It was with great sadness that we have learnt of the death of John Rixon (a.k.a Amukidi) on Monday 14th January. John had suffered a stroke on Boxing Day and since then had been in hospital.
I wrote a few word for the Echaskech facebook page to try and mark his passing:
John was instrumental in legitimising the clubbing world’s use of visual arts: as visual coordinator for the Big Chill he helped and supported numerous audio visual acts - including ourselves - to get seen and heard. He was a huge fan of electronic music and was always keen to find out what we were up to.
His own creations were always a joy to behold. Under the alias “Amukidi” (his name coming from a track by his long time friend and collaborator Roger Eno) he blended slow moving constantly changing abstract organic shapes and textures into ever changing landscapes that encouraged the audience to stop and engage with.
In 2010 along with Simon Wild he curated “Quiet Voices” a show at the Tate Britain gallery that featured live audio visual performances by artists such as Roger Eno, Jon Hopkins, Alucidnation and Animat (to name a small selection) and a short film programme that explored the nature of quiet. I was incredibly honoured to be selected to contribute a film. To be given the opportunity to have something that I help make be shown at one of the UK’s leading art galleries is still my highest accolade, and for that I am still humbled and will be forever grateful for the trust that John placed in me.
Though what will be missed the most will be John’s warm, friendly manner, supportive nature and his acerbic wit. Never one to mince words he always cut to the chase and let you know exactly how he felt whilst raising a smile..
My last meeting with John was at Awamu’s Together festival. We caught up and shared new musical findings he asked me what I was working on. I was reticent to bring it up because my current project (which had stalled) was so ephemeral and pointless and, when I’d discussed it with others, their eyes had glazed over. But not John - his eyes lit up and he grabbed my arm “Mark! You must finish this! I have to see it! It sounds right up my strasse!” Only John had that uncanny ability to see what I was trying to achieve! My last sight of John was of him grinning, bouncing around to a deeply ambient set by Misled Convoy, whilst mixing his beautifully intricate visuals across the screens. He never looked happier.
Our thoughts are with all who loved John but especially to his wife Sarah and his children Pheebs and Clare.
You can happily spend hours watching John’s videos on Vimeo here
Last Friday, whilst my wife and I were having afternoon tea at Ruben's in Victoria, my phone chirpred it's merry little sms chirp and there was a simple message from my friend Grant at Agency X saying "Would you like to do warmup for (Max Cooper's) Emergence? Has to stay not banging". Naturally I jumped at the chance - this is Max Cooper's new AV one man show in a prime venue in London, under the auspicious gaze of LWE - a superb event promoter making deep impressions in the night club scene with uber hot DJs and dance music acts and as part of their London Electronic Arts Festival . "Sure, I'd love to" I replied. I was already getting excited.
I'd not been really thinking about DJing; I lost my Concrete residency last year and had turned my hand to doing weddings which is a completely different mindset to this - still fun, still rewarding, but you are playing what the couple and the audience want to hear - this would be different: I could play what I wanted within reason, I understood what a Warm Up slot means and there was the helpful remit of "Has to stay not banging".
Has to stay not banging. Not banging. HAS TO STAY.
NOT.
BANGING.
Hmmm. The words echoed around my dusty and cavernous brain, like a Deep House looping vocal hook. Why would Grant say this? He knows that I'm not really that up for the banging tunes, why would he feel he needed to stress this? After a few more texts back and forth it made sense, because Max's set would start ambient and to give it the best opportunity to grow from that point you don't want the act before to be slamming out BIG TUNES building up the audience's expectation to think that whatever follows would be EVEN BIGGER. Fair enough. This was the remit and it was a remit I was happy with. I had two hours to play with and so I set myself to quietly build for an hour and a half and then half an hour to break it down.
So... why am I telling you all of this? Well... here's the thing: This set isn't two hours long; its 2 hours 20 minutes long. That might not mean anything to you but it might go to help you understand why, from 1h 35 the mix descends into an ambient wash out for 20 minutes and then starts to pick up again at 1hr 55... which might correspond to the moment I got told that Max wouldn't be starting at 9:00 but at 9:20.
:D
This isn't a criticism nor a whinge. Far from it. At most it's an explanation of the flow of the set you're about to listen to, and more of a reminder to me (and to anyone else who cares to listen) not to plan too rigidly, not to be too prescriptive and to remind oneself that no matter what you think the plan is, it's not.
Hope you enjoy it
Tracklisting
BvDub - Strength Underworld - M.E. Speedy J - DeOrbit Trentemøller - Always Something Better Pye Corner Audio - Electronic Rhythm Number 3 Deft - One Eye Open Opal Tapes - Coffee Aphex Twin - Xtal Deft - Vapid pt1 Fybe One - Harmonic Curve Luke Hess - Evidence Everywhere Vermont - Dynamik (Prins Thomas Version 1) Eagles for Hands - Glass Hands (Slow it Down Remix) Jamie XX - Far/Nearer The Slow Revolt - Farther Deft - A Little Kiss Shadow Child - Border Town (Synkro rmx) LostLojic/Innex - Last Goodbye Datassette - Cagney XOR Lacey (Pt 2) Echaskech - Form Function (Epic Washout mix) Mountains - Choral Synkro - Memories of Love Synkro - Why Don’t You Taso & Wolfbitch - Tria Seba - Painted Sky (DFRNT remix) Taso - Exi The Village Orchestra - Lo Pencil (The Village Orchestra remix)
E2A:
I forgot to say: thanks to the numerous people who took time out to let me know how much they enjoyed my set - I know you don't have to do that, and it really makes a huge difference to my well being. Thank you, you're lovely, you are.
Also - thanks to the staff at Oval Spaces, LWE and LEAF for all the help (high 5 to Soundman Josh) as well as Hugs eternal for Grant at Agency X and of course Max for letting me do this.
Look I know I've been quiet. I'm sorry about that. But since me losing my residency at Concrete, in my defence, I've been busy. Stupidly so. Some of you might know of the Disco Shed (who won "Shed of the Year 2014" in the "Normal Shed" category in Channel 4's Amazing Spaces competition) well, they have a wedding dj business called "Disco Wed" and I've joined their ranks as one of their DJs, and they have been keeping me exceptionally busy; so, if you're thinking of getting married (or even if you're not) and you need a great, friendly, adaptable and hiqh quality dj to hire, you know where to go.
