Last weekend’s exclusive mix for 45 Live‘s radioshow is now up, it features in Greg Belson‘s bi-weekly show for Dublab and this one is late 80s/early 90s house, acid, hip house and bleep classics and obscurities, all from 7″ vinyl.
Music
Back at the start of 2000, PC and I went to the US and Canada to do some gigs and a load of press for the Kaleidoscope LP which was due out in April – imagine that, flying to America to meet journalists face to face for interviews in magazines!. While we were there we bought a lot of records as you do. On returning, we of course played lots of them on Solid Steel. I made three ‘U.S. Vinyl Excavations’ mixes although I’m not sure where part 1 is right now, I think it’s on DAT somewhere as I switched over to using CDRs to archive in 2000 after trying DAT for a bit and cassettes before that.
There’s way too much echo on this (a common trait for me back then) and the set is a mix of breaks, cover versions, soundtracks, easy listening, jazz, spoken word and future sample fodder. It was also the first time I delved into the psyche rock genre, buying Mothers of Invention, Rare Earth and the like. The Yussef Lateef I’d been hunting for a while after hearing it sampled on a Meat Beat Manifesto LP. On tour with Kid Koala and his then sidekick, P-Love, we returned from a digging session and were showing the spoils and he’d scored a copy. I’m not sure whether I swapped it with him or managed to get a copy later but I seem to remember that this was the one he found. The record shopping was so good back then, visiting cities across the States and Canada you’d have a mental wants list of stuff and could pick up virtually whole discographies in one two week period.
Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Yussef Lateef, Billy Cobham, George Duke, Zappa, Blue Note and Command records, they were everywhere and cheap. I also bought a lot of music that would later crop up in my rescore of The Monkees’ film, ‘Head’, some of which you can hear in these sets. The first mix is themed around a comedy stereo test record with Mr Magoo which crops up throughout and there are a clutch of personal answerphone messages near the end which I used to record and re-use back in the day. Part 3 next week and I’ll try and find part 1…
Part 2 – Magoos Hi-Fi – 07/08/2000
Track list:
Richard Rodney Bennett – Love Scene
Memphis Underground – Eleanor Rigby
Susan with the Children’s Chorus – ABC song
A Special TV Record – Wild Drums
Quincy Jones – Hangin’ Paper
Jimmy Castor Bunch – Creation (prologue)
Mothers of Invention – King Kong Pts 1,2 & 3
John Simon – Beach Music
Yussef Lateef – Sister Mamie
Jerry Garcia – Spider Gawd
Al Hirt & Hugo Montenegro – After Mass On Sunday
The Groovin’ Strings and Things – The Fool On The Hill
interspersed with selections from Mr Magoo’s ‘Magoo in Hi Fi’ – RCA Victor
It’s that time again, the now monthly day when Bandcamp waive their fees and give 100% of the profits to artists and labels so there’s never been a better time to support the artists you love. Here’s what I’ll be attempting to buy but those lathe cuts go so fast and I’m not one of those people who camp outside record shops, much less someone who repeatedly hits the ‘refresh’ button, waiting for a sale to go live.
New Dimensional Holophonic Sound LP!!!! Seeing Is Believing
Planet Battagon LP! – also check out the new On The Corner Records comp Door To The Cosmos
Limited Jeffrey Siedler – Maximer Compiler / Whyme Lines 7″ lathe cut inc.12 page booklet of video synthesis graphics, badge + sticker * Already sold out but check Buried Treasure for the full album and all sorts of other goodies – recommend The Dandelion Set and Zyklus albums.
Luke Vibert‘s final in his recent trilogy – Rave Hop, trip hop is back, now with added rave! Also check his Modern Rave and Amen Andrews albums, also both on Hypercolour.
50 copies lathe cut by Loose Capacitor be quick!
Two new Miracle Pond releases debut today…
A new Astral Industries release, AI-20, drops at some point today… artist as yet unknown New Waveform Transmitter!
Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids – Shaman! on Strut
Both the Yellow Machines and Modified Magic labels have 25% off sales this Friday – use the code: FRIDAY at checkout if you like your retro jungle (MM) and intelligent electronica (YM), why these labels aren’t more talked about is beyond me.
See Thru Hands – Connectivity + remixes (check the single and the Massey mix for some Talking Heads/LCD Soundsystem vibes)
Pye Corner Audio – Magnetic Acid – minimal acid experiments from the head technician at any price you want to pay.
Scanner – Warp & Weft – new FREE album from Robin Rimbaud
The Gaslamp KIller – Heart Math – new album for GLK on double 10″ coloured vinyl
Aquasonic Research Society – Soft cues for deep ocean travels – library style collection from Markey Funk and friends on pre-order on the fledgling SOM label.
Honourable mentions for:
Richard Norris – his Group Mind ‘Music For Healing’ 20 minute tracks are lovely and his new Elements album is great too from what I’ve heard so far.
Posthuman / I Love Acid – always worth checking for new acid and Balkan Vinyl who have been putting out weekly Wednesday releases from various artists
Kirk DeGiorgio – AsOne / Nuron – plenty of his old albums now available direct from the man himself as well as a 41 track ART Rarities comp exclusive to Bandcamp.
