Summer evenings mix inc Lone, The Cardigans, Valentin Stip etc

You may have noticed a new mix go up at the top of the page...  Heres the tracklisting...


Valentin Stip - Anytime will do
Liv Lykke - Notes fall
Lone - Sungrazer cascade
The Cardigans - Erase & rewind
Sergy Fresh, Andras Fox & Tutu Sweene - Told me
The Orb - Fluffy little clouds (Dance Mix mkII)
Bocca Grande - Procedure
Arandel - #1
Burial - Stolen dog
Marvin Belton - Bleed to be free
Cavalier - Umadoshi (Break my heart)
Kaytronik - Love rethought
Trus'me - In the red
Valentin Stip - Gravels I&II
Burial - Street halo
Robag Wrhume - Pnom gobal
Murk - Reach for me (Paul Woolford re-edit)
Bocca Grande - Bremen orchestra (Re-edited remake)
Jesper Ryom - Luna
Kerri Chandler - Halleuyah (Kaoz club mix)
Kerri Chandler - The invaders
Burial - NYC

I'd be curious to see what people think, its not the easiest mix to listen to but I think it flows fairly well...

Event Review #5 - Nico Jaar @ Fabric

Writing this while I remember it...

I've seen Nico Jaar before, in CAMP, and to be honest, hes a challenging person to get into (no pun intended), even more so live...  Which is why I was especially surprised to see 2 nights of him playing live at Fabric, looking at the line ups and the times it was no contest which day to go for, the 4am finish winning out over the Wednesday...

So I arrive, at 10.10pm ish and the queue for the very limited on the door tickets is insane, makes me glad I bought mine in advance, I get in and contrary to the line up poster for this night Soul Clap are opening (it was meant to be Gadi Mizrahi), they do their thing nicely mixing up old and new funk eg

At which I went mental - I am actually quite annoyed they played this because this was my secret weapon, never mind...  Tracks from Barry White and Jamie Foxx went with it before Gadi finally arrived and took people down into a deeper rabbit hole.

Valentin Stip was on first on the stage at midnight and he did his thing, I was very irritated by the people at the front of the stage almost booing him for starting too slow, you can never rush a live artist.  Tried to show my support by clapping a lot (was quite drunk by this time), so not sure if that got through, he did seem very nervous though...  Anyway he played some great dubsteppy tracks, very deep and mournful even, but with lots of energy...

Nico Jaar was up next on the larger part of the stage of Rm 1 and this was when I made my escape to the bar, I've seen Jaar before, and I know what to expect.  I also know what to expect of a crowd that is not expecting what they are hearing from a Jaar show = crush.  He was typically Bohemic in his track selection with the sax player particularly prominent in several tracks, unfortunately so because he wasn't particularly good...

Soul Clap then finished the night off and this is where the review ends because I don't remember much past 2am....

Cheers and good night

8/10

Event Review #3 & #4 - Lovebox and Huntley & Palmer's Audio Club

Friday was taken up by a visit to London and to two different events, the flyers are below...

Lovebox was our first stop at Victoria Park, a place seemingly built specially for events like this... A large grass area where the festivals set up shop in different layouts.  Lovebox was well spread out with around 7 stages of varying sizes.  The main stage was not operating on Friday, the largest one being the Gaymer's which was host to the bands on the afternoon.  Other stages included Rinse, NYC downlow (more on that later), and the Bacardi Get Together.

First up we caught the end of Architecture in Helsinki, an 80's synth band that seem to be all the rage at the moment, some nice catchy tracks that swapped between a female and male lead singer.  Wasn't really sure what the drummer was doing because the percussion was highly electronic.  Recommended though.

Ed Sheeran was next on stage, and suddenly the crowd expanded massively, mostly late teenagers, attracted by Ed's chart status.  He went through a few of his average album tracks to start off with  then moved into A-team and Little Lady, during which he brought out his collaborator Mikill Payne.  I was very impressed with his acoustic tracks, really showing off his choirboy vocals.

Staying by the Gaymer's stage we then caught Beardyman who was the most incredible act I have ever seen, a beatboxer that uses complex equipment to loop and distort the sounds emanating from his mouth.  His set list included loads of well known tracks with a bouncy beat behind all of them.  The video below is an example of what goes on during his set:

We then went off in search of other music at the smaller stages, Rinse didn't really catch out attention and it was far too close to the Relentless stage, the sound clashing - and not in a good way.  We then spotted the Bacardi stage that was built in the form of castle with the DJs in the centre and what looked like a VIP section around the back.  Jaymo and Andy George were playing, nicely warming up for Aeroplane who started at 8pm.  We caught a small amount of his funky set before heading off to find out where Flying Lotus was playing.

This is where it started going a bit wrong.  The NYC downlow stage was a old dilapidated building with a familiar yellow NY taxi crashed into the top of it.  The queue to get in stretched right across the park from the entrance that was guarded by a fence, bottlenecking it.  Once we got closer, almost inside there was a sudden crush to get in, we didn't see exactly what happened but it seemed that people were coming from the side as well as coming our way.  Security dealt with it well but then closed the entrance which was very annoying - having waited 30 mins in and then being not let in.

