Perusing the download section on DGM LIVE – the King Crimson / Robert Fripp / related website – I ran across this in the very extensive and notated music discography. Possibly a session for Eno and Byrne‘s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts album, which is a personal Desert Island Disc for me. The five track EP is pulled from a reel to reel tape and remastered for download as so many of Fripp’s performances, interviews or Frippertronics sets seem to be. I know he has a reputation for a eye for detail but the amount of material on that site is ridiculous, most available to purchase and download too. This one even came with a printable PDF cover should you want to make your own CD. Personally I’m not convinced I can hear any of this in MLITBOG but it’s still nice to peek into the archives.
More here
Music
Given that the new Batman film is about to be released, the tenuous reason I picked this set out is the Snoop Dogg opener, ‘Batman & Robin’ which just bangs with DJ Premier production and offbeat fight sounds. A voiceover from an LSD documentary (I forget which but it may be a Negativland radio show) forms the glue that holds this mix together and accompanies Pedro’s excellent Steve Reich/Phillip Glass-esque remix of Cinema Record Music Library’s ‘Lost’. The RJD2 remix of N.O.W’s ’70’s 80’s’ I’d completely forgotten and it sounds super fresh to my ears 20 years later, perfect summer tune, this is why I love unearthing these old mixes.
During a visit to Canada on tour we passed through Halifax in Nova Scotia and hooked up with Sixtoo who furnished me with a CDR of untitled music, this became ‘Outremont Mainline Runs Across The Sunset’ on Vertical Form and the LSD doc is back over the top of this mellow instrumental. This period of his output is so underrated, definitely one of the more interesting producers from this era before he switched up his style. I don’t remember where the Brian Bennet & Alan Hawkshaw tune came from but it’s mostly likely an excellent French Jazz comp called The Urge compiled by Victor Kiswell with a track from different countries around the world.
I have no idea why Stephanie McKay didn’t make it bigger, her earthy, beautiful vocals sounded so much more appealing than others who came after her and forced a ‘soulful’ delivery. This track was listed as ‘Bluesin’ It’ but I think it’s actually ‘Rising Tide’, track her debut down on Go! Beat, produced by Geoff Barrow from Portishead and Tim Saul from Earthling. The Cliff Martinez tracks that play out are both from the Solaris soundtrack, hard to pick two favourites, the whole album is sublime, must revisit that too, love those pure tones. This set is a real mixed bag but it all makes sense to me and every track stands up two decades later.
Track list:
Snoop Dogg feat. Lady of Rage – Batman & Robin
Cinema Recorded Music Library – Lost (Pedro mix)
Nightmares On Wx – 70’s 80’s (RJD2 mix)
Sixtoo – untitled
Brian Bennett & Alan Hawkshaw – Name of the Game
McKay – Rising Tide
Cliff Martinez – First Sleep
Cliff Martinez – Wear Your Seat Belts
The Fifth Dimension was a very short-lived club night in Leicester, it only lasted around two months by all accounts. I showcased plenty of acts in its short life though with an average of four gigs a week. It also had the distinction of having an original poster designed by Michael English of Hapshash & The Coloured Coat, printed in red, blue and gold as seen above. The original pencil line work for this was sold at auction many years back and a letter from Michael with it, signed and dated December 1999, explained the genesis and concept of the design.
”Normally, the structural design of our work was created on layout paper and then traced out onto the final artwork card. That layout was then invariably discarded as waste. However the 5th Dimension poster was so complex that it required a great deal more preparatory work. This meant the creation of a master drawing on cartridge paper whose more robust nature allowed us the freedom to erase and re-draw the various parts of the design until we were satisfied with it. That done, a final tracing was then made from it on layout paper which was then transferred to the card.
The complex maze like pattern that comprises the central theme of this poster was intended to give the impression of a window or doorway into a fifth dimension. The flickering effect of the colours together with the pattern creates a mesmerising experience that was supposed to draw the observer into another space. Under the influence of LSD, of course, the effect would have been much more dramatic”.
Below is a local paper listing for the opening night of the club, presumably before they had the poster above. By the end of October the night would be over.
This is the third part recorded for the show I put up last week. A very Mo Wax-centric mix this time round with five of the tracks being from the label or previously signed to it. Attica Blues had moved on by this time and were signed to Columbia which was sadly the last we’d hear of them with the Test. Don’t Test album that this is taken from. The first part of Nigo’s Japanese exclusive ’Symphony No. 250910 – Escape From Planet of the Apes’ is up next which was from the Ape Sounds LP and literally sampled huge chunks of the POTA soundtrack over heavy beats. Around the same time the album was released in the UK but without this track, possibly for legal reasons.
DJ Shadow’s ‘Dark Days’ soundtrack was out on 7” and his excellent David McCallum-sampling theme was exactly what was needed by an audience fiending for more after the uneven UNKLE album. The Cinematic Orchestra rearranged Krust’s erm… ‘Re-Arrange’ which was probably from their remix album collection as I can’t find it in his discography and contains the same spoken word sample that PC used on his ‘The Sky At Night’ on Kaleidoscope the same year. Nigo Pt.2 is next – this part was remixed and became known as ‘March of the General’ on copies of the album outside of Japan, a highlight in the late period MW catalogue. I seem to remember Jadell did production on this at some stage with the Scratch Perverts, top work.
