Good afternoon! It’s a beautiful, clear spring day here in London which is a refreshing change from the incessant rain of recent times. Apologies for the lack of a newsletter last week. It was my birthday and although my celebrations were relatively low-key I did take the opportunity to take a breather from work over the weekend.
I squeezed in a bit of record shopping at Lorenzo’s in Brockley and also went up to the Saatchi Gallery to check out the excellent Beyond The Streets exhibition. It was a real thrill to see hip hop and graffiti given such an expansive treatment. As well as some incredible art and memorabilia it also contextualised the emergence of the culture in the UK within the wider political landscape of the time. If you’re in London any time soon I’d highly recommend checking it out.
March 15th • Jimetta Rose And The Voices Of Creation - How Good It Is
The manufacturing of vinyl is something I seem to spend an inordinate amount of my day talking about. The lengthy timescales and dramatic price increases we've experienced over the last few years are starting to take their toll on indie labels, sending it on the way to un-sustainability unless as fans we're prepared to spend £30+ for a record.
Another consequence of this is the effect it has on album releases. It's now not uncommon for the vinyl version of an album to drop months after the digital. I ordered this record so long ago I'd almost forgotten about it, so it was a pleasant surprise when it dropped onto the doormat a couple of days back.
For those not familiar, Jimetta Rose assembled a choir to bring to life her songs that had emerged from a time of self-healing. Her selection criteria reflected this inspiration: 'I recruited people based on their interest in healing themselves and others, not necessarily on their musical experience or being seasoned performers'.
What emerges is a tight set of uplifting jazz-gospel. There are familiar covers (Let The Sunshine In / Spirits Up Above) alongside a couple of originals and a standout re-imagining of Funkadelic's Cosmic Slop. It’s a warm embrace of a record; a rare ray of sunshine and positivity.
Jimetta's words sum this up better than I ever could: 'It’s a shortcut if you will to the better feelings. The hope that we need to keep pressing forward. We are saturated and inundated with images of chaos and destruction, death and hatred. There’s so much we can witness. So, I want to make sure that there is a representation sonically of the other parts that are still there to witness so that we can continue to build those things. So that the systems we support actually reflect what we want to experience. So it’s like: “Don’t give up and Let The Sunshine Into You” and then find out what your purpose is and answer the call.'
Amen to that.
March 19th • Ronald Snijders - Natural Sources
One of the downsides of listening to a lot of music is that it gets harder to be surprised. You learn through repetition the rules around different styles of music. Whether it's simple song structure or knowing exactly when a solo is going to land, there is a familiar expectation that you can't help but fall into when checking a new record.
The plus side to this is that when a record does something truly unexpected it's that tiny bit more exhilarating as a listener. This 1977 debut from Ronald Snijders fits into this category as a record that threw me for a loop a number of times across its 40 minutes. I saw this appear in an Charlie Dark’s Instagram stories describing the track that had been shared as 'proto-bruk'. I recognised the album cover, and realised I'd seen it on Bandcamp when it was reissued back in 2019.
Surprise number one came when I was greeted with 4 minutes of increasingly frantic solo flute at the start of the LP, which gives way to the heavy chords and spritely free jazz-fusion of Seven Wings. The rest of the LP continues to throw left turns and unexpected excursions, taking in percussive Latin workouts, Brasilian rhythms and free jazz, sometimes in the space of a single track.
The standout is the shuffling broken rhythm of Busy Street, one that I'm sure would set fire to the right kind of dancefloor. It's a wild ride and one that I highly recommend you check out. This feels like an LP that's going to be revealing new dimensions to me for years to come.
March 22nd • Grace Jones - Nightclubbing
Confession time! I did not own this LP until a fortnight ago - which given how iconic it is, represents something of a surprise. Thinking about it, Grace Jones' icon-status is part of why I'd never picked up the record.
Let me explain: all of my early memories of Grace Jones are non-musical. I remember going to see A View To A Kill at the Odeon in Harlow, and later Conan The Destroyer at a friends house on a ropey VHS. I also recall her infamous slap of chat-show host Russell Harty live on TV. As I got older there were the pictures of her at Studio 54 with Warhol.
