Cursed techno mayhem from GrecoRoman

Who? Colin Bailey, 29, a voodoo comic-book villain who terrorises dance floors.

Sounds like? Acid house, Black Sabbath and grime with old school rave melodies and throbbing bass lines.

It may be hard to believe that a boy brought up in a small Scottish town exposed to folklore and listening to Michael Jackson could be transformed into a ghoulish, death-obsessed techno fiend, working with Peaches and touring with Hot Chip

“It’s like my upbringing has gone full circle”, he says, “I heard Metallica and that was the changing point.” Next was a love of hardcore punk, which he pursued through singing in a band. But he says: “My true awakening came when I got into clubbing in Glasgow when I was about 21 or 22 and discovered all types of electronic music; I loved the feeling of elation in a club and this combined with a love of freeform jazz, metal, hardcore punk and no wave meant I was ready to make my own music.”

All these influences combined with a dark, cheeky imagination are what make up Colin’s alter ego, Drums of Death. As the story goes, on waking to the sound of tribal drums after a frivolous night with a Haitian warlord’s daughter, Princess Zara, Colin realised he was under a voodoo curse. “I wanted to create something that combined the primal with the visual; Drums of Death is like an allegory for growing up,” he explains. “It’s a subconscious thing; I was a quiet kid, so he’s like a comic-book villain that brings all the bad things out on a personal and aesthetic level.”

The sight of this macabre figure on stage, along with the wobbling bass lines, old school piano stabs and the whip and crack of snares causes riots. It is the closest we’ve ever come to dance-floor pantomime - only it’s more ‘Sin City’ than Widow Twanky.


Words: Adam Saville

Vampires!: they're everywhere!

It has without doubt been the scariest of all Halloweens, not just for mothers and children but for stock brokers too. By Adam Saville

Short-sellers, more recently coined ‘speculators’ within the third-rate rags left in scattered piles in London tube stations, stand accused of bringing down the pillars of monetary faith and security that were taken for granted by all of us. Prior to the existence of these demonic schemers, we are told the financial world was safe – children and mothers could sleep in the blissful assurance that the facets of our economy were free from vampiric stock brokers waiting to pounce on their next incapacitated victim, left for dead on the side of the road.

Of course, the monetary system itself is in no way flawed; it is the exceptional greed of a few that has brought down the system, right?

In order to address this issue, it is worth considering a simple analogy. In an anarchic world without rules, how would people behave? Would the day-to-day standards we uphold remain in tact? Would the inherent quality of the human condition prevail to allow us all to live in harmony? I think not.

It’s a shameful admittance, but a realistic one, that human beings are self-motivated; the traditional Darwinist notion, I believe, still rings true. It is for this reason, then, that we have rules, laws, guidelines and, most importantly, morals. If a human being is left to run wild and gratify himself in all the fleeting pleasures that the body or mind will allow without being told otherwise; pain at the expense of others will ensue. These are not new or complicated ideas – they are universal givens.

So what happens when you give absolute freedom to a bunch of vampires? By ‘vampires’, I mean money-motivated slime balls who would step over their own grandmother’s corpse to get their next fix, bonus, tip-off, bond, dividend or whatever you want to call it. Add this to the scenario; the vampire god – the king of the vampire kingdom – says ‘do whatever the FUCK you like’, which can be translated into ‘sell, sell, sell’, 'buy, buy, buy' or any other monetary derivative. In other words, ‘drink as much blood as you possible can because it will make us stronger’.

It doesn’t take much to conclude that, eventually, when this happens people will get hurt – the kingdom, as it were, will be reduced to indescribable chaos; there will be no overall winners and eventually no one will be left directly unaffected by bloodshed or the splatter of severed heads.


Words: Adam Saville

STRONGLOOK presents...

Friday 12th 2008 @ Barhouse 2pm-3am:

Downstairs (StrongLook)
Detachments
The Dead Formats
Whole Sick (KKK)
Mark Wrongson

Upstairs (This.is.Sick)
L-VIS 1990
Tomb Crew

PLUS T.I.S residents adverb & crossbones

THIS.IS.SICK presents...

Upstairs @ Barhouse: L-VIS 1990 & Tomb Crew feat residents adverb & crossbones

Friday 12th 2008 8pm-3am

Glade 2008

As I sit here thinking about what exactly occurred just under a month ago in a field near reading, I keep returning to the same problem: how to explain what was essentially and indescribable experience in a way that can be comprehended.

I could list the Djs I saw, but that wouldn’t do justice to the experience. I could reel off the recreational ’activities’ that took place, but that, too, can only go so far. For all the sense it made, I thought that perhaps a series of random noises and smells would sum it up best.

However, I am feeling intrepid so I will try my best. It is at first worth clarifying that my memory of it is fairly hazy. I took a disposable camera but when I returned home only nine photos were of anything. The rest were blank. This pretty much says it all.

Glade is, ostensibly, a dance music festival tailored to the psy-trance audience. This description undermines the presence of Jeff Mills, who blew us all away with an astounding two hour set, Dubfire, and Vitalic. Although, Vitalic didn’t show up, which only reiterated my belief that he is an incredibly unreliable DJ. I love OK Cowboy, but having seen him play a pretty ropey set in Brighton, charging the customer £12 for an hour long set, I was bitterly disappointed by his absence. The love affair has well and truly ended.

