Solid Steel

Pepe Deluxé ‘Queen of the Wave’ album launch

In addition to the prep for the Pure Evil gallery exhibition I was playing at the Pepe Deluxe album launch party at the London Aquarium on Monday night, mixing water, sea and surf inspired music before and after their ‘Queen of the Wave’ LP play back. Out came everything from Jaws, James Bond and The Deep soundtracks to Led Zep’s ‘The Ocean’ and Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke On The Water’. The gig was held in the Ship Wreck Room which has a whole wall of glass looking into a giant fish tank populated by all manner of sharks, fish and three huge Easter Island heads. It was fun to play to an audience who didn’t make requests and gently bobbed their heads to even the most obscure surf soundtracks.

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I finally met Jari and Paul too (Pepe Deluxé) and they gave out mini books containing all the album companions they’d been posting on their site a well as nice little lunch boxes for the post-work crowd to chew on.

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Not only is their new album, ‘Queen of the Wave’, (finally) out today but they have a new mix on this week’s Solid Steel too which you can listen to and preview some of the album right now. Buy it here (physical) and here (digital)

There’s also a great grindhouse-esque trailer for the record to give you some sound AND vision – seriously, you need to hear this album, it’s going to be a love it or hate it affair but if you love it you’re going to LOVE it. If you liked ‘Spare Time Machine’ then this is a worthy successor but also even deeper in detail, it takes a fair few listens but will have you humming tunes out of the blue before you know it.
In case you hadn’t already guessed, I love this band and record.

Posted in Event, Music, Records, Solid Steel, Uncategorized. | No Comments |

DK – Cymatic Frequencies II Part 1

Check this exclusive preview of DK‘s new AV mix – ‘Cymatic Frequencies II’. This is, hands down, the best intro to any video mix I’ve seen yet. Yes the main footage is taken from the film ‘The Third & The Seventh’ but the way he’s overlaid the footage of the speaker into each scene is beautiful, watch it twice, I missed a couple the first time round. Also the minimal placement of the typography within the frame perfectly compliments the clip. It’s like an issue of Wallpaper come to life (sorry DK).

[quicktime width=”636″ height=”380″]http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Cymatic-Frequncies-II-intro-web.mp4[/quicktime]

This is the kind of thing I want to see in video mixes, high quality, well designed and thought out sound and vision, he’s raised the bar here and it has been steadily rising all year with Mr Armtone, Hexstatic and DJ Cheeba helping put Solid Steel at No.1 in the iTunes video podcast chart. Debuting on Friday via Solid Steel you’ll be able to see and hear his best of the year round up, and this is only part 1! There’ll be a second session coming before the year is out.

The keen-eyed among you might have also noticed that there’s a new Solid Steel logo book-ending this clip, this has been in the works for nearly a year, batted back and forth and through all sorts of changes in between a million other projects and we finally nailed it last week. Here are a few of the myriad of versions we discarded.

Posted in Film, Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 3 Comments |

The Search Engine launch party at The Planetarium

This has been under wraps for a while but I can finally reveal…

Three 45 minute sets (due to limited spaces in the Planetarium) of a specially reconstructed version of the album including exclusive material. I’m currently working with the astronomers at the Observatory, building a bespoke show for their 360 degree hemispherical screen. Tickets are very limited, only 82 for each show, so be quick if you want to see this http://ninjatune.net/shop/tickets

Posted in DJ Food, Event, Film, Music, Ninja Tune, Poster / flyer, Solid Steel. | No Comments |

The Search Engine launch party at The Planetarium

This has been under wraps for a while but I can finally reveal…

Three 45 minute sets (due to limited spaces in the Planetarium) of a specially reconstructed version of the album including exclusive material. I’m currently working with the astronomers at the Observatory, building a bespoke show for their 360 degree hemispherical screen. Tickets are very limited, only 82 for each show, so be quick if you want to see this http://ninjatune.net/shop/tickets

Posted in DJ Food, Event, Film, Latest Designs, Music, Poster / flyer, Solid Steel. | No Comments |

DJ Food – A Magpies, Maps & Moons Reader mix

As the release of my new EP is imminent (Nov 7th) I’ve put together a special mix entitled ‘A Magpies, Maps & Moons Reader’, available on Solid Steel this Friday, to showcase it and the tracks that influenced me whilst I was making it.

