I keep forgetting to mention RISIBLE, the little lo-fi electronics + vox project myself & Simon from the Ceramic Hobs etc have put together. Simon has made 33 CDR copies (I think) & probably distributed them all by now. My copies are gone too, but if you lobby him (try the Oz Oz Alice Project in my firends), he might do some more. Here is a nice review of it (fair to middling on some other related projects!) from our pal Joe of Bidoche Musique...
---------------------
Ship Ahoy!

I met up with an American bloke yesterday, one who had seen the insides of prisons, drug rehabilitation, physical ruptures, isolation and death wishes. I gave him a copy of Risible. He needed it. Quite the Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "I'm a good person". Sure.

Listened many times to this album and find it quite amazing. The words and lyrics of DJ Powergen Course (who I now realize is Simon!) are top notch. The beatbox can never replace the drum lad, but for the articles on hand, do a neat job. The other day, I listened to Oz Oz Alice - first outing (the zip that I acquired after perusing the Blackpool Bands forum). No comparison. Lo-fi noise, squashed words, roundabout.

Quite strange that Oz Oz Alice and Heffalump Trap both have the same personnel albeit different "managers". What a way to go. The Haddenham One & DJ Powergen Course team are the future. Oz Oz Alice doesn't cut it with me, at least until I could see them live and compare to the formidable Ceramic Hobs.

Don't be offended - take it like MEN!

your friend in arms,
Joe Fleury (Bidoche Musique)

This gig is coming up soon now.

The Mrs C/Heffalump one in November was very well-attended & much enjoyed, a really good vibe. I'm hoping this one will be similar & am pleased to have taken all this time to help set it up properly.

Mrs C & Heffalump are back, & this time we are joined by long-lost German new wave band Brud and the Hadfield/Juanito performance poetry & soundscape duo. As ever, there'll be plenty of wild & wonky DJing inbetween, and doubtless some similarly odd projections, plus the usual West Coast drink deals, late opening etc etc...

Really hope you can join us...

----------------------------------------------

Mrs Cakehead (Bacup reggae lunacy)

Brud (Neue Deutsche Welle?)

Heffalump Trap (Blackpool spacedronenoise)

Miles Hadfield & Carlito Juanito (Manchester performance poet & Blackpool accompanist)

Sat 16 May, West Coast, Blackpool

10pmish - 2am
West Coast Club Above
Abingdon Street
Blackpool

DJing probably from Digamix, Kate Fear, Ging & co...

Film projections

£2 entry

"I WANT” DON’T GET: UBERWANTS FOR APR ‘09

philreadsbooks@hotmail.com

http://www.discogs.com/user/philbeard

Really, really desired records, CDs & tapes

(or good quality CDRs/MP3s thereof, unless otherwise stated),

for sensible prices or trades…

Stuff I’d be willing to trade for items of similar value is listed at the bottom…

MUCH MORE TO COME 4 SALE BTW - NOT LISTENED THROUGH THEM & LISTED EM YET...

Apple – Mr Bean 12”,

Siegalizer 12” (Slimting white label, 2008) – UK Funky

Astral Social Club – Skelp 7” & CDR (Trensmat, 2008) – drone – original only

Butcher Sam – Passions of A Woman 12” (white label, 1990) – piano house

Canopy & Matrix – Rough Business 12" (feat. “Arkines Lost”, Space Records [based at a Wolverhampton recording studio], 1995) - ambient drum & bass

Morny Cash - I Live In Trafalgar Square (music hall)

or the Richard Thompson cover (1000 Years of Popular Music DVD + DCD on Cooking Vinyl, 2003)

Ceramic Hobs – Fuck Da Police tape (Face Like A Smacked Arse, 1998?),

Noisy Tape, Eleven Years In the Making (Spite)

- psycho-punk

Clubstation – Pull Over 12” (Legend, 2001 or Clubbb Box, 2003) – hard house/donk

Joe Coleman - Infernal Machine Pic. Disc LP with booklet (Blast First, 1990) – experimental – original only

