How many blogs go from early 70′s folk to up-to-date 2010 grime-pop? Not that many, that’s what!

More up to date I’ve been slowly wading through the gigabytes of tunes that Wiley released via Twitter in July – 11 zip files full of new Wiley music, variable (even demos and just beats in there) but The Elusive tracks are brilliant, as are quite a few other – as with Wiley’s career it’s a mix of pop and underground grime, a real mixture. The track below – Could Be featuring Jake Gosling (with a Chew Fu beat) is as good as anything B.o.B. and the like are doing…and has become a bit of an anthem for me.

Wiley – Could Be (Cought Up In Here)

I like Wiley’s more downbeat/serious songs, it’s obvious that he’s got a love/hate relationship with pop, wanting to keep it real, keep that depth but when everyone is bopping up and down to David Guetta’s latest it’s rather hard to do both (it is possible – see Shutterbugg by Big Boi for example). And I like the honesty in this, especially the line ‘No matter what he says I can’t go against Dylan’ – a reference to his former Roll Deep colleague Dizzee Rascal.

Other tracks I like:

Value for Money, a funny song about posh restaurants – only one of the Roll Deep crew could make a club banger about haute cuisine, over a rave-house backing!

Mz Bratt – Lose Your Love (Ft. Wiley) – a pop grime gem, could see this chart like ‘Could Be’ easily.

Wiley – Days Are Long
Wiley – What They Want – something about these two and subject of some of the lyrics suggest to me that Wiley has all this planned out, it’s not the random releasing of 100s of tracks, it’s intentional, and a message to the fans – going direct to them, and involving them in the ups and downs like some grime soap opera. I think he’s going to come back bigger and better…

Wiley – Still Gonna Miss – quite an odd interesting production on this, eastern grime? Maybe it was inspired by Chase & Status’s Eastern Jam.

Wiley – Stickin’ With You (?) – a banger in the same realm as Bonkers, I could see people going mad fer it in the clubs, if not already.

And a song included but from a previous LP is Music I Like – pointing out the eclectic music he listens to isn’t the music he makes.

It sounds like The Elusive would’ve been a good if not great album, and I hope he gets it together as ‘Never Be Your Woman’ was genius – he’s working on yet again a new album. And I think it’s a great tactic – his music is going far and wide, and will be shared…so the next album will have a larger audience I reckon – I’ll certainly check it out.

You can download the Wiley zip files from here.

Here’s a track that could’ve been on the Summerisle podcasts apart from the fact I’ve only just heard it. Keith Christmas played on Space Oddity and was one of those ‘lost’ folk generation, although lost to later disinterest in the early 70′s folk sound rather than a cult or drugs, I’m guessing.

This is very much of a hippie persuasion, slightly embarassingly so – but also unusually political, p-folk? P for paranoid too, but also sums up my current mood, and also an early 1970′s mood of general confusion and political strife, which seems to be making a comeback.

I’ve always maintained that Heaven 17′s masterpiece is an early acid house gem, partly because it was one of the first tracks to utilise the then new Roland TB303 in it’s squelchy (if not filter sweeped) glory. The 12″ mix makes this more clear.

The video (due to EMI I can only embed off Myspace, a better quality version is here) is very prescient for modern times – showing a distaster or financial ‘crash’ in the aftermath Day the Earth Stood Still monochrome, echoed later in the beginning of the second Resident Evil film, and filmed outside the Bank of England (and is that Kings Cross St Pancras or Paddington Station?) which makes the line about ‘and now the bank is broken’ comes in sharp relief, as well as the horror references and surrealism in the vein of Meyer Deren.

You’d not expect a normal love song from Heaven 17 would you? And they don’t disappoint.

Although I can’t stop thinking Glenn Gregory looks like a grown up Draco Malfoy in this…

As created a few days ago by DJ Rubbish, previous collaborator with RC regulars Cassetteboy…Professor Brian Cox goes on an vast cosmic intergalactic journey – interally.

Apparently he approves, saying on his twitter:Worryings few edits in this and ‘it’s superb!’ which makes me like him even more (I’m a fan of his via Shaun Keaveny‘s BBC Radio 6 Breakfast Show – I mean quantum physics and the workings of the universe over breakfast, what could be better?)

(current mirror of Newport State of Mind – try here if it gets pulled like the original)

Thanks EMI! If you hadn’t pulled this Jay-Z parody video I’d have never heard of it, just like you’ve never heard of the concepts of ‘cover’ ‘fair use’ ‘parody’ ‘humour’.

Sadly in the UK unlike the US, parody and fair use isn’t enshrined in law, so even a parody cover (it doesn’t sample any of the original track as far as I can hear) like this can get aggro and a DMCA from a humourless EMI (the publishing arm), whereas if this was created in the States there would be nothing they could do.

Anyway the track by Alex Warren and singer Terema Wainwright is genius especially the bits ‘Newport – access from the A402!’, rhyming hamster with rapstar, ‘Josie D’Arby is from Newport, yes we didn’t know either! Thank you Wikipedia!’ and ‘Bugger off Alicia, Shirley Bassey is our queen!’.

Of course the success has lead to responses, one from Goldie Lookin’ Chain alleging that they aren’t from Newport and doesn’t know what they are talking about (the performers are from Newport it seems, but the video director who wrote it is from London). I wonder if they’ll get pulled too?