Well, that’s all the music I can remember. This isn’t going very well. I’m not sure its possible to continue in any meaningful way. To hell with convention. I’m just going to list five or so memories of glade, in no particular order. Perhaps that is the best way to represent Glade festival in words; erratic, incomprehensible and utterly confusing.

1. The food was excellent. I had falafel and it was delicious.
2. There were only 8000 or so attendees. It was incredibly intimate.
3. Imagine that you’re in a children’s nursery rhyme. Then combine this with the sense that you, and everyone around you, are on a quest, charged by some unknown force to walk around, dance, and talk complete shit. That’s Glade.
4. By the morning, I could only describe all music as thus: it sounded like the smell of glue.

I cant continue. I’m really trying but it really isn’t working. Everything was just so surreal. Perhaps its best if I leave you with a brief story.

The setting: Sunday night, the music had finished, and myself and my friend Luke (who had married a stranger in the inflatable chapel earlier in the day) went to the only place open: Granny’s Gaff.
This was a café that sold brandy coffee, whisky tea etc etc. There were deckchairs laid out, and films being projected on a big screen. A giant chessboard on the ground next to me, everyone wearing silver foil heat sheets, like the ones they give to marathon runners.

I spent my time either in the porch of the café, convinced I was on a boat, or sitting on the deckchair, admiring the films being played.

Oh, I almost forgot. Everyone who worked at the café was dressed up like a granny, complete with wig and long dress, and spoke with a croaky and extremely high pitched voice. Hours passed. A Charlie Chaplin silent film was being played. The security arrived, and took all the projection equipment due to excessive noise levels. From a silent film. The volume increased substantially by our protests. A cry was heard. ‘You can suck my balls’. The grannies come deranged partygoers argued with the security guards, maintaining at all times their granny routine. Luke and I left soon after. We found a man playing classical music on an out of tune piano, accompanied by a man banging out a drum ‘n’ bass rhythm using an empty tin of beans and a chair. Some more time passed. A woman sidled over to the drummer and handed him his much deserved crystal meth.

I left, feeling like I had died inside. Oh the humanity.

Well worth going again next year. Maybe I wont lose my mind quite so much next time.

Words: Giles Skerry.

The Story of DRUMS OF DEATH

Papa Djim doesn’t like techno, doesn’t like Kool Keith and certainly doesn’t like people sleeping with his daughter. Papa Djim does however like tribal Drums and the overall concept of Death. It’s not particularly surprising – Chief Papa Djim is a Haitian warlord. And Haitian warlords tend to be sticklers for tradition. But all this came as particularly bad news for one Colin Bailey as the repercussions of his whiskey-fuelled night with Princess Zara on his Haitian holiday became clear: Papa Djim was not best pleased, promptly placing an ancient voodoo curse on the young Glaswegian before ripping out his beating heart and replacing it with a broken drum machine! Colin awoke in his hotel room the next day with no memory of the previous night but soon discovered mysterious scars on his chest. And the pounding inside that chest didn’t sound like a heart… It sounded like drums.

Confused, Colin returned to the UK just in time to play his first ever live show at an infamous GRECO-ROMAN party alongside GROVESNOR, BOOJI BOY HIGH and HOT CHIP in an old mill on the outskirts of Manchester, but the venue was hit by a long, mysterious power-cut the minute he went on stage. A young Mancunian barman dived into the power-socket armed with little more than an anorak, a gurn and a screwdriver and managed to restore the power by publicly electrocuting himself to death in a puff of blue smoke. Despite this noble self-sacrifice the show was an electrifying success. But something was clear: there was a strange magic in the room. Colin’s voodoo curse had been unleashed. They should never have let him go on after midnight.

Mildly aroused by his virginal notch on the bedpost of Death, but haunted by the realisation that Papa Djim’s curse had followed him home, Colin turned for salvation to the holy trinity of Acid House, Black Sabbath and Grime. The voices told him to write his first confessional material: 'Breathe' (the first gasps of the reborn), 'Cursed By Magick' (the tale of Papa Djim's enduring curse) and 'Midnight Stalker' (what happens to his soul when the sun goes down). AND THUS DRUMS OF DEATH WAS BORN. This debut E.P. tells the story with old school techno piano stabs, throbbing distorted bass and lyrics that blend voodoo magick with references to Mozart, punk rock and 80s excesses. It comes complete with a sub-bass-heavy remix of 'Breathe' from DRUMS OF DEATH'S close friend New York City producer de jour DROP THE LIME.

But despite his best efforts the curse remains intact. Colin Bailey’s fate is to endure his inner drummer demon and to roam the earth reeking acid voodoo havoc after midnight as… DRUMS OF DEATH!

