NA-vi-IM-be

I know Naim. Very well. Too well. I spent a memorable year living with him in a filthy house in Brighton making stoner rap. He moved back to his native Copenhagen and started making soulful electronic pop music. You may have heard him on a TM Juke album or singing a hook on an obscure UK rap album but you probably don't know that he has an amazing album out right now called Balloon Pop, he's going to be in London for a one night only special show at the Vibe Bar in Brick Lane on Saturday the 15th of May, and he used to have a really big Afro. I decided to catch up with him in his favourite local Internets for a quick chat:



HT: So I know you like a brother but not everyone reading this does, so just let everyone know who you are and where you are.

Naim: I'm an artist, I'm in Copenhagen, Denmark and I make music - right now I'm in the process of promoting my debut album "Balloon Pop" and I've also begun work on my follow up solo album.

HT: You mention Balloon Pop; I know it's been out in Denmark for a while now but what about us poor sods in the UK? Can people cop a CD of it?

Naim: It's out there on various digital platforms, Juno etc. But it's not on iTunes or out in a physical format in the UK yet, only in Denmark.

HT: Well I hope someone gets the CD out here at some point, until then people should just grab the digital version. If someone does go on into their local Internet and buy the album what can they expect?

Naim: I put a lot of work into forming the album as a whole - from start to finish - so as it stands I couldn't take out one track without it disturbing the whole balance. That has been very important to me throughout the whole process, to create a solid album. That's what people can expect; a solid album - not just an alright single, a less alright single and then 9 fillers...

HT: Damn skippy, that's what I get from the album as well. Despite it being all brap and no crap there must be one tune that means the most to you, what is it?

Naim: Hmmmmmmm, that's a hard one - I think "I Was You", the end track on the album. Lyrics wise, it's the sort of theme I live by, or quite often remind myself of. It's all about learning and developing as a person - and not to criticize your every move, but more to go with the flow. I'd like to get to a point where I'm completely satisfied and accept myself as a whole, flaws and everything - and just go and explore and live it out!

HT: Word.

Naim: God, that last bit sounded awful.

HT: Nah, it sounds very Naim. Don't worry.

Naim: Explore your full potential!!! Go to Naim.com and see what YOU can do!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!!!!! But I'm also a bit boring, I like to drink also, and throw balls at people, yes…That's me! Give me a ball and I'll throw it out there man!

HT: Indeed. We're about halfway through so keep focussed.

Naim: Is the interview half done or half not done?? I don't know! I'm just a ball thrower! What do I know!!

HT: Quite. Speaking of balls, do you throw any balls around when you play live? With your upcoming show at the Vibe Bar in London's not-so-trendy Brick Lane, what can the clamouring, plimsoll clad masses expect from a Naim show? Balls?

Naim: The main thing for me is to connect with the audience - I suppose that involves some balls, I don't know, but something happens when I'm on stage - It's as if everything is allowed. Like holding someone's hand all of the sudden or caressing someone's head you know? Anyway, lots of energy and I also like to make little jokes with my face. Not to forget, I have The Amazing Drummer Machine with me - he also sings like an angel - but he beats the crap out of the drum kit, he's a bad boy!

HT: I'm already a bit aroused to be honest. Are you looking forward to showering down London with your voice and music?

Naim: YES!! So fucking much man, can't wait - I'm psyched!

HT: That's what I like to hear. We need you here more though. Who can people get in touch with if they want to bring Naim over to the UK?

Naim: Promoters should get in touch with me directly! I'm soooo up for playing the UK a lot more!!

HT: You heard it promoters, get on the blower, the Internet, Carrier Pigeon, whatever! Just holla at ya boy, and with the future in mind, what's next? New album? New projects?

Naim: Yeah, I've just started working on a second solo album and a little side dish, an EP of minimal house'ish style that should be ready this August! A little chillness pleaser for the day after the night before when you had a bit too much to drink, but you also need something to remind you of how great it was the night before.

HT: Well as long it's not trip-hop I'm cool with it. One of your side projects that has been getting love from the HT fam is a little slice of lunacy called Smell Your Bacon, what's the story behind that?

Naim: Smell Your Bacon is out as a single in Denmark, for now. It's a side project I'm on with Danish producer/singer/song writer - Frederik Thaae, he also goes under the name A Kid Hereafter...



HT: Cheers for clearing that up. Like many people who make music, you also listen to music as well, so what have you been listening to recently?


Naim: To be honest I listen to a lot of my own stuff, but I also make time to listen to Ariel Pink, Rinse FM and Adam Buxton's Big Mix Tape on BBC 6 every week.

