NORFOLK LOVES SOUND SYSTEM CULTURE, BUT WHERE’S THE COMMITMENT TO ANTI-RACISM?

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Perspectives and tagged 1312, ahmaud arbery, appropriation, arts, BAME, black, black lives matter, braithwaite, british history, burru, culture, dick hebdige, drum and bass, education, empire, featured, Jamaican, jungle, music, naybinghi, obeah, party, punk, race, racism, rastafarian, reggae, subculture, uk, underground, whiteness.

by Lisa Insansa Woods

Norfolk’s music, gig and free party scene is a vibrant stream of colour, with bright red, gold and green gushes moving through the illuminous pool. Reggae, dub, jungle, drum n bass and techno can easily be discovered blaring from a stack of speakers in a venue or elusive field in and around Norwich. Norfolk loves sound system culture, but many of those same people who dance to this music are quiet in the struggle against racism.

“Babylon A Fall,” they shout. But what does that actually mean? Continue Reading

MUSIC THAT MATTERS – ICYMI: STÖJ SNAK INTERVIEW WITH NIELS SØRENSON

Posted on July 24, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Music That Matters and tagged Aalborg, acoustic, Billy Liar, concert, Copenhagen, danish, denmark, DIY, electronic, Frank Turner, gig, grand collapse, grindcore, Guns'n'Roses, hardcore, hip hop, icymi, interview, kollapse, Lemlæstet Fosterbræk, metal, Mighty Midgets, MTM, music, music that matters, NIELS SØRENSON, Pizza Tramp, punk, reggae, rock n roll, screamersongwriter, series, Ska, STÖJ SNAK, streaming, underground, venue, vocalist.

by Sara Harrington

Part of a series exploring great music from the DIY music scene that you may have missed.

Hi Niels, thanks so much for letting me bother you with lots of questions! How are you doing today?

No worries. My pleasure. I’m pretty good today – currently in an airport, waiting for a plane to Copenhagen where I’m going to visit an old friend and see a Guns ‘n’ Roses show. Ten year old me is stoked.

So, I’m pretty late to the game and only just stumbled across you and your musical endeavours – Can you tell me a bit about ‘Stöj Snak’ and how it started and who is involved?

Stöj Snak is a ScreamerSongwriter band from Denmark. I started Stöj Snak as an acoustic solo act around 4 years ago – basically just me recording songs in my apartment as a hobby project. It was never meant for anyone to hear.

Since then the band has grown to a four piece with drums, washboard, upright bass and other trash instruments but the attitude towards the music is still very much the same – we do everything ourselves and because it’s fun. It’s basically the antithesis to Guns ‘n’ Roses.Continue Reading

TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK – AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIK PETERSEN OF MISCHIEF BREW

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Music That Matters and tagged Against Me!, Beyonce, Blink-182, crass, dead kennedys, defiance ohio, DIY, Donald Trump, Emma Goldman, erik petersen, folk, folk-punk, grandmaster flash, howard zinn, IWW, mischief brew, music, music that matters, owl sanctuary, pete seeger, plan-it x, punk, punk rock, ronald reagan, Run DMC, subhumans, underground, utah phillips, whodini.

by Chris Jarvis

In the early 2000s, American punk music underwent one if its periodical renovations on the underground scenes. Bringing together punk rock’s anger, pace and aesthetic and meshing it with the instruments, skill and stories of folk music, folk-punk shifted the goalposts of what it meant to be a punk band. While Against Me! are probably the most famous, Defiance, Ohio the most innovative and influential, Mischief Brew are probably the best. A decade after their first full-length release Smash the Windows they continue to produce rebel rousing and exciting music, with last year’s This is Not for Children shows their ongoing versatility and eclecticity endures.Continue Reading

THE CORPORATE UNDERGROUND

Posted on April 3, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged art, arts, brand, capitalism, Converse, corporate, creative freedom, expression, industry, internet, mainstream, Mass Appeal, Mike Vinti, money, music, music industry, music that matters, nme, O2, pop, promotion, punk, radio 1, Red Bull, Red Bull Music Academy, Reel Big Fish, Relentless, Rubber Tracks, Rude Kid, sell out, Sprite, trend, underground, wealth.

by Mike Vinti

The lines between the underground and mainstream music worlds have been blurring for a while now. As with the majority of issues facing the music industry these days, this is largely because of the internet. While it’s been an undeniably positive force on music itself, allowing fans and artists to connect more easily as well as opening whole new worlds of music to potential fans, it’s also made underground music more marketable.

