Stinkmix 12 – Late Night Snack

A curious conundrum of a curly concoction is this one. From ’99, possibly 2000 when I was flinging out mixtapes like they were going out of fashion. The whole idea with this one was to pick tunes that stood up on their own merits but could also handle the background business, acting as a bed for all manner of foolish spoken word riddiculation to occur. That said there are a couple of vocal cuts, real gooduns too (the timeless Cala Boca Menino and Natural Calamity’s wickedly under-rated cover of And That’s Saying A Lot) because rules are meant to be broken right?!

The first cut is a bit of a cheat since it’s already a superb, spoken, slice and dice thing.. but give a man a chance to sup a cuppa and lash something together for the start of a long mix won’t you. Early on there’s a whole heap of Reverend Jim from the mean streets of NYC – that album has been gold for me – a find from when Mosgiel used to be the spot for picking up that kind of tackle. The loungey lift off is sent stratospheric with the inclusion of one of my favourite ever pieces of New Zealand music Oswald Cheesman’s Rouseabout from the album Wayleggo. Let alone the fact that it’s a symphony, a symphony I tell you.. about sheep rearing and shearing – which immediately makes it more genuinely befuddling and brilliant than any number of lauded overseas tryhards – it’s just a a scorching piece of music. N.Z.S.O. fully represent, especially the brush drummer who sounds almost timestretched. I have a few Oswald Cheesman recordings and he was the light entertainment don down these ways, before he passed in 1985. I remember trying to find out about him in the 90’s, and aside from some of the greyhairs at Stebbing and the odd – ‘my Dad used to work with him’ type comment – there wasn’t much. Now the internet is alive with data on the original OC and you can find out all about dude, so get familiar. Kiwi Pacific Records bought the gentle boom and it’s still findable in op shops, on the rare occasions I play that way these days.

Moving along – the sofistikated sounds continue with a John Barry favourite (of who knows how many?!) and his almost equally esteemed Gemerman counterpart-hausen Peter Thomas (of Raumpatrol fame) and Joan Dontato’s aforementioned Braz classic. It might seem a surprise to find the poor man’s George Benson, better known as flaccid jazzer Ronny Jordan, on a Stinkmix but this DJ Spinna remix is a particularly plump specimen and an excellent backdrop for a little of the brilliant bawdy humour of the original Red Foxx, who could lay claim to being featured atop more Stinkmixes than most.

UK hip hop instrumental sensei DJ Bombjack is one of the overlooked ones in my book, many of his more celebrated contemporaries are in comparison, overshook… As this laze-strumental shows Bombjack is on point and under-rated. Maintaining the domestic inclination it’s a blat up the motorway for some alphabetized Manchester magic featuring Rae & Christian/Aim and some wonderful words before (US based but Manc released) Tony D emerges from the sonic swamp with a crucial post midnight morsel Welbury Way. Keeping it across the ditch Declaime and Primeridian continue the snoozy sizzle avoiding the soporific by a hairs breadth at max.

We’re into a couple of longer and more involved tales here with accents too …ooh! There are actually a couple of dialoguical threads that run throughout the whole mix and for alert headphone listeners a few trails, tangents and tone tales to be had amongst the spoken verbiage… not that I’d recommend looking too hard… they are that bloody oblique I only remembered ’em just now as I’m playing it through. Space Time Continuum’s remix of Lypid is a beautiful sloucher of a tune that (as with many of the tracks) stood out and demanded inclusion by not standing out too much or demanding anything ..it’s the beauty of a brilliant background…sometimes other tracks are just trying to say too much! This was originally released on Statra, a great label out of New York of just the sort that is very much missed these days.

Introducing the well worn concept of a bit of Nipponese niceness Joe Hisaishi’s Play On The Sands was lifted from a Japanese only mix-CD by Gilles Peterson, pulling tracks from other folks mixes doesn’t sit right, but in this case it was a chance to expose the delightful rotating repetitions of this smouldering scorchulator outside of a frankly hard to get and overly expensive disc (it also gave me a chance to add some heavily effected Tarzan calls and a bit of timestretched George Carlin…as you do).

Next it’s train time with Bungalow dwelling Hermans Daeurfisch and our old mucker Funki Porcini hitching a carriage to Dutchie Jerry Van Royen. There’s some railway related hi-jinx from a French narrator and y’know…more spoken nonsense (‘this cat man, he goes’) and effecty bollocks.

