An xxjfg archive for posts featuring xxjfg.
This post is definitely not about cat parasites. This post is definitely not about the fact that each member of 20JFG is surrounded by at least one cat on a daily basis. This post will not postulate what the cat parasite wants with us. It will merely point out that we are all from (marginally) diverse backgrounds…
120 Megabytes – Episode 19 brought to you in association with @markbrown and our friends over at Network Awesome
Jimmy Savile sat on the train to Leeds, his head in his hands. The night before he had been playing records at the Roxy in Bradford. It had possibly been the most life changing experience in his life. After a particularly heady does of acid while playing a rather long version of some Engelbert Humperdinck song…
So here we are, caught up in an epileptic epiphany lighting up James Brown’s drug-addled brain as he dances around the burning wreckage of his automobile like a Balinese finger puppet lucubrated by a Dionysian necromancer, police sirens Doppler-effecting closer and closer. And what does this epiphany concern, you ask? It concerns the realisation that…
Ray & The Prisms, Hans Tanza’s foremost competitors in the field of analogue-cryptic management consultancy, recently launched ‘astrograph’, a distraction channelling API for business service providers in the creative industries – particularly product design houses and boutique architecture studios. Astrograph transforms the flow of information generated by social media networks, e-mail systems and behaviouralist web-browsing…
Hi, and welcome to another old dark matter whistle test. ‘Whispering’ 20jfg here with a selection of music and cultural reference that only a rather small percentage of our readers will actually read, listen to, or understand. mock rock :) 20jazzfunkgreats mixtape – The old dark matter whistle test Just for fun, there is no…
(Where we share some bits from the diaries of future curmudgeon extraordinaire & gallic cyber-problematiser Alfred Tessier-Guilleme, moaning about what life is like in 70 years or so. We can totally get away with it because he hasn’t even been born. All hail H.G. Wells!) We have reconstructed the concept of love for our new…
(Image by Ian Miller) In our own special way, we recreate the cliché of the lone resuscitant marooned in a post-apocalyptic scenario– the current affairs perceptual chasm explained by a Purification Festival where we retreat to the innermost vaults of our manor and listen to hermetic discographies for months, we flip tarot cards too, disconnected…
Its been a while since we received correspondance from the fictive archaeologists at Dramatic records, so it is with great joy that we present a swansong tale from their Endless House archives. The track below is taken from the final chapter in the elaborate construct known as the Endless House which, if you are lucky enough to have not…
One morning, as Stuart Lamour was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that despite only a minor insertion wound his right hand had begun to resemble not so much the one he went to sleep with, but the proboscis of the ant which had bitten him. Marsha Hunt – Oh, no! Not the Beast…
(Otoman architecture via 50 Watts) As we descend parallel to the spike that impales the heart of the province over which our tower rises we reach a damp oubliette whose walls are covered in mysterious scribbles, the descent continues into the darkness, but we have never gone further, for an old man of foreboding countenance…
(You know which Boris) Arthur C. Clarke once said that ‘Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Undistinguishable from Magic’. Let us work this aphorism backwards, and apply it to Zombi’s corpus, as manifested and further advanced in their latest release, ‘Escape Velocity’. For what does something that sounds like black magic tell us about the technology…
We are once again thrilled and regailed to bring you some more half baked ideas and muddy prose, typed straight from the malfunctioning Brother WP-80 of Preston G. Parallax. During the cold, grim winter of 1986 Preston’s controversial short story ‘Reggae Against Communism’ was deemed too dangerous for inclusion in his unreleased collection ‘Glaucoma of God and other…
Once upon a time, in the days before the ’chill wave’, there lived a genre know as ‘Ambient’. ‘Ambient’ lived happily in the mind of Brian Eno, until one day he got sick and it floated out of him on a cloud of Vick’s Vaporub (TM). The genre of ‘Ambient’ became very popular since then, enjoying…
Lo and behold the starwanderers as they continue their ramblings inside a box of black space lined with gold thread, chronological boundary for the holy year that was 2010. Here we report the risky explorations that over this period tore asunder the walls of reality to fetch from the amorphous manifold beyond nutritious morsels of quantum pop which which we watered our garden and fed the livestock. Such were the…
In last week’s gripping installment of this post, we introduced you to our newest contributor - Preston G. Parallax. He is one of 20JFG’s all-time favourite Sci-Fi authors, but his shockingly ahead-of-their-time-novels made less money than Granny Parallax’s rock cakes at the church fayre, and he was thus relegated to the stinking dungeon of unbearable obscurity…
World Class People’s fierce stomp and power horns getting down like it was 1992 etch a crypto-constellation of neon voodoo signs in the back of your skull, glowing graffiti containing the address of a post-apocalyptic Baltimore Basement party you can’t possibly miss. It is the primitive tech soundtrack for an alluring video game sitting in…
It’s back to the rain slick streets of future garage once more. Those crumbling Victorian buildings giving up their neon secrets as we pass. Over a century of water pouring over their environs. Bass notes rising up from the harbour depths in concert with the glittering blimps above, carrying the sinister advertising for ‘a new…
What is the future without the past? Give me a simple answer to the question, “What is time?” Lovely all these nonsense shapes that words can form, isn’t it? Let’s slow it down a bit then. Focus. A bunch of “stuff” happened in the past. Some of that stuff is music. After letting that music…
When you hear the banshee coming from down the mountain, she is still only a whisper. Surprise surprise (and much to your delight) when you find out that the banshee is always so gentle. How about an added bonus: The banshee loves MC Hammer! Yeah, it doesn’t get much sicher. So acts like Universal Studios…
There are magicians in this world, who in their lifetime dip many different toes into the pools of creation, creating ripples that vary in wavelength, yet are similar in signature. As parched travelers crawling through the desert of popular culture, where ravenous vultures attempt to lead us astray so they may feed off our dry…
This post goes to the memory of Jay Reatard, his time was too soon and we are sad we will be missing many heartfelt fucked up party jams in the future. Blood Visions For Ever Upset the Rhythm prevail a bastion of goodness in the midst of the turbulent winds agitating the modern music industry….
Nite Jewel floats in a sorcerous space of her own making, witch master of an ice palace resting under the white hand of a terrible albino giant. Every hall glitters with the glamour of a thousand diamonds, sparkles in the eyes of dead kings that willed this to her. The Kamera Song, a cover version…
Everybody gets exactly what they want. While I can’t explain why in the world we wanted 2009 to be so bad, this metaphysical law is fantastic now because everyone wants 2010 to rule. Anyone with a twitter or facebook account knows what I’m talking about. “2010 is gonna rule!” is the quote of the day…
A princess of crimson dress and black mane of hair roams halls of a darkness thick as ink deep down in the forgotten heart of the castle, illuminated by the light of a feeble candle, following chalk symbols scribbled in the walls by an exiled hermit who will tell her of the end of her…
20jfg adventures of little cthulhu mixtape
A New Year begins, a New Year where 20jazzfunkgreats will continue treading the echoey halls deep in the heart of the rocky mountain where a wealth of holy grails rest, of all sizes and materials, overflowing with pristine water, scented wine and translucent liquids over which glittering fairies hover with an emerald twinkle in their…
Trying to figure out what the labyrinthine UK dance scene was all about this year was like trying to figure out what the man with no face might have looked like. Basically, an interesting diversion, but a rather pointless one nonetheless. More so than ever dubstep sounded like a hyperactive mutant techno hybrid, the Autonomic…
The beast that is 20JFG has always had one head with an abnormal taste for that which its other heads should conventional abhor. Yet the 20JFGbeast cares not for convention. And so it is then that we continue this end of year round up with a survey of that which could or most definitely should…
Pink Stallone – 20jfg Mixtape Recorded live at the reception of our unholy union to the cold blooded chicks of the summer, we lost the scroll containing the tracklist after a scuffle broke out between one of us and a rather unconvincing man in a lizard costume, who turned up claiming to be one of…
Hello. My name is Genuine Guy. One day, whilst lost in the dark forests of Neukölln I encountered a wise sage who entrusted me with a password. It was the password to a realm I once inhabited but had left behind, drawn away like a magpie, by the treasure of another. The treasure proved to…
It seems to be the week of psychedelic awakenings at 20JFG’s White Castle, what better way of getting the ball rolling than by the gold and ruby beringed hand of Prince Rama of Ayodhya, one of our most favourite bands and last victims of the iniquities of the world, i.e., they had their totemic instruments…
In More Than Human Theodore Sturgeon posits the next stage of human evolution, one where those endowed with psychic powers blesh into each other in a Gestalt process where different capabilities become functions of a single living being: telekinesis for hands, telepathy for mind, teletransportation for legs, poltergeist for speech, Aspergers style awesome computational power…
Dance music was never supposed to be classy. Nevermind Italo. MVSCLZ’ music sounds as if, knowing everything he knows now, Michael Mann travelled in his Testarossa space machine back to 80s Miami, shacked up in a minimalistic condominium, left keys, wallet and pocket change configured in an esoteric arrangement over a mantelpiece of blinding white,…
Inside the crystal dome of the snowglobe that the Gods shake with childish abandon rises a pyramid of Jodorowsky tarot cards, at whose top you will find your animated 20jazzfunkgreats miniatures dancing in the midst of the blizzard, Christmas is coming and we shall enjoy it in our own special ways. Let the pagan celebrations…
Sometimes November last forever. 20jfg November drone mix Other times it ends too soon.
You might have noticed that in the past weeks we have posted tunes only for streaming. This is the case today, but no more. We have decided that our policy from now on will be to post songs only as mp3 for download. Although we understand labels preferring to have tunes only for streaming, we…
Imagine friends, Professor Genius’ mighty flights of synthetic fancy colliding against Speculator’s dusty psyche twang. Rejoice friends, the soundtrack for your pilgrimage towards the epsilon vanishing point has been finally delivered. Headbang friends, because if our insectoid overlords raided the pantheon of rock gods with berserk zest, they wouldn’t be able to come up with…
A monster roams the streets of Sacramento, you need not worry much, because it is not primarily the tender flesh of teenagers or the sour spleen of caffeine pumped policemen that it craves, nay, this beast of brutal muscle and solid shadow feeds on broken glasses and abandoned tires, and drinks from rancid pools of…
When we first heard Lucifer Rising by Darktown Strutters, aside from the fact that we all flipped our collective shit, one of us managed to compose ourselves long enough to remark how much it sounded like Kiss Me Again by Dinosaur if Arthur Russell and Nicky Siano’s dream-team collaborative effort had been remade by the…
Bands bereft of ambition, watch how Mi Ami continue taking it to the next level, and repent of your sinful ways. When you start down the path of creation, you shouldn’t dare settling for less, least the furious Gods decide to reincarnate you into a wingless insect in a garden full of hungry birds the…
Azari & III already made one of our favourite tunes of the year with the growling sexual menace of their malfunctioning, Voguing android, machine anthem, “Hungry For The Power”, and they continue to astound us with their latest high precision dancefloor killer in the making. Around these parts anyone who sees fit to unleash the…
It is the fate of some stars, when they die, to reincarnate here in this planet, or perhaps elsewhere, it’s not for us to say. A child of features faded like a watercolour blur was born the day Electra, brightest of the Seven Sisters, collapsed into itself in the absolute silence of the constellation of…
If Ariel Pink was to one day awake from the 1980s dizz-ney landscapes that inhabit his semi comatose mind where the sunbaked California streets lined with friendly faced anthropomorphized apple pie trees are alive with bleached, drooling beach bunnies in black ray-bans and pink scrunchies hitching rides with perma-tanned creeps in white suits driving busted…
Though we have not visited them for a while, Glass Candy are still leading the IDIB pack into further uncharted territory of moonbeam disco prowess, with Desire forging a new companion galaxy where planets take the form of giant stalactites spearing an orbit around a chrome sun. Remixing Glass Candy is much like remixing LCD…
The Emperor Machine return with album number trois with much rippling of synths, bulbous polymorphic cloudscapes punctured by the stabbing points atop the Martian radio masts and sonic batshit accounts of the interstellar clashes of lunar violence between moon-monkeys and the giallo Saturn marshalls, lost in space and time forever where no-one can hear them…
Ghostape ensnares an unsuspecting listener in a snug realm of smokey spectral exotica, like turning a flesh and bone body into rice-paper and setting it down on a bed of morning dew where it can melt into the blades of grass on a field in front of a strange formation rendered in black glass and…
Your 20JFG dudes will be roaming around where the good stuff goes down at this week’s Great Escape Festival in Brighton, we would elaborate on the bands we are planning to see and whatnot, but hey, we are too busy with the preparations of our Shamanic prayers for a weekend of sun and joy, and…
But the third sister, who is also the youngest- hush! Whisper while we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or else not flesh should live; but within that Kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not, and her eyes,…
Listening to a Finders Keepers compilation is like stepping in one of those invisible cities described by Italo Calvino, a confabulation of sounds from all over that at first might feel chaotic, the outcome of the whimsical pointing of privileged fingers/finders, but it is rapidly that order emerges, you can recognise similar themes shining through…
As the summer approaches, olden genetic memories of dancing around bonfires under the aegis of Dionysus, Bacchus and the like are resurrected in the thick blood that surges across the nicotine-clotted arteries of your spaced out 20jazzfunkgreatsters, what better way to celebrate this sunny day that thee Lord has beckoned upon us than listening to…
Professor Genius delivers a super mellow and droney mix recorded live: Professor Genius – 2OJFG Mixtape 2009 Tracklist The Pipes of Pan Yves + Alan Laurent: Arc en Ciel Duermo: Canoas Para One: Sunless Professor Genius: Piramide Terry Riley: M Music Dave Ball: Sincerity Professor Genius + Speculator: No Title One Liaisons Dangereuses: Peu etre…
We have been staring in awe at the febrile glue wave moth spiralling around an incandescent flame where timeless melodies dance & tinkle frail like undead muses always prettier under a few shovelfuls of noise and fuzz, as the good ole ancestors of the first shoegaze revolution taught us , well, it’s Eat Skull who…
Sudeten Creche’s Dance is the soundtrack for a Walter Hill opium nightmare, poisonous smoke and twisted mirrors and an almost unbearable feeling of foreboding, like peeking over the shoulder of a filthy raincoat as the hand slides into the pocket fingers blind animals twisting against the ebony handle of the switchblade, feeric lines twist from…
You know we’re all about the gilded dancefloors of the discotheque, but you should also know that we’re even more about the winding staircases behind blood red velvet curtains hidden away in the dark corners of the disco that lead us down to the seedy, murderous places where red lights guide your way through a…
The sun may have been shining over parts of this haunted isle of ours for the last few days, but that hasn’t stopped Winter’s icy grip from loosening up it’s stranglehold on us all which actually hasn’t been all that bad considering here at XXJFG towers we’ve been bathing in a gloriously seasonal, pixelated bath…
We have been a bit bad lately, what with all the joyous disco, synthetic fear and versicolor reconstructed pop, we have perhaps neglected the other leg supporting the ‘it’s so not art’ bed where your 20jazzfunkgreats gaunt ghouls wallow, roll and frolic frenzied like brain fried commuters crashing onwards in a southern rail carriage destined…
Another postcard from Brian Miller at Deathbomb Arc HQ, another chance to rejoice. Pretty awesome. / / / / / \\\\\\\\ Some lovely sounds from Los Angeles this time, both of the ragamuffin sort and the prim and proper. Although both camps represent a distinctly working class, far beyond Hollywood, urban pop mentality. The duo…
In spite of what you might think, we are normal people who revel in the rays of sun as they shine across the derelict halls of our forsaken manor, the bad things that crawl across them retreat back into the shadows, and, feeling safe for once, we cuddle in the crimson gold-gilded sofa behind the…
How cool is cool italo, precisely because it is the antithesis of cool? Just check out the two nuggets by Marzio Dance and Baby’s Gang we bring you today- self-improvement choruses to get a whole dancefloor pumping raspberry fists in the air *check* unhinged//overblown progressions packed with weird sci-fi effects and Jane Fonda on speed…
For the last few years Ghost Box have been releasing unto the world a steady stream of mysterious and intoxicating records dedicated to sound tracking a quintessentially eccentric British past saturated in Tomorrow’s World technology and ancient pagan traditions that may have never actually existed. Consequently Ghost Box have undoubtedly emerged to be one of…
Whatever We Want Records stealth releases more circular shapes of awesome in this humble beginning of ‘O9, slipping these under the radar discs into stores, only for them to be snapped up double quick by as many real music fans as eBay renegade charlatans. Snap the Food of the Gods 12″ up before you have…
‘Dour post-punk music with a german mock accent which I guess isn’t mock after all because the singer is actually German’ is the genius comment that DJ Rick had to make about Siltbreeze’s finest, Teenage Panzerkorps. Theirs is one of those rackets we get understandably excited about, being as we are obsessives of Chrome and…
Boredoms are actual magicians spewing forth unto the world rainbow acid oceans of spazzed out, foaming mouth free jazz noise and haywire tribal drum workouts that sound and feel like the threat of legions of stampeding war elephants charging towards you in endless waves of destruction, and so we hope you can relate and understand…
We didn’t sleep this weekend. We spent it chasing a coven of witch CEOs across the streets of the City at night. You know how the master puppeteers of the world share membership in a dense cobweb or secret societies and the like? Well, some of them are about more than secret handshakes and wearing…
We have the best tunes, man. And the best images, thank Tommy Boy for that. The gentle folks at Six Degrees Records have sent us one piece of balearic heaven, or an advance from their upcoming release by some people called Pacifika, as remixed by those magicians Quiet Village. Go on holidays somewhere warm and…
Not too many moons into the near future the good people at Absolutely Kosher will be releasing Revenge, The Rollercoaster Project’s debut album which has seriously knocked us all for sixxx. A positively awesome mindmelt of crystal chamber compositions, bleeding wire computer balladry, and shards of black metal noise filtered through the mind of Hans-Joachim…
Remember when Jason Voorhees was shot into space and re-animated like some kind of psychotic, cybernetic Frankenstein, half machine, half scar tissue, to wreak bloody havoc on a crew of gormless idiots who were so faceless they probably defined divine retribution having their faces split in half by the full force of a Goliath sized…
Epic post! Epic because Love is Disco, and Disco is the one genre that has united all 4 horsemen of 20JFG in agreement that 2008 was an awesome year for said musical style. Disco hit hard this year with Chicago House making a welcome return to the forefront of dance music and the act of…
What links and binds all the music that’s dazzled and dazed us and forced us like an unseen entity to fall to our knees in wide eyed rapture like wailers in a temple, is that no matter how abstract and dizzying so much of this stuff appears to be on the surface of things, ultimately…
Amongst the seasonal activities in which your humble 20JFG scribes indulge, there is the odd film screening in the home cinema that our tycoon grandfather has set up in the cellar of his rural demesne. Crimson draperies and decadent gold gilded statues of Pan and Astarte, you can picture the scene. Well, for this year…
Chris sent us a parcel, and we opened the parcel and in the parcel there was a shovel and with the shovel we made a hole and through the hole we found a passage and past the passage we found a world and in the world there was a party and in the party there…
While Salem continue to incant and toil away over their potent purple potion making music perfect for accompanying codeine assisted drowning deaths in Jacuzzis with all the lights off at night, their Chicago based associates, Young Cream appear to be more intent on influencing impressionable revellers to click their joints out of place in the…
Greetings Jazz Mutilators, My name is Mark Brown and I’m a video and new media artist from Baltimore. I want to thank 20 Jazz Funk Greats and Merok for putting this project together, all the remixes are fantastic and it’s been incredibly exciting to see what my peers in the video-dome are up to. I…
The good people at Merok records and one of our favorite bands, Telepathe, were nice enough to ask 20jfg to curate some remixes of the Telepathe song, Devil’s Trident.Firstly we need to thank all the artists who responded, the results were amazing.A Vinyl 12″ of some of the remixes is available to order from Merok…
Love Saves the Day’s comeback at Micro was utterly joyous, a dancefloor packed with people spinning in the pink mist to the sweetest sounds of the disco diaspora. Well, it’s happening again this Saturday at Micro, 11-3AM, drink deals and stuff, get in cheap via the Facebook collective. Ours is a broad and inclusive church…
Psychic Ills’ Mirror Eye is the spooky echo of a murky nightmare and the shapeless forms lurking in its periphery, reverberating steps down cobbled ways, a Walpurgisnacht happening in the forests of the Twin Peaks soundtracked with a ghostly psychedelia that reminds us of Wooden Shjips at their codeine-intoxicated best, or even Hawkwind’s dizzying spirit…
I was in the office on Wednesday and people were smiling more than usual. Many were paying an American girl who works there a visit, to congratulate her, and also to say thanks What happened in the US Presidential elections wasn’t just the end of what will be probably remembered as some sort of dark…
Vote for Obama Barack kids. Otherwise it’s the end. Sub Pop’s single clubs scores again with hyperkinetic LA DIY ladypunk gang Mika Miko, who in their new 7, Sex Jazz, slow it down a bit, and spread it sideways the densest we’ve heard them yet, murky DIY peanut butter toast for yummy styles flip out….
Love Saves the Day (facebook group here) is back on Saturday at Micro, just by Digital in Brighton’t Seafront. Dan Nixon is the man leading in this glorious return, with the 20JFG crew eagerly involved, and excited. Some of the most joyous dancing your caring ‘n’ sharing nerds have subjected the world to this year…
We go together Like sex and violence Like death and silence Listening to the grimly seductive funereal balladry of Prince and Pearl is like wandering through silent woodlands at night without any real purpose, only to come across a ramshackle old wooden cabin, barely standing buckling under the weight of it’s ghosts, wherein upon opening…
(Tommy Boy, wonderful stalker of our hallucinated unconscious, where would we be without you?) There are more maths to the disco than you’d think, a precise language of rhythm which unfolds over the blackboard of a dance floor punctuated by melodic twists, the loving and caring bassline curvaceous loop of an integral function binding this…
We have been going on about Times New Viking since the invention of sliced bread more or less, you know they did it with mangled melodies, burning wire and serrated peaks of distortion, a sonic field of love fever, a mattress in a bedroom crammed with memorabilia and grainy posters from legendary shows only ten…
This is a special one- two of our heroes, JD Twitch and DJ Rick have written some words for you (in the case of the latter you can find them gloriously splattered over the comments of a post a couple of days ago). There’s not much to add, this is what we aspire to be….
