
I’m ending on an epic – after more than four years, 199 uploads and seven exclusive mixes – a three hour Solid Steel with Matt, Jon and myself from October 1994. As the show aired between 1am-3am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning and the traditional time of putting the clocks back is 2am – smack bang in the middle of the show – we get an extra hour. For this reason, this mix was referred to as a Spacetime mix, due to the fact that we time travelled during it and thus needed several tapes to fit it on. I’ve got nearly two and half hours, some of which would have been taken up by adverts and some may have been missed with tape turnovers but let’s just say the remainder has disappeared into the space time continuum.
I’ve also slaved over this track list between Shazam, Matt & Jon’s incomplete track backs in the recording and my own fading memory. I’ve nearly got it but not quite. The fourth tune at the 15 min mark was really annoying me as I know it, Jon says it’s ‘Todd Terry – Bad Boys’ but there’s no such track that I can find. UK original Todd Terry licensee Champion had an offshoot called Bad Boys Records in the early 90s so I checked there but it’s none of those releases. Turns out it was his Hardhouse alias with the dub of the B side ’11:55’, subtitled ‘Bee Boys Dub’. When we were (hand) writing down the track lists on the PRS sheets for Kiss we’d sometimes not know exactly what had been played in what order, were cribbing through a pile of discarded records, some of which were white label promos and just had to guess. Then sometimes we couldn’t read each other’s hand writing or ran out of time to go through the list, with Matt’s favourite get-out clause being, ‘and other mystery beats’. All in all it created confusion and no doubt frustration for those who wanted to track down the songs but had no access to any form of internet database like Discogs.

My section is roughly in the middle with Matt and Jon either side, I’ve left them in for this one as it’s the only three hour show I’ve got in the archive and it’s the last of this run. I think the Art of Noise is my entry point with maybe the Attica Blues as the exit – no idea on the female led ‘dabba daaah’ tune after it or the Hendrix-sampling trip hop track after that which is, again, naggingly familiar. I’d got the white vinyl FSOL ‘Smokin’ Japanese Babe’ 12” shortly before this show and was so taken with it I played both sides in full alongside a bit of old school electro. I’m not going to go through every track as I’m writing this Thursday night but I hope you enjoy this nearly two and a half hour ‘rub’ to end this epic archive project. When all is said and done, the left over tapes are minimal; a one and half hour Sphinx mix from the end of 1994 (we did a lot in that year!) a few personal mixes that I did for friends that never aired on Solid Steel and a live recording of PC and I in Bristol in 1997 which is mostly Patrick leading. I’ll send that one to him and maybe he’ll put it up, the others I may put up for free later but for now I need a break from the weekly uploads.
If you still want access to all these uploads you’ll have to subscribe but I anticipate a drop off in numbers which is fine, the work is done and I thank everyone who contributed along the way, especially those who have been here from the start (are there any?). I’ll let someone else do the math but there’s quite a few hours worth up here now and these are just up until 2007/8, not the years after which should be a bit more readily available in general via solid steel.net, Mixcloud, Soundcloud and various other places. I’ll be concentrating on my new monthly radio show on ROVR – the Electrik Collage – the third of which dropped last Friday – listen back here. It’ll be good to be looking forward and playing new music – like we did on Solid Steel – rather than getting stuck in the nostalgia trap, nice as it can be. I’m keen to make the shows that soundtrack these times that I’ll hopefully enjoy listening back to in 20 years time.
Track list:
The Sex Pistols – Anarchy In The UK
Beastie Boys – Fight For Your Right To Party
The Aloof – Society
Hardhouse – 11:55 (Bee Boys Dub)
The Transplant – Afrocentric (Come Together)
Bedouin Ascent – Internal Bleeding
Acacia – Cord
Hydra – Song For a Fish
Spacetime Continuum – Ping Pong
LFO – Tied Up
Mephisto Odyssey – Dream of The Black Dahlia (Keyboard mix)
Art of Noise – Opus 4
The Firesign Theatre – Everything You Know Is Wrong
Far Out Son Of Lung – Ramblings of a Madman
Far Out Son Of Lung – Zeebox
Vapourspace – Gravitational Arch of 10
The 7th Plain – Think City
The Octagon Man – The Demented Spirit
Hashim – Al-Naayfisch (The Soul)
La Funk Mob – Motor Bass Gets Phunked Up (Electrofunk mix)
Herbie Hancock – Rockit
Arthur Baker – Breaker’s Revenge (Extended Vocal version)
Unknown – unknown ambient
Autechre – Montreal
Silence – Omid/Hope
Massive Attack – Euro Child
Inky Blacknuss – Desolator
Far Out Son Of Lung – Are They Fighting Us
Far Out Son Of Lung – Smokin’ Japanese Babe
Attica Blues – Contemplating Jazz
Unknown – female vocal
Unknown – unknown trip hop
Single Cell Orchestra – Call Me
The Auteurs va Mu-Ziq – Lenny Valentino (Mu-Ziq #3) (on 45rpm)
Spring Heel Jack – The Sea Lettuce
Yellow Magic Orchestra – Tong Poo (The Orb remix)
Freak Power – unknown







That’s My Boy! was a trilogy of tapes I made whilst living in a house share in East Dulwich, they were given out to friends and neighbours around 30 years ago as my DJ career was just starting with Coldcut and Ninja Tune. Weirdly my old friend Jem Panufnik sent me a photo of his copy of this tape he’d found just a week after I’d digitised it (see below). There were three volumes of which this is the second and I was showcasing the tracks of the day whilst trying to find my style as the times shifted out of the ambient scene I had been playing in for the last few years. The first strands of what would become known as trip hop were mutating out of the hip hop, indie dance and acid jazz scenes and it was a fertile time for electronic music with Warp leading the pack with their Artificial Intelligence series. You can still hear the tendrils of the German kosmischer scene overlaid in places as well as the collaged soundscapes of the Orb and others of their ilk but this volume definitely ups the funk factor with cuts from the Beastie Boys’ then current Ill Communication album, the Ballistic Brothers vs the Eccentric Afros EPs and early Mo Wax and Ninja Tune releases. 



















A dark but beautiful selection from a show I shared mix duty on with Riz Maslen aka Neotropic. My tape dates it as 30/01/98 but my online reference from Marcus Maack’s BTTB database says 04/01/1998. Whatever, it was sometime in January 1998 and this was recorded in the Ahead of Our Time studio in Clink St. most likely with engineer Ali Tod at the controls and my flanger pedal in the mix by the sounds of things. 




