You’ve been missing us right? Well not long to go till we start back up, to keep you sweet though, here’s a mix by Nasty McQuaid. You can download it here.

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So, in the post below, I said if you were lucky you might get to hear some more live recordings from last year’s Off Moderns. Well as it happens every housewife’s favourite, Nasty McQuaid, is putting on Kalakuta at the Big Chill House in King’s Cross this Thursday, which is a perfect excuse for us to post them performing the excellent Fela Kuti jam, Water No Get Enemy, at Off Modern 14. They were excellent then, they’ll be excellent this Thursday too, so its definately worth heading down to check them out again.

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This saturday May 15th. Call the number on the flyer for location details.

Off Modern Resident Nasty McQuaid will be doing what he does best in the main room and we will be doing some DJing ourselves in room two. It promises to be one hell of a night.

Arrive before 2am.

So, a month or so in club music has rushed on by since I last did the round up, and, woeful Haiti relief records aside, things are looking up.

In the world of Hip Hop it’s been all about big guns with Pharrell, Snoop and Rihanna all putting out interesting tracks-

Have It All, Pharrell’s track with everyone’s favourite jailbird Gucci Mane is, for my money, the best track from the Neptunes stable since ooohhhhhh, like 2002 or something. It’s a sugar sweet return to Frontin’ territory with lyrics that feel like they were carved on a school desk on a sunny day. At one point Pharrell and Gucci even start singing ‘Wheeee’ in the manner of 12 year olds riding a round-a-bout made of candy and goodness. To cap it, the beat has this magical little tic-tocking that puts me in mind of Oompa Loompa’s covering MJs ‘The Girl Is Mine’ whilst churning out Scrumpdiddlyumptious Bars, (without the funny voices and dwarfism, obviously). The other collabo between the two, Soldier, is back over on the rough side of things, being one of the rave bass grind outs that the Neptunes used to toss willy nilly onto erupting dance floors. Both great tracks.

Meanwhile Snoop’s getting plays with Check Yo Self –and whoops! He’s only gone and covered a remix of an Ice Cube song that itself uses the beat from Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’. Cripes! Is that the sound of hip hop munching upon it’s own bloated, face down, rat gnawed corpse? Or is this merely a knowing self referential jam-that-bangs? Jesus I don’t know. Personally I quite like it. The beat is a killer, and fairs fair, The Message came out in the Stone Age so no one’s ever heard it anyway. (I heard Pixie Lott describe Take That as ‘old skool’ the other day, Lord help us). Snoop still sounds good, and all in all this is alright. Maybe a touch irrelevant but, hey the man’s got a mansion to maintain.

You’ve already heard Rude Boy by RnB ‘singer’ Rihanna, (you may have even heard my sketchy jungle remix of it if you were at last months Off Modern…) and…. well, I always thought Rihanna was rubbish to be honest. I don’t care, Umbrella is OK. Just OK. Face it. Stick Crazy In Love and Umbrella in a tiny boxing ring surrounded by baying hood rats and who’s going to emerge the bloody, staggering victor? And don’t even get me started on the wailing dirge that is ‘Take A Bow’. However I think only the most cloth eared of haters could deny that this track is brilliant. It’s all the things I love about pop; it’s nonsensical, euphoric, sparse, repetitive, sleazy, and cat aids catchy. I love the steel drums married to Tiesto trance. I love the way that seeing as Rihanna can barely sing, the old trout just raps away, vaguely having a stab at a melody. I can’t help but think how bad this could have been in the hands of a grade A warbler (say, Mariah)—the whole production is more than emotive enough to require any vocal pyrotechnics.

And talking of suspect-singer-releasing-good-song-shocker, well didn’t Ellie Goulding do well out of Jakwob’s mix of Starry Eyed? Whilst Goulding is some kind of horse-jawed Home Counties Salome prancing around blogosphere flourishing the severed head of Music on a platter made of money and hate, Jakwob it would appear, isn’t. He tethered a warheads worth of sublow wub wub to the nag, drenched her vocals in reverb, gave it a load of ocean deep drops, and somehow came up from the shit fields smelling of daisies. Fair play. It seems that since then the remix work has been coming in for the lad thick and fast, so let’s see how long he can milk it for by producing essentially the same track again and again and again.

Other big dubstep releases came from Dub Police and new boys Erba Records.