Aug 15th: Old Blue Last, London Sept 5th: Bestival (w. Greco-Roman Soundsystem)
Aug 22nd: Scala, Berlin Sept 6th: Contort Yourself, Manchester
Aug 29th: Barfly, London Oct 4th: Studio B, New York
Aug 30th: Broomfields Festival, Essex
Oct 18th: Matter, London (w. Greco-Roman Soundsystem)

And thus DRUMS OF DEATH steps – nae, bursts - out of Glasgow's nascent basscore scene and into the GRECO-ROMAN wrestling ring formerly held by 8-bit upstart DAVID E. SUGAR, electro balladeer GROVESNOR and fiery Portugese Kuduro trio BURAKA SOM SISTEMA. His first Long Player ‘Generation Hexed’ is to be released on GRECO-ROMAN in the darkest depths of winter, early '09.

D.I.M interview: Mind-bending distortion from Boys Noize Records

Who? Andreas Meid, 33, German electro-techno pioneer who makes a lot of noise.

Sounds like? Cranking your hearing aid up full and listening to Autechre through a blown-out speaker on an industrial building site.

There could be a number of explanations for why Andreas Meid’s breed of twisted electro-tech goes under the initials D.I.M. As an abbreviation, it could stand for ‘diminished chord’ as a reference to the dissonance within his music, or for ‘dimension’ perhaps as a nod towards the ethereal atmosphere it creates. But, in fact, these are no where near.


“The name comes from a painting by a good friend that had a spiral with a head and a hat, and the letters D.I.M on it”, he explains. The darkness of such a surreal image can clearly be heard in his tracks; the immaculately produced ‘Is You’, and the bordering on disturbing ‘Sysiphos’, have been storming dance-floors across Europe since 2007.

It’s not difficult to locate the source of the aggression within his music too. “At a young age, I was really into metal. The distortion and aggression of metal riffs and bass lines feature heavily within my music.”

Andreas grew up within a musical family with a father who exposed him to Motown at time when “you needed to hear music rather than search for it on the internet”. At nine, he learnt to play the piano and later moved onto the guitar, playing in a number of bands during his teens. His first concert experience, when he was 12, was a Happy Mondays gig in 1987, in Munich. “The venue was packed and the atmosphere was great. I remember seeing Sean Ryder come on stage with a joint and a beer, and thinking it was a little revolutionary considering the situation in Germany at this time.”

What has since followed is an obsession with wobbly synthesisers and grinding bass lines. He tells me, “I don’t have time for anything other than playing live and working in the studio. My hobby has become my career” - which doesn’t sound too dim to me.


Andrea’s Top 3 Metal Bands

Pull out quote: “At a young age, I was really into metal. The distortion and aggression of metal riffs and bass lines feature heavily within my music.”

Guns & Roses:

“I’m not sure if they count as metal, but their album ‘Appetite for Destruction’ is the greatest album ever made.”

Entombed:

“They’re a Swedish metal band. I like the aggression of the deep, huge guitars.”

Helmet:

“They’re a hardcore band from New York. I like them for the irregular drum rhythms.”


Words: Adam Saville

Words, Words, Words (2)... Giles Skerry on Barbers

"Literally hellish. The smell, the faces, the weather channel on TV, the car magazines, the endless chitchat, the coathook. The best thing is my feeling of superiority over the suckers without an appointment."

Words, Words, Words...

"It reminds me of an old story" he said. "It's about a man who said he could drum a beat; but it was not that his technique was wrong. It was that he had very small fingers. He tried to use his tiny fingers to beat the world. But when he failed, he made it his life to teach big-fingered people how to play the Bongos."

Words: Adam Saville

Cairo Diary #3: Birthday

Another extract from Adam Thomas' diary about his time in Egypt (the drunk)

It was Mohammed’s birthday and there was no school, so we smoked and gambled and drank spirits in the afternoon. Outside the heat swam in the air and people came and went from mosques and houses, mumbling. Their steps were busy and they carried sweetmeats and sugared almonds. Up in our three bathroom apartment the smoke from fine Cubans circled the poker table and we sprawled like lizards over the many couches, shirtless and full of food. In the corner the TV buzzed a Hollywood movie into our ears and the floor was scattered with pizza boxes and empty bottles. The bars were closed ofcourse and our friend who delivered the alcohol wasn’t allowed to do so today, but it didn’t matter; we had panic bought the day before, and there was enough to see us through. As the afternoon dripped into evening, the muezzins began the chorus of evening prayer. It rose up from the city like a cloud and rippled through every crack and crevice; filled every empty room and empty head; for a brief moment it replaced the dust and smoke and made the air hum with something else. We turned up the TV and closed the two sets of French windows that led on to the balcony. Not today. We were drunk.

Words:Adam Thomas

"Hyper Bass Fusion"

Young Upstart L-VIS 1990 has been at large, traumatising clubs in both Brighton and London, for almost two years; Adam Saville speaks to him with the onset of the release of his first E.P




It's 9:15pm on a Friday in Fabric and it’s almost empty. By my side is a bright-eyed 24-year old from Brighton with an Ace Ventura-style quiff and a multi-coloured shirt decorated with exotic fruits; his name is L-VIS 1990. He makes a type of bass-heavy dance music which he calls his “hyper bass sound”.

