Machines Are Funky: 31/5/08 with B12 Comp

On tonight's gut-bustingly exciting production, I'll be spinning the latest from the likes of The Per Eckbo Orchestra on Oslo (definitely more exciting than it sounds), Nick Curly and Reclick on Murmur (Geddes' of Mulletover's label), Raiders of the Lost Arp on Nature and Lemos on Cecille Numbers.

I've also got two copies of the latest B12 cd "Last Days of Silence." So listen in if you fancy winning a bit of techno from one of the UK's originators.

Keep it locked during June for a guest mix from ex-Cambridge resident cum-Berliner Mark Henning, as well as a comp to win his debut cd on Soma "Jupiter Jive" (14/6), as well as a guest mix from pioneering decktician and king of the tape edit Greg Wilson, plus a comp to win his soon-to-be-released 20/20 Vision mix compilation "Greg Wilson's 20/20 Vision.

Machines Are Funky: 105FM in Cambridge, 209radio.co.uk everywhere else

7-9pm BST

Link at the top of links section.

Get Your Wadsworth - Kris Wadsworth (Morris Audio)

Read my RA review if Kris Wadsworth's "Get Your Wadsworth" EP here.

Panspermia

Panspermia (Gk. πάς/πάν (pas/pan, all) σπέρμα (sperma, seed)) is the hypothesis that "seeds" of life exist already all over the Universe, that life on Earth may have originated through these "seeds", and that they may deliver or have delivered life to other habitable bodies.


So I finally got around to doing a mix on time. It's always under duress though. Grubs hanging around in their tattered egg cases upstairs ready to hatch and smaller offspring ready to burst in and show a healthy disrespect for my efforts at any moment means I must work fast. I'll have been over to Barcelona for Sonar (or, more truthfully, off-Sonar) before the next one goes up.

Panspermia Tracklist:

Foxy Lady - L'Homme Qui Valait 3 Milliards $ (Cassius)
We Said Nothing - Matthew Styles (Diamonds and Pearls)
Detroit Night - Kris Wadsworth (CDR)
Berlin Dub - Mixworks (Mixworks)
Lost Tracks of Detroit (?)
Motions (Sunrise dub) - Patrice Scott (Sistrum)
Visions - Dubshape (8-Bit)
Doom Deferred - Silent Servant (Sandwell District)
How Long Must I Continue (G's Freedom Train mix) - Mike Grant (Moods and Grooves)
Psychotic Phtosynthesis - Omar S (FXHE)
Equalized 1
Baccara - Guido Schneider & Andre Galluzzi (Highgrade)
M.A.M. (Marcel Dettmann remix) - Gowentgone (Vidab)
Louder Elvis - Lee van Dowski (Leena)
Space (Radio Slave remix) - Minilogue (Traum)
Give Myself to You (Grand Ballroom mix) - The Daou (Tribal)

These are all tracks that have been favourites of mine over the last couple of months and beyond. More next month. Download here.

The Weather's Shit . . .

. . .so what else can I do but upload a few more choice cuts from the archives.





Casa - Jeff Mills (Axis)

From "The Purpose Maker" which spawned a label in itself, "Casa" is probably my favourite cut from four. This EP arguably started something completely new in techno, being composed of subtly sampled disco and tribal rhythms which are held together by a pounding beat. Primeval, yet totally modern.




Life (Derrick Carter Mix) - Blair (Promo)

Always great with a vocal. Derrick Carter puts his trademark boompty beats under a scatty, jazzy vocal for a great singalong track.


Baby Put My Mind At Ease - Automagic (Captivating)

A Mark Farina fave a few years back. Disco heaven.





Erotic Illusions (Decadent Dub) - Abacus (Fragile)

Austin Bascombe's second release, and put out on Transmat offshoot Fragile. Excellent deepness built on a foundation of tropical percussion.



Open Late - Steve O' Sullivan (Blue Trane)

I don't know if this is what the track's called. Anyway it's track A2 and it's a lovely dubby trancey little beast that teases the listener because it never really lets go. This is from the first release on O'Sullivan's Blue Trane imprint the influence of which, together with his work on Mosaic and Ferox, is still being felt today. Great stuff

More Random Ruminations

Title: In Theory Yes
Artist: Shlomi Aber
Label: Be As One
Genre: Techno

In Theory Yes
Efrat

Part of Mossad's digital wing, Shlomi Aber, along with Guy Gerber, Itamar Sagi, Chaim and Gel Abril (I'm sure I've forgotten somebody else here) have exported their own sound from Israel which, while not being stunningly different from anything else, is highly polished and does all the right things well. This is a typical piece of understated, restrained but competent and melodic techno from Shlomi which matches "Freakside" beat for beat in my opinion. Both sides are eminently playable, but my personal preference is "Efrat."