We end with Shadow’s ‘Giving Up The Ghost’, at that point unreleased but taken here from a mix James Lavelle had done from an acetate. You can hear the quality isn’t great but also it’s very fast compared to the version on The Private Press, but what a track, the follow up to Endtroducing gets a bad rep but for me its every bit as good. The mix is interspersed with various snippets of food-related spoken word, one from the How To Have a Dinner Party album and two from a Warner Bros. comp with skits related to eating vinyl and the quality of the plastic.
Tracklist:
Attica Blues – The Man
Nigo – Symphony No. 250910 (pt 1)
DJ Shadow – Dark Days (Spoken For mix)
Krust – Re-Arrange (Cinematic Orchestra mix)
Nigo – Symphony No. 250910 (pt 2)
DJ Shadow – Giving Up The Ghost
A two-in-one offering today as we kick off the year proper with a blend of robot-themed tracks from late 2000. This sowed the seed for my Remember The Future mix seven years later, constructed from records about robots. Jon More fave and Solid Steel spoken classic ‘Music For Robots’ kicks things off then into the Electro The Robot version of MBM’s ‘Original Control’ with samples from an actual robot built by the Westinghouse Electric Corp in the late 30’s.
Kraftwerk should need no introduction and then we have an oddity from a soundtrack by Milton & Anne DeLugg called Gulliver’s Travels Beyond The Moon. ‘Rise, Robots, Rise’ is a stomping brass affair that gives way to an always funky Rufus Thomas dance number, ‘The Funky Robot’.
After that mix of mechanics it’s back to business as usual with the reissued-on-7”-at-the-time ‘Brutus Drums’ by Eddie Warner and a precursor to the first Now, Listen mix in the form of Sabu Martinez’s ‘Hotel Alyssa’. I think this had been bootlegged at the time and the early 00’s were a ripe era for all sorts of ‘unofficial reissues’ popping up in shops no doubt making a few people a bit of cash in return. Much like the web at that point it was still the Wild West and huge shops like HMV regularly carried bootlegs with no questions asked. Freeform Arkestra was always a great tune to play out with that plucked bass sample and building tension. Some chancer called DJ Food follows and then into an evergreen classic from the box, Camping Gaz & Digi Random’s ‘Circus World’. Around this time I found five mint copies of this in the bargain box in Soul Jazz Records (now Sounds of the Universe) for a pound and proceeded to give them away to anyone who would take them. The combination of Circus clowns, ska, screaming children and theremin solo has never been bettered or even attempted by anyone else.
The covers above and below were from a (very short) period where I was going to make a custom cover for each mix, around the year 2000 when I think I got a decent inkjet printer for the first time and could print glossy colour images. This lasted for approximately three Solid Steel mixes but I did make others for one-off themed sets like the Kraftwerk Kovers and the interview shows.
Into part 2 of the original show with Robert Klein’s hilarious ‘Record Offer’ of every record ever recorded, “we drive a truck to your house!”. Klein has several 70’s comedy records that are worth tracking down as he covers the usual topics of sex and drugs in a manic style. A Ninja classic from Up, Bustle & Out into Coke Escvedo’s ‘Runaway’ leads into ‘Funkyacidstuff’ from Luke Vibert via a 12” of archive material on Planet Mu, the same one where the track ‘Analord’ gave the Aphex series its name.
Photek’s name has been coming back up a lot recently it seems and ‘Terminus’ was possibly the last track he made that caught my attention before he fell off the radar. A B side on one of the Virgin releases, this huge downtempo monster just tramples over everything else in size and scope, proper widescreen break beats with bouncing bass, distorted drums and synth stabs. The Prodigy were occasionally mining this vein too and another B side, ‘Molotov Bitch’ follows with its ‘Ants Invasion’ sampling melody line. Klute plays us out with ‘Kahno’ from a 12” release on the Certificate 18 label. More spoken word crops up that would later be used on Now, Listen too, this was from an airline travel record about the Far East I think although the name escapes me.
There’s a part 3 saved for next week…
Part 1
Forrest J. Ackerman – Music For Robots
Meat Beat Manifesto – Original Control (Electro The Robot)
Kraftwerk – The Robots
Milton & Anne DeLugg – RIse, Robots, Rise
Rufus Thomas – The Funky Robot
Eddie Warner – Brutus Drums
Sabu Martinez – Hotel Alyssa
Freeform Arkestra – Freeform Theme (Raw Deal mix)
DJ Food – Rubber Samba
Camping Gaz & Digi Random – Circus World
Part 2
Robert Klein – Record Offer
Up, Bustle & Out – Aqui No Mas
Coke Escvedo – Runaway
Luke Vibert – Funkyacidstuff
Photek – Terminus
The Prodigy – Motolov Bitch
Klute – Kahno
For the last 6 months I’ve been editing the weekly 2 hr Pirate TV audio visual shows that Coldcut‘s Matt Black has been doing with his wife, Dinaz and assorted guests like Mixmaster Morris on Twitch.
Along the way I’ve been setting aside little moments from the sublime to the ridiculous, all in good spirit, mainly because they made me laugh or were special.
