Reasons to be Cheerful 1,2,3

Now that the DMZ photos are off the production line, I've got a little bit of time to tell you about what I've been up to.

1. Chillin with the South Side Youngers:

Ashton (aka Bashton/Bashment), my stinky but sweet nephew has been staying with me. He's 19 months and already has a penchant for partying. Walks in to my house, looks through my records, chucks away the ones he doesn't like the look of (I keep trying to explain to him that you can't judge a record by it's sleeve but he doesn't seem to get it), has a read of Undercover Magazine before deciding to deface the pictures and then walks over to my stereo and cranks up the volume. His latest favourites are some D1 beats that I'm in the process of writing about. Considering they're deep, dark and eerie sounds, that's quite worrying, but then again, maybe he just takes after his Auntie when it comes to musical tastes. I'll give him a column one day.

2. Sounds:

Blackdown and Dusk's first release on Keysound Recordings- I'm particularly feeling the second track Submerge which has a wicked skank to it. A slightly quirky, off key sounding rhythm with a warm feel- and a step which conjures up the image of a cartoon character walking with a bounce down a sunny street. Drenched is minimalist and a lot colder in atmosphere, opening with the sounds of the Dubstep Express train (London Bridge to Croydon via Streatham and Norwood) on what sounds like a shitty day in London. A creeping bass line and an industrial kinda grating noise which loops underneath gives it a pissed off and slightly paranoid vibe and one that makes you even more pleased of the warmth of the second track. Listen Here >

Appleblim and Shackleton have also been on repeat for the past few months. Blim's Girder Dub is now a favourite of mine-it's driving bass line sounding even bigger and bolder at the last DMZ night. Loving the industrial vibe-conjured up by the metallic sounds and delays on the claps which lead the ear into some big bold space. It almost sounds like Blim's been jamming in Battersea Power Station. Mystical Warrior is another industrial sounding affair with a whole host of beeps and blips plus an aggy Freak Recordings style B-line. It also has a slight early Mystikz feel to it and due to the name- I'm wondering if the tune is kind of a nod to the producers that I see Appleblim raving to every month.

I once knew a guy who spent all his time hitting tea cups with forks, writing down the notes they produced and recording them, breathing into microphones and generally seeing the whole world and all the objects within it as an infinite room full of instruments. Shackleton (pictured above) appears to be of this breed experimenting with as many sounds as humanly possible and cramming them into 8 tunes that were sent to me recently. Featuring stripped down bars of mad eeks and cries laid over hard digital bass lines (New Dawn), eerie sounding strings and exhalations, bongo's (I Am Animal), Dance-hall flavoured bass lines and what sounds like an electric guitar going nuts in the background (Massacre), Shackleton is definitely the king of kook and one who generally sounds like he's having big fun with sound.

Some new Skope's beats. The man's been working hard recently and considering he's been producing for under a year, 15 signings is pretty good going. Sinking is my new favourite Skopey track- a soul-tipped bubbla with a delicate Joan Armatrading (one of Britains finest) vocal loop running throughout although the wonderfully warm but still slightly edgy sounds of How Do You Feel are also giving me reasons to be cheerful. He's set for the big time as we've known all along. Keep an eye on this place for a newly updated Skope's profile about to drop soon... the last one's kinda out of date (oops). Check a recent set of his Here, courtesy of Inperspective Records and Noir.org.

Last week's Youngsta and Task show which I had the pleasure of witnessing for myself. The audio is available Here, thanks to Mr Dubway and www.dubplate.net. The show features Yunx's usual Beat-juggling skills plus a half an hour performance from the man like Loefah during which he drops some explosive DMZ bombs.

Size9: Shouts to lead singer Breezy who blew me across Hannah's gorgeous garden where the gig took place in honour of web-designer Nobby's birthday. Her voice, stage presence and image are phenomenal and she sings with so much emotion and attitude. I danced happily in my high heels with a vodka in hand and smile 'pon face and was for one night only, transported to South America via the seriously good Latin and Jazz-Funk sounds of the band and Hannah's amazing Colombian cuisine. Catch Size9 at Croydon's summer festival this year. www.sizenine.net

3. Hot Chocolate, Red Peppers, Berocca and last weekends little bit of sunshine that made it necessary to consume these things.

I've got that weird lump-on-one-side-of-the-throat feeling and as various people have reported their ills to me recently, I can only assume that I too, am coming down with a cold no doubt induced by the fucked up weather system of our little island. The above selections of food stuffs are my weapons against it developing into something bad (god forbid that I'll get so ill that I don't make it to Valve on Saturday). Did you know that Red Peppers contain three times more Vitamin C than Oranges (and are better for the teeth)? Here's a tip, they go nicely with Houmous. My all time cure for colds, flus and hangover's however is Berocca- it turns your wee a weird yellow colour but it tastes wicked and is full of enough vitamins to revive the deadest of dub zombies (< guess who's back!). As for the Hot Chocolate, well- there's only one and it goes by the name of Green and Black's. A beautiful fairly traded tropical storm in a teacup but too much of it induces nightmares in which vertically challenged people wearing jet packs come and get ya...no lies, I'm still traumatised by that one.

4. Alright so the 'Reasons to be cheerful' song only has 3 reasons, but I've got a few more including:
Chatting to Youngsta about why CD-J's can never rival Vinyl (coming soon)....Reaching Blues and Soul Magazine with a pic of Mala on the decks, Poax looking gruff and Wiley and Jammer feelin the vibes at Forward>>....Reading Riko Dan's blog (thanks to Blackdown for the link)....and much, much more....