Heading back to the land of the rising 12″ with a brace of Major Force related cuts makes me wonder what the hell are Typhoon Tosh and KUDO are doing these days? I know, note and appreciate some Japanese viewers of this blog in me stats, so if anyone knows, or can illuminate, I will sort out a suitable reward for hard info. And That’s Saying A Lot is a breakbeat classic (ie – not a breaks classic involving Chemical Bros, Ozstraylian munters and tired uptempo beats – but a classic in terms of killer open drums) that was originally recorded by Christine Perfect, better known as a pre-Fleetwood Mac Christine McVie. Unsurprisingly given my strong and abiding revulsion towards almost all of Mk II FM’s dreary output (not so with the excellent Mk I FM), I’m no fan of anything more than the first 10 seconds or so of the original (which incidentally has been sampled by Dan The Automator, 88 Keys, a whole host of others and ahem… yours truly) but this cover is a belter that gets a little spacebound on this occasion. Don’t know too much about Natural Calamity (anyone?!) but the Major Force connect was enough to pique my rekid buying sensors way back and whaddya know – there they are next with the majestic Mugen In The Morning… a poifect synthy slovenly loper. From memory, some of the Carlin coffeespeak ended up as is on the Phase 5 Space Bar album so I guess this was sorted before, or at the very latest, during the extended protractions that were the finishing of that album with the Rt Fantastic Angus McNaughton.

Moving into the concluding trio David Axelrod should need no introduction but back then some of his gear was a lot harder to get… I suspect us more wizened folks will (optimistically) wind up in some sort of bar (or retirement home), hopefully aided by a range of soothing quality chemicals we can only dream of now, talking about “remember when getting your hands on the music was the hard part…arf arf chortle snortle”. Currently the most strenuous part is generally wading through and filtering the endless waves of old, new, undiscovered, re-released, never heard, should have never been heard etc etc etc items without losing sight of the goal, getting sent off on multitudinous tangents or lured in by short shelf life, hype bait….nurse..the screens!

Nearly there – Dooblong Tongdra is so criminally under-rated and sub-celebrated that it’s a crime, a big fucking huge crime of epic proportions… squared and quite possibly cubed! Quite how such a devastatingly talented and original artist can get ignored when shite of the most cynical, offensive and syphilitic mundanity is championed endlessly is beyond me. A pox upon all the overly well adjusted, business planned, social media’d, listener voted, fashionably distressed, sponsor saturated, post dubstep, post whatever – 2013 genre-bilge artists. I want to see Oswald Cheesman and Dooblong Tongdra’s leering mugs on freshly minted currency… or at the very least stamps – or there will be blood… or at least a lot of huffing and puffing.

Finally a fleeting piece of brilliance on 7″ on A-Musik from the incomparable Terre Thaemlitz, that I now have to digitise ASAP as listening again has made me want to end, or start, a night with it somewhere, once more. You won’t find a more interesting and unique DJ/producer/human being than Terre Thaemlitz (to start check here, here, here or here ) and this 7″ is so highly rated round these parts we even have His’n’Hers copies like some sort of metaforical 70’s bathrobe kind of hooha. Don’t sleep on Thaemlitz’s gear as DJ Sprinkles either, it’s as good as it gets.

Damn – long ramble….my apologies. That’s why it’s taken a little overtime to post… easily distracted me. Usual here we go yo what’s the scenario, dl link and tracklist underneath. Next train to leave the station is Stinkmix 16 – Teddy Boys Picnic, will be up soonest.

Stinkmix 12 – Late Night Snack by Stinkyjim on Mixcloud

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01 Sound Sniper In Sri-Lanka – World Famous
02 Traces – Curd Durca
03 Rouseabout – Oswald Cheesman
04 Human Jungle (Alt Version) – John Barry
05 Girls Asylum – Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra
06 Cala Boca Menino – Joan Donato
07 A Brighter Day (Dj Spinna Remix) – Ronny Jordan
08 Open Mic Session – Dj Bombjack
09 Anything You Want (Aim Instrumental Remix) -Rae & Christian
10 Welbury Way – Tony D
11 Illmindmuzik (Instrumental) – Declaime
12 90 Degrees Longitude – Primeridian
13 Stratospheric (Sapce Time Continuum Remix) – Lypid
14 Play On The Sands – Joe Hisaishi
15 Trip On A Train – Dauerfisch
16 Great Train Robbery – Funki Porcini & Jerry Van Rooyen
17 And That’s Saying A Lot – Natural Calamity
18 Mugen – In The Morning – Major Force
19 The Fly – David Axelrod
20 Virtual Bestiality – Dooblong Tongdra
21 A Musak Program B – Terre Thaemlitz