Here’s a compilation of those moments while Pirate TV takes a break for a bit, many of the show highlight edits I’ve been making are available to view on Coldcut’s YouTube channel too.
In the second of this occasional series for Mixcloud Select subscribers I turn the spotlight on another remixer who’s always been one to check over the last 30 years. Jagz Kooner made his name as one third of the Sabres of Paradise production team, alongside Gary Burns and, of course, the late Andrew Weatherall. Some of the greatest remixes of the 90s were created by the Sabres and Kooner went on to join The Aloof when the group disbanded in 1995.
In demand in his own right as a remixer to just about anyone as well as a producer, he has a precise production style, mainly working in the rock world after leaving Sabres. His Discogs page lists 175 remixes for everyone from Primal Scream, Oasis, Kasabian, The Charlatans, Garbage, Killing Joke, Massive Attack, Soulwax… the list is endless.
This mix is LOUD and has the most brutal waveform I’d seen on a set, Kooner likes his compression it seems and the waveforms on most of these mixes are solid blocks of sound with everything pushed right up to the top. Nevertheless, everything is crystal clear in the mix, with hard as nails drums that sound like they’d hurt you.
If the bands discussed above aren’t your bag then turn away now as plenty feature, toughened up and fed through the grinder to make them fuzzed out and tweaked from the originals. Plenty of the original songs are still fully present, these aren’t complete reconstructions but they wear a new coat of armour. For some reason I just hear metal when I listen to these mixes which mostly lean away from the dance side and more to rock.
Track list:
Kasabian – Club Foot (Jagz Kooner remix)
Regular Fries – Fused (Jagz Kooner mix)
S’Express – SuperFly Guy (Jagz Kooner Tainted Paradise Update – edit)
Kasabian – Empire (Jagz Kooner Remix)
Primal Scream – Miss Lucifer (Hip To Hip) [Remix by Jagz Kooner]
Oasis – The Turning (The Jagz Kooner remix)
South – Broken Head (Jagz Remix)
Oasis – The Shock Of The Lightning (The Jagz Kooner Remix)
Clint Mansell – Coney Island Express (Requiem For A Dream Jagz Kooner Remix)
Freeland – Mind Kller (Jagz Kooner Remix)
Killing Joke – Seeing Red (Jagz Kooner remix)
Leigh Devries – Strange (Jagz Kooner Dub mix)
My friend Julian Hand has now completed his trilogy of 360 videos for The Oscillation – truly tripped out, you can pan around them in YouTube, wish I’d known him and had his expertise when I was doing my Search Engine dome shows 10 years back.
After ending on a bummer in the final hours of 2020 as MF Doom‘s death emerged on social media, we awoke to the news on January 1st of The KLF re-entering the music industry via Spotify and YouTube with remastered material in the form of the first of five compilations. By Jan 6th though any hopes of a better year were dashed, despite the historic swing for the Democrats in the Senate and Congress, with the scenes at Capitol Hill and 1k daily deaths reported in the UK. No surprises on Trump‘s acquittal after the second impeachment hearing in February either.
Surprise of the year was that the UK’s vaccination programme rolled out fast and with few hitches – amazing what can happen when you don’t pump billions into untested private companies and instead let a trusted national institution handle it. I won’t go on, it was pretty much downhill from there and some of those promised KLF albums are still yet to emerge.
Anyway, as is usual on Dec 31st, here are some favourites from the last 12 months in no particular order. There’s been an avalanche of amazing music and art again this year, some coming out of the lockdown months, let’s hope it continues and the virus eases up in 2022. Please check out and support these artists if you like their work, Bandcamp is an excellent way to put a large chunk of money straight in musicians and label’s pockets and buying a print, T-shirt or piece of merch at a gig really helps too. Even a share or piece of positive feedback on someone’s post can give them a boost to know that people are watching or listening out there and they’re not shouting into the void.