Copper Cat – Stay In School 7” (Party Ride riddim, Pot of Gold, 2000),

Run the Version 7” (Street Life riddim, Gold Pot, 1999),

Go Mek Some Money 7” (Problem riddim, Pot of Gold, 1999) – bashment

Crescent – Lost 7” (Planet, 1993) – lo-fi

Paul B. Davis - Pretty 12”EP or white label promo (Beige, 2001),

Enter the Mystical Faggot 7” (Frank Wobbly & Sons, 2004, 250 only) – idm

The Deadkirks – Ten Commandments 12” (Mid-Town, 1992) - gabberhouse

Demon Rocker – Iron Lady/Stick Together 12” (Unity),

Demon Rocka – Bad Boy No Ramp 12” (Unity) - dancehall

DJ Rob original 1991 gabberhouse sets from Parkzicht, Rotterdam

El-B – El-Brand 12” (white label, 2000) – UK Garage

Gus Elen - Down the Dials - music hall

Flinty Rank – Gunman Style (B side of Jack Wilson & Demon Rocker – Chuck It 12” on Unity, which I have the A side of),

Kenny Knots – Mr Chattabox/Flinty Badman & Richie Davis - My Lover Gone 12” (Unity) – dancehall

God Is My Co-Pilot – Songs of Praise/4 Steps Down the Road To Trouble & Refused Medical Attention 7"EPs (Making of Americans, 1991),

Ykt Flot! 7” (1993),

Melt-Banana split 7” (HG Fact, 1994),

Ootko Sa Poika Vai Tytto? 7"EP (Trash Can [Finnish], 1995),

Children Can Be So Cruel 10” (Miguel, 1997),

Bz Bz Ueu split 7”EP (Music a la Coque, 1998)

- queercore

Greylox - Call the Cops 12” (Buzz [Ruff Tuff & Wicked Stuff], 1992, 500 only, or the virtually identical 2008 bootleg; I already have an MP3 of the A side),

Curly Greylox - Fools Rushin’ 12" (Buzz, 1993) – jungle tekno

The Ink Spots - Ebb Tide 78 (King, 1953) or 18 Hits LP/CD (King, 1996) – proto-doo-wop

Invisibl Skratch Piklz – A Cup of Skratch & A Slice of Cut 12” (bootleg) - turntablism

Buddy Max - Many Styles & Sounds and The Great Nashville Star Is a Flea Market Cowboy LPs on Cowboy Junction,

Together - Our Masterpiece, Little Circle B, The Great Nashville Star and The Story of Freda & Bud LPs,

The Life To Fame & Fortune LP/CD,

Gold Record Award Winning and Orange Blossom Special CDs,

Tribute to Challengers Crew of Seven & Apollo Moon Capsule's Crew of 3 and Cowboy Junction Stars tapes [c'mon, someone upload the early stuff]

- country

Monoshock – Pink Jelly Vibe tape (Chocolate Monk, mid 90s) - garage psych

Nutmeg – And In England They’re Going Mental 12”EP (Molesworth, 1987),

Electric Putty LP or CD (Ground, 1989, 1000 of each only) - indie

Po! - Little Stones LP (Rutland, 1989),

Bedroom Tapes Vols. 1-4 (Rutland),

Live In Leicester & Fragile Debris (Outtakes) tapes (Rutland),

Things That Might 7” (1992),

Not Marked On the Ordnance Map LP/CD (Rutland, 1996),

A Page A Day 7” (Elefant, 1996),

The Alphabet 7”EP (Rutland, 1997),

Horse Blanket Weather CD (Rutland, 1998)

- twee

R!!!S!!! - Lake DLP (No Fans, 1990) – experimental – original only

Ruth's Refrigerator – A Lizard Is A Submarine On Grass LP/CD (Madagascar, 1991) – kitchen psych

Saba Tooth - Gal A Pose 7” (Wicked Man riddim, Killamanjaro, 1996) - ragga

’77 Punk covers of Velvets’ “Heroin”

Egyptian Shaduf chant recordings

Shackleton/Appleblim – Majestic Visions 12” (Skull Disco, 2006) – dubstep – original only

Sounds From Silence LP/CD on Bella Roma (contains “Hurrian Hymn (the Song from Ugarit)” from c.1400 BC)

Steinski - Boricua All Stars split 7” (Howlin’, 2002),

Skull Snaps – It’s A Brand New Day Redux 12” (feat. Steinski mix of “Soulbus”, Ten12, 2006) – hip hop

