Mixes/Solid Steel

‘O Is For Orange’ AV mix for Solid Steel 25


This week I decided to put down some of the set I made for ‘A Few Old Tunes’, the Boards of Canada-inspired night we did on June 20th. Because I’d edited so much video to go with it, I thought I’d finally get round to my first solo video mix too, so here it is.

(UPDATE: Vimeo closed the Solid Steel account that hosted this mix after three copyright strikes so it’s currently offline but some kind soul has uploaded it to their own ‘Solid Steel’ account here but I can’t embed it here)

‘O Is For Orange’ is the sound of weathered tape saturation, detuned analogue synthesisers, vinyl crackle and machine hum. It’s also the look of unfocused, flickering lenses, mirror image filters and blurry grain embedded into film. Unofficial fan films sit alongside experimental animation, public information shorts and even the odd official video. Material that BoC took inspiration from blends with their own work as well as many that they inspired.

I make no apologies for the quality of the vision here, some of it is only available via the web at frustratingly small sizes. In a couple of instances I’ve actually downgraded the look and quality of the image to make it blend in better and in others, even my best attempts at filtering can’t disguise the low quality of the source material. No HD or widescreen here, I’ve gone back to 4:3 for this one even though some of the clips were originally 16:9 or wider.

On the Vimeo page I’ve endeavored to list as many of the videos and their respective directors as possible alongside the track list. When we’ve done video mixes in the past we’ve repeatedly found that some film makers take exception to having their work used like this, whereas few artists would email you requesting that you take their track out of a mix. I can see why, especially if a promo they’re done for one group ends up being re-edited and bolted on to a completely different track.

Anyway, enough guff, thanks to everyone who inspired this mix, especially Boards of Canada, and everyone who requested that we recorded our sets for ‘A Few Old Tunes’ last week. Josh from Posthuman‘s is already up in audio form (here) and I’m reliably told that Tom Central has his waiting in the wings for next week.

Posted in DJ Food, Film, Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 18 Comments |

African-themed Solid Steel with Melt Youself Down

This week’s Solid Steel has a definite African slant and I kick things off with a mix of music I call ‘Afreaka’. Percussion heavy funk with a tribal feel, from Madlib sample grabs to Malcolm McLaren or Eno & Byrne‘s imagined ethnic soundscapes. For part two we welcome Melt Yourself Down into the guest slot for a whole world fusion of flavours from Ali Hassan Kuban to the Mad Decent stable.

The band release their debut album on June 17th via the Leaf Label after a trio of killer singles that fuse post-punk Pigbag skronk funk with acid electronics. Catch them on tour across the UK right now with a must see live show that recently ripped Jools Holland‘s ‘Later’ show a new one. Check out their site for date, music and merch.

Jon More fills the Solid Steel 25th slot with a mix of African music proper. Over the past quarter of a century, if there’s one continent that has been well represented since day one, it’s Africa. Coldcut have always dug deep into it’s rich musical heritage and Jon More displays another fine selection of Afrobeat and African inspired music. There’s Bala Miller from Nigeria, Alemayehu Eshete from Ethiopia and Julien Babinga from Congo, plus music from Ocote Soul Sounds, Shina Williams and Troubleman.

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Peter Serafinowicz mix on Solid Steel

A very special mix went up yesterday on the Solid Steel Soundcloud, something we’ve been angling for for months now and finally the stars have aligned perfectly. On the eve on the release of Boards of Canada‘s new LP, Peter Serafinowicz, actor, comedian, musician and voice of Darth Maul himself, has provided us with a BOC-inspired mix including some of his own compositions as well. It’s a beautiful collection of tracks and a perfect accompaniment to the albums which is hitting UK letterboxes all over as I type.
Also not to forget DK opening the show with his usual style and grace and another lovely guest mix from First Word artist Yosi Horikawa on the eve of his album release.

