WGP Journalism

Classic who dunnit fun

Had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Miller for the Richmond and Barnes magazine. Really nice man who has lived a very interesting life of animal rights philanthropy. 

Quality amateur producation of John Webster’s ‘White Devil’ at the Mary Wallace in Twickenham

My first piece for the Richmond and Barnes magazine! 

To balance the scales of my experiences of actual Australians after the mental racist cab driver I had some lovely Oz locals return my phone after it went walkabout on a Saturday night. I was fucking hammered and rang my phone and they told me to come meet them at some club called prestige on Oxford street (which is the gay street in Sydney.) I jumped in a cab to go meet them and only realized as I got out of the cab that i had no way of ringing them to find out where they were. The only people I could see were two cross dressers and so I asked to borrow there phone and they overheard in my phone conversation that I didn't know where the club prestige was and so offered to escort me there. The phone conversation with this girl as I got to the club went like this: Me: Hey thanks so much for waiting I'm just approaching prestige now. Girl: "What do you look like?" Me: "Just look for the Ryan Dunn lookalike flanked by two crossdressers" Girl "What the hell are you talking ... oh wait totally see you" To balance this act of kindness out from a proper Ozzie local I did have a man tell me to shut the fuck up when I sighed whilst taking a piss at a urinal in a boules club. Wasn't really sure how to react to the situation as it's not often I have someone try and start a fight with me whilst my dick's out. Well at least not that often. Ok FINE so it happens allot. Things are looking up in the world of glass collecting as I've actually managed to make it behind the bar to serve drinks. Although only temporarily to cover a couple of shifts I'm totally taking that as a win. The work at the Woolhara bar is an odd combo of incredibly mind numbing and ridiculous. I was working one evening collecting glasses and I wandered into the private function room to be confronted by the image of a 50 year old man whose birthday it was lying on the floor with a dildo in his mouth and a dildo in his hand whilst two strippers/soft-core porn stars bounced up and down on aforementioned dildos and made out on top of him. Probably the only job I could see that image and not be in porn. I also had a woman stop me during a shift and tell me that one of the other barmen had cleared her drink away. I asked her what he looked like and she responded with this little gem "he looked quite allot like you, only much better looking." Never been completely burned by a fifty year old women, not a fan of the feeling its a bit like having your ass handed to you by your mum. All the lads behind the bar got involved in Movember and so the entire team of barstaff look allot like a team of 70's pornstars although it has lead to a bar motto of "united we mo!" Having a mustache is awesome because when you see another guy on the street with one you just give each other a little head nod to acknowledge the fact that both of you are awesome. I did however perhaps take the mustache comradery too far when i shouted mustache high five to celebrate an awesome shot into the bin at work. There was an awkward silence as everyone realized that would just be a kiss. Australia has carried on throwing up some interesting cultural differences to England. For some reason about a fourth of all bus drivers in Sydney wear cowboy hats. Not really sure why but I enjoy the YMCA spirit their showing. The northern states of Oz also have a national holiday for a horse race called the Melbourne cup, a motherfucking horse race. Back in England you've got to win a war for that shit. I also never thought I would miss English terrestrial TV but compared to Australian basic cable it is the absolute dogs bollocks. Oz terrestrial is basically made up entirely of 30 year old sit coms from America and England, stuff like cheers, becker and whose line is it anyway. Friends is like cutting edge brand spanking new stuff on Oz basic cable. Australians are also shit at losing stuff. They can't take banter about their cricket or rugby team being shit and when i went to watch the England Australia game in a sports bar they only had it on on one screen out of 80 in the bar because they thought they were going to lose. They really need to get used to losing seeing as all of their sports teams are shit at the moment. Back in England we've basically made it part of our national identity. Been a big fan of the results of the Autumn internationals although for some reason they've entered my subconscious in a weird way. I had a dream the other night about playing against the New Zealand rugby team and having the winning try scored by Dawn French in the character of the Vicar of Dibly. Would be interested to see what Freud would have made of that one. Some memorable moments of the past month have included Ollie getting his ass absolutely handed to him at a variety of skill based games. He came last in a four hour game of boules. Also after bragging for about 4 days about how he was going to beat me at this arcade game where you hunt deer he then got annihilated by myself in a 15 round marathon, managing to only clock up a paltry 22,500 to my monstrous 27,000 point score. He also got beaten heavily at shooting basketball hoops in an arcade and just generally is a bit of a quiche lorraine, honestly he should probably just give a facebook apology to life as currently it is handing his ass to him 5-nil in every metaphorical game of fifa he plays with it. We learnt that my inability to read certain words is not just limited to Quay as I told Ollie to walk down the Great Western Hwy, reading Hwy as Hweee instead of highway (once again thanks English degree.) Went to see the High focus tour which was absolutely epic, Fliptrix, Jam baxter and Dirty Dike absolutely killed it as usual. Ben got fired from his job charity fundraising but bounced back quickly after going to his work drinks and meeting one of the tele-fundraising bosses who took pity on the wee laddie and offered him a job charity fundraising on the phones. This lead to a pretty shit faced Ben spending the entire night repeatedly telling me and Ollie that he'd "basically been headhunted." Just so were clear Ben's using the term 'headhunted' there in the same way as I use the term 'threesome' and 'five star meal' after a pot noodle and a wank. So that's it for the latest installment of Australia so far. It's been educational: Ollie's pants at most stuff and Australians don't like it when you sigh at a urinal.   