DJ Rick is so totally DJing at our collective wedding. So I left this tune on the record player while I was shaving and when I came back to my bedroom it was all fucking trashed, even the paint stripped off the walls, sweet baby Jesus playing chess with Alejandro Jodorowsky on the top of…
Whether it’s been Orion Rigel Dommisse’s terrifying bad seed lullabies infiltrating our fragile minds at night and warning us of the dangers of encountering girls who wear pretty-as-a-doll dresses whilst wandering the woods alone, or the claustrophobic intimacy of Ilya E Monosov’s scratch in the ear whisperings, or Ex Reverie’s Renaissance Faire maiden musings potent…
Chicago macabre squad GATEKEEPER fulfil your 20jazzfunkgreats’ thirst for the nocturnal with another black morsel of thrills and kills. Their music embodies all that we like about 1980s cinematic suspense, paranoid hallucinations, a phantasmagoria of green lights and ectoplasmic mist seeping through multiple fracture lines on the thin walls of reality, you can of course…
It’s not that often that I come across a band that I am at a loss to describe in terms of honourable influences, or scenes of a film, snippets of a conversation overheard in a club or a fragment of a book. Gyratory Systems are one such band. Their music sounds like the pulse of…
Hello there, you looking all miserable under the neon lights of the tube, you perusing through vacuous magazines while the screens of Oxford Circus and Victoria Station announce the imminent apocalypse, you lost in the trebly vibrations of an ipod configured to switch the world off, you kicking mangy pigeons off your way, advancing through…
Nite Jewel hails from the stratospherical miasma that floats over, and sometimes through, the citadels of Los Angeles, covering all she touches in a shimmering film of glittering beauty that cascades in droves across the tundras of the ecotone, where chrome wolves slink along the edges of the city to snatch away stray victims, sinking…
Woe is me! That Xbox 360, which has given me so many hours of delightful bloodshed and merciless sniping was recently afflicted by the loathed Red Ring of Death. So, after the initial shock and wondering about what to do with my life, I decided to climb down the stairs of my video game manor,…
Its too exciting a prospect that Salem will be recording new material, fact. When this is we do not know, but soon it will come, like impending nightfall when your stuck in the old cemetery in deepest, darkest Dunwich – its all about the fear of the unknown/that advancing noise in the cold black air?…
Picture this, your humble 20JFG scribe awakens on a rainy Berlinese morning with the headache to end them all, brought to existence by one of those eternal & crazed nights that seem oh so frequent in that city of angles and angels, he sits in a comfortable sofa and turns on the TV looking for…
Ah, Vangelis, where would we be without you? Surely we wouldn’t have danced with gods and demons over portentous clouds of a blinding blue, or roamed the streets of hallucinated eastern bazaars where weasely merchants display their strange wares in a most ramshackle manner, baroque pieces of analogical technology blessed with spells of a sublime…
20JFG – Commemoration of good times Mixtape Commemoration of good times mixtape tracklist 1- Ennio Morricone- Theme of Ali 2-Soft Rocks- Black Magic 3-Alain Goraguer- Deshominisation I 4-Black Devil Disco Club- With Honey Cream 5-Venise- Playboy 6-Jellybean Benitez- The Mexican 7-Tom Tom Club- On the Line Again 8-Bostro Pesopeo- Falls (Hercules and Love Affair Remix)…
(image supplied by Tommy Boy) Whilst Ciara single-handedly continues to bring to life the Arabian Prince, chrome plated Janet Jackson collaboration of my electric dreams, I await with a foaming mouth and bloodshot eyes for Cassie to emerge from the vapour mists once more with a record which if the faint callings that have so…
Where up and coming master of the cosmic oscillator Gatto Fritto creates, in his remix of Subway’s Simplex, a warm epic to awaken to as twin stars dawn over a Terran colony in a galaxy far away, reflecting refulgent on the shiny surfaces of a crystal architecture built by people wiser than us. Many dudes…
I asked the incredibly talented Chris Pell for some of his awesome illustrations, and lo and behold the astonishing triad he has summoned specially for us as they illuminate these black spaces in all their sublime and twisted glory. The strength of their psychedelic imaginery has dispelled the pseudo-writer’s block that afflicted me, imagine my…
This Saturday the 20JFG shall be going up to London for some more adventures in Victoria Park, it is Field Day. We intend to sit down in a certain area identified after careful analyses of secret manuscripts and the casting of the runes over esoteric cabbalistic texts, which led to the retrieval of a corpse…
As you would expect, of all that Services’ new album, ‘Eat Prey Love’, has to offer, 20JFG likes the 6 minutes long proggy instrumental best. The rest is all very enjoyable Ballardian disjointed electro-punk that will undoubtedly add a few well needed ounces of serrated steel to the clockwork mechanisms regulating the operation of thee…
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…
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…
The image of Snake Plissken advancing stealthy down the mesas, sliding in between the small flows of life that flourish in the desert at night like a shark tracking down the scent of his prey in the air so still, desert foxes, coyotes and wild dogs staring on his wake like a visitation from a…
Vivian Girls’ S/T album encapsulates all that made C-86 great, that fortunate connection between Spectorian Pop and Post-Punk lo-fi, topped up with a good dose of cavernous feedback which makes us think of the ‘Girls in the Garage‘ compilations, i.e. teen turmoil unfurls over a spanking 60s psyche beat, natty! This is an In The…
image supplied by Tommyboy Codek is a relentless tidal wave of synthesised arpeggiated surf breaks and polyester primary coloured bongo loops. This faux 70′s wave is crashing upon the beaches of Afro-disco like a thundering black-watered leviathan, leaving the sunbathers drenched with dance music. If Italians Do It Better are the label of the year,…
If you liked that song we posted some time ago with Pete Tosh singing exalted about smoking doobie while dancing to tropical disco then you are going to love this one. We first heard Junior Byron’s ‘Dance to Music’ in the astonishing James Murphy/Pat Mahoney Fabriclive cosmic/physical trip, it was one of those cuts that…
Munich-based Permanent Vacation are another of those labels that seem to exist just to delight your 20Jazzfunkgreats types with beaming rays of light transmitted from the pristine decks of some wonderful cruise across the golden seas of class, as exemplified by our most beloved disco chanteuse Sally Shapiro, 40 Thieves, Ilya Santana (of Quasar fame)…
The Thinker knows everything that goes on this side of the Galaxy, and most of what goes on the other side as well. We arrange to rendezvous in one of those lawless bars set-up in the basement of a building somewhere in the ruins of Lower Manhattan, which I should find through a guide-pill that…
The beautiful guitar melody with which Mirror Mirror’s ‘New Horizons’ begins contains in the revolution of its tones the complete structure of what is to come, like a strange flower slowly unfolding its crimson petals to reveal a wonderful piece of psyche-folk that seduces us with the scent of the United States of America, Syd…
The Stooges knelt in front of the bloated body of rock and roll, as if to give it that blowjob it very much expected, and while doing so slid a switchblade from the back of their leather jeans and, with one fluid flick of the wrist, severed its femoral artery and watched it bleed &…
20jazzfunkgreats returned to Primavera Sound in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago, and it was like a bit of a comeback home after harsh times at small-hours Sonar last year (not that we didn’t enjoy some frankly fantastic stuff there!). This festival fits most definitely the scattershot taste of your 20JFG nerds, both in terms…
Where we continue our adventures into the lands of quiet and mellow, leaving behind the uncertainty of an English sky for aural landscapes where the sun shines bright filling our hearts with primordial cosmic energies the colour of blue, like the sonic equivalent of Wilhelm Reich’s orgone accumulator, if only it worked and shit. 20jazzfunkgreats…
We already told you about Stickydisc Recordings, which is the labour of love of Eric Broucek, DFA’s in-house sound engineer. After Babytalk’s awesome ‘Keep on Move’ he has a couple of references just out of the press which keep defining a vector which draw the label into the glimmering zone of 20JFG worship. Watussi is…
Where two good men and excellent friends of thee 20JFG with an awesome taste on all things, of course music, take us on a trip back to the old school warehouse/discotheque whence all good things came, and to which we pay homage on a daily basis from this humble zine of yours, say hello to…
You never send me those lovely letters any more That time you dreamt of dreaming of being taken up by the birds surfing over the capricious spirals of a wind drawn with delicate lines rising to face gaping clouds dissolving into faces telling you of things you ought not to forget, of things that needed…
Reality bites us, but you know how we roll. An international team of biologists travel to the barren lands of London to investigate the impact of the electoral catastrophe in the life-forms of the area. Picture this- a charismatic and rugged Kurt Russell type, a nerdy quantitative analysis guy with empathy deficit issues, a blonde…
I can’t remember when is the last time I bought a 7” by an UK indie-rock band, I swear, I don’t remember when, but I have thought a lot about the why*. Perhaps it is that the dynamics of the music industry in this country where so-called indie (aka indie schmindie) is the scene du…
As part of our preparations for Love Saves the Day, and also in order to shape a worthy mixtape for the awesome El Guincho gig we were involved with a couple of weeks ago, we did some researches on African music, here you have a couple of gems unearthed in the process, as well as…
I went to see Gary Numan the other week. It wasn’t planned, but a friend had a spare ticket and his very generous girlfriend thought your synth loving xxjfg writer would enjoy the experience more than her. It’s not that we are Numanoids or anything, but Robert (hello if your reading!) who lived in my…
You know the ones. Those gifted harlequins that prance wide eyed with devious smiles through napalm filled swamps of writhing horror and sparkling synthesized glitter bursts, past neon outlined mountains where confetti falls upwards and all around the sounds of madness are melting away all the boredom as if Cillit Bang became a day-glo purple…
I just went for a walk, and I found these songs. I saw a tree shaken by the wind furious, its branches stretching feeble into the air like the bony hands of an emaciated white witch begging for a miracle from the elements. A trembling ray of sun was granted, and in the pool of…
Codek are fast becoming a label with liquid gold running through its cyborg veins, a label so awesome that its disco releases transcend sound itself and become feelings and colours. Here is something black and blue: Harmonika Lyder – Siegfried Der Drachentoter The Sounds Superb 12″s are both 4 track discs of pure Studio 54…
A synth spell, or a velvet fist cast in analogue electronica sends your puny 20jazzfunkgreats types spinning into another dimension of mystery, magic and romance noir slash murder, you know how blood and sex are tightly interwoven and the suchlike. Life is a bitch, heh? The new cloud edits 12” comes packed with analogue delights,…
Across seismic tidal waves on the most dangerous oceans in any parallel universe you may care to mention, Captain Dandi Wind sails her neon viking boat to lands ripe for plundering. Her fearless crew of indie-brute oarsmen row to the crisp beat of a Korg drum sequencer. Dandi stands fast at the helm, fluorescent tube…
In an icy cave in the deepest forests of Canada (forests where the leaves have all long gone, but are instead replaced with dangling icicles that chime to an incessant beat), there lives a creature with bright yellow spherical eyes and pale blue skin, wrapped up all snug in a pea-green parka jacket. He sips…
So we come to that time of the year when the wild hordes head down to SXSW for a few days of revelling in the excitement and dopeness of the underground sounds, or at least that’s the way we imagine it, a bit like that exotic bazaar where Conan of Cimmeria knocked out a camel,…
Because rhythm speaks one tongue The stunning psychedelic power of Ozo’s Anambra envelops you like shadows projected by a solid canopy of majestic trees raising in the deepest recesses of the heart of darkness. It resonates with the enigmatic echo of a secret hidden behind a door you can only open with the key of…
Praise to Lovefingers, the vast all-encompassing knowledgeable ones, who float through cyberspace like a giant orb of malevolently humming eyes, searching for the best disco and cosmic decadence ever committed to humble vinyl. Then, sometimes they edit them to achieve maximum enlightenment: Nitedog – Mars (Nitedog’s Lunar launch) It’s Nitedog, not Lovefingers! Yeah I know,…
It’s late kid, go to bed. And dream of A vast frozen tundra in the midst of which a lonely chanteuse opens up her heart & melts the snow surrounding her with the pastel glow of her amazing soul. Sally Shapiro- Jackie Jackie (Spend this Winter With Me) (Dylan’s Subzero Nocturne Remix) Sally Shapiro’s new…
Because we know where our hearts are. I have just placed an order for LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Confuse the Marketplace’ US-only 12” release and I am sure you’ll do the same after listening to Freak Out/Starry Eyes. Actually this came out on December last year and I cannot fucking believe it isn’t sold out. Come on…
Where 20JFG give you brief reviews of horror and sci-fi books, films and video games as part of our training programme for those Telepathic Inter-Dimensional Wars we expect to erupt any time soon, and also as a way of introducing some fucking awesome music in a suitable nerdy way. Visit here for further information. Artwork…
It might be too early in the great cosmic scheme of things to make such grandiose statements but maybe, just maybe, a revival of Chicago House will be the new Blog House (*spits*) for 2008. As evidence, The Juan Maclean’s “Happy House” is so super hot with iconic Nancy Wang vocals soaring into space across…
20jazzfunkgreats watched the digitally restored version of Holy Mountain at the cinema last night and thoroughly enjoyed it in a holy fuck how did this film get made (cheers John & Yoko), and holy cow thank Jodorowsky this film got made, on top of The Christian imaginery, gas-mask clad troopers carrying around the crucified corpses…
Martha-Beat Part \\\\\ 2 ///// The Ark – Patronus Winter The Ark myspace page ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- Mi Ami – Ark of the Covenant Mi Ami myspace page ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- No Age with David Scott Stone – Switches No Age myspace page ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- ¬|- ¬|-…
Part 1 of another Martha-Beat post, tell her how awesome she is here Sex In Dallas – Everybody Deserves To Be Fucked Sex In Dallas myspace page /<./<./<./<./<./<. Toecutter – Best Party Ever (12 Minute Dub) Toecutter myspace page /<./<./<./<./<./<. Ata Kak – Obaa Sima No link, this instead
Demon Seed was a based on a real story, our planet is a stage where the computarised conspiracy led by Proteus, the love-child of, erm, Proteus and Julie Andrews combats rabid hordes of meat-obsessed humanists, this of course inspired most of Philip K. Dick’s opus, particularly Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (that guy sitting…
After being criminally dropped from DC Recordings for being “too commercial” (wtf? surely about 2/3′s of the current DC roster is not what you would term as commercial?), Italian masked killer of scantily clad women, The Giallos Flame, is self-releasing an album of chic 70′s horror-homage on his very own label Analogue Screams. Said album…
You know we love indie, we are always complaining about indie schmindie this, and indie dance remixes that but then we are being lazy and incorrect with our terminology, you know that what we slate, that indie, is not really indie but revivalist fashion driven corporate Middle of the Road derivative crap, actually almost everything…
There was quite an interesting debate in one of the darken spaces that thee 20jazzfunkgreats roam regarding the extent to which the trend towards tunes of 10 minutes or longer which has become growingly common in certain genres you know we dig, such as kosmische disco, is a good or a bad thing. We pray…
Are Excepter the techno Liars? Maybe Excepter are Liars, doing some wicker-tech-house on the side wearing man-suits to conceal they’re true identities, Buffalo Bill style – cos after all, theres only so much deep, dark forest prancing a fine fellow can take before the damning isolation drains any ounce of humanity from him and all…
So, what you been listening to? James N’s guide to getting back on the wrong tracks. Been neglecting the noise of late due to the overwhelming abundance of seriously brilliant cosmic/baleric/nu-disco/space-house. You can’t blame me/you/us for getting all caught up in the faux glitz and glam but not everyone has a Prins Thomas/Studio/Joakim/Rodion remix…
Thee 20jazzfunkgreats myspace has started receiving a deluge of add requests from scantily dressed women with breasts bigger than our heads and strange coloured skin, probably a mutation brought forward by an excess of tanning lotion, it’s we guess exciting for some to see the prostitution industry getting on with the times and joining social…
Started this post about the great In The Red Records, got lost in the middle somewhere, as you do, and ended up stuck on old favs Lost Sounds – but first off more from masters of unreality Human Eye on Disordered Records. Human Eye – Rare Little Creature Is there something already eerily familiar about…
We are not sure on the official release of this amazing new Nemesi 12″ via Relish. Its on iTunes, its been and gone on Juno and its expected on Picadilly. In any case check it out real quick kids cos its got the seal of approval from every warlock DJ and mixtape alchemist who isn’t…
We picked up Videohippos‘ new album Unbeast the Leash just before Christmas after a cursory listen in Edgeworld, having being admonished by Colin about their similarities with Dan Deacon, who digs them very much, here we have a hyperkinetic indie with a penchant for the motorik and the super-focused craziness required to deliver it the…
We like fantasy role-playing games. We also like Americana, both of the old kind which brings tears to our eyes, and of the new kind which keeps the spirit of real folk music burning laced with a mess of wonderful influences, let’s see our heroes battle in the middle of a night they illuminate with…
More 2008 fun! There are a few albums coming out in the next couple of months that are long awaited and so exciting a prospect that all we can do is sit in our dusty basements rocking back and forth with anticipation at finally getting them and seeing exactly what they are all about. Without…
We bid farewell to this 2007 of great hecticness, haulage of goods from one place to another and much good music, we do this by peering into the future hopeful and confident like chthonic seers with an ace in the hole, discussing things that shall be hot in 2008. As an epilogue we also deliver…
2OO7 – WHERE DISCO PREVAILS!! Music can take you to strange places. From vast deserts of echoing purple and grey prog drones, to industrial estate robot body-pop raves backlit by showers of sparks from car construction. In the case of this new infinitely awesome wave of Cosmic Disco that has spread across the red earth…
As we were saying the other day, if our life had needed saving during 2007, it would have been saved by music. As it is, it didn’t, but knowing we had this bad-ass aural bodyguard watching our spiritual backs, ready to run in our support should we start feeling disheartened by the state of affairs, or…
You know how 20jazzfunkgreats are a bunch of happy-go-lucky jesters living in a constant spiral of delights, ah, what new kitten will be grinning at us from the delightful feed window every morning, will the Great Cthulhu have awakened today to bring this vacuous society down while taciturn packs of Cenobites chase celebrities down the…
Why do we go so much for the 80s? Besides the fact that, at least in my case, those were childhood years about which I reminisce with much emotion, it is also that it was then when many of our fave things like disco and new wave, as well as all the crazy experimental synth…
Intense debate, or maybe just a few email exchanges during supposed work hours, was created in a cloud of confusion as to where this fearsome edit by In Flagranti originates from. Some though Abba cos of the fancy piano lines, but Stu came through with his knowledge of disco-era Rolling Stones, with elements of ‘Emotional…
The people from the hills inhabit the range of blue crags lying at the north, no-one knows very well what they get up to in such inhospitable places of surfaces polished into mirrors by shards of merciless ice which reflect fierce the portentous glare of the sun blinding those foolish enough to stare into them…
We live in a constant tension between the space above, away from gravity, which is the first force of reality we have to contend with when we are dragged out of the womb, and the Earth below, full of shit and pain but also warm and alive, let us take the latter route today, tread…
You know when Robin arrives to 20JFG because the air glimmers with an otherwordly green hue like Solaris if it had an emerald sun. Robin rules. Say thanks to him at the bottom of the page. Orion Rigel Dommisse looks like a nice girl. The kind of girl who might feel a wave of guilt…
Reissues are about as common nowadays as a purple American Apparel hoodie on a skinny indie kid. The Cloud label are putting out some of the best in 20JFG’s humble opinion, releasing two-track 12″s of hot cosmic disco and balearic love, while the parent company, Supersound, puts out the disco stomps and italian fine tailored…
Round these ‘ere parts we love a bit of Dolly Parton. There is in fact nothing we like more than knotting a pinny to our torsos and skipping through the house doing chores, cleaning, vacuuming, watering flowers, um, filing away mp3s in the correct folders. We do this whirlwind of housewifery to the dulcet tones…
Impalled & heartfelt apologies for the slow beginning of the week kids, we’ve got peoples moving around like this was Bobby Fischer on sludge doom coffee over the randomised chessboard, and sentimental shizzle going on too, your small and rusty robotic scribes happen to be defective & infected with bizarro emotional virii, hence their relative…
Having just moved to Providence, Rhode Island, a town that holds a special place in many of our hearts for spewing up a steady and continuous stream of lovably brutal, candy coloured nuggets of noise, Justin Barnes, aka Werewolf Unit, has been out and about, exploring his new found territory, getting better acquainted with the…
There are many good things about these three years of 20JFG psychedelic nerd adventures down the crazy spiral, one of which is having met so many good & inspiring people. A few have even put aside some time of their busy schedules to write for us, and we thank them for it, they are the…
If Kate Bush was our eccentric Aunt we would visit her all the time. Pulling up to her mansion amongst the misty hills of Dartmoor, we hop off the step of the horse-drawn carriage and run slow motion past the vine-covered columns lining the grand entrance. As we burst through the giant oak double doors…
Planningtorock is a beautiful female counterpart to Frankenstein’s monster. She’s a Victorian Cassette Playa. She is a white and beige witch from the dusty woods of Ganymede. She is the furious force of mother nature to planet Jupiter. She is an alien priestess dressed in silken gowns and a bonnet made from the happy faces…
We like the East the West The North the South of the USA, witches living in every corner, crazy kids on ragged clothes chase them roast them eat their flesh and fart magic spells of sound and fury. Let us begin with our homeboy James Nascent giving you the lowdown on winning by not caring…
VH1 presents Divas! Live, for one, magical night only from a wishful, imaginary place located somewhere in my brain, and hopefully yours too. On the bill tonight… Amanda Lear. A perfect pop star. An enigma, shrouded by folklore, wrapped up in a mystery, tied up within a myth. She may never have existed at all….
