Tuesday, July 22, 2008  7:05 am 

And

And the dam broke with a mighty crack, and the water precipitated free like crazy horses, and a thousand birds took flight covering the land with shadows, and a sound as if the gasp of a thousand hearts had melded into one, or as if God had gasped at hearing the mighty crack, look at those columns of white water running furious over everything that was in the valley. And this way it ended, houses and churches and schoolyards and barns and fences and hills and forests sitting strange and uncomfortable in the turbulent green like polite hosts to an unexpected guest, while the possessions of a thousand spiralled to the white surface like the apparel of ghostly pilgrims, I look into the murky shadows and I see a closed room in a house standing where all these things remained trapped, sepia portraits in the walls staring blind at the water dripping through cracks in the yellow walls, and the dented floorboards, a bed unmade, a girl trapped inside singing a song that has haunted ever since the hearts of those that, on that day, stood by the emerging shores of the nascent lake.

U.S. Girls- Prove it all Night

We are ever so happy that U.S. Girls eerily beautiful incantations are finally embedded in the black vinyl of her ‘Introducing’ album released by mighty Siltbreeze (we heart). There was a soul to the music of the Shaggs, one perhaps taught by the ghosts of the prairie, it does shine strong in U.S. Girls heart, and her heart beats strong in her songs, and we listen enthralled because we can’t ask for more.

And the other night I couldn’t sleep so I sat in my bed by the window smoking a cigarette, staring outside into a shining fresco unreal in its silent stillness, all shades of blue merging into black interrupted by the stealthy silhouette of a cat jumping the fence precise with murder in its refulgent eyes, then, all quiet again save for that red firefly crashing capricious into the mound of ashes perched on the windowsill, then a cadence approaching slow but steady in the distance, turn towards the gaudy clock ticking and tacking indifferent by my bed, do trains run at this time of the night? Because my window looks, past the green- then blue- foliage into the tracks approaching the station, the cadence growing louder, carrying with it a mournful something I had never heard before, it could be that in the small hours every sound produced resonates deeper into the pit of loneliness of one awake and expectant, sitting by the window, and then a train crashes through this reverie obstinate in a mystery destination, surely trains don’t run this late, perhaps this is the way the dead travel, through empty tracks past closed stations, staring from their own windows into a world of shadows where the living sleep.

Arch M- 21st Union

You could imagine ghosts slender and sad performing elaborate ballet pieces full of drama across empty architectures while Arch M’s otherwordly music plays in the background, like dolls at the beginning of a Kitano film. Which would take your breath away rightfully.

And if you walk down a smooth path of stones polished by the wind, long after a hint of a footprint could last be read, and find yourself confronted by a dark crack just about the longest you ever jumped, maybe a couple of feet longer, tired and weary, the explorer inside you wiping his sweaty brow doubtful while the voices of your friends call your name in the distance, or is that their echoes chasing each other in the blue sky between the shapes of squeaking seagulls, and you half turn around, and then back, stare beyond the crack where the air shimmers uncertain, ionised particles dancing with a mischievous smile like they were about to tell you a secret, and then you mutter something, hold your breath and jump as long as you ever jumped to land precarious on the other side, and stare down steep rocky cliffs where a little beach lays curled calm past the echoes of your friends’ voices, descend. Because from there, you shall behold a majestic palace of gilded domes floating over the placid blue sea, the sun reflected almost blinding but not quite in its mighty spirals, around which the birds play their game eternal and free.

El Guincho- Jugadores de Juegos

Excellent gentleman Cristian from Discos Compulsivos/LUV LUV sent us today the very sold-out Folias CD-R by our favouritest tropical trovadour Pablo aka El Guincho, and seriously, while listening to it the sun has finally decided to shine through the merciless battlements of clouds under which we have toiled morose for so long, might the guitar strings gently plucked by Pablo’s fingers open up those heavy and grey curtains for good, so that we might behold into a blue sky smiling, the summer is here.

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Arch M’s Corey Reid shall be DJing at Brighton’s Ocean Room on Friday night, and New Look will be playing live. Good stuff, we’ll be there.

