Music Monday:Jude Woodhead

Forest Hill based Jude Woodhead has a new EP out (available here on bandcamp and on soundcloud). 'Deep Transport' includes five of Jude's own tracks plus a remix of a King Krule track. 17-year-old Jude, who plays keyboards and trumpet as well as producing, is also one of the contributors to the new photography/art/music blog Essy (SE, gettit?). There's a bit of a Burial influence on some tracks, but the soundscape is more diverse than that might suggest. 'Ambient', 'Electronic', 'Hip Hop' are some of the tags that Jude uses to describe his music, I would add 'Cinematic', with samples including a speech from US radical black activist Angela Davis.

Jude's previous EP, last year's Nights in the City, included a couple of SE-referencing tracks - 'New Cross, LEWI' and 'Night Bus. N171'. Another track on that EP, Finger to the Moon, has recently been used as the basis for a track by 'influential in Brockley' grime artist Koder. The track Hand of Gold, which also includes singing from Pia Morris, has been getting played on BBC1Xtra and is included on Koder's new Naked EP. The start of this collaboration was when Koder introduced himself to Jude when the latter was playing the piano outside Forest Hill station!

Music Monday: Aphex Twin and legendary Elephant & Castle

Major junctions attract folklore as well as traffic, as those who pass by take their choice of the road less travelled or the road not taken, and wonder whether the guy with a stick and a dog is actually Papa Legba, guardian of the crossroads. This is even more so with a junction close to the heart of a major world city, so no surprise that the Elephant and Castle is the  location of many legends. There's the matter of its name - is it really a corruption of the  La Infanta de Castilla,  a supposed Spanish princess? (its seems not, most probably the area was just named after a local tavern). Then there's Shakespeare's Sister buried underneath the Elephant, isn't there?

And of course there's the legend of Richard James, better known as Aphex Twin. The techno/ambient pioneer's Cornish origins are well-known, but the story goes around that at one time he owned, or even lived in, the stainless steel tructure in the middle of the Elephant and Castle roundabout. Of course it isn't true, said structure is the Michael Faraday Memorial, built in 1961 and designed by the architect Rodney Gordon to commemorate the Victorian scientist who was born nearby. It houses an electricity sub-station for the London Underground.

photo from Atlas Obscura

James came up to London to study at Kingston Polytechnic in the early 1990s, and by 1994, when he was interviewed by David Toop, he was living in Stoke Newington. But not long after that he seems to have moved to somewhere near the Elephant. In 2001, he was interviewed by the Guardian in a cafe in the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, and in the same venue by John O'Connell in the The Face (October 2001). The latter seems to be the source of the tale: 'He's lived in Elephant & Castle for six years, in a converted bank vault. He likes it here. He's just bought the strange silver building, a 'third house' to add to the vault and his Scottish cottage, in the middle of the roundabout just down from the shopping centre. 'It used to be a sub-power station,' he explains. 'I'm exchanging contracts later this afternoon'. This is of course a classic piece of James mischievous misinformation, whether the journalist was clueless enough to believe it or in on the joke I do not know.

Of course that may mean that the bank vault story is not true either, but there's no reason to disbelieve that he lived in the area. Another interview from that period, seemingly conducted in the Italian cafe in the shopping centre, says that he lived on the top 3 floors of a converted bank, with another floor occupied by musical fellow traveller Cylob (Chris Jeffs). James is quoted as saying: '"Yeah, it's a cool neighbourhood. I like it here. It's quite not trendy here, that's why I moved here. There are no young people - nobody recognizes me here. I think in five years I only got recognized two times. Where my girlfriend lives, in East-End, it all became  pretty trendy, lots of people visit you. It's like: 'Oh, you live in a cool neighbourhood  so we'll come around and visit you.' Down here it's like this: 'Oh, you like down there?!  I never got there." He also says that the he used to be able to throw water bombs from his roof on to people queuing for the Ministry of Sound, which narrows the location down to somewhere north of the Elephant and on west side of Newington Causeway.

[Update - in a comment the Ruinist has identified the building as located at 89-93 Newington Causeway, an old bank now demolished and replaces by The Signal Building]

At some point he seems to have relocated to Scotland, but his Elephant period would have included the recording of his Windowlicker EP and the Drukqs album. The beautiful Avril 14th from the latter has featured in a number of film soundtracks and also served as the basis for Kanye West's Blame Game. 

Update, November 2021:

The metal box features in the video for Joy Crookes' 2019 track 'Two Nights'

Return of fftang! fftang!

