A mixed bag of then current music and what an embarrassment of riches! From contemporary psyche rock instrumental beats to post electroclash tracks and downtempo sample-fests.
The Giallos Flame first came to my attention via the DC Recordings 12” that the opening track was taken from, of which the mix title is a play on as this set was recorded when I was living in Dulwich. I know the Cdr says ‘Dunwich’ but that’s wrong and so is the date, being when it was recorded, not broadcast. Following swiftly is an early Heliocentrics track from a Jazzman 45 followed my another track from the aforementioned Live From Dunwich 12”. DC Recordings were on a ridiculously good run at this point with releases from The Emperor Machine, Padded Cell, Tom Tyler, The Oscillation and White Line Circus, all wrapped in gorgeous La Boca artwork and the Padded Cell remix of Future Loop Foundation’s ‘The Sea & The Sky’ is still a banger to this day and cheap as chips.

Keeping the tempo high there’s the Ted Nugget-sampling ‘Shake A Fist’ from Hot Chip, an amazing Optimo remix of Prinzhorn Dance School’s ‘Space Invader’ (check the 303 breakdown) and LCD’s ’Sound of Silver’ which I seemed to think sounded like Frankie’s ‘Relax’ in the middle, hence the acappella overdub. Racing through ‘other mystery beats’ as Matt Black always used to call the ones he couldn’t recall – Mr 76ix was a Skam records artist who sounds like he’s sampling a snatch of the Ronnie Corbett ’Sorry’ theme tune in there. The Shocking Pinks remixed by the Glimmers I barely recall but would have been sent on promo, mining that Liquid Liquid percussion sound repopularised by the DFA crew. More spy jazz Giallos Flame with a mystery preacher sermon too low in the mix and then Indoor Life’s ‘Archeology’ which must have been on a compilation as it’s an old 80s track on Celluloid. A quick look on Discogs confirms that it was on a B-Music comp titled after the track itself, dig and dig and dig indeed.

The excellent but sadly none too prolific Mr Chop (these days simply known as Chop) is up next from his Jazz & Milk release, ‘Sounds From The Cave’, he’s go on to get picked up by Now Again Records for a few releases and has also since had a 10” out on the coveted Drumetrics series. I don’t recall the Kid Acne ‘Sliding Beats’ either but what a banging beat, seems it was the instrumental of his ‘Sliding Doors’ release on Lex, co-written with Req One, mixed by Ross Orton and mastered by Rob Gordon no less! Next is a brace of Bullion’s breakthrough mash up of Jay D/Dilla beats and Beach Boys samples. So good I included four in a row, mainly because they were quite short too, he turns an unlikely alliance into something quite magic and forms a third ‘artist’ in the process which is what the best mash ups are all about. I’d been contemplating a Beach Boys sample-fest of my own for some years but he took it further than I ever could, I must revisit that record soon, it still sounds fresh.

For the last section we go deeper into sample territory, starting with what, for my money, is one of the first sample records in pop – Eno and Byrne’s My Life In The Bush of Ghosts and the spooky ‘Come With Us’. I could rhapsodise about this album until the cows come home as it’s one of my favourite records ever but Gescom throw any reverence away, shoving the whole thing into some sample chopping and rearranging programme that expertly reconfigures it from a meandering ramble into an uptempo electro stomp. Add in Murcof’s darkly creeping ambience over the end and you have something quite special as the track contorts and breaks down under its own complexity. ‘Cosmos 1’ is from the fourth of his five album debut run with the Leaf label and what a fine group of albums. This melts into the final track from the sole release by The Dead Soul Brothers, a record I don’t recall ever having but which may have come to me digitally by this point as it’s 2007 and methods of distribution were changing fast every year in the music business and they got hold of the digital realm.

Track list:
The Giallos Flame – Live From Dunwich
Heliocentrics – Dance of the Dogon
The Giallos Flame – Crime Squad
Future Loop Foundation – The Sea & The Sky (Padded Cell remix)
Hot Chip – Shake A Fist
Prinzhorn Dance School – You Are The Space Invader (Optimo remix)
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
Mr 76ix – Romanticism
Shocking Pinks – Smoke Screen (12″s & A Bit More by The Glimmers)
The Giallos Flame – Live From Dunwich
Indoor Life – Archeology
Mr Chop – Snob
Kid Acne – Sliding Beats (instrumental)
Bullion – Let’s Be Friends
Bullion – Pet Sounds
Bullion – Sloop Jay D
Bullion – Don’t Talk (Close Your Eyes)
Brian Eno & David Byrne – Come With Us
Gescom – B1
Murcof – Cosmos 1
Dead Soul Brothers – Overtime