TV on the Radio- Dumb Animal We fled from our planet after realising that as long as the Gods kept freaking out about each other’s fandoms’ lifestyle choices/ diet/ interior decor tastes we were going to need to walk around making constant small jumps to avoid stepping into vast pools of blood, or maybe sew…
Tedious corporate droning about the death of culture brought forward by the arrival of a new information distribution model based on diffusion/hybridisation instead of consumption and control is challenged by a thriving network of true DIY labels and artists who perhaps won’t build many mansions in the hills of Malibu or fuel international cocaine trade…
So I don’t have that much of a clue about funk or jazz, soz kids, you know how the name of this blog is taken from a lovely album by sex magick gender noise terrorist unit Throbbing Gristle and whatnot, which is both jazz, funk and everything else that is or has been deemed to…
Do you remember all the times when you plead to yourself to do anything for being rescued from this horrible number of bloated sounds? Fortunately, now no major price is to be paid. With 20jazzfunkgreats, the ground-breaking, you can achieve naturally health life style and become really edgier. Notice what people state! ‘I had always…
We like people who have strong characters, not cardboard copies of the ‘throws the TV out of the window’ school of rock documented by Yo la Tengo in their lovely video for Sugarcube, wannabe thugs driving their tank into a swimming pool surrounded by booty shaken Ladyez after watching Scarface for the zillionth time, or…
We were hanging out downtown as we do each night, you know mano, watching the papis singing songs from la tierra with tears in their eyes, playing pinball, staring at las senoritas, drinking cerveza under the moonlight and being super bad-ass when this pendejo who looked like Tony Montana’s boss stopped by in his white…
Slide into this weekend like a recently departed soul into the world of shadows beyond, Brighton is going to be packed with music industry types down for the Great Escape, we hear a few demons hide in their ranks, so beware, don’t let anything get in between the silver charm from the Goddess and that…
20jfg down and out from paris to hove mixtape
The main tip for the season is the following: have fucking class, style’s in, fashion’s out. On top of being a true legend of Enlightened Synth Disco (I just made that genre up but I hope you know what I mean), Daniel Wang looks hot yeah? Anyhow, if you haven’t listened to his classic Berlin…
We here at this blogpooterzinepage are into weird disco’s, we don’t want normality, odd sounds and backwards hits are the shit for example the remix marriage made in heaven of Liars n’ CC, w00t!, now all we need is Brian Eno to produce The Knife or something and we can call it a day. In…
We are the baddest gang of bravos to ever roam the barrio, we watch over from our vantage positions like hawks, on the look out for the fuzz or chingones with enemy colours, nothing happens here without us knowing, and getting paid, nada. This ain’t no explotation thing, we are just taking care of our…
One moonlight night, your humble 20jazzfunkgreats monk was preparing to sleep in a field adjoining a cemetary. By the light of the moon he saw three wild panda bears placing on their heads skulls and some whithered bones, go through several mysterious movements, and then deck themselves out with grass and leaves. Presently the bears…
Self improvement had always been the motto of Edith Massey, and one day all her dreams came true. Sure she had her fun, earning dimes in every which way you can, living from trash can to sofa but just like all girls from Denver Edith dreamed of being a movie star! As Cinderella stories go…
Where the 20jazzfunkgreats one who loves spiralling tongues of acid fire and noise brimstone stops 4 a sec, looks into the mirror down the corridor & sees wistful eyes staring back oblique bouncing zig zag zig zag slide doubtful like tears down the smooth curves of an innocent face, not his unless he looked straight…
August is four months away, but a month is a year for 20JFG kats who are eagerly awaiting albums. Glass Candy’s is preceded by two 12″s, one being the just released ‘I Always Say Yes’, then ‘Etheric Device/Computer Love’. Glass Candy – The Chameleon (Acappella) The proper 12″ version of this is a menacing blood…
Haters talk shit, here is the Demi-Gods-honest truth, dispelling the rumours about the 3 Superhero Horsemen of the Acid-Kraut Apokalypse: Juan-San In Monster Land III Juan–San is a computer game character, therefore he is entirely pixelated. He comes in 2D platform game mode or full on 3D polygonal zombie-smashing killa-megabyte-rate beat-em-up warrior mode, depending on…
One of your 20JFGsters has spent this Easter of delight banging on things. It must be the soul reverberations coming from his country, where, in the past days, lots of people have gone into the streets dressed like the Ku Klux Klan but with better quality fabrics, carrying massive candles and colossal statues of the…
So we have reached this fantabulous moment in the history of mankind when the position of the DJ is finally democratised: there’s tunes galore to do it, free to grab through your filesharing network of choice, or perhaps just the hype machine if you want to cut to the chase and play what people really…
Ah, welcome to the Post-punk bash, leave your pre-conceptions at the door buster, in this party you have moody avant garde motherfuckers rubbing shoulders with chain-smoking Geordie poets who spill ash all over the drinks of pale S&M fetishists whose satanic medallions have attracted the mischievous attention of those new wave teenies who just popped…
Our main man Steven was packing for a trip to the Lake District last week and he asked us if we wanted him to bring us a sheep skull. Apparently there are many of those over there, as a consequence of a Sheep apocalypse Aeons ago. Or at least that is what we thought. But…
I HAVE HURT MY IINDEX FINGER TYPING SO GOTTS TO KEEP IT SHORT. LET THE MUSIC TALK ECT. I’M WRITING IN UPPER CASE TO CONVEY THE SHEER LOUD HARDCORENESS OF THE TUNES I’M POSTING FREINDS. IT’S ANNOYING AS FUCK BUT BEAR WITH ME. OR JUST LISTEN TO THE TUNES & BUY THE RECORDS, WHICH IS…
Gotta love the record industry: it appears that the album format is not selling that well with the advent of the ‘digital revolution’ and all, you know, CDs are overpriced and most of the stuff in them is filler, people just buy a couple of tracks in iTunes and give the finger to the bundling…
Bernard Fevre is loved by 20JFG for his stellar work as Black Devil Disco Club where he conjures satanic black-light shimmering disco from his wizard-like fingers. But his solo work takes a different route, minimal and delicate sounds not music to dance with the devil in the pale moomlight to. 20JFG faves Quiet Village have…
When I uploaded the rather nicely packaged, all-in-one, brand new reissue of Nico’s seminal albums, “The Marble Index”, and “Desertshore”, into my iTunes, I noticed that in the genre section it had registered as “unclassifiable“. iTunes has a habit of getting the genre identification thing a tad wrong from time to time, but in this…
Ok so we have been thinking about the 2.0 revolution and everything it means for the world. Everyone knows how any movement is just hype until 20JFG gives it its seal of approval, it’s all a bit like, if a tree falls in the forest and 20JFG haven’t posted about it in their lo-fidelity blog,…
2O12 AD: AUTOMATONS MADE FLESH, SPEARHEADING TOWARD EARTH FROM PLANET CYBER-FOLK This, they have said, is ADULT.’s folk album. No really. Check out the video on the official site that casts them as film noir Liars hacking up the forest ground with high heels and blood splattered spades. ADULT. – You Don’t Worry Enough So…
(Lo and behold, down the yellow road cometh Lord Nuneaton Savage, please do visit, and do bookmark, his new log on all things swirling, ‘The Savage Word’ because his penmanship defeats anything you’ll find anywhere else in the serendipitous lands of the information highway, this, dare we call him, MAN, is a genius and whenever…
When the weak child that I was first saw the light of day, my father took me in his arms, raised his eyes to heaven and said, ‘Oh almighty power, whose exponent is immensity, oh last term of all ascending series, oh my God, behold another sensible being projected into space. If he is destined…
Chromatics have been stepping up their game in the past few weeks, rumblings of new music posted on the myspace page sending out ripples of sound across the internet. These ripples reverberate off of us and we share the dark egyptian-disco love. They also are featured in the latest edition of Dazed & Confused too….
I’ve always wanted to draw like Paper Rad kids. I also want to sound like them, or their drawings. You know how everyone is doing the Oizo Crunk Skunk Saraband these days, and painting it in pretend pixelated dayglo? Well, except Justice I guess, who have decided to take the piss off Larry Levan’s standing…
Last time we saw him, 20JFG was lost in the Freudian caverns of Nerd-Dom enjoying noisy thrills in his walkman, trying to accumulate some energies for the final fowdown against his fatal foe. Shame against doesn’t start with an f. Neither does show-down, we just like to break the rules cos we’re so punk. We…
After several defeats in the neuronal field, the 20JFG one who never hurt a bee retreats into the caves of nerd-dom to gather energies, he whistles posts like a 1920s Depression hobo remembering better days of stock exchange bonanza and nights down at the cabaret, wha, you say, cut to the chase you overgrown baby,…
What prey tell has our favourite debonaire Zombie-about-town been upto since the unleashing of the ‘Teddy Boy’ EP last year? Kavinsky has been hard at work with the ’1986′ EP, which has just been released by the lovely Record Makers. Kavinsky – Grand Canyon We love Zombies, its the surest thing, and we love cartoon…
Fuck guitars. Everybody knows, its all about the drums. So primitive, yet so instant and, oh, so satisfying. Its drums that have the power to make you dance as if a demon is trapped inside your body, and looking to make a messy blood and guts style exit, not guitars. Pppsssh! A lot of theorists…
After last weekend, which was total carnage and included the Do on Friday (followed by a Jungle party where we danced to Shy FX & UK Apachi w00t), 20JFG on Saturday with Superstar Robin DJ and Mr. James Hines of Nascent & best t-shirts in the land fame rocking the house like only good people…
So we at 20 Jazz Funk Greats like extremes, we like to put things together that plainly and ever so blatantly do not go. If you have been to our DJ nite extravaganza (every 3rd saturday party kids! *big grin*), you will know that the general flow and ambience and good hard earned mixing skills…
Unearthing long forgotten gems is so fun because it makes you look well cool! You can be all like “yeah, I found this, check me out! I’m the only one who has it, yeah?“. No, of course I am being sarcastic, we don’t care for that nonsense, we leave that shit to the Nathan Barleys…
Some random musings on why going to most clubs is a bit shit when you’re a totally self-righteous nerd. So the indie kids are dancing, the question is, how do they do it? is it the Jitterbug or is it the beheaded chicken? Or the fashion accessory shake? I like it when they do the…
The other day I saw these kids playing so fast they finished before they began, they totally sounded backwards. WHAM! You know how 20jazzfunkgreats posts a bigger share of 8+ minute long tracks than most other blogs out there, excluding mixes that would only demonstrate our non-existent DJing ‘skills’/artificial Ableton skills. But we like it…
Devils? Disco? We are so there! (hails overly expensive Brighton taxi) Disco Devil – Now Dance Re-edits are so 20– (insert whichever year it is when you happen to read this), and this particular one is shrouded in mystery as we can’t find any info on what its an edit of. Anyone know? Answers in…
Imagine you find yourself pitched against another dot in space, an actor defined by an utility function if you will, whatever, yep, in front of the two-dimensional grid of a matrix, with nxn cells each of which contains an outcome (in terms of pay-outs and losses, say money earned or lost for you non-numerical types),…
Today we visit our trusted friends DC Recordings, you know, the fear-disco label that pretty much ruled last year and will no doubt rule this year too. Will there be a Padded Cell LP, chances are good seeing as a new track from the 3rd single was heard a few weeks back on Beats In…
Excuse me man, 20 jazz funkgreats is not out there, it is in here, and if you don’t wanna believe this, pay some attention, you better get some muscle to back you up because when you fuck with us you’re fucking with the best, we’ve got the heavy artillery, it’s loaded and ready, I’m just…
2 cosmic gems today from the outer reaches of space, beamed down via a sophisticated contraption we have (it would take too long to explain) and fed through filters to turn them into mp3s. Oh no, how could anyone miss this? It came out on 12″ from Down Low Music in 2OO2 but no blog/pooterzine…
You know how music is a form of expression, it’s just this thing people do and there’s no reason for it, humming when you’re alone is music in its purest form. Yelling when someone steps on your foot can be music, at least the way Punk did it. There you have a reason. Then there’s…
Lord Nuneaton Savage is back from his lair, and he’s got some…erm, SPEED. When he characterises his writing as ‘infantile’, the adjective rises to Nietzschean dimensions (in a good way). Anyway, bring it on… PART 1: The robotic pleasure principle ‘Let’s go!” I said. ‘Friends, away! Let’s go! Mythology and the Mystic Ideal are defeated…
Deep within a dank dungeon full of shifting shadows, you can part thick cobwebs to find a corner hidden in pitch black cold. Suede lay dead on the stone floor; they’ve already been dealt with. An old record player crackles out the sound of an LP by The Cure, the title track, a ranting mess…
Yeah, I’m losing my edge. I’m losing my edge. The kids are coming up from behind. I’m losing my edge. I’m losing my edge to the kids from France and from London. But I was there. I was there in 2002. I was there at the first fluxblog post. I’m losing my edge. I’m losing…
Sam is one of the most intelligent people we know, he’s a good person and he knows his stuff, do you need any more information? He’s writing for us today, and this is awesome, so say ‘hi Sam’ and ‘thanks Sam’. Hope you’re buying, cos we’re buying… ///// Drums are the new guitars. They were…
Let me paraphrase my man Beto and begin by saying, this is Hip Hop, where guys are guys and ladies need a sense of humour. 20jazzfunkgreats love it when the girls rock the mic you know, Hip Hop sometimes can get a bit too serious for its own good, you know, consciousness and its polar…
The sun is shining and the birdies dance with each other in front, behind and around the shaky trees, fey characters in a peripheral act of the play of life, the coffee wasn’t too weak, but it wasn’t too strong either, just enough to boost your 20JFG’s level of energy in the direction of the…
You have to choose one of these plans Idea number 1 Buy some cheap whiskey, start drinking it while writing all sorts of sleazy things in a piece of paper. Put it in an envelope with your address in it, go down to the mailbox and put it inside. Go back to your room and…
We think we are obssessed with Scandinavia. Is it the new Canada? Who can say at this early juncture of 2OO7, but all we know is that The Knife, Zeigeist, Sally Shapiro, Skatebard and Moomins hail from this fair land, and that fucking rules! Check these 198O’s-a-like gems for referencing purposes: Miss Sally Shapiro has…
Ceephax Acid Crew is G.O.D. and we are all but figments of his melodies. In the Crisp Chronicles he soundtracks a gangster story starred by, erm, crisps. They get mashed…You know, this is a Chelmsford Film Society endeavour and as such we endorse it wholeheartedly (check this and stay away from the K). The music…
I was gonna do a noise one but then I recoiled, hold on pumpkin, there’s all these nice people throwing parties and stuff on friday, perhaps I should tell our dear readers about them because these are good people doing things for the love of it and everyone should go. So avast, I am going…
So Justice’s “Phantom” has slammed into the blogosphere (hate. that. word.) like a crucifix-shaped comet covered in white fire shot forth from the Hell that exists on Mars. Though I am sure you already have, you can pick it up at Skull Juice. Its good, yes of course, but lest we forget where that vocodered…
20jazzfunkgreats found some rayban wayfarers in a box and got themselves in this total ‘They Live’ situation, welcome to their wacky adventures in a world of mind manipulating robots that lurk hidden in the shadows controlling all the echelons of the government and the economy, scientists have framed the question wrong my friends, it’s not…
(Remix)? By who? Why be so secretive Cristina, what do you have to hide young lady, huh? Cristina – What’s A Girl To Do? (Remix) This sorry tale of weary friend-loathing in (presumably) trend-fuck-city New York circa Punk Funk (the first time around), is a chaotic electro shambles with a white Grace Jones doing a…
So you have recovered from New Year’s Eve hangover, hah? Well, I didn’t need to because I didn’t have any! I didn’t get beat up by thugs in the cold streets of my town either, although they called me gay, which is always a compliment. I’m always down with being hated by that kind of…
Happy New Year readers! 2OO6 is dead DEAD! Stabbed to death! We hope you had fun spinning around to jackin’ EBM or feral no wave yelps, whatever is your bag for NYE, we hoped you liked it. We are looking forward to 2OO7, waiting feverishly for new stuff from Justice, Michael Dracula, Crystal Castles, Animal…
So we said we’d see you in the new year, A-HA we were lying, nah, we found ourselves in this Arthur Gordon Pym style situation, chased by feral cats and having to hide in the pooter room. Since we are going to have to stay here till some unsuspecting visitor comes in the house, true…
Here’s the moment everyone was waiting for, right, 20jazzfunkgreats bunch of 2006 lists and stuff, records we dug, things we have felt, reminiscences, cries, silly dances and the like. Befitting our non-competitive approach to music and life, generally, we’re not ordering the lists, how the fuck do you compare these records? would you feel comfy…
In a parallel universe where maniacal barbarian mothers out Christmas shopping (or, slaying street walkers with their flaming brimstone prams) do not exist, 20JFG kids swan about like dandy divas across vast hallways. These hallways freeze into glistening ice rinks in the winter months and we can be seen amongst the ghouls, banshees and spectres,…
Ok so this post is a big high five to James Nascent aka King of Dude who, from a few years back has been animating Brighton’s cultural life with all sorts of exciting endeavours: Nascent Nights club (together with Genuine Guy and Ben Caton, word), Nascent gigs (The Locust, Coughs, Magik Markers, Yeborobo, Shimmy Rivers…
Say you thought of having this New Year’s eve party but now you are doubtful about what to play. Say you told your friends it was going to be a dance party, and by dance you didn’t mean whatever, as in do people do their ironing to Les Georges Leningrad, we hope they do, but…
A regular annoyance of the late half of 2OO6 has been the dreaded ‘New Rave’. It actually started as a nice idea by Joe Daniel to discibe The Klaxons, but then rapidly nose-dived into journo-Hell with certain magazines hailing everyone from The Knife to New Young Pony Club to Shit Disco to Metronomy as New…
We were thinking like, yeah, this wi fi thing is fucked up yeah (not wii, wii rules blud), wi fi is like, man, all those vibrations going, brap brap like gunshots in Compton, I wonder, can’t you see it, I mean, you can’t see it but you dig what I say, electromagnetic vibes criss crossing…
Somewhere in a dark forest in Germany there is a shaft like that one in Lost that goes down for miles ‘n’ miles and under the ground near the warmth of the Earth’s core is a network of tunnels housing Fraggle Rock-like trolls, Orcs and Shapelings that make music like Gorilla Aktiv. Gorilla Aktiv –…
So general augusto pinochet died, ah, kids, what a…party. As Lord Nuneaton would say, he doesn’t deserve the fucking capitals. I mean, he didn’t. Oops. Cristian Vogel- General Arrepientase The title of this track by Barcelona-based UK-raised son of chilean exiles Cristian Vogel means ‘Repent, General’. I suspect the bastard didn’t, and hope he’ll burn….
‘You can increase your Appearance using cosmetic surgery- A +1 in the Appearance attribute will cost you 500 Euro$’ ‘How much does it cost to decrease my Appearance?’ ‘You can buy a razorblade for 20 cents’ (Vaguely remembered quote from the Cyberpunk RPG manual) Botox has changed 20Jazzfunkgreats’ yeah-call-it-lives- ever since we discovered it we…
So hush little robot. Einsturzende Neubauten- -Feder Vice Liars say people with the Neubauten t-shirts always stand at the front in their gigs. I reckon they also know how to lose it at Kompakt raves, just check out this esoteric drumtraxxx, Steve Reich v Vitalic anyone?. Liars- Don’t Techno for an Answer We know Liars…
uh, yeah, welcome to the freak out halls dude, where the spirit of the inspirational coyote roams frolicsome, forever free to mess with the heads of the heads and make their mouths speak tongues. Sit in that psychedelic improv rug where Dan Van Vliet’s mongrel pooch used to chill. Gotta give it to you dude,…
Back in the days, strange conceptions drove your small 20jazzfunkgreats guy astray. Confused by a rather twisted vision of a past that perhaps existed for 10 minutes in the retrofuturistic den of an italian dilettante, he naively thought he’d start wearing white sta-prest trousers and cream turtlenecks, move with suave confidence down the imaginary decks…
Go to that lovely christmas work do, watch your respectable colleagues become bubonic bats spreading sickly black wings, black blue bloated veins holding on to a drink, sneaking surreptitiously around the body of a wide-eyed victim, angry drooling mouths supurating toxic saliva and baring yellow teeth, close your eyes. We hope you weren’t looking into…
We are today in a pretty mood, our hearts are filled with warmth and our heads with glitter and spangles. We do not feel the cold of the great winds screeching in from the seas in our fair land of Brightonia, as the bands and artists that we hold dear are making such great aural…
Listen with attention, I’m going to read now from the holy book of Wack-O and tell you the Truth, how dance was invented by Adam and Eve as they tumbled down Eden’s Garden back 10.000 years ago, the angels observed in awe and imitated them on top of a pin, we don’t know how many…
It’s complicated being me. When I was a wee chap my dad threw me around the swimming pool too much so I ended up becoming a bore and a dullard, I hate unexpected things happening, except on the stereo. What’s with Hella? They went from being the gentleman’s choice for polirhythmic math-rock (say it 10…
Sweet!! There is a network of 20JFG friends who can do no wrong, and we love their warrm guts. They are spread across the world like subversive cells doing their own thing, working in the corners of the system or wholly outside it, where monetary concerns are tangential and fads the fast blur of some…
(We are featuring, for our second instalment of the Dance music post series none other than Professor T.D. Coleman from the University of California at Berkeley talking about Ghetto Tech. I find it hard to express our pride at having such a luminary of cultural studies writing a small review for us. If you don’t…
Yeah, it pains me to think that we are socially wasting away in some lame two-bit indie-disco hovel, sneering at shit like Hadouken! and groaning as the opening bars of ‘Never Be Alone’ are blasted out for what seems like the 2,498,365th time. Geez, instead we could have been super-trooper italo renegades striding from one…
”If I have to play records like (*) to connect to a young crowd, quite frankly the young crowd can go fuck themselves” Some people in Glasgow rule. After leaving all the darkness behind, one of the 20JFGees is going to concentrate, during the next few days, on the noble art of dancing. Hold on,…
Joakim is a part of Tigersushi and therefore a god amongst men. So it was a delight to hear the new LP ‘Monsters & Silly Songs’, due in January, and to hear loads of nice things within its dense layers. Joakim conjures up the atmospherics of Goblin (check out ‘Sleep In Hollow Tree’ over at…
Horror is not Dracula coming to bite your neck that’s sex. Not Zombies coming to devour your flesh that’s revolution. Not a devil sliding up your throat to cuss your mother that’s bad manners. Not a ghost in a shroud staring at you from the other side of the corridor that’s growing up. Horror is…
It’s the UK Music Hall of Fame!!!! God. Come back to the UK for this. Nevermind. As Mike Patton said… I was having some quality time with my dad the other day and he was going on about how if Mozart had been born these days he would have been Max Tundra or Andy Jenkison…
Liliental – Wattwurm Wattwurm is the little krautrock kitten first let out to play in the snow at Christmas. While your uncle and niece laugh and play our little Wattwurm gazes in wonder at the new found land of what looks like solid substance, but on the press of a paw becomes wet and disappears!…
We never told you because we were afraid you’d think we are like those sad types out there who drool over chrome pipes and fake leather seats and think that purchasing ‘the ultimate seduction in compact format’ (Audi A3 BMW Series 1 apparently) will make other drones envious and improve their puny chances in the…
ESG invented drums. No really, it says so in The Bible (page 237, line… er… 21). It wasn’t Neu!, and no it wasn’t Can either, it was ESG. We feel it is our job to educate you on these historical religious events in music and we know you don’t read your Bibles you horrid little…
Kano – it’s a war Kano is perhaps best known for his cutting hedge uk post grime give me the fucking money and I’ll sing over Phil Collins style rn’b, but a little known fact is that at the tender age of -10 our pimp riding uk sell out star made some great disco records,…
Synth cyber dalek humanoids from 2525 AD, Suicide, turn synthesisers into sex crime victims. In a good way of course, but nonetheless they rape them into a yelping ravaged frenzy. Synthesisers were not invented before Suicide practiced in a loft in New York city, if you have heard of synths before this time its a…
Yes, I have been gone a long time and the story of my dissapearance is strange indeed. I will, however, regale you with it should that be agreeable? It is? Excellent… Dark were those first months in the belly of the mighty whale, Seskolath. He who’s stomach is the size of a hot air balloon…
Yes we do. It was only last week that we went to see two robots fucking, in-out hardcore style, yes? After the robots had fucked, the lady robot sauntered off to a dark place to sleep and the gentleman robot stumbled around bumping into things – just like real humans! You don’t believe us? Well…
Those of you who missed Coughs last night in Brighton, well…LOSERS. Gig of the year with Boredoms in Barcelona and Liars at the Hippodrome and Curzon Theatre. Big high five to James Nascent for putting them up. Catch them and send them our love in the following places in the following dates Nov 3-Milton Keynes…
20JFG has a bit of a bad reputation in certain quarters, they say we’re a bunch of bitter nerds and that we hate everything except the odd gem of putrefact noise that sounds like Thom Yorke’s face, or weird stuff we dig just because it’s weird and wacky and gives us hipster cred or whatever…
Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Bands – Floral Dance JUAN: parp parp…STEVE: Ommmmmm om om ommm …..JUAN: I’ll tell you something, er, that um pah horn reminded me of something.STEVE: Ommmm …..JUAN: Did you, did you see that, er, TV coverage of the, er, the dj when he was lying in state? The-, the last dj,…
TRICK OR TREAT!!! Happy Halloween dear readers! Don’t fear we have lost it, we’re always losing it! But there’s lots left…enjoy, just read this small zine the way you’d watch a controlled demolition in delightful slow motion, small crumbs of sanity falling from our flanks like spiritual dandruff, until the great collapse happens, in two…
You NY hipsters, you know how Tussle can do these magnificent Liquid Liquid ESG Konk style jams, yeah, I love ‘em, they’re great. You can hear Tiny Sticks and Scraper throughout, which I guess makes them punk-funk, but in a good way, without that dreaded lowest common denominator standard disco-punk beat which makes us spit…
The resurfacing of Space Disco in the last couple of years didn’t really come as much of a suprise for this Italo obssessed 20Jazzkateer. We had electro and synthpop, then acid, (i’m ignoring Neu Rave) so its obvious that another form of dance music from yesteryear would be wheeled back in. Figurehead Lindstrom is thought…
20JFG work not network We would have loved to come to your fabulous house party but we lost the flight back after a sleepless nite running zig zagging criss crossing the wet streets of the Berlin-rotterdam-Amsterdam-Ghent Euro-day-neon-glo industrial terrordrome with Miss Violetta Beauregard while chased by a pack of nazi rave acid bee frothing pitbulls,…
Soul Jazz could be called something annoying like ‘tastemakers’ with ‘their fingers on the pulse’ but these shitty terms actually hold true. The ‘New York Noise’ compilations rule as its well difficult (and expensive) to find some of the artists on vinyl and Soul Jazz fill them with brilliance. Volume 3 has just dropped and…
Deerhunter – Spring Hall Convert When we first declared our unrequited love of Bradford Cox and the geek miscreants Deerhunter it was at that age of the Buck when they had to stop playing together as friends as their furry antlers emerged. It was the loss of innocence and the coming of the rut. Heatherwood…
In this post we demonstrate the importance of a rapid creativity-driven development approach to musical composition and performance through case studies of three successful ‘bands’, Grabba Grabba Tape, Cutting Pink with Knives and Das Wanderlust. We demonstrate how models for musical creation which disregard genre boundaries, make use of available technologies (instead of trying to…
One day we were thinking it would be amazing if we could, besides promoting the stuff we love and respect, also demote what we loathe and despise, you know, like fucking Moby. I think he’s a synthetic. Someone smack his face. Blood or milk? Let us know. 20jazzfunkgreats is a zine written by peace-abiding individuals…
A nation of zombies!? Nah, we aren’t that lucky (though some say its already happened), apparently this is going to happen instead. But alas that is in a katrillion years time so none of you fuckas will see it, we will of course as we are supreme eternal beings from a parallel dimension that dwell…
Bobby Beausoleil is a bad man. A cohort of the Manson Family he was ‘allegedly’ responsible for the fatal stabbing of Gary Hinman in 1969. The following track is from the soundtrack to Kenneth Angers “Lucifer Rising”: Bobby Beausoleil & the Freedom Orchestra – Movement The Fifth Beausoleil gets convicted of the murder, but is…
Fuck your fancy recording studios and your fifteen takes to get those vocals right, fuck your high production values and your proficiency, your virtuoso solos and arrangements processed twisted and contorted through an n-track recorder, fuck your snobbish attitude towards anything that’s loose and fresh and doesn’t conform to your pathetic standards of professionalism, fuck…
(This is slightly adapted- erm, actually mostly ripped off- from ‘the Preserving Machine’, a short story by Philip K. Dick, you can find it in his beautiful ‘Beyond Lies the Wub’ anthology). Dr Labyrinth was worried about the collapse of civilization. He thought of the art, the literature, the music, everything that would be lost….