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Our friend George Quartz has a very nice blog called La Maladie Tropicale, go and say hi. Enjoy the colours and fonts. Classy.

labels >> Arch M, El Guincho, U.S. Girls, xxjfg

  3 Comments »  

Monday, July 21, 2008  8:26 am 

Orgy of the gastropodas

Recently 20jfg we have been growing. Not just in number / girth/ facial hair but in our back garden. Spinach, rocket, pak choi , basil , radishes, tomato, chilli , jerusalem artichokes and some nasturtiums (the leaves are rather good). It’s not bad for an area the size of a the back seat of a mini.

Upon returning after dark last night, after mischievous of one kind of another, 20jfs2 put on his wolf suit and ventured into the garden to summon the familiars for feeding time with the traditional call. They roared their terrible roars, and rolled their terrible eyes, and gnashed their terrible teeth, and showed their terrible claws. Once fed the familiars curled up into purring balls of fluff in their beds.

The real horror that was to await came from a much less animated source, for did my eyes deceive me or was the floor of the garden moving ?

Barrabas - Wild Safari

Like this 1972 cut from early disco-able without meaning to be Spanish drug threatened Barrabas, my heart was beating with both terrible anticipation and excitment. Fetching a torch to investigate I stared on in wonder. Wherever i cast the beam a whole army of invertebrate were moving across the lawn in a far more animated way than their sluggish (sorry) daytime behaviour. The heards of snails made our tiny garden look like the plains of America during a buffalo migration.

But why were the snails and slugs so tightly bound, climbing on top of each other and erm, eww….

I’d never seen the orgy of the snails before, must have been something to do with the alignment of the planets.

In the morning they had gone, along with most of our crops.

20jazzfunkgreats will not abide a discussion of apocalyptic events without a mention to our most beloved Aphrodite’s Child. As you might well know, Book of the Revelations’ influenced ‘666′ represented the band-breaking transition from earlier flower-power balladry to something altogether darker and, in our patchouli-allergic opinions, way more powerful, first step also towards Vangelis’ Earth, one of the best albums ever made, ’nuff said.

Aphrodite’s Child- The Four Horsemen

This is the sort of album you really really need to hear in its totality (how many of those coming out these days?), so if you didn’t know about it do continue your research after stepping through the pre-new age chiming of the Four Horsemen’s beginning, blueprint of ‘My Face in the Rain’ on a hardcore LSD messianic trip, the calm before the storm of some of the baddest breaks ever concocted by bearded Greeks, which set your soul on fire with the trascendental equivalent of the Bomb Squad’s Welcome to the Terrordrome, and that’s only the beginning.

This must be one of the most joyful songs ever written about the arrival of skeletal riders carrying inside their ragged cloaks the evils of conquest, famine, war and plague. I think that at these point of their existences, Aphrodite’s Child (or at least Vangelis, Demis Roussos was already itching for global  pop stardom) might have seen themselves in command of spiritual energies strong enough to defeat that dreadful onslaught, and who knows, maybe they did.

Surely music this furious and beautiful must, upon being devised, crafted and performed impact the fabric of the cosmos at levels difficult to understand, or even perceive, a storm in heaven over some the rocky cliffs of a Mediterranean archipielago where stormy clouds of doom where routed by the psychedelic exertions of these progressive wizards.

And after the apocalypse, what better than the post-apocalypse.

Zager and Evans’ ‘In the year 2525′ is one song that my dad had in most of his 60s tapes, so whenever we travelled around the country when I was likkle I used to get soaked on its lush mexican-psyche-sci-fi spirals and bass-drum heavy stomp, listening to a description of processes of accelerated technological progress, evolution and change that would have made Yevgeny Zamyatin, and perhaps William Hope Hodgson, proud. It was even nominated for a Hugo award, for chrissakes. That’s more than enough to justify the inclusion of anything into the Annals of the society of 20jazzfunkgreatness, so here you have this timeless classic still shining strong in all its precognitive glory.

Zager and Evans- In the year 2525

When alien creatures slender like chrysalis step out of their silvery pods in the midst of the ochre nothingness, from which the ruins of our civilisation protrude like carious teeth in the mouth of the world, covered in eroded commercials for products which have joined bones, hopes and dreams in the dust of the dead and forgotten, and they wonder what is that brought mankind’s crazed adventures to its end, maybe it will be the echoes of this song that resonate in the crazed winds.

labels >> Aphrodite's Child, Barrabas, Zager and Evans

  11 Comments »  

Friday, July 18, 2008  12:03 am 

Danceparty @ the Ascending Egyptian Algorhythm

It really can’t come soon enough, but in a few months time one of our most beloved of NYC experimentalist groups, Gang Gang Dance, will return to bestow upon us a new album of their intoxicating neo-tribal tekno trance that should sufficiently have everyone‘s bodies violently convulsing soon enough. Following on from the mind-blowing goodness that was God’s Money, and a slew of other awesomely mind melting releases, Saint Dymphna, will probably be one of the best things our ears will hear this year, and few things recently have sounded as exciting as the prospect that grime artist Tinchy Stryder will indeed be gate crashing their pharaonic rave.

