Solid Steel

30 years of Solid Steel

Solid Steel 30Solid Steel – Coldcut’s weekly 2 hour mix show – is 30 years old – wow, now I feel old too. To celebrate they’ve commissioned a clutch of special mixes which will air throughout the first week of December. Juan Atkins (the show’s first guest back in ’88), The Bug, Bernd Friedman, Gerd Janson, HAAi and Mark Pritchard have all recorded mixes as well as Coldcut, DK (with an epic 4 hr effort) and myself.

What do you do when you’re faced with a blank canvas to commemorate a 30 year anniversary? I’ve been with the show for 25 of those years and so much music has flowed through it in that time it’s impossible to crystalize that into one set. Instead I thought I’d attempt something I’d not done before and put together a collection of classic minimalist songs by the masters – Kraftwerk, Eno, Reich, Riley, Can etc. – and weave other elements in and out of the mix. In some respects I succeeded but I started out with seven hours of music! A lot had to go as flow and tuning just didn’t work and I also didn’t want too much 4/4 kick drum to pin things down, rather just the throb of forward motion.

Mixing this stuff takes time and patience, the tracks are long, you can lose your place in the rhythm very easily and most of them are played live so not locked into any steady metronome or midi clock. Getting the mix tight was a constant headache. I’ve used some tracks more like samples to add textures to others rather than to have their own spotlight and the intention was to always have at least two things creating a third, which is the basis of all the best mixes.

When compiling sets for the Solid Steel mix CD series, then Ninja A&R for the series, Dean Smith, used to talk about ‘moments’. Each mix should have at least two or three points that would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up or blend the sound to such a point that you got a rush. It’s not enough to just blend two ends of a track together, we’re sculpting here, making connections that wouldn’t normally sit together and, in the best instances, mean that you can never hear one of those tracks on it’s own again without hearing the other playing in your head. There are subtleties at play in recorded mixes that can never be experienced in clubs as the volume and crowd noise often pushes out the details.

Two thirds the way through the set I also did something I’ve never done before too – inserted another guest mix. Chatting to Brian Dougans from Future Sound Of London, he’d confessed to being a Solid Steel fan, regularly taping shows throughout the 90s and being inspired by the weekly mixdowns. When I told him it was the 30th anniversary he offered an exclusive mix of new Humanoid tracks, an alias he’s just reactivated as it’s three decades since he first had a hit under the moniker with ‘Stakker Humanoid’. It seems fitting to have a contribution from an artist whose career started at the same time as the show, FSOL’s own radio shows in the 90s similarly inspired me and this is a nod to their idea of inserting guest mixes into their early Kiss FM shows. The six acid tracks are a stark contrast to my own selection but rather than surround them with similar material I’ve let them occupy their own space within the set, you might have to adjust your mood though. A massive thanks to Brian for this mix and all the music he and Gaz have bought us over the years.

After 25 years as part of the Solid Steel team and after hundreds of hours of mixes, it’s great to still be inspired to push myself and be among such esteemed company as the show morphs once again into a new era. Solid Steel moves to a new format next year, already with some killer guests lined up, and there are around 8 years worth of mixes in the archive online along with an extensive database of dates and guests from the past 30 years.

DJ Food Solid Steel 30th mix featuring Humanoid

Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms (Kapp Records)
Brian Eno & David Byrne – The Carrier (Virgin)
Pink Floyd – On The Run (Harvest)
Kraftwerk – Autobahn (Vertigo)
Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois – Ascent (An Ending) (Virgin)
The Beach Boys – Our Prayer (Brother/Reprise)
Vapour Space – Gravitational Arch of 10 (Internal)
David Bowie – Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix) (Columbia)
Herbie Hancock – Rain Dance (Columbia)
Can – Messer, Scissors, Fork & Light (Spoon )
Steve Hillage – Rainbow Dome Musick (Virgin)
Cavern of Anti-Matter – Tardis Cymbals (Duophonic HF Discs)
Pat Metheny – Electric Counterpoint fast (Nonesuch)
Steve Reich – Music for 18 Musicians (ECM)
10cc – Wet Rubber Soup (Polydor)
Steve Hillage – Rainbow Dome Musick (Virgin)
David Sylvian – Answered Prayers (Virgin)
Manuel Gottsching – E2:E4 (MG-Art)
The KLF – Deep Shit (The Cult of Mu 7″ mix) (CDR)
Jon Brooks – A Mechanical Eye (Ghost Box)

Humanoid In Session 2-4th Nov 2018 – guest mix
– 1 Acid Ho
– 2 Spore
– 3 Point Cloud
– 4 Co-Pilot
– 5 Koma Flow (808 State)
– 6 Far-Point
– Recorded live at 9L West, Engineered by Yage for EbV. Fsoldigital Recordings.