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 5 Comments |

Hexstatic’s ‘Clinkmix’ for Solid Steel 25

We went back to ’89 last week for United States of Audio‘s De La Soul ‘3 Feet High & Rising’ tribute mix and this week we slip another year to ’88 with Robin from Hexstatic. For this week’s Solid Steel 25th guest mix he takes us on a trip to Clink Street in London Bridge, here’s why…

“1988, 25 years ago, and the ‘Summer Of Love’ in London, little did I know how much this street would come to mean to me. An explosion of new music, new headspace, new ideas. The birth of Solid Steel on Kiss FM. It is highly coincidental that driving from the suburbs up to the infamous Clink Street raves for the first time we were listening to that exact show on the radio. To Borough, and down a side street,… at the time nobody went to this area. You could park your car on a double yellow all weekend and not get a ticket. And so into Clink Street, the RIP nights, run by Mr C and his merry cohorts. The sound here was always a bit ‘darker’, heavier beats, stripped down music and decor, the strobe and smoke. This place was definitely about the dance,..you couldn’t really hear anything but music and see anything but your hands in front of your face :) Evil Eddie and Kid Batchelor were my favourite DJ’s at the time and I’m pretty sure Coldcut played there too? Little did I know. The Jungle Brothers even came down once to do a PA of ‘I’ll House You’. They looked pretty bemused. There’s a video of it on Youtube somewhere, with Mark Moore jacking at the end. Skip forward nearly a decade of dance and I’m back in Clink Street, Winchester Wharf, a few feet opposite Clink prison, at Ninja Tune HQ, talking to Matt Black about animations for their forthcoming album. Who’d have thought it. I spend a fantastic few years there and later teamed up with Stuart (Warren-Hill) as Hexstatic, we hire our own studio in the building and embark on the task of making an AV album with a couple of pocket calculators. The building was great, full of music and arts people coming in and out all the time, (David Byrne and Jean-Jacques Perrey just dropped in once!) I was signed to a label, travelling and working with people who I greatly admired. I go past now and again. It’s luxury flats and a bloody Starbucks now :( “

To the music. We start with Nitro Deluxe and a track that bridged the gap between eclectic clubs like the Opera House and the start of Acid House, a few years old but was still getting played years later on the scene. Cultural Vibe’s ‘Ma Foom Bey’ had such a heavy slow sound, coupled with the African chanting it was the first time I’d heard a mix like this,..early Tony Humphries on the cut. Next up Sueno Latino, the first ‘Balearic’ track I came across, it would always send the floors into a trance wherever it was played. ‘Voodoo Ray’ was arguably the first UK ‘Acid House’ record, it sounded so fresh when it came out, fusing an almost ‘electro’ sound with the 303, people would always dance a certain way to that record, freaky like. Another UK record and Baby Ford’s ‘Oochy Koochy’, this was the straight up sound of the early scene to be sure. Next, one of several from Todd ‘The God’ Terry in his ‘Black Riot’ moniker. I loved this record so much I danced to it in a car park in Kingston once. ‘Big Fun’ was termed ‘techno’ on release,..seems funny now,..but it was also a big hit in the UK, Inner City even shot the video in London to capture the vibe of the time. Fallout’s ‘The Morning After’ had that lovely, slightly melancholic vibe that always felt refreshing, especially early in the morning. Think Tank and WestBam, were those freaky records that would spin everyone out,..turning to a friend with a massive grin and gesturing,..”what the hell is this?!”. Jungle Brothers get their ‘House’ in order next and then into more Todd product with a reworking of the classic ‘Weekend’. Next, the all time hands in the air anthem of anthems, ‘Let The Music Use You’ just brought a super smiley, almost spiritual vibe to dance floors,..I think most DJ’s tried to judge the ‘peak’ moment to drop it,..matey :) Next up, probably my favourite proper ‘acid’ track of all time, Bam Bam’s ‘Give It To Me’,.. 25 years later I still can’t decide if it’s pure genius or complete rubbish, followed by two more ‘Acid Trax’ classics from Charles B and the mighty Adonis. Stakker next and the video game sampling ‘Humanoid’, another track with that distinctive UK sound, fusing break beats with acid and crazy samples that later spawned FSOL. KC Flightt bringing a hip hop vibe to house without the cheesy ‘Hip-House’ tag and into another mix of ‘UK centric’ elements with the Afro Acid mix of Mory Kante’s ‘Yeke Yeke’,…and we finish on the upbeat sound of Longsy D and the reggae acid of ‘This Is Ska’,..yes mate.”

This era (or slightly later) was highlighted by Vice magazine in a surprisingly non-smug fashion when Clive Martin wrote an article on the YouTube comments made by partygoers under classic rave anthems. Read the comments under his article as well. We didn’t think about it at the time, same with music in the 90’s, it was just everywhere, classic after classic release, week after week. All of these tracks stand up there with any of the acknowledged Rock and Pop classics we’re constantly bombarded with on radio and in the press. I wonder when the music magazines are going to wake up and start writing features on these artists and their legacies rather than recycled the smallest piece of information on the Beatles, Stones, Who, Dylan, Hendrix et al into features for eternity?

