Gary Gygax passed away on Wednesday. I never did that much D&D to be fair, but if it hadn’t been for the stream of pen & paper Roleplaying games that his work inspired, and which I played the shit of (MERP, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Cyberpunk, Star Wars, Traveller and Games Workshop stuff, as well as all sorts of Choose Your Own Adventure books) , I would have spent a really boring time during my teenage years, there were only so many Schwarzenegger and American Ninja films to watch. Perhaps I would have read even more comic-books, but then I wouldn’t have developed the sort of mathematical modelling chops and wacky imagination that render me totally unsuitable for most jobs in the real world. Maybe I would have had a girlfriend, or perhaps become a hoodlum, risen in the echelons of organised crime and be living in a vast manor built with the profits from drug and weapon trafficking.

Damn you Gary Gygax!

Nah, don’t have the right character for all that hustle & bustle to be fair, although I am not too bad a sniper in Halo 3. Ha! Video games! If it hadn’t been for Gary Gygax and D&D half of the video games out there you wouldn’t exist. Young whippersnappers, at your age I was building massive imaginary worlds inside my head and sharing them with my friends instead of grinding in that Microsoft MSN with legs you call World of Warcraft. So get off my dungeon. I’m joking, but I’ve got a point. Paper and dice RPGs are totally good for you.

Street Horrrsing (out soon in ATP Recordings) confirms Fuck Buttons as one of the best bands out there right now, their portentous Cthonic drone punches a hole in the heart of the black stormfront spreading its powerful wings over the lands of Istar, whenceforth cometh a rod of glimmering light straight from the mysterious Pleiades that Black Dice call home. The damp cellar where Tangerine Dream, Yellow Swans and Suicide roll their dice grim and focussed fills with a blinding glamour which summons the shape of things to come, and illuminates the preparations for an quest fraught with dangers. This music plunges forward mighty and epic like a funereal march for heroes on the warpath against invincible Colossi, if you have played a fantasy RPG right, you know that feeling of doomed expectation, and you know it’s right.

Do you want to talk about magic?

Let’s talk about fucking magic.

Fuck Buttons- Okay, Let’s Talk About Magic

This blog would be totally different from what you see now, or wouldn’t even have happened if it hadn’t been for Gary Gygax’ opus, we’d surely be less prone to wild flights of fancy, for chrissakes I found out about H.P. Lovecraft through the Call of Cthulhu RPG!! So, because he has influenced us an awful lot, we dedicate this post to him, here is an aptly named tune by Underground Resistance which resonates with the epic echo of an infinity of possible universes to be jubilantly explored. Many of them wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for Gary Gygax.

THANKS. LOVE & MANY SIDED DICE

WE ARE ROLLING THEY’RE HATING

Underground Resistance- Inspiration

We continue out trip through the voids of darkness beyond the clouded dome taken by the hand of Sweat X, I’ve been listening to a good bunch of sidereal/muscular/hard-hitting (think Starship Troopers directed by Tarkovski) hip-house that the aforementioned Underground Resistance came up with back in the days (check out Hype Stuff (You Gotta Move to)) and this exclusive Black Line remix of Interestella with crazy arpeggiated sci-fi synth line sounds like a proud descendent, I had a Close Encounter of the Third Kind and all I got was this pumping tune.

Sweat X- Interstella (Black Line Remix)

Citinite keep getting it right with master Manuel orchestrating underground manoeuvres in the neon lit space, another step towards global domination. Wait til you listen to Her Bad Habit, you are going to lose your shit for them.

Williams covered Love on a Real Train by Tangerine Dream, and Studio did their thing and that’s all she wrote, we were hypnotised, white vinyl and opium dreams. Anyway, Williams has a new 12” coming out on Get Physical, it goes by the name of ‘El Baile’ and it’s b-side Kiss of Life is a spaced-out minimal glider with an arpeggiated breakdown that kills it softly and a melancholy vibe that conjures images of C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. Can there be any higher praise than that?

Williams- Kiss of Life

NEWS NEWS

We have confirmed El Guincho to play live in Brighton on the 23rd of March, that’s two weeks into the future kids. Barfly. It’s going to be fucking awesome. Get tickets at Resident!