Music:
Concretism – The Concretism Archive Vol.1 LP (CiS Subs Library)
Steve Roach – Tomorrow LP (Behind The Sky)
Snow Palms – Land Waves LP (Village Green)
Jane Weaver – Flock LP (Fire Records)
Stereolab – Switched On vol.4 LP (Warp/Duophonic)
Robert Fripp – Music for Quiet Moments (DGM)
DJ Format – Devil’s Workshop LP
Trevor Jackson – Underdog 1993-1998 radio mix (NTS)
The Hauntologists – Tales From The Scary Magic Field 7″ (Bandcamp)
Various Artists – BLE-EP 12″ (Yellow Machines)
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Butterfly 3000 LP (Flightless)
CAVS – CAVS 12″ (PHC)
Various Artists – Infected Machinery EP 12″ (Downfall Recordings)
The Nevermen – Treat ‘Em Right (Boards of Canada remix) DL (Lex)
Vanishing Twin – Ookii Gekkou LP (Fire Records)
Jay Glass Dubs – Jungle Shuffle 12″ (The Wormhole)
Brian Eno – The Lighthouse (Sonos HD)
Regal Worm – The Hideous Goblink LP (Quatermass)
Ternion Sound – Dovetail (Kursa remix) 12″ (Next Level)
Podcasts:
Chris Atkins – A Bit of a Stretch (Apple podcasts)
The Alexei Sayle Podcast
Martyn Ware – Electronically Yours
Ed Piskor / Jim Rugg – Cartoonist Kayfabe (YouTube)
Stephen Coates – The Bureau of Lost Culture
We Buy Records (Apple podcasts)
Matt Black – Pirate TV (Twitch/FB/YouTube)
The Bunker/Culture Bunker (Acast)
The Adam Buxton Podcast (Acast)
Gigs / Events:
Vanishing Twin – Pensiero Magico live stream Jan 20th
Alice In Wonderland @ The V&A Museum, London
Savage Pencil @ OrbitalSpace, London
Eno @ Paul Stolper Gallery, London
The Light Surgeons ‘Atemporal’ @ Iklectik, London
Funki Porcini @ Common Ground, Coventry
The The’s Comeback Special premier @ Troxy Cinema, London
Jonny Trunk’s Groovy Record Fayre @ Mildmay Club, London
Vanishing Twin @ Kings Place, London
Levitation Festival, @ Flowergate Hall, Whitby
People Like Us – Gone, Gone Beyond @The Pit Theatre, Barbican, London
Pye Corner Audio @ State 51, London
Anicka Yi – Aerobes @ Tate Modern, London
Design / Packaging:
Hattie Cooke – The Sleepers LP (Spun Out of Control) by Eric Adrian Lee
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – live bootlegs series LP (Fuzz Club)
Krashslaughter feat. Phil Most Chill – Rebel Base 7″
Sync 24 – Inside The Microbeat LP (Cultivated Electronics) by Will Barras
Une – Spomenik LP (Spun Out Of Control) by Eric Adrian Lee
Cos – Mix LP (Finders Keepers) by Andy Votel
Castles In Space Subscription Library series LPs (Castles In Space) by Nick Taylor + more
The Third Man Records shop in Soho, London
Pepe Deluxe – The Phantom Cabinet vol.1 LP (Catskills) by Vilunki/James Spectrum
Thundercat – The Golden Age of Apocalypse 10th anniversary edition (Brainfeeder)
The Zen Delay (Ninja Tune / Erica Synths)
Roger Webb – Shadows of Fear 7″ (Trunk) by Julian House
Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra – Stylophonika (Spun Out Of Control) by Eric Adrian Lee
Brian Eno’s turntable
Books / Magazines / Comics:
Rain Like Hammers – Brandon Graham (Image)
Breaking Open The Head – Daniel Pinchbeck
Bedroom Beats & B-Sides – Laurent Fintoni (Velocity Press)
Decorum – Jonathan Hickman & Mike Huddleston (Image)
Ultramega – James Harren (Skybound/Image)
Anatomie Narrative – Samplerman
The Black Locomotive – Rian Hughes (Picador)
Cruisin’ with the Hound – Spain Rodriguez (Fantagraphics)
Kane & Able – Shaky Kane & Krent Able (Image)
Tales To Enlighten – Matt King & James Edward Clark (Kickstarter)
The Out – Dan Abnett & Mark Harrison (2000AD)
Electronic Sound magazine
99 Balls Pond Road – Julie Drower (Scrudge Books)
Artists:
Savant
RX Skulls
Pablo Fiasco
Donk
ZombieSqueegee
Karoline Rerrie
.EPOD
FiftySevenDesign
Minty
Stinkfish
Perspicereartist
Tamar Cohen
Hoxxoh
Lovepusher
Artyom Trakhanov
Prentler
Soda
Smitheone
Raymond Lemstra
Film /TV:
Bathtubs Over Broadway (Netflix)
Wandavision (Disney+)
Dead Pixels (Ch 4)
Grayson’s Art Club (Ch 4)
Sisters With Transistors – Lisa Rovener (BFI)
Loki (Disney+)
What We Do In The Shadows Season 3 (BBC2)
Martha: A Picture Story (Projector Films)
Records – Alan Zweig (TVO)
Big Mouth (Adult Swim)
The Book of Boba Fett (Disney+)
Another year over and what have I done?
A second mix of religious rock for Megatrip‘s ‘Tales To Enlighten’ comic kickstarter
Stuck 300 foil covers to 300 LP sleeves for The New Obsolescents album on Castles In Space which ended up selling out in 25 minutes and went for a repress.
Finally finished the design and packaging for The Real Tuesday Weld‘s ‘Blood’ and ‘Tape Dust Memories’ releases, the first in a trilogy as Stephen Coates winds up his recording project.
