Now we’ve lost Lincoln ‘Style’
Scott, better known simply as Style Scott, drummer and riddim guru extraordinaire.
Having emerged in the Seventies
as a key member of the legendary Roots Radics, one of Jamaica’s most prominent backing
bands, Scott worked alongside many of the greats of Jamaican music over the course
of his life. I think his best work was reserved for Adrian Sherwood’s On-U
Sound label, as the driving force (with Sherwood) behind Creation Rebel and Dub
Syndicate, who provided so many great riddims for the likes of Prince Far I,
Bim Sherman, and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, among many others. Scott also operated
his own label, Lion & Roots.
Details of his death are
sketchy at present, reports coming out of Jamaica suggest the 58-year-old was
murdered at his home.
Going way back, here’s a
tune from the missing channel, ‘Geoffrey Boycott’ …
Here’s something from Auckland group Friends Electronic – released back in June, it’s a fresh take on a very old New Zealand pop classic, and another name-your-price Bandcamp download …
More name-your-price
local goodness from Bandcamp. This time from Wanaka-based producer Civilian Sol
(aka Danny Fairley), and the When Tomorrow Comes album, which was released a month or so
ago. The album comes to us via Austin TX-based Gravitas Recordings and has a seriously
good dub-hoppy electro-soul vibe, combining state-of-the-art bedroom studio
wizardry with real instrumentation and luscious production. The end result is hard
to resist – a soundtrack for those upcoming warm summer evenings, or for any
northern hemisphere readers, a pocket full of warm fuzzies to help fend off the
winter chill … Also check out
(separately) Civilian Sol’s own Bandcamp page here.
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But only if it’s done well.
Not content with using the name of one of The Jesus And Mary Chain’s best tunes for their band name, Tauranga-based Here Comes Alice also successfully manage to ape TJAMC’s signature sound. In a very good way.
Check out the Bandcamp links below for a couple of name-your-price downloads of Here Comes Alice flattering the bejesus out of TJAMC with layers of melodic feedback, reverb, fuzzy guitar, and wrist-slitting vocals ... just released in August:
Regular readers
of everythingsgonegreen will be aware of the blog’s fascination with all things
Hyperdub, and it was sad this week to read about the death of The Spaceape (aka
Stephen Samuel Gordon), who died on Thursday after a five-year battle with a
rare form of cancer.
As a Hyperdub
original (since 2004), The Spaceape has long been one of my favourite vocalists,
and his work with label founder Kode9 is right up there with the very best
Hyperdub output. In fact, it ranks alongside the best any-label “bass music” produced
in the past decade.
The 2011
collaboration between Kode9 and The Spaceape, Black Sun, was one of this blog’s
most loved albums of its year, and I’m still very much looking forward to the arrival of
the pair’s latest effort, The Killing Season EP, which is due for release later
this month.
R.I.P. The Spaceape …
here’s ‘The Devil Is A Liar’ from that forthcoming EP:
And from a few
years back, a spooky version of The Specials’ Ghost Town ….
I can’t
let this one pass without blogging about it. On a few occasions now I’ve used
everythingsgonegreen to highlight some of the exceptional dub and roots music coming
out of mainland Europe, and this name-your-price Bandcamp release is yet
another prime example of that.
Bass
Culture Players is a collective of dub devotees operating out of Madrid, Spain,
and the Foundation EP contains four top notch tracks, plus a (dub) version for each.
It features several different vocalists and the music itself is an infectious
blend of classic roots and contemporary dub.
It’s
difficult to identify a favourite track on the EP but I have to say that Payoh
Soul Rebel’s vocal on opener ‘Forgiveness’ is a stand-out, and his voice sounds
a little bit like the perfect hybrid of Lee Perry and Bob Marley himself.
Truly wonderful stuff.