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Radio, Solid Steel. | 1 Comment |

The story of the Bug In The Rug

Many times I’ve been asked what the origin of the story of ‘The Bug In The Rug’ was, a spoken word piece that was overlaid in the ColdKrushCuts mix that PC and I did in 1997. Until recently even I didn’t know where it came from because the original source was one of PC’s inclusions, possibly sourced from Jon More‘s record collection.

Patrick took a monologue from this record, ‘Four Dreams of Man’ by Dr. John Furbay, heavily edited it and laid it over Hex‘s track, ‘Harmonic’. The record is a kind of lecture and motivational speech about man’s place in the world released on Lecture Recordings in, I guess, the early 60’s.

This is my copy, it’s actually signed by Furbay, who was an international traveler and speaker at many schools, institutions and companies. He believed the world was getting better and could foresee greater integration of different races and cultures in the future. You can hear the original section of the mix below, the speech starts about 2.10 mins in.

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Ninja Tune, Records. | 14 Comments | Tags:

De La Soul classic dissected by United States of Audio

“Now waaaaaiit a minute!” People are really pulling out the stops for the Solid Steel 25th year anniversary guest mixes at the moment. Last week Gilles Peterson not only made a Brit Funk mix but also a special video promo to go with it.

This week though, sees the return of United States of Audio aka Dave Trigg with what I’m already calling ‘Mix of the Year’. Riffing off the same idea as our ‘Paul’s Boutique’ reconstruction last year, he takes on De La Soul‘s  classic ‘3 Feet High & Rising’ LP. I’ll turn it over to Dave for the explanation:

“Several years in the making (well it’s an idea that’s been knocking around for a while anyway!), and including around 100 tracks, this is my personal tribute to De La Soul’s ‘3 Feet High and Rising’. Using original sample sources, album tracks, interviews and rarities, ‘How High’s The Water Mama’ tells the story of one of hip hop’s most influential albums.

When De La Soul’s debut album dropped in 1989 I was ten years old. Yet, by some stroke of amazing good fortune a cassette copy of ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ found its way into my hands thanks to my best mate’s older brother (though I’m pretty sure said brother had no idea of this fact!). The music was a revelation and had a significant influence in shaping my musical tastes – in fact I can’t think of any other album that has had such a profound effect on me as this one. Thus ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ holds a special place in my musical affections. Now, some twenty-five years after its original release, it’s time to pay my respect to Pos, Dove, Mase, and Prince Paul…”

The pace and flow of this mix is a masterclass in how to put songs together and the ease with which he balances the sonics of a huge number of vastly different genres can only have meant hours of mixdown time. The reconstruction of the ‘Cool Breeze On The Rocks’ section is worth the price of admission alone (with a great nod to Solid Steel too). It gives a fresh take on ‘3 Feet…’ and reminds you of how many great songs they recontexualised within it. It’s also a history lesson, with interview segments where the band talk about the making of the album, the hippy tag and the sample lawsuits.

This is the one to beat in 2013. Also, in a bizarre coincidence, the latest issue of Wax Poetics features De La talking about the making of the very same album.

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 6 Comments |

Free Comic Book Day-themed mix for Solid Steel

Tomorrow (May the 4th – oh the irony) is this year’s Free Comic Book Day and readers of this blog will find it no surprise that I’ve chosen to celebrate this with a mix based around songs mentioning comic characters for Solid Steel’s 25th celebrations.
So, we get the obvious ones like Prince – Batdance, Queen – Flash, Black Sabbath – Iron Man (even though it isn’t about THAT Iron Man). But we also get Elton John singing about Dan Dare, Anthrax‘s ode to Judge Dredd, I Am The Law and, my favourite, a 1977 track by Cliff Richard praising Spider Man (who knew?). This took ages to do because all the styles of music were so different and making them set naturally together was a real labour of love.

FCBD is a bit like Record Store Day except there are – as the title suggests – FREE comics to be had if you turn up early enough. Besides encouraging people to get out to real shops there will be various signings, happenings and such at your local comic store as well as a wealth of specially-released titles. I’ll be trying to grab a copy of 2000ad‘s annual special which has a special Henry Flint cover aping classic Marvel and DC first issues but twisting them into an alternate future. I’ll also be picking up ongoing issues of B.P.R.D., the new Abe Sapien book, Brandon Graham’s Prophet and more.

