It’s that festive time of year again, so a big Happy Christmas (and a jolly new year) to all our readers and hope you’ve survived the day of food and drink madness and the usual entertainment on the telly (which this year included Call the midwife live on ice, a Two Ronnies marathon and a interesting film about Patrick Moore’s mate Brian May, “A life of barnets and telescopes”). Let’s hope 2019 brings you all a good year with plenty of great gardening!
And from the Tru Thoughts camp (in a old style Greensleeves style label) an excellent dub called Dread Nourishment from The Magic Drum Orchestra. It’s in an “out there” style you’ll want to listen and listen to again!
And the mention of dread nourishment put us in mind of an excellent single that was originally given away with Nutrament from The Messengers with Ken Boothe on vocals, a cover of the Syl Johnson classic “Is it because I’m Black”. The single is on discogs for under £3. It’s a snip!
It’s far too wet to get out in the garden even though there’s a million and one things to do out there (including collecting up those autumn leaves before someone breaks their neck on the path and pulling up those Dahlia tubers to store indoors) but what the heck what can we do?
Epoch – Robber Rock (Steady Robbin’ Version) – Dub Temple Records Well a good start would be to keep warm and crank this up loud! A lovely rework/redub of Wayne Wade’s “Man of the Living”.
Souleance – Francois – First Word Records And this is another warming tune, from Souleance called Francois on First Word Records. Turn the heating up, turn the sound up and batten down those hatches!
A big shout to Justin Moorein Cincinnati for getting in touch with Weeds and sharing with us some pictures of his back garden and forwarding some tune recommendations. Justin came to our attention a couple of weeks ago via the SWLing Post Blog where we read his excellent piece called “Holger Czukay, Radio Wave Surfer”here(well worth a read!) He’s a lover of good music (with an across the board taste), writes a fine blog here and is interested in, and broadcasts on, the wireless (hosting a radio show and being an active radio amateur). At the present moment he is presenting Trash Flow Radio on WAIF 88.3.
Justin’s back garden looks like a very nice space (it puts us for some reason in mind of St Stephen’s Gardens in London, W2 where we used to work for the council years ago), it’s very shaded because of a huge oak tree but he and his partner (she’s the one with the green fingers says Justin!) still manage to mainly grows herbs and a grape vine. (Pic above) lemon balm and lavender. We love a bit of lemon balm here, we got some seeds years ago, they came up, they multiplied and the plants are now going mad!
We’re loving the grapevine growing on the fence (above). Hopefully later we’ll be getting more pics including next year the veg patch out the front and the houseplants doing well indoors. We don’t have much luck with houseplants funnily enough. A good source of info when it comes to houseplants by the way is Jane Perrone’s excellent podcast On the Ledge here.
And as an addition the above are some pics of Justin’s radio shack and music listening room, we do love all of that kind of stuff here!
Justin also passed on three excellent tunes, the first being from a chap we’ve never come across before but sounds well up our street, sound artist Nigel Ayres aka Nocturnal Emissions. This is from “Nocturnal Emissions in Dub Volume 1” called “Bodmin Parkway (Disintegrated Public Transport Mix)” and features station announcements that will bring out the trainspotter in you. Tune!
The next is on the darker tip by Lustmord “the originator of the “Dark Ambient” genre” so it says on his bandcamp here (there’s also a PTV/Throbbing Gristle connection too). This is nice stuff with some Tubby’s bleeps stuck in for good measure. More off the album here.
The next (another tune we haven’t heard of) is by Dubcon called Black Hole (Martian Dub Beacon) from an collaboration between cEvin Key (Download, Skinny Puppy, PlatEAU) and Twilight Circus’ Ryan Moore. Lovely out there stuff! Is that Black Uhuru’s Michael Rose on vocals? More on the album here.
So a big thanks to Justin and we await more pics and tunes!
Alter Echo & E3 meet Ishan Sound & Rider Shafique – Ah mi guide (Egoless remix) This corker of a tune was first heard on Steve Barker’s On the Wire the other month and thanks to Scotch Bonnet records it’s available now. This tune cuts the common cold stone dead!
It’s a great resource for all gardeners be they novice or experienced, right from the first chapter “Gardening tips for beginners” it’s full of brilliant tips and ideas. As we’ve said before gardening is such a wide spectrum there’s always something to learn.
We can relate to it; “”Nobody gets it right first time” says Kate of Diary of a Country Girl blog”, yes we can just think back to the time we were faced with the back end of a large rodent in the compost bin after previously putting some salad leaves into it (that possibly had traces of meat on them). There’s stuff about looking after your soil, tool care, fruit & veg, container growing and a whole lot more. Big shout for Thompson & Morgan for producing a informative read! Get yours now here.
Just to let you know Weeds’ music armMadtone is now up on Bandcamp here and there’s also a Facebook page here if you fancy a bit of dubby electronica with some shortwave noises bunged in for good measure! Now those clocks have turned back, turn up the heating and tune in…#shortwavesnotdead
Found on a wall in Forest Hill this morning, a lovely collection of 5 plastic bell cloches. All they needed was a quick swill out and there you go, plants and seedlings protected from mild frosts and the wind!
Have you found anything gardening-wise on the street lately? Send us a pic of your gardening finds!
We were particularly excited last week when we acquired another White Foxtail Lily from Shannon’s. We were so enamoured by the plant that we even named one of Madtone’s new tracks after it (see last post).
It’s the bizarre starfish-shaped root crowns that do it for us, family members have gasped “Urghhhhh, keep THAT away from me” and have also remarked “they’re disgusting” when we’ve showed them the crowns. We here really appreciate the root crown’s oddness as you know we love something a bit “out there” here at Weeds! The tweet (at the top) from Shannon’s from a few years ago still makes us laugh.
We’ve lost a couple of plants over the years as we don’t think they like our heavy clay soil here in London. As the plant originates from the dry grasslands of western and central Asia it prefers a free draining soil and when awakening in the spring the early leaves don’t particularly tolerate the frost. We give the bed a good bit of preparation before putting it in, mixing in some organic matter to help with the drainage.
It’s a very bizarre sight when the plants starts to kick into life in the spring. Over a few weeks you can see the thing drilling up through the soil and reminds us of the film War Of The Worlds when the monsters from outer space start to wake up. Sadly, the plants don’t look like those monsters that have the hoover-like tentacles though. Now that would be interesting!
It’s brilliant when leaves explode out of the soil and then the fantastic flower head a couple of months later. No-one talks about how odd they are then do they? Leave the Eremurus alone! We love it here and will bring you updates when it pops up in the spring. #FoxtailLily #Itcamefromouterspace
And as an addition the above are some pics of Justin’s radio shack and music listening room, we do love all of that kind of stuff here!
Just to let you know Weeds’ music arm 
Weeds up to me knees 