I’ve put one of the mixes I did for this weekend’s live streaming Altar Ego Radio on my Soundcloud so that it can kill two birds with one stone (pun intended) and promote my set at the Lunar Festival in Tanworth, Warwickshire on June 6th. The mix was done with that in mind being that it’s a psychedelic set for a gig of the same, check the line up below, tickets and other info available here.
A second hour of Magpie Music by 2econd Class Citizen is available here.
Mixes/Solid Steel
Last minute post I know but I’ll be on Altar Ego Radio at 6 – 8pm tonight with a show of electronica that sounds like the past predicting the future called ‘Future Shock’. You can listen live here – I’ll even be talking.
Then tomorrow, Sunday 25th I’ll be doing another show with 2econd Class Citizen called ‘Magpie Music’ – one hour each of heavy psychedelia and the like.
‘Children of the Sun’ is a mix about the sun and summer in general, made especially for Farmfest 2014. 50 minutes designed to relax to outside, lying on the grass in the warmth of the sun. Taking in jazz, beats, ambient, soul, funk, rock and electronica each track comments on the sun, summer or the great outdoors in some way.
This is just being premiered over on ClashMusic.com and won’t be appearing on Solid Steel, being exclusively for Farmfest where I’ll be playing on August 1st.
Tracklist:
Wolfgang Dauner – Take Off Your Shoes To Feel The Setting Sun (MPS)
The KLF – Brownsville Turnaround On The Tex-Mex Border (KLF Communications)
Koushik – Lying In the Sun (Stones Throw)
DJ Food – Sunspot (Unreleased)
Boards of Canada – A Beautiful Place Out In The Country (Warp)
Three Dog Night – Out In The Country (Dunhill)
Dr Rubberfunk – Sunset Breakdown (GPS Recordings)
The Orb – Little Fluffy Clouds (Ambient Mix MkI) (Big Life)
Ammoncontact – Children Of The Sun (Ninja Tune)
Belbury Poly – Summer Round (Ghost Box)
Sesame Street – Bees & Honey (Children’s Television Workshop)
July – Dandelion Seeds (Bam-Caruso)
Diplo – Summer’s Gonna Hurt You (Big Dada)
Isley Brothers – Summer Breeze (Epic)
Roberta Flack – I Can See The Sun In Late December (Atlantic)
Delia Derbyshire & Barry Bermange – Dreams / Land (BBC)
The Dells – Wichita Lineman (Cadet)
The KLF – Pulling Out of Ricardo And The Dusk Is Falling Fast (KLF Communications)
Imagine an alternate version of the 80’s pop chart, not the one already there in the form of the extended 12″ remix that came to prominence in that decade, but a secret, subtly twisted one with different producers at the controls. Imagine Depeche Mode and Gary Numan remixed by a Hip Hop engineer, Tears For Fears cut to ribbons by a tape edit king, Bow Wow Wow and The Human League streamlined into a slow disco groove. Grace Jones and Heaven 17 pumped up for a House club, Japan remixed by Giorgio Morodor or Grace Jones covering Tubeway Army – no actually, those last two really happened.
My latest Solid Steel mix compiles an hour of mostly unofficial remixes, re-edits and versions of classic pop songs from the 80’s, remodeled by fans or studio engineers with access to the separate track stems. What emerges is a collection of pop classics seen through a distorted looking glass, culled from the darkest corners of Soundcloud or the hard drives of those with access to audio they shouldn’t have and time on their hands. See below for track listing and more info.
‘E Is For Eighties’ – An Alternate 80’s (Re)mix
Gary Numan – Films (DJ Butcher Instrumental) (soundcloud mp3) – Found on Soundcloud, this toughened up Hip Hop take on the Numan classic, beloved by break fiends from back in the day, is minimally tweaked for the dance floor. Check more of DJ Butcher‘s wares here.
Tears For Fears – Shout (Remix di Marco De Luca) (soundcloud mp3) – a crazed edit-fest of cuts and splices of one of TFF’s best known songs, I actually had to edit this down a little as the machine gun edits got so relentless that it was a difficult listen – the full 8 minutes is here.
Grace Jones – Slave To the Rhythm (Better Days’ Rough Slave version) (mp3) – The first of three versions of Grace’s finest moment – this one takes the multitracks and strips away the percussion and bass to leave a gorgeous string and acappella version that’s billed as a ‘Rough Slave’ version on YouTube.. Info suggests that this was done by DJ Bruce Forest circa 1990, who got the chance to do a quick mix when working at SARM Studios on a different project. It has since been taken off of the web.
