Here’s the 3hr all-star electronica mix I contributed to as part of Terminal Radio 22 – curated by Nmesh – and featuring FSOLDigital (aka Yage / Brian Dougans with an “Electric Brainstorm 10: Micro Edition”), Mixmaster Morris, Neotropic, Youth, Akkya, LMS and Surface 10. There’s a long 5 minute intro before the mixes start and my section starts around the 1:12:45 mark
Radio
I was Virgil Howe‘s guest on his Hidden Level radio show on Soho Radio last Saturday – we chatted and played music for 2 hours and swapped stories and tunes in the tiny studio in the heart of Soho. I’d not met Virgil face to face before but we’d been in contact and remixed each others material via The Amorphous Androgynous who he drums for. Virgil’s had his hands in loads of bands from the Killer Meters to Little Barrie to his own work on the Breaking Bread and Scenario labels. He’s the son of Steve Howe, guitarist for Yes and Asia and his brother Dylan also plays drums and has just released an album of jazz versions of Bowies‘s ‘Berlin’. He’s also DJed since the mid 90’s and can eat 12 cream crackers in 1 minute (I may have made this one up).
Virgil Howe’s Hidden Level Radio Show (11/10/2014) by Soho Radio on Mixcloud
Anyway, top bloke with skills and great taste in music and we chatted and played two hours away in no time, taking in recording stories, mutual friends, even comics and at one point Virgil told a tasty little anecdote about a recording session that his dad disrupted whilst Trevor Horn and co. were constructing Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s ‘Relax’. Yes, the world is that small. Anyway, here’s the podcast and look out for Virgil’s name, he’s everywhere and has a new solo album called ‘Hidden Level’ on the way soon which is excellent. Also check out his three Drum Series 7″s on Breaking Bread where he teams up with Malcolm Catto, Shawn Lee and Mark Claydon.
After waiting years, it’s finally here, Jeremy Schmidt‘s soundtrack to Panos Cosmatos’ ‘Beyond The Black Rainbow’. It’s short but it’s more than sweet and beautiful to behold in the packaging we’ve come to expect from the mighty Death Waltz label.
I appear to have an orange vinyl version with no sleeve notes though, not sure what happened there but I’ve mailed Spencer at DW to find out.
Also, here’s the new More Than Human radio show in handy downloadable form: it features a full-length interview with Jeremy (aka Sinioa Caves) plus some of his soundtrack picks; a final preview of the New Forms Festival (in Vancouver this weekend just gone) and lots of new, old and obscure electronic and experimental treats.
You can subscribe for free to the podcast in iTunes – that way the show auto-downloads every week.
A podcast I took part in with Ben Eshmade, organisor of the upcoming ‘Space In This Place’ event at the ArcelorMittal Orbit in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park in South East London on August 8th. The Anish Kapoor-designed structure will play host to music all night with a definite space theme, from Grasscut, Paddy Steer‘s homemade instruments, to Astronauts and myself, there will be music at different levels. Ben speaks to Paddy and myself about this and more in this podcast themed on the night to come.
The night runs from 6.30pm – 11pm and tickets are £20 – this might seems steep but it’s £15 just to go into the structure with no music so an extra fiver for all this is a pretty good deal. This is actually the first time they’ve ever had music inside, tickets can be bought from here or call 0333 800 8099 to book – and there’s more info about the various lates on at the structure here.
His online blog has been dormant for a year now, rumours that he had come into some money and taken up morris dancing remain unsubstantiated, but now, the legend that is Steinski speaks:
“Folks –
I’ve emerged from hibernation to post 2 shows on WFMU.org. They’re streaming online, they’re NSFW, and they emphasize my favorite non-instrumental portion of the musical spectrum: the talking part.
Show #1 (3 hrs.) showcases monologue artists ranging from Ruth Draper and Lord Buckley to Ana Deavere Smith and Danny Hoch. The listenable playlist at WFMU.org is here:
If you want, you can download the show (.zip) in easy-to-listen-to tracks here:
The second show’s title is “Walkin’ and Talkin”; all the tracks are spoken word over music (3 hrs.). Speakers range from The Last Poets, Jack Kerouac and Jean Shepherd to William Burroughs, Jean Grae, and Saul Williams. The show ran once a few years ago and got buried because I never added any information about it. A listenable playlist has been coaxed into existence on WFMU.org here:
Download (.zip) here:
Thanks very much,
Steve Stein”
I’ve never heard this before, an interview with Matt Johnson playing some of his favourite records on Greenwich Sound Radio way back in 1983 when ‘Soul Mining’ was first released.
Last minute post I know but I’ll be on Altar Ego Radio at 6 – 8pm tonight with a show of electronica that sounds like the past predicting the future called ‘Future Shock’. You can listen live here – I’ll even be talking.
