We just thought it was worth reminding you guys that the Family Blunt are out and about with our record boxes this weekend. We’re back for our fortnightly “Sunday session” entitled Off The Cuff, at the George II, Bute St. Luton, Beds.

Expect to hear a mixup of classic funk, soul, jazz, hip hop, reggae, and other pieces n’ bits from Blunt Beats Residents Doug, Agent M, and The Erbalist. We power up the speakers at 7, and keep going ’til around 11pm. It’s free to get in, so if you’re in the area, pop down and say hello to the faithful. Round your weekend off with a beer, a game of pool, and some Blunted background music. Nice

Oh dear. I’d better start by way of both an apology and explanation. You may have noticed the gremlins were in the system on Wednesday nights live show. Firstly, our grave apologies. Believe me, it was a bit of a mission to get any kind of show at all. Continue reading…

This is a new fortnightly, low-key event that the crew here at Blunt Manor have put together. Off the cuff is exactly that: - Blunt Beats DJs playing tracks from across the years, and across the genres, as and how they see fit.

The idea is that this little shindig is to be a chill out, end-of-the-week session. It’s not a case of dancing all night, its about coming out for a beer with a few of your mates, in the company of the Family Blunt, and some great music to nod your head, just to finish off the weekend. Continue reading…

Right…now how do I start this shit? It’s probably best to start with an apology for the fact that this review has taken 2 weeks to write! It’s all been a bit fuzzy, and very busy here at Blunt Manor, what with gigs, festivals, birthdays, illness, hangovers and a general lack of sleep, so sorry it’s taken so long to get this review done.

Urban Picnic Sounds - 2 days - all the Blunt Beats Residents and special guests. A Victorian bandstand in a park with a soundsystem and sunshine (allegedly)….that’s the deal.

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Right….I’ll keep this short and to the point. We’ve had a ball over the last two weeks, with both making an appearance at the Til The Cows Come Home festival, and running our “Urban Picnic Sounds” stage at Rhythms Of The World for our 5th year.

Both events were top stuff. However, if has all left us a little bit deaf, sleep deprived, injured to various degrees (usually self-inflicted) and very fuzzy headed (especially the UPS weekender). Once we’ve figured out what day of the week it is again, we’ll be giving you a written report, and picture update of both events…I’m sure there’ll be a few stories! We’ve got a hell of a lot of people to thank, from rain-soaked dancers to on the ball sound engineers, cameramen to bar staff, and a whole host of others. We’ll get to all that in the reports

Also, we managed to record the entire Blunted musical output at Urban Picnic Sounds. The recordings are good quality. I’ve listened (cheers J!)…We’ll be making these available for download along with complete tracklistings very soon.

As I say, this is short and to the point. We’ve had a mad couple of weeks. We’ll be giving you a review of all the shenanigans very soon. You’ll be able to download the music. Bear with us as we are still mentally delicate, and will get back to business very soon!

I’m off for a lie-down.

Good Lord. How did we get to this time of year again so damn quickly? As much as I’d like to ponder that question, I don’t have time…That’s right, next weekend sees the Blunt crew taking to the stage for our 5th year at the Rhythms Of The World festival with our Urban Picnic Sounds Project.

For those of you that know the score, it’s gonna be more of the same, which is no bad thing! - For those of you that don’t, well, Rhythms Of The World is the largest free world music festival in Europe, attracting over 30,000 people, hundreds of bands and solo artists from all over the globe, and your favourite Blunters run the 3rd biggest (and the only DJ) stage at the event, with our Urban Picnic Sounds event.