Posted in Comics, Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 5 Comments |

Old School Hip Hop mix on Solid Steel

This week on Solid Steel I put together the best of a set I made for the De:Tuned party in Antwerp the weekend before last with the I Love Acid crew. They asked for an old school Hip Hop and Hip House set (I think I probably own about one Hip House record so it’s more heavy on the electro to be honest). Anyway, it’s a trip back to the 80’s but with an added bonus for Solid Steel that the Antwerp crowd didn’t get. The first seven and a half minutes consists of selections from the first mixtape I ever made in 1987, extracted from an old TDK AD90 cassette and unheard by virtually anyone for 25 years.

Let me explain a little about the mix, it was made over many months in various sections once I traded in my first mixer (a Tandy model with no crossfader) and bought a Soundlab model – hence the name, ‘The Soundlab Mix’. At the time I had very few records, maybe less than 100, I had no parental collection to raid as they never had a record player and my younger brother had none either. So, I was forced to use what I could find alongside the few import 12″s I could afford and the limited UK releases of US Hip Hop that were available. People forget that a lot of early rap never got released in the UK in the first half of the 80’s, we were mostly forced to survive on Streetsounds Electro compilations and the few ‘hits’ that the Sugarhill, Tommy Boy and Def Jam labels produced until the rest of the industry caught up.

This meant that my early mixes have tracks from 7″ singles given away free with music papers, carboot soul and funk compilations and even a flexi disc I had found attached to a magazine in a paper recycling shed at school. As you will hear, the mix is massively influenced by Double Dee & Steinski‘s ‘Lessons’ series and Grandmaster Flash‘s ‘Adventures On The Wheels of Steel’. Kicking off with the Thunderbirds theme, the idea to mix well known soundtracks over beats seemed like a no-brainer but I’ve spared you the 007 and 2001 themes elsewhere on the tape. In the spirit of the aforementioned ‘Lessons’ I decided I needed an ‘old’ song to mix over some beats, similar to the ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ section in Double Dee & Steinski’s masterpiece. For this, I used the flexi disc which happened to contain, ‘The Inquisition’ from Mel Brooks‘ ‘History of the World Part 1’ film, not very politically correct by any means, sorry, I had to use what I get my hands on.

Anyway, I wanted lots happening rather than having to mix live and change records so I would record a short section of two records, wait until one had finished and pause the tape on the beat. Rewinding to the best point, I’d cue up another record and jump back in at the appropriate point, sometimes for as little one line of dialogue. Neither of the decks were Technics 1200‘s and only one had a pitch control so each record had to be pitched to beat mix before the next section. Actually the ‘pitch’ control wasn’t anything of the sort, it was a tiny screw next to the tone arm that I found, if you inserted a small screw driver into it, you could fine tune the deck speed faster or slower. At times I would have to release the pause button and start scratching immediately so a lot of it is a little shoddy, also, occasionally the initial edit was sloppy so I had to rewind and do it all again until I got a clean join between the two separate recordings. It was a learning experience and I would record small sections with what I had and slowly build on it as and when I got new records so that the side filled up over the course of about a year, eventually ending with some chart acid and dance music in amongst the beats, rhymes and film snippets.

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DJ Scientist’s Solid Soviet Steel mix

DJ Scientist, label head of Equinox Records, pulls out all the stops for his 25 years of Solid Steel mix this week with a Solid Soviet Steel special.. Never someone to do things by halves he’s been working on this for months and there’s a lot of background info to go with it:

Solid Soviet Steel Radio (SSSR) is a special guest mix for Solid Steel by DJ Scientist that solely features music from the former Soviet Union. The dedicated record collector, disc jockey and label owner from Berlin managed to unearth and put together an extensive and fascinating selection of tracks from countries like the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldavia, Russia and more.

More than that, to make it even more special, this first lesson in a series of other Soviet mixes by DJ Scientist is dedicated to tracks by so-called VIA bands. VIA is an abreviation for Vocal Instrumentalis Ansamblis or Vocal Instrumental Ensemble which was basically the synonym for pop groups in the Soviet communist states throughout the 70s. Many of these groups managed to create their own kind of sound, mixing western styles like Jazz, Funk and Rock with traditional music from their own countries. For example, very unique vocal harmonies can be heard in VIAs such as Iverya (Georgia) or Gaya (Azerbaijan).