“I am from a Drum and Bass & breaks background”, he tells me. “A lot of the breaks DJs are only just getting into the electro thing. I was into it when it first started to emerge but now it’s completely tired.” What about bassline? “Bassline is on its own really, I don’t want to class myself within the bassline scene although I am a big fan. It is a really good scene full of energy, but most of the DJs are not really breaking out or crossing over on to the London club circuit. However, a new sound is emerging, and a new crew of DJs and producers is coming together to do something fresh and new”.

He tells me his club night Night Slugs, which was set up with Alex Bok Bok from Faggatronix, was set up because there was no night in London playing this bass-heavy sound. Prior to this, his club night in Brighton, So Loud, marked what he saw as an “official funeral” for the new rave of old. As he recalls, “we painted a banner in blood that read “New Rave R.I.P.”, that was the turning point for me, the return of bass.”

This reversion back to "bass" has produced a sound that fuses the aggression of bassline with the slickness of Ed Banger; it combines rave melodies, electro bleeps, jacking techno beats and the wobble of dubstep to create a sound that, as he asserts, is made “only for the dance-floor”.

“My sound has plucked all the goods bits that I have found in the last ten years of listening to dance music. I’ve put them all together – it’s like drum and bass, Detroit house, jacking ghetto house, grime, dubstep and garage all into one. What I want is for everyone to enjoy my sound. Whether you’re into dubstep, garage or electro, you can all get together and enjoy my sound.”

What L-VIS shrewdly avoids is sectioning his sound off; his music is not too dark or oppressive, but it certainly packs a punch. Plus it has a sense of humour; his sample of Al Green in ‘Stay Together’ is a cheeky nod towards the lack of girl-friendly elements that his music appears to be lacking.

“I’m not one for melody. I’m not musically trained – I make tunes that I think will go down well on the dance floor. Girl-friendly doesn’t have to be about female vocals or Spanish guitars. (Laughs) My music is girl-friendly in the sense that it is fun and that you can dance to it.” He’s not wrong. Three hours later, Room Three at Fabric is by no means short of girls, laughs and, of course, terrorising bass lines.

L-VIS 1990's E.P is out 21st July:

A1) Apple Bass
A2) Change the Game
B1) Mr Wobble
B2) Black Snax

Words: Adam Saville

Off-cast #1 Offices Are Strange Places No Matter How Hard You Try by Giles Skerry

Brilliant. Someone has brought their kid in. Every time this happens, the women flock to it, often shrieking with delight at the little terd.


Sorry about that. No matter how hard you try, you find yourself inexorably drawn into a world to which you think you don’t belong. This is entirely understandable. As a middle class, well-educated liberal with extreme delusions of artistic grandeur, I cannot help but think that I am basically spending seven hours a day rotting away in a physical, intellectual and moral compost heap.


My physical degradation bothers me the least. Sitting has often been one of my favourite pastimes, so atrophy is nothing new. Sure, I can actually feel the (small) muscles in my body turn into blubber but I have a thrice daily trip to the vending machine. This means I break a sweat throughout the day. That’s not to mention the epic journey outside for some fresh air. It’s not all good though. Constant typing has turned my hands into arthritic wrecks, so that by the end of the day I am barely able to lift the mashed potato I seem to always be eating to my mouth. And I come home with yet another illness. The air in here, by 4 p.m. is brackish and stagnant. Sometimes I eat mouldy food solely on the hope that it contains some penicillin to cure my ever increasing ails. I have also become a massive hypochondriac. I’m pretty certain that I have some sort of cancer, and if so it’s definitely because I work in an office.


As I write, I do so like a member of la resistance. I quickly switch screens (alt-tab folks) whenever anyone important walks by. Not because I fear recrimination and punishment. Rather, it is because in this environment any kind of intellectual discourse is considered heresy. There is no room for Vivaldi, or Kubrick, or Napoleon, or Eco. This is a world of solutionising, of task management, of spreadsheets. So severe is the busin-rot that has set in that there is actually one folder containing the following sub-folders: desk instructions, drafts, goals, metrics, process improvement, RMS PREP, SOX, staff, useful information*. Now, I don’t know what RMS PREP or SOX is but I’m pretty sure that if I read each file contained within I’d probably become so bored that I would collapse and die. This job has made me so brain dead that I am actually struggling to think about what intellectual conversations I’d like to have with my colleagues. I used to like all that shit, but now I just go home and watch the hits.


If you do feel the need to talk to colleagues about something other than ‘actioning the business plan’, then broadly speaking there are but three avenues you can go down. Sport (usually football) and plans for the weekend are deceptive cul-de-sacs. They can normally only be sustained for a few minutes before both parties go back to work feeling wholly unsatisfied and actually a little bit irate. The third avenue, however, often turns out to be a route 66 of conversation that can lead to laughter, friendship, and possibly hopefully sex: gossip. I have actually found myself trying to ingratiate myself with people by listening to their trite complaints about others’ fuckups and agreeing that he or she in question is surplus to requirements. Everyone, including myself, spends most of their time judging someone else.


