Dj Magazine October 2010 by vassiliy fartukov

DJMAG.AE

Creamfields returns: full line up and ticket details inside

No wf ull ONL y ww w. djm INE ag .ae !

Sound system? The rise of Funktion 1

In for the Subtrakill

Dark drum and bass and dubstep in Dubai

Return of the Jedis Adidas and Star Wars team up to take over dance music Empire

Martial music 10 years of Ninja tunes

U Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Know Me

Armand Van Helden on how he re-created disco + His October 15 date with Nasimi

PLUS: Groove Armada, Space, James Zabiela , LCD Soundsystem and Es Vive Hotel! + 10 things you never knew about the funk

lIvInG & breathInG dance MuSIc!

Contents upfront 05 07 08 10

Tune in/Turn off funktion 1 bestival 60 seconds: mark pickup

aaa access

featureS 17 armand van helden

from hip hop to house - and now re-imaginaing disco - we look at the rise and rise of the new york Dj.

all

areas

space ibiza

hotel es vive

lcD soundsystem

john Digweed, bo 18

20 In for the Subtrakill

house producer anmol pinto has branched out into the bassier side of electronica with his subtrakill alter ego. and we like. a lot.

22 dear me

canadian uber producer matthew Dear talks techno.

24 Martial music

as seminal label ninja Tunes celebrates 10 years of being, we chart their amazing story.

MuSIc 45 46 47 48

house Disco Global bass D’n’b

28 count on them

Their ‘after Dark’ tune has launched them into the mainstream, but there’s a lot more to global bass champions count and sinden than meets the eye.

30 return of the Jedis

light sabers at the ready, as star Wars and adidas team up for an intergalactic Dj battle.

32 changing Industry our tips on how to stay at the top.

tech 56 57 58 59

vestax pDX-3000mkii Techtalk paul Woolford Dj Doctor

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editorial

Editor Andy Buchan andy@djmag.ae Contributing Editor Mike Ross mike@djmag.ae Sales and Marketing Lisa Chauhan lisa@djmag.ae, 055 934 6646 Online Vassiliy Anatoli vas@djmag.ae

Net working DJing is nothing without technological innovation and progression. From Kool Herc and Tom Moulton creating the DJ mix and essential breakdowns, to Pioneer and Ableton pushing forward the technological race, dance music has evolved throughout generations. And so have we. First published in 1991, DJ Magazine has since branched out into Brazil, China, Mexico, Germany and of course the Middle East. And it’s this edition that is leading the way, as we’ve rolled out our ﬁrst ever online issue.

Design Jmax Lolo allan@djmag.ae Contributors Oliver Adams, Martin Beck, Xan Blacker, David Craig, Rukshan Jayasekara, Lloyd, MaDJam, Martin Metcalf, Georgina Wilson-Powell, Lisa Sant, Zahra Soar, DJ Solo, Danilo Venegas. Paul Emous/Moustrap Media, Marie Sorensen, Olly Wood.

After listening to our readers, we’ve added to our normal coverage by bringing you the latest news, club listings, in depth features and music and tech reviews. Not only that, but our website - www. djmag.ae <http://www.djmag.ae> - will soon have a revolving Twitter feed, contentious and thought-provoking blogs, Facebook interactivity and lots more. You can read the full issue online via www.djmag.ae <http://www. djmag.ae> and you can download the full magazine as a PDF to your desktop and read it at your leisure. Enjoy the issue and please do get in touch with feedback on the new-look issue.

Andy Buchan Editor

The publisher does not accept any liability for errors or inaccuracies contained in this publication, however caused. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the publisher. Information contained in this publication is intended for general use and readers are advised to seek specialist information before acting upon any information enclosed herein. No part of this publication or any part of its content may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form, without the express permission of the publisher in writing. The only exemption to this is for extracts used for the purpose of a fair review.

Flash back Abu Dhabi organisers bring back Creamfields for a second season

t might have had its problems last year - poor tickets sales and an abundance of under-age kids - but that didn’t stop the 10 hour, 4 stage Creamfields being a stand out event on the dance music calendar.

And it’s back once again this winter, at its new home on Yas Island. David Guetta has already been confirmed as the headliner, but the Creamfields team have now announced four other acts. And it seems they’ve listened to the trance community in the Middle East, as Above And Beyond, Gareth Emery and Sander Van Doorn have all been confirmed, as has the technical wizard, James Zabeila. The only downside for the event is that it takes place on Thursday December 9, which might make travel from Dubai difficult, but this line up more than compensates for it. Creamfields, Thursday December 9, Yas Arena. Tickets Dhs250

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Changing Rooms

TUNE IN Spending the summer out of Dubai and in Ibiza. (Y)

After the summer and Ramadan break, the clubbing season is once more upon us: and it’s a game of two halves thanks to the searing summer heat and the beautiful winter weather. But who’s moved where, who’s been promoted and who’s a free agent?

Promotions

Taboo at Trilogy @ every Thursday night Now officially re-opened - and officially working under the Trilogy name again - Taboo are their flagship Thursday nights. If there opening few dates - Mark Ronson and The Crystal Method - are anything to go by, expect the unexpected, alongside some big house hitters. Everyone Loves Friday @ Alpha every Friday With long-running eclectic night SYNF no longer at Alpha (see below), ELF has taken its place. And it’s not just the acronyms they have in common: ELF will be catering to the rock and roll that’s helped make Alpha’s name, and more specifically in the live arena.

Transfers:

See You Next Friday and Digital to Friday (SYNF on the Rooftop, Digital in the Main Room) Two of the most forward-thinking nights have teamed up to provide the Friday night entertainment at the newly re-opened Trilogy. From big room house (Danny Howells) to disco-house (Disco Bloodbath) and big bad basslines (Scratch Perverts), every base is covered. Deep Nights, every Thursday at Sanctuary Once the biggest hitter in the house market, Deep has returned after a brief sojourn to head up the Thursday nights at the Atlantis’ 3 room club. If it’s got a 4/4 beat and it’s worked in Dubai before, you’ll no doubt see/hear them at Sanctuary in the near future. Cheese to? Cheese is available on a free transfer following their departure from Chi. Main man Tim Cheddar is remaining tight-lipped about their new home, but with a loyal following and over 5 years of history behind them, it shouldn’t be too hard. Cheddar’s proclivity for roller skating rules out any beach venues though, we presume. Quantum to Sensation Yes, the club that has had more name changes than Prince has done it once more. From Tribe to Quantum and now Sensation, the Crowne Plaza venue has changed its identity again. Dion Mavath helms Thrust, the big-room electro night on Thursdays, while Sandy Rivera returns to Dubai to launch the White night on Friday.

Trilogy re-opening, with all three levels Funktion 1’d up. DJ Shadow dropping super-limited copies of his new track in record stores while on tour. The opposite of shoplifting. Sandance: Armand Van Helden alone would have sold out Nasimi, but they’ve also added Zero 7, Chicane and Ronin and Nesta to the bill. Over half a million votes for this year’s DJ Mag Top 100, winner announced in November. Half price sunset drinks at MustHaveSoul every Saturday at 360. Hair of the dog has never been

TURN OFF Open air venues opening up too early: bedraggled and sweaty is not a strong look. Sandance adding Baby D to the bill? Really?

‘Dam funk

They might not have a current base in the UAE, but that hasn’t stopped SessionS from going international as they host their own boat party in Amsterdam during ADE. Helmed by John Spoor - recently seen warming up for Louie Vega as part of Trilogy’s grand re-opening - he’s joined on this seven hour funky house marathon by DJ Yass, Soulmagic, Richard Earnshaw and Lokesh Soni, as well as Dubai based DJs, Smokingroove and Salah Sadeq. Rival pool party promoters claiming that their opposition venues are closed. DJ Twitter bores. Yes, your gig went off - that’s what’s supposed to happen. Can you imagine a doctor preclaiming: ‘Yes, broken bone mended. Who da man!’ Pls RT. www.djmag.ae

And we haven’t even got to the best bit yet: it’s all taking place on a 250 capacity, two tiered boat which will be cruising Amsterdam’s canals from 4pm-11pm. And, weather permitting, the outdoor deck will be opened up making it a moving two-room club. The boat party runs on Friday October 22, tickets are just 20 Euros, and over half of the 250 allocation have been sold already. For more information, or to reserve your tickets, please contact John on johnspooris@hotmail.com. 5

Sound SySteM?

on the Stereo

since its launch at alpha 2 years ago, the funktion 1 soundsystem has quickly gained a foothold, and can now be found in Trilogy, armani prive, 360 and alpha. We talked to patrik carrera, armani’s artistic director and resident Dj to find out why they’re the latest to install it.

Pirupa - The Leader Jackin’ goodness from Riva Starr’s new label. Azari & III - Reckless With Your Love (Tensnake remix) Mid-90s disco-house track that lodges in your cortex and refuses to let go. Winner. Lee Foss - Charmer Discordant deep house from the very-up-and-coming Foss. Swedish House Maﬁa - One (Stanton Warriors Edit) Yes yes, we’re bored of it as well. But this is a fresh and bass-heavy rework. Big look. Mark Ronson - Bang Bang Bang (Russ Chimes remix) Epic synth house re-rub of Ronson’s latest.

Why have you opted to install a Funktion 1 Soundsystem for the new season at Armani? Funktion 1 is a quality brand name in sound systems that’s highly respected world wide and showcased in some of the world’s best clubs. We’re bringing people like Norman Doray, Sultan, Martijn Ten Velden in the new season, and wanted to offer a new level of sound alongside these world class artists. What will the Funktion 1 soundsystem do that the previous system could not? The Funktion 1 install will simply deliver a new level of sound to our guests that will align with our high quality product ethos. The previous system was a Tannoy System: the brand makes a great product, however for the specific needs of this venue it didn’t fit right. And why install it ahead of other big soundsystems like Void etc? A new sound system install for Armani/Prive was a difficult task with major acoustic and design factors that needed to be considered, alongside the very specific needs of the Armani brand. When seeking a new install, Armani/Prive had the who’s who of sound system brands assessing the venue. Funktion 1 ticked all the boxes in regards to design, product, install timeline, the actual product and the team’ss willingness to work with what our specific needs were.

Armani Prive brand. However, to a regular guest who comes into Prive and experiences the quality of sound, the brand name Funktion1 may not mean anything to them, but they will take note. The Funktion 1 brand does however bring with it a huge level of respect and recognition with in the music industry, and its a good thing for Armani/ Prive to be aligned with such a highly respected brand name. Does the wide-spread introduction of Funktion 1 signal a changing perception of the importance of sound to clubs in the Middle East? Sound is the most important thing, and deﬁnitely an area in the past that’s been overlooked. The majority of guests in Dubai have experienced some of the world’s best clubs either in their home country or on their travels. Once that’s happened, even someone who is not musical or technically minded on sound, their expectations rise and when returning or arriving to Dubai will expect a certain quality level. In the past clubs may have been able to satisfy guests with poor sound, however with the crowds’ rising expectations, nightclubs in Dubai have to provide a certain quality level and the majority of venues new and existing I think are really taking notice. It’s really a positive thing and will help excel the nightlife in Dubai on an international level.

And does the Funktion 1 name help improve your brand? For more information about Armani Prive, Having a quality sound system does of course search for Armani Prive Nightclub Dubai on improve our product and thus strengthens the Facebook. www.djmag.ae

Netsky - Iron Heart It won’t be long before Netsky joins the drum and bass big boys with epochal, melodic bangers like this. The Prodigy - Breathe (Caballo + TMFK remix) Basslines don’t get much bigger - or darker - than this. For late night raves only.

ewan pearson What’s the difference between ﬁshing and going to a dubstep rave? Nothing, it’s people standing around waiting for the biggest bass.

tiesto Super fan Last night I dreamt I was riding a unicorn through heaven. While I was riding, Tiesto’s ‘Adagio For Strings’ was playing. I cried.

Iam Mark ronson Who knew that Trilogy in Dubai would go down like an indoor version of notting hill carnival? Thank you & I’ll be back soon x 7

beStIval vIa dubaI UK festivals needn’t mean slurping through rivers of mud, warm Cider and rain-sodden tents. Not if you take Olly Wood’s advice and do it in Dubai style

t’s the end of another foot-stomping British festival season, perfectly bookended by Bestival: the three day celebration of fancy dress, acrossthe-board line up and late summer, erm, sunshine? But being wise to the English way, we decided to do Bestival the Dubai way. It needs no explanation really: most of the expat festival goers who have settled in this sandy tax haven have had enough of the muddy mornings, condensation dripped tentage and the constant hiss of balloons closely followed by a clearly deﬁned giggle. After a few phone calls we hooked

ourselves up with a clear plan of action and artist guestlist thanks to the incomparable Barry Ashworth, lead singer of festival greats, and recent Alpha guests, The Dub Pistols. The short ferry trip over to the Isle of Wight, the home of Bestival, was full to the brim with healthy ravers, fresh

Radio 1 UK’s Annie Mac) blew us away with their heavy beats and piercing tech break. These guys are definitely ones to watch, and I hope to see them in the sunshine soon. Dizzie Rascal gave us his usual mix of clever lyrics and pumping pop punches, but I can’t help thinking the man has gone too far when he sampled some of I say hotel: it was more of a B&B, with Annie Lennox’s classic vibes. 4 a greeting not to dissimilar to that of minutes of sampled grime pop Basil Fawlty from our own inexplicable left me feeling rather sickly. The Flaming Lips added their usual host, Mick. Apparently our slightly freaky deeky flair to the fun tardy arrival had held up his dinner packed fancy dress day. I went as arrangements. Our apologies a Mexican Wrestler, of which photos lurk somewhere in the Parts I remember, depths of my camera, never to parts only be found. photographs can suggest I was The onset of dress up was when the involved in. The first person we met party people were at their best. Some classic moments included a rather was the glorious exhausted and ‘chubby’ Robocop Thomas Gandey of bedding down in a bar towards the end Cagedbaby fame of his mud soaked struggle through the (appearing at site in full robot gear. And then there Trilogy on Friday was a rather unnerving ‘white rabbit’ October 8). He’s a who had clearly chased the dragon seasoned festival rather than the ‘time’ of which he was goer, Space Ibiza resident and a star fabled. He was last seen unning round our table, teeth out and paws up of the season. He searching for something lost. gave us plenty of insight into the art of ‘festival time management’, which we The site was lined with glorious food duely ignored and rushed into the outlets from around the world, and proceedings headfirst. organic was the word. This ‘enviroraving’ was even present when The highlights of the 3 days were a mix of people watching and big beats. shoveling sawdust into the rather ‘long drop’ after a sordid portaloo New kids on the block, Andy George break(when no other option was left). and Jaymo (Now DJing regularly for faced and fancy free; a stark contrast to the journey back! Rucksacks and tents in tow, we remained proud and consciously smug that our suitcases would not return 30kg heavier once stocked up on mud and all the other entrails that drag behind a good old British festival. For we had, in our infinite wisdom, booked a hotel.

