#1 in an occasional series...

Over the coming months I'll be occassionally raiding my HD and unearthing some great lost bootlegs, and here is the first one.

Track : ST3PAN0VA - "DUB MONDAY"

New Order's seminal "Blue Monday" track is no stranger to the bootleg scene. It's been sampled, chopped and looped many a time with even Kylie Minogue using it for her bootleg style Brits performance of "Can't Get You Out Of My Head". The original itself is no stranger to having the remix treatment, with people like Hardfloor, Ritche Hawtin and even Quincy Jones all having a go at it.

I downloaded St3pan0va's track expecting the usual treatment that bootleggers normally give "Blue Monday", y'know, the classic drum beats with some other vocal plopped on top. But this, this was in another league.

The two startling points of this remix is that, one, it actually has Bernard Sumner's vocals on it (I didn't think there was an acapella of "Blue Monday"...), and two, the backing track used is not the usual well known version of the song.

Listening to this, you would swear that St3pan0va had built a time machine, set the controls for Jamaica's legendary Studio One, convince the house band to perform and record a reggae cover version of the New Order song and then he's handed the master tapes over to King Tubby to filter through his Echo Chambers...

Is it all an original production? Is there a traditional dub take of "Blue Monday" kicking about that has passed me by? I don't know. But, I do know that this is one of the better remixes of "Blue Monday" I have ever had the pleasure to listen too, even better than some of those official ones.

Enjoy.

Go Visit : St3pan0va (is this his site? It may be. If it is, it gives the game away as to how he got Sumner's vocals...)
Go Buy : New Order - Substance 1987

Feel free to leave a comment about this track in The Pipe section of the forum

Ta,
Budgie.

"Quieten Down / I Need To Make A Sound"

I suppose it was inevitable that a proper M.I.A post would appear up on The Pipe sooner than later...

My love for M.I.A's music is well known. I'll tell anyone who'll listen to go and buy her debut album "Arular". It's chock full of Old Skool Hip Hop beats, Jamaican Dancehall rhythms, Brazillian Baile Funk and then topped with her curious mix of school yard and sometimes political rhymes. It is an incendiary and fresh mix that blasts out of your speakers.

Prior to the album coming out, M.I.A and her boyfriend Diplo put out a mix tape called "Piracy Funds Terrorism". It was more or less a sampler for "Arular" but constructed around your typical hip hop mix tape. So you'd get bits of her tracks merging over different and more well known beats with plenty of surprises. For example "Sunshowers" is performed over Salt N Pepa's "Push It" and "10 Dollar" is backed by The Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams".

XL Recordings, the label M.I.A has signed to, is currently paying homage to "Piracy Funds Terrorism" by hosting an Online Mix Tape for anyone to submit their own reworkings of the M.I.A material that they have provided. There are 3 tracks available, "Bucky Done Gun", "URAQT" and "Pull Up The People".

So if you fancy it, then click on the link to XL Recordings at the bottom of the page and have a go...

Track : M.I.A - "URAQT (SIE REMIX)"

House Of Cuss' very own Sie did just that. The beauty here is that Sie had never heard an M.I.A track before and thought it would be a challenge to see what he could produce just by listening to the acapella.

And he has thrown a curve ball.

Out goes any hint of Hip Hop and in comes a thumping big Euro House track. So big synth lines replace the originals honking horn sample and M.I.A's lyrical warning to the girl who is texting her man is being bounced about the track atop a huge big wobbly bassline. For fans of Sie's work, you won't be disappointed as he even lobs in a couple of his trademark breakdowns for good measure.

Good work fella!

Track : KING OF PANTS - "BUCKY DONE GONE ELECTRO" (M.I.A Vs LITTLE COMPUTER PEOPLE)

I spotted this over on GYBO last week and loved it. Featuring another of the acapellas from XL, Seattle's DJ Freddy - King Of Pants, takes "Bucky Done Gun" and mashes it over "Electro Pop" by Little Computer People. I'll put my hand up and say that it's a song that I'm not familiar with, but this is a brilliant mix, what with its big Arthur Baker / Afrika Bambaataa style beats, vocoder vocals, buzzing synths and all in a quite similar, but tougher, vein than the M.I.A original version. More importantly, don't let his name fool you, it's not pants...

Track : M.I.A / XEROX SOUNDSYSTEM - "GALANGROX (XEROX RE-RUB)"
Track : M.I.A / XEROX SOUNDSYSTEM - "HOMBRE (XEROX RE-TUG)"

These 2 were also spotted over on GYBO. Xerox are, according to their website, "a 2 man DJ / Production team aiming to celebrate the unoriginal in the most modern and entertaining way possible". I'm definately celebrating these 2 M.I.A reworks.