JG Thirlwell – A new digital version of his 90s album Null/Void album has just gone online, also check his collaboration with Simon Steensland ‘Oscillospira’ that I recommended last month, it’s one of my favourites this year so far.
You can see previous purchases and recommends if you follow my Bandcamp profile https://bandcamp.com/strictlykev
and lastly – he’s not on Bandcamp but he’s on iTunes and Am*z*n (if you must) –
Robert Fripp’s ‘Music For Quiet Moments’ weekly ambient Frippertronics uploads are some of my favourite releases this year. I’m not sure why it says Albums there because they’re all single tracks but they range from 4 mins to nearly half an hour in length, all for £1 or £2 each. I recommend #4, 7, 11 and 13.
Being a fan and collector of underground comics as well some of the indie stuff out there I was intrigued to find a copy of something called Fuff #7 by Jeffrey Lewis in a charity shop recently. I recognised his name on the cover because a friend had played me his excellent ode to vinyl ‘I caught the disease for LPs’ a while back and my partner has seen him a bunch of times at the Windmill in Brixton over the years. Halfway through the issue he splits the page in half and the story runs to the back page, flips upside down and then runs back into the comic to circle back on itself above the pages preceding it. I like artists who play with the format and the strip deals in time travel with the characters journeying back in time from a future issue with their dialogue reversed into the bargain.
Anyway, I loved it and looked online for more, Jeff has back issues on his website but he’s in the US and the postage on those things to the UK is crazy, but I lucked out as a British seller on eBay was selling issues 1-6 – what are the chances? The tone of the strips is summed up on the cover of issue 7 – ‘Travelogues, Biography, Fiction, Whimsy’ – semi autobiographical in a kind of Robert Crumb / Harvey Pekar American Splendor style, mostly dealing with his tour diaries, tales his dad told him and surreal oddball characters.
So I’m totally loving the first seven issues and I have to get the set because I’m a completist like that and I’m feeling bad about not ordering from Jeff and putting some money in his pocket during this pandemic so I ordered issues 8-12 direct and he sent a little drawing along with them too :). The comics just got better and better, the European tour diary was a great insight to an independent musician on the road, his self-confessional sex therapy sessions with Dr. Afting Table M.D. are a brave move and a tale of his dad’s acid trip in the woods in issue #11 was the best yet. Finally, issue 12 deals in a cosmic tale with God featuring character cameos from previous issues that just upped the ante even further into a mind-blowing critique of today’s all-knowing, opinion-orientated world.
The sad thing about the timing for issue 12 was that Jeff released it at the beginning of the year with a view to selling copies on tour in the Spring. Of course that’s not happening for the foreseeable future so, like most artists, he’s had a major part of his income cut off. What I’m trying to say here is simply check out Jeff’s comics if you can as they’re great if you enjoy that kind of material and he could do with the support. He even does a bundle with the first 11 issues including the harder to find #0 which reprints micro comics he drew as flyers in the 90s. And of course check out his music while you’re there.
Track notes:
I was intrigued to pull this set out because I don’t remember much about it, especially the Henry Rollins track at the end, so curiosity got the better of me. Around 2002/3/4 I was pretty productive on the Solid Steel front and probably put more hours into some of these mixes than at any other time. This was pre-being a parent so the hours were there and this is what I’d call a proper mixed bag style wise, veering from break-led cut ups to electronica and 80s synth pop as the mash up era continued with Richard X now in the charts.
Lots of the usual suspects on the list of labels played, Stones Throw, Output, Twisted Nerve, Skam and of course Ninja who were still on a creative roll after the tenth birthday three years before even through the record industry was slowly falling apart around our ears due to downloading.
‘Words With The Voda’ in the title refers to a sample about a computer that’s used throughout the mix although I can’t remember where I got it from. But John ‘Voda’ (actual name John Moore – not the Jon More from Coldcut) was the name of the guy who mastered a lot of Ninja Tune’s records over the years. He started off in a little studio in the Canary Wharf building that also housed Ninja, Hex/Hexstatic, artist Shiv and the Hydrogen Jukebox label and slowly progressed to the whole of the top floor. When we moved out of London Bridge at the turn of the century he moved into the middle of Soho and had a full mastering and repro operation going and I remember going there to master the ‘C Is For Cookie’ and ‘Pinball Number Count’ release. A quick google reveals virtually nothing of his current whereabouts – anyone know what happened to him?
There’s some buried treasure on here for sure – Alex Attias’ version of Sun Ra’s ‘Nuclear War’ (with my reversed expletives for radio), Mu’s ‘Chair Girl’, Goldfrapp’s remix of Marilyn Manson… Ah yeah and I remember that Rollins sketch now, it’s worth the wait, “evil woman, look out!”