The Tinklers – U.F.O.s 7”EP (Frownland, 1995),

with X.X.O.O. 7”EP (Music a la Coque, 2001) – outsider music

v/a – Blackpool Rox 7”EP (Vinyl Drip, 1980) – post-punk

v/a – Fuck That Weak Shit Vol. 1 & 3 7”EPs on Pitsbull (1 feat. Fruitcake & No Tomorrow Charlie, 1000 only; 3 feat. Fruitcake offshoot Garment Bladder, 1200 only) - garage psych

v/a - Join the Queercorps 12" (Queercorps, 1998) – queercore techno remixes

v/a - Yes LA Pic. Disc LP (Dangerhouse, 1979, 2000 only) – post-punk – original only

Waveform - The Poet 12” (white label, 1993) – this is my number one want now…never seen any sign of it anywhere…

Peel played it a coupla times & I have a ropey tape of the main track, which is a lovely sparse Future Sound of London-style ambient dub track, with a lengthy sample of Richard Burton reading a mysterious piece which transpires to be about Christ: “I was a carpenter”. Peel also played another track off the record, which was similar (possibly another mix of the same track?), but instrumental.

Just doing yet another search now & guessing Peel got it slightly wrong, I’m thinking there is a good chance that it is Waveform “Earth, Beat, Heart (The Ambient Poem)” on Different Drummer – anyone know if that is right before I splash the cash on it?

Wiley – Frost Bite white label 12” (Wiley Kat, 2003),

Snowball white label 12” (Wiley Kat, 2003)

World Power Alliance - Kamikaze 12” (Underground Resistance, 1992) – techno – original only

Worried Well - Don't Get AIDS 12" (Lonely Boy, 1988) – synth-pop

Adam X – Lost In Hell 12” (Rave Age, 1992),

Vs Audio Sex 12” (Direct Drive, 1992),

Psychodelic Grunge 12” (Direct Drive, 1993) - acid

And A Coupla Books/Mags I’m Also After…

Martin Barker - Action-The Story of A Violent Comic (Titan, 1990, hbk)

June Alison Gibbons – Pepsi-Cola Addict (New Horizon, 1982)

Albert Goldman – Disco (Hawthorn, 1978)

Muckraker #1-3, 9 (mag & CD)

I WILL TRADE…

Collectable ones first. Record Collector grading here, sleeve graded first, then record...

Black Sabbath – Master of Reality LP (Vertigo, 1971, embossed box cover, highly collectable swirl label. No poster. Box leans a little one way! Foil covering a little raised all round the writing & around a few very small creases, some v.v. minor scuffing round the edge of the sleeve, Vertigo die-cut paper inner with poly inside, which is a bit discoloured & has creases in bottom corners & some ringwear. The record is virtually as new) – VG/NM - £40 equivalent

Cat Power – Headlights 7” (The Making of Americans, 1993, first & very scarce single, was in John Peel’s legendary singles box, 500 copies only; some slight ringwear to rubberstamped glossy paper sleeve; polybag, paper die-cut inner; a few slight crackles here & there on the thin black see-thru vinyl) – EX/EX - £25 equivalent

-----

+ a variety of distro items & duplicates always available to trade, at the moment including…

Ceramic Hobs – Part 3 of A Trilogy tape (Matching Head)

Ceramic Hobs – Shergar Is Home Safe and Well CD (Pumf, 2004, the very best Hobs album, hangs together superbly)

John Clyde-Evans – For H&D tape (Matching Head)

John Clyde-Evans & Ross Parfitt – Untitled tape (Matching Head)

A Companion As Glamorous As Sleeping On Wheels [Julian Bradley] – Yaej Sceni tape (Matching Head)

De La Soul – Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey) 7” (Big Life, 1991, ace first single from second album)

godspunk 1, 2, 4, 5 & 6 compilation CDs (Pumf)

Heffalump Trap – Seven CDR (Pumf, 2008, first release from my spacedronenoise rock band)

Jah Rizlafoureye & the Heady Bread Beast – Grab yr. Balaclavas and let's go! CDR (Pumf, Simon & Stan from the Hobs second rap album)

Job Finder & the Mental Cruelty – Homunculus Construction in 42 Easy Lessons CDR (Pumf, third Hobs offshoot rap album)

Litterbug – Speaking Through the Gaps CD (JSNTGM, 2005, feat. 2009 hot-to-trotter Karima Francis on drums & vox as well as Andy Higgins from Erase Today)

Marzuraan – Solid State CD (Traqueto, 2004, Culver's drone metal band, in lush package)

Marzuraan – 10 000 Year Reign of Glacial Death tape (Matching Head, 2006, another sleek package)

