Yes good people, I’m now doing a regular podcast via the film-only photography website - filmwasters.com - that I run with some friends. We’ve decided to get together via Skype and natter about photography-related stuff for an hour every month. Well, it keeps us off the street. I tend to keep the photography guff off edwenn.com, but thought I’d make an exception just this once.

Anyway, the URL is filmwasters.com/podcast and you can subscribe to the show here.

I still can’t believe I was party to a single release featuring one weird punk song and two even weirder hip hop songs. How super weird is that? Anyway, I wanted to post some more MP3s and it seems Chocolate is in the frame again…I really need to get some songs ready for the other bands.

The Cast of Thousands:
Simon Finbow - Vocals
Ed Wenn - Guitar, keyboards, vocals
Wolfie - Bass, vocals
John Ruscoe - Drums, vocals
DJ Vince - Scratching
Jason - Samples & song construction

Random thoughts regarding this release:

• I was listening to PJ Harvey’s first album a lot around the time that I wrote the main part of Blue Streak. I hope you can tell. Not sure why I felt the need to add a thrashy section halfway through…and I’m even less sure that it works, but whatever.
• There’s also a major nod to X and their masterpiece, Blue Spark, both with the title and the vocal harmonies. John does the high part and Simon does the lead vocals.
• The sampled/sequenced sections of the hip hop songs were constructed in his bedroom by Jason (ex-of Optimum Wound Profile, Earth Motherfucker, Bum Gravy etc.). This stuff is almost the exact opposite of his normal Industrial stylee output, but he stepped up to the mark and really did a great job for us. I went round his house and spent a couple of evenings with him getting the samples pieced together and layered and then he tweaked things by himself. The sequencing side of things was very rudimentary, so I’m really pleased with the way things flow.
• The main Items Of Interest sample is from a Lucious Jackson track. I’m a bit embarrassed about that because you’re not supposed to sample other hip hop songs, but there you go. We’d tried a host of other ideas and none of them worked, so Jason and I plumped for that at the last minute. The song itself is split into 3 verses; the first one is an intro/show-off thing and then the second and third are about Ken and Binman, two famous Ipswich street celebs from back in the day.
• The main Fat Havana riff is sampled from an Al Green song; I think from the Gets Next To You album because it’s my fave. John played drums, I played keyboards. I think Simon and I may also have been responsible for the (cough) human beatbox at the end…what were we thinking of??? There’s an obscure Jawbox reference in Tools & Chrome. I love this track though; nice and short. Probably Chocolate’s best hip hop track.

Pity the Nation by Lawrence Ferlinghetti as heard on Sept 3rd’s edition of Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.