(…sorry, worst title for a post ev-aaah) The Knife are touring they’re live show to the UK this weekend, which means that 20 Jazz Funk Greats and assorted companions will be staring wide eyed at the double video screens of Swedish robo-enhanced day-glo-goblin rave. But before the prancing silently shouting pygmy-skeletons serenade alongside the happy-hardcore…
Yeah you read right, fuck ‘Night of the Living Dead’* its shit, as zombie films go its tame and boring. ‘Zombi 2′ (or ‘Island Of The Flesh-Eaters’, ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’, whatever they call it in your country) is by far the best undead opus that your living eyes will feast on, unless your in Norway…
which we learned throughout the dark weekend at the cost of a couple of layers of skin and 20 points of sanity…this is only the beginning Have now refin’d my Method, whereby I may cease to take heed to those Nu Rave fools who trouble mee. The recording dungeon is fit (id. est, v. dense,…
A couple of weeks ago when Brighton was sunny I went to Edgeworld on a record-shopping errand and Colin was there, he was like, hey dude how are you doing, I was, yeah, it’s all cool Colin, how are you doing yourself, he said, yeah, cool. I browsed through the new albums and there were…
From time to time props need to be given to our godfathers (the virgin sacrifices are a bit risky and some of these sacrificial “virgins” have been lying to us too). Chris & Cosey, or Dad, are Lords of the New Wave, so join us in respect and let us pray… Chris & Cosey –…
Hoot like an owl and rowche like a rumbleDo something magical and disappearScratch the above and write new rulesThese rules autodestructed 5 minutes agoAnd don’t forget to lick the mustard from the hand We love these bands: Just when you thought defeat was imminent, Yeborobo fly from their laundry bags with magical signs painted in…
A moth is sitting there staring at me malignantly as I type this, this is what I am doing on a sunny saturday morning. The moth hasn’t moved for two hours, mind, I haven’t spent two hours typing that sentence, I’m not that good, I guess since there’s light everywhere this moth doesn’t know where…
Alien, whos name cannot be spelt out on a puny Earthling keyboard, is bored of his home planet (again too impossible to spell), so he is on a one way trip to Earth, hitching a ride to our fair planet on the back of a passing meteor. He hurtles through quasars and nebullas until he…
Thanks (the above is dark castle btw, there goes our geeky purist cred, sheesh, mixing up text adventures and videogames you guys weird) [[[Opening credits]]] FTSE100- Hail Hegemony Welcome to 20JFG. Release 12 / Serial number 990623 / Inform v6.14 Library 6/7 East of House This is a small room with white walls and a…
Monday 8.10 PMHi guys, this is Sasha calling from Drug magazine, we have Sex Fuck, a super-sleazy gay electroclash trio coming over from Paris next week. They have been getting rave reviews from all our taste-maker DJs and friends and their debut single, ‘baisez votre frere’ is a hot hit. Anyway, to cut a gak…
That’s what you thought cunts. Apologies for the expletive, but I just got up early in the morning to pick up a parcel from the post office, I was expecting some fancy delivery from a place far away, the scent of adventure and an exotic disease, perchance, but do you know what I received instead?…
The difference is frequency (or the specific speed that energy is vibrating at) apparently; according to Ida No in her slightly scary conversation with the inquisitive but logically agnostic Robot on the intro to the new Glass Candy tour CDR ‘Music Dream’. We’re just energy perceiving energy anyways. There is no opposite to energy as…
(tis a sublime message a raven delivered from lawrd Genuine’s manor by the sea where the fish swim and the octopi twirl and the jellyfish somersault and some assholes go skinny dipping and GET EATEN BY MECHANICAL BADASS SHARKS WE DIRECT WITH SOPHISTICATED REMOTE CONTROL DEVICES) Gosh, there seems to be an awful lot of…
‘New’ Arthur Russell LP ‘Springfield’ collects together alternate versions and cuts from the unreleased ‘Corn’ LP. It also features a remix of the title track by the DFA. ‘Let’s Go Swimming’ is a personal Arthur Russell favourite and it too gets an overhaul: Arthur Russell – See My Brother, He’s Jumping Out (Let’s Go Swimming…
One day, while lounging around in the lounge, I noticed a fancy plastic case tableing around in the table. I picked it up and realised this was no less than a little videogame, one of those artifacts people like me use from time to time, mostly for cathartic purposes or when hangover, they are usually…
FLASH POST: New LP from The Emperor Machine is killer, but of course, and it comprises the previous Vertical Tones & Horizontal Noise 12″s plus totally new stuff that is equal parts epic, discopic (is that a word?), rumbling and thumping. Space disco at its best: The Emperor Machine- Monkey Overbite ‘Monkey Overbite’ is what…
Self promotion is not lame*, its a neccessity, therefore it is time to promote like a motherfucker and give you nice free hot-action music too cos thats what we are all about in the end, yeah. The Do is this friday and it has two fuck-off cool bands that will slay and charm in equal…
Have you ever been tempted to slap some booty during Assault on Precinct 13? We are not giving away if 20jfg ever have or not, but we are real sure them good guys would have been helped out by a suspension shifting car with bass system to give the bad guys the brown sound while…
Why do some people find music that isn’t all happy-clappy 4/4 beats depressing? Some of the best, most amazing heartbreaking sound can come from people like H T R K, a band who don’t feel the need to keep you dancing and smiling, no, they operate on higher plains, their concern is not for your…
Hello people, apologies for the lack of posts but Juan’s pooter was finally taken by the creepy guy who lives with all the spiders down the corridor after he refused to give him his babies (the creepy guy took the babies anyway), and Steven is finishing his teletransportation to Genuine Towers with an exorcism of…
We lowly creatures at 20JFG adore anything Emperor Machine-like, and they never fail to impress with remixes of artists dodgy or brilliant (does not matter either way): Markus Kienzl – Dundy Lion (Version Emperor Machine) ‘Dundy Lion’ comes from Klein Records (the proud lion image beats the faceless 12″ cover anyday), and features a Mars…
Remix albums tend not to be that great an idea in general, more a ‘lets squeeze out the last few drops of cash from the last album’ kind of thing. There were a few of them last year (goodie: Justice, Erol Alkan and Test-Icicles’ Sammy Danger tearing up Death From Above 1979 (who have fucking…
Deranged no wave demons Die Todliche Doris once recorded two albums that were the same length (each track the same duration over both LPs) and were meant to be listened to simultaneously to create a mystical 3rd LP. We don’t have those LPs and the track we are posting doesn’t come from either (yeah yeah,…
‘Music is like a dream. At the same time it is, on the contrary, like a more distinct form of conciousness than that of our normal waking hours’ (Yukio Mishima) Sometimes it is both, sometimes we are hit by sonic rays of loving grace coming from an unexplored universe, of a mysterious beauty which is…
Yep, poor them, subject to all those pernicious influences out there, dodgy Wicker Man remakes (someone bring us the head of Nicholas Cage), Star Wars DVDs where Greedo shoots first, shoulderbags with Jim Morrison’s face in them, bourgeoise new era caps, Ableton, Rockstar game characters way realer than MTV rock stars, those evil multinational entertainment…
Brighton is sunny, apocalyptically rainy and stormy all at the same time today, with a hairstyle destroying wind that shears through the streets like invisible bullet trains. I am inside packing boxes moving from xxjfg Towers to Genuine Heights, listening to Lego rave ballads: XXJFS2 gave the heads up on Thrust Lab, Baltimore based 8-bit…
I stole my sister’s boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat and flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road We drove down South. And this is what happened. 28th AprilA concert of horns and then deferent silence, the metal worm shut up under the neutral gaze of a kakhi brick wall,…
Searing laserbeam death from robots constructed in junkyards PEEOW! SebastiAn, French king of glitched up rusted 1985 electro, has a brand new EP awaiting release from Arcade Mode. A taste, pour vous… SebastiAn – Walkman Title track ‘Ross Ross Ross’ is all well and good, but as with the previous 12″ ‘Smoking Kills?’, it’s the…
Quick post with some modern dance music, you know, like what kids dance in the discotheque, you know, not traditional, no jigs or (as beautiful Leonora Carrington sez) Catatonic Sardines or morris dancern, it’s all a bit ‘blog’ if you know what I mean but super nice as you’ll see/listen, trust us, we care for…
All the tunes in this pretty post are secretly interconnected like those channels under Venice where little red riding hood midgets chase Indiana Jones and rats dance inside skeleton eyeballs or the subconscious diagonals of a Thomas Pynchon novel. If you discover the nature and direction of the linkages, well, fucking hell, you just scared…
Whilst firing off flaming arrows at haters from high up in the turrets of xxjfg Towers I noticed a curious sound that kept repeating across the lands. It wasn’t the sound of hater-flesh being simultaneously sliced and sizzled by my be-quivered fire bolts of vengeance, for I know that sound all too well, and it…
Let me quote Winston Niles Rumfoord: ‘There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the mafia’. Well, do you remember how I got lost in…
Do sit in that sofa and hand your tape to trusty Silas, he will slip it in the ornate stereo player hidden in that medieval armour, yes, in its helmet, how ingenious, and press the ‘play’ button at once, Stuardo, Stevonius and me will light our pipes and listen intently to the distillations of your…
Good evening argonauts, Tonight I’m gonna take you on a tour, the mediterranean clubs where all the adventurous kiddies go and try to leave their bodies by various means and methods, anything necessary, some things that you quite won’t be acustomed to, so I think we’ll fit each and every one of you with your…
Christ, we are fucking busy kids y’know, hence the shortness of this post – making up for it by having three tracks though, one being 18mins long so no bellyaching you damn fools, here you go: Arpanet – No Boundry Condition First up from the recent 12″, ‘Reference Frame’, comes a track by Arpanet, yet…
I guess The Blood Brothers can be a bit of an acquired taste (if you’re over 17): a pure ADHD rollercoaster of grindcore razorblade sharp plunges and piano led power ballad peaks, if mathrock is beardy rock and roll guys showing (off) their jazz influences, then they are lethal hardcore punk kids throwing up their…
Propulsive ghostdance german funk monsters we love it. CAN or a drum thrust towards the innerspace white hot flame without hesitation. NEU! or a relentless trip down a magical mystery psyche autobahn. Timeless stuff, songs to end your night with the bang of a metronomic supernova: as James Murphy once said, if these bands were…
‘Shining Violence’, the new Chromatics LP, the LP that may halt production of all other bands future LPs for fear of constantly being second best, has been delayed. Yeah, fuck, I know, it sucks but there is good reason. They are taking their time to perfect it, maybe getting some guest vocals in and they…
Many eons ago in the distant past of 2OO3 your humble narrator was slouched for endless days in a smelly flat in Whitechapel that housed me and two friends. It was nice enough, if you ignored the barrage of old McDonalds packets that prevented you from opening some of the doors cos they were piled…
The world is in great danger, evil clones march on from music-boxes everywhere, like most boring common denominator chrome wasps ready to sting the spirits of the youth and turn them into mindless cool-obsessed drones willing and happy to devour the latest glossy fad churned out by the entertainment factories, music becomes another fashion accessory…
Wheras boys can grow funny little beards and rock the wizard look or go full Horrors and look like girls wanting to be goth boys with deliberately slap-dash make up, its really down to the fairer sex to go full schizo-gonzo on our collective ass. Check out Dandi Wind for example, a deranged feral performance…
Cerrone’s ‘Supernature’ would be here right at the top if only it had not been posted already by both Moistworks and The Number One Songs In Heaven. It would be at home today with its glamorous snynthetique disco-porn thumps. Its Italo day! First up comes a jaunty little number by Digital Emotion. What they lack…
Hi Kids, apologies for the lack of posts this week but we’ve been fighting the heatwave and the black bugs that started appearing in the periphery of our vision as soon as we stopped smoking cigarrettes after the busy gross weekend. We have also been ‘absorbing’ the new Wolf Eyes album, ‘Human Animal’, released by…
The political music I like doesn’t have any sloganeering in it, it’s not a pamphlet, it’s not about easy solutions to hard problems, it’s not about rules to live all lives by, it won’t try to impose any commandments in my brain because that’s not the way to convince my heart, and I know there…
Neu-Rave will not fuck off will it? Pookie and I have just this very nite witnessed Rother & Moebius blast out some at Komedia (actually it was equal parts squiglly Neu Rave, Miami Vice, holiday TV program theme tunes and actual Neu!) to a basement of bearded folk who kept talking loudly (hello? legends in…
Allez Allez – Allez Allez Allez Allez is the sound of an organic Brazilian Associates. As nutty as new wave squirrel shit, but with a firmish grasp of a groove, you’ll be surprised to here this tune was actually made by contemporise of The Associates in the early 80s in Belgium. Maybe not that surprised…
Neutral Mute – Engine You know the bit in an LCD Soundsystem concert at the opening of Movement, when the crowd of indie, dance and electro kids suddenly turn into the front row of an Anthrax gig in 1987? The controlled ranting turns into a primal outburst, and James looks like he’s having the most…
20jazzfunkgreats is a dance music blog. That the tunes we like to rave to tend to contain shiteloads of white noise, weirdoes yelling gnarly obscenities and cyclopean basslines that literally do bring the house down simply proves that those years we spent locked in a basement wallowing in our own filth, watching Lon Chaney movies…
Remember last time I said I had a favourite band? They were from Toronto and went by the name of Crystal Castles, their Nintendo no wave blitzkrieg is blasting sharp window bytes off those stupid London skyscrapers to chop airheads’ heels off like, two minutes ago dude, check them out tonight in Delete Yourself at…
I don’t think I know or am what it’s needed to write about these songs the way it should be done but I can’t help it, because even though my spirit is weak, its roots buried and dead in grey concrete and clogged waterpipes criss crossed by sly rats, the white light white heat of…
Digitalism have never really blipped up on my radar (xxjfs2 has had them on his for a while) in the past – so-so remixes of stuff, ok-ish solo things that didn’t really grab me. They just seemed like another electro-house by numbers DJ duo that thought, ‘Yeah, let’s make some tracks!’. That was until I…
‘Wotcha. So I was round my bredren Bob Marley’s house the other day watching the Da Vinci Code on bootleg. After he’d made me sit through the entire Mad Professor back catalogue for the umpteenth time he started playing me this track by some geezer called Silverlink. Fuck me. This is way better than any…
The Horrors – Count in fives (demo) The Horrors sound like a bunch of old men from Manchester/Medway/Milton Keynes or one of those places of ledged, and if they were we are sure they would be held in great respect by the masses. Because they are a bunch of young overdressed upstarts from Southend on…
Honeymoon Killers were a belgian new wave band who got in all the 80s hit-lists with an efervescent cover of Charles Tenet’s glorious tribute to paid holidays Nationale 7, which Stereo Total also did in their hit n miss (too long) Musique Automatique album, they sounded like Devo if they had featured J.C. Vannier on…
An article at Wired suggested today that video-game journalism will one day find its ‘language’ and this will be ‘some crazy, unruly spawn of sportswriting, gonzo journalism, analytic philosophy, memoir and investigative reporting’. Sounds interesting to me, and it makes sense, after all, aren’t video-games more or less complex, interactive worlds the player becomes part…
Wanted: Job for Stuart xxjfg Stuart from 20jfg has graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Although presently employed writing regular expressions all day long he would like the opportunity to work at something he can really get his teeth into, preferably in Sussex, but London for…
Purveyors of Noise and stuff that is ‘experimental’, Excepter, have a new LP out next month. It’s a bit more coherent, nay, dancey than previous efforts too. Its not exactly Crystal Castles Rave! But y’know, you can bop ya head to da beat. Do the quirky jerk-jerk: Excepter – Rock Stepper So yep, bit more…
DJ Godfather- Bang the Box [OMFG](funny sound) bang the box [DJ GODFATHER] bang bang the box bang the box bang bang the box bang bang bang bang bang bang bang (funny noises) let’s go (pounding techno beats) bang the box bang bang the box bang the box bang bang the box bang bang bang bang…
We aren’t always playing gnarly stuff at 20 jazz funk greats villa, no, it’s not always no wave and no rave and no ise and schyzoid electro-techno beats from hell, we know robots have a heart, but it beats to a different drummer. No, have you ever tried to think about that erm, significant one…
Today we are going to talk about bass grammar kids…the bass is a flexible tool you can use in different ways when you are making a song, here you have two examples: Bass as verb In this case the bass is the glue bringing all the different elements of the song together, it takes it…
Kirk Degiorgio Presents Esoterik – Starwaves Today is a day for stars and to say its good to laugh and cry. Starwaves sets out on the time trip path of future disco with an air which may date the track to The Orbit in Leeds but soon takes it further back to the late 70s…
So we didn’t get to post that awesome ghettotastic remix DJ Funk Justice remix, and it’s too soon to unleash a HOT Crystal Castles butchering of Atlantis to Interzone number which is gonna make you shit your dayglo bermudas, Merok’s got the key, it doesn’t matter, we’ve got some synthetic banging raving toons to keep…
Standard. Witness the nite ladies putting all the wannabe leather jacket clad assholes to shame (later on in the week some exceptions). Yeah, we won’t cringe if they pull those guitar worshipping poses. We’ll smile and write a thesis about it. Always check Sympathy for the Records Industry albums, not that you will be able…
So 20 Jazz Funk Greats blew up big on Friday, didn’t blow the speakers mind; crank volume = loss of nite. While XXJFS2 pranced around the lake district with TwenTinaJazzFunkGreats and 1FG handled business at The Do, XXJFSt3ve played alongside extra soopa great guests Benedict, who played equal parts grime, EBM, hip-hop and Post Punk,…
‘According to custom, the man had brought a black hen in a brown canvas; he blindfolded it, then cut its throat over the fire whilst looking to the east. The hen’s blood did not put out the fire; on the contrary, it seemed to make it burn more fiercely: tall blue flames shot up, and…
Ok kids, I am writing this at my (fancy and ample, admittedly) new house with no internet connection, so I’m going to put whatever crap I manage to churn in a floppy disk (I’m a cassette player videotape etc. kind of guy) and do the html and publish malarkey at work. It’s a swag arrangement…
PTR was kind of a mystery to me but once this track turned up on Ivan Smagghe’s and Chloe’s new compilation, ‘Dysfunctional Family’, I now know of her mad one woman brains-on-sticks show. Planningtorock – DeathDream So Chicks On Speed dig her so much that they put her on their pretty little label (home of…