An odd assortment from mid 2002 here with a bit of party-style mash up, a bit of funk, some Four Tet and some cut ups thrown in, sounds a bit like I was tidying up some loose ends. The inclusion of ‘Milk’ by The Basic dates it instantly to around the time of DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist’s ‘Product Placement’ mix, of which this was a staple, both musically and visually. It’s also the first time Luke Vibert’s ‘Homewerk’ gets an airing, a track that would be in the record box from most of the decade and still comes out for the Kraftwerk Klassics, Kovers and Kurios set.

‘Yoda’s One Man Band’ sounds more like Kid Koala than he did back then and I’m not entirely sure it was serious. I never knew who the Freelance Hairdresser was, obviously a play on the Freelance Hellraiser and in early on with the mash up craze. Here he/she mixes the BBC Pot Black theme (Winifred Atwell – Black & White Rag) with Eminem to ‘hilarious’ effect, hasn’t dated a bit – but seriously, this is half of what I enjoyed about the bastard pop craze, it was ridiculous and unpretentious fun, mostly made by people who had nothing to lose.

‘Funk’ is, of course, the less famous B side to Meco’s huge disco-fied hit, ’Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band’ although something tells me they needed a filler track quickly for the flip and didn’t stop to think too hard about the title. Here comes Luke with his obvious steal homage to the Dusseldorf Quartet and I have to say, that tempo switch down mix out of it into Paul Kass is inspired. There’s also a link between the two as ‘Underground Agent’ is featured on the Further Nuggets compilation of library music that Luke made for Lo Recordings around this time.

And here’s The Basic with their advertisement for the dairy industry, not 100% sure where the spoken word about cows comes from that I’ve slung over it but it’s probably a Sesame Street sketch. I remember seeing the Product Placement show at, I think, the Scala of all places, in London. Shadow and Cut confounded a few people after the party-tastic ‘Brainfreeze’ set by digging pretty deep to the point where the tracks were cool but more of a head-nod than a get down. Z-Trip ripped it up on that show, pure showmanship with Nirvana cut ups and plenty of mic action.

A couple of Four Tet pieces follow, first, a remix for James Yorkson, and second, something he did for the Domino label which takes a big slabs of John Abercrombie’s ‘Timeless’ and weaves it into something beautiful. It comes as a 7”, split over two sides and features a photo of a young Kieran with his sister on the cover. We play out and turn off the light with Al Dente and Ill Chemist – friends of Steinski’s – and a little track from a CDr I was given I think as I can’t find it anywhere on the web. Nighty Night!

Track list:
DJ Yoda – Yoda’s One Man Band
Freelance Hairdresser – Marshall’s Been Snookered
Meco – Funk
Luke Vibert – Homewerk
Paul Kass – Underground Agent
The Basic – Milk
James Yorkson & the Athletes – The Lang Toun (Four Tet remix)
Four Tet – I’m On Fire (Part 2)
Al Dente and Ill Chemist – Nighty Night

Happy New Year for 2023! I hope it was fun for you all, sorry this is late today, I’ve been deep in design and gig mode, opening for The Art of Noise two nights in a row at the Jazz Cafe. On with the show I promised in the last entry.
Matt Black rang up one day in the summer of 1994, there was a problem. KISS FM had been booked out, both studios, for the Friday pre-record so he needed somewhere else to record the show that week. I’m not sure if Jon More was around, maybe away DJing with PC? I’m also not sure the exact turn of events aside from KISS wasn’t available but could he come over and do the show at mine? Wow, this was a turn up for the books, I’d only been a guest on the show for just over a year, had a handful or more under my belt and was becoming part of the crew due to now providing artwork for the label as well as the odd gig away with Coldcut. OK, come over to East Dulwich and set up in my bedroom and record Solid Steel, why don’t you? Holy shit!

