Greetings From Nittyville.

Reviewing and trailering the series, with contributions from MED, Guilty Simpson, Strong Arm Steady, Karriem Riggins, and AG; and a Jaylib-era track earmarked for the not-to-be second album.

Medicine Show No. 7.

Arranged By Kieran Hebden.

Three brilliant re-routings of Detroit machine funk — Moodymann in particular — into deep mid-Atlantic co-minglings with raw, old-school hiphop and house.
Str8 Crooked is clattering, chugging jack, holding something like Paisley soul under the water; Build Back Better Sweatshops is more driving, riven with breakdowns and horror-show vocal samples. With an uptempo downbeat which nonetheless sounds like a tolling bell, the epic, immersive, sixteen-minutes-plus Episcopi Vagantes pulls off the deadly combination of a kind of stifled, timeworn, melodic wistfulness and percussively restless, passing-through urgency.
This is killer dance music, run through with swingeing, parping bass and ruff b-boy drum-machine rhythms: encrusted and detailed, mangled and nervy, but intensely hard-grooving; wired with punk insouciance, edginess, and free spirit.
Bim bim bim.

Visceral, elemental, electronic funk, conjured from scraps of sound, breath, mutterings, dubwise remembrances, scuffling, sweat and blood, thin air — ‘crawled out of the slime’, as the opener puts it, self-engendering like the baddie in Terminator — all harnessed to cruelly grooving earthquake bass and b-boy drum science.
Rhythmically it has ants in its pants and it needs to dance, with an improvisatory, streetwise nervous energy and uninhibited, purposeful rapture — akin to this guy, say, eighteen minutes in — crossed with on-song Pepe Bradock and stripped-to-the-bone, mongrel hip-hop.
It’s unruly and edgy, a bit off its rocker, emotionally ranging — typically anxious, often nostalgic — and riveting dance music.
Judge-dread mastering by D&M; first-class Pallas pressing; stunning gatefold artwork by Will Bankhead.
Ruff ruff ruff.

‘The opener Cans People is an archaic rave monster, To Know Those Who is non-linear dub techno, Nocturnal Palates expands the filter-house universe, and Rave Nite Itz All Right hits you hard and strange, kind of subtly.
‘The last two tracks really let loose. Madteo manipulates time, space and sounds to create the psychedelic secrets of Luglio Ottantotto. And Emo G (Sticky Wicket) explores the outskirts not only of House or Techno or whatever but music in general: a fifteen-minute trip through the low frequencies, the rumble, the dark hearts, and the enchantment. Breathtaking.’

Increasingly interested in making reggae, the Basic Channel duo first recorded with Tikiman in 1995, laying the foundations of Burial Mix.

Besides Basic Channel and Maurizio, in 1994 Mark and Moritz set up Main Street, for song-oriented, vocal house. This first single whips an Isleys b-line, and features Londoner Andy Cunningham, plus a Chez n’ Trent.

With Tiki.

With Tiki, wrapping up Main Street in 1999.

Bristolian singer Andy ‘Caine’ Cunningham was a big fan of Al Green.

Ray Barney’s label is the bees knees in raw, stripped Chicago house music. From Duane And Co’s breakthrough and killer classics from the likes of young Lil Louis, through to the first shoots of ghetto house.

Rodders meets Wrongtom, re-running original raps like Chin High and Juggle Tings Proper, this time with reggae in their jeggae. Spirited but a bit Trojan.

Out of all the twelves by MN on Jamal Moss’ Mathematics label, maybe the most outstanding goes under the name Ra Toth — and true to form this is double-sided trumps for BH, slapping together bad-minded, cosmic jazz and banging, bruk-up disco.
The A sounds like a young Pete Rock giving Theo a hand with some Dirty Edits; the flip like a blend of evilous Arkestra and prime Innerzone Orchestra.