I decided to start a monthly update of my adventures in Oz to keep my writing skills up to scratch and to keep a record of whats happened seeing as I'm sure I'll forget most of it. It'll be nice to sit down with my wife and kids in 30 years time and show them a record of my happy youth before they ruined it. Well either that or I'll be alone .... and now I'm sad.  Having gotten off the plane the first real life Australian i spoke to was my cab driver who initiated conversation with "FUCKING INDIAN DINGO'S!" I wasn't sure whether he was being racist or if Indian Dingo's were some sort of threat to the local wildlife. This confusion was made worse by him following this comment up with "COMING OVER HERE EATING OUR BLOODY FOOD." Now my jet lag addled mind was presented with two options:  1) This man was a weird sort of gluttonous racist who was more concerned about immigrants coming over her and taking his food than taking his job which is the more traditional refrain of the ignorant pleb. 2) This man was simply trying to warn me of some of the trials and tribulations that i would be facing as a new arrival into his wonderful Australian homeland. My polite British upbringing meant that i went with option 2. This was unfortunate as the next comment that came out of his mouth was "AND OUR BLOODY JOBS ALL THE FUCKING CAB DRIVERS ARE INDIAN NOWADAYS." (This man was cut from the cloth of people that solicited the need for the invention of the caps lock.) A nasty moment of realization occurred that in some small way my Britishness had just apathetically allowed for a little bit more racism to enter the world than otherwise may have if i had just been a little more French and assumed from the get go that this man was probably a prick. Happily however my misfiring brain was still focused on assuming option 2 of this man and before i could stop it from doing so my mouth vomited out the phrase "How would a dingo drive a cab? They don't even have opposable thumbs." The concept of a different ethnicity being so backward they don't have thumbs seemed a racist bridge too far for this man as he just gave me a weird look and carried on the drive in silence. Take that racism, bamboozled by a lack of thumbs! A month on from thumbgate and I've learnt some things about Australia, in many ways it's like 200 hundred years ago i started my own country; All the local food is different forms of meat like Schnitzel, steak and burgers, not to mention that due to the large Chinese and Asian population there Thai and Chinese food is incredible as well. The range and quality of beer is ridiculous. The women are stunning and because of the weather constantly in short skirts and summer dresses. Every single bar has every single sports channel and pay per view known to man on all the time so there is sport on constantly, to the point where last night i ended up getting drunk and cheering on women's boules. I learnt the hard way that the wrong response to a woman asking you back to her apartment is to take the piss out of her ... 5 times. Also, don't refer to Vegemite as Gypsy Marmite as apparently it gets Australians quite pissy. I learnt that I didn't know how to pronounce the word Quay. But most importantly I've learnt responsible drinking laws in Australia mean that they have free shrimp during happy hours. FREE MOTHER FUCKING SHRIIIIIMPPPP!  Notable moments during the trip so far have included Ben getting in a fight with some green peace activists about the cow hoof content of his McDonald's ice cream. Ollie's new thing whenever he gets drunk is to either fall asleep in the.corner and get thrown out or go and find a member of a different nationality to spend an hour relentlessly telling them why there football league and or cricket team are shit. We went to the NRL final which was absolutely insane, 90000 Ozzies all in one ridiculous stadium going mad, it was the closest I've ever seen a sporting atmosphere come to matching Twickenham. Although the journey to the stadium was a little weird because on the same day in the same stadium complex One direction were playing so the train was full of hysterical 16 year old girls and the occasional pissed off looking dad. We ended up playing fives for the full 40 minutes journey to stop Ollie from sweating too much. Went to watch gravity at the Sydney Imax which contains the worlds largest screen and was pretty fucking epic. Fair play to the directors of that film in managing to make an hour and a half long film set in space still manage to contain about 30 minutes of a scantily clad Sandra Bullock. There was something simultaneously terrifying and sexy about watching a 40ft tall cougar walk around the screen in her underwear. Ben's got work as a charity mugger on the phone and in a sign that the end of days may well be coming Ollie is a white van man. I've got work as a glass boy in a bar and as a removals man so the three years and £27,000 spent on a degree in English and Philosophy is totally looking worth it. So yea minus a slight lack of drum and bass and some casual cab driver based racism Australia's pretty much shitting all over England so far. 

