Bristolian producer Gemmel Phillips, better known by his shortened nickname Gemmy, blossomed out of the so called ‘purple’ quagmire. Spearheaded by fellow producers Joker and Guido, the trio’s penchant for naggingly catchy leads and squalling computer funk made them an instant hit in the dubstep world, servicing beats that were often drastically different to the deep and pressing bass loaded soundscapes. Feeding more off the energy and insistency of grime music, Gemmy’s debut release on the Punch Drunk label – a Bristol based label famed for bringing the emerging sounds of the South West to the wider world – ‘Bk II The Future’ b/w ‘Bass Transmitter’ wailed and staggered through contrasting synth lines.
Inebriated with the sound, his consequent release for the Planet Mu label ‘Supligen’ rewired the template whilst the flip side, ‘BT Tower,’ showed a different side to his productions, positively bruising speaker stacks with its pummeling array of low end frequencies. Following it up with the ‘Jonny 5’ double pack – again on Planet Mu – it was obvious Gemmy’s sound was maturing, deviating rhythmically from the halfstep template, he riddled the stand out track ‘Dolla Digital,’ with tom tom rolls piled on top of erratic snares.
Hard at work on his debut album, he's just dropped a freebie ahead of his performance at fabric on the 24th, which you can download below.
Today's been a big day for sharing... so in the spirit of the thing Gemmy - in a probably unrelated act of kindness - has upped his remix of La Roux's 'Quicksand' to soundcloud for a free DL. First thing from him in a while...
If you follow any of dubstep's 'super DJs' on twitter you'll have read two or three weeks ago about a forthcoming Guido album, something Punch Drunk label boss, Peverelist, has today confirmed. Called Anidea, the album follows two trail blazing 12 inches - 'Orchestral Lab' and 'Beautiful Complication' - for the label from the Bristol based producer who recently contributed remixes for Pinch, Lauren Pritchard and Wedge & Shadz on the If Symptoms Persist label.
Part of the Purple Trinity, a trio of incredibly brave and melodically inventive producers that includes Joker and Gemmy, Guido's will be the first album from the three artists to be released and it comes with no exaggeration to say that we are awesomely excited at the prospect and extremely proud to be able to bring you some advance previews of three album tracks.
Cue gumpf:
Guido cut his teeth in the embryonic mid-decade Bristol Grime scene, producing instrumentals for MCs and vocalists culminating in his ‘Unleashed’ mixtape in 2006. His production style shares the ultra vivid colour, melody and rugged texture of golden era Davinche, Skepta and Ruff Squad’s Rapid but also the playfulness and pop sensibility of Timbaland or Neptunes without losing underground edge or appeal...
The album will be preceded by a digital single, ‘Way U Make Me Feel’ featuring a vocal from Yolanda who has recently been touring with Massive Attack and who also featured on Pinch’s recent ‘Get Up’ 12” on Tectonic.
After slaughtering our recent Sonic Router is 1 rave with his midnight slot earlier this month, we've been expecting big things from Gemmy. With word leaking months ago that his debut album for Planet Mu was ready (though its still to appear in the ether as of yet) there's been a couple of remixes surfacing of late including one on the grassroots Carbon Logic initiative; as well as a couple of sides on two of M4 Records most recent (split 12"s with Wedge) releases.
This mix also comes at a particularly pertinent time for Rob Booth who, with this mix, celebrates his 100th show. Booth's Electronic Explorations podcast has been a constantly great source of music since I first discovered it around about show 21, and looking back through the ample and, quite frankly stacked, list of guest mixes, its more than evident that there isn't any podcast series out there as committed to bringing quality electronic music direct to your iTunes as EE.
Bristol's grasp on dubstep is undeniable... There's something about the city that breeds great music, from the hyperactive colouration of people like Joker, Gemmy, Guido and Hyetal, to the deepness of Pinch's Tectonic imprint (home to 2562 and Jack Sparrow amongst others) and beyond into the technoid void of people like Peverelist and Kowton.
And so its with a smattering of smugness we present you with Rhythm Factory's Friday line up bringing the best of the South West to East London...
