Category Archives: Dub Gardening

In the beginning there was rhythm

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Weeds up to me knees give a big shout to Chris The Rhythm Doctor who was interviewed on this week’s Gilles Peterson’s breakfast show on Worldwide FM. After a while of waiting for the show to go up online yesterday, the show is now finally up in all its glory on Mixcloud.

At 1.37.00 on the show is the interview featuring Chris chatting about his early days in Birmingham and Coventry, a good bit about the Jazz Funk days and bit on his involvement in the early days of House music. Trouble is, there’s loads more that can go in there! Any chance of a part two or three, Gilles?

At 2.33.00 in there’s an exclusive mix from Chris. Cheers to him for playing two Jasmine Tutum & Madtone tracks alongside lots of great eclectic stuff including the brilliant Don Cavalli “Fire Fire”, Arina Singh and the crazy dub of The Detonators “Lift Off” (which as the legend goes, after hearing it, Jerry Dammers contacted the tune’s producer John Collins and got him to produce The Specials’ Ghost Town).

Do check RD’s label Almost Unknown on Bandcamp here and expect more releases on the label. And as we keep mentioning, do check out his Monday morning show here on IDA Radio (Tallin) which has a fine mix of tunes for the start of the week.

Here’s the full tracklistings of the mix as it’s a bit sketchy on the Worldwide site at the present moment:

01. Uku Kuut – Visions of Estonia (PPU)
02. Collage – Uni,Tule Silma Peale!/Sleep,Come On The Eye! (Melodiya)
03. Treee vs Hüpnosaurus – Suveöö/Summer Night – Rhythm Doctor Rub (Umblu)
04. N.Ae. – Fatum/Fate (Polskie Nagrania Muza)
05. Arina Singh – Persian Glitter Carpet (Unreleased)
06. Jasmine Tutum & Madtone featuring Lee “Scratch” Perry – Livicate (Unreleased)
07. Maarja Nuut – Kutse Tantsule/A Call To Dance (Self Released)
08. Gunars Rozenbergs – Disko Roze (Melodiya)
09. Konstantin Orbelyan – Vocalese (Melodiya)
10. Medey – The Hunter Suite (pt 1) mix Stanton Davis (Melodiya)
11. The Detonators – Lift Off (Special Request)
12. Jasmine Tutum & Madtone – What Is Man (Unreleased)
13. Don Cavalli – Fire Fire (Rag Records)
14. The Outlaws – Crazy Drums (His Masters Voice)
15. Chyskyyrai – Khara Tüün – Rhythm Doctor radio edit (Indigenous Lifeforms)
16. Vladimir Tarasov – Monotipijos 45 (Melodiya)
17. Skeet – Meathouse (Almost Unknown)
18. Mad Musician – Jazz In (Tribe Recordings)
19. Ajukaja & Ats – Signal (Mida)

More cool stuff on the shortwaves

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On Sunday 11th August 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz Imaginary Stations have yet another version of COOL, this time COOL 5 via Shortwave Gold. Like the last COOL shows, it’s summer vibes galore and tunes to listen to whilst on the sun lounger. Towels and suntan lotion at the ready please!

Then via WRMI on Wednesday 14th August 2024 at 0200 UTC on 9395 kHz they’ll be bringing you a back to school special of KMART, your “official supermarket shortwave radio station”. Expect voucher give-aways, extended opening hours and the best blue light specials on the planet (*All subject to availability of course). Tune in and enjoy an alternative to shopping via the shortwave dial.

Meanwhile, back in the Midlands…

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Thanks again to Mike and Julia for the pics of their back garden when they returned from their holiday. “We now have two sunflowers and those purple things in our wild patch are chicory. The flowers close up at night when the bees have gone home.” Brilliant Mike!What we love here is they’ve got an olive tree, called Olive (of course). She’s in the top laft hand corner of the picture and as Mike says “seems to be benefiting from the high temperatures”. Excellent!

And here’s a great rich coloured clematis and a “Ms Mars” sunflower, all looking wonderful. That’s it with holidays when you come back you will notice the difference in your garden.

We never knew that. Part 303

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Reggae is one of those genres that if you think you know a little, you’ll always be suprised. By pure fluke we found the above tune from Ranking Toyan – Kill No Man whilst looking for another Toyan tune on youtube. We then remembered the horn version on the LP Aggrovators Meet The Revolutionaries we bought in a second hand shop many moons ago and used the title track on a “Radio Clarion Vs KDUB” shortwave mix. That thing called the internet can be great sometimes!

Big up the Echo Chamber on KFAI

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A big shout out to our good friends across the pond Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss of the excellent radio show The Echo Chamber on KFAI. As we’ve said before, if you want to hear reggae, dub, downbeat and beyond, tune in from 8 – 12 UK time on a Wednesday morning here for a cracking good show. At around 37 minutes into the 24th of July show you’ll hear Madtone‘s “Who’d be a pirate” just before a lovely garden related tune from Sister Julie called Garden Binghi.

