April 21, 2016Surprised there’s not been more kicking around about this; photographer James Barnor will be doing a Q&A at Westminster Reference Library next month, discussing his life’s work and his first monograph Ever Young which was published last year. Born in Ghana on the tail end of the 1920’s, Barnor opened his first studio in Accra in 1950. As a photojournalist…
April 4, 2016There’s an essential library of well-known books that you’ll find more often than not in a sound man’s house. All Crews by Brian Belle-Fortune, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop by Jeff Chang and Bass Culture by Lloyd Bradley on the narrative tip, then Behind The Beat by Raph, Dust & Grooves from Eilon Paz and Joe Mansfield’s Beat Box for record collection and gear porn. You’re…
January 8, 2016We’re pretty late on these but they’ll be trickling through the nest few days. Cracking year for Jimmy Monsta Funk, who, as well as unearthing a field recorded mix from his residency at Snugg, delivered six hours worth of live wax from 2014, which you can check out here. Here’s his lists of 2015. 5 Documentaries Of 2015 ‘A Syrian…
November 4, 2015While we’re on the photo book tip it’s worth shouting at the latest Cafe Royal Books publication that we got sent from crew in London. Running Riots and the Days After is a photo zine collecting work from well known independent photographer Homer Sykes, based around riots in the UK / EIRE. Focussing on events in the late ’70s to early ’80s…
November 3, 2015It’s ten years since Ewen Spencer’s Open Mic Vol. 1, the photographic collection documenting grime’s early years in the nineties to the ’00s of the book’s release. Even a decade on it’s not hard to note what a revelation the book was, especially for those outside of London. Ten years ago youtube was just being founded, Facebook was barely a…
May 11, 2015Stoked to have picked this up before they sold out, a very cool zine from the Creation camp. Nowadays Creation aka Creation Rebel are known equally for their t-shirt designs as much as the style and carefully curated aesthetic of their blog. It’s got to be one of the best looking sites out there, the lo-fi online equivalent of a dusty…
January 2, 2015Mad delay getting this up here, tradition does dictate first of the New Year but what can we say…it’s been a crazy series of events lately. Simply put, 2014 was freaking awesome. So much good music, new labels and strange directions for wax and cassette labels that kept us interested for the full twelve months, if consistently broke at the…
November 27, 2014We’ve been waiting for this one for the last decade; and thank god that someone with cash and time has managed to get it off the ground. Currently in it’s final stages and crowd-funding to get it across the line, the first proper feature-length documentary for Jaco Pastorius is looking to be released in the first half of next year,…
October 31, 2014For those that may’ve missed the October issue of DJ Mag we wanted to pull up and highlight the ‘Top Ten’ feature from one of our favourite selectors in London. Everything is Everything is the alias belonging to one Neal Birnie, the DJ and collector who you may know as the cat behind the counter at Sounds Of The Universe with…
October 28, 2014At 70 years of age, Jamaican-born Notting Hill-raised photographer Charlie Phillips has carved a life to date as one of the key documentarians of black-culture around the world. Emigrating with his family to West London in the fifties, from a young age Phillips was photographing life in the area, during the time of West Indian migration to London. Self-taught on…