Basement Crates: 37 & 38 (& 39)

King Sun: Coming Soon (Profile, 1989)
I've been having a good root around down there (the basement) and found a stack of stuff which, as far as I can make out, I've not played since the last time someone asked me to DJ. As you can imagine, that was a tremendously long time ago (with no major bookings on the horizon, either). So, I think I bought this at HMV in Guildford back when the very idea of owning a hip-hop LP was exciting. It's hard to imagine feeling like that now, isn't it? That craving for more, buying stuff that you know almost nothing about, but you're willing to take the risk because you might just luck out. Anyway, King is still banging away, working for his next break. Someone more cynical than me might say that he should have got over it all by now and found something else to do, but I feel rather generous, so, good luck to you KS. And, if you're reading, can I just mention that while I like Coming Soon's "I'm acting silly, she's just a lady...", a lot, I think "A nice dinner, on the spaghetti tip..." might just be my favourite lyric of all time. So thank you!

Isla Cameron and Jack Armstrong: My Bonny Lad / O Can Ye Sew Cushions (Concert Hall, 1970)
I remember buying this on eBay when I used to work at a rather downmarket dance music magazine. All the people who worked there were lovely, but the people who ran the gaff were utter, utter, um, something else. Anyway, I instigated Folk Music Fridays there and I would play Pentangle and Barry Dransfield and Toni Arthur records. How the young people screamed with joy when this collection of traditional Northumbrian folk music slipped from the envelope. Anyway, it's full of nice tunes, so why worry? And, while we're at it, why does no one write songs called O Can Ye Sew Cushions anymore? What's wrong with people? All this nonsense about cars and jewellery and the like when the real question is, what are your needle skills like? Can you handle a whole sheet? Apparently, Isla learnt this song from a Mrs Mackay - a Scots lady. It's an ancient Scots nurse's lullaby. I think it's safe to say Isla had a fairly sweet set of "pipes" on her.

BONUS POST
Big Daddy Kane: Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now (UPSO mix) (Cold Chillin', 1989)
In 1989 this was the sound of The Future. UPSO were Blacksmith, the late 80s and early 90s remixers of choice for nearly everyone. Sounds ridiculous now, but in a good way.

Holidays: Whose Good Idea Was That Then?

Hello! Are you back at work? It's cold, isn't it? Right after the last post we jumped into an Addison Lee cab and made for Heathrow. Scrap and S were full of "beans", while I felt completely bloody awful. Sick, tired, full of cold and thick with late-December London booze-fuelled poison. I was looking forward to the 11-plus hour flight as it meant I could sit in a chair for hours drinking Lemsip. You're right, I really was a barrel of laughs. Anyway, that was Tuesday morning. By Wednesday morning we were at the hotel, just about the single best place ever. Instead of wind and rain and grey skies it was hot and bright and quiet and calm and the sun felt good on our mottled, milk-white skins. By tea-time we were enjoying a Singapore Sling and watching the sun - now a blood-red ball - dip down into the Andaman Sea. We looked at each other - quite a lot - either just smiling widely and wondering whether we really were here, or whether it was some sort of waking dream. In fact, thanks to the jetlag - we're still dealing with the return journey's dose - it actually was some sort of waking dream.



We'd be first to breakfast (at 6am) for fruit and noodle soup (sometimes fish ball, sometimes chicken, sometimes white ear mushroom) and coffee. To be to honest, we had noodle soup for breakfast every single day. I generally had a version of it for lunch and dinner too. We were also first to bed (at 9pm at the latest) after a couple of drinks and, possibly, a single delicious gasper on the balcony (although Thailand's policy of plastering it's cig packets with autopsy snaps did take the shine off the moment a little). We usually squeezed in a couple of hours nap in the afternoon too.



So the days began to take shape. We swam, had ten minutes in the sun and got back under the umbrella. Scrap met up with his pals at kid's club for an hour or two meaning S and I could actually read books and relax for the first time in four and a half years. I read Gomorrah and S read The Road Home. S even had to buy more books from the hotel gift shop. She described Second Chance as "by far the worst book I have ever read", but she read it all the same. I tried to work my way through David Simon's Homicide, but after the sharp brilliance of Roberto Saviano's book it seemed a bit ponderous and heavy. Scrap watched Wall-E and Scooby Doo Aloha. Best of all, we watched no telly and ate no cheese or wheat.