Grace Jones – Slave To the Disco (Tribute To Trevor Horn mix) (We Mean Disco mp3) – upping the bpm to a steady 110 this new cheeky re-edit turns a mid 80’s hyper-polished pop masterpiece into a dirty disco groove to brilliant effect. I’ve added a fair amount of the Better Days acappella and strings version over the top of this as the original is mainly instrumental.
Bow Wow Wow – I Want Candy (Deep Sound Design Balearic Dub) (soundcloud mp3) – Taking the original’s drum and bass groove and stretching it out, the mix just feels so dirty. Again I edited this down as the sugar-sweet singing of Annabella sounded a little too cheesy in the mix but check out Deep Sound Design‘s Soundcloud pages for tons of excellent mixes both past and present, he even makes ZZ Top sound good.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Relax (Hibakusha ‘Don’t Crack’ mix) (CDR) – One of my favourite 80’s songs tackled by my good friend Jeff Knowler aka Hibakusha. This is a few years old now and was largely achieved through EQing the various mixes of the song and re-sampling parts to achieve a mix. This is actually only half of Jeff’s version and he’s done many more Frankie and ZTT mixes in his own time, all sounding like they could have existed 30 years ago and among the best fan mixes I’ve ever come across.
Talking Heads – Once In A Lifetime (Hibakusha remix) (CDR) – Another one of Jeff’s, originally done for a friend’s birthday present and now presented here for the first time in public.
The Human League – Seconds (Antony Toga Unlimited Orchestra Mix) (soundcloud mp3) – The ‘Don’t You Want Me’ B-side taken and stretched into a menacing 8 minute groove with the help of the ‘Love & Dancing’ version by Anthony Toga. I added the news bulletin dialogue as JFK’s assassination took place and edited it again for length.
Japan – Life In Tokyo (Extended Disco mix) (Virgin) – A bonafide original, this actually saw a release in 1979 with Giorgio Morodor at the controls, one of the turning points in Japan’s history which saw them at a crossroads between outdated glam rockers and early adopters of synthesisers who were put in the same bracket as the Futurists.
Grace Jones – Slave to the Rhythm (Steve Anderson & Chad Jackson remix) (soundcloud mp3) – A third outing but justified by this killer mix for DMC from the late 90’s, unreleased but one that successfully ups the bpm by 20 or so to make this go-go pop classic into an 11 minute house club banger. Check out Steve Anderson’s Soundcloud for tons of interesting mixes in this vein.
Tears For Fears – Mad World (ABH Remix) (soundcloud mp3) – Another Soundcloud find, TFF’s breakthrough hit given a crunching big beat undercarriage by ABH from London.
Depeche Mode – Big Muff (K Master bootleg demo) (soundcloud mp3) – This is actually an unfinished demo but I liked it so much I featured it anyway. A slowed down, Plastikman-esque remake of one of my favourite tracks from DM’s debut album, ‘Speak & Spell’ – hopefully one day he’ll finish it. K_Master hails for Minnesota, USA, not to be confused with the K Master from the UK.
Heaven 17 – Penthouse and Pavement (Eggman Remix) (soundcloud mp3) – The mysterious Eggman Productions from London, filters the Heaven 17 classic into House territory – the original is nearly 10 minutes long but I edited it a lot to fit it in, hear the full version here.
The Clash – Rock The Casbah (Dubrobots 12″) (mp3) – One of Jeff’s engineer friends who goes by the name of Dubrobots takes on The Clash. ‘…Casbah’ has been versioned a few times over the years but this sympathetic, dubbed out mix using the original stems to break it down caught my ear for the open piano passages. Also check out his Dubrobots HQ blog for a great mix of Adam & The Antz – Cartrouble Pt.1 (Dubrobots ‘Who’s The Slave & Who’s the Master’ mix). It’s a rarity to find any remixes of Adam Ant material, even more so to find one of the original, pre-fame Antz tracks. His is a fantastic re-imagining of ‘Cartrouble Pt.1’ which really exists in its own little world, I’m not sure how you’d place this with any other music successfully and it just didn’t make the final cut because of this.
