betrayal - Dusty remix
Riki Gooch - Bakade varor
Recloose live band - Racetrack in France
Onelung - Mr frisky
Scratch 22 - Devotion
Lewis McCallum - The almanac
Adi Dick - Jahjah is coming
Conray - Space dub jazz
Hikoikoi - Jah armour
Jahlicious - Want
Lord Echo - Thinking of you
Rub a dub brothers - Respirator
Tubbs - Five day night - Fat Freddys remake
Loudhaler - Sea monster run
Trip to the moon - Trance ebo express
Julien Dyne - Scissorhands
Karl Marx Project - Anti gravity
Mephisto Jones - Remember me
Module - Faultlines - Jet Jaguar remix
Unitone hifi - Up to eleven
Joint  force -Burntime inst