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SECRET

WEAPON

THE DJ’S GUARANTEED KILLER!

SaM farSIo

Socio Robots ‘Chimphony’ This is one of those bombs that would definitely transport you to the jungle, and yet maintain the pace to make you groove! Created by my friend arnold misquitta (arnold from mumbai), ”Chimphony” creates a whole new party experience that leaves you wanting for more. This tech house baby sure works its magic on the floor everytime we play it. it’s great to see such a killer response from the dancefloor. Needless to say, festival loos leave little to be desired. As the triple threat of life sapping festival days drew to a close, I was ‘uncontrollable’ with joy at the fact we were clean, full English breakfasted up every morning, and had torn it up VIP style in every way. All that was left was to load my accordion (which later when lucid, I found out was an empty cardboard beer crate) into a headlining band’s tour bus and make my way back to the comfort of a Shanklin Hotel duvet. Rumour has it that I made them take it all the way to their next gig in Bologne, even though they tried arguing with me that it was not part of their rider. See you next year, Bestival. And this time I’m landing my helicopter in the artist campsite. Tickets for next year’s Bestival are on sale now: www.bestival.net.

Mark pickup Trilogy, if you didn’t already know, has re-launched, and brought with it a few new residents including this multi-skilled DJ and drummer, Mark Pickup. YoU’Ve gone from drummer to a headline DJ act - how did that musical transition occur? i played drums from the age of 13 but had a big car crash when i was at college and had to sell my drum kit to help pay towards the cost. Then at university i found house music. Watching the likes of sasha and oakenfold control a dance ﬂoor with 2000 plus people was truly inspiring and so the task was set and my mission was to do that one day. YoU’Re known for a driving style of house music that’s more suited to main sets. How do you adapt your sound when you’re doing warm ups without losing your style? That’s a very good question. Having played main set so many times i know that a good warm up DJ should not play pumping or big tunes and leave that to the main act. my warm up style now consists of mainly Jackin House and Funk or very slow tech house with the emphasis being it has to be ‘cool’. YoU also have a live element to your music as you play the electronic drums. What or who inspired you to do this, and why don’t more people do it? i stumbled across the Roland Hansdsonic drum machine in miami and at the ﬁrst opportunity i checked the connections and

wondered if i could incorporate it into my DJ sets. When i found out it was possible it opened up a whole new world for me, it deﬁnitely raised my game and took my DJing to another level. i’m really surprised that it is not utilized more in the industry as it is such a good accessory and as you say transforms my sets into more of a live act. Congo / bongo players and house music DJs have been playing together since day one but having a DJ play percussion whilst DJing is certainly a novelty and having 400 different drum sounds at my disposal in one machine certainly makes for some creative sets! YoU say on your bio that your gig with sasha in Las Vegas in 2007 was an amazing moment for you - why was it? and what was so special about the gig? it was special to me because my inspiration back in 1995 was sasha. i was there on stage in front of 3000 people in Vegas and played immediately after sasha, my wife mel and i partied with him afterwards. it was a very memorable night. YoU’Re one of the new Trilogy residents. How does it feel to be stepping out into one of the world’s best clubs?

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i’m very excited about playing there as it closed just before i moved to Dubai so i didn’t get chance to experience it in its prime. But i have heard so much positive feedback from everyone about how good it is, so i am very excited to be playing there. Plus they have booked some amazing international artists for october and november so expect big things. YoU seemed impressed with the music you came across in ibiza recently. Why were you so impressed, did you expect to be disappointed? and who and what impressed you the most? i’ve been going to ibiza for 15 years now and after my last couple of visits the music wasn’t really that exciting. When i went in august this year i was blown away by the style of drivin tech house being played in most of the top venues. People go to ibiza to party but DJs go there to be educated too and i found myself going to venues to just listen to see what the sound was and, like a sponge, i absorbed that sound and brought it back to Dubai to play to my audience. i have to say the DJ that impressed me most was Joris Voorn. i booked my trip to ibiza around his gig at space so i could listen to him and he didn’t disappoint. He is making a name for himself with his bouncy tech house sound and i hear he is coming to Dubai soon!

faShIon

Takes all sorts

face it, there are a whole bunch of styles in the footwear department to tickle your taste buds. We’ve dipped our toes in and come up with a collection likely to provide you with some fanciful food for thought.

essential selection it’s all about the sony mDr headphones… THE SEARCH IS STILL ON for the perfect headphones for every occasion — each has its own purpose and worth. Be it a day pair — for general usage and leisurely listening, or a night-time ampliﬁcation abuse set. We’re not saying these are going to cover all bases but when it comes to style and label stamp approval, we say Sony are a cut above. The MDR-570 range is a stylish, light, closed-type, available in black, orange, green, indigo blue and brown. A

perfect addition to your chic look du jour. It’s interesting to also note that Sony are embracing environmentally responsible ways to develop their brand. sony.eu

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faShIon what a SIte! from the safety of your home…

trekStock.coM Doing the right thing has never been so right. Charities are aplenty and giving is what’s best. Trekstock is an organisation that supports young people with cancer, working in partnership with Cancer Research and supported by many music industry characters — Mark Ronson, DJ Yoda, The Mighty Boosh, Beth Ditto and Chromeo, amongst many others.

What you wearing?

TocaDisco

exclusive wardrobe access… 9

01. adIdaS Dsh300 jdsports.co.uk

06. St vacant Dhs750 saintvacant.com

02. new balance Dhs350 size.co.uk

07. huMMel Dhs350 020 8275 1170

03. kIckerS Dhs250 kickers.co.uk 04. evISu Dhs750 020 7292 0500 05. reebok Dhs300 reebok.com

08. pf flyerS Dhs350 pfflyers.com 09. GourMet Dhs700 crookedtongues. com

ShotGun.tv If you’ll excuse the street talk… Shotgun.tv is siiiick! They’ve been online since 1999 and this isn’t their ﬁrst mention on these pages. Hosting a gaggle of high and lowbrow labels, including the likes of Umbro, Eastpak, Dr Martens and 2sickbastards, Shotgun is a loveable lads site that’s also ﬁt for girls.

What are you wearing right now? “I’m wearing Levi’s jeans — I always love originals, Levi’s are THE original jeans — and a t-shirt by R.A.R.E, which is a cool Italian design brand. My shoes are by Adidas, white Superstars.” Where do you get your fashion inspirations from? “I have never had any icon, it’s just my taste. I like it either streetware/ skateware, with sneakers and just a T-shirt, or a bit more chic with boots and a shirt and leather jacket, depending on the occasion.” Favourite designer/label? “For t-shirts it’s R.A.R.E from Italy. I love their shirts and they always have very advanced cuts.”

laStnIGhtadJSavedMylIfe.orG A collective of DJs and dance music industry stalwarts have gathered together to put on fund-raising parties and events for humanitarian and environmental causes. It can only be a good thing.

Favourite boutique/store? “I have some favourite stores in Cologne. I don’t really know their names. I just do my usual rounds checking out new stuff they have. It’s mostly based around the Ehrenstrasse, which is the main shopping street for cool clothes. And every year when we come back to Ibiza we go shopping. Just go

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into the city of Eivissa, there you will ﬁnd plenty of shops.” How do you like to shop? “I’m very fast. I go inside, choose and buy. Sometimes I just walk through the city without buying and then go another time just to shop for the items I saw before.” Your favourite trainers? “Sneakers always come from Adidas especially the ‘Materials of the World’ line. They are very rare pieces, and they make only 500 pairs each.” What is your most treasured item? “I know it’s corny, but the Rolex that I bought was a good feeling. It felt like I have achieved something good to afford that watch.” What are you up to? “I’ve just ﬁnished mixing the new Toolroom Knights album out now with Chris Lake and my third album is coming out soon, as well as some collaborations with Afrojack and remixes for Joachim Garraud and Riva Starr.”

faShIon

less is more...

We love ep!

Tasty bits and grand leaps… fabrIc of the Month…

electronic poet rock up in Topman with We love… IT GIVES US a nice, warm feeling to see the likes of Electronic Poet servicing a top-notch store like Topman with their garms. We’ve been fans of this uber-sassy brand for some time now, and it feels mighty good to see them hit the high street. This summer EP has also collaborated with Ibiza’s finest, We Love…, producing neat t-shirts that have been seen here, there and everywhere, particularly looking fine on key players like Jamie Jones, Damian Lazarus and Clive Henry. Electronic Poet have promised to hold one t-shirt back for a lucky DJmag reader to win, keep and treasure. Just fire over an email to helene.stokes@ djmag.com, sling We Love Electronic Poet in the subject box, tell us your size and address and keep those fingers crossed!

Denim. Never goes away, really, does it? This month we’ll be wearing it chopped up and raggedy. We’ll also be searching for a faded denim flat cap to go with.

lISten up…

reaDy for beD?

sharam jey and cleptomanicx team up

HAMBURG-BASED Cleptomanicx are a super-cool German street/skatewear brand with an emphasis on fun. They’re currently in our good books for producing a lovely range of t-shirts for fellow Deutsch-man Sharam Jey and his King Kong imprint. However, it’s their PJs that we’ve done a double take for. What’s not to like about their toast or lemon prints? And blow us down if they haven’t gone and offered a pair of each, plus an ‘In My Blood’ t-shirt and copy of the album for a DJmag reader to win. Life is sweeeet! Send in your entries to helene.stokes@djmag.com with Clepto vs Sharam Jey in the subject box, and do include your size and address, please.

artists that make fashion sense

JIMMy edGar

HE’S A TERRIBLY STYLISH FELLOW is producer/

musician Jimmy Edgar. He oozes fashion nous and has an arresting sense of self. “Sometimes I could give a shit less. I’m into looking sleek, designed, colour schemed, monotone or reflective,” he enlightens us. His latest release ‘XXX’ through !K7 is all of the above, naturally, however his talents don’t stop at music production. Jimmy is also working on short fashion ﬁlms that take fashion magazine editorials and make them into moving images. “I’m working on some interpretive dance with a dark fashion theme from my scripts,” he explains. As for his favoured brands, it’s all about Gucci, Maison Martin Margiela and Gareth Pugh “My fashion icons are photographers like Steven Klein, Jamie Nelson, Miles Aldridge — they set the actual mood of the fashion.”

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Urbanears follow up their clever clog headphones with these Medis in-ears. Simplicity at its best, and in some tasty colourways. Dhs220 from audioout. co.uk

watch out… Check out next issue’s fabulous competition to win a whole outﬁt courtesy of Nickelson. We’re talking jacket, shorts and a top. Oh yeah.

ManbaG… Is it a rucksack, is it a satchel? Actually it’s both. And we like very much. Courtesy of Full Circle for £95. Fullcircleuk.com

aMbaSSador actIon… Fenchurch have taken super-cool French producer/DJ Djedjotronic under their wing and fully furnished him with their clobber. Why not?

waX lyrIcal… The Autumn/Winter collection from Alpinestars is looking good, looking real good. We’ve put a big golden star next to their waxy shirts, hitting the stores this month.

up for GrabS

Win tickets to see Armin Van Buuren Last year’s DJ Magazine Top 100 winner - and for the third time no less - is playing for Peppermint this month at Dubai Trade Centre. And because we’re nice like that, we’ve got 3 pairs of tickets to give away for the gig on Friday October 15. To win, log onto www.djmag.ae and tell us the answer to the following question: The dress code for the event is... a) All white b) Birthday suits c) Black tie

Win tickets to Chi’s Garden Gathering feat. Roni Size, DJ EZ and Stromae While Trilogy might boast a 3 room line up, Chi can always pull out their trump card: the fourth room. And with line ups like this, they’ve put their advantage to good use. Stromae, he of the rather sickly ‘Alors Dance’ track, headlines outside, but the beats are better inside as Roni Size headlines the new Chi Black room, DJ EZ does his thing in Chi Club, while Step On play indie bangers in the Red room. And we have three pairs of tickets to give away for this Friday October 15 event. Hit www.djmag.ae and enter the correct answer to this question to win... Roni Size’s breakthrough track was called: a) Brown Eyed Boy b) Brown Paper Bag c) Jackie Brown www.djmag.ae

OCTOBER 2010

02.10HIPPIE TORRALES 09.10SEAN MCCABE 16.10ANDY WARD 23.10CONAN LIQUID 30.10ROCCO CLUB ZANZIBAR, USA

KINGSTREET SOUNDS, UK

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REGISTER FOR THE FREE GUESTLIST BETWEEN 4PM-8PM AT WWW.PLATINUMLIST.AE WALK IN FOR FREE AFTER 8PM. CAPACITY RESTRICTIONS APPLY. EVERY SATURDAY. 4PM UNTIL LATE. 360ยบ, JUMEIRAH BEACH HOTEL.

