Solid Steel

Solid Steel piece for The Quietus

I wrote a piece about 25 years of Solid Steel for The Quietus, highlighting one of my favourite mixes – the original Coldcut meets The Orb from 1991.

Only one week until the big London show where they meet for a third time alongside Four Tet, Mr Scruff, Actress, Trevor Jackson, Illum Sphere, DK, PC, Hexstatic, James Mountain and myself, Cheeba and Moneyshot doing our Paul’s Boutique routine.

The Hydra (who are promoting the event) have a competition over on Facebook to win tickets, goodies and a £100 bar tab if you share the flyer from their page.

 

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Solid Steel: Amorphous Androgynous + Stephen Mallinder

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.

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Format & Phill ‘UK vs Philly’ + Mr Armtone SS25 mixes

A very special pair of exclusive mixes on Solid Steel this week (isn’t there every week?) or should that be three mixes?

First up we have DJ Format AND Phill Most Chill, hot off the release of their new album, ‘The Foremost’, they’ve put together a 30 minute mix each, representing their home turfs of the UK and Philadelphia respectively and in Matt’s own words:
“Instead of doing yet another promo mix that incorporates a song or two from our new album, I thought it would be fun for me & Phill to each do a 30 minute mix of Hip Hop from our respective areas. I’m from Southampton, and since that’s not a very big place I thought it would be more fitting to play some of my favourite old UK Hip Hop records. Philadelphia always had a healthy Hip Hop scene that boasted famous artists such as DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince, Cash Money & Marvelous and Steady B just to name a few. Phill wanted to showcase some of the more obscure/random Rap records from Philly that he loves.”

You can hear and buy the album HERE and HERE – I know this is the third post about it in as many weeks but it really is great.

Next up is Solid Steel’s Russian agent, Mr Armtone, back with the follow up to his ‘Time Machine’ video mix from last year (how does he do it?). Firmly club-based in style and with a very high standard of visuals and on-screen blends (no YouTube rips here) he brings a 80 minute AV set to add to the quality collection we’re slowly building on our Vimeo page.

Mr. Armtone – Time Machine II from Solid Steel on Vimeo.

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Four Tet 2 hour Solid Steel takeover

It’s never been done before but Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet has been granted a 2 hour mix for this week’s Solid Steel ahead of his appearance at Solid Steel 25 at Fire in London on Dec 6th.

This mix is made from exclusive DJ edits either by Kieran or by fellow DJs like Daphni or Floating Points, very few of these will ever see the light of day legally and are made for club sets rather than release.

Kieran will be headlining the main room for our 25th anniversary show in London, tickets can be bought here.

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Solid Steel 25: new website and extra London guests

The Solid Steel website has had a makeover to include a 25th guest mix playlist and the ability to step back in time to older playlists and mixes. We’ve also just announced two extra guests for the London party at Fire on December 6th.

Not only will Mr Scruff be joining Illum Sphere for a 4 hour back to back vinyl session but we’ll have Four Tet headlining the main room! Very excited to add both of these excellent DJs to the line up, Scruff recorded his own Solid Steel mix nearly 10 years ago and Kieran was our first guest at the London residency of our club night in 2004. Get tickets here...

Four Tet will also be taking over the whole show this Friday Nov 1st – something no guest has ever done before – for a 2 hour mix of exclusive DJ edits.

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Ollie Teeba’s War of the Worlds mix for Solid Steel 25

About a decade ago Ollie Teeba and I embarked upon a session to re-soundtrack The War of the Worlds using Richard Burton’s excellent narrative for Jeff Wayne‘s version as the glue. That session was never finished and the audio languished for years until Ollie rebooted it and recorded a 45 minute version a few years back, presenting unique CDRs to friends and family one Xmas.

It was good but it was dense and the spoken word sometimes relentless, so I suggested he spread things out, play more of the underlying music and extend it to an hour for the show. And he has, on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the radio play first being broadcast across America and sparking a panic that the world was being invaded.

