Ring The Alarm playlist, BaseFM, April 27

Nu Shooz - I can't wait - Long Dutch mix
Noel Pointer - Living for the city
Frank Strazzeri - Cloudburst
Esther Phillipps - Home is where the hatred is
Harlem river drive - Idle hands
DL Jones and DJ Second Nature - Whoa Bobby
Black moon - The way - inst mix
Creators - Make an impact isnst
Original Tropicana steel band - Spanish hustle - Kon 12" re-edit
Betty Davis - Your mama wants you back
Melvin Jackson - Funky skull pts 1 & 2
Thelonius Monk - Straight no chaser
King Kapisi - Reverse resistance inst
Quincy conserve - Same old feeling
New age steppers - My love
The Pleb - Snake in the bush
Joni Rewind feat Estelle - Uptown top ranking
DJ Mark the 45 king - Third joint
Wrath of donkey man - Donkey twist
Latinaotearoa - Fuego en mi corazon
O'Donel Levy - Everything I do gonna be funky
Lady - Please don't do it again
Lalo Schifrin - Quiet village
Block 16 - Electrokution - Daniel Wang and Brennan Green mix

Dub Addiction Meets Kampuchea Rockers Uptown

Metal Postcard Records is an underground label in Hong Kong  - heres one of their acts, a Cambodian reggae band fronted by a German...

"Dub Addiction Meets Kampuchea Rockers Uptown" review

"...The Phnom Penh-based collective’s second album, Dub Addiction Meets Kampuchea Rockers Uptown, is an epic fusion of reggae and dub with Khmer saravan ...  it represents the band’s most ambitious project yet. 

 Professor Kinski, the German music producer and Dub Addiction band leader says “Cambodia is a country with an exciting musical past: old Khmer Rock, Sinsi Samouth, Rua Sorey Sothea, all killed by the Khmer Rouge. When I arrived in Cambodia in 2002, there was nothing left except cheesy karaoke. Hearing those beautiful voices and melodies inspired me to use those old styles and create a new fusion groove out of it with Western funk, house, big beat and electro influences. The Cambodian roughness in those days was very exciting and gave me the idea to let my music sound more dirty and raw than common Khmer pop.”

The album sounds more epic, more massive, more dub than the first one. The 13 tracks feature a veritable Who’s Who of the local music scene. Cambodian hip hop icons Pou Khlaing and Nen Tum make guest appearances on The Fruit Song, while Nigerian vocalist Okoro Elias Jefferson debuts on Okoro. The main ragamuffin toasters are MC Curly and DJ Khla, the latter someone Kinski compares to Cutty Ranks, Sizla and Anthony B. “Never forgetting his Khmer roots, DJ Khla is toasting about the country‘s pride in its Khmer heritage, modern development and everything that can be positively highlighted after the end of the civil war.” When songs steer too close to potentially dangerous political territory, Khla cleverly switches to metaphors – fruit being his favourite.

Bass player Sebastien Adnot from France was schooled in the sound of reggae by Jamaican friends long before he arrived on Cambodian shores in 2011. But it was here that he discovered Khla. “One day, I saw this Khmer guy playing keyboard reggae. I said that’s fantastic! You play reggae! That’s my music. He said: ‘What’s reggae?’ You’ve never heard of Bob Marley? ‘Who’s Bob Marley?’ Never mind. Can you sing? ‘Yeah, sure...’ So he starts to play a song for me and I swear it’s pure 100% ragamuffin. I found out months later he was an orphan raised in a pagoda and he took his ‘reggae’ from the monks’ chanting. And he’s a star here; he’s on TV every few weeks. All the Khmer people know him. I have a star in my band, which is a gift.” ... THE ADVISOR MAGAZINE - CAMBODIA

Nile Rodgers: hidden treasures

Just saw Nile Rodgers post this up on his FB page...

Le Freak: the best Nile Rodgers collaborations you never knew existed (Fact Mag)

Nile added the note "Dear Author, I do remember doing all these records. This is pretty funny..."

Substantial: beats

"Baltimore emcee Substantial released his Oddisee executive produced album Home Is Where The Art Is late last year and quickly garnered acccolades from his strong worldwide fan base. Since then, Substantial has toured with yU (of Diamond District), seen the vinyl release of his record, performed at the Smithsonian in DC, and released a wildly successful tribute album to Jill Scott titled "Jackin' Jill".

 Today, Substantial wanted to share the entire collection of instrumentals from Home Is Where The Art Is with his fans. The complete instrumentals will be free for a week before heading up on itunes, so be sure and grab them now. Beats byOddisee, Eric Lau, M-Phazes, Algorythm, and more!" 