House Jam, as a taster of things to come, has been made available as an xxxchange remix which on first listen will definitely rattle the cages of those who have become accustomed to Gang Gang Dance as the conjurers of broken riddims, haunted by decaying synths and visions of regretful Gorilla and vengeful father Nzame, because never before have Gang Gang Dance sounded so structured or well equipped to bring about the destruction of limp-ass indie discos everywhere, having been somewhat cleaned up by the Spank Rock cohort who‘s temporarily rubbed the foam from their mouths. So no, this isn’t exactly the same kind of primal dub workout we’re used to, but all the same it’s still nicely heavy stuff that should provoke the devoted into unwittingly hitting the dirt as they mutter strange, dead words to themselves, their eyes rolled into the back of their heads hypnotised by the tropical grunge and shamanistic diva wailings of Liz Bougatsos who incessantly asks the mystifyingly cryptic question, “Will the clouds carry my tears to you?”, evoking more wonderment the more its repeated.

Gang Gang Dance - House Jam (xxxchange Remix)

Joining Gang Gang Dance out in the vast technicolor Paper Rad deserts where Brooklyn and Cairo converse and become one, where Hummer convertibles caked in dust are pimped out with brightly coloured feathers, and gold beads, and idols of Sekhmet and Anuba sit on the dash as weathered speakers blast the streets with the sound clash of Wu Tang beats and Faiza Ahmed, are husband and wife duo, Rainbow Arabia.

Rainbow Arabia - Omar K

Adventuring on a similar dark star safari, Rainbow Arabia wearing their kaleidoscopic militia uniforms, and armed with unforgiving jet-black machine guns adorned with rainbows of ribbons, stampede into town on crystal war elephants, painted red with Nubian scrawl and decorated in chains of silver plated animal skulls, firing bullets into the sky to announce their arrival, creating the kind of noise you could imagine the DFA might make had they ever decided to throw a party in the underground ruins of Egypt, the ghosts of the Pyramids shaken into action by the sinuous rhythms and earth quaking basslines. They may very well be some of our newest favourite people.

labels >> gang gang dance, rainbow arabia

  5 Comments »  

Thursday, July 17, 2008  12:01 am 

Welcome to the Jungle

Our beloved true magick star Mrth told you about this particular tune with drawings we couldn’t even try start to describe, least be us forever vanquished to the asylum for psychedelic glosolalia motherfuckers, alien code spilling out of eyes bulging boiled and all that this entails.

Well, Mi Ami infiltrate our interstellar space with a new 12”, so we thought we’d say WHA, in Ark of the Covenant they continue reading the crooked ways of the drum straight off the black source without resorting to post-punk translators, and the message strikes home fierce n deep. The sheer intensity of its death wailing, which surfs over a red tide of stomping dub bass and no wave guitar shrieking, yellow-eyed panther chewing through its own flesh to escape that cruel trap, burns into our brains images feverish like Malaria-induced hallucinations, camouflage nets covering barracks where taut guerrilla muscles tattooed with the severe faces of Fela Kuti, Sun Ra and Jah Wobble flex resolute covered in a sweaty sheen.

Mi Ami- Ark of the Covenant

Mi Ami’s music sounds made in the treading of hidden paths across a war-torn spiritual jungle, from the splinters of punji sticks, empty shell cases, the sun shining stroboscopic through punctured blood-splattered leafs, caterpillars of unbelievable colours contorting in bizarre shapes, and tribal echoes in the distance of a revolutionary heart of darkness. We so fucking dig.

And now some balm to cover those lacerations, you know that Hugo’s image shines forever reflected in the pool of blood flowing through 20jazzfunkgreats’ syncopated-beating heart, which is to say in a gory way that his intrepid adventures and excellent spirit inform and inspire us in equal degrees.