20JFG IS SEARCHING

20Jazzfunkgreats is currently involved in a secret project which requires a collaborator with the talent to create wonderfully ghastly images such as those we include below. It’s quite hard to come up with people who do proper fantasy & horror painting these days, but we surely need one. Some of them must have survived the 80s, perhaps your dad, or your weird uncle who hanged out in Soho and has a vast collection of softcore pornography?

If you think you have what it takes, or know someone, please contact us immediately via e-mail or on the myspace, the lord of darkness summons you. Payment in blood, and more.

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 spear with the head of a non-believer skewered to the tip in one hand, and blood stained smiley face shield in the other, torrential rain lashes her rave-panda painted face but she stays in place, strong and never faltering.

The ship crashes onto the beach and the crew of Nordic neon are lead to certain victory over boredom by their elastic limbed queen of pantomime synth-rock hellfire. Later, they roast their defeated adversaries and praise the Lord Viking Robot for the delight of this cannibalistic meal.

Dandi Wind – Searching Flesh (Revision)

This particular battle cry is taken from the cheap as chips remix album, Sacrificial, which you may pillage from Summer Lovers Unlimited should your viking hearts desire it.

In a separate camp under the SLU flag, Twin Crystals are about to release an amazingly limited edition 10″ of demos, entitled No Clinics. Our brother-in-arms, Sean Orr, felt compelled to write this from the front-line after seeing Twin Crystals do it live:

“Our hero awoke. He was somewhere. He had just returned through the shapeless void of nowhere, and now here, the only thing he knew, was that he had to be somewhere else. He tried to move away from it, but it would follow him. He kept moving, at first through the maze of the dirty village streets, then towards the sea.

A crowd had gathered, there on the shore, as unsure of why they were there as the man striding so apparently with confidence towards them. But it was not, as we now know, a stride that begat confidence. Only a stride that begat an opaque void, a vast shifting semi-nothing; at times clear and purposeful like the work he had done on the fields, at others a menacing glitch, an image ill-formed and muddled. There was a boat waiting for him, he had seen it before. The crowd could very well be an angry mob; they could very well be the ones to take him from his dream state to the shores of reality. They, of course, were both, and neither. It was clear now that they were all there to row the battered skiff, but why and where were not. Our hero graced the helm, ignoring the mass of figures behind him.

The image was sharpening. A girl. A woman. A princess? The last person to enter the boat was a small boy, disguised earlier by the confusion, and yet somehow not affected by it. He had a drum, and beat it as purposefully as the rhythm of an unfinished dream. The crew, unbeknownst to themselves, began howling, chanting, yelling at the hero. He stood stoically at the helm, taking it all in with an air of grace not suited to his farmer’s rags. He closed his eyes. There she was. The howling swirled and coalesced and formed and mixed above an eerie ocean mist forming shapes and breaking off. Maybe a week had passed. Maybe a month. The howling never abated, the hero’s visions never appeased. They had reached the shore, but it was a non-event.

They laboured through the dunes, but it was meaningless. They shouted through swamp and crag, eating their screams for sustenance. A clearing; an army without general gathered above a banal brick castle, as grey as the skies and neutral as a stand of oaks. For the first time the howling ceased, the mob lay still on the moist earth. Princess. Our hero stepped forward, the mob collapsed in exhaustion, except for one: the boy whose beat had drove them into a frenzy. The two marched victoriously down the slope towards the army. Some rumbling amongst the shine of armour, then more. Then tears, and screams and moans of relief. They had been gathered here for months, maybe a year. They started to break off into what appeared a well rehearsed formation, but they had never done this before. Princess. Closest to the wall the men, once as brave as lions, now naked and exposed climbed onto each others shoulders. Closer to the hero a wall of shields was raised, and angled, shining like angels. The soldiers, although unaware at the time, were making some sort of ramp up to the castle walls. It took only minutes. The beat whipped them like slaves. Princess! The hero stepped onto the first shield, rickety. Then the second, sturdy. Then the third, a vision. Then the fourth, clarity. And so on, as the boy stayed behind, crying. For this was not a tragedy. This was pre-destined. There was no army behind the wall, no wizard or chimaeras. Just a girl locked in a room. Princess.”