The 5 track label sampler doing the rounds from Dub Police gives a fairly accurate overview of where the scene’s at, coupling, as it does, exciting forward looking club music with leaden tedious crap. Caspa has decided to represent with an immensely dull track that he quite possibly wanked out whilst catching a five-minute breather from killing troglodytes on World of Warcraft. Emalkay, who may be forever stuck in the shadow of ‘When I Look At You’, continues in similarly depressing vein and the whole affair was looking to be pretty desperate until The Others showed up with their big bag of zany rave riffs and – Jesus Christ – fresh approaches to the sound. Their track ‘Quantum Leap’ fizzes and leaps about whilst maintaining suitable levels of dubbed out menace and the requisite face pummelling go slow beats. From then on it’s all plain sailing, Subscape come up with a vile and insistent breakstep growler that sounds like a pitbull wolfing a cat made of Pentium chips, if the cat was singing through the mutt’s mouth whilst being eaten alive – and D1 come up with some sort of ace pinging futuristic dance music that takes the wood pigeon sounds of ‘Night’ and whacks them over some high speed house and bass.

The Erba release Gangsta Nuh Play came across as the soundtrack to dancehall don Mavado’s murder and subsequent descent into hell, dragged by Lucifer’s chattering child demons (if it helps, imagine Willy Lopez’s death in the fine Patrick Swayze classic Ghost.) It’s got all the swagger and terror of the finest the genre has to offer and Mavado’s speaker rattling, mournful baritone proves himself once more to have one the strongest voices in dubstep. The flipside has a somewhat jollier Afrikan Boy sampling UK funky track, which continued the blurring between funky and dub that has been so prominent over the last few months.

More funky came from Sony who produced the excellent and aptly titled Sugar Rush, a mix of old skool garage keys and vocals combined with the sound of a hundred drums being battered in a broadly rhythmical fashion. At some point in the track a Sunny D glugging hyperactive bassline splurges out all sweaty and grinning like a mug and it sounds like perhaps everything’s not going to be so bad after all.

Roska has also come up trumps with Time Stamp. I was listening to it whilst walking the dog last week and I came across quite an unsettling sight. A murder (which is a great collective noun eh, like a parliament of owls, or a pride of lions) of screeching crows had gathered together by one of the footpaths in London Fields. They were jabbering frantically at each other and tugging at something in the middle of the circle they had formed. As I got closer I could see that the thing they were obsessing over was a dead one of their own. One crow would grab the limp bird’s wing while another crow would grab at its tail feathers, pulling the corpse into weird and unpleasant shapes. The others would screech and cackle, and it seemed that some sort of judgement had been passed. After a few minutes of this a mongrel dog came bounding through their midst and snatched up the body in its jaws. The crows scattered to the sky. They circled and screamed, flapping the air black with feathers and noise. As they whirled up to the clouds the nervy synths and whip crack snares of ‘Time Stamp’ blasted into my ears and the jittery excitement of it all was quite special. Roska is great.

Unfortunately the song finished to be replaced by David Guetta & Kid Cudi which I honestly swear is only on my iPod for review purposes. Guetta, a man as French as rudeness and sheep burning, is on some kind of one man mission to besmirch the careers of hip hop’s biggest names with his generic abysmal euro cack. First up he sorted out Kelly Rowland and Akon, both massive arseholes in their own right (fond as I am of an Akon sing-along, he owns a fucking diamond mine therefore = evil). Now Dave’s moving onto more credible artists, recently gifting Kelis with the worst song she’s ever released, before turning to stroke his fudgy production fingers all over man of the moment Kid Cudi. There’s no place for this music anywhere. You already know what it sounds like. It could possibly be played to a club full of moneyed tone deaf inbreds, lurching to its ‘uplifting’ beat in between paying £30 for a tumbler of peasant spit and incompetently planning a coup of an Equatorial Guinea. So, big in Bungalow 8 I dare say. To give an alternative review of this track, here’s a comment from the youtube video:

“Stoner song, party song, get away from life song. Kick ass song”

So what do I know, eh?

And while I’m on the subject of dumb music for morons Don Diablo & Sidney Sampson have blessed us with Monster and Rise Up this month. Lest we forget, Don Diablo has a big Anarchy ‘A’ in his logo which shows that he’s a totally crazy guy. Sidney Sampson had the word ‘motherfucker’ featuring prominently in his last hit (‘Riverside’ for those of you to apathetic to keep up) suggesting that he too, is pretty darn crazy. No prizes for guessing what happened when these too scallywags got together, yep, hot diggedy, lock up your daughters because we are gonna go super ! mega ! bananas ! batshit ! CEEERAZY !! whoop !! whoop !! etc.