THE VOCAL BOOTH, SPAIN SUNSPELL RECORDS, UK

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RESIDENT DJS: SIMON REID, TRISTAN BAIN, DAN CHADWICK

GUESTLIST ONLY 4PM - 8PM 21+ ONLY ID REQUIRED

U Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Know Me

Some people have a knack of being in the right place, at the right time. The man to the right has a knack of making your body physically jerk in time to music at the right time, every time. From bassline house, ghetto grooves and re-imagining disco - not to forget his brief dalliance with hip hop - Armand van Helden has been a perpetual renaissance man. Ahead of his headlining gig at Nasimi on Friday October 15, we present 10 facts you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know about Armand van Helden (and one that is a made up lie). Can you find out which one?

Words: Andy Buchan

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10) Armand Van Helden’s next project is called Balkan Boombox, and is a gypsy house project working alongside reclusive music-maker Gogel Bordello. Their first single is slated for release at the end of the year, and is going to be called ‘Where’s Your Caravan’.

2) His biggest hit to date remains his remix of Tori Amos’ ‘Professional Widow.’ But as it was an unofficial remix, he wasn’t entitled to any royalties from it. But it did lead to remix work for The Rolling Stones, Daft Punk and Britney Spears, so every cloud etc. 3) The Armand remix of ‘Professional Widow’ - as well as his re-rub of Sneaker Pimps’ ‘Spin Spin Sugar’ - can also be seen as an influential milestone in the brief, but important rise of speed garage. Maintaining a 4/4 beat as with house music, the scene incorporated big, wobbling basslines - see Herve and Jack Beats for recent examples of the genre - as well as musical links to jungle and drum and bass. 4) Like all the biggest and best dance music acts, Armand takes inspiration from crate-digging. His hit ‘My My My’ from 2006 was heavily based on Gary Wright’s ‘Comin’ Apart’, while ‘I Want Your Soul’ from the same time, is an almost direct copy of Seidah Garrett’s ‘Do You Want It Right Now’. And perhaps the most obvious of all, was his re-working of Carrie Lucas’ seminal ‘Dance With You’ which later became ‘U Don’t Know Me’. 5) One of Armand’s first remixes was for the Rednex’ single, ‘Cotton Eye Joe’. If you haven’t heard it, imagine the soundtrack to ‘Deliverance’ but with house beats and a one-toothed singer leering wildly at you while mouthing ‘squeal piggy, squeal.’ It’s. That. Bad. 6) Famously, Armand has liked to change musical direction, saying ‘Every time people thought they knew me, I’ve flipped on them. And it p***** them off, but at the same time I made a whole new group of people that are into me, that didn’t like me before.’ Nearly all his musical experiments have worked, apart from his hip hop homage, ‘Sampleslaya - Enter The Meat Market’, which was dismissed by many. 7) His most recent musical change up has been his project Duck Sauce, done in collaboration with Canadian DMC winner A Trak (who, interestingly - and totally non-connected - is the brother of David from Chromeo). Their second single, ‘Barbara Streisand’ takes its chorus from Boney M, and is one of the most bootlegged tracks this year. Just search for it in Soundcloud if you don’t believe us. 8) The video of ‘Barbara Streisand’ made us cry - no, howl with laughter in the DJ Mag office. There’s a ropey Barbara Streisand look-a-like, cameos from Questlove, a dour Kanye West and Chromeo, and Pharrell. It is in short, the best video we’ve seen for months. 9) Armand Van Helden has graced the cover of DJ Magazine a few times in his long history. But perhaps the most memorable was 8 years ago when he told the photographer to hang on while he did some press ups. 10 minutes later he re-appeared with his top off, sweaty and looking not a little homo-erotic. ‘You know, I gotta get my swell on’ he told the interviewer. Quite.

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Number 10 is false!

1) Armand was born in 1970 to a Dutch-Indonesian father and a French-Lebanese mother. He’s quite proud of his Arab heritage, and once appeared on the front cover of a Scottish listings magazine in a dish dash and keffiyeh under the headline ‘Sheikh Rattle and Roll.’

Zero 7 There are few better artists to soundtrack the mid-afternoon sun. From their own hits - the Jose Gonzales-aided ‘Futures’ is our favourite - to their mix CDs, which take in everything from Serge Gainsbourg to the Cinematic Orchestra, they’ve got sunset written all over them.

Chicane

Ignore their Bryan Adams hit ‘Don’t Give Up’ (and that is direct advice to the band), and go straight for their Ibiza classic ‘Offshore.’ Excitingly, the band are playing live and with latest album ‘Giants’ getting positive reviews, this should be an impressive return to form for them.

Baby D The odd one out in the line up - in that the rest have credibility - this hopefully won’t be an awkward 30 minute set of new material before that hit comes on as the last song.

RONIN and NESTA The highest Lebanese entry in last year’s DJ Mag Top 50, Ronin and Nesta are making their first trip to Dubai. And considering their summer - they’ve warmed up for everyone from James Zabiela to Carl Cox in Beirut - they’ll have a few new tricks up their sleeve.

Sandance at Nasimi, Friday October 15. Tickets are Dhs150, and doors open from 4pm.

In for the

Subtrakill

His â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jumeirah Janeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; track might have gained world wide recognition, but Anmol Pinto - a 25 year old Dubai resident - has moved on from his progressive electro sound and, under his Subtrakill alias, started making dubstep, drum and bass and 4am electro. DJ Magazine found out why.

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You’ve gone from a hard metal band to progressive electro to dubstep and drum and bass under your different guises - why do you feel the need to move around musically? Because nothing bores me more than sticking to, listening to, producing, performing the same type or style of music over and over again. The music industry isn’t doing well ﬁnancially, but I think it would have been completely obliterated if there weren’t enough open-minded musicians constantly trying to experiment and come up with different sounds. What other producers do you look up to? Sam Philips, Butch Vig, Max Martin, Quincy Jones, Rick Rubin (any man who can go from producing the Dixie chicks to Slayer has respect in my books, haha). And of course all the obvious electronic ones like The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, Eric Prydz, Deadmau5, Steve Angello, Richie Hawtin. Michael Woods has been producing some amazing stuff lately. And there are the not so obvious ones like Taurus & Vaggeli, and there’s this duo from France called ‘Uppermost’ that I’ve really taken a liking to. Awesome stuff. And does this mean and end to your house music career? No, not at all. It’s all still primarily house: this isn’t my “drum n bass and dubstep” project. This is my “electronic music” project, so that includes every sub-genre you can think of. Dubstep, in particular, has been slow to make it into the clubs in Dubai with a few exceptions. What is it about the genre that appeals to you so much? Well considering the music scene here is light years behind everyone else, it’s no surprise it hasn’t reached here yet. It’s too “edgy” for the delicate handbagmanicure-sunshine-beach-and-strawberries-andcherries-loving souls that live here. Why is musical experimentation so important to you, is it not better to perfect one area or genre than move around? I think a non-experimental musician is a bit of an oxymoron considering most music is made through experimentation! I’m sure there are lots of musicians out there who are willing to just stick to one style throughout their entire career and that’s fair enough. But I would rather shoot myself in the face than sit in the studio and produce the same style for the next 20 years and perfect the crap out of it. Take Rick Rubin for instance: he’s produced everyone from Shakira to Metallica. And although I will never be as big of a genius as he is, it’s a good example of what I aspire to be! Even as a DJ if I’m browsing through Beatport and I hear a track I really like and I buy it and play it out and the next week I go back to that same producer and hear THE EXACT SAME TRACK as the previous one, I just think, “Oh no not one of those producers” and I’ll probably never look for him/her on beatport ever again! Coming back to DJing, one of the greatest things about it is that “element of surprise”, like playing 45 minutes of deep, drony minimal and then randomly dropping a huge vocal track that makes people wet themselves. There is honestly no greater feeling than that, and so I want to apply that same mentality to producing. Of course it’s important to “have a sound” by using certain synths and basslines and blips and clicks or whatever. It’s not like I’m completely confusing people by dropping a country song with Taylor Swift and then going into a System of a Down track the next. It’s all still

electronic music, so if people “need” to have some expectation of what I do, there you go: I play and produce electronic music. You seem quite disilluisioned with the Dubai club scene - how would you improve it? I don’t think as DJs or producers or promoters we can do anything to improve it. Dubai has been pitched to the world as this rich, lavish, “touristy” fantasy land filled with never ending free flowing Champagne and caviar and luxury yachts and designer brands and the world’s biggest shopping malls etc. And don’t even get me started on the live and rock music scene. Some might argue that that’s not part of the question, but I really believe that one scene affects another. The smaller the variety of music there is out there, the more closed-minded they become. Sure you have good events here and there supporting underground music, some of them with great consistency. But in the grand scale of things, it’s just not happening. You can debate about this thing for ages, but I’ve been here for 25 years and been through every music scene imaginable, so excuse my pessimism. And without going out clubbing - and by your own words, living in your studio - how can you keep up to date with what works on dancefloors, trends etc? It’s pretty simple really, it’s not rocket science. Dance music is probably the easiest genre to write so I don’t understand this whole “if you don’t go out clubbing you cant tell what works on the dancefloor” idea. It’s not like attempting to make an ‘Aenima’ (Tool) or ‘The Downward Spiral’ (NIN). My track ‘Jumeirah Jane’ was the first house track I ever produced with zero DJing experience, zero production experience and a bit of clubbing experience, and it still worked on dancefloors all over the world. What it comes down to is you are either a musical person or not. It’s a talent, a gift. You can’t explain how you know these things, you just do. You also have a lot of online support - thousands of Facebook fans, Soundcloud followers etc. How important is that to your career, and how hard is it to maintain that following? It’s definitely important, and helps get your music out there. But then again it’s not very difficult to get followers these days. I’m sure if I had some boobs and posed in a bikini I’d get a million followers in a day and they couldn’t care less about my music. You also say you’re an expert Peanut butter sandwich maker. Excuse our ignorance, but just how hard can that be? You are definitely ignorant. Did you not know that it takes years of experience to skillfully judge the brand of peanut butter and the amount of pressure you apply while spreading it on top of the bread? What do you produce your music on, and do your production techniques change from genre to genre? Primarily Ableton Live and Reason. Production techniques will always slightly differ from genre to genre. For example, the amount of sidechain compression in a drum n bass track would definitely be different to a deep house track! And finally, what are your top 3 tracks at the moment? 1) B-Complex – ‘Beautiful Lies VIP’ (Original Mix) 2) Robyn – ‘Dancing on my own’ (Michael Woods Remix) 3) Daniel Half – ‘It’s F*cking Hollywood, What Can I say?’ (Lorenzo D’ianni Remix)

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the beSt of both worldS When not cranking out concrete hard techno as audion or jabberjaw, matthew Dear reverts to his given name and crafts lowdown, sleazy, funky electronic post-punk inﬂuenced by metropolitan life. and with new album ‘black city’, he’s proving you can have your cake and eat it, too… Words: JoE RoBERTs

ike most of dance music’s innovators, it’s hard to pin down exactly who Matthew Dear is. Born in Texas, raised in Detroit and now living in New York, his musical DNA is a mish-mash of styles and geographical inspirations, with a career that has increasingly swung the pendulum arc from producer of stripped-down twisted techno to touring singer-songwriter, crafting electronic paeans of love, loss and modern urban life. It’s the latter of these that finds him hitting full stride on fourth album ‘Black City’ (out 16th August on Ghostly International), arriving accompanied by an all-encompassing vision that takes in a series of films and video. Slower, sexier, more brooding, and in places downright funkier than on previous outings, it’s a distillation of the overwhelming nature of big city living alongside more personal reflections on relationships with his wife and friends, forging a sound that owes as much to New York’s ’80s arty downtown scene as the post-industrial Motor City musings of Model 500. “It’s kind of about any metropolitan monstrosity but parts of it are definitely about New York,” admits Matthew when we catch him during America’s successful qualification for the second round of the World Cup, an event he’s following eagerly despite the early morning screening times. “My releases are catching up with the influences I’ve had my whole life. Each album can easily be linked to my favourite playlists on my iPod. Definitely leading up to this, there was a lot of Gary Numan and the dark-wave ’80s stuff. I was listening to it before, but being here in New York adds a backdrop to that sound, like when you’re running over a bridge with it in your headphones looking at this immense cityscape.”