Twin Crystals – Princess

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, but they go hand in hand on awesome new 12″, Black Disco, Vol.1, and the Mars edit is the best of the lot.

Listen as the opening thousand points of light ring out like a coda of sin, black cloaked creatures with blank faces and emaciated limbs converge on a grey cold stone formation of unknown origin but well known power. From its middle tip a stream of black liquid coils out from a fissure through the air and forms into the face of a thousand funk legends that grows in size and rushes to the ground engulfing the worshippers who then trail off across the white sands towards a blue and green sunrise – no fear in their hearts, just the sound of strutting demon soul instructing them to blow their minds.

Once they have reached this aurora borealis sunrise, they gain faces and the whiteness in their skin turns a vivid green hue, thus their true alien form is revealed, as synthesised drums roll in from the icy north and The Emperor Machine arrive in their spacecrafts to blanket-bomb the white desert with balls of discopic fury.

The Emperor Machine – Gang Bang

These balls thud into the sand and open like a Pandora’s Box of minimal sparking retrograde 70′s Lost In Space sci-fi fuzz. This fuzz breaks apart and shoots into the hearts of our green-skinned hordes who affect African dance moves and kill the sandy dancefloor with Martian voodoo death. Soon their backs split and giant electric spiders stretch out their limbs from the sack of skin and cloak that they leave behind. They march to the nearest city, all the while soundtracked by The Emperor Machine, and fire lasers from a cluster of glass-like eyes, bringing down civilisations to the sound of electro disco from an Africa that exists on Mercury.

‘Gang Bang’ is the flip to new 12″ ‘Slap On’, check it from DC Recordings.

——–

Special Bonus Treat For Readers!

The excellent mixtape pioneer, Zzzune, has made us an awesome slow-motion disco behemoth which we now share with you – complete with artwork by our number 1 kid, Martha – its recorded onto actual cassette tape for that authentic taste that you will surely dig:

Zzzune – Pattern Recognition Mix

Achim Wollscheid – 7 Sentences
Cousins of Reggae – Old English Spelling Bee #6
Yellow Swans – Descent 1
James Yorkston – Woozy With Cider (Quiet Village Remix)
Mala – Left Leg Out
COH – Quadrate Fur Max-ernst
Shackleton – Blood On My Hands (Ricardo Villalobos Apocalypso Now Mix)
The Knife – The Captain
Milanese – Tony Sombrero
Harmonic 33 – Planet 54
Animal Collective – #1
Stormhat – A Pathway to Gormenghast (Demo)
Excepter – Give Me The Cave
Kid Acne – Eddy Fresh (Gescom Dub)
Jack Rose – How Green Was My Valley
Deerhunter – Octet

So 20JFG visited Berlin last long weekend, clenched fists and fractured bones, it was a harsh battle, one where we fought accompanied by savvy wizards, sorcerous mystics & bass music ladies against the powerful & holy green smoke coming out off this majestic city’s decadent and mighty underground, and we lost, it couldn’t have been any other way, we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Thanks Berlin, keep on strong, keep on beating us.

Love to Fuck Hugo for being the best host & comrade we could have prayed to the big tentacled one for, he gloriously enters the 20JFG rooster of associates with an awesome post you can find concluding this small musical overview of what happened over the weekend, don’t hope for a theoretical underpinning for out behaviour though, the coherence machine is being repaired and we won’t have it back for at least a month.

Let’s just say that something had to give.

Soooo after arriving in Berlin we went for drinks, you surely heard about the lovely German beer that doesn’t give you hangover and whatnot, oh well, there, 10 times, so we went to this real nice German disco do, and then popped down to a gay bar with a mural of the Virgin Mary crying blood down into some sort of rusty receptacle. Obviously God got cross with us heathens so we had to run back to the U-bahn under all sorts of gnarly lightning bolts, I looked at the sky and swear I could see his evil Charles Burns style cyclops visage staring down at us in utter contempt, who cares, we arrived back to Hugo’s as the sky started clearing, and played records in the turntables til we passed out, it went a little something like this:

E.S.G.- There Was a Time

True Bronx Godzilla Drums of Death breaking up the Punk rock school disco included in their lovely Rarities comp just published by Soul Jazz. Buy. Buy. Buy.