At the time I shared a house with Chantal Passamonte (Mira Calix further down the line), David Vallade and Mario Aguera and we had hosted the original Telepathic Fish party in the three story house above a chemists on Goose Green which we’d dubbed 102 Central. Mario had by now started working with Hex as a computer programmer and David and Chantal were working in Ambient Soho, the record shop in Berwick St, Soho, while I was up the road at Books Etc. on Oxford Street. At the time I had three decks set up in my room, a couple of Technics and something else I forget, not sure what the mixer was but it was the same one on the cover of the Funkjazztical Tricknology compilation. I also had a keyboard, a drum machine, CD player and an odd flanger guitar pedal hooked up – see the blurry photo for reference. Matt came down and we took turns playing into a portable DAT player he’d bought along I think. Can’t remember what we used for a mic but it was probably a pair of headphones plugged into the mic. input hence the terrible sound quality. I think the Coldcut jingles were flown in off cassette and this recording was probably taken from the radio broadcast as it has the KISS news jingle added onto the end, probably live by the sound engineer.

Starting off with a then holy trinity of electronica pioneers Autechre, MuZiq and Caustic Windown (Aphex Twin) tells you we’re in the golden age of Artificial Intelligence era electronica. AI only took another 30 years to become part of everyday life. None of the tracks here have aged badly either, I still play the Aphex track out sometimes too. Following ‘On The Romance Tip’ (where did that title originate? It’s not on the record anywhere) there’s an elongated trance-ish acid thing that makes me think it might be European. Shazam gives me nothing and the ears don’t recognise it at all – anyone? Starts about 11 mins in and bubbles away for another four minutes until Global Communication’s ‘Sublime Creation’ races in on 45 instead of 33, sounding not far off Acen’s ‘Trip To The Moon’ in places.

Cut for an ad break and more Glob Comm with the opening track to their classic 76’14 album, ‘4’02’ with the opening of The Orb’s remix of Material’s ‘Praying Mantra’ slurped over, a common DJ tool of mine. Another was the phasing, filtered and panning intro to Mergener / Weisser’s ‘Sunbeam’ from a New Age Music comp on Klaus Schulze’s Innovative Communication label that Mixmaster Morris had hipped me to, I think I found this in Beanos or somewhere along Berwick St. on my lunch break one day in Soho. This can be heard bridging ‘4’02’ and Kraftwerk’s ‘The Man Machine’ classic, which needs no introduction. Out of the other Fab Four into Coldcut’s own ‘Eine Kleine Hed Musik’ – fresh on vinyl from the extra disc that accompanied the Ninja Tune vinyl version of the album and first heard opening the original Coldcut meets The Orb radio show on New Year’s Eve 1991/92. Which brings us full circle, 31 years later… exit Matt Black stating, ‘Openmind in the house, or rather I’m in Openmind’s house!’

Track list:
Autechre – Lost
MuZiq – Nettles & Pralines
Caustic Window – On The Romance Tip
Unknown – unknown
Global Communication – Sublime Creation (on 45)
Global Communication – 4’02
Kraftwerk – The Man Machine
Coldcut – Eine Kleine Hed Musik

Another week, another book launch, with a film launch before it in the form of At Home With The Boyle Family by Stuart Heaney and Chris De Selincourt at Iklectik on Sunday. Telling the story of how the Boyle Family (Mark Boyle, Joan Hills and their children Sebastian and Georgia Boyle) developed liquid light shows at home before hooking up with Soft Machine, Pink Floyd and Hendrix and blowing people’s minds at the UFO Club. The film showing was augmented by a liquid and microscopic light show display to a live set by Jim Edgar Morgan’s soundtrack (album online here), a Q&A, food and a great closing set from Avsluta aka Lucie Stepankova. The ‘Lumini’ of the lighting world came out for it and a great day out was had in this fantastic but now threatened venue.

Tuesday was a double-header book launch at the Century Club on Shaftsbury Avenue with Dorothy Max Prior and Dave Barbarossa reading from their new books, both focussing on their adventures in a pre and post punk time frame from the 70s. I’ve read Dave’s book, Mud Sharks already and am now well into Max’s and cannot recommend them both enough. Covering a similar time to Jordan’s recent biography by Cathi Unsworth, her bio, 69 Exhibition Road from Strange Attractor, connects COUM Transmissions and seedy sex work with the punk and gay communities she straddled.

This week’s workload has seen me finish another sleeve for a forthcoming 12″ on De:tuned, license some photos I took at a hip hop gig in 1988 to a BBC3 documentary, begin research on a secret project and start writing for the second Dust & Grooves book, due out 2024. I also scored a great number of Oz and International Times magazines from a collector and then found even more Oz’s elsewhere at unbelievable prices (clue, it wasn’t eBay). Still haven’t found time to watch Andor and it’s nearly over, but anyway, onto this week’s upload.