I’m very pleased with this one (there are mix companions to the previous EPs in the Downloads section of this site) as I spent a long time doing special re-edits and remixes on some tracks. It also contains a couple the premiers of tracks by Pepe Deluxé and 2econd Class Citizen from their respective albums, both due next year.

If you like what you hear you can pre-order the EP here.

Solid Steel Radio Show 28/10/2011 Part 1 + 2 – DJ Food by Ninja Tune

Posted in DJ Food, Mixes/Solid Steel, Ninja Tune, Solid Steel. | 10 Comments |

King Megatrip’s Solid Steel clearout

King Megatrip has been a longtime fan and contributor to Solid Steel over the last decade or more, he’s also subscribed to the weekly series of CDRs the show used to send out to radio stations (it’s all digital now).

As a result he has amassed a huge collection of shows from the last 10 years but the time has come for them to go. See more here and make him an offer

This World Renounced

Posted in Solid Steel. | 7 Comments |

The Death of Output

DoO1-3 coverL3output logo webBack at the end of 2006, when Trevor Jackson‘s Output Recordings folded, I put together a 3 hour tribute mix of my favourite tracks. This went out as 3 separate mixes on Solid Steel and I even made a very limited number of facsimile Output CDRs of the mixes. I’ve recently had requests to upload it again so, by the miracle that is Soundcloud, it’s available. I’ve also edited it into one piece finally and the track list is embedded in the Lyrics section of the mp3. Being an avid collector of the label I thought I’d show off the screen printed promo releases and a few other choice pieces.

Further reading from early 2007 can be had on Mark E’s ‘ireallylovemusic’ site.

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The Death of Output by DJ Food

DELIAPHONICLOGO_220107_BLCKMS193 Acapellas Anonymous 24:11:2003 PRSMS193 Acapellas Anonymous 24:11:2003 CDrElectrik Collage logo webMS192 Coldcut Alien Sphinx on Solid Steel 16:09:1994 tape

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Posted in DJ Food, Music, Records, Solid Steel. | 4 Comments |

Videocrash Solid Steel AV XXmas party this Saturday

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A bit of a special one this: Videocrash and Solid Steel team up for a XXmas knees-up at the Electrowerkz in an Audio Visual rave up this Saturday. Hexstatic will be presenting a ‘Trailer Trax’ special, Cheeba will no doubt be previewing some tidy new pieces and DK and I will round out the year with a final showcase of our own Ninja Tune XX AV mix before packing it up and putting it to bed. Joining us will be Digitonal showing their new ‘Deep Space’ a/v set – an hour long set constructed around a voyage that starts with Earth. moves past the Moon and planets, and into the infinite…

Not only that but Graffiti artist, stenciller and sticker-er (?) supreme, SNUB23 from Brighton will be joining us and painting an original piece live from 11pm. This will later be auctioned off in aid of the MacMillan Cancer Support charity after being signed by all present. He might also bring some stencils for custom T shirts too (see below). It all starts at 8pm and will probably end messily at 4am, this is a final farewell to a great year for Ninja and the 20th celebrations before we break for Xmas.

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Posted in Art, DJ Food, Film, Gigs, Music, Solid Steel. | No Comments |

DJ Food – Sunday At Bundy’s mixtape

[singlepic id=220 w=320 h=240 float=left] I’ve just dug the master DAT for the DJ Food mixtape I compiled in the late 90’s out, cleaned it up and stuck both sides on Soundcloud. This collection of radio show, gig and other recordings was put together to sell on tour in the States, Canada and Japan mainly. It includes some jams with Squarepusher (one of which he ended up sampling part of), DJ Krush and Ollie Teeba from the Herbaliser amongst answerphone message from DJ Vadim and aftershow banter.

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DJ Food – Sunday at Bundy’s (Side A.) by DJ Food

It’s rough and ready, all live, no edits or overdubs, sub-titled an ‘audio scrapbook’, it’s exactly that, little sections torn out of sets played around the world in the mid 90’s. There were around 500 made I think, all long gone now but you can hear a bit of what went down at clubs like Stealth back in the day and all the early Ninja Tune DJ package tours.

DJ Food – Sunday at Bundy’s (Side B.) by DJ Food

Original cassette artwork and info here.