Released the Celestial Mechanic LP on Utter with music by Saron Hughes and myself and design by Rian Hughes
Appeared on the Big Mouth, We Buy Records, Sleevenote‘s Under The Covers, KTMusic Online and Bureau of Lost Culture podcasts, had guest mixes featured on the Jonny Cuba & Friends and 45 Live shows
Released the Kaleidoscope/Companion reissue 4xLP on Ninja Tune subsidiary Ahead Of Our Time
Designed the Lo Recordings’ 100th edition library album for a limited edition lathe cut LP
Started the Openmindesign Instagram account for current designs and archive ephemera
Continued the DJ Food Mixcloud Select weekly upload series
Saw designs for Steven Rutter, Amon Tobin, Clocolan and Humanoid released on De:tuned, Ninja Tune, FSOL Digital and Castles In Space
Written the forward for a book about light show picture wheels for Four Corners Books
Remixed The The’s ‘Global Eyes’ for The Comeback Special live box set
Designed a Janko Nilovic & Yeti On the Pads 7″ sleeve
Collaborated with Imeus Designs on a second book of Forgotten Graphics Command LP sleeves
Edited hours worth of Pirate TV audio visual broadcasts for Matt Black
Remodelled my Quadraphon turntable for live performance
Oversaw the repressed New Obsolescents LP with screen printed black prism board
Contributed the singles column to MU magazine each issue
Designed a Hey Duggee zoetrope LP for the BBC
Designed a 25th anniversary Stealth T-shirt for 1 of 100
Mixed a preview CD of Touched Music‘s ‘Project OO’ – ‘DJ Food’s Oona Selecta’
Designed a 3rd fold out Xmas card, ‘Solstice Songs‘ for The Real Tuesday Weld
Finished my Cineolascape mix for The The, due for release in 2022
RIP: Phil Spector, Larry King, Ricky Powell, Double K (PUTS), S. Clay Wilson, Chick Corea, Victor G. Ambrus, Frank Thorne, Lou Ottens, Orbital Comics, Malcolm Cecil, Shock G, James Prigoff, Captain Rock, Ken Garland, Eric Carle, Gift of Gab, Peter Zinovieff, Jon Hassell, Peter Rehberg, Chuck Close, Charlie Watts, Lee Scratch Perry, Sir Clive Sinclair, Richard H. Kirk, Alan Hawkshaw, Orbital Comics, Lionel Blair, Andrew Barker, Mick Rock, Alvin Lucier, Robbie Shakespear, Chris Achilleos, Michael Nesmith, Richard Rogers, Desmond Tutu, Janice Long,
New Year’s resolution: Use less black in my work
Looking forward to:
The return of Saga comic
The Soundcarriers‘ new album, ‘Wilds’
King Gizzard remix album
A mixer to complete my Quadraphon set up
Collaborations…
Better late than never, Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to all my subscribers for tuning in each week for your vintage slice of archive Solid Steel! Here’s a short but sweet swinging selection from 2003 leaning heavily on the hip jazz end of things and includes my favourite festive song of all time, The Soulful Strings’ version of ‘Little Drummer Boy’.
As I recall, this set takes liberally from an excellent compilation put together by Martin Green called ‘Cool Yule, The Swinging Sounds of Christmas’. Stick it on whilst preparing the dinner and raise a glass to having made it through another year. Have a great one, see you on the other side…
Track list:
Tony Rodelle Larson – Cool Yule
Herbie Hancock – Deck The Halls
Bill Darnell & The Smith Bros – We Wanna See Santa Do The Mambo
Bill Cosby – Merry Xmas Mama
John Rydgren – A Christmas Reflection
Lalo Schrifrin – Joy To The World
Billy Taylor & David frost – Bright Star In The East
Soulful Strings – Little Drummer Boy
Dickie Goodman – Santa & The Satelitte Pt 1&2 (edit)
Phil Spector – Silent Night
Ed ‘Kookie’ Burns – Yulesville
Here’s part 2, DJ Food – PC and myself – on 4 decks at The Blue Note, Dec 7th, 1995 – a more drum n bass led set coming out of some Ninja business from Up, Bustle & Out and The Herbaliser. It’s possible, listening back, that these first two tracks aren’t PC and I but the end of either The Herbaliser or Coldcut’s DJ set and we start with the breakdown sample of Dirty Harry from the end of The Real Killer Pt.2. There are also sudden stops or breaks in the recordings where tapes must have run out and by the time they’re changed the music has moved on so I’ve crossfaded a couple of bits so there are no sudden stops or jump edits. The levels on a lot of it were up and down so I’ve done my best to make volumes a bit more consistent across the mix.
This is available as part of my Mixcloud Select subscription – £3 a month gets you an archive mix a week every Friday morning with tracklist and notes – you can sign up here and leave any time
At a couple of points there’s what seems to be a theremin being played over the top of the set, I’d completely forgotten about this but it lit a dim recollection of someone doing something like this, not Patrick or I though I hasten to add. The mix is rough and ready, straight from the central mixer we were both plugged into with no crowd noise sadly so it’s a little dry. Every rough mix, distorted level and jumping record can be heard but you get the sense that this is very live, improvised on the spot with vinyl and the occasional spoken word overlaid from CD. For some context, this is very early days of this kind of music being played in a main room of a club, not the back room/chill out, on a four deck set up with DJs facing each other on a club stage in London. There are a lot of unknown tunes in these sets, some PC’s and some mine, lesser known break beats and DnB tunes that Spotify can’t recognise and the old braincells won’t remember, I’m hoping people can spot some and fill in the blanks.