This set was recorded up at the Ahead Of Our Time studio in Clink Street where the Ninja Tune office was located until the end of the century. The recording engineer, Ali Tod, would subtlety add FX and samples live during the mix as well as type things into the artificial speech app on the computer. The sets opens with Autechre’s amazing ‘Cipater’ from their Chiastic Slide album with its time signature shift midway and a spoken word section from the ‘Getting Through’ album recently procured from a Canadian tour. The down tempo shift slowly morphs into ‘Rettic AC’, a mass of static waves and the following track from the LP. I could have played the whole album, I think it’s still my favourite of theirs. That dissolves with delay and turntable speed manipulation into what Shazam now tells me was Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Cresendo e Diminuendo’ – all classical concrete-ish blurbs and parps – with a Martin Luther King speech we’d regularly use over the top.

A sizeable chunk of the middle of the mix is taken up with a track from Siah & Yeshua dapoED’s debut on Fondle ‘Em Records (the Bobbito Garcia-run label that MF Doom debuted on). Given that ‘A Day Like No Other’ is a multi-part, tempo-changing 11 minute collage of beats and rhymes, it’s no surprise. I then slice into a DJ Vadim track (under his Andre Gurov alias), ‘Organized Babbitry’ on his Jazz Fudge label. Not recognising the track and Shazam being no use here, I turned to my record collection thinking it may be from his Ninja debut LP, U.S.S.R. Repertoire, but no. The Jazz Fudge section yielded the goods but I was dismayed to find a huge crack and piece missing from my only copy (I designed the artwork as well so pride myself in having mint copies in my archive).

More spoken word from the Getting Through album interrupts before a breakdown into The Silhouettes’ slinky, flute-led ‘Lunar Invasion’. I’ve never managed to get an original of this (this was played from a late 90’s bootleg) as it was too expensive but it’s an amazing, multi-faceted track that suddenly takes off completely unexpectedly from a slow strip tease into a frenzied funk freak out and back again. For some unknown reason I thought it was a good idea to add in David Rose’s version of ‘The Stripper’ for a few bars to heighten the mood before it takes off again, absolute monster of a track. Out of this comes some crazed crowd-pleasing funk mash up of which I’m struggling to identify, quickly descending into a further snatch of Bernstein before abruptly ending with a ‘Strictly Kev on the mix’ from the computer. Time was up it seemed. Part 2 next week…

Thanks to the ever-helpful, all knowing Mr Armtone for helping me complete this set as my original tape only had half of it. I’ve tried to re-EQ the two halves to match in some way, see if you can spot the join.

PS: the ‘+ ambient set?’ on the tape is an excellent session from the same show, presumably by Coldcut, possibly Matt Black, which I’ll send to them for their Mixcloud sometime.

Track list:
Autechre – Cipater
Autechre – Rettic AC
Leonard Bernstein & New York Philharmonic – Cresendo e Diminuendo
Siah & Yeshua dapoED – A Day Like Any Other
Andre Gurov – Organised Babbitry
Unknown – Getting Through: A Guide To Better Understanding The Hard of Hearing
The Silhouettes – Lunar Invasion
David Rose – The Stripper
Unknown – unknown

Heading back to mid 1995 this week for a fine selection of trip hop, drum (drill?) n bass, retro lounge, ambience and more. I realised that the ’96 / ’97 uploads have been thin on the ground and have spent some time digitising cassettes as well as doing some general housekeeping on the 125 previous uploads. This takes a lot longer than the CDs as all the track lists have to be done by ear as very little exists pre-’97. I’m probably about half way through the tapes and 3/4s through the CDrs by now, still a way to go. Finding some gems though.

I wish I knew what the first track in this set was, a jumble of spoken word about possession, Satan, burning records etc. Perfect for one of my religious mixes, if anyone knows, please leave a comment. Wagon Christ’s superb remix of Moloko’s ‘Lotus Eater’ is taken from the Further Self Evident Truths 3 compilation on Rising High, a fantastic comp with barely a bad track on it. Just love the creeping intro on this, the strings, chopped up beats and hand claps, just amazing. The Gentle People were amazing too, such a curveball for RePhLeX, those soaring strings… ‘Emotion Heater’ isn’t quite up to their debut, ‘Journey’, but has aged very well.

