This isn’t the video they were doing on Saturday. This is an older, more lo-fi joint. Its awesome, still.

Pydos In Spydos are on this podcast.

YO! Doncast 8 is live. It’s the brand new Akira The Don podcast! Whoo! Loads of new music and my ill deep voice. Awesome. Plus! A bunch of shoutouts. Unfortunately many of you were too slow. And too many. So better luck next time. I still think you rule.

DONCAST 8 is live!

iTunes people should go here.

The feed with which you subscribe to the podcast is here.

Tracklist!

Well, I was gonna put a tracklist, then I thought, well, that might spoil it. You’d know what was going to happen. IS that fun? What do you mob think?

PS - did you see that awesome gay advert?! Where the fuck did that come from?

PPS - Jack Paris writes: Akira, I’m writing to tell you that Down with the sickness is not by Slipknot. It is actually by Distrubed! Other than that Doncast 8 was Ill! I stand corrected! Sorry Wade!

OK you! I am doing that podcast today. I am a lot more ill. So it will be the Ill Edition. Any suggestions for Ill Songs welcome. Also! If you want a shoutout I shall shout you out. I am feeling shoutoutey. Hit me on the comments or the email.

PAX!

PS - things to read:

Bol on Common

The New Yorker on the detah of Print.

Ioz on kids.

I think I am coming down with something. POOR ME! I have got ulcers in my gob and a sore throat and sluggishness dripping off of my very BONES!

WAH!

Boy oh boy friends, this bank holiday did me in. Checked in on the creamy and glittery Pydos In Spydos video shoot on Saturday afternoon. An exceedingly drunken wedding on Saturday night. Easter Egg Hunt on Sunday (I did a very poor impression of a grumpy uncle), video shoot on Monday.

‘Another video shoot?’ I hear you cry. Yes indeed. We got the team together to shoot a merry movie for the lush Back In The Day remix from Thieving. This shit is gonna be fun to edit!

Photos below. Cheers Tego for these! Well shot!

L - R: Shizzio, Akira The Don, Big Narstie, Marvin, Pixel, Jack Nimble.

The problem with doing videos with Marvin is you have to look at his batty all day.

We are an angelic choir of angles.

Marvin is nice usually but sometimes he goes a bit Liam Gallagher.

Narstie entertaining us with tales of sneaky pillow wiping.

I am sticking my head back on here, after it fell off from laughing at Narstie’s pillow wiping story.

We are bringing the world down to our level.

Hi Kids. It is snowing in London, for no good reason. Isn’t this supposed to be, um, Spring? Is this something to do with global warming? How about all those fuckin’ jellyfish, multiplying like fucking rats after a bamboo feast?

Strange times indeed, when a brutish gang of jellies can storm a Salmon farm and get away with it. Did you hear about that shit? They fuckin’ merked those salmon! All of them! They stormed in, all wobbly and 98% water, hardly there at all, and MERKED the salmon to DEATH. POW!

Yessir. So I am going to see Pydos In Spydos over the otherside of town, who are filming a video for their ace pop song Le Chat, then I’m gonna go to a wedding. You, you can read this stuff.

The 5 Most Insane Celebrity Comic Book Cameos!


America was conned - who will pay?!

5 Upcoming Comic Book Movies That Must Be Stopped!

Neon Neon and The Magic Numbers team up in London
Gruff Rhys and Boom Bip invite indie stars on stage
Mar 21, 2008

Neon Neon were joined by Romeo Stoddart and Angela Gannon of The Magic Numbers last night (March 20) for their live performance in Room Two of the Fabric nightclub in London.

The band played songs from their new album ’Stainless Style’, including ’I Lust U’ and ’Belfast’, with the aforementioned members of The Magic Numbers providing vocals for set closer ’Stainless Style’.

Cheers for having me Neon Neon! It was very random, and I had a lovely time. The Magic Numbers people were very nice too.

So! I have the Gonzales album now. A very nice man who I shall not name just in case sent it me. I asked him where he got it.