Title: Distant Brother Remixes
Artist: Pedro Cali
Label: Fine Art
Genre: Just when you need it big tune

Distant Brother (original)
Distant Brother (Rennie Foster remix)
Distant Brother (Ran Shani remix)

These are all so good it's difficult to pick one. I've played the Ran Shani mix on the radio and but the Rennie Foster one on a recent mix of mine (it didn't help that I took the mix off this blog because I hadn't listened to it before it went up and it was full of glitches but this was coming in straight after Patrice Scott's "Motions (sunrise dub)" and it sounded ace!) Excellent package. It's a bit big room/big sound and it veers just on the right side of cheese. But when it's pulled off with such aplomb who gives a shit.

Title: Nacho
Artist: BLM
Label: Fear of Flying
Genre: Techno of the Housier Extraction

Believe in Love (original)
Believe in Love Westpark Unit remix)
Oi Pedro Do You Do Chips
Nacho

The original of "Believe in Love" is pure Detroit. All the best bits are there. Spacey synth stabs, toms, subtle cymbals etc. Dunno if the vocals an original or a sample, sounds like a sample. This is definitely more than the sum of it's parts. Westpark Unit slow things down to walking pace but while this remix has swagger it doesn't touch the heights of the original. I can't imagine it's meant to though. "Oi Pedro . . ." has a daft title but makes up for a lack of seriousness by laying down the type of groove that is omnipresent in Mark Farina's sets. It's all good but the best is saved until last with "Nacho." A deep excursion through the alleys of the collective consciousness of all the best messy warehouse raves you've been to. Speeds up and gathers momentum at all the right moments. Some crafty editing in there. Very tasty.


Title: Seven Peanuts EP
Artist: Phillipe Autuori
Label: Hypercolour
Genre: Under The Influence

A1 Seven Peanuts featuring Thomas Meyers (original)
A2 Seven Peanuts (Skylark remix)
B1 Redemption featuring LN (original)
B2 Redemption (Shenoda BAG remix)

Now what does this remind me of? The original has a cold, narcotic feel . . . hold on . . it's the feeling I get when I wake up from a dream that involves me walking naked through a deserted city centre with feet the size and weight of diving boots. It's bleak and druggy. Good flat vocal, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. The "Skylark remix" keeps the vocal but has a more peppy backing track that could be termed as minimal P-Funk. "Redemption" also does the biz in both it's forms, despite sounding initially a little too "teutonically electro" for it's own good (that's the vocal specifically, pop pickers). The "Shenoda BAG remix" puts a tribal slant on things, fucks with the vocal (or changes the vocalist??) and calls to mind "Gravelifter" by The Foremost Poets, and that can't be bad can it?

Machines Are Funky: 17/5/08

Here is last night's playlist:

Billy Says Go - Audion (Spectral Sound)
Redemption (Shenoda B.A.G. remix) - Phillipe Autuori (Hypercolour)
Ripped Open - Kris Wadsworth (Morris Audio)
Uno - The Electric Press (20/20 Vison)
Crank (Zander VT remix) - Pan-Pot (Mobilee)
Raw Beauty (Luke Solomon remix) - Losoul (Playhouse)
Efrat-Shlomi Aber (Be As One)
Gracias a los Vinos - The Mole (Wagon Repair)
Rabouine House - Anthony Collins (Freak n' Chic)
Subbie (T Rock remix 2) - Mr G (Oproof)
Rush (John Tejada remix) - Frankie (Frankie)
Moody Bastard (Ed Davenport remix) - Mark Henning (Soma)
Nacho - BLM (Fear of Flying)
Wakefield - RNDM (Dial)
Oedipe - Ulysee (Motoguzzi)
Lookooshere (Wighnomy's Rollmop remix) - Kreon & Lemos (Resopal Red)
Mild Pitch - Manuel Tur & D Play (Drumpoet Community)
Steady Play - Ben Klock (Klockworks)

Words Floating Up And Then Away . . .