Conrad Schnitzler swoops in with ‘Electric Garden’ from his Con LP, a track that Mixmaster Morris hipped me to a few years before, sounding as fresh now as back then and it’s 45 years old next year! ‘Squarepusher Theme’ barges into proceedings, doing what only Tom Jenkinson can do in a frantic five minutes before we exhale for The Orb’s Peel Session version of ‘O.O.B.E.’ Odd that I put Squarepusher between Conrad and The Orb, these days common sense would tell me not to but I suppose it does mix in time. Ethik’s ‘Moral Sculpture’ is one of those tracks I instantly know but can never remember the name of and comes from a great 1993 album, ‘Music For Stock Exchange’ – reissued a couple of years back on Kompakt.

It’s nice to know that I was playing Andy Votel right from the beginning, his left field, wonky take on sample collage has always appealed. ‘Spooky Driver’ comes from his debut 12” on Grand Central – then just billed as VOTEL. Careering out this is JG Thirlwell at the wheel of a sonic juggernaut under his Steroid Maximus moniker from the ‘Gondwanaland’ album. His cover of Raymond Scott’s ‘Powerhouse’ has all the industrial (sorry, Jim) bombast you’d expect from the master of disaster. I remember Jon More rolling his eyes at this one as some of my more over the top choices weren’t always to his taste (‘it’s an un-easy listening sound’). In hindsight he could probably hear all the late night listeners switching off or over. The sudden end wrong-footed me (it was only on CD) and we get a snatch of the next track, ‘Homeo’ before submerging into Funki Porcini’s gorgeous ‘Going Down’ from his second album for Ninja Tune, ‘Love, Pussycats & Carwrecks’. Calm is restored as we ‘whinge on into the night’ as Jonathan puts it.

Track list:
Unknown – Possessed intro
Moloko – Lotus Eater (Wagon Christ remix)
The Gentle People – Emotion Heater (Instrumental Mix Parts I,II,III)
Conrad Schnitzler – Electric Garden
Squarepusher – Squarepusher Theme
The Orb – O.O.B.E. (John Peel Session)
Ethik – Moral Sculpture
Andy Votel – Spooky Driver
Steroid Maximus – Powerhouse!
Steroid Maximus – Homeo
Funki Porcini – Going Down

This was one of those shows where I put together a mix largely from the contents of my record buying trips whilst abroad in North America plus some current new releases. I can’t quite believe I used to go a couple of times a year at one point, each time coming back laden with music new and old. I don’t think I’ve been back for over a decade now and I really miss it, one day I’ll get back out there.

We kick off with Ramsey Lewis (RIP) and the break-tastic ‘Do Whatever Sets You Free’, chopped up nicely by Natural Self once I seem to remember… Eddie Harris slinks in with a nasty beat and a fuzzed up horn, plenty of sample action here and I think this is the source for a bit of Shadow’s ‘In/flux’. I’m not sure if the DJ Zinc track quite works out of old Eddie, sure it’s in time but not quite in tune or swing, that’s quite a change of pace. I had a white label at the time but now know that the track is called ‘Tonka’. Then into The Human League (!) mixing by bpm, not feel, I like the way Phil Oakey calls everyone ‘big heads’ at the start. This was from the Richard X released ‘Golden Hour of the Future’ album of early Human League recordings.

I like what Push Button does with the Anti-Pop vocal of ‘Ghostlawns’, putting it on a different beat of the bar and slowing the tempo to half time. But into The Banana Splits? What was I thinking? This the most uneven mix of all time, just because it’s IN time kids, doesn’t mean it should go next to that similarly tempo-ed tune. Doesn’t sound quite like Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky though does it? The Incredible Shrinking Man was an alias of Shawn Lee who apparently is also singing on this cover of ‘Wichita Lineman’ as well as playing almost everything else too. Killer version on a 7” on Ape City who only put out three releases.

Sixtoo I hooked up with on tour and ‘Duration’ was his long-digesting masterpiece, featured here in an excerpt, maybe he was living in Montreal by this time or maybe that was after he signed to Ninja Tune, it was around this time anyway. The ‘stop scratching’ vocal sample is actually from a 7” comedy record about a dog, the cover folds out three times into a dog shape, I think it’s a Fred Basset tie-in maybe. Stan Kenton covers ‘Hair’ with his take on ‘Coloured Spade’, I’d go on to collect many versions of the musical over the years and have lost count how many I have now. The New Seekers’ ‘It’s The Real Thing’ – do the Coke advert from a promo 7”. Pugh’s ‘Love Love Love’ I’m sure we all recognise the opening bars of? This was the opening track of Cherrystones’ then current ‘Rocks’ compilation and also the opener of Pugh Rogefeldt’s debut LP.