Track list:
Kid Koala – Skanky Panky
Bonobo – Pick Up (Four Tet remix)
Charles Mintz – Give A Man A Break
J Rocc – Junkies Pick
Mu – Chair Girl
Luke Vibert – Propertronics
J Rocc – Junkies Pick
Alex Attias presents Mustang – Nuclear War
Akufen – Hawian Wodka Party 1
Secondo – It’s Ok, I’ve Overstood
dncn – bwdm remix
The League Unlimited Orchestra – Things That Dreams Are Made Of
Richard X feat. Kelis – Finest Dreams
Marilyn Manson – This Is The New Shit (Goldfrapp Remix)
Forss – Jazz For Nerds
Quinoline Yellow – mystery track
Henry Rollins – Breaking Up
Some things never change, nearly 20 years on I’m still playing Luke Vibert, Boards of Canada and loving Ken Nordine and Sesame Street spoken word. But some things most definitely do, Chocolate Weasel only made one record for Ninja Tune, Photek never quite scaled these heights again and the Twisted Nerve label morphed into the wondrous reissue venture, Finders Keepers. This set is from a run where Solid Steel had moved to Radio LDN at Bush House (as explained in previous posts), each time you arrived you had to sign in and get a stamped sticker and wear it so that security knew you were OK.
The first half of this set is full of tricky time signatures from the off, the wrong-footing Ski Oakenfull track, the Chocolate Weasel tune which I still can’t work out the time signature of, the switch from the 120bpm of Luke Vibert to the 80 of Boards and then 160 on Photek. Then our ‘Looking Glass’ track mixed at 160bpm instead of 120, it shouldn’t work and it doesn’t really but it’ll make you hear it in a different way and sometimes that’s what DJing is about. Future Ninja signing (MC) Sixtoo crops up on the end of part 1 guesting on Aquasky‘s ‘Shamen’, I remember pushing for Ninja to sign him around this time and he made a couple of excellent records for the label in the 00’s.
The second half presents a mix of the then relatively new Twisted Nerve label and surrounding artists, a love that still endures nearly 20 years later and a catalogue that’s still fascinating. You couldn’t have a much starker contrast between the two halves if you tried. Even though there’s no distortion I was quite surprised to see a lot of brick wall compression going on in the mix, not sure what I was putting it through when recording or mixing down but there’s a lot of rectangular blocks with no dynamics in the original recording. We live and we learn don’t we?
Track list:
Part 1
Ski Oakenfull – Fifths (Jazzanova 6 Sickht mix)
Chocolate Weasel – Music For Body Lockers
Luke Vibert – Chris Chana
Boards of Canada – Zoetrope
Photek – Seven Samurai
DJ Food – Looking Glass
Aquasky feat MC Sixtoo – Shamen
Part 2
D.O.T. – Say Your Prayers
Andy Votel – Diode
Cherrystones – We Three Kings
Sirconical – Pumpfarm
Mum & Dad – Swinchiard
Alfie – James’ Dream Pt 2
Jane Weaver vs Doves – Seven Day Smile
Dakota Oak – J Saw The Figure Five
Andy Votel – Spooky Driver
Pedro – Abacus
Sirconical – Moondance
Track notes:
What an embarrassment of riches this mix holds, a very special time musically as you will hear over the course of the hour. I’m fairly certain that this was probably my third ever appearance on Solid Steel, still as part of Openmind and not yet DJ Food. You can hear the chill out scene still going strong, but the beginnings of trip hop emerging and the Artificial Intelligence era of techno in full swing. Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works II must have just come out as he gets a huge six tracks played, Autechre get two, Global Communication also weave in and out with Locust and Drome. Tricky, Justin Warfield and the Beastie Boys signpost the tripper end of hip hop gaining momentum.
I think we recorded this live on air on a Saturday night at KISS FM, it was myself and Mario Aguera from Telepathic Fish (who did the second hour after I did the first) and Matt Black from Coldcut on the mic and various samples. We were still new to the radio studio and it was nerve wracking knowing that we were live on air with Matt watching and listening. A couple of my mixes are a bit wonky to say the least and I remember Matt would always shout ‘escape!’ if he thought a mix was going out too wildly, still makes me smile when I think of it. I decided to weave bits of the soundtrack from The Wizard of Oz in and out of the mix to give it some continuity, hence the mix title.
Track list:
Coldcut – Strange music jingle
Edgar Frose – Ngc 891
Wizard of Oz – intro
Beastie Boys – Namaste
Chapterhouse – Blood Music: Pentamerous Metamorphosis – Beta Phase (Global Communication retranslation)
Tricky – Aftermath
Chapterhouse – Blood Music: Pentamerous Metamorphosis – Beta Phase (Global Communication retranslation)
Justin Warfield – Tequila Flats (inc Hidden Material, Ghosts of Laurel Canyon)
Autechre – Lowride
Aphex Twin – Untitled from Ambient Works II
Justin Warfield – B-Boys On Acid
Aphex Twin – Untitled from Ambient Works II
Wizard of Oz + Whale noises
Aphex Twin – Untitled from Ambient Works II
Drome – Age of Affordable Retina
Steve Hillage – Rainbow Dome Musick
Reload – The Biosphere (Global Communication Remix)
Insides – Skinned Clean
Wizard of Oz – Tin Man
Aphex Twin – Untitled from Ambient Works II
Locust – Lust
Autechre – Basscadet
Aphex Twin – Untitled from Ambient Works II
Wizard of Oz – outro
Track notes:
Steinski was coming to the UK, cut up collagist and all-round nice guy legend that he is. We’d known each other since 1998 when we played together in Brighton for a night Krafty Kuts had put on and had kept in touch ever since. He was visiting the UK for a holiday with his wife and we asked if he would play unannounced at our monthly Solid Steel night in London to which he agreed.