Pinch Peverelist Redlight Gemmy & Guido Hyetal DJ Derek
Venue: The Rhythm Factory Date: Feb 26th Doors: 10pm - 5.30am Cost: £5 (Advance)/£8 NUS/£10 Door After 12
To mark the passing of their 3rd release, which is apparently imminent according to their twitter, If Symptoms Persist have contributed a mix to FOO Magazine's series, segued together by label boss Wedge. Featuring a bunch of ISP material it includes tracks from the new 12" Wedge & Aesoteric's 'Night On The Wonk' and the Gemmy remix.
Keen followers of this blog should know just how much of a lingering presence that Bristol based producer Hyetal's mix for us had on us when it dropped all those months ago (audio and interview here). Well... now the boy dunn did a FACT mix...
Julio Bashmore - Around (Forthcoming Soul Motive) Mosca - Square One (Dub) Doc Daneeka - Deadly Rhythm (Dub) Shortstuff & Hyetal - Don't Sleep (Dub) NB Funky - Frequency (White Label) Brackles & Shortstuff - Pipey D (Dub) Headhunter - Love Dup (Forthcoming Soul Motive) Starkey - Knob Twiddler (Forthcoming Planet Mu) Sully - Toffee Apple (Dub) Guido ft Aarya - Beautiful Complication (Forthcoming Punch Drunk) Hyetal - Gold Or Soul (Soul Motive) Gemmy - A Night On Da Wonk (Dub) Hyetal - Pheonix (Dub) Prince - I Would Die 4 U (Warner Bros)
To celebrate a whole year in the blog game we're hosting Room 2 at [dissident] in Bristol on the 6th Feb 2010. We've invited some of our favourite DJs including Brackles, Jack Sparrow, Shortstuff and Gemmy to mark to occasion.
The rest of the line up across the club is stacked too. Join us...
If the main trait Joker, Gemmy and Guido still share is a fiendish devotion to the use of synth textures to stain dubstep’s monochrome template a deep, groovy purple, then the last year has gone some way towards emphasising their substantial differences in approach. Whilst Joker’s ever expanding catalogue betrays a strong affinity with the smooth funk of West Coast hip-hop and Guido’s forthcoming ‘Beautiful Complication’ 12” sees him move ever further towards mutant, future-shocked R’n’B, the most recent music from Gemmy is hugely indebted to the scorched melodies that used to blare out of your brother’s SNES.
Gemmy’s second release for Planet Mu this year includes three of the tracks that featured on his mix for Mary Anne Hobbs’ Bristol: Rise Up special at the tail end of last year. At that point his only release had been the precociously brilliant 'Bk 2 The Future' 12" on Punch Drunk, but during his ten-minute mix its comparatively spacious atmosphere was entirely lost to shockingly barbed circuit meltdowns. The new EP’s title track ‘Johnny 5’ remains a case in point, its innocuously calm intro section suddenly exploding to life in a flurry of jittery high-hats and a grin-inducingly addictive melody.
By way of contrast ‘Wata Down Sound’ marries one of the cheekiest sample steals I’ve heard in a while to a hulking slab of Bristolian dubstep, driven by characteristic descending melodies and a cocky swagger. Final track ‘Shanti Riddim’ rounded off the Hobbs mix in silky-smooth style and in its full form is the EP’s highlight, playing toytown psychedelia off against a liquid groove that’s strangely reminiscent of Vincent Vega’s stoned ride down Pulp Fiction’s sleaze-ridden strip.
But it’s second track ‘Dolla Digital’ that may give some indication of the future potential in Gemmy’s music, its robotic refrain of "we don’t give a fuck about you" subverting dystopian menace with a sublime sense of the ridiculous. Crucially, it operates as an incredibly well-realised whole, its cruelly abrasive bass textures offset by the quirky pop sensibility that rears its head again and again over the course of the EP’s length.
Session 006 marks a new look to SRR thanks to the man like Spam Chop, who took time out from running Wigflex (eyes peeled for 003 - its dapper don, believe me) to create a new logo for us and on this edition you can hear a mix of skweee, beats, dubstep and all that other stuff I play and talk about on the podcasts usually.