Fes Parker – Side Room CD (Pressupable Recordings, 2008, final round-up of his best from the late Lancashire outsider punk)

Pavement – Slanted and Enchanted CD (Big Cat, 1992, absolutely essential first album)

Prince – Sign O the Times VHS (4 Front, 1992, the great man on his best form, live)

Vibracathedral Orchestra – Live tape (Matching Head, 1999)

The Wedding Present – 3 Songs 7”(RCA, 1990, fantastic Albini-engineered piece of Yankophilia)

Thought I ought to point out that as well as here, I've been over on Facebook for ages now (which I mentioned before), & Twitter now too. Here seems a bit quiet recently, which is a shame, as I still think here does some things better (including listening to music, which is pretty essential for me).

Facebook is very good for Groups, which then send you emails about stuff. On the music side of things, thats its best feature really. Probably best I don't overbroadcast my address over there, as its also more about personal stuff I think than here is, but you'll be able to find me if you want to...

Twitter is a bit overrated, but it IS interesting reading what comes through from people, at least once you've joined a good set of them up (& quite different ones on there to Facebook to Myspace, which is also part of the reason I'm keeping up with all three sites). I'm not posting as much as I might, but hopefully I also only post vaguely intersting stuff, as opposed to one-word replies etc. http://twitter.com/philblackpool

It should also be noted that its interesting seeing which of these sites survive & which get abandoned (or at least aren't popular in this part of the world)....anyone remember Friendster? Then theres Bebo, which is scarily open to kids...etc etc...

little off the back of it, which I may follow with a fuller ramble about the
North-West rave scene at some point later (& I’ve attached at the bottom a
previous bit I wrote as part of a longer piece about Italian dance music). I’ve
seen the North/South divide a lot clearer since I moved to Blackpool six years
ago than when I previously lived in Leeds for three years. I’m always a bit
ashamed when I see my fellow Southerners treating Northerners as if they are an
undiscovered species, & on this occasion they even subtitled the entire
documentary! They attempted to cover this up by subtitling the presenter too
(the aforementioned Donky), who I was going to completely disregard as an idiot
with a stupid fashion hair cut, until the last part, when he made some quite
heart-warming comments about how the up-for-itness of Wigan Pier had explained
it all to him (& then ruined it by, on reflection, talking about “the
horror, the horror” on the voiceover). It was quite funny seeing him getting friendly
stick about his poncey outfit, as that was exactly what happened to my friend
from down south when we went out raving up here a few years back. On one level,
I can see Vice were making the effort to relate to the various scallies (&
they deliberately picked a good few fruitloops in amongst the pack) & the
approach was clearly to try to make the North-West seem exotically bleak &
menacing, just like Grime’s crucible, Bow. They also did an amazing job of
keeping Scouse House completely out of the picture, with not a single rococo trance
flourish being present, reinforcing the idea that the scene is based entirely
around the unstoppable pounding ‘donk’ sound all the time. I must admit, the
donks are more persistent here now than previously & can wear you down over
an extended period, but it is hardly the only thing being played... ....

All this amounts to a pretty
thin veil though, covering a huge sign saying “Northerners are a bunch of thick
morons who chuck hundreds of pills down their neck & can hardly speak”.
Ironic, considering the subtitler couldn’t even spell “weird”! I also find it
amazing that a magazine that can be quite on the money at times re: music is SO
far behind the pace...I must admit that it seems to have taken Blackout Crew’s comedy
genius “Put A Donk On It” to wake the country up to Donk, but you expect that
of the Guardian etc. I think I first started hearing Donk records around 2004
(Lee S’s “Got Your Number!” sticks in the mind as a particularly blatant early
use of the sound). Can you imagine the Londoncentrics taking four & a half
years to wake up to Grime?! By 2007, that was in need of resuscitation! The
donkumentary seemed to make it out as if it was a new, rabid explosion of
interest, everyone foaming at the mouth at this new discovery, when in fact I
doubt the rave scene here has gone up or down in size much since the big
national drop-off in the late nineties. Since the early nineties, the
north-west scene has had as defined a history as any other, splitting off from
the national scene because of the local preference for Italian house, then
adding in a dollop of Scottish bouncy techno, falling back to a pumped-up house
position when the Italian & Scottish stuff dropped off & then regrouping
around vocal euro trance records (Scouse House), a particularly local strain of
hard house known as Bounce & Bounce’s ultimate bastard child & more
successful heir, Donk.....

