This is a short interview by Chris Tubbs with Stevie Kotey: member of world-famous production outfit Chicken Lips, owner of Bear Funk Records, and main man behind Kotey Extra Band.
They chat about Chicken Lips’ upcoming album, his origins and his inspirations, as well as fitting in a quick behind the scenes look at the disco juggernaut that is Bear Funk Records.
The Native Instruments collaborator (and of course, Warp artist) gets on camera to offer his thoughts on music making and live performance, among other things.
Before we get into the interview Fact magazine did, I would just like to say "this album is da nutz" an since late 2009 i have been in full support of tracks like 'Restless Natives' & 'BoneYard'..... As always a biggup to Danny Native good work sir.. Have you ever dreamed of a music that combines the DIY swagger of hardcore and grime with the swing of garage, the bump of UK funky, the ineffable jack-factor of house and the surgical precision of techno? Yeah? Me too. Well, here’s some good news: last week I took delivery of Tenement Yard, the new album from Altered Natives, and it looks as though our dream may have come true.
It’s the first of two albums that Altered Natives, the one-man army of London’s Danny Yorke, is set to release this year on his digital label, Eye4Eye. Yorke has been in the game a long time – earning an estimable rep within the broken beat community before breaking (brukking?) out into the wider world last year. It made sense that Yorke would be adopted by the UK funky scene, for whose dances his swaggering, dancehall-inflected but assuredly housey productions are perfect firepower, and he enjoyed a well-earned crossover hit with ‘Rass Out’ – an addictive number showcasing the core Natives sound of slinky, rave-ready melody and tough, live-sounding drum fills looped and layered to the point of delirium. What really stood out about ‘Rass Out’ was its sense of timing, and its shapeliness: the way it managed to pull off sudden shifts and handbreak turns without losing liquidity of groove or coming over all skittish.
Tenement Yard is a truly British techno, born of, and for, the deep-rooted but ever-mutable soundsystem sensibility unique to these shores.
I for one assumed ‘Rass Out’ was a one-off by a new producer, and at the time didn’t think about exploring any further. My colleague Tom Lea, however, got in touch with Yorke and found out about his career prior to this release, interviewing him and commissioning an Altered Natives FACT mix along the way (one of the best we’ve ever had). Since then many more people in the dubstep and nouveau UK house scene have got wise to Danny’s sound - Kode9, who has actually been spanking Altered Natives dubs in his DJ sets for ages, recently invited him to remix Ikonika’s ‘Idiot, and I believe Night Slugs have him lined up for a 12″ release later this year.
But Altered Natives, and his new album, Tenement Yard, deserve to find an audience outside of the UK bass-chasing community as well. For me, Tenement Yard sounds like what Horsepower Productions were heading towards on 2002’s bottomlessly brilliant In Fine Style and passages of its breaksier, proto-dubstep follow-up, To The Rescue (2004) – a truly British techno, born of, and for, the deep-rooted but ever-mutable soundsystem sensibility unique to these shores.
The spry garage-techno path which Horsepower started upon but eventually abandoned (in order to help forge the new Croydon style with Hatcha, Skream et al) is but one of several aborted or forgotten underground narratives that Tenement Yard seems to pick up, dust down and carry forward across its zippy duration. It marks an obvious continuation of the broken beat tradition, a thread running from Nu Era and Maddslinky through to more recent fare from Dave Huismans (2562, A Made Up Sound) and Martyn, yes, but it also tugs some much-needed new life (ooh-er) into the Funky thread.
The insouciant, “high-upon-high” spirit of ‘ardkore reverberates throughout this album
One of the reasons I got so excited about the kind of funky being pushed by Marcus Nasty two years ago was because I imagined it would lead to music like Tenement Yard – house and techno with London pirate character. Turns out it did – it just took a year longer than expected; to be precise, roughly six months months after I’d completely given up hope. Better late than never and all that. On Altered Natives’ ‘Body Gal’ and ‘What Life Once Was’, the evolutionary leap is almost literal – their pinched dub-chords recall both Roska’s ‘Elevated Levels’ and the frost-bitten Berlinism of a Radio Slave or a Shed, but Yorke takes the drum choppage to a level of dirt and disorientation that none of those esteemed producers would be willing or able to countenance. ‘Afterlife Riddim’ sets out as a bashy Afro drum work-out a la Perempay, before unsettling the equation with deep-scooping bass, Benny Ill-style voodoo FX and a creeping undercurrent of xylophone dissonance that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Aphex record.