There was an odd jump at the end of this tape, from DnB to a sudden 130 tempo, the DAT must have either stopped or ended and there was a sudden change at Bushflange. We probably did the 45-33rpm trick and turned the deck off for a second so the tempo ran down and landed at a more techno pace then mixed into that at the slower speed. Bushflange have come up numerous times during these mix excavations and their tracks were always solid, strange that they weren’t remembered in the scheme of things. Owners of the Sunday At Bundy’s mix tape will probably recognise a couple of sections from this set as they were featured on that tape back in 1996.
Below is the original print file layout for the flyer, this was printed on gold card so the purple came out more a burnt umber brown as you can see by the tape inlay above that I made from a flyer.
Remember, if you want a 1 of 100 commemorative Stealth T shirt then I think there are some left, follow this link, choose you colour, size and T shirt number from the ones left and place an order, once the 100 are sold there won’t be any more.
https://weare1of100.co.uk/limited-edition/dj-food-openmind/
Track list:
Up, Bustle & Out – Revolutionary Woman Of The Windmill
The Herbaliser – The Real Killer Pt.2 (Rooftop Prowler)
Larceny – Who Are You? (Aquasky mix)
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown (acappella on 33rpm)
Alex Reece & Wax Doctor – Detroit
DJ Vadim – Call Me
Photek – The Rain
The Pharcyde – Passin’ Me By (acappella)
Unknown
The Shamen – Transamazonia (LTJ Bukem mix)
Unknown
Incognito – Still A Friend Of Mine
Squarepusher – Male Pill 5
Dream Warriors – My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style (acappella)
Fatboy Slim – Weekend Bonus Beats
Rae – Free Rolling
KRS One – Uh Oh
Cypress Hill – Scooby Doo
Unknown
Unknown
Bushflange – Cloud Cover
Plastikman – Helikopter
DJ Shadow – In/Flux
Colourbox – Baby I Love You So
As some may have seen, I recently did a collaboration with 1 of 100 shirts on a Stealth t-shirt as the date of the first Ninja Tune night called Stealth was on December 7th, coincidentally the same day as 1 of 100 formed four years ago. The anniversary for the Ninja night was 26 years ago and I managed to find tapes from that same night to encode for you all to hear. Unfortunately it all came at a time when I’ve been busier than any other part of the year so things got held up.
The set presented here is DJ Food – PC and myself – on 4 decks at The Blue Note, Dec 7th, 1995 and the photo above was taken that same night by Martin LeSanto-Smith. The set is about two and a half hours in total, recorded from a DAT across two TDK tapes. I’ve no idea where the original DAT is, I don’t think I have it and PC doesn’t, maybe Coldcut do but where it would be is a mystery at the moment. It’s possible that we played twice on the night but I can’t be certain, there’s a point where Coldcut mix into us when Jive Samba is played at the end of part 1, this was a Jon More special at this point in time so I know it’s him, but there’s more music from us later. There are also sudden stops or breaks in the recordings where tapes must have run out and by the time they’re changed the music has moved on so I’ve crossfaded a couple of bits so there are no sudden stops or jump edits. The levels on a lot of it were up and down so I’ve done my best to make volumes a bit more consistent across the mix.
At a couple of points there’s what seems to be a theremin being played over the top of the set, I’d completely forgotten about this but it lit a dim recollection of someone doing something like this, not Patrick or I though I hasten to add. The mix is rough and ready, straight from the central mixer we were both plugged into with no crowd noise sadly so it’s a little dry. Every rough mix, distorted level and jumping record can be heard but you get the sense that this is very live, improvised on the spot with vinyl and the occasional spoken word overlaid from CD. For some context, this is very early days of this kind of music being played in a main room of a club, not the back room/chill out, on a four deck set up with DJs facing each other on a club stage in London.
PC and I were keen to have lots of tools to play with so there were also a delay and flanger pedal incorporated into the set up at different points as well as a sampler on the mixer used to capture little snatches of beats and trigger them over the mix too. Occasionally I would use a little tool I made from a film canister with a pencil stuck in the top, placing it over the centre spindle and balancing a record or top, using the pencil as a spindle. The tonearm would then be heavily weighted on the back end and the cartridge unscrewed and inserted upside down, placed under the elevated record which would then cause the sound to come out reversed as if the turntable was playing backwards. You can hear it around the 31 minute mark in part 1 and see me doing it in this photo, taken at the Sonar festival the next year. PC would use his delay pedal to loop up sections occasionally and then drop back into the records. Sometimes one of us would pick a snare sound and the person who was playing would find a kick on the one and we’d scratch improvised beat patterns for a few bars before dropping back into a track, hoping the records wouldn’t jump which they sometimes did if we got carried away.
Anyway, here’s part 1, a more downtempo, trip hop, hip hop set, with part 2, more drum n bass led, to follow. Subscribers to my Mixcloud Select can access it for £3 a month, for that you get an archive mix each Friday and notes, tracklists and photos.