The day after it was all flash and thunder, played records in the chaos of KIM and met some awesome people, word up E*Rock & Greg, the soundsystem was all over the place but so was everything else, people danced to Acid house & the Stooges, which is the only righ way to follow, and so did we, faking professionality, down from the sky we fell into this disco, strobes and Glass Candy, memory flash and off to a party at Nadja’s to play bass music, and some immortal hits such as

Carly Simon- Why? (Extended 12” mix)

Which I was lucky enough to grab on a second hand shop last week, good times.

This ended at 9.00AM. or something like that.

Re-started a few hours after, bid our beloved Valent goodbye and communicated telepathically with Gizmo the grey sex dog, ate something, slept more, Sonny Crocket & Ricardo got dressed to kill while listening to the sexiest piece of electrifying synthetic sleaze ever to besmirch the silken whiteness of their virginal bespoke handkerchiefs

Chris and Cosey with Eurythmics- Sweet Surprise

…soiled, off they (we) ran & enjoyed lovely goulash in excellent company to a sweet selection of slick M.O.R.tunes which slid down white walls like vanilla over ice cream, jumped down to a Spanish party and met good old tiny wee friend who ended up with dirty feet, were force-fed Cous-cous while Mario and Sarah turn into Merlin Mentat%%Lawrence of Arabia v Wiley, then down to the spacey patios of Picknick, dance to the hits including that awesome Smith & Hack’s Space Warrior we posted last week as well as

Yello- No More Words

Actually they played Bostich but y’all know that, plus Hugo gave me a copy of ‘You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess’ whose title sort of summarises the weekend, especially when one takes into account we ended the night inside a paper and cardboard container trying to recycle ourselves. Very professional.

And the day after we left, oh booo our putrid soul on fire as the puny aeroplane took off over the orderly German fields, onwards we rushed towards reality burning like that chrome android at the end of Daft Punk’s Electroma, when what we really needed and desired was a dark space where we could curl up and sleep the sleep of those who don’t deserve it, our stride surely more hesitant than his…

Jackson C. Frank- Dialogue

And this was it in a hysteric nutshell, some nice weekend it was, and one that shows how you can take 20JFG anywhere you want, we’re guaranteed to make you feel & look sensible. Thanks to all who shared the madness, we will be back.

The freewheeling spirit of the whole escapade is quite aptly summarised by our awesome host Fuck Hugo, who besides being a true gentleman and a very talented Disc-Jockey, also has a fantastic taste and a way with words, we welcome him to 20JFG’s den of illuminati…

The Ethos of a Mailman

What is it, that makes us take certain choices? Why is it that, some of us will end up following obscure paths that lead nowhere (nowhere your mom would like to see you anyway) while others, following the righteous way, end up finding their place in society, accomplishing what is expected of them, achieving success after success, to end up becoming model citizens for the generations to come?

But wait a moment, what is exactly a model citizen?

And all the time, money and energy spent in record stores, shows, parties…what is all for nothing?

If you ask Max, the mailman who wrote on the package above (for those who can’t read Swedish, it says something like ‘Stop buying so many fucking records and start investing your money on something useful’) the answer is crystal clear, or at least he would try to convince you- and probably himself too- of that. If you ask me, you migth as well poke out my eyes and cut my ears and tongue, fill the bleeding holes with drugs that kill thought and throw me inside a bottomless pit full of lice n’ snakes n’ spiders. Follow your heart and do what you want, Dance to every song that’s worth it and buy every single record you feel like buying. Nuff said!

Mogg & Naudascher- Moon Unit Part 1

From Mogg & Naudascher absurdly excellent Moon Unit 12.

Talking about records, you can go and check out the sweet top 10 we prepared for our buddies at IGETRVNG, strictly not in order, but also strictly full of love. Take care peoples, and care.