This is the real problem with my office. I can take the absence of intellectual and physical stimulation because I can find these in my spare time (or not at all because I cant really be bothered). The moral reprehensibility of this job, however, is almost insurmountable. I actually have become a shit. I bitch about people just to pass the time and judge them because they are shit at a shit job. But it gets better. I am also a corporate bastard. My job basically entails making sure that debt collectors get their money from poor people who turned to the wrong people for a cash injection. I am the electronic equivalent of a sledgehammer. I break people with emails. One particular example stands out above all else to illustrate this.


I opened a sizeable envelope containing a list of everyone that one of our clients, CBN if you’re interested (ha!), had made bankrupt that year. I handed the document, which was well over fifty pages thick, to my Italian boss. She looked at it and began laughing. When I asked why, she said it was because they were all Sicilian, and everyone hates Sicilians. On the hope that I could get a pay rise, I started to laugh as well. It worked, though, because for seven fifty an hour I’d pretty much do anything.


*contains nothing useful.


N.B. Since writing this, I have received a letter from one of the debt collectors I work for demanding ninety quid. I’m not going to pay.

Words: Giles Skerry

NEW ADVERB MIX

Download the new installment of the Broomfields Festival podcasts @ Stronglook...

http://stronglook.blogspot.com/2008/06/broomfields-festival-dj-mix-adverb.html

Cairo Dairy (#2): Water

Adam Thomas, who lived in Egypt for a year, presents another right honourable extract from his diary




In Cairo you never feel clean. This is mostly because you never are; the air is heavy with dust and exhaust fumes that burn the back of your throat and coat your skin. It gets in your hair and pores and when you sweat it out you even your sweat tastes worse than normal. There is also a variety of smells to be had. Our street often smelled of vomit. Sometimes it smelled like barbeque; sometimes of both. Sometimes garlic. We found out later that this was because the top floor of our building was full of boxes stacked filled with garlic, slowly going bad. But we didn’t worry, we just took what we needed and left. Also the water is full of chlorine. This is because they use it to kill all the stuff that you get in the Nile - because it is bear dirty. Trouble is, now the water is full of chlorine, we couldn’t drink it; on account of our precious white skin, which turns green if chlorine gets in it. Also it turns you into a lifeguard, and then you can’t go about you business any more because people are always shouting “Oi lifeguard, come over here and look at my shoes, you stupid bastard” and stupid stuff like that.

Words: Adam Thomas

Cairo Diary (#1): The Adventures of al-Gore

During the time of The Festival of Sacrifice in Cairo the streets are a wash with animal sacrifice, Adam Thomas tells of his experiences



During the height of the Winter ‘Eid, the roads in Downtown run with blood and piss. It is at this time that the mass slaughter of the herds of sheep and cows that have been huddled outside butchers and roaming the streets over the past week or so takes place. There are mounds of crap, and also guts and feet. Once on the way to my friends flat I was lucky enough to find a horn; I wanted to keep it but then I realised this was a bit disgusting. Walking around even wealthy and relatively westernised areas such as Mohandiseen where I lived, you have to watch where you tread in case you accidentally step on something’s colon or stomach. It was around this time that my flatmate James saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with shit down our street, singing. He came home fuming, demanding to know “Where has he got the shit from? where is he taking it? And why is he singing to it?!” I told him I didn’t know, but suggested that he might be related to the cake selling midget who had chased him down Sharia’ Shehab the week before.

These gruesome – and massively unhygienic - sights therefore jar somewhat with the festival atmosphere that infects central Cairo and its inhabitants during these few days at the end of the year. This is the ‘Eid al-AdHaa, The Festival of the Sacrifice (in Egypt ‘Eid al-Kabir), The Big ‘Eid, which starts for three days the 10th day of the 12th month of the Islamic Calendar, the month in which the Hajj takes place. This is around the 17th of December, and commemorates the actions of Abraham who was ready to sacrifice his own son, Ishmael, as God had commanded. After Abraham had thus demonstrated his devotion to the Lord over all things, God took mercy on him and allowed him to sacrifice a sheep in place of his first born. It is for this reason that the best animals are selected and herded up in back alleys and main roads alike in preparation for the ‘Eid. In one particular street, the animals had been gathered under a large fairy light lit pavilion, built like the entrance to a fairground over the front of the regular butcher’s shop, where their throats were slit and their blood drained before they were skinned, gutted and turned into the meat for the many large and communal feasts that would take place over the next few days. The whole process took place in the street, late at night, in front of the crowd that had gathered there excitedly, and watched as an employee of the butcher’s shop recited the traditional prayers into a microphone at the top of his voice, at times reaching a sort of euphoric wail that seemed to spring from his very gut. Children ran and played around the animals and their various deposits; screaming and singing and swarming around my brother - blue eyed and friendly faced as he is.

Second only to the atmosphere of festivity that buzzes in the air during the ‘Eids is the sense of community. As in Ramadan, where food is often taken en masse and outside in large communal areas; the meat from this festival is not simply eaten, it is feasted upon, shared amongst families and friends and even strangers who happen to be walking past. As is decreed in the Qu’ran, meat is also provided for those who cannot afford their own, and wealthy Muslims with their own livestock are expected to contribute their best animals to be slaughtered to look after the poor and hungry, which in Egypt is a lot of people.