The night had a policy of never announcing who the guests were, it was DK and myself as residents and you paid £3 on the door and found out who was on the bill when you got downstairs to the basement where the club was. This meant that people genuinely wanted to be there and felt part of something when they could say they saw Four Tet or Diplo or Luke Vibert the night before in a sweaty basement in central London for less than a fiver.
So Stein comes over and hangs out and has made two special mixes for the night too, which he gracefully let us play on Solid Steel a few weeks later. Not only that, I’d bought a box of 45s on eBay a few months before but the seller only shipped them within the US. I got them sent to Steve’s place in New York and he bought them over. There were a couple a quite rare Christian spoken word 7”s in the box, one including John Rydgren but there was plenty of other good stuff too. This mix is made up of the contents of the box plus a few random flexi discs I also added to the mix. Add in Steinski’s two mini mixes and you have an hour of very random beats, bits and bobs.
There’s a lot of drug messages in this as several of the records were about that. The Fenella Fielding flexi disc is a classic and Jonny Trunk swears that she farts at one point in it. The Kenny Everett and Michael Aspel disc, ’On Love’ is very strange, Kenny seems pissed or high, Michael makes an inappropriate confession about his daughter and Kenny confesses to unrequited love with someone called Henry which, given that this was made way before he was out of the closet, is another one for the list of now obvious clues he dropped throughout his broadcasting career.
Track list:
Steinski – Ruby Lo mix 1
Dr Donald B. Louria – Is Marijuana really habit forming?
Rhythm Heritage – Theme From Rocky
Dr Donald B. Louria – Does LSD Increase creativity?
Marc Hamilton – Tapis Magique
Everyday People – I Like What I Like
Guitar Self instructor For the Very Beginner
The Cousins – The Robot (Madison Twist)
John Rydgren – The Butterfly
Steinski – Ruby Lo mix 2
Doobie Brothers – Listen To The Music
Grand Funk – Destitute and Losin’
Cliff Richard – A Personal Message To You
Kenny Everett & Michael Aspel – On Love
Love Unlimited Orchestra – Sweets Moments
Fenella Fielding – Limber Up with…
Elton John – Bennie & The Jets
Dr Donald B. Louria – Are people using other potent hallucinatory drugs?
John Rydgren – The Lord Is My Shepherd
Dr Donald B. Louria – Is Marijuana really dangerous?
John Gibbs & the US Steel Orchestra – Steel Funk
Jerry Samuels – Who Are You To Tell Me Not To Smoke Marijuana?
Kenny Everett & Michael Aspel – On Love
Analogue meets digital as two of my favourite music-buying events have teamed up in the virtual world to launch an Indie Label Market fee-waiving Friday on Bandcamp. Not that most of the content on Bandcamp isn’t indie labels already but a few of the hipper bigger artists have got on board recently (Underworld and Bjork to name two). Below are a few recommendations, recent or new releases I’ve been waiting for which I’ll no doubt be adding to as the day goes on…
SimfOnyx – Magenta Skyline / The Unresolved 7″ (Delights)
Russian Library label: (checkout the whole label)
Aural Design – Looking and Seeing
Listening Centre / Pulselovers
Luke Vibert Presents series (Hypercolour)
Modern Rave
Castles In Space label
Clocolan – It’s Not Too Early For Each Other
Bernard Grancher – Soleil Gris Eclatant
Polypores – Azure
The Allergies – Say The Word (Jalapeno) pre-order with T shirt bundle
Deepchord – Lanterns (Astral Industries) – repress of the first even AI release!
I’m very aware that this blog seems to mostly be mixes at the moment so I thought I’d update people with what else has been happening these past few months. Since lockdown and the loss of all gigs I’ve been super busy, firstly trying to adjust as we all have to this new weird order, and working on lots of projects.
I started a Mixcloud Select channel 13 weeks ago (as you can’t fail to have noticed if you read this blog) – weekly uploads from my tape archive for the price of a cuppa a month.
I also started a digital-only label on Bandcamp, Infinite Illectrik, for my turntable experiments and other non-DJ Food projects. I’ve been working on several collage pieces (examples seen here) which will eventually result in a comic to be included with another project I’ll be recording for the label, The In-Sect, no release date for that yet, probably next year.
An old collaboration with Howlround has been resurrected and completed under the name The New Obsolescents, I’m listening to the masters of the album as I type and preparing the handmade covers over the next few weeks, it will be different and the sleeve will be very special indeed. More info very soon…
PC and I compiled three Kaleidoscope companion mixes to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the album we made in 2000. We’re currently assembling a proposed release for it, i’ll let you know what becomes of that.
