The Face: Shoom (June 1988)

Going out on a high for 2009, a sweet piece from The Face in June 1988. Sheryl Garratt nails Shoom in one paragraph. Top lady.


Thanks to Matthew J.
[Apiento]

Tokyo Tracks 003: Osamu Kitajima – Thru Cosmic Doors

Fusion’s excesses give way to a new age. Instruments dance a ballet. In my head. A second-hand ticking. Time hurries by. A shakuhachi mourns its passing. Pleading. Calling it back. As if it were trying to prevent a lover from leaving. A koto marks the attempts at persuasion and the inevitable. A lyricon. The struggle.

The struggle with time.

There’s a photograph of my Nan attached to my Tokyo fridge door. It greets me every morning when I go to make the children breakfast. She’s all dressed up with somewhere to go. Black jacket, blue skirt, white thinning hair. She’s holding on to the handrail of the steps to her garden in Croydon for all she’s worth. When I look at this photograph I think of the eighteen years I spent living next door. I remember toy soldiers scaling the mountains of her stairs. Action man’s journey’s to the centre of the coal bunker. And a gold carriage clock high on the mantelpiece with a delicate mechanism too fascinating not to touch. I hear the constant banging of the gate between our house and Nan’s. At night, the wind conjuring up robbers and ghosts when I’d forget to lock it. I smell the roses in her garden and touch the rubber flowers on her rubber swimming hat. I share evenings baby-sat between Nan’s legs. Fan heater warming us. Stealing sips of Babycham and watching TV in the dark. Nan singing in Welsh and snoring through the opera on BBC2. There are no memories of scoldings. Only love and pride. I see another photograph of Nan. She has black hair and she’s holding me in her arms.

When Nan died, my childhood finally ended.

The shakuhachi defiant now. The figure more elaborate. Each dancer moving to a separate song.

Osamu Kitajima – Thru Cosmic Doors
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[Dr Rob]

Photographs: Dirt Box 83-86

These photos of the Dirt Box crowd circa 1983-1986 come courtesy of Hazel Taylor. For our ex-UK friends, the Dirt Box was an illegal drinking den that moved around London run by the infamous club face Phil Dirtbox. As you can see it was a time of amazing clothes, hair and jean shorts on Philip Salon. Thanks Hazel. x.










[Apiento]

Wally Badarou: The Daiquiri Diaries

After ‘Fisherman’, Wally Badarou returns with ‘The Daiquiri Diaries’, a new release from ‘The Unnamed Trilogy’. As Wally describes it, ‘A fresh start, with a yellow glimpse of humour, banana or strawberry, your choice’.

You can hear and download the track here.
[Apiento

Mix: Jose Padilla – Cafe Del Mar (Numero 27)

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Thanks to Matthew J.
[Apiento]

Test Pressing Mind On The Run Take Over

Test Pressing started in December 2008 and was partially inspired by some Swedish friends who, as well as being behind the rather good Parlour 7″, are also kings of the Swedish balearic beat and the chaps behind the always good Mind On The Run blog. If you though the balearic well was running dry these two show the depth of music that is out there.

We asked them to select their favourite tracks from the site and here we are. There are twenty tracks in total so we’ve split them into two parts. Part two follows soon.

Paul Davidson: Midnight Rider
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Blue Gene Tyranny: Next Time Might Be Your Time
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Torkel Rasmusson: Resan
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The Gipsy Kings: Ternuras
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Bernt Staf: Valhall
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Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation: Watch ‘n’ Chain
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Scorpions: I’m Going Mad
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Mikael Ramel: Imorron E En Ny Da (Instrumental)
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Terry Jacks: It’s Been There From The Start
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E.S.P: It’s You
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In case you missed the link here it is again, Mind On The Run.
[Apiento]

Party: The Return Of Afternoon Sessions

Happy to mention the return of the super mellow Afternoon Sessions. DJs Phil Mison and Steve Terry will be joined by Balearic Mike to play balearic beats, fascinating rhythms and sunset vibes. Price on the door? Nish. Perfect.

[Apiento]

Party: Cosmic – New Year’s Eve

If you are at a loose end tomorrow in London town you could do worse than get down to Sosho in Shoreditch for this one. Enjoy people.

[Apiento]

i-D: The House Sound Of Chicago (September 1986)

Taken from i-D magazine September, 1986.





Thanks to Matthew J.
[Apiento]

Happy Christmas From All At Test Pressing

It’s been a good year at Test Pressing towers. We posted a Detroit legends home phone number by accident, hosted lots of amazing mixes from our favourite balearic anything goes DJs (special thanks to Phil Mison, Balearic Mike, Moonboots, Jolyon and Lexx) and played host to some amazing old tapes from Alfredo, Soul II Soul/The Wild Bunch and Jose Padilla.

