Ancient Aliens
URL/IRL Vol4
Photo Credit: Damien Hockey
I’m writing this weeks substack from my balcony in the beautiful city of Herceg Novi, Montenegro. The sun is shining, the wasps are annoying, and kiwis are growing on vines beneath our balcony.
Yesterday, we swam in a blue cave off the Lustica peninsula and it was pretty unforgettable. A guy swimming near us asked if we had spotted any ‘Sea Hedgehogs’ as he didn’t like ‘Sea Hedgehogs’. I handed him my mask and told him to look down.
The water in the cave was 45m deep – very little chance of touching sea urchins.
That works out to be roughly 3.3 storeys deep in building terms.
The most reliable English-speaking TV we have in the evenings here is the History Channel, and it’s my first proper time sitting down and watching any of the programming. Watched some of this guy:
Ancient Aliens is mental. William Shatner is mental. The channel overall is great fun.
This isn’t a travel blog so let’s get onto the content:
Old Music – Review
Free Samples – Review
Bristol News
Things I’ve Enjoyed – A Roundup
Old Music – Review
Deep Puddle Dynamics – Mothers of Invention/Bo Hansson – Day and Night
I was a rollerblader for many years, of the vert ramp and handrail variety, as opposed to the lycra + promenade kind. Like other extreme sports, blading has its own subculture attached to the scene in terms of music and fashion, that’s changed over the years. In my most active years, the sport had an attachment to various aspects of Hip Hop predominantly, and the fashion followed suit.
At 14, I was wearing XXXL cotton jogging bottoms and tops, and for a brief period, had braided hair down to my shoulders. I looked awful and I’m very glad that no pictures exist of me in this time period.
I’m not ashamed of my choices though – I was living my movie at the time.
Rollerblading videos and the musical accompaniments to individual sections really informed musical tastes for an awful lot of people across the world, who participated in the sport. You can bet that anyone who was a particularly active blader in the 2000s can still recall Anticon Records, for example.
I’m not skilled enough as a writer to help you to fully understand the vibe of Anticon, (it’s crazy hard to pin down) so instead, I’m going to list some articles for reading, in a hope that you can get a feel for it all. Check here and here and here.
There was a specific section, of a specific blading video, that stands as one of the greatest ever recorded and is still heralded today as a pinnacle of the sport:
Brian Aragon’s section in Mindgame Bang.
The accompanying track for me, is one of the greatest examples of the Anticon Records output and I’ve been obsessed with the song ever since. Deep Puddle Dynamics was a ‘supergroup’ of sorts and the album ‘Taste of Rain, Why Kneel’ garnered critical acclaim albeit, from terminally online music nerd types.
Giveth thanks for the nerds.
The title of the album comes from a "western haiku" by Jack Kerouac.
Slug from Deep Puddle Dynamics went on to become one half of the indie rap outfit Atmosphere, who became a household name, and co-founded Rhymesayers Entertainment – home to Brother Ali, Aesop Rock, Murs, Dilated Peoples, Blueprint, RJD2 and more. Slug has also been closely tied to Rollerblading video culture, with Atmosphere’s music featuring in a good number of videos over the years and even a cameo from slug himself, introducing a blading video.
The backing instrumental for ‘Mothers of Invention’ was created by Anticon Co-Founder Jel
I spent many years wondering about the looped sample on the track, as I couldn’t work out what kind of instrument it was or how it sounded the way it did.
Some years back I caved and found Jel via Facebook and asked him directly. Turns out Jel (Jeff Logan) had sampled it from a record he picked up from a second-hand store somewhere on a whim, from an artist Jeff had never heard of – Bo Hansson. Interestingly also, Jeff had no idea that Anticon records were so attached to the Rollerblading scene and was pretty blown away when I linked him to Brian Aragon’s section.
