Category Archives: non-gardening business

See you at the heel stone

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Solstice to all! Rather than bunking the train down to Wiltshire, English Heritage has got tonight’s sunset and tomorrow morning’s sunrise on a live stream. Sadly there won’t be Hawkwind playing Silver Machine live, Ken Barlow in full druid gear and you can’t sit on top of the stones but we are sure it will be an event. Tune in as from now to hear some ambient classics and enjoy!

It looks great, we’ve just seen a bloke walking around carrying a union jack with an acid house smiley face in the middle of it, some people eating cheese sandwiches, some sort of giant made out of bedsheets and wood and we’re loving the comments “Dave in Atlanta – Stonehenge doesn’t exist, it’s all done by projections, can you see people actually touching the stones?”

We’ll be up with the postman at 4 am for the sunrise.

The music keeps on coming

Posted on by
5

It’s been four years since the passing of the great Andrew Weatherall can you believe. We saw on Facebook a link to this great mix from Outlaw Yacht Club, Leeds 2013 (from a great night presented by our good mate Chris Madden) and we just had to share it. The mix starts off with Big Youth, Ari Up, Dr Who in dub then goes into rockabilly and much more and you know what? It’s downloadable. RIP Andrew Weatherall.

And the best Monday morning radio show goes to…

Posted on by
Reply

 

A big shout to our good friend The Rhythm Doctor for playing two Madtone tracks on his radio show this week (NC-ND and Message from Madtone). As we keep saying, if you want to hear a great Monday morning radio show which plays all sorts from Jazz, Funk, Dub and Downbeat you should tune into The Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on a Monday morning from 9-11am (UK Time) on IDA Radio, Tallinn. 

Both tracks featured are available on the Madtone Bandcamp here.

 

And here’s a version of a Message from Madtone from another good friend Jasmine Tutum.

A view from the front door (January edition)

Posted on by
Reply

A big cheers goes out to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us a few pictures from his front door this week. And what a view! As Rich told us: “Here’s the view out front this lunchtime. A bit of context here, the distance from one end of the photo to the other is 6 miles. Imagine how many buildings London has in that space!” He ain’t wrong there. We worked out that Forest Hill to Elephant and Castle is 5 miles or so, so that is some width!

Pic below “This is looking south from the doorstep towards Keswick , 2 miles away and in the foreground.” Now there’s a great view from the front door. Cheers for sending the pics in Rich!

Festive tune of the week

Posted on by
Reply

This excellent tune was found when compiling a shortwave mix, a great spoof of The Normal on a festive tip. We hope even Daniel Miller would have a chuckle at it while he’s listening to it around the open fire.

Keep this frequency clear

Posted on by
Reply

It was very sad to hear about Benjamin Zephaniah who passed away this morning. Thanks to Gerry Hectic for letting us know about this great tune. RIP Benjamin Zephaniah.

Bass and drum plus some gurgling and groaning

Posted on by
Reply

Last night we found a wonderful track on Bill Laswell’s Trojan Dub Massive Volume One compilation on Bandcamp. It’s a version of Delroy Wilson’s Have Some Mercy (first heard on the John Peel show many years ago) and George Faith’s To be a Lover called Lovers Skank (Spanglers Clap) by The Upsetters. Crazy minimal dub with all sounds of strange things over the top.

This track also appears on the vintage King Tubby’s Hometown Hi-Fi recording from Jamaica in 1975 (Thanks to Who Cork The Dance for cleaning the tape up) at 11 minutes in. As the great U-Roy says while the track is playing “It’s kind of scratchy, very very scratchy but the brother asked to play…” Tune!

Here’s an excellent interview with the great U-Roy where he talks about King Tubby’s electronics wizardry at 11 minutes in.

Evening all

Posted on by
2

Cheers to Rich R in the Lake District for sending us his pic of the Halo moon (“and is that Jupiter to the right?” said in the best Patrck Moore voice) taken at 10.30pm on Saturday night. We were well tucked up in bed at that time knackered after that little bit of work in the garden, the lightweights that we are. Cheers for that Rich, it’s a great photo!

And talking of Patrick Moore here’s possibly one of the best youtube clips ever, apologies as we do roll this out a few times a year as it love it so much. The handwriting part is excellent. “Keep watching the skies” as they say.

COOL down the pace

Posted on by
2

Last weekend’s transmission of Imaginary Stations (the show that features music you probably won’t hear elsewhere on shortwave) is now up on Mixcloud. This episode is the station COOL “Cool tunes for Summer moods” featuring some music that evokes sunshine even though London last weekend wasn’t experiencing much of that.

23 minutes into the broadcast in is a mix from One Deck Pete called a “Seven Inch Single Summer Special” featuring
Earl Brown – Get Together
Stereolab – Miss Modular
Freda Payne – Unhooked Generation
Anthony Johnson – Zuggi Zeng Version/Roots Radics Dedication To Flabba Holt 2 Martel Robinson – Follow you

So get out in the garden, perch yourself on a deckchair, stick some headphones on and blast the show for maximum pleasure. “Summertime and the living is easy” as Our ‘enry once sang.

Thursday night version excursion

Posted on by
Reply

The other evening found a different cut of this fantastic cover version of the reggae classic “Queen of the minstrels” by Mr Day and we now love this happy snappy mix. It’s very soulful and upbeat with still a hint of the original in there. A tune and a very catchy one at that.