So bonkers, in fact, that this Dutch headbang house tagteam haven’t been able to contain their megalithic nonsense to just one piece. Instead we get one track that has some clown shouting ‘Rise Up NIGGERS’ (I know this may be off the point a bit, but whenever I think of Dutch people getting together to say nigger, I think of Steven Biko getting his head kicked in. Still, no reason why that should stop the party) until an Ed Banger jocking bass grinds out over the Prodigyesque – if that’s a word these days – drum break outs. The other track bangs along with a guy going ‘whoop’ in the background and some loud noises and stuff. If you want to feel a bit rebellious, then I can say that these truly are tunes that ‘your mother wouldn’t like’ (well, my mum wouldn’t anyway) but I suspect that might be because there a bit shit.

For a better representation of 4/4 music, it’s worth noting that DFA have come back guns blazing with 4 releases in as many weeks, all worth a listen. My favourite is Shit Robot – I Got A Feeling. As with all the other recent releases it’s a little bit disco, a little bit techno and a heaving great church full of house. After 4 punchy minutes of bleeps, bass lines and jack, the bloke from House Of House shows up with a sack full of 92 rave pianos he’s pinched from Detroit and starts emoting all over the place, working the track into what is generally considered epic territory. As with the greatest releases on DFA there’s an excellent sense of pacing at play—the stripped down opening half feels essential rather than noodling, and when the piano and vocals do kick in it’s less everything stepping up a notch, more everything falling into place.

I think there’s time for a mention of the SNES remix of Gorrilaz track Stylo. Put together by new boy Labyrinth, it’s a Mario bothering 8 bit epic with all the shimmering arpeggios, crunchy byte explosions and mushroom munching power up widges that this sort of carry on demands. Tinie Tempah shows up somewhere along the way sounding better than he did on his own chart assaulting single, Albarn’s voice sounds as haunting as ever over the video game hubbub and really, only the most curmudgeonly of fantasy Nintendo plumbers could hate this.

Oh, and while I remember, honourable mentions should go to both Hounds of Hate and Beaty Heart for having amazing tracks out, but seeing as everyone who reads this goes to Off Modern, you know that already. Still, good to have some of the most exciting music in England to be springing up from S. London eh… pip pip x

These reviews are edited from Nasty McQuaid’s weekly round ups which can be found at http://theransomnote.co.uk/

We have reached the 13th Installment of Off Modern and to celebrate this fact we are going all out!

Joining us just before they all jump on a plane to Texas for SWSX, we present to you:

DJANGO DJANGO
http://www.myspace.com/djangotime
It’s almost impossible to box this band in. In the trusted words of the guardian, Django Django are ” Psychedelic art pop at its brilliant best”. Pulsating percussion, fast rhythms, handclaps intertwined with a lot of whiskey, a burning hot sun and a mustang. They are sure to bring that much needed heat to a very icy Elephant & Castle.

+

FRENCH KISSING
http://www.myspace.com/frenchkissingband
Another band to undoubtably take the winter chill away. French Kissing serve up a strong dose of sunbleached 60’s Harmonies and garage pop to go bonkers to. In the word’s of one blogger, French Kissing make Brian Wilson want to put on his speedoes and head back to the beach – enough said.

+

BEATY HEART
http://www.myspace.com/beatyheart
This south London four piece will get you moving. With their own brand of b-more inspired loops, samples and frenetic tribal drumming Beaty Heart should not be missed.

DJ sets courtesy of:

Deadly Rhythm Sound-System
http://www.myspace.com/deadlyrhythmclub

Yo Mamma
http://www.myspace.com/yomamaldn

+ Off Modern Resident (Tomfoolery’s gone to Finland!)
Nasty McQuaid

ART:

This month Off Modern presents ‘Social Capital’ curated by Sally Hogarth & supported by IdeasTap.
Featuring new work from Kirsty Buchannan, Nisha Duggal, Philipp von Frankenberg, Sally Hogarth, Marnie Hollande, Leah Lovett, Sarah Walters, & more TBC

8pm-3am

FREE before 9pm / Five Pounds After

see http://www.OFFMODERN.com/ for more info

Joining the dots between disco, dancehall, tropical rhythms and bass, South London’s finest Nasty McQuaid & Mangno take a break from their roadblocked Off Modern art raves to deliver some grimey party music sunshine to your Thursday night. This month they’re joined by Top Nice supremo Louis Enchante who’ll be bringing his bag of italo treats and electro pop magic to woo your ears and feet…
Joining the dots between disco, dancehall, tropical rhythms and bass, South London’s finest Nasty McQuaid & Mangno take a break from their roadblocked Off Modern art raves to deliver some grimey party music sunshine to your Thursday night. This month they’re joined by Top Nice supremo Louis Enchante who’ll be bringing his bag of italo treats and electro pop magic to woo your ears and feet…

