Kuduro Riddims

Woohoooo, tomorrow morning I'll be off to Manchester for what might well be THE best party of the year. Annie Mac invited the creme de la creme of DJs and artists around to play at the Warehouse project, a temporary club under Piccadilly Station. It's going to be an exhausting night with live performances by Major Lazer and Buraka Som Sistema, and Toddla T, Fakeblood, Skream, Boy 8-Bit and DJ Zinc behind the decks!!!!! More exclamation marks: !!!!!!!!!

I think this is a very exciting time for dance music, with rhythms and musical elements from all over the world seeping into mainstream club music, entering the dance floor and making us shake our booties. Take tomorrow's artists for example. Diplo, the guy who played an important role in bringing baile funk out of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, has now turned to dancehall with his latest project Major Lazer, in collaboration with Switch. With great success. Also Toddla T has a taste for Jamaican riddims (as well as for club house and garage). Buraka Som Sistema brings us kuduro, a genre which originated in Angola and was later transported to Portugal (its colonizer). And apparently kuduro is now huge in France, thanks to the substantial Cape Verde community. I stumbled on a selection of some excellent kuduro tracks at the Masala blog (a great blog BTW, even though I can only read half of it - they're from Montreal, so most is written in French). I pass two of those tracks on over here, both by Angolian artists. It's raw. Very raw. But that's how I like it!

Dog Murras - Midexa. Get it here (YSI).

Noite E Dia - Tiramakossa. Get it here (YSI).

Taken off the compilation Akwaaba Sem Transporte.

the zombie skank

Ever heard of zombie walks? God, I think this would be the best thing to do on Halloween ever! Dress up like a zombie and invade the streets with hundreds of other zombies. I knew of zombie walks in the US and Canada, but I didn't know there was one so close to where I live: in Bristol!! They had a zombie walk for the first time last year and was a huge success. Just look at the pictures! Anyone who fancies joining next year's walk should check out their Facebook group or MySpace and let me know so we can stride together!


I would definitely be heading over to Bristol to walk along today, if it wasn't for the fact that my day is packed with other fun events and parties here in Cardiff. First I'm heading over to the Halloween October Fest at Artisan Beer's on Kings Road. It's a micro brewery (it's so small you could call it a nano brewery!) within an artist studio complex, so there will be the best beers, market stalls, open studio's, a BBQ and lots of live music. Among which the amazing Word Virus Essay!! I'll then be popping over to a friend's birthday party and to top it off I'll be dancing till my legs are worn away down to my knees at Dance of the Dead!! The line up of Toddla T, Ms Dynamite (she's back!!), Mumdance and Squire of Gothos (just to name a few) will have me walking home like a zombie for sure!!

We bring you: BASS

You could be sitting on your couch this saturday, drinking hot tea while watching a movie, which would be nice.. But you could also put on some tight pants, a skimpy shirt, grab your earplugs and come to 'Het Paard' in The Hague. And party hard.

Jaques de la Disque is celebrating his birthday and invited some really cool people to provide the soundtrack. Yobkiss will be playing live on the drums, we will do a DJ-set and Jaques will play some tunes himself. And when the room is smelly and damp, boss of all ravers, DJ Donna Summer will make it even smellier. This man is known for the notorious Birthday Parties in Berlin. The only party where there's a confetti-machine that spreads about ten pounds of paper in one night.

We decided that we will let the rave-boss do the rave and make you skank. Listen to the wonderful remix of Little Boots by Toddla T and you'll understand what we mean by that.

Little Boots - Meddle (Toddla T rmx) Get it here (YSI)

Salford Ladettes Club

This year I really got spoiled with birthday presents... Ghetto gold AND my lovely boyfriend treated me to a weekend trip to Manchester. He knew how much I wanted to visit this city, home of my favorite band ever: The Smiths (and many other great bands). I've been a die hard fan since I was 16, so his gift was a dream come true! Highlight of my pilgrimage was traveling to this gritty neighborhood in Salford (next to Manchester) to have my picture taken in front of the Salford Lads Club. The place became an icon because of the famous picture by Stephen Wright, which was used for the inner sleeve of The Smiths' The Queen is Dead album. It also appears in the video I posted earlier here. I can die now and heaven will know I'm not miserable.

Saturday we spent the day strolling through the Northern Quarter, which is packed with 2nd hand stores, crafty markets, independent boutiques, cute eateries, great bars and clubs. And there are some excellent record shops as well. One, Beatin' Rhythm, stocks nothing but cds and 45s of girl groups, doo wop and northern soul. I probably could have completed my collections of songs about dances there instantly, but my budget forced me to stick to just a few cds.

It was also in this store that I saw a poster... The poster said Toddla T, the boy wonder from Sheffield, was DJ'ing that night in Manchester!! Another dream come true! His set didn't disappoint. He played some of my favorite tracks, like Too Many Men and The Migrain Skank (blogged about here and here)! My boy and I were the only ones who knew how to do the Migraine Skank, so we got props from the MC haha!

Manchester isn't the most beautiful city on earth, but I kind of like cities that are a little rough and in transition. It has an interesting (musical) history and nowadays it's a great city for shopping, drinking beer (go to The Knott for some real ales) and parteeeeee! MADCHESTER!!!

here come the girls

It's time we put some more music up here! Thing is, I’ve got a soft spot for female vocalists. No matter what genre, indie, hard rock, soul, hip hop, I dig it. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not into EVERY female singer (Celine D., Lady Gaga, Within Temptation... God forbid!). But two women who do combine a great sound with a great voice are Zarif and VV Brown. They’re both based in London, they're both in their early 20's (23 and 24) and they both draw on 60's soul, funk, girl groups and doo-wop. They mix it with 80's pop and indie respectively to create tunes that are going to be MASSIVE in 2009. I'm telling you!!

Zarif - Let Me Back. Get it here (YSI).

Zarif - Let Me Back (Toddla T feat Mr. Versatile Mix).
Get it here (YSI).

VV Brown - Quick Fix. Get it here (YSI).