Category Archives: Dub for the greenhouse

Dubbing on a Sunday night

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A piece of out there dub courtesy of the great Dennis Bovell at the controls called “Coolie” from Sarathy Korwar (Featuring Delhi Sultanate & Prabh Deep). Jazzy vibes, some dubbed out keys and a lovely rhythm section, what more do you want? The Bandcamp “The time has come to open thy heart/wallet” legend comes quicker than you think. The vocal version is tops too: “Cocaine run by the CIA, Opium smuggling run the same way”. Tune!

And talking of the great Blackbeard Bovell… (off the 1980 LP I Wah dub)

And an excellent show from Ross Allen on NTS where Dennis Bovell picks some tunes. It starts with the excellent Bovell produced Riot in Lagos from Ryuichi Sakamoto and it goes from there.

Genuine Thursday night tune

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As heard on last week’s excellent On The Wire show on BBC Radio Lancashire. Lloyd Ruddock with the excellent Roy Cousins produced “Genuine Way” with the lovely flip, Ungena, a dub by his brother the late great King Tubby. Cheers Stevie B for letting us know about this one and for Fenny for telling us about finding a genuine stone-age axe head! Here it is in all it’s glory on the On The Wire website! It’ll be passed onto a museum for safe keeping but what a find!

Reel out me hose…

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So spring has finally arrived! It’s now time to scrape the mould off those gardening gloves and that inch of dust from your kneeling pad. When you’re next out in the garden dangle a speaker out of the back window and play some tunes as we all know music and plants go well together.

The first recommendation is for all who love a certain brassica from Helsinki-based composer Jukio Kallio featuring some tinkling on the old Joanna. This’ll get those broad bean seeds a germinating!

The next is a lovely piece called Garden Dub for the tripped out gardener in us all from Pale Rider, a solo project featuring one half of the Nashville/New York dub duo Phase Selector Sound. Lovely stuff! Leave the top window open in the greenhouse so the treble can escape and float around the neighbourhood.

Greenhouse classics (revived)

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Cheers for Justin Moore for starting us off again on the search for gardening related music with his recommendation for Mort Garsen‘s Cosmic LP “Mother Earth’s Plantasia” last week here. Also a big thanks to the good Dr Strangedub from The Echo Chamber on KFAI for his mix a few years ago below and Pete Haigh from the monthly Funkology radio show (on “On The Wire” on BBC Radio Lancashire) for his gardening-related chart here. We’re now looking for more. Know any deep house classics that mention “potting on”? Or some dubstep that mentions dephiniums? Or just some fine tunes you like to like to prune the roses to? Send us your nominations please. Remember music and gardening do mix!

Keeping it short and sweet

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Little and often is an apt saying when it comes to gardening. The job for today was to tidy up the bed at the bottom of the garden that had gone a bit haywire (above). There was a fair bit of weeding to do and pulling up of dead Nasturtiums that were left to their own devices followed by a good old forking over. It looks like a proper vegetable bed now (below) rather than a bombsite!
In the process we found a couple of spuds that were missed when we initially harvested them in the autumn and also found a few dried out pods of some heirloom French climbing beans we bought at the Roots and Shoots Potato Day earlier this year. That’s one less packet of seeds we’ll have to purchase then!

Talking of Potato Days and Roots and Shoots here’s the next event in a few weeks time and one well worth going to!
London Potato Fair/Roots & Shoots Potato Day
9th and 10th February 2019 11.00am-2.30pm
Roots & Shoots 
Walnut Tree Walk
Lambeth, SE11 6DN
http://www.roots&shoots.org
FREE ADMISSION
More details on this and more such like events (all across the UK) at this site here.

And here’s a festive treat from The Groove Thief from KGNU Community Radio’s “Dub Palace” show. The mix includes some heavyweight bass from RSD, Prophet, Johnny Clarke and our very own Madtone with “Compost your mind”. 

A happy and prosperous 2019 to one and all from us at Weeds!

The plant that came from outer space

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In celebration of buying another Foxtail Lily from Shannon’s this weekend Madtone & The Eremurus All-stars have composed a short piece of music called Foxtail Lily Dub influenced by said plant. To say that the root crowns are out of this world is an understatement and the blooms are something to behold!

The flower spike:

The mad as anything root crown: (about 10 inches across!)#FoxtailLilyDub #Itcamefromouterspace

Bean pole idea of the week

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The other week we went over to an open garden event in Blackheath and had a lovely afternoon in some fantastic surroundings and even dipped a hand into our pockets at the plant sale there. While in the veg garden this bean pole idea (above) caught our eye. We very much doubt that the rusty looking metal things that are holding the bamboo canes in place have anything to do with garden centres (they’re probably something off a building site or in a steel-fixers toolkit) but we could be wrong. It’s a great idea though! If you know what they are actually are (and if you can buy them at garden centres) answers on a postcard please.

And two other good ideas if you’re thinking of picking up some tunes this weekend. The first the Aimes mix of Cloud Nine by Joe Morris and the next a belter from yesteryear from the excellent Johnny Clarke called Blood Dunza/Dub Dunza. May the sun reign this weekend and while we’re asleep we get a bit of rain.

Welcoming back that yellow thing in the sky

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Here’s a lovely tune called Janet 50 from Smith & Mudd, with the top frenchman I:Cube on the mix. If this 7 minutes of joy don’t welcome the sun back into the garden, god knows what will! One to stick on (in the headphones of course) when getting the hose out at 7am to give those plants their morning soak.

And if you enjoy “tipping around” with a hoe later on in the day here’s a tune of the calmer variety from Everton Blender called Sing for Jah with a great dub to boot.

It’s good this gardening lark especially at this time of the year and it can only get better!

Music to accompany the sunshine

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Big shout to Dr Strangedub & DJ Baby Swiss out of KFAI’s The Echo Chamber and Bruno out of Dan Dada Records for the latest instalment of Around The World in Dub (volumes 9 and 10) available free from the Dan Dada Bandcamp page here. Thanks a million to the crew for including Jazzmin & Madtones‘s Earth Citizen.

The free (we repeat FREE) compilation contains 35 cracking tunes of a dub wise or dub influenced nature from all around this planet of ours featuring Dubmatix with Earl Zero, Trevor “The Technician” McKenzie and The Last Boss & Dubby Doo and a lot lot more, all on a top quality tip! There is no excuse; download, chill out then dub out!  #jazzminmadtone #earthcitizen

From April showers to a dub shower

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Big thanks to long-time friend The Rhythm Doctor for pointing us in the direction of this tune the other night, Hold Up Your Head by Errol Carter (aka “Flabba” Holt of the Roots Radics/Morwells) produced by the great Rupie Edwards. With a keyboard sound reminiscent of Unexpected Places by Hortense Ellis it’s a killer of a tune and on the B side a top dub called Tank Skank that the youtube here doesn’t do justice. The single is less than a fiver on discogs so hunt it down! We would like more dub showers on the stereo and less rain in the garden please (or could it rain in the night?).