HT: Can't fuck with Rinse and the Buxton for sure. Well cheers for taking the time out of your busy child rearing and marriage schedule to chat to HT. Any parting shots for the readers (yes, both of them)?

Naim: Stay true to yourself others and make sure you touch someone's face at least once a day. Thanks for having me on the Hear Today Show; it's been an utter pleasure!

So there you have it, wise words from Naim. Make sure you come down to the Vibe Bar on Saturday the 15th of May, it's 4 quid to get in and you get the full Naim live show, support from Hear Today's own Rupert Rappingfluff and a whole host of DJ's and booze and things. If you don't come to the show make sure you pick up Balloon Pop in any format you can. It's very good. Trust me.

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Posted by rup on 05/12 at 02:24 PM

Guru’s Beer

It was a balmy summer's eve in 2008. Rupert and I stepped off the train onto the familiar platform of Brighton... a home from home. We both lived there many years ago, and a collection of our close friends still do. We were to perform a gig that very evening, alongside Skrein and DJ IQ's new, unfortunately titled, 'Mama Said' band and in support of the legendary golden age rap-man GURU (RIP).

We weren't particularly excited about the prospect. Although 'Hard to Earn' was one of my favourite albums as a young teen, it's fair to say that in 2008 if you prodded shuffle on my ipod you weren't going to be landing on any Guru music.... no Mama Said either for that matter. Still a gig's a gig... and if not excited we were at least amused by the prospect of supporting the big, but short man (is it ok to say a dead man was short?).

Upon arriving at the Concorde 2 we bumped into DJ IQ and the band... Brass, Keys, Guitars, Strings, Singers... As two smirking overweight men with a CDR, we felt a wee bit under-dressed and promptly lost our smirks.



tbc

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Posted by steve on 04/29 at 12:22 PM

OYSTER

The sound of Ted's phone alarm broke through the fragile wall of sleep brought on by last night's misguided trip to the local boozer. Ted could still taste the shots of Sambuca that ended what was supposed to be a quiet night with a few friends, the football and a couple of pints of Guiness. Ted cursed his bad judgement as he blindly pawed at his phone hoping to make the noise go away. The idea of having '1st Of Tha Month' by Bone Thugs n Harmony set as his alarm tone seemed funny at the time, right now it seemed like his worst idea since those Sambuca shots. Somehow he managed to find the right key for snooze and he lay there attempting to get his brain in order for the forthcoming day. He had to have a shower. This was essential as Ted had a date after work. The first date had gone surprisingly well, Ted hadn't said anything offensive, had actually been witty rather than obnoxious and he hadn't ended the night being sick over his date.

Ted's phone vibrated and broke his reverie, a text had come through: "Rly lukin fwd 2 tonite lv Emz xx". Ted's first reaction was to smile, his second was to think "Should I really be seeing someone who can't even be bothered to spell texts correctly on a Blackberry?" and his third was to think "I'm really going to fuck this up if I'm not careful". Despite the childlike texts she insisted on sending, Emily (he could never bring himself to use the frankly ridiculous Emz she liked people to use) was a sharp, intelligent and beautiful woman, and Ted was still shocked that she seemed to like him.

Ted must have fallen back asleep as the next thing he heard was Bone Thugs n Harmony again. "SHITTING FUCK I'M GOING TO BE LATE" thought Ted as he convinced his phone to shut up. He fell out of bed, obviously still drunk, and stumbled down to the shower. Greeting him as he approached the door was the sound of running water, a bad rendition of the latest big tune by a quirky female singer songwriter and the unmistakable smell of Badedas. Ted, to put it mildly, was nonplussed by this development, he knew Sarah didn't have work today, he didn't even know what she did if he was being honest, something creative that mainly seemed to involved meeting people at cafes for late breakfasts and then going to parties with the same people she met for breakfast. After standing outside the door for five minutes thinking about ways he could kill her and get away with it Ted realised he didn't have the time or the inclination to argue with his least favourite housemate, he was too hungover and, by now, too late. He went to the downstairs toilet and washed himself in the sink as best as possible, he then urinated and was almost simultaneously sick.

Ted decided to skip breakfast, he'd get a McMuffin or something, and made a mental note to buy toothpaste and a toothbrush on his way in to work. He headed back to his room to get dressed. Things were looking good for Ted today. After flinging on some clothes (Ted worked in the creative industries where no one really cared if you looked like a tramp) he ran down the stairs and out into the South London street he'd been living on for the last 3 years. It was meant to be a stop gap before finding somewhere a bit less student-chic to live but the combination of low rent and a lack of motivation had meant the stop gap was now his life. Ted liked the area though, and was the only one out of the four people living there who had actually made the effort to get to know the neighbours. Ted liked to think this was because he wasn't a typical provincial fuckwit scared of everyone else in London but it probably had more to do with the fact that he had been there the longest.

