Saturday, July 03, 2010

RIP Rammellzee > A king , a wave passes

On Monday night this past week,
old friend and collaborator The Rammellzee passed away at his mom's place in Far Rockaway.
Under an orange moon ...

Met Ramm in 1983 in W Berlin,
called him up to join Death Comet Crew for the first Ep in 1984,
he showed up buzzed and bleeding from working on art pieces.
After we tracked "At The Marble Bar" , we went directly to "Exterior Street" and Rammell blew it to kingdoms come .
The live at Danceteria is legend stuff,
Noyuri's photos downstairs with Ramm became the cover of the DCC Delic Records Tokyo rerelease ( as pictured ),
someone stole my boombox from downstairs !

Black rain and Ramm tracked 2 cuts in 1986 up at Current Sound with Bob Ward and Joe Bartoldus. the two cuts appeared on Black rain's 1996 album "nanarchy" . Shinichi Shimokawa and I did these tracks and he played them on the Dommune Tokyo web 'cast memorial, hadn't heard them for awhile and it was very cool to hear Ramm's rhymes on Letter Racer & Monster Models and Train stop again.

After DCC got rereleased on Gomma's "Anti NY" there was a stir of interest and we decided to reform the group and play some shows ( CMJ 2004 with Ramm & Shock dell + North Six ). DCC also began tracking and aiming to produce and release an all - new album.
Ramm had been saying he wanted to hear more vocals from me and Nick and everyone,
so the new album has three with Ramm,
two with Nomi from Hercules & Love Project,
and guests Honeychild Coleman and Ramm's friend Nadia aka Rapscallion
+ Nick and me doing vocals

We produced Bi - Conicals Of The Rammellzee album for Gomma in 2002, an album with choice creators from around the planet, friends of Ramm's guesting = all custom made for his own album with sonic sets laid out for him starting with
"Sigma One"

DCC "This Is Riphop" EP released on Troubleman 2003, CD & vinyl album 2004. Cover by Tim Saccenti.

DCC & The Rammellzee activated again to do a string of dates across Europe starting with the presentation of "Bi-Conicals Of The Rammellzee" @ Venice Biennalle in 2005, performing for 3000 @ Toulouse Fr Cartier Festival w/ The Bug and Airborn Audio, Paris, Ghent, Berlin. Onto Tokyo and Osaka 2005 following the Japanese release of "This Is Hiphop".
Shin came to Paris for Amiens Nuits Blanc 2006 + 2007 Electro Choc @ Burgoin Jallieu, Rotterdam @ The Worm and Porto & Lisbon

It's crazy this week,
When I look at what Rammellzee achieved with his mind and artwork, in his times
A NY freestyler who surfed through decades down at the Battle Station,
did it his way and as much on his own terms as he could.
it was always great to see him work, at the same time I knew there was some poisoning due to resins, plastics fumes and so on
. Today I am enjoying Ramm's art works in the 1990 Art Random Rammellzee "Acfs Of Terrorism", drawings, masks,
body armors suits, outlyer of systems, keys to the subways ...
Bye Ramm !

Monday, June 28, 2010

Summer babies

Some hot days for sure,
but one cooling night Nick Taylor aka DJ High Priest brought his family up to the Oval for a little r & r in the green grass,
the next night we went out to an opening for Co Ba , by a friend of ours who used to own the Viet Namese place on First Ave. called Cyclo, then later Nam downtown.
Drank champagne and a cocktail with a parade of choice rolls, sections of Banh mi sandwiches on thin planks that went all too quickly.
The moon came out to stay over the past nights.
We couldn't see the partial eclipse the other early morning, but did see a ghostly photo taken by an Air Force base it looked like.
Orange again last night
Our friends Saori & Atsushi had their luna baby on Friday night ...

And that's how it's been rolling around her lately