DAILYSESSION

By Fact Magazine

01: DJ MILO / VA

THE WILD BUNCH – STORY OF A SOUNDSYSTEM

(STRUT, 2002)

OK, so this isn’t strictly a Massive Attack album, but if you want to get any real sense of the social and musical context that gave rise to that band, you need to pay it some mind. The Wild Bunch was basically a Bristol soundsystem that came to prominence in the late 80s, tearing up parties in St Pauls and beyond with their infectious, immediate and quietly radical fusion of reggae, hip-hop and soul: a fusion that Massive Attack would take to the next level a few years down the line.

The core members of Wild Bunch were Miles Johnson (AKA DJ Milo, compiler of this 2002 retrospective), Claude Williams (Willy Wee), Nellee Hooper and Grant “Daddy G’ Marshall, soon joined by Andrew ‘Mushroom’ Vowles and Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja. Very much pre-acid house, the parties the Wild Bunch played at and hosted were massively important to Bristol’s creative flowering and laid the foundations for the sound and aesthetic that would later be termed hip-hop. Though ecstasy and other drugs infiltrated the scene, it remained predominantly weed and booze-driven; accordingly, the wide range of music espoused by the soundsystem was united by its dub DNA: from the rolling, bass-heavy house of Mr Fingers’ ‘Can You Feel It’  to the electro-rap chop-up of Man Parrish’s ‘Hip Hop Be Bop’. [Read More]

By Ben Ratliff – NY Times

The crowd thinned out before the last band at Brooklyn Bowl on Thursday night. This made no sense, by normal gig logic, because of course the best band — Cymbals Eat Guitars — came last.

But this wasn’t a normal gig. It was a five-band show of new indie rock sponsored by Insound, the Brooklyn music distributor and online retailer of vinyl albums, T-shirts and other cool things, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary. And it happened at Williamsburg’s newest rock palace: novel and g-g-gorgeous, a place built to satisfy your desires for grass-fed beef and tipsy recreation. If you can stand any more leisure, there’s live music there too. [Read More]

By Anahad O’Connor – NY Times

DJ AM, a high-profile disc jockey who was as famous for his much-chronicled relationships as he was for his creative scratching and mixing on the celebrity club circuit, was found dead on Friday evening in his apartment in Manhattan, the police said.
The police said his body was found in his seventh-floor apartment in SoHo about 5:30 p.m. after friends had tried unsuccessfully to reach him for days. The chief police spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the police did not suspect foul play. [Read More]