Hey readers, sorry for the lack of updates last week but we’ve truly been up against it what with holidays, moving house, losing internet connections, battling wasteman internet companies for access, yeah its excuses I know, but thats the deal. We will improve and stop being bad, promise. Lately we’ve been getting hot for some…
Despite an avalanche of crawling n prancing n gurning n chair throwing hick (in a bad way) techno-monkeys at the dance tent on Friday (DJ Rush fer chrissakes), Primavera Sound ruled: I saw the best gig of my life (BOREDOMS) and one of the best 5 gigs of my life (ESG) and some that would…
XXJFSt3ve winds up in Brighton after being pulled apart by art-skool fiends and Shoreditch vampires in East London and barely surviving the terminal boredom of village life in Surrey. He sets up a blog (To Here Knows When – no link it ain’t there anymore) cos he has a fast broadband connection and too much…
It’s the weekend! Woop! Friday in Brighton we have When I plugged her in she just blew up with the delectable Miss Pain and Miss Heidi Heels in a Heavy Metal fancy dress special at The Penthouse. Aerial Pink at the Freebutt. Pink Grease live and The Horrors dj set at TheDoClub at The Core…
Its the summer, its actually sunny and hot (ish) in Brighton! So here, erm… is Dark Day: Dark Day- Chameleon Yeah ok, this is a bit morose and if its raining where you are, sorry if you feel the need to cry when listening, but we never said 20 Jazz Funk Greats was all rollercoasters,…
Michael Rother – Sterntaler My favourite uncle of 20jfg, sure to give us a Worthies Original on every visit, is Michael Rother. With Sterntaler you get that initial opening sweetness which soon swells into a rich multi layered caramel, not in an overwhelming way, but just right. Jaki Liebezeit keeps the rhythm steady while Conrad…
Have you ever fantasised about Mike Patton and DJ Scotch Egg getting together to compose an alternative soundtrack for Suspiria? Do you leave your room often? Don’t worry dear reader! We 20jazzfunkgreat kids understand you have eccentric worries, and that’s why we are bringing you this track from the thrilling power & blood & silver…
Hawnay Troof has just released Dollar and Deed, one of the albums of the year, maybe to make up for his super-short releases of the past (usual tune clocking at around a minute, is Get Up resolution love an album or a maxi?), fancy speedlines and dayglo sneakers, aerodynamic tube socks make up for superrapid…
HTRK- Ha Slow and filthy, thats the way we like it. HTRK manage to record the missing semi-industrial dirt soundtrack to that Richard Kern film you know he has in the private stash of him and Lydia Lunch getting to ‘know’ each other while watching David Lynch movies. HTRK share the scent of “this is…
Silver Apples are what we stand for, a weird beat you can dance and go WTF to at the same time, all in a tune, Program is but the archetype (Hallogallo, Kiss me Again, Mother Ski, Sister Ray, Ruckzuck, Windowlicker, U.F.O. would be other examples). ‘Why do people bother doing music after this?’ asked Massimo…
20 Jazz Funk Greats had a go at being professional DJ’s on the weekend at The Great Escape, courtesy of the nice guys at Adventures Close To Home- our thanks go out to them! Evil tyrants MTV2 fucked with our shit so we only got to play a small amount of records before Metric’s intro…
The Emperor Machine – Bodilizer Bodilsizer God like genius award winners The Emperor Machine return with some new Vertical Tones And Horizontal Noise taking the shape of a track so gloriously infectious and Old Grey Whistle Test it hurts. For those of you who are unlucky enough not to know The Emperor Machine have been…
We at 20jazzfunkgreats know about the rules of argumentation and taxonomy, so we have decided to put up three bands that begin with a d. And one that begins with a w cos we feel like it. As Milan Kundera would say, you’re gonna have to put up with it guys. The first two are…
Are we giving you a Fox N’ Wolf overkill on 20JFG? No, it would be overkill if they sucked but they don’t so its an overload!!! 3 tracks this year so far, you lucky bitches! Partly inspired by a recent viewing of Teenwolf (don’t bother with Teenwolf 2, but check the last 10 minutes for…
From time to time, once each two months or so, your 20JFG kids need to release all that tension accumulated doing research on the way people do things online (you’re our guinea pigs dear readers), plotting to undo the western economic system, programming code trees of extreme complexity that unfold multidimensionally like origami chicken printed…
Rave! We promised more rave before but didn’t deliver but now we are so fuck off with complaints! Some old some new (or neu), its all good whichever fickle fashion music cycle it spawns from, nineties or nauthies (I fucking hate that term). Hands in the air, all ravers: Rather than give you some random…
Ok I was going to write a post about the transilvanian doom metal invasion coming to carve Satan’s real name in your forehead with a meat cleaver, you know all the sludgy witchety evilness etc. but then the sun blinked at me (even though it’s 9.00 PM on the evening oh well) and I thought,…
(This was supposed to be posted yesterday but our macpage thing blew up, apologies for the delay, bless our star kid Steve for a solution…enjoy!) Can Oneida do no wrong? They have been releasing consistently mindblowing albums for a few years, I guess they should start a subscription business where you pay a fixed amount…
Aah, the split 7″, such a wondrous creation. Recent great: the Silver Daggers/Death Sentence: Panda split, part of the Bored Fortress series, with its brown card, glitter paint and stuck on paper leaves. Thats how you make a record sleeve, none of this photoshopped to the nines shit. Bleugh! Uber-label Kill Rock Stars put this…
Listening to good coca-disco might make you feel a bit weird, especially if you are out on a stroll around town with your headphones on, you know, just check out the high drama high octane synths and the reaganomics robodisco beats, whoops, suddenly you’re not walking, you’re making moves, that guy over there in the…
Too many people have written too many things about Scott Engel and how he gave up boy band career ect ect. I do not find Scott fascinating, just his music. All I can see is like any good micro organism, adapt and survive. As a performer Scott is one of those rare kind attempting accelerated…
This is a post by Massimo one of those people who’s pushing the ‘scene’ forwards which I guess means doing his own thing with passion and excellent taste, because people are wise and pay attention, wait, maybe I’ve been reading too much Rousseau, anyway, Massimo has also been making it hard for your 20JFG kids…
Two totally unrelated and opposing tracks today, just doing it random, no themes, no loose ties, just . . . meh. ‘Begegnungen’ I & II and the Plank-less ‘After The Heat’ were kindly rereleased on Water in October of last year. Yeah we’re super lame for being so late, but we’re bringing it now, and…
I Was going to write an erudite super-long post about Hawnay Troof’s sexual politics and such but then I started playing Sissyfight2000 (I’m hardcore) and spent way too much time, you know, bullying people around the playground and saying that emo sucks big ballz lol. So it’s late and the evil agressive instincts that usually…
Is this one of these posts where the 20JFG guys don’t write about music but about made up movies with zombies and bikers and nazis and surfers and shoegazers and monkeys wearing leather trousers blah because they don’t know that much about music and anyway it’s more fun to bullshit, Lester Bang’s school of rock…
Whoops, its Friday and we’ve only done two posts! Sorry! But don’t playa hate, its been all about bank holidays here, throwing sickies, forest-dwelling, buying the best 12″ (top left) of the year and various other shits and giggles. Back on track next week, sure thing, with some more of this new-fangled rave business, and…
Sucking on helium and then talking is funny when you’re like 6 (or stoned) but when you record a song with it, that’s soopa doopa good! DAT Politics have made one of the craziest bonkers albums of the year, ‘Wow Twist’. ‘What’s Dat?’ is maybe the cutest thing on there, and we like cute sometimes,…
After kicking off their Easter Genghis Khan Overkill style with the soundtrack to ‘Kittens eating Babies’ by GG Allin as performed by Wolf Eyes, and shaking down and dirty with the Bug (highlight: Ras B riding Jammer’s Merkle Man riddim), your 20Jazzfunkgreats kids are getting sacramental now, witness the meekness. First there’s the passion, none…
Hey, we have been going about all dis rave shit indie dat blah blah don’t take us seriously dear readers, never ever, but especially when we get down with the trend business cos i-D we ain’t and we don’t wanna we no wanna. But if you wanna see what we are talking about come to…
What’s the new sound the kids dig? Grime was the new Indie and then Neu! Rave is the new Grime, but fuck all that shit its Neu! Techno Trance Lullabies from The Knife! The Knife! Live! Oh my. While its kind of easy to just want it to be the most amazing life affirming EVENT…
So there’s an indie rave happening! It’s got a myspace profile and we have even mentioned it in our magnificent The Do press release: it’s happening! And how does it sound? Like this Ceephax Acid Crew- Camelot Fossil plus this Retro Spankees- My Sonic Driver Or them of course. Watch the 20JFG kid who was…
Silver Ninjas – Night Wars You are bleeding because we stabbed you! God those ninjas are sneaky, don’t let them anywhere near your fucking precious heirlooms. These ninjas are a bit different cos they don’t go in with shinobi, they are setting the score right for those decades without record when ninja secrets were passed…
Occasionally you have these times. After going to ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ the other week and doing a bit of jiggling to ELO and Starship alongside Tiga and Daft Punk you have, as Dave Unpop would put it ‘the 80s in my head’ kinda attitude. Its nothing to do with being cool, ironic or even…
Happy otter likes it that it’s spring and stuff. Happy otter likes the Heavy Meckle mixtape by Sheen and Matt Shadetek because it’s badass as hell and mostly sounds like the evil bass at the beginning of I Luv U by Dizzee Rascal only all the time. Happy otter is not sure about the social…
Grumpy old men that we are we often complain that things are not as good as in the old days. The fact that we were either not born or knee high to a grass hopper in said old days has never stopped us, so it true Last of The Summer Wine style grumpy old fucks…
Clouds lift, but then descend once more, night creeps in, you fire up the speakers, this comes to mind. Just. Press. Play. Padded Cell – Signal Failure Black Magic DisKo! DC Recordings gave us The Emperor Machine which we bowed down in adulation for, but Padded Cell too? Spoilt! But where as The Emperor Machine…
In the spire of a gothic church in a dimension beyond the worm hole a young Nick Cave contorts, knots of black oily muscles react to the synaptic firework expanding and retracting beyond what’s natural, blood shot eyes shoot satanic if only not, agnostic death-rays. ZAP ZAP ZAP no interventionist god, or devil in this…
Noise Boys – miniminiminijupe Stephan Eicher is one of the people from Grauzone so we got to love him really. His first recorded music project we know of is Noise Boys. I was going to write all the things about fun lo-fi French punk that sounds like a 4-track and Suicide and stuff but then…
Fuck prog-disco let’s prog! Zombi would rock my world with the strength of Skeletor after a sack of green-beret grade amphetamines even if they were shit, I mean, how cool does it get, a duo playing imaginary soundtracks to Dario Argento, George A. Romero and John Carpenter movies, Corey the Huss introduced me to them,…
That’s where we at, I know in the past we have said we were doing ‘Noisy fucked up music you’re not supposed to dance to but you can’t help it momma, momma, what’s happening’, ‘all that’s left of what the hipsters try to hijack’ (left as in left-hand) and ‘the music they play at Fraggle…
Channels 3 and 4 – The Queen demo One good reason to leave the house is obviously to go see some of the amazing bands on Summer Lovers Unlimited . I think we blogged almost all their artists before we new about the label, so they must have good taste. The Queen is here and…
Oh god, the return from London last weekend was hellish, we had been warned about tribes of cannibals armed with crossbows roaming the roads in their customised dragsters, Stuart laughed confidently and raised slightly his Slayer t-shirt to show our concerned interlocutor a gold-plated colt python hanging from his waist. loaded with silver aconite flavoured…
Well, London was shoddy chaos on our behalf. Thanks to Den and Glyn (aren’t they lovely??) for putting up with us and Twitch, Tim and Tim for the great music, but mostly thanks to everyone who came to witness, to those who danced to Lightning Bolt and Kraftwerk and to the guy raving with his…
One of the lucky few bands that escaped the nuclear fallout of Electroclash, A.R.E. Weapons have a new EP out! We love the Weapons cos they come on like a group of Escape From New York prisoners that live underground fronted by none other than 1FG (judging by the picture), or maybe a biker gang…
I am such a fan of the Silver Apples I have made a colourable poster of them for the next Do zine. Just listen to any of their tunes and feel the power of a drum, or a brotherhood of drums being played by a single body with a beat and a drone that will…
We live in Brighton and like to go to the Pier for the lunatic ambience of lost love, everywhere old people die in the summer sun marooning in multicoloured deckchairs and those fooled with a passion take their try at the karaoke, so we go to watch the freaks…. Jamie T- Salvador Whether its charm…
Everybody seems to be bored/sad/not very enthusiastic about stuff these days, is it seasonal people? spiritual? global? local? physical? I don’t know folks. What’s clear is your small 20JFG won’t get any sexual healing heh heh. GALS? Not unless they’re on tape. Anyhow, we wanted to help those of our readers feeling a bit whatever…
I’ve done my share of fear posts and you people don’t seem to give a shit. But I don’t care, cos as HPL (second quote on a week and I’m not even a member of his church) said, more or less, in his introduction to ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’, fear is the oldest and strongest…
Here at 20 Jazz Funk Greats its not all drones from dark dimensions and John Carpenter worship, no, sometimes we like to show our poppier side! (*flashes poppier side*) Not too poppy though, we need some sort of black goo flicked across it to make it more vicious and apocalyptic, and today that black goo…
Sometimes we like it small like faint memories of that bite a mouse took from the pale cheeseball in grandma’s country house when we were little. Sometimes we like it small like young atoms floating in a space that wasn’t space, but nothingness, a second ago, yet how can you measure that second if time…
He’s started a blog!! But now…putting the jazz and the funk back into the jazz funk. Archie Shepp- Money Blues pt. 1 No apologies for highlighting this particular track from Soul Jazz’s awesome ‘New Thing!’ compilation despite making it one of the reissues of last year. This Mother needs some extra special attention. Also no…
Meanwhile, in Brighton, the kids were shaking their tails in a dirty basement. The amp shook and rattled, alcohol soaked mother giving birth to a yelping baby, a baby born on the floor, contrary to what you might have heard this baby didn’t cry the same, its blood was black groove and its little muscles…
Wooooo . . . breaking you’re foot isn’t so bad you know? Laying in bed all day, robot slaves cooking up the meals, fetching the records delivered by the postman . . . yeah, its ok. Especially when you have these fun little painkilling pills too . . . making the world seem like its…
I know the TV on the Radio album leaked over the weekend so it must have been blogged to death by a thousand beautiful geeks out there, but it doesn’t matter to me, I’m covering my eyes with my feet and shouting ‘nanananananana’ as I type (hence the braindaamgd spelng) because I’ve got an ‘angle’,…
Staying up late can expose you to terrifying things. Like Late Night Hollyoaks and Channel 5 in general, or the hideous sounds of flatmates having ugly sex, ack! (no link for that, sorry). But it can also be incredibly beneficial. On P2P networks, the small hours of the morning in the UK means that the…
Ok, so yesterday we talked about drums, today, let us listen to…drums. CEEPHAX ACID CREW IS BACK! Squarepusher’s lil mentalist brother (yeah, Tom is the normal one you see?) puts most dubstep geeks, drum and bass dancing clowns and warp backpackers (hum, do those Maximo Park fools wear backpacks?) to shame with a full machine…
Yep, the new album by our beloved Liars came out yesterday, monday, and it’s a pretty sight. Thing is my vinyl copy seems to have some sort of defect and the second cut (Let’s not Wrestle Mt heart Attack) prances and bounces rather upsettingly. I have decided not to listen to it any more and…
I smiled. Myspace…oh, I could go on about myspace for ages. (Skip the next paragraph and do something worthwhile with your life mate) ((I could go on about ‘emo-haircuts’ and how the difussion of digital cameras has changed the fine art of portraiture, about stalkers and lame bands, about spam from lame bands (‘hey cool…
We all know how there is only so much madness collected in one place in one time and levels slip and rise in patient/staff relations, so it all gets a little blurry who the patient is and the professional line goes wooo yeh, quantity theory of insanity, and the party gets a little wild. You…
The Screamers – I Wanna Hurt The internet is great and filesharing fucking rules. There is no chance on the planet someone like me born in the wrong country a little too late would be able to track down anything by The Screamers and not pay through the nose for it. Punks in Liverpool used…
Did we ever tell you we love Kill Rock Stars? We’d also like to kill a few ‘rock stars’ like Bono emperor of the world (Playlouder are right, he is starting to look like the Predator), but nah, we’re talking the excellent record label and we’d never kill anyone save for that evil narnia queen…
Free Blood – Never Hear Surf Music Animal Collective are not really known for having the funk. If they did it might come out like what we thing Beck should be doing these days (bit harsh, we liked the 8-bit stuff).!!! really do have the funk, like an army of it Napoleon Dynamite dancing down…
I have a special playlist in my twat-pod just for when I face horror, that is, when I have to go to Churchill Square Mall, it includes Wolf Eyes, Burning Star Core, Sunn O))), Fushitsusha, Xinlisupreme and from tomorrow, this. Haddonfield, Illionois- La Rebelion de las Muertas In which a bunch of scary masked types…
Robin Crutchfield’s Dark Day- No, Nothing, Never Well yes, I have actually, now that you mention it. Gary Numan was there, sitting in the corner writing ‘Replicas’ while your track was playing, and the cast of ‘Liquid Sky’ were trying they’re hardest to look elegantly wasted and hide the fact they have zero acting talent….
You know how at 20JFG (and the Do) we kinda obsess with a number of things that include dario argento, artificial intelligence, ninjas, old school sneakers, heavy metal grafitti, stupid keyboards, bright colours, rammellzee’s outfits, cats, dan clowes, mythical creatures, bruce campbell, h.p. Lovecraft and daft punk toys (wait, that’s robots). And Divine. We also…
Zongamin’s debut a couple of years ago was a total blinder, a collection of playful electrofunk toy symphonies composed by a smart and gentle bass wielding gentleman, who, when asked by me to autograph a copy, covered it with a drawing of an honest abe wearing a stovepipe hat smoking a, erm, pipe, and a…
Test-Icicles bring the Devil’s noise, we all know this. Their album ‘For Screening Purposes Only’, has enough death-metal-grime-schlock-hell to knock you straight over if you play it loud enough. But there have been some pointless dodgy dance remixes that really should be banished back to the studios from whence they came with a ‘PUT THE…
Today we’ve got Sam Wander who guested with Benedict at 20JFG a couple of months ago (and totally killed it) writing about a couple of Brighton bands from a thriving noise/underground/industrial/folk/always DIY as fuck scene that got started at bedrooms, house parties, little theatres and the Psykick Dancehall club/gig night that Ben and Hannah run….