In these boring times of tedious, thankless summer jobs, self imposed isolation and beard growing, whilst waiting for my life to begin once again, forests have provided significant solace these last few months. But then forests, immersed and saturated in their own unique mythologies, have always been perfect hideouts for dreamers looking for a place to wile away their time. Lost in the trees, lost in your thoughts, no one has to matter once you’ve walked away from the grey spaces, however momentary the escape may be. Inspired by my woodland jaunts here are some musings. Obviously they have some sort of connection with forests, though perhaps sadly not the kinds of forests we may be too accustomed to, but close your eyes, listen, and you might find yourself there. Oh, to dream.

On the off chance you ever happened to find yourself wondering what it might have sounded like if Can had taken the decision to up sticks and record an album in the middle of the rainforest, ditching their guitars and drums in favour of a saxophone wielded like a snake charmer’s pipe and synthesizers that sound as if they were born out of nature itself, and at the same time adopting the services of an animal choir intent on doing its own sweet thing yet somehow completely connected to the human minds at play? Then wonder no more my friends, because in 1978 a man called Ariel Kalma made that record and called it ‘Osmose’.

Ariel Kalma – Saxo Planetariel

People could call this stuff new age, but frankly they would be wrong, because new age conjures up images of stupid hippies decked out in turquoise trinkets desperately seeking something they will never have the capacity to find, or treatments that involve people drowning in seaweed, avocado, salty lemon grass muddy gloop. Music like this deserves more. I don’t want you to envision healthier looking skin when you hear this. I want you to see Mayan ghosts swaying with their bones in their arms. Designed to soundtrack slowly unravelling minds, crystallizing the moment, I can only sadly imagine, you witness your brain cells turn into tiny phantoms that dance amongst the trees, before drifting towards the sky. Listening to these compositions I refuse to acknowledge Kalma’s intent wasn’t to corrupt, but to caress the human mind. Play it loud and this is madness, not meditation. Whatever the intent behind its creation, I’m just happy to let my psyche drift down the river with this one, and NOT down the plug hole of a swanky spa bathtub.

Tomu Tonttu didn’t actually have anything to do with the sounds on this piece. It is in fact a field recording they made in a very isolated, very mysterious place.

Well, the first statement isn’t entirely true about Tomu Tonttu’s contribution. They did partake in a light bit of strumming, but you have to understand that was only done in order to coax their subjects out of hiding, and attract them to their presence. You see, this place is one inhabited by a plethora of weird and wonderful creatures. Home to birds that have mirrors in place of faces and bodies comprised entirely of glasses. Vultures with umbrellas for bodies, owls with accordion necks, and others with shovels for beaks and hammers for heads. This place is of course Tulgey Woods. A girl called Alice passed through quite some time ago, and nearly lost her sweet, innocent mind. She managed to pull herself together in the end, or at least as far as I’m aware. Anyway when Alice went wandering through Tulgey she managed to unintentionally draw attention to herself, and lo and behold, out of curiosity all the creatures emerged from out of the darkness. Twittering and cooing, clattering and rattling, strangely familiar, and yet equally alien, they perched from branches, and peered out from bushes to view upon her. Alice didn’t really like them much, but that’s because she thought they were just a bit too odd for her tastes. Personally, I just think she was a square. Tomu Tonttu would probably agree.

Tomu Tonttu – Rattus Nativitatis, Part IV

Now, stop looking at this screen, and run for the woods.

You know how we always be going on about Citinite, one of the best curated labels out there, we have posted something off everything they have released, well, there we go then: Gosub’s Watchers of the Black Universe is a trip through R Funk’s back alleys, beats connecting spaceships in an alien detection grid targeting the voids of outer space, nimble Egyptian fingers of computer love synthesis, still there’s a warm heart beating strong at its core, or how Tron was actually a documentary, that’s the thing with good electronic music, you can feel human fingers carefully manipulating the sounds behind the network of hardware and software, and this is definitely it. That stupidly funky bass too.

Gosub- Laugh Track

Dopplerffekt’s Gesamkuntskerk has been recently re-released by Clone, so we have got lost in its futuristic paranoid architecture once again, Kraftwerk’s eternal CPU blueprint is perverted and starts sending corrupted messages left and right, or perhaps the user is downloading too much porn, there is also a little homage to all those hard working scientists out there, this is what I put on the stereo when I get to work everyday, yep. Analyse data. Construct facts. Oops. Forget I said that.