Ollie has re-styled the piece with large helpings of 70’s soundtrack work and psyche rock, digging into his favourite genres outside of Hip Hop. Well known pieces by Axelrod and Schifrin take on a new light when coupled with Burton’s story-telling and many seem tailor made for this presentation. Re-scores of famous books are pretty unique and I think this is the first time we’ve featured anything like this on Solid Steel.

You can hear Ollie performing as part of Soundsci in Bristol this evening at Sip The Juice in Stokes Croft. His Herbaliser partner in crime, Jake Wherry, will be holding it down tonight in London at Village Underground with Jaga Jazzist, Mr Thing, Kelpe and Tom Central.

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Paul’s Boutique live set debuts at Solid Steel 25, Paris

In 4 weeks time myself, DJ Cheeba & DJ Moneyshot debut a live 4 deck version of our reversion of the Beastie Boys‘ Paul’s Boutique album. Subtitled ‘Caught In The Middle of a 3-Way Mix’ we’ll be premiering it at La Bellevilloise in Paris on November 16th alongside DK and the 2013 DMC team winners, DJ Deska, Mr Viktor and Hertz.

We’ll be reprising it at the London Solid Steel at Fire on December 6th and then taking it to Australia in February 2014. Anyone interested in booking the show please contact Ben Coghill at Elastic Artists.

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DJ Food In:Motion mix on Solid Steel

A week to go until our gig in Bristol supporting DJ Shadow at the city’s official Solid Steel 25th anniversary date. Myself and DK will be joining Coldcut, DJ Cheeba and special guest Benji B to rip it up at Motion on October 11th.

For this I’ve put together a more dance floor friendly mix of releases than some of my recent offerings, taking in Mark Pritchard,  Machine Drum, Om Unit, Reso and Drums of Death – the last three all of whom have appeared on the excellent Civil Music label who also have a room at the Motion gig too.

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‘T is for Trapped’ mix on Solid Steel

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.

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‘Out Of The Future’ mix on Solid Steel

I’ve been in full on mix mode this week. I finished off a follow up to the Boards of Canada-inspired ‘O Is For Orange’ set from earlier this year called ‘T Is For Trapped’. This was already half recorded as I couldn’t fit everything into 1 hour before so had 30 minutes left over which I’ve updated and added to with other like-minded songs that have been patiently waiting their turn. At the moment I’d love to do a video version too but just don’t have the time, but it may happen as I have video for at least half of it.

The second mix, that I’ve literally just finished, is for the In Motion night we will be doing in Bristol with DJ Shadow, Coldcut, Cheeba, Civil Music and more. This set is straight up club material, unashamed four to the floor stuff and a load of ‘Amen Brother’ flavoured d’n’ b as well which will probably debut the week before the gig in October.

But firstly it’s another mix up on Solid Steel – ‘Out Of The Future’ – in a similar vein to ‘T Is For Trapped’ it features lots of synths, spacey sounds and such. The title comes from an old ad for Micronauts toys that appears at the start and Gary Numan, The Simonsound, Four Tet, Scanone, Sinoia Caves and more feature. Late night headphone music… enjoy.

In other news I’ve just finalised a DJ Food library compilation of material with Jon Tye for his Lo Editions imprint. This will be music for TV and film and it features unique edits, instrumentals, reworks and even the odd bit of unreleased material. You won’t be able to buy it but I’ll put a link up in a couple of weeks when it’s online so that people can have a listen.

I’m also about to begin work on not one but two remixes for The Amorphous Androgynous (!) and write an album of new music based around samples from the Bruton catalogue in conjunction with Universal. There’s also the small* case of rehearsing the ‘Paul’s Boutique’ mix with Moneyshot and Cheeba and the usual DJ gigs…

*(not small at all)

 

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DJ Shadow / Solid Steel 25th at Motion in Bristol

Very proud to be on this line up for our Solid Steel 25th anniversary gig in Bristol, first time sharing a bill with Shadow, another one ticked off the list.

There are also many more on the line up, not sure why they couldn’t fit them on the flyer? In the Civil Music room there’s: Om Unit, Débruit (live), Reso, Brassica (live) and Civil Music DJs. In the Inflect room there’ll be: EAN, Adam Elemental, Wascal, Daffy and Kensei
Get tickets here.