DarinG Title track ‘Little People (Black City)’ sounds like what David Bowie might create today, a nine-minute electronic post-punk odyssey that swells into falsetto at the seven-minute mark, ‘I Can’t Feel’ shuffles along to jerky bass guitar and ‘You Put A Smell On Me’ ﬁres sexually-charged lyrics over dark foreboding synths

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that recall Depeche Mode at their most strung-out and debauched. Other highlights include ‘Slowdance’, whose lust-filled whisperings creep along in narcotic, whited-out bliss, and ‘Gem’, one of the album’s oldest tracks, which evaporates in an orchestral haze. It’s the boldest, most daring and mould-breaking step away from Matthew’s other incarnation as a techno producer yet, a role for which he uses varying aliases: the floor-destroying Audion, False (“my project from Minus, it’s really a lot more subliminal”) and Jabberjaw, his evocatively-named tech-house project which has numerous releases planned for this year. Yet for an American audience, used to a clear dichotomy between electronic music and live bands, there’s still a difficulty understanding someone able to straddle both these fields, despite Pitchfork voting 2003’s single ‘Dog Days’ one of the top 100 singles of the decade. “It just so happens that I first became known as a DJ and my first records were house and techno, but in my mind I’ve been making this music the whole way along, it just hasn’t been released,” he explains on this progression from one man and his machines to touring band leader. “I have a back catalogue of crazy guitar and pop songs that I’ve been making since before I even made ‘Hands Up For Detroit’ in 1999. I’m into bands like Animal Collective and Beach House who use synthesisers and drum machines. The Caribou record is electronic and it’s amazing, but I wouldn’t categorise it as dance. To me, that’s experimental electronic pop.”

an album out. You can make it at home if you want. The DIY aesthetic was instilled in me at a young age.” Come the home computer revolution, this vision was born out. “I remember when we had our first PC, it must have been 1994 or ‘95. It was a super-slow home PC and it came with Sound Blaster 16, a really shit 16-bit audio editing programme. I’d take CDs and record little bits of audio. You could only do about 30 seconds before your hard drive was full. I wrote Madonna songs and totally mashed them up, looping certain parts and overlaying narrative stuff over that. When home computers happened, it was like, fuck, this is getting really cool.” This burning teenage enthusiasm is still glowing bright

and clear, razing the boundaries imposed by those too blinkered to see the full scope of what an electronic artist can achieve. “I love DJing and I love playing with the band,” he states with unbridled honesty. “I tour as Audion for a couple of years getting the next album ready as myself. Then I’m tired of DJing by that point so I’m with the band for a year or two. After that I get hungry again and want to go out and DJ. “It’s fun,” he concludes on the bottom-line behind both these endeavours, the pendulum frozen for a split second at the height of its arc before beginning the return journey again. “I just need to go back and forth to keep the scales perfectly aligned.”

In this sense, it’s not just New York’s past, but also its present, that casts an influential shadow over Matthew’s latest work. Living near both indie heartland Williamsburg and Wolf + Lamb’s nerve centre, The Marcy, Greg from No Regular Play has recently joined his live set-up to play keys and trumpet alongside bassist John Gaviglio and a drummer named Mark Maynard. And just like Wolf + Lamb’s experiments in slow-mo disco and funk grooves, he’s abandoned the banging all-out assault of techno’s recent years. “It’s kind of a gradual slowing on all fronts. I’m playing slower house. I think everything sounds better like that. You can get more attention to detail in the sound and the pauses in-between the sounds. I think overall there’s a shift.”

TEXAS ROOTS While it’s Detroit and now New York that are most prominently discussed when trying to understand his unconventional path, it’s by journeying back to his formative Texas roots that you really get a sense of why Matthew Dear cuts such a distinctive figure and has outgrown the limited DJ/producer tag. “I think it’s mainly the influence of my father. I got a lot of the Texas folk stuff from him, and growing up with an older brother who was into Ministry, Nitzer Ebb and that kind of stuff. Having a huge sonic palette as a kid, I didn’t have any restraints on what recorded music could be. In that sense, I think I’ve always had this open mind about combining electronic music and songs. Pop songs are great.” With his dad working as a musician, playing in cover bands at bars and lounges up and down the East coast, his family home was always full of mics, guitars and amplifiers fostering the sense that this was normality, what ultimately became a self-fulfilling prophecy. “He was into Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot and Townes Van Zandt so I grew up around that idea, a guy with a guitar changing the world,” says Matthew, explaining that his dad recorded many of his gigs on 8-track tape, as well as a few studio sessions. “That really showed me from a young age that anybody can have recorded music. You don’t have to be a successful recorded contracted artist to even have

“ I first became known as a DJ and my first records were house and techno, but I’ve been making this music the whole way along.” MATTHEW DEAR www.djmag.ae

2010: year of the nInJa coldcut’s ninja Tune label celebrates 20 years at the bleeding edge of electronic music in 2010. pioneering cut-and-paste experimentation, freewheeling genre-free eclecticism and launching the careers of many of the most well-loved artists the uk and beyond have ever produced, they’ve more claim than most to being one of the greatest labels in existence today. With a mammoth box-set ‘ninja Tune XX’ primed to drop, there could be no better time to examine the imprint’s inestimable legacy… Words: TRIsTAN PARkER

wentieth birthdays are rarely anything special, usually lost in a clichéd, boozy haze and hurriedly forgotten in the morning by all involved. But this year marks a far more important and memorable birthday: the 20th anniversary of the Ninja Tune record label. For two decades, Ninja has helped shape the way that beats and samples are used in electronic music,

pioneering the idea of cut-and-paste as an art form and offering an alternative route into hip-hop through wild experimentation with the genre’s components. Appropriately enough, it was a record shop — Soho’s Reckless Records — in 1986 that provided the setting for computer programmer Matt Black to meet Jonathan More, then working behind the tills at Reckless. Several years later they would create and run the Ninja Tune label, also enjoying success of their own as Coldcut, now

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one of the most established and influential production and DJ outfits of modern times. Although these achievements were still some way off in 1986, the pair quickly identified in each other similar musical ideals, which would lead to Coldcut’s first release. “I think John and I recognised each other straight away as serious music-heads and we also identified that we were really into the American idea of putting an eclectic

aMon tobIn

cultural high,” says More. The album was the ﬁrst release on the newly formed Ninja Tune label, under the alias Bogus Order, due to contractual issues with Big Life.

birTh anD re-birTh

What makes Ninja unique? “I think it stands out as a label that’s done things on its own terms. Whatever your views are on the directions it’s taken over the years, you can be sure those decisions were taken by the label itself and not some massive parent company.”

music party on plastic, which is what Grandmaster Flash and Double Dee & Steinski did,” says Matt. “That’s how we made our ﬁrst record, ‘Say Kids, What Time Is It?’. So, although Ninja didn’t come about until a few years later, we already had the idea that we didn’t need a record company to take us on. We could make our own company, press our own records, do any kind of music we wanted, feed in ideas of hip-hop, mixing and eclecticism, and just be free and party.”

pushinG The paraDiGm It’s important to remember that hip-hop in the early ’90s was a far different affair to the all-encompassing global beast of today. Though a number of genre-defining, classic hip-hop albums had already been produced, the music itself was still evolving, and although race was not an issue in the same way it had been ten years previously, white hip-hop acts — though in existence — were far less common. Thus, Black and More’s desire to push the paradigm of the genre they loved was perhaps even more leftfield than it first appeared. But Black is refreshingly upfront about his hip-hop credentials, or lack thereof. “We were a bunch of white, middle-class weirdoes who fell in love with black music and getting stoned and made a career out of it,” he laughs. “You can define Ninja Tune in a lot of different ways,” he continues. “A quite blunt statement is that all the people on Ninja Tune are inspired by hip-hop. It’s about experimenting with this.” Although initial pressings of ‘Say Kids…’ — strewn with chopped beats and sampling everything from Ennio Morricone to ‘The Jungle Book’ — quickly sold out (followed shortly by the duo’s seminal rework of Eric B. and Rakim’s ‘Paid In Full’ and a further Coldcut record), it wasn’t until several years later that Matt and John pursued the idea of starting their own label. The concept crystallised

Favourite Ninja moments: “The ﬁrst time I went on tour, I lost all my records. I had no idea what I was doing on tour and thought if I smoked enough weed, people would just think I was stoned and pay me no mind. The next day I bought a whole new set of records in a store in Germany which I played until Sweden, where I lost them all again.”

during a tour of Japan with Norman Cook’s Beats International — perhaps a little ironic, considering the current state of big beat compared to Ninja’s continuing success. At the time, Coldcut were signed to Big Life, an early hip-hop/dance label who prevented Black and More from following the experimental path they craved. “It was such a release after we’d had a particularly stagnant period,” says John of the Japanese trip. “The machinations of the industry and the label we were on — being successful, but being a square peg in a round hole — were beginning to hurt. It was great to get away and have some space in an entirely different culture. For people like Matt and I, who are stimulated by art and culture, it’s an amazing place, and we both independently got into the idea of ninjas and how that could be a useful hook to hang our ninja cloak on, as it were.”

This was 1990, the birth of Ninja Tune, and the following years saw various crucial events take place, including current label manager Peter Quicke coming on board in 1992 and a steady influx of signings, including such luminaries as Amon Tobin, Mr Scruff, Wagon Christ (a Luke Vibert hip-hop alias), DJ Vadim and many more. However, in celebrating 20 years of an influential record label, it’s almost too tempting to set up camp on memory lane and indulge, glassy-eyed, in what is an admittedly rich and entertaining history (covered admirably and exhaustively in Stevie Chick’s excellent book, ‘Ninja Tune: 20 Years of Beats and Pieces’), but the focus of Ninja’s 20th birthday is, as Black says, “very much forwardlooking. It’s not retrospective, it’s ‘future-spective’.” An idea exempliﬁed in the ‘Ninja Tune XX’ anniversary box-set. The mammoth 94-track release consists almost exclusively of new material, featuring guest Ninja remixes from Modeselektor, The Orb, Scuba, Joe Goddard, Rustie and a host of others. There are far too many good moments to mention, but Mark Pritchard’s (aka Harmonic 313) jittery rework of a Poirier dancehall track and a Four Tet remix of the Big Dada label’s Antipop

kId koala

Such was their enthusiasm for developing their own musical vision, John and Matt recorded ‘Zen Breaks’, immediately after returning to the UK, “on a jetlagged,

How did you sign to Ninja? “Coldcut and DJ Food accidentally heard my four-track mixtape in a car.” What makes Ninja unique? “They’re one of the only labels that are not afraid to release albums as strange as mine! But really, Ninja Tune is like this big family, everyone there is so chilled and passionate about their work and the music.”

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StrIctly kev/dJ food

How did you sign to Ninja? “I never have actually signed with them, I have an agreement based on trust from way back in the days when the label ﬁrst started, similar to the kind of thing Depeche Mode had with Mute or New Order with Factory. I came into contact with Ninja through Matt Black, via Mixmaster Morris.”

Favourite Ninja moments: “My ﬁrst ever commercially available mix (with Coldcut) being given away free as a covermount with DJ Magazine in 1994. Helping Coldcut realise their ‘Journeys By DJ’ mix CD. Being able to do my dream job every day for over 15 years.”

Consortium are two such gems. Many of the tracks also come from the new breed of Ninja artists, again reinforcing a desire to continue progressing and gambling, rather than dwelling on sounds that have brought previous success. When examining these new acts, the sludgy, punishing frequencies of King Cannibal or Shuttle’s fondness for bassline house and dirty two-step (a fascinating alter-ego for the drummer of synth-pop act Passion Pit) may initially seem a lifetime away from the clear, gentle grooves of Mr Scruff or Coldcut’s signature chop-and-paste creations, but in fact both these acts — along with The Bug, Toddla T, Poirier and the rest of the new roster — all pay differing homage to hip-hop and share a base desire to experiment as widely as possible with beats, synchronising with Black’s loose characterisation of the Ninja sound. And for those acts that aren’t just influenced by hip-hop, but driven by it, there is the Ninja umbrella of Big Dada Recordings (started by UK hip-hop junkie Will Ashon), home to Roots Manuva and Diplo. At the other end of the spectrum lies Counter Records, a Ninja imprint focused on alt. rock and leftﬁeld band sounds, taking shape after an irresistible album from eccentric musician and former Ladytron bassist Pop Levi was offered, as Ninja label manager Peter Quicke explains. “Pop Levi brought along this fantastic album that was pop rock, but it didn’t seem quite right for Ninja Tune, so we just invented a new label.” More continues: “Your audience does have expectations and you can only push them so far over the edge before they decide to let go of their tenuous grip. You have to manage that input as well. Sometimes it’s worth having those separate identities.” But if this is the case, are these acts ushering in a fresh Ninja sound for a new era or simply continuing the label’s tradition of experimentation, albeit with

kInG cannIbal What makes Ninja unique? “It’s a rare beast — a label that thrives on the underground yet has the resources and nous to make things work and pull in things like daytime play on Radio 1, if the music is suitable.” Favourite Ninja moments/releases: “The biggest thing for me has been buying DJ Food records when I ﬁrst started collecting vinyl and then having Strictly Kev & DK [Darren Knott] in my studio and mixing one of the tracks on the latest DJ Food EP.”

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toddla t

How did you sign to Ninja? “I wanted to go independent, because I thought it was right for my sound, so I started looking around and Ninja Tune were just so into it, and I had a good relationship with them anyway, because I’d worked with Big Dada before.” Favourite Ninja artists: “Rodney Roots Manuva, obviously. I love the fact they’ve signed Jammer, ‘cause he’s cutting-edge in my opinion, and he’s a totally different style to Coldcut or something like that. I’ve also got a lot of respect for Mr Scruff and what he does.”

