Dial tone prob.Mirai Kami

Thank you DG. 

Cover by GAIKA 
Original photo by Diogo Lopes
www.gaika.co

The Villainous Theme

S A W W A V E

did u miss these rhymes when i was gone

(c)2016 by Reinier Van Houdt,
Release date October 2016,
Get your vinyl copy via Hallow Ground,
http://hallowground.com/hg1606

All tracks composed, played and mixed by Reinier van Houdt 
Guest players: 
Susanne Fröhlich, recorders 
Simon Lenski, cello 
Sascha Sulimma, drum machine 
Paul Amlehn, voice text

Reinier Van Houdt - The Fabric Of Loss, Orphic Asylum, Vessel

Rachael

LYRICS:
Raise your head

Woke up in a foreign land
Didn’t recognise my home
TV says a stranger is my enemy
When I swear he is my friend
Demagogues and prophets in ascendency
They’re not speaking in my name
Come to me – and I will hold you as a brother
And I know you’ll do the same
(and so I say)
	You must raise your head, look up to the sky
	Or you and I will sleepwalk out into the danger
	You must raise your hands, to the other side
	Salvation only lies, in the eyes of a stranger
Woke up in a foreign land
Didn’t recognise my home
TV says my troubles are another’s fault
When I swear they are my own
Demagogues and prophets in ascendency
Say that we should be apart
Doesn’t take the news to tell you when a life matters
You know it in your heart
(and so I say)
Chorus 2	


(middle 8)
But all of the songs are, telling me, telling me
That all you need is love
And all of the songs keep, telling me, telling me
That we shall overcome
And all of the songs are, telling me, telling me
That we can make it through the night
And all of the songs keep, telling me, telling me
A million radios must be right!

You must raise your head, look up to the sky
	Or you and I will sleepwalk out into the danger
	You must raise your hands, to the other side
	Salvation only lies, in the eyes of a stranger

=====
CREDITS

Written Hal Ritson, Richard Adlam

Published Henry Ritson administered by Kobalt Music Group and copyright control

Produced Hal Ritson, Richard Adlam + Michele Balduzzi

Mixed Wez Clarke at The Old Hit Factory

Mastered Dave Kutch at The Mastering Palace

Lead vocals Sifiso Mazibuko. Backing vocals Vula Malinga, dTale. Programming + percussion Richard Adlam. Keyboards Hal Ritson. Additional programming Michele Balduzzi. Guitars + bass Rob Harris. Drums Alex Reeves. Trumpet Neil Waters. Trombone Trevor Mires. Saxophone Graeme Blevins. Strings Arranged by Fabio D’Andrea for SNFNK with violin by Tom Piggot Smith (leader), Ciaran McCabe, Julian Tear, Matt Elsto; Viola by Emma Owens + Fiona Leggat + Cello by Nerys Richards + Julia Dale.

Raise Your Head

Raise Your Head (Original Extended 12" Version)

Originally conceived as a hip-hop scratch/battle record for turntablists, ‘Do or Die’ is made up of short instrumental beats interlaced with sound effects and vocal snippets. Predominantly constructed from obscure vinyl samples, the record also features an Emu Drumulator, and live performance samples of cello, organ and percussion. Re-contextualized as home listening experience, the album sounds timeless and fresh, a musical journey rich with drama, romanticism, and humor. 

‘Do or Die’, was produced over the course of a year (2003-2004), and self-pressed by Milk and Beef as 1,000 vinyl LPs at the end of 2004. This pressing was taken on by short-lived label The Thin Man, and released in 2005 with catalog number TTM001. 

Of the 1,000 copies pressed, 100 were distributed directly by Milk and Beef, and we believe a further 150 were sold through The Thin Man. So roughly 750 copies remained in stock, 50 of which were held by the artists, 700 by the label. 

In 2009, Milk and Beef were approached by Bladud Flies! with a view to re-releasing Do or Die. The Thin Man were duly contacted to request the return of the 700 copies, but to our horror and disgust, confessed to having ‘thrown them in a skip’ a couple of years previous. They showed very little remorse, and we were left shocked, upset, and short of 700 records… 

Not wishing to dwell on this distressing and acrimonious situation, we decided to go ahead anyway, individually silk-screening a new sleeve design for the 50 copies still in our possession, and releasing them as a now very limited one off edition: Do or Die (Resurrection). Vinyl purchasers will also receive a free download of a digital version re-mastered by the.bricoluer and featuring 2 bonus tracks, Louise and VW. 