“Strange one that,” he wrote. “at work today I found a small cuddly toy (a sheep called Thomas) with a blue cdr taped to him. The disc had Gonzales - SP written on it. I asked about the office but nobody new anything about it so I checked the contents of the disk and thought “I know a man who will want this”. I burned a copy and stuck the cdr back on the mysterious Thomas and left him as I found him.”

Pretty awesome non? Anyway. I am fucking loving this record! If he wasn’t going to make another rap album, this was the album I wanted him to make. Its got sax solos! It is lush!

I got a phone call just informing me that Gruff Rhys wants me to come down to Fabric tonight and play with him and Boom Bip, who are collectively known as Neon Neon.

I don’t know what they want me to do, other than rap. It is a mystery. I will find out at 6:30. This is Neon Neon’s first gig, I think.

Exciting huh?

Yes. Oddkidd’s playing tonight too. Geddin!

OK. Site of the day is Stuff White People Like. Cheers Svenhunter for the link…

Word up my people equals. We shot a video for Click Clack Blam last night. It was super dope. We have developed a revolutionary new technique, I think. You’ll see when I’ve edited it. Editing is gonna be a bitch. The footage looks awesome though, I am hyped. Pizza Girl took a few photos to check light contrast, peep game.

Oh, I just got told a track I did with an outfit called Temposhark is on the cover of the new XLR8R magazine, so you should check that out. Someone send me a copy! I refuse to leave the house!

OK. Check out Little Man’s new video for the excellent Unsent Letter, wot we recorded round Don Studios III at the end of 07. It is ace!

So, I heard that Gonz tune last night, and I got all excited, and spent all day making a remix of it. I had so much fun! It was almost perverse how much fun I had. It’s a vocal and musical remix. I spent ages on it, the drums are very intricate and the raps are ace. You can listen to it NOW!

Download it in 190kbps here, and at 320 here.

In other news, I got a really nice stereo for the kitchen, a fishbowl, and a proper architect’s drawing board, all off of Freecycle! I’ve wanted a drawing board all my life! I can make comics properly now! It is so sweet! Weird thing is it was, like, 100 meters away from me, in a warehouse by my local corner shop. Thank you people, for the stuff. Our kitchen is a nice place to be in now, and I can’t wait to get my fishes!

By the way, that’s me and Gonz in 2004. You can’t tell from our awesome composure, but we’d just smoked two spliffs and spent a good two hours or so talking about The Wu. Good times!

“Gonzales is forced by Mercury Records to take singing lessons before they release his piano-rock anthem “Slow Down””

OK, didn’t have time to do the podcast today, sorry, check tomorrow.

Don’t matter though, this is much better:

Gonzales’ new video!

A thing of greatness!

Crap, I drank too much coffee this morning. I feel like I’m about to blow up.

Yeeek!

So, new podcast later on. In the meanwhile, listen to Adam Walton’s BBC Radio Wales show from last night, it was very good. Apart from this one “song” that sounded like the inside of a chimney. Mothboy would have liked that one. Rest was grand though. He played The Music of The Spheres too.

Rah then, who saw the rugby? Wales smashed it! How very exciting! I have to admit to having been entirely uninterested in Rugby before last year. However, I watched all the Wales games in this latest 6 Nations and they were great. Loads of big ugly sweaty men beating shit out of each other. Fucking awesome.

Due to popular demand (whoo! I get to say “due to popular demand!”) I have made the acapellas for the Thieving mixtape available to download.