The track in question that Jel sampled was Bo Hansson – Day and Night, from the Attic Thoughts album. Bo isn’t widely known but has an incredibly interesting back story that you can read here
Highlights include jamming with Hendrix, charting in the UK top 40, writing an album dedicated to Lord of The Rings (Sagan Om Ringen) that was released on Sweden’s first ever independent record label – Silence and supporting the Rolling Stones in the early days, as part of ‘The Merrymen’.
The album – Attic Thoughts was released in the UK by Charisma Records, a record and management company ran primarily by Tony Stratton-Smith, who was an interesting character in his own right. Read more on that here.
Charisma’s roster of artists included Hawkwind, Peter Gabriel, The Alan Parsons Project, Genesis, Malcolm McLaren (utter scum – read more here) and more. Stratton-Smith also supposedly received demos from Queen but decided against signing them. Silly sausage.
At the end of his years, Hansson supposedly took great pride in knowing Hip-Hop producers were sampling his early works. I wonder if he ever sat down with some Anticon records, and wondered what the hell was going on?
FREE SAMPLES – REVIEW
Abletunes: Foundation – Keys:
This technically is more of a multisample library, than just a standard sample library. 2GB at that.
This is also specifically for those with Ableton 10+ as it’s in the form of multiple instrument racks with assigned macros – I’m just letting you all know before you download it, then can’t use it and get all mad at me.
25 different types of multisampled pianos, mostly designed for contemporary dance/pop/modern usage, all with effects and rack specific parameters built in. They sound great and it helps cut down time wasted fine tuning sounds when you just need a 90s dance sounding piano in the mix. Helpful if you don’t have access to M1 VST or otherwise (like me, as my legitimate VST has just decided to stop working).
Lots of the instrument racks have been sampled directly from old Kawai + Yamaha keyboards so expect lots of vintage FM sounds along with some additive synth sounding bits too. You can find the library here.
Bristol News
Mulholland
Amity club seem to be on a real winning streak at the moment – resident and 3024 affiliate Mulholland has a track forthcoming on Scuffed Recordings ‘Scuffed Bits’ compilation out October 7th.
Track titled ION-9: Uptempo percussive techno - nods to late garage/early dubstep a la Horsepower Productions, coupled with the sort of space age sound design + modulations you would expect from a release on AD93.
Keep an ear out.
Thing’s I’ve Enjoyed - A Roundup
This is a new weekly feature, and is my little way of sharing bits and bobs unrelated to music that I’ve been enjoying in my spare time.
I’m not going to dedicate masses of time to it but you should hopefully:
1. Get a picture of my boring life.
2. Possibly get a recommendation for something that you might enjoy.
TV Series:
Autumnal Americana in it’s most purified form. Imagine if Pumpkin Spice Latte was a TV series.
Very long running show and consistent across all the series, save for the Netflix ‘reunion’ run, which felt like a cheap homage and seemed completely forced.
There’s also a huge, subtle, but incredibly well written ‘Hero to Zero’ character arc that I won’t spoil.
Food:
Ćevapi.
Turns out people in the Balkans love to BBQ.
We’ve been eating in BBQ restaurants near constantly since we’ve arrived and they know how to cook meat.
It’s well priced, good quality product (you can taste it) and doesn’t leave you feeling overwhelmed and slightly sick, like a Doner kebab might leave you feeling in the UK, for example.
Honestly, don’t come here if you don’t like meat as you will be stuck eating Greek salad for every single meal until you leave.
One of the highlights on the mixed grill plates we’ve been sharing is Ćevapi.
A simple sausage, supposedly Bosnian in origin, and adapted across the Balkans. The Croats and Serbs historically made theirs with Pork, so that the invading Turks (who incidentally brought them to the region via the Ottoman empire) wouldn’t steal their food from them, due to being followers of Islam. Crafty.
The sausages are small, juicy, salty and delicious. You can find a recipe here.
That’s all for this week folks. If you’ve not already subscribed then hit the button below. See you next time.