As we have already told you, he just about kicked off a record label, Capablanca discos, wise communications from a Cuban disco legend some witnesses have described as a cross between David Mancuso and Jodorowski’s Alchemist. His first reference is a seed that grows into a tree of slender delicate limbs reaching towards pearls glimmering in the velvet black, the fulfilment of a loving promise, and the beginning of a very special trip.

Grackle- Jungle (T.Keeler and Capablanca remix)

Grackle’s ‘Jungle’ is thus transformed by the mediation of that gentleman T.Keeler, and el hidalgo Capablanca into chiming alkaloid bliss, warm synthetic waves washing our bodies through the psychedelic membrane into the mother-of-pearl shores of a Balearic island so that, from his vantage point in the deck of a ship sailing valiant away in the night, Steve Reich may behold our faces, white smears of pleasure, through gold-gilded binoculars and tell his attentive students with a knowing smile, ‘this is how it’s done kids’.

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We are back “live” this Saturday at the Penthouse, 8-1AM FREE ENTRY

Death disco vs Love dorky

It’s like the photo above if Larry Levan had produced it and we couldn’t find the record anywhere.

Fierce love

XXJFG

labels >> Capablanca, Mi Ami, grackle, xxjfg

  2 Comments »  

Tuesday, July 15, 2008  12:01 am 

Automatons Marching

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Steve needs a job - and this time its serious.

Calling all London-based music pr companies, marketing agencies and record labels, Steve is looking for employment as a press officer or Marketing Executive. he loves music, and wants to work in something he loves - you need him!

Steve studied a BA Hons degree in Fine Art practice focusing on images of London at night without people, morphing normal streets into dramatically lit temples and alien structures. He went on to do a National Diploma in Professional Photography Practice, honing commercial photographic skills.

Steve is also adept in the business arena having worked successfully as a team co-ordinator, managing priorities and workloads, communicating effectively through all levels of management, and supporting directors, in a fast paced business environment, with confidentiality and professionalism in a PA role.

As a member of your favourite blog, 2OJFG, Steve has established and maintained relationships with artists, labels and promotion peeps at all levels within the music business from grass roots to heads of marketing. Steve’s flair for creative and descriptive writing helps make the blog unique and interesting, with its own distinct voice in an ever competitive world of music promotion.

Through social networking groups, forums and online/printed media coverage, Steve has developed the ability to stay one step ahead of the industry, understanding his audience by encouraging user generated content wherever and however possible, learning from it and incorporating it into the whole.

Steve is an extremely organised, passionate, creative, imaginative, self-motivated, forward thinking individual looking for a challenge in an industry that he loves.

Please contact Steve at the usual e-mail address (xxjfg @ hotmail.com) if you can help!
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Now, onwards to the musics…

Since cruising the underground of New York for every illicit feral animal in possession of a fuzzing guitar and prehistoric yelp, Soul Jazz haven’t really shown up on my music radar. The New York Noise triptych of compilations were some of the most concise and striking collections of a certain era to ever be given “benchmark” status, but now Soul Jazz are back with a release that sounds like a thousand androids swinging into action on the surface of a zero gravity planet with the LP ‘A Matter Of Scale’ by Secondo.

Secondo- Ought To Say

‘Ought To Say’ opens the album with its disjointed rhythm and shifting sands hi-hats, with bits of other linear robotic structures flying in from other directions and instrumental Grandmaster Flash 12″s cutting through the air in shattered fractures, slicing into the mainframe and assimilating perfectly. Once the track is in full swing, two separate channels of disco are clashing together with minimal ninja strokes, effortless springing movements through the air and sonic darts transferred from one side to the other. Kompakt are gonna be jealous, oh well.

The robots keep advancing, the cold stare from their lifeless red eyes chilling mortals to the bone. But what’s this strange violently regimented sound coming from the Parisian HQ of I’m A Cliche? Grime riddims are exploding from speakers and seem to have been incorporated into the central CPU’s of these automatons, backed up by spearheaded laser blasts, raining down on the Champs-Elysées with brutal unrelenting force.

Uncle O - 8O8 Melody

The 12″ ‘Jupiter Menace’ can be purchased at Piccadilly Records, check it to hear one of the most random collections, presenting snippets of each style of dance music from disco to europop, by way of darkly ambient synthesised landscapes and whole terrains built from the fused wireframes of electro and cosmic balearic movements.

labels >> robots, secondo, uncle O

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