Lead by award winning saxophonist and rapper Soweto Kinch and featuring a stellar rostra, The Flyover Show returns to Birmingham with dynamic and challenging performances on the 29th May. Now in its third year the unconventional inner city festival transforms the grey space beneath the Hockley Flyover into an oasis of cultural expression, celebrating generations of black British music and art. For the first time this show explores the specific theme of black female identity.
This year’s Flyover Show is a week on Saturday, in Soweto’s words it is about ‘Jazz and Poetry and Hip Hop’ – well worth going to and free might I add, for more info check here. For the revolution see below…
Bass Festival has come around again this year’s theme is DNA…
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) forms the building blocks of life and controls the development and functioning of all known living organisms. But what does DNA mean to us individually in the 21st century? Identity, test tubes, control, heritage, science, ID cards, family, databases, samples, genomes, protest?
The fifth BASS festival will explore how DNA varies and develops, whether caused by external forces, or by personal development, enabling us to rethink our evolving identities.
There is a full programme of events and exhibitions celebrating black culture and creativity, take a peek at the flyer and website for all the details.
The Smash Bro’z Hip Hop Collective are a Birmingham based crew who are currently dining out on the competition’s Puma States and dancing the ‘Victory Wig Out’ for taking gold at this year’s Hip Hop Championships. The crew are now preparing for the finals in Las Vegas and the last I heard still wearing their winning gold medals.
They have a nice feature on the BBC Birmingham site here.
The crew also run the Open Circles Radio Show which is hosted by Bboy veteran – Silence (pictured centre).
This is a radio show for people in the dance community to link up, share stories and info on training spots, performances, classes, jam nights, battles etc…
Music policy is all those beats that have inspired people to get up a be creative with movement.
That’s anything from Hip-Hop to House, Jazz to Rock, Salsa to Samba I could go on all day! Music that B-Boys battle to. Lockers, Lock to. House dancers, Jack to. Waackerz, Waack to etc….
OK! say there’s people getting into the dance world and they are looking for classes to go and learn a new style.
They want to find out about the music that inspired that style.
Then they want to find a place to practise what they’ve learnt with others that have more and less experience then them to share ideas with.
Then find a place to throwdown all these new styles with other dancers. THIS IS THE PLACE!
The show is on Rhubarb Radio every Thursday from 3pm-5pm.
Calling all Birmingham beat makers – CDR Knowledge – Beat Innervisions Birmingham comes to the Ikon Gallery next week on
Thursday 21st January. Featuring production insights from:
Morgan Zarate (Spacek)
Soundspecies (burntprogress)
And a discussion with Burnt Progress/CDR big man Tony Nwachukwu and the producers on the bill; Spacek’s Morgan Zarate and Soundspecies.
Folks will be able to gain insights into how Logic Pro was used to craft and develop one of their standout tracks. Furthermore have a chance to get to grips with Logic Pro 9 supported by CWPro and CDR community members and observe CDR community members build a track from scratch on the night!
Running Order:
7.00pm – Working Logic – Production demonstrations / Track productions (until 9.30pm)
8.00pm – Introduction
8.15pm – Soundspecies
9.00pm – Morgan Zarate
9.40pm – ‘Open CDR’ – Tracks produced during this session played – LOUD!
10.00pm – END
For those unfamiliar with Louis Den Beat Battles it’s an online community of hiphop beatmakers and producers taking part in weekly beat making challenges run from our myspace, our Beat Cypher nights are an extension of this taking beat making to the live platform with invited producers coming to showcase their material and emcees / vocalists sharing the stage performing special versions of their tracks over the nights producers.
The next Louis Den features Budge, Chemo, Sleaze Da Don, Ghosttown, Wizard and Birmingham favorite Juice Aleem and will be hosted at their new home Sound Bar, 250 Corporation St on 10th December from 9pm and is only 4 pounds before 10pm.
The online beat community Louis Den Beat Battles returns with another installment of the “Beat Cypher” night; the aim of “Louis Den Beat Cypher” is to showcase the production element of hip-hop in a live setting, the main focus will be on the 4 profiled producers of the night as well as live PA’s from artists.
He is a fully paid up member of the new wave of experimental beat makers…alongside the likes of Flying Lotus and FlyamSam .
The self-professed Animal-style DJ, Gaslamp Killer — a reference to his hometown of San Diego and its beach-brah’s Gaslamp bar district — has been holding it down at the front counter of LA’s Turntable Lab. His real home, however, is behind the turntables, where his wild style takes DJing into the realm of freak fest psychedelia.
Gaslamp Killer DJ sets are something else… Bass that feels like someone is sitting inside your stomach rearranging your internal organs and drops so heavy you feel like you are falling down a well wearing a pair of Smeg fridges as earrings. His brutal mix of Dubstep, Hendrix, Futuristic Hip Hop, Leftfield Electronica and Dilla are delivered with a truly eccentric energy that one might describe as a kind of hybrid that would include Animal from Sesame Street, Einstein and Doc from Back to the Future all conducting the crowd in a truly passionate, energetic and intensely captivating way.
I cannot tell you how much you have to witness this…Tonight at The Hare & Hounds. Details here.