This may not sound like a bad thing, and to a large extent it isn’t. While it would be great if musicians could live off credibility alone, in the ruthless world of capitalism in which we live, you need to be stacking that P if you want to survive. Where this increased marketability becomes less positive however is when corporations start getting involved.Continue Reading

HUMAN PROBLEMS, HUMAN SOLUTIONS – AN INTERVIEW WITH BABAR LUCK

Posted on December 12, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Music That Matters and tagged arts, Babar Luck, folk, human, humanity, interview, King Prawn, music, music that matters, politics, punk, series, Ska, underground.

by Chris Jarvis

In underground music circles, Babar Luck is something of a legend. For more than twenty years, he has been a staple feature of the UK punk scene, blending and smashing genres along the way. Starting as the bassist of seminal London band King Prawn, notorious for their eclectic influences which drew upon hardcore, reggae, metal, punk and hip-hop, Babar has gone on to have an illustrious solo folk career, as well as working on new bands such as East End Trinity and collaborative projects The Babylon Whackers and Suicide Bid, while providing guest vocals for friends and comrades in the scene such as Sonic Boom Six and Random Hand. Babar Luck’s musical outputs have been beyond any doubt, inhumanly prolific.Continue Reading

RAISE THE PITCHFORK: MUSIC AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged blog, blogosphere, commercial, Conde Nast, Ed Sheeran, establishment, GQ, journalism, Major Lazer, media, MSM, music, music artists, music journalism, music media, Nasties, niche, Pitchfork, public, Stormzy, Taylor Swift, The New Yorker, The Weeknd, underground, Vanity Fair, vogue.

by Mike Vinti

It was announced on Wednesday that influential music blog Pitchfork – virtual second home to many music nerds – has been sold to Condé Nast, the publishing group behind Vanity Fair and Vogue.

On the face of it, this is a pretty boring piece of news to anyone other than music journalists; Condé Nast is no longer the giant of media it once was, and Pitchfork has a relatively niche audience. As such, this announcement has been met with derision by many in the blogosphere, perhaps wary of the old-world Nasties infringing on their ad revenue, alongside some legitimate concerns for the diversity of its audience and contributor pool. Yet aside from the dull business of one company purchasing another, the deal proves far more interesting than it first appears.Continue Reading

THE LONDON TUBE STRIKE: CRAB LOGIC AT ITS MOST CRABBIEST

Posted on July 19, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged art, artist, artwork, cartoon, commuters, crabs, human rights, london, media, neoliberalism, strike action, Thatcher, tube, tube strike, underground, work, workers, workers rights, workforce.

by Alex Hort-Francis

Last week saw a 24 hour strike by London Underground staff, with commuters and tourists left to make their own way across the city. The dispute centred on a new, much-heralded night-time service, which unions claim would impose changes to the working conditions of Underground staff without proper consultation. Union members voted overwhelmingly for strike action, with concerns about safety on the Underground voiced.

Watching people’s responses to the Tube strike is an exercise in forced deja-vu, with the same arguments repeated across the web: ‘plenty of people work harder for more hours and less pay’, ‘if they adon’t like it they’re free to find another line of work’ and the classic ‘they should suck it up and work harder like the rest of us’. The common denominator being that because the striking workers already have better pay and conditions than many of the city’s commuters they aren’t justified to take action to stop these conditions changing without their consent.

There is actually already a term for this: ‘crab mentality’ (although I happen to think ‘crab logic’ is a bit snappier).Continue Reading

underground

NORFOLK LOVES SOUND SYSTEM CULTURE, BUT WHERE’S THE COMMITMENT TO ANTI-RACISM?

MUSIC THAT MATTERS – ICYMI: STÖJ SNAK INTERVIEW WITH NIELS SØRENSON

TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK – AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIK PETERSEN OF MISCHIEF BREW

THE CORPORATE UNDERGROUND

HUMAN PROBLEMS, HUMAN SOLUTIONS – AN INTERVIEW WITH BABAR LUCK

RAISE THE PITCHFORK: MUSIC AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA

THE LONDON TUBE STRIKE: CRAB LOGIC AT ITS MOST CRABBIEST

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