Back for part 2 of the set from last week where Matt Black and I recorded a Solid Steel session in my bedroom as the KISS FM studios were booked out. This hour is a mix of the two of us but it’s hard to determine who played what so I’ve left the thing whole, the tape also started with Cypress Hill’s ’Scooby Doo’ but it was incomplete so I’ve cut it. I kick off with a snatch of the Psychic Warriors Ov Gaia’s majestic ‘Obsidian’ remix before Digital Underground’s ‘Packet Man’ – a tale of a sexual experience sold in a pill. A short snatch of a DJ Spike track precedes the newly released ‘Sound Of The Police’ from KRS 1’s Return Of The Boom Bap LP, a virtual classic as soon as it hit the streets before a ‘pause for the cause’ and into a bit of Matt on the decks. The Tape Beatles had become a spoken word staple on the show since the Orb visited and hipped Matt & Jon to their work and the first two tracks from their Music With Sound album feature here. Steve Reich was also a mainstay of shows, continually popping up over the years in different mixes with his minimalist works, joined here by a spoken word piece, read by Matt’s dad. Out of this comes another ambient classic, ‘Flurescence’ (spelling as on the record) from Jonah Sharp’s debut EP as Spacetime Continuum, another track that got many outings in the early 90s.

A NSFW sketch about vinyl opens the next section with a a near ‘C bomb’ moment quickly cut with a fader. Tournesol’s ‘Holy Cow’ was a bumping trip hop-y moment on their Kokotsu album for R&S, followed by early Chemical Brothers when they were still masquerading under the Dust Brothers’ moniker with ‘If You Kling To Me I’ll Klong To You’. Brian Eno’s ‘Alternative 3’ from Music For Films creeps in with the exorcism from the I Am Lucifer album which I only finally found last year, always a favourite of Matt’s and one he used extensively on the show. The Future Sound of London’s ‘Lifeforms (Path 2)’ was new at the time too, what a time to be alive! I wish I knew what the track following was but it’s gone and Shazam doesn’t know either. Likewise with the burbling acid track after that although I do recognise some bits of David Sylvian & Holger Czukay’s ‘Plight & Premonition’ in there somewhere but it might be as a sample. Ah, here comes Global Communication according to Matt although I can’t identify the track and neither can he (I’m not entirely sure it’s them actually). Matt’s dad crops up again reading a passage about ‘the 9th world’, “How does an eye work? How does a foot work?” – another spoken word favourite. It’s all beginning to blur into one ambient mass around this stage until we get to Attica Blues’ ‘Contemplating Jazz (D’Afro’s Picky Head Dub)’ which plays us out only to be rudely interrupted by the KISS news jingle.

Track list:
Psychic Warriors of Gaia – Obsidian (Organically Decomposed)
Digital Underground – Packet Man
KRS 1 – Sound Of The Police
The Tape Beatles – Beautiful State / Green, Blue Beautiful Place
Steve Reich – Six Pianos
Spacetime Continuum – Flurescence
Monty Python – Vinyl record sketch
Tournesol – Holy Cow
Dust Brothers – If You Kling To Me I’ll Klong To You
Brian Eno – Alternative 3
The Future Sound Of London – Lifeforms (Path 2)
Unknown – Unknown
Unknown – Unknown (Global Communication?)
Attica Blues – Contemplating Jazz (D’Afro’s Picky Head Dub)

Happy New Year for 2023! I hope it was fun for you all, sorry this is late today, I’ve been deep in design and gig mode, opening for The Art of Noise two nights in a row at the Jazz Cafe. On with the show I promised in the last entry.
Matt Black rang up one day in the summer of 1994, there was a problem. KISS FM had been booked out, both studios, for the Friday pre-record so he needed somewhere else to record the show that week. I’m not sure if Jon More was around, maybe away DJing with PC? I’m also not sure the exact turn of events aside from KISS wasn’t available but could he come over and do the show at mine? Wow, this was a turn up for the books, I’d only been a guest on the show for just over a year, had a handful or more under my belt and was becoming part of the crew due to now providing artwork for the label as well as the odd gig away with Coldcut. OK, come over to East Dulwich and set up in my bedroom and record Solid Steel, why don’t you? Holy shit!

At the time I shared a house with Chantal Passamonte (Mira Calix further down the line), David Vallade and Mario Aguera and we had hosted the original Telepathic Fish party in the three story house above a chemists on Goose Green which we’d dubbed 102 Central. Mario had by now started working with Hex as a computer programmer and David and Chantal were working in Ambient Soho, the record shop in Berwick St, Soho, while I was up the road at Books Etc. on Oxford Street. At the time I had three decks set up in my room, a couple of Technics and something else I forget, not sure what the mixer was but it was the same one on the cover of the Funkjazztical Tricknology compilation. I also had a keyboard, a drum machine, CD player and an odd flanger guitar pedal hooked up – see the blurry photo for reference. Matt came down and we took turns playing into a portable DAT player he’d bought along I think. Can’t remember what we used for a mic but it was probably a pair of headphones plugged into the mic. input hence the terrible sound quality. I think the Coldcut jingles were flown in off cassette and this recording was probably taken from the radio broadcast as it has the KISS news jingle added onto the end, probably live by the sound engineer.