The insouciant, “high-upon-high” spirit of ‘ardkore reverberates throughout Tenement Yard, more balls-out authentically than in, say, the more streamlined breakbeat techno tranmissions of recent Shed and Millie & Andrea. It’s there not just in the big bad Belgian vamps (though ‘Oh My Zipper’ delivers those in spades), but in the liberal use of samples – not least the vocal fragments, from squeaky feminine pressure to tetchy badman chat, which combine to sound mad as a London high-street at 25 degrees C . The drum-sounds are largely sampled too: “I’m a serious lover of finding drums to hack up,” Yorke told FACT last year. “Personally I like using samples as opposed to drum machine kits. I like dirt in my tracks.”
“I’m a serious lover of finding drums to hack up…Personally I like using samples as opposed to drum machine kits. I like dirt in my tracks.” - Altered Natives
And my, what dirt. The helicoptering breakbeats of opening track ‘Blackvibes’ and the later ‘4Four’ (a priceless slab of martial house brutalism) nod to early Rob Playford, particularly 2 Bad Mice’s ‘Waremouse’, but these breaks are just part of a more complex rhythmic make-up. That’s the thing with Altered Natives – he’s not content to settle for one beat pattern and bleed it dry over the course of a track, as pretty much every other artist on the planet is. There are at least three distinct drum parts running through each of his productions, and they’re made to collide and collude so tightly that the resulting tracks can be tracky, trancey, breaksy, jacking and rampantly bruk all at the same time.
The most potent examples of this are the Carl Craig-esque ‘Splintered’ and particularly ‘I’m…Sexy!’, which hitches ‘Show Me Love’ bass to broken, bogle-friendly yard rhythm and still manages to sound heads-down and tunnelistic enough to work the ‘floor at Berghain (well, sort of). The highlight of the album arrives in the shape of ‘It’s Just A Crush” - a pulverising four-square club banger, driven by an unashamedly bombastic piano riff, bonkers cymbal crashes and a nagging, spine-catching rave motif that would keep even the most bug-eyed techno viking satisfied – indeed, this one jacks so hard that moshing feels like a more appropriate response than dancing.
‘It’s Just A Crush’ jacks so hard that moshing feels like a more appropriate response than dancing.
In what’s been a fairly dreary year for house/techno albums – the only essentials to my mind being Actress’s excellent but punishingly introspective Splazsh and Dettmann’s fierce but utterly frigid Dettmann - Altered Natives’ Tenement Yard comes from way, way underground to save the show. Rejecting wholesale the sweet-toothed synthesizer sounds that have become such a fixture of the Hyperdub-house era, it’s a wonderful return to the real raw, and not at the loss of depth or sophistication. As hectic, unpredictable and excessive as Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant, but far more crisply edited, Tenement Yard ought to win over all but the most purist and hard-hearted.
Oh, and when Danny got wind us of FACT’s plans to publish the piece, he very kindly offered to mix all of Tenement Yard’s tracks into a handy 35-minute sampler for you, dear reader, to enjoy free of charge. How diamond-like is that? So if my ringing endorsement has made you at all curious, do yourself a favour and get downloading. And if you like what you hear as much as I know you will, be sure to buy the album when it’s released through Eye4Eye later this month. Look out too for past and future releases on Eye4Eye not just from Natives but also Surra, Ceramic and others – more info here.
Again this is another product like Serato and Traktor that i dont much care for but I do however realise that nuff of you do...... so heres what Pioneer have to say....
"rekordbox™ is the best way of preparing and managing your tracks, be it at home, in the studio, or even on the plane! It allows you to import music from other music management software using the Bridge function or by simply adding them into the software for management. rekordbox™ will work out the BPM and allow you to set hot cue and loop points into the track, utilizing a full beat grid view in advance, as well as color coding your music and adding all the ID3 information so it appears automatically later on any CDJ-2000 or 900. Working with rekordbox™ also means that when tracks are exported to a USB key or SD card, the CDJ-900 or CDJ-2000 will load the waveforms instantly. The database layout within the software can be customized to suit individual DJ style which enables personalized layouts when browsing on your CDJ-900 / CDJ-2000s. The software's unique reverse functionality enables the new CDJs to record your cue, loop & set history during your set which can be recalled in rekordbox™ later. If you enable the Quantize feature within the CDJ-2000 / CDJ-900, then rekordbox™ makes loop and cue points snap to the beat (1ms accurate), ensuring beat-perfect loops and cues.