A few are missing as I haven’t got the files anymore. So! The Thieving Acapellas tracklisting:

1. Thieving
2. Click Clack Blam ft. Pixel
3. Thanks For All The AIDS ft. The Women
4. BOOM! (Smash Stuff) ft Why Lout?
5. Werewolves!
6. Back In The Day (Remix) ft. Jack Nimble, Narstie, Marvin & Shizzio
7. The Music Of The Spheres ft. Mary Turner
8. Dear Baby (Cut You In The Face)
9. Oobie Doo ft. Mary Turner & Marvin
10. Jesus!
11. Gitmo ft. Narstie
12. Giro
13. Riot Going On ft Dego Brown
14. Now Then
15. Tomorrow ft Madison
16. Oh! (What A Glorious Thing) ft Bashy
17. To The Tongue Tied ft Mary Turner

17 Potential Bootleg Smashes! Whoee! Yours for £4.50. Awesome.

The fine people at Culture Deluxe posted a fine review of Thieving yesterday. And they gave it 8 stars, which was also fine. Peep game:

Culture Deluxe Review
8/10
Akira the Don
‘Thieving’
Released on 10 March 2008 on www.akirathedon.com

The title track and album opener shamelessly admits that Akira is fond of lifting the odd sample - but we knew that. Hell, even the artwork to this fine new release is a clever re-reworking of Blur’s pastel reworking of The Beatles’ iconic ‘Let It Be’ cover. Along with some great new material, ‘Thieving’ revisits some of Akira’s greatest moments to date and, naturally, a number of the tracks which influenced this indie / hip hop crossover with a sense of humour and lyrics to rival the wittiest social commentator.

Old favourite ‘Thanks For All The AIDS’ benefits from a sharp steal of The Kinks’ ‘Days’ as an introduction while the Elastica-sampling ‘Boom!’ originally surfaced on a mixtape called ‘third hand Wire riffs’ before its release as a bonafide cheeky b-side. Both sound immense here along with other such pilfered material as crackly 70’s disco records on ‘Y R U So Layzee’ and XTC’s ‘Making Plans for Nigel’ on the soon to be classic ‘Giro’.

When not audaciously stealing tracks outright on ‘Werewolves of London’ Akira makes references to both Amy Winehouse and surely the first to slum landlords since Carter USM’s ‘Sheriff Fatman’. Despite his hip hop medium, Akira definitely owes more to Jimbob and Fruitbat’s influence than that of Dr Dre. Akira is the closest thing we have to Ian Dury in this modern age, mixing the jocular and seemingly inconsequential together with great results. I mean, how great is ‘Oh! WHat a Glorious Thing’, itself a humdrum tribute to Ice Cube’s ‘Today Was A Good Day’?

Even at twenty three tracks in length, ‘Stealing’ never becomes trite, irksome or stereotyped. It presents the perfect opportunity to get on the ATD freedom buggy to rhymin’ oblivion - so hop on.

The album can be ordered on CD, MP3 and, er, t-shirt through Akira’s website.

Posted on 13 March 2008 by Richard Brown”

Cheers Culture Deluxe! I am also at number 10 in their top ten artists, for some reason. Two places above The Teenagers. My little brother was taking me to see them on April 7th. But now I am playing a gig with The Indelicates, which is kind of his fault for getting me into them. Is that irony?

GIG! GIG! GIG!

Look down there on the left. I am playing a gig. It is a nice wee gig in a pub in Cambridge supporting The Indelicates on April 7th. The promoter hit me up the day after I announced to the world I liked them via my podcast. I thought, shit, why not? I haven’t played for a while. I have all these new songs I need to try out.

Another guy hit me up about doing a show in Leeds, around then. People have been asking me to play Leeds for ages. PLAY LEEDS BUMHOLE, they say. So I will. And I figure it might be a good idea to do a bunch of gigs around then - between the 4th and the 14th of April, maybe.

So! If you’d like me to come to your town, have a word with the local club, pub, disco, studentunion, whatever, and get them to holla at me. I am easy to find. I am right here, all the time.

So! Video. Damn, a lot of you wanna be in the Giro video!

Good for youse. How handsome and pretty you are! You’re gonna look great after Zef has chopped you up and stuck you behind Akon or whoever. Heh.

OK. so. My beloved Technics DZ 1200 broke. I don’t know how. Nothing fell on it. No one hit it with a brick. I just woke up one day, switched it on, and it didn’t work. The platter span, and the digital display shone blue, and empty of readout. My Bright Eyes CD stayed stuck inside. And that’s it. I have searched the internets, I have asked on messageboards, but no avail. Any of you clever boffins have a clue what the problem might be?