"Galang" is probably M.I.A's most well known track and on "Galangrox" Xerox paste her vocals over a variety of beats, including the infamous break from Public Enemy's "Security Of The First World".

"Hombre" on the other hand goes for a hand clapped rhythm punctuated with a nice dark, deep bass and the occassional burst of effects. A perfect backing to M.I.A's war cry like chorus.

Track : CIARA feat. M.I.A - "GOODIES (RICHARD X MIX)"

Seeing as it's M.I.A overload today, I couldn't let this one pass you by. It's Richard X's excellent remix of Ciara's crunk track "Goodies" from earlier in the year. It's a lot darker, and better than the original and made even more so by the appearance of M.I.A.

It's pretty cool as there seems to be a "Degrees Of Seperation" thing going on with it all. You have Richard X, who helped produce M.I.A's "Arular" album, remixing Ciara's "Goodies" and having M.I.A doing her thing amongst it all and in return the original backing track of "Goodies" appears on M.I.A and Diplo's "Piracy Funds Terrorism" with M.I.A singing her "Amazon" track over the top of it.

Go Buy : M.I.A - Arular
Go Buy : Ciara - Goodies CD Single

Go Visit : XL Recordings
Go Visit : M.I.A
Go Visit : Ciara
Go Visit : Richard X
Go Visit : Xerox Soundsystem
Go Visit : DJ Freddy, King Of Pants

Feel free to leave a comment about these tracks in The Pipe section of the forum

Ta,
Budgie.

Ola!

Track : N.O.H.A - "BALKAN HOT-STEP"

The man above is The Pipe's mascot. After asking the forum members to name him, I have plumped for both Sie and Jimmy The Flid's names and from now on the cheeky pipe tooting man will be known as "Poncho-Hetty".

You may know todays track from being recently featured in a Nike commercial. The Flid and I both know this track as a tune that took over 3 to 4 months of our lives.

We both heard it around about the same time, a long time before it appeared in the advert, and went totally daft over it. We then proceeded to harass record shops in Glasgow and Edinburgh for it in a race to see who could get a copy first. Having no luck in Scotland we both had search further and this ended up with us trying to translate online record shops in the various corners of Europe. The Flid was having more luck than I was and eventually I gave up. Alas, his orders from Europe were not forthcoming and then I discovered that Gilles Peterson was including it on his "Eclectic Sessions - Vol.2" mix CD for Trust The DJ. Even better was the fact that this mix CD was to be released on Vinyl in an unmixed form. My order was sent in right away. The day my Posty handed me the parcel was a good day. The record was promptly plopped onto my decks and as it came out the speakers, I was a happy man. I had won.

Or so I thought.

A quick text to The Flid later on that day to proclaim victory was replied to with a text claiming that his Posty had just put 3 copies of it behind his door. His european orders had come through. He had won.

To rub salt in the wounds he also holds over me the fact that he has heard the "Balkan Hot-Step" being played out and he has had the pleasure of seeing a room full of clubbers going from bemused, to partly interested to absolutely mental to the said track.

I don't want to say too much about the track as it will spoil the surprise. I will tell you that it's a leftfield, jazzy dance record, by Prague born producer Philip Noha, and that it just manages to stay on the right side of novelty.

Why am I posting it in conjunction with The Pipe mascot? Well, load the track up, look at Poncho-Hetty's face and you can tell he is listening to this. He loves it. C'mon, you'll be grinning like him by the end of it and wanting to have a quick toot on his pipe too...

Toot Toot!

Go Buy : N.O.H.A - Next Plateau

Go Visit : N.O.H.A

Feel free to leave a comment about this track in The Pipe section of the forum

Ta,
Budgie.

Track : SEIJI feat. LYRIC L - "LOOSE LIPS"

To mark the release this week of M.I.A's excellent album "Arular", I thought that The Pipe should put up a track from it. However I got to thinking that I'd already linked to some of her stuff, as have countless other Bloggers over the past year or so, and I'd be kind of stuck as to what to write about. Other Bloggers have covered her better and there are numerous interviews with her kicking about just now as part of the promotion for "Arular".

I then remembered reading a pretty indepth interview with her over on Pitchfork a while ago and one of the questions was along the lines of "what producers did you want to work with for the album?". The first name that was mentioned is a guy called Seiji. More importantly, she said she wanted her stuff to sound like a track called "Loose Lips" that Seiji had put out back in 2002. I loved the track when it first appeared but hadn't really listened to it in a while. After listening to it again recently, it definately made sense in relation to the direction that M.I.A then followed. Unfortunately, she never did hook up with Seiji as he thought her music was too "pop"...