Dopplereffekt- Scientist

And let us close with something which is not quite as electro but still frozen as fuck, and so it goes, Pan Sonic are back with Katodivaihe on Blast First, parts of it sounds like all the evil abrassive bits from the Jesus Mary Chain laid one on top of each other in an avalanche of shards that smother the listener into blissful oblivion, or perhaps Sunn O))) trapped inside a nuclear submarine with Gene Hackman going all ‘I’m the boss’ on their ass…

However, the song to which I’m hooked right now is different, it sounds like Arthur Russell stranded in the midst of a barren tundra, playing his cello to keep the mind (and the fingers) distracted from the biting cold, perhaps also the wendigo away, you can hear its gnarly claws tip-toeing around the feeble bonfire on the sparse beats and the ominous bass of this tune, how awesome.

Pan Sonic- Virta 1

TONIGHT!!

OvO at the Greenhouse effect, you know the deal, Goblin sleeps with melt banana’s steaming corpse, it’s all for a good cause.

You be warned, don’t bring cats to the gig.

OvO-Mammut

AND

Remember, The DO IS COMING BACK TO THE CORE
CLUB IN BRIGHTON ON FRIDAY THE 1ST OF JUNE with

New deal: 11-4AM 6 quid on the door, 5 quid NUS, 4 if you drop us
a myspace mssg and get in the guest list

And they fired those security assholes. Good times.

We can’t wait to bring you all the hits we’ve accumulated during our
spring break, yeah, it’s going to be like the best indie noise
hardcore dance DIY disco ever.

10 bands we’ll play: Animal Collective, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Drop the Lime, Envelopes, Unicorns, Slayer. Make Up, Public Enemy, Raincoats, Adam and the Ants…

The rest is as good as this. Keep checking our bulletins for more
fancy mp3s and photos & stuff

We’ve even made a blog with songs, photos and stuff cos it’s
like, yeah, a comeback, like, 2.0 you know.

We’ll keep you posted, We heart U.

Also, Marnie Stern & Extreme Animals as one off gigs for your total delight, yay.

So we were in Cuba, in a tiny town called Floro Perez, and we cam upon the village square, pumping out some sort of state-sanctioned cuban crunk-hall and like two tourist fucks we start handing out toothpaste, candy, and t-shirts to the kids trying to be all You Shall Know Our Velocity and shit.

Stopped to ask for directions. The policia didn’t like us. Talk about a roving gang of bravos man. Turns out one of the T-shirts was a parody of an American Flag, a parody they didn’t quite pick up. And me no habla espanol man, me mui muey mooey muiy CONTRA CONTRA americano! ANTI!!!

4 hours later El Bajo shows up in his perfect panama linen suit to bail us out of jail. We were all like, ‘naw dude. Its all good. We were just chilling with El Minestero Interior. What a fucking beautiful night in Cuba-town. And these mustachios aren’t so bad anyways.’ But then he gave us one of those looks, you know ‘the look’. And we hopped on out scooter and drove into the firefly-lit, tobacco smoke scented chocolate coffee banana country road with El Perros running out in front of us and kids on bicycles trying to race us, and dude with his burro on the side of the road just winked at us and its all good.

Back to the tired parade of flesh that is the Grand Turquesa Resort.

Turns out it was Logans Run. We won.

Because Sean Orr rules.

We don’t give a fuck about this winter backlash, in our hearts the latin sun shines strong & true.

Nick Chacona makes minimal disco for dudes in white suits and we love his sexy bones for that, you’re going to run and buy his ‘A Cambria Heights Affair’ now because it contains another classic unclassic 2007 disco epic to die for (and with), just check it out, ever wondered what it would be like to hang out with Villalobos, Santana and Sonny Crocket in Miami Beach while the sun sets in slo-mo, the barbecue fire cracks and pops like a merry feline, and God smiles down on you you lucky demon? What if I said Arthur Russell shows up halfway through to put some motherfucking bass en las brasas, ey, you would be so buying it you’re not even in this page anymore, hey, come back man. Good times.

Que si que bueno, gracias Nick.

