Add Void’s Best of February Mix

As we languish on through one of the most depressing parts of the year it can often seem that there’s very little in the outside world to make us feel good. The onset of spring (despite how fucking long it’s taking in actually turning up) is probably one of them. Another has to be the early bumper crop of stunning new music that’s recently sprung into bloom (sorry, enough with the harvest metaphors). We’ve been totally blown away by the number of fantastic tracks released this month, to the extent that the mix has required various omissions to maintain linearity of style and an acceptable duration (pretty sure we could have done a sprawling two hour-long one if we’d wanted). So if there’s a personal favourite that we’ve neglected to include, please don’t consider it a dismissal, simply an avowal of how great things have been and how many things there are to be happy about. Yay!!!

Image is called Touched By The Hand of God and is by David Benjamin Sherry.

Jamie XX mixtape

Nothing original with this, but it’s got big ting agwan (ugh, sorry, cringe) so I thought it’d be a good thing to share with the world. Here’s the ubiquitous Jamie XX’s mix for Benji B, broadcast on BBC Radio 1 the other night. It features some awesome tunes from James Blake, Mount Kimbie, Zomby, Beach House, Harmonic 313, Gil Scott Heron and The Knife and is now yours to listen to and download when and wherever. Ta-da!

Above image is a picture of some dust by a Man called Ray.

GSOHeron

Sometimes it’s funny, that what you expect from an artist and what you actually get are totally different things. I mean, most of the time personalities are replicated through work – Damien Hirst makes prickish art and is a prick, David Lynch is odd and creepy and he makes odd and creepy films, etc. – but occasionally this doesn’t happen.

Take Gil Scott Heron for example. His new album, the first after his release from prison due to crack cocaine offences, is a running narrative of pained, damaged and heartfelt blues-inflected spoken word, underscored by dark, brooding beats reminiscent of old DJ Shadow or Portishead but stripped down and hollowed out. It’s powerful in its minimalism and inextricably draws you in to this man’s soul, stripping bare his traumas to shocking yet moving effect.

When I saw him the other night though he had an entirely different effect on me. His first three tracks were what I expected (and when he first released – I don’t use the word lightly – his voice, it was a real revelation – utterly mesmerising) but as he was slowly joined by more and more backing musicians, adding bongos, tenor sax, flute, harmonica and electric keyboard (complete with synthesised vocal and string effects, cringe), the tone changed and became a celebratory, hand-clapping, Jools Holland-friendly set of uplifting Boogie-Woogie. The musicians were all technically proficient and energy levels soared but hang on, this wasn’t what I’d come for. Where was the anger, the pain, the suffering? Where was the stripped back, held down, tell it like it is in the ghetto shit? Where was the cool?

Maybe who he is and what music he makes change, like all of us, from time to time. Maybe up on stage he wanted to enjoy his fame, bask in the limelight and not drown himself in the introspective, embittered nature of his recent recorded work. Which is fair enough. But I know what I prefer.

Then again…