Fresh Touch
The Ethiopian EP
Angular Records

Nailing its conceptual quirks to the shop-front in the form of its title, The Ethopian EP emerged out of an African trip by producers Richard Russell and Rodiah McDonald. Both have recently been prominent presences in music, with production and recording credits for Gil Scott-Heron and The xx respectively, and the EP proves to be no major departure from their work elsewhere.

The project’s roots in an Ethiopian field trip would normally be the cue for a degree of healthy scepticism on the part of the listener; there is a surfeit of well-intentioned albums that seek to bridge the gap between electronic Western music and whatever the project co-ordinator encountered of ‘African’ music whilst on their holidays. The end product tends to be at best patronising, at worse an exercise in post-colonial sublimation. Fortunately, Fresh Touch manages to avoid the usual prat-falls, and it seems that Russell and McDonald have produced an EP that is by turns both compelling and familiar. Part of where it succeeds lies in managing to incorporate a number of African musicians without the additions feeling bolted on. Opening track Harar Rhythm builds from a a group of looped vocals into a dense package of bass-heavy synths, and yet at no point do the transitions feel awkward or unsustainable.

All four of the songs follow a similar pattern, offsetting components of looping sound against keyboard lines and a variety of other electronic bells and whistles. Modern Approach with its faulty analogue whomp is vaguely reminiscent of Mr Oizo’s work, whilst Adaji Legit borrows some of Hudson Mowhawke’s shimmer. The relative brevity of the EP probably does the music contained therein a favour, preventing things that are pleasing over a fifteen minute timespan from becoming fatiguing. Although it’s an accomplished EP, where Fresh Touch have gained in side-stepping the obvious traps, they also seem to have failed to find anything particularly distinctive in their own sound and composition; as result, The Ethopian EP has plenty of good moments, but few great ones.

Words: Andrew Spragg

Bloc 2012 from Bloc. on Vimeo.

And here we have it. The infamous Bloc weekender is back and with arguably its strongest line up to date, relocating to London Pleasure Gardens, in the Royal Victoria Docks (venue trailer above), to a new early-summer slot this promises an exciting to change to an already excellent formula. Although it’s previous Butlins, Minhead location did hold a certain Eerie Indiana appeal.

On the 6^th and 7^th of July the Big Smoke welcomes electronic gods Orbital, dark synth-pop futurist Gary Numan and the growing legend that is Flying Lotus, a strikingly diverse headline trio that will no doubt be added to. While other big hitters include DOOM, Squarepusher, Jeff Mills, Four Tet and Hudson Mohawke.

Bullion has long since been cherished for his mash up album Pet Sounds: In The Key Of Dee and bassy floorfiller Get Familiar. His most recent release, You Drive Me To Plastic, released by Young Turks Records, is abeautifully sewn together 21 minute piece of music consisting of nine tracks drawing from leftfield disco, krautrock, exotica and afro inspired 70’s electronics that he preferred to call a ‘non-LP’.

Now we have Say Arr Ee / What Does She Know, a natural progression from the eclectic range of tastes from a producer who now appears to have, literally, found his voice.

Say Arr Ee / What Does She Know is out on R&S Recordings on January 30th and you can stream the single below.

Bullion – Say Arr Ee by bullionness

We don’t do end of year lists at Bonafide but if we did Dimlite’s Grimm Reality would we be well up there alongside Shabazz Palaces’ Black Up, Thundercat’s The Golden Age of Apocalypse and Stepkids self-titled debut as some of the strongest releases of 2011.
Andy Spragg described Grimm Realityas “Ducking the cliché of ‘being taken on a musical journey’, Grimm Reality is more akin to going from ‘in here’ to ‘out there’, a sudden collapse of constraint into dazzling inventiveness.”

We have three copies of the album up for grabs, to stand a chance of winning one just answer this question: Which country is Dimlite from? Send your answers into the usual address, mailbox@bonafidezine.com including your full name and postal address details.
Competition closes February 25th.

