Month: October 2013

Collapsing New Buildings


There are few better illustrations of how the utopianism of post-war urban planning and architecture came crashing down than this photo of the Ronan Point tower block in East London which partially collapsed in 1968, killing four people. Though it was caused by a gas explosion, the fact that one whole side of the building fell down was blamed on shoddy design and cheap materials, and high-rise tower blocks soon stopped being seen as visionary modernist systems for living in the clouds, but instead dehumanizing and brutalist concrete boxes — usually with the attendant problems of drugs, crime, and lifts that stink of piss.

It wasn’t always like that. I remember my Gran telling me that when new tower blocks were built down the end of her road in the 1950s people couldn’t wait to move into them because they thought they were clean, bright, and modern compared to the dingy, back-to-back Victorian terraced houses they were living in.


The estate I grew up on was fairly human-sized — each building was only two levels and every flat had a garden or balcony — but when I was a kid we loved playing on the bigger estates and tower blocks with their walkways, ramps, endless stairwells, underground car parks, and playgrounds that were like abstract concrete and steel sculpture parks. Through our eyes they were futuristic places designed for adventure but to others they were Ballardian nightmares and a scary backdrop for pop records.

Download: Hatfield 1980 – Everything But The Girl (mp3)

These are the breaks


The “Funky Drummer” drum break has been sampled more times than you and me have had hot dinners. Though it was more ubiquitous in hip-hop than a tracksuit and trainers its shuffling beat was also sampled to more mellow and trippy effect in records by George Michael, The Family Stand and, er, Candy Flip which were a reflection of the more chilled-out direction club music was going in post-Acid House.

My favourite such usage was on the gorgeous “I Don’t Even Know If I Should Call You Baby” by Soul Family Sensation from 1990. How such a sublime record was never a hit is beyond me but, despite several remixes (including one by Marshall Jefferson), it never made the charts and lead singer Jhelisa Anderson left the band for a solo career after their first album New Wave — which is well worth a listen too. I think maybe they were a little ahead of their time, making soulful Electronica before Trip-Hop was really a thing. Another few years and they could have been Morcheeba or something.

Download: I Don’t Even Know If I Should Call You Baby (Original 12″ version) – Soul Family Sensation (mp3)