Music is our weapon

A bumper birthday selection full of moods, grooves, rhythms and sounds, compiled and blended by yours truly. No mic interface, just trax.

This is fortified with love, wisdom and understanding – all those precious things we need, particularly in these challenging times. Divisions and hostility abound. As Prince says in the mix, "To counter that we're gonna have to talk to one another. And music was one of the ways we used to do that."

SPECIAL MENTIONS
RIP The Purple One (giving thanks every day)
RIP Bernie Worrell (an unfathomable genius)
Labels circulating that good stuff
Musicians making it mean something

GIG
Catch me and the Soul Labels collective at Total Refreshment Centre on 20 August for an Africa special where we explore the history and future of the Motherland through live music, film, workshop and discussion. Blackman Akeeb Kareem, a Nigerian musician and master songwriter who features in this mix, will be performing with the house band. I'll be chairing a panel discussion about how Africa can, and should, profit from its immense archive.

Check the bill and book tickets here: https://billetto.co.uk/palm-wine-beat...

Stay close,

AmAr

Press play

For many of us, they soundtracked our youth and introduced us to the art of the mixtape, not forgetting those endless hours of amusement pushing buttons and untangling jams. But is the cassette revival anything more than a nostalgia trip or hipster trend?

via GIPHY

Vinyl’s back. A familiar headline over the past few years, whether you are talking about the UK or US market. Last year the former enjoyed its first year of one million-plus sales since the nineties’ Britpop era, while record revenues in the latter exceeded that of ad-supported streaming platforms. What continues to surprise many though, is the sustained comeback of the cassette.

Survey the marketplace and specialist labels appear to be thriving, offering expertly curated releases with indulgent artwork. Take Awesome Tapes from Africa (archivist and DJ Brian Shimkowitz’s dusty finds from the Motherland), Burger Records (LA garage rock store that’s sold more than 300,000 tapes since it opened in 2007), Manchester’s Sacred Tapes (noise artfully packaged with letterpress-printed insert and the odd incense head), Opal Tapes (experimental electronica) and limited edition industrial ambience on Umor Rex.

Newer labels are getting in on the act, offering more futuristic sounds such as the dub techno on Cong Burn Tapes and outsider acid excursions on Seagrave Records while San Diego’s Bonding Tapes presents a more abstract, intergalactic take on the classic beat tape. In short, the breadth of spooled music available in 2016 is astounding.

 This is no niche enterprise, either. Over the past 24 months major label artists such as The Weeknd, Justin Bieber and Marina and the Diamonds have released albums on cassette. Last year the NAC (National Audio Company), the leading cassette manufacturer in the US, had its best year since 1969. They now employ their own graphic artists and produce their own machine parts to satisfy demand.

There is even a Record Store Day international offshoot event called, you guessed it, Cassette Store Day, which celebrates its fourth anniversary on 8 October. Incidentally, the two biggest-selling releases in the history of Record Store Day, according to co-founder Michael Kurtz were cassettes – a mixtape for Guardians of the Galaxy and Metallica's No Life 'Til Leather.

So what’s sparked this movement? A good person to ask is POST/POP label founder Jed Shepherd, one of the biggest tape enthusiasts out there. “This is a tangible rectangle you can hold and kiss and love, which makes all the difference,” he says. “You have more of a connection with your favourite artists than with cold mp3s.”

Artist Daniel Oduntan, who released the first of his acclaimed Palm Wine Beats series as Lo-fi Odysseys on POST/POP, argues that a tape’s limitations can also be its strengths. “There is a whole generation of people that have never experienced physical media,” he observes. “We need to get back to that. The digital age can be toxic. The human mind can only absorb so much information. So slowing down and taking your time is a beautiful thing, and the tape allows you to do that.”

Lo-fi Odysseys' Palm Wine Beats mixtape

Using the same stock and duplication methods can even produce a signature sound imprint, creating what Opal Tapes’ Stephen Bishop has dubbed the “fifth band member” effect. For Oduntan, it's the ephemerality of the medium that really appeals. “The tape is constantly changing,” he says. “That’s interesting to me. It will grow old as I grow old, revealing other nuances. This adds to the art more than it takes away. Anyway, there’s nothing stopping you from listening to the digital file that most people offer with a tape.”

Although typically produced in modest runs of between 50 and 200, at a cost of about £2 per unit, tapes do provide a valuable additional revenue stream for artists. “You play a gig, you might have records on sale, but who has £25 burning a hole in their pocket nowadays?” asks Shepherd. “However, most people will have £5 they can throw at a band they've just seen, so it's a way of earning what might otherwise have been lost.”

Upcoming producer Wu-Lu fondly recalls singing along to a tape of The Fugees in his mum’s car and falling asleep to the tales of Asterix and Obelix. When the time came to release his debut album Ginga, he chose a low-cost, high-commitment format that listeners could actually hold. “I put it out on tape because I wanted my first release to be a homage to the way that I was exposed to music, as a stream of consciousness,” he explains. “That’s why the whole album was mixed together … almost as one long track.”