The main road was pretty busy. One of the other side streets had been cordoned off by police tape. it could have been anything but already one of Ted's elderly neighbours was approaching him saying that she heard it was a stabbing and probably to do with the gang war that was supposedly raging in the area at the moment. Ted often turned his brain off at moments like this, letting the words wash over him. Of course stabbings happened, and shootings as well, but usually it turned out to be a road accident or something else tragic but not exactly sinister. He made his excuses and left his neighbour to speculate on the gory details of the supposed gang murder with her crew of pensioners.

Ted had to top up his Oyster card, he could see his bus in the distance and hoped there wouldn't be a queue, but of course there was a big queue. He resigned himself to missing the bus and joined the queue. Everyone looked a bit like him, even the women, some were more smartly dressed but they all shared that ghostly rush hour look of people struggling hard to get somewhere they would rather not be. The queue moved quickly, he grabbed a can of Coke and a Snickers (his appetite returning with a vengeance after his little incident in the toilet) then he put them back and got a Diet Coke and some kind of cereal bar. The health benefits of this change were probably negligible but it's the thought that counts thought Ted as he thought about it. He was almost at the front of the queue now, one more person to go. In a way he didn't want this moment to end. As soon as he topped up that would be it, off to work and another day to play out until he went on his date with Emily and fucked it up by revealing what he thought was the real Ted (this "real" Ted was really just a creation of his own, a combination of low self esteem and general dissatisfaction with life, ask most of his friends and they would tell you that Ted was a stand up guy, one of the good ones, but this was something that Ted would deny vehemently).

The person in front of him got his 20 Mayfair Lights and moved off. Ted greeted the Shopkeeper; they had a bit of rapport, born out of Ted's habit of getting a six pack most nights after work. He was a valued customer. "I've just got to top up my Oyster" said Ted, reaching round in his jacket with one arm as he placed the Diet Coke and cereal bar on the counter, "Going on a diet I see" said the shopkeeper in a gently teasing tone, Ted laughed. He couldn't find his Oyster card, he muttered under his breath, "fucking today of all fucking days, fucking, fuck, bollocks, fuck". Then he realised it was probably in his inside pocket, the pocket he usually put his wrap of shit cocaine in at the weekends, he reached into the pocket, there was something cold and slimy in there, he felt something hard as well, like a shell, with some mucus attached to it. Ted pulled whatever it was out. He looked down into his hand, the shopkeeper staring at him quizzically, sitting there in Ted's hand, instead of the card in a plastic wallet, and there was no mistaking it, was an actual Oyster.


The End

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Posted by rup on 03/29 at 07:50 PM

Arting

D i d s o m e s c r e e n p r i n t i n g









Birthday card / present I made for Dan... That's a customised USB with his boat on it:








Dan was clearly thrilled with the effort I'd put in to his card design & creation... he immediately likened it to the architectural compositions of Estonian-Jewish heavyweight Louis Kahn:

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Posted by steve on 02/20 at 10:43 PM

DEADBOY

Who is Deadboy? Introduce yourself to our seven readers...

Hi! Deadboy is from south east london, and makes kind of uncertain garage/house/R'nB/rave/step on a probably too old laptop, and sometimes DJs. And sometimes makes wierd R'nB/hiphop stuff as well.

Uncertain as in you're not sure what you're doing?

More as in the tunes are not sure what they're supposed to be, but I'm into that, I like hearing a record that sounds like a bunch of disparate stuff all working together, as long as its coherent to some degree and not 'novelty'. But its all definitely rooted in garage. It's garage that sounds like other stuff.

Yeah, those drum patterns feel unmistakeably rooted in garage. Was garage a big part of your musical upbringing? I'm one of these mugs who's only really discovering a lot of it during this current revival...

