Hello!
It's Monday and I've just got back from Latitude festival yesterday, had a great time. I was performing as part of the 90's BPM show and apart from a 7 hour journey to get there from London, due to a man on the roof of Ipswich station with pants on his head (if you don't believe me read HERE) it was a whole heap of fun.
There's been a quite a few gigs of late, Purely festival, Brockley Jack Scratch to name a few, most with Conrad Murray who I work with regularly, we both had a lot fun. But on the 7th July I was invited to perfrom at the Cabaret Lounge, which is a night run by a singer and artist called Airlie Scott. I took Conrad with me and we did a full 25 minute set so I was able to mix it up with straight spoken word and music, which I don't get to do very often, I even played the snare drum for one of Conrad's solo tracks. It was a wicked night and we were well looked after. It was a different sort of gig to what I'm used to but I really enjoyed it. It's set in a restaurant called Toulouse Lautrec and is very well set up for small gigs, there's even a camera over the piano keys so the audience can see what the pianist is doing! Anyway, I was able to perfrom 2 tracks from the EP myself and Conrad are working on called The Dice That Rolled A 3, and luckily we had it filmed and recorded, so below is a one of those tracks, called No Frills.
From next week, I go into the final development phase for my first solo show A Tale From The Bedsit so I'll keep you all posted.
Enjoy
Paul
Monday, 22 July 2013
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Rubix: Red Album Live (video)
Hey
Almost 2 weeks ago now, (time flies) we had the Rubix album red show at the Chelsea Theater on the 27th June. The show went really well, and we were lucky enough to have the whole event filmed by On TheRed
Which you can see below.
We were also lucky enough to have a nice review written for us by David Kwaw Mensah which you can read HERE
You can purchase the full album HERE
Almost 2 weeks ago now, (time flies) we had the Rubix album red show at the Chelsea Theater on the 27th June. The show went really well, and we were lucky enough to have the whole event filmed by On TheRed
Which you can see below.
We were also lucky enough to have a nice review written for us by David Kwaw Mensah which you can read HERE
You can purchase the full album HERE
Friday, 21 June 2013
Monday, 27 May 2013
Just A Name Vol 1
A long time ago, in a land far far away (in my head) and an era when in my ignorance I'd never even heard of spoken word and knew very little about poetry or theater, I was rapping.
I still do it. I love it. It's a special feeling kicking a verse over a beat, but from late 2000 onwards for a long time, outside of my work life, it's pretty much all I did.
It's a topic I cover in the show I'm working on A Tale Fron The Besdit in which I moved to Brighton to further what I was already doing, at the time, predominantly MCing in small clubs under the name of Kase One before I began to move towards making Hip Hop and Grime.
During that period while I was down there, I wrote a lot of lyrics, which at the time, didn't seem to amount to anything. When I left Brighton in early 2006, the few music projects I was working on had all seem to drift by the wayside and I was left with a shoe box full of lyrics, and one day, whilst sorting through some stuff just before I moved up to London, I had the idea to put a CD together. So I saved up, bought a laptop, borrowed some equipment, went to Bristol and got a crash course in Logic from my brother Gatekeeper and set about recording some of these words over tracks that I'd selected, or used to practice rapping over.
Mixtapes and CD's were pretty much common place for MC's and rappers even back then, but for me, it was a big achievement and I think I surprised a few people when they listened to it back then. It never really went anyway, at most, I probably gave away 100 copies which I burnt and hand drew the sleeves for, and hearing it back, it's very raw, both lyrically and in the recording of it, and despite most of it making me cringe I'm proud of it, it was a milestone for me. Most of the lyrics were the result of a stream-of-consciousness style of writing I used to do, because it was all I knew to do, I didn't know much else and never really worked with other MC's about from old friends Boogaloo Dee and later on, through the Bristol connection, Grilza, all of which helped me to develop
I've had 3 of the tracks up on Soundcloud for a while, but decoded to stick all up on line (bar 1 track which Soundcloud won't let me, which is fair enough, as I didn't get permission for most of the tracks) and here it is.
.
I still do it. I love it. It's a special feeling kicking a verse over a beat, but from late 2000 onwards for a long time, outside of my work life, it's pretty much all I did.
It's a topic I cover in the show I'm working on A Tale Fron The Besdit in which I moved to Brighton to further what I was already doing, at the time, predominantly MCing in small clubs under the name of Kase One before I began to move towards making Hip Hop and Grime.
During that period while I was down there, I wrote a lot of lyrics, which at the time, didn't seem to amount to anything. When I left Brighton in early 2006, the few music projects I was working on had all seem to drift by the wayside and I was left with a shoe box full of lyrics, and one day, whilst sorting through some stuff just before I moved up to London, I had the idea to put a CD together. So I saved up, bought a laptop, borrowed some equipment, went to Bristol and got a crash course in Logic from my brother Gatekeeper and set about recording some of these words over tracks that I'd selected, or used to practice rapping over.