September also saw me at Bestival with Disco Shed on what turned out to the best Bestival yet; a great crowd, great weather, wonderful crew, a fantastic location for the Disco Shed and not to mention the undeniably awesome company of Rachel Mavis Stringbot III. It just couldn't get any better than that.
But all of that is in the past. So what of the future?
On Nov 26th 2014 at the Sebright ArmsBeat Unique are presenting a night of kick ass Electronica of the very highest quality, featuring Infinite Scale (live), DJ Sets from Digitonal and Phil Winter (Tunng/Wrangler and introducing Kinza (live). I'll be on the visuals for Infinite Scale on the night and I'm slap bang in the middle of trying to make up a completely new visual show so, if you're free that night, please come down; it'll be topper.
If you're on the torrid and addictive monstrosity that we all call Facebook the event is set up here
This ones from the archives, from 2011. I'd always enjoyed what I'd set out to do with the mix but was never happy with the execution of the mixes and it certainly feels like a rough, skechbook mix to my ears, but 3 years on and I've not actually gone back and tidied up all the messy blending, pulls and slides (it was done on Torq - the belt drive of DVS systems). You do deserve better, but in the meantime It's time for me to let it go. Try it on a Friday night after a bad day at work and your lacking the motivation to get your glad rags on and get out dancing. So open the wine, sit back and see if it doesn't get your toes tapping. :)
http://www.mixcloud.com/djmachv/from-winter-to-spring/
Download available on request, please enquire within
right here (dropbox link)
Following on from the Send in the Drones mix, here's the video that inspired the last track in that mix
The BT Tower has always been a symbol of the future, of technology and progress; it's a unique and outstanding feature on the London Skyline and even as a kid I always wanted to visit the top, especially the revolving restaurant. However, due to threats of terrorism in the 80's, it got shut down and I thought that opportunity was closed to me, until (thanks to my employer, the NSPCC) Late last year I was given the chance to work on a Charity event at the BT Tower, an opportunity I jumped at.
The film is of two revolutions , one during the day and one at night. Each revolution takes about 20 minutes and so the footage has been sped up about 10 times. The initial edit was done without music and then passed to Echaskech who the constructed the soundtrack to match my edits, I then did some fine tuning and the result is what you see. The title of the piece, "626" is the height of the BT Tower in feet.
p.s. there will be a you tube version, but later and when I can be arsed, cos You tube really does look pony compared to vimeo
The arrival of Hawksmoor on the London restaurant scene has caused quite a stir of late. People eulogising about the care and attention to the meat that is prepared has not fallen on deaf ears, and they continue to grow their empire across our fair capital so, after a heavily meat centric twitter discussion between fellow meat fans @zammo, @nu_rave_is and @thesvelteone, a steak centric lunch was planned and Hawksmoor seemed to be the logical choice. After a few more thousand tweets on the subject, we finally managed to get together, joined also by @oh_henry, @waywardgirl100 and my darling wife @mikosoft who opted to be the control for the group (as she's not a fan of beef).
The Seven Dials restaurant itself is a very welcoming and warm space, with lashings of dark rosy varnished woods, beautiful light fixtures & surprising low ceilings (it being in a basement). The staff are friendly and casually dressed, making it a relaxing place to hang out. We started with the cocktail menu which is well structured and innovative, and the drinks were served to match, presented in perfectly matching glasses for each cocktail. I plumped for an Anti-Fogmatic in the form of a "Shakey Pete's Ginger Brew": Gin, homemade Ginger Syrup & Lemon Juice, topped with London Pride, which was presented in a glass tankard, matching the drink's brash bold flavours, Miko (a teetotaler) had an "Apple & Mint swizzle" which, despite being tucked at the back pages of the drinks menu, came in a cut crystal beaker with a beautifully prepared apple and mint garnish (see photo).
Lunch was a three course affair with me choosing the "crab on toast" to start, toasted brown bread with half the slice being laden with an excellent crab mousse and the other half with shredded crab, accompanied with a delightfully light, creamy mayonnaise. Miko had the half lobster which was a bit of a disappointment, lacking real punch, the lobster flavour being slightly drowned in the hazelnut butter. The steak tatare was amazing, being sharp and zesty and showing the diversity and strength of beef in its raw form. However the star (I'm reliably informed) was the spare ribs ordered by tso which sadly, due to my pork intolerance I can't feedback on.
Hawksmoor allow you to order steak by the weight, so that you can order various cuts of beef for your table to share (as well as the serving staff ensuring that you order enough for your table, but not too much). The six steakers chose some porterhouse and prime rib cuts to divvy up between us, with a variety of sides including two types of chips (the dripping chips are practically roast potatoes) carrots, mushrooms, buttered greens and mac & cheese (Miko went for the Bacon Chop as her main). This sharing option does turn some people rather competitive in ensuring that they get a "fair share" (I include myself in this description) but also does make it a more convivial meal time experience and its a good way to get to taste the various cuts and I (like most of Hawksmoor custom) wasn't disappointed. Though at the same time, not completely wowed, either. Beef is amazing when well prepared & cared for like this, but, to be honest, I've actually had better tasting beef meals because of their seasonings. This isn't a criticism, just an observation. This is beef perfection, but not beef augmentation. However there are some superb sauces on offer, such as the sublime blue cheese hollandaise, the spicy and traditional horseradish and the salty but well balanced anchovy butter which do mean that you can enrich the beefy wonderment as you desire. In the non bovine corner, Miko found her Bacon Chop was a bit O.T.T., very smoky and salty like biting into a whole pack of bacon. The sides were great, with warming and homely mac and cheese being an unsung hero.
My desert I chose something simple, just a some lemon sorbet to accompany a very fine glass of Tawny Port (Quinta de la Rosa LBV), Miko had a selection of macaroons which were most enjoyable. Henry's order of Sticky Toffee Pudding was also very well received as was wayward girls pear and almont bakewell tart getting an honorable mention. Tso wasn't too happy with her cornflake sundae, but to me it tasted exactly as it should have: milky and breakfasty with a light crunch.
The whole meal lasted about 3 and half hours and came to £576 (including service) for 7 people and that included starting cocktails, three bottles of wine (a very drinkable Tempranillo at £24 a pop) and three courses each. No it's not a cheap lunch, but it was an excellent one.
