Rambling and blogging for over 8 years, from good food and drink around town, eclectic electronic music, absolutely anything to do with digital media, throw some sport (more than likely cricket) in and the odd personal experience — as seen through my viewfinder.
I gave FabricLive33 an absolute thrashing this week, so you’ll see a favouring of the tracks from the CD below in my chart of most listened to for the week. If you’ve seen them live, or even if you haven’t, and are just familiar with their playful Baltimore sound, then this CD might surprise, not for it’s lack of playfulness - far from it, but it’s a fusion of many styles, a genre-smash of techno, old school breaks, guitars, electro (not electro-house) and even some progressive rock!
Mr. Oizo – Nazis (Justice Mix)
Dominatrix – The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight
KW Griff – Good Man
Metro Area – Orange Alert (DFA remix)
The Romantics – Talking In Your Sleep
Uffie – Hot Chick (Feadz edit)
CSS – Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above (Spank Rock Remix)
Kurtis Blow – The Breaks
Simian Mobile Disco – Hustler
Rick Ross – Hustlin’
Matthew Dear – Fleece On Brain
Pete Hook, ex-bassist from New Order and over the last few years, international superstar DJ extraordinaire. But I ask - for how much longer?
Here’s some footage of him playing a club in Hong Kong. Now to the uneducated, it may seem like quite normal footage. However, he’s playing directly from a pre-mixed CD, and not just any CD, but one that appeared on the cover of Mixmag.
Peter Hook - the Milli Vanilli of ‘Superstar’ DJs. Now that’s something to be proud of.
There’s some problems currently with the last.fm weekly charts - so no fresh music right now.
That said, here’s a great new mix from Dave Choe and Matt Aubusson of Glitch in Sydney. Had it in the car for a few days now and loving it. Tasty goodness from the likes of 2000 and 1 and Magda. They do promise a tracklisting shortly.
Some great action around town coming up as we swing into the summer season.
The Minimal Fuss crew are throwing their first birthday bash on Friday, November 2nd with Ewan Pearson (Kompakt) and Dixon (Get Physical, Sonar Kollektiv & Innervisions) on the lineup! Joining them on the lineup will be Declan Lee, Dave Choe, Ben Korbel and Matt Aubusson as well as maybe one more surprise international at Oxford Art Factory! Check the Youtube video invite below.
…and then there’s the Mad Racket 9th birthday featuring Chris Duckenfield on Saturday, October 27th. Check out the Mad Racket site for further info.
What a cracker of a show!! Check out the latest show (September 1) from the Sonic Sunset duo. The sounds from the Rhythm & Sound camp highlight what are probably my most favoured genre of electronic sounds - fifteen years on, the sounds from Basic Channel et. al are still rocking my stereo.
Personally, I can thank Suenomartino for the introduction to the sounds from the B12 camp - way back when. A brilliant example of the foundations of IDM.
Part 1 » Explore the depths of Berlin’s Rhythm & Sound extended family of labels, focusing especially on their “Main Street” imprint – for deep house and dark, eerie detached layers of dub traces. Playing the more downtempo shades of Basic Channel sound, hear the best expression of dub and modern techno today. Fifteen years after they first pioneered it, their unique sound has proven timeless.
Part 2 » A retrospective set of London’s B12 Records. We’ve been wanting to do this show for many years, and decided no better time in space than now: “Expressions of the Future” as viewed in 1991 from B12 in London, through a lens that built on Detroit’s original foundation, but angled the sound into a unique British unknown. Michael Golding & Steve Rutter crafted this vision under numerous artist names on their B12 imprint, releasing one of the pillars of the Artificial Intelligence era, Electro Soma (primarily a collection of their early 12″s), on Warp Records. We love the 12″ philosophy they adopted, with super-limited colored vinyl among an already-limited total run. The records have gorgeous cutting jobs with massive etchings before and after the grooves, not unlike the look of UR/Red Planet records from that same era. B12 was a key first step for UK’s clinical twist on soulful circuitry, we dug deep to play many of their originals we had.
The Sentinel from Southern Outpost drops a favourable minimalistic dubbed out mix, heavily saturated in Basic Channel, Chain Reaction and Deep Chord. In the mix is ‘Phylyps Trak II’ (51:50 mark), probably one of my most played records in my collection - the quintessential minimal dub release.
More mixes today, I’ve been listening to a slew of mixes from the Dave Siska and Matt McQueen aka the Sonic Sunet crew who present Clinically Inclined every week on 89.3FM WNUR, straight outta Chicago.
Today I listened to Teep’s mix which consisted of tracks that had a vocal, with tunes ranging from the melodic electronics of Florence’s ‘The Vineyard’, the dirty and dusty basement jam ‘Smile’ by Theo Parrish to ‘I House U’ a Marco Passarani’s grimey electro jam that samples the vocal from the JB’s track ‘I’ll House You’. It’s funny how worlds cross-over, but I remember getting an ‘interesting’ response from Teep when posting a question about Drexciya on the 313-Detroit mailing list some 11 or 12 years ago. Now, I look back and laugh as I well and truly understand the realm that is Drexciya.
Incidentally, the show is named after a brilliant Detroit-meets-Sheffield funk machination by Future/Past (aka Kirk DeGiorgio) - simply brilliant music, which 14 years on lives on strongly in my record collection (and obviously Matt McQ’s!) as it features in the show dated August 15, 2005. Someone once said techno was a fad. Whilst it’s not as revolutionary as the home computer, I’m sure someone said the same about it as well at the time. Whatever, here’s the tracklisting from that show:
William DeVaughn - Be Thankful for What You Got (Roxbury)
Prince - Sign O’ The Times (Warner)
Next Movement - All I Do (Nuance)
Rene & Angela - I’ll Be Good (Mercury)
Loose Endz - Hangin’ On A String - Good Times (BBE)
NYC Peech Boys - On A Journey [Dub] (Island)
Hanna - Metropolitan (Sound Signature)
Mr. Hazeltine - On The Avenue (Plug Research)
Presence - Better Days (Pagan)
P. Lauer - Neonbrown - Staystacedays EP (Real Soon)
Romanthony - Let The Rhythm Move You - The Wanderer (Prescription)
Gus Gus - Ladyshave [Biggi’s Megatron Mix 2] (4AD)
Kenny Black - Broken Soul - Future Instrumentals EP (Finest Blend)
Jesper Dahlback - Polyhouse (DX)
Future/Past - Clinically Inclined (Planet E)
Balil - Choke & Fly - Trainer (Warp)
As you can see, it’s not about genres but just about playing solid music that you can tap your toes to while typing up another document. A real mixture here with the Larry Levan discotech influenced NYC Peech Boys on to Mr. Hazeltine which is a pseudonym for current dancefloor devastator and soon to be Australian tourist - John Tejada. And then there’s Prince.
Tune in and check it out. Well worth the download.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Brennan Green is rocking Sydney this Mardi Gras weekend. Unfortunately, I wont be going - so for those who can’t make it, or are unsure about his style, here’s a couple of mixes to boogie on down to thanks to the guys over at Beats In Space.