So. Linkage (soon, he promises, Zef’s gonna hook up a mini-blog on the right hand side so I can post crap like this without disrupting the flow of the main site. Then we can get back to thoughtful, insightful political commentary and shit. Whoo!).

That Biggie doll is ill, no? And only $30! Its my birthday soon you know!

Bol on paying for sex: ROFLCOPTER this dude hates ladies! The comments are even more ridonculously gut busting.

That Celemony thing looks sick.

26 million have watched this amateur footage of a bunch of animals going to war over a baby animal, but I hadn’t till yesterday. Shit is bananas!

Them crazy Yankees are looking into putting Venezuela on their list of Terrorist States, since their attempted coup didn’t work out as planned. Wastemen!

Wanna be in the video we’re making for Giro?

Dermot Arnold is. Paula Fischer is. In fact, all of you that emailed after hearing about the competition in the last Doncast are in. So too are the “pick a working title” winners (I haven’t forgotten your avatars!).

Well done!

There’s space for 30 more of you. If you applied for the Donsquad and sent a photo, you’re in the running. The rest of you, if you want your merry mug in the forthcoming animated video for my song Giro, email a full head shot (and body if possible) to atd@akirathedon.com with GIRO as the message subject. 30 people will be picked at random next week, when we’re properly amidst it (I am waiting for Zef to finish working on Erol Alkan’s website before we start properly).

Oh, if you want a taste of the vibe of the video, click here.

Go in peace!

So, l’ve been reading a bunch of Terry Pratchett books lately, after not thinking about dude for, like, twelve years. Shit is fucking funny, and mad clever. Yesterday I saw this massive poster for a Sky One adaption of The Colour Of Magic. That’s weird I thought. Then this morning, as I lay in bed and my girl got ready for work, I heard dude’s name mentioned on the radio, but I was half asleep so I didn’t notice what it was about. Then I got this mail from Colin:

“Terry Pratchett made a very moving but also very critical and relevant speech this morning. It appears that he has very early onset altzheimers disease and has donated a million dollars to research. It was very sad. He did make several hugely relevant points on the state of the NHS and how it is easier for him to get crack than it is for him to get his medication. You should try and watch it. Although it may make you upset. He is a great man and it is so admirable to see someone both publicly criticising the health system whilst actively trying to help others in similar situations.”

I couldn’t find the speech, but I found a story about it here.

“It’s a shock and a shame…to find out that funding for research is three per cent of that which goes to find cancer cures,” said Dr Pratchett, who can’t get NHS treatment because he’s “too young to have Alzheimer’s for free”.

“I want to go on writing!” he said. “Admittedly, that means I have to stay alive. You can’t write books when you are dead, unless your name is L. Ron Hubbard.”

Bless that funny man.

OK. Onto more trivial matters. What do you people think of this new Lil Wayne single?

New Marvin video. Single out April 7th. My favourite bit’s the Jack Nimble avatar at the end. WINS!

See previous post for more Marvin.

Otherstuff - new Jeff Wells.

Adele: Massive Racist?

Envy is still great!

Leonard Cohen dates are out!

Southpark returns tomorrow!

L - R: Marvin, Example, Jack Nimble, AK Donovan Indeed! The weekly onslaught continues. It is over a month now since I quit fags, and over a month since I started doing a podcast every week. Are the two linked? Who knows? All I know is DONCAST 7 is live!

iTunes people should go here. The feed with which you subscribe to the podcast is here-AH!.

With music from Marvin ft. ATD & Example, Leonard Cohen, Rick Ross, Lou Gramm, The Teenagers, Lupe Fiasco, Aidan John Moffat and MORE! Like The Pydos In Spydos remix of Thieving! That sort of more! PLUS! Listen inside for first details on the Giro video competition! We’re taking it back to The Drinking Song days, if you remember those.