‘Permutation’, an underrated masterclass in found sounds, built from swing breaks and jazz melodies wrapped up in jungley IDM. “That’s another ethic that runs through the Ninja brand,” says More, “the reappropriation and recontextualisation of the great well of culture, but with a character and identity which is undeniable when it’s done. You can identify a Kid Koala sound or a Mr Scruff sound three tents across a field.” “We’re specialist bag ladies of sound!” adds Black with regard to the Ninja fondness for recycling. “In the old days some Coldcut records bombed, and John and I would console ourselves with the thought that some of our favourite records came out of the 50p section of the Oxfam shop. It’s amazing how things come in and out of focus. I came into the office recently and said, ‘Oh, what’s this you’re listening to? It’s pretty good’. They said, ‘It’s ‘Zen Breaks’, Matt!’” “What’s amazing about those ‘Zen Breaks’ tracks is that they actually sound quite contemporary,” adds Quicke. Indeed they do, and it’s reassuring to know that Ninja’s very first release is still as relevant to modern electronic music as the label itself. Here’s to another two decades of innovative Ninja-ism.

different musical frameworks as a basis? “They’re doing both,” says Quicke. “In a way, some of Toddla T’s aesthetics refer back to a style of music from 20-30 years ago, and there’s a massive dancehall thing there. But in another way, it’s very new.”

parallels Looking at Ninja’s roster in this sense draws a number of parallels with perhaps its closest contemporary, Warp Records. Arriving a few years before Ninja Tune, Warp favoured bleeps and experimented with acid house, while Ninja revelled in beats, pushing hip-hop in a new direction, but both were instrumental in bringing about the alternative face of electronic music. Although genre-splicing tracks full of found sounds may now seem like standard musical fodder, when Ninja and Warp artists began developing these concepts 20 years ago, the process was genuinely innovative. But while Warp bathed in the fluorescent glow of warehouse parties and IDM, Ninja never aimed to be a dance label in the traditional sense, always preferring the Furious Five to the 303. Despite a penchant for all things beat-based, various forms of house and techno have appeared on the label, particularly via remixes. A dark, clubby version of Mr Scruff’s ‘Sweetsmoke’, courtesy of Manitoba (Caribou) on the ‘ZEN RMX’ album is a ﬁne example. Unsurprisingly, you don’t get to Coldcut’s position without a wide musical palate, as Black conﬁrms. “We love other sorts of music and you can hear that in ‘Zen Breaks’, because we’re mixing house with hip-hop, speeding hip-hop breaks up to 120/125 BPM, venturing into house territory. We totally felt the energy of house. Things like [early Chicago label] Trax Records, fucking around with synthesisers and that acid sound, but we never saw it as separate from hip-hop. Take Afrika Bambaataa, who was more open-minded than a lot of hip-hop fans. He would play anything as long as it had a

groove. Hip-hop has always been very eclectic, and we recognised this and used it to build an eclecticism in the UK.” This included the wider adoption of cut-and-paste sampling, with Ninja artists proving that the technique could be used as the basis for an entire track or album, a la Kid Koala’s retro-spliced turntablism experiment, ‘Carpal Tunnel Syndrome’, or Amon Tobin’s unique

Shuttle What makes Ninja unique? “It was a label started by artists, so inherently they treat us all as they would like to be treated. I genuinely feel they have my best interests in mind. By branching out and releasing everything from folk to dancehall, Ninja has also avoided the dangerous genre pigeonholing of many labels.” Favourite Ninja artists: “I think Amon Tobin was the ﬁrst artist on the Ninja roster I fell for and through the label I discovered so much music like Bonobo, Coldcut, Blockhead, the Cinematic Orchestra, Antibalas, and on and on...”

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SOME NOISE ANNOYS!

The Count & Sinden aren’t playing by dance music’s old rules. Their long awaited debut album ‘Mega Mega Mega’ is dumb, fun, clever and captures contemporary Britain’s kaleidoscopic reality better than any other album of 2010. House purists are advised to avert their gaze and cover their ears now… Words: JIM BUTLER

hink of the best double acts in history — Marx and Engels, Bogart and Bacall, Morecambe and Wise, Rooney and Heskey (ok, maybe not that one) — and it’s evident something magical is at work. It’s not always easy to put your finger on what secret ingredient makes a partnership fly, but it’s fun to behold. And so it is with dance music’s latest superstars in waiting, The Count & Sinden. Maybe it’s because they both hail from Essex and recognise in each other a shared heritage, or it could be their refreshingly irreverent and carefree attitude towards the music they make. Spend some time in their company and it’s clear the pair complement each other. Superficially, you’d peg The Count — Joshua Harvey, also known as The Count Of Monte Cristal, Hervé, Speakerjunk, The Things — as the gobby loudmouth, words skipping out of his mouth at breakneck speed, but it soon transpires he’s the sensitive sort: a deep thinker, who’s always in the midst of some internal dialogue about the value of what it is he does. To wit: “I’m always thinking whether this is art or just crap for people to dance to.”

PRODUCTIVE UNION Sinden, or Graeme Sinden to the taxman, G to his friends, is Josh’s perfect foil. Happy to let the gregarious and eloquent Count hurl out the provocative rhetoric, it’s actually his spurning of dance music’s mores and conventions that feeds the pair’s iconoclastic sound. “I liked that disregard,” admits Josh of his first meetings with Graeme. “It was like, let’s be a bit bolshy. There was an element of ‘fuck it’.” In essence, whatever fuels The Count & Sinden’s partnership — and this, as they both admit, is something that’s greater than the sum of its parts — it’s patently working. The first fruit of this productive union was the memorable ‘Beeper’ from 2007. Initially, the duo thought ‘Beeper’, their homage to garage, was a B-side track. Released as part of their first EP, it struck a chord, and for a while, as 2007 bled into 2008, became the tune that wouldn’t die. Sufficiently impressed, Domino, home to the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand, signed The Count & Sinden on the spot. Two years on comes their debut album, the aptly-titled ‘Mega Mega Mega’ (also the name of their itinerant club nights). An unholy amalgam of all their influences (house, techno, hip-hop, Afrobeat, garage, booty bass, dancehall, electro and, crucially, the Proustian rush of unfettered rave), it is the sound of dance music being reborn. House purists are advised to avert their gaze and cover their ears now. You see, The Count & Sinden aren’t playing by dance music’s old rules. They aren’t interested in any canon. Sure, they appreciate what’s gone before – they’ll speak passionately about the first time they heard Leftfield and Daft Punk, Josh admits to studying mags like Jockey Slut as if they were textbooks, and they worship at the altar of DJs like Andrew Weatherall — but they are not beholden to the past. “You’ve got to remember we were under the rule of tedious deep house,” explains The Count of his and Sinden’s first forays. “You had all these people putting jazz chords over a 4/4 drum pattern and thinking they were smart. We didn’t find any of that interesting or exciting.”

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Accordingly, everything is fed into their incendiary and celebratory mix. Back in 2007, this meant mad noises over speed garage records with a 2Unlimited riff. The more outlandish the idea, the more daring the duo became. Naturally, the kids went nuts for their bionic sound. Others were less impressed. “Lots of people look at us as if we’re idiots,” spits Josh, barely concealing his disgust. “They think we’re these one-dimensional cartoon characters from Essex. We’re not thick. We read. We’re interested in film. This intellectualising of dance music I find hilarious.” “I think a lot of people can’t get their heads around the fact that music has to move on,” interjects Sinden. “Everyone gets to the point where they can’t be bothered to keep up, that’s fine,” says Josh. “But when you’re still involved in music… we soak it all up. You see some people go, ‘Oh, it’s just noise’. It’s like that Alan Partridge thing isn’t it: ‘The Prodigy? That’s just noise’. We all turn into Alan Partridge, one day. I just hope that G and I do that in our 60s rather than in our late 20s, which is when a lot of people seem to freeze musically.” ‘Mega Mega Mega’ is their riposte to all forms of musical purism, then. Having had their initial sound ripped and burned before they could complete an album (“We didn’t even have time to repeat ourselves,” laughs Graeme), they started again, attempting to capture that ‘What the fuck?’ moment one more time. “Real art is making something that has never happened before,” opines Josh thoughtfully. “We’re driven by the impulse to create something new.” Whether ‘Mega Mega Mega’ is art isn’t something the pair seem overly bothered with countenancing. However, what can be said without fear of contradiction is that it’s bloody great. It’s dumb, it’s fun, it’s clever and it captures contemporary Britain’s kaleidoscopic reality better than any other album of 2010. “The worse thing you can do as an artist is make a genre record within a genre that you didn’t start,” says Josh. “We have made an album that sums up everything that we’ve done and more.”

NEW SONIC SCIENCE Unsurprisingly, it’s an album dripping in personality. Unlike other dance albums that feature A-list indie and r&b stars phoning in their vocals, the collaborators here are kindred spirits, friends of friends, or live next door in the case of Mystery Jets who appear on the anthemic single ‘After Dark’. This led them to work with the likes of Bashy on ‘Addicted To You’ (a suitably rewired adaptation of sunshine-soaked dance music), Rye Rye and Trackademicks. Dynamic and innovative to the core, it’s tempting to get cerebral and theorise about this post-modern array of textures. In fact you could demonstrate how The Count & Sinden’s musical dialogue with global culture (‘Llamama’ is their take on the Colombian heritage of Cumbia) places them in the lineage of other musical pioneers such as the Rolling Stones, Kraftwerk, Chic, Grandmaster Flash, New Order, Derrick May and The xx, artists who melded sounds to form a new sonic science. One could even reveal how the duo have joined the dots between M.I.A., Renegade Soundwave, Afrika Bambaataa, Diplo, Inner City and Orbital, but at the end of the day it’s about energy and excitement, not chin-stroking pretension. Anyway, they already have a take on what it is they’re doing. “It’s world music from Essex,” is their pithy response. “Everything is in there,” admits Sinden, “but it’s all twisted. There’s an indie band but it sounds like Nigerian folk disco. We couldn’t do it any other way.” Josh, meanwhile, is still thinking about what it all means. “It’s hard to explain,” he starts, “we want to be part of stuff but we want to do our own thing at the same time. People might say, ‘Oh, well that’s a club tune’, but when you’re in the fine details of tune-to-tune it is kind of different, it’s not mainstream. Maybe we could have done a dirty Dutch dubstep UK funky album and we’d sell a million.” He looks up from his pint, and smiles, that internal conversation still going like the clappers. “It’s just not us, though, is it?”

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Inspired by the Star Wars legacy, Adidas decided to launch a Star Wars inspired range, including our favourite - the Storm Trooper Stan Smiths. And they’ve now taken that homage one step further, by creating a DJ battle between The Force, helmed by MrMr, and the Dark Side, led by Dany Neville. mr mr 1) Who’s on each side and why? As captain of ‘The Force’ (Mr ‘Luke Skywalker’ Mr), it was difficult to choose a side that possessed varying battle skills of the electronic variety. On my side is Charl ‘Yoda’ Chaka, Raxon ‘Obi Wan Kinobi’, Da ‘Han Solo’ Funct, and MC Swerte ‘Mace Windu’. All the guys have a force that should carry us through to victory on the night of the battle, those forces cannot be detailed, otherwise I may be forced to light saber you! 2) How will the event actually work on a club scale? We have Rone Jaxx, David Craig and Charl Chaka building things up with soul, funk and groovy beats. At around 11:30pm, both teams will take their places in their ‘battleships’ - there will be 2 DJ booths on the night, directly opposite one another, ‘The Force’ and the other for ‘The Darkside’ (boooooo). Quite simply, the teams will try and out do each other with a selection of their best tracks. Expect looping, bass drops, loads of FX, and a mix of all types of genre. The guys are all experienced enough to ensure it all just doesn’t sound a mess, and we have a good understanding of what it is we need to achieve from a listeners point of view, otherwise it just wouldn’t be pleasing on the ear would it! 3) If you could be any character from Star Wars, who would it be and why? What do you mean, ‘If’? I AM, Mr Luke Skywalker. If you never seen my light saber before, then you’ll

just have to witness it’s wrath on the 20th October - that’s why. 4) Ewoks or Jar Jar Binks: which is the most evil character? It’s got to be the Ewoks, you know what they say about short people (well, short Men). Jar Jar is not the sharpest tool in the box, in fact he’s thicker than concrete, but has a good heart. I wouldn’t want to come across an Ewok with a hangover, put it that way. 5) Finish the sentence: In a galaxy far, far away... A city known as ‘Dubai’ was preparing for a musical battle of universal proportions, between the city’s fiercest entertainment warriors! 6) What sort of ammunition do you expect each side to have up their sleeves? What I can say, is that each team member has been informed they must pull out all the stops, to ensure we rain down a shower of electronic hail stones on their evil fire! 7) And is audience participation encouraged, especially if you have MCs on either side? Absolutely, the more cheers, heckles, excitement, hands in the air, break dancing, glass smashing (joking) the crowd can create the better. Each team has an MC, who will be the supporting the DJs through adverse rhyme and general banter. MC Swerte is our verbal artillery, if there’s anyone who we can trust to protect our force field it’s him – bring on the battle!

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return

of the

Dany neville

alias, no evilness can top that scam.

1) Who’s on each side and why? The darkside is Dany Neville, Rone Jaxx, Emtee, David Craig and MC Olly Wood. My stragedy of picking the dark side team was purely based on DJs that have the musical knowledge to mash up instrumentals and acapellas to create a theatrical set. We’re the darkside thanks to our straight forward, non back down personalities, mixed with our collective genres (hiphop, dubstep and UK funky) that depend on heavy and “dark” basslines.

5) Finish the sentence: In a galaxy far, far away... Darth vader was voted president..

2) How will the event actually work on a club scale? There have been a lot of stagnant nights happening lately, so I personally think clubheads are on the search for more than your average night out. So I think a 1 hour set with 10 creative musicians, with the musical knowledge that they possess, going back to back in a story like scenario, will be highly entertaining as well as educational to the clubbers. 3) If you could be any character from Star Wars, who would it be and why? Darth Vader with a twist of Obi Wan Kanobi, just to mess with earthlings psychological system.