Nascent have been putting great gigs in Brighton since the good lordy knows when, last night it was Pheromones (non musical band which features James Nascent, James from the Sticks, Russel who sadly moved to london and a guy I don’t know, the style is a bit the Shaggs meets NEU! meets Fall or sth…
Matthew E – Bad Blood! Just searching the internet to find some more stuff out about lovely people over at Skint Records artist Matthew E (erm,one half of Radioslave it turns out- he famous) when I found this comment on a dance music record site about my favourite track off the 12” check it ‘Bad…
…but we ain’t gonna sue anyone… Ninja Scroll! ninjas fighting demons! First time I saw a hardcore sex scene on TV! (Doggystyle wOOt!??) So much blood and arms being torn apart and this ninja who kills people by having sex with them! tattoos which are snakes that become snakes and bite a poison bite! a…
I guess you might have noticed the xxjfg beast bot has reproduced and spawned another head. We are proud to announce a new addition to the collective of Steve from one of our favourite blogs of last year To Here Knows When. Steve refused to accept the reprogramming we gave him and will continue on…
Alright, so this will be up on tuesday but was written on monday, which was supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, it’s the january blues, a grey sky, debts mounting, no escape like good old mummified Sky Saxon said, well, why don’t we just…fuck it? Yeah, fuck it with a good…
Caribou – Marino All the things you want to say about Caribou have already been said. The Silver Apples psych sound obviously leaves xxjfg drooling over them while the album made many peoples top 10 ten lists last year which we were very glad to see. Marino – the dvd seems to have slipped out…
If indiepop is about running around and falling around with the face painted in dayglo colours while wearing a strippy everything, and climbing in the merry-go-round with creatures ten years younger after an all night bender and sending text messages full of lil faces and wearing those colourful badges with pride of being silly but…
Human Eye – Age For anyone who ever drowned themselves in the psychic apple barrel of Chrome and the world of Helios Creed but wished somewhat to have more of the skinny limp-wristed punch in the face of Stiv Bators at the throat, screaming his best non-sensicle hope I die before I get old (well…
Going out can lead you to despair. The 20JFG kid finds himself lost in a scary forest of boring half assed half baked acid, crappy 4×4 electro-house made with PVC beats, worthless remixes of indie disco crap and generic disco-punk nothingness. DFA please release something and deliver us from the drudgery of the early 2006…
Copy – It’s a Little Too Late Pure self indulgence for me on this one, just to ease you into this week in Winter for our hemisphere. Slippers, log fire and some electonic goodness to warm the barnacles in the led glow. Right from the start we are witnessing the missing link between Isolee and…
Ok, we said we’d normalise the situation and then we disappeared. Bear with us. We have been fighting spiders, throwing up on top of grannies, representing gay rights, we’ve been attacked by viruses and spit blood, we have made friends with dragons and tigers and slept with Cassette Playas, we have read Kurt Vonnegut and…
Tis a hit n run post Scott and Juan try to breakdance manically when geekdom answer’s to Bubba Sparks and Ying Yang Twins hit da club. Shitkickin banjo playin booty shaking soul diva chantin you Hawnay Troof are hot you. Hawnay Troof- This is Our Invite (feat Mika Miko) From the community ep out in…
…or like the whispers of a new race’s first*. Yep. We have decided to begin the year with a super fun post, lots of pop for you inhabitants of die 2006. I didn’t know about three of the bands I’m writing about until a couple of days ago. The underground is fun and all those…
(we are posting this with some time so you have time to come…) Welcome to our party, is gonna be fast and dirty and everyone is going to have such a good time you should give us a prize or at least a sweet kiss. You know how sometimes everyone tries so hard to have…
Brief xmas prsents post for you Santa Claus worshipping people and other victims of cultural globalisation. You people who follow other traditions don’t read this or do the right click save as routine until the day your God chose for presents to be given n taken. Also ask yourselves if you are flexible enough for…
(Lessons on postmodernism learned watching Amityville Horror 3) I am 1FG and I am a person. I also happen to like records. This is going to be my last post for a while. Flying to Madrid on saturday. Come to 20jazzfunkgreats at the Penthouse (7-1AM, free entry, cheap drinks, Massimo guests) and the Do at…
Ok fellas, our comrade Matt has made a few write-ups of his re-issues of the year, listen with attention because he knoes his shit. Also, of all the white people I know, he’s got the best way of saying motherfucker. That’s quite important too. Jean Claude Vannier-L’Enfant Assassin Des Mouches This has been a superb…
We know almost nothing about Multiples except they did a great song on a compilation our friend Mags was nice enough to get called “Raising mental health awareness in scotland” 20JFS2 played it at the ArtSchool Dropouts gig with Pro Forma and Fujiya and Miyagi where Russel Warrior like it, so we get him to…
Telepathe – Blind Mouths When you’re doing homework its difficult to listen to stuff that just goes “rahhh!” so you end up listening to a lot of ambulance music and exploring your interest in classical. Country and Folk would be perfect but it has too many lyrics about stuff you suddenly find yourself deeply engrossed…
Ok, no tops or anything, just a lil’ list of things that we enjoyed this year… -The Animal Collective- Feels (you listened Grass here and can enjoy Purple Bottle at Kill All Artists and Banshee Beat at Motel de Moka). -Black Dice- Broken Ear Records (the DFA remix of Smiling Off, one of the tunes…
1-Liars @ the Kilburn Luminaire Ok, you know, we are obsessed with Liars, I shelled 10 quid for the three songs in ‘We No Longer Knew Who We Were’, I saw them make it night in Barcelona, one of the main reasons I had for starting a night was getting somewhere to play their stuff…
People! People! Sorry for leaving you in the wilderness for such a long time but we’ve been stoopid busy, went to London to see Liars blow up the Luminaire in the best gig 1 has seen this year (we’ll bring you some bits of the new album later this week, fingers crossed), Celebration were aces…
Clearlake – Good Clean Fun (Caribou mix) Brighton! Brighton! Brighton! , yeh we love this town. Here we watch Clearlake’s vocal harmony layered indie tribute to xxjfg favourites Loop transformed into something (almost) friendly loop(ed) guitar space rock out that doesn’t nearly last long enough for our tastes, but you cannot have cake and eat…
Hella – Madonna Approaches R&B Blonde Wreckages What is she approaching them for? Is she dumping Stuart Price already? Who the fuck cares, this is Hella and they are playing in Brighton on December 7th at The Engine Romms and we are going to be there come Hella high water ……………..(ow, stop hitting me). When…
It’s not always underground comic books and music journalism that we read at the 20JFG towers, nah, sometimes we have fun with Edgar Allan Poe, but mind, not the ‘pop’ (or maybe better, goth) stuff, which is real cool, of course, no, we read Edgar Allan Poe’s Essays on Physics, namely, Eureka, included in a…
It’s not always monster guitars and stomping disco beats at 20JFG towers, nah, nah, sometimes I wake up in the morning and each tiny spec of dust floating in the smokey air of my chamber is a little sharp blade cutting the skin and making my soul bleed, oh lord it hurts. Those days which…
(what’s there not to like?) In anticipation to my possible participation in a research project about learning processes in the video-game industry I have decided to take a look at three different eras in the history of this form of entertainment, art, if thou wilt. Let us begin with the dark knight himself, yes, Batman!…
How many good bands with wolf in their name…Wolf Eyes, We Are Wolves, Raised by Wolves…we’re not so hot on Wolf Parade but Dan digs ‘em so they’re cool with us, like. What’s the thing about this beautiful and bloodthirsty animal that makes adopting its name such an attractive proposition for restless souls? Maybe the…
Ok, first, apologies for the dearth of posts this week, it is hard, yeah?? Anyway, there we go. Stuart played this in the last Do. I played it in the 20JFG before that. Stuart played it in Unpop the month before. I even posted it already in this blog ages ago. It’s Caesar’s Column by…
Not that sure about the new Gossip (or Goxxip) single, too indie disco and formulaic for me. And then there’s the awful remix, why does it seem that everything Le Tigre touch these days turns, well, into rubbish? I used to love them, seriously. Anyway, I prefer old school Gossip, well fucked up, like Coachwhips…
Thanks to Scott I’ve got this new computer at home and I can write about music and listen to music and stuff, its belly makes this fun noise which is kind of hypnotic when you stop and listen with some attention, last night after some hours of HUMMMMMHUMMMM I felt like grabbing a kitchen knife…
We have enough noisy bouncy stuff to fill two weeks of 20JFG agony, but let us do a quiet one first, you know, like hush-hush, Autumn has finally arrived and ochre leaves accumulate outside and the wind bites, let us curl up in a foetal position in the little den we have made with our…
A big thank you to Liars Club for letting us play records in London at the weekend and go see The Long Blondes, Zongamin and White Rose Movement who were all great in there own ways. Send us photos if your reading Ricky. Especially enjoyed Midnight Mike bopping away on his own at the side…
Ok fellows, this has to be a fast one, Stu is learning how to land flies (this is true, he’ll explain some other day), I am at work, busy, and going to London in a bit to witness the fitness (Gonzales), the freakness (Jamie Lidell), the glitchness (Jackson and his Computer Band) and the miceness…
Here comes the man, hell yeah, he dee-jayed in Japan and got shot at in Korea, he taught Phil Spector the studio tricks, he made the twangy guitar respectable, he is the reason Gram Parsons didn’t sing in Sweetheart of the Rodeo and the reason Nancy became more than the daughter oh the voice, he…
You know the story… ‘A musician witnesses the murder of a famous psychic, and then teams up with a fiesty reporter to find the killer while evading attempts on their lives by the unseen killer bent on keeping a dark secret buried’…It happened to me yesterday… Yay, it’s Profondo Rosso, it’s the original master of…
Today it’s a 20Jazzfunkgreats do the indie pop thing issue, it’s just a coincidence that Pitchfork have an extensive dossier on twee stuff. By the way, when did Pitchfork news stop being funny and get quite annoying, as if they were written by a dude, or something? Maybe when they started trying to be consciously…
Faust – j’ai mal aux dents When an engineer managed to bumble together Faust’s removed from reality home recordings (made to amuse friends) then master the lot in a studio a bright spark at Virgin records thought it would be a great idea to put it all on an album and sell it at the…
Three part post today cos there was nought yesterday… To begin the first instalment of what might become a little series in which we pick tracks we like from good dj mixes and post ‘em in their original version. Who’d thought it?? we’re so inteligint! Anyway… When I think disco it’s always Carlito’s Way by…
Argento – Milano Gospel Rock rock it’s a planet rock, or is it? I mean what’s with the kinda creepy flutes and stuff? Well we couldn’t really expect anything less from the son of Dario Argento(we might have made this bit up) on this late 80s world music italo outing could we? Apparently he likes…
Benjamin Theves- Texas (SebastiAn Mix) Oh dear. Ed Banger Records SebastiAn who released the very nice Dolami does not know what he has let himself in for. Didn’t he read the sign? DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS! SabastiAn has messed with Texas. Oh boy. They will probably make him go pick up litter from the streets…
I got Matt to record me a compilation, but he’s a wizard so music’s trip from record to his stereo to tape to my pocket to my stereo to my ears couldn’t be straightforward, nah. Straightforwardness is for losers. So he channeled his record collection through the uncertain and magic world of fate (is our…
Mushi Mushi – Chicken So we have Daft Punk meets Lightning Bolt played by Spanish white and pink furry aliens and xxjfg favs Grabba Grabba Tape. It’s unsurprising then that we also have 808 State meets Add n to (x) playing songs about chicken (which seems quite popular at the moment) in the form of…
So Glass Candy have a new single out! We got the cd on the mail, cheers to whoever sent it! We love Troubleman! And you know we love Glass Gandy, it sounds lame but… RAUURGHH Still, to be honest this humble 20JFG kid is not 100% convinced about the A-side, Iko Iko, I find Ida…
Core Club real close to Dr. Brighton’s/Pool Valley 5 squid with a flyer drink promos and no less than 8 people playing records for you, that’s around 50p per dj how cheap are we? The Do is your new favourite night if your into noisy edgy where the fuck did that come from music by…
Duchess Says – Cut Up We have been laying off Canada for a bit but Duchess Says got me. Hello! were back in Montreal. Everything I read about Duchess Says says they are Goths, but it sounds to me like they got the same overcharged buzz dance friendly sound championed by Whitey and made so…
Gosh this has definitely done it. You wanted it? there you go, i think this is the best remix of the year so far with Emperor Machine’s rejig of ‘Human After All’ by Daft Punk but that’s got a motorik beat so it’s kind of cheating. Black Dice- Smiling Off (DFA Remix) There’s a certain…
HA HA HA NOISE MINDFLAYER’S EXPEDITIONS TO THE HAIRIER PEAKS IS THE HAIRIEST RECORD OF THE YEAR WITH CONSTANTLY TERRIFIED BY HAIR POLICE WHO ARE LIKE GOBLIN DOING GRINDCORE MY MOM SAYS I HAVE TO POST EM SOME DAY. IT’S FUNNY THAT BANDS THAT HAVE THE WORD HAIR IN THEIR NAME OR THEIR RECORD MAKE…
Franz Ferdinand – Do You Want To (Max Tundra remix) Max Tundra has a good sense of humour and knows how to have fun. So do we. (Juan would like to add that he’s a fucking great DJ, guess that’s in the ‘having fun’ part. He dances well too. Hey, I sound like a fanboy)…
Audio Flyer alert : It Came From The Sea Soundsystem appearing at b’lo this Saturday with kicking k and nikon driver at the helm playing lots of songs with CAPITAL LETTERS. Last time they played this place the computer friend Daisy (R.I.P. tears, snuffle) blew up. It will be sweaty mayhem and they even play…
Another one that went past us on its day and fuck it’s good!!! This song should be played in any club I attend or I’m gonna start wasting people seen? Caesar’s column is our favourite track by Oneida and one of our favourite tracks ever (actually if anyone has the White Pants mix or the…
Chromatics – Nite (demo version) How did music began? After the quality that is the Chromatics tour CD available from Troubleman Unlimited we were wondering what would come next from the further recordings in Glass Candy’s studio. The answer blew our mind. Traditional song structure and chorus are yet again thrown out the window in…
The Velvets shot drugs (poor Kate Moss) on young rock and roll and dragged its twitching body to a den of white noise. No Wave insects feasted on its corpse and synthetised small rusty iron toothpicks that when aligned in the right configuration turned into siege engines that brought down not their enemies but their…
Judy Nylon – Room Without A View The legend goes that as Brian Eno lay convalescing from an accident, Judy Nylon brought him a record of 18th-century harp music. While listening to it half awake with the volume turned down low, he discovered the magic of the space between sounds, of ambience. Judy went on…
The other day I was hanging out at 20JFG villa while minding my own business when Wakamaru (pictured) came trailing behind me, o, little yellow creature…and so it said with its monotonous voice… -Ahoy Master, have ye realised you haven’t posted a hornpipe barnacle in ye little hull for a full moon, arr? I was…
It rules to have friends who have good taste but sometimes disagree with you and think that x band you like is crap and you thing that y band they like is crap and then you check band y and they’re quite good actually, no surprise cos your friend had good taste to begin with,…
Today we’re taking a break from the writing and leaving it in the hands of, first, a true and tested Fall fan, Mr. Love from SHRAG (who will be playing with Art Brut in the Concorde on Thursday, by the way). An open letter to Mark E Smith: Dear Mr E Smith Please do not…
Neon Blonde – Barbados Nights Why are terrible drum machine toms and congas like sweet sugar to our ears at the moment? When some guy is screaming his lungs out over the top like a Robert Plant wanna be from a hair metal band it gets even better. Is that like two wrongs make a…
Ok, NEU!’s vinyl reissues are being re-released. If you have read this blog for more than a week you’ll be aware that NEU! is one of those bands that makes us feel all warm and weird inside like watching the sun come out with a loved one and birdies chirping around. We have decided to…
A.R.E. Weapons – Who Rules the Wasteland? As chat up lines go ‘I cruise through the wasteland on a collision course covered in the blood of an animal corpse’ probably isn’t an easy line to sing with conviction unless you really are Mad Max, Snake Plissken, Glen Danzig, Tom Waits and Jim Morrison all rolled…
Rolling around on the floor at Detournement in some odd drunken breakdance/air guitar hybrid style move seemed like an appropriate way to spend the weekend. This post is an apology to the three guys three times bigger then me who I tried to start a fight with after one of them trod on my head….
(with Pain and fear) I’m not quiting, I’m just cutting down massively, but I feel it. I used to smoke a lot when writing these pieces, well, no more, no more. The prose was crap, now it’s probably going to go to the dogs. Tell us if it gets real bad and I will light…
Hot R.S. – In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Act 1,2 and 3) It seems like only the other day we were talking about concept disco albums like Rinder and Lewis Seven Deadly Sins and Tantra Tarot Suite. Anyone know anymore, let us know in the handy little comments box below. I think this one beats the shit out of…
It’s all about monsters and fantastic creatures today y’all Whenever I ask someone about how does such and such band sound and they reply that it is…’angular’ I go…yucks! It’s been overdone kids, everyone is angular, my dad is angular, euclidian geometrics are angular, fuck it, c’mon, haven’t you read the Hounds of Tindalos? Maybe…
Here’s the facts- I woke up this morning in Stu and Tina’s lounge. They had gone to the beach to have races n pick up stones with holes in them and swim around in white Marks and Spencer undies (well hot). I had consumed a small amount of formerly legal drugs before falling asleep so…
My brother and me used to share a room and when the lights went off he would tell me about all these monsters lurking in the shadows and the wardrobe and under the bed, I would look intently into the murky walls and see the scariest stuff, that stuff you can’t really make out, for…
It had to be Load records! Fucking mentalists! dance label of the year, 20JFG sez so! They released ‘I’ve visited the Islands of Jocks and Jazz’, last album by The Hospitals! They play like werewolves and bite your ass like antrophagous roaches with rusted iron cuirasses! The kids hold their hands and spin in circles…
We know you all lie sleeplessly in bed at night wondering what does the future hold for xxjfg? No tea leaf reading, crossing palms with silver or crystal balls can tell us only through the Tarot. We could just be dice men, yes yes yes men or puppets of the fat controller designed to fulfil…
A fast one for the party dudes and the party gals. We at 20JFG have always advocated sexual abstinence as a way of channeling your energies into worthy pursuits such as the development of highly complex imaginary worlds, The Novel or Boxing. Well, now we have Green Velvet on our side! And the guy surely…
The Hip Place to be! Dodge the geeks with heavy metal t-shirts, long oily hair and poly-faced dices jingling from big silver chains and enter the horror section. I was always a Call of Cthulhu/ Cyberpunk 2020 bitch. Why go out, the world is a sick place and I want none of it, as George,…
Let’s get down to bizza. I think that Brooks’ Red Tape was one of the most sophisticated, seductive and slept on (not with as much as it deserved) albums of last year. It came out in Soundslike and sounded like (heh) the English answer to the Soft Pink Truth (they share labels), classy glitchy (male)…
Medieval chicken YEAH- ..tonight at the Penthouse 7-11 20JFG… Plug a gameboy, a casio and a mic to some decks. Drink cheap beer and wear funny clothes. drink cheap bear. Play noise music. Throw some techno in the mix. Play Black Dice. Dress whatever…do some E MC Square. Drink cheap beard. It’s Battlestar Gallactica! —with…
(we don’t know that girl at all but she insisted on being in the photo and we didn’t want to argue…you can see us behind her) Well, actually 20JFGs birthday was almost two weeks ago but we forgot, we are busy and stuff. Oh those days of innocence and server crashes… After last nite’s postathon…
Yep, another post with a handful of amazing yet badly described tunes from your stressed hyper jazzfunk coffeine kids. Doing flyers for this club we’re gonna start with some other cool brighton people, will keep you posted on that, one member of the team is getting married, send your presents before saturday, writing phds, any…
Ok, so we’re in semi-stasis, so what? it’s August for christ sakes, get off your computers and take a walk to the beach, play with the frisbee non-competitively or something… If you go camping make sure you don’t forget these tunes though (I missed Devendra Banhart playing in Brighton with Espers yesterday because I am…
I woke up today and there were roaches eating the bread crumbs that covered the crusty sheets of my bed. Another morning here. Another day which would be good if I didn’t have to use my AK. I got up and stood by the window. I could hear the yelling of the neighbours through the…
Hey, no gonzoid ranting from us this week as we are busy fighting for freedom and the way of life. The fast-spreading robotic zombie benson and hedges smoking teddy bear plague is keeping us busy and in loathing (see above for a photo of the horrific mutation). Three of them critters escaped from the contention…
I’ve been pedalling through muddy waters with a flat brain-tire since saturday. Tonight I will visit Z-Z-Z-Zs repair workshop and have it fixed. So apologies for the brief post, but there are things that need to be said so you know, eh. This thursday at Club New York in Brighton it’s Geekbeat, from 10 to…
Hey! Why hadn’t anyone told me about this band?? They are called Antifamily and this song is in their self titled EP released last year by Difficult Fun which is the name of a Slits song. Antifamily- Staring at a Point It’s got it all!! offish postpunkgirl vocals!! blambapblamblam monster Metronomicon beats!! Nicely recorded dumdumdum…
Felix Kubin- Hit Me Provider Hit me provider (Internet sadist song about te wholes in tissues of flesh. ‘Hit me Provider, I lost my mouse, oh no, I’ve got a Loch im Gewebe.de’) according to his website. Brutalist synthpop I say, and genius at that, Felix Kubin, ruler of the Syndicate of Counter-Noise, scrawls the…
Last time I saw Snoop he was in Live8 sporting two very cute ponytails… I was like…WTF? I mean, the guy who turned my brother into a hustler with doggystyle, probably the apex of Gangsta Rap (with Straight Outta Compton and the Chronic), the guy who had this routine where gangbanging, smoking dope, smacking people…
Special guest post today from mr Gary 11 on, well Motown Philly. We will let him explain. “DMM-DMM-DMM DAAH DAAH, DMM-DMM-DMM DAAH DAAH, BAA-EY-AAH-EY-AAH-EY-AAH DAH!” etc.. I could go on. But I don’t think that would be a good idea now, would it. No, I’m not even going to think of trying to preach to…
Indian is a long time favourite look down the local discotheque. You got to be brave(no pun intended) to pull it off. From The Sweet, The Village People, Pow Wow of Soul Sonic Force, Adam Ant through to Anthrax and now the latest bunch Tussle are all rocking the Indian too. Nothing turban based, just…
We at 20jazzfunkgreats like to tread those fuzzy areas between what you can call (proper) indie and avant garde (whatever), Artrocker would be the ‘pop’ extreme and Wire the ‘leftfield’ one. We get lost in the edges, where things get messy and interesting, we like fucked up noises we can groove to and noisy grooves…
First things first, thanks to Fujiya and Miyagi and Steeple Remove for letting us dj at their gig at the Sussex Arts Club last night, we fucked things up a bit as usual but with panache, and both bands were ace. They’re working on some rather mind blowing stuff, we’ll make sure to keep you…
Plant Life – The Last Song (Chicken Lips Remix) Plant Life give us a small hint in the lyrics like Bootsy, like Sly, like Jimi, like Prince, like George apparently and yeh, we can go with that. We would like to add Chromeo, Detroit Grand Pubahs, Daft Punk and Les Rhythm Digitales when it comes…
It’s all about the dark forest… Two years ago Phil Elverum disappeared in the woods of Mount Eerie, he came back carrying a beautifully hand-sewn piece of cardboard full of black vinyl that was dark poetry flowing with the subtle strength of an unseen stream. The spirit of Mount Eerie possessed and transformed the Microphones,…
Karl Popper was the founder of falsationism, a methodology for scientifical validation that stated that scientific theories cannot be proved ‘true’. According to him the only possible criterion for their acceptance is that they are not proved wrong, that is, contradicted by empirical evidence. He proposed that a scientist, when developing a theory, should present…
Very briefly, today, just had to say… Circle are playing in Brighton on Sunday. They are this amazing Finnish kraut-prog-rock outfit who sing in a made up language called Meronian and rule quite a lot (so much they are playing in Kosmische’s birthday tomorrow). We missed them last year, and apparently they gave the best…
I haven’t really been able to do anything today, just feeling weird and spaced. No-one I know, and no-one anyone I know knows have been hurt, still. It was the same with Madrid last year. It feels shit to think that way. That’s what it makes to you. What I wanted is to come back…
Hank – Defreeze & Top Gal Today I have been mostly gyrating around like I was in a surfer b-movie. Sand in my Brylcreem barnet. So what’s causing this 50s throw back go-go beach happening you ask? Did you get Sisters of Suave by Thee Headcotees in the local charity shop? Nope. It’s simply. The…
An Albatross – I Am The Lazer Viking An Albatross play that kind of stop start hyper energetic children of Devo noise we are so fond of at xxjfg, usually made by our Japanese friends like Melt-Banana. As a result they won a place in our hearts and set lists for quite some time now….
Danava – Silver Shock You know you really want Danava to all be 7ft drag queens from Uranus who thought Hedwig was false metal. Aparently they are not though, Danavas are the sons of Danu, a daughter of Daksha. Their father is the sage Kashyapa, who is a wish-born son of Lord Brahma. They are…
I am tired so let me write a lazy review, if thou wilt. I’m gonna connect Klaus Kinski and Kevin Bacon, no, sorry, Klaus Kinski and John carpenter, no, sorry, Kinski and I-F. Sorry. Please. Kinski is a band that does very beautiful, mostly instrumental rock that sounds a bit like a soundtrack to the…
Snuten – Crazy B (Lindstrom Remix) Any one who heard the 2003 album Welcome To The Jungle by Snuten on C+C records will know that they are indeed crazy in Norway. Check the oddski-opera electro of Rollerboy, it’s an experience. This Crazy B mix is on Hi-Phen and sees Snuten shake a tail feather like…
Cristine – I Freak Yay! One finger! Best type of keyboard playing. You could probably get a whole genre out of it. Numan got a few songs out of it. Ok so you got lots of people with keyboards, all playing with one finger, but its still just one finger! Feel the power of the…
The other day a bunch of us were having delicious mexican food Julie had cooked and Dan slapped this into the…erm, i-pod. And I was like, wow, I want to post that in 20JFG…then I thought hum, maybe it’s not like, erm, 20JFG stuff. Then I thought…but what is, like? Old school no kraut wave…
Ok, let’s check my knowledge about Hawkwind… Lemmy Kilminster played with them. Angels of Death makes me feel good and B.A.D. (Bad Ass Dude) at the same time. Stuart and Matt and Michael Moorcock dig them a lot. They could be the definitive Games Workshop band. Optimo put ‘Hash Cake 77′ in their ace Psyche…
Happy Birthday Alan Turing Alan Turing is England’s greatest hero ever. Alan Turing was the founder of what you are viewing this blog on, He described the ideas that have become modern computeing. Give it up for Alan Turing! Today is his birthday, and as a respect to Alan Turing we are going to propose…
Prog breakcore is the way forward That’s what I thought after seeing Jason Forrest do his thing at Wrong Music the other night, it was quite fantabulous to enjoy his not-quite-gig-not-quite-dj session completely sober, geeking out with Scott while the rest of the crowd shook in a tribal druggy celebration. Beats dropping on top of…
Motiivi:Tuntematon – 1939 1939. Slow beating of monkey’s wings. Attack ships pulsing energy signals. Bombs dropping. What kind of sick reality is this? Take me home! Hear that bellowing in the background? That’s Prince Vultan. Motiivi:Tuntematon takes the same principles of Throbbing Gristle fighting a War Of The Worlds, and applied them to some Wolf…
If there’s been a time when I wanted to form a gang, not a band, is after watching the Warriors again for the third time. Afro? there! Leather waistcoat? Easy to find! Chains? Will nick some at the next Wolf Eyes gig. Attitude? Ha, sometimes my brain is like that helicopter scene in Apocalypse Now….
