It is with great pleasure that DK and I finally bring you months of hard work with a mix comprising parts of our Video Turntablism sets from the last 12 months. Massive thanks to DK for really pulling out all the stops to get this thing realised from all the material we have, it couldn’t have happened without him.
[vimeo width=”635″ height=”480″]http://www.vimeo.com/8073574[/vimeo]
Coming to Solid Steel next week – Part 1 of 2
Last weeks’ Solid Steel mix – the Kraftwerk Kover Kollection vol.6 – now up on Soundcloud. 1 hour of songs covering, sampling or influenced by the other Fab Four. The full 6 volumes + artwork and track lists are up for the download at BosBos.net too!
Another Kraftwerk post (I’ll have to give them their own category) and time for the sixth installment of my Kraftwerk Kover Kollection to coincide with the final release of the remastered Catalogue box set on Monday.
It’s up for a week, streaming via the Solid Steel site and I’ll be making it available via Soundcloud when the next show replaces it.
For those unfamiliar, I do these hour long mixes every year or so featuring cover versions, sample-heavy tracks or songs that obviously owe a debt to the Dusseldorf quartet. I had the idea to string these sources together several years ago and the more I dug, the more I found, the amount of material out there is mind boggling. Not so strange for such an influential band who rarely release new material, I suppose fans have to fill the gap somehow. For anyone wanting to play catch-up, the first 4 are available here with full artwork and track listings and I’ll be putting 5 up with 6 next week too.
At a festival in Warsaw the other week, DK and I had the pleasure of seeing ex-Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos play. I was surprised at how much of the set was old material mixed with his solo stuff. His stage show pales compared to his former bands’ but he had full visuals and 5.1 sound all mixed live and hearing a new take on classic tracks was well worth the time we took to check him out.
I know it’s a bit late but I wanted to share these two pumpkins I carved for the kids’ party.
Got back from Bristol Solid Steel where DK and I played with Hexstatic, King Cannibal, DJ Cheeba and Moneyshot as well as D.O.P. of course. The others all rocked it but we fell foul of some technical problems and just plain sloppy mixing in the middle of the set. We’d spent a week making up quite a complex video piece that we’d never tried before and it was a seat of our pants execution.
Saturday night was the Big Chill House alongside Cheebs again (who rocked it amazingly both nights) and Altern8 who sounded excellent up until I left. The city was full of freaks and ghouls, zombies being the big favourite it seems.
Been a bit quiet recently mostly on account of being on holiday with the family and knuckling down on the music.
The next EP is nearly in the bag, featuring a collaboration with DK – mixed by King Cannibal no less, a remix of ‘All Covered In Darkness’ by PC, a cover version and more artwork by the excellent Henry Flint. Mixdowns take place next week, mastering the week after, release should be Oct / Nov.
Kid Koala just sent me the new record he did with Dynomite D – ‘The Slew’ and it is stunning, a mix of rock, blues and scratching, you won’t have heard much like this before. Download it for free here – don’t worry, I’m not into music piracy, this link comes direct from Kid Koala himself with the message “Feel free to pass it on to anyone you think would enjoy this noise. ;)”
DJ Moneyshot’s September Solid Steel mix is floating around on the web already, it’s a collection of all the tracks the Beastie Boys sampled on their ‘Check Your Head’ album and has been on constant rotation here since I got it.
I’ve raved about him before but I just finished ‘Totally Wired’ by Simon Reynolds, the companion to one of my books of the year in 2007 – ‘Rip It Up And Start Again’. Essentially a series of interviews made during research for the first book, it is fascinating reading for anyone interested in music circa ’78-84.
Ashley Wood has some great new robots out, just a shame I’m broke after the taxman reared his annual head.
This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages, Finnish guitarist StStanders strips the track’s audio and inserts his own, complete with off key music and silly lyrics.
Last Friday we made No.2 and No.8 with the Ninja Tune and Solid Steel podcast respectively on the iTunes Music chart – whoohoo! Well done to DK and guests who put together the show with so much effort
It’s here, you wait for ages and then three come along at once. Yes I finally got round to releasing another record and it’s out today, a 30 minute EP on Ninja Tune called ‘One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World’. It features the vocal talents of Natural Self (yes, I said vocal) on lead track ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ and the nifty drums of Dr. Rubberfunk alongside the sampled vocals of Ken Nordine and The Dragons on ‘All Covered In Darkness’. Bundy K Brown is behind the board for ‘A Trick of the Ear’ and an old collaboration with PC makes it’s first appearance in the form of ‘extract from Stolen Moments’. 2000ad artist Henry Flint graciously provided drawings for the cover art to make it something worth having and holding when it folds out to an A2 sized poster. It’s available in the form of a 5 track 12″ with poster cover and download code or a 6 track mp3 bundle.
You can hear selections from it on my Soundcloud and buy it from iTunes / DJ Download / Play.com / Spotify / we7 / Ninja shop / HMV Digital / Bleep / Tune Tribe / 7 Digital / Juno / Boomkat
There’s an interview in the new Clash Music magazine including a free mp3 and a very nice review by Mark E on Ireallylovemusic
Not only is there a new record but the near mythical DJ Food site is finally ready, choc full of stuff from my Openmind alter ego design work past and present and a full DJ Food discography stretching back nearly 20 years. If you want to know anything about the records connected to this moniker over the years then it will be there along with gig dates, blogs, playlists and more. The site is divided into 4 sections: Diary, Design, Discography and Downloads and you can subscribe to the blog without going through myspace at last. It’s still a work in progress as there is so much to present, especially on the design side of things as most entries provide stories, alternate artwork and release info. A big thanks to Dean at Safe As Milk for all his hard work on making it what it is.
And finally, it’s a Solid Steel takeover this week with an hour long mix from myself based on the EP with tracks from all the contributors, some original sample sources and various things I that inspired the making of it. The second hour is a fantastic mix from The Broken Keys – aka Natural Self and Nostalgia 77 – called ‘Engine Oil and Elbow Grease’, stuffed to the brim with old funk, rock breaks and psyche. You can listen here.