Then tomorrow, Sunday 25th I’ll be doing another show with 2econd Class Citizen called ‘Magpie Music’ – one hour each of heavy psychedelia and the like.
On the last full day of the Australia 3-Way Mix tour we met up with Tom, Raine and the guys from Hardcore Classic, a Hip Hop show that goes out on the 2SER station in Sydney. We were quizzed for over an hour and played a short section of the live 3-Way Mix version before escaping the air condition-less studio and enjoying some down time. The interview starts at the 1hr 21 min mark and the mix follows it.
Hardcore Classic – Feb 28th 2014 (ft DJ Food, DJ Cheeba, DJ Moneyshot, Broken Thought Theory & Dboe) by Hardcore Classic on Mixcloud
At the end of the month we set out for 3 dates in France with DJ Format in support, should be fun!
We got back from Australia at 5am on Wednesday morning after what seemed like days of flying in cramped seats but it was worth it. The first mini tour of the Paul’s Boutique 3-Way Mix went well and I’ll throw out some highlights here rather than going into a prolonged tour diary.
Playing the Perth Festival outside and finishing before 10pm then going out into the crowd to chat and give away our rider. 
Landing in Melbourne to a torrential rainstorm, worse than back in the UK but being taken around by tour manager Joel to see local graffiti spots and ERT, shop sporting a tattoo parlour, recordstore, clothing, posters and spices.
Seeing old friends at the Melbourne show and rocking it despite the show being advertised as ‘Beastie Boys (USA) Paul’s Boutique feat. DJ Food, Cheeba, Moneyshot‘ (grrrrr). Finding out about ‘Vaporwave’, ‘Sea Punk’ and ‘Business Funk’ via a radio show on Melbourne radio.
Recording an impromptu mix of originals from ‘Shake Your Rump’ and ‘Hey Ladies’ for Jack Shit‘s show on FBI radio – you can listen back to it here.
Playing our best show in Sydney in front of more friends but ducking out of the proposed after party with Grandmaster Flash as it became a roadblock.
Taking the ferry to Manly to hang out with Moneyshot’s girlfriend’s ex-pat mates who served up the best BBQ.
Meeting up with DJ Hickory Dickory Dock who took me round various Sydney record spots, ending up at the excellent Revolve store near Newtown.
There’s an interview with Cheeba, Moneyshot and myself on this edition of Bristol’s Universal Magnetic Radio show with Ben One and Awkward. It was conducted inside the boat shortly after we’d nailed the InnoFADER routine a few weeks ago. Unfortunately the other two don’t get much of a word in until about half way through as a lot of the questions seemed to be directed at me. The show deals with the theme of cut ups in general and also has a section dedicated to William Burroughs who would have been 100 this month. Our interview starts about an hour in…
UM-04-02-14-Cutups by Universal Magnetic Radio Show on Mixcloud
The soundtrack mix to my fulldome version of The Search Engine has just gone up as part of the latest podcast on Solipsistic Nation. Alongside a short interview you can hear an altered, slightly more ambient version of the album with remixed versions and edits of a lot of the tracks.
This is the version that plays at the dome shows and includes the ‘Deep Space’ version of ‘GIANT’ remixed for Matt Johnson‘s as yet unreleased Lazarus compilation ‘The Others’. You can listen to the podcast here or download it directly here.
This is rather good, the BBC have produced a new radio play, ‘Darkside’, written by Tom Stoppard. He apparently wrote his dialogue over Pink Floyd‘s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, using it as a kind of “emotional underscore.” It’s going to be broadcast at 10pm next Monday on Radio 2 and Aardman Animation have created this trailer for it.
You get the impression that Jim Mahfood can pull these kind of illustrations off in his sleep, even though, some days he’s just on fire. Did you know he also has a podcast – The Beat Bee sessions – with Jane Dope and they just passed the 50th edition?