Nick Chacona- A Cambria Heights Affair

And if there’s a song that has to be listened as the sun kisses the horizon night night baby, every colour fuses into orange and the neon lights blink blink open, the city wakes up in an introspective mood to stare at its navel, nevermind it’s a gutter, sending a message of love to the lonely astronauts in their shiny satellites orbiting in the cold voids of space, then this is it, Frankie Knuckles’ is the real deal.

Testarossa accessorising to drive this song around is optional, highly recommended, you know it’s worth it broder.

Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle- Your Love

Pastel coloured soul melting like vanilla ice cream in the heat of the night, only a few renegade stalwarts like Johnny Jewel, Adam Miller or Daniel Wang manage to make the synths burn so slooooow these days, this is one of the best songs ever and we encourage you to have your heart broken to it, it will be worth it, hiding bitter tears of love with ray ban turtleshells is totally the look of this summer.

Cruise smooth, and feel it.

Disclaimer, I don’t know if they sing hymns at the pentecostal church of mentalism, and I can’t be bothered to check it out using the pooter. AFAIK Michael Meyer played a well banging minimal techno edit of their ’04 single in his last fabric comp. Now, you’re right, I never listened to that.

Say last year’s winner from 20JFG’s favourite Green Velvet, you know the score, that christian straight edge remix of Alvin the Chipmunk that wears Sky Glasses and sits on his shoulder going SHAKE N POP SHAKE N POP SHAKE N POP SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE POP POP POP, say what, all the people in the disco SHAKE N POP SHAKE N POP SHAKE N POP SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE POP POP POP, even more hysterical than usual in this ghettotech remix by Gantman which pushes all the right buttons in the right order at the right speed, which is waaaaay toooooo fast sending us in a spiral into oblivion like the bereaved puppets we are.

Green Velvet- Shake and Pop (Gantman remix)

(cheers to Ramp Records for fedback on errata above)

Say, Claude Von Stroke spreading the spreadable everyone likes to something, or USA’s answer to Shepherd Pie over back to ’89 nutricious beats, fun farty noises, epic horns that would have made the 45 king jingle baby, and even a telephone call from the tasty side of the tracks *ring ring*, pick it up and receive Buckwheat Boyz’ immortal&eternal nutshell of wisdom, PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME. Mine in a bagel, please.

Claude Von Stroke- Peanut Butter Jelly Time (Claude VonStroke and Julio Ingles Miami Doodoo Bootleg)

Go to top class beatdown blog These Rocks Pop for more Claude Von Stroke.

&&

This was going to be a different post but then I was, aw, whatever, might as well put all the booty in the trunk and take you for a longer ride, I always post shiteloads of tunes whenever I do a boogie down one because I like the party to last. So yeh, first, as Mr. Senor Love Daddy would have it, ‘We’re slowing it down for all the lovers in the house. we’ll be giving you all the help you need, musically, that is‘.

And that’s the truth, ruth.

Curtis Vodka comes from Alaska, we reckon he needed to keep warm in those polar cold nights the films tell us they get over these, so he just started crafting tunes. He’s been causing quite a splash over here with some remixes of erm, Uffie (no love lost there), and the YYYs but we reckon his own stuff’s where it’s at, he makes these super-smooth sassy sexy baltimore-tinged R&B tunes which strangely remind me of UK Garage at its pass me the Moet Chandon soulful best, and totally set the mood for some New Jack City swing sofa action for those who get some, just check out his lovely Yeti Bounce EP for more, erm, dare I say it, chilled beats, heh. 20JFG never went down so smoooooth.

Curtis Vodka- Hey Girl

Then, an introduction, go and add The Whole Sick in the myspace, I hear they be doing a party in Brighton and apparently they like to get stoopid and play songs like ‘Get F’ed Up’ by legendary Philly rogues Bo Bliz and Emynd, who throw it all up in their new ‘White Tees White Belts EP’, also released by our favouritest label Flamin’ Hotz Records. Dumb horns, broken bottles and heavy duty neuronal spillage to keep it goin’, keep it movin’, messy.

Bo Bliz & Emynd- Get Fucked Up

This raucous chorus brings us back to the beginning in a perfect example of circular narrative, bodies stumble and fall around like this was an alkaholic remix of Saving Private Ryan.

