Wrongtom

Like the proverbial Jack I’m hitting the road tomorrow, armed with a small box of soul, ska & reggae 45’s ready to give Cliff Richard a run for his money on a well earned summer holiday. Never one to don a hanky, roll up my slacks and idle away my week on the beach, I’ll be manning the turntables at a handful of nights on either coast of the Americas.

First stop is NYC where I’ll be warming up for Easystar Allstars with a selection of deep and dubby roots reggae and a dash of dancehall in The Oval @ Stuy Town, Manhattan on July 21st – I’ll be kicking off at around 5:30pm so come down for some free blazing bass-heavy action if you’re in the neighbourhood. Following a few days of record digging and a monumental pancake binge I’ll be jumping on another plane to…

LA, where I’ve been invited to play some funk & soul 45’s at the now legendary Funky Sole @ The Echo on July 31st, run by Miles of Breakestra infamy and free of charge, what possible excuse do you have for not coming aside not actually being anywhere near Sunset Blvd that night?

Following that, after a few days of finally languishing in the sun (after months of perfecting my studio tan) I’ll be returning to Sunset for a ska & early reggae session at the Rocksteady Lounge @ Akbar. Another free session and this one’s gonna be a stormer as it’s the Lounge’s main man’s birthday session, so come shake a leg.

I can’t leave you without mentioning Huey Morgan played the forthcoming Roots Manuva meets Wrongtom single “Jah Warriors” on his 6music show this weekend, you can listen in for the rest of the week here.

It’s also very possible that on my return I will be heading to the Big Chill but more on that when I’m home, til then, adieu.

I can now officially announce my Kid Koala remix is not only going in the Ninja Tune XX box set but apparently it’ll be amongst a handful of exclusive 7″s as part of the package. It’s quite an honor to be involved with Ninja’s 20th anniversary celebrations and if you wanna know more then have a look here, and pre-order your XX box set before they run out.

As ever you can hear a snippet over on my LISTEN page along with a couple of tracks from the forthcoming Roots Manuva meets Wrongtom LP and the 1st remix from my new act Indian Queens.

Don’t forget if you’re in NYC next Wednesday I’ll be opening for Easystar Allstars in The Oval in Stuy Town, armed with a bag of dub, roots & bass, plus it’s free! info here.

Yesterday’s post brought with it a special treat in the shape of two black circles of goodness. It’s always nice to get fresh wax through the post but this time it was twice as nice, no, thrice as nice, as the records in question were the test pressings of the Roots Manuva album, finally! To you this means you can expect to see it lining the shelves of your local vinyl vendor in the near future but to me this means over a year’s worth of faffing about with hihats, breaking bass guitars, and dying laptops is finally over and it’s no longer a pipe dream. Tony McDermott’s artwork is looking awesome and I’m just finishing off the b-side for the single “Jah Warriors” ready to drop in August.

On a vaguely related note, I’m honoured to have been invited to remix something for Ninja Tune’s 20th anniversary XX collection, I wont say who just yet but I can assure you it will be marsupial friendly. In the meantime if you’re stuck for something to do tonight or next Friday then come and see me play in Kings Cross with Jimmy Screech or Peckham with Dawn Penn respectively.

Sorry to bang on about it again but to tie in with my recent boots which Nice Up! deemed fit for release, I thought it’d be nice to share some older mash up action from my Cassetiquette CD.

I’ve picked a couple of reworks which fuse everything from dirty old dancehall and uk hip hop to the unlikely pairing of prog-rock and yet more uk hip hop, so check em out below and download at your own peril.

On top of Riddim Killin topping both the Reggae and R&B charts over at Juno this week, I also just heard that my recent Pama version is in stock at South London’s finest Reggae store Dub Vendor, so get your skates on, get yourself down to Clapham Junction and grab yourself a copy while you still can.

In other news, my new act Indian Queens’ debut dj set was a storming success last Friday, 3 hours of pounding bassline heavy house and dubstep shook into the small hours in Brixton with punters begging us for a copy of 1st as yet untitled production. Fear not as it’ll hopefully be available before the summer’s out but more on that later.

Dj Wrongtom “Styloclast” by wrongtom

Dj Wrongtom “Destination: South London” by wrongtom

What better way to cap off a weekend of birthday celebrations than to find out I’d somehow wound up being number 1 in the Juno reggae charts? For those that don’t know, the mysterious Nice Up! went and released my remix of Rodney P’s Riddim Killa on 7″ today alongside another recent Resuscitation. Fully endorsed by Rodders himself and championed by the likes of Don Letts & Daddy G from Massive Attack, I knocked this up last summer simply to play out and soon had requests coming in from Indianapolis to Indonesia, seriously. Pretty good considering I only burnt copies of it for 2 or 3 people initially.

So what else can I say aside grab yourself a copy.

And believe it or not this wasn’t even the best thing to happen today as I was also sent Tony McDermott’s preliminary drawings for the Roots Manuva LP cover – a bizarre feeling seeing my ugly mug drawn by the guy responsible for some of my favourite reggae album sleeves.

Lastly on a slightly different note, if you’ve noticed me mention Indian Queens a few times then I can finally reveal that the new act I’m involved in is playing it’s first ever DJ gig this friday at the Dogstar in Brixton. IQ material is still yet to drop but if you come down you can expect to hear a nice selection of bass heavy house music or maybe house heavy bass music, who knows, just come and have a dance.