Sometimes there are moments and sets in London clubland where the stars align, certain artists are in the building and the energy is LOOSE.

Skee Mask at the HVYWGHT 4th Birthday back in February was one of those moments.

Following on from a South London Digital Mystikz homecoming at peak time to a fever pitch Brixton Electric. Playing a dubstep party for the first time, alongside legends of the scene - Skee Mask proceeded to play one of the hardest sets we’ve ever seen, effortlessly mixing classic grime into dubstep into techno into breaks and beyond.

A flurry of MC’s were in the wings, none of whom were booked to host the set but had no choice but to jump on. The energy was infectious - Flowdan B2B Trim B2B Chunky B2B SP:MC over Skee Mask on the Sinai Soundsystem. We can guarantee you will never get this combination of artists on a set EVER again.

Listen back as we jump into the set roughly 10 minutes in. Flowdan has just jumped on and Trim is lurking.

Skee Mask w/ Flowdan, Trim, SP:MC & Chunky - Recorded Live at HVYWGHT 4th Birthday

A song made as a resident artist at Primary Studios, Nottingham, supported by a-n the artist's information company. 

My proposal is to re-interpret Brian Eno's classic ambient album, Music for Airports, for the budget airline experience. Songs made on a budget are sampled and over-inflated with digital sound elements, comparing the mixed joys of budget travel to lived experience of bipolar 2; from the manic grandiosity of the 'priority lane' to the depressive torpor of a delayed or cancelled flight. Accept the Voucher was inspired by a radio show about the frustration of budget airline passengers when their flights were cancelled after lockdown.

Accept the Voucher

Join me every 1st, 3rd and 5th week of the month
Tuesdays 7-9pm
Rinse.fm / Rinse App

Kool FM Podcast

Sweetpea presents The 'PeaPod' Cast (Deeper Sessions) - 16/1/24

Downstream

Downstream (feat. John Anderson)

To celebrate the Metalheadz back catalogue Remasters series Randall has kindly supplied us with this mix. As a Metalheadz crew member from the off there was no better choice.

Book Randall: paddy@friendlypiranha.com

Twitter @randallmac2

Facebook - www.facebook.com/DjRandallMac2


Buy Remasters

Randall- Metalheadz Re-Mastered History Mix

I made this jam in my room on Fordham Street in Whitechapel, London, in 2004. It was a hot summer day and I was totally manic. I was between 1st and 2nd year of an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art. I had just come off a course of Seroxat, an anti-depressant drug, a year earlier, and I had been in a terrible depression for a year. The withdrawal symptoms from the Seroxat were awful,  but I survived it. Then in my second year at RCA I moved house, from Brixton to Whitechapel, with new friends from my year at RCA. I think the mania was a delayed reaction to coming off Seroxat, triggered perhaps by being in a much better house situation - i'd needed a change of scene and I got one. The flat was just off Commercial Road near Tayabs restaurant, above a little carpet and corner shop. From the roof you could clearly see the minaret at Whitechapel mosque and hear the call to prayer. All the shops in the area would close their shutters during prayer times.  In my bedroom I had a Yamaha A3000 sampler, an Alesis drum machine, a Korg electribe rhythm machine, a mic, an electric guitar. I made a beat on the Alesis drum machine and fed it live through the Yamaha A3000 sampler, which was on 'record' mode. This enabled me to set a high sample rate and to channel the beat through a powerful three-way effects unit. One effect is that the sampler will remix a beat randomly. I messed around with the pitch of the beat on the Alesis and had lots of effects on it through the sampler. I messed about with the dials on the Yamaha so much whilst making this track - changing effect parameters and so forth - that a few of them snapped off. I need to fix it still. The electribe kept switching itself off too so I found a really simple bass sound and jammed on it gently by tapping on the korg keypad, being careful not to knock the power cable out and turn the whole thing off. I played around with the beat for ages and worked out ways in which I could manipulate it live that might sound interesting. I saved up for the sampler and a korg CS1x keyboard by working day shifts at the very noisy metal pressings factory in Donnington where my dad worked, then nightshifts at a dodgy cinema in Loughborough, ripping tickets. I saved up and got myself a basic studio. I ran cubase off either an amiga 500 or an Atari - I forget which. The korg keybord was a good midi controller that came as part of a bundle when I bought the sampler (£1200 I think). I had bought a Roland Juno 6 in Manchester a year previously when I was in clover from an end-of-school party I threw, which I raised lots of door money on. I also bought an Alesis drum machine. So I jammed it all together and tried to push all the machines as far as I could. I was listening to a lot of Arthur Russell and ODB at the time, and I was obsessed with DIY and post-punk music. There is also the influence of Reinforced records, which I collected a lot as a teen - sonar circle, nasty habits, arcon 2, alpha and omega, nucleus and paradox, procedure 769, G-Force & Seiji...). All great breakbeat records that I bought from Selectadisc in Nottingham, spending all my money on d&b and attempting make it myself, but always improvised within certain parameters and recorded live.

ACCURIST2

Made in 1999. I made minidiscs full of loops of samples - tom waits, arto lindsay, 4 hero, debussy, alpha & omega, john coltrane, nucleus & paradox, my own samples of electronic noise, some weird percussion of an lp from a charity shop, grooves, ends of songs, bass lines, stabs, breaks... You can put track marks wherever you like on a minidisc and then press random repeat and it seemlessly shuffles through the samples. I had 100's on each disk. Here there are two playing at once through fx, and some other live ambient noises too. I had heard The Bribe by John Zorn around this time and thought it was great. I was listening to a lot of d&b off reinforced, 4 hero, sonar circle, metalheadz, certificate 18, juice box, photek, source direct, j majik, arto lindsay, dj spooky, sonic youth just had experimental jetset trash and no star I think. I was into Washing Machine too - the play between a groove and abstraction. Herbie Hancock - Sextet. Robery Wyatt - Rock Bottom, Shleep, Nothing Can Stop Us Now and Dondestan (the original one). The Wu Tang Forever double lp, Arkology boxset by Lee Scratch Perry, Bonnie Prince Billy was probably on Ease down the road round then, or i see a darkness. I had the album by Arthur Russell with Every Step is Moving me up on it. Sam Prekop and all the Tortoise and Sea and the Cake artists from Chicago. David Grubbs. Camoufleur by Gastr Del Sol. Jim O'Rourke's solo records with the weird cartoon covers. NYC Ghosts and Flowers by Sonic Youth - such a weird album. I was trying to push myself musically, and to see what the sampler could do. A lot of the work is textural, with sounds chosen for the sound of the sound - the grit of strange effect. I broadcast this track on Ruskin Radio when I was at Oxford Uni studying BFA Fine Art, in the 1st year. My tutors the artists Maria Chevska & Mark Dean set up a once-only broadcast from the studios at Bullingdon Road (Bully Rd as we called it). I thought  this track would be interesting to broadcast as it might suggest a person flicking through radio channels making a groove as they go along. The photo is a new drawing I am working on that revisits stuff I did 20 years ago when this music was made.

QUESTION99

Rob C Trax - Flat Earth Life
Electronic / Deep House
5'08''

QUESTION99

Simon Raven