This is why even as you watch the blade being drawn across the throat, the blood spilling and the legs twitching, the skin being tugged from the flesh and finally the flat slab of meat being slapped onto the board; it is hard not to be fascinated, even enthralled by the whole gruesome process, just as the people are who come to watch it happening. It is probably something quite primitive, and what you are watching is – at is most basic level - ritual sacrifice. But even so, it’s pretty fuckin gnarly.

words: Adam Thomas

Around the world in 80 pages: #1 Moon(walker) pie, what a time to be alive

Believe it or not, I spent a good twenty minutes working out the title to this, my inaugural, post. Reading Wikipedia entries all day, obviously the best possible use of my time at work, I stumbled across a page about Michael Jackson’s 1988 dance odyssey Moonwalker where my eyes were immediately drawn to the text about Smooth Criminal.

I remembered very little about the video as I read; Alien Ant Farm’s unfortunate cover version had obscured my vision of Jackson at his inimitable best like a University rugby player drawing a penis over every page of the only copy of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Fortunately, I rushed home to remind myself exactly why, for a number of years, Michael Jackson was the biggest superstar in the world.

For those who haven’t seen it in its entirety, definitely check it out. It is without doubt the best music video I have ever seen. From the improbably well tossed quarter that slides neatly into the slot of the Jukebox to the renowned anti-gravity lean, there is not a moment that dips below utter perfection. Its such a shame, then, that Michael Jackson will be remembered not for the style, the moves, the talent he oozes throughout but for his dubious relationship with children and plastic surgery. And that’s the best thing about the video; there isn’t a bottle of bleach or child in sight. (O.K that’s only half true, but it’s the kids watching Jackson prance around in a seedy, backalley, speakeasy and not the other way round).

N.B. When I made a film with my friends during sixth form I held lofty ambitions that the climactic scene could be as good as Jacko‘s video. Well, not quite as good. Nowhere near as good. A decent attempt. Alright, an attempt. I suppose in that sense we succeeded. It was slightly unfair, though, because we only had six dancers, all of whom were poorly directed and untalented. And we filmed it in a rather small room in my mother’s house. Oh, and there was very little choreography. Or budget. Other than that, it was exactly the same. You can see the (completely transformed) end result here.

This week I have been listening to Musik, by Plastikman.

Next time: Serial killers, serial thrillers.

words: Giles Skerry

Confessions of a serial killer. Part 1.

Matthew Hamblin presents us with an extract from this latest work that delves into the darkest of all human psyches; the mind of a serial killer



Blood is the only part of killing that I find unpleasant. That’s why I mainly use blunt weapons; strangling would be fine if I was stronger, but my average strength means I can only usually strangle women.

I know people won’t understand. They were raised to not understand, to ignore passion and instinct in order to do what they believe is the ‘honest’ thing, not seeing that it is as far from honest as possible. They despise people like me, people who live true to thier feelings but yet they admire ‘our’ soldiers who aren’t following their desires at all they are just following the orders of our supposed leaders who do what I do just on a larger scale. At least I don’t do it for material objects; money and oil mean nothing to me. People no longer live true to their instincts. That’s why the only time I feel even a smidgeon of respect for the fuckers is in the final moments before they die, everything is then instinct. They no longer show they are hurting with the customary “ouch”, they forget all they have learnt; they no longer regurgitate bullshit. Instead the noises come from deep within them, noises that would usually frighten them; grunts and screams that sound as if they are the product of an explosion in their stomachs. The noises get more and more frantic, as the situation approaches the inevitable crescendo. And then the noises stop and I’m left alone - with beautiful silence - feeling as alive as it is physically possible.

Words: Matthew Hamblin

Adverb gone electro vinyl mix..

Electro Mayhem from This.is.Sick's - ADVERB...

http://www.zshare.net/download/13693779424b0cb7/

The rise of the Chelmsford scene...

Over the past year or so, the Chelmsford underground clubbing scene has had a period of self-discovery; Adam Saville looks at the major players on the scene



My return from the culture capital, Glasgow, to the culturally backwards, Chelmsford, after four years of mind-expansion was hardly an exciting prospect. The gut-wretching prospect of the Dukes Genesis Experience was alot like the thought of spending a night in an abattoir. However, not long after my arrival during the summer of 2007, I soon realised that things were just getting going and that it was only just the beginning.

The emergence of The Chelmsford Ravers has played a huge part; setting the balls rolling and giving other people the courage to provide something that the town craves even though it is too afraid to admit it. Events like the The Black Holes left shimmering impressions, and we await with baited breath the arrival of Dub:Tech this summer. But one group cannot be held up as sole providers of a wave of mentality that can most certainly be traced way back. A number of recent events have brought to light a communal desire to chemically alter our minds and dance to particular styles of music for want of a higher state of social consciousness.

Notably, Nobody Don't Dance No More miraculously transformed the grottiness of Saturday night drinking at The Fleece into a night that has showcased serious contenders on London's live circuit, most memorably Dead Kids, then followed them up with the pick of Chelmsford's wealth of local DJing talent - with regular appearances from Badspeller, JBic, Ro and TIS's Crossbones. Its enormous success has been such that it has been able to branch out and occupy a monthly slot @ Industry Bar, Old Street, in London.