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Later on that evening we hit Plastic People for Huntley and Palmer's Audio club for Its a Fine Line with Ivan Smagghe and Tim Paris, they were playing all night which meant they could really stretch their audio legs running through a variety of genres ending up with some pretty awesome electro at the end.  Couldn't name one tune that they played but thats fine by me!  

Plastic People was everything it promised - small and intimate with a great sound system, I will definitely try and get down to both the venue and the night again wherever it may be.  The only criticism may be that it finished far early at 3am!

T-shirt design 2

The second t-shirt I have done - this one has a more house theme to it!  Any comments?

Out and About... Where I'll be this weekend...

Not seen Ivan Smagghe or Tim Paris before so this will be great!

Looking forward to Flying Lotus, Photek, The Wombats and Beardyman especially!

Trends

So... In the last few years we've seen the rise of minimal, slo mo house, disco sampled house, 'funky' house, and a form of bass house that straddles the divide between house and dubstep. All of which have either been represented or been repeated from an earlier time. So whats coming next?

Far from me to stick my neck out with some predictions but there do seem to be some trends:

For DJs such as Jamie Jones the progression has been from minimal, dark edged techno through to starting Hot Natured and the funk fuelled explosion that has come with it - as Little White Earbuds has noted:

"Over the last six months that’s meant a deluge of house tracks with full on vocals, not just the snippets that dotted 2010′s output."

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/chart/lwe-2q-reports-2011-overrated/

Does this indicate a move back towards vocal house do we think? I might think so... The funk has been returning for a while through influential producers such as Sergio Santos, Soul Clap, Lee Curtis etc... I might even go as far to say that we could see a return of the full on 'proper' funky house of the late '90s and early '00s that dominated Defected, Soulfuric and Subliminal's output. These producers and accompanying DJs are in the enviable position of being trend setters and it would be interesting to see older tracks popping up in their sets.

The next trend has been around the bass house/dubstep house/funky house (not to be confused with the 'proper' funky house), I think this may indicate a 4/4 garage comeback, with DJs such as Scuba pushing this kind of sound theres no reason to think it may not happen...

http://boilerroom.tv/scubas-45-min-mix/

Scuba's boilerroom mix containing some of the sounds indicated...

Lastly and perhaps most controversially... Progressive house... interesting this one and its not that clear to me why there is such a stigma attached to the genre, I still dig out my old Digweed or Kleinenberg CDs. It is a type of melodic house that may not be out of place:

Or try Groovemates - Natural Sound on for size - couldn't find it on Youtube...

This next year will be an interesting one as it seems like there has been a decade of innovation in the dance music arena squeezed into a few years that has flown by...

The London divide

I find London interesting and wonder if any other cities are like this? Over the weekend the flow of people changes by age and type... (There are a few exceptions!)

Fridays are young, urban based and alternative, the city pubs filling up early after people finish work, the sun going down on a long day. Home for a short time before heading out again for Fabric, XOYO or Cable.

Saturdays are more grown up, focussed and dedicated, bars opening up at lunch time for those shopping or those starting early, the music bubbling out from doorways from late evening and the fences keeping the crowds contained only being rattled from past midnight.

Sundays are an all day mixture of ebb and flow of people going home, coming out and going home, with the parties dominated by house and techno with a sunshine slant.

This is a common theme for London weekends - the trainers on a Friday, the moccasins on Saturdays and the sandals on a Sunday...

Edits mix...

I've done an edits mix - you can find it at the top of the page, its full of the best edits I could find on Soundcloud and around the place. There are a few other bits thrown in as well for good measure.

I'd like to say thanks to all those guys making these edits, putting them up for free downloads and making DJing a lot more entertaining! Even with the edits some are tricky to mix which makes them fun! I never use the sync button - as you can probably hear lol

Tracklist:

Main Stem - Creative use of space

Satellite - The asteroids galaxy tour (Drilla's edit)

Jay Haze - New freedom

Pink Floyd - Have a cigar (Osvaldo Wilson Grey Sunday edit)

Joe Cocker - Woman to woman (Apple Scruff's edit)

Nico Jaar - Mini Calcutta

Jacques Dutranc - Hippie hurrah (Alkino edit)

Faces (Rayko edit)

Rufus Thomas - Breakdown (Hawk's edit)

Main Stem - Couldn't edit right

Simple Pleasures - You got the hot stuff (Microwave edit)

Feel my love (Rayko edit)

Queen - Its fun to smoke marijuana (Jimmy Michaels mix)

Joubert Singers - Stand on the word (Leftside Wobble edit)

Death On The Balcony - Cruel banana

Simpson & Neville - Baby wants to edit

Fantastic Johnny C - Don't depend on me (J*ski edit)

Lani Hall - Tiny dancer (Apple Scruff's edit)