club music
joe.muggs
Immediately following the death of radio DJ John Peel in 2004, it became clear very rapidly that there was no obvious heir apparent. With so many specialist shows on the station, nobody ran the full gamut of leftfield and underground music in the same way that Peel had. But if anyone comes close, it is Mary Anne Hobbs. Schooled in rock and indie journalism in the last great era of the weekly music press, the mid-1980s to early 1990s, and presenter on XFM and then Radio 1 of everything from extreme heavy metal to deep electronica, she certainly approaches Peel's eclecticism and dedication to Read more ...
joe.muggs
Londoners, we know, can be spoilt. Certainly the crowd, predominantly of nerds in rare and expensive trainers, at the Lightbox last night didn't seem to be overly bubbling with enthusiasm despite an exciting lineup of talent and astonishing surroundings. The main dancefloor area of Lightbox lives up to the club's name, being an arched space with the entire wall/ceiling surface covered in colour-changing LED lights that allow pictures and patterns to dance across the room. But the nerds – and a very few women, mainly in equally modernist trainers – seemed almost oblivious to the fabulous Read more ...
joe.muggs
Glasgow-born, south London resident Steve Goodman – better known to discerning lovers of modern music as Kode 9 – has a unique and privileged position in relation to the ever-shifting UK dance music underground. In the mid 90s he formed part of the slightly cultish Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) founded by Sadie Plant and Nick Land at the University of Warwick, where he gained a PhD in philosophy.The CCRU cooked up a rich gumbo of postmodern theory, situationism, science fiction and HP Lovecraft, occultism, rave music (particularly jungle / drum & bass) and high-tech Read more ...
joe.muggs
Club music has always been a mongrel creation. By definition, DJ-driven music – assuming the DJ is any good – is about combination, recombination and juxtaposition. But even allowing for all that, we are currently going through an uncommonly fecund time in the clubs as disparate fringe innovations of the last decade collide and combine.London's pirate radio stations and blacked-out VW Golfs are pumping out the sound of “UK funky”, a deliriously upbeat reboot of 1990s UK garage, fusing house music, dancehall, calypso, African rhythms and grime, its whipcrack rhythms supporting Read more ...