Following a successful event in April, fftang! fftang! return to the Amersham Arms in New Cross on Saturday 11 August for a free 'rum-fuelled carnival jam of global beats and tropical bass for afro ravers, latin funksters and balkan b-boys with live percussion over the top'.
 

Hot Chip in Charlton House

The new video for Hot Chip's Night and Day was filmed in and around Charlton House, the Jacobean mansion built in the early 17th century and now owned by Greenwich Councl

The film was directed by Peter Serafinowicz (who among other things voiced Darth Maul in the later "Star Wars" films), and stars Terence Stamp,  model Lara Stone and comic/musician Reggie Watts.




Seemingly some kind of dance ritual in is going on in Charlton House, summoning space visitors. Unfortunately it all goes wrong and the spaceship crashes into a block of flats on Charlton Road.

Techno-Soul n'House

I had  a good night out at the Bussey Building (CLF art cafe) in Peckham on 13th April, with late 1980s hip hop legends The Jungle Brothers on stage all the way from New York. They did not disappoint, working their way through many of the classics from the period when as part of the Native Tongues posse with De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest they redefined the possibilities of hip hop. Straight out the Jungle, I Got it Like That and I'll House You all got an airing.

This was one in a series of events promoted by CLF (The Chronic Love Foundation) under the banner 'An Exhibition of Sound', a kind of sonic chronicling of the history of dance musics.  The line up for 'Chapter5 - Techno-soul n'house' on Friday June 29th includes three more pivotal figures.

Adamski was one of the first home grown live perfromers in the early acid house scene, probably best known for the track Killer which launched Seal's career.

Eddie Fowlkes was one of the originators of the Detroit techno sound.

Paul Trouble Anderson has been an important figure in London house and funk since the 1980s when he was a DJ on Kiss FM in its pirate radio days.

(tickets available here)

Detroit Techno: The Creation of Techno Music (High Tech Soul) 

- featuring Eddie Fowlkes

Fftang! Fftang! - Tropical Bass in New Cross

So an SE14 neighbour of mine turned the former garage at the bottom of their garden into a temporary social space at the weekend. I ended up dancing with an all ages 14-50 crowd to a scratch band playing ska on Sunday afternoon (including a Message to Rudy). It got me thinking about how strange and wonderful it is that a music invented in Jamaica fifty years ago has become a kind of universal party sound, in the UK at least. Ska was first heard over here via Jamaican migrants, crossing over to mods via clubs like El Partido in Lewisham , then being taken up by the first wave of skinheads, revived by 2-Tone bands in late 70s/early 80s, and further popularised in the 1990s by bands like No Doubt. Now it's just part of the grammar of pop music.

Ska is just one of the many ingredients in the mix for FFTANG! FFTANG!, a night of 'Global Beats and Tropical Bass' coming to the Amersham Arms in New Cross on Easter Saturday  7th April (admission free). If you check out the mix below you'll see that is starts with a ska remix of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire, but the FFTANG! FFTANG! sound includes all kinds of infectiously danceable stuff from all over the world - favela funk, dancehall, afrobeat, reggaeton  - you name it.

As they say: 'From Buenos Aires bedrooms to Cape Town raves, traditional dance rhythms from around the world are being fused with modern production to create hybrid party music. Boundaries are melting and genres breed as internet culture allows worlds to collide. FFTANG! FFTANG! is a monthly club night in London set up to champion these genre mutations. Brazilian dubstep crossed with Himalayan mambo? Swedish hip hop over Congolese speed disco? Old meets nueva. Sound-clash meets culture-clash'.

If this all sounds a bit like ethnomusicology homework, just listen to the music - all of it very accessible and get-up-on-the-floorable. In this mix, there's some Kate Bush, Etta James and versions of Seven Nation Army, Nirvana's Lithium, Uptown Top Ranking and Mas Que Nada. Oh and mash up of Cutty Ranks 'Limb by Limb' with Tequila! And you don't need to know what Moombahton is to appreciate a great mix of The Rolling Stones' Miss You (starts at about 9:30):

FF have been putting on monthly club nights at various venues across London, including 93 Feet East and the Big Chill bar. For their first night in New Cross they will be including live percussion along with the DJ sets.

Music Monday: Controlled Weirdness

Neil Keating aka DJ Controlled Weirdness has been DJing since the 1980s, playing out all kinds of bass and beats in London, New York, Berlin and many other places (I first came across him at Dead by Dawn in Brixton in the mid-1990s). While best known for hard breaks and electro-tinged sounds, he is also a formidable authority on disco (especially it's crossover into early rap)  as I can vouch having once spent time crate digging with him in Friedrichshain - check out some of his mixes at Ill FM.

