Chaos part deux

Oof - holiday business has meant there's not been much in the way of online updates cos we've been living it hard in the real world. See for yoursens...



Bryony Gormless



Red trouser brigade goin' down



Poulet - roasted



Hometown vibes innit



Breakfasting on pig



It's a pride ting



Pre-Pride cocktails



Sweets



Oh-oh



Geller flex



Murky

Shangaan Electro know what time it is

If ass shaking is an art, then Shangaan Electro would be the dancing equivalent of Picasso. The music made by this South African group is perfect for wriggling your booty to, albeit at speeds which could result in your hips coming clean off if you get too carried away - Billed as 'New Wave Dance Music' these digital, electronic sounds are guaranteed to make you sweat, especially those which move at the higher end of 180 bpm. When they played at the Rich Mix in Bethnal Green the other week, Nozinja, the producer and man at the healm of this outfit, claimed theirs is the 'fastest music in the world'. The thick, fuggy stink of sticky BO that surrounded the frenetically dancing crowd on what must have been one of the hottest days of the year suggested that his statement could well be true.



The collective were riding a real wave of hype when they landed in East London the other week, fresh from showing Sonar how it goes down. And the hype meant that Rich Mix was packed to the rafters when they wriggled on stage. The Secousse Soundsystem had got proceedings warm from the off with some electronic, housey stylings and this prescription of sound, plus the £4 pints of Stella Black, meant the room was well lubed up by the time the main act appeared.

Shangaan's live flex consists of Nozinja as the ring master behind a pair of decks - Then upfront we have four dancers, each taking it in turns to shake their bits to the sounds of the Shangaan hits. And shake they did, to ever increasing cheers of rapture from the crowd. We'd never seen such moves. By the time they'd got audience members up on stage to attempt to ape the vigorous shape throwing agwaning up on stage, the cheers were almost loud enough to drown out the sound of their beats. Whistles, samples, Guantanamo Bay style boiler suits, terrifying masks and extreme pace is their ting - Catch them if you can...

Under cover of the night

Big tunes have been a-popping over the last seven days like acne on a pubescent's face. Neon Jung is a mate of ace techno dude Lone - it's weird head music.

Neon Jung Just Can't Leave It Alone FACT review



I've had a little slurry of business for Hyponik of late - check 'em below... My favourite is the Kuedo - it's proper wonky businesssssss produced by Jamie Vex'd...

Kuedo - Videowave EP review



Milyoo - Colours/Games review

Hype Williams - Kelly Price w8 Gain Vol. II review

Big Boi is Heaven

Big Boi's album has been a big look round our neck of the aural woods for time - As one half of Outkast and now as a producer and rapper in his own right, he's got a serious rep for tossing out tunes you need to file in the cupboard marked 'large'. So we jumped right on board when news of a solo London gig popped out of the internet - The location for the showdown was Heaven near Charing Crossa and the flex was turntables and microphones. In shades and tracksuit, he bounced through a bevvy of Outkast classics and the biggies from his new one. I missed Shutterbug due to incontinence issues - the fatal error was asking for the now traditional 2.5 pints rather than just the one. It's to save time in busy bar situations with the extra half thrown in at the beginning to give the discerning drinker something to do while waiting for the additional pint to be poured. Not only does it save time, but it gets you 2.5 times more hammered and in an even faster fashion than one normally does. So by the time Big Boi concluded tings, and after a slightly cringey invitation to the ladies in the house to dance on stage with him and his crew, it was before ten pm and were shitfaced. Cue going back to a gaff and cramming as much ganj and lager as possible into our minds. Cue feeling like the world was going to end the following morning. No pain no gain...

