Abbey Road Studios yesterday with Matt Johnson (right), engineer Alex Wharton (left) and the Neumann VMS 82 DMM cutting lathe (far left), the only operational one of its kind left in the country.
Oh! Gear porn! Big, clunky machines with real knobs and buttons that scream, ‘ANALOGUE!’. But what were we doing there? Cooking up something for Record Store Day but that’s all I’m allowed to say. You’re welcome to make an educated guess though…
I did a mix for Big Fish Little Fish – the party for parents and kids with a more discerning taste in music.
It’s straight up club classics with no messing about pretending to be cutting edge, classic Hip Hop, Rave and Disco all features plus there’s also a healthy dose of humour in there too.
Bestival have hosted it on their Bestimix site as well as part of their online advent calendar. I can’t embed it unfortunately but you can listen HERE.
I’m very pleased to announce that I am now represented by Ben Coghill at Elastic Artists who is also responsible for booking the ‘3-Way’ mix shows I’m doing with DJ Cheeba and DJ Moneyshot next year.There’s a shiny new DJ Food page up on the Elastic Artists website with a handy ‘BOOK NOW’ button, should you be that way inclined.
If you want to book either myself solo or the Paul’s Boutique reconstruction show then Ben is the man to go to. I’ve known him for years under his other pseudonym, Boom Monk Ben, and he provided many a great Solid Steel mix back in the day before moving into promoting and agency work full time. Very excited to see what 2014 brings…
DK and I have created a set on Soundcloud where you can directly access all my Solid Steel mixes with one click. With the archive on Soundcloud now several years deep and also being that it is part of the overall Ninja Tune account, it’s increasingly hard to find things easily. Now you can with one click. If I’ve had a mix on the show it should be here, whether a solo mix, part of a collaboration or sharing an hour with another DJ.
So, if you wanted to check the Beastie Boys ‘Paul’s Boutique’ reconstruction I did with Cheeba and Moneyshot, it’s here. Likewise the ‘Free Comic Book Day’ mix, ‘O Is For Orange’ or ‘In:Motion’ mixes and many more. I give most of my mixes titles, one day I should go through and make an inventory of the lot…
I joined two recent Solid Steel mixes together to form this downtempo, dark synth-laden hour of sparse electronica and such. I think they work together nicely as one piece rather than separate sets. Enjoy in headphones late at night.
What to say about last Friday’s Solid Steel 25th anniversary at Fire in London? It was amazing, exhausting, exhilarating and unique at different times. I personally had a great night and haven’t danced so much in years (mainly to Robin Hexstatic‘s amazing Acid set in the Light Box).
I heard fantastic music in all three rooms, it’s just a pity I couldn’t actually be in all of them all night. DK, PC and I surprised people by doing an unannounced version of the ‘Now, Listen’ mix CD from 2001 – unrehearsed and mainly mapped out at sound check. Cheeba, Moneyshot and I managed to just about pull off the Paul’s Boutique 3-Way mix and PC stepped up afterwards with a rousing Nelson Mandela speech (RIP) and straight into Ritchie Havens’‘s ‘Going Back To My Roots’.
Here are some photos of the night by Beth aka Daddy’s Got Sweets and there are more over on Resident Advisor. (Coldcut meets The Orb flight deck, Matt Black and Alex Paterson and 3-Way Mix kit photos by Cheeba and I)
There’s a fantastic review of the night here by Raya Raycheva and Joe Muggs did a huge 5 page history of the show with myself, Coldcut, DK and Ninja label boss Peter Quicke for FACT.
I did an interview about the show with The Ransom Note last week, you can read it here and I also wrote a piece about the show and my favourite mix – Coldcut meets The Orb – for The Quietus.
Earlier in the evening, at the pre-gig dinner, DK and I were presented, completely by surprise, with a tongue-in-cheek framed disc by Coldcut, recognising our ‘broadest beats, masterful mixing and unerring dedication’ to the show over the years 
Tickets available from Resident Advisor or on the door.
Nearly forgot, I take up the last half hour after DK on Solid Steel this week with a companion piece to last weeks mix – very mellow and a bit dark in places too.
I wrote a piece about 25 years of Solid Steel for The Quietus, highlighting one of my favourite mixes – the original Coldcut meets The Orb from 1991.
Only one week until the big London show where they meet for a third time alongside Four Tet, Mr Scruff, Actress, Trevor Jackson, Illum Sphere, DK, PC, Hexstatic, James Mountain and myself, Cheeba and Moneyshot doing our Paul’s Boutique routine.
The Hydra (who are promoting the event) have a competition over on Facebook to win tickets, goodies and a £100 bar tab if you share the flyer from their page.
Not long now until the London Solid Steel 25th anniversary gig at Fire closes out the year in fine style. Tickets available here…
This weeks Solid Steel features not one but two guest mixes plus a 30 minute set from yours truly. Kicking things off we welcome The Amorphous Androgynous back with a half hour culled from their new 2xCD release of ‘psychesploitation’, ‘The Cartel’. They showcase some of their new tracks in a funky 70’s cop soundtracks/ fuzzed up Blacksploitation style – it’s the sound of Get Carter‘s swinging London and the sleazy San Francisco of Dirty Harry. Both volumes are available now from their online store and a third volume will feature a remix from me at some point in 2014.