Controlled Weirdness recently at the Bussey building in Peckham

From his Rotherhithe tower block HQ he has also released numerous tracks under various guises on his own Unearthly Records and other labels. He has recently started uploading much of his back catalogue on to Soundcloud (he has made some of the tracks featured here temporarily available for download so get busy). 

The Deptford Market Arcade Classics EP (2003) was 'Inspired by rooting through the debris and detritus of South London. The sound at the start of Docklands Battle Breaks is the Thames river rushing through one of the old dock gates in Deptford'.

'South London Bass' (2005) is a classic; the title is self-explanatory.




His latest upload is the previously unreleased 'I'm the Guvnor'.



'Let's all have a South London Acid House Party'  - great late 1980s sample at the beginning: 'Saturday night in South London, hundreds of young people are gathering for the latest craze - an acid house party in a disused warehouse'



Neil has written an excellent article in Datacide magazine about clubbing and warehouse parties in 1980s London, You’re too Young to Remember the Eighties – Dancing in a different time:

'The Saturday night ritual was to head to the Spice of Life pub on the Charing Cross Road. This is where all the various clubbers would congregate before heading out to different parties. Here you would hear about these illegal warehouse parties that had started taking place in the run down old docklands areas near the Thames and around London, Blackfriars and Southwark Bridges. This area was pre regeneration and was full of empty old warehouses with nobody living near by. You would get the address and head down after midnight and try and find the party. It would be Five pounds to get in and you could buy Red Stripe beer for a pound which was sold out of dustbins crammed full of ice. Some of these parties were massive and you would get a real cross section of people crammed into a dirty warehouse and dancing all night. The music was usually rare groove which was basically obscure funk 7 inches that DJ’s had started digging up. There was no door policy like at the some of the trendier night clubs so you’d get people dressed up in designer clothes next to punters in jeans and T-shirts dancing all night'.

As mentioned here before, Tooley Street by London Bridge was the location for some of these warehouse parties.

Controlled Weirdness is playing at the Festa Junina Brazilian festival in Berlin in June, and has some other nights lined up a bit nearer home. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter for details.

Music Monday: Deptford Goth

'Deptford Goth' is Daniel Woolhouse. As featured in the Guardian last summer, 'Deptford Goth is a solo artist from Peckham, and we have no idea why he didn't opt for Peckham Goth, because it would be no more or less appropriate considering the sound he makes. Put it this way, it's not goth, unless we are to use that genre as a catch-all term to denote "mysterious" and "dark", which this music sort of is, although there are several indications that it comes from that part of south-east London, if indeed we are to accept that area as dubstep's home'.

His debut EP Youth II was released last year  by Merok Records (Klaxons, Crystal Castles etc), and has been variously described as 'spectral R'n'B' and 'folky sound with an electro edge'.



DEPTFORD GOTH - YOUTH II from Merok on Vimeo.

He has also been busy remixing other people's works, such as Vancouver's Blood Diamonds

Darren Jay, Greenwich Junglist

Darren Jay was one of the original London Jungle DJs, and indeed still plays out. This interview comes from the dance magazine Eternity (Issue 28) in 1995, and describes his SE London roots, growing up 'on a council estate in Greenwich' and going to reggae blues parties before coming across the Tunnel Club in Greenwich around 1988 where Micky Finn was DJing: 'At that time The Tunnel Club was playing out Acid House with the likes of Todd Terry, Fast Eddie, CC Rogers, Micky Finn and Jarvis'.

The Tunnel Club was in the old Mitre pub by the entrance to the Blackwall tunnel from 1983 to 1988 and was run by the late Malcolm Hardee as a comedy club as well as hosting music nights. It closed following a police raid.

[click on images to enlarge]



A period raving lead to Darren Jay's breakthough into DJing: 'There was a party called Asylum which was held at London Polytechnic in Woolwich. I managed to blag my way into playing by telling the guy who ran it that I had been playing for a couple of years. There was about 1500 people there and Micky Finn was palaying straight after me. Luckily I played OK and since then I have never looked back' (assume this was at Thames Poly). Jay and Finn went on to become part of the AWOL crew who put on a famous drum and bass club in Islington and later at the Ministry of Sound.

Here's an extract from a 1999 Darren Jay set at Helter Skelter featuring MCs Juiceman, Riddla & Ranger D:



Got any good Tunnel Club or Asylum stories, or indeed any other SE London ravin' memories?

