KEVIN PRODIGY interview for Thump US

So I managed to get an interview with the legendary and elusive KEVIN PRODIGY, whose voice you will have heard by now all over ballroom and vogue music by now. The interview covers Kevin's guest spot on the recently released "Bad Bitch" by Gage, and features Gage and label boss Andy Musgrave talking about the influence of ballroom on other genres:

THUMP: Kevin Prodigy is a pretty big deal in the world of vogue and ballroom. How did Crazylegs come to release “Bad Bitch”?
Andy Musgrave: Yeah it’s a huge honor for us. Kevin’s an absolute legend. Gage’s stuff has started to lean towards that modern ballroom sound in the last year, at least rhythmically—stripped back, harsh, driving beats. In terms of attitude, it’s the embodiment of what we do. “Bad Bitch” is totally new in so many ways, as a culturally meeting point this just doesn’t usually happen.

Kevin Prodigy: Gage inboxed me on SoundCloud and asked me if I wanted to do a song with him. And you know me, I'm open to new ideas and like to jump out of the box a lot. This was a good opportunity for me to work with someone not in America. So I just did it and it turned out really, really great!

READ IT ALL HERE. 

Voguing films by Vice/Noisey

OK, I've had my issues with Vice in the past (even though I write pretty regularly for Thump/Noisey) but here's two films they have produced recently about the modern NY ballroom scene. Well, involving it - the Icy Lake film also throws back to the late 90s and the long forgotten track of the same name which was an anthem with certain voguers of the era. And big up to MikeQ and Qween Beat, even though that film is 1000% too short! Anyway, enough words, just watch:

post-PARIS IS BURNING vogue films playlist

I put together a playlist of short films (and short extracts from longer films) that people should watch once they have seen Paris Is Burning. These films fill in some of the gaps of PIB, give background details and information, and show where ballroom culture is at right now - which is important, as I feel people watch PIB and think they all there is to know about ballroom, which leads to this vibrant, living, breathing, evolving culture being dismissed as some kind of "90s relic", which plays into the kind of co-option and exploitation Madonna is guilty of. VOGUING IS NOT DEAD, IT IS ALIVE AND BETTER THAN EVER!

On this playlist you will find extracts form How Do I Look (the unofficial sequel to Paris Is Burning), footage of Crystal LaBeija in "The Queen", rare footage of Willi Ninja and pier kids voguing in the late80s/early90s, a film about the lost ballroom "classic" Icy Lake from LA's Fade To Mind label, a very short peek inside Vogue Knights (NY's weekly voguing showdown) and a look beyond the US scene to the modern voguers making Paris burn.

MANCHESTER ALT QUEER SCENE piece for Thump UK

Having gotten a bti sick of reading about how fabulous London's queer scene is atm, I decided to put something together for Thump about what's going on here in Mcr. I didn't think they'd publish this but they did! Kudos to Lauren and everyone at the site. :)

Bored of London's Queer Club Scene? Manchester's is Wild and Wonderful

Hey kids, wanna know how the media in the UK works? Here's a rule of thumb: if something is not happening in London, it's not happening. If a music scene doesn't have an outlet or any representation within the capital, then it obviously must not be happening anywhere in the country. Everywhere outside London is filled with behind-the-times bumpkins, who are desperate to emulate the forward fashions and tastes of swinging London.

 

Well fuck that noise. Right now, regional scenes are the healthiest they have ever been in the UK. In a way, you could even thank London for it - by ignoring what is going on around the country, these scenes have had a chance to flourish. 

 

I live and work in Manchester. Before I moved here, I lived and worked in Glasgow. Both cities have incredible live music and clubbing scenes - gay and straight, DIY and commercial. I'd like to tell you about some of the awesome shit that is going on in Manchester right now, particularly on the queer scene.

 

FEATURING: House OF Suarez Ball, Vogue Brawl, Cha Cha Boudoir, Tranarchy, Mother's Ruin, 2 Koi Karp, Kurt Dirt, Islingotn Mill and a fuckton more, right HERE! 

