This album has been a long time coming and Africa Hitech have delivered. It was difficult to pick a standout tune, but the use of vocals on this one really surprised me – probably the most organic tune of a record full of overall brilliant electronic dance music. Buy it here, and catch them at The CAMP if you’re in London on June 3rd.
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![Classic Material - 1991 [mix]](http://btglondon.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/CM1991-100x100.jpg "Classic Material - 1991 [mix]")
tUnE-yArDs have just released an amazing album (which you can buy here). This is one of my favourite songs off it. Absolutely love her energy. She’s headlining Scala on June 8th, get tickets here.
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Come down tomorrow to celebrate The CAMP being a legal venue for 1 year. Had some crazy parties throughout the past 12 months! Free food and drinks from 7pm onwards. Djs on the night are from these dope crews: Deviation + secretsundaze + Livin’ Proof + Get Me! + To The Bone + Cosmic Truth + Phonica + Electric Minds + Bridging The Gap + Classic Material + No Fit State + Silence + Holic + Hipsters Don’t Dance + Selective Pressure + Revive Her! + Drop The Bomb + FixedFear and Futuristix.
More info here.
Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings is setting up a special pop up shop in conjunction with Record Store Day. An avid record collector himself, Gilles knows all too well the buzz one gets from digging in the crates. So for one day only, the East London venue The CAMP gets a Brownswood makeover. Here, fellow vinyl enthusiasts can browse to their hearts content through rare soul, jazz, groove, funk, and African records from his favourite UK dealers and special live auctions with generously donated finds from celebrity ‘fans’ including Thom Yorke, Erkyah Badu, Four Tet, Zane Lowe, Rob Da Bank, Jaime Cullum and more.
Brownswood’s resident visual artist, Josephine Ade Chinonye Chime will customise the shop into a traditional African street fair with her elaborate illustration cut-outs and textile prints.
Paul finished a mix for SMS last week, and turned it in the morning right before our 2nd birthday. You can stream it here via mixcloud. As usual, its amazing – this one captures summer vibes perfectly.
So many people are asking for it as a download, so I thought we might as well give it up. He’s repping the BTG stage at Stop Making Sense on August 12th. Get your friends & family tickets here.
Download: Paul Pre – SMS mix 23
![J DIlla - Make Em NV [The Roots Remix] (mp3)](http://btglondon.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Cristo-Redentor-4-100x100.jpg "J DIlla - Make Em NV [The Roots Remix] (mp3)")
If you don’t have plans for Saturday, I would highly recommend checking out the Huntley & Palmers label launch at Plastic People. The lineup is dope, featuring Running Back’s Mim Suleiman (playing live), T Williams, Auntie Flo, Alejandro Paz and SOPHIE. Preorder h&p01 here, its a solid record.
Find the full details on facebook, tickets are available here.
Tomorrow. Click here for more info.
Lead track off Midland‘s newest 12″, recently released on More Music. It is a typical Midland record, successfully balancing old and new sounds and styles. Really dig the vocal samples and that bassline is killer.
He’s headlining BTG018, we can’t wait.
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![King Salute & Green T - ASM Rootsrockers [mix] (mp3)](http://btglondon.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/JJM_5-100x100.jpg "King Salute & Green T - ASM Rootsrockers [mix] (mp3)")
We’re taking over the Beach Bar on the first day of the festival, Friday the 12th. Our lineup is equally inspired by the setting sun and full moon, so its everything from hazy electronica to swagged-out house. We’re really proud to be showcasing these artists at this point in their respective careers and can’t wait to check out what they have in store for us.
Buy your ticket with this link and you’ll automatically get registered to win a prize. Not sure what the prize is yet but it’ll be special, we promise. Early bird tickets are only available until the end of the month.
Our full lineup is:
Mosca
Chad Valley (live)
Tropics
Paul Pre
BTG djs & friends
It’s going to be brilliant.
More info after the Jump:
![Classic Material 1991 [mix] Classic Material 1991 [mix]](http://btglondon.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/CM1991.jpg "Classic Material 1991 [mix]")
This is 5th edition of Classic Material paying homage to a year of hiphop via a mix and party. This time, its 1991 which gets the limelight, the year which signaled the start of what many consider to be a golden period for club friendly credible hip hop . Aside from numerous memorable LP releases, 1991 was above all a year of anthems – Tribe’s ‘Scenario’, Nice and Smooth’s ‘Hip Hop Junkies’, Showbiz and AG’s ‘Party Groove’ and many other club records with catchy hooks saw releases during the year. 1991 was also a solid year for long players with stand out debut LPs from Black Sheep and Main Source amongst others. Debut LPs from Del the Funkee Homosapien and Cypress Hill both broke preconceptions about the West Coast sound in very different ways.