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This post goes to all the readers of Q magazine who support 20jazzfunkgreats, people, are you really there? is that thing I’ve read true?? or is it a fabrication? Fucking hell. Next thing I hear, 20jazzfunkgreats win a Brit Award.

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GOES TO BED WITH HIS SOCK MONKEY

Of their dash across Brightonia in a stolen skateboard; Stuart’s sojourn in a Police Station near Hove, when the constabulary mistook him for an American gangster; the drunk they all threw which began in the Fringe Bar and lasted well past Lilo Feast; the derelict Juan at the outskirts of It Came from the Sea and the hours they spent waiting for his recovery by the bar, inhabited by all sorts of denizens of weirdom- a straight edger defrocked named Jones who spent his time breeding marmosets in tinfoil cages once used by the Albanian Mafia to punish their fruit machine gambling addict debtors, and the MC Rudeboy McCoy who had the misfortune of being both middle class and a Snoop Dogg impersonator- afterwards, wandering restlessly in the piercing cold among dubstep looking vistas of concrete ravished by Seagulls, lamplights blasted by inebriated stones, rubbish wrinkled by the stormy wind; of their arrival at a house party and the difficulty with local white rastas in the queue to the toilette (from which Steven extricated them through some skilful bargaining using an ounce bag full of moss); of the long wait in the taxi rank, during which Stuart lost 10 quid and a piano key tie on a stone paper scissors match against a mild faced gay civil servant on a rampage who called himself Bruce Petitpoint; there was little for any of them to remember. The Bed alone drew them, a clenched fist around a yo-yo string.

It’s been a hard week, and Thomas Pynchon would be appaled. Nevertheless this post was inspired by him and our man Dan, who made me pay attention. He rocks harder than Oliver Cromwell.

Anyhow, what would be a suitable soundtrack for JFGs ever-dazed yet mysterious roamings thither and yon the moonlight void of a subtly chaotic existence? Perhaps this.

You shall dance like a motherfucker to the vocal version with Timberlake and Nelly Furtado at It Came from the Sea, but you can also have sex in zero gravity to the Lalo Schifrin goes cosmic disco wrap of the instrumental, Timbaland is a genius full stop, and well buff too.

Timbaland- Give it to Me (Instrumental)

The Pack- Fresh (instrumental)

Where hyphy stars the Pack (they wearing Vans yeh? remember Run D.M.C.) go ice-cold minimal, what if Tarkovsky had directed Scarface, and the film had been about Tony Montana sitting in his grand tacky lounge smoking cigarrettes and chasing cocaine paranoia fuelled shadows in the edge of his vision? It would have been 4 hour longs, and perhaps sounded like this…a slow burning skeletal thriller that shows, once again, how good music is all about a clever arrangement of silences.

Watch wiz kid Riton decorate the halls of a ghostly disco den and your 20jazzfunkgreats dweeb get lost in it in sheer delight. Hammer of Thor unfolds its bony melodic fingers in a desperate, subdued epic gesture of frozen beauty worthy of the Knife, synth fracture lines stretch across the white walls left and right enveloping him in a hypnotic bliss which is both Giorgio and Delia (some pair!).

Riton- Hammer of Thor

‘The dancing floor and bar lay up a wide curving flight of marble steps lined with statues in niches: statues of Knights, ladies and Turks. Such was a quality of suspended animation about them that you felt come the owl-hours, the departure of the last sailor and the extinguishment of the last electric light; these statues must unfreeze, step down from their pedestals, and ascend stately to the dance floor bringing with them their own light: the sea’s phosphorescence. There to form sets and dance till sunup, utterly silent; no music; their stone feet only just kissing the wood planks’.

Or perhaps Riton, smooth, in the background.

Have a nice weekend kids!

PS-Thanks to lovely Plan B for letting 20JFG say ‘hello’ from a paper window on their new issue, grab yourself a copy, you know it’s always good for you (BESTEST MUSIC MAG out there, with Wire and Arthur).

PPS- Early warning- DIS on 22nd FEBRUARY THURSDAY ENGINE ROOMS WTF Two of our favouritest people play Brighton at the same time W00t. Spread the word and spread the love.