FPM

Hey folks! Sorry for the latency. The New Year's preparations have taken all my time. However...

I was really glad to find this tune on YouTube. I already wrote here about my first meeting with Japanese indie through Pizzicato Five, Boredoms, Melt Banana and Boom Boom Satellites videos. So when I finally found the Bungalow Records' compilation "Readymade Records, Tokyo - The Remixes", I was listening to it all the time. This was the first cassette to include Pizzicato Five and Fantastic Plastic Machine music. And it introduced me to the "pop" side of the genre so much provided by late 90's Ninja Tune artists. And this remix was definitely one of my first favorite groove tunes. And I think it's a nice tune to post on the New Year's Eve - just to help you get in the holiday mood. :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY! :)

Hefner

When I first heard this tune by the future jazz artist Hefner (not the indie rock band) on "Radio Styl", I had no idea yet that search for this tune will bring me into the whole world of downtempo/electronic jazz music and a few years later - into broken beat scene. Later, in August 1999, when I was listening to Gaya Live (one of the first streaming web radio-stations to deal entirely with electronic music), I heard Hefner's music again. But this is an entire huge story to tell about. Let's be consistent...

It will take me about a year to find the Inertia Records compilation, where this tune was included. And another couple of years until I first find his tunes through AudioGalaxyy, and then - his entire album through SoulSeek. But still, this opening tune, alongside Clifford Gilberto and DJ Vadim's "London Mind State", will always remind me of my last spring in Minsk.

Clifford Gilberto

Today's tune is another Ninja Tune classic that followed me from spring till autumn of 1999. It was a perfect soundtrack for both - the first sunny spring days in Minsk, that I was often spending walking around downtown, and the first cooler days of autumn in Jerusalem, that I was spending in ulpan. Indeed, oddly enough, each time I hear this tune, there are two different sights that come up in my memory at once: banks of Svisloch river, covered with snow, melting in the sun; and the road from Kav-Tet be-November street all the way down to Emek Refaim.

New Forms

Yes, it took me a while before I finally bought this album. But after all this was one of the albums that made up the soundtrack of my first months in Jerusalem. And this particular tune very much reflected the way I saw this city, when I first got here - full of tension and mytery.

White Town

Time for a weekly tune! Something that I was thinking about for quite a while lately.

On the wave of new disco-inspired hits, like "Sexy Boy", "Lovefool", "Da Funk" and "Music Sounds Better with You", another memorable hit was "Your Woman" by White Town. Around the same time there was an article about the artist behind this name in "MG", from which I've learned that this song was recorded at home studio by British-Indian Jyoti Mishra and he's built his studio from the equipment that he found in the streets. Indeed, as I'm thinking about it right now, back then a lot of old electronic instruments seemed so useless that people were getting rid of them for ridiculously small money.

When we arrived in Israel, one of the first places that me and my sister visited was the "Picadilly" store on Shatz street, that was already running a closing sale, so a lot of CD's were extremely cheap and we bought a few after 2 hours of digging through shelves. One of which was White Town's album, because my sis loved "Your Woman". Back home we were amazed by the fact that the rest of the album sounds way different from the hit. And actually, all the other songs were much better! Like this one:

Jyoti Mishra is an original "bedroom producer". You may even call him and original hipster, if you wish. Despite his past major success, he continues recording and releasing his music independently to this day. He was one of the first artists I knew that were managing their website and even a sort of blog (it was still 1999, remember). Here it is - really worth checking out!