Terry Riley vs Meat Beat Manifesto – In C (Version 4.2) (Electronic Sound)
Boards of Canada – Telepath (Warp)
Psychic Warriors of Gaia – Obsidian (Organically Decomposed) (KK Records)
This Mortal Coil – Waves Become Wings (4AD)
Steve Hillage – Rainbow Dome Musick (Virgin)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Suzanne Ciani – A New Day (RVNG INTL)
Vapour Space – Gravitational Arch of 10 (Internal)
Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms (Kapp Records)

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Jean Jacques Perrey meets Coldcut on Solid Steel

Jean Jacques Perrey on Solid SteelRIP Jean Jacques Perrey – a true pioneer and a man not afraid to keep the comedic in electronic music – here’s an archive interview Coldcut did with JJP back in 1997 for Solid Steel.

“Coldcut meet Jean Jacques Perry. This occurred in early 1997, at their Spacelab studio in the old Ninja HQ in Clink St. (now luxury flats with a Starbucks underneath). E.V.A. was enjoying a huge revival as the soundtrack to a Lucozade commercial and Moog, Easy Listening and Music Concréte were all back in vogue. Jean Jacques was
promoting the reissue of the track and playing his first gigs for years. Matt Black had recently acquired three huge Korg PS3300’s, was deep into his analogue kit and instantly struck up a rapport (Richard James would later buy one of the Korgs from him when studio space grew tight).”

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Bear Witness

#solid_steel #result_art #dk #bear_witness #stage_jump

A video posted by Anton (@mr.armtone) on


I think this is one of my favourite videos of the year. From the Resultart party DK and I did in Nizhny Novgorod in Russia last weekend (that’s him playing on the right) I wasn’t around for this but wish I had been. The party was in an old warehouse that had been left unused until just a month before and had been transformed with artwork and a huge video screen into a great club space. The soundsystem was SO loud that the bass frequencies were hurting my ears and rippling the screen of my laptop at times.

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Polar bear video courtesy of Mr. Armtone who managed to find me a very rare ‘bone disc’ (see last week’s Flexibition) which I will treasure forever. Thanks Anton! :)DSC00002

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Brand new Solid Steel website by antipattern

SSSite_Featured
We have a brand new Solid Steel website, built for us by antipattern, which finally does all the things we wanted it to do with the vast archive of mixes we’ve accumulated from the last 27 years. We’re very pleased with the results as the site is full of easy to navigate touches that leave plenty of room for a gallery of artwork and photography to grace your desktop, tablet or phone whilst you listen.

Here’s a quick walk through: (above) Main landing page with Featured mixes bar on the right – just tap Featured to close it. (Below) Once a mix is selected just hit play on the Solid Steel logo on the left, you can jump through the mix once it’s loaded or pause by tapping the logo again. Click Tracklist to open a side bar with a scrollable tracklist.
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SSSite_Tracklist

(Above) Click the Synopsis tab to bring up details of the mix plus a link to Soundcloud where you can find the mixes and leave a comment or download. (Below) If you fancy finding an old mix there are several ways of accessing them: the good old Search button in the middle of the three top left circles or the Timeline button next to it which brings up a new graphic showing the decades from 1988 to the present.

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(Above) Click the Year you want and a side bar will appear with a scrollable list of all the shows from that date. You can also then scroll vertically through the years too. (Below) Finally there’s an A-Z directory down at the bottom left so that you can see if an artist you love has contributed a mix to the show, hit the name and all their mixes will appear in a scrollable side bar.
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Big thanks again to Suki and Paul at antipattern, go visit their new site, DK for producing the whole project and Tom and James at Ninja for the behind the scenes help.

