Trouble Tune Tonic/One Taste

As I doubt if anyone seriously reads the words I write on this page I'll keep it short and sweet. One Taste at the Bedford Arms was a good look and I feel blessed to finally take to their stage. Fun night with the stripped down set up of melodica and voice create pedal.

Trouble Tune Tonic was a riot and perhaps the final piece in the jigsaw for the path ahead. Brought out the Tenori On for the first time in public and it dropped like musical Viagra. Speeche Debelle, Soweto Kinch, Dels, Leaf Cutter John and keir Vine killed it. Will report back soon with a proper round up but for now lets just say I came home smiling which is a rarity and I didn't clear the stage.

Next Stop The Big Chill

The Current State of Play

The current set up

On a clear day i can see forever

When I', not writing poems and making beats I can be found running the streets of London with my crew The Run Dem Crew. 50 strong and growing daily we meet once a week to explore the rat runs of London and exchange ideas. Find out more at www.rundemcrew.com

On another note spent the day working in the studio on beats for the Bass Poet Project. After a set of shows I've come to the conclusion that rehearsal and practice are the key to success once you step outside of your bedroom. the live rig is working lovely now and stripped down to the core ingredients. No more loop pedals and broken microkorgs at least for now. Just drum box and vox old school style and me likes it. Currently listening to a beat I made which is perhaps the most stripped down piece of music I've ever made. For some reason the minimal approach is working for me right now and with my limited mixdown skills I'm hoping that a corner has been turned. Today was a good day.

Latitude Festival

So we went with the box and returned before th power supply had a chance to cool down. All in all it was a good look with a jam packed poetry tent listening to the vibes. Not sure if the audience really got what i was on about but as always it was a good learning experience with some lessons learned to take back to the studio.

Lesson 1.
The spoken word game can at times be just like the rap game full of people swimming in shark invested waters. Despite the feeling that I no longer have a place within the confines of the scene I shall remain positive and keep on the path I've embarked on.

Lesson 2.
Hung out with Kate Tempest and her band Sound of Rum as they took their busking rig around Latitude. Was real inspiring being around their energy and watching them set up shop, perform, shot cd's and bounce when moved on. Check them out here

www.myspace.com/soundofrumband

I toyed around with the idea of a mobile poetry rig earlier in the year and now feel moved enough to get it together and hit the streets and read some poems with the drum box. The worst thing that could happen is that no one listens and the best thing would be that I catch someones ears but I'm not going to find out by staying locked down in the studio endlessly tweaking.

Lesson 3

My inability to learn poems is now a bit of a boulder when trying to operate technology with a rhyme book in one hand. Not happening and you never saw Rakim walk on stage with his rhyme book. So the task ahead is to cement these poems into my brain and free myself from the shackles of pages.

Lesson 4

It would be easy to follow in the footsteps of those who have been deemed the bastions of Literature in it's spoken word form. Seems that their are lots of failed rappers and comedian people masquerading as poets these days. Entertaining and funny but devoid of any content. What happened to quotable lines and poems that moved you and made you laugh in the same breath? I made the almost fatal mistake of falling into the trap of playing for laughs when the serious words didn't seem to work. Must remember what Linton Kwesi Johnson said to me' Don't write for applause'.

Anyway that's enough from me for one night. Check www.myspace.com/charliedark for a new poems and beats experiment currently online

Where have you been

Well I started with good intentions and then got snowed under with other projects and then suddenly it was 2008 and I still hadn't completed any tracks for the Bass Poet project. Sometime in the summer of 2008 I actually moved studios up to deep Hackney for a change of scenery hoping to get the vibes going again. As my neighbours included Morgan Zarate,Loefah and The Bug theory suggests that I should have made more music than I did but the lack of air conditioning in a sweltering summer killed all notions of getting anything completed and eventually after six months I called it quits and came home. Pissed at my inability to actually get any songs finished I locked up the studio and didn't go back in for a good while. Having flirted with different forms of music as bedding for the project in 2008 In 2009 I decided to call it a day and shut up shop. With the music industry changing i was thinking there was little point in putting out anything and especially not my stupid attempts at marrying poems to the music I like to spin.

However in the tail end of spring 2009 I had a series of weird situations that inspired me to break out the toys again and here we find ourselves back in the lab with a new vision for the project and a clear direction for the rest of the year ahead.

So my friends to keep matters short I'm back in the studio and actually recording with a series of spoken word gigs coming up during Festival Season.

Tired now so won't bore you with details but stay tuned for July 4th when I will be unveiling some new bits and pieces. Until then.

Peace Dark