6) What sort of ammunition do you expect each side to have up their sleeves? With 10 of the UAE’s DJs and MC heavyweights involved, I would expect nothing less than insane creative mash ups, entertaining technical ability and energetic crowd control. 7) And is audience participation encouraged, especially if you have MCs on either side? The audience will have no choice or control on the night. The audience will be under the mercy of the dark side, the audience will do as we say, the audience will obey. Sooooo yes, audience participation is a key factor on the night, says Darth. The Star Wars battle takes place on Wednesday October 20 at Alpha. To be part of it, look for the Adidas Originals Presents 20102010 - The Star Wars Battle’ group on Facebook, and click attending. State which team you’re supporting, and you could win Dhs1000 of Adidas Originals clothing.

4) Ewoks or Jabbar Binks: which is the most evil character? Ewoks secretly do Hollywood movies under the “Jack Black”

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proMote & SurvIve

it’s all very well being a great Dj or producing amazing electronic music, but if you don’t promote yourself properly then your creations or sets may sit unheard by all but a select few. Djmag looks at how the promotions game has changed in the new digital age… Words: CARL LOBEN

ime was when, as a music-maker, you shopped your wares around to record labels, hoping that someone would sign you up. In the late ’70s the punk revolution convinced many that they could do it themselves, and acid house spawned a similar DiY ethic in the late ’80s and early ’90s. With increasing access to bedroom music-producing technology, more producers were making more music, and more labels started up to bring that music to the world. The ’90s was a golden era for dance music sales: a 12-inch vinyl release could easily do 10,000 sales, and DJ/producers could earn a tidy sum from worldwide export sales. As the noughties have unfolded, though, sales revenues have sharply declined in the transition from vinyl to digital. It’s now the DJs who export themselves all around the world, earning most of their money through gigs, but with labels now making far less money the onus is much more on DiY self-promotion — and this is pretty much all done online.

promote yourself any way you can these days,” Barry believes. “The more people you’re linking up with, the better. It’s also the best thing for up-and-coming artists and labels, as it doesn’t cost anything.” Facebook limits everyone to a maximum of 5000 friends, with many DJs subsequently setting up fan pages. David Guetta, for instance, has nearly 2.5million fans on Facebook and well over a hundred thousand Twitter followers. MySpace, meanwhile, is still the primary place for tour dates and new music hosting, although it’s widely felt to have become a bit of a wasteland recently. Twitter tweets from iPhones can be synched to status updates on Facebook, and it’s this online revolution that has allowed greater artist/fan inter-connectivity. “Constantly talking about great shows or upcoming bookings also reminds people how busy and in-demand you are,” says Ashworth.

It used to be that DJ/producers would give their tracks or album to a label, and the label people would do the rest. They might place ads around the release date and employ a PR company to service key journalists with the new music. The PR company would send a whole load of CDs out in the post and then follow this up with requests to see if there was any editorial mileage in a feature story or proﬁle on the artist concerned. The game has changed massively now, though, and many DJs — from the upper echelons to the middle rankings to beginners — now do most of their promotional work themselves. How does this happen, and what are the best ways of going about promoting yourself? DJmag decided to take a look at this phenomenon, in the hope that it might inspire those not already fully switched on…

With gigs now the primary source of income, artists have taken to new ways to get their music heard. Some give tracks away on blogs, and others have even given away whole albums on the front cover of magazines such as DJ or via a free/ donation website like Radiohead did. Bass music boys Baobinga & ID recently gave away their latest album ‘Bass Music Sessions’ as an experiment via Bandcamp.com, effectively using a website/blog as a label and giving the name-your-price donation proﬁts to

changing the game “Thank you everyone in Auckland @ Nightlife last night… was rocking. U bunch of nutters” — Darren Emerson Go on Twitter and Facebook and you’ll ﬁnd pretty much every DJ worth their salt. These social networking sites are the primary tool for micro-blogging tweets (like the above), event promoting and linking to ways that people can discover more about an artist and their work. One avid user of Twitter and Facebook is Barry Ashworth of the Dub Pistols, an artist whose seemingly non-stop schedule surely makes him one of the hardest working people in dance music. “These sites have allowed artists to become more connected to their fans. You have to shamelessly

Barry Ashworth

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Baobinga & ID

charity. They then promoted it themselves, using the internet. “The continuing decline of sales mean it’s often not really possible to spend several hundred pounds on a PR campaign for a record that will maybe only sell a few hundred copies,” says Ed Bayling, the ID half of the partnership. “Then there’s the fact that the barriers to ‘entry’ are falling,” Ed continues. “The increasing influence of blogs, and the fact that most blogs put their contact details online, mean that it’s a lot easier for individuals to get their stuff to the people that matter. It makes less sense now to pay for access to a PR’s contact list when you can go online and start building your own.”

Whole new paradigm Tech-funk behemoth Elite Force, aka Simon Shackleton, goes further, believing that the digital age has brought forth a whole new paradigm that DJs have to embrace. “Like many people, I am both the artist and the label and — more often than not — the PR officer,” Shack says. “The entire process is now inextricably bound together. All of the various different aspects of music creation, branding, promotion, networking, connecting with fans and live performance now need to be seen as one.” This tallies with the so-called 360 deals that some premier league artists are signing, whereby one single company may manage an artist, run their label, help with their PR and book their gigs for them, too. Mostly, though, DJ agencies take care of gigs, and increasingly many DJs run their own labels — either alone, or with help. There are definite advantages to doing your own promotion, believes Ed ID. “You can really save some money, and target the campaign to the people you want it to go to. No-one looks after your interests like you would yourself,” he says, sagely. “Equally important is the development of self-service technology such as Fatdrop, which allows you to create uniquely targeted promo mailers and compile mailing lists that cater for each release’s needs,” adds Elite Force. “The tendency with PR firms is simply to carpet-bomb everyone on their list with music, which can be a waste of time for everyone concerned.” Shack begins to detail the promotional means at his disposal, and you begin to wonder how this guy ever sleeps. As well as using the Fatdrop digital mailout facility for DJ,

press and radio promotion, he also uses Facebook and Twitter to engage with people interested in his music. “Then we use Soundcloud and Mixcloud for previewing tracks as a form of public promo,” he continues. “Soundcloud’s proven to be a great resource — the ‘Shaolin Style’ re-ﬁx from my ‘Re-Vamped’ album, for instance, rapidly had 14,000 listens on there with around 100 comments.” Shack also uses Myspace, Last FM and iLike for release bulletins, and has a network of around 80 forums to post release information up on. “Aside from our Tech-Funk Manifesto blog, there’s also the blog network with whom we’re always trying to build relationships through a series of free downloads,” he continues, “and we also hit up our list of 300 or so supporters from time to time when we have content they might be interested in.” Elite Force also has various web portals with built-in online stores, which allow him to create customised bundles for people of remix parts, signed test pressings, albums, digital exclusives, T-shirts, USB data-sticks, gig tickets and whatever other combinations it seems a good idea to tailor to his and his fans’ needs. This guy really seems to have nailed the DiY promotional thang. “You need to make it as easy as possible for people to hear your music,” believes Ed ID. “Starting Bassmusicblog.com was incredibly useful for me. Not only did I end up making links with other blogs and press people, but the daily bombardment of press releases, music and news from people asking me to feature their stuff has given me a brilliant insight into how PR works and how people use it.” The main disadvantage of all this online promo work is that it’s very time-consuming, these DJs admit. Traditionally, the reason why DJs and producers left their bookings, management, release details and PR to others is the time it all takes, yet the squeeze on sales means that more promo is having to be done yourself. So where does this leave the traditional PR company? “You still need PRs, they’re always going to be around,” believes Barry Ashworth. “There will always be places that you can’t reach, and people — particularly the likes of the big radio shows and producers — that you can’t get through to yourself,” agrees Elite Force. “I wouldn’t know how to get someone at The Times to listen to my stuff, and I’d certainly struggle with, for instance, US radio stations or German print magazines,” admits Ed ID.

network savvy Matt Learmouth, managing director of Alchemy PR, who look after acts like the Japanese Popstars and Above & Beyond, believes that PR companies are like ’roaches — they’ll always be there. “I think they need to evolve and move forward to ﬁnd new niches for the new digital age,” he tells DJmag. “It’s all about the story,” Matt continues. “It’s still what makes the artist and your ‘pitch’ more interesting than the competition. This will never change, regardless of the mediums you use to convey the message.” It seems like the pool of independent PRs who service the dance music industry have had to adapt with the digital age too, though. “It’s become less personal and a lot more email-based on one level,” says Jonas Stone from ePM, who specialises in techno artists such as Richie Hawtin. “The magazines are more bombarded with releases, downloads and information than ever, so you really need to know when to pick the right moment to pitch the right releases.” Both Jonas and Matt admit that the social networking revolution is a good thing for the dance scene, and that PRs have had to adapt their services to work alongside the promo work an artist or label can do themselves. “The more social network savvy are using these tools to great effect to get themselves known,” says Jonas from ePM. “Once they are at a certain level, they may well

Matt Learmouth (Alchemy PR)

consider it time to bring in external promotional expertise to help push their label or bigger projects.” Matt Learmouth, meanwhile, who’s developed a digital content wing to his company as well as a radio plugging agency and a lifestyle PR division, reckons that “Social media exploitation is key in establishing artists, but it needs to be managed properly by people who know the landscape. Many an artist has suffered from an itchy Twitter-finger, or by spamming people with Facebook updates.” It’s clear, then, that DJ/producers can no longer — with few exceptions — ‘let the music do the talking’. Electronic artists increasingly need to have a handle on all aspects to their career, and promotion is something that most can do themselves to an extent. Whether that be simply tweeting a few messages to fans or something much more substantial is obviously down to the individual. Ed ID reckons that there’s a level of authenticity that comes from doing your own promotion. “I sometimes feel like people are more likely to take notice if something comes direct from the artist, rather than if it comes through a label or a PR company first,” he says. Do it yourself promotion does take time, though: time that could otherwise be spent making tracks, practising DJing or even just chilling with family and friends. Most established DJs haven’t been able to ‘make it’ on their own, and it’s often essential to garner help from others so that you don’t take your eye off the ball too much. “You need to recognise why you are doing this in the first place,” offers Jonas Stone. “To be creative, make music and rock the crowd, and get a capable team of people behind you.”

Elite Force

we love... Space p.36

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Is Groove armada’s live show the jewel in the we love crown? words andy buchan

t’s hard to argue with the We Love mandate: they love music, good times, to dance, and, ﬁnally, they love you.

And as ‘Superstylin’, the inevitable closer to Groove Armada’s live show, rings around the jumping-room only dancefloor of the Discoteca, it really is hard to disagree. Even more so when you consider that Retro/Grade and Funkagenda have just played neck-hair raising sets, and James Zabiela and Felix Da Housecat are yet to come on. But as with any seven-room superclub, and a cast of thousands (as they themselves state, it’s Ibiza’s only weekly festival), it’s probably best to start at the beginning.

really, really does - it isn’t the focal point that the band need. A point only too well illustrated as ‘Superstylin’ climaxes the show, and their long-term MC, M.A.D. bounces on like a 5 year old high on Tartrazine. But on ‘Black Light’s standout tracks, ‘Paper Romance’ and ‘Won’t Kneel’, the band gel into a polyphonic spree of dance and rock magic, with each cascading synth note set to seratonin stun. And it works on the crowd, as the phaser-green lasers pierce the bouncing-as-one mass of arms, legs and Wayfarers. The charismatic front

And like all good beginnings, Groove Armada aren’t even on stage yet and the crowd are going madder than the double rainbow dude (Youtube it). Things aren’t helped when a Jive Bunny medley of ‘Superstylin’, Candy Staton and ‘I See You Baby’ blasts out of Space’s Funktion 1 speakers, followed by a violent wave of squalling guitars and hyperventilating synths. With Andy Cato stage left, and Tom Findlay to the right ensconced in a wall of digital sound, the only thing that’s missing is a focal point. And as hard Jess Larabee tries to stand out - and in gold pantaloons, she 36

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person is still missing, but as the band move into a reverberating rerub of ‘Song 4 Mutya’ and then into a ludicrously big ‘Get Down’ it’s obvious that Groove Armada are bigger than any one person, Andy Cato’s towering 6ft 8 presence aside. And to prove it, dubstep beats are casually thrown in, Hervé approved basslines are teased from the bank of computer equipment and UK funky time signatures throw a curve ball into proceedings. And backstage with Andy later, he acknowledges that tonight’s show was a risk. ‘We were nervous about how it would work,

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Always, always take the backstage option. Take advantage of the fully stocked bar, but do not under any circumstances get caught in conversation with Groove Armada’s MC. After a 10 minute diatribe that took in cosmic duties, dribbling and ‘lishen here, mayte’ lines, we were ready to get back amongst it.

as we’ve been playing a lot of big festival shows recently. We didn’t know whether we’d lost our niche, but that was a great show for us.’

Do stay at the Hotel Es Vive. It’s not cheap, but if you want to be in the heart of the action, have all day pool parties and a bar that essentially never shuts, you know exactly where to come.