We went back to ’89 last week for United States of Audio‘s De La Soul ‘3 Feet High & Rising’ tribute mix and this week we slip another year to ’88 with Robin from Hexstatic. For this week’s Solid Steel 25th guest mix he takes us on a trip to Clink Street in London Bridge, here’s why…
“1988, 25 years ago, and the ‘Summer Of Love’ in London, little did I know how much this street would come to mean to me. An explosion of new music, new headspace, new ideas. The birth of Solid Steel on Kiss FM. It is highly coincidental that driving from the suburbs up to the infamous Clink Street raves for the first time we were listening to that exact show on the radio. To Borough, and down a side street,… at the time nobody went to this area. You could park your car on a double yellow all weekend and not get a ticket. And so into Clink Street, the RIP nights, run by Mr C and his merry cohorts. The sound here was always a bit ‘darker’, heavier beats, stripped down music and decor, the strobe and smoke. This place was definitely about the dance,..you couldn’t really hear anything but music and see anything but your hands in front of your face 
Evil Eddie and Kid Batchelor were my favourite DJ’s at the time and I’m pretty sure Coldcut played there too? Little did I know. The Jungle Brothers even came down once to do a PA of ‘I’ll House You’. They looked pretty bemused. There’s a video of it on Youtube somewhere, with Mark Moore jacking at the end. Skip forward nearly a decade of dance and I’m back in Clink Street, Winchester Wharf, a few feet opposite Clink prison, at Ninja Tune HQ, talking to Matt Black about animations for their forthcoming album. Who’d have thought it. I spend a fantastic few years there and later teamed up with Stuart (Warren-Hill) as Hexstatic, we hire our own studio in the building and embark on the task of making an AV album with a couple of pocket calculators. The building was great, full of music and arts people coming in and out all the time, (David Byrne and Jean-Jacques Perrey just dropped in once!) I was signed to a label, travelling and working with people who I greatly admired. I go past now and again. It’s luxury flats and a bloody Starbucks now 
“
To the music. We start with Nitro Deluxe and a track that bridged the gap between eclectic clubs like the Opera House and the start of Acid House, a few years old but was still getting played years later on the scene. Cultural Vibe’s ‘Ma Foom Bey’ had such a heavy slow sound, coupled with the African chanting it was the first time I’d heard a mix like this,..early Tony Humphries on the cut. Next up Sueno Latino, the first ‘Balearic’ track I came across, it would always send the floors into a trance wherever it was played. ‘Voodoo Ray’ was arguably the first UK ‘Acid House’ record, it sounded so fresh when it came out, fusing an almost ‘electro’ sound with the 303, people would always dance a certain way to that record, freaky like. Another UK record and Baby Ford’s ‘Oochy Koochy’, this was the straight up sound of the early scene to be sure. Next, one of several from Todd ‘The God’ Terry in his ‘Black Riot’ moniker. I loved this record so much I danced to it in a car park in Kingston once. ‘Big Fun’ was termed ‘techno’ on release,..seems funny now,..but it was also a big hit in the UK, Inner City even shot the video in London to capture the vibe of the time. Fallout’s ‘The Morning After’ had that lovely, slightly melancholic vibe that always felt refreshing, especially early in the morning. Think Tank and WestBam, were those freaky records that would spin everyone out,..turning to a friend with a massive grin and gesturing,..”what the hell is this?!”. Jungle Brothers get their ‘House’ in order next and then into more Todd product with a reworking of the classic ‘Weekend’. Next, the all time hands in the air anthem of anthems, ‘Let The Music Use You’ just brought a super smiley, almost spiritual vibe to dance floors,..I think most DJ’s tried to judge the ‘peak’ moment to drop it,..matey Next up, probably my favourite proper ‘acid’ track of all time, Bam Bam’s ‘Give It To Me’,.. 25 years later I still can’t decide if it’s pure genius or complete rubbish, followed by two more ‘Acid Trax’ classics from Charles B and the mighty Adonis. Stakker next and the video game sampling ‘Humanoid’, another track with that distinctive UK sound, fusing break beats with acid and crazy samples that later spawned FSOL. KC Flightt bringing a hip hop vibe to house without the cheesy ‘Hip-House’ tag and into another mix of ‘UK centric’ elements with the Afro Acid mix of Mory Kante’s ‘Yeke Yeke’,…and we finish on the upbeat sound of Longsy D and the reggae acid of ‘This Is Ska’,..yes mate.”
This era (or slightly later) was highlighted by Vice magazine in a surprisingly non-smug fashion when Clive Martin wrote an article on the YouTube comments made by partygoers under classic rave anthems. Read the comments under his article as well. We didn’t think about it at the time, same with music in the 90’s, it was just everywhere, classic after classic release, week after week. All of these tracks stand up there with any of the acknowledged Rock and Pop classics we’re constantly bombarded with on radio and in the press. I wonder when the music magazines are going to wake up and start writing features on these artists and their legacies rather than recycled the smallest piece of information on the Beatles, Stones, Who, Dylan, Hendrix et al into features for eternity?
Andy recently made a fine mix for Jonny Trunk’s OST show on Resonance FM. As they don’t have a listen again feature you might have missed it but, by the magic of the internet, it’s been made available over on the excellent A Sound Awareness blog. Go grab it a take some time to peruse the delights over there too.
