An entertainment company that had plans to reunite the Jackson family for a series of concerts has sent cease and desist letters to Michael Jackson demanding that he not perform his London shows this summer.
This week we have exclusive mixes from Brit beatheads Paul White and Bullion who both sprung from little London label One-Handed Music, which sounds like a joke about the autoerotic nature of esoteric instrumental hip-hop. Thankfully there is no musical masturbation here. Bullion all but willed Summer 2009 into life with his luminous Young Heartache EP while his friend and label-mate's forthcoming LP, The Strange Dreams Of Paul White conjures a hallucinatory world which owes as much to guitarists dressed as wizards and epic songs about Stonehenge as it does to turntables and microphones. I asked the pair a series of increasingly irritating questions.
When I was small I used to play a game with my brother and sister called Not Allowed To Touch The Carpet. It involved climbing and jumping around the house while avoiding the biggest and most obvious spaces. We stopped playing when my brother impaled his forehead on a stone windowsill by the front door. He's fine now. Cool scar. During this interview we're going to play Not Allowed To Mention Dilla. Who is your favourite hip-hop producer?
Paul White: Has to be Madlib, his creativity is so endless, the fact that he does it for him and for fun, the rawness, the innovation...and his discipline and dedication has been a major inspiration to me!
Bullion: It changes. Right now it’s Paul White.
What other producers do you like? Bullion: As far as hip-hop goes I like Edan a lot. Tightface is really good too, proper original London sound. I like whoever produced this band called Caravan in the Seventies—warm sounds!
Paul White: To be honest I’m listening more and more to just old records, but Bullion has been a big inspiration, we have long prog rock chats. Oh No, Kankick, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Dam Funk, some good friends of mine Sir Real and Tightface, I need to listen to more producers to be honest!
Paul, your album is called The Strange Dreams Of… I used to have a recurring dream about being stuck in a maze and being chased by huge boulders while my family watched from a nearby patio set. What's the strangest dream you've had? Paul White: I have a recurring dream about never getting to surf. I’m always about to and something crazy happens, like the water disappears. But one of the strangest has to be when I was just an energy ball floating about. I could travel through anything, see everything, even myself. The feeling it gave me just being energy and not a person, it was crazy!
Bullion, let’s talk about Time For Us All To Love. It’s like bottled sunshine and arrived just as everyone was getting really sick of winter. Are you going to specialize in Optimistic Summer Jams? Bullion: That’d be fun and everything, but I’d be stuck for the rest of the year when the weather’s rubbish! Plus I never really sit down and decide to do any type of track. It’s just whatever feels good at the time.
I hear you’re doing a lot of remixes. What are you working on? Bullion: I finished a few recently—Bat For Lashes, Amadou & Mariam and King Creosote.
What do you both think about all this Beat Generation stuff? Do you feel like there is a movement? Paul White: To be honest what I love to do is just be in the studio making music, so I don't really think about that stuff. There definitely is a community of beat makers supporting each other though, which is really good!
Bullion: I hear a lot of it about so I guess there must be some kind of a movement. There’s definitely a community of people in London who are into that stuff, but I don’t think everyone is consciously trying to be part of that scene. It’s just a lot of shared influences and tastes I reckon.
Some people think instrumental hip-hop producers are a bit humourless. What do you think? Bullion: Bollocks.
Paul White: I think that's funny. The main reason I make music is to have a laugh and have fun. I try to put that in my music too sometimes.
Paul White FADER Mix Intro
King Stitt - Herbsman - Trojen
Todd Rundgren - International Feel - Bearsville
BBC Radiophonic Orchestra - Doctor Who - BBC Records
Peter Baumann - This Day - Virgin
Joe Zawinul - In A Silent Way - Atlantic
Todd Rundgren - Never Never Land - Bearsville
Paul White - Highlife - Unreleased
Paul White - Universal Thoughts - Unreleased
Paul White - Alien Attack - Unreleased
Paul White - Get Em Up - Unreleased
Jo Jo Bennett - Leaving Rome -Trojen
Batucada Fantastica - Atabaques E Surdos - Musidisc
George Duke - OMI (Fresh Water) - Epic
Gong - And You Tried So Hard - Virgin
Utopia - Singring And The Glass Guitar - Bearsville
Paul White - Time Wars (Extended Version) - One Handed-Music
Bullion FADER Mix Brother Ah – Love Piece
Tightface – Track 24
David Earle Johnson – Grandma’s House
Leon’s Creation – Until You Were Gone
Ahu – Bitches Of The Past (Bullion Mix)
John Martyn – Smiling Stranger
Modern Sound Corporation – Safari
Maximum Joy – Searching For A Feeling
The Beloved – 1000 Years From Today (Todd Edwards’ Dub Mix)
Breakbeat Era – Bullitproof (Steve Gurley Mix)
The Soulful Strings – Within You Without You Paul White – So Far Away
Candi Staton – You Don’t Love Me No More
Kraan – Young King’s Song
15. Harvey Mandel – Shangrenade
16. B.W.H. – Stop
17. Bullion – Crazy Over You
Fridays have come to mean many things in the FADER office (alcohol with breakfast, EVR, staying up past 10pm), but we've come to look especially forward to the Friday's that bring One Step Beyond at the American Museum of Natural History. This past Friday boasted the beloved Stones Throw All-Stars including Dam-Funk, Peanut Butter Wolf, James Pants and Mayer Hawthorne. Having witnessed the mayhem that was the Stones Throw showcase at CMJ, we showed up bright and early to Mayer Hawthorne opening up. Taking the reigns next was Pants, who played plenty of doo-wop, but to the chagrin of one puzzled attendee, did not sing. Dam Funk, on the other hand, did sing, performing songs from his upcoming album, including one dedicated to a former head of state called, "Killdatmutherfucker." Closing out was Peanut Butter Wolf, who finished with an especially well-rounded set, ranging from hip-hop classics to The Ying Yang Twins, "Wait (The Whisper Song)" transitioning into the Bing Bong Brothers version. We. Couldn't. Get. Enough.