Newtown Rocksteady new EP

"Newtown Rocksteady return with their second extended EP, Goin’ Steady (6 originals and 4 dubs, listen below) on April 26th, hot on the heels of their stonking performance at this year’s WOMAD.

Recorded live at The Boardroom (an offshoot of infamous Wellington studio, The Surgery) and mixed collaboratively, the album captures the band’s well-developed, crowd-pleasing live sound, which traverses light, up-tempo rocksteady riddims to dark and stormy dub/reggae grooves.

Comprised of highly active members of Wellington’s vibrant music scene, the sprawling 13-piece has a great depth of experience to call upon. Its members are involved in numerous other groups including The Nudge, Brockaflowersaurus-rex, Fly My Pretties, Bella Cajon and more.

Newtown Rocksteady will be touring NZ during April and May with things kicking off on April 26th at San Francisco Bath House, Wellington. New Plymouth on May 3, Raglan on May 4, and Leigh on May 5. A full list of performances is available at facebook.com/newtownrocksteady/events "

Girls can't rap says non-rap DJ

Dominic Harvey is a radio DJ on Mediaworks station The Edge. After watching X-Factor he's decided girls can't rap.

Girls rapping? Hardly ever a good idea #xfactornz
— Dominic Harvey (@DomHarvey) April 22, 2013

Unsurprisingly, this got a fairly heated reaction on Twitter. Fellow Mediaworks DJ on George FM Nick D tweeted to Dom "maybe a few of us should loan you a couple of history books, you know - bit of light reading might help xxx."

Dom replied "All good mate.  Don't sweat the small stuff."

@missmoxiemoo said :"the small stuff holding sexist views and then defending them because as you said, women are a minority?"

Coco Solid (female local rapper) joined in, saying: "Girls rapping is the best idea and saved my life. Sorry to Marathon Man @DomHarvey who lets face it, I could outsmart on quaaludes."

The Edge's Facebook page is attracting a lot of comments from women who didn't take kindly to Dom's casual sexism.  To their credit, they've left the criticism up, and not deleted it. EDIT  - just checked The Edge's FB page again, they've deleted all the negative posts about Dom (about a dozen of them), bar one.There were a number of posts of folk posting videos of their fave female rappers, all gone.

Dom was last in the news after he lost a bet and had to march in the Pride Parade.“Poor Dom had to walk in Auckland's Pride Parade today in a gold G-String after losing 'Would You Rather?” a post on The Edge’s Facebook page reads... "

Rodion G.A. - Lost Tapes

From Strut: "The full story of Romanian genius Rodion Ladislau Roșca and the music he recorded as Rodion G.A. involves the stifling artistic climate of Communist Romania in the early 80s, the ingenuity of amateur recording, obsessive record collecting, early synthesizers, unheard archival recordings, and eventual recognition. Basically the kinds of things that make our heart beat faster! A more comprehensive version of Rodion's history can be read below, but a listen to the music alone should be enough to make it clear that there's something special to what Rodion has created.

The Lost Tapes, the first ever commercially released album of Rodion G.A.'s music, is due May 28th on Strut Records in association with Future Nuggets and Ambassador’s Reception. Free download of a track below..."

Read the fascinating story of Rodion GA over here....

Jet Jaguar - Shreds EP drops

Some freshness from Jet Jaguar, the latest of six EPs he's dropping this year. "Track 1 is the first Jet Jaguar song ever, thanks to the contributions of Clare Wieck. She's responsible for the lyrics and vocal melody."

 

Money

First solo single from Bjorn Petersen, ex Opensouls. Produced by Jeremy Toy. Great chorus.

Gene Dudley Group hits it

Fabulously funky hotness from WahWah45s posse... gritty as, groovy too. "The Gene Dudley Group represents an outpouring of deep soul and funk music from an obscenely talented 27 year-old multi-instrumentalist residing in North London, Gene Dudley.

Both tracks on the debut release from this one-man band were recorded in Gene's bedroom studio and feature him on trumpet, saxophone, drums, bass, guitar and piano. Both are available now as a free download while we also have beautiful heavyweight 7" vinyl - officially released on April 29th.

Fans of labels like Truth & Soul and Daptone will relish these sonorous soulful offerings, and will no doubt be hotly anticipating the debut long-player, due for release this (northern) summer on Wah Wah 45s.

In the live arena, rather than trying to play all the instruments himself, Gene deploys a quartet of top notch young musicians to help him out (whilst Gene mixes it up between bass and keys throughout the set) as witnessed at the recent Hot 8 Brass Band gig in London, The Gene Dudley Group's debut live show."