A love from outer space and Andrew Weatherall's small feet

Stoke Newington isn't the first place which springs to mind when contemplating psyche-house and slo-mo disco. You'd be forgiven for thinking that these strains of cosmic electronics would more likely be found orbiting the earth somewhere near Mars than tethered to the dancefloor of a basement in NW16. But A Love From Outer Space, the monthly club night lorded over by Lord Sabre Andrew Weatherall and his chum Sean Johnston, does the interplanetary hardwork so you don't have to. These elder statesmen of dance have been roaming through galaxies of cosmic house for time - they've plucked out throbbers from among the stars, then stashed them away in a dungeon out of sight but not out of mind - Thing is this bevy of electronic beauties are only allowed to roam free once a month in the basement of the Drop up in Stokey. So you need to act with due diligence if your ears are gonna catch a glimpse of them. Held on a Thursday eve, it's one strictly for the heads who don't care about tomorrow - or at least can get away with spending the day moping on Facebook or 'working from home'.

We journeyed up to Stoke Newington to see what all the fuss was about for the June session - having been on the pints straight from work, sustenance came in the form of sausage and chips - which is about as cosmic as it gets. When we landed at the Drop, greasey of face and mind, Weatherall was outside toking on a cig wearing prime cuts from the 'man of the sea' side to his wardrobe. There was no way of speaking to him without coming across as a fawning fan boy but I took solace in the fact he has a very small pair of feet. He may have produced Primal Scram's rave opus Screamdelica, is one of the best techno djs and producers in the land and taken so many drugs that he can't remember five years of his life during the early noughties but he seemingly owns a pair of feet last seen on a 13 year-old boy.

Once we'd stopped gasping over the size of his teeny hooves, we waded into the small dungeon. The Drop may be miniature in size but is massive in vibes and the two were laying some seriously tough digi-business. Every tune landed with a massive punching clout - it meant the tunes and the lager coursing through our veins ensured that whatever drops of 'cool' we'd saved outside were utterly lost - The two of us were whooping and dancing like loons right down at the front getting sweaty with the mixed up crowd of tourists, students and gnarled elderly gurners. The walk home was spennt banging on about what a fucking pair of genie-i these two are. The next day was spent eating stodge and attempting not to do anything too stupid at work...
Massive scenes...

Check my Resident Advisor review - I didn't send them any images of the sustenance...



Our pilot - nice tats



Having it



Pre-party late evening nosh up



Post-rave morning nosh up

Piff

The last few weeks or so have been pure and unadulterated hype with almost too much shizzle and bizzle going on. The standard bouts of extreme binging have been balanced out by behaviour which could almost be classed as civilised. Almost. Perhaps. In a parallel dream world where it's normal to consume lager all the time, sleep for an average of 5 hours and usually at a time when most folk are up and about going down Homebase to source new shelves.

Big tings include going up to London's zoo and checking in with perhaps the most distinctive of all the animals - the bearded pig. Other hype business included getting relatively close to a sloth (a sleeping sloth - natch) and the wonderful facial hair of an Emperor Tamarin monkey - Stands to reason that being a peacock is kind of a big deal round our way but these little tinkers take the proverbial style biscuit and make it their own by owning huge, white taches. They look preposterous... Other than that, we attended a 20-20 cricket match down at the Oval and Nando's have promised to open a new branch within spitting distance of the entrance to our office. Fingers crossed the birds come home to roost sooner rather than later. Big up the Peri Peri crew...




New mug - steeze? Steeze...



Hello you. That's right. You



Sheffield



A bearded pig




'Weeeeeeey' - down at the cricket

Fist kissing with fractured arms

Muscle kissing when you've fallen in the shower and done a real mash up to a limb can be tricky. But Chinchilla Price AKA The Cosmic Chef went above and beyond the call of duty earlier in the month to show that you can still drink, DJ and kiss the fist despite being injured. Props to the champ. Only hours earlier he'd been in A&E being pieced back together again...

It was the KTF First birthday bash down at the London Fields and was, as per, a suitably messy affair - the session culminated in a brief dalliance with psychedelic worlds while still physically being in our front room in Hackney. Roll on the next dance. Hopefully we'll have all our limbs and brains fully-functioning and pointing in the right direction by then...