Wu-Lu's Ginga tape, which he launched with an in-store performance at record shop Sounds of the Universe in London

Cassette is also a great medium for trying new ideas and being more spontaneous. Exhibit one: Berlin-based Klasse Recordings and their Graffiti Tapes, aimed at writers that make music and vice versa. Over in LA, Leaving Records founder Matthewdavid is using tapes to turn a new generation of listeners on to new age music and promote what he calls “the art of long-form listening”. Following on from the Laraaji reissue package, his Modern New Age series continues a longstanding tradition of pioneering DIY American music, both in body and spirit. Each tape is designed to be “a mindful, meditative, ‘beatiful’ hand-assembled art piece”.

A parallel is often drawn between tapes and files, and cinema and Netflix. Tapes offer more than good value. They are fulfilling a deeper need, particularly among those who have only ever known digital. But will major label interest kill the countercultural spirit of this outsider culture? Tristan Bath thinks not. He hosts Spool's Out, which is a weekly cassette culture radio show on Resonance FM and a monthly tape reviews column on UK music site The Quietus. Bath says this tape community reaches “as far as the internet goes”, with labels producing “labours of love”and even helping to lower postal costs by distributing each others’ releases.

“Nobody's afraid to put their music out on tape,” he adds, “from harsh noise to power pop. Most of these DIY labels are doing limited runs (under 100) and for the most part it's weird music for weird people. The fact that several thousand people might have a copy of that Guardians of the Galaxy mixtape won’t change the fact this music is often niche.”

Ironically, one undisputed driver will be technology. More and more retailers are offering players – from walkmans at Urban Outfitters to twin decks on the high street – while Sony recently announced a 185 terabyte tape for our lossless pleasure. Audiophile collectors, meanwhile, can hunt for treasure such as this.

CDs scratch and can alienate. Vinyl is ultimately a luxury. Tapes, on the other hand, are little affordable objects of desire, like a handwritten letter to a fan. Some are still being popped in to car decks and players decades after being opened. I think they call that staying power.  

A new age of storytelling

Last week I attended the always excellent MoJo London gathering, hosted by BBC Media Action's Corinne Podger and Daniel Jackson, Head of Communities at Trinity Mirror. This monthly session is for people wanting to learn tips and tricks for mobile reporting and storytelling, one of several regular meet ups across the world. There is also a conference and a very active Facebook group where people share their latest experiments and experiences with new gear. (Nick Garnett, Glen Mulcahy and Yusuf Omar are always popping up with useful insights. True MoJo geeks, in the nicest possible way.)

Most attendees are working or have worked as journalists or media professionals but the great thing about the smartphone is how democratic a device it is. You don't need to be in 'the industry' to learn how to film a story or make a narrative. And the story could be anything anywhere, from a holiday hike in the mountains to a spontaneous riot in the city. This mobile newsroom has been particularly liberating for citizen journalists, as I've discussed here before. In the age of Periscope and Facebook Live, their in-the-moment reporting will be in even greater demand. Traditional broadcasters and reporters are finally catching up. Some are even going further – Al Jazeera on Snapshot Discover, for instance. 

But back to the smartphone and the unbelievable quality at speed that it offers. Your iPhone 6 could easily make a cinematic Sundance hit, if the story is strong enough, of course. And you don't need to be built like a prop forward to carry the basic gear required to capture, edit and send broadcast-quality content. A major step forward for women, of course. 

Two thirds of the country now own a smartphone according to Ofcom. It's the Swiss army knife of technologies, apparently wielding more power than all of NASA's computing in 1969. Ah, you know the rest. You are probably reading this on the go, while streaming a tune, going back and forth on WhatsApp, checking Instagram and whatever else takes your fancy.

Apps have been another major boon when it comes to facilitating creativity, allowing us to quickly make and share what comes to mind. And not simply in one medium: often, you can combine stills, moving image, sound and text commentary to find your own 'voice'. One app that blew my mind is Quik. And it certainly is.

The best way to understand something is to play with it. So we each set off around Canary Wharf to capture our own take on the beating heart of London's finance district. Half an hour later, we gathered in Trinity Mirror's offices to piece together our stories. It was amazing to see the different approaches taken, from happy snaps diaries to more whimsical takes, each powered by Quik's clever themes … and a little journalistic flair. Here's what I came up with…

Interested in journalism and keen to get more out of your smartphone? Then come to the next meet up in London. It's free, fun and definitely inspiring.

Can a book really change your life?

I know next to nothing about Chinese philosophy. Expect for this proverb, which my teacher at prep school used to drill into us: “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” The great Confucius said that. Or did he?

Whoever said it, they were obviously on to something. These sage fellows loved asking the big questions that puzzle many of us today. Who am I? Why am I here? How can I be better? Consider that “heart” and “mind” are the same word in Chinese – “xin”. Human beings have been learning and searching since the dawn of civilisation. No wonder self-help books are big business, worth more than £6 million in the UK and $10 billion in the US at last count.