Residency at the Royal Albert

The Royal Albert is a fine pub, even if for some of us it's hard not to recall some great music nights in that place when it was the Paradise Bar. You know you go in there and there's some terrible football on the screen and you stare in to your pint and wistfully mumble about the night you saw The Long Blondes or Art Brut or even spent a whole evening at a Belle & Sebastian fan convention.

But hey it's not as if they don't have any music there now, and among other things there is a montly DJ residency by er... 'Residency' (Alex Cordiner and Richard Goff) playing house, electro, disco, indie, pop and whatever else takes their fancy. It's not so much a club, more just a night in the pub with some decent music, though you're welcome to try out a few moves. Their next session is next Friday the 14th January.

Alex Cordiner produces music under the name Lusty Zanzibar - among other things he has been working with the great singer Billy Ray Martin on The Crackdown Project - this is a cover of the Cabaret Voltaire track Crackdown:

172 to Brockley Rise

MC Jimit is seemingly an American house/hip hop MC and producer who was in London last December. He enjoyed his bus trip across town so much that he made this track '172 to Brockley Rise' (there's a sample of the title phrase at the end - obviously recorded on the bus). Not sure if he ever made it as far as Brockley, but the film shows a trip across the river, round the Elephant and Castle roundabout and down the Old Kent Road.

Telepathic Fish

When the ambient scene emerged in the early 1990s, I was somewhat ambivalent about the notion of whole clubs dedicated to low tempo electronica. It might have been perfect for winding down after a night out, or even for taking a breather from the dancefloor in a chill out room, but perhaps not for someone who habitually spent time in such rooms impatiently tapping feet and demanding 'can we go and dance again now?' The first such club night I went to was at Jacksons Lane Community Centre in Highgate - I think it might even have been called the Ambient Club (anybody else got any recollection of this?). The ex-punk in me bridled at a club with most people sitting down on mattresses round the outside. But you sit down too, relax a little and hey... it's not so bad!

One of the first series of dedicated ambient nights started out in South London courtesy of a collective who put on Telepathic Fish. In his book 'Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds' (1995), David Toop recalls:

'Telepathic Fish grew from... origins as a small squat party to a growing public event with its own fanzine, Mind Food. "It's like being in someone's living room", Hex/Coldcut 'Macpunk' Matt Black said to me in October 1993 as we watched somebody step around the inert bodies, the dogs on strings and the double baby buggies, carrying a tray of drinks and eats. On that occasion, held in Brixton's Cool Tan Arts Centre, Telepathic Fish ran from noon until 10 p.m. on a Sun­day. You could buy Indian tea and cheese rolls (the latter constructed in situ with a Swiss army knife) from a low table set up in one corner of the main room. This looked for all the world like a 1960s' arts lab: bubble lights, computer graphics, Inflatables, sleepers, drone music, squat aesthetics.

My first and foolish action was to sit on a mattress which has been out in the rain for a month. For half an hour, only professional interest keeps me from screaming out of there in a shower of sparks but then I relax. No, it's fine. This is ambient in the 1990s - the 1960s'/70s'/80s' retro future rolled into a package too open, loose and scruffy to be anything other than a manifestation of real commitment and enthusiasm. Tel­epathic Fish was started by a group of art students and computer freaks - Mario Tracey-Ageura, Kevin Foakes and David Vallade - who lived together in a house in Dulwich. Later, Chantal Passemonde moved into the house, shortly af­ter the parties had begun. Kevin was a hip-hop fan, David liked heavy metal and Chantal listened to the ambient end of indie music: Spacemen 3 and 4AD label bands such as This Mortal Coil. There were no shared musical visions; simply an idea that the environment for listening to music could be different...

For the first party, held in the Dulwich house, six hundred people turned up through word of mouth and Mixmaster Mor­ris DJd. Then they planned a May Day teaparty. The fliers were teabags. Mixmaster Morris wanted a German ambient DJ, Dr Atmo, to play at the party, along with Richard "Aphex Twin" James, a recent addition to Morris's wide circle of friends and fellow psychic nomads. "We realised that the whole party was going to be too big for the place we were going to have it," explains Chantal, "which basically was a garden, so we rushed around. Morris knew some people and we found this squat in Brixton, which was run by these completely insane people. Just real squattie types, right over the edge. It was from Sunday tea on May bank holiday and people just turned up in dribs and drabs all through the night. We got Vegetable Vision in to do the lights. We ran around and got mattresses from on the street round Brixton and we had some of my friends do­ing the tea. We made lots of jelly and there was plenty of acid about. That went on for about fourteen, fifteen hours, with people lying around. That was the first proper Telepathic Fish, May 1st, '93".