More than being the central music preparation software for the CDJ-900 / CDJ-2000, rekordbox™ will also be fully compatible with future Pioneer DJ products across the range. As clubs begin to upgrade to the CDJ-900 and CDJ-2000 from the CDJ-1000MK3, the ability to travel and arrive at the club with your music prepared on a single USB or SD card (such as a USB flash memory key) is now a reality."
Z Records is set to release 20 Years of Joey Negro, a three-disc compilation looking back on the prolific UK producer's career to date.
The collection marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Dave Lee's first 12-inch under his Joey Negro guise: Do It, Believe It on famed New York house imprint Nu Groove. The compilation will be released through Lee's own Z Records, although mixing responsibilities have been handed to his long term friends Grant Nelson and DJ Spinna, who take care of a disc each.
On CD1 Nelson tackles Lee's house output under his vast array of aliases: Akabu, Sessomatto, Doug Willis, Jakatta and Raven Maize material is mixed-up alongside a clutch of Joey Negro tracks and remixes. DJ Spinna meanwhile, shines a light on Lee's work in seven-piece live act The Sunburst Band, which also includes remixes of the group from Dennis Ferrer, Idjut Boys and Henrik Schwarz. And rounding out the collection, CD3 serves as a bonus disc offering exclusive edits, remixes and productions.
If you're unsure as to what to expect sound-wise, allow us to point you in the direction of our recent Playing Favourites feature with Lee, in which RA's Finn Johannsen drew upon tracks from Blaze, Esther Williams and Doobie Brothers. Lee has built his career upon a deep-seated love of disco and classic house sounds, which was certainly in plain view during their conversation.
Tracklist CD 1 – Joey Negro Mixed by Grant Nelson 01. Erro - Change For Me / MAW - Backfired (Accapella) 02. Mistura - Think Positive 03. Doug Willis - Spread Love / Joey Negro - Can't Get High Without You(Accapella) 04. Z Factor - We'll Keep Climbing 05. Joey Negro - Can't Get High Without You 06. Joey Negro - Love Hangover (DJ Spen Remix) 07. Joey Negro - Ride The Rhythm 08. Raven Maize - Forever Together (Grant Nelson Remix) 09. The Sunburst Band - Fly Away 10. Dave Lee feat. Ann Saunderson - You're Not Alone 11. The Blackbyrds - Mysterious Vibes 12. Joey Negro - Must Be The Music (Nicola Fasano Remix / Grant Nelson Re-Fix) 13. Nova Fronteira - Baila Conmigo 14. Dave Lee - Latronica 15. MAW feat. India - Backfired (Joey Negro Remix / Grant Nelson Special Edit) 16. Z Factor - Makes You Crazy 17. Yolanda Wyns - I Know You, I Live You (Joey Negro Remix / Grant Nelson Re-visit) 18. Jakatta - Scattering Stars 19. Akabu - I'm Not Afraid Of The Future 20. Grant Nelson Epilogue
CD 2 – The Sunburst Band Mixed by DJ Spinna 01. Searching 02. What's Your Sign? 03. Do You Really Love Me? 04. Moving With The Shakers 05. U Make Me So Hot (Yam Who? Mix) 06. We Can Live Forever 07. Shabadowah 08. Far Beyond 09. Everyday 10. Dusk 11. Twinkle (Idjut Boys Remix) 12. Turn It Out (IG Culture Mix) 13. Atlantic Forest 14. Survivin' feat. Leroy Burgess 15. For All Eternity 16. Journey To The Sun (Dennis Ferrer Mix) / I'll Be There For You 17. Man of War (Henrik Schwarz Mix) 18. He Is (Ian Friday Tea Party Mix) 19. He Is (Album Mix) 20. Until The End of Time 21. I Know U Care 22. Fly Away
Z-Records will release 20 Years of Joey Negro in July of 2010.
As always I start off the week with my reviews if I have been out. So this week I went down to restless souls night Inspiration Information, as they had special guest Shuya Okino from the Kyoto Jazz Massive, who was in town for a one night only extravaganza.
When I touched down Phil Asher was downstairs bussin' out pure jazz/boogie/soul heat straight from vinyl, warming up nicely for Patrick Forge to come on and heat up the decks.