Posted in DJ Food, Oddities, Solid Steel. | 6 Comments |

New Ninja Tune Psyche / Fuzz / Rock mix on Solid Steel

I’ve been planning this since the summer but only had time to put it down recently, this is some of my favourite music on Ninja Tune over the last few years, quite a few overlooked tracks and artists as well as some new tracks from the XX set. Ninja Tune first became known for ‘Trip Hop’, alluding to ‘Trippy Hip Hop’, but what about all the other trippy music released on the label over the years? Bands like Super Numeri, The Slew, Yppah or the Dragons? I’ve put together an hour of guitar fuzz, wah wah, delay and heavy beats focusing on the acid rock and psychedelic stylings of the label and it’s Big Dada and Counter offshoots.

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Solid Steel Radio Show 5/11/2010 Part 3 + 4 – Strictly Kev by Ninja Tune & Big Dada

Posted in DJ Food, Ninja Tune, Solid Steel. | 1 Comment |

Final line ups for Ninja XX US mini-tour

Ninja Converse Ninja Tune, Converse, and XLR8R present Ninja Tune’s 20th Anniversary!  Please join us for a special night of music to commemorate and celebrate 20 years of Beats and Pieces.  Also get exclusive downloads from Ninja artists as well as all updated event info at xlr8r.com.  Anybody who comes to the event will be eligible to win a free pair of custom Ninja Tune Converse… we’re talking only 62 in production! (61 once I get my pair! but not sure if the ones on the left will be the final design I submitted)

New York – October 28th
Located at: Santos, New York
Lineup: Amon Tobin, Kid Koala, DJ Food & DK, Poirier, Toddla T & Serocee, DJ Kentaro, Eskmo, High Priest (of Anti-Pop Consortium), Small Change, & visuals by Strangeloop.
Tickets // Facebook

.FREE WITH RSVP!
Converse Presents San Francisco – October 29th
Located at: 1015 Folsom, San Francisco
Featuring Ninja Tune DJs Amon Tobin, Kid Koala, DJ Food & DK, Toddla T & Serocee, Eskmo, Kentaro, Ghostbeard, additional special guests include Ill Gates, Lowriderz feat. AnTenNae & Laura (Muti-SF), Motion Potion (Sunset), J.Boogie (Om), DJ Centipede of Mophono (Bastard Jazz), Ripley (Surya Dub), Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist (True Skool), Toph 1 (Red Wine), Senor Oz (Afrolicious), Malarkey (Juke Joint), U9Lift, Visuals by Strangeloop
RSVP // Facebook

Los Angeles – October 30th
Located at: Echo/Echoplex, Los Angeles
Lineup: Amon Tobin, Kid Koala, DJ Food & DK, Toddla T & Serocee, Eskmo, DJ Kentaro, Ghostbeard, Thavius Beck, special guest Cut Chemist and visuals by Strangeloop
Tickets // Facebook

also in the offering: guest appearance by myself and possibly Kid Koala at a special gig Sunday afternoon in LA…

Posted in DJ Food, Gigs, Ninja Tune, Solid Steel. | No Comments |

Remember The Future? mix

REMEMBER THE FUTURE3 years back I recorded a robot-themed mix for Solid Steel to coincide with the imminent release of the first Transformers film. I’d been meaning to do this for some time but this gave me the impetus and I crafted a little Transformers intro from various samples or tracks that sampled the robots in disguise. After that it’s mainly material from the 60’s and 70’s with that novelty look at robotics pre-Star Wars, what some would call ‘the golden age’.

I love this stuff, real oddity bin stuff, plenty of madcap psyche, dance craze records, vocoders and even a country ode to an electronic brain. A friend recently asked me to dig it out so here it is again.

Remember The Future by DJ Food

Posted in DJ Food, Music, Radio, Robots, Solid Steel. | 2 Comments |

Big Chill igloo tent Solid Steel set times for Saturday:

festivalWe’re playing in a dome with 360 degree video, come and check us out, a few Ninja XX compilation exclusives in the set so far…

21.00- 21.15     Warm Up
21.15-22.45      JFB
22.45-23.45      DJ Woody Turntables In Technicolor
23.45-1 .15 am   DJ Food & DK
1.15 – 2.45 am   Hexstatic present Trailer Trax
2.45 – 4.00 am   Sampology’s Super Visual Smackdown

Posted in DJ Food, Event, Gigs, Music, Solid Steel. | No Comments |