South Rakkas Crew – The Stimulus Package
It may be a couple of weeks late, but this entirely free album from the lazy Santas at South Rakkas still stakes a claim to be my favourite Christmas present of the year. Tracks explode all over the shop with an digi dancehall sound that comes on like The Bug making Benny Benassi electro bass without any trace of dank English misery, or indeed, irony. It’s a big dumb party with guests and genres popping up, smashing together, and staggering off to the dancefloor, limbs and pigeon holes all akimbo. Vocalists include Toddla T cohort Serocee, bashment legend Capleton and, somewhat bizarrely, indescribable San Fran freakniks Deerhoof. The tracks range from the undisputed dancefloor smash ‘Double Up Riddim’ to the dubstep meets Under Mi Sensi bass bubbling of ‘Rise’ to ‘Hands Up’s pure classic techno chords and steppas baile funk. Listened to in one sitting, the full set can be a bit wearying in its relentless party action, and personally it all gets a bit too much for me on stinking Mylo riddim -can you guess which Mylo track gets sampled …?— but the exuberance of the other songs on here more than make up for this, and the sheer fucking weirdness of the Deerhoof collaborations is worth the (free) entry alone. Download here — http://maddecent.com/stimulus/

SCNDL – Need To Know
I’ve got a super soft spot for gay US dark house anthems with a sarky queen talking over the top. Bam Bam’s ‘Where Is Your Child’, The Horrorist’s ‘One Night In New York City’, bangers every time. This track is carrying on this proud tradition, and does a fine job to. Creepy descending acidy riffs, piano break downs, grinding nasty bass lines and crucially, a big queen asking if ‘you wanna get in’. It’s all a bit Berlin sex dungeon and, to be fair, conjures up the image of a sweaty middle aged pervert with a very very serious face wearing a leather apron and dancing with an accountant who’s told his wife he’s out watching ‘the match’. Kind of. But that’s not a criticism.

Skepta – Bad Boy
Ridculously Tiesto sized massiveness. I know progress is good and everything but when did Skepta decide to turn into Haddaway ? I literally don’t understand, I do not understand. How do we find ourselves a decade away from the birth of grime stuck with this nonsense ? Skepta has been responsible for some bonafide classics- Duppy and Too Many Men spring to mind, but shitting hell he can pull out some strange old decisions when we wants to. This little number kind of lifts the chorus from Underworld’s Born Slippy and that’s basically all you need to know. If you think Skepta doing that sounds like it’s going to be a good thing you may like this. If, like me, you find the staggeringly woeful creative blind alley that half of this countries formerly great MCs have leadenly pranced down a sad and depressing event it’s probably best to steer clear. I guess it’s catchy enough and the track isn’t irredeemably bad, but then again, neither, necessarily, is the Cheeky V, the cocktail Charlotte Church invented containing 3 bottles of Blue WKD and a shit load of port. It is however, very pikey.

Fiction – To Stick To
Fiction are 4 piece based in South London. They channel a bit of Postcard records with elements of Orange Juice and Josef K coming through the jangling guitars and fey vocals, and this year promises to be a big one for them. This track has dreamlike whispery vocals with a hint of celebrity racist Morrissey creeping into the languid swoops of lines such as “When you last checked you didn’t like the taste// Hunger could persuade you// Since it was suggested I was taking shape// A shape will take you”. The backing ‘aaaahs’ and tambourine hits add to a sensation of a cosy, particularly English forlornness, making this an ideal piece to listen to whilst pressed against the radiator, drinking a milky cuppa and staring out at the white expanse that has swept January.
Download here: http://offmodern.com/news/index.php/fictiontostickto/

Maxwell D - Blackberry Hype
Finally getting a full release after knocking around on the underground for half a year now,
this is the former Pay As You Go MCs official entry into the brave new world of UK Funky,
and while he may have pissed off Lil Silva by riding one of his beats unbidden, and while the
lyrics are bollocks nonsense about phones most hoodrats had 5 years ago, this definately works.
After the skank craze of 2009 vocal funky is here to stay and a splash of personality on a genre that skates the big bottomless rink of deep house is a breathe of fresh air. It’s not big or clever but it bangs in the club, and if what the kids think counts for anything I had 15 teenagers request it this week alone.