The Classic Material 1991 party takes place at The City Arts and Music Project tonight with special guest Ollie Teeba (Herbaliser).
See below for the official message left from the two people behind Institubes: a great, cutting edge Parisian label with an eye for great design. Its so sad to see them go, this came out of nowhere for me. Anyways, read this and learn a little bit of the trials of running an independent label in the post-Napster era. While I don’t agree with all of their points, I really respect them for what they’ve accomplished and most importantly for staying true to themselves.
“So, the next Institubes record is not coming soon. And I can’t tell you how much it pains me to write these words. We’ve released many records in our (almost) eight years of existence and managed to introduce a number of excellent artists to the world. Good times were had and accolades garnered. I’m not so conceited nor high on my own supply that I’d try and talk up our “legacy” but I don’t think that in five, ten or twenty years I’ll look at our discography and cringe. Now I get to tell you, Institubes fans, friends and allies, that we have to wrap it up. Party’s over.
I could write ten pages about the realities and difficulties of the music business but you’ll only get about two paragraphs and not much whining. We never lived those halcyon days some industry elders tend to rave about. We always moved through a post-apocalyptic, terminally pauperized landscape, complete with irradiated A&R zombies and mutated eyeless bloggers. It’s always been a bit of an uphill battle. But it got worse and worse. At first it was fun to figure out ways to get people to check out our music. But once that’s done and you have something resembling an audience, it becomes apparent that this is not really your job. Your job is to reconcile the public with the very idea of buying records. All the power to you if you can bear it.
We’re closing shop because the operation is losing too much money, this much is clear. Most of what we could have done to prevent or delay this outcome reside in two words: lifestyle and branding. Investing in t-shirts and co-branding, scoring “collaborations” or sponsorship deals with deep-pocketed companies. I have but a regret: we actually did it sometimes. We should have said no more often. Bands struggling to get together with brands, artists and audience deriving more validity from corporate interest than from anything else, bands happy to learn that in the future they would have to “take charge of their own promotion”: this wasn’t for us. In other words, on our small scale, we should have been able to carve a non-capitalist niche within the larger corporate world. I thought, being young and naive when we started, that “underground” meant just that.
The fact that ours is a struggling industry, where 90% of your time is spent “staying afloat”, obscures an important fact: we are still playing by the rules that got us fucked in the first place. The way we do business is defective: our values are defective, our contracts are defective, our post-Napster economy itself is defective. I just read an article by a label owner who states that “anything we can do to stay afloat should be condoned”. I don’t think so, no. Staying afloat by any means necessary is a meaningless pursuit. The only honest way for a record label to make money is by selling records. We’ve always been uneasy about selling anything else.
And our current cultural economy isn’t healthy either. Consumer practices are fucked. You don’t need me to tell you that music is devalued. Not only because we no longer sell shit (and even when you do, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re selling free shit), but also because tracks are peaking faster than tumblr memes. In our historical moment, music is everywhere but second or third or tenth to many other interests and areas of culture. Fashion, Apple, video games, “devices”, social media, etc. And that’s cool, I guess. But I don’t want to have to be a function of fashion. Nor do I want to urge an artist to publish half-baked tracks every month in order to stay “relevant”. Depleted accounts is one thing, but depleted attentions?
![Four Tet - Much Love to the Plastic People [mix] (mp3)](http://btglondon.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/plassstic-100x100.jpg "Four Tet - Much Love to the Plastic People [mix] (mp3)")
The nice guys behind Pictures Music are programming the gallery space for Off Modern, this Friday. There will be pictures from David Richardson and Armand LeFou while music will be provided by Lapalux, Seams and some Secret Guest djs. Looks like it’ll be a really eclectic and great night of live and electronic music.
JR Seaton (a previous BTG guest, great friend and burgeoning producer on Relish Recordings) has come back to London to play some gigs. Catch him at newly refurbished Bar A Bar in Stokey on the 18th for some impeccable disco, house and techno.
BTG is 2 years old. To celebrate we’ve invited some special guests, Midland and Paul Pre. You might know Midland if you’ve been following the recent mutation of House, he has released music on Phonica Records, Aus Music, Werk, PMR, This Is Music and Southern Fried not to mention he has done some brilliant remixes of Washed Out and Caribou. He’s destined for big things, trust us.
Paul Pre is better than your favourite dj. He is the man behind our best BTGMX to date. He is flying in from Germany. Its actually ridiculous to have him – the proverbial icing on the cake, if you will. The best part is we’ll get a taste of what he’ll be playing for us at Stop Making Sense Festival this Summer. We’ll just be in a basement as opposed to on a beach.
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The Alibi
91 Kingsland High Street, Dalston
London, E8 2PB
Free Entry
01.04.11
21:00-03:00
Buses: 67, 76, 242, 243, 149
Overground: Dalston Junction, Dalston Kingsland
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