So many other artists killed it at the Jungle Jam Carnival it’s hard to do them all justice in the shortness of this review. Lady Chann smashed her set which included a live performance of the track she collaborated with La La and the Boo Ya on ‘Lioness’ which is pretty much an instant Jungle classic. Skeptical came hard as usual with that weird unique jungle/dubstep hybrid that I’ve only ever seen him manage to pull off. The experience of warped crunchy basslines distorted over slowed down dark aggressive drumlines was as trippily awesome as usual. He dropped one of my favourite tracks of the night in ‘Marka’ which is just impossible to classify in any genre other than “oh my days that’s the funky s***”. Northern scum’s set was as much fun as ever including an awesome drum and bass remix of ‘Come Around’ by Collie Buddz which I was hugely impressed by. Whoever was MC’ing for them also killed it managing to carry on bossing his lyrical delivery despite some random blonde chick getting lairy and trying to grab the mike off him. Audio active DJ’s in Room 2 were also dropping some fire, an impressive little dubstep set from James Little standing out especially. As always Jungle Jam nailed it on every level, kicking summer off to one hell of a start. 

Kenny Ken and Mc Navigator are two names that need no introduction and they brought some audio terrorism to the night with a batshit crazy ragga set.  Both of these guys were in the scene when it started and it showed as they showcased 50+ years of collective experience in dropping dance floor destroyers. Navigator has an endless supply of lyrical ability, having been a reggae soundboy in the 80’s and a jungle mc/artist from the 90’s onwards the man’s versatility is legendary, switching seamlessly from a lilting lyrical Rasta sing song voice for chilled out sections of the set to a breakneck speed MC delivery when heavier tunes dropped. The two complimented each other perfectly as Kenny Ken is a big fan of switching up the tempo of his sets; tunes like the Shy FX and Benny Page remix of Gyptian’s ‘Hold You’ would lull the crowd into a false sense of security before a song like Frisk’s ‘I Swear’ would announce itself by making forceful and energetic love to their eardrums. Brockie and Det carried the night on with some more driving jungle. Big shout out to MC Det for my favourite lyric of the night “freestyle selection that’s worth a mention.” Brockie dropped a fresh selection of old and new school jungle tunes with the precision and energy that won him the Best Jungle DJ of 2013 at the DnB awards in February. A nifty little mash up of Brockie and Ed Solo’s ‘system Check’ with Bad Company’s ‘The Nine’ was one of a number of highlights of a polished set. I wish I could tell you more about Nicky Blackmarket and Marvellous Cain’s sets that finished the night off but by that point my note taking had somewhat degenerated to the point where my last entry was NICKY BLACKMARKET BASSSSS and a massive smiley face. I think it’s safe to say I was enjoying whatever they were playing and considering the source we can safely assume it was absolute fire.. Jungle Jam please please please keep doing these nights they are absolutely the lions bollocks.

soundclash format with some of the founding fathers of jungle? Yes fucking please

Completely forgot i wrote an article about Ninja's at the begging of this year.

Krafty kuts is a beast, who else brings there kid to a rough tempo? Looking forward to watching him slew his set at Mint Warehouse on the 12th despite having broken his leg at Snowbombing. 

Icicle's Dropping a set at Momentum's 10th birthday up in Leeds at Wire on Friday back to back with ANT TC1. Looking forward to some dark and twisted shit.

