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.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s the Soundcloud stream of the interview I did with Dexter for the Ninja Tune podcast, talking about the new album, collaborators and choosing my top 5 favourite records

Solid Steel Radio Show 20/1/2012 Part 3 + 4 – DJ Food interview by Ninja Tune

Thanks MK

After a couple of recent requests, and due to the fact that the BosBos.net URL that used to host these mixes is dead, I’ve uploaded vol.5 of my Kraftwerk Kover Kollection series to Soundcloud. Vol.6 is already there and 1-4 will follow sometime in 2012.

Kraftwerk Kover Kollection Volume 5 by DJ Food

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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).

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

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

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

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