Heavy Artillery Graffiti Crew

Now i’m not sure whether any of you are interested or not but I myself am pretty much obsessed with rare and hard to find rap records from 1988-1992. I know this is technically a ‘Graffiti’ website but seeing as i haven’t done a great deal this week due to the weather and work i thought i’d diversify the site content..

This period of rap is commonly described as the golden era as it was when the craziest amount of sampling and musical development was able to take place in a pretty much ‘use any funky sample’ free for all, until the record labels and forgotten artists decided enough was enough and it was time to share the wealth.
Certain records garner more praise than others sometimes this due to certain personel that were involved, dopeness, obscureness/rareness, or sometimes the fact that the wax has been included on a killer mix cd.
The two records here are dope/desirable for seperate reasons..

RON B – STITCH BY STITCH.
Certain records are hard to find and some are next to impossible to find, this one is rare as it is but to find a sealed one is ridiculous..
This track is sought after due to its inclusion on the ‘HEAR NO EVIL’ mix series by DJ IVORY.
This record has been known to top the $1000 mark on ebay.

MAIN SOURCE – THINK / ATOM.
Main source are one of the most important rap groups from the tail end of the golden era. This 12″ mixed and engineered by the late great PAUL C one of the most respected rap producers of the late 80′s.
This record is the debut for the group that would go on to create some of the most incredible rap records of the late 80′s early 90′s even being the group to give NAS the spotlight for the first time.

I might delete this post in a few days i was just messing about in my ‘record room’ and decided to get my lady to film me breaking the seals on these two great great records..

Amongst numerous invitations and job offers every now and then you get one that sounds so odd its worth doing out of curiousity. (see the Vienna trip from last summer). This one was up there no doubt, The basic premise was we were to travel to a village sandwiched between Napoli (Naples) and Salerno in southern Italy. Pretty straight forward so far, until the rest starts getting added in – We had to paint the inside of an ancient monastery that had been partly converted into a youth hostel. To twist the job further still i (AROE, English speaking) was expected to then give a lecture and powerpoint presentation on my personal history in Graffiti. Not bad? seeing as i can just about order pizza and spraypaint in the native dialect.

This is how it went..

Typical Napoli street.

The Venue..
Please note the great weather.

Now onto the typical pre-jam paint scenario that we all love so much.
First off-

TIGER PAINT? it seems wherever i go i seem to find a new brand to tackle.. i’ll warn you this one is shockingly bad, not control wise just the worst finish you’ve ever seen! its kinda ultra, ultra matt and when you fill over any other brand you can guaranteed see the original sketch lines straight through the fill colour… nice.

That said, there was still the mandatory paint scrum (fighting over the few cans of montana black range)..

But whatever the situation i feel that 24 cans was a pretty decent amount considering how little we were expected to paint.

This was the spot we were asked to paint..

This is how it looked once we’d redecorated..

Now on our trips we meet some cool writers/people, i’m not sure if many of you are familiar with the ‘WILD BOYS’ crew out of Napoli but they are fresh as hell and the coolest guys you could hope to meet. Heres a posse shot of us lot.

MR WANY, OPIUM, PENCIL, ROTA, AROE & ZEUS 40.

The WILD BOYS hospitality was incredible, they have this cool hangout/office/warehouse/art studio kinda set up and they ordered an almost continuous supply of pizza and drinks. A room full of cans was opened and an invite to paint any wall i wanted could not be turned down, so heres the results..

I look forward to my next visit to Napoli and the WILD BOYS are coming to the UK in the spring so be prepared for some Anglo-italliano nonsense in the coming months..

End of the 2008 chapter and on to the beginning of the 2009.

ALERT AT WORK.. NOTTINGHAM 09..
After what I would call a productive year as a crew/team/family,
constantly pushing each other striving to produce quality eye candy
for ourselves and for the spectators. I find myself excited at what
prospects this year will bring. Expect more bombs from the Heavy
Artillery…

Thanks for all the support from the HA and the Anti Drip boys.
Big ups to the spectators and viewers for the comments left on Flickr.
It makes it all worth while.

Cheers me ducks.

ALERT. HA. AD.

First off WE are going to make more effort with the website.. updating more regularly and generally doing stuff with it..

so to kick of 09 GARY and myself thought we’d carry on the Brighton new years day tradition of putting some extra effort on the paint front.. you might’ve read about it before in JIROE’s Graphotism interview where he mentions club hammers and brick removal session from a while back..

Due to the fact that there are fewer and fewer places to paint in our city we feel that our mission in the coming year should include getting more new spots and expanding some of the ones we already have.

so heres some simple easy to follow instructions that we used to create a new piece of arting today..

1st step.

Find a wall hidden by trees, bushes or some type of horticulture.
Recycle an old piece of fencing into a handy (bendy) ladder.
Take a £3.50 pair of hedge trimmers from B&Q.
Get a crew man to start hacking..

Chart the progress in a series of pictures like what we have done.
Destroying birds nests and small wildlife habitat doesn’t matter as we are the top of the food chain.
GARY has managed to cut quite a bit down. Which i carried and piled up out of view.

As you can see, the once hidden wall is starting to grow.
These slash n’ burn techniques were developed at the now defunct Davigdor graffiti training facility in central Hove.
Please also note the ‘layered fringe’ effect that we created with the foliage. Both trendy and functional.

When all the leg work is done simply drop some dubbings and a horse with uzi’s wearing a cowboy hat.. standard.

Jokes aside though, if everyone every now and then took the time to make a wall imagine how many spots we’d end up with in the UK..
AROE.