Patrick stepped up to really turn up the tempo with an eclectic selection, that got the crowd stepping in the name of boogie.
Then came Shuya's turn who played a very educated set, playing sounds from the world over yet he played in a very traditional Japanese manner by which I mean he was very safe, I personally wanted for him to go a bit further outside the box. Having said this I thoroughly enjoyed his set and would definitely recommend going to hear him play.
So yet again I must say another solid night co-ordinated by the restless soul fam, biggups to Phil Asher for again picking a wicked special guest. Check out the video below.....
Limestone Recordings relaunches with its first single by Deep House Souldiers "This Is Why We Dance". Originally released in 2003 this beautiful vocal piece captures the essence of soul and carries a message everyone can relate to. A timeless song that sounds as fresh today as when it was originally released. Look out for new rmusic on Limestone later this year from Boddhi Satva, Adrianne Archie, Jose Carretes & Matthew Bandy.
LR001 Deep House Souldiers "This Is Why We Dance" (Including Community Recordings & Rick Preston remixes)
1. This Is Why We Dance (Deep House Souldiers Original Mix) 2. This Is Why We Dance (Community Recordings Drum-appella) 3. This Is Why We Dance (Rick Preston's Steamer Lane Redub)
Now usually I do all the nights on a wednesday but this is pure QUALITY and not to be missed....
Also I have set up a £5 concessions list, so if you send an email to restless@restlesssoul.co.uk and mention At One Sound blogspot or just At One, you will be on the list. How good am I, to my readers??!! :-P See you there...
Downstairs
Boogie Connoisseur from Kyoto Jazz Massive shares his Soul with London Town for one night only.
This enigmatic sartorialist will be engaging us with a selection of Funk, Soul & Jazz Boogie Tokyo style.
Shuya Okino - Kyoto Jazz Massive / The Room - Shibuya
Alongside residents
Patrick Forge & Phil Asher
Upstairs
The SunSplash Antalya Warm Up Party.
Giving you Taster of Turkey's Biggest little Summer Festival.
Playing, Reggae, Roots, Soul, Funk & Freshness, we have the Pleasure to Introduce,
for the first Time at Inspiration Information, a fine selection of some of the Dj's Appearing
at Sunsplash Antalya this summer.
Manasseh
djsoulprovyder - Urban Jazz radio
Lebz & Vinny
Serkan
Time: 9pm-3am Venue: East Village, 89 Great Eastern Street, Shoreditch, London, EC2 Cost: £5.00 before 10 pm - £8.00 After
Some visuals of the sounds you can expect to hear.....
Shuya Okino and Toshio Matsuura Interview
KYOTO JAZZ MASSIVE Live Set 2009 - STAND UP feat. VANESSA FREEMAN
Bm Soho present: Black Coffee In-Store @ BM Soho, Saturday 15th May On Saturday, May 15th, soulful house hero Black Coffee will be playing a special in-store at London's leading underground dance music record store, BM Soho with vocals from none other than Bucie. Special treats include complimentary Kopparberg Cider, promotional giveaway of goodies and record signing; we get going at 4pm – get down early to avoid that road block…
Ahead of the release of their fifth full length album next week, we speak to foremost electronic live act Booka Shade about the making of ‘More,’ their impressive live show and why they started DJing again.
After the huge crossover success of their minimal club hit ‘Body Language’ everyone from your mum to your indie loving mate knew who Book Shade were. Then came albums Movement and The Sun and The Neon Light which transformed the German duo into a festival headlining live act, and they haven’t looked back since.
Well, they have, and have since taken up DJing again – read on for details – but their new album ‘More’ is once again made for the live arena; made for those big summer events under the sun. This time, though, it’s a rougher and more direct affair which joins the dots between their previous output. Ahead of their gig at Koko on May 13th, Booka Shade play at Koko on the 13th May (just £16.50 from ticketmaster.co.uk) we spoke to Arno to find out more…
Where are you and what are you doing at the moment?
I'm in the studio doing preparations for the first live show – we’ve had a holiday before we present the new album in all the major cities London, Dublin and so on.
At the moment we’re at the beginning of the tour - we just played Australia. Obviously at this stage, when you have a lot of new songs from a new album, you need to add or take away tracks until they fit - we just added one today to the playlist which wasn’t in before. There’s always tweaking to do basically, we always make some changes here and there throughout the whole tour.