If you wanna hear the remix of Marvin’s Superhero without me talking on it, go here. If you wanna hear Jack Nimble and Marvin’s remix of Thieving without me talking on, go here. In other news my old mate Marty from Miami has written and directed his very own movie film! Check the trailer here, it looks pretty fuckin smart you know.

People often ask me, ‘Mister The Don, how, owning as many fine books and records and movie films as you do, does a man of your limited means house such splendorous trophies in an affordable, comfortable and space efficient fashion?’

I tend to say, ‘Well noticed, fellow human! I DO own many fine and splendorous works of entertainment. Thanks for asking’. Then I say, ‘Well buddy, a lifetime of living on the edge has made me quite the creative sort. Take my shelves. I make my shelves out bricks and planks of wood I find on the side of the road.’

‘Wow’, people usually say. ‘What a great idea. I’m glad I got to ask you about it. Now I can aply your groundbreaking methods to MY situation’.

‘No problem’, I say. That’ll be five hundred pounds.’

Saying that, I have moved up a bit in the word lately. And my plush new pad in Hackney Wick has shelves made not of the usual road side driftwood, but fresh, legal planks given to me by my new landlord, a fine old gentleman who has spent the past 40 odd years making furniture, and just retired, leaving a workshop full of lush, dusty wood out back of my yard.

And these aren’t the usual bust up old road bricks either, but BRAND NEW dusty sand coloured bricks they’ve been building bungalows with round the corner. They were stacked on a pallet and everything. I’d like to thank BJ and Colin for helping carry them.

By the way, if you can’t find any bricks, old videos do the job just fine, as you can see from picture one. And in picture three, you’ll notice another method - the “two planks of wood with nails banged into them” method. That’s my newest.

ALSO! If, like me, you have had eight billion entirely useful cables tangled in a huge terrifying wire ball under the desk, get yourself a big plank of wood, bang nails into it, and voila! The perfect place to hang your wires, easily accessible at any time. First you’ll have to untangle that ball. I did this last week, the bugger took me five and a half hours. I was listening to Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter though, the time just flew by.

Happy building!

OK! Don Studios IV is set up, the internet is working, and THIEVING IS OUT NOW ON CD, MP3 and T Shirt!

Preorderers will (mostly, stupid Canadian post) know this already. They all agree it is great! How great? Just listen to this song called
GIRO!

Ace huh? Yes indeed. Zef and I are making a video for that. ANYWAY! Thieving has 21 songs on it, and they’re all GRAYTE. Either brand new, or new versions of older songs, the tracklisting goes a little suttink like this:

1. Thieving
2. Click Clack Blam ft. Pixel
3. Thanks For All The AIDS ft. The Women
4. BOOM! (Remix) ft. Lethal Bizzle & Narstie
5. Werewolves!
6. Back In The Day (Remix) ft. Jack Nimble, Narstie, Marvin & Shizzio
7. The Music Of The Spheres ft. Mary Turner
8. Can’t Go To Sleep
9. Dear Baby (Cut You In The Face)
10. Oobie Doo ft. Mary Turner & Marvin
11. Unlearning
12. Jesus!
13. Gitmo ft. Narstie
14. Giro
15. Riot Going On ft Dego Brown
16. Now Then
17. Tomorrow ft Madison
18. The Tree
19. Oh! (What A Glorious Thing) ft Bashy
20. To The Tongue Tied ft Mary Turner
21. Y R U So Layzee

Laffs! Sobs! Special guest stars aplenty! Yes indeed. You can get it on luxury 4 page booklet full colour doolah CD for £5 plus postage, or on CD Quality 320kbps MP3 for £4.75, no postage.

MP3 bundle comes with printable artwork and a bonus track called MOVING! Whoo!

You can a T shirt for £15 plus postage. OR a CD and a T shirt for £17 plus postage (wow, DISCOUNT!) or an MP3 and T shirt for £16.50 plus postage (EVEN MORE WOW DISCOUNT!)