All tracks have been recorded from original vinyl from the Soviet state label “Melodia” (Melody) and have been mixed and edited with Serato Scratch Live and Cubase. Some of the bands appearing in the mix cannot clearly be labeled as VIAs. Rero for example usually was an instrumental group and has been called “Variety Orchestra”. However, on the track “Come Outside” they play together with a vocal group. Technically speaking, the famous “Rude-Paparude” by Maria Kodrianu is not a straight VIA track too, as Kodrianu was a well known solo singer from Moldavia. However, here she is backed by one of the funkiest grooves, played by a VIA that was lead by A. Mordkowicha.

The artwork is taken from the cover of the Soviet youth magazine Krugozor issue 11/72.

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Solid Steel 25 – Food, The Light Surgeons & Jack Dangers

The Solid Steel 25th anniversary continues and this week I’m in the first slot with a mix of /4 electronica both new and old. Modular experiments, deep house grooves, classic electro and a touch of acid. Ninja & Big Dada artists Falty DL and Dobie feature, oldies from Air, Eon and Hashim appear and a fantastic new track from Natural Self features near the end that I just can’t stop playing. His album, ‘Neon Hurts My Eyes’, drops next week on Tru Thoughts and it’s quite a departure being all-vocal led, most of it sung by the man himself including a great cover of Laurie Anderson‘s ‘O, Superman’.

In hour 2 we have The Light Surgeons with a very different mix taken in part from their new show ‘SuperEverything*’, a narrative about cross cultural identity. They tour in the UK in March and play a London show in April. The last half hour has a mix from Meat Beat Manifesto‘s Jack Dangers, showcasing his collection of electronic record made by children in schools, see some of the sleeves below and be prepared for something different.

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 1 Comment |

Coldcut meets The Orb – The Return Trip

Late last year DK and I were chatting on the phone about potential guests for Solid Steel’s 25th anniversary year in 2013. We were aiming high and had decided to ask any prospective guests for themed mixes or collections of tracks outside of their usual comfort zone. The idea of collaborations came up, maybe Fourtet and Caribou could team up or Aphex and Vibert? What and who would make people sit up and say, “holy shit, I HAVE to check that out?”. Suddenly the thought bubbled up, why don’t we get a rematch between Coldcut and the Orb? It’s no secret that their original New Year mash up from the end of 1991 is very high up on my list of greatest mixes ever and the thought of a new sound clash 21 years later was very appealing indeed.

We put it to Matt and Jon, who loved the idea, and promptly contacted Alex Paterson and Youth. Convening at the latter’s Butterfly studio on the anniversary of JFK‘s assassination the four of them, along with Coldcut studio accomplice Dor Wand, got down to it. The resulting session produced over 3 hours worth of material, Matt excitedly collaring me a few days later to rave about what a blast it had been.

He wanted an independent opinion on the results and I immediately volunteered to take on the edit job to sculpt it into the shape needed for a Solid Steel mix. Luckily they had recorded everything to multi-track and just before Xmas I sat down to construct a 2 hour show from the chinese puzzle in front of me. After sifting, editing, compressing and discarding over a 3 to 4 week period I finally had something to send the guys. Matt came over to the studio to run through some finishing touches with fresh ears and we now present 133 minutes of mind-melting madness.

In a time now saturated with mixes by everyone from the famous to the unknown to your mate’s mum it’s sometimes hard to grab people’s attention. This year we start off with something that we don’t normally do, we’re giving the entire show over to four artists to present one mix. To say that I’m pleased with the result is an understatement, not my contribution to the edit so much as what we now have because of a fanciful suggestion I made a few months ago. It’s a very different beast to their first excursion, how could it not be? 21 years is a long time and the whole mix is rooted in dub of all permutations, layer upon layer of sonics to pick apart including many unreleased tracks, versions or remixes by all participants. Lee Perry, Killing Joke, Sun Ra, William Burroughs, Teebs, Ry Cooder, Actress, Prince Jammy, Iggy Pop, Monty Python and Hank Williams are all in there plus probably a hundred more, some submerged, others strutting their stuff, you can have fun trying to guess who played what and who is who hiding behind a pseudonym. We haven’t included all the spoken word samples in the track listing because it would just get way too confusing but you’ll hear John F Kennedy, Hal 9000, William Burroughs and more swimming around in there.

