‘There’s not enough basslines in techno,’ says Neil Landstrumm, and he should know, he’s been doing techno for decades, not to mention other stuff where basslines are obligatory. There’s a memorable bit in the fabulous historical document, NTS’s UK Garage in 6 Stages, where Matt Jam Lamont tells us how a junglist (Blame from Movin’ Shadow) came round and told him to turn up the bass. It prompts the thought that maybe the nineties were like this for everybody.....Liam Prodigy, Peaches, Jermaine Dupri, Armand Van Helden, maybe even Timbaland. A junglist came round and told them to turn the bass up. Spice has plenty of bass, as it nods its chin to R’n’B, dubstep and deep dancefloor mashiness. There’s some brilliant siren-sounding builds going on too.
As well as bass, Spice also has vocal snippets from a singer called Tina P. There’s a Tina P who is an ALT-based, Mississipi-raised funk singer with a taste for canine references with a mucky edge – like Pet That Dog, except it’s not really a dog. Maybe a funkateer came round and told Landstrumm to get more snippets. Any attempt at authoritiveness must now be abandoned as I suspect that This Weeks' Tina P is a different one to the Mississipi-raised one. This Week's Tina P sounds Australian for a start, although my track record in this regard is deeply flawed – remember Millie Turner was tagged as Scandinavian when she’s actually from Clapton. You’d think googling would easily resolve these doubts, but it doesn’t. At least, not the way I’m doing it.
Landstrumm’s origins are far easier to pin down. He has cajoled nobody to pet their dogs, neither muckily nor any other way, and he’s certainly not Australian. He’s Scottish, and as mentioned, he’s been around a while, with a track record that includes releases on Rave Or Die, Peacefrog, Tresor, Snork Enterprises, Planet U and Moustache Records. A great insight into his technique and attitude can be found in an interview in Attack magazine, which gets a massive thumbs up, not least ‘cos it provided the quote which kicked off Paragraph One above. There’s another quote where he celebrates the virtues of, ‘doing things wrong’, which was the inspiration for the whole of Paragraph Two. Obviously.
Kudos too for making history as the very first bloggee to have released an Evil Ring Tones pack for Halloween. The only question is whether somebody (Beyoncé maybe, or a guide gone rogue from an Edinburgh ghost tour) came round and told him to do it.
THIS WEEK
Neil Landstrumm feat Legacy and Tina P
145 views since 23rd September Weekly Average Views - 203
LAST WEEK
Millie Turner – Luv Luv Luv
Weekly Average Views – 570 Blog Week Views – 111
EXTRAS (split into 2 parts; Off The EP + Interviews, Historical Resources and Ringtones)
Off The EP
Neil Landstrumm – Dog Falls
Neil Landstrumm – SOWAHH
Interviews and Ring Tones
Attack Magazine Interview
NTS’s UK Garage Evolutions
Evil Ringtones