After a refreshing nap we drifted down to the beach for a swim or build a sandcastle or to just lie in the warm surf. S had a massage every single day. One afternoon she spent wrapped in something amazing at the spa and came back smelling of amazing oils. I got so lost in the moment I agreed to a pedicure (I can fully recommend the experience). We all got a little colour. The black bags under my eyes began to shrink (that might have been the Clinique products). We got used to never wearing more than swimming costumes. On Christmas Eve there was a party. It was interrupted by a huge downpour, but no one cared. Rain's warm and it feels nice on your head. I took the opportunity to slip back to the room for an unbrella, hoiking down two glasses of champagne on route. The Bangkok Symphony Orchestra played and there was a bizarre dance performance entitled "The Miracle Of Christmas". Santa came by to say hello. We drank wine for the first time in a week (it was horrible).



There was a little row of shops and restaurants outside the hotel where we bought drinks and snacks and had our lunch and got our laundry done (S got a bit obsessed with this service). I got a black pinstripe suit made by a lovely woman in an incense-perfumed tailors. I tried it on for the first time with my bare, brown feet poking out the bottom and liked it very much. We developed a taste for Nori Seaweed crisps and put lime juice on everything. In the evenings we ate steamed crab and the soda or tonic for your gin or vodka was served in its own tiny jug. This was, literally, the best holiday of all time. We came home to weather so cold it made our hair hurt.

Fabio starts school next week. I have "gone freelance". There is snow on the ground. It's always good to be home, but this morning we woke up and said to each other, "Wouldn't you like to be back at the Katathani?" and the answer was, "Yes. Quite a lot, actually."

Quick, Let's Go On Holiday!

We're off to the exotic east. Enjoy "winterval". See you all in 2009,
isn't it.

Winter Collection: Yule Log

This is one of those really old-fashioned cakes that I've not made since domestic science at school and thought would be easy, but actually, there's a lot here that can go wrong.
But as we're going to be away for Christmas and we were having a little neighbours' tea party yesterday, I thought I'd give it a go. I like to have everything sorted the day before but this really has to be eaten on the same day. I didn't enjoy the risk of making it on the morning of the party and although it was a bit of a faff and me and melted chocolate don't get on so well, it was a big hit and the icing covers a whole lot of cracks! Have a go!

Serves 12
75g self raising flour
50g cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
100g golden caster sugar, plus a little extra for sprinkling
5 large eggs
FOR THE FILLING
250g mascarpone
icing sugar, to taste
splash of double cream
FOR THE ICING
200ml double cream, broken into pieces
200g dark chocolate

1 Preheat the oven to 190C / Gas 5. Line a 30x40cm Swiss roll tin with baking parchment and rub with a little butter.

2 Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder into a bowl. In a second bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs until thick and airy – they should roughly triple in volume. Sift over the flour mixture and gently fold in, making sure there are no pockets of flour hiding in the bottom of the bowl.

3 Pour into the tin as evenly as possible then bake for 10 – 12 minutes until just firm to the touch. Sprinkle some sugar onto a sheet of baking parchment and turn out the sponge. Peel off the paper then roll it up with the new sheet of paper inside. Leave to cool completely.

4 Make the icing. Pour the cream into a small and bring to the boil. Add the chocolate and stir to melt. Leave to cool completely then chill until thick enough to spread – keep your eye on it as it cools - it’s runny for ages then suddenly changes from runny to thick to too-thick-to-spread in quite a short time.

5 Make the filling: beat the mascarpone with a wooden spoon to soften a little then add icing sugar to taste – it may be a little to thick to spread so a little cream to soften.

6 Open out the sponge and spread with the mascarpone mixture, if you like, grate over some chocolate then roll up. Cut a diagonal slice off and place next to the log to look like a branch. Spread with the chocolate icing in a wood-like pattern and leave to set. Dust with icing before serving.

Vintage Magazine Joy Friday

Situated over this side of the internet, some kind soul has scanned in years and years and years worth of old Radio Shack catalogues. He - I'm assuming it is a "he" - calls them "catalogs" because he's out of the Americans, but let's not quibble. The point is this, if you can't get, say, an hour's solid pleasure from looking (adoringly) at 40 year old tape decks, then, frankly, there's something wrong with you.

Winter Collection: Soft Roast Potatoes

I like my potatoes roasted this way, they get a nice sticky bottom and some crunch on the top. They're best made with my current obsession, Bartlett rooster potatoes but desirees will do.
Enough for 6
small knob of butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2.5kg rooster potatoes, peeled and cubed
200ml hot chicken or vegetable stock
grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
2 garlic bulbs
1 tbsp dried oregano

1 Preheat the oven to 180ºC, gas mark 4. Heat the butter and oil in a large roasting tin. Add the potatoes, stock and lemon juice and cook for 30 minutes, turning once or twice.