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Coldcut – 2 Hours of Sanity Pt.1: Love

It’s easy, in this daily avalanche of media, to hype something to the stars and proclaim it the greatest thing in the universe. People are paid to do it for a living regardless of the content they’re pushing but I will only feature items here that I truly think measure up.

As it’s the aforementioned 25th anniversary of Solid Steel, we’re pulling out a lot of the stops this year to bring the very best mixes to the show in the sea of free that is the web these days. We’ve had Coldcut meets The Orb, Kirk DeGiorgio embracing ambiance, classic albums by De La Soul and Public Enemy reconstructed by United States of Audio and DJ Moneyshot respectfully and that’s just the first half of the year.

So it’s a great moment when the creators of the show, Coldcut, step up with the first part of a new mix series – ‘2 Hours of Sanity’ – the first part being a mix ruminating on ‘Love’, and it’s up there with the best. This has been germinating for 3 years, I’ve heard it in various forms for at least the last year and it’s fantastic to finally have them share it with everyone. The word ‘masterclass’ has been bandied about a lot in the few days since this debuted and it’s used with good reason.

The art of the mix is about layering, combining songs, sounds and speech in new ways, in a coherent flow and creating something new from old and new. Many mixes are one song after another, beat-mixed into each other to form a perfect linear trip from A to B. It’s my opinion that the best mixes throw tempo, genre and linearity to the wind and travel from A to Z. You’ll know many of the tracks here if you’ve listened to the show over the years but you won’t have heard them like this before.

Not to forget show producer DK holding up the rear of the show with a solid (pun intended) selection and a rather tasty ‘Bollywood Steel’ mix from collaborator 2econd Class Citizen.

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Solid Steel radio show image by Andreas Mass

The Solid Steel team got this lovely message and set of images from Andreas Mass thanking us for our work over the last 25 years on the show.

“I’ve been listening to the Solid Steel Radio Show for many years now. You never failed to make my day, or at least make it a better day by bringing out a new mix.
To all who are responsible for managing the Radio Show and of course to every regular and featured DJ, big props for creating, evolving and keeping it running!”

Andreas is a graphic designer and 3D artist working in Cologne, Germany and you can see more images and his artist profile on Behance.

On a personal note it’s kind of crazy to think that I debuted on the show in the summer of 1993 – 20 years ago! I had just left graphic design college and was asked by Matt Black to guest under the Openmind name with one of my flatmates at the time, Mario Aguera.

Since then, having been asked back again and again, I became one of the team and have lost count of the amount of mixes I’ve clocked up on the show. It’s sometimes easy to forget that I have a platform at my disposal as and when I make mixes and that that platform has a growing numbers of fans every week. I don’t make as many mixes as I’d like these days but I spend much more time than I ever did on the ones I do to ensure they at least come up to standard with the rest of the content.

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Trevor Jackson’s ‘Edit!’ mix for Solid Steel 25

DK takes the first 40 minutes then Trevor Jackson cuts up the Tape Edit Kings of the 80’s.

In his own words; “This mix consists of electro/freestyle/miami bass classics & bonus beat edits by the likes of Chep Nunez, Omar Santana & The Latin Rascals, how they did what they did with just tape, a reel 2 reel & a razor blade still defies belief  and continues to inspire me as much as it did when I first heard their work in the mid 80’s
There is no tracklisting & won’t be because I come from a generation when Shazam. Discogs, eBay & Google didn’t exist, when I first heard something on the radio in a club or a mixtape it often took me many months of desperate searching to find out what it was, I’m more than happy to inflict this highly satisfying laborious experience upon you, you’ll appreciate it in the long run.”

The second hour has an interview with Thundercat and DK finishing up with a tribute to George Duke who died earlier this week.

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Solid Steel 25th Anniversary Party (London)

This promises to be a pretty unique event, you’re not going to get a line up like this every day. Even more so once the Very Special Guests (3 in total) are announced. The end of the 25th year will be seen out in style and Cheeba, Moneyshot and I will attempt to recreate the Paul’s Boutique mix we put together last year.

Tickets can be bought here and we should be announcing similar events in Bristol and Paris very soon.

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