Joensuu 1685 - Im On Fire
Big throbbing mother ship drums. squeals and drones and retro future synths . Mary Chain vocals swoop in a cathedral of gaze and it’s kind of like Muse if they werent a four letter word. This band have a stupid name and a great sound, somewhere between the stadium and the underground, prog in a good way, and beholden to single notes of bass playing skunkbucket riffs for heavy heads nodding until the levy breaks and guitars crash in. Best seen live, the vinyl, sick as it is, just whets the appitite for the show. A joy, pressed in 300 copies. Buy it now and feel smug hating em when they get massive

http://www.myspace.com/joensuu1685

Miike Snow - Silvia
The new single from Swedish Britney Spears producers Miike Snow opens with a very serious, very portentious piano line, and continues in the same poe faced manner throughout. Hyper polished and anemically epic, this has drivetime anthem written all over- big synth arpeggios, marching drums, and insipid lyrics combine to make, well, nothing much really. Perhaps a faint impression of a neatly made wet bed. Onto the remixes then, and it seems Sinden’s managed to perform the finest turd sprucing with a skippy carnival mix that avoids his more clownish tendencies and delivers a hypnotic bass line underpinning choice vocal cuts and nice touchs of melancholy. Emalkay hands in a dubstep mix that can only disappoint after the might of recent killer ‘When I Look At You’. Here he just whacks a load of sub under the original to make the kind of palatable dubstep, one eye coldly cocked towards daytime radio, that has been flooding out since Skream’s La Roux rework. And finally, Felix Da Housecat comes along like its 2003 with a big electro rock banger which would probably sound great changed off your nut in a Miami mega club, but just sounds annoying on a freezing afternoon in Blighty.

Lindstrom & Christabelle - Lovesick
With bass and horns lifted straight from Bobby Byrd’s 70s rarity ‘Headquarters’ Lindstrom’s new project sees him putting the space disco to one side and instead focusing his considerable studio chops on remodelling squelchy electro funk. Opening with breathy spoken vocals, Lovesick benefits from the Norwegian producers’ understanding of the importance of space, with the track being given plenty of room to do it’s thing without ever being swamped by uneccessary fussiness. The signature disco guitar chugs along carrying the beat, pianos stab in and out and Christabelle’s vocals fit in perfectly. Cruically ‘Lovesick’ pulls off the tricky maneouveur of wearing it’s influences proudly on it’s sleeve without becoming a pale imitation of them, managing to sound both retro and relevent. On this form the album should be a winner.

These New Puritans – We Want War
God bless you Puritans. The most under rated band in England have returned to the fray with a 7 and-a-bit minute claustrophobic neo classical opus the likes of which these ears haven’t heard since Radiohead’s misery opera heyday. We Want War kicks off all grimey DavincHe style discordant brass, marching gulf war drums, mutant voices and vicious little whispers before switching half way through to a sprawling choral freefall. Veering between the towering and terrifying, this tune has you wondering why more doom laden orchestral epics don’t pepper their epiphanies with sword drawing sound effects, because they’re pretty fucking amazing sounding here.

Hot Chip – One Life Stand
One time back when the internet consisted of a single big computer called HAL 57 and the only people who had mobile phones were dickheads or criminals, we tried to put Hot Chip on in a small pub in New Cross. They didn’t show up because the drummer had the flesh eating disease that everyone got for a week in 2002, and as a result the fairly ropey band I was flailing away in headlined, getting to play to hordes of screaming girls and sweaty palmed teenage boys. Since then I’ve always loved the ‘Chip, so I’m happy to say that this tune, even though it’s not really as big as Ready For the Floor and certainly won’t have the same all conqueringness as Over & Over, is still 87% brilliant, with skanking bass, warping carnival steel drums and the inevitable heart-rending chorus where Alexis Taylor sings so mournfully and so beautifully that you realise that Hot Chip are a genuine national treasure whom we should all cherise forevermore.

The Count & Sinden – Strange Things (Remixes)
My wife hates drum n bass in all its forms and she would definitely hate this record. I however am an ORIGINAL JUNGLIST and go fucking mental for it. Therefore, whilst the original of Strange Things is kind of a shit reimagining of ’98 dull and bass, the High Rankin remix is a massive and ridiculous amen feast that’s making me bounce up and down in my (junglist) swivel chair. It’s got a dubsteppy speeding up breakdown half way through and loads of ragga shouting and stooopid snares and sounds like High Rankin genuinely loves Congo Natty and Remarc and probably knows all the words to Original Nuttah, including the indecipherable ones UK Apache made up when he was taking a break from inventing jungle.

Chelley – Took The Night
‘Sassy’ is an unfortunate word. Does anyone actively want to be described as sassy ? To be honest I thought no one ever really, truly wanted to describe themselves as ‘bonkers’ but ooo-eeee it turns out I was wrong on that count. So I’m going to say that this is sassy. Its got a kids playground chanty vocal and an RnB beat at a house tempo similar to the type Pitbull likes to deliver his wisdom over. It starts off with some haters bitching in a manner not heard since ‘Baby Got Back’ then kicks in with the big club drums and general sass. And it really really gets stuck in your head which isn’t either a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just a thing.