From Swedish psych rock to Brit hip hop and out into Yo La Tengo covering Sun Ra – edited for radio. This should be called the dis-jointed mix, veering all over the place, it made sense to me at the time. The Free Association were a psychedelic outfit led by David Holmes who made one great album and a clutch of singles and seemed to be the point after which he jumped into soundtrack work. Plenty of sampling going on and all the better for it. Still veering all over the place the Dsico rework of Nelly’s ‘It’s Getting Hot In Herre’ was further twisted out by my occasional Flexus guise for a particularly sweaty party on the hottest day of the year in the old basement under the newsagent that used to house the Bastard night. I think it was a Kinky Voodoo event hosted by my friend John Power and during this song I threw out tons of ice poles for the audience from a cooler I’d bought with me.

I don’t remember the track after this featuring a female rap over ‘Superbad’, but Dsico was putting out loads of mash ups at this time. Another switch, down into dub with Tino, a Ben Stokes and friends alias, from the Hallowe’en Dub album which seems relevant this week. We finish with ‘Acetate Prophets’, the DJ track from the end of Jurassic 5’s third LP. After ‘Lesson 6’ on the first and ‘Swing Set’ on the second we get a complex eastern-themed set of breaks and samples which I wish Cut and Nu-mark would do more of.

Track list:
Ramsey Lewis – Do Whatever Sets You free
Eddie Harris – Carry On Brother
DJ Zinc – Tonka
The Human League – Dance Like A Star
Ant-Pop Consortium – Ghostlawns (Push Button Objects mix)
The Banana Splits – Doin’ The Banana Split
The Incredible Shrinking Man – Wichita Lineman
Sixtoo – Duration (excerpt)
Stan Kenton – Coloured Spade
The New Seekers – It’s The Real Thing
Pugh – Love Love Love
Die & Skitz feat Rodney P/Ms Dynamite/Tali/Mixologists – It’s On
Yo La Tengo – Nuclear War
The Free Association – Don’t Rhyme No Mo
Nelly/Dsico vs FLEXUS – It’s Getting Hot Hot Hot In Herre
Dsico – Super Hiding
Tino – Living Dead Dub
Jurassic 5 – Acetate Prophets

A follow up to last week’s upload with a set full of bits and pieces floating around at this point in time, most of it contemporary with some oldies to finish. The recording at the start is DK from my answerphone, he’s a huge World’s Famous Supreme Team and I’d peppered the set with bits of a recording of an old WHBI show I’d found. A full length version of 2 Tall’s entry into the Solid Steel intro competition kicks things off before Diplo’s premiere release, the amazing ‘Epistomology Suite’ enters. I remember how exciting this was to hear at the time, we felt Big Dada had discovered the new DJ Shadow and this was his ‘Entropy’. It didn’t quite work out like that but his debut LP, ‘Florida’, is still a classic debut. Smoove switches things up with a swinging double time soul banger featuring Jess Roberts, I used to play this out for years. Firstborn’s Northern Soul-esque stomper, ‘The Mood Club (Part 2)’ is taken from the 7” and features a great tempo switch down.

Señor Coconut remixes Stephen Coates’ The Real Tuesday Weld and Madlib tackles The Free Design with a Nostalgia 77 track sandwiched in-between. Earl Zinger cuts up the Pink Elephants on Parade theme tune before Black Lodge (RIP) puts his twist on it and then Sun Ra and his Arkestra cover it from the Disney compilation, Stay Awake. Def Tex’s slamming, bleeping ‘Freaks’ ruins the mood somewhat as does the frantic mix into Awkward’s excellent break-fest ‘Plug Me In’, must dig that out again. Ivory blazes a trail all over the shop before Steinski gets old school with the cuts from his split 12” on Stones Throw with J.Rocc. Dr Rubberfunk gets the treatment from Fort Knox Five before Four Tet gets made over by Icarus – I seemed to like the remixes over the originals half the time. This latter remix starts like some lost Terry Riley piece before the drums steam in, must revisit!.