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Solid Steel logo process

Solid_Steel_logo+1_2015The start of the new Solid Steel site was the creation of a new logo for the show, from which we determined where we were going design-wise. A clean, modern look was wanted that also had to work alongside an image of the mix artist featured each week. I decided on a very thin, san-serif font that would leave plenty of space for an image, show date and artist name, all within a circle or square that would work at thumbnail size.

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(Above) I started off with variants of the existing single ‘S’ logo which looked OK but lacked that certain something.

(Below) I won’t bore you with all the endless font and weight placements but there were many and I ended up with a central ‘o’ which aped a record or CD appearance from a distance and a very thin font on which I did a lot of work kerning and re-sculpting letters to sit at different weights. There were many subtle variations on the ‘S’s and by extending the ‘L’s and ‘T’ the text was suddenly no longer floating and a unique, eye-catching logo had been formed.

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(Above) Variations in a heavier weight as well as an off-centre ‘O’ were needed for use at smaller sizes.
(Below) I then started experimenting with different ways to unify the weekly artist images – toning or tinting the images and discarding an oblong title card inside a square as it looked too much like existing mix show graphics.
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Image test 4

(Below) A brief flirtation with breaking the circle which was discarded because it would cause too much trouble when placed onto a coloured background or image.
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Image test 3
(Above) Different weights of type for readability. (Below) By moving the artist name out of the centre circle we freed up space and gave ourselves room for longer names. I have to be creative with the image placement each week but the date is readable and there’s plenty of room for the artist names in the top right section.
SS idea slackk

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Future Shock AV show premiere at Videocrash, Koko, London

My new Future Shock 2 mix is getting a lot of love on this week’s Solid Steel and now I can reveal that I’ll be premiering the AV show that goes with it at Videocrash at Koko, London this May 23rd. *UPDATE – Soundcrash cancelled this gig after changing the line up four times in two weeks. It has since been rescheduled for another date in December at a different venue.

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New Solid Steel logo / identity

SS_logo_0_2015
Keen-eyed listeners to the Solid Steel weekly radio show may have noticed a logo makeover last week. A new, slimline logo has taken place of the previous single ‘S’ one as we continue to streamline the show for online consumption. The logo comes in white on black circle but can be reversed and I designed it in three weights with the heaviest being for small usage where the centre circle is offset with the outer circle also in box form. Expect a new responsive website redesign in April too. SS_SSpacek_Kutmak_BlkSS_logo_small_square_2015

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Future Shock on Solid Steel


Future Shock was a 2hr mix that I cooked up for an online ‘pirate’ radio station a couple of friends set up earlier this year called Altar Ego Radio. Billed as ‘Music from the Future you remember from your Past’, I mixed sci-fi electronica with a retro feel from Jokers of the Scene, Falty DL. The Books, Sculpture, Nico Motte and Jeremy Schmidt. Here’s the first hour, exclusively sans the chat of the original broadcast which was hosted like a regular radio show. Much like the recent Magpie Music mix of a few weeks ago I intend to expand on these themes in forthcoming Future Shock mixes focusing on the more electronic side of my current tastes. Altar Ego Radio will also be back on the air over the August Bank holiday weekend, more info here

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Matt Berry / DJ Food Solid Steel mix

I’m very pleased to be sharing airtime with the legend that is Matt Berry on Solid Steel this week – my Magpie Music show that debuted on Altar Ego Radio earlier this year is paired with his trip though gospel rock, soundtracks, spoken word and classic Pop.

Matt has a new album out at the moment on Acid Jazz called ‘Music For Insomniacs’ which mines very different territory from his previous outings. This time he’s channeling Vangelis, Mike Oldfield and Tangerine Dream and turns in a more ambient, synth-laden set although there are plenty of surprises that spring up in the mix too. He’s currently filming the new series of Toast of London and we’re thrilled to have him on the show. Got to Acid Jazz to buy his album or previous records + tour memorabilia.

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‘E is for Eighties Edits’ new mix for Solid Steel

E Is For Eighties cover webImagine 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.

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Sabotage comic and the ‘3-Way Mix’ hits 100k plays

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.

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30 Years of Acid mix by Posthuman on Solid Steel

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.

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New Food mix + Markey Funk Trish Keenan tribute

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.

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