Every week resident FADER selector Eddie STATS runs through dancehall riddims and other artifacts from the ghetto archipelago.
Sometimes things just come in waves. I didn’t have to reach too hard for a theme (or micro-genre) for today’s Ghetto Palms because for some reason my inbox this week was full of non-dancehall remixes of Jamaican artists that—even though they came from different countries and different mindsets—all had a similar vibe. The vibe is electronic, skittery and minor-keyed, sometimes leaning towards house and electro, sometimes on a more UK grime thing, but meeting up in that fast half-time, slow double time tempo that has been floating in and out of music since the invention of drum n bass. For lack of a better term I am labeling it Garrisontech.
Garrisontech Blend:
Aidonia, “Wine n’ Bubble” (Instinct remix)
Mavado, “Neva Believe You” (Tim Turbo After Hours remix)
Mavado ft. Busta Rhymes, “So Blessed” remix
Tarrus Riley, “Back Biters” (Instinct Tropix remix)
Buju Banton, “Yard an Abroad”
Download: Ghetto Palms Garrisontech Blend
The first (and the second to last) came from my dude Instinct in London. Apparently, when he is not being one half of De Tropix, making the kind of 2000Tone jams that qualify for a spot on my 2008 Ghetto Palmes d’Or list, he is busy not sleeping, surfing the interscape for dancehall acapellas to kill with massive remixes like these re-imaginings of Aidonia and Tarrus Riley songs. Practically tripping over that one in the email queue was a spooky 4/4 remix chopped together out of pieces of Mavado’s “Neva Believe You,”—an instant cult classic, though until now I thought the cult only consisted of me. Not so—it also crawled earworm-style all the way to Germany where it infected Tim Turbo, which may or not be the alter ego of a man called Seen, a prolific producer in Germaican reggae circles. He hosts a site called Seen’s Non-hippie Reggae and Dancehall Blog, and the Tim Turbo Thursday podcasts he runs are kind of like the German Ghetto Palms (I don’t know how to translate that because I think ghetto in German is "ghetto"—Ghetto Tannenbaums?) except housier.
The next cut is a remix of Mavado’s “So Special” featuring Busta Rhymes which is about to be everywhere (Hot97 take note) but specifically found it’s way to me courtesy of publicity gal extraordinaire Rhona Fox. This is hardly a remix except in the guest-vocal sense, but then it hardly needs to be since Stephen McGregor’s original beat already lives in the gothic, 4/4 meets dub zone I’m talking about. Likewise, Buju’s version on the Target riddim is a JA production as well, it just sounds like the grimey rap side-project of some UK dubstep producer. But there’s no law that says Garrisontech can’t be made in the actual garrison. In fact, if there is a poster girl for this sound it must be Waterhouse-based Terry Lynn. The video for her dub poetry x glitchy electro track Kingston Logic leads off the column, thought to truly keep it garrison check the
version 1.0, pirated together from animated Peter Dean Rickards photos of gully life.