Mind to Mind feature for THUMP UK, inc interviews with MIKEQ, DJ SLIINK and KINGDOM

Got this piece together for Thump, featuring some of my favourite DJs out right now. I'm pretty fuckin proud of this piece tbh:

If I were to ask you what your favourite dance labels are right now, I wouldn't be too surprised if you mentioned LA's Fade To Mind and London's Night Slugs; two closely-related club imprints who have been setting the bar very high as a network of DJs throwing some of the best parties on the planet.

Now, you can add Mind To Mind to that list too. Mind To Mind is a new Fade To Mind offshoot, which - as label boss Kingdom and producers MikeQ and DJ Sliink explain - is influenced by Night Slugs' Club Constructions, yet with its own, unique outlook.

THUMP: What made you want to start Mind To Mind?

Kingdom: Will and I who run Fade To Mind had been thinking a lot about what is at the core of what we do; what would be a category of music that our artists generate that doesn't get released, or that doesn't make it onto EPs usually. We came to see that a lot of that stuff is casual collaborations, and improvised music that our artists make together, so our concept was to create a release series that is specifically for collaborations.

Those collaborations can be one off - like, if I happen to be in London for a few nights, and I make a couple of tracks with Bok Bok, or whatever the case may be. It's basically to have a space where people can make tracks together without having to form "a band", or have to say "We're a duo, we're now called this".

Will Mind To Mind have a similar club-based/DJ tools approach as Night Slugs' Club Constructions series? 

Kingdom: Mind to Mind is only really comparable to Club Constructions in the way that they are both side releases. Sonically, we're hoping to push an entirely different direction - although, these tracks on the release from Mike and Sliink are very rhythm-based and drum heavy, like Club Constructions. But, in general, this stuff is going to be very free-form. Some stuff will have no drums.

We are keeping it really open format, though. We don't want it to be just club music. It can be more experimental forms too. Also, you can't really know what to expect based on who is collaborating. Massacooraman and L-Vis 1990 have been making a lot of tracks together, and those are kinda of grimey, but also quite sparse and a-rhythmic. Very creepy, industrial, dark stuff. 

Mike and Sliink, how did you guys meet? Did you know each other before Mind To Mind?

MikeQ: Sliink and I met online first. I already knew of him and his music being from New Jersey. I always played his music when I played here in the past, and we had a few gigs together. 

DJ Sliink: I met Mike from this video interview and mix session program in NYC called Noise212 with JP Solis. Mike did his slot before me, and I was on the next week. I pretty much saw he was from Jersey and messaged him. Everything was pretty organic. The first remix I did for him was the 'Ha Dub' remix on Fade To Mind. 

How did you start producing music together? 

DJ Sliink: After Mike and I met, we found out that we lived around the corner from each other. We have a lot of tracks together. We both really dig each other's style, and have a culture behind what we do. I'm all for the culture.

MikeQ: Well for my debut EP I asked him to remix a track, and then the Mind To Mind release idea didn't even come until after we were done with the tracks. For this project, we were just fucking around and had this idea to clash ballroom and Jersey club. We passed tracks back and forth and met up a few times at my house, and this release was born.

DJ Sliink: Mike and I both use Sony Acid Pro and FL Studio. It's amazing that we use the same thing, as it makes the process that much easier. We would email demos over and review them, and see what might work in the club. When we both were home, that's when we would grab some studio time. 

READ THE WHOLE THING HERE.

"The UK is a Nation of Cunts" BLACKNECKS interview for Thump UK

I interviewed the mysterious, reclusive techno duo BLACKNECKS for Thump,. Rally nice guys, so down to earth, really nice guys, so down to earth, really nice guys, so down to earth:

If there's one thing I know about techno it's that techno is serious business. Nobody knows this better than Blacknecks; the enigmatic, previously anonymous dons of serious techno. So serious and mysterious are Blacknecks that rumours about their real identities have been rife in techno-land for a while, inspiring raging debate and some epic forum threads. The press release for 2013's 'Untitled' called them "The new, anonymous side project of two prominent UK garage producers & remixers, known for remixing a string of top 40 singles, as well as having their own minor hit in the late naughties."