NBDDNM is not the only example of Chelmsford DJs breaking onto the London scene. The Lost Souls daytime residency at Public Life in Brick Lane, which has become recognised as one of the most significant underground events in London, has welcomed regular appearances from the CR's very own Lee Hume, Lepsy, Ro and Avtex.

Other nights have sprung up in allegiance with the very small pool of local DJing talent bolstering the scene and adding variety; these include Pulse, Dujitex, and Korkus. And not to mention, the outstanding and immaculately organised basement party, Cornerbeats @ Cornerhouse - we all eargerly await the next one.

It is with these developments in mind that This.is.Sick embarks on its monthly residency at Bar Toucan. Its purpose will be to bring together the local DJing talent of Chelmsford and also book bigger names that will attract large crowds of like-minded people.

This movement is set to culminate with the Broomfields festival, hopefully opening up a path to bigger and better things: This.is.Sick, NBDDNM, The Chelmsford Ravers, Strong.Look and The Flea Market have collaborated to present a one-day event at a secret location in the Chelmsford area.

The bands include:

Drum of Death (GrecoRoman)
*A Super Super Special Guest*
The Badical
Futurecop!
Cathouse
The Dead Formats

DJs include:

Crossbones
Adverb
Quailman
Ro
Lepsy
Badspeller
Pocobawa
Mark Wrongson
The Dead Formats Sound System







words: Adam Saville

Things for campin'

In today's frantic world, it is often easy to forget the important things in life, Adam Thomas helps us remember the things we should never forget (when we go camping)



As soon as Davey proclaimed that his grandfather was the inventor of paper underpants, we knew that this trip would be mighty sweet. We all had sharp sticks and one of us had a brace of rabbits. They swung from the end of his bindle as we walked, looking for which field would be most accommodatin' for a few young gents short on money and down on their luck to pitch in for the night. After maybe half hours a-walkin, we found a real good one, mostly empty, flat and with a cove of trees in one corner where we could bed down; on account of it provided shelter and hid us some from whatever farmer owned these parts. There was even a good pile of firewood, dry as a bone and standing shoulder high. We felt as if the good ol lord done fixed up this field for us special. So we set about it, pitchin' the tents and building the fire a fore the night closed in. There was beer and the little one had a quart of whisky, which he done swigged on awhile he was workin'. We whistled and sung the same work songs that we sing out on the fields, or on the railroad, or quarry, factory or any of the other scraps of work that fellas like us pick up here and there, movin from place to place, as if they was dead leaves that got caught up in our boot laces. Some folk don’t like to sing work songs when they’re not a workin, but for me it always seemed to make that time all the more sweet; on account of it reminded me I weren’t at work, and I’d done chose to sing the songs; of my own volition, as it were, like a frog what jumps into a pond knowin' full well he can get out when he pleases. Right about then, after we was full up of rabbit and set down to stargazin' and the fire was lulling, i checked my list of things for campin:

1. Tent
2. A sharp stick
3. Beer
4. Vittles (camping word for food)
5. Know how
6. A good ol patch o lan’. Flat and mostly without stones. Sometimes you think there’s stones but really thems is just hard clods of mud. Remember to remove any hard clods of mud, they are as bad as stones.
7. Buddies
8. A spookelele
9. The love of a good woman
10. A sharp stick
11. Mule/ donkey: curmudgeonly, fat leggs
12. Stories about unusual horses with those growths they sometimes get that look a bit like you might eat em if you wanted, but then again maybe they'd just stir up the appetite without settin her back down again.

Yessir, this trip was gonna be mighty sweet.

Words: Adam Thomas

Listen to: Drums of Death

Signed to Hot Chip's label, Grecoroman, Drums of Death frightens children. If there was anything a drunk, paranoid mother did'nt want her ruby-cheeked child to hear - it's the shrilling worble of Drums of Death. Not only does he evoke the sort of k-hole inducing wobbling dubstep basslines that have claimed the sanity of hoards of ravers across the nation, he jacks it up with whips and cracks that have enough force to give Mr Manhattan whip-lash. At times dirty minimal, and at others grime-tech - this is why Bassline House is gaining so much credence, it has literally every thing. FUCK!

http://www.myspace.com/drumsofdeath4eva

You can catch Drums of Death @ The Broomfields Festival - 30th August 2008

Words: Adam Saville

L-Vis 1990 E.P Vid

Watch this and shit your teeth out...

Top Five Secret Historical 'Facts'

1.Between the ages of 9 and 13 Shakespeare ate three pencils for breakfast, this is why he was so good at writing.

2.King George the fourth was not mad, just very, very hungry.

3.Shortly after the Great Fire of London, when killing and raping were highly fashionable, there were approximately three million sharks released into the Thames in an attempt to "clean up the streets".

4. The Holocaust never happened.

5. During the start of the Tudor period there was a branch of the military whose job it was to go around the towns giving people more appropriate hair cuts. When questioned about this, King Henry proclaimed: "Listen here brother, don't wave that goddamn thang in ma face, i wouldn't come all up in your crib waving no goddamn dictaphone in YOUR face."

words: Matthew Hamblin

Whatever happened to garage music?