I’m currently in the middle of composing a soundtrack to a book that’s being published this summer, again collaborating with a few different people, that should be getting a CD and digital release this year too.
Graphic work largely ground to a halt during lockdown including a trilogy of albums for The Real Tuesday Weld and a zoetrope project for another artist. That work is slowly picking back up it seems and I hope to finish these as well as starting another zoetrope job for a huge act next week.
I then have a mix for 45 Live to do, a live stream audio visual mix of my Kraftwerk Kover Kollection airs on July 18th and there’s another very special mix which I’ve yet to record that will be getting a physical release at some point too but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Track notes:
Firstly, this tape actually dates from 1996, not 1995 as it says on the label. I know this for sure because not only did most of the records played come out in ’96 but I remember taping this on my then girlfriend’s stereo as it was broadcast. She later became my wife and we hadn’t even met on this date in 1995 (my birthday funnily enough) so I’m pretty sure I labelled it wrongly.
Anyway, this was a good one, a proper headfuck of a mix, lots of trip hop – heavy beats, scratching, trippy sounds, electronics, tape loops and weird spoken word – that’s trip hop in my book. Trouble Funk and As One bring the groove, Camping Gaz & Digi Random (actually from Spain, not Italy as Jon More says) bring the comedy and Scala (a little remembered offshoot of Seefeel with Locust’s Mark Van Hoen producing) bring a distorted slice of filth called ‘VDT’.
Richard Dorfmeister appears twice, remixing Alex Reece with partner Peter Kruder and in his Tosca guise, DJ Shadow gets a whole side of his Mo Wax Excursions release played, accompanied by frenzied scratches via a Bionic Boogie Breaks record and Kirk Degiorgio crops up again at the end. The As One tracks were from his album for Clear, ‘The Message In Herbie’s Shirts’ which, I had an unlabelled test pressing of at the time so I didn’t know the titles. I even impressed myself by playing Pauline Oliveros in 1996, her track ‘I of IV’ is from the same record as Reich’s ‘Come Out’ which is then sampled in UNKLE’s remix of Tortoise’s ‘Djed’.
The Up, Bustle & Out track is a real oddity, actually a remix by Gwen Jamois and a pre-Cinematic Orchestra Tom Chant who recorded under the name The Sycophants, they remodel it entirely into a skronky jazz track! Squarepusher shows up under his real name in the lesser-heard ’Squeak’ from the Worm Interface 12” ‘Bubble & Squeak’. This was on the shop Ambient Soho’s label and there are three versions of it out there, a colour screen printed cover and B&W cover with crayons stuck to it, both my fellow Openmind designer, David Vallade. Then there’s a third version designed by me with photos provided by Tom.
Track list:
The Groove Robbers feat. DJ Shadow – Hardcore Instrumental Hip Hop
The Groove Robbers feat. DJ Shadow – 1/2 Bonus Scratchapella
The Groove Robbers feat. DJ Shadow – Last Stop
Steve Reich – Come Out
Tortoise – Died (UNKLE Bruise Blood remix)
Req – Req’s Garden
Trouble Funk – The Beat
As One – The Kiss
Pauline Oliveros – I of IV
Camping Gaz & Digi Random – Camping Gaz (Calliphora Vomitoria Mix)
Scala – VDT
Alex Reece – Jazz Master (Kruder & Dorfmeister mix)
Tom Jenkinson – Squeak
Tosca – Fuck Dub
Up, Bustle & Out – ‘Revolutionary Woman of the Windmill’ (OestroGwen mix)
As One – A Short Track About Love
I know I’ve been going on about Bandcamp a lot lately but they really have turned out to be a saviour in the last months and more artists and labels from the independent sector seem to be getting on board, realising that the payments from streaming companies like Spotify and iTunes are never going to give them a return they can live on. The music industry was duped into believing that the revenue from the deals they signed would replace dwindling physical sales and here we are, with our content filling their apps for returns that make minimal wage the lap of luxury.
Today is Juneteenth (June 19th) a day commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. After giving all artists 100% of their sales revenue in recent months, Bandcamp have decided to give 100% of their own profits to the Legal Defence Fund for the next 24 hrs (PDT, so ending 8am tomorrow GMT). So if you want to buy new music and support artists via their platform them today is a good day to do it.
Here are some recommendations and recent purchases I made.
(above) Suzanne Ciani – Improvisation on Four Sequences at Festival Antigel – All Spatial Mixes
(below) The new release on Markey Funk’s Delights label – Simf Onyx – Magenta Skyline / The Unresolved
Lo Five‘s brand new album – The Art of Living
The expanded edition of Eno’s ‘Neroli’ – a great album in itself but expanded with a complete extra hour long bonus track. The physical 2xCD release of this goes for silly money but All Saints have their output on Bandcamp for easy purchase including all their expanded Eno releases.
Clipping‘s last two releases – There Existed An Addiction To Blood and The Deep.