 

Word on the street was that Blacknecks were Skream, or Burial, or Disclosure (thanks Mary Anne Hobbs) - or even the dark lord himself, Cliff Richard. With that in mind, many serious techno heads crammed in to see Blacknecks live debut at Brimingham's legendary House Of God club recently - and were shocked to discover they were none of those people. 

 

Blacknecks are in fact two white blokes, Gary Diablo and Salso Fontes, accompanied for live shows by a cross-dressing, ginger bounce MC called Joyce. 

 

In this THUMP exclusive, I caught up with members Gary and Salso to get, as they call it in serious music journalism, the "low down." And it turns out that they're serious fellas alright - seriously lovely, that is, great to chat to and really down to earth. 

THUMP: Who are Black Necks?

Gary Diablo: We are. And it's Blacknecks, not Black Necks.

 

How did you meet and start making music?

Salso Fontes: It's quite funny because we actually met in Wycombe in 1997, at some awful short lived drum 'n' bass club in the suburbs. I wasn't a drum 'n' bass DJ, but the fee was enough to buy two hours' worth of records for the gig, and have enough left over to pay part of my council tax bill for that month. We had a good chat about musical integrity - which I said I was in favour of, and he agreed. We hit it off. We started working on a project together that day. Gary dealt with the technical and engineering details - the arrangement, the mix-down, the musical ideas and so forth —and I oversaw the whole thing. There was a real chemistry from day one.

 

GD: Symbiotic.

 

SF: Yeah, symbiotic. And I knew a guy at Sony. All the ingredients were there.

 

What are your formative musical influences?

GD: I was never really into music much in the early days. It's something that just found us. In that respect, you could argue that we've had more of an influence on music than it's ever had on us.

 

SF: I remember growing up, when pop music in the UK was at its most cutting edge: Kraftwerk, Afrika Black Mambazo, Del Amitri just released 'All I Ever Wanted.' I remember my dad being a big fan of Slik. It’s pretty much circling the toilet bowl now. It has been ever since we started making music, anyway.

 

GD: Gary Numan…

 

SF: He wasn’t British was he?

READ THE REST HERE. 

THUMP article on Voga by Lauren Martin

I posted on voga before, the hybrid of voguing and yoga happeneing in East London - here is an interesting article by Thump.com's Lauren McNally, who went to an actual class (also featuring MikeQ's thoughts on voga) and wasn't impressed. [Note: I didn't write this, Lauren Martin did.]

It was a strange display; not so much energetic as frantic, as Murrell shouted out the sequence over the music at young women being put through a series of jilted movements that were somewhere between aerobics, yoga and a smattering of half-hearted classic Vogue arm poses. One of the girls turns to me and mouths “What the fuck?” in my direction, as the class lie down on bended knee, resting their upper body weight on their elbows and chins on their hands. It's more Babysitters Club Aerobics than Vogue-infused yoga. As Murrell shouts “Find that inner pose!”, I get the distinct sense that some are at best bemused, and at worst uncomfortable. The sexuality, power and fantasy of the balls is pointedly absent throughout. 

The class finishes to the strains of Bill Withers - 'Lovely Day' and the group huddle onstage for a photo, striking twee power poses and grinning. The camaraderie feels forced, and I ask the girl who mouthed at me earlier what she made of the session: “Being clumsy and with the arse of an ironing board, I probably wasn’t the best contender to convincingly Voga. I don’t think I’ve ever felt less poised or attractive. I would have been chased out of Harlem with a shoe. Vogueing is all about the kind of classy restraint that’s difficult to pull off if you’re worrying about farting on the girl behind you.”

Mike Q is right. Murrell is a harmless human being. She seems a perfectly pleasant and sociable woman, who likes and wants to teach yoga. Voga is a stupid idea poorly executed, and accusations of cultural appropriation on her part are as likely to be shot down as sanctimonious posturing by cynics. Who cares, right? It's yoga.