So how much was the new album, More, made with the live shows in mind?
We wanted a lot of new songs we could play at the live shows. Many people know us for these energetic Booka Shade live shows so we wanted to know that when our fans put our album on before or after coming to see us in concert, it would sound the same as the live show.
Also it was real fun for us to bring this energy back. Our last album ‘The Sun and The Neon Light’ was more home listening and was moodier, slower darker - at that time that was important to us - we wanted slower tracks in the shows back then that’s why we had a real orchestra involved at some points.
This new album ‘More’ is rougher. There are songs on there that are really really rough, especially the first track ‘Havana Sex Dwarf’ - it’s the most forward-going track we’ve ever done.
Listening back to the first three albums they always had a similar set up: you have this more epic song writing which took you into the album – it was ‘Vertigo’ on Memento, then ‘Night Falls’ on Movement and ‘Outskirts’ on The Sun and The Neon Light - and, similarly, we always had a certain way to end the album.
With this one we wanted to show people from the first second onwards that it’s more about energy than big emotions – you have a track like ‘Havana Sex Dwarf’ and it’s straight in your face from the off.
So what inspired that shift in styles?
What inspired it and helped the production a lot was actually the DJing we did last year. We stopped doing the live shows at the end of festival summer because before that we’d toured constantly for the last 4 years or so with each album – 150 shows for Movement – so it was one constant touring period so we wanted a break from this.
Still, we didn’t just want to sit in the studio and work on the songs, we wanted to know what was going on in the clubs at that moment so the DJing was great for that – we could take the productions we did in the week and try them out with other tunes at weekends so that was very helpful.
So will you keep up the DJing?
Well for us the DJing will always be the real thing – we’re live musicians, we want to stand on the stage and present our own songs. But we’ll do a couple of DJ shows in Space in Ibiza cos that’s perfect for DJing, and we’ll probably do a few more in some summer locations but most of the year will be dominated by the live show.
With all that going on, then, how do you fit label stuff in?!
We’ve been not so much involved in the label- in the beginning when we all set up the label together we did the production together on the first dozen or fifteen releases now MANDY do A&R and we mainly get involved when we release and album.
OK back to the live show – can you tell us about the production and Booka Shade balls?
We took the whole production to Aus with the big light balls but for club shows we have a UK based crew as we need a special, smaller light show to take around – the lights are an important part of it.
You mention there both big festivals and smaller club shows - how much tailor sets for each audience?
We really don’t change the show round much – if it’s a big 20/30, 000 people show or a smaller 1500 people club, it’s bizarre that people except the fact we don’t have these huge techno bass drums as you’d expect for a big festival – instead we have the sexy beats and really we build grooves not big huge kick drops but people accept that and like the sounds so we don’t tailor the sets that much.
And what kit do you use?
We use Ableton live for backing tracks; Walter plays a Moog Synth Voyager which is nice as we can make fuller sounds with this big equipment. He also uses a mixing desk, KAOS pad, laptop and musically cues sequencers. For each song we have 10/12 individual parts for the melodies, the bass and stuff, all separated out ready to cue up.
On my side I have electronic drums but these are only for the triggers – I customise bespoke sounds with a laptop running Logic and a drum sampler called ‘Battery’ plus I have a lot or real cymbals I use.
We have a set list like and band – we don’t go on stage and jam. I believe the music of Booka Shade is designed in a way which we like with big breakdowns at the right point, melodies starting at specific points. But within the set list we can add or subtract, tease the people using all our triggers -we do as much as we can with our 4 hands to make it sound live.
There’s a lot to go wrong so if it does you really hear it – I think that’s the nice thing about the live show – people appreciate the roughness and realise when we hit a wrong note we are actually on stage, doing it live, working hard!
So do you use old as well as new tracks in the show?
We will present the new LP of course, we’re happy to have a lot of news songs in the set list but of course we have special versions of ‘Mandarin Girl’ and ‘Body Language’ which are always nice moments in the set. Were happy with these songs and happy to present them again in different ways.
Final question - what’s your World Cup prediction?
I can with a good heart say I don’t know anything about football. I was at a dinner the other night and someone mentioned a name and I asked who it was and everyone looked at me funny saying – that’s the coach of the national team! I didn’t know don’t ask me about football – that’s not for us, we’re happy just being musicians!
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