come as you are

youth. young edits. i think he goes by both. either way i’ve been a fan of this young (!) australian’s stuff for a while, he’s always making useable edits and funky tracks. most recently he seems to be subtly turning his hand to rock classics, specifically the cure’s why can’t i be you and talking heads’ naive melody (which, i might add, is used at the end of wall street 2, much like the first film – though i wouldn’t recommend seeing it). this time he’s done something very brave, gently tweaking nirvana’s come as you are to make it play-out-able. not quite ep1x bang0rz status, but early room-building disco mix times appropriate, at the very least. impressive.

i’m taking the weekend off

yeah i’m going to edinburgh to hang out in cool old-style cinemas and eat lots of greggs and dress up as mark zuckerberg for halloween.

i already mentioned that awesome ra podcast, but there’s more amazing halloween-themed mix/podcast dealyos to check out this weekend while you pretend to play with ouija boards and whatever. there’s this awesome old mix boy 8-bit did a few years back called Halloween Special!!! Oooh Sppoky Sounds!!, i remember listening to it in the hmv in preston at some that definitely wasn’t halloween, but simply because it popped up next in my “mixes” folder – i tend to tag all my dj mixes as “mixes” so they all end up in the same place in my ipod, but that means that i’ll have a mix i made followed by diplo or erol or, as happened, boy 8-bit. i don’t care though, it’s such a good mix it’ll work any time. it’s all creaking doors, creepy vocal samples and chilling sounds and songs.

her

it’s been a minute since solid bump have hit us with a new release, and this one has been in the pipeline for so long that some of us have been, quite literally, itching to get our hands on it. what do you get when you combine san fransisco, leeds and a love of delicious house music?

yeeeeeeeeeeeeah. lovely isn’t it? classic house, tinged with disco, guitar licks that scream party but have a hint of melancholy, ghosts of venice‘s her is, in two words, all good.

halloween is coming

i’m actually going to be in edinburgh this weekend but if i were in dublin i would definitely be going to transmission to see the subs. check out this interview i did with them for the tm blog.

keeping in the spirit of things, the latest ra podcast is crazy good, as is this retro-italo-themed release i blogged about for truants.

a couple of years ago i discovered a track called fulci’s rotting children (possibly on the hllrbrd), and now i want the rest of this compilation. techno frights.

on sunday night when i get home i plan on ordering pizza and watching hammer films.

another night out

can i have a rest already?! the above is basically what i played last night. i tend to write down what i’m playing in my phone as i play it, as much for myself so i know what i play for future reference, and not to be too repetitive, and sometimes post it online. i’ve never really played a dubstep set before, and i’m not exactly deep in the genre, so a lot of the tracks and transitions were inspired by a mix i did two years ago mixing dubstep and ghettotech. or skirting the edges of each. there were two new(ish) tracks, that ethix track and the kill light track which is called animate, for the record.

tonight i’m going to see trentemøller and then play at transmission, where i’ll hopefully play some stuff from the likes of…. shadow dancer, screendeath, savage skulls, renaissance man, club cheval, carte blanche…. or maybe none of them at all. we’ll see.

today i…

woke up at 1pm.
put on a wash.
listened to loads of tunes.
made an edit.
made a chart.
finished the season of jersey shore.
nearly fell over in the shower.

now excuse me while i go drink some red bull and watch corrie before getting ready to go dj somewhere.

costings

i really don’t like that word. there’s no real reason for this, but it just sounds horrible to my ears. i guess any of that pseudo-management-bureaucracy-jargon-speak that they indulge in on any of the various apprentice shows is going to sound nonsensical at the best of times, but even worse when it comes out of the mouths of these power/fame-hungry zombies who launch their (reality tv) careers on a platform of unhealthy, overzealous ambition.

not that i’ve a problem with industry. one of my favourite tracks of late is the from azari & iii‘s release on turbo, the worker. it’s a plodding, no-nonsense technoid track that does exactly what it says on the tin. it works. grinding, pulsating and serious, it sounds like it was created in a warehouse, crafted by workers to the sound of the very track itself. another track in that vein is hector & nate‘s jomo, just out on scattermusic. the belgian duo have put together a useful ep, not of club bangers but of effective club tools – the label’s own promo descrives jomo’s “cascading percussion that’s already proven to cause ultimate chaos on the dancefloor”, and while i can’t vouch for this chaos, the percussion is swirling and atmospheric and definitely works in my head. wooooooooork.

Azari & III – The Worker

Hector & Nate – Jomo

sidetracked goes to the disco

it’s a multi-platform world, and sidetracked is expanding. mixcloud, we’re on you. the first three of our resident’s mixes (mine included) are up for your listening pleasure. be sure to have a listen ahead of this friday’s get together with the wetyourself bigwigs in trainwreck. see above. boom.

bank holiday fun

bank holiday weekends in dublin are always crazy busy when it comes to gigs. this upcoming october bank holiday (sunday 24) is no different, with a rake of big names flocking to different venues across the city on the sunday night. which one you choose will depend as much on a combination of who you’re going with and where it is (and consequently how much it is) as who is playing.

for example, much as i’d love to see laidback luke (he was a lot of fun at pukkelpop this year), i’d be more inclined to walk 10 minutes to the twisted pepper to see moodymann and optimo. ultimately, it doesn’t matter what i would do, as i’ll be staying in and getting some sleep ahead of my 9am start the next morning… hurrah. that said, i’m pretty excited about seeing trentemøller live again, his set at (again) pukkelpop in 2007 was one of the best i’ve ever seen, and a saturday night show in tripod should be just dandy.

cacti

sixty seconds of hum. ambient, melodic hum. a glissando followed by an electronic kick. this introduction sums up the cacti ep, the latest work from aman ellis on modyworks. the last time i wrote about him he was looking to the skies and dealing with extra-terrestrial soundscapes, but this time he’s back on this planet. it’s an new attempt at the chopped-up, cut-and-paste efforts from the likes of dj shadow and rjd2. as the title suggests, it sounds like it’d be perfect listening in the hazy wilds of the us desert.

seinfeld basslines, repeated vocal samples, snippets of old tv show themes, lashings of glass bells, nightmare phone conversations, it’s late-night lazing music, gentle enough to relax to, but interesting enough to ensure you stay alert. there’s even a hint of a dubstep wobble on hello, which ends with about three seconds of folson prison blues. and why not. i think my favourite track has to be a man in alabama, which calls to mind the turn-of-the-century stylings of the likes of the avalanches and groove armada. what this really evokes for me is the soundtrack to the uk tv comedy green wing, put together by jonathan whitehead, aka trellis. it’s mainly the slow tempo, lazy feel and the wailing trumpet sounds, all of which add up to form a languid, enjoyable breeze through this thoroughly engaging project.

Aman Ellis – The Cacti EP (direct link)