Title: Stay Out All Night
Artist: Josh Wink
Label: Ovum
Genre: Tech House

Stay Up All Night (Organ mix)
Stay Up All Night (No Organ)
Stay Up All Night (Dub)

This is a functional track by Wink and it's one of those that when you read the feedback you wonder if you've got a special "edit". It throbs along in an understated way and will no doubt underlay some more attention-grabbing tunes, enhancing their dancefloor worth, but nothing special. The "organ mix" and "no organ" only differ in the most obvious way. The "dub" checks in at about half the length of the other two versions and emphasises the percussion and the organ, shrinking the throbbing underlying bass to within an inch of it's life. None of these do it for me, but it's going to be remixed by Harry Romero, Someone Else and Dixon so hopefully they'll do something a litlle bit more indiosyncratic.

Title: World Keeps Turning
Artist: Psychonauts
Label: Souvenir
Genre: Bombastic

World Keeps Turning (original)
World Keeps Turning (Audiofly remix)
World Keeps Turning (Highfish remix)
World Keeps Turning (Mogg & Naudascher remix)

The Psychonauts biggie "World Keeps Turning" gets a rerelease with some shiny new remixes on Tiefschwarz's Souvenir. Sorry to be so negative from the beginning, but I didn't like it then and I still don't. It's over-ostentatious, both lyrically and vocally. So let's neatly side-step my obvious prejudice and get to the remixes. The "Mogg and Naudeshcer" remix toughens things up a lot, enough to make it unrecognisable from the original, and I love me 303. Unfortunately the vocal is still well in evidence so I'm not going to go overboard about it. The "Highfish" remix gives a lot of space to the vocal and underlays it with a nice dramatic backdrop p;lucked straight from Europe's frozen wastes. Audiofly provide the slowest-ppaced remix on offer here, and perhaps the most interesting, but I'm just not a fan of the vocal, and if you don't like that then there's no point with this package. The remixes do their best to offer something different respectively, the quality of the instrumental input is high and I dare say this will be a well-received package, but the vocal overshadows everything for me. Audiofly take the honours here though.



Title: Babouine House
Artist: Anthony Collins
Label: Freak n' Chic
Genre: Tech House

Babouine House (original)
Babouine House (Mikael Stavostrand remix)

Good two-tracker that doesn't do anything except rock the floor in it's own sweet way. The original relies on congas and bongoes to keep it going and is punctuated by vocal snippets in a language I don't understand, there's the simple touch of a vibrating bell that stays at a constant pitch throughout parts of the track too. Other touches come in and out of the tracks too at just the right time. Mikael Stavostrand strips 'tings down and keeps things more menacing and subdued, subtly distorting and underplaying the vocal and distilling the percussion down to one or two of it's original elements. Cleverly done and devilishly devious.

Title: Tumble Dry Low EP
Artist: Various
Label: Siteholder Uncut
Genre: Tech-House

Here I Come - Brad Miner
White Socks - Quell
David's Song - Andrew Grant
Fuzzyhead - Diego Fieri
Osaka - Pablo Rez

Aren't you sick by now of the genre "tech-house"? What is it anyway? I remember when it was first coined and the Wiggle lads, Terry Francis and Nathan Coles said it applied to good house and techno, anything they'd consider playing in fact, or something like that. So here's the "Tumble Dry Low EP" on Siteholder Uncut, and a fine mixed bag of tech funk goodies it is too. I'll be brief because my son's crying and wants a bath so I'll just say that there isn't a bad track on this EP. I particularly like Brad Miner's offering as well as Andrew Grant's. Diego Fieri's "Fuzzyhead" is just the right combination of raw, jackin' funk and sleaze while "Osaka" by Pablo Rez is a chunky offering that throbs through the slipstream and out into the sunshine. Quell keeps things real with a very housey offering with the tunes elements nicely offsetting each other. It's all good.

Equilibrium

So, I get enough good music here nowadays and never have time to play it all. I still won't have time to play it all, but plan to air a little bit more of it in my new mix series to start at the end of this month. I'll search through some of my archived gems in order to mix some up and there'll be a full-blown philosophy behind it too. I've always had a very deliberate approach to constructing mixes at home which is much different from when I play out. Maybe it's normal but I'm much more easily distracted at home in the lab.

Maybe it's a failing but I normally don't approach mixes totally spontaneously at home. There's a big element of planning and during the session at least a couple of mad scrambles to find tracks that were right under my nose and a few more of instant choices. I suppose that's as spontaneous as it gets. There's also always been a level of risk taking and leaping in the dark. Paradoxically this isn't as prevalent when I play out. I tend to play it safer and more mono dimensional. I also prefer a mix with peaks and troughs, not one that throbs at the same constant level all the way through, although those are very nice too. I try to operate within pyramidal parameters. Building up to a peak somewhere around the middle and then descending at the same rate.