If you want a commemorative Stealth T shirt then I think there are some left, follow this link, choose you colour, size and T shirt number from the ones left and place an order, once the 100 are sold there won’t be any more.
https://weare1of100.co.uk/limited-edition/dj-food-openmind/
Track list:
Unknown
DJ Food – The Food Song
Unknown
Whistle – We’re Called Whistle
Unknown
LL Cool J – Rock The Bells
The Herbaliser – Up 4 The Get Downs
Unknown
III Most Wanted – Calm Down (a cappella)
DJ Food – Spiral Dub
Kid N Play – Gittin’ Funky
Coldcut – More Beats
Big Apple Productions vol.3 – Genius At Work
Depth Charge – Queen of the Scorpion
Trouble Funk – Live Percussion Solos
Unknown
Eric B & Rakim – Let The Rhythm Hit ‘Em (acapella)
Autechre – Rotar
Unknown
Unknown
Caveman – Victory
Def Jef – Droppin’ Rhymes on Drums
Hardhouse – 11:55 (Bee Boys Club)
4E – Temple Traxx
Dirty Beatniks – Getting Stupid (Live At The Blue Note)
Oh-Zone Layer – Dark Side Of The Shroom
The Last Minister – Tribute To J.B. Family
DJ Chuck Chillout & Kool Chip – Rhythm Is The Master
Unknown
Kraftwerk – The Model
Jack Constanzo & Gerry Woo – Jive Samba
Monday: Photographed The Real Tuesday Weld‘s annual 3″ CD Xmas card I’d designed which then went on sale online. Buy here
Tuesday: 1 of 100 shirts / DJ Food/Openmind collab went on sale, 100 shirts with the Stealth club logo. 26 years to the day of the first Ninja Tune club night called Stealth, mini commemorative flyer swing ticket to round it off.
Recorded a ton of jams on my Quadrophon turntable and found the recording of PC and my set at The Blue Note from the same night all those years ago…
Wednesday: Fine tuning a 7,500 word intro to a book about light show picture wheels I’m doing with Four Corners Books, for publication next year, months of research and interviews distilled into a huge piece.
DJed at the Let’s Stick Together night with Mira Calix at The Gun pub in Hackney, people came and made collages all evening while we played, the best will go into Mira’s next collage zine, out next year.
Got home at 11pm, started editing turntable jams for Saturday…
Thursday: Working in Studio Cineola with Matt Johnson of The The, finishing off my CineolaScape mix for release on his label next year. This is a distillation of my opening sets for their live comeback tour, playing Matt’s music from across his 40 year career. We’re doing final mixdowns and edits. Also finally got a copy of the Comeback Special deluxe set with my exclusive remix on the bonus 10″ vinyl.
Friday: More of the same and then off home to see the Touched Music‘s Project OO go live with a virtual release party online at 7.30pm and the release of a 58 track, 5xCD compilation in aid of 7 yr old Oona Dooks who needs special treatments to walk. Also available is a 74 min mix CD I made to promote the project featuring many tracks from it. Amazing response as both sold out in hours.
News that Electronic Sound magazine had both the DJ Food Kaleidoscope/Companion reissue and The New Obsolescents‘ album in their end of year list and a two page photo of us performing at the Levitation festival. Delightfully modelled here by fellow Obsolescent Robin The Fog at the Book & Record Bar in West Norwood.
Saturday: Jamming with original Antz/Bow Wow Wow drummer Dave Barbarossa in a West London studio with tracks made on my four-armed Quadraphon turntable, making exploratory music for a possible collaboration.
I’m incredibly proud to have been asked to contribute a promo mix of a selection of tracks from the next Touched Music charity compilation, ‘Project OO’. This compilation of 58 ambient and electronic tracks is in aid of a disabled seven year old named Oona with an undiagnosed condition similar to cerebral palsy. In her short life she has had emergency operations and requires specialist physio which costs thousands of pounds a year. Although she can barely walk she has learned to swim and this has been an epiphany.
Martin Boulton at Touched Music has pulled together 58 electronic artists to form ‘Project OO’, a compilation to raise funds for Oona’s treatments. The quality here is off the scale with some of the most beautiful tracks I’ve heard in ages, many interspersing samples of Oona and friends at play which tugs at the heartstrings even more. The compilation features many familiar names including 808 State, The Future Sound of London, Scanner, Plaid, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Mouse On Mars, John Beltran, Mark Van Hoen, Paul Blackford and many more.
The release comes as a 5 CD set with slipcase and download. I’ve selected 20 of my favourites for this preview mix which will also be getting a super limited release on CD too. The set is released on Dec 10th at 9pm via the Touched Music Bandcamp. Please give it a listen, the music is beautiful and by buying a set you could help make a difference to Oona’s life.
There will be a free virtual listening party tonight at 7.30pm UK time too
https://www.facebook.com/events/482528636516824
For the third year running I’ve designed The Real Tuesday Weld‘s traditional 3″ CD Xmas card. We’ve returned to the fold out cover again but this will be the last of the trilogy. Folding so many by hand has proved too much for the Antique Beat worker elves this year and they’ve vowed never again. Not only is the new, 5 track, Solstice Songs CD available (above), but there will be a few sets of three including the 2019 and 2020 Xmas CDs available too.
This was the last quarter of a show broadcast 11/11/2002 in a show with DK and The Unabombers, very much a chill out, wind down half hour. The original CD is described ‘Amb half hour’.
