Afterparties

Hi all, apologies I haven't written anything in a while, its been a busy few weeks recently!

I want to talk about afterparties, I was in Amsterdam recently and attended this event:

It was a superb event (the pub crawl wasn't good beforehand but thats another story!), it took us a while to find the venue as we kept on walking past it, Elliot played some great tracks, and I even forgave him for an edit of 'Needin' you'.

The event finished at 5am and there was an afterparty afterwards going on until 11am or so at Cue Bar - after more walking around we finally found this place and preceeded to queue up outside to try and get in.  This was probably the most entertaining part of the night -not the music - but actually trying to get in to the venue, it was actually FUN!  What I'm getting at is that the afterparty scene seems to be almost too easy to find in London - with venues and parties such as The Egg and Cable hosting Jaded advertising on RA and places like that.  You queue up, pay your money and you get in, when you're in it just feels like another party - it could be anytime... I miss the challenge of actually finding and having to work to get into venues - this makes the party much more special to me knowing there are people outside still trying to get in, envying you!  

So back to the Amsterdam one, we both still had our Studio 80 bands on and were hauled off to one side of the door and told to wait there whilst some people, probably locals/friends of the bouncer went straight in.  It was quite gratifying to see a much longer queue on the other side of the door who didn't have bands on but were holding notes waving them at the bouncer like he was a stripper.  After 10 minutes of patient waiting he gave us 'the nod' and we were let in.  The wall of heat and sweat in that dark room impervious to the growing sunlight outside felt all the more special... 

Sankeys Mix competition

Yep, been sucked into another one... d'oh! lol Well it doesn't hurt to try!

Mix is above at the top of the page... Need all the listens I can get really... 50 would be awesome for the shortlist... :-)  Tracklisting is below:


Welcome aboard
Main Stem - Electric fan
Daft Punk - Funk AD
Archie Bronson Outfit - Chunk (6th Borough Project remix)
Main Stem - Bomma jack-it
Lauer - Delta NRG (Mock & Toof remix)
Brandt Brauer Frick - Bop
Yello - Bostich
Main Stem - Get redeemed
Jay Haze - I'm riding high
Bocca Grande - Bremen Orchestra re-edit remade
Roberto - Logical progression (Jamie Anderson remix)
Jay Haze feat. Ricardo Villalobos - The dark disco

Cheers all!

House Logger Likes... #2

See you there...

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?