Eminem – Drop The Bomb On ‘Em
I’ve never understood why Sting’s ridiculous Jamaican accent has been allowed to pass entirely unmolested. It’s the great unspoken shame of a nation. For example: “Giant steps are what I take // Walkin on de moon” What was he thinking ? And how has he slipped it under the radar for so long ? Richard Madeley does one shonky Ali G impersonation and is hounded from our screens. Sting builds a career out of an ability to pronounce ‘bacon’ as ‘beer can’ and makes millions. Bewildering. Still, it seems Eminem was taking notes, as he kicks off this new banger with a few stinking cod dancehall “bambaclaarts” before thankfully sacking off the crap accent and settling down to prove that he’s still one of the illest MCs alive. The beat is one of the standard piano chuggers that Dre could knock out in a coma, but it allows Em room to lyrically dance over the bars, tossing out references to a host of his favourite fictional characters, from Freddy Kruger to Stringer Bell via “Captain America on a ferris wheel”. Tis good to have him back.

Gramaphonedzie – Why Don’t You
If you’ve been looking for that elusive bridge that’ll link your love of burlesque (you naughty devil) with your propensity to ‘get on one’ down Shoreditch of a Saturday night, then this slickly produced bag of shit ensures you need look no further. Coming from a fine lineage of songs that cock about with a 40s swing band sample and some pointless house beats, this is essentially ‘Doop’ for a new decade, and set to be just as huge. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being a curmudgeon. No. Hold on, I’ve just listened again and it’s total gash. Possibly a number one come the new year. Jesus. The bloke who’s responsible also wrote the theme for Serbian Big Brother, which makes him the Balkan Paul Oakenfold. Make of that that you will.

POPO – Knife Iz Yung
Pallet cleansing garage punk that makes everything better and lasts for 1 minute and 27 seconds. The twinned vocals swoop lysergically up and down, the guitars explode, sound scratchy and broke, and the whole thing is brilliant and grimy and melodic and then over. It’d be weird if this review took longer to read than the song does to listen, so I’ll just mention that Mad Decent are putting out POPO’s album sometime early 2010 and leave it at that.

Nouveau Yorican – Boriqua
OK, well this came out a week or so ago, so I’ve slept on it a touch– pretty dumb on my part seeing as it’s come from the Sound Pelligrino, the label responsible for a mini tsunami of tropical fresh dancefloor hits throughout ’09. This time the increasingly omnipresent Laidback Luke joins forces with Gina Turner (who I’ve honestly never heard of) to turn out the JACK. Between them they offer up an ace slice of bompty house conceived in a sweatsticky warehouse located some mythical place between noughties Holland and eighties Chicago. The tune doesn’t piss about too much, instead staying nice and tracky, riding on a pitch perfect 303 bassline that wobbles along just fine until the synth stabs leap out of nowhere in a dirty great popper rush that’s 8 parts hands-in-the-air; 2 parts pull-a-techno-face. The whole thing pulls off the tricky task of sounding like classic house with all the shit bits taken out, like watching Stephen King’s It but without the bit where Pennywise turns into a cretinous 70 foot formica cockroach. Oh, and extra marks to the Harvard Bass mix for stripping the track down to a sinuous, jerking bass skeleton…

Blame Hakim Bey and Crass. Blame Unsound, Hedfuk and Acme soundsystems. Blame South London and rising rent, or if you can’t be arsed to do any research and write for the Guardian, blame !WOWOW! Whatever, squatting’s on the up. This is a piece sharing a few tips on how YOU, yes YOU can get a slice of the free mansion pie.

If you’ve read this far then I’m assuming you’re already interested in breaking a place for one of various reasons. As such I won’t bother going into the history or philosophy of reclaiming dead space. This is about the practical’s; the tools and knowledge you need to storm the castle and begin the siege.

First of all (obvious this one) you need a building. There are empty buildings everywhere. As a rule of thumb, the viler and more run down an area, the more empty buildings. This leads to a mental equation where you have to offset the potential amazingness of, say, a towering fully furnished 20s dancehall with the fact its in West Norwood and surrounded by mental bastards. Generally, unless you’re a mental bastard too, it’s best to stay out of places that are too hardcore. Your neighbours will hate you for paying no rent (even if none of them ever have either), and will either rob you, extort you, or burn your house down. Whilst squatting in Lewisham our neighbours did the first two and threatened the third. I’m not joking here.