1. Robot Koch – Death Star Droid (forthcoming on Robots Don’t Sleep) 2. Beat Bully – Buck Fergen (Dodpop) 3. devonwho – Whispers (free download from http://devonwho.bandcamp.com/album/3p) 4. Hudson Mohawke – 3.30 (Warp) 5. DOOM ft. Kurious – ? (forthcoming on Gold Dust Media) 6. Pariah – Detroit Falls (R&S Records) 7. Rigas Den Andre – New Plastic Bastard (Flogsta Danshall) 8. Darkstar - Aidy’s Girl Is A Computer (Hyperdub) 9. Ikonika vs. Eero Johannes – We Could Be Ikons (Planet Mu) 10. Gemmy – Johnny 5 (forthcoming on Planet Mu) 11. Desto – Broken Memory (forthcoming Ramp Recordings)* 12. 2562 – Like A Dream (Tectonic) 13. HXDB – Showdown At The Cinema (Mindset) 14. Blackdown – Concrete Streets [Zomby Remix] (forthcoming on Keysound) 15. Blackdown ft. Durrty Goodz – Concrete Streets (forthcoming on Keysound) 16. Fantastic Mr Fox – Sketches (forthcoming on Black Acre) 17. Headhunter & Invisible - Love Dup (forthcoming on Soul Motive) 18. Untold – Palamino (Hemlock) 19. Joy Orbison – J.Doe (forthcoming on DLDRMS)
* This particular mp3 clips. We are aware of the issue.
Get the skinny on the new 2562 LP and Peverelist's forthcoming CD plus news on new Guido, Gemmy, Headhunter, Sigha, Joy Orbison and Untold by reading this month's Sonic Router Column on The Quietus.
Its usually me, virtually hotfooting it over to RA, entering one of our interviews into the news feed and waiting with baited breath to see if it gets published. Way more often than not they do get displayed, so, as if in some gratuitous turn of fate, when they sent me this link I simply had to shout about it.
Here Richard Carnes goes deep on some of the most prominent dubstep producers to emerge all year.
Bass Music Blog's very own I.D. hit us up with a special treat last week, putting together this promotional mix to back up his recent slew of releases. In his own words:
"I've been pretty busy lately - releases and remixes on Earwax, Enchufada, Heavy Artillery, CIVIL, (and that's just the last 6 weeks) and trucks more stuff lined up soon - including releases on Mad Decent, Boka, Mata-Syn, Lucky Break, Passenger and Baobinga's new label 'Build' (which is gonna be amazing) to name just a few.
So to celebrate I've put together this mix - it features loads of the above, a shitload of new and unreleased dubs by the likes of TRG, Gemmy, Toasty and DJ Madd (as well as me and Baobinga/Skinnz obviously), and it swings from deep 2-steppy vibes, to melodic post-dubstep (yeah I know, I hate that term too! But you know what I mean...) to choppy breakstep and beyond."
Mary Anne Hobbs is still standing strong as one of dubstep’s figureheads. Her weekly BBC Radio 1 Experimental show has become the place to hear new music from key players and curve balls alike - first. After pioneering innovative bass music through her Dubstep Warz special in January of 2006, which featured guest mixes from Mala, Skream, Kode9, Vex’d, Hatcha, Loefah and Distance, m/a returned this time last year with Generation Bass, the sequel starring Joker, Cyrus, Starkey, Silkie & Quest, Oneman, Chef and Kulture.
Whilst the variation between the two corner point shows was obvious, with 2008 showcasing the new ‘shoots’ of dubstep rather than the well watered and bass rich roots, her passion for fierce innovation was still more than apparent. It’s in this that m/a truly excels, whether it’s using her radio show, her live appearances, her three Sonar stage curations or her compilations to reveal and expose true electronic talent.
With a CV that stretches impossibly far into the depths of broadcasting and journalism, she stands on the precipice of her third compilation on the Planet Mu label, ‘Wild Angels’, which harbours gems from Darkstar, Gemmy, Mike Slott, Hudson Mohawke, Brackles, Mark Pritchard and too many more for me to possibly list before this intro just becomes a drawl recollection of a tracklist; we caught up with her and shot her some questions.
