Hello to all,
I usually like to send this newsletter out in the weekend. This one is a few days late, mostly because I wanted to include my most recent NTS mix in it. I also had a few rolls of film I wanted to develop. As usual, you’ll see photos I’ve shot with an Olympus MJU II throughout what unfolds below.
WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING:
Over the weekend, London’s NTS Radio Live were kind enough to air another mixshow presentation from yours truly. You can listen to it here. Peoples is a celebration of the 90s hip-hop scene in Aotearoa New Zealand. You’ll hear songs from a generation of rappers, DJs, singers and producers who crafted a distinctly South Pacific hip-hop sound. People like King Kapisi, Che Fu, Tha Feelstyle, Sisters Underground, Teremoana Rapley, etc.
It’s also worth noting that two of the songs included in Peoples showcase the rap skills of (a then very young) Zane Lowe, way way back before his time with BBC Radio 1 and Apple Music. It’s also worth nothing that the version of ‘Chains’ included in this mix is the ragga remix version. Che sings about gentrification. It’s fucking great.
Something else happened in the weekend. Being the first Friday of March and all, it was Bandcamp Friday. For those unfamiliar (lol), once a month Bandcamp sets aside a day where they waive their fees and all the money you spend purchasing an EP, album, single, whatever, goes straight to the label (or the artist if they’re independent, or maybe still the artist if the label are GCs). Anyway, every time they do this, I write up a list of suggested purchases for the excellent Balearic music stronghold Test Pressing. Bandcamp Friday March might be over now, but you can still check my last suggested purchase list here.
RANDOM:
While I was putting together Peoples for NTS Radio Live, I made a very random and very cool discovery. I’ve probably overplayed it a bit on recent mixes, but since I was putting together a Aotearoa New Zealand hip-hop retrospective, I had to include a song called ‘In The Neighbourhood’ by Sisters Underground.
Brenda Pua and Hassanah Iroegbu aka Sisters Underground are a hip-hop/RnB duo who came up in South Auckland (Otara 2 b specific) in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. A Mormon and a Muslim, tearing it up on stages with the guys (in a time when the guys tended to hog the stages).
In 1994, they recorded ‘In The Neighbourhood’ with a producer named Alan Jansson. Alan went on to produce ‘How Bizarre’ by OMC (you know the song, seriously, you do), but that’s another story. Between it’s airy guitar line, street soul styled backbeat, innocent sounding chorus and gritty verses, it really captured people’s imaginations.
‘In The Neighbourhood’ was a top ten hit in New Zealand at the time. Years later, one of the main television stations here, TV2, used it as their theme music for a bit. They had some success with it in Australia and Europe as well, and ended up living in Hawaii and New York, where they played some really cool shows, before disbanding for a spell due to life commitments.
Anyway, fast forward twelve years and in 2006, Young Jeezy, one of the principal architects of the Atlanta trap rap sound released his fourth studio album Thug Motivation 102: The Inspiration. If you scroll down the tracklist, you’ll come across a song called ‘What You Talkin' Bout’. Have a look through the credits and a familiar name pops up, Hassanah Iroegbu from Sister Underground. Have a listen here, that’s her singing part of the chorus. When I went back and read through the lyrics to ‘In The Neighbourhood’, I couldn’t help but chuckle.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:
Nyshka Chandran, DJing In Asia: Don’t Play Too Many Asian Songs (Pioneer DJ)
“Two staff members immediately approached me and said the space doesn’t do Bollywood music. But really, it shouldn’t matter which part of the world music comes from. Disco is disco. It is its own language.”
Parts of this article are sad, but also sadly unsurprising. The always on-point Nyshka Chandran speaks with DJs from around Southeast Asia to find out how the nightclubs, venues and punters they play for feel when they play vintage Southeast Asian records. I’m gonna preface things and say the scenarios that play out aren’t all bad, but in a time when as Nyshka puts it, “Vintage Thai funk, Malay disco and Indonesian Boogie have become treasured by international crate diggers,” this stuff is worth thinking about (read here).
Selim Bulut, Danny L Harle on bringing euphoria to a new gen of ravers (Dazed Digital)
“It’s weird, fundamentally, that certain combinations of sounds ‘sound’ emotional. No one has quite worked out why sounds without words associated with them make you feel a certain way. I’m eternally investigating how to get those feelings out of sound.”
Selim Bulut, one of my all time favourite editors, profiles UK producer, DJ and songwriter and PC Music alumni Danny L Harle. Anchored by the release of Harle’s new album Harlecore through Mad Decent, it’s a fascinating window into Harle’s views, heroes, and what might come next (read here).
Rainald Goetz, RAVE (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Rave is cult German novelist Rainald Goetz’s headfirst dive deep into the heart of nineties techno culture. The euphoria and release of the dancefloor, the shit-talking that happens at after-parties, the drugs, the freedom, the paranoia, it’s all here. Page by page, you can feel Goetz losing himself in the subject matter, and hey, a few of us have done that ourselves haven’t we? Fitzcarraldo Editions does not miss (Order here).
THAT’S ALL FOLKS!!!