E is for Eighties Edits – the next installment in the Alphabet mix series…
Solid Steel
Off to Australia tomorrow for 3 gigs in the sun – can’t wait to feel warm again and hook up with the likes of DJ HDD and others. Posts on here may be sporadic to non-existent for the next 10 days but I’ve just finished a mix of 80’s pop remixes and re-edits that may appear on Solid Steel at some point.
Solid Steel this week features an exclusive hour of Kid Koala live in Victoria, Canada. The second hour brings a mix from yours truly coupled with a tribute to Trish Keenan and the music of Broadcast by Markey Funk.
It’s now three years this week since Trish passed away and last year Markey put together a new soundtrack to the 1966 Jonathan Miller TV version of Alice In Wonderland made entirely from the music of Broadcast. We feature half an hour of that mix but it’s best watched with the film in full which you can see here or here.
My mix kicks things off though and takes the distorted drums and fuzzy electronics route with a detour into James Murphy‘s recent David Bowie remix in the middle.
Very pleased to have commissioned this mix from Chop for the latest installment of Solid Steel and it’s something slightly different from him too. Here’s what he said about it;
“I’ve been listening to quite a lot of French, Japanese and electronic library music of late. This mix for me has been about discovering and re-discovering some fantastic artists/music from around the globe. Whether its the eccentric French sounds of Marc Moulin‘s – Telex, mutations from YMO genius Haruomi Hosono or the influential proto-electronica of Manuel Gottsching I think there’s something here for everyone from diggers to digesters of great music.”
His last album, ‘Illuminate’, came out in August 2013 on Now Again and is available here
DK and I have created a set on Soundcloud where you can directly access all my Solid Steel mixes with one click. With the archive on Soundcloud now several years deep and also being that it is part of the overall Ninja Tune account, it’s increasingly hard to find things easily. Now you can with one click. If I’ve had a mix on the show it should be here, whether a solo mix, part of a collaboration or sharing an hour with another DJ.
So, if you wanted to check the Beastie Boys ‘Paul’s Boutique’ reconstruction I did with Cheeba and Moneyshot, it’s here. Likewise the ‘Free Comic Book Day’ mix, ‘O Is For Orange’ or ‘In:Motion’ mixes and many more. I give most of my mixes titles, one day I should go through and make an inventory of the lot…
I joined two recent Solid Steel mixes together to form this downtempo, dark synth-laden hour of sparse electronica and such. I think they work together nicely as one piece rather than separate sets. Enjoy in headphones late at night.
What to say about last Friday’s Solid Steel 25th anniversary at Fire in London? It was amazing, exhausting, exhilarating and unique at different times. I personally had a great night and haven’t danced so much in years (mainly to Robin Hexstatic‘s amazing Acid set in the Light Box).
I heard fantastic music in all three rooms, it’s just a pity I couldn’t actually be in all of them all night. DK, PC and I surprised people by doing an unannounced version of the ‘Now, Listen’ mix CD from 2001 – unrehearsed and mainly mapped out at sound check. Cheeba, Moneyshot and I managed to just about pull off the Paul’s Boutique 3-Way mix and PC stepped up afterwards with a rousing Nelson Mandela speech (RIP) and straight into Ritchie Havens’‘s ‘Going Back To My Roots’.
Here are some photos of the night by Beth aka Daddy’s Got Sweets and there are more over on Resident Advisor. (Coldcut meets The Orb flight deck, Matt Black and Alex Paterson and 3-Way Mix kit photos by Cheeba and I)
There’s a fantastic review of the night here by Raya Raycheva and Joe Muggs did a huge 5 page history of the show with myself, Coldcut, DK and Ninja label boss Peter Quicke for FACT.
I did an interview about the show with The Ransom Note last week, you can read it here and I also wrote a piece about the show and my favourite mix – Coldcut meets The Orb – for The Quietus.
Earlier in the evening, at the pre-gig dinner, DK and I were presented, completely by surprise, with a tongue-in-cheek framed disc by Coldcut, recognising our ‘broadest beats, masterful mixing and unerring dedication’ to the show over the years 
A selection of these, with a mystery mix selection, will literally be floating around the club tomorrow for the first 100 people in the door…
Tickets available from Resident Advisor or on the door.
Nearly forgot, I take up the last half hour after DK on Solid Steel this week with a companion piece to last weeks mix – very mellow and a bit dark in places too.
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.
Not long now until the London Solid Steel 25th anniversary gig at Fire closes out the year in fine style. Tickets available here…
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.
Also, we just hit 90,000 plays on the original mix on Soundcloud! Thanks to everyone who listened, the new live version is longer, remixed and we aim to add video at some point in the future…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
