Yes, it’s been a couple of weeks since my last proper post. I’m sorry. I’m finding it very hard concentrate on anything productive at the moment. Is anyone else finding it hard to con… HEY what’s that over there??!!

Seriously.

A couple of strange-but-good-but-strange weeks, combined with early Spring restlessness, have not been conducive to coherent thoughts, written or otherwise. On the plus side, these periods of discombobulation and cerebral signal failure usually lead me to old, familiar and well-trusted things to get me back on track. Hence the last 2 weeks have featured the excessive consumption of:
- Buffy re-runs (currently on S3. Just watched Band Candy, Anthony Stewart Head’s finest moment as far as I’m concerned)
- Couscous (lekker lekker!)
- Burt Bacharach ♥
- Online stores that sell sewing patterns from the 1960s

Not such a bad way to waste some time, right? But even with a mofo of a writing deadline breathing down my neck, and my cognitive mind taking temporary leave, I dare not neglect you any longer, dear snoop bloggy blog. Alas, I can’t stay for long. So, in brief:

A couple of new reviews of mine up in RA-RA land…

Michoacan’s debut for DFA In The Dark Of Night is a woolly, sweaty, basement-dwelling homage to psych-disco, with a bassline that (for some reason or another) reminds me of 10CC’s “Dreadlock Holiday”. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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Daedelus’ Righteous Fists of Harmony is an homage to resistance fighters of China’s 19th Century Boxer Rebellion. The extremely specific theme seems to afford him some contained walls within which to bounce off, and its done a world of good for the finished product. Deliciously weird.

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My  front page feature for the current issue of  Running In Heels asks the question: Are celebrities the new face of fashion? I came to one odd conclusion during the course of writing this: I miss supermodels. I mean the proper ones from the 80s and 90s. Linda, Christy, Naomi (pre-phone), Cindy etc. They were so sassy and glamorous and utterly, unattainably beautiful. And they looked like women. None of this miserable sickly-looking teenager bollocks. They would have eaten these hungry girls for lunch, shot a campaign for afternoon tea, madea cameo in aGeorge Michael video in the evening, and jetted off to St Tropez with their rock star boyfriend for dinner. The good old days! Now we have the likes of Katie Holmes’ utterly puzzling hand-in-flame campaign for Miu Miu, and occasional spot-on campaign like Mrs Beckham climbing out of a Marc Jacobs shopping tote. That one still makes me giggle.

I couldn’t find one damn thing in my iTunes that I wanted listen to today, and finally remembered that I had downloaded DJ Premier’s Malcom MacLaren mixtape tribute the day before. Aside from being hella entertaining – if you can get past the self-congratulatory ‘DJ PREMIER!! DJ PREMIER!!’ shouts throughout -  it also made this little music geek feel like a complete ignoramus. I had no idea that Trevor Horn was a member of Art of Noise or that he assisted McLaren’s early hip hop excursions. I’d never heard the story of McLaren’s behind-the-scenes wrangling to get Afrika Bambaataa signed.  And I never knew that Adam and The Ants, sans-Adam, became Bow Wow Wow. Nerdtastic stuff.

Sadly, and strangely, it was partway through this process of joyful listening and learning via DJ Premier, that I learned that his former Gangstarr partner Guru passed away today. It’s such incredibly sad news. He’d been hospitalised recently after a heart attack recently, but from several reports had been downgraded from critical status, and was on the mend. As it turns out he had been battling cancer for a year, and succumbed to the disease today.

I am one of those late-to-the-game Gangstarr fans who discovered them after the fact, via the Full Clip decade compilation, but it was Guru’s Jazzmatazz project that first caught me interest, with his distinct vocal tone and jazz experimentation. I finally got to meet the man in Sydney, around 2005, after numerous conference call meetings and intense emails, working as a press manager for the distributor (RIP Creative Vibes) that put out releases from his then-new label 7 Grand in Oz. His latest album at that time, Version 7.0 with new production partner Solar received some mixed reviews, but it led to an Australian tour. The crowd for his Sydney show (at the Gaelic Club, if memory serves) were lukewarm to some of the new material, but when he eventually dropped some Gangstarr classics, they swelled, roared and celebrated. I was a little nervous about us meeting, due to some of the more scathing reviews I’d had to email him for my press reports, but he was warm, funny and really professional in person when we met afterwards. I started to tear up a little when I read that he’d died today… particularly reading what has been presented as his final words, a letter that has one final dig at former collaborator Premier.

In any case, his most unique and flavoursome flow should (and will) be remembered. For me it will always come back to  “Loungin’”. Rap & jazz, black & white,  dome & shades, Donald Byrd, and effortlessly cool. RIP.