Grace Jones – Me, I Disconnect From You (Island) Another track that’s legit but has only just seen the light of day. Originally recorded in 1981 for inclusion on the ‘Night Clubbing’ album, Grace covered Tubeway Army but it sadly never made the cut. Finally released on the new 2 CD deluxe edition we get to hear it and I mixed a little of the original into the ending so that Numan bookends the whole mix.
Along the way, whilst making this mix and auditioning a lot of other mixes in a similar vein, I stumbled upon Paul Dakeyne‘s site where he has a number of interesting posts including one on tape edits with an unreleased Omar Santana ‘Bullet edit’ version of the same Tears For Fears track I used. It’s pretty full on and comes from a cassette Paul had, his Soundcloud page is also worth a look with unreleased megamixes of Paul Hardcastle material.
Sadly on Sunday it was two years since MCA passed away and there was a weekend long celebration in Brooklyn to remember the man and the music he made with the Beasties. With another, happier, anniversary also approaching – 25 years since the release of ‘Paul’s Boutique’ – there is a fair bit of Beastie-related activity on the horizon.
Above and below you can see a comic created by Derek Langille illustrating the song ‘Sabotage’ – this was done nearly two years ago now and takes a similar old school comic style to Ed Piskor‘s excellent on-going ‘Hip Hop Family Tree‘.
A couple of fans in Italy (SM&A Prod.) are preparing a ‘visual companion’ to the album, to debut online on July 25th (see new trailer above) and Filter magazine are running a special on it in an upcoming issue.
The 3-Way Mix should be getting a feature somewhere in that issue and I was interviewed recently for an updated version of Dan LeRoy‘s 33 1/3 book about the making of the album.
Also over the weekend the deconstructed mix of the album that I made with DJ Cheeba and DJ Moneyshot finally hit 100,000 plays on Soundcloud – this is a big milestone for us so thanks to all for listening.
This week’s Solid Steel has a particular Acid taste with two distinct flavours. In the first hour Posthuman give us a very special look through 30 years of music made with the Roland TB303 from 1984-2014 assigning one track a year to give just one particular history of the machine. The choices had to be harsh and lots of obvious tracks were missed but you get a year by year progression ending with Posthuman themselves.
Talking of endings, their seven year-old night, ‘I Love Acid’, will breath its last on April 12th, the day after this mix debuts and this is a fitting way to celebrate the end of an era.
Amongst the line up is a certain Luke Vibert whose track of the same name titled the night in the first place. In a beautiful piece of synchronicity we have Lexis from Music Is My Sanctuary with an hour-long retrospective look at Luke’s career in many of his different guises after 20 years of official releases.
and in another little bit of Acid-related news I found this first review for the Roland TB 303 in a 1982 issue of Sounds this week, even back then with only two years left until production would cease, it received a glowing review.
E is for Eighties Edits – the next installment in the Alphabet mix series…
Arts London Music Magazine asked me to name 10 influential tracks to kick off their Rewind series. These are specifically songs that took me through my three year BA degree course at Camberwell College of Art in London during the years 1990-93. I wrote a little piece about each including design inspirations as well as a couple of old pieces of college work that I did in response to music-related briefs whilst on the course, unseen for 21 years pieces. To cap it all off I gave them a mix I made for a college reunion in 2012 that features many of the songs plus plenty more and runs for nearly 2 hours. Full track list and info in the link above.
ALM Mix 01: DJ FOOD – Citrus ’12 by Arts_London_Music_Magazine on Mixcloud
Below are some more detailed shots of the ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ piece I made. It takes the Ricki Lee Jones interview that’s heavily sampled on the track and twists it typographically using hot metal and wood block printing on tissue paper (in itself a very difficult thing to achieve without ripping the paper). That was then mounted on clear acetate and meant to be hung away from the wall so that light could pass through it to reflect the cloud-like nature of the piece (student thinking huh?).
On the last full day of the Australia 3-Way Mix tour we met up with Tom, Raine and the guys from Hardcore Classic, a Hip Hop show that goes out on the 2SER station in Sydney. We were quizzed for over an hour and played a short section of the live 3-Way Mix version before escaping the air condition-less studio and enjoying some down time. The interview starts at the 1hr 21 min mark and the mix follows it.
Hardcore Classic – Feb 28th 2014 (ft DJ Food, DJ Cheeba, DJ Moneyshot, Broken Thought Theory & Dboe) by Hardcore Classic on Mixcloud
At the end of the month we set out for 3 dates in France with DJ Format in support, should be fun!