What a way to start a Monday.
Canadian ambient artist Tim Hecker specialises in creating distant & ethereal sound scapes through affecting traditional keyboards, notably the piano - in his LP "Dropped Pianos" - and, in his latest LP "Ravedeath 1972" the Church Organ. I'd just got familiar and been enjoying Dropped Pianos when Andy from Echaskech texted me that he had a spare ticket to see Tim perform at St Giles in the Fields (an historic 18th Century Anglican Chapel and the last standing building of London's Lawless "Seven Dials" district and still an active church) I jumped at the chance. If anything just to hear a church organ being played, without a man in a dress droning on about that chap on the cross, all the time. There were to be two performances - one at 6:30 and another at 9pm, both were sold out; Andy and I were attended the first performance.
Noting that John Mulvey had already written a review for it on Uncut's webzine, this next paragraph is based on my comment on his review (just to give you context):
On arrival, I was disappointed to see the stage full of speakers as I, in my mind I'd imagined it to be a more "organ-ic" affair with the ambient space playing a major role; after all, church organs live in symbiosis with the space they occupy, the sound being coloured by the room's acoustics . Just before the start of the set the all lights were extinquished (people even hid their illuminating and omnipresent mobile phones) and Tim, hidden from view from us in the pews on the ground floor began the recital of "Ravedeath 1972" and we sat, in the darkness, in silence, in this freezing cold church on hard, wooden benches. As the sound of the wind moving through the pipes began to move through the speakers I immediately got a very odd headache which passed as quickly as it arrived; ethereal noises washed and distorted at increasing volumes to a deafening level and then washed away to endless reverberations and echoes of the sounds played. It's a difficult sound to describe as the notes, the tune and melody is mostly hidden within the effects and what you're listening to isn't really the church's organ, but the effected echo of the multitude of notes, all blending and cascading into a waterfall of sounds.
So was it any good? Well... yes. Mostly. It It was about the effect: the wall of sound being played out within the space. Sure I missed hearing the actual organ, and seeing Tim Hecker himself (as well as some visual accompaniment - but then I would say that, being a VJ), but as an audible experience in a unique space it still worked. The sound moved from utter beauty to threatening menace with ease and expertise and my mind and emotional state was massaged along with it. At points I wanted to see angels, and at others I thought he would wake the dead. At one point the frequencies changed so dramatically that you could feel the air pressure change in the church. Admittely there were also points of boredom and FREEZING COLD (!) but they were rare and part of the experience, respectively. So I still feel the space played an important role, maybe not in the way I was expecting, but it was still a unique experience (both audibly and situationally). At the end I felt my brain had been expertly and vigorously scrubbed clean; I'm very glad I went; but I still feel that I was slight robbed of a kick ass organ recital. ;)
Please spread this music as far and wide as possible. Thank you for being supportive of aKido ...
aKido's last lp, "Gamechanger" was one of my lps of the year, in 2009, and considering it was free that's high praise indeed, so I'm hoping for more of the same.
Hello you lovely people and welcome to the newly designed DJ Mach V website. Lots of more helpful navigation and catagorisation has been added (above) as well as lots of helpful, handy social media plug ins (over to the right) so you can easily find my facebook page and tweets; there's even a tag cloud down below, which I've been wanting for a while. The work has all been done by my lovely wife, Miko Coffey, who's awesome talents have sourced and customised a brilliant new template for my posts as well as the frankly awesome new customised logo and backdrop, as well as a new backdrop to my twitter page. We've also moved the site onto new servers, which we have more admin control over. I do hope you like it; please take some time in looking aorund, and please be vocal with your feedback in the comments below (or tweet me at @djmachv , if you prefer). We've got a few more tweaks and shuffles to do but if you have any suggestions or find anything wrong, do let me know. I'm looking to expand the blog into other areas (occasional reviews, random photos, and anything else that comes to mind) and not just a endless continuum of "here's another mix for you" blog posts, but the new layout and navigation should mean that you can find the content that you want much easier and faster than before.
In other news, for now I'm going to stop doing the weekly Back To Mine shows - they've been fun and very cathartic to do, but it's also a lot of work to keep them up on a regular basis. I'm not going to say that it's the death of the format as I'm not getting to play out all the amazing music I find, and I can see me wanting to share that with you all, but for now I need let it rest. The Club, in Second Life, will, of course, remain. If you do want a weekly hit of awesome mixes I suggest you track the awesome Marky de Sade's 52 mixes project. I know I am.
Not that this means I'm going to abandon your ears completely; I still want to keep up The Bearding Hours, combined with occasional appearances at Monday Hates You, and, now I've migrated over to Traktor Pro 2 and an S2 control surface, it means I can record more live sets for you (most, if not all, the sets I've uploaded have previously recorded by Nicecast when broadcasting from home). Oh and if you ever thought of buying Traktor, it's great. Bye Bye DVS, Bye Bye Torq. It's been great, but, when you go back and read my blog posts over the last couple of years you get a sense of how unreliable Torq actually was and how much I was in denial about it. Traktor's stability, UI and function are worlds apart. But then so's the price. And if you want to argue whether, in using a control surface I'm actually a "DJ" anymore, go ahead, fill ya boots; I'm quite happy with using it. Anyway... I digress. Here are a couple of mixes you might have missed:
The first was recorded at London's Elektrowerks, as an opening set for the awesome new electronica club night "Fields" (@ldnflds) (picture above). As a warm up set I'm really happy with it. I hope it helps keep you warm, too. ;)
Tracklisting is as follows:
Death In Vegas - Your Loft My Acid
The Walls - Into Our Midst
Specta Ciera - Glowing Colours
Alucidnation - Technically Warm
The Field - It's Up There
Tycho - Coastal Break (Hatchback's Cosmic Caviar Dub)
James Yuill - Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box
LCD Soundsystem - 45:33 Theo Parrish Space Cadet Remix
Zed Bias - Koolade ft Toddla T, MdCL
Prince - Hot Thing Extended Mix
Claude Von Stroke - Big & Round
Maya Jane Coles - Focus Now
Banco de Gaia _ Gamelah (Dub 3)
Martin Buttrich - You Must Be This High
Ramadanman/Appleblim - Void 23 (Carl Craig remix)
Scuba - Adrenalin
Julio Bashmore - Battle of Middle You
Buraka Som Sistema - Restless (Julio Bashmore remix)
XXXY - Kerpow
Dark Sky - Neon
Todd Edwards - I hear him (Listen Remix)
Rodney P - Trouble (MJ Cole Re-Rub)
Sepalcure - Every Day of My Life (Jimmy Edgar Remix)
The second is from Bar Concrete (@barconcrete ) as part of the continuing residency of Echaskech Presents. It's quite housey (and yes I still have trouble writing that down, let alone saying it out loud), but never mind that here's the...
