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Turns out that charity event thing I was banging on about features the engagingly bonkers Tetine from Resonance FM- that sounds quite enticing, and unusually for a charity thing (it's children's chartities by the way) it's only five quid. Live tommorow in Clapham- more details here.

Grant Green- Solid. That's one heavy album. Standard. Lee Dorsey- Search For The New Land. Utterly spellbinding modal explorations, not just peppy soul-jazz in a Sidewinder vein (nice tune though that is). Any more cheesemeisters (or near cheesemeisters) who have at some point sat down and down...

I've got my copy of Ego Trip's book of rap lists, as indeed anyone with a passing interest in hip hop should do, but I'm intruiged by this follow up book about racism. Anyone read it, or heard any good or bad reports?

Just talked to someone from a charity who are putting something on at the Clapham Grand soon, and Asian Dub Foundation has dropped out. Their trying to book a similarly-sized-yet-admirably-indepedent-minded act who could go someway towards filling a 1500 capacity venue for a good cause. Perhaps...

DJ Zimbon hasn't turned up, so they're killing time discussing UK TV from the 80s. "I'm not going to lie, Fraggle Rock was big". Well funny.

Slint the band = stunning Slint's bands, that they selected = largely rubbish apart from The Melvins At least Slint were amazing. Isn't Spiderland the last really blueprint-defying rock album? Has there been anything approaching that paradigm shift in the fourteen years since it was released?

According to Bossman on the radio, this top, top tune is coming out next week. Blimey, it's so long so I first heard this that listening to it now I'm almost experiencing nostalgia (and there are plenty of even more delayed tunes of course). But this ain't a good business plan is it, releasing...

I can't think of a single grime lyric which bigs up graffiti or its artists. Which is pretty strange, when you consider that MCs even big up "the Rock massive" from time to time. Funny that. Does this mean is graffiti viewed by London as desparately uncool?

Just listening to the new Fat Cat split series 12" by The Dead C and enjoying it a lot- obviously they've been around for donkey's years now, God they're probably due for some retro revival or something, but their work just seems to last. It's noisy without being cluttered, atmospheric yet still...

Something I noticed the other day is that there's been a bit of a trend of grime producers re-doing a rhythm using their own kit- for instance a half-speed Katie Pearl tune, with a [possibly overproduced] guitar sample has been redone by IMP batch in very cheap but rather cool style. When Ghetto...

Susan Sontag dies. Only 71, that's quite young for a lot of those philosophy types, who seem to write up until they're 95 generally. Just started reading my Roland Barthes reader, edited by Sontag with a fantastic introduction that summarises his thought wonderfully. RIP.

I'm not well versed in post-structuralist thought, but years dipping into Roland Barthes suggest to me he's right more often than not. F'instance the Death of The Author business is actually a very nuanced theory- his contention that we're all readers, but the writer is at least first reader...

There's a remix of S.L.K.'s Hype Hype out, produced by Wonder, and those "brrrrrrrrrrr" "braaaaaaaahh" noises that Flirta D does actually sound quite cool- the remix has sucked all the friskiness out of the track, replaced by scorched-earth dubby hip hop. Flirta sounds like a caged animal...

Seems worth mentioning this fearsome vocal on the Forward rhythym. Absolutely mentalism is all I can say. Brap! You can hear it on the Hotsound show on 1xtra, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/1xtra_aod.shtml?hotsound click it forward to 15 minutes through the set, and they drop it (and...

Listening to some of his newer stuff on the Juno shop site, it sounds pretty varied and a hell of a lot more exciting than a lot of dubby techno. Can anyone confirm that it's worth splashing out on a CD?

.... are there any? Reggae and hip hop are both notable for, as well as a number of geniune beefs, quite a few ones invented to boost publicity, have a laugh, and sharpen mic-skills. Yet grime's disses always seem to be either absolutely fearsome, genuinely threatening, or at least tough to the...

Dizzee- Showtime is simply phenomenal, yet it can sound a pretty humourless record. Even when there are jokes, they seem calculated for maximum dissing effect. Compare Dizzee's Hype Talk, where he takes a list of rumours and slews that have been made him and coldly rams it back down his...

Played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas last night, which is amazingly fun (much more so than the bloated, stoopid Vice City). Set in Straight Outta Compton era LA, it's extraordinarily rich in observation- one of the characters (Ryder) is clearly Eazy-E, perpetually blunted, hunched up behind...

He's got a new album out, which to me sounds exactly the same as everything else he's done. Is there anything more to this man's talents than singing like a tramp, telling tedious tales of drunken bar-hopping, and his musical accompaniment of someone hitting a sink? And didn't Captain Beefheart...

A couple of years ago, they were everything you'd expect of an indie/dance crossover- weak beats , sloganeering lyrics, an air of total novelty ("hey! we can do rave music"), and basically a total mess that would be a total struggle to dance to. But the new album is actually rather good. It's...