Also, ask yourself if you really need a massive gaff? This boils down to what you’re squatting for. If you want a venue to hold fuck off ridiculous parties where you know 5% of the people in the building then THINK BIG. The bigger the building, the bigger the crew you’ll need to hold it and sort out its repulsive shit smeared interior, and don’t even think of trying to live there. This country is too cold to handle a no-heating winter. (Although if you find a place with a working boiler and you don’t mind being a criminal, you could always register the gas in a fake name and then get the fuck out of dodge when the bailiffs come knocking. I wouldn’t recommend this, even though it works.)

If you’re looking for something slightly more exclusive then littler is often better, especially when you’re just starting, and doubly especially if you want to actually live in the space — it means you need less people to rely on and less shit to clean. Old pubs are a great start, usually having upstairs bedrooms and the communal/performance/gallery/shooting gallery area of the previous bar.

When scouting for empty buildings look out for certain signs — curtainless windows, scrubby overgrown gardens, boarded up areas, or just the general sense of emptiness. When you’ve spotted a likely spot go for the tried and tested method of sticking some furled up paper as a marker in the letterbox / doorjam. Keep revisiting to see whether the marker has moved, and if it hasn’t gone anywhere in two weeks or so, bingo! You’ve either got an empty or someone’s about to have a fucking horrible surprise when they get back from holiday.

Incidentally the holiday thing pretty much never happens — if you get into a place and its clear that someone lives there still (and its going to be really clear) you’ll want to get out sharpish unless you want the threat of criminal damage proceedings + the knowledge that you’ve made a strangers life a complete and unnecessary nightmare. Despite what the Telegraph may think that’s generally not top of most space reclaimers wishlist.

You’ll often see buildings with the windows and doors covered by large impregnable looking steel sheets. This hateful stuff is called Sitex and is a total hassle to get off from the outside (unless you can access a council Sitex key — the crusty Holy Grail). However, the presence of Sitex guarantees two things – the place is empty, and no ones going to do anything with it for a while. Often councils are lazy and will only Sitex the ground floor. This is great. If you can get up the side of a building and through a window 3on an upper floor then Sitex is a piece of piss to take off from the inside. There’s even a strong argument for not removing the downstairs Sitex at all, in all but one fairly concealed entrance, as it maintains the illusion to the owner that the building is still secure from you and your feral skipdiving buddies.

So, once you’ve found a building you’ll need some or all of the following —

A torch (Maglites are definitely the best)

A crowbar

Any sort of plug that lights up when connected to the mains (some phone / ipod chargers do this, and some extension cables)

Boltcutters

A new Yale lock (barrel and key)

A mini hacksaw

Chains and padlocks (decent ones!)

Screwdrivers + possibly a drill

Thick soled shoes

2 copies of a Section 6 (The legal document that breaks down your rights. You can download one at http://www.squatter.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=30)

AND CRUCIALLY —

Mates who can bring you stuff like food, water and bedding if the place is a winner.

Here are the rules to the game: If you can get in without the law seeing you, change the locks and maintain a presence in the property, then it’s yours until the courts say otherwise.

It’s a fun game and free to play.

So, step one. Getting in. This is hands down the hardest part, but as with most things in this world, persistence pays off. First off try and find any way you can of getting in without breaking anything. This is pretty unlikely, although a ladder on the side of a place can often reveal unlatched windows. It’s more likely your going to have to either break a window, or prise wooden boards off windows/doors with your crow bar.* Some cheeky beggars like to get themselves a fluro tabard and do this sort of thing in broad daylight, under the cover of being a man from the council. Personally I’ve never had the balls for that sort of carry on and am far keener on the cover of darkness. With London being a large anonymous city its amazing what sort of noises you can get away with in the dead of night. The bonus in prising off wooden boarding is that your certain that no ones going to be inside the property (check for fresh looking building materials though! You really don‘t want to bump into a pissed off brickie working nights). If you’re gonna have to break in with more vociferous means then just make sure the place is empty. Then steam on in.

Don’t worry if you can’t get into a place on first attempt, have a couple more goes that night, then just leave it and come back later. Don’t bait yourself up by battering away at your chosen building for hours. You’ve got all the time in the world. Relax.

Hopefully, eventually, you’re in. Smashing. This part is the most fun. There’s nothing like the sneaky thrill of creeping through a long empty time capsule by torchlight. If the floor is covered in shit and it looks like the place has been squatted before then go slowly and keep an eye out for needles (hence the thick-soled shoes). First off try and see if there’s any working electrics. Flicking light switches is no good as the chances are the bulbs will be gone (although not always, in which case, result), so try sticking your plug-with-a-light into whichever plug sockets you find, avoiding any that look mangled. Don’t go doing anything spacky like grabbing bare wires. If the buildings really old, and really knackered, and you’ve got no power you might have a problem. However any relatively new place can be fairly easily reconnected, so don’t worry if there doesn’t seem to be any juice in the house.