Tracklisting
Posthuman - Europa Sky (echaskech remix)
Crazy Penis - You started something
Herbert - Audience
Claude Von Stroke - Vocal Chords
Lee Jones - Duvel
Maya Jane Coles - Little One
James What - It Feels Wrong (Lee Curtis remix)
Martyn - Ghost People
George Fitzgerald - Don't You (SCB remix)
SCB - Klinik
Sepalcure - The One
Lando Kal - Further
Lee Jones - Moment
Max Cooper - Echoes Reality (Si Begg remix)
Hot Chip - I Feel Better (Max Cooper remix)
Jon Hopkins - Light Through The Veins (Ewan Pearson remix)
Jacques Green - Tell Me (Kingdom edit)
Radiohead - Feral (Lone remix)
Ok there's lots to tell you about this week. First off please accept my apologies for no update last weekend - I was with Echaskech at Deershed 2011 as part of Just Music's day up there, (along with lable mates Digitonal and Laki Mera) but more on that later. Last Friday morning Echaskech, along with the vocal talents of Napoleon Complex, released their new track, "Change the Station" as a free download from Soundcloud. My video for it is on the Echaskech youtube page
As well as on my Vimeo page,
both available in glorious 720p. Initially I wanted to visually represent Napoleon's desire to make his point about broadcast news. The first idea was to have Napoleon being the one holding the bill board/placard, gagged. The idea being that the act of protesting would be his message, and even as an individual it could still be done, but sadly Napoleon lives in Naples, Italy (hence the name) so we changed it to just be Dom, representing Echaskech, or the music supporting what Napoleon has to say. Dom holding up the placard with Napoleon on it is a metaphor of Echaskech's music supporting Napoleon's lyrics. Shooting took place over the easter weekend on my trusty Panasonic HDC HS300 (we got Napoleon to film himself and send us the footage) and the editing was done in Final Cut Pro, then round tripped into After Effects to comp Napoleon on to the placard by Dom and then back to mine for a final treatment in FCP. We're all very happy and proud of it.
Deershed must be one of the most child friendly festivals I've even been to. We reckoned that the children out numbered the adults 2 to 1, the average age of the audience must've been about 12 years old. On Saturday night, at 11pm, just as we were ready to go out on the tented town and party, all the entertainment stopped and by 11:20pm the arena was a ghost town... quite an eerie experience for a old festival vet like my self. However as our soundcheck was at 8.30am(!) it was probably for the best.
Though we were playing at 1pm on a blisteringly bright Sunday afternoon, I was relieved to see that Deershed had sourced a properly dark tent for us to perform in, which meant that i hadn't traipsed up with my vj rig in tow for another wasted journey, only to watch the boys play from the sidelines. Much thanks to the lovely people at Deershed and at Just Music for making it a very special day for us all. And then, if that wasn't enough, Just Music announce that one of the Echaskech tracks "The Calm" is to be included on Linn Records "Just Music exclusive" compilations. Yes, that's right: the same Linn records that orginally signed The Blue Nile. How awesome is that?
Anyway, now on to the podcasts, which there are two of, this week. first off is the one I couldn't upload last weekend due to Deershed - BTM20110720 - and secondarily the one from this week, which is BTM20110727. There you go, 3 hours of music for you. :) And here are the
Umber - A Song for Two Seasons
Biosphere - Shika-1
Future 3 - A Sound
65daysofstatic - Debutante
I'm not a Gun - Never Meant to Be
Radiohead - No Surprises
Echaskech & Napoleon Complex - Crusader
Tim Exile - Carouselle
Untold - Don't Know. Don't Care
Scuba - Tense
XXXY - Blue Flashing Lights
Jack Sparrow - Loveless
Sigha - Expansions
Pangaea - Coiled
Chechan - Siberia
Perverelist - Infinity is now
Machine Drum - Mean Mean
Adam F (footwork edit) - Circles
Omni Trio (footwork edit) - Renegade Snares
Bibio - Saint Christopher
So, for those avidly waiting for the latest Torq upgrade adventures, I've reverted back to version 1.5. After a truly horrible experience whilst djing at "Monday Hates You" (mostly down to me being a really quite rubbish DJ) it crashed halfway through a set which is the worst offense it can commit. So Version 2 gets a red card (until there's a upgrade or two) and I'll carry on where I was. This weeks picture is of one of the offices of "End of the Line" the professional graffitti crew who's daubing of walls have been responsible for many of the pictures that accompanies my blog. The boarding up of their offices was a depressing site to see, however after an email from Probs I'm happy to report that they've moved just round the corner and will continue to be an active artistic presence in the area, which should mean more graf pics for you in the blog. Phew. All power to you EOTL, you rock. :) Aaaaaaaaaaanyway without further ado (hi jubs!) here's the...
Yes well, hmm. But that's no way to start a blog post following two months of absence - more on the "Yes well, hmm" later
HELLO! How the devil are you? Good I hope? We last spoke just as our major home improvement project was kicking off - moving the wall between our bedroom and bathroom by half a metre, completely rebuilding and installing the bathroom from scratch and installing a new wall of wardrobes in our bedroom to hide all our clutter away and we finished it off last weekend. Phew. It's nice to get everything back in it's place or more accurately into it's new homes and the house is looking great and functioning marvelously. My quite frankly awesome Mother In Law is still with us until next Tuesday when she sadly leaves us to return to her home when the stars at night, are clear and bright, but Miko took her to Paris last week which meant I could get back behind the decks and play out this set for you all.