We take all major credit and debit cards, via Paypal which does not require a Paypal account and we ship WORLDWIDE! (Even Canada, although their postal system is a little slow)

MAKE YOUR CHOICE!

CD - £5

MP3 - £4.75

CD & T - £17 - Comes In Mens and Womens Sizes

Size	Man SMan MMan LMan XLMan XXLGirl SGirl MGirl LGirl XL

MP3 & T - £16.50 - Comes In Mens and Womens Sizes

Size	Man SMan MMan LMan XLMan XXLGirl SGirl MGirl LGirl XL

Just A T - £15 - Comes In Mens and Womens Sizes

Size	Man SMan MMan LMan XLMan XXLGirl SGirl MGirl LGirl XL

So, I happened upon Courtney Love’s Myspace somehow, and I was shocked and ashamed to discover that she has FUCKED UP HER FACE with some knives. What fuckery is this? Shit! When I was 14 I thought Courtney Love was the BOMB.

Not so much now.

So, it’s Brainwashed Manchurian Candidate McCain for the red team!

I promise you it’ll be Hillary for the blues. It is written in the sands. I should put a bet on. If I am wrong about this I will listen to Beatles records non stop for a week.

So, those bees. Remember how all the bees have been disappearing (last year about 750,000 of the 2.5m hives in the US were wiped out in “mysterious circumstances”, and the same thing is happening in Europe now), and what a scary prospect (DEATH FOR ALL!) no bees is? Adam Fletcher has alerted me to the impact of the bee’s bugger-offage on the ice cream industry, who are talking about Colony Collapse Disease (CCD). “The mysterious and unique aspect of CCD,” writes The Guardian, “is that the bees are not being found dead near their colonies. They are flying off; just abandoning their life’s work, leaving behind the queen and a few younger bees.”

What would make a bee do that kind of selfish, dude-like shit? Pesticides? Mobile phones? Global Warming-ah?

Hmm. Boffins have linked CCD with a virus imported from Australia known as IAPV or Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, which merked a load of Israeli bees in 2004. The Aussies deny this vehemontley, mind. Anyway, the boffins have been breeding IAPV resistant bees. PRETTY CLEVER! Not necessarily a solution, given we’re not sure it’s IAVP doing the bee merkage. Still. The USDA are looking into solutions. And when I say USDA, I do not mean Young Jeezy’s crew, fool. I mean the United States Department Of Agriculture, fool!

So, thanks Fletch for that update. You good people should feel free to keep my ign’ant ass updated, and don’t be sad if I don’t mail you back right away, I am a busy man! But I appreciate everything you do! Even the dumb stuff!

Thank Crikey for interwebs. Those dang post people don’t seem to know where my house is. This is weak on their side. I live in the finest yard in all of East London. Damn!

I dropped this on Playlouder just. It is a true story.

My new favorite band are a bunch of Frenchies called The Teenagers. They are well great. Sort of a 2008 Jilted John, with Pet Shop Boys pretences. Actually, they sound like that disco song off the first Belle And Sebastian record, if Stuart Murdoch had ever seen a vagina. And that Pet Shop Boys song from Flight Of The Concords, but funny. And good. They are well ace, and they are going on tour, so if someone sees this and wants to buy me a ticket, holla at me.

My little brother The Svenhunter got me into them, by the way. He was round my swanky new gaff on the weekend, leaking toxins on my sweet red rug following a night out at some gay warehouse party, playing this totally sweet electro indie record that went “I love my American cunt” or something, I was like, dude, this OWNS, and he was like, yeah, it’s this band called The Teenagers, they’re pretty sweet, and I was like, give me the album then, I am after all your elder and better, and he was like, OK.

So now I HAVE THE TEENAGERS ALBUM and it isn’t even out till March 17th, and its not on Waffles either, I just checked.

OK, tour details:
Manchester Roadhouse (April 1) Birmingham Carling Bar Academy (2) Glasgow Stereo (4) Bristol Thekla (5) Brighton Barfly (6) London Cargo (7) Leeds Faversham (12)

Like I said, if you got a ticket, HOLLA AT ME! I am like E from Eels, I hate shows, but I bet this one’s great.