Sonic Router: You’ve had a brilliantly varied career in radio pushing everything from metal to experimental electronic sounds and beyond, how did that all get started?
m/a: I could not imagine living another way. I had a burning desire that tormented me from my days as a little kid, listening to [John] Peel play punk under my blankets in bed in the dead of night. I ran away to London as a teenager and lived on a bus for a year on a car park with a rock band called Heretic… I was their lighting engineer, I made their backdrops and their clothes, designed their record sleeves... And I was also the bus mechanic!
What’s been some of your musical inspirations over the years, what made you fall for music and who’s keeping the light alive for you right now?
I’m unconcerned by genre in any formal sense, I just wanna hear something fresh, elemental and unique. I’m endlessly inspired by Sex Pistols, Public Enemy, Jungle, Metalheadz at The Blue Note, Nirvana, the DMZ label and club in Brixton, Chris Morris, Kode 9 & Hyperdub, the Tempa crew and FWD>> at Plastic People, Daddy Kev, The Gaslamp Killer and all the Low End Theory crew in LA plus Pinch, Joker, Gemmy, Jakes and all the Bristol family.
The list is endless and constantly evolving and I think that’s reflected in pace at which my BBC Radio1 show moves forward every week.
You’ve been given the accolade of curating a stage at Sonar for the last couple of years now, what have been your favourite moments of the festival so far and are you already planning the next one?
We made history in 2007, it was the first time dubstep was lifted out of tiny, intense humid club environments and onto an international festival stage. We honestly expected a couple of hundred people to show up, especially as The Beastie Boys were headlining the main stage at the same time, about 10 paces away.. Skream said to me it was the greatest night of his life on earth. The magic in the air was tangible.
Can you shed a little light on your first dubstep experience?
The first tune I ever heard from this generation of producers was P Dutty & Pinch – ‘War Dub.’ The rest is history…
How do you feel the scene has changed and progressed since Dubstep Warz in 2006 to now?
There are new textures of sound emerging every day, drawing in a myriad of different influences from every corner of the globe. There’s a fascinating sonic intersection between Flying Lotus and the West Coast crew, Vienna, Bristol and South London right now... And of course, it’s wonderful to see an artist like Skream with a gold record for the La Roux remix!
What is your most prized dubplate?
Darqwan – ‘M/a...ximum Reespek’ written for me as a gift, and cut onto acetate by Jason at Transition Mastering Studios.
Your brand new compilation for Planet Mu, 'Wild Angels,' is about to hit the shops, tell us about how that came about?
Electronic music moves forward in thousands of tiny scattered steps every day. 'Wild Angels' is a collection of future sound from Transatlantic producers building new creative causeways… beyond dubstep, hip-hop, soul, folk and electronic.
The album title was born out of an expression I used to describe the late Alice Coltrane, who has inspired and informed so much, on my BBC Radio1 West Coast Rocks special (which featured many of the US artists on the album).
You must get so much new music every week, how do you go about finding the good stuff and what’s your advice for new producers who want to get heard?
Be your own most ferocious critic. Work hard to get your beats in brilliant shape before you start harassing the fuck out of people...
Have you got any inspirational advice for our readers?
‘Wild Angels’ is out on the 14th September (on CD and double pack 12”) on Planet Mu featuring tracks from Gemmy, Hyetal, Hudson Mohawke, Mono/Poly, Darkstar, Floating Points, TAKE and more.
Debut of the Purple Trinity b2b as Joker, Gemmy and Guido hit London alongside Pinch, Appleblim, Peverelist and Headhunter as Subloaded comes to London's Corsica Studios on 07/08.
Documentary/celebration of Bristol's dubstep scene. Filmed by Jack Losh featuring interviews with Gemmy, Joker, Appleblim, Forsaken, Peverelist, Headhunter and more.
I don't have any other info on these clips. If you've got it, please get in touch.
In illustrious celebration of the traffic marker we reached this week - hold tight 20,000 seperate visits - I fully intended to give a mix out, done by my fair hands as a present to you, the readership. And whilst its been up and twittered to death for a week or so prior I still wanted to commemorate this moment with something... so here it is: the promise I've broken to myself by featuring my work on a blog that's fully supposed to be about how great other people are.
Special thanks to Radio Magnetic for packaging it up nice as a podcast and uber special thanks to everyone who's said nice things about the blog.