Ok my friends, it’s super-stealthy like a ninja turdle today, and very short cos it’s late and I’m tired, just wanted to say, hush hush, Zea- We Buried Indie Rock Years Ago (Actually you can download the track here, I was gonna link to the mp3 but then thought it’d be rude. If I was…
THOSE STRANGE CREATURES!!!! Maybe civilised society is better off without them. They spat and farted and crawled around the floor and hurt themselves and bled and broke windows and scared the shit outta grannies (not of cool grannies, of course) and wore space-age shirts and moustaches and fringes that hid devilish eyes criss crossed with…
Norwegian Lady – Dance Champion This is a tiny ode to the glory of being the hero and bestest dancer in your town (ahh, sweet). Like a good mod face you wear the sharpest clothes, dance the finest moves, get all the girls (cos every girls crazy bout a sharp dressed man). With that much…
(On friday I spent, no, it would be more accurate to say, sublimated, a respectable sum of money on Minimum Maximum, the 4 vinyl box set that contains this, and listening to it made me happier than a robot with an olive oil overdose). Kraftwerk- Home Computer (live at Sala Kongresowa, Warsaw) (This one goes…
Michaela Melian – A Song for Europe *If you have just lost or broken up with someone don’t listen to this song. *Just don’t alright, skip to the next song. I’m sure Brian Ferry wasn’t the international jet setting glamorous star with the world as his oyster when he scribed the lyrics to A Song…
Autokat – The Driver Undying unrequited love is such a perfect conception of tragedy. I don’t think I could deal with it in real life. I would quite happily watch a middle class French film “To learn to live to love with no return” and cry at the pathos of such a strikingly heart wrenching…
En garde! Today I am a spirit emerging from the woods like the girl turned assassin to avenge her honour in Baby Cart in Peril, my favourite lone wolf and cub movie. I’ve got the tattoo of a baby in one breast, I flash it, just to distract you… There, the Plastics, sweet as toddlers,…
Oh, another noisy post…what a bore!! Let me ask you a question… Could Load Records be (with DFA) the best dance record label right now? I say…Hell yes! I say Load but I guess I could also refer you to Troubleman or In the Red. Why? Let us remember that Dance is a verb and…
Animals must be liberated!! The name Death Sentence: Panda! was inspired by the Chinese government’s ‘actions’ to save panda bears from extinction!! Death Sentence: Panda!!- Wild Thing (…) You can hear the animal army marching up the street in perfect formation as this track pounds and crashes you into oblivion!! They are bringing a little…
(ilustration by Shephard Fairey) We all know and love Slick Rick, he’s the gold-teeth original UK MC stealing hearts with the smoothnes of Rodolfo Valentino let loose in da Club. And an eye-patch! I’ve always been obsessed with pirates, oh yeah, it was never dinosaurs in my case, you see? And stormtroopers and wookies and…
Plug 1- Go to It Came from the Sea on saturday at the Joint (not the Sussex Arts Club, it’s being refurbished), they are our mates and they play some ace stuff there, it’s a ball! As pretty as the flyer… And as good as this… Tiefschwarz – Wait and See featuring Chikinki Ahh….. cop…
Had to post this picture of the anorexia sponsored heiress. Check out what it is holding. They actually showed her the video too Mu- Paris Hitlon Yoof tv is a wonderful thing (ok, maybe that’s a lie). Perfect chance to post this absolute classic, just in case you missed it. Mu and Maurice Fulton-Let’s Get…
K homey, there ya go, Primavera. Nasti tent was the place were 20Jazzfunkkids saw !!! last year, the only reason they didn’t cry is they had sweated all their tears already. This year Nasti was somewhere else, we mean, a different venue, but the spirit of madness and moon-atic dancing stayed, and not only cos…
Crash Course In Science – Cardboard Lamb Bit confused about the lyrical meaning behind this track. Luckily Crash Course in Science were nice enough to provide us with a video which helps explain it in much clearer terms than I could. I’ll name that song in 10 say those of you who are trying to…
First things first an advert: X-Wife are playing in England (yay!). May it be the first of many appearances. I cannot urge you enough to go see the live show. 30th May – London, Notting Hill Arts Club with Selfish Cunt 1st June – London, Karma Club, 2-4 Hoxton Square 21:00 2nd June – Brighton,…
JuanFunkGreats is going to Barcelona for this so besides some random tracks left hidden somewhere, this is all you’ll hear from him until next week, pray for his soul yada yada. Sorry the writing is a bit shite, but there wasn’t time for moe… Oxford Collapse come from New York and manage to fuse, in…
To end the week of teenage rebellion, toupees, drugs, violence, blasphemy and carnival outfits (which will culminate with an outburst of nervous energy taking place in the Penthouse above the Freebutt tonight friday from 8 to 11, free entry, cheap drinks, trembling record players, cheap discmen, sungeek kid and bitch cassidy not-djing and the mighty…
Dandi Wind – Balloon Factory We all know about the face of The Virgin Mary in the skirting board, The statue of Little Baby Cheeses and the Twiglet / Potato / Haphazard root vegetable effigy of Christ your fanatic neighbour brings round every few weeks, so when Dandi Wind told the tale of being the…
Sexton Ming and Billy Childish – Muscle Horse Sexton Ming the legend was part of the whole Medway Scene along with Billy Childish and although primarily a poet, artist and bloody awful woman (10 points style, 0 points convincing) recorded music with Steady, Thee Headcotes and a large list of other luminaries und nose pickers….
Nathan Fake – The Sky Was Pink (Icelandic Version) Nathan Fake is not a dj. Glad to hear it. He still managed to get to do the remix for Tiefschwarz – Isst which is no mean feat. The original of The Sky Was Pink is made unlistenable by some terrible drums, but this Icelandic Version…
We’re not talking James Lavelle-Nigo-Paul (shit) Frank Bathing apes, or yob apes, we’re talking prog-punk Apes motherfuckers who live in the mountains of Ozzy Osbourne’s imagination (gorillas in the mist!) and record fuzzy bassed heavy organ-loaded concept albums about magic, headtrips, wandering around mountains full of monsters and stuff. They hang out with Oneida and…
Mahi Mahi – He No Wa(The End) Ever wondered what it would be like if your dentist was the funky drummer? You sit down to relax in the chair, how’s your mother in law ect and then driiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllll, and biff bang pow he’s getting a bit funky on the drums, I mean you only came…
‘You have to be very dumb not to realise that you have to be very smart to make music that sounds this dumb’ someone said about the Ramones. We love our raw chops, our fuck it, let’s play bands who just grab their instruments (in some occasions, other people’s instruments) like an awkward teenager with…
Ellen Allien returns (in LP form) after 2003′s Berlinette and she still sounds like a robot arrived in a time machine from a distant future where emotions have been erradicated because they are not efficient and just make us sad at the end, have you ever read the Elementary Particles? (well, there they got rid…
White Rose Movement – Love Is A Number White Rose Movement have been getting a hella lot o attention from London’s taste maker community, and the first single shows exactly why. A bit of a Joy Division bass line, tasty keyboards and soaring vocals reminiscent of Dex Dexter or if you got really bad taste…
Goto80 – Comsten We have covered stuff from the computer game music scene before like Teamtendo and Paza with good feedback (hey the kids just dig it!) and it seems to be getting more attention after its influence on the last Beck album. Goto80 manages to break a bit more of the mould on his…
Grace Jones – I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango) (DJ Hell & Jochen Schmalbach’s Berlin mix) For some people life is art. Leigh Bowery, Warhole, Amanda Lepore, Divine and all of the other marvalous Cockettes, Dee Snider, Micheal Alig, Cindy Sherman, Tommy Lee you name it they are all just freaking out there. DJ Hell…
It’s nice music today, non of that loud stuff I’m feeling sensitive.And no Canadians either. Gus Kay – Stereo Gus was nice enough to email us this track, which made us smile a lot. Gus Kay is not from Canada (I think he is Greek) and makes music off his own back without any label…
We are Wolves – We are all Winners Wow, i never win anything. Goldkixx has been my portal into the world of what seems to be the most vibrant music scene I’m so jealous of. Canadians are uber cool this decade, its official. Goldkixx was nice enough to point us in the direction of We…
Terrorgruppe Schwarzenraben – I’m ok, Your ok Hey Ho, Let’s Go! is a chant shared by all my impatient pinhead loving brothers and sisters in this multiverse. Its also a nice sample the body and mind sharing Terrorgruppe Schwarzenraben have adopted in this p2p open source part of the mulitverse we live in. Unlike the…
People, people, ok, let’s start with the bad news, Coachwhips split up. Boo-hoo. Their gig at the Freebutt will be a legend. But you know how it is with bands, meet ‘em, fall in love with ‘em, fall out of love with ‘em, hate ‘em, send ‘em threatening letters… Anyway, the world keeps turning, as…
Circle – Takaisin Meronian is the language Circle invented to sing in. How fucking wikid is that! Inventing your own language! Ok, its going to exclude you from radio play in certain territories (like all of em who don’t speak Meronian) but what the hell. Its made up of lots of other bits of language…
Cuteness in nature a form of natural defense for the young. It is recognized by lots of species including humans and makes the parent form a bond with the child. From Gators to Vultures to Lemmy, we were all bonded with because of our cuteness. When animals look after other species young it’s caused by…
Cos yeah, we be posting… …a Missy Elliot song, produced by those Neptunes and featuring, I think the one and only trekkie fingered Pharrell Williams jet set teenage millionaire, on moaning duties in addition to the deck ones (used to love him when he was a studio n*e*r*d). Anyway, Missy Elliot in 20JFG you will…
Ok, now that our indie hipster credentials have been endorsed by the Pope (he is a fan of Kraftwerk, y’see?), we can start setting trends. The new wave of the new wave is…DOWN!! Dirty crazy synth bands are…….UP!! People like Mr. Quintron, the coolest werewolf mo-fo ever to emerge from New Orleans. Fashion tips… -Get…
Within three seconds I’m feeling like Cliff Burton never died and Dave Mustaine never had an asshole problem. Its not just DFA1979 who are coming on like the new wave of British heavy metal didn’t die when man of leather and studs Rob Halford declared that letam si yag (The Revolting Cocks already new I…
Hey Colossus – Take It Hey Colossus did a split single with Brighton’s own wonder boys Phil Collins 3 so we got to love them really, but aren’t they just another one of those loud shouty bands? Take It is straight into the heavy prog riffage that treads dangerously close to Voivod doing Astronomy Domine…
I think that the technical weirdness that you people are experiencing when visiting this blog is not our fault but Apple’s, so hopefully it will be sorted out soon or something… …In the meanwhile, just wanted to say that those of you in Brighton would be very welcome if you came to the Penthouse above…
(In the absence of 20jazzfunkStuart, kickin’ k keeps helping J out, with these friends who needs heroes? Btw the photo illustrating the Rogers Sisters is not them, but it’s also the Rogers Sisters) I know this is a listening blog, not a reading blog, but fuck you, pay me- and while you’re at it, go…
Pussy Galore- Sweet Virginia I’ve got a good idea instead of covering one of our favourite songs, cos we so good, lets just do the entire album. Fuck Yeh! Thus Pussy Galore ambitiously tried to covered the entire of The Rolling Stones Exile On Main Street. This album is a genuine oddity, and its existence…
Simple Minds – Changeling Like a great deal of English bands that formed in the late 70s Johnny And The Self Abusers were a punk rock band who had listened to a fair bit of Low and Heroes Bowie, acquiring a penchant for Kraftwerk along the way. Obviously when punk became unfashionable they changed their…
(this is a guest post from our mate Neil aka Kickin’ K from It Came From the Sea / Plan B fame and legendary pukickin’ 20JFG guest who cut it against all bodily odds in our lovely night, now he’s bringin’ some tunes, and as Scott sez, some tunes!) Note: looking for info on Cantankerous…
Wayne County & the electric chairs – Fuck Off Has anyone who lives in New York not met Jayne County? Every motherfucker I meet from there has a photo of him or her with Wayne or Jayne. I live in Brighton, England so I haven’t. The nearest I got was reading Man Enough to Be…
The White Sport – Scag Lover Andrew Aveling is a very nice nutter and one of the eccentric founder members of Add N to X. With The White Sport he managed to take that Rogue Moog and twist it into his disconcerting vision of avant-pop. This track comes across as if Nathan Barley was co-writer…
Baron Mordant – Dark side of the Autobahn Personally I don’t go in for bootlegs much any more. Sure Boom Selection still has it going on, but most of the bootlegs you tend to get nowadays are Jive Bunny for your local house club Pat Sharp (see The Charts). If you give me a mash-up…
Yep, after the highly praised ‘Revival of the Shittest’ comp/reissue last year, Gang Gang Dance are back with ‘God’s Money’ (out in the always great Social Registry label). And they are doing it ‘pop’ now! Check dis out!! Gang Gang Dance- God’s Money VI Yay, looking forward to seeing them at cd:uk! Now, I reckon…
Nid and Sancy – Sleaze Boogie (Manic Twin Dub) (oops with thanks to Rolf) Erm, very familiar vocal lyric from a certain PiL song gets re-mixed by our favorite Teutonik Disasters Gomma records maestros Munk. Munk rework Sleaze Boogie into an awesome slow harsh dirty funk which builds into something that should have been done…
Pink Grease – Peache Grease Remix by Peaches The original of Pink Grease – Peaches is on of my favourite almost balad since The Ramones – Baby I Love You which it pays tribute to, and can easily bring a tear to my eye. A heartbreaking tragic love tale that i’m really hopeing gets radio…
WHO? Hella, that is, Spencer Eim (Guitar & Vocals) and Zach Hill (drums), a what the fuck maybe guess we can call it rock duo from Sacramento. I must say that I knew next to nothing about them before getting my hands in their last album (more about it later gators). I had read about…
Hi people, to celebrate the end of Easter we heathenic 20jazzfunkgreatsters have decided to bring you a song from the Wedding, the new album by our favourite Stoner-Psyche-Noise-Rockers, Oneida. What can we say about the Wedding? it’s a more cohesive, expansive affair than their last effort, ‘Secret Wars’, and it might well be the closest…
K, I’ve done lotsa machine dance modern music for r****s lately, and the nature spirits have got angry, the leaves that caress my window pane have whispered an ultimatum in my ears, ‘some forest music or we pull a Poltergeist on you’. I’m weak and small so I’ve given up to their demands with the…
Sightings – Sugar Sediment Sightings have taken the gentlest distant drift of a psychopathic nursery rhyme and welded it down under a wave of crunching noise distortion. It screams and whales in response and claws its way up, climbing and then tumbling back down. The drums beat faster with your heart, will it escape? Won’t…
PiL – The Order of Death John Carpenter is so jealous of this shit I bet. Seriously, I recon he swore like an Irish protestant minister when he heard it. By all rights it should be from Scarface but no, this fantastically atmospheric electro goth mantra was used in the cinematic masterpiece that was Miami…
Ok, fast post tonight, just arrived from a gig: Miss Pain opened with class and were true stars over the stage, another step more towards world domination (and Caught My Eye is a blinder, one of these days we’ll put it up here). Gravy Train!!! gave the goofiest, sexiest in a shag in the club’s…
Blogger is behaving like the Smoker in X-Files, trying to thwart your good jazzfunkgreatsters’ attempts to get through with some tunes, and we don’t have time to write anyway and things ain’t good and we don’t feel inspired. But we’d do anything for our readers, so with the last drop of coffee-soaked blood we write,…
O God, when, when are Glass Candy and The Shattered Theatre going to get theirs? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Roger Sisters, what about Glass Candy? (and these are respectable bands, I won’t even get into discussing Kings of Leon or the Killers or Jet or The Vines, I shouldn’t even be mentioning those…gits…in these…
Have you seen this advert featuring a baby with a jaunty woman’s voice? Gross!!! I’m talking about babies cos I don’t want to mention robots…and the song we’re posting today is like the likkle kid, the ‘Boogie Boy’ if you will, of the LCD Soundsystem hermaphrodite monster. Kaos featuring Captain Comatose-Boogie Boy It’s like a…
WOOZERS!! Faster than a little horsey being chased by a man with titties!! Band with a situationist name and dodgy armbands (oh my) start this really dancey groove in a ‘escaping from the mental ward’ vein, reminds me a bit of Liars Mk. 1 but with a hardcore bent, or meatier Ex-models. And enough of…
This morning I was looking from the bus at the people walking up and down Western Road and they all looked so grey and miserable and so sad, their skins were the same colour as the sky, which was actually like the screen of a TV with a broken aerial (image kind of adapted from…
The rules of Robotics as rewritten by Alden Tyrell. 1- A robot should enslave as many human beings as possible or, when not possible to enslave them, bring harm to the human beings. 2- A robot must obey orders given it by Satan except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3- A…
No artificial flavour? Who are they kidding. FannyPack are just a bunchy of kids with attention deficit disorder who just ate all the sour sugar coated candy (that makes your mouth go urgh and you pull a funny face) in the entire lucky bag from Woolworths, and downed it with Sunny Delight. As such they…
I’m re-reading ‘Fear and Loathing in the campaign trail’ as a little tribute to Hunter S. Thompson (and because it’s an amazing book). When talking about the disorganisation of the McGovern campaign, this is what he had to say… ‘So it is probably not fair to mock Shriver for marching to the beat of a…
Off the Hook could well be the best song E.S.G. (see yesterday) never wrote, it’s got that perfect combination of earnest amauterism, unlikely tight-ass funkiness and disarming sincerity that you find in the Scroggins sisters at their best (almost always). It turns the Rolling Stones original into something else. Y Pants- Off the Hook It’s…
Robots are not your friends, haven’t you read any science fiction? They are made to protect you from yourself with their superior intelligence in subtle and devious fashion. My Robot Friend – I Am The Robot is the opener on Hot Action! the latest album by My Robot Friend on Proptronix. Hot Action! also contains…
Yeah, you know, this band, they’re real cool dude, and they got tattoos and all, really sick tattoos, you know, with skulls and bones and chicks, and dreadlocks, and they play like, punk rock, yeah, man, theyr radd!! I listen to them while Im in my crib hangin out with my buddies and smoking spliffs,…
Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music did lots of albums which incorporated the talents of his friends. Naturally this included a certain Mr.Eno. Inspired by a No Sweat Nights post we looked into the Phil both as a guitarist and song writer and found this Diamond Head of a tune by him and our baldly with…
Fill one like this up Throw for luck, fumble, it looks cold out there, that shitty wannabe snow falls gently, as if it was mocking you… Get into the kitchen without hitting the door (throw for agility, failed, down two hit points). Moan and disentangle yourself from those dreams still clawing at your legs (throw…
Hunter S. Thompson died like he lived: the way he chose. Is there a better song to bid him farewell than this quasi-funeral march of drug addled king-hell heaviness? Yeah, Jesu’s in da house. Jesu- Your Path to Divinity This ain’t no White Rabbit, but it comes from the same expanded conscience twilight zone, kickstarting…
Today I was going to write a lengthy dissertation called ‘StoStoS: From the Shangri La’s to the Slits to Shystie’ but I won’t cos I’m tired and actually not feeling really inspired. So I’ll do the easy thing, which is posting this motherfucker of a tune by the master of all things B, both visual…
Look at me eyes Look at me eyes. It’s spinning. Tonight Friday the 18th, at 7.30, you will head towards the Penthouse above the Freebutt in Brighton, where the masters of mesmerism Juan and Stuart will be performing one of their rituals from 8 til 11. After a history of messy sacrifices and legal prosecution…
Ah, stereotypes, Stereo Total , continental europe…sophisticated people with good teeth and lifelong jobs who wear berets and stripy tops and in their spare time play with vintage keyboards, drink coffee and wine and eat croissants without ever getting fat, fall in and out of love in the midst of a cigarrette smoke cloud that…
Dear readers: we at 20JazzFunkGreats are geeks. We are totally against misogyny or any sort of sexual violence except when it’s against Jar Jar Binks. We are geeks. We do not even endorse sex. It’s messy- there should be a better way of reproducing the species until it evolves and becomes pure thought travelling at…
That’s where our supa-doopa friends Natasha and Lucy live, word! Anyway, I’ve been away for a week and a bit as my computer, which had become the proverbial ‘can of worms’, was being exorcised, purified and so on. Apparently the cyberpunk who took care of the poor thing found pieces of banana inside it. Wow….