Old Face and i-D magazines got plundered, Tim H introduced us to fine pieces of music in his Streatham Island Discs column, Waldo stirred it up and Dr Rob came on board at the end of the year to share his thoughts on his new life in Japan, as well his series of Tokyo To Kissa mixes. Wally Badarou and Dennis Bovell got the Test Pressing inquisition and Dave Dorrell proved himself, in hindsight, to be the most erudite quotable acid house DJ (see below). Write the book Dave.

Also, we’d love more new people to come on board next year to write about design, film, TV, news, photography, art, whatever really, so if interested get in touch here.

Stay tuned for more of the same next year and enjoy your break. We may be back before the year is out and we may not, depending how we feel. Keep it tidy and remember, it’s all about the nippers.

[Apiento]

The Face: Looking For The Perfect Beat

Taken from The Face, October 1983. Check the chart.






Thanks to Matthew J.
[Apiento]

i-D: Alfredo Piece

Right – not sure where to start with all these but over the coming months I have many amazing pieces courtesy of Matthew J a.k.a Groover from DJ History to post on Test Pressing. First up – DJ Of The Month from i-D April 1990 – the legend that is Alfredo.


Thanks to Matthew J.
[Apiento]

Just Because: 005

Got to love Malcolm. And if you haven’t checked Shaun Stussy’s blog do so here. The man has taste.

[Apiento]

You Tube: Club Culture (1988)

Got to say thanks to our Swedish cousins at Mind On The Run (more from them soon) for finding this classic documentary on the clubbing scene shown on Channel 4 in the UK in 1988.

On a New York hip-hop tip, we get interviews with the Jungle Brothers, Mantronix, Biz Markie, Red Alert & Q Tip, Stetsasonic, Richie Rich, Keith LeBlanc and a great montage to the sound of ‘Don’t Believe The Hype’ in Dapper Dan’s NYC shop.

If you want to go straight for the acid house section go to 14:20 and Mike Dunn saying, ‘So let it be written, so let it be house’. From there we get interviews with Ten City, Daryl Pandy, Tyree Cooper, Robert Owens and at 23 minutes up turns Oakey with that brilliant hair cut and Lisa Loud (wrongly named ‘Nancy Noise’) discussing balearic beat. Dorrell appears and states…


Nailed. Colin Favor tells the Ibiza story, Fat Tony talks escapism and it’s all cut in with some great acid house footage. Bam-Bam, Adonis, Marshall Jefferson, Eddie Richard go on to discuss the music and they show the E’d up video for Paul Rutherford’s ‘Make It Real’. Coldcut, Jazzie B, Youth, Baby Ford and a few others bring up the rear with the London perspective.

Jamie B Rose, the director, whoever he is, deserves a pat on the back. Someone re-release this please. Top top documentary.

[Apiento]

Mix/Piece: Dr Rob – Toyko-to kissa #2

Catching my reflection in the mirror, I look like an old prospector. I’m in red long-johns to keep out the cold. Lee Marvin in “Paint Your Wagon”. My star has wandered. I’m either getting softer or Tokyo is getting colder. I bought the long johns, or Akapan, from Sugamo a week ago. The red colour is supposed to be lucky. Tradition dictates that you buy them in your 60th year and the place was overrun with gangs of old people focused on this sole purpose. I was bitterly cold. I couldn’t wait another seventeen years.

A nine hour time difference meant I got up at 3 AM this morning, to Skype a mate in the UK, who predictably wasn’t there. Since I was up, I opened an email from sister. “Nan’s taken a turn for the worse. They’ve given her two days left to live”. I called my Mum, who has been caring for my Nan for the last fifteen years. She wasn’t home. I called my sister. Nan had died an hour before. It’s not going to be the best of days. So much for lucky red long johns.

“When my memory wanders, as it does when bad things happen, I put a seashell to my ear and it all comes back……”. No seashells round here. Only shellac.

Ryo Kawasaki is locked in a bolero tarantella in the desert playing jazz-funk as heavy as metal, and I remember a sombrero-wearing dude tripping on a three hour bus journey out of Tokyo. I hear Software noisily getting their sausages sucked and I’m back having sex in Brixton. The acid taking me out beyond the universe. Everything falling away to blackness. It’s Immaterial push the boat out and dance, and drunkard logic has me entering another night in expectation. Shutting out the extremely high probability that it will bring nothing. Liz Frasier sings in glossolalia. Speaks in tongues. The language of heaven is that we all hear want we want to hear.