To mark the release of their latest vinyl on limited 10” through RAMP Recordings, Stay+ (Christopher Poole + Matt Farthing) have made a video for ‘Dandelion’, a track featuring vocals from Moshi Moshi’s Psychologist. In keeping with their bewitching aesthetic last seen on their Bonafide Beats #23 mix, the video depicts a debauched and haunting flat party complete with baked beans on toast.

‘Dandelion’ will also feature on an upcoming EP due in Spring 2012 also on RAMP.

All City Records, the Dublin based independent label specialising in electronic leaning hip-hop, continues to defy the odds in a David v Goliath type fashion with the type of releases that make other labels (with far bigger budgets, dare i speculate) green with envy.

2011 has been a particularly strong year, with releases by Onra, Falty DL, Shafiq Husayn and Om’Mas Keith (Sa-Ra Creative Partners) and this banger by Martyn, among others. To celebrate this fact label head honcho Olan and Tuki put together a 2011 Round Up featuring cuts fromHudson Mohawke, Rustie, Zomby and more, full track list here, listen below.

A$AP Rocky to Zomby 2011 Wrrrrappp Up by allcitydublin

Bonafide set out with the aim to celebrate hip-hop. Our aim was to explore ‘old-school, mid-school and new-school creativity’, five issues on we’re proud to present the old school x new school issue. In hip-hop chronological order we speak to the Godfather of it all, Grandmaster Flash, profile EPMD, the funky Long Island duo from the golden age of rap and get crazy with ‘the lazy hustler’ and fourth Beastie Boy, Ricky Powell. Still in NYC, we speak to a leading voice for alternative hip-hop, EL-P, who, nearly 15 years on from the release of the Funcrusher Plus (as part of Company Flow), reveals that there’s plenty of drive left in the tank. From the West Coast we catch up with the revered turntablist and Beat Junkie, J Rocc.

In the new-school side of the magazine, we break bread with those responsible for some of the most exhilarating new sounds in British urban music. We have exclusives with DELS and Ghostpoet as they launch their careers with original and nuanced albums. For this issue’s roundtable we speak with the men behind Numbers, the Glasgow based record label that has rewritten the rulebook on how techno, electronic, R’n’B, house and hip-hop music should sound. And the resulting mutant strain of bass music is destroying dance floors the world over. On the visual side, we delve deep into the Brainfeeder psyche, speaking with designer and artist Charles Munka about his contribution to the label’s distinct art direction.

Buy an issue via the Bonafide shop and you will receive a redeemable code (sent via email within 48 hours) for a free copy of DELS’ Gob EP, including the original single and remixes by Dave Sitek of Tv on the Radio (catch a listen here), Untold and Ry9n. While stock lasts.

You can also buy Bonafide in the TATE Modern bookshop, Rough Trade, Fopp, Magma, all good online and physical record stores and for the first time, HMV, from May 15th.

In 2006 Spank Rock’s channelling of Miami Bass hedonism and dayglo hipsterism made his debut album Yoyoyoyoyo a refreshingly dangerous – even unhinged – break from rap’s standard macho scowl. It was filthy, bass-heavy, and fairly unrepentant about its fixation with drugs and x-rated dancing. Cycling forward to 2011 and it is probably safe to say that not a great deal has changed for Spank Rock, at least in terms of lyrical content.

There is, however, a younger generation of artists that have managed to be simultaneously weirder (Lil’ B) and wilder (Odd Future) than anything Yoyoyoyoyo could have possibly prepared the listener for; all of which leads one to speculate as to whether Spank Rock’s follow-up will retain a singular voice amongst a growing chorus of post-irony, pre-maturity rap artists.

Initial signs for Everything is Boring… are good. The first three songs provide one of the best openings to an album this year: the minimalist assertion of ‘Tah Dah’ runs into the unrepentantly grubby ‘Nasty’, followed by ‘Car Song’ and its sublime Santigold voiced chorus. All three are linked by Spank Rock’s confident delivery, which does its part to cover over any stylistic discrepancy between the songs. ‘Car Song’ is not too dissimilar from a TV on the Radio track in terms of its texture, a definite departure from the more pronounced electronic edge of Yoyoyoyoyo. Elsewhere Spank Rock seems to eschew his rap persona entirely, most notably on the fraught but superb ‘Energy’; loathe as this reviewer is to recycle a comparison already made by the press release, it does sound very much like David Bryne.

It is difficult to know what to make of Everything is Boring. As song-writing goes the album is well developed and broad in its scope of influences. ‘Birfday’ would undoubtedly have been hailed as a progressive leap if it had had the good grace to pre-date the Shabazz Palaces album, rather than follow it by a few months. It is this tendency to feel slightly too late that plagues a great deal of Everything is Boring; it is a great piece of work at both its beginning and end, but with an oddly hollow ring to the centre. The momentum leaves somewhere around ‘#1 Hit’, an auto-tuned song about the tedium of auto-tuned songs, and fails to return until the closing few tracks. There is too much a scrabble between ideas to excuse such a lapse, and it is a shame as it feels as if the album touches on greatness without managing to sustain it for the duration.

Spank Rock makes adult music, but in the same way that adult films aren’t really meant for proper adults, and with enough of a knowing wink to render it palatable. The terrifying implications that come bundled up with Odd Future’s corrosive youthfulness are less of an issue with someone like Spank Rock, however it is also to his detriment. While one can forgive Tyler the Creator for not knowing better, or rather not wanting to know better, Spank Rock gives off a sense that not only does he know better, he also knows you know that he knows better, and wants to develop beyond finding increasingly eccentric places to put his penis. To that end, ‘Turn it Off’ laments a wired-in generation for not making more of itself, yet it is followed by a song which bears the problematic chorus lyric, ‘shake it until my dick turns racist’ (‘Race Riot). It’s a unique mind that doesn’t see any incongruity between these two poles. It is a mind that should be applauded, though perhaps at a distance.

Words: Andrew Spragg

PUTTING IN ‘WERK

When hip-hop’s beats became untethered from the vocals in 1996, few could have predicted the implications. It levelled the playing field for producers from all over the world to concentrate on sonic rather than geographical landscapes. Beats became dislocated from the semantics of words and formed a new language as producers from Tokyo to Leeds set about crafting beats on MPCs and SPs or using their parents’ computers. Nowadays, a neck-snapper is as likely to come from Singapore or Melbourne as it is from one of the five boroughs. Freeing the producer from beats that work for MCs has also let it incorporate more disparate influences and evolve more quickly.

Which takes us up to 2011 and Fieldwerk recordings. Hailing from Chicago, Crushcon 7’s label started out in 2009 as a way to release his own projects and has grown to tightly knit but exceptionally healthy roster since then. Much of their output is the type of moody beat-driven instrumental that makes them the latest in a lineage that stems from Endtroducing, although occasional releases feature choice Midwest MCs such as Onry Ozzborn (Grayskul), I Self Divine (Micranots) and recent signing Cloudy October.

They came to our attention through the split album Falcon by Design produced by Joe Beats and Maker, a slept-on gem showing Joe Beats’ progression from straight-up boom bap to sleazy hammond funk and blissed-out dubby soundscapes. Other highlights of their recent releases include the skittering, swishing analogue sounds of Void Pedal and Zavala’s production on the Dark Time Sunshine album featuring the clattering breakbeats and densely-layered production that seem to be mainstays of the label’s style.

Label owner David Humphries, aka Crushcon 7, puts their success down to a simple ethos: ”Respect the music, respect the art, be honest.”. Concentrating on solid and interesting releases and trusting that they’ll find an audience for them through tours, independent stores and their website, fieldwerk.com. Peep their website and check fatcity.co.uk for releases outside the U.S.

Exclusive to Bonafide, we have a free label sampler featuring releases from Joe Beats, Zavala, Maker and Cloudy October. Grab it here, tracklist as follows:

1. Zavala – The City is Mine
2. Maker – Everything Ends
3. Cloudy October – Wingman
4. Joe Beats – Korla was Black
5. Void Pedal – Night time Butterfly
6. Zavala – Dark Time Sunshine
7. Joe Beats – Blunted Lapdance
8. Void Pedal – Parachute

Kieran Hadley