Breakbeat remix of the godfather theme tune? Yes fucking Please

This was an epic night of ‘raveology’ from the Now Then! Collective, showcasing some of the very best and brightest breakbeat has to offer.  This was a night for the dedicated no nonsense raver; an insanely bouncy booty shaking extravaganza with more energetic bass than an extreme fishing programme featuring Robson Green.  I was a big fan of the crowd that showed up purely because they all seemed to be insane.  Every single drop that Mint’s crystal clear Funktion One sound system delivered had the crowd jumping around like kangaroo’s on red bull.  The mint ceiling was as mind blowingly cool as ever, matching every tearing bass line with an intense, strobe heavy light show that was artistic in its absolute bad-assery.  At times the combination of awesome Breakbeat, strobe lights and smoke machine made it feel like the actual room was skanking.  I enjoyed every minute of this night; it was such a welcome alternative to the house music dominance that the Leeds clubbing scene is currently experiencing.  Personally I find House music a drop-tease, it keeps making you think it’s going to drop and then it doesn’t, or it does it half-heartedly.  Stanton Warriors, Rack N Ruin, Mafia Kiss and The Hustle and BreaksJunky on the other hand are the village bikes of bass saturated drops.  They will give you a euphoric build-up of 30 seconds and then rip the dance floor to shreds with a nuclear and clearly defined drop, Christ sometimes they will give you a secondary drop in the middle of their primary drop and every now and again they will make things really interesting with a tertiary drop.  If like me you enjoy DJ’s that drop bass-lines like Liam Neeson does Eastern Europeans then this is the night for you.  The non-straightened 4/4 drum pattern from which Breakbeat gets its name is used in pretty much every genre of music, ranging from Pop to Garage.  This means that a good Breakbeat DJ has an almost limitless supply of songs and samples which they can work into their set.  Mafia Kiss and The Hustle duly obliged and hustled everything from grime to dubstep into a back-to-back performance that was so enjoyable I would strongly suggest they form a group together permanently: Mafia Hustle.  They gave a master class in how to work 3 or 4 different drum, bass and synth patterns into one coherent and just generally sick sound.  The fresh originality of Mafia Kiss’ club track re-edits blended together really well with the distinct ‘gangster breaks’ style that The Hustle is renowned for.  This was most evident with a nifty little electro break remix of the dizziest of rascals ‘Fix up look sharp’which got the whole club singing and dancing like crazy people.  Another moment of pure genius was a fast tempo Breakbeat re-edit of Daft punk’s ‘Derezzed’ mashed together with Skream’s remix of Cassius’ ‘I love you so.’  I couldn’t identify the last track they dropped but it was absolute fire, they’ve been kind enough to upload it onto YouTube and it’s definitely worth checking out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA75M1dBiCo Stanton Warriors took to the stage after Mafia Kiss and The Hustle and absolutely body bagged their set.  Stanton Warrior’s sets are like Beyoncé on a trampoline: mad booty shaking fun that makes everyone happy.  Their set started with the ‘Speak Softly Love’ instrumental (the theme tune to The Godfather) that quickly mutated into a filthy eclectic electro break rhythm that got the crowd skanking furiously.  This was then followed by an hour and a half of excellence as they oscillated wildly through varying genres and rhythms with surgical precision and fluidity.  It’s almost impossible to describe a lot of the music they dropped as when you try and label it under the myriad of genre’s it sounds a little absurd.  For example they dropped a sort of trip hop, Breakbeat, electro, remix of ‘Party and Bullshit’ by the immortal Biggie Smalls, in concept it doesn’t sound like that would work but trust me Stanton Warriors made it work and it was an absolute banger.  A nifty sort of electro-dubstep break rework of Justice’s ‘We are Your Friends’ was another genre defying moment of brilliance.  The entire set was bonkers and a testament to why Stanton Warriors are very much at the forefront of all things Breakbeat.  They finished in style with my favourite Breakbeat tune which is their very own remix of ‘Good vibrations’ by the Beach boys that never fails to get a dance floor moving hard.  Rack N Ruin closed out the night with a slightly more laid back style of Breakbeat.  Heavily influenced by Bashment, Dub, Grime and dancehall, he delivered a wicked set that perfectly demonstrated why he’s been making such big waves in the scene over the past couple of years.  His set was ill and felt like a Breakbeat take on what dubstep used to be before the American’s ruined it.  Wobbly bass and Breakbeat drum-lines got mixed together with grime and dub lyricals to create something that sounded like Breakbeat’s Caspa and Rusko.  However, like the rest of the acts on, he refused to stick to one genre. The grimey/dub/breakbeat sound of his own tunes like ‘Righteous’ and ‘Signal’ were occasionally broken up by the insane pumping electro step of some of his more energetic offerings like the aptly named ‘Do one’.  As good a night as you could hope to have, I would strongly recommend looking out for the next Now Then! night in your area. 

Barry Ashworth dropped this in his set at raise the roof, absolute fire.