Mixtapes and CD's were pretty much common place for MC's and rappers even back then, but for me, it was a big achievement and I think I surprised a few people when they listened to it back then. It never really went anyway, at most, I probably gave away 100 copies which I burnt and hand drew the sleeves for, and hearing it back, it's very raw, both lyrically and in the recording of it, and despite most of it making me cringe I'm proud of it, it was a milestone for me. Most of the lyrics were the result of a stream-of-consciousness style of writing I used to do, because it was all I knew to do, I didn't know much else and never really worked with other MC's about from old friends Boogaloo Dee and later on, through the Bristol connection, Grilza, all of which helped me to develop
I've had 3 of the tracks up on Soundcloud for a while, but decoded to stick all up on line (bar 1 track which Soundcloud won't let me, which is fair enough, as I didn't get permission for most of the tracks) and here it is.
Just A
Name Vol 1 Tracklist
Small Town
Perspective – RJD2 Ghostwriter (Deadringer)
I Drop A
16 - Metal Fingers – Spikenard (Special Herbs vol 4)
Figure It
Out – Metal Fingers – Lemon Grass (Special herbs vol 4)
Story –
Black Grass - Toys (Black Grass)
Trials and Tribulations - Myst aka Gatekeeper
Remember
Your Roots - Various Artists - Distorted Minds In The Mix (Knowledge
Magazine Issue 46 / DJ Fresh – All That Jazz (Instrumental) / Q
Project – Ask Not
Friday, 10 May 2013
New Scratch Show and Ritzy Gig Audio
Hello.
There's pollen type things flying around the air, carried on the winds and it's making my eyes itch, though, anyone that's ever seen me get nervous, on, or off stage, will notice that I'm always rubbing my eyes anyway, especially as at the moment there is a lot for me to be getting excited / nervous about!
New Scratch show No Milk For The Foxes
So...At the end of July I'll be going into the final development phase for A Tale From The Bedsit where we actually get to make the show, set an all, and we now have a brilliant set designer on board, which is great....but before then, on the 31st May as part of the Cook Up Scratch festival at Battersea Arts Centre myself and Conrad Murray will be presenting 10 minutes of a new work in progress called No Milk For The Foxes. The show is about 2 security guards and we will be exploring what a job like that means to them in the current climate, using elements of dialogue and rap. I've been working with Conrad for over 2 and a half years now both in theater and with music, as well as our work with young people for BAC Homegrown . We've had endless conversations lasting for hours about our mutual interests, swapping books, reading articles and posting each other links to video's and the like. It feels like a natural time for us to finally collaborate in a theater context and to do it at Battersea Arts Center which is somewhere that means a lot to both of us. There are over 60 artists and company's all going to be showing new work over the course of the scratch festival so naturally I'm rubbing my eyes in excitement and nerves, but trust me, nerves are good!
New Scratch show No Milk For The Foxes
So...At the end of July I'll be going into the final development phase for A Tale From The Bedsit where we actually get to make the show, set an all, and we now have a brilliant set designer on board, which is great....but before then, on the 31st May as part of the Cook Up Scratch festival at Battersea Arts Centre myself and Conrad Murray will be presenting 10 minutes of a new work in progress called No Milk For The Foxes. The show is about 2 security guards and we will be exploring what a job like that means to them in the current climate, using elements of dialogue and rap. I've been working with Conrad for over 2 and a half years now both in theater and with music, as well as our work with young people for BAC Homegrown . We've had endless conversations lasting for hours about our mutual interests, swapping books, reading articles and posting each other links to video's and the like. It feels like a natural time for us to finally collaborate in a theater context and to do it at Battersea Arts Center which is somewhere that means a lot to both of us. There are over 60 artists and company's all going to be showing new work over the course of the scratch festival so naturally I'm rubbing my eyes in excitement and nerves, but trust me, nerves are good!
New Audio: Live At The Ritzy
Back in February, I performed at the Brixton Ritzy, at a night called Ritzy Platform which is an open mike night hosted by fellow spoken word artist and good friend Richard Purnell. Every month Richard will feature an act to do a full 20 minute set, and back in February it was me. It was a good gig, I had a few of my mates there and also 2 of my brothers came which is quite rare. Conrad Murray also joined me for the final piece, which was an improvised acoustic version of a track off the EP were working on called The Dice That Rolled A 3. Have a wee listen...Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Lates@Flat Planet Thursday 2nd May
Hello!
I did this gig last year for Lates@FlatPlanet (the picture on the right hand side of the web was from there) and it was a special night, in fact the only place I've ever been asked to do an encore. It's a very intimate spot in the basement of Flatplanet just off Oxford Street and luckily enough they have asked me again for a slot.
It was a lot of fun last time and the spelt flatbreads are banging!
Hope to see you there!!
Paul
The line up is as follows:
On Storytelling- Mr Steve Keyworth
I did this gig last year for Lates@FlatPlanet (the picture on the right hand side of the web was from there) and it was a special night, in fact the only place I've ever been asked to do an encore. It's a very intimate spot in the basement of Flatplanet just off Oxford Street and luckily enough they have asked me again for a slot.
It was a lot of fun last time and the spelt flatbreads are banging!
Hope to see you there!!
Paul
The line up is as follows:
On Storytelling- Mr Steve Keyworth
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)