As Space cadets will attest though, the headliners are just one facet that makes We Love the all consuming, all embracing event that it is. Intent on finding somewhere a bit more sedate, we ambled through to El Salon, fully expecting some schizoid disco. And right on cue, Tensnake’s ‘Coma Cat’ was playing as we walked through, while a character that looked like Andy Wharwol - all black bob, dark glasses and nervously fingered cigarette - was lurking at the back of the DJ booth. It was in fact The Charlatans’ lead singer Tim Burgess and his taste in disco couldn’t be faulted as Jacques Renault’s ‘Beam Me Up’ soon followed. Suitably rejuvenated, it was time to head back to The Discoteca and the Main Terrace where a battle of tech-house proportions was unfolding: Felix ‘The Housecat’, erm Housecat was going head-tohead with James ‘Techno Nerd’ Zabiela (we can’t actually see those names catching on). What actually emerged was too rather similar sounding sets. Both had huge breakdowns, both had wham-bhamthank-you-mam beats and both were impeccably mixed. And both were a little too samey, but try telling that to the queues at each entrance. An interesting booking putting two similar acts on at the same time, but one that clearly worked. But after 10 hours of music spread across 6 rooms and with a beautiful sunset rising outside, who are we to argue with We Love?

Villa after parties. Yes. Villa after parties where you know no one, and more crucially, no one knows how to get you home. No.

Recharge your batteries, sure. Just don’t do it on Selinas beach at 9am as you slump from the previous night. You’ll wake up looking like a land lobster. And unless you have some very nice friends, some dubious genitalia drawn on using suntan lotion.

Avoid booze cruises at all costs. Unless being shot at by Sambuca-ﬁlled Super Soakers who believe Pitbull/Guetta collaborations to be the holy grail of dance music is how you think days should be spent.

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If you’re going to do Ibiza right - and you really, really should there’s only one option that that ticks all the white Isle boxes. the legendary hotel es vive.

ou know you’ve arrived at Hotel Es Vive when three things happen. The glorious pool - and crammed in pool beds - are full of still up/recovering clubbers. The weekend DJ is playing everything from Royksopp to Jackson 5 to Djuma Soundsystem. And you’re greeted like a long-lost friend by the none-friendlier hotel staff. It is in short, the perfect entrance. Conveniently located halfway between Ibiza town and its spiralling cobbled streets, and the never-quiet Playa d’en Bossa club strip, and just a short hop to the sunrise-facing beach, Es Vive is a ﬁve storey art deco styled building that oozes class. The hotel comes with two bars - the pool bar which is open from 9am (and serving for those still up), while the Smirnoff Experience bar is where all the magic (and by magic, we mean never having to hear the words ‘closing time’) happens. Set in the heart of the hotel, and with walls so well padded and insulated the music continues well into the next day, this bar and club is an infamous den of iniquity that’s often populated by big name DJs looking to wind down: Pete Tong played at his own after-party there while we stayed. Perhaps the best bit of staying at the hotel though is the comfort factor. You can walk in and out at any time of day and night, and the hotel staff never blink an eye. You suspect they’ve seen a lot worse than the DJ Magazine team traipsing in at 9am on a Monday morning. They’re also happy to point you in the right direction for romantic meals, pre-club bars and will help organise VIP tickets and entrance for virtually any club in town. Obviously this luxury comes at a price, and the Es Vive isn’t cheap, and the rooms - although minimal and spotless - are a little on the small side. But if you’re spending more than 6 hours in your room while in Ibiza then you’re clearly doing something very very wrong. If you want the full Ibiza experience - and want to stay well clear of the chav-alanche in San Antonio - then this is the hotel for you. Be warned though, the hotel books out every season, so book well ahead. 38

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Dubai

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out of time?

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did we catch lcd Soundsystem’s last ever Ibiza show. words andy buchan photos la Skimal

or a band that are, reputedly, on the verge of their last ever tour, it’s no surprise to see them positively running onto stage a full 10 minutes before they’re due. Who wouldn’t want to make the most of this Ibiza Rocks crowd? Baggy-shorted boys bounce from the overlooking balconies, the VIP terraces are full of not-so-important people (Jade Jagger aside) and the central moshpit is nicely energised following a solid warm up show from come back funk punkers Sunshine Underground, and a 20 minute mega mix from highly rated resident Doorly. Which makes the opener ‘Us vs Them’ all the more poignant as everyone (even the grizzled Ibiza husks taking up residency at the bar) are with them. Dressed head to toe in white - and with everything bouncing in time to the acid-tweaked punk rocket beat - James Murphy is a truly unique host. Not entirely comfortable with his frontman status, he often jumps on one of two drum kits to bash the bin lids with not a little skill. Or he’ll stand, eyes wide shut in the centre of the stage, and grasp the microphone stand as if it’s the last living thing in the world, oblivious to the frantic crowd below. ‘Drunk Girls’ gets a not so ironic cheer from the hordes of San Antonio Skins-esque crowd, before a re-worked ‘Daft Punk Is Playing At My House’ stumbles on center stage and proves to be the only bum track of the night. On record it’s a primeval rocker that grabs you by the cojones and doesn’t let go for 6 quite brilliant minutes, but live they’ve

ditched the rock and roll urgency and replaced it with a grooving mid-tempo bassline that simply satisﬁes. It’s business as usual next up though as ‘All My Friends’ and its ‘Heroes’ aping melody rolls in. And like an Ibizan villa after party, just keeps getting bigger and bigger until the night’s second moshpit erupts. Nervously glancing at the clock - the band are on a strict midnight curfew, hence their eagerness to get on stage - the band launch themselves into ‘Yeah’. And if ever a tune was going to help the growing moshpit whirlpool into spontaneous combustion, it’s a techno-fuelled rock and roller that has a chorus even a lobotomised monkey could howl back: ‘yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH’. There’s a brief interlude while Murphy wipes himself down - it’s sweaty, sweaty work in Ibiza tonight -

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before the seminal ‘Losing My Edge’ enters centre stage. The lyrics might not mean much to some of the younger crowd out in force today, but when he asks if he’s losing his edge, there’s really only one reply. And it’s immediately validated as a nevermore tender ‘New York I Love You’ ﬁnishes the set, but not before an inspired cover of Jay Z’s own tribute to the Big Apple bends the musical script and causes a mass double-take in the crowd. With a minute left on the big red clock, Murphy curtsies to the crowd and the band stroll off into the midnight warmth. Is this the last we’ll see of them? Let’s

Dubai

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What better way to see in Eid than with John Digweed at BO18 in Beirut. Words and pictures: Lisa Sant

e’ve had our fair share of clubbing injuries. Cigarette burnt ﬁngers, the obligatory Jaeger bomb head the next morning and still-ringing ears after hearing Fatboy Slim’s torturous set in Dubai last year. But bruised shins? That’s a new one, even for us. BO18 is, as you may have guessed from our disco injuries, pitch black. And not just black, like the inside of Simon Cowell’s heart: we’re talking can’t-see-your-handinfront-of-your-face black. Then again for a venue that used to be a quarantine during the previous civil war, that’s probably to be expected. But as we entered at 3am - notice that Dubai, entered, not left, at 3 - it was so dark we couldn’t see anything. I heard my name being called, but couldn’t even see that it was my friend standing next to me. And, rather annoyingly for those of us that wanted to dance, there were tables strewn across the table, each adorned with a magnum of Champagne. Underground tech-house in an old war-time bunker with VIP table service? Only in the Middle East.

Diggin’ deep

The music though was anything but out of kilter. Starting off the night with tracks to suit the pitch black atmosphere (Guy Gerber’s ‘Timing’), Digweed then took the crowd deeper and darker as Sian’s ‘Dreams Are Maps’ emerged from the speakers. And he continued to do so for a full 6 hours. And as the ﬁrst rays of light began to emerge from the roof, and just as the club’s legendary rootop doors opened to bathe the vampiric clubbers in 7am sunshine, Digweed took the music up to match the mood. Finishing with the acidic thrust of LCD Soundsystem’s latest, ‘You Wanted A Hit’ (Soulwax remix), Digweed even grasped his iPhone and took a picture of the crowd which he later Tweeted, saying ‘Thank you so much for a very special night :)’. And the smiley face wasn’t just restricted to an emoticon (really, at your age John?). Notably one of the more serious and studied DJs, Digweed was smiling, clapping and generally looking as enthusiastic as much of the liberal crowd. As were we, even with the bruised shins.

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Dubai

Digital Launch party feat Louie Vega Trilogy, Friday September 24 The big question was would Digital be able to pick up where Mark Ronson left off at the grand Trilogy re-opening? And despite a more commercial set than normal from Louie Vega, it was a deﬁnitive yes. John Spoor played what he described was his best set ever on warm-up, while Louie brought disco flavour to the main room, none more so than when he dropped Dan Hartman’s ‘Relight My Fire’.

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Image conscious

Splash Fashion show Madinat, Friday September 24 You know you’re onto something when your invite only tickets have been sold on the black market. But that’s what has happened to Splash, after their fashion shows and legendary afterparties took off several years ago. This event launched the Winter collection, and ex-Remix Editor Kennedy was on hand to supply the runway and postparty tunes.

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What’s on

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only one-off events are listed listings are free, but please send the full details, using the below templates and with a hi resolution image, to listings@djmag.ae

areas

Time: 10pm-4am Entry: Dhs130

FRIDAY 1 audio tonic feat. Funk D’Void Club: 360º Description: Deep, funk-chunk house from the ever-popular Lars Sandbarg. Time: 4pm-2am Entry: Free, Register @ www.platinumlist.ae Website: www.platinumlist.ae Digital and See You Next Friday Club: Trilogy Description: Dave Seaman headlines the main room, with SYNF residents on the Rooftop. Tel: 055 882 5675 Time: 10pm-3am Entry: Dhs130, ladies free before 11 Just Jack DJ set Club: Chi @ The Lodge Description: Indie bangers from the UK singer. Tel: 04 337 9470 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dhs100, free for ladies before 12 Pacha Club: Nasimi, Atlantis

Description: Pacha make advances into the UAE, with resident DJs Sebastian Gamboa and Tuccillo playing. Tel: 055 200 4321 Time: 4pm-2am Entry: Ladies free and men Dhs50 before 7pm, Dhs100 after Sanctuary Fridays feat. DJ Vector Club: Sanctuary, Atlantis Description: Commercial house, with the emphasis on entertainers. Tel: 04 426 0561 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dhs100 www.sanctuarydubai.com Sensation (repeated every Friday) Club: Quantum, Crowne Plaza Description: House music. Tel: 050 911 0 600 Time: 10:30pm-3am Entry: Free for ladies before 12, Dhs120 after. Men Dhs120 Tiesto Club: ADNEC, Abu Dhabi Description: Flash make the move into club nights with this big booking. And that 4am ﬁnish is correct. Tel: 050 582 3793

Viva (repeated every Friday) Club: Armani Prive Description: Tech-house grooves from the residents. Tel: 04 888 3308 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: TBC We Are... Warped Club: The Catwalk, Golden Tulip Hotel Description: Full on techno and tech-house from the highly respected Warped crew. Tel: 050 451 7002 Time: 10pm-3am Entry: Free AKS Club: Da Gama, Century Village, Garhoud Description: New club night. Tel: 055 777 1213 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dhs100

SATURDAY 2 MustHaveSoul feat. Hippie Torrales Club: 360º, Jumeirah Beach Hotel Description: Legendary soulful house legend from Club Zanzibar. Tel: 055 6160 643 Time: 4pm-2am (guestlist only between 4pm – 8pm) Entry: Free Website: Register for guestlist at www.djmag.ae.

THURSDAY 7 Deep Nights feat. DJ Diamond Club: Sanctuary, Atlantis Description: House and tech house. Tel: 04 426 0561 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dhs100 www.sanctuarydubai.com Friday October 8, Trilogy, Disco Bloodbath + Cagedbaby Maximising Trilogy’s 3 rooms, Digital and See You Next Friday bring you Cagedbaby’s tech-house rollers in the main room, while Disco Bloodbath’s Damon Martin does his disco and proto house thing on the Rooftop. Plus, hip hop heads get Dany Neville and Rony Jaxx in the studio. Winner.