One or two may have found their way into my hands: Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Cargenie, for instance, as well as new age novels The Alchemist and The Celestine Prophecy. They didn’t change my life but they did encourage me to shift my perspective and ask different questions. Nevertheless, I remain quite skeptical when it comes to such books. Some are quite wooly and fail to appreciate the complexity of the modern world. Others make me vomit with their cloying optimism.

The other night I attended a talk by Harvard professor Michael Pruett at workspace Second Home. Pruett, another advocate of unconventional wisdom, has been making the headlines for the past few years because his Classical Chinese and Ethical Political Theory course has been one of the most popular on campus. Remember, this is an Ivy League school more famous for its STEM and finance options.

He aims to show students how Chinese philosophy can help them to be a better person and find their place in the world. The first step is to break free from what they think they know about themselves – no easy feat in the egocentric age of social media when so many millennials are striving for self-actualisation and desperate to project their chosen identity.

This is not guru guff masquerading as education. Pruett draws directly from five Chinese philosophers— Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi and Xunzi – who all lived more than 2,000 years ago. Relics of a bygone age, you might think. Hardly. In fact, these were “exciting and radical thinkers … expanding the scope of human possibility,” as Pruett explained to the Guardian.

Together with journalist Christine Gross-Loh, who met the professor while covering his story for the Atlantic in 2013, Pruett has written a book called The Path. The title is a play on the opening line of Taoism founder Laozi’s Tao Te Ching and boldly sets the course: “The way that can be clearly defined is not the enduring way.”

Students are given small tasks to do: try a new hobby, smile at a stranger and change their tone of voice, for example. Then they are asked to observe how others respond and pursue the things that arouse good feelings and new sensations. Their assignment is to discuss what it’s like to live by these philosophies. What a refreshing approach – the idea of education as a means of transformation. All too often, pupils are treated as nothing more than vessels to be filled with knowledge, assessed and fast-tracked. Similarly, The Path tries to harness our ability to sense situations so we can apply our learning for the benefit of others. 

During the talk, Pruett covered a lot of ground in a matter of minutes but his main point was that we are all “just a bunch of messes”. Follow that thought through and you realise that there is no one self to find or be true to. There is no pre-defined destiny – whether career, relationship or any other accepted form of success or fulfilment. Instead, we are challenged to remain open-minded and experiment with new ways of living better. A nightmare for advertisers, data junkies and devotees of demographics but a major step forward for humanity.

I think back to the wall of expectation analogy in Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy. We are often told how important it is play to our strengths, to focus on a particular goal and follow a set path to achieve it. But the more rigidly we set about that task the more frustrated we can become. Pruett frames this phenomenon differently, in terms of damaging patterns of behaviour. We are all guilty of these. Getting angry with those that cut in line, raising our voice on the phone, holding ground in the workplace because you don't feel valued, staring at a screen for hours and expecting good ideas to appear… These traits become an unflattering take on our personality.

Pruett says the challenge is to start reacting differently to things, to sense the problems and patterns in everyday life and then break them. These are what Confucius called “as if” rituals, loosely translated. Transformative changes in behaviour – faking it, if you have to. Again, the simplest example is smiling and talking to strangers. It's that sense of being spontaneous, open to the world and, dare I say it, in harmony. Mencius, the late 4th-century BC scholar said that these chance conversations, interactions and experiences help us to see new connections and opportunities everywhere. In turn, our influence grows and we begin to have a positive effect on the lives of those around us.

Zhuangzi encouraged people to embrace trained spontaneity, the idea that you apply yourself in a particular area – playing a sport or learning an instrument, for instance – so your mind doesn’t get in the way in the moment. Perhaps the most counterintuitive idea is not playing to your strengths. Xunzi says that nothing is natural. So if you can’t dance, won't dance, sign up for that class. If you don't like getting wet, jump into the swimming pool. Not to get better, specifically, but to live life “as a series of ruptures” as Pruett puts it.

A fascinating aside: Pruett described himself as being part of the ’89 generation who felt there was no need to ask big questions because “we felt they’d already been solved”. (I wonder how big a factor the rise of the internet was in all of this?) Now people are enjoying being fundamentally challenged on how they should live from day to day and these questions are being debated furiously in the blogosphere of post-Communist, post-imperialist China, in particular.

I came away from the talk feeling quite liberated. It’s ok if you don't have all the answers, to feel like a work in progress, even in your thirties. I will definitely add The Path to my reading list and dip in to the original texts. As with any book that draws on so much source material, there will be those who find it too general or too quick to reach a consensus among the different philosophers. But as a break from the norm it sounds promising.

Mindfulness continues to be a hot trend, indicating that there’s an appetite for alternative ways of living, particularly in the pressure cooker environment of the city. Pruett won’t show you the path specifically but he’ll certainly help you make a few tweaks here and there. Add all those up and who knows…

Right, I’m off to talk to strangers in Pret and tango the night away.