Way back in March I was asked by Eddy Temple-Morris if I would be interested in putting together a short mix offering my take on the work of DJ Shadow. This was to form part of a marathon special on his XFM show celebrating Josh’s career and tying into a compilation of some sort which has since evolved into the ‘Reconstruction’ release and deluxe box set.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a big Shadow fan so this was a thrilling opportunity and also a daunting task. The mix had to be between 17 and 20 minutes long according to Eddy, how on earth to fit so many great tracks into that length of time? No idea but best get down to it and see what develops. Going through my extensive collection threw up over 80 potential tracks, skits, remixes, co-productions and original samples which totaled over 6 hours of music if I remember correctly. How to do this so that it wouldn’t be just another Shadow mix? How to present the ubiquitous but essential ‘Organ Donor’ in an exciting way? Have a listen…
Well, I couldn’t get it down to to 17 minutes, or 20, but squeezed it all into 23 which Eddy graciously let me get away with. I decided to go for the essence of a lot of tracks rather than letting everything play out, trying to edit sympathetically to each track’s progressions so it wouldn’t seem too brutal. I used a lesser-known compilation track (from ‘Turntables On The Hudson’) called ‘Flashback’ as a theme to title the mix as it’s such a blur of sonic information sometimes that it seems like it might be just that. Having not listened back since I made it nearly 6 months ago I find it’s quite an exhilarating ride if a bit relentless, which I quite like but it you might have to be in the mood for it. The solution to ‘Organ Donor’, probably his most well known creation, was to put it at the end, the big bang after a big build, mixing in the original Giorgio Moroder ‘Tears’ sample that forms the main melody as well as a newer production to show that he’s still got it.
But after all that, I still had material left over, specifically large chunks of ambient sound beds that formed a big part of his earlier releases, which is something I love about his music and that stood out as both original and uncompromising at the time. I wanted to put these together as some sort of collage without the usual beats and vocals, maybe it could be used as a bed to talk over on the radio? It was all here, might as well see what could be done with it, I doubted anyone else would go down this route too. The result is the short but sweet ‘Trip Out’ mix…
I was thinking of the KLF‘s classic ‘Chill Out’ album here, hence the pastiche of the cover and the title – also an allusion to hallucination of course but also a knowing wink to the Trip Hop genre tag that has dogged Shadow since the start of his career. I actually think this concept could have been taken further with a bit more production to extend and rearrange sections but time constraints didn’t permit. Anyway, now I had over 30 minutes of mix for Eddy when he only wanted half that. Props to him that he played both and you can hear the whole thing, along with mixes by IRN MNKY, Bare Noize, Stereo:Type and Culprit One online at XFM for the next week. If you’re abroad and you need to enter a postcode to make it think you’re listening from the UK then try W1A 1AA.
I did a mini Kraftwerk Kover Kollection (7.5) mix for Mister Sushi‘s Kraftwerk special radio show a couple of weeks ago.
Here’s some more info on the show:
In May 2012, London Fields Radio returned to multi-arts, multi-venue festival Land of Kings in Dalston to host an evening of pop-up radio with guests and hosts from across the festival line-up. We took over the Print House Gallery until midnight with a special selection of shows.
In this podcast, Nuts N’ Bolts presenter Mister Sushi hosts a one-off show in celebration of our favourite Düsseldorf quartet, Kraftwerk, a band whose influence can be clearly seen across Land of Kings festival this year. He’s joined by DJ, blog and club night Feel My Bicep to talk about how and why their legacy lives on in east London today and he premieres an exclusive mix by DJ Food filled with some of his favourite Kraftwerk covers.
Last night I did a Record Store Day round up on Solid Steel on Strongroom Alive radio, you can listen again here
or, if you prefer less chat, catch the non-vocal version with no RSD section here later on today.
I thought I’d put up some pictures of the releases I was chatting about so here you go. Wicker Man 7″ photos nicked from Stuart Ford‘s blog. More on the Vinylmania film here.
On tonight’s Solid Steel show on Strongroom Alive radio we have an exclusive 30 minute Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble mix by The Amorphous Androgynous in the guest slot. It includes a couple of exclusives as well as part of their remix of ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ which is out this coming Saturday for Record Store Day.
Sadly, I won’t be there as I’m playing in Switzerland with The Herbaliser but DK will be joined in the studio by PC and there’ll be a competition to win a copy of the 12″ in all it’s multi-coloured glory. Listen again now via Strongroom Alive’s site or Solid Steel.
The Sesame Street special I did with Jonny Trunk in 2004 for his weekly OST excursion into soundtracks, library and other esoterica is now available as a podcast from Resonance FM. This features a lot of material from the unreleased ‘D Is For Dig’ compilation I put together for Sesame Workshop in 2003 which never came to fruition because of legal matters.