Which brings me back to the "Yes well, hmm" at the beginning of this post. It wasn't great. I've just upgraded my DJ software to Torq 2.0 and, well the transition hasn't gone smoothly. For some reason one of the decks sounds absolutely awful, like one deck is outputting audio at 320kpbs and the other is outputting audio at 92kbps and trying to fix this problem while djing didn't prove that successful. My work around was to mix on two decks and as soon as the mix was complete, then copy the bad sounding deck over to the good sounding deck. This worked in the most part however remembering to reset the second good sounding deck to the settings on the bad sounding deck wasn't as successful as I'd like so you'll hear a bit of rather funky sounding phase and slidely swipes in the mix and my apologies for that. Have also done a bit of "post" on the recording to try and make it sound better than it did live, namely I've spliced a cleaner version of Pogo Music's "Upular" (ty Helle!) over the version played out as it sounded terrible and I hadn't worked out my solution at that point. Sadly Bibio's "Pretentious" I couldn't fix, but as Bibio's production features quite a bit of fancy lo fi work it didn't suffer too much. Sorry Bibio, if you're listening. Hopefully you'll forgive me, over time. Here's the rest of the...
Tracklisting
Hammock - No Agenda (Instrumental)
Bibio - Pretentious
Dub Tractor - Faster (album version)
Pogo Music - Upular
School of Seven Bells - Babelonia (Sepalcure remix)
Bola - Squib (Nuclear)
Specta Cierra - I'm Totally Not Looking At Her
8Bitch - Me & U
Grizzly J - Rainbow Fire
Hyetal - Neon Speech
George Fitzgerald - We Bilateral
Sepalcure - Taking You Back
Mount Kimbie - Maybes (James Blake remix)
NDV - Night and Day
Joyo - Jels
Battles Feat. Matias Aguayo - Ice Cream
Life continues at pace at Soft Towers... we're having some major building work at our home, walls being ripped out, bathrooms being destroyed and rebuilt, all of which is having a temporary impact on our quality of life. Our Music room/Miko's Office/Spare Bedroom/Womb Room (where Back to Mine is broadcast from ) is currently our temporary storage facility for our bedroom wadrobe meaning that for the next couple of weeks I physically can't get to the decks to play records for you all, and when all this work is finish, my frankly awesome mother-in-law is coming to stay for three weeks so this might be the last BTM for a while or at least the irregularity of this years broadcasts will probably continue for a while longer.
This set was fraught with technical issues so is shorter than usual; the first 30 minutes was full of hardware failures and software crashes, which I'm putting down to a distinct dislike between Torq (my DJ software) and, rather surprisingly, Chrome (my favourite browser). If I use Chrome before or during a DJ set, then Torq really starts to suffer. It beachballs and now even crashes outright, even if I shut down Chrome all together. There something lurking in the background, like an old TSR programme that Torq doesn't like. Anyway, after a reboot and some frustrated wails, it all managed to hang together for the last 60 minutes or so. Here's the...
Tracklisting
Seams - Platz
Mogwai - Monaco Grand Prix
Booka Shade - Regenerate
Actress - Let's Fly
Aphex Twin - XMD 5a
Martin Buttrich - Well Done (Serafin remix)
Posthuman - Lander (Global Good remix)
Noraj Cue - Release Me
Tok Tok vs. Soffy O. - Missy Queen (Mitte Karaoke remix)
9B0 - Sad Cat (Flack.su remix)
Yes, yes... I know. More slacking on the blog posts and set uploads but there are some very good excuses; I'm just not going to tell you what they are. ;) Suffice it to say that I've been VERY BUSY with other things... to be specific it's video like things and you'll get to see what that is somewhat later, when it's all finished. But right now I've got for you a couple of shows, the first chronologically is an extended set of The Bearding Hour after I forgot to record the original broadcast of it on Sunday 3rd April. I decided that, because I really enjoyed the set I played, I'd use my "Back To Mine" slot on Wednesday 6th April to recreate the set with a few bonus tracks thrown in to make it up to 90 minutes instead of the usual 60. So, here it is - Back To Mine, The Bearding Hour or even The Bearding Hour and a Half, if you will. Take a moment to take in the
Tracklisting
Josh T. Pearson - Thou Art Loosed
Boduf Songs - Things not to be Done on the Sabbath
The next is the Back To Mine from this week making a full 3 hours of music for you to wrap your lugholes round. Here's the
Tracklisting
Hammock - Lonely, Some Quietly Wander in the Hall of Stars
Leo Abrahams - Scene Memory
Lawrence - Sunrise
Shed - 44A (Hard Wax Forever!)
SCB - 3_5
My My - Price tag (Appleblim & Komonazmuk remix)
Sepalcure - The Warning
FaltyDL - The Groove
Lee Jones - Aria
West Norwood Cassette Library - Blonde on Blonde
Martin Buttrich - Well Done
Mogwai - George Square Thatcher Death Party
Wagon Christ - Ain't He Heavy, He's my Brother
Transient - Ain't no cure for the way you walk
oOoOO - Burnout Eyes
Girl Unit - Wut
Joker - Snake Eater
Dark Sky - Drowned City
XXXY - Rain (Jack Sparrow remix)
My lovely Macbook Pro has been acting a bit erratic, recently and one of the concerns I had about was the decreasing amount of space on my hard drive so after reading ExtremeTech's awesome step-by-step guide numerous times and popped down to maplins and bought myself a new 2.5" 320BG sata drive and some torx screwdrivers and set about some minor laptop surgery. The fact that I'm now writing this blog post on said machine is testament to the good people at ExtremeTech and their awesomely well written guide, but why it's taken so long for me to update my blog is down to the odd behaviour of Maxtor.
I use Time Machine (as all good Mac people do) because it works and is amazingly easy to use - it's even part of Mac Os X's installer package (since 10.5 onwards) so when you're doing what what I was doing it's real easy to restore your Mac to where it was before whatever has caused you to do the restore. I don't use Time Capsule because, well, I'm not made of money and to be honest any external drive will do, so I use a 1TB Maxtor usb external drive for Time Machine.
After I'd installed the new hard drive, I popped in the OsX 10.5 installer and chose "Restore sytem from Time Machine" option from the Utilities menu and it found the Time Machine and my last full back up and set it off running. And waited. 12 hours later it was still stating restoring (with the blue barber shop poll twirling away). "Never mind" I thought, "be patient; this is a system restore on the same machine you're restoring on to , using a CD restore boot - this might take a while. 24 hours later, still nothing. Still whirring away. "Be patient" I mantra'd. 48 hours later and I think my patience was misplaced, so I cancel the restore and think what could be causing the failure of the restore.