I guess so, I was pretty young at the time, my older sister in the room next to me was well into jungle and garage and stuff, always playing all of the tape packs and compilations. I was in bands and stuff in my youth but I always listened to dance music and made bits of it on the side. I got properly stuck in with grime I guess, thats when I got a dodgy copy of reason and started making crappy kind of grimey 2 step tunes, and bought a cheap pair of decks, around the time of stuff like Jon e Cash, Wizzbit, Wiley's instrumentals, Slimzee mixes, More Fire Crew and Roll Deep and stuff, then got into dubstep through hearing people like Plasticman (before he was plastician), Slaughter Mob, early Kode9 and Digital Mystikz and Markone and D1. I liked it because it seemed like dubby future garage and grime at the time, but then when it all got half step and overtly agressive I totally lost interest, and the more minimal techno influenced stuff left me a bit cold so I went back to things like dancehall and the original garage stuff and more recently UK funky, which I think is more of a continuation of garage than dubstep is. There's still the odd dubstep tune that pricks up my ears but I dont really care to sift through all the boring stuff to find them, luckily I have some good mates who do that for me so I can just listen to them play out.





The Grime and Dancehall influences come through... Your beats sound really raw and emotive... Not over-processed or over-tweaked... What's inspiring you musically right now? Any hot picks we should be checking for?

Yeah thats fair to say, I was never really that technical or patient, if something doesn't sound right pretty quickly I won't spend long tweaking it, I'll scrap it and try something else.

Lately I've been listening to a bit of 4x4 stuff from people like Tuff Jam, Confetti Records, Anthill Mob and Todd Edwards, stuff like that, and some early rave stuff like Foul Play and Manix. I really like bassline house, and a lot of dancehall, particularly with female vocals, and RnB, especially from the Dream and Danja. I love Cassie, Official Girl is one of my favourite tunes right now. And I listen to a lot of Scott Walker. I was really into the stuff from James Blake, and Julio Bashmore and Karizma are making some great house at the moment. At this point I should shout out Ultrasound and Alex Gordon who are making some great big tunes right now that people will be hearing soon hopefully. And of course Hyper Black Bass.

Shit, I really need to check that Dream album... I also love Cassie... Really into the CFCF remix of Official girl. Big fan of James Blake too... I saw him play live recently... not only a badman producer but an incredible singer. Before we let you go, what have we got to look forward to from yourself? Releases / remixes?

I've just finished a little kind of 2 step remix thing of Official girl, gonna upload it soon probably.
Got the U Cheated 12" coming out on Well Rounded very very soon, and a couple of 7"s of some cheeky RnB/rap bootlegs from the likes of Cassie, Ashanti, Three-Six Mafia and Lil Kim in the pipeline as well. And hopefully a bunch more shows.

I think U Cheated is going to be one of the 12"s of the year... Thanks very much for taking the time out to talk to us...

Thanks! No problem.

- Click here for more on Deadboy and check out Brock Lee Riddim, from the forthcoming 12", streaming below...

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Posted by steve on 08/26 at 01:16 PM

OSTMix

So i've been collecting soundtracks for a while now. I don't have a crazy collection, but i have a good few! I sometimes like the incidental music on them, but often i go straight to the groovy track. As often is the case there is only maybe a couple of standout tracks in this vein on the lp, so i wanted to make a mix compliling a bunch of the hottest tracks, really for my own listening pleasure. As I was dealing with more funky orientated tracks (the last one was a hippy psych mix) i could add a bit more mixing to the podcast. Also having got my hands on a stack of radio-spot advert 45's i was able to bring a bit of humour to it too.
I've tried to include a variety of styles from different soundtrack 'genres', and i tried not to get stuck in the typical generic wah-wah grooves. I've also included some well-loved 'classics', but being a digger, i've chosen to include some more obscure cover versions rather than the more well known originals, not just for the sake of it. The covers i've included are better than the original versions. I've not stuck strictly to OST's, i've used some library lp's - but i think everything used is by a composer of soundtracks.
Whatever... get it here.

Cheers,
Wyndham Earl

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Posted by steve on 05/29 at 03:31 PM

BUY RUP’s LP!!

*STOP PRESS!!! Buy the entire LP digital download with full artwork for UK3.50 ("that's the price of a sandwich?!?"... delivered to your inbox - CLICK BELOW!!.





We've sold out of CDs... Only pressed up 200 and won't be doing anymore. I think there are still a few available at www.suspectpackages.com and at Rarekind Records in Brighton http://rarekindrecords.co.uk/music/lzax9979/rupert-just-woke-up. Sincere thanks to everyone who bought one...

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Posted by steve on 03/19 at 12:55 PM

STYL

Artist: Rup featuring Naim
Title: 'Something that you Like'
Produced by Naim
Label: Hear Today
Release: Late 2008

www.myspace.com/rupthecnut
www.myspace.com/naimnafar
Video Director / Producer: Rich Clements
www.richillustration.com

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Posted by steve on 10/08 at 11:35 AM

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