This end section was sonically themed: I thought the vocal harmonies of Air’s ‘Run’ were a clear reference to 10cc’s ‘I’m Not In Love’ so found the original and a Godley & Creme version. I’ve always thought there was an obvious sonic fingerprint shared with 10cc’s I’m Not In Love’ and the Art of Noise’s ‘Moments in Love’, a theory strengthened by the fact that AON’s JJ Jeczalik collaged the 10cc/Godley & Creme History Mix Vol.1 LP together and then Lol Creme joined the AON in the 00’s. You could further add G&C’s Trevor Horn-produced ‘Cry’ to the equation, forgive the tuning, it’s way out. A further link to the AON/Trevor Horn axis comes in the form of Hibs’ excellent fan mix of Frankie’s ‘Two Tribes’ which could have been a lost mix from the 80’s. Hibs – aka Jeff Knowler to his friends – engineered my recording of Paul Morley for the Raiding The 20th Century mix and then went on to mix most of my work since.

2 Tall – Solid Steel intro (full version)
Diplo – Epistomology Suite
Smoove feat. Jess Roberts – Coming Back
Firstborn – The Mood Club (Part 2)
(The Real) Tuesday Weld – Ugly & The Beautiful (Senor Coconut remix)
Nostalgia 77 – Sad Thing
The Free Design – Where Do I Go (Madlib remix)
Earl Zinger – Heavy Hitter
Black Lodge – untitled
Sun Ra & His Arkestra – Pink Elephants On Parade
Def Tex – Freaks
Awkward – Plug Me In
Ivory – Blaze A Trail
Steinski – Ain’t No Thing
Dr Rubberfunk – The Owner (Fort Knox Five remix)
Four Tet – My Angel Rocks Back and Forth (Icarus remix)
Air – Run
Godley & Crème – I’m Not In Love
10cc – I’m Not In Love
Art of Noise – Moments In Love
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Two Tribes (Hibs’ Reagan Says No More mix)
World’s Famous Supreme Team – outro

Here’s a silly little set from the last show we broadcast on Radio LDN, part of the BBC network, on a Monday nights in the early 00’s.
BBC London could never make up it’s mind around the turn of the millennium; after 18 years of being BBC Radio London and another 12 of Greater London Radio (GLR) they decided to switch to BBC London Live just as we joined the station in 2000. A year later and they changed it again to BBC LDN and then further to BBC London around the time they got rid of most of their specialist programmes in favour of talk radio.

We were part of this cull along with other DJs like Ross Allen and Dr Bob Jones and it came out of the blue, one week we were on, the next we had one show left. I found out from another presenter who casually mentioned “sorry to hear about your show”, whilst I was covering for the others solo one time. Seeing the puzzled look on my face, she realised her faux pas and explained that the station had axed all but two of their late night specialist music shows in favour of a more talk based radio station. We had one week’s grace and that was it but we really made use of that week…

But let’s start with how we came to be on the BBC in the first place: after leaving KISS in Feb ’99 (before we were pushed – big changes were ahead) Solid Steel set up home online, streamed via the Ninja Tune homepage every week, still maintaining it’s 2 hour format, uncertain as to how many people were listening. With DK now firmly in the producers chair, syndications to overseas stations had been instigated and we were looking around for a ‘home’ on a London station. There was a pilot show for GLR on 27/06/99 but the first regular slot was 27/03/2000, the week the station relaunched as BBC London Live. We had a midnight until 2am slot on a Monday night which suited us fine, no playlist, minimal fuss or bother from the powers that be and a proper studio to broadcast from.

The big drawback was that the studio was more geared to CDJing than turntable mixing and the decks there were more of an afterthought than an integral part of the set up. Out went the live mixing and in came the pre-prepared, home studio mixed sets, something that did no end of good for the quality control threshold but which sounds odd at times when listening back as we had to leave instrumental gaps for talking and tracklists in the selection. Another revelation was no adverts other than the occasional station sting for an upcoming event or show – yes! More uninterrupted mixes and less stop / start nonsense.

Initially we took over after Ross Allen‘s Destination Out show which was perfect as we caught a lot of his audience but he moved on to two separate nights of the week as his star rose. Generally two of us would present the show live whilst playing that week’s selection of mixes and we also had the means to take calls for competitions where we gave away tickets to shows or CDs in return for answers to ridiculously easy multiple choice questions. The BBC had a full online streaming web presence too so we were beamed live worldwide and, on occasion, we got calls from overseas for the competitions, including one from New Zealand! Being ‘on the BBC’ also afforded us instant credibility when asking for high profile interviews and both David Axelrod and Herbie Hancock were recorded using their facilities.

