Festive tune of the week

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.

It’s just under a foot ain’t it?

Here’s the audio of yesterday’s imaginary stations show via Shortwave Gold called WS10S, a tribute to the 10 inch single. We’re not just talking 78’s we’re talking all speeds spread over a good few genres. It’s a great show and well worth listening to in its non-ionosphere reflected glory in stereo.

Also at 26.33 minutes in there is a mix from One Deck Pete called unsurprisingly “A ten inch mix”. Here’s the tracklisting:
Jasmine & Madtone – What is man? Dubplate
Zap Pow – Broken Contract
Ellis Island Sound – Republica Evescarra (played at 45rpm)
Marc Collin – Les Kidnappeurs (Main Theme) (Revisited By Jackson)
Nicola Conte – Jazz Pour Dadine (The Dining Rooms Remix)

So chill out and tune into last nights’s show without actually tuning in, if that makes sense.

Bass and drum plus some gurgling and groaning

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.

Baby, it’s cold outside

It’s cold as cold here and it’s time for a good tune to warm up those slippered feet. It’s the original version of Ijahman Levi‘s classic Jah Heavy Load from the grand old year of 1976.

We can’t find the dub of this but the tune in its full glory is played at 2 minutes in on this “recorded straight off the Medium Wave in glorious mono” of John Lydon on BRMB (261 Metres) in interview with Robin Valk from 1979 complete with a european station breaking through in the background with really adds to the recording. A great listen by the way.

Here’s a later released version of the tune with a excellent dub which we really want here. Keep warm out there!

Morning all from Estonia

Big shout to our good mate The Rhythm Doctor for sending us a weather report out of the studio window of IDA Radio, Tallinn this morning. They’ve just had some snow out there and the top temperature in Tallinn for this forthcoming week is predicted to be -5 C. We’re certainly will not be complaining about the weather here!

If you want to listen to something great on a Monday morning tune in here for a two hour selection of Jazz, Reggae, Electronica and downbeat from 9am. It’s a show well worth tuning into!

Evening all

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.

Dreams less sweet

On Saturday afternoon after our Mystic Meg-like prophetic dream, the “vibes” (or more than likely the guilt) forced us out in the garden to do some tidying up. We only did a couple of hours but it was a pleasure to spend some time out the back.

We tidied up the patio and moved the carrots in the big pot we found in the street from the bottom of the garden up nearer the house. It’s all tops and does need thining out but there are baby carrots there and the decorative foilage ain’t bad. If anyone asks we’ll them they’re some sort of exotic microferns.

And we finally cleaned the leaves off the pond netting and gave it a good once over around it and it does make a difference to the look of it. With this weather God only knows when we’ll be able to get out there again though next Saturday is looking dry.

And finally we retrieved some beetroots, not many but enough to boil and to fill a small bowl and stick in the fridge to eat this week. Cheese and beetroot in a white bread sarnie, a treat you can’t beat!

And here’s a few random tunes for a Sunday evening.

 

 

Honey from down under

Big shout to our good friend Paul Greenstein once of the East Dulwich parish, now of Melbourne, Australia (we’ve featured his garden a few times here, here and here) and also a Madtone musical collaborator as Audiovert.

If you remember, Paul keeps bees in his garden (above: a pic of his bees from a while ago) and he’s just recently had his first bumper crop of honey (below), extracting around 30 kilos and reckon they may be more as well. Great stuff Paul and thanks for letting us know about it, we imagine it’s very hard work but well worth it though.

With some of the honey he’s been making Mead (below), one with Seville orange, cloves, raisins and cinnamon and the other with Morello cherries. Sounds and looks tasty! We tried making Mead once with honey procured from a stall at Leather Lane market. The recipe said it will either taste heavenly or like battery acid. Ours tasted like the latter, we never made it again!

Paul makes some great tunes under the name Audiovert including this Madtone collab African Bass and his contribution to the Shortwave Transmissions project here. Thanks for getting in touch Paul!

Coming to the end of the road

It’s cold and miserable out there and the garden is in a right state even though it looked a lot better earlier this year. The butternut squash (above) that was making a late start has fallen by the wayside and now looks a right mess.

In the forthcoming weeks there may be a day where it may be dry enough to give the lawn a cut and even give the beds a tidy over. Remember the more work you do now means less work come the spring and the garden will look a lot easier on the eye over the winter. Trouble is when the garden looks a bit ropey you have less chance of putting on those gardening boots but we will try as the wild bit at the bottom (above) does look a bit wild and look at the pond (below). The word neglect comes to our guilty gardening minds.

Got any ideas of what you’ll be growing next year? We’re now on the lookout for any seed swaps, seed bargains or plants on the cheap. If you know of anything as in cheap seeds or events do let us know and we’ll blog them up.

We can’t control the weather but we can control the music

The above picture was the weather we had at the start of the week and by all accounts will return tomorrow. That’s all we need but the heating’s on at the moment and the stereo has been turned up high. The first tune of the night is Straight to Mad Professor’s head from the set Mad Professor meets Channel One: Round 2 by Mad Professor and Channel One. It is one subtle dub!

 

We heard a Hugh Mundell dubplate on this week’s excellent Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio (Tallinn). While we were looking for it we found a great Augustus Pablo Dub of Feeling Alright.

 

And the best “out there” tune of the night is from a LP called Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol.1 on the excellent Sublime Frequencies label from out of Seattle. No idea who it’s from or what it’s called, all it says on the notes is that it’s in the Sumatran Dangdut style. It has a hook that sounds like an interval signal from a numbers station which we can’t place, that is sometimes played on a rasping bagpipe sounding keyboard. The LP has a wonderful cover too, what more do you want? Wonderful stuff which will worm its way into your brain as it’s so catchy.

Let’s temporarily forget the crap weather and dark times and listen to some decent tunes to soothe, inspire us and give us a break so to speak.