Hey yo! Doncast 6 - Welcome To Don Studios IV is up now! I rediscovered CDs during my move, so expect LOADS OF ACE SONGS! Jack Nimble and Marvin (formerly The Martian)’s remix of Thieving! A preview of the next “single” from Thieving, Giro! Whoooo! DONCAST 6 iTunes people should go here. It takes a whee while to refresh itself so it might not be visible there yet-AH! Other people, if you wish to subscribe to the podcast, the feed is here-AH!. Enjoy! So, Ali and I went up to Hendon in North London (which is gross) on the weekend to help Littles with his new video. Shizzio and Narstie showed too, alongside a bunch of other cats. It was dope. I met Littles’ dad, he looks, like, 12. Crazy.

Your order will be dispatched promptly.

@!

Hello, I have been unable to upload that podcast cos I have no internet in my house and internet cafes don’t let me instal ftp things and my mates who live locally and have internet are refusing to answer their phones. Maybe they will later.

PAXUS!

I read Small Gods by Terry Of Pratchet the other day, it was very funny and clever.

Oh, Thieving will be officially Out within 24 hous, and you’ll be able to buy it on MP3, although the Cd is cooler cos its got a big photo inlay, and there are photos of some of you lot in there I nicked off your myspaces. Didn’t know THAT did you?

Oh, here are some reviews. Cheers Gio!

Manchester Music
4/5

He’s always been threatening to do it and despite successful crossovers into the music media and charts, Akia The Don’s second album may just be the breakthrough. In the meantime though, this collection provides 21 tracks of mixes, versions and collaborations with the likes of Lethal Bizzle and Big Narstie sitting alongside a host of crucial indie samples.

ireallylovemusic

neither a new album, nor a mixtape but somewhere inbetween.
this 22 track self released artifact is a mixed bag of remixes of tracks off akiras major label funded debut, when we were young, acoustic revisits of said major label nightmares, some new bangers, and a couple of special laywer baiting bonus levels that will make you jump with joy, or writhe in agony.

ever since the whole i’m on a major label, oh, now i’m not episode (and if i am right [You’re not! - AK], i think the actual phone message that declared him dropped, has been added to the mix before the gorgeous can’t go to sleep), akira has held back on his flow of mixtapes that were often dropped on his site.

instead, prior to the arrivial of the official second album, adam releases proper fully packaged cds like thieving, with made to measure artwork, and lets his fans throw him a fiver for the love-n-rent and priviledge of hearing his latest adventures, and to be honest, i think this freedom is perfect for his creative urges.

prior to thieving was the mashup/electro/dancefloor madness of stunners 130 that adam made with his hipster party monster wade crescent, whereas for this one, its all about taking it back to his hip hop roots, with a huge slab of pop-n-song thrown in for good measure.

alongside a couple of home made gangsta/chopped and screwed styled productions, the real fun is when adam takes a forgotten classic and goes all freestyle crazy over the top.
of course, most people will know of his nirvana and elastica rips (both of which appear here to complete the jigsaw), but alongside these crowd pleasers are new unexpected pleasures.

to really get the smiles going, he’s grabbed an old warren zevvon classic, werewolves of london, and just dropped the almightiest of slabs of brilliance over the top for werewolves, using the piano party loops as a foundation, the celeb/gigolo scene gets a nudge before descending into a seedy but catchy chorus involving the realities of living in rented accomodation. its hook filled and if not for the massive sample making its official release impossible, a massive radio hit. as would the brilliant xtc heavy giro that tells the story of all how many ex rock stars end up in the line for their giro, or working at woolies, all to the loops of making plans for nigel.

spread over 70+ minutes are many tales of personal issues, some funny, many heartfelt, with references to the troubles of daily life, all matched against the struggles of a man in need to tell the world stories via his chosen art, and in that sense, thieiving is by far one of the most enjoyable hip hop based albums i have heard in a long time.
a fiver well spent suckas.