Griff says; Blanket Coverage - Turn off your television

Astute readers will recall me writing about melancholic, Swedish folk-rockers Turn off your television (pictured) back in April (see 'here'). Well, those of you who enjoyed last year's eponymous debut album will be excited to learn that the trio have newly released a teaser track off their newly recorded studio album, scheduled to be released on October 8th. The album is to be made be available on a name your price basis, presumably on their bandcamp page, so remember to look out for it. Here's the preview track, Blanket of Shame, which can be downloaded right now:



Enjoy.

Griff
xx

Griff says; If creativity is the field, copyright is the fence

Gordon is off globetrotting again, leaving Ray and I to our own devices back here at Streetlamp HQ. This, of course, means that there will be a dearth of 60s psychedelia on these pages over the next few weeks but there will be more hip hop. Oh yes, there will!

Hot on the heels of my last piece on the new Loki album, I wanted to draw your attention tonight to the compilation album 'Anti Copyright & Censorship Compilation Vol 1' released last month by the A Better Tomorrow netlabel. This latest release is a collaborative project of DIY, electronic music artists against copyright and censorship. The album features 45 tracks, ranging from downtempo, ambient electronica to UK conscious hip hop of the sort I normally champion. The album is only available from the A Better Tomorrow bandcamp page on a 'pay-what-you-want even-nothing' download scheme in-which users are encouraged to re-post on other blogs and websites. Any and all proceeds from the album will be going to the extremely worthy bloodinthemobile.org and various anti SOPA & PIPA causes.

 The album features two interesting and socially-conscious hip hop artists who I've had in my sights for a while now and who I think are well worth bringing to the attention of readers of the Streetlamp. Firstly, track 16 of the album is the Ruby Kid's 'Art vs. Industry':

This spoken-word poet, based in London (but originally from Nottingham, via Sheffield, and with roots in New York), first released this track on his excellent, early five track demo La Manif, which is free to download in its entirety from his bandcamp page.

The other artist worth seeking out is Captain of the Rant Vs. Hair Explosion who provide track 1, 'A Copy of A Copy of A Copy'.

This track first appeared on the duo's second EP 'Nudges, Whispers and Threats', which was released in April 2012 and is available to download from their bandcamp page on a name your price basis. Their first EP 'No Copyright Necessary', was released in May 2010 and is available from the same source.
I think Streetlamp readers will really like this duo's output as it combines thoughtful, and passionate spoken word poetry, which runs the gamut of human expression from rage to sarcasm to sorrow, with deep, dubby, trip hop beats. This makes for a genuinely absorbing and unsettling experience and as each song progresses you will find yourself unable to stop listening I predict.

 Captain of the Rant is an East London-based writer, spoken word performer and promoter and, with his literate and cerebral style, you're most likely to be pleasantly reminded of Scroobius Pip. His musical  partner, the mysterious Hair Explosion, provides the beats and musical production. It's a winning combination in this writer's opinion.

Griff
xx

Griff says; Loki - Never Mind the Pollok!

I've got a bit of Scottish hip hop for you again tonight in the shape of the new 12-track album Remind You by Loki and Bill Breaks. Fans of hip hop should recognise the name of Loki as probably Scotland's best known rapper who seems to have been around forever. In fact, he began rapping as a teenager in 2002 and his prolific output in the intervening years can make you forget that he's still only 27.

For those of you who might not be up to speed with Scottish hip hop, here's the standard Loki potted biography:
Loki is the stage name of Darren McGarvey who grew up in the badlands of Pollok, a peripheral district on the south-western edge of Glasgow associated with social deprivation, high levels of unemployment and poor housing. Loki grew up in a troubled family and, leaving home at age 16 following a family breakdown, he found himself living on the streets. Despite the eventual support of community services he still fell into the drug and alcohol culture pervasive in Glasgow's marginalised schemes before discovering that he could use music as his inspiration and guide in life.

His songs, performed in the broad Glasgow vernacular, deal unflinchingly with the realities of life in the city. As well as making music, Loki is a long-time social activist and has been involved in community groups since his teens. He is acutely aware of his role as a spokesperson for the voiceless and is determined to make us all remember that "every ned is a human being, with a heart and a soul and a story".

Loki's songwriting has matured over the years, I must admit that some of his early work left me cold, and Remind You shows him in a, mostly, thoughtful and reflective mood. In keeping with the Streetlamp's own obsessions, Loki's lyrical concerns are, understandably, political and socially conscious but I must add a warning here; don't expect a soft and fluffy liberal.  Loki has a sharp edge that can seem vicious or overly aggressive to those of you unused to Glasgow street 'banter'.
Here's track 2 from the album, These Things Happen, to give you a taster of what to expect:



The album can be downloaded on a 'name your price' basis from his bandcamp page. Loki can be found on Facebook and Bill Breaks can be found on Soundcloud.

Since making his name as a rapper, Loki has branched into many other areas of community art and activism, some of which I want to write about tonight.
Firstly, he is now running Volition, a unique community project for young people. The reason that it's unique is that it was set up and is run by Young People according to democratic principles. Volition engages 14 to 25 year old youth, many of whom are victims of a society that provides limited opportunities for them. Meaningful jobs are scarce, families are often in disarray and drugs and alcohol are everywhere. Volition aims to help them take control of their lives through mediums such as Music, Dance, Visual Art, Photography, Film, Recording and Live Events.