I also recently picked some favourites from my BC collection for John Jervis’ Carry On Bandcamping blog with links and recommendations – go here
Track notes:
Going through my CDRs this week to make them easier to sort, I tried to find a show that was close to this week’s date. Worryingly there seems to be a batch of CDs yellowing around the edges so I should get them encoded before the CD rot sets in further.
This mid 2003 set from 17 years ago seems to have several links from some sort of meditation record which for the life of me I don’t remember. Musically it’s the era of great chart hip hop, reggae, silly mash ups and garage-y club bangers. Also there seem to be a couple of Marilyn Manson tracks nestled in there which I remember caused a few raised eyebrows at Ninja back then. The funk 45 craze was still unearthing treasure and the show opens with Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Vannier’s incredible ‘La Horse’ which had just been reissued as part of DJ Oof’s Cinemix project.
Nestled in the middle of the mix is a mash up I made under my Flexus alias called ‘Bite My Salami’ (there’s a whole album’s worth of these which I used to make for DJ sets). It layers Justin Timberlake’s ‘Rock Your Body’, Queen’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ and Pepe Deluxe’s ‘Salami Fever’ and sort of works but really needs some of the guitar from Timberlake’s tune. At the time you couldn’t get the a cappella for this so I ended up buying the CD single and using the phase insertion trick with the vocal and instrumental versions to cancel out everything but the vocal. Then Sean Paul gets overlaid with a version from The Bug, it was a different time…
Track list:
Serge Gainsbourg/Jean Claude Vannier – La Horse
Geezers of Nazareth – Loving the Pole (pt 1)
HIM – The Way the Trees Are
Cardinal Offishall – Belly Dancer
Trashman – Got To Get Ya
Connie Prince – The Badger
DJ Format – Here Comes the Fuzz (Quartertones remix)
Prince Paul feat. Chubb Rock, MF Doom, Wordsworth – People, Places and Things
Marilyn Manson – Baboon Rape Party
Amon Tobin – Hot Korean Moms
Flexus – Bite Your Salami (demo mix)
The Bug – Slew Dem (version)
Sean Paul – Get Busy (acapella)
Massive Attack – Butterfly Caught (Jagz Kooner remix)
Marilyn Manson – Thaeter
Camping Gaz & Digi Random – Circus World (Skamping Gaz Simphony 2)
Jammin’ – Tonka
Tubbs – 5 Day Night (Baloo mix)
Instrumental – All Shook Up
This week’s upload was requested by never_be_game_over who cited it as one his favourites. Titled ‘Osy Kicks It Off’ in reference to Osymyso who starts the show with a recording culled from another show at the time, XFM’s The Remix. Why was I pulling audio from another programme? At this point in 2002 the bastard Pop / bootleg / mash up scene was in its early stages with a handful of physical bootleg records available but the majority of these creations existing purely online through sites like Boom Selection (run by a 14 year old school kid called The Dr but that’s another story).
Eddy Temple-Morris and James Hyman’s XFM show, The Remix, quickly became the place to showcase a lot of these tracks and host mixes by the leading lights of the scene, Osymyso being one of the originators alongside The Freelance Hellraiser and Cartel Communique who started the first London club exclusively playing mash ups. Originally named ‘King of the Boots’ before changing to the much more direct ‘Bastard’, this was a monthly event in a tiny, sweaty basement under a newsagent just off Tottenham Court Road in London’s West End and were some of my favourite clubbing experiences ever. There’s a brief clip of it at the start of this Swiss TV piece featuring Osy and myself DJing at Bastard, just look at that pre-mobile phone crowd.
Anyway, Osy’s Intro-Inspection was a megamix made completely from intros of famous pop songs and the recording I pinched was the only way of getting it as it hadn’t been pressed yet. It didn’t occur to me to actually ask him for a digital copy even though we’d met years before and have since become great friends but I heard it and thought it was so brilliant that it had to be the show opener. You can hear Osy (Mark Nicholson to his mum) and James Hyman at the end and James even names checks Coldcut as being up next which is odd as I don’t think they ever had an XFM show, maybe it was a guest mix, either way I thought I’d leave it in.
The rest of the show is a mix of current hip hop, both UK and US, which is in rude health by all accounts, mixed with trip hoppy experiments by the likes of Sirconical (on the then new Twisted Nerve label), Sixtoo, Money Mark and the first fruit from DJ Shadow’s second LP, the incredible ‘Monosyllabik’ track, allegedly made from only two samples. Lightening the mood are more mash ups from Girls On Top feat The Sugarbabes (later to be a UK no.1), Pitman’s take on Pharaoh Monch’s ‘Simon Says’ and Wevie Stonder’s sound effects guessing game. Whilst the US rap scene was embracing RnB and having crossover pop hits with the likes of The Neptunes and Timbaland the underground had gone back to the old school and was pioneering a much rawer composite of back to basics sampling exemplified by The P Brothers and their Heavy Bronx sound in the UK and Edan in the US. The early 90s was a golden age for music magazines too with the likes of Big Daddy and Wax Poetics picking up the baton land down by the Beastie Boys’ short-lived Grand Royal mag and doing in-depth interviews with scene pioneers even as the music industry plummeted into the abyss of file sharing.