When I was reading Ben Esser’s Dazed blog about Club Zeus in Chelmsford, which happened to be the first club I was allowed into as a baby faced 16 year old, I noticed that he mentioned 'garage is the shittest thing ever'. Now, this is something I would have probably agreed with three years ago; living in Essex, you tend to associate garage music with idiotic women with knee-high boots, bleached blonde hair and an ass-brimming skirt, and men who think that finding out that a woman is a slut makes good ground for an early marriage. But today, what is it that is getting the skinny jeaned, ex-indie chompers onto dancefloors? It's big-beat/garage. Just check any track by Sinden, Herve, Crookers, Boy-8 Bit or check out upstairs at the Vice pub Old Blue Last in Old Street on a Friday night. It's as if today's generation, whose ipods are just as likely to contain Arcade Fire as, say, a bugged out mix by Erol Alkan, have inherited a liking to thick bass lines and repetitive vocals - something that, during their adolescence, they were most probably repelled by. Call it nostalgia, or call it some sort of innate transfusion that took place during the oblivion induced by underage drinking - whatever it is, there's no denying that, today, garage is bigger, better and more appealing than ever. Rather than admit it, we hide our shame by re-naming it “bassline”.

Top five tunes that are garage but we are too afraid to admit are garage:

1) Sinden & Count - Beeper
2) The Count of Monte Cristal – Bounce that Ass
3) South Rakkas Crew – Mad Again (Boy 8-bit remix)
4) Crookers – My Penny
5) Grovesnor – Drive You Car (Bird Peterson remix)




Words: Adam Saville

adsav2001@hotmail.co.uk

Listen to: L-Vis 1990

L-Vis 1990 draws his influences from the last six years to create what he calls his "hyper bass sound". His bass heavy sound fuses elements of grime or dubstep with jackin' techno beats, electro bleeps, cut-up vocals and rave melodies. When he booked NY's Drop the Lime for his Brighton club night he saw it as an "official funeral" for the new rave of old. As he recalls: "We painted a giant banner with the words "New Rave R.I.P" written in blood. I think that was the turning point for me, the return of bass".

L-Vis 1990 E.P is out now.

You can catch him:

12th June @ Proud Galleries
13th June @ Fabric
July 25-27 @ Secret Garden Festival



words: Adam Saville

This.is.Sick goes monthly... a time for reflection.

This.is.Sick sprung onto the Chelmsford scene with its unmistakable brand of electro, bassline and techno on two occasions: the Christmas bank holiday 2007 and the Easter bank holiday 2008. What it provided was a bass-heavy attack on like-minded people, leaving them with a feeling of optimism over the future of Chelmsford nightlife. There was a real buzz, people began to realise that there was more on offer in Chelmsford than the trashy, gut-wrenching Dukes Experience. This was not an immediate realisation; the coming of age of the Chelmsford’s underground club scene had been set in motion way before – so where did it all begin?

Historically, Essex has been home to some remarkable dance acts and movements – UK garage thrived here, The Prodigy came out of Braintree and pirate drum & bass stations have been ten a penny over the last decade. But what we associate Essex’s dance scene with is not what is being vented at TIS. TIS draws its influence from wider catchments than UK garage or D&B – naturally, these sounds do exist intrinsically, but the heart and soul of the music we play spans out much further. We do not relate to Modern day hip-hop, gangster rap, or grime lyrics – we appreciate the darkness of the streets but we do not aspire to survival in a cutthroat world by way of an aggressive tongue. Instead, it is the sound of the wobbly bass line, the terrific snare and offbeat high-hat that reaches us. We are eighties children – we were brought up on Transformers and Corey Haim – twinkling synthesisers and Air Jordans. Our role models were the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Micheal J. Fox before he got Parkinson’s. Our elder brothers and sisters were ravers - they discovered ecstasy and glow sticks, and how to testify their love for someone they had never met for an evening/night/morning to never see them again. Our parents listened to The Beatles, northern soul, punk, funk, reggae, Motown soul, rockabilly, no-wave, new-wave, PETER GABRIEL (and so have we). The day we discovered Kraftwerk was possibly the most important day of our lives. All of this has affected us and it is there in the music we produce, play, listen to and dance to.

This.is.Sick embarks on a monthly residency @ Bar Toucan on the 18th July 2008.

August 8th 2008 – This.is.Sick presents… The Broomfields mini-fest Launch Party.

August 30th2008– In association with This.is.Sick, The Chelmsford Ravers, Nobody Don’t Dance No More, Strong.Look – The Broomfields Festival.

Check: www.myspace.com/thisissickchelmsford

words: Adam Saville

This.is.Sick presents... The Broomfields Launch Party.

This.is.Sick is providing Chelmsford with a chance to taste the party aspect of the Broomfields mini-fest three weeks before @ the official launch night.

DJs adverb, crossbones, quailman plus more TBC will bring you a night of jackin' electro, boob-ticklin' bassline and wobbly dubstep...

As well as dancing you bollocks off, there will be an opportunity to grab official merchandise, purchase last minute tickets (subject to availability) and sign up to the Broomfields/T.I.S mailing list.

This is gonna be KILLER!

adverb