The biggest problem though is finding the time alone to do one. Of course this isn't a consideration in a club or at a party but the distractions at home are more real and not as easy to brush off. It can be a stressful hour or so, not knowing what's going to come up next and an exhilarating one too. The activity assumes a life of it's own and you just get deeper into it only to sometimes be rewarded by disappointment as a distracted move pulls the beat out of sync, and the thing is it's not a big deal, nobody will notice it except you, but you will, and it'll do your head in until you've got it out of your system by either playing it and playing it back again in an attempt to convince yourself it doesn't really exist, doing the whole thing again or doing a completely new one.

Equilibrium will be kicking off before the end of May. Keep it locked.

There's Still Sickness In This House . . .

But I'll be back at the day job tomorrow. Just about recovered from an awful bout of gastroenteritis. I couldn't forget the blog though. Four more of the best. I'm trying my hardest to track down DBX's remix of "Vampirella." It's out there, somewhere . . .




Stardancer - The Martian (Red Planet)


This should please someone north of the border even though he's got it. The only thing I don't like about this track is that it's much too short. It's one big, huge incandescent rush of energy. Fifteen years old and counting. Will it ever be bettered? Did Detroit peak here? Not exactly but another would be nice.




Losing Control (Carl Craig remix) - DBX (Peacefrog)

The pick of the bunch for me. Remixes also come courtesy of Robert Hood and Plastikman. Carl Craig turns in a proto-minimal stormer of Dan Bell's classic.





Art and Soul - Octave One (430 West)

Picked this one at random and it's not a bad choice being a little bit left-field of the Burden Brothers normal sound. Not as groovesome as we're used to from them but groovy nonetheless. More to be posted from the cosmic siblings soonio.




Gamma Player - Millsart (Axis)

From the "Humana" EP and one of my favourite Jeff Mills tracks. Enigmatic and beguiling. It's deeper than the Mariana trench and seems to belong to the past just as much as the future. The woman on the label is a resident of the twilight zone and the whole concept reeks of paranoia.

Out the Boat - Gerald Mitchell (Reincarnation)

I've just about got enough strength to say "read my RA review of Gerald Mitchell's "Out the Boat" here.

Fucking disease. I feel as strong as a young Shirley Temple at the moment. So much for making the most of a bank holiday weekend. I've spent most of it in bed. Normal service will, I hope, be resumed within the next couple of days.

I Suppose It Had To Happen One Day

Just an almighty pain it happened to be today. I've had to cancel tonight's show because I'm ill, I've got a touch of what Marcel's got, so both ends burning and general lethargy. The most annoying thing though was that I was going to interview A Guy Called Gerald before his slot at the Junction tonight. Anyway, I've just chatted to him and he's up for answering a few questions by email. Not the same but better than nowt.

The Circus is in Town this Weekend

Bloody hell, I must have been deaf when I mixed "Alimentary's Canal." I've had some good feedback for it but I'm sure it's down to some of the tunes on it rather than my mixing. The next one, and all subsequent offerings will be the bollocks. Meanwhile, here's what's happening this weekend in Cambridge.



The circus is in town this weekend with the Hacienda nostalgia roadshow. I made it there once and will be in attendance tomorrow night if only to see and hear Bez dj.

And on tomorrow's show . . .

To keep you company this Bank Holiday weekend, we've got plenty of fresh electronic offerings from the likes of D'julz, Mr G, Audion, Damian Schwartz, The Electric Press, Pan-Pot and Nick Holder.

All good stuff and much more besides. Keep it locked. Link on the side of this page. 105FM in Cambridge, 7-9pm BST.

Hey Kids It's Time for Diarrhoea

Marcel. one of my boys, is at home with a dicky tum, so it's time to captalise and put a few more bits up.





Sex in Zero Gravity - The Martian (Red Planet)

Maybe the most notable release on Mad Mike's side project. Lush Detroit hi-tek funk that does indeed sound like it comes from another world.




Show Me the Way - DJ Sneak (Henry Street)


When cousin Mathieu was here the other week we dusted this one off and went on a nostalgia trip. From the polyester EP. Mournful violins with a strong kick.




Altered States - Ron Trent (D-Jax-Up-Beats)

Ron Trent's signature tune. It doesn't matter how much deep house he makes, he'll never be able to top this.

Domina (Carl Craig's Mind Mix) - Maurizio (Maurizio M-3)

Backed by Maurizio's version, this is a bitterweet piece of timeless electronica.