Track list:
Osymyso – Intro-Inspection (part two 48-101)
Sirconical – Spank
Ultramagnetic MCs – Poppa Large (accapella)
Wevie Stonder – Kenkeneb
Midnyte – Nott’s Rep
DJ Shadow – Monosyalabik
Sixtoo – Camino
Girls On Top/Sugarbabes – We Don’t Give A Damn About Our Friends
P Brothers – Science
Jehst / Jzone / Harry Love – Staircase To Stage
Dr Dre (feat Nocturnal) – Bad Intentions
RJD2 – The Proxy
D Stroy – Roll Out
P Brothers (feat Cappo) – Nottingham Bronx
Pitman – Pitman Says
Edan (feat Mr Lif) – Rapperfection
Blade – Survival of the Hardest Working
Money Mark – Soul Drive 6th Avenue 
My customized turntable – the Quadraphon as I sometimes call it – is featured in the opening spread of this month’s Electronic Sound magazine including a piece I wrote about it. Once again, the magazine is full of so much it’s hard to know where to start – Suzanne Ciani, Sonic Boom, a tribute to Florian Schneider and a peek inside Neil Arthur’s memorabilia collection as well as tech news, tons of reviews and an exclusive Suzanne Ciani 7″ if you subscribe to the double bundle each month. It’s also still one of the best designed mags on the shelves.
But with a lot of major newsagents and record shops closed they’re relying on subscriptions and mail order right now so if you’ve been meaning to take out a subscription then now’s the time. There are also plenty of back issues and other vinyl in their online shop but those bundles sell out pretty fast.
I’ve got an exclusive mix of the De:tuned label’s 10 year anniversary tracks airing on Belgian station WAV (We Are Various) tonight between 8pm-9pm (CET – 7pm in the UK) plus here’s an interview about the mix & designing for the label. It should be on Soundcloud after so I’ll add it in once it’s premiered. UPDATE and here it is…
Track notes:
Side B of a mixtape created for a Floatation Centre in Brixton called Aquatonics who wanted a mix of continuous ambient music and sounds to play to their customers that would aid their floatation trips. Recorded live on two turntables and a basic CD player with no pitch control direct to this cassette in the house I shared with fellow Openmind associates David Vallade, Mario Aguera and Chantal Passamonte (later Mira Calix). The title was coined by David and was also used as a track title on Chantal’s debut album for Warp.
This week I’ve dug out one of the original flyers used to advertise this in the Ambient Soho record shop, this was an incredibly early computer design by yours truly, probably one of the first. I think this was done on Mario’s computer at his work as we didn’t yet have one at the flat. He was a computer game programmer at that point (working on a game for Queen (the band) I seem to remember) and later worked with Hex creating visuals and animation for a game they were working on. 
The music selection is a pretty good representation of what we were playing at the Telepathic Fish parties at the time: The Orb (of course), Future Sound of London, Dreamfish (Mixmaster Morris & Pete Namlook), Sven Vath and a few side steps like ambient sections from ZTT and 4AD releases. We used to play bits of This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, Grace Jones and there’s even a bit of U2 in there (!) There’s also a fair bit of stuff that I just cannot work out in amongst the layers so if anyone spots anything I’ve missed then please comment.
There is one particular moment that makes me cringe on this side – at the end of an Orb mix of whale noises I’m playing over the ‘Return’ mix of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Warriors of the Wasteland’, suddenly a fairground Wurlitzer strikes up the opening notes of ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’. I wasn’t paying attention whilst mixing with three decks and this caught me off guard, quickly being faded out before it could launch into full flow. It may have ruined a few floats… I used to have two copies of the Frankie tune and the intro to this mix is a lovely ambient piece before going into the full song, I would crossfade them together three of four times to extend the intro, sometimes at different speeds or pitches.
Track list:
The Orb – Back Side of the Moon
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Well…
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Warriors of the Wasteland (Return)
Grace Jones – The Crossing (Ohh The Action…)
Sven Vath – Caravan of Emotions
U2 – Mysterious Ways (Apollo 440 Magic Hour Remix)
Brian Eno – Lantern Marsh
System 7 – ?
The Orb – O.O.B.E.
This Mortal Coil – Filigree & Shadow
Kraftwerk – Europe Endless
Dreamfish – School of Fish
This Mortal Coil – Firebrothers
Future Sound of London – Papa New Guinea
Sven Vath – Caravan of Emotions
As you may have heard, Bandcamp, the online shopfront and streaming site for many independent labels and artists, have been having monthly Fridays since lockdown began where they give 100% of the revenue made to artists and forego their cut. Today is another of those days so I thought I’d compile a list of new releases and current personal favourites to check out if you can’t see the wood for the trees.
*also remember that it operates on Pacific Daylight Time which is 8hrs behind UK time. So, buy from 8am onwards in the UK up until 8am Saturday morning to maximise the support for artists and labels or check depending on where you are in the world.