From here we drift into a darker, more synthetic sci-fi soundscape with eight esoteric tracks I picked that play on the spacier side. Tracks from compilations; ‘The Sound of Belgium’, ‘Music Sans Frontiers’ and ‘Space Oddities’ feature as does music from the new Richard Norris/Luke Insect collaboration Dark Seed. This is the first part of a mix called ‘Night Music’, a selection of new acquisitions that I’ve been enjoying after dark recently.
In the second hour we have a real coup, Stephen Mallinder – ex of Cabaret Voltaire and a long-standing solo artist in his own right – has put together an hour of:
“Peers, associates, co-conspirators, influences and baton-carriers. Starting with early head-turners This Heat (1978) and filtered through the mix claps from composer Steve Reich (1972) onto post-punkers 23 Skidoo who I’d gigged and recorded with.
A couple of FSOL tracks – covert Cabs somewhere in there and back up north to Sheffield’s first real label WARP – the original Forgemasters reworked by bleepers Unique 3, The Black Dog posse and sonic provocateurs supreme, Autechre. An offering from my own Cabaret Voltaire – a rework of ‘Yashar’ with the original ’70 billion people’ sample.
Keith le Blanc and co – Major Malfunction, classic tough electro, there’s a whole history from Sugarhill to Tackhead in there. And rounded off with our one-time co-conspiritor On-U’s Adrian Sherwood‘s mix of metal-machiners Einstürzende Neubauten, complete with sniff sample.
All spiced with some period spoken word courtesy of Malcolm X, Mr Burroughs and JG Ballard stories and lovingly mixed by hand.”
It’s an excellent selection and there’s also a timely Cabaret Voltaire box set just out covering the years ’83-’85.
Also, we just hit 90,000 plays on the original mix on Soundcloud! Thanks to everyone who listened, the new live version is longer, remixed and we aim to add video at some point in the future…
I just spent Sunday in Bristol continuing rehearsal work on the 3-Way Mix that DJs Cheeba, Moneyshot and I will be premiering in Paris on Nov 16th at the Solid Steel 25th anniversary gig at La Bellevilloise. This is a 90 minute version of last years ‘Caught in The Middle of a 3-Way Mix’ tribute to The Beastie Boys‘ ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album, made from all the original samples, acappellas and more.
We’ll also be performing it at the London Solid Steel gig at Fire on Dec 6th and taking it to Australia in February next year. Anyone wishing to book us please contact Ben Coghill at Elastic Artists.
The soundtrack mix to my fulldome version of The Search Engine has just gone up as part of the latest podcast on Solipsistic Nation. Alongside a short interview you can hear an altered, slightly more ambient version of the album with remixed versions and edits of a lot of the tracks.
This is the version that plays at the dome shows and includes the ‘Deep Space’ version of ‘GIANT’ remixed for Matt Johnson‘s as yet unreleased Lazarus compilation ‘The Others’. You can listen to the podcast here or download it directly here.
In 4 weeks time myself, DJ Cheeba & DJ Moneyshot debut a live 4 deck version of our reversion of the Beastie Boys‘ Paul’s Boutique album. Subtitled ‘Caught In The Middle of a 3-Way Mix’ we’ll be premiering it at La Bellevilloise in Paris on November 16th alongside DK and the 2013 DMC team winners, DJ Deska, Mr Viktor and Hertz.
We’ll be reprising it at the London Solid Steel at Fire on December 6th and then taking it to Australia in February 2014. Anyone interested in booking the show please contact Ben Coghill at Elastic Artists.
This is a pretty big deal for me, going to be special…
A week to go until our gig in Bristol supporting DJ Shadow at the city’s official Solid Steel 25th anniversary date. Myself and DK will be joining Coldcut, DJ Cheeba and special guest Benji B to rip it up at Motion on October 11th.
For this I’ve put together a more dance floor friendly mix of releases than some of my recent offerings, taking in Mark Pritchard, Machine Drum, Om Unit, Reso and Drums of Death – the last three all of whom have appeared on the excellent Civil Music label who also have a room at the Motion gig too.
Jon Tye‘s Lo Editions series of online licensing albums gets another entry with a DJ Food sampler this month. This is music for TV and film use, fully licensed and ready to use if you’re signed up to Universal Music’s production music service. The tracks span from early ‘Jazz Brakes’ LPs up to ‘The Search Engine’ but all songs have any vocals removed as well as names changed from the originals.
Some are exclusive edits, instrumentals, reworkings and even unreleased in some cases. You can listen online and play spot the original but there won’t be a physical release because this stuff is mainly in the digital domain these days. Above is the cover image and below is an outtake from the design session which wasn’t chosen but that I particularly like.
