High Contrast

Black Out JA featuring Chantaleaze – Baltimore Revolution

Two tunes are rolling around our brains at the moment. The first from Black Out JA was heard on the great On The Wire on BBC Radio Lancashire the other week. It’s a blistering toast over the classic Baltimore rhythm. Tune!

https://soundcloud.com/caughtbytheriver/one-edit

Be – One (Edit)

The second is a completely different sausage, from a forthcoming album by the artist Be (Kev Bales and Tony Foster plus Jason Pierce, Youth, Deidre Bencsik, Camille Buttress and Amiina). It’s released on Caught By The River’s  Rivertones label and the LP, “imagines the sound of British summertime as heard by one of the most important members of the animal kingdom – the bee.” How good is that?

This edit was heard on Tom Ravenscroft’s show the other week and is now firmly stuck in our heads. Big up the waggle dance crew!

Eyes down for spudulike

CSSG Potato day 2016

Thanks to Mick from the Cambridgeshire Self Sufficiency Group for getting in touch about their 7th Annual potato day on Saturday 13th February 2016 at Commemoration Hall, 39 High Street, Huntingdon PE29 3AQ.
It’s from 11am-3pm, with refreshments and a craft stand and more, all for FREE. How good is that? They’ll have over 60 (count them!) varieties of spuds alongside onion sets and shallots. What’s great is people can buy how little potatoes (10 grams or less) or large (as many kilos as they want) at £1-00 a kilo.
If you’re organising a potato day or even a seed swap (if it’s in London even better so we can go!) and you want us to mention it send us an email with all the details to onedeckpete (at) gmail (dot) com
There’s a mention about potato days and seed swaps in our Sounds From The South podcast from a couple of years ago below.

False teeth out, slippers on, it’s the weekend…

A trio of tracks to start the weekend off in style! The first features a spoof video of a “better than well” guru cult complete with a nice bit of T’ai chi-like dancing. It’s from Mind Enterprises with a tune called Idealistic and do have a pen and paper and your credit card details handy for the end!

The next is a heavier than lead dub that’ll get you dancing down the greenhouse even in this weather! It’s called Jamtone Dub from The Shaka All Stars and around again on reissue.

And finally a bass-heavy monster from Kanka Featuring the great U Brown called Beat Down Babylon with a heavy dub at 5.21 that’ll shatter your terracotta plant pots if they’re anywhere near your speakers!

How can I understand the flies?

fungus-gnatA big thanks to everyone on the Tim and Joe on BBC Leeds Facebook Group for their help on the escalating fungus gnat situation on the kitchen windowsill. Do join the Facebook group (here) for some brilliant information, answers to your gardening questions and tips galore!Fungus gnatsWe’ve a few pots of various herbs that have attracted a load of those pesky gnats of late. Now after posting on the group, there’s a combination of grit on the top of the pots, yellow sticky traps, a sprinkling of cinnamon, a lack of water and finally a trap of cider vinegar with a couple of drops of washing up liquid in it. If this lot don’t work, the pots will be forced outside as we can’t take them damn midges any longer!

7 degrees celsius selection

Here’s two tunes for this cold January night. The first is a deep one from Intrusion called A Gentle Embrace as heard on BBC Radio Lancashire’s On The Wire last week as part of an excellent mix put together by Jim Ingham. The full mix is available here. Big up Steve, Fenny and Jim!

And the second comes thanks to our good friend Dr Strangedub who played this one from Gold-E-Locks featuring Jah Hero called International on this week’s Echo Chamber on KFAI. You can download the track for free too!

New Year, New Idea

top tip 2016Are you a bit like us at weeds who leave plastic plant labels in the ground and forget all about them? Then a few months down the line when you’re tipping around with a hoe you shatter them into little pieces?

Well we here at weeds have a clever solution for you. We’ve got a small purple plastic box that we leave in a central position in the garden and if we ever find a stray label we stick it in the box. When it’s full, after a good old scrub with Bar Keepers Mate, we use the labels again. We are so chuffed with our idea we might patent it and put it into immediate production. Any backers out there?

Big New Years shout to all our friends and may it be a good one!

Who put that moustache on me King Tubby LP?

Defaced value

Following on to our last post with the customised 7″ sleeves book, a big shout goes out to Strictly Kev (DJ Food) for letting us know about the great site “Deface Value.” It features all manner of creatively vandalised record covers which have either been found or intentionally altered. Have a butchers here, you will smile!

David Mancuso’s been in our loft again…

record covers book_1

The other day we rediscovered this mad old book/fanzine in the loft while getting the christmas decorations out. It’s 24 pages of home-made 7 inch record sleeves (the front and back covers of 12 singles) and originally purchased for a handful of shrapnel from a charity shop in Farringdon many many moons ago.

record covers book 5

record covers book 6

record covers book 2

record covers book_3

record covers book 4

Any ideas on who or why? Any info appreciated, as “it’s daft as,” as a good council gardening mate of ours used to say. We at weeds love a record sleeve/label that has been defaced in the name of love (“to my number 1 man/woman” etc) so do send us examples of any you have in your collection.

Big up the defaced record sleeve. And whilst we’re here, a happy new year to all of our readers/gardening mates worldwide!