Anyway, I persevered, mainly
to see if I could glean anything new out of it. They certainly drove around a
good bit, hitting Bolton, Burnley, Wigan & Scarborough (I didn’t realise it
was popular over there). Considering it was only one week being filmed, there
seemed to be LOADS going on. It was nice to see Bad Behaviour getting
interviewed (one of the more credible names), and to catch glimpses of Electron
Records in Burnley (which I rather liked the one time I went in, about eleven or
twelve years ago) & Power Records in Wigan, which I really must go back to.
....

The biggest surprise to me
was the number of guys on the scene taking steroids. This was counter-balanced
nicely by the honest picturing of quite a few scratty, scatter-headed
middle-aged Donk fans who clearly never came down from their first pill in
1987, but the lightbulb came on in my head. No wonder it felt much less loved
up & much more testosteroney when I went to Sanctuary last year than on any
of my other coupla-times-yearly visits to north-west raves. I hope that gets
knocked on the head sooner rather than later. ....

It wasn't until 2003,
when I moved to Blackpool, that I started to work out much of what had happened
after 1991. Big music fan as I am, I was blissfully unaware of the fact that
this later period of over-emotive Italian Parmesan had become the new Northern
Soul. I had long been telling people throughout the late nineties that happy
hardcore had a similar vibe to Northern Soul, with youngsters shunning more
fashionable styles in favour of bombing wraps and staying up all night, dancing
to chirpy songs until they collapsed, but here was the real thing. All of the
above was true of the Italian stuff, but added to that was the fact that it had
survived as the oldies scene for the young crowd, aficionados of the new Bounce,
Donk and Scouse House tunes reaching back to rediscover their predecessors from
the boot-shaped Mediterranean land. Not only that, but the nearly-always
impossibly obscure records seemed to uniformly command high prices (even for
this era when vinyl pressing is more and more expensive) and were being bootlegged
right, left and centre onto compilation EPs.



This all became apparent to me within weeks of moving. Remembering the
strangely 'other' look of the names on flyers and the releases in shops in
Blackpool when I visited a few times in the late nineties, I bought a local
tape pack and was immediately struck by how different the rave scene really
was. Obviously, you can still buy drum n bass sets up here (ye gods, you can
even get the odd garage one in Manchester), and happy hardcore and hardcore
techno are just as popular here as down south, but you just don't get rave
crowds going wild to what is essentially house music in the south. The
difference between club music and rave music is often marked by the presence of
MCs, and this was the first time in years that I'd heard MCs really going at
that kind of music. One of the four tapes was an old skool set, and in amongst
Gat Décor and the other countrywide smashes were a surprising number of warm, synthy
tracks that I'd never heard in my life before. Lalene's "The Best",
JK's essential "Beat It". A whole new spin on the previous ten years
or so. The other tapes were full of new stuff, but the trance- and hard
house-derived tunes here weren't even the relatively serious, overwrought
examples of lengthy breakdowns or the 'plain biscuit' instrumentals I'd been
hearing (reluctantly) down south. The northern scene is like seeing Dave
Pearce's creed about only playing the biggest anthems being writ large. Trance?
Dump a lass with pidgin English vocals on top and call it Scouse House. Hard
House? That's a bit boring. Why not scratch in a load of rap vocals, make the
bassline a bit more bumpy, give it a few more catchy hoover sounds and call it
Bounce? Bored of that? Why not bring the beats down to just a
hammer-drill-style succession of four-to-the-floors, and just pitch them up and
down until the listeners can't hold a normal thought in their head anymore, so
brutally addled are thir brain cells. We'll call that Donk, because that's what
it sounds like! Donk, donk, donk, donk…



I'm not being rude here. I like all this stuff. I've always preferred music
that goes straight for the jugular instead of pussyfooting around. And my point
is that when you hear it all together, it works and the influence of the
Italians is obvious. I'd heard some of that Scouse House of course before I
migrated back to the north, but DJ Sammy just sounds like Clock all over again
until you put the songs in the right context. I like him a lot now. I even like
Ian Van Dahl a bit, despite finding "Castles In the Sky" to be one of
the most irritating records of the new millennium. The scene is shot through
with covers and reinterpretations of Italian tunes and other belters from the
same period. The way that the Bounce tunes use samples mirrors the way the
Italians did, American hip-hop providing the hooks because you couldn't
possibly entrust the job to the local MCs...