Electric Sweat at Venue MOT

Coming up next Friday May 3rd at Venue MOT, Surrey Canal Road SE14 - Electric Sweat, a night of 'underground electro and jacking grooves'

They say:

'After a long hiatus, Electric Sweat has returned on it's promise to providing a serious session of Electro and jacking grooves all night long. Experience a more specialist and old-school approach with longer set times from the DJs, in a warehouse setting!

Resident Controlled Weirdness has teamed up with Lex G (Gunfinger Food) for this mega return and the pair have invited down UK electro don, Phil Bolland aka Sync 24.

Phil has been a key part of the resurgence of electro the past few years. An amazing DJ, producer and mastermind behind the renowned record label Cultivated Electronics, which has been running since 2007. He has worked with and released many tracks from key figures of the underground electro community such as Radioactive Man, Morphology, The Hacker, Silicon Scally, The Exaltics, DeFeKT, Assembler Code and Jensen Interceptor as well as many others. Expect plenty of new and unreleased music to be played by the artist on the night and experience the sweaty warehouse experience you've been missing, down at the wicked Venue MOT.

Support from residents Controlled Weirdness & Gunfinger Food...

Controlled Weirdness is a veteran producer and DJ who's been at the front line of all aspects of club and sound system culture since the early 80’s. His musical CV includes playing everywhere from plush clubs to dirty warehouses as well as mixing tunes on a variety of iconic London pirate radio stations. He has released music on numerous underground record labels and runs Presence Unknown, a vinyl and digital record label dedicated to releasing music influenced by his love of Electro, Acid House and Rave. He also has a monthly residency on Threads radio and has recently started a podcast called "Tales from a Disappearing City", which is a platform to educate and tell some untold subcultural stories from past and present, joined by friends from his lifelong journey through subterranean London.

Gunfinger Food is an independent record label, platform and DJ advocating underground vinyl culture, with a core focus on Electro and Breakbeat styles. Lex G has been running and DJing under the brand for 5 years and through this journey has pushed his sound through radio residencies (bloop, Threads), features (Rinse, Balamii, Netil & more), countless mix/podcast contributions (Dark Science Electro, Typeless, Das Booty & more) and rocking the party with his vinyl sets across UK and Europe. At Electric Sweat we always promise to play you some amazing music that you have never heard before.

Inspired by and always remembering Nacho'.

Controlled Weirdness · Electric Sweat - Promo Mix - May 2024

Music Monday: London Bridge is Falling Down - Newtrament (1983)

Newtrament's 1983 electro track 'London Bridge is Falling Down' came out after the general election of that year. The track includes a sung refrain from the nursery rhyme and one of the first UK raps. As Paul Gilroy writes in 'There ain't no black in the union jack' (1987): 'His version chronicled police malpractice and inner city decay while suggesting that electoral politics were a sham. Whoever won the contest, he argued, the political processes of significance would take place far from parliament and the plight of the dispossessed and the poor would be essentially unaffected:

Election Fever on all four channels...
Red or Blue...
Win or lose, lose or win,
jobs will still be getting thin...

vote, vote, vote, there ain't no hope'

According to the excellent How's Life in London thesis on the history of London hip hop:

'Bertram Johnson, better known as Newtrament, was a London-based DJ who teamed up with MC Sir Drew and DJ Mr Mix12 to record what is widely considered to be the first British rap song London Bridge is Falling Down (Hunter, 1998). Released on Jive in 1984, it was ‘one of the first British tunes to make references to the land of its origins’ through its mention of the ‘boys in blue’ and its message about the state of electoral politics in Britain... The ‘cod American accent’, however, was still in effect and would continue to be present in most British releases during the 1980’s as British MC’s continued to wrestle with their own identity and the authenticity of their music. The Newtrament Krew were influential in establishing jams around London that helped further interest in hip-hop and also brought together the small clusters of interest that existed. The London hip-hop scene at this point consisted predominantly of small localised scenes with many people ‘unaware it was going on in other parts of town’ so these jams were important'