Beastie Boys
No Sleep Since Brooklyn Originally published in the Stool Pigeon, photography by Spencer Murphy As Beastie Boys videos go, it’s an understated affair. Adams Yauch and Horovitz – MCA and Ad-Rock respectively – are seated in front of a large mixing desk. Yauch wears a red collared shirt and does most of the talking; a...
Kode9 & The Spaceape
Operational Bass Originally published in the Stool Pigeon There’s an uneasy moment following my interview with Kode9 and the Spaceape when I realise I’ve left my dictaphone running on the mixing desk of the former’s south London studio. I return to his front door to find him standing there grinning, said apparatus in hand. “I...
Kuedo
Back To The Future Originally published in the Stool Pigeon There comes a point in any first airing of Kuedo’s debut Severant when the word ‘different’ becomes an inevitable descriptive crutch. Not different in the way you might condescendingly flatter your housemate’s curry omelettes, but different in the way literature students might refer to dislocated...
DJ Shadow: The Less You Know The Better
The Entertainer Originally published in the Stool Pigeon As first Glastonburys go, DJ Shadow’s appearance at Worthy Farm last month didn’t have the most auspicious build up. Not only was he performing at a John Peel stage ankle deep in the worst kind of slop – not only did his headline slot coincide with Friday...
Cypress Hill
Pot Shots Originally published in the Stool Pigeon Like most habitual dope smokers, the only party I can recall from the last twenty years is the one at which I puffed my first ever joint. Even then the details are hazy: I remember the host, Jim Walsh, arm-wrestling his pretty blonde girlfriend over a surfboard....
Gonjasufi
Desert Storm Originally published in the Stool Pigeon There’s so little known about the dystopian warrior poet Gonjasufi that research is all but impossible, and I’m forced to email Warp Records after our chat to clear up a few points I never got to raise in the interview. What is his real name? How old...
The Gaslamp Killer
Gaslamp Killer Shining Light On ‘Overlooked’ Los Angeles Originally published in the Stool Pigeon Anyone who caught The Gaslamp Killer’s set at this summer’s Brainfeeder session in London’s Fabric will have witnessed a performance as mesmerising for the eyes as for the ears. GLK moshed his trademark mushroom of curls, screamed obscenities into the microphone,...
Flying Lotus
Soul Position Originally published in the Stool Pigeon There’s a sense among those attending Brainfeeder at Fabric that they’re less participants in a club night than privileged witnesses of a mass movement in electronic music. It’s a feeling bolstered by the way the cast of DJs resemble a clan of twisted superheroes: the butter-wouldn’t-melt cuteness...
Endtroducing: A Short Story
Endtroducing: A Short Story Originally published in Huck His name was Arthur Fury, and he’d been a model tenant, or so claimed the landlady as she led us to his room along a corridor bathed in stuttering halogen light. She pushed open the door and we found him as she’d found him that morning: slumped...
Evil Is An Industry
Evil Is An Industry: True Events Concerning My Old Band Told In The Form Of A Victorian Ghost Story Originally published in the Stool Pigeon The 12 Bar Club is a battered brick music venue at the eastern end of Denmark Street, a squat, beer-smelling establishment of the type I would never normally enter unless...
Shabazz Palaces
The Strange And Unenlightening World Of Hip Hop Illusionist Ishmael Butler Originally published in the Stool Pigeon The combination of the words ‘Seattle’ and ‘hip hop’ is only the first thing about Shabazz Palaces that turns conventional wisdom on its head. Their first two EPs, for example, were limited run, largely unpublicised affairs, hard copies...
Raekwon
Cooking With Gas Originally published in the Stool Pigeon Among the countless online images of Raekwon hunched Scarface-like over mountains of cocaine (presumably fake), or spelling his name out with fist-sized buds of hydroponic weed (presumably real), is an enigmatic snap of the Wu-Tang heavyweight signing the guest wall at the Facebook offices in Palo...