The project aims to challenge the negative stereotypes surrounding youth culture by encouraging members to conduct themselves in a thoughtful and positive manner with each other and the wider community. It also hopes to show that hip hop can give new meaning to their lives. As I have mentioned before on these pages, when rap was first introduced it was often dismissed as violent and homophobic by people who weren't willing to engage with it. Since then it has changed immeasurably and has become a universal language among young people. Indeed, it is often the only means of self-expression available to socially-marginalised, disenfranchised, urban youngsters, wherever they live in the world. Volition takes that language and helps the youngsters involved; overcome the deprivations that they have suffered, use creativity as a means to express anger, conquer their fears and look beyond their own present situation to a more fulfilled life.

Some of Volition's musical output can be found on the project's soundcloud page. They also have a Facebook presence 'here'.

As well as Volition, Loki has been involved this year with National Theatre of Scotland’s hip hop driven project 'Jump'. Fusing physical theatre, storytelling and the urban movement discipline of parkour, Jump has so far engaged over 1000 boys at Fife and Glasgow high schools in a series of workshops, training sessions and exercises, examining the fears and challenges faced in the transition from boyhood to manhood.

As the project progresses, Jump will collect the boys’ own stories and reflections on what it means ‘to be a man’, ‘to be strong’, gradually weaving a narrative into an evolving, large-scale, physical theatre event, styled around the urgent and fluid movement of parkour. Jump will culminate in a series of public performances in November 2012 – at Rothes Halls in Glenrothes, Fife, and Platform in Easterhouse, Glasgow. For details of dates, and to buy tickets see 'here'.

All good stuff, I'm sure you'll agree. And what's more, it seems that far from being the music of 'gangstas', hip hop really can save the world. Who'd have thought it!

Griff
xx

I Misplaced It At The Cinema: The London Nobody Knows

London, 1967.
If you were to believe the hundredweight of Pop culture tomes pontificating on the Swinging Sixties, you would believe that London was the very pendulum of all that was hip, trendy and happening. You would imagine Mary-Quant-skirted girls and Carnaby attired young gents swanning around like contemporary Byrons as the music of Pink Floyd or the Creation blared from Aston Martins.....right?
Well, Norman Cohen's 1967 filmed short (48mins) documentary 'The London Nobody Knows' will come as a real eye-opener and a bit of a culture shock!

Filmed in the very heart of London at the height of the Sgt Pepper era, Cohen's film paints a bleak and disorientating picture of London as a run-down slum filled with meth drinkers, doss houses and crumbling, decaying architecture.
Our host, James Mason, looking and sounding like a wandered country gent, takes us on a tour of abandoned theatres that once boomed to likes of Marie Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin, standing within perilous distance of the swinging wrecking balls demolishing the buildings. Then it's onto a street market where, amongst all the fresh food and bartering salesmen, live eels are prepared in gruesome close-up as they are prepared to be jellied and sold to the punters. Cockneys? Jellied eels? And you thought it was all a bit of a stereotype! We then cut to run down cafés where pensioners and down-and-outs are served suspicious looking green gruel. Then it's on to the Salvation Army flop houses where the homeless and the desperately poor congregate for a hot meal and a bed for the night. Here the film begins to resemble Luis Bunuel's 'Land Without Bread', a film the ~Streetlamp~ had seen at the Sleeping Cinema event we covered back in the Spring.
Bunuel's film shows inland Spain in the 1930s; rough, rural landscapes peopled with faces as ravaged and worn as the land itself. It seems baffling then that here in 1960s Swinging London, faces very similar to those in Bunuel's film gaze out from the screen, eyes bereft of hope and a demeanour that suggests they have given up. One haggard old chap reveals that he had once been wealthy but had lost everything in the great stock crash of 1929. Now he dosses in the Salvation Army shelter, bedraggled and covered in boils.

Once out of the flop houses, the impoverishment and wastage never lets up as we find ourselves gazing upon genuine meths drinkers. I always thought the whole drinking meths scenario was a bit of a put on, some urban myth surrounding tramps and the homeless, but here we are and bottle after bottle of the pink pure alcohol is swigged straight or mixed with what looks like cheap cooking sherry. In the infamous 1963 documentary 'Mondo Cane' there is footage of Hamburg's Reeperbahn district, depicting excessive drunkenness leading to violence and debauchery, and here again as the meths drinkers begin fighting among themselves these images echo and again you find yourself pondering "Could this really be London in the late Sixties? This is not what the brochure promised!".

Any film set in Swinging London, even those shot at the time, inevitably has almost EVERYONE decked out in the latest high fashions of Carnaby Street. The hair is often long, the young men bearded, the girls all flowery dresses and uber-big sunglasses. The reality, captured in this film's street scenes, appears quite different. The clothes are drab and workmanlike, the young women all dress like housewives or their mothers, and men's hair seems to be divided into two groups; greasy quiffs or severe Beatle-cuts (as in the Klaus Voormann Left Banke haircuts sported by the 1963-era Beatles). If London really does 'swing like a pendulum do' then the clock it is affixed to seems still to be set in the 1950s.
Of course there are a couple of Jason King dress-alikes, and one or two hipster chicks, but that's just the point....one or two!

It's hard to tell from James Mason's comments whether he approves of this unseen London, or if he's happy to see it being torn down. His beautiful, velvety, mellifluous voice seeming at odds with the ruination and neglect (of body and building) on display. But his authoritarian presence elevates the film from trashy 'Mondo' rubber-necking to a more serious and worthy timecapsule. Not of a world that no longer exists, but of a world we never knew did exist!

You can view the whole film below.

 
~Gordon~