Basically, we set up a whopping big sound system in a Victorian bandstand, in an ornamental park, right in the heart of this 2 day festival in Hitchin, Hertforshire. Then we take it upon ourselves to play a laid-back, quality mix, of reggae, funk, soul, electronica, hip hop, cinema scores, and anything else we see fit to allow the assembled throng to chill and catch some rays. Continue reading…

The summer season is surely upon us. We’re out and about this weekend, playing at a festival called “til the cows come home” in Bedfordshire. This somewhat low-key, and almost secret affair is now growing and growing. It runs from the Friday night, and has a host of Djs and bands playing (including Blunt Beats friends Bowfinger)

Rumour has it that we’ll be making an appearance at some point around lunchtime on the Saturday, with our records in tow. All in, it’s about 20 quid for the whole thing (I think!), and there are camping facilities and all that jazz (well, it wouldn’t be a festival if you couldn’t sleep in a tent and make tea out of a puddle, would it?)

We’re really looking forward to this, as we’ll be playing the “wake-up set” for all the happy campers from 11am through until 1pm on the Saturday. Expect to hear a chilled, ear-opening mixture of funk, hip-hop, ska, and electronica courtesy of Doug, Agent M, and the Erbalist.

If this sound like your kind of thing (of course it does!), then you’ll be able to experience a similar musical work-out on the following weekend at the Rhythms Of The World festival, where we take to the stage for our 5th year with our Urban Picnic Sounds project. More details on that in the coming week.

Anyway, for tickets, information and band listings for this weekends event, you can visit the organisers myspace site.

We’ll see you there!

i first saw Battles about 18 months ago supporting Prefuse 73 at Scala.
When Battles first came on stage the audience were gobsmacked. Im sure no one had ever heard anything like this before, there was 3 guitarists & a Drummer with laptops, keyboards and other toys at their use. It must have been like seeing Capitan Beefheart or Sun Ra back in the day.

This time the audience knew what they were letting themselves in for. The start of the night was a bit of a let down, the first act on seemed like a poor version of the fantastic Keiran Hebdon & Steve Reid, with a person on digital oddments & a poor drummer. The music playing in between the acts was supplied by Four-Tet aka Keiran Hebdon, what can i say, great tunes.

Battles came on to a rapturous applause. When they played their last single Atlas, the crowd just erupted. They rattled of tunes from their latest Album Mirrored which went down really well with the crowd, toes tappin, shoulder twitchin head bangin, body movin, great stuff. If you like your music a bit unusual try the avant-garde tones of Battles.

I was lucky to be put on the guest list for Rodger Waters at Earls Court courtesy of the Afghan who has been changing light bulbs for him on his latest European tour. What a tour to work on, Mr Waters has been performing Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety. I was lucky enough to catch Rodger & his band perform this at Hyde Park last summer and to find out he was touring the same show and to be offered a couple of tickets I had to go.

The journey down there was a bit of a mission, train lines being worked on and alternate routes to be made, thanks London Underground for making my journey to and from Earls Court easy, NOT!!!.

i was a little late and missed the start but in time to catch the performance of Dark Side Of The Moon, the show was fantastic, as soon as the crowd heard the start of Speak To Me, tensions rose and people started standing up and moving to the front, me being already at the front didn’t need to move.

The whole performance was great as was Mr Waters band which included the likes of Snowy White and Andy Fairweather Low guitar maestro’s of 70’s & 80’s, one of his backing vocalists was PP Arnold of First Cut Is The Deepest fame and one of Ike and Tina Turners Ikets, his son Harry was on Keyboards, and on Drums for the Performance of Dark Side Of The Moon was Nick Mason. Wow what a gig.

Hi there folks. I just thought I’d drop a line to let you know about my travels in March & April, & to big up all the peeps involved.

First of the party’s was down in sunny Brighton for the Ted Live show from the Volks Club, where myself Agent M, SdZ & Minnie Adenoid drove down in the little red go kart. We arrived in Brighton & headed straight for the beach (well it was sunny!) The night didn’t start till 11pm so we meandered around for a bit, & met up with a few of Agent M’s old uni pals, along with Operata M and Tribal Editor for a few afternoon drinks and smokes on the beach. We were starting as we were meaning to go on.

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