Solid Steel this week features an exclusive hour of Kid Koala live in Victoria, Canada. The second hour brings a mix from yours truly coupled with a tribute to Trish Keenan and the music of Broadcast by Markey Funk.

It’s now three years this week since Trish passed away and last year Markey put together a new soundtrack to the 1966 Jonathan Miller TV version of Alice In Wonderland made entirely from the music of Broadcast. We feature half an hour of that mix but it’s best watched with the film in full which you can see here or here.

My mix kicks things off though and takes the distorted drums and fuzzy electronics route with a detour into James Murphy‘s recent David Bowie remix in the middle.

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.

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.

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.

Another mix from me this week on Solid Steel, this time it’s a continuation of the ‘O is for Orange’ mix I did some months back. You may remember that this was the Boards of Canada-inspired one for the night we did called ‘A Few Old Tunes’ that happened around their LP release.

Well, I had 30 minutes recorded left over from that initial mix so I’ve added to it to make a second part. I’ve worked pretty hard on this and there are a few moments in it that I think are among my best when it comes to placing music together. It’s probably going to annoy some BoC purists for several reasons, most likely because I’ve layered other elements over a pristine recording of the officially unreleased ‘XYZ’, of which I’m lucky enough to have a copy.

Unfortunately this time the set is not accompanied by a video mix of the same but I may get round to that later and the images above are taken from several tracks that I already have footage for.