We will continue celebrating a quarter of a century of ‘the broadest beats’ every week throughout the year with exclusive mixes from: Four Tet, J Rocc, Skream, Kirk DeGiorgio, Trevor Jackson, Chris Carter from Throbbing Gristle, Toddla T, Benji B, Photek, Andy Votel, Z-Trip, Tom Middleton, Richard Dorfmeister, Greg Wilson, DJ Kentaro, James Lavelle, Giles Peterson, Don Letts, Jack Dangers, Future Sound of London, Kid Koala, Luke Vibert, Laurent Garnier, Congo Natty, Gaslamp Killer, Andrew Weatherall, Francois Kevorkian, Fink, Ross Allen, Mixmaster Morris, Manasseh and the first guest to appear on Solid Steel back in 1988, Juan Atkins (and that’s not even all of them…).

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 9 Comments |

Terminal Radio Transmission: FSOL 2 hr tribute mixes

A new mix series called Terminal Radio has just launched by fans and musicians from the FSOL online message boards. Members from around the globe were asked to make a 15 minute mix each and eight of these were collected and mixed together into a 2 hour trip.

Each volume will feature eight more alternate universes converging into one super quadaural meta-brain: (says Craig who has organised all this). If you’re a fan of the Future Sound of London there’s a lot here that will be right up you’re street.

Transmission 1:

Transmission 2:

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Music. | 1 Comment |

25 Years of Solid Steel in 2013

I can’t quite believe it’s been a quarter of a century since Matt Black and Jonathan More combined their Mastermix Dance Party and Meltdown Party shows to form the Coldcut Solid Steel show on the pirate station Kiss FM in London.

Both had separate shows on a Friday afternoon on the station, Matt’s at midday and John’s at 4pm with Danny Ramplin(g) sandwiched in between and Judge Jules‘ Family Funktion, Bobby & Steve’s Zoo Experience and Jazzie B‘s Soul II Soul shows following. Check out this amazing line up from an old Kiss 94 FM newsletter (94 was the frequency it was on before it went legal in 1990 and switched to 100).

No sooner than they had joined forces – we think sometime in the latter half of ’88, no one is quite sure – Kiss went off the air at New Years Eve. In an attempt to gain a legal license they had to stop broadcasting for 6 months as a show of faith to the DTI. As it turned out they didn’t get the license until Spring 1990 as they lost out to Jazz FM in ’89 which is why there are no shows from that year floating round on the web.

DK has raided the Coldcut tape cupboard to put together a show comprised of snippets of both Matt and Jon’s separate shows in the first hour and a later Solid Steel on the legal Kiss 100 FM in the second. Spot the signposts in Coldcut’s early career, hear now classic tracks played in their heyday and vintage adverts for gigs now a distant memory.

New shows arrive on Fridays, you can listen to the show every week on Soundcloud and also subscribe and receive the podcast through iTunes. We have some very special mixes coming up throughout the year from big guests both new and old that we’ve asked specially to contribute.

We’re looking back in a different way this time, no more archive shows but guests who we’ve admired and played the music of over the last 25 years have been asked to do something special for Solid Steel in 2013. More announcements next week and a whole show devoted to a totally new return trip from Coldcut and The Orb…

Also for anyone wanting to know more about the Kiss FM story there’s a great documentary on Vimeo that tells the tale.

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 5 Comments |

New DJ Food mix of Israeli esoterica and radiophonica

On a recent trip to Tel Aviv I was given a huge amount of music, both new and old, from Israel and was knocked out by the quality of it. These form the bulk of a new mix for Solid Steel and you can see a heavy bias towards the Mordy Laye and the Group Modular record I posted about the other week which is now out on vinyl and download.
Hear and buy the album in full here or hop over to group member Markey Funk’s Mixcloud page to digest one of his great Modular mixes. He, along with group partner Mule Driver, will be putting together a special Solid Steel guest mix soon…

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 1 Comment |

Mr Armtone AV mix, DJ Food & Ill Chemist on Solid Steel

Mr Armtone – Time Machine from Solid Steel on Vimeo.

St. Petersburg’s Mr Armtone returns to Solid Steel this week, with an AV mix no less, full of great material and up to our usual high standard both musically and visually. The overall theme is Time Machines so watch and listen out for various references cropping up throughout.
The second hour features both my recent DJ Shadow mixes and the guest mix debut of NYC’s Ill Chemist aka Alan Friedman, friend of Steinski and one time Break Beatle. His mix is a stunning gallop through all music styles from BeBop to Hip Hop, Jazz takes on the classics and a whole lot more, could this be the show with the most tracks squeezed into it?