In all four instances, Jones' style and uncompromising persona was front and centre, a character that dominated multiple forms of media. I think I was probably into my teens before I even realised she released music, and when I started DJing in the late 90s my 12" of Pull Up To My Bumper was a staple in my record bag.
A few weeks back I wrote about the clues you look for on record sleeves when deciding what to listen to in a record shop. In abstraction this record ticks a lot of those boxes: amazing sleeve design, Sly & Robbie and Wally Badarou in the credits, covers of a number of songs I know well and love - this would definitely get pulled from the rack even if I had never heard of Grace Jones.
I probably don't need to tell you how great this is, peerless art-pop wrung through the tightest rhythm section in reggae music fronted by Jones' half-sung, half-spoken vocal delivery. Often imitated, most likely never bettered, this LP is an all-timer. I only wish I'd bought it sooner.
March 26th • John Haycock - Dorian Portrait
This morning I experienced the annual daylight savings confusion of thinking I'd had an extra long lie-in before realising that no, it was very much too early to be awake, but I'm up now so I may as well get out of bed.
It seems like it's been raining for weeks in this corner of South London. As I waited for my tea to brew I watched the raindrops forming pools on the garden steps and thought about putting a record on. The weather does impact my listening choices. I dedicated a whole radio show last year to music for a rainy day, which probably runs sunshine a close second for meteorological inspiration in music.
This record arrived last week and it was perfectly suited to today's atmospheric conditions. John Haycock is a Manchester based kora and griot player, cutting his teeth under the tutelage of Gambian master instrumentalist Jali Kuyateh. On this LP, Dorian Portrait, Haycock runs the 21 string African harp through various electronics and effects, creating a meditative palate that he subtly manipulates across eight tracks. I discovered this via Luke Unabomber who has been singing its praises for a while now.
It puts me in mind of the Andrew Wasylyk records I've written about previously; music that sits in the space between jazz, ambient and experimental music, with an underlying electronic pulse wielding its influence from just beneath the surface.
A wonderful album from the rainy city, that deserves its moment in the sunshine.
March 25th 2021 • Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx
I love records like this that make me nostalgic for a life I’ve never even got close to living. It’s such a weird thing when you think about it. I have literally not an iota of experience of the world that Rae and Ghost paint so vividly in this record and yet listening now it instantly plunges me into their domain. I think rap does this better than any other vocal-based genre - it allows artists to become larger than life facsimiles of themselves: part reality, part legend but totally compelling. It’s like the Marvel Universe, but with more drug dealer stick-ups.
I’ve got a long-held opinion that the majority of rap albums are too long (one of the reasons why Illmatic is so good is its brevity); this clocks in at around 70 minutes but I don’t mind at all. The best Wu-Tang records demand that you immerse yourself in them totally and 40 minutes would probably not be enough to really get in that space. These are LPs in the truest sense - a long player that you need to give yourself to completely. I wonder how Wu would have manifested themselves had they come up in these more impatient times, but I’m sure RZA would have found a way.
Reading about the record one thing really stuck out to me - talking about the influence the LP had on the wider music world Raekwon said that wasn’t in his mind at all at the time: "Really, I was just trying to make something worth purchasing and worth respecting.” I wonder if RZA would give the same answer. I do love that though - he just wanted to make something good. It’s a simple maxim (Can It Be All So Simple?), but one that more artists should think about.
I met Raekwon once - probably 15 years ago now at a party in Cannes (the glamour of that sentence!). He kept himself to himself despite my friend’s fruitless attempts to smoke with him. I didn’t engage more than a nod of the head and a probably incredibly high-pitched ‘sup’. I was sober enough to realise that I would only embarrass myself and it was best for everyone that I kept my distance. I think it was the right decision.
Very curious about the Ronald Snijders album after reading ur post 👀 and I’m also pleased to see John Haycock getting some much-deserved love thanks to his new record. And yeah, Grace Jones was really larger than life growing up, wasn’t she
Happy belated, Aly!
The Purple tape is definitely in my top 5 hip-hop albums, ever. I interviewed Rae once, about 15 years ago. He was extremely friendly, almost jovial. Ghost was different though. Chased him through three boroughs to finally capture a few darts of slang over tuna sandwiches in the back room of a Stapleton studio (the glamour of that sentence!).