I am so much younger. We’re driving in a purple Ford escort. Someone’s first car. The girls have yet to sit their O Levels. Hard little bodies, tiny bras and kohl-ed eyes. A bob like Clara Bow. Sex Maniacs or romantics? Out for one more boast, or doomed to act out every film, every fiction, over the next twenty painful years? Youth is a truly beautiful thing. May you find a cunt that fits. Harry Crews` gypsy curse. Forever walking Spanish when she left. A flamenco player wrestles his guitar. Johnny Weissmuller with a rubber crocodile. The African kora carries the melancholy. I don’t remember where I am but I am leaving. A harp swings. A buzzing sax circles in and out of range. A mosquito honing in on its target. An annoyance rising to a scream. A doubt. Regret maybe. Loss. The sound of another empty bottle. Another night on the floor.

Keith Jarrett urges the music on with wordless cries and grunts. No mere dance. All at sea again. Not waving but drowning. Frenzied below the surface. Weather prophets play a penguin café pastoral. I almost pray. I hear the music of a goodbye, and I’m back in Croydon. Putting together my last compilation for a friend before I pack my records to be shipped to Japan. Looking for a brand new start. A lion found me, a week or so later, completely lost, six thousand miles away, in Yodabashi Kamera. I wept my fucking eyes out as I dragged my two boys through the blare, glare and bustle of Akihabara, attempting to sort out a PC, phone and internet connection. Morrison gets sent. The roar somehow stuck in his throat.

5 AM in Tokyo and I’m checking flight availability. Wondering how to cover the child care if I make the trip back for the funeral. Caught between responsibilities to the past and responsibilities to the now. Responsibilities to the dead and to the living. A defiant hymn from the Beach Boys` Holland LP plays. It holds a mad story about moving a studio across continents and the last vestiges of Brian’s genius.

At one end of the market street in Sugamo there was a beggar on all fours like a dog. Eyes fixed on the ground. Hands and feet blue. Vividly reminding me of the “creature” that the woman in the film “The Audition” keeps prisoner in her apartment, he looked like he was in a lot of pain. There are a few homeless doted around the parks and under the highways, but beggars are so rare as to be non-existent in central Tokyo. My wife was crying. The old people didn’t seem to see him. We gave the kids some change to put in the empty paper cup.

Once more for the living.

Tokyo-to kissa Mix #2

Ryo Kawasaki: You Are Like Sunlight
Software: Present Voice
It’s Immaterial: The Better Idea
Cocteau Twins: Pandora
San Sebastian Strings: Gypsy Camp
Ketama: Jarabi
Dorothy Ashby: Little Sunflower
Pat Metheny: So It May Secretly Begin
Jan Garbreck: I Took Up The Runes
Keith Jarret: Dancin`
Ellis Island Sound: Building A Table
Van Morrison: Listen To The Lion
Beach Boys: Sail On Sailor

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[Dr Rob]

You Tube: Behind The Beat – Acid House

Another great acid house video with interviews with Pete Tong, Mark Moore and Dave Dorrell worth checking for the Dorrell interview alone. (For our European friends he was one of the guys who made ‘Pump Up The Volume’, was a London club face and DJ about town). Aciiied!

[Apiento]

Under The Radar No.11: Sister Sledge – Easier To Love

This one goes out to all our friends in far away places. It’s the B side to ‘We Are Family’ and comes across like a slow version of ‘Thinking Of You’.

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[Apiento]

You Tube: The Tube – A Night In NYC (Danceteria, The Roxy & The Paradise Garage)

Killer. Jools Holland in his guise as Tube presenter, goes to Danceteria, The Roxy and the Paradise Garage in NYC. When Mark Kamins at Danceteria is asked what bands he thinks have that magic feeling he answers, ‘Quando Quango, Africa Bambatta, The Peech Boys – they’re all different but they have that feeling’. Finally, they visit The Paradise Garage and interview the Peech Boys at 5am. Golden times.

[Apiento]

News: Superimposers Release Their Bid For Christmas Number 1

Yo ho ho. The festive season is upon us and we think it’s time for you all to avoid trying to help Rage Again The Machine and Sufjan Stevens getting to that number one spot and instead spend your money wisely buying the lovely new super-limited CD from our own balearic wonders Superimposers.

The single is available from Rough Trade, Soul Jazz and Colette Paris, or from the Superimposers themselves who you can contact here. Further information is available from the chaps on their blog here. Below is their rather beautiful music box track, ‘Would It Be Christmas’ taken from the EP. Deck the halls people.

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[Apiento]

Mix: Apiento – Deck The Halls… A Christmas Mix

Here’s a Christmas mix for the end of the year. It’s full of songs I’ve been listening to over the past few months. It’s not balearic, nor disco, just a collection of lovely songwriting that starts with Ian Matthews ‘Seven Bridges Road’ (Fleet Foxes owe you a pint sir) and then moves along a folky rock lineage from there. Nice.

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[Apiento]