But all good things must come to a (tr)end and 21/10/2002 was the last show we did at the station, but we weren’t going out without making a statement and Matt, Jon, DK and I were all determined to make it one to remember. I kicked things off with plenty of loaded spoken word and songs aimed at the Beeb – Has It Come To This?,  It’s All Over Now,  The Show Must Go On, Fool If You Think It’s Over, It’s Just Begun – you get the idea. I must apologise firstly for the cheesiness of some of the tracks (a worrying amount of Queen) but mostly for the tuning on some of the mixes – oh my ears! This recording is the original studio mix without talking, not the live broadcast with the ridiculous competitions, shout outs and studio banter. I’ve actually edited this down as some of the tracks really laboured the point and some were in there for us to talk over so sound odd without it. Plus there’s a Stones track in there and Charlie Watts died this week (RIP).

After this (but not included here) Matt turned in a storming old school ultimate breaks and beats cut up using the Street Beat compilations in Ableton Live. Jon waded in with possibly the first BBC jingle and presented a set of mashed up hip hop acappellas, ending with Monty Python‘s phone in sketch. DK ran through some of the show favourites from the last few years, the tracks getting the most plays from the variety of DJs over the course of our tenure, flagged up some of the high profile jingles we’d recorded and ended appropriately with The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’ as the final word. It was sad to go but we had no choice and it wasn’t as painful as the KISS departure because we had the internet support fully set up by this time, still it was great to be part of the BBC for a while.

Track list:
The Streets – Has It Come To This? (Hi Contrast Remix)
The Who – My Generation
The Rollings Stones – It’s All Over Now
RJD2 – The Final Frontier
Queen – The Show Must Go On
Mr Guder – Super Guder Breaks 3
Chris Rea – Fool If You Think It’s Over
Jimmy Castor Bunch – It’s Just Begun
Studio Housten – It’s Not Right But It’s OK
Blackalicious – Chemical Calathenics
DJ Food – Turtle Soup (Wagon Christ Remix)
Geoff Muldaur – Brazil
The Carpenters – It’s Only Just Begun
Joni Mitchell – Parking Lot
Jackson 5 – Never Can Say Goodbye

Debuting almost exactly 18 years ago today, this downtempo wander through the less club-friendly side of electronica is peppered with one of those stoic announcers talking about radio waves, probably taken from the Internet Archive. After Mackay’s classic ‘Take Me Over’ there’s an odd spoken word cut up called ‘Cokeboy’ featuring a rabid raver babbling away under the influence by Kids With Toyz. This weird one-off was released during the mash up craze with a version of ‘One Nation Army’ and nothing else was ever released under that name. From the same scene, Loo & Placido were one of the better purveyors of the genre and they fuse The Beatles and Aretha Franklin to make something that goes further than a cool acappella over the unlikeliest of instrumentals. Prefuse 73 features from the excellent ‘One Word Extinguisher Outtakes’ CD as does the beautiful Boards of Canada remix of Boom Bip’s ‘Last Walk Around Mirror Lake’.

I don’t remember this Bola track at all but it’s sublime, I really must check his stuff out again. I was wracking my brains to work out what the track N.A.G – demo no.4 was and finally I twigged, it was a program that pulled random spoken word from the web and mashed it together in random collages of sound. I did a bunch of experiments with it and must have overlaid it on the Bola track before the beats kick in. It’s still archived here
The Boards of Canada track that follows was from the ‘A Few Old Tunes’ tape that was doing the rounds on the web around this time. ‘Murmuring Mermaids’ is another one I have no memory of, originally listed as Lunz, but Discogs tells me that it was a project between Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Tim Story and that Lunz was actually the title of the album(s) they made.

NOTE: The date on the above PRS sheet was wrong, it was the 28th of July, not the 25th, the mix listed above was uploaded to Mixcloud last week as No.66 in this series.

Mackay – Take Me Over
Kidz With Toyz – Cokeboy
Prefuse 73 – Suite For The Ways Things Change
Loo & Placido – Safari Love
Boom Bip – Last Walk Around Mirror Lake (Boards of Canada remix)
Bola – Aguilla
Various – N.A.G – demo No.4
Boards of Canada – Finity
Hans-Joachim Roedelius & Tim Story – Murmuring Mermaids