2 Separate the garlic cloves but do not peel. Add to the pan with the lemon rind and oregano and toss well together. Roast for a further 30 minutes, without turning until the potatoes are golden brown, the garlic is tender and the stock has disappeared

This New Record Is Literally Quite Good

Baskery: Harsh (Glitterhouse, 2009)
I don't know what it was that first attracted me to the Bondesson sisters, the Swedish triplets that make up Baskery, but the fact the one on the right looks like Becky from Coronation St doesn't hurt. Anyway, my goodness, whatever it was, I'm pleased to report they play nice music as well. Harsh is from their rather wonderful album Fall Among Thieves. They play stand-up bass and banjos and snare drums and they holler sweetly and they seem like perfectly lovely young ladies. I hope I never hear of anything that will rob me of this illusion.

Paramount: Loving London All Over Again

Had a night out in Paramount last week. It's an absolutely amazing place 32 (and 33) floors up the Centrepoint tower. It looks good from Bedford Square:


and London looks so good from the viewing gallery that I - and everyone I was with - spent almost the whole night gazing out of the window going, "Blimey..." and cooing about how good London looked from, literally, the sky. This, I feel, can only be a good thing.

Winter Collection: Chocolate Brownie Cake

A bit squidgy in the middle and crumbly on the outside. With so many nut allergies around I swapped the usual chopped nuts for sultanas.
Serves 12
225g unsalted butter
350g dark chocolate
4 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
350g light muscovado sugar
225g plain flour
75g small sultanas
small handful chocolate buttons
cocoa powder for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180°C, gas mark 4. Grease a 23cm and line a 23cm loose-bottomed cake tin.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a small pan. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla until pale and airy. Stir in the chocolate mixture, flour and sultanas and pour into the tin. Scatter over the chocolate buttons.

Bake for about an hour until risen and craggy. Shake the tin gently, a slight wobble in the centre is good. Leave to cool in the tin for a while. Dust lightly with cocoa before slicing.

It's Indie-Pop O'Clock

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart: Young Adult Friction (Fortuna Pop, 2009)
It has come to my attention that The Pains' new album is, literally, the greatest record ever made (as long as your idea of truly great records hovers around the greatest hits of The Razorcuts and very early Slowdive). It's like acid house never happened! Happily, on mornings like this one - - that combination works for me just fine. Their album doesn't really exist on the internet yet, but here's a handy Amazon link to check sometime in January (it's out in February - the one on this link is an import copy).

Winter Collection: Afternoon Apple Cake

Serves 6 - 8
150g golden caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
150g butter, room temperature, pus extra for dotting
2 large eggs, beaten
250g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground mixed spices
2 Bramley apples
100g small sultanas

Preheat the oven to 180°C, gas mark 4. Grease and line the base of a 1kg loaf tin.

Whisk together the butter and sugar until creamy then beat in the eggs, flour, baking powder and spices – it’s quite a stiff mixture.

Peel the apples and dice one and half of them. Thinly slice the remaining half. Stir the diced apple and sultanas into the cake mix then spoon into the tin. Smooth the surface them arrange the apple slices on top. Dot with butter, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 50 – 60 minutes – turn the oven down a bit if it starts to get too dark.

Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

The Inaugural Religious Friday

Funkadelic: Talk About Jesus (Westbound Records, 1971?)
George Clinton's Funkadelic were known for many things, but keenly-felt religious hymning wasn't one of them. Perhaps that's an oversight on all our parts, as they clearly had "it" in them - "it" being a love for the lord as well as a head full of eyeball-scouringly powerful chemical enhancers. Exemplary work from Bernie Worrell on the old joanna to "boot". Much more of this sort of think here.

This New Record Is Literally Quite Good

Andrew Bird: Effigy (Bella Union, 2009)
Mr Bird is "a Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist, lyricist and whistler." He is also a writer of brilliantly mournful songs like Effigy that are a little like Leonard Cohen had the venerable Canadian gloomster spent a little less time on remote Greek islands and a little more time inside with the curtains closed watching vintage Scooby Doo reruns and listening to ancient sea shanties. If you have an un-scratched itch for twenty-one year old Momus records then, frankly, you'll love it.

Music For A Surprisingly Cold London Evening

Susumu Yokota: Kodomotachi (Leaf, 1999)

Music For A Surprisingly Sunny London Morning

State River Widening: Your Chance Ended There (Rocket Girl, 1998)

Winter Collection: Cheese Scones

Makes 8
450g plain flour, plus extra for kneading and dusting
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
150g mature Cheddar, coarsely grated
284ml buttermilk or low fat natural yogurt
3 tbsp semi-skimmed milk
2 tbsp wholegrain mustard

1 Preheat the oven to 220 C, gas mark 7. Mix the flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda and Cheddar in a large bowl.