So, the first party was in a house in East Dulwich, the second in a squat in Tunstall Road, Brixton, and then there was at least one at Cool Tan, the squatted ex-dole office in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. I went to many parties in that place, but don't think I was at that one.

Mixmaster Morris was living in Camberwell at the time (may still do for all I know), he put out a track with Jonah Sharpe called Camberwell Green. He was also involved in the mid-1980s with running a club called The Gift at the Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross.

Update August 2025:

Kevin Foakes, who as part of the Openmind collective put on the Telepathic Fish parties, talks at length about them with Controlled Weirdness on the great 'Tales from a Disappearing City' series.

Kevin has previously provided more information about the parties in comments to this post, including confirming that the original party took place at 102 Grove Vale in East Dulwich- the flat above what is now the Shelter charity shop on Goose Green roundabout.

Kevin is putting together a Telepathic Fish compilation complete with a booklet telling the full story:

'The Openmind collective’s Telepathic Fish parties of the early 90s are to be honoured with a double vinyl compilation of some of its key sounds. The seminal underground South London ambient party connected seminal labels like Ninja Tune, Warp, Leaf and Rising High/Blue Planet and paved the way for many of the developments in the electronic music world that followed.

Hosted by Chantal Passamonte (aka Mira Calix – RIP), David Vallade, Mario Aguera and Kevin Foakes (aka DJ Food) – collectively named Openmind – with help from Mixmaster Morris aka The Irresistible Force and Coldcut’s Matt Black, they started DJing and decorating house parties or squats with mind-blowing installations and wholly idiosyncratic design. Regular guests included Aphex Twin, Andrea Parker and Tony Morley (The Leaf Label)'.

The album is to be launched with a party in Brixton on 31 August 2025 at Arch 555 (tickets from Resident Advisor)

[incidentally I've now found out the Ambient Club at Jacksons Lane was put on by Pod Bluman and Stuart Warren-Hill, later of Hexstatic & Holotronica]

Spiral Tribe parties in SE London

Spiral Tribe were the best known of the many techno sound systems putting on parties in (mostly) squatted venues and free festivals in the early 1990s. They became media folk devils as a result of their role in putting on the famous Castlemorton festival in May 1992, following which people associated with Spiral Tribe were prosecuted for public order offences, only to be acquitted after a four month trial (the government got its revenge by passing the anti-rave Criminal Justice Act).

The year before, Spiral Tribe put on several parties in South London. According to this list included in a Spiral Tribe zine at the time (reproduced below), these included:

- July 27-28 1991, a benefit party in Deptford
- September 21-22 1991, Peckham party
- October 12 -14, Volume 2 Lewisham

I went to lots of free/squat parties a little later in the 1990s, but didn't go to any of these ones. Does anyone remember where they were or anything about them or other similar events?

Here's a few clues. DJ BPM says on her myspace that 'walking into a Spiral Tribe squat party in Carnegie Library in Deptford changed my life, it was a divine experience to me (neither joking nor blaspheming)'. The Carnegie library referred to is the old Lewisham Central Library (now Lewisham Arthouse) at the New Cross end of Lewisham Way, which was built in 1913/14 with funding from the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. It closed in June 1991, and was sporadically used as a venue for squat parties until Lewisham Arthouse moved in three years later. I think this party actually took place after the above list was compiled in November 1991, as Steve Spiral recalls:

'Lewisham Library, the venue walls were painted by Mark and Debbie for a week before the party, and the 2 terror strobes and smoke machine were intense and ran all night long. Darren crashed his camper with the rest of the light show in the back the day before the party. Easy to remember this was my 21st birthday party…Saturday 17th November 91'.

There's some great footage of this party, featuring some classic '91 raver moves. The film was apparently shot in the afternoon when not many people were around, as it was too dark to film at night:
He also mentions a separate party at 'The arches Deptford, the venue was arranged by big Alex (dancer for Back to the Planet and co-organizer of the Urban Free Festival in Fordham park, New Cross). This part took place directly after Camelford so must have been mid Sept 91'. This does slightly contradict the list, so wonder if there's some confusion with the 'Peckham party'?

The exact dates aren't really important, but I'm guessing that the Deptford arches party actually took place in July 1991, as I believe that this was the time of the Deptford Urban Free Festival which he mentions, and I have seen somewhere else a reference to Spiral Tribe organising an 'after party' for the festival. No idea where the Peckham party was or 'Volume 2' in Lewisham.