Seiji is one of the founding members of the West London production crew, Bugz In The Attic which was formed back in 1997. The producers, musicians and DJs that make up the Bugz took their individual influences and talents and focused on creating quality dance music. In the search for the perfect beat their influences of things like House, Jazz, Afro-Beat, Latin, Soul and Funk combined to encompass what is now more commonly known as "Broken Beat".

"Loose Lips" is a very good example of this kind of stuff. The story goes that an instrumental of this track was knocked up for playing at "Co-op", the club ran by Bugz In The Attic. The club features the cream of the crop of like minded DJ's and producers of the calibre of Marc Mac and Dego (of 4 Hero fame), Domu, Alex Attias, Modaji, Charlie Dark and Phil Asher. Apparently when the track with it's broken beat, 303 bleeps and sirens was played, a female rapper in the crowd called Lyric L jumped on stage, grabbed a mic and then proceeded to freestyle over the top. Seiji was impressed, hooked up with Lyric L and within 2 weeks the track was out in the shops on the Bugz' record label Bitasweet.

The Bugz are still going strong with their trademark remix work and many other projects under many a pseudonym. They also narrowly missed scraping the charts at the tail end of last year (beginning of this year?) with their "Booty La La" track.

Finally, a "Fact Of The Day". When putting this post together I was curious as to where the phrase "Loose Lips, Sink Ships" came from. Apparently it was created as part of a public service "Security Of War Information" campaign during World War 2. It was a reminder to Americans to be discreet in their communications to prevent restricted information being leaked to the enemy...

Go Buy : Various Artists / Bugz In The Attic - Fabric Live 12
Go Buy : Bugz In The Attic - Got The Bug
Go Buy : M.I.A - Arular

Go Visit : Bugz In The Attic
Go Visit : Lyric L
Go Visit : M.I.A

Feel free to leave a comment about this track in The Pipe section of the forum

Ta,
Budgie.

Ah, it's been a while.

It's good to be back.

Miss me?

Doubt it.

This is the first of what is now the new, improved, whiter than white, additive free, fresh frozen and now, YES, regularly updated version of The Pipe.

No more trawling the net for me to bring you tunes. I'm now trawling my record collection.

You have been warned.

So what can be expected in the new Pipe? Well, I'm not too sure.

I hope to bring you a decent, eclectic mix of old and new tunes but with a nice slant on dance, electronica, ambient and more leftfield stuff, but pretty much anything goes, so expect the unexpected every now and then.

The music featured will be more or less the stuff I haven't really touched upon much on my "Back To Budgie's" compilations that are knocked up for the lovely degenerates over on Chutney.

Anyway, I'll roll up my sleeves, get a mouthful of coffee, get hunched over my keyboard and start, shall I?

Track : ALEX SMOKE - "CHICA WAPPA"

I've been loving this track since the tale end of last year. Soma Records have been at the centre of Glasgow club culture for nearly 15 years now and they have a great reputation and roster capable of putting out high quality tunes. "Chica Wappa" is one such tune.

The young Alex Smoke has been gaining a lot of acclaim recently with his tracks and remix work and is just about to release his debut album, "Incommunicado", in a week's time. "Chica Wappa" will feature on the album but in a slightly tweaked form.

This version is from labels recent "Soma Recordings 2004" round up and is a great rolling, simple, electronic house track with a nice chimey hook appearing out of the warm chords every now and then to truly lift it up.

Smoke claims this is the most optimistic track he will ever write and his music will never be this upbeat again...

Go Buy : Various Artists - Soma Compilation 2004
Go Visit : Soma Records / Alex Smoke

Track : JEROME SYDENHAM & DENNIS FERRER - "TIMBUKTU"

"Timbuktu", another dance record, mirrors "Chica Wappa" in as much as the hook is barely in the track.

The credentials of this are nigh on impeccable in Deep House circles, put out originally as a 10" on Jerome Sydenham's revered "Ibadan" label, home to such house luminaries as Joe Claussell, Danny Krivit and Kerri Chandler, this has the label owner teaming up with Kerri Chandler's occassional musical sparring partner, Dennis Ferrer, on an excellent deep, almost tribal, house track.

Featuring clicks, bangs and echoes, that wouldn't sound out of place on a Basic Channel record, "Timbuktu" just keeps building and building, adding great chords and what sounds like a cello until the time is right to drop the melody.

The thing I love about this is that the melody is never really there for that long and the record returns to what it once was and leaves you with a feeling of "what just happened there?".

So, you have to play it again.

Oh, and did I mention the "chant"?

I got this track on the BBE Music compilation "Beats And Pieces - Volune 3". A great label and a great series of compilations too. Well worth investigating.

Go Buy : Various Artists - Beats And Pieces Volume 3

Go Visit : Ibadan Records
Go Visit : BBE Music

Feel free to leave a comment about these tracks in The Pipe section of the forum.

Ta,
Budgie.