Have a listen to the whole show here as it’s wonderful stuff! Thanks again the good Doctor!

You don’t see that kind of thing at Chelsea

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The garden is doing alright this year, it’s July already and some things are doing well and some not. We don’t know if it was the peat-free compost we got from the local supermarket but the peppers and tomatoes didn’t do much so we had to buy some plants from B&Q and Lldl istead.

The Hydrangeas are doing great for the first time in years and we have a lot of greenery going on in the side bed (above) even under the shade of the big tree next door. The poppies and the pot of lettuce on the weird wooden coat hanger are grand with not much interference from slugs. There’s a nice poppy just flowered next the lemon verbena (we’re having a cup of lemon verbena tea at the moment) and if you look hard enough you may see a tomato plant or two!

Yesterday while killing a bit of time we popped into a library in Clerkenwell in the afternoon and picked up the book All Gates Open: The Story of Can by Rob Young and Irmin Schmidt. We whiled away a bit more time than we thought as next thing we knew, the librarian was ringing a schoolbell and shouting “It’s 5 o’clock and the library’s closing”.

What was great was in said book there was a mini interview with Mark E Smith and Irmin Schmidt. Little did we know that in 1977 that Mark E Smith rang Irmin and asked if Can would come over and do a joint gig with them. Now how good would that have been? In Dazed & Confused a few years ago here Irmin says of The Fall frontman “What I took (from the interview) is that I met a very lovable person.” Ahh isn’t that great? A book well worth having a look at!

Shortwave’s not hip? Who told you that?

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On Sunday 7th July 2024 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then at 2000 UTC on 6160 kHz and 3975 kHz the Imaginary Stations crew will be bringing you COOL 2 via the services of Shortwave Gold.

Expect entertainment of the summer vacation kind via the ionosphere. They’ll be a live BBQ in the studio with running commentary (plus amateur firefighter), a specialist towel folder to give you tips on how to place your towel on the sunlounger when reserving premier poolside seats, alongside some summer tunes. There’s a mix from our very own galloping gardener One Deck Pete with “A 7 inch single summer special” at 4 mins in featuring Earl Brown, Stereolab, Freda Payne, Anthony Johnson and Martel Robinson. So roll out the beach blanket, blow up that beach ball and get yourself comfy and tune into COOL 2.

Then via WRMI on Wednesday 10th July 2024 at 0200 UTC on 9395 kHz there’ll be the debut show of COOL which was broadcast to Europe the other week which we posted about here. Tune in and enjoy the “summer of shortwave” vibes.

Cool Runnings

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Here’s the studio audio of Imaginary Station’s COOL from Sunday 30th June 2024 transmitted by Shortwave Gold to Europe via shortwave. The programme features cool tunes for this summer of ours (even though it’s been a bit grey here today) featuring DJ Frederick and Justin Patrick Moore.

At 3.47 in there’s a mix by One Deck Pete called “Summertime and the living is easy”. Here’s the tracklistings:
Jimi Tenor with Cold Diamond & Mink – Gaia Sunset, Part 1
Glass Beams – Mahal
Augustus Pablo – Satta Dub
Chancha via Circuito – La Victoria ft Lido Pimienta & Manu Ranks

Get some suntan lotion on and enjoy the sunshine!

Two for the road…

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Here’s two tunes for a balmy Saturday night. The first is a wonderful tune from Dubamine on Dub-Stuy Records called Mosquito Dub featuring a couple of samples from the great David Rodigan. “Every single mosquito had me for dinner, lunch and breakfast.”

 

And we just found this:

Then we end the evening with The Secret Soul Society with Stay. A very nice chilled tune indeed!

Keep those windows open tonight as it’s going to be a warm one.

Serving up the subsonic stew

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A big shout to Dr Strangedub who alongside DJ Baby Swiss hosts the great Echo Chamber on KFAI. If you love Reggae, Dub and Downbeat you must tune in live here or to their archive show here. The programme goes out in Minneapolis + St. Paul on a Wednesday from 2 to 6am and that translates from 8 to noon here in the UK. It’s a wonderful show and one to listen to live if you’re an early starter. Tune in for some serious good tunes from the reggae spectrum and associated genres. We also thank our good mate Will J for originally informing us about the show many many years ago.

A big thanks goes out to Dr Strangedub for playing at 18.13 minutes in on this week’s show here for an early mix of Madtone‘s “Replace the soundcard” (though “Replace the hard drive” is a good title too Dr Strangedub!) amongst some great tunes over the four hours including this one from Dry & Heavy and that one from The Frightnrs. There’s also some tunes which were left over from last week’s Dread Western show here as well. A show to tune into. Big ta to our mates from across the pond!