A UK Thing: Dubstep, Grime, Purple & Bassline
My latest DJ mix is live on Mixcloud now.
Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.
The year is 2009. You just read an article about Joker in The Wire magazine. Tonight, you're going to Plastic People in Shoreditch to hear Benga DJ. Lately, you've been listening to the 5: Five Years of Hyperdub compilation album, the tracks by Ikonika are amazing. Tomorrow, you might leave some comments on Blackdown's Blogspot and upload a gallery of photos on Facebook. Life is good.
Last week, I spent a bit of time strolling down memory lane (or was it Gully Brook Lane?) and reflecting on some of the amazing “bass” focused electronic movement that came out of the UK in the mid-to-late 2000s. In the words of Mall Grab, I always liked grime, but it took me a bit longer to warm up to dubstep.
Two things that really helped get me over the line were A: the strain of ragga dubstep promoted by people like The Bug, Warrior Queen and Flowdan (look at him now, winning Grammys?!) and B: the Bristol “purple” sound that Joker and Ginz and co pioneered. I mean, c’mon, dubstep meets g-funk? Bristol meets Long Beach? Far out!
Anyway, while I was going over everything and listening to tunes from the likes of Benga, Ikonika, Plastician, Pinch, Gemmy and Girl Unit for the first time in years, I felt compelled to record a mix. The results are live on my Mixcloud page now. You can have a listen here.
FUEMANA, NEW URBAN POLYNESIAN
This is for those who have followed our family’s music over the past few decades. We have teamed up with Gazebo Records and have remastered and are re-releasing the "Fuemana - New Urban Polynesian" album. This will only be available on Vinyl around the 15th of March 2024, and we will celebrate with a release party in Melbourne around that time. A special thank you to Nick Saw & Daniel Beaton for falling in love with the music, and thanks to Martyn Pepperell for making sure we stayed true to Phil’s dreams.
The album will also be available online.
Peace.
When I hopped on the internet today (lol), one of the first things I saw was this really lovely and personally significant post that I’m going to assume Tony Fuemana put on the OMC Facebook page.
For those unfamiliar, OMC (formerly known as Otara Millionaires Club) was the duo project of New Zealand musicians Pauly Fuemana (RIP) and Alan Jansson. In 1995, they released a remarkable piece of modern Polynesian pop titled ‘How Bizarre’, which went on to become one of the biggest chart hits on the planet at the time and sent Pauly and a backing band that included Kiwi jazz legend Nathan Haines and the incredible Auckland club DJ Manuel Bundy on a seemingly neverending world tour that felt like it stretched on for a couple of years (it may have been shorter though).
Prior to all of this, Pauly honed his skills working with his older siblings Phil, Cristina and Tony, and the singer Matty J in the Fuemana family band (originally named Houseparty) and the original iteration of OMC, Otara Millionaires Club. In 1994, they released what was arguably the first and only street soul-slanted RnB album to be recorded in New Zealand, New Urban Polynesian, through Deepgrooves Entertainment.
As Tony wrote earlier, it’s going to be available on vinyl for the first time soon, thanks to my friends at Gazebo Records. I was lucky enough to write the liner notes for the release and look forward to sharing more details about all of this with you soon.
BILLDIFFEREN: A MIX
“Big love just huge. Tremendous love. All-encompassing and monolithic, a rampaging fist-swanging headbutting buttheading lovewave. It's so big. And it's yours. It's your feelings about billdifferen's Madjestic Kasual 'A Mix'. It engulfs you such that you like and share and repost recklessly, indiscriminately. Big love just huge.” - Madjestic Kasual
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:
Our Voice, Our Mess, Our story - The Inspiration Behind Miles From Nowhere: Writer, journalist and poet Mohamed Hassan on how his everyday experiences as a Muslim man in New Zealand helped him create new comedy-drama series Miles From Nowhere. Read here.
South Auckland’s Queer Creative Scene You May Not Know About: In South Auckland, there’s a creative, Pacific arts scene you may not know about. It’s rooted in the intersections that make these artists who they are: their queerness, being Tagata Moana and having ties to South Auckland. Breanna Tugaga-Rogers for RE. Read here.
T.Williams: no limitations: Over the past two decades, West London DJ and producer T.Williams has worn many hats, from his roots in grime and jungle through to spells in garage and soulful melodic house. His recently released debut album, ‘Raves Of Future Past’, finds him freed from all limitations and pays tribute to this wide-ranging career. Here, Ben Murphy speaks to him for DJ Mag about writing songs versus bangers, the freedom of expression of the early 2000s era, and how he made his classic track ‘Heartbeat’ with Terri Walker. Read here.
The Musical Age of Shitpost Modernism: The next generation of underground rappers, electronic misfits, and jazz weirdos have flooded the internet with an approach that is both artful and inane. For Pitchfork, Kieran Press-Reynolds. Read here.
CRYSTAL CHEN & KENNY STERLING - LOVE LETTER
I wrote a bit about this song a few weeks ago, and I believe that at the end of my text on it, I mentioned that a music video was coming soon? Anyway, here it is. As well as making the music, Crystal and Kenny (Matt Hunter) also produced, directed, coloured and edited the clip. If you want to get into the reeds with the details, they’re all on the YouTube page. I love that this song got the video clip it deserves.
LEBANESE GROCER IS ONE
This week, Auckland’s Lebanese Grocer, easily one of the best (if not the best) Lebanese eateries in New Zealand are celebrating their first birthday. They asked me if I could help out by putting together a playlist for them to play in the shop this week. I’ve known the team for a while, and I know how much they love hip-hop as well as classic Lebanese songs and other Arabic language music, so I threw together a sample of popular rap that samples Middle Eastern and South Asian songs, the songs those rap tracks sample, and some classics from big time Lebanese singers like Fairuz. There wasn’t really a clear brief, and even if there had been, I probably would have missed it, but there are still loads of fun and special memories encoded within all this music.
INCOMING:
Here are a few interesting records that are coming out over the next few months. The text included is abstractions from their sales notes.
Clasico kicks off 2024 with Superclásico Vol. 1: the first edition of an annual Clasico compilation series charting the most exciting names in cutting-edge global club music.
Coral Morphologic and Nick León’s Projections of a Coral City marks a series of collisions between distant worlds: the organic and the artificial, the Eocene and the Anthropocene, sea and cement—and even, perhaps, ambient music and activism.
London producer Jesse Hackett ( Ennanga Vision / Owiny Sigoma band) and Chicago based artist Mariano Chavez team up with Nyege Nyege Tapes for NNT18 music and art collaboration METAL PREYERS . Hackett and Chavez have been working together for two years on their audio visual project Teeth Agency. Together a plan was conceived to invite London underground music veteran Lord Tusk to Nyege Nyege’s head quarters Uganda to work on the project Metal Preyers .
FIN.