The Linda Lewis track was released on Riz Maslen’s Council Folk label on a 7”, a beautiful acoustic number. ‘Ghosts In The Weewee’ was a mash up I did using Japan’s ‘Ghosts’ and the instrumental of a Japanese Kool Keith with Natural Calamity release called ‘In The Wee Wee Time’. The sparseness and tempo of both seemed to work but it’s a bit out of tune in places and was more of an experiment than a club track. The version of The Cinematic Orchestra’s ‘Oregon’ was from the ‘Horizons’ single I think, possibly the same one on the Every Day album.
Andrew Pecklar – Steam, I have no recollection of where this comes from and Discogs isn’t yielding any info either, if anyone has any info please let me know. Amon Tobin ‘The Whole Nine’ was from the B side of the ‘Verbal’ single, Amon in brilliant cinematic mode. JG Thirlwell’s Steroid Maximus alias had been reactivated and ‘The Trembler’ was the opening track from his third album, ‘Ectopia’. By this time I’d met Jim and remixed a track for him for his ‘Blow’ album, alongside Amon, banking it as a favour for a vocal at a later date. This would take another ten years when he honoured his word and contributed to ’Prey’ on The Search Engine album.
Ill Chemist was a friend of Steinski’s and ’Take This, Brother’ is taken from a CD called The BreakBeatles he gave me while in NYC. Obviously this is not official but it was one of the best Beatles cut ups at this time (this is long before The Grey Album) and the whole package was really well done. Ollie Teeba and I had a plan to do a Beatles cut up megamix back in the 90’s under the name The Big Beatles, sadly it never came to pass.
Tracklist:
Linda Lewis – I Keep A Wish
Flexus – Ghosts In The Wee Wee
Cinematic Orchestra – Oregon
Andrew Pecklar – Steam
Amon Tobin – The Whole Nine
Steroid Maximus – The Trembler
Ill Chemist – Take This, Brother
Doing this next week: Wednesday at The Gun in Hackney with old friend Mira Calix
A collage party, come and cut and paste images while we cut it up on the decks.
FREE! but you have to book on this link, limited places too.
Plus, Mira is launching a call for collage with the theme, ‘let’s stick together – in a divided world’, details on the link too.
Her new album, ‘absent origin’ is out now on Warp and limited numbers come with a 48 page collage fanzine and stickers.
FREE! but you have to book on this link, limited places too.
Plus, Mira is launching a call for collage with the theme, ‘let’s stick together – in a divided world’, details on the link too.
Her new album, ‘
I designed a zoetrope for the recently released Hey Duggee Greatest Woofs LP picture disc! It was a lot of fun and you can see it in action using a third party stroboscope app. I recommend StroboScope myself, available on the app store.
This set was on the end of the Scanner vs Openmind tape and dated 05/02/1995. I had to re-pitch it down slightly as the tape I dubbed it from was running a little fast and Matt’s voice at the end seemed quite high pitched originally. It’s also a bit overloaded in the second half but that was radio reception coupled with tape compression for you.
Drum n Bass was getting exciting, trip hop is bubbling up from the cracks in the pavement and Ninja Tune was finding its feet and direction, something that would continue to build for some years to come.
I’m unsure of the first track, Matt says it’s Deep Blue ‘The Helicopter Tune’ but I don’t think it is and I don’t have a copy of that so it wouldn’t be me playing it, maybe he did before me? I have a feeling it may be from Germany’s Smokin’ Drum Recordings label who put out some really interesting DnB in the early to mid 90s. If anyone knows then please leave a comment. D’Cruze is another artist who’s not released anything for 20 years, one of the original Boogie Times / Suburban Base Records crew.
Studio Pressure aka Photek – this might be one of the first times I’d played him and I do the little 45 to 33 rpm switch down trick to change the tempo in Bomb The Bass. ‘You See Me in 3D’ was a B side and I still play it to this day, a great breaks cut up track, just pure driving beats at 120 bpm.
Bridging this and The Herbaliser’s then-forthcoming debut single on Ninja Tune is, possibly, Akbar Ali Khan but that could have been flown in off a CD by Matt.
More trip hop with a trio of promo Ninja tracks ensues with a Marden Hill remix of 9 lazy 9 from the forthcoming Ninja Cuts compilation and one of Ashley Beedle’s takes on DJ Food’s ‘Consciousness’. Spank Da Monkey’s track came from the Fusion Flava’s Chapter 1 12” EP which was an early UK collection of trip hop beats with a graffiti tag cover. Orin Walters who would go on to record as Afronaught and a be a part of Bugz In The Attic was part of the group. I also slipped in Trouble Funk’s ‘Pump Me Up’ for good measure.
Track list:
Unknown – Niceness (Smokin’ Drum Recordings?)
D’Cruze – Lonely
Studio Pressure – Touching Down… Planet Photek
Bomb The Bass – You See Me In 3D
Akbar Ali Khan – unknown
The Herbaliser – The Real Killer
Spank Da Monkey – Down Side Up
9 Lazy 9 – Train (Marden Hill remix)
Trouble Funk – Pump Me Up
DJ Food – Consciousness (Ashley Beedle Dub)
We may have packaging of the year here – Thundercat 10th anniversary repress of The Golden Age Of Apocalypse on Brainfeeder – “a translucent red LP housed in a beautiful shiny gold mirri board sleeve with a large Thundercat logo hologram sticker and gold rainbow holofoil detail” – out this (Black) Friday.