A lovely tune from the island of Hawaii (a place where they absolutely love reggae!) called “Smile” from Hirie (featuring E.N Young) with a nice and chilled dub version. This one’s a bit of a grower.
Thanks to our good friends “across the pond” Dr Strangedub and DJ Baby Swiss who have been playing this over the last few weeks on the excellent Echo Chamber on KFAI.
This is a tune to whack on while thinking of ditching plans for the rest of the day and go out and tinker in the back garden. Then you realise how cold it really is out there and have to give it a miss!
Inner Circle ft. Chronixx & Jacob Miller – Tenement Yard (News Carryin’ Dread)
Heard this on David Rodigan’s radio show this week, a lovely reworking of Jacob Miller’s “Tenement Yard” from Inner Circle featuring the great Chronixx and a vocal loop of the late great Jacob Miller. A tune to warm up those cold evenings to come (if the weather forecasters are to believed!) and one that creeps up on you slowly.
This tune from the mighty Mungo’s Hi-Fi went through my mind as I spent a couple of hours in the garden today. It was nice to be back, cleaning up, cutting back and getting that dustbin incinerator back into action!
As Kirk Brandon of Theatre Of Hate sang all those years ago “I incinerator, I incinerate, I incinerate” But he forgot to also put in the words “the neighbours are angrily slamming their windows shut, their windows shut, THEIR WINDOWS SHUT!”
Talking about Theatre of Hate, a few years ago I featured in the blog this stone that I found on the beach in Camber Sands. Ain’t it a ringer for old Brandon’s mob’s logo. Big up gardening!
Protoje Ft Chronixx – Who Knows (Gregory Morris Dub Mix) https://soundcloud.com/pan_recs/afrikan-sciences-circuitous-pan-54 African Sciences – Circuitous – Pan
Two for playing very loud while wrapping up those christmas gifts or dancing around the back room with a Baileys to, celebrating the start of this festive season (and to blot out out the thought of how much brass you’ve already spent on presents!)
Here’s a well mellow number played on the Tom Ravenscroft radio show last week. It’s a tune by C Duncan called For and it’s released as a free downloadable on the FatCat label. Just mellow, man.
Found this on Beatport the other night, a rather nice dubbed out affair on a chilled out tip. A tune to have on the stereo loud while flicking through those seed catalogues and dreaming of the better weather. Roll on the spring!
A big shout to Jochen of Splintercell Sound out of Germany for getting in touch and for letting us use some great pics of his veg cultivation. He’s been growing veg for a good few years in a limited space using minimalist techniques but still gets some great results (as these images show!) with the aid of his greenhouse and some tricks learnt along the way!
Alongside growing other plants, he got fascinated with cultivating Bonsai. He read a lot about horticulture, studying books, blogs and online forums and did his first ‘experiments’ in the small yard of his parents house.
After school he completed an apprenticeship with a breeder of agricultural seeds, studied horticulture for one year, worked at the Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food and now is studying Urban Planning. Sounds like a good grounding for this veg growing lark!
Most of the plants are grown in pots as he only has limited space and has a small greenhouse on top of his carport (above). As he says “it’s urban gardening!” Brilliant!
He grows a lot of different vegetables and plants and always tries to use special strains and varieties. He told us one year nearly every plant was blue; blue potatoes, blue kohlrabies, blue carrots etc. Brilliant, well up my street as blue is one of my favourite colours but I am not sure what I think if it was served up on my dinner plate!
He also tries to grow something interesting like melons or special tomato or chili strains because of his limited space and he tells me that this years cucumber-harvest was amazing! I’ve only tried growing them outdoors twice and haven’t had much success but these below in his greenhouse look brilliant!
Even more up our street, he’s part of Splintercell Sound and also promote a regular party called “Feel like Jumping” in Münster where they play (rocksteady, early reggae and dancehall and conscious Rap.) Here’s a mix on their great soundcloud site (with lots of modern “roots” tunes!) which is well up our street :
Busy Signal – Money Flow/Greetings (Ribbidibi) Two videos in one as played by The Rt Hon David Rodigan over the past few weeks which utilise a couple of familiar rhythms from yesteryear. Especially for everyone who’s suffering with the pre xmas flu!
Listen to the podcast of this week’s episode of The Dirt on Fab Radio International here.
There’s some great things on the show this week including lots of talk of about Beetroot, the first of a brand new feature “blog of the week” with Agents of Field, Sounds From The South (at 26.02 mins in) is about why Beetroot is my favourite vegetable (tune of the week is Big Youth – Some like it Dread) and Amie Sagar interviews the person on the street about the shocking pictures of the new killer Robin that has now settled in the UK ready to cause aggravation! Get orf me bird bath! Ta to The Dirt for letting us reproduce the shocking photo’s they obtained here!
There’s a new day and time slot for The Dirt on Radio Fab International from today. Tune in every Monday night from 7-9pm here for “a gardening programme like no other.” Tonight’s show featured some great tips on compost by Geoff Garrad (including rip up your tea bags before putting them in the heap or they’ll never rot), sausages and calories in alcohol amongst other things.
Our contribution to the show this week is also about composting. I had so many failures with my early heaps I went on a great “composting in the city” course (taught by our good friend Scarlett) and I’ve imparted a couple of things I learnt that day.
SFTS is 20.55 minutes into the podcast which is available here and on iTunes. Record of the week is from Dillinger with the track called Ragnampizer. Keep on rotting y’all!
Weeds up to me knees 