Starting off with a then holy trinity of electronica pioneers Autechre, MuZiq and Caustic Windown (Aphex Twin) tells you we’re in the golden age of Artificial Intelligence era electronica. AI only took another 30 years to become part of everyday life. None of the tracks here have aged badly either, I still play the Aphex track out sometimes too. Following ‘On The Romance Tip’ (where did that title originate? It’s not on the record anywhere) there’s an elongated trance-ish acid thing that makes me think it might be European. Shazam gives me nothing and the ears don’t recognise it at all – anyone? Starts about 11 mins in and bubbles away for another four minutes until Global Communication’s ‘Sublime Creation’ races in on 45 instead of 33, sounding not far off Acen’s ‘Trip To The Moon’ in places.

Cut for an ad break and more Glob Comm with the opening track to their classic 76’14 album, ‘4’02’ with the opening of The Orb’s remix of Material’s ‘Praying Mantra’ slurped over, a common DJ tool of mine. Another was the phasing, filtered and panning intro to Mergener / Weisser’s ‘Sunbeam’ from a New Age Music comp on Klaus Schulze’s Innovative Communication label that Mixmaster Morris had hipped me to, I think I found this in Beanos or somewhere along Berwick St. on my lunch break one day in Soho. This can be heard bridging ‘4’02’ and Kraftwerk’s ‘The Man Machine’ classic, which needs no introduction. Out of the other Fab Four into Coldcut’s own ‘Eine Kleine Hed Musik’ – fresh on vinyl from the extra disc that accompanied the Ninja Tune vinyl version of the album and first heard opening the original Coldcut meets The Orb radio show on New Year’s Eve 1991/92. Which brings us full circle, 31 years later… exit Matt Black stating, ‘Openmind in the house, or rather I’m in Openmind’s house!’

Track list:
Autechre – Lost
MuZiq – Nettles & Pralines
Caustic Window – On The Romance Tip
Unknown – unknown
Global Communication – Sublime Creation (on 45)
Global Communication – 4’02
Kraftwerk – The Man Machine
Coldcut – Eine Kleine Hed Musik

A quick half hour from mid 2000 when we first started doing BBC London Live with Solid Steel, hence the title (despite pre-recording it in my studio in SE5). Kicking off with Taskforce from the amazing Voice of the Great Outdoors EP – still one of the defining releases of UK hip hop. Lots of space-themed samples overlaid including bits of Ren & Stimpy’s ‘Space Madness’ episode and then into Icarus’ UL-6 from their single on Output, each cover of which was ripped and torn or defaced in some way. I’d gone a bit overboard with the spoken word as it was an early show on the Beeb and I wanted to make a good impression. Funkstorung’s ‘Grammy Winners’ still sounds fresh 22 years later, featuring an MC called Triple H who appears to have done very little else.

Bowery Electric were a really interesting band who had excellent remixes and their ‘Freedom Fighter’ one is my favourite, made by the band themselves and featuring snatches of Kraftwerk, the combination of vocals, strings and beats just works for me. Cherrystones’ ‘Pressure Cooker’ appeared on the short-lived AP.E. Records, what a fertile time this was, all sorts kicking off. Off to LA for a few tracks with P.U.T.S., Jurassic 5’s incredible ‘Swing Set’ and a swing-based oldie from Fishbone. Nice little nod to the BBC’s Bush house in a sample over Jurassic too, I think the ‘horn master’ answer phone message before Fishbone is actually DJ Vadim playing silly buggers. Morgan put out an album and a number of singles on Source around 2000 but never quite hit. Divine Styler’s ‘Concept Design Deflon’ was from Mo Wax’s again short-lived Vecta label – so futuristic. My friend Tamsin leaves a message that she was going to see the new Star Wars at the very end – this was unfortunately to be The Phantom Menace and we know how that ended.

Tracklist:
Taskforce – Cosmic Gypsies
Icarus – UL-6
Funkstorung – Grammy Winners
Bowery Electric – Freedom Fighter (remix)
Cherrystones – Pressure Cooker (Blues In M.A.)
People Under The Stairs – Live at the Fishbucket
Jurassic 5 – Swing Set
Fishbone – In The Name of Swing
Morgan – Let Me Hear Your music
Divine Styler – Concept Design Deflon

Drunken shenanigans reigned last Friday night at The Book & Record Bar’s Stick It On night where we were all having so much fun no one noticed that it was approaching 2am and Michael, the shop’s owner, only has a license until 1. The monthly night takes place on the first Friday of the month after the shop closes and the idea is to bring your own records, put your name on the board and then play three tunes when your turn comes up. I ran out of records and started pulling stuff from the racks that I wanted to hear. Michael unearthed a huge box set of disco, soul and funk classics and proceeded to make us act like the drunken idiots we were.

Saturday was a site recce in the morning and then Stereolab at EartH in Dalston which was nice but we missed most of the supporting acts due to bad timing and trains not running. After a shaky start they rocked it.

Monday was a visit to Neil Rice out of town for tea, a demonstration of how polarising slides work, a trip up to his packed loft of light show equipment and a lot of chat. He had the Optikinetics FX Cassette featured on the cover of my book too. I came home full of inspiration… the rest of the week has been writing and battling a cold I must have picked up at some point during all that lot. Last night was going to be Warrington Runcorn Town Development Plan (or WRTDP to those too lazy to write it) and Pye Corner Audio at Corsica Studios but I felt too rough to attend. But, as the Mighty Boosh always say, “on with the show”…

The earliest track lists we have in a digital format thankfully reside with Marcus Maack of BTTB – Back To The Basics who maintained the PRS information when he was one of the first to license Solid Steel for German radio station FSK in the late 90s. As a result we have some track lists and sometimes DJ info from early 1997 through to the end of the decade by which time DK had arrived as show producer and things were better organised than us scribbling on huge sheets of paper at KISS FM in between mixes. There are still the usual mistakes and typos, gaps and unknowns but now we have Discogs, Shazam and the Internet to help fill in the blanks.

Using one of Marcus’ play lists I compiled the track order below for this mid 1997 show where I provided two sets in the second hour. Salena Godden aka Salena Saliva was the guest in the studio with Jon More and I and she periodically performed her poetry over passages in the mix. Kicking off with one of my favourite Kirk Degorgio tracks from his Celestial Soul album – an influence on my own track ‘…you’ from ‘Kaleidoscope’. Into this we have Faze Action’s ‘Plans & Designs’ (String Reprise) which still sounds majestic all these years later, I’m sure Simon Lee from the group used to work in a Soho record shop and I’d regularly buy records off him in the 90s. Next, Hardfloor prove that there’s more to them than just acid bangers with some excellent trip hop under their Dadamnphreaknoizphunk? moniker from Volume 2. I don’t know what I’m doing in the mix, it all seems a bit tentative with little drop-ins rather than things really getting going, maybe we were discussing when Salena was going to make an appearance and sorting the tracks out.

I don’t recall ever having this Denise Johnson single but the remix is excellent although I’ve not idea which one it is out of about eight possible contenders, must look for that in the collection. Next up is Salena’s first turn, a tale of walking amongst the wild flowers before things take an unexpected turn, over the Witchman remix of Bowery Electric’s ‘Without Stopping’. Later in the track she drops in with an ode to arse watching, I think I was always a bit weary of Salena as she was so sexually upfront with her material which was not common in 1997, or not in the circles I ran in anyway, but she was always lovely on tour with Coldcut. The Witchman mix rattles on with that submerged Amen sound he did so well before merging into Sukia’s ‘Dream Machine’ which seems completely at odds with the darkcore d’n’b underneath it. I loved Sukia, it was silly, cheesy sampledelia, produced by the Dust Brothers and later licensed to Mo Wax. I always put it in the same box as bands like Tipsy from that era. This track samples a hypnotist called Reveen who made many records on how to quit smoking, gain confidence, stop over-eating etc. I found some in Canada on tour and we deduced that the records were identical aside from the intro’s and outro’s relating to each subject matter.

Part 2 opens with the remix Kid Koala, Ollie Teeba and I did of Coldcut’s ‘More Beats & Pieces’ – collaged together from freeform jams we did at sound checks on tour around North America using specially cut dub plates of the B&P’s parts given to all remixers. It’s a bit of a mess but it was my first remix so go easy. I’m not sure where the spoken word skit comes from directly afterwards, probably one of Coldcut’s Word Treasure jingle compilations, but Kirk’s back was another As One track from Celestial Soul doing exactly what he does best with that soaring, melodic techno of his. I appear to be scratching some stuff over it which adds little to the mix. Out of the extended breakdown comes Hell Interface – a pseudonym of Boards of Canada – with their version of Colonel Abrahams’ ‘Trapped’ over a scratchy roller of a beat from one of the MASK compilation 12”s. Sliding awkwardly out of this is Faze Action’s ‘Plans & Designs’ proper with all its kettle drums and strings intact over the beat, very much in that Rob Dougan ‘Clubbed To Death’ tradition. Someone is playing all sorts of jingles over it with delays which makes me think that this set might have been recorded up at Ahead Of Our Time in Clink St. with Ali Tod on the mix. I think I’m playing some Kid Koala over the end of the track and it’s all a bit of a mess to be honest. Bizarrely we then dip into two random Ken Nordine tracks from the How Are Things In Your Town compilation on Blue Thumb. A very odd selection and collection of sounds.

Track list:
As One – Renaissance
Faze Action – Plans & Designs (String Reprise)
Hardfloor presents Dadamnphreaknoizphunk?- Chillin’ 6 Feet Deep
Denise Johnson – Inner Peace
Salena Saliva – unknown 1
Bowery Electric – Without Stopping (Witchman Mix)
Salena Saliva – unknown 2
Sukia – Dream Machine

Coldcut – Beans ‘n’ Pizzas (Strictly Kid Teeba version)
As One – We No Longer Understand
Hell Interface – Trapped
Faze Action – Plans & Designs
Kid Koala – Goodnight, Drive Safely
Ken Nordine – Outer Space
Ken Nordine – Manned Space Capsule