We suspect there are still copies of The Thin Man release of Do or Die out there somewhere, possibly in the back of a record shop, or maybe in a skip near you. However, it’s safe to say that this limited run of 50 editions are all salvaged artifacts to be treasured. 

Is this the end of the Milk and Beef story? Or will there be ‘Life After Death’… 

Produced by D. Batters & S. Boyle. 
Additional production 'Closure' M. Ashley, K. Lemonnier. 
Cello by M. Henry, Bongos by J. Addy, 
Organs by D. Batters, Flute by L. Hawtin. 
Mixed & Mastered by S. Boyle in darkness. 
Digital re-master by the bricoleur.

Ltd Vinyl

07 Closure (Milk & Beef - Do or Die)

To keep calm. Classics and rare ambient-electronica vinyls.

2H Chill Out Mix For V

Satanic Memphis Murder Rap and Dirty South Hiphop fused with Grime, Bass, and Dubstep instrumentals.  

Fuck your political correctness.   This is the voice of the otherwise voiceless, testament to the real lived experience of people so marginalised that they literally live outside of society.   This culture must be celebrated with sober and deep recognition of the harsh and alienated social realities of racialised capitalism which shapes it.  This music must be loved with full awareness and despite of the fact that gangsterism is a blight on African American communities.  

After the Black Panthers and other similar inner city Black and Brown Marxist revolutionary movements were systematically destroyed in the infamous "Counter-Intelligence Program" of 1960s repression, organisation leaders framed and imprisoned or murdered by FBI age, this culture of gangsterism which valorises criminality was born.  This is the nihilistic sound of revolutionary energy decapitated, confused, mislead, turned inward, causing harm to each other rather than working to overthrow the oppressors.  

Musically, complex polyrhythms in the verses replicate the patterns of African drums, and delivered often with a ferocity and intensity that is the ultimate expression of late capitalism.  The alienation, anxiety, frustration, rage, and sadness in this music speaks to all of us.   

Theorists have described how bourgeois society deprives citizens of both a sense of adventure and of community. To people locked into a predictable life of school, employment, and retirement, their everyday existence a dull cycle of work, consumption, and sleep, the life of the criminal is the exact opposite, and captivating in ways their own lives can never be. This is why suburbanites mimic the style, language, attitude and posture of inner city gangsters. Trap music reproduces a feeling of danger, of intensity, of life and death urgency, and allows people who live safe and boring lives to briefly approximate a feeling of being truly alive.

Hood music is also a narrative of clandestinity, of trust, of honor, of unbreakable familial bonds, of real friendship and real enmity with very, very real consequences — a sense of true community which the comfortable classes entirely lack. When a real loss of agency and immediacy is assigned to the middle and upper classes, whose existence consists of tedious complacency and suffocating security, it of course isn’t morally wrong for them to try to fill this emptiness. 

Trap is perhaps the most direct reflection of our times, where young people face grim personal prospects in a diminishing job market, amidst escalating economic, political, and environmental crisis. Trap music exactly mirrors the coldness, meanness, brutality, abjection, dehumanization, and desperation of late capitalism. Extending what Young Jeezy said about the rap game being the same as the trap game: the trap game (selling drugs) is a microcosmic facsimile of macrocosmic capitalism. Reality in the hood, a vicious cycle of addiction, suppliers, gangs, crime, police, and prisons, all part of a system designed to sustain this process, is a perfect miniscule model of reality around the globe, a larger vicious cycle where powerful states administer political and physical violence, destabilize resource-rich regions, manufacturing terrorism, while arms dealers make trillions, and corporations exploit the global South, devastating the natural environment. Trap music comes from a visceral experience of survival on the love-less streets, but is a mirror image of the world at large: a neo-Darwinian nightmare in its rawest form.

07 Closure (Milk & Beef - Do or Die)

Bladud Flies!

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