2 Mix together the buttermilk, milk and mustard then add to the bowl. Mix with a wooden spoon then using your hands, bring together to make a soft dough. Knead lightly until smooth then shape into a 22cm round loaf.

3 Cut the round into eight wedges then transfer to a non-stick baking sheet. Sprinkle with a little flour and bake for 20 – 30 minutes until browned and crusty. Cool a little and eat warm or split and toast the next day for breakfast.

New Music Wednesday In Dub

Peter Murder Tone: Paper Tiger (Jahtari, 2008)
Peter is a middle aged social worker chap from Australia who now lives in the UK. He has no reason to make digital dub records this good. I half-inched this - wholesale - from this marvelous record on which many other knob-twiddling types make merry with the delay units and cavernous reverb settings. Thanks to my old pal Bill at Cargo for this beauty.

I Could Do This...

... But I just can't be bothered.

Basement Crates: The "Pot Roast" Year(s)

Gravediggaz: Diary Of A Madman (Gee Street, 1994)
My very good friend Billy and I used to DJ as Pot Roast. I know, but it was a long time ago. Our reasoning was, we played the sort of music that sounded quite good if you'd inhaled and our regular gig was at The Albany on a Sunday night (what a night...). Anyway, I found a few of our most beloved tunes while looking for some cutlery the other day. I actually felt a little choked up as I pulled out what young people used to refer to as "the jizz-ams". So, The Gravediggaz were a huge hit with us, I remember seeing them play an amazing showcase at a club in Ladbroke Grove, and this tune was always somewhere near the front of "the box" (you see how I remember the lingo?).

Pressure Drop: Back 2 Back (Main and Dub mixes) (Big World Records, 1990)
I used to play this record so much that it actually haunted my dreams. It had everything I wanted from music in 1990, ie, it was a bit hip hop, a bit funk, a bit abstract and a bit weirdly ambient. The lyrics sort of make your eyes water now (although I like the way the guy says, "ray-shism"), but this is nearly 20 years old now - let's cut ourselves some slack, eh? Pressure Drop got signed up in the great post Coldcut / Massive Attack goldrush of 1990, but it never happened for them (that makes a nice change for Landcroft House, doesn't it?) This is the sort of record that (and here's another popular DJ phrase from the time) really "turns around" loud (ie, it has a walloping big bassline which sounds good if, perchance, you have inhaled / ingested and hear it on huge speakers). I've included both mixes because, frankly, they're both incredibly good.

E-Z Rollers: Believe (Foul Play remix) (Moving Shadow, 1994)
There was a school of drum and bass in the early to mid-90s that wasn't exactly "intelligent" and wasn't exactly whatever the other thing was (whither, "jump up") and this E-Z Rollers tune sort of typified that sound. Foul Play's drum programming is ludicrously tight and there's this full-on, proper head-spinning dance-floor diva vocal (to this day, Billy and I will sing, "Be-Leee-Eeeave" to each other for no clear reason and we have a combined age of 82) to "boot".


Bob Andy: Dubbing Home (I-Anka Records, 1989)
This is the one we used to play when we were, well, going home. A deed that, in itself, used to raise a few cheers. If there's a record in the world that makes you want to raise your lighter to the sky and sway slowly and drunkenly more than this one (bearing in mind you're not allowed to raise your lighter to the sky in clubs anymore), then I, for one, have never heard it. Fantastic record. Happy days!

Basement Crates: "Jazz" Tuesday

Jimmy Smith: In Search of Truth (Delta, 1980)
Neither of these tracks are really jazz at all. This wonderful Jimmy Smith track is, basically, a done-in-one-take blues vamp and the Emperor's New Clothes choon is consensually funkual, breakbeat dub with some silly noises on it. But I love both of them dearly, despite not having heard either of them for a Very Long Time indeed (hang on a minute, that's probably why I lo... etcetc). Eagle-eyed readers will notice that this is the later Milan pressing from 1989 - oh yes. Anyhoo, this was originally from the Lalo Schifrin soundtrack to Battlecreek Brawl (also the title of a fantastic track by Brit hip hop chaps, Gunshot) and it is, literally, really good.

The Emperor's New Clothes: Nature Never Repeats Itself (Acid Jazz, 1993)
I think I might start a strand where I just collect together vintage press releases. Then again, maybe I'll just throw myself out of a window and be done with it. 15 years ago, this sort of thing was - to my ears - incredibly wonderful and strange. It still sounds pretty good to me, but this sort of ambient dub has, sadly, been cheapened by being whacked on every TV ident between here and a thousand years in the future. Whatever, this is still a great record. It never really happened for TENC - if you're out there, get in touch...