Temple Temple are featured on the new compilation Le Nouveau Rock n Roll Francais. Sean McLusky of Sonic Mook is one third responsible for the compilation along with Ludovic Merle and Jean-Baptiste Guillot. As with the Future Rock and Roll compilations we have the good, the bad and the oh dear. Some bands signed and…
Panico first came into our hemisphere with the Ice Cream EP a while ago. The people with great taste over at Tigerbastard (hence forth the new name for Tigersushi, thanking to Mu) have also noticed them and put out a lovely little 7″ for this Chilean noisy voodoo bullshit band. I must admit the sound…
These are my teachers… Bernhard Reus Dan Chalmers David Young John Carroll is in the house, yeah With some help from ilXor (special thanks to Si Carter, JoB, Alienus Quam Reproba and tylero) and the Trash Message Board users (special luving to zrookovian at gigabytepicnic , giorgio who also gave us the Mu video link,…
Coco Electric do these great free mixes every month if you subscribe to there mailing list. This months features the classic ‘Magnifique’ by Magnifique, which is a good excuse to post this classy as hell Moroderized (trust me, it’s a doing word(copyright Shrag)) update by Jersey Devil Social Club. This is big gay disco which…
I am not a fan of the 20-20s but luckily Jason Spaceman (aka Jason Pierce) is. Mr J.Spaceman has turned Hold On into a gratuitously stereo panning Velvets drone of zone out blues psychodelia, or possibly the longest intro to any song ever! 20-20s – Hold On (J.Spaceman Remix) Is this the sound that Spacemen…
Ok, just writing to apologise for the shortage of posts this week, the computer of one of the conspiracy members (‘Robbie the Robot’ aka ‘Robbie da Robot’ or Ar-Ar after playing GTA San Andreas) has suffered from influenza and has been taken to the likkle computer hospital, hopefully it will be healed before the weekend…
Being huge retro nerd we are naturally suckers for music made by big people on tiny old machines. bleep 736F206973206C6974746C6520736F756E6420646A00 160165163163040141162145040141143145(not working at the moment) It used to be a dis in the dance music scene to say your music sounds like it was made on a playstation, but then the tide turned and the…
We get to hear and see a lot of weird bands at xxjfg, actively seeking them out for you is part of our job! One of the oddest species we have encountered over the past few years is The Pink Grease. This normally shy and retiring creature can be seen skulking into the second hand…
Here at xxjfg we have on numerous occasions been known to get quite deliriously excited by multilayered abstract electronic music that oddly seems to be mostly made Germans. M83 really confused us by not being German (not even a German grandmother or aunty as far as we are aware). Jeans Team are German (phew not…
1. Don’t do it yourself, build robots to do it for you, they can hammer and grind and drill much faster, and you don’t bang yourself on the thumb or anything nasty. 2. Play them DJ Hell’s track Let No Man Jack to inspire the workers and keep them from revolting. In a weird 3…
Mahjongg RaYDONcoNG 2005, out in Cold Crush- March Kinda like AVALONches – Go! Team but PoSt PunK, some. PouNding SnAcks or SnAkes of Rythm they hit-bite-beat-hard hard hArd and PASSionate gLyTchy cAsio synth Guitars like RAPTure on Opium. Not cut and pAST but kinda you TrickstERS, deconsTRUCTIONists, you! cut and furTHer and hit the DRUM…
Last year saxophones and cowbells were rescued from the dungeons of ‘uncool’, will it be violins this season? Well, Patrick Wolf’s got a bit of that in in his new single, the Libertine. Some other people (sorry, forgot the actual link) bet on flutes on account of Dungen and Caribou. What do you think dear…
On the Left hand Corner- Coachwhips City- Providence, Rhode Island. Gym- Narnack. Weight- 10.99 Pounds Special Moves- The Vaporiser (bone-crushing drum headbutt), the rotorblade (mutilation with a rusty bass), Satanic whirlwind (chaotic keyboard spiral), the geekscream (disorientation through authoritarian nasal yelling) Dirty Trick- Illegal loudness! School- of deranged blues garage rock cranked up to 11,…
So Lula and Sailor jumped in the car and drove away from town faster than the fox after dinner at a survivalists’ camp bin. He lit a cigarrette and said ‘wow Baby, that was close, eh? I thought those mo-fos were gonna get us, can’t believe you ran like that with those heels on, hon,…
Out Hud return after the awesome S.T.R.E.E.T.D.A.D., and oh Baby, it is a blast, a short odyssey cruising through waters that are cool and hot at the same time, the shy mysterious sister of that party monster !!! shows that she knows her moves too, the glitterball starts turning and yeah, you will never be…
Ha ha ha ha ha!! Love it! When Suicide were on methadone they obviously managed to regress to 17 year olds and record a version of Van Halen’s Jump. No, not really. I’m talking about “No Romantic” ( new one on me ) band Tender Buttons obviously, and although they seriously have recorded Van Halen’s…
Just like normal I was confused. I didn’t know who ripped off who. Plastic Bertrand (real name Roger Jouret) in punk pop international smash hit Ca Plane Pour Moi or unknown nearly formed The Damned but then moved to Belgium (??) Elton Motello (real name Alan Timms Ward) in gay no radio play (cept John…
After yesterday megapost, short quick thingy today. Last night I went to the Bad Place which is the main cheap midweek indie night out in Brighton where ‘DJs’ spin all the boring flat music that corporate ‘rock and roll’ bands make these days. Anyway, I ended up talking with lovely Jack and James Nascent about…
(this communication between members of a North American Security Agency was intercepted by one of our collaborators two weeks ago, we can’t say which agency it was cos then we’d had to kill you. ) The Make Up: A briefing Adressed at XXXXXXXXXXXXXX Past Record(s) Three of the subjects (Ian ‘El Gato’ Svenonius, James Canty…
We are all mutant. Mutants rule the earth. XXJFG mutation means we have to wear Domes to collect energy that escapes from the crown of the mutant head. The dome pushes energy back into the Medula Oblongata for increased mental energy. On all other occasions XXJFG must wear a Pomp to avoid Megula Oblongata depletion,…
I love Wire , it’s probably the band I’ve listened to most last year, I love their elegance when they are dangerous and their frailty when they are pop. I love the fact they make me feel mysterious all the time. Worst thing I’ve ever done in a festival (music-wise) was missing them in Barcelona…
Just like American bloggers see European stuff as exotic and attractive we Europeans have the same mystical attraction to the American rock and roll myth. Just look at the Stones obsessions (best read The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth) from that wide open space that resides by Route 66 next to…
Phoenix have already proved how great middle of the road French rock bands can be. Scenario Rock are French quite astoundingly aor, and they do rocketh!. Shake in some good old fashioned XTC, a pinch of International Pony, and add Mike D’s shouty raping for white punks (on dope). There a kind of Paul’s Boutique…
Sometimes you go thorough your records and think, why the fuck did I buy that? and how much money can I get for it now?, cos I’m never going to listen to it again. I nearly sold C J Bolland – The Prophet t’other day cos it’s a large piece of poo. Then I listened…
If in ‘Losing My Edge’ The LCD Soundsystem spelled out a hipster musical mythology combining wisely respect and irony, in ‘Daft Punk is Playing in My House’ they dissect geeky fandom, with its enthusiasm and a slight hint of creepiness (‘never never let them go’). Of course that is the postmodern part, the music is,…
Castanets- Industry Snow Sebastien Tellier- Zombi Two songs for today, listen to one after the other for an emotional carousel, fast, before I go to play pictionary and watch B movies, one is a velvety dirge by the best band of last year I listened to today, Castanets , murky folk from the swamps and…
Twas the night before New Year and nothing moved in the house, nothing except some feeble neurons in the frontal lobe of a 20 JazzFunkGreatster. He was trying to write something about one of his favourite songs, ‘Fur Immer’ by Neu!. He had decided to avoid the evocative angle, he had already used it when…
Ok, we at 20JazzFunkCakes are not going to have an exciting best of 2004 list with a countdown and everything…why? because we are rubbish and we are two and we don’t want to fight each other to decide which of the featured artists gets to be number one…and we are too lazy to devise one…
We Love travelling… Murcia, Spain: Schwarz are a band from Murcia, in the south-east coast of Spain, and they are quite weird, which is of course something I love. I have caught up with their stuff quite late (living in the UK etc), so the only thing I can say is that their last album,…
Stazi – World of Temptation So this man walks into a bar and says Stazi come across like Soft Cell with a little bit of Phoenix Nights magic. My mother in law saw Stazi and said they do a hefty bit of Wigan casino (no bingo) but with the electronic beats of The Human League…
Optimo have remixed All Repro from Moebius,Plank,Neumeier’s Zero Set. I’ll give you a bit of a rest to contain your excitement. Take a deep breath and count to eleven. Ready now? Then I’ll begin. Betty Botox presents Kraut was an obvious for us at xxjfg. It’s like our very own Christmas present or something, some…
Listening to Stylus magazine’s Stypod show on the Kompakt label, which is so funny, mainly for there attempts to pronounce the names of the tracks and artists. They are much braver than me. Rex The Dog – Frequency Loved Rex the Dog since Prototype, Frequency is his second single. Pushing the pitch wheel of his…
Japanther- Super Loser Had to love ‘em: first, their name is one of these hybrid words like ‘Liger’ (featured on that Napoleon Dynamite film and in Spain’s dodgiest circuses), ‘rat’ (half rat half bat) or ‘brat’ (half bat half rat). Then the track is called ‘Super Loser’ with ‘Super’, that gives us a hint of…
Jad Fair is a genius. He (in his own words) ‘started (along with David Fair and David Stansky) what has now proven to be the quintessential power, punk, allstar, rock and roll band in the history of the universe. Half Japanese, the name itself is music. Too beautiful, too beautiful, too beautiful.’, he makes amazing…
Electroputas- Never Been More in Love In the third (non planned) instalment of New York City bands this week we visit the wonderful Social Registry manor once again to bring you Electroputas, a trio by whom we already posted a song during the Monster Days preceding Halloween (they were Leatherface in it, by the way)….
Slint-Nosferatu Man Nosferatu was a creature of chalk and slate with a spidery shadow. Slint filled its cold and rigid body with boiling blood and bloody muscle, Brian McMahon gave it a raging voice. The guitars in this song tease, pierce, rip and tear, the bass is made of the same stuff as nightmares and…
Man Man- Man Who Make You Sick This song by Man Man is in ‘The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face’, recently released by Ace Fu Records, and is a little oddysey where Can go to a cabaret and decide to jam with the Greasettes or maybe Deerhoof, Don Van Vliet observes intensely…
Today’s post comes from guest geek Scott of Nascent Zine. Genius. A band who cover all the genres on your cutting edge indie club flyer but who are more influenced by Homorap and UK Garage (i believe the adults are calling it Grime nowadays) whilst simultaneously managing to have a proper Teenage Jesus/Contortions style nihilism…
Well I finished my homework and now I’m ready for a night on the town, who better to do it with than Adam Green from The Moldy Peaches and Bruce Springsteen from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (like there is any other Bruce). Adam Green – Born to Run Boy it will be…
I am writing from the future, I can do such a feat thanks to the machine above, discovered by Stuart…anyway, further into what’s to come…(no lottery numbers, sorry)…Next Year… …Next year starts with a bang, i.e., the LCD Soundsystem album in DFA, which contains lots of nice stuff, some of which we already knew (Movement,…
No More – Suicide Commando This German new wave one hit wonder seems to have dated rather well. Not that it was a hit anywhere, but you know what I mean. It could easily have been inspired by the classic drug information film Christiane F Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo, or a 50s B movie…
Warning- we will be 10Jzfnget until later in the week as one of the members of the team has been abducted by the forces of the neon reticle and is now fighting for salvation in a tron-like environment. Please pray for his physical and spiritual well-being, the song being posted today is nothing but a…
I bumped into the doppelganger reading one of those Advanced Dungeons & Dragons gamebooks, the Werewolf one (the best ones are the Ninja and the Ravenloft ones, by the way). Although according to old lore, this creature is a ghost that attachs itself to a living being, like a shadow or something, and follows it…
Must write post. Got 10 minutes. Sip Coffee. Sip Sip. Go for the Stream of Consciousness thang. La di La. Gotta get ready for Lightning Bolt. Die Monitr Batss. Second Album, Girlz of War. Related to the Gossip. In Troubleman Records (one of our favourite labels like, ever). They wrote this amazing song called ‘Spread…
One of Kill The DJ resident record players Sir Alice has recorded vocals on with Avril on the new album Members Only and works with Marc Collin of Volga Select and Nouvelle Vague. This is no reason to be impressed, but this certainly is. Sir Alice – Bouda is a Material Girl In England at…
Einsturzende Neubauten- Tanz Debil Their name stands for Collapsing New Buildings, maybe another strain of Situationist Architecture’s revolt against modernism. But they are not intellectuals, or at least not of the usual sort… (slight detour) The child starts striking the walls of the building closer to him, the walls of society, with his red hot…
Moebius,Plank,Neumeier- Pitch Control I have no idea how to describe this track. It is from the album Zero Set. I could tell you this track is !!!s latest remix by Maurice Fulton, released next week and most of you would believe me. I could tell you this track was recorded in 1982 by Juan Atkins,…
Eon is usually Ian Beta (who used to do stuff for Rhythm King Records), J Saul Kane of Depth Charge and some other luminaries. An Idiot’s Guide to Dreaming have some Eon mp3s for you, and a nice little story too In this case they blow the whole cool thing off using the name Ignition…
Today I bought a couple of records from the budget section of a record shop in my town, they were ‘Paradiso’ by Kamerakino and ‘Calling Out of Context’ by Arthur Russell, less than 8 quid altogether. So… Kamerakino- Metall Auf Eis These guys are another of those wonderfully weird/weirdly wonderful bands that tend to come…
Yeah, it was geek heaven Madrid, they even had robots running around the hallways! not security dogs as Stuart was wondering, but little white plastic dogs (the size of half a big cat more or less) that will compete in this rather remarkable event (apparently the rest of the members of the Telematics team in…
As Juan is in Spain being a nerd, we have a guest and honorary nerd the one and only kicking_k of It Came From The Sea fame and Plan b magazine. Life Without Buildings – The Leanover “If I lose you, if I lose you, if I lose you, if I lose you, the huh…
Selfish Cunt blow me away live. Martin has the whole Lydon/Osterberg “I’m on stage and I’m gonna show get me as much attention as possible” thing going on, while Patrick kills his guitar with so much passion it gives me the fear. Intensity is at a max. This is for real. I don’t know how…
20JazzFunkgreatsNite IV, a New Hope, was great actually, and the drinks were cheap and did their job and our guest Verity was amazing. Thanks to her and to those who were there and to those who feel the whole thing! Juan’s playlist (as far as he can remember: drinks were cheap) The Emperor Machine- Emperor…
We not men we are 20 Jazz Funk Greats. Using the name of something cool to appear cool ourselves. (association, implication) It’s not Jazz Funk it’s not Great and there are not 20 of us. Naughty school boy humour from Throbbing Gristle. Throbbing Gristle – Something came over me Also… minimal mystery song with a…
The Emperor Machine- The Emperor Machine After releasing a string of 12′ which come close to perfection, a classy yet utterly alive (or undead?) collection of disco-dub informed by moroderian dynamics and replete of eerie electronic droning (think of The Carpenter), The Emperor machine (Andy Meecham of Chicken Lips) doesn’t disappoint with his formidable debut…
Let’s talk about Glenn Branca’s Lesson No. 1 for Electric Guitar. I can’t say much, I know next to nothing about modern composition. Of course this is a void I hope to fill at some point in the future, but for now I can’t really get into the theoretical aspects of this song, the classical/minimal…
As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, we are suckers for inappropriate drumming. This track has a tiny little girl with a tiny little music box in it too. Vitalic – Fanfares Much the same concept as Jeremy Deller’s acid brass meets The Battle of Orgreave in one, Vitalic take the massed marching bands…
(Our reporter from the spiritual front, Matt, sends another chronicle, as brilliant as always, but in this case tinged with the sadness of another untimely departure) The Monks: A shamanic appreciation. What possessed them? The first thought that comes into your head when you see a picture of The Monks. What possessed them? What possesses…
Every Black Strobe release or remix is held up by young whippersnappers and old dj farts with great elation as the saviour of dance music. I keep falling for it too, and looking though my collection I see I have shit loads of remixes and tracks by them. I don’t think they live up to…
The Barcelona Pavillion- New Materiology Let me quote Derrida at some length (my translation), after all, in 20JazzFunkGreats we’re all about Monster Music… ‘…they nick the start of the song from the Fall (Rowche, Rumble, Rowche, Rumble, it’s Valium XS XSS, Valium XS XSSSS…doesn’t get any better than this eh my friend?), the infectious videogame…
Want to know about Italo? Ask Woebot here and here, and Jahsonic. My knowledge pales in significance to this thesis like research on the subject. Fonteyn and Marika at computer blue are so hot on it at the moment, and don’t cringe at some of the more MOR moments and cliched production style. Computer Blue…
So in this review I can’t say much about the band themselves, but I can tell a story… Some time ago my friend Mark and me ended our Hunter.S.Thompsonian night at 6.00AM in his house drinking coffee (don’t ask!)…he asked me to play something off my 20JazzFunkGreats record box (we had held our night a…
I hope you were where you had to be, doing what you had to do, I’m sorry it wasn’t enough, their tide is rising and everything looks ugly. Just one song, anger, some hope maybe. Sonic Youth-Youth Against Fascism It’s a shame we have to post our first Sonic Youth song in these circumstances, but…
DFA Compilation #2, is an indispensable artifact for anyone interested in modern electronic music and classy dancefloor mayhem. It includes two CDs of great stuff ranging from the crazy post-punk adventures of J.O.Y. to Black Dice’s blissful ambient noise (in between, amongst others, Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom’s synthetic odisseys, the Robotic Psychedelic Funk of…
Iain and Pete are members of the amazing Shark and great music conoisseurs, as the setlist they played when guest djing for 20JazzFunkGreats last month demonstrates… Tracks Iain played: Art Ensemble of Chicago- Rock Out Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band- When Big Joan Sets Up 5 Amp Fuse- Power To The People Whirlwind Heat-…
Ah, yeah, it’s friday and your 20jazzfunksters have to go back to their lairs to dust their capes and shine their fangs (a shout out to little fang from here!!) before the Halloween wick-end… …so yeah, we leave you with two tracks that don’t need much of a comment, one of them is by Can,…
The Lost Boys might well be one of the ultimate 80s movies, with its blend of terror slasher and kid fantasy, US high school social struggle, leather jackets, a bonkers grandpa, nerdiness (one of the definitive comic bookshop scenes ever), brat packers, Corey Feldman, silly comedy and lots of hairspray. If the relationship between the…
(it feels weird and in a way wrong to keep posting songs here as if nothing had happened yesterday, because yesterday John Peel passed away, and he meant so much to us and many others, so let us keep silent for a respectful moment before continuing with the music, which is what he would have…
Undertones – Teenage Kicks John Peel was my best friend. At school he made me feel like there was something else out there and other people who were into the same thing as me. John Peel died of a heart attack last night while on holiday in Peru. We were very lucky to have you….
Mum and Dad- The Human Fly Total evil riffing stunt rider music from Manchester. Ok, so The Cramps did a different thing about a Human Fly(available here at bubblegum machine, Help me help me….). Sonovac did a good cover. Gregor Samsa first awoke to find himself as one, and Wire wrote about the annoying one…
BOO BOOOOO Hallowe’en is coming, and almost at the same time as the US election, creepy eh? Who will win? the forces of evil? the forces of not-so-evil? Is dumb evil? Is the Religious Right right? Ah, we won’t declare our allegiances althought you can imagine them, suffice to say i’ve read the whole of…
(He fights on our side and we’re lucky cos he’s got more ammunition than Robert Duvall’s Huey and more attitude that Lobo when the hairdresser gave him a toupee…Yei, Matt’s back with a double posting that goes into deep space (9mm) and comes back with the goods. Nah, your PC isn’t shining now, it’s just…
Sonic Boom- Rock and Roll is killing my life Spacemen 3 devastated the 80s landscape with a firestorm of abrassive drones and drug addled perversion. Then they split up and Jason Pierce discovered God in the thickest vein of his arm, extracted Her from there with a rusty air pump and launched Spiritualized, a zeppelin…
Mahjongg- Countdown (The chicken) Konk bump into Add (n) to (x) in a crowded Berlin bar. But neither Konk nor Add (n) to (x) are individuals, they are bands, collectives, post-punk latin percussion obsessed freaks the former, decadent very well educated northerners in a transition to full robot state the latter. You could imagine them…
DJ Grand Wizard Theodore- Military Cut B-Boys stealing from Kraftwerk the same way Can stole from James Brown and Fela and Miles and the rest of the black presidents, avant garde concepts such as detournement and cut-up and musique concrete inadvertently introduced in the sound of the streets, block party crowds bouncing to Burroughs and…
Josh Smith, Tim Green (a former Nation Of Ulysses)and Tim Soete are C4AM95, The Champs, The Fucking Champs, and now (together with Trans Am) TransChamps and The Fucking Am. I cannot tell if they are trying to do something brilliant and original to an overblown cliche riddled genre, or if they are having a huge…
Pixeltan – That’s The Way I Like It Phoenix used to this thing live were they played the riff from Yes- Owner of a Lonely Heart in the middle of their song Funky Square Dance. Here is an entire song based on (almost) the same idea. Was it Lennon who said to Bowie before they…
Kreidler – Coldness (Sunroof Mix) In which German men sing with the delicate beauty and refinement, which makes women (not girls) think they are sexy in that sophisticated European way. Helmut Newton has taken there photo and it is forever preserved in the loft. I got really confused when I first saw this video. Kriedler??…
TV On The Radio – New Health Rock A guy with these huge great big pair of maracas which he was using to cut his toes , Lee Ranaldo, and Andre 3000 once jammed together in the hope of forging a new era in sonic art, but couldn’t get a good song out of it….
3rd Face- Canto della Liberta As a child on my first summer holiday abroad I was shocked to discover the local kids didn’t speak the same language. What was this strange sound coming from there mouth, all fierce and gutural! I was a bit scarred. This soon changed into fascination and the inevitable swapping of…
I only got into the Red Crayola (or Krayola) recently, Jim O’Rourke and Pere Ubu (fans/collaborators) introduced them to me (I mean, not personally, I read about stuff they had done together, it’s not like I’m mates with Jim O’Rourke…yet) plus I really enjoy painting with crayolas so I thought, ok, let’s see what this…
Pere Ubu – Final Solution Taking the bass line straight from Blue Cheer’s summertime blues ain’t a bad place to start for a 1976 pre-punk garage band with a power fuzz peddle. We all know there is no cure for the summertime blues, so instead David and co suggest the Final Solution. Pere Ubu were…
The Vanishing – Lovesick Are Goths allowed to do dissonant jazz analogue disco? I think Bauhaus may have but without the synths. The synths on this track are what renovate it from some Slits/Ze Records funk into something entirely darker. On there own they could be from Riz Ortolani’s score to Cannibal Holocaust, and in…
(these are review that our fellow conspirator Matt wrote as part of his jazz funk greats participation- he’s been the first Jazz Funk greatster-night-guester and he did amazingly, it couldn’t have been any other way. All our respect and love to him, we hope he writes more for us because this is simply brilliant!) Nick…
I can’t believe it! it’s our blogrthday and my manager hasn’t given me a day off to celebrate properly, write a fan letter to the Bavarian Illuminati (yep, did you think it was a coincidence that all those bands came from Germany? nah, it’s all a big conspiracy, half of them are aliens!) and the…
Fly Pan Am – Pas a Pas Step Until Did anyone mention the Boredoms ? I’m sure the canadian people were listening and here is the result: Pas a Pas Step Until is a joyous riot of noise, kerrazy rhythm and tribal chanting, krautrock that left Germany and travelled East in a blitzkrieg of peace…
Yeh today I was going to post Death in Vegas, but I changed my mind. The new album “Satan’s Cock” or whatever is a reviewer’s wet dream in terms of the references to classic music and all that, but although it talks the talk, has all the right sounds (and some good tunes) it’s just…
Your all winners! all of you losers! A big thanks to everyone who contributed. So after long thought and deliberation, we decided to give the Suicide week prize to a newer band. We had loads of entries and obviously realize the value of Spacemen 3, DAF, Relaxed Muscle, Sisters of Mercy and loads of others…
(Smog)- Bloodflow Talking about playlists…last friday we had our second release of 20 Jazz Funk Greats at the Penthouse in Brighton, and it was great. quite busy, the people there seemed to enjoy the noise and the weirdness and the greatness. Matt Djed like a true lord of The Drone and The Riff. I played…
Brakes – I Can’t Stand To Stand Beside You Brakes are: Guitar & Vocals: Eamon (British Sea Power) Guitar: Tom White (Electric Soft Parade) Drums: Alex White (Electric Soft Parade) Bass: Marc Beatty (The Tenderfoot) Indie Shmindy (ok maybe thats a bit evil on British Sea Power) boys sound like they been listening to a…
Villalobos- Dexter (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix) Here the legendary Swordsmen create a post-rock-post-punk doppelganger of Dexter (one of the highlights of Ricardo Villalobos’‘ masterpiece, ‘Alcachofa’), replacing its intrincate click house beats and synthetic melodical progressions with head nodding metronomic drums, neu!-ish guitars and a bass-line straight off Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR (my flatmate Marcos also hears…
Brooks- Roxxy Brooks could be an English version of Ellen Allien or The Soft Pink Truth, his album, ‘Red Tape’, out in Soundslike, is a first class carrier of sophisticated electronica which is romantic yet robotic, sexy, even raunchy (check out ‘Man-Size’), but never devoid of elegance. It sounds futuristic as fuck (the glitch, the…
Brian Eno – Third Uncle Where Brian Eno starts post-punk even before there was punk, we are talking 1974 here. The guitars scratch, the bass is really black and the sparse tinny percussions, ah, the percussions, they are madness, you can see a direct line going from them into the African jungle the Talking Heads…
VVV- Red Lights Down Suicideness scale: -Completely evil/Completely innocent lyrics This is called ‘Red Lights Down’ and apparently was sung by the last survivor of a nuclear holocaust. 5/5 -Monotonous lo fi beats The aforementioned mutant survivor had developed some extra limbs as a consequence of his exposure to radiation, he used them to hold…
Big Black – L Dopa Suicideness scale: -Completely evil/Completely innocent lyrics Remember kids, we are talking about Big Black here. In this particular song the fragmentary lyrics (I got a sickness sweet as a love note, I got a headache like a pillow etc) might refer to drug addiction, mental disorder or suicide. Not nice,…
On this wonderful Wednesdaycide of Suicide Tribute Week Gutterbreakz brings you a Cassette Pets Suicide special. You can enter the competition here. And then… Secret Weapons – Bumps Ryan Noel the guitarist from ARE Weapons just managed to kill himself with heroin which is pretty bad. They were shaping up into an awesome rockin bunch…
Dead Combo – You Don’t Look So Good At first listen this is perfect. But it’s got some cracks. Or maybe it hasn’t, and that’s the problem. Dead Combo sound a bit like black rebel motor cycle club doing Suicide, if you know what I mean. On record it’s a bit clean. There is a…
All the music is being moved to another server, normal service will be resumed within 48hrs (apparently). Apologies 20JazzFunkGreats. Some people have been asking about tracklisting for what we play at the club. Matt is guest DJ at the next one, here is the tracklisting for his tape that got him the spot. “The Ace…
Giving away a cdr at the club of stuff we played. Any track nominations for the next one?