Just for shits and giggles I decided to swap out the unmarked cable that Maxtor supplied with drive for a Amazon Basics marked USB 2.0 cable and started again. In a few minutes we'd progressed passed the barber poll and on to a timed status bar that happily told me 4 hours, and lo! 4 hours later I've got my machine back. I'm in complete bafflement why Maxtor woudl supply an (apparantly) usb 1 cable with a usb2 1Tb drive and if you want a moral to take away from this it's: If in doubt - check your cables. :)
So here's what you've been missing: 3 sets, the first from the welcome return of MondayHatesYou, the one day a week Second Life club/website that's here to make that return to the grindstone a whole lot better for you. I opted for (no suprises here) a future garage set and I'm pretty happy how it turned out:
Tracklisting
Sepalcure - Inside
Sepalcure - Every Day of my life
Alcosta Blvd - Deep
Julio Bashmore - Around
Kidkanevil - The floating world (Eliphino rmx)
FaltyDL - To London
Midland - Bring Joy
Pearson Sound - Wad
George Fitzgerald - Painted Jezebel
Chechen - Syberia
Addison Groove - Footcrab VIP
Four Tet - Love Cry (Joy Orbison remix)
Kasrave vs Joy Orbison
Kelly Dean - Contagious
DJ Madd - Arpz 3000
XXXY - Rain (Jack Sparrow rmx)
Jack Sparrow - Loveless
Julio Bashmore - Footsteppin'
Appleblim & Ramadanman - Sous le Sable
Then there's Back to Mine, 20110323 (which my mac was beachballing through, making actually djing really hard work hence me upgrading the hard drive). That Tanka EP you can get from here: http://tanka.bandcamp.com/album/patterns-break-ep
Tracklisting
Tanka - Step(s)
Nicolas Jaar - Spectors of the Future
Hammock - Stranded Under a Helpless Sky
Radiohead - Morning Mr Magpie
The Books - A Cold Freezing Night
Working for a Nuclear Free City - A black square with four yellow stars
Asa - Sweeter Things
Brackles & Shortstuff - Broken Harp
Alcost Blvd - DMZ Chill
Apox - Hokaido
Crucial Cuts - Time
Redifine - Love N Learn
Son!ka - Bright Light
Fujiya & Miyagi - Ventriloquizzing
Appleblim & Ramadanman - Sous le Sable
George Fitzgerald - Don't You (SCB remix)
Noraj Cue - Homesick
FaltyDL - St Marks (Cosmin TRG remix)
And lastly BTM20110330, which I'm proud to say doesn't feature any garage or dubstep at all; it's been a while that I've managed to do that. It probably won't last, but hey - it makes me happy. :)
Tracklisting
Mordant Music - Inn Ohm The Lake
Hammock - Birds Flying in Sequence
Yimino - Bintliptick
Hiatus - Save yourself
Jam Baxter - BarrelEyeSpookFish
Wagon Christ - King's Lynn
Wisp - Library Grey
Penfold Plum - Cagney Driver
Working for a Nuclear Free City - B.A.R.R.Y.
Radiohead - Bloom
Holy Fuck - Bontempi Latin
Fujiya & Miyagi - Cat Got Your Tongue
Chandarit Singh - Raga Bairagi
8Bitch - Astarte
Glasser - Tremel
School of Seven Bells - ILU
FaltyDL - All in the place
Daniel Masolo - Ritmo Especial
Yoshinori Sunahara - Unconscious Fragment
Gold Panda - Marriage (Baths remix)
The Field - Sun and Ice
(picture courtesy of The Venn & Strick infographic team)
So what's all this about a weekly show?? ;) Ok fair does - my apologies once again for the lack of musical updates, I've either been not well or having a RL take over, which has prevented me getting behind the decks for you, but I'm back now and next week sees me playing three times in in SL. Monday it's the return of "Monday Hates You" and features djs from four countries - UK, Italy, USA and Netherlands - all set in bringing joy to your Monday as much as they can - at 7:00pm GMT/12:00 SLT/PDT I'll be kicking proceedings off with some garage and melodic techno, at 8:30/1:30 the stream will switch over to Italy and the super sexy nudisco & electroclash stylings of Bibdui will be taking over the dance floor; at 10:00/3:00 we hit state side with Yuzien Born, who brings his awesome Breakbeat and Indie Dance tracks out to play. At 11:30/4:30 we travel to the realms of the magical, with a live performance from ^v Split Phase, a exciting house and techno act featuring the genius of Transient Zeluco, who's DJ sets at Suffugium on a Saturday night we unmissable for me. Lastly, but by no means least, at 1:00/6:00 The maestro of tech and tech house, Noraj Cue finishes off the evening, with warm smiles all round. Then on Wednesday will be Back to Mine (if I'm recovered enough by then!) and on Sunday 27th, 9:00pm it's time for the next delve into the world of acoustic and folk music, with another selection for The Bearding Hour.
But that's all for next week, you've still got digest this weeks podcast (oh that skream LP is from here ), so without further adieu, here's the
Tracklisting
Lost Idol - Organswell
Lost Idol - Full of Dust & Guitars
Nicolas Jaar - Space is the Only Noise If You Can See
Fujiya & Miyagi - OK
Radiohead - Codex
Yimino - Firen (reading edit)
Eskmo - Color Dropping
Gold Panda - Marriage (star slinger remix)
Echaskech - Redeploy
Jacques Green - Tell Me (kingdom edit)
George Fitzgerald - Painted Jezebel
Kavsrave vs Joy Orbison - Untightled
Pearson Sound - Wad
Cosmin TRG - See Other People (FaltyDl rmx)
Addison Groove - Footcrab VIP
Maddslinky - Ruled by YOur emotions
Trentemoller - Moan (noraj cue edit in my mind)
Skream - Intro
Skream - Commercial Sellout
Working for a nuclear free city - Autoblue
Nate Dogg (RIP) & Warren G - Regulate
Welcome to 2011, Music Miners! Sorry that's taken a while to get the wheels rolling back on the wagon that is Back To Mine, in Second Life, but... well... you know how it is... ;) Anyway we're back on track. I hope you all had a wonderful and restful break and are now all gee'd up for a new year. While I was off I was delighted to find out that I got a special mention in the magical A Strangely Isolated Place blog's 2010 round up under the letter V, as part of the continued sight & sonic enslaught that is Echaskech, which was a wonderful way to round off 2010. I can only once again urge you to subscribe to ASIP as it is an essential musical feast; let's put it this way: if you like these shows you'll love ASIP. On the Echaskech tip, I met up with Dom last night at Echaskech Presents... Concrete for a back to back DJ set and lots of new nebulous Echaskech tracks were given their first light of day, and I have to say the crowd feedback was most encouraging. Many exciting things are being planned and acted upon in the Echaskech sphere: keep 'em peeled and pinned back, peeps cos we've some treats in the pipeline. Thanks to all who came down and made a great night a whole load better. We had a blast. :) Oh and a BIG THANK YOU to whoever added my last blog to StumbleUpon; my web analytics were way up over the festive season and it was all thanks to you. :) Anyway, here's this weeks...
Sorry for the lateness of the update - I've been very busy! Here's just one of the things I've been up to:
L'Autre Pied, Blandford Street, Marylebone, London.
Miko and I went off to L'Autre Pied for Lunch to celebrate her birthday and our 13th Wedding Anniversary.
We arrived at 1pm and after perusing the menu we plumped for the "tasting menu" which was a 7 course affair, at £55 per head. Miko asked for a vegetarian version.
After a delightfully light "amuse bouche", the first course arrived
Jerusalem Artichoke Velouté, Wild Mushrooms, Hazelnut Oil
What a way to start a meal! The jerusalem soup initially tasted far too salty but once we'd picked up the courage to dig deeper in to the plate, a fantastic layer of pasta and some beautiful beans (not too sure what type) underneath balanced the salty flavour and heaven was had in the mouth. A stunning and remarkable starter.
Second starter
Line Caught Cornish Mackerel, Organic Ginger Carrots, Shaved Fennel Salad, Coriander Cress
An awesome dish. Though I'm no fan of fennel, it perfectly complimented the mackerel and carrot.
Fish
Pan Fried Cod, Roscoff Onions, Ragout of Sweetcorn, Chanterelle Mushrooms, Lightly Smoked Sabayon
A beautifully cooked piece of cod which was supported and complimented with the corn and enriched with the very lightly smoked sabayon. noms.
Main
Roasted Breast of Gressingham Duck, Shallot Fondant, Fondant Potatoes, Roasted Fig, Pistachio Jus
This was a weird balance; my pallatte was confused by the duck, the fig and the pistaccio being on the same plate together. It wasn't bad, just confusing. My wife had a pumpkin taggiatelli that was outstanding. I note that on the menu now, the fig has gone and is replaced with a pear which might make all the difference.
Cheese course (unphotographed) we were presented with a selection of 6 or 7 cheeses including a goats cheese, some hard smooth english cheese, a stilton style and a couple of french camenbert style cheeses, we chose three of them but none really amazed us.
First Dessert
Vanilla Panacotta, Raspberry Purée and Pear
Ok. A slight mishap here as I'd finished the dessert before photographing it, but the photo does speak for itself. This was delicious. Smooth and slightly sweet with the sharpness of the raspberries cutting through the panacotta and then smoothed and sweetened by the pear. Absolute genius.
Second Dessert
Caramel Parfait, Chocolate Streusel, Black Treacle Ice Cream
This is the second and last desert. Though we both enjoyed it, my wife and I disagreed on this course - she found the parfait too cold and I didn't. We both loved the treacle ice cream, though. However, the panacotta was the star of the desserts.
Petit fours (not photographed) were freshly baked micro cookies served very warm on a warm slate. Utterly beautiful.
The whole meal took just under 3 hours to be served. The service was warming, welcoming, informed, funny, friendly and well timed. The total bill including a glass of wine, an apple juice spritzer and water for the two of us was just under £150 (service included) and was worth every penny.
So it's been almost a month since you got a new show and it was really great to get behind the decks once again, fuelled with all the new music that I've picked up from the festivals. So what have I been up to? Well let's start where I left off...
Driving back from the Big Chill I noted that the van's brakes were beginning to grind so I got it booked into a ATS Euromaster to get them serviced - they ascertained that it was the callipers that had seized but despite having the van for a few days, they couldn't get the parts to repair it, so we decided to take it to Green Man and see if we could get it fixed between Green Man and Festinho. Most of the journey to Green Man is motorway so I doubted that it would be that problematic, though coming off the M4 towards Abergavenny/Y Fenni it became apparent that the brakes were getting worse and worse...
Still, we arrived on site at 9:30pm, which was a bit annoying as I was supposed to play records on the Radio at 9pm, but we set up in the pouring rain and bedded down for the start of Green Man.
Green Man is rapidly becoming the best source of new (albeit beardy) music for me. Twice I've looked at the line up and wrinkled my nose at it as nothing seems too familiar, but after some excellent dissection of the program (mostly by Miko, she's organised enough to read it) we came away with a plethora of many new artists - more than I've got from festivals before. On the Americana/folk tip I've learnt about Mountain Man, Mega Faun, The Tallest Man Alive and First Aid Kit, in the psyche rock genre I discovered The Besnard Lakes and on the electronic oeuvre I've picked up on Gold Panda and Bear in Heaven. I spent £80 in the Rough Trade pop up shop just getting cds of artists that I heard at the festival. :) I LOVE THIS! MORE NEW MUSIC PLZ!!! The weather was variable between pleasant British dappled sunshine to torrential down pours, but nothing stops this festival and it's punters enjoying the weekend and the artists. Saturday Night we were all thoroughly entertained by The Flaming Lips who's live show is so impressive (even more so in a field in Wales) - i wouldn't call myself a fan following it, but I would go and see them again, they really are a truly awesome live act. I did a bit of compering on Saturday afternoon on the Main Stage and I loved it. Again: MORE OF THIS, PLEASE!!
Monday rolled around and after an extended morning radio show on GM Radio (3 and a half hours, instead of 2) we packed up, arranged for the van to be seen a LDV specialist that afternoon in Frome (pronounced "Froom") which was sort of on the way between Wales and Weymouth, our destination. The journey was fraught. The brakes were getting worse and worse. We eventually got to the LDV depot and they immediately took the van on to the rack to check out the brakes. The news wasn't good. On both sides of the front axle the callipers were seized, the pads worn down to bare metal and the discs scorched and scratched like an old 78 (and probably just as fragile). The service manager ordered the parts, guaranteeing their delivery the next day at 9am and they rearranged their work schedule to fit us in as a priority job, to get us back on the road to enjoy the rest of our holiday.
In the meantime we needed to find somewhere else to stay - the LDV guys offered their car park, but I had spied a rather plush looking spa hotel between Bath and Frome on the drive down so I convinced Miko that this was the sensible option as the Travel Lodges and the like would be all booked up with company reps (and after ringing around, they were) and luckily for us the Spa Hotel had a room (£159 for two of us including breakfast and access to the spa) so we booked ourselves into the Homewood Park Hotel. We asked the LDV staff for a cab number, but they didn't seem to like that idea so one of their staff gave us a lift to the hotel instead. How nice is that?? :)
We weren't really packed for staying in such a posh palace, but after a bath and wrapping ourselves up in lush dressing gowns, swim suits and slippers we extensively hydrated ourselves in the jacuzzi (oh sorry "hydrotherapy pool") and in the heated swimming pool, and in the sauna, and in the steam room. All of these were included in the cost of the room. Awesome stuff. In the evening we decided to stay in and order room service however the quality of the food that was delivered to our very comfortable room was good good it surpassed what you'd expect from room service - placing most hotel restaurants to shame. One thing I did notice was that I still had the keys to the van, so I was all prepared to take a cab to take the keys back to the LDV place and sit in their rather sparse waiting room while they worked on the van.
In the morning, we rang the depot and told them about the keys, and they sent a parts van up to the hotel to pick them up, saving me another taxi journey. In the meantime we checked out and asked the reception to look after out luggage while we swanned about the very stately homely reception rooms waiting for the work to finish. At about midday we got a call with some bad news - one of the calliper bolts had seized and they would need to order another, but that meant we'd need to stay another night in the hotel. Oh Dear! What a calamity. :) So we booked ourselves back in to the luxury we were rapidly becoming accustomed to, this time booking ourselves into the restaurant for dinner.
Aaaanyway to cut a long story short (and yes I could go on and on about this, but I realise it's only Tuesday and we've still got two more festivals to cover!) we picked up the van on Wednesday morning, paid the bill (that was less than quoted) and set off on the road again. We'd cancelled the Weymouth Caravan park as one night wasn't really enough to justify the trip and booked ourselves in to a caravan park just outside of Woodstock in the lovely and familiar county of Oxfordshire.
We set up at Bladon Chains (pouring rain) and I set about grabbing my laptop so I could work on the video for the two Echaskech gigs at the weekend... only to find that I'd left the power supply at green man. I wasn't too happy. In fact I was in tears. The pressure of the van repair, the amount of money we'd just spent in two days (well over £1000 - the holiday was only supposed to cost us £60!) , the state of my very red bank balance were all weighing down on me, the dreadful weather and the cramped state of the van (i can't stand up in it - it's very frustrating) and to be let down by my own stupidity (even when I'd made a concerted effort to remember it, only not to) broke me and I wasn't a happy chappy. I wasn't in the best state.
Thursday was a new day with sunshine (mostly) so we packed up and drove to Milton Keynes to visit the Apple Store to pick up a new power supply (I'd tracked my old one down - it was experiencing a week in Edinburgh) and a new leisure battery from Halfords for the van as that had died on us, too. Then onto Festinho! I was already trying to ingratiate myself to somewhere (ANYWHERE!!) that could offer me a power socket so I could work on the set for Festinho but it wasn't going down to well - things were quite fraught with the production team - an appalling lack of volunteers and stewards had really piled on the pressure so the last thing they needed was little ol' me wanting to get in the way of it all. But with a huge amount of thanks to Simon, a corner of the desk was found on Friday afternoon and I set about preparing video for the evening's performance. Which went rather well. :)
Festinho is awesome - I could wax lyrical about how incredibly special, initimate, friendly, well organised, loving (and a million other superlatives) Festinho is, but seriously the only way is to experience it first hand. It's hard to find a more warm, smiling group of both punters and staff. Here's miko's photos of the weekend if you need some encouragement. :) I haven't felt this way about a festival experience since going to The Big Chill's Enchanted Garden Festivals. Yes, it's that magical. :)
Saturday afternoon I met up with Dom and Andy and we packed Dom's dad's car and drove to Silloth in Cumbria where Solfest was - we got there at about 8:30pm and bimbled about, catching a bit of The Wailers and Eat Static. I slept for about an hour and then we got about playing our set in the fantastic Dogs In Space tent, finishing at about 5am - Huge thanks to Michael Dog (yes, he of Planet Dog and MegaDog Fame) at which point we packed the car back up and drove immediately back to Festinho. We really didn't want to miss anymore of it, because Festinho was all full of friends and love and fun and good times and in agreeing to do this Solfest gig we were missing the best part of it - Saturday night! We got back at 10:30am, and I got into the swing of things and had a wonderful Sunday, managing to stay awake until the end of AGT Rave crew awesome set and then slept for 11hours. :) Home on Monday, back at work on Wednesday.
there.
that's about it - (amazingly) there's quite a lot of detail I've left out, but you'd never know. ;)
Anyway I hope you like this weeks offering, here's the
Tracklisting
Verulf - United in Two Variations
Origamibiro - Quad Time/Bloodpulse of the Hungry Fingertip
Beak - He Descended into his Memory
First Aid Kit - Ghost Town
Sam Amidon - Way Go Lilly
Moon in the Gutter - Jack Rose
Gillian Welch - Everything is Free
Sarah Jaffe - Even Born Again
Quadron - Far Cry
Bonobo (ft Andreya Triana) - Eyes Down
The XX - Night Time
The Arcade Fire - Modern Man
The Besnard Lakes - Chicago Train
Lost Idol - Wish I was there
School of Seven Bells - Dust Devil
Yoshinori Sunahara - The First Step
Lusine - Auto Pilot
Echaskech - Shatterproof
Portishead - Roads (Max Cooper rmx)
Future Sound of London - Max