While you’re looking around the place get a feel for it. Does it have any sinks? Do the taps work? Are there any toilets and do they flush? Basically is it any good. Personally I’d say that any place that is structurally sound, that has either working electricity or working water, or both, is always a good bet, even if it’s filthy. Dirt can be cleaned, carpets stripped, junk thrown out, walls painted or knocked through, its all part of the joy of the land of do as you please.

If the place seems good then you need to secure your entry point as quickly as possible. There’s a couple of ways to do this. If the building is a big one with the main doors already chained your going to have to boltcut off the existing chains and replace them with your own. Whilst this is fairly easy in principle, and only really requires brute strength, you might want to practice with the boltcutters and some spare chain at home so you can get good and quick at it. Alternatively if you’re feeling a bit Moriarty you can pick padlocks with hair clips and the top of a biro. I mean, I can’t, but the girl here can : http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-pick-a-lock-for-beginners-266745/

Pretty informative eh?

Alternatively a more residential property will probably have a cylinder lock. These can be replaced by removing the old barrel (which is the part with the keyhole in) and replacing it with your own. There’s a decent guide to doing this here http://everything2.com/title/Changing+a+Yale+lock. This has proved to be the most useful option for me in a number of properties. There’s nothing like sticking your key in your front door to confer the air of a home owner on a person.

So now if you’re in and you’ve got the lock sorted out, its time to embed yourself. Stick up a Section 6 somewhere visible but unobtrusive on the outside of the property. You don’t have to legally put up a Section 6 for it to have effect, and sometimes putting it up only draws attention to your presence. Do make sure you keep a copy on you though, it’ll give you confidence when dealing with the police/ owners. Get on the phone to your mates and get em to come round with food and warmth and battery powered ipod speakers and candles and bog roll. And get ready for your encounter with the law which will probably happen at some point in the next 24 hours. When the old bill come (and it’s be no means 100% that they will) you have to remember that they will lie to try and get you out. Stick to your guns, tell them you’ve been in the property for a while and it’s your home. Refer them to the Section 6 and in the end they’ll fuck off. It’s not really their problem who’s in the building and it’s best to keep it light hearted when dealing with them. Don’t start spouting your counter culture bullshit, or calling them pig, or making oinking noises or banging on about Ian Tomlinson. As detailed below, you may need them to be on your side in a few hours. Still, don’t open the door to them no matter what they say. Honestly, DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR. If they want it open they’ll just kick it in. If they’re not kicking it in then it’s because they’re not allowed.

Sometimes instead of the police coming down you get the far worse situation of big lairy bastards employed by pissed off landlords, keen to administer a spot of street justice. If they come down with threats to kneecap you or whatever, make sure you’re secure in the building and phone the cops. You’re legally in the right. Most property owners can’t believe it when they get our countries beautiful legal system explained to them, but the fact is they can’t do anything without a court order. God bless England.

Now for the fun part. Once the police know your there, as long as you’re not running the place as a crack house or an all ages absinthe grotto, they’ll leave you alone. If the landlord issues a court order it’s always worth trying to negotiate with them. Sometimes people can get to stay in places for peppercorn (ie nothing) rent, although realistically this is rare. Choose who you’re going to let live with you really, really carefully. Avoid lazy, messy and stupid people, they will only make the process a nightmare. Avoid hippies, they have a terrible aesthetic and tend to paint retarded slogans on the walls, badly. Avoid drug dealers and ketamine addicts. Avoid people who you haven’t known for very long; they will turn out to be thieves. And most of all, avoid Mick Brady, an alcoholic who headbutted me 2 years ago and shat himself on a bus.

* This part of the process isn’t legal, and can be construed as criminal damage, so naturally this article doesn’t condone it, or anything else I might write that is on sketchy ground legally. This piece is just one big jolly with no application to any reality anywhere. You get me.

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Nasty McQuaid is a veteran squatter, superstar dj, and is probably the kind of all round solid bloke you’re paranoid Mother thinks you’re going to start hanging around with as soon as you move to London to go to ‘art school’. He ran a shop in New Cross called Rubbish and Nasty for a few years which sold amazing records as well as putting on some fantastic gigs.

This Friday Off Modern’s own terrible twosome Nasty McQuaid and Mangno will be playing songs at the Haggerston in Dalston. It is completely and utterly free, which is great.