The
Foundation EP was released last week, grab a copy by clicking on the link
below:
I
attended a pretty special gig at Wellington’s Boat Café on Saturday night. It
was the final stop on The Nomad’s national tour – promoting new album ‘7’ – and
it proved to be about as state of the art as these things can get, from both a
visual and aural perspective.
The night was MC-ed by Melbourne-based Londoner Lotek,
but also on hand were fellow collaborators on the album, Christina Roberts,
Israel Starr, and the star turn (for me) saxophonist, Andy Qroniq (aka Andy
Pearce). The
Boat Café is a relatively new venue on the Wellington live music scene but it
strikes me that the lower deck area/room (of the docked tugboat on Oriental
Parade) might just about be one of the most sound-friendly spaces on the
circuit. Certainly the room coped admirably with the bass-heavy bottom-end treats
being conjured up on the night, and I doubt I’ll attend a louder gig all year. As
venues go, it was very impressive.
And
so it occurs to me that although it’s been on virtual perma-repeat ever since I
scored a pre-release copy of it a few months back, I’ve yet to review ‘7’ for
the blog. Suffice to say it’s easily one of the best local albums I’ve heard
all year – if not the best – and quite possibly the best thing the Nomad has
ever done, although that in itself is a big call given his extensive back
catalogue and wider legendary status in local production/DJ circles.
New Zealand music lost one of its
very best this week, with the death of Flying Nun legend Peter Gutteridge (The
Clean, The Chills, The Great Unwashed, Snapper, and others). Here’s one of his
best moments:
The Psychedelic Furs’ third album, Forever Now, is another one of those albums you’d not normally associate with the label, “classic album”.
It makes the everythingsgonegreen cut only on account of the nostalgia factor it
offers your blogger. It’s that old familiarity thing again. It just sort of
fits ... a bit like a comfy old sock, or an old grey jersey. Or something …
The album was recorded
in New York and produced by Todd Rundgren, yet it remains quintessentially
English in mood and atmosphere, and delivers something of a prototype
four-piece post-Punk/”new wave” sound.
Although the band had
already enjoyed some limited chart success – and would enjoy considerably more
once American teen movie director John Hughes (RIP) got his hands on an earlier
release called ‘Pretty In Pink’ – the Furs were at the time of Forever Now’s
release still very much in the “cult band” category and not taken especially
seriously by the notoriously hard to please British music press.
The singles, ‘Love My
Way’ – complete with Richard Butler’s trademark almost Bowie-esque vocal and
that memorable if (now) slightly dated synth line – and ‘Run And Run’, with the
memorable lyric “I’ve been waiting all night for someone like you … but you’ll
have to do” … are probably the best known tracks off the album, but it’s solid
throughout and Forever Now is devoid of obvious filler.
The increased preference
for synthesisers over guitars on Forever Now was a welcome development
generally, adding a more chart-friendly formula, and helping to flesh out
several tracks; making the music fuller and less sparse than it might
previously have otherwise been, while Rundgren himself also contributed
keyboards on the album. In saying that, there is no question that Tim Butler’s
fretwork remained every bit as pivotal an element to the band’s overall sound.
Forever Now hasn’t aged
particularly well, it is VERY Eighties, and yes, the more familiar stuff like
‘Love My Way’ sounds a touch flawed today, but on the whole the album remains
very listenable and has much less of the cheese/cringe factor than you might
imagine.
The aforementioned
singles are definite highlights, ‘Love My Way’ in fact became a global hit, but
the title-track (and album opener) itself is a great scene-setter, and
‘President Gas’ remains a personal favourite if only for the fact that a local
covers band I once knew did such an awesome version of it.
This
time last week I rambled on a little bit about the Going Global gig at GalatosLive in Auckland (I’d attended the previous Friday). I actually took a
few photos on my phone while I was there but when push came to shove none of
them were good enough for publication (even for a hobby blog) so I pushed
delete instead.
Little
did I know that Jackson Perry was snapping away for Russell Brown’s PA/Capture blog and he came up with quite a few gems well worth sharing … check them out
here:
