Exciting times this weekend when I visited the Spark House in Leyton for an AV gig with the Light Surgeons, Blanca Regina & Pierre Bouvier Patron, Generic Human, Julian Hand and Heena Song. The night was put on by Matekoi and featured an experimental set of modular soundtracks, film showings and DJ sets along with a few punters walking in unawares of what was going on. Wheels of Light got featured in the Observer on Sunday and online via the Guardian and we visited the Horror Show exhibition at Somerset House which was a mixed but fascinating bag. I’ve been doing even more promo and writing this week to promote the book as well as writing for Dust & Grooves 2 and swelling the ranks of my underground magazine collection. But enough of that, on to the mix!

Saxondale was a short-lived TV comedy starring Steve Coogan as an embittered ex-roadie with anger management issues who now runs a pest control business. DK was and is a huge Coogan fan so I put the quote about music from it into the end of the mix and we sometimes dropped the theme tune from the show – ‘House of the King’ by Focus – at gigs around the time it was airing. Scanning down the track list before listening to this it looks a bit like one of my live DJ sets around the time, book-ended with a few esoteric inclusions.

Kicking off with yet another entry for the Solid Steel intro competition (these kept us going for years) by S24 and then into a DJ Krush/DJ Shadow/Cut Chemist three-way, in fact Shadow pops up in different configurations all over this mix. Dualling with DJ Krush in a snatch from his Meiso LP on MoWax and then into ‘This Time’ from his own The Outsider album using a found reel to reel tape of an unknown vocal take to build an extraordinary pop song. Cut Chemist’s incredible ‘(My 1st) Big Break’ from his ‘The Audience Is Listening’ LP is one of my favourite things he’s done, from the wrong-footing polyrhythmic breakdown to the amazing 360 video (check it out). Sirconical was always an artist I hoped would release more material but he seemed to crop up more on mastering duties than writing on numerous Twisted Nerve or Finders Keepers releases. ‘Ziggonometry’ is from his only album and the heavy beats sync nicely with the following three tracks that all feature that Bangra-type rhythm so popular around that era. No idea who Blunt Laser was, the Thomilla track came on a neon green 10” promo and the Caveman on the Kelis remix wasn’t the UK hip hop crew from the early 90s but a Ross Orton and Steve Mackey collaboration.

Shadow’s back but this time remixed by Soulwax via a huge chunk of the B-52s, Danny Breaks’ ‘Duck Rock’ takes it back to the old school with the wobbly bass reminiscent of Scruff’s ‘Ug’and his own ‘The Jellyfish’. A snatch of the Mighty Boosh from the radio series bridges into the Nextmen who pump up the party with Dynamite MC. Next is a couplet I used to spin all the time; Cut Chemist’s remix of Shadow’s ‘Number Song’ into ‘Dark Lady’ – always works nicely, especially when pulling the bass line out and teasing it back in again with a replayed melody. But this is an early version where I hadn’t worked out the replay sequence yet or added in the ‘Bug Powder Dust’ dessert for afters. Urgh, Kanye, the less said the better, this was such a huge tune and the Hollertronix version was genuinely exciting at the time but it got overplayed very quickly. Ah, but saved by Zero db’s incredible ‘Bongos, Bleeps & Basslines’ – DK and I played the shit out of this for years in all kinds of combinations, still sounds incredible. I even went so far as to edit together a video made from a Len Lye animation that visually synced to each part for our first 4-deck AV sets.

Z-Trip’s block-rocking ‘Bus Stop’ beats work so well over it, taking it half time and then back again. Yes that’s Christine Aguilera, top tune with the original that it sampled afterwards, ‘Hippy Skippy Moon Strut’ by the Moon People, awkwardly stumbling out of it. We take a turn to Los Angeles for a couple of tunes from Paul Humphrey and his Cool Aid Chemists and The Dragons which preceded our use of the latter in the Solid Steel ‘Now, Listen Again’ mix the year after. I’m glad we didn’t include the embarrassing ‘D-J’ before the chorus in that (or did we? I forget) – RIP Daryl and Dennis Dragon. There’s the Saxondale music rant before Focus and the bit where he mentions ‘the Rascal’ refers to his pet name for his car, ‘oh! New shoes!?’. Recognise that bass line! ‘Yeeeaaah! That’s right!’, Galt McDermot’s ‘Aquarius’ from Hair slides in before Orriel Smith takes us out with ‘Winds of Space’. This would have been taken from the excellent ‘Fuzzy Felt Folk’ compilation by Jonny Trunk and Martin Green on Trunk Records, a highly recommended album of songs for children that bears repeated listens.

Track list:
S24 – Solid Steel intro
DJ Krush vs DJ Shadow – Duality
DJ Shadow – This Time (I’m Gonna Do It My Way)
Cut Chemist – (My 1st) Big Break
Sirconical – Ziggonometry
Zero 7 – You’re My Flame (Blunt Laser mix)
Thomilla – Freaky Girl (Geeky Boy mix)
Kelis – Bossy (Caveman mix)
DJ Shadow – 6 Days (Soulwax mix)
Danny Breaks – Duck Rock (instr)
The Nextmen feat. Dynamite MC – Spin It Round
DJ Shadow – The Number Song (Cut Chemist remix)
DJ Food – Dark Lady
Kanye West – Gold Digger
Hollertronix – Gold Digger (Diplo remix)
Zero db – Bongos, Bleeps & Basslines
Z-Trip – Bus Stop
Christina Aguilera – Ain’t No Other Man
The Moon People – Hippy Skippy Moon Strut
Paul Humphrey and his Cool Aid Chemists – Funky LA
The Dragons – Food For My Soul
Saxondale – Rant
Focus – House of The King
Galt McDermot – Aquarius
Orriel Smith – Winds of Space

Last weekend saw a long-delayed trip out of town to Leicester to get away from the city for a few days, seriously needed when you’ve been living next to a building site for the last 18 months. The Leicester Print Workshop were having their Xmas Bazaar so we dropped in and caught up with friends including Kid Acne, down from Sheffield for the day to hawk his wares. Then off to Nottingham to have a mooch about, saw my book in a shop for the first time and visited brand new record shop, Running Circle.

Monday I was in Birmingham picking up a turntable and sought shelter from the pounding rain in the new Diskery premises now that they’ve moved (well, nearly). The shop is one of the UK’s oldest record emporiums and has recently had to vacate the shop they’d been in for 50 years. Luckily they didn’t have to go far, just 2 minutes round the corner and they now have a large basement stacked to the rafters with 45s, the LPs and 12″s being upstairs.

Back to London for more writing and research on Tuesday, designing The Real Tuesday Weld‘s Xmas card and a couple of bits for De:tuned. My sons were asking about the Telepathic Fish parties I used to do and one of them is running rings around me on the iPad where I’m supposed to be teaching him how to paint with it. Loads more going on as ever but all in good time, let’s get to this week’s archive show…

Following on from last week’s part 1, here’s the rest of the set, kicking off with a snatch of People Like Us’ ‘Bran Mash and Crushed Beans’ that we’d steal a decade later for the intro to our Now, Listen Again live set. The jazzy drum n bass track that follows is one I remember but not by name, the lovely little ‘Shadow’s Creep’ refrain always brings a smile though. Sounds like I attempted to mix Squarepusher’s ‘Vic Acid’ in three times before nailing it, those rolling, stumbling beats took time to get right in the mix. Out into the Plug (Luke Vibert) remix of Meat Beat Manifesto’s ‘Asbestos Lead Asbestos’ which – I think – was only available on the US 12” of this release.

Three Wheels Out was a British ex-pat named Graham who was living in San Francisco when we first toured there in 1996 and we hung out with him as he showed us around Haight Street which was near where he had a place. As far as I know this was his only release under this name, an excellent, tempo-switching number, released on Pussyfoot and sampling the same drums we’d had for ‘Spiral’, always wrong-footed them in the clubs. The Herbaliser’s ‘Theme From Control Centre’ creeps into the mix and, from the sound of it, that could be Ollie Teeba or PC cutting up The Jungle Brothers’ ‘Beyond This World’ a cappella over it. We finish with the sublime ‘Nuane’ by Autechre from their Chiastic Slide LP which reminds me that I must dig it out again.

Track list:
People Like Us – Bran Mash and Crushed Beans
Unknown – Shadows Creep
Squarepusher – Vic Acid
Meat Beat Manifesto – Asbestos Lead Asbestos (Plug Remix)
Three Wheels Out – Rise Up Children
The Herbaliser – Theme From Control Centre
Jungle Brothers – Beyond This World (a cappella)
Autechre – Nuane

Another week, another book launch, with a film launch before it in the form of At Home With The Boyle Family by Stuart Heaney and Chris De Selincourt at Iklectik on Sunday. Telling the story of how the Boyle Family (Mark Boyle, Joan Hills and their children Sebastian and Georgia Boyle) developed liquid light shows at home before hooking up with Soft Machine, Pink Floyd and Hendrix and blowing people’s minds at the UFO Club. The film showing was augmented by a liquid and microscopic light show display to a live set by Jim Edgar Morgan’s soundtrack (album online here), a Q&A, food and a great closing set from Avsluta aka Lucie Stepankova. The ‘Lumini’ of the lighting world came out for it and a great day out was had in this fantastic but now threatened venue.

Tuesday was a double-header book launch at the Century Club on Shaftsbury Avenue with Dorothy Max Prior and Dave Barbarossa reading from their new books, both focussing on their adventures in a pre and post punk time frame from the 70s. I’ve read Dave’s book, Mud Sharks already and am now well into Max’s and cannot recommend them both enough. Covering a similar time to Jordan’s recent biography by Cathi Unsworth, her bio, 69 Exhibition Road from Strange Attractor, connects COUM Transmissions and seedy sex work with the punk and gay communities she straddled.

This week’s workload has seen me finish another sleeve for a forthcoming 12″ on De:tuned, license some photos I took at a hip hop gig in 1988 to a BBC3 documentary, begin research on a secret project and start writing for the second Dust & Grooves book, due out 2024. I also scored a great number of Oz and International Times magazines from a collector and then found even more Oz’s elsewhere at unbelievable prices (clue, it wasn’t eBay). Still haven’t found time to watch Andor and it’s nearly over, but anyway, onto this week’s upload.

This set was recorded up at the Ahead Of Our Time studio in Clink Street where the Ninja Tune office was located until the end of the century. The recording engineer, Ali Tod, would subtlety add FX and samples live during the mix as well as type things into the artificial speech app on the computer. The sets opens with Autechre’s amazing ‘Cipater’ from their Chiastic Slide album with its time signature shift midway and a spoken word section from the ‘Getting Through’ album recently procured from a Canadian tour. The down tempo shift slowly morphs into ‘Rettic AC’, a mass of static waves and the following track from the LP. I could have played the whole album, I think it’s still my favourite of theirs. That dissolves with delay and turntable speed manipulation into what Shazam now tells me was Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Cresendo e Diminuendo’ – all classical concrete-ish blurbs and parps – with a Martin Luther King speech we’d regularly use over the top.

A sizeable chunk of the middle of the mix is taken up with a track from Siah & Yeshua dapoED’s debut on Fondle ‘Em Records (the Bobbito Garcia-run label that MF Doom debuted on). Given that ‘A Day Like No Other’ is a multi-part, tempo-changing 11 minute collage of beats and rhymes, it’s no surprise. I then slice into a DJ Vadim track (under his Andre Gurov alias), ‘Organized Babbitry’ on his Jazz Fudge label. Not recognising the track and Shazam being no use here, I turned to my record collection thinking it may be from his Ninja debut LP, U.S.S.R. Repertoire, but no. The Jazz Fudge section yielded the goods but I was dismayed to find a huge crack and piece missing from my only copy (I designed the artwork as well so pride myself in having mint copies in my archive).

More spoken word from the Getting Through album interrupts before a breakdown into The Silhouettes’ slinky, flute-led ‘Lunar Invasion’. I’ve never managed to get an original of this (this was played from a late 90’s bootleg) as it was too expensive but it’s an amazing, multi-faceted track that suddenly takes off completely unexpectedly from a slow strip tease into a frenzied funk freak out and back again. For some unknown reason I thought it was a good idea to add in David Rose’s version of ‘The Stripper’ for a few bars to heighten the mood before it takes off again, absolute monster of a track. Out of this comes some crazed crowd-pleasing funk mash up of which I’m struggling to identify, quickly descending into a further snatch of Bernstein before abruptly ending with a ‘Strictly Kev on the mix’ from the computer. Time was up it seemed. Part 2 next week…

Thanks to the ever-helpful, all knowing Mr Armtone for helping me complete this set as my original tape only had half of it. I’ve tried to re-EQ the two halves to match in some way, see if you can spot the join.

PS: the ‘+ ambient set?’ on the tape is an excellent session from the same show, presumably by Coldcut, possibly Matt Black, which I’ll send to them for their Mixcloud sometime.

Track list:
Autechre – Cipater
Autechre – Rettic AC
Leonard Bernstein & New York Philharmonic – Cresendo e Diminuendo
Siah & Yeshua dapoED – A Day Like Any Other
Andre Gurov – Organised Babbitry
Unknown – Getting Through: A Guide To Better Understanding The Hard of Hearing
The Silhouettes – Lunar Invasion
David Rose – The Stripper
Unknown – unknown

Heading back to mid 1995 this week for a fine selection of trip hop, drum (drill?) n bass, retro lounge, ambience and more. I realised that the ’96 / ’97 uploads have been thin on the ground and have spent some time digitising cassettes as well as doing some general housekeeping on the 125 previous uploads. This takes a lot longer than the CDs as all the track lists have to be done by ear as very little exists pre-’97. I’m probably about half way through the tapes and 3/4s through the CDrs by now, still a way to go. Finding some gems though.

I wish I knew what the first track in this set was, a jumble of spoken word about possession, Satan, burning records etc. Perfect for one of my religious mixes, if anyone knows, please leave a comment. Wagon Christ’s superb remix of Moloko’s ‘Lotus Eater’ is taken from the Further Self Evident Truths 3 compilation on Rising High, a fantastic comp with barely a bad track on it. Just love the creeping intro on this, the strings, chopped up beats and hand claps, just amazing. The Gentle People were amazing too, such a curveball for RePhLeX, those soaring strings… ‘Emotion Heater’ isn’t quite up to their debut, ‘Journey’, but has aged very well.

Conrad Schnitzler swoops in with ‘Electric Garden’ from his Con LP, a track that Mixmaster Morris hipped me to a few years before, sounding as fresh now as back then and it’s 45 years old next year! ‘Squarepusher Theme’ barges into proceedings, doing what only Tom Jenkinson can do in a frantic five minutes before we exhale for The Orb’s Peel Session version of ‘O.O.B.E.’ Odd that I put Squarepusher between Conrad and The Orb, these days common sense would tell me not to but I suppose it does mix in time. Ethik’s ‘Moral Sculpture’ is one of those tracks I instantly know but can never remember the name of and comes from a great 1993 album, ‘Music For Stock Exchange’ – reissued a couple of years back on Kompakt.

It’s nice to know that I was playing Andy Votel right from the beginning, his left field, wonky take on sample collage has always appealed. ‘Spooky Driver’ comes from his debut 12” on Grand Central – then just billed as VOTEL. Careering out this is JG Thirlwell at the wheel of a sonic juggernaut under his Steroid Maximus moniker from the ‘Gondwanaland’ album. His cover of Raymond Scott’s ‘Powerhouse’ has all the industrial (sorry, Jim) bombast you’d expect from the master of disaster. I remember Jon More rolling his eyes at this one as some of my more over the top choices weren’t always to his taste (‘it’s an un-easy listening sound’). In hindsight he could probably hear all the late night listeners switching off or over. The sudden end wrong-footed me (it was only on CD) and we get a snatch of the next track, ‘Homeo’ before submerging into Funki Porcini’s gorgeous ‘Going Down’ from his second album for Ninja Tune, ‘Love, Pussycats & Carwrecks’. Calm is restored as we ‘whinge on into the night’ as Jonathan puts it.

Track list:
Unknown – Possessed intro
Moloko – Lotus Eater (Wagon Christ remix)
The Gentle People – Emotion Heater (Instrumental Mix Parts I,II,III)
Conrad Schnitzler – Electric Garden
Squarepusher – Squarepusher Theme
The Orb – O.O.B.E. (John Peel Session)
Ethik – Moral Sculpture
Andy Votel – Spooky Driver
Steroid Maximus – Powerhouse!
Steroid Maximus – Homeo
Funki Porcini – Going Down

This was one of those shows where I put together a mix largely from the contents of my record buying trips whilst abroad in North America plus some current new releases. I can’t quite believe I used to go a couple of times a year at one point, each time coming back laden with music new and old. I don’t think I’ve been back for over a decade now and I really miss it, one day I’ll get back out there.

We kick off with Ramsey Lewis (RIP) and the break-tastic ‘Do Whatever Sets You Free’, chopped up nicely by Natural Self once I seem to remember… Eddie Harris slinks in with a nasty beat and a fuzzed up horn, plenty of sample action here and I think this is the source for a bit of Shadow’s ‘In/flux’. I’m not sure if the DJ Zinc track quite works out of old Eddie, sure it’s in time but not quite in tune or swing, that’s quite a change of pace. I had a white label at the time but now know that the track is called ‘Tonka’. Then into The Human League (!) mixing by bpm, not feel, I like the way Phil Oakey calls everyone ‘big heads’ at the start. This was from the Richard X released ‘Golden Hour of the Future’ album of early Human League recordings.

I like what Push Button does with the Anti-Pop vocal of ‘Ghostlawns’, putting it on a different beat of the bar and slowing the tempo to half time. But into The Banana Splits? What was I thinking? This the most uneven mix of all time, just because it’s IN time kids, doesn’t mean it should go next to that similarly tempo-ed tune. Doesn’t sound quite like Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky though does it? The Incredible Shrinking Man was an alias of Shawn Lee who apparently is also singing on this cover of ‘Wichita Lineman’ as well as playing almost everything else too. Killer version on a 7” on Ape City who only put out three releases.

Sixtoo I hooked up with on tour and ‘Duration’ was his long-digesting masterpiece, featured here in an excerpt, maybe he was living in Montreal by this time or maybe that was after he signed to Ninja Tune, it was around this time anyway. The ‘stop scratching’ vocal sample is actually from a 7” comedy record about a dog, the cover folds out three times into a dog shape, I think it’s a Fred Basset tie-in maybe. Stan Kenton covers ‘Hair’ with his take on ‘Coloured Spade’, I’d go on to collect many versions of the musical over the years and have lost count how many I have now. The New Seekers’ ‘It’s The Real Thing’ – do the Coke advert from a promo 7”. Pugh’s ‘Love Love Love’ I’m sure we all recognise the opening bars of? This was the opening track of Cherrystones’ then current ‘Rocks’ compilation and also the opener of Pugh Rogefeldt’s debut LP.

From Swedish psych rock to Brit hip hop and out into Yo La Tengo covering Sun Ra – edited for radio. This should be called the dis-jointed mix, veering all over the place, it made sense to me at the time. The Free Association were a psychedelic outfit led by David Holmes who made one great album and a clutch of singles and seemed to be the point after which he jumped into soundtrack work. Plenty of sampling going on and all the better for it. Still veering all over the place the Dsico rework of Nelly’s ‘It’s Getting Hot In Herre’ was further twisted out by my occasional Flexus guise for a particularly sweaty party on the hottest day of the year in the old basement under the newsagent that used to house the Bastard night. I think it was a Kinky Voodoo event hosted by my friend John Power and during this song I threw out tons of ice poles for the audience from a cooler I’d bought with me.

I don’t remember the track after this featuring a female rap over ‘Superbad’, but Dsico was putting out loads of mash ups at this time. Another switch, down into dub with Tino, a Ben Stokes and friends alias, from the Hallowe’en Dub album which seems relevant this week. We finish with ‘Acetate Prophets’, the DJ track from the end of Jurassic 5’s third LP. After ‘Lesson 6’ on the first and ‘Swing Set’ on the second we get a complex eastern-themed set of breaks and samples which I wish Cut and Nu-mark would do more of.

Track list:
Ramsey Lewis – Do Whatever Sets You free
Eddie Harris – Carry On Brother
DJ Zinc – Tonka
The Human League – Dance Like A Star
Ant-Pop Consortium – Ghostlawns (Push Button Objects mix)
The Banana Splits – Doin’ The Banana Split
The Incredible Shrinking Man – Wichita Lineman
Sixtoo – Duration (excerpt)
Stan Kenton – Coloured Spade
The New Seekers – It’s The Real Thing
Pugh – Love Love Love
Die & Skitz feat Rodney P/Ms Dynamite/Tali/Mixologists – It’s On
Yo La Tengo – Nuclear War
The Free Association – Don’t Rhyme No Mo
Nelly/Dsico vs FLEXUS – It’s Getting Hot Hot Hot In Herre
Dsico – Super Hiding
Tino – Living Dead Dub
Jurassic 5 – Acetate Prophets