Posted in Film, Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 2 Comments |

DJ Shadow ‘Flashback’ and ‘Trip Out’ mixes for XFM

Way back in March I was asked by Eddy Temple-Morris if I would be interested in putting together a short mix offering my take on the work of DJ Shadow. This was to form part of a marathon special on his XFM show celebrating Josh’s career and tying into a compilation of some sort which has since evolved into the ‘Reconstruction’ release and deluxe box set.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a big Shadow fan so this was a thrilling opportunity and also a daunting task. The mix had to be between 17 and 20 minutes long according to Eddy, how on earth to fit so many great tracks into that length of time? No idea but best get down to it and see what develops. Going through my extensive collection threw up over 80 potential tracks, skits, remixes, co-productions and original samples which totaled over 6 hours of music if I remember correctly. How to do this so that it wouldn’t be just another Shadow mix? How to present the ubiquitous but essential ‘Organ Donor’ in an exciting way? Have a listen…

Well, I couldn’t get it down to to 17 minutes, or 20, but squeezed it all into 23 which Eddy graciously let me get away with. I decided to go for the essence of a lot of tracks rather than letting everything play out, trying to edit sympathetically to each track’s progressions so it wouldn’t seem too brutal. I used a lesser-known compilation track (from ‘Turntables On The Hudson’) called ‘Flashback’ as a theme to title the mix as it’s such a blur of sonic information sometimes that it seems like it might be just that. Having not listened back since I made it nearly 6 months ago I find it’s quite an exhilarating ride if a bit relentless, which I quite like but it you might have to be in the mood for it. The solution to ‘Organ Donor’, probably his most well known creation, was to put it at the end, the big bang after a big build, mixing in the original Giorgio Moroder ‘Tears’ sample that forms the main melody as well as a newer production to show that he’s still got it.

But after all that, I still had material left over, specifically large chunks of ambient sound beds that formed a big part of his earlier releases, which is something I love about his music and that stood out as both original and uncompromising at the time. I wanted to put these together as some sort of collage without the usual beats and vocals, maybe it could be used as a bed to talk over on the radio? It was all here, might as well see what could be done with it, I doubted anyone else would go down this route too. The result is the short but sweet ‘Trip Out’ mix…

I was thinking of the KLF‘s classic ‘Chill Out’ album here, hence the pastiche of the cover and the title – also an allusion to hallucination of course but also a knowing wink to the Trip Hop genre tag that has dogged Shadow since the start of his career. I actually think this concept could have been taken further with a bit more production to extend and rearrange sections but time constraints didn’t permit. Anyway, now I had over 30 minutes of mix for Eddy when he only wanted half that. Props to him that he played both and you can hear the whole thing, along with mixes by IRN MNKY, Bare Noize, Stereo:Type and Culprit One online at XFM for the next week. If you’re abroad and you need to enter a postcode to make it think you’re listening from the UK then try W1A 1AA.

Posted in DJ Food, Mixes/Solid Steel, Radio. | 7 Comments |

“I wanna say a little something that’s long overdue…”

A great big THANK YOU to everyone who’s listened to the remake of The Beastie Boys‘ ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album that Cheeba, Moneyshot and I debuted 10 days ago. It’s been blogged and linked to from all over the world by magazines like Urb, Fact and Spin plus sites like EgoTrip, Comic Book Resource and Dangerous Minds, and this weekend the LA Times ran a news piece on it.

On Friday we broke the record for the most listens to one mix ever on our Solid Steel show (33,000 for Bonobo) and are currently heading towards the 40,000 listens mark on the Ninja Tune/Solid Steel Soundcloud. Sadly we received the news that Strongroom Alive – the radio station that hosts us in London every Thursday – was no more last week but their memory lives on in the live version currently on Mixcloud which has garnered another 10,000 plays.

Big thanks to Erik Batternberg who sent me the LA Times photo and for all of you who blogged it, shared it, retweeted it, let us know your thoughts and hipped us to others who have done the same.

Now that the mix has had it’s week on Solid Steel I’ve uploaded it to my own Soundcloud and you can access it quickly via the image on the right or the download page. We are all blown away with the reception this has received and will be working on something special as a follow up for next year.

Posted in DJ Food, Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 1 Comment |