Freshly Laced (repeated every Thursday) Club: Casa Latina, Ibis Hotel, Al Barsha Description: Funk, B-boy breaks, afrobeat and Latin music from DJ

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Solo, DJ Lobito and Mr Yeti. Time: 10pm-2am Entry: Free MoFunk Club: Nasimi Description: Funk, soul and disco - of the non-fromage variety from Mr Mo and DJ Mag favourite, Schooly. Tel: 055 200 4321 Time: 8pm-late Entry: Free for ladies and Dhs50 for men until 10.30. Dhs100 after Rekkord Club: Armani Prive Description: The ﬁrst in a promised long-line of international guests, as Ibiza veteran Pippi plays, with support from Darko De Jan. Tel: 04 888 3308 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: TBC Taboo feat. Sidney Samson Club: Trilogy Description: Dirty Dutch house from the ‘Riverside’ star. Tel: 04 397 3728 Time: 10pm-3am Entry: Dhs120

FRIDAY 8 audio tonic feat. Omid 16B (SOS) Club: 360º Description: More deep, techy tunes from one third of the SOS collective. Tel: 050 107 6405 (after 3pm) Time: 4pm-2am Entry: Free, Register @ www.platinumlist.ae Website: www.platinumlist.ae Digital feat. Cagedbaby + Disco Bloodbath Club: Trilogy Description: It’s a big double header as Cagedbaby plays the main room, and Disco Bloodbath on the Rooftop. Tel: 055 882 5675 Time: 10pm-3am Entry: Dhs130, ladies free before 11pm Juliana Down album launch

Club: Trilogy Description: One third of SOS headlines the main room. Tel: 055 882 5675 Time: 10pm-3am Entry: Dhs130, ladies free before 11pm

Friday October 15, Armand, Nasimi It’s a battle of the Vans, as Armand takes on Armin. Helden might just edge it thanks to the beach location (Nasimi), and his warm up coterie including Zero 7, Chicane and Beirut big boys Ronin and Nesta. Tickets Dhs150, 4pm-late

Club: Alpha Description: One of the biggest local bands take over Alpha for a live showcase. Tel: 050 913 0165 Time: 7pm-late Entry: Free before 10pm, Dhs50 after Kaiser Chiefs DJ set Club: Chi @ The Lodge Description: The grand Garden re-opening, with the ‘I Predict A Riot’ rockers DJing. Tel: 04 337 9470 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dhs100, free for ladies before 12 Sanctuary Fridays feat. Aaron Brien Club: Sanctuary, Atlantis Description: Deep techy house. Tel: 050 274 1111 Time: 10pm-3am Entry: TBC Website www.nova-club.net We Are... Club: The Catwalk, Golden Tulip Hotel Description: Techno and tech house. Tel: 050 451 7002 Time: 10pm-3am Entry: Free

SATURDAY 9 MustHaveSoul feat. Sean McCabe Club: 360º, Jumeirah Beach Hotel Description: More disco, soul and funky house fun. Tel: 055 616 0643 Timing: 4pm-2am (guestlist only

Sanctuary Fridays feat. Paulo Insomnia Club: Sanctuary, Atlantis Description: Commercial house, with the emphasis on entertainers. Tel: 04 426 0561 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dhs100 www.sanctuarydubai.com between 4pm – 8pm) Entry: Free Website: Register for guestlist at www.djmag.ae

THURSDAY 14 Deep feat. Zac Santiago Club: Sanctuary, Atlantis Description: Big room house, electro and tech house. Tel: 04 426 0561 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dhs100 www.sanctuarydubai.com Jermaine Dupri Club: Chi @ The Lodge Description: Hip hop in the Garden from the US rapper. Tel: 04 337 9470 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dhs100, free for ladies before midnight

Sandance feat. Armand Van Helden Club: Nasimi Description: Massive line up as Armand Van Helden headlines, with support from Zero 7, Chicane and Ronin and Nesta. Tel: 050 Time: 4pm-1am Entry: Dhs150 We Are... Club: The Catwalk, Golden Tulip Hotel Description: iLL Communications regular Salah takes control of the tech-house beats. Tel: 050 451 7002 Time: 10pm-3am Entry: Free

Friday VIBES Club: Manila 21 Bar and Night Club Avenue Hotel, Rigga Road Deira Description: Stand-up party, House, RnB, Hiphop and best of Commercial Dance hits with DJ JPG, DJ Mango and Jmaxlolo Tel: 050 957 9939 Time: 7:30pm-3am (Repeats every 2nd and last Friday of every month) Entry: Dhs50

MONDAY 25 WAY UP PHILI Club: ROCKY’S Café, Regent Palace Hotel, Deira Description: Features your most wanted and favourite dance hits, Vocal House and Nu-disco Time: 7:30pm-3am (Repeats every ﬁrsrt and last Monday of every month) Entry: Dhs50

SATURDAY 30 CHIC & GROOVE Club: Metro Manila FNC, Grand Royal Hotel Riqqa-Deira Avenue Hotel, Rigga Road Deira Description: An evening of fashion and dance party Tel: 050 957 9939 Time: 7:30pm-3am (Repeats every last Saturday of every month) Entry: Dhs50

Taboo feat. The Crystal Method Club: Trilogy Description: Legendary US breaks duo make their Middle East debut. Tel: 04 397 3728 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dh120, tickets from www.djmag.ae

FRIDAY 15 Armin Van Buuren Club: Dubai Trade Centre Description: After just a 9 month break, Armin is back with his nuclear-powered trance tunes. Tel: 050 357 1113 Time: 9pm-3am Entry: Dhs150, www.djmag.ae

Friday October 15, Peppermint feat. Armin Van Buuren After Tiesto’s unfortunate cancellation earlier in the month, this will be even more eagerly anticipated by the city’s trance commuity. Tickets are still available, but this is likely to sell out so you get yours now. Dhs150, www.djmag.ae. 9pm-3am

Digital feat. Desyn Masiello www.djmag.ae

MUSIC Flower Power!

Quanticâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Flowering Inferno bring the hazy Latin funk with their latest album

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SINGLES

Our expert reviews team run through the hottest upfront releases p.45

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houSe revieWs

Quickies Danism

Erick Morillo & Eddie Thoneick feat shawnee Taylor

T-Coy

Carino (Motor City Drum Ensemble Remix) Deconstruction

8.0 We should say that ‘Carino’ probably wasn’t the first UK house track. That honour likely belongs to Hotline’s ‘Rock This House’. But whatever the historical accuracies, there’s no arguing that Mike Pickering is a pivotal figure in the development of UK house, and his ‘Carino’ is a benchmark track. Motor City Drum Ensemble’s curious mix is possibly the first ever remix of a classic track to sound older than the original. But the result isn’t to make it dated; if anything, it channels the track’s intensity as the Latin delights of the original are reined in to make way for a ponderous but deeply satisfying revisit of something that still carries the essence of what it is — a 1980s masterpiece.

Deux feat sheila Cuffy Diskout Urbana

7.0 Any vocalist with even the slightest stylistic resemblance to Grace Jones can’t be all bad, and Sheila Cuffy’s cause isn’t harmed by having David Penn and Toni Bass at the controls. The pair contain the camp drama of the vocals and craft one of the burly-but-never-banging grooves Penn manages so expertly. Head to the ‘Main Mix’ for big room beats and the ‘Dark Mix’ for late-night electro rhythms, but the slickest mix is easily the ‘Nu Disco Remix’. Not quite Tom Moulton, but very tasty.

Pirupa feat Baz Clarity Of Love Rebirth

7.5 Italy’s dalliance with electro and minimal never really felt quite right for a country that once delivered a thousand happy piano house stompers. ‘Clarity Of Love’, a cute, musically accomplished and emphatically summery tune, is something of a nod to that history. Fronting events is the talented Londoner Baz, who delivers a whimsical and attractive vocal that the fast-maturing Pirupa matches with a light and melodic but energetic production. Leon’s remix clubs it up while retaining the track’s essence while Tevo Howard opts for underlining the melodies with some vintage Chicago elements. Nicely done all round.

DJ gregory & gregor salto Canoa

Defected

8.0 The sporadically brilliant Gregory and recent partner Salto are back on top form here with the latest of their

Angolan-influenced rib-shakers. But there’s nothing euphoric about Canoa, no big climactic drops, no slick, catchy hooklines and no killer riffs. So what’s so good about it? Everything else, which is to say an irresistible Afro-house beat and a simple chant that provides the focus without getting too in your face or looped to death.

Nocturnal Groove

Michael gray, Paul Harris & kid Massive feat sam obernik

electronic, but nicely balanced,

Home

7.0

Live Your Life Subliminal

Deep and heavy, but never

7.5

quite banging. Tweaky and Subliminal’s slick cross between commercial vocals and and a bit more underground

Phonetic

club grooves reaches another

7.5 Another instant house supergroup sees Full Intention’s Michael Gray link up with ex-Dirty Vegas man Paul Harris and the irrepressible Kid Massive. And if that isn’t good enough they’ve drafted in the vocal star of Tim Deluxe’s ‘It Just Won’t Do’, Sam Obernik. With a line up like this a poor showing isn’t really on the cards, but ‘Home’ is no up and at ‘em affair; instead there’s a considered, even restrained, production featuring melodic piano and guitar parts for Obernik to deliver a vocal made for lazy summer days. Michael Gray’s mix adds some body to the beats, but this one’s more for the warm-up or the wind-down.

Ezel

In My Lifetime (Remixes) Ocha

8.0

than usual. apogee with this C&C Music

Colonel Abrams

Trapped (Remixes)

Factory flavoured feel-good

Caballero

anthem. Thoneick’s presence

7.0

adds body while Nyx, Syrinx & Always worth hearing a brilNelio’s mix gives the electronic liant vocal like ‘Trapped’, but of edge. the four mixes on offer here,

Harry Choo Choo Romero vs Chris Moody

only Gregor Wagner’s gives the

Acid Kraft

song the room it needs.

Osunlade’s ‘Yoruba Soul Dub’ kicks off this remix brace with washes of deep chords and soft but insistent bass underpinning choice lines from Tamara Wellon’s floating vocal harmonies. That merely serves as a warm-up for Deetron’s version, a powerful remix that conjures up some of the majestic magic of Pepe Braddock’s ‘Deep Burnt’. We start out deep, jazzy and beat-less with vocal ad-libs setting the scene, switching ﬁrst to sustained keys, then a stabbed hook and ﬁnishing with a section of tweaky tech beats. Impressive, if obscure.

Pablo Cahn/Cesar Merveille Split EP Cadenza

7.5 It’s all about collaborations these days as producers seek to make the total more than the sum of the parts. But rarely do you see egos being put on the line as two producers go head to head with a track each as George Morel and DJ Pierre used to on their Joint Venture releases. Having revived the concept, Cahn and Merveille rise to the occasion with intent, Cahn’s ‘Elle’ an altogether more tracky and jazzy-tech, down low groove than DJ Gregory’s track of the same name, while Merveille goes for an equally jazzy but jerky extended loop that incorporates piano and horns into an otherwise relentless journey. Deliciously awkward.

sergio Fernandez Samsara

Leaders Of The New School

Denis THe menaCe sUBLIMINAL 01. DENIs THE MENACE ‘Bamboleo (Club Mix)’ Subliminal

“The reworked version of the Gipsy Kings — heavy floor action on this one.”

02. sykE‘N’sUgARsTARR & ALExANDRA PRINCE ‘so Alive (Jolly Remix)’ Do The Hip “Another future classic!”

03. CHICCo sECCI ‘Tarantello’ Magniﬁcent

“Drops into a huge Greek folk music break. Heavy tune.”

04. MARk kNIgHT ‘Devil Walking’ Toolroom

“The ‘80s classic of Murray Head’s ‘One Night In Bangkok’ in a great new version.”

05. DAVID ToRT & NoRMAN DoRAy

06. ERICk MoRILLo & EDDIE THoNEICk FEAT. sHAWNEE TAyLoR ‘Live your Life’ Subliminal “When the vocals drop in with this piano, it’s just a huge anthem.”

7.0 A phenomenally large percentage of pure tracky instrumental business can be instant throwaway fodder that ends up in the bargain bins. But some labels do manage to rise above the morass and LOTNS is one of them. Spain’s Sergio Fernandez is another of their new ﬁnds and though ‘Nirvana’ is admittedly slightly forgettable, the rather better ‘Samsara’ shows real promise, a linear track that locks into a warm, smooth groove in much the way a Freerange release might.

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‘Chase The sun’ Nero Recordings

“A huge rework of Planet Funk’s ‘Chase The Sun’.”

07.

MoBy ‘go (Prok & Fitch Floorplay Booty)’

CDR “This version brings back good memories on the floor.”

08. BLACk RAW

‘Circo Nero (Daddy’s groove Re-Edit)’ Test Pressing Records “This tune brings the summer Latin vibe back to the floors, a great tool.”

09. AFRoJACk & BoBBy BURNs ‘Bungee (original Mix)’ Wall Recordings “Simple, but works great.”

10. DR kUCHo Vs MIkE HADDAD & RoyCE HAVEN ‘Lloreiras (Etienne osbourne)’ Haiti Groove

“Dr Kucho delivers another biggie. This brass hook is huge.”

disco REVIEWS

QUICKIES

The Jellies Jive Baby On Saturday Night

Trunk

10 Curious new-wave re-issue plucked from oblivion (legend has it that after its poor initial sales of 30 copies, the remainder were condemned to landfill) that caused a small stir in one of the golden years of post-punk - 1981. It’s a total mystery as to why ‘Jive Baby On A Saturday Night’ was not a hit at the time as it boasts a deadpan punk attitude similar to that of Tom Tom Club or the trippy, spun-out grind of Rammellzee (RIP) vs K-Rob’s hip-hop holy grail, ‘Beat Bop’. John Peel championed it and even Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore rinsed its memorable, low-slung bassline over the years. Finally, in Jonny over at Trunk HQ has done the decent thing and pulled off this immaculate re-issue job, with the addition of three fitting remixes from the likes of Georges Vert (aka Jon Brooks of The Advisory Circle), Fred Deakin of Lemon Jelly, and Trunk himself (with the aid of Tommy Stupid of renowned UK hardcore/thrash troupe, The Stupids). Essential and destined to sell more now than it did then.

AD Bourke Mirage Citinite

10 After initial listening, I was sure that this was a pseudonym of Stones Throw’s Dâm-Funk, with its fizzing electro-boogie bass and airbrushed melodies being a bit of a giveaway. I was wrong. Close, but this tremendous EP is, in fact, the Citinite Records debut from Italian synthesizer addict, AD Bourke. With a generous amount of eight tracks to choose from, ‘Mirage’ falls somewhere between the viscous flouro-beats of Hudson Mohawke/ Rustie, the slick, post-disco electro of Zapp & Roger and the liquid, 808-pumped ‘boom tschak’ of the aforementioned Dâm-Funk.

Nacho Lovers Deeper (Azari & III/CFCF Remixes) Fools Gold

8.0 Latest transmission from A-Trak’s boisterous Fool’s Gold label with a lush, disco-tinged house number from Canadian duo Nacho Lovers. With a couple of stellar remixes in tow, this single is certainly primed

Coati Mundi

Mike Simonetti

No More Blues (Lee Douglas Remix)

That Look In Your Eyes

Rong

7.0 Club friendly release on Rong preparing us for a new album by leftfield/ tropical-disco legend, Coati Mundi. Lee Douglas drops a much trackier version on the flip.

ESP Institute to cause a stir