We got back from Australia at 5am on Wednesday morning after what seemed like days of flying in cramped seats but it was worth it. The first mini tour of the Paul’s Boutique 3-Way Mix went well and I’ll throw out some highlights here rather than going into a prolonged tour diary.
Playing the Perth Festival outside and finishing before 10pm then going out into the crowd to chat and give away our rider. 
Landing in Melbourne to a torrential rainstorm, worse than back in the UK but being taken around by tour manager Joel to see local graffiti spots and ERT, shop sporting a tattoo parlour, recordstore, clothing, posters and spices.
Seeing old friends at the Melbourne show and rocking it despite the show being advertised as ‘Beastie Boys (USA) Paul’s Boutique feat. DJ Food, Cheeba, Moneyshot‘ (grrrrr). Finding out about ‘Vaporwave’, ‘Sea Punk’ and ‘Business Funk’ via a radio show on Melbourne radio.
Recording an impromptu mix of originals from ‘Shake Your Rump’ and ‘Hey Ladies’ for Jack Shit‘s show on FBI radio – you can listen back to it here.
Playing our best show in Sydney in front of more friends but ducking out of the proposed after party with Grandmaster Flash as it became a roadblock.
Taking the ferry to Manly to hang out with Moneyshot’s girlfriend’s ex-pat mates who served up the best BBQ.
Meeting up with DJ Hickory Dickory Dock who took me round various Sydney record spots, ending up at the excellent Revolve store near Newtown.
Forthcoming mix set by Blank & Jones for the So Eighties series where they’ve been given access to the master tapes for some of ZTT’s classics. Here’s the cover, which was made with a little help from my image archive, and a short video of them in the studio going through the process, they’re keeping the mixes in a classic sense rather than trying to update the sound into todays styles.
Cheeba, Moneyshot and I were filmed by the Scratch Pro Audio crew for the InnoFADER sessions on a boat in Bristol a couple of weeks ago. We performed a short routine culled from part of the ‘3-Way Mix’, the reconstruction of ‘Paul’s Boutique’ we’re touring this year.
The Scratch Pro Audio crew sell and distribute specialist DJ products and very kindly hooked us up with InnoFADER cross faders for our mixers and Dr Suzuki Slipmats. Along with the Rane 62 mixers, Serato DJ software & control records and Magma DJ bags, we’re very lucky to be using some of the best gear out there. Thanks guys!
All together now, “I’m on a boat motherfu…”
DJ Cheeba, DJ Moneyshot and I are touring the ‘3-Way Mix’ this year. That being a 4 deck, 3 DJ reconstruction of the Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique‘ album made from all the original tracks that they, and the Dust Brothers, sampled + more.
Here’s the first round of tour dates (more to come) with a graphic I made featuring all the sources they sampled, can you spot the Beasties? I made several versions + several Facebook timeline headers. Click for large versions.
DJ Cheeba, DJ Moneyshot & DJ Food – ‘3-Way Mix’ trailer from Solid Steel on Vimeo.
Here’s a little short I just edited to promote the ‘3-Way Mix’ tour DJ’s Cheeba, Moneyshot and I are doing at the moment. It was shot by Jim Alexander at Solid Steel‘s 25th anniversary party at Fire in London last December. We’re still taking bookings so, if you want to see this in your town or city then check the details at the end.
It’s been bought to my attention that the original version of my ‘Raiding The 20th Century’ mix is now 10 years old. Originally a 40 minute guest mix on Eddy Temple-Morris‘ XFM radio show, The Remix, it was my attempt to construct a rough history of ‘cut up’ music in the midst of the mashup up/bastard pop craze. Taking in Music Concrete, avant garde tape composition, radiophonic tape experiments, megamixes, edit kings, scratching, early sampling and of course mash ups, it was one of the most densely mixed and edited things I’ve ever done. When it debuted it was put up on the Ninja Tune site at the time and quickly went a bit viral, causing the server to melt down and the site to grind to a halt by the next morning. More info here and here.
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
I did a mix for Big Fish Little Fish – the party for parents and kids with a more discerning taste in music.
It’s straight up club classics with no messing about pretending to be cutting edge, classic Hip Hop, Rave and Disco all features plus there’s also a healthy dose of humour in there too.
Bestival have hosted it on their Bestimix site as well as part of their online advent calendar. I can’t embed it unfortunately but you can listen 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.