I’ve structured the list Artist / Title / Label then further recommendations if the link is to a label
Timbuktu & Ollie Teeba – Million Dollar Note (Urbnet) – album
https://timbuktuollieteeba.bandcamp.com/album/million-pound-note
Zyklus – Gumbo Gulag (Buried Treasure) – album
https://buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com/
also check out: Revbjelde / The Dandelion Set / The Delaware Road compilation
Various Artists – The Isolation Tapes (Castles In Space) CD/Cassette/DL – album
https://castlesinspace.bandcamp.com/
also check out: Clocolan / Dalham / The Heartwood Institute / Concretism / Lo Five / Twelve Hour Foundation / Soundhog
Astral Industries (label)
https://astralindustries.bandcamp.com/
check out: Heavenly Music Corporation, LF58, Multicast Dynamics, Deepchord
– 50% off the label’s entire discography
Quadraphonic Stylus Ensemble – Four Tet in Sixteen Locked Grooves (Infinite Illectrik) – single
https://infiniteillectrik.bandcamp.com/
also check out: The Infinity Curve – (full disclosure – this is my label!)
Coldcut – Keleketla! (Ahead of Our Time/Ninja Tune) – album pre-order
https://coldcut.bandcamp.com/album/keleketla
SimfOnyx – Magenta Skyline/The Unresolved (Delights) 7” pre-order
https://delights.bandcamp.com/
also check: Project Gemini, Group Modular, Nicola Spiromarino, Markey Funk
ScanOne – Break EP (Yellow Machines) EP
https://yellow-machines.bandcamp.com/album/ym017-scanone-braek-ep
Cleon – Blowback / Varonos – The Bitch (Acid Cuts) – clear 8″ lathe cut singles
https://acidcuts.bandcamp.com/
Mat Ducasse – We Are Stardust / Lord of the Cosmos – single tracks
https://matducasse.bandcamp.com/
Pictogram – Trace Elements (Miracle Pond)
https://thepictogram.bandcamp.com/
also check: Beam Weapons
Granary 12 – High 1987 (Balkan Vinyl) EP – first of the weekly Balkan Wednesday releases
https://granary-12.bandcamp.com/album/high-1987
also check: Luke Vibert, Posthuman, Ben Pest
Howlround & Merkaba Macabre – Cantor Dust And Monster Curve (Psyche Tropes)
v. ltd. lathe cut 7″ in aid of Iklectik venue support
* this is already sold out but you can buy the digital and support by donating more
https://psychetropes.bandcamp.com/
also check: Howlround, Sculpture
Milleu – Statuettes Part Two (Milleu Music) – album
https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/statuettes-part-two
also check: there are just too many to check, the man is a music making machine
Various Artists – Isolation Compilation (Shapes of Rhythm) – album
https://shapesofrhythm.bandcamp.com/album/isolation-compilation
also check – Body Moves, Gaijin Blues
Richard Norris – Music For Healing (Group Mind) – 20 min tracks
https://richardnorris.bandcamp.com/
There are now 11 Music For Healing releases, all proceeds go to the charity MIND
Trevor Jackson / Playgroup – donating 100% of revenue today to the Stephen Lawrence Trust
https://playgroupofficial.bandcamp.com/
also see Pre_Recordings
https://pre-recordings.bandcamp.com/
JG Thirlwell / Foetus / Steroid Maximus (Ectopic Ents)
https://jgthirlwell.bandcamp.com/
Fill your boots, an embarrassment of sonic riches
Scanner – Spore – hugely expanded reissue available today (inc. ‘Arc’ one of his greatest songs IMO)
https://scanner.bandcamp.com/
If you’re not signed up to Bandcamp it’s easy and for any purchase you make, a digital version immediately goes into your online collection whereby you can then stream on your device or to portable speakers and the like via their app. Artists can sell merch as well as physical copies of their music, you can follow them and other users and explore their collections for recommendations. Here’s mine https://bandcamp.com/strictlykev
Using the Quadraphon turntable, a customised deck with three additional arms, I remixed side D of Four Tet‘s ‘Sixteen Oceans’ album which contains only locked grooves. These grooves play one revolution infinitely, looping the sound, and played in multiple combinations with added FX you can create endless remixes. I call them ‘Phonomontages’ – two are released today via my label, Infinite Illectrik https://infiniteillectrik.bandcamp.com/
The final (I’m assured) part of the 10 Years of De:tuned release programme – after the initial ten 12″s, the special silver vinyl #10, the poster, the tote bags and the super-limited wooden slipcases for Touched Music – a repress of the entire series on coloured vinyl. Some of the originals sold out super fast and are now going for much more than anticipated so a final edition in a corresponding colour has been arranged.
Listen to the series here: https://soundcloud.com/detunedrecords/sets/10-years-de-tuned-l-de-10-01
Pre-order here:
Bleep: bit.ly/3dQ23RF
Juno: bit.ly/2Zb4iLd
Red Eye: bit.ly/2yaq4nb
Deejay: bit.ly/3dQwPty
Horizons: bit.ly/2WCfMWr
I’ve also done a special promo mix of a selection of tracks from across the series which can be heard here