Oi! from South East London,
Sun’s out, time for three months of mania. First of all, thanks for bearing with our new home for this newsletter. We’re fine tuning things, so give us a little bit to get everything looking as shiny as it did on S*******.
First thing’s first! New show. Last weekend we reappeared on Voices. We’re back next month.
V: Decidedly more amped up than last month, mostly as I had slept more than two hours and spent all day at my niece-in-law’s third birthday. Nothing to induce some hyperactivity like being surrounded by your in-laws and 10 kids with a bubble machine.
B: If you were wondering why I was also sounding a little more exuberant this month, it was because Scunthorpe United were promoted (to the National League! See you in Sutton) about five minutes before we were meant to go on air. The game had begun at 4pm, and by the time I had rocked up to Kings Cross their game with Chester had dragged onto an extra time period that had to be extended by eight minutes due to a crowd invasion and ten yellow cards, but some good news for my beleaguered hometown is always welcome. Enjoy the screaming.
01. Hard Cut - Kinlaw
02. First Sample Session - instantworks
03. Into the Sea - Blank Hellscape
04. Scraps of Sanity - Public Acid
05. Machine - Cold Meat
06. A Few Little Shocks - Scattered Order
07. Opium Hum - Coil
08. Untitled - Shackleton
09. Cosmic Hamburger Girl (Grime mix) - サイケアウツG
10. Silver and Bile - Left Hand Cuts off the Right
11. Warlord - Wrath
12. The Egg Man Don’t Cometh - Teddy and the Frat Girls
13. River - Water Machine
14. Dying - Surgeon
15. Fluent - DJ Javascript
16. Anticipate - Nazar
17. Evolution - Benga
18. ахерон мысли roaming [STILL FLAME] - Jasmine Smoke
You can hear the show on our Mixcloud and Soundcloud. Links to tracks available on Bandcamp can be found on our Buy Music Club.).
We will be broadcasting live again on Voices Radio next month: Sunday 15th June at 21:00 UK time. There’s a chatroom, the studio is in King’s Cross, tune in, come on down.
Everything is Setting A Boat on Fire
V: I’m chasing finishing up some deadlines for school, so this month has been... blurry? Very weird? I am so tired. So very tired.
My therapist told me I need to be taking time for myself, so I took her advice and attended the launch Dirty Dykes Film Club at the Rio two weekends ago. An event I can only describe without this going to your spam folder as “hilariously lesbian”. Maybe the only film festival in London where a director will get up after screening their work and ask “what, have you all never had a sad wank before?”.
Listening-wise: I’m bathing in Blank Hellscape’s “Hell 2”. Unfortunately decided to tribute this record on the show by subjecting my favourite track to an absolutely mortal clang, but so it goes on live radio. A double-album (in this economy!?) that, to me, brings back when Liars were scary or the 35% of the time Atari Teenage Riot were amazing while sounding absolutely nothing like either. Ever look at a skyscraper and hate it? I want to see blue.
Impossible for me to not mention Jasmine Smoke, who I squeezed in at the end of the show. I think the time it would take to unpick their largely anonymous multi-alias Bandcamp – which houses anything from Americana Duster worship to MIDI slam metal to a 50m song of Eternal Tapestry-style psych – could fill its own email, so I’ll stick to this one. This specific project appears to focus mostly on constantly folding slowcore cloud rap, like a sort of what a hypothetical Clams Casino x Space Afrika collaborative set might sound like – without even getting into the detour into a fried jersey club x euphoric hardtek crossover. A Rolling Loud set at the bottom of the Mariana Trench? The song I played is an 18m morphined autotune ballad that in its final five drags a ragga jungle sample to its surface. World tour, please.
I’ve been celebrating summer by…listening to tons of Skull Disco? Makes sense to me – so you get me playing the most evil Shackleton tune of all time, and later Benga’s “Evolution” which was inspired by being introduced to this truly beautiful video of FWD in 2006 filmed at about 8fps.
Similarly joyous internet viewing: At least one-third of my brain is thinking about footwork at any one time, but somehow I had never seen RP Boo’s short film on the House-O-Matics 29th annual event until this week. Truly implore you to click that button and save yourself the thesis on footwork, my relation to it as a punk, and how maddening I find being increasingly aware of how overlooked cutting-edge black music is in queer nightlife.
Honestly, maybe just me, but I see very little difference in artistic merit between this and something like Leilah Weinraub’s Shakedown. It’s the same part of my logic that thinks modern art museums should be screening things like Q starting their set by setting a boat on fire every week. It captures the sweaty chaos of its subject, is produced by the subculture it’s documenting, and the music is only recorded with the camera’s mic which means it bangs hard as hell.
Not a lot of grand overarching life lessons this month as I’m barely holding my own together. My eyes have recently met Sadie Plant’s Zeroes and Ones (banger) and the Ultra-Red Journal Vol. 1. The latter of these is a beautifully compiled work detailing the South American roots of radical teaching and bringing us to the modern day of the Heygate Estate and Alabama’s prison system.
Finally, I’m reading Michael Herr’s Dispatches, which I recommend if you seek an lighting-bolt insight into the total futility of the Vietnam war. This book essentially inspired Apocalypse Now and parts of it ended up in Full Metal Jacket, which makes the note on its Wikipedia that someone adapted it into a musical even more confusing? Death to The West.
If You're Feeling All In
B: Not much to report on this month – whether work, rest or play, my life seems to revolve around timings, metadata and More Computers. I did see MURO and they cleaned my ears right out, just as they always manage to do. Punk, it's a laugh!
For now, I'd just like to extend my solidarity with everyone who has withdrawn from Field Day and other Superstruct-owned events in protest at the latter's ownership by KKR and their investments' role in the ongoing genocide in Gaza – a strike fund has been set up, and this weekend an all-nighter at Venue MOT will both star and benefit those artists, DJs and musicians who have withdrawn their labour. Details are here - pay what you can.
Ⓐ Oi! from South London Ⓔ
Repetitive Strain is free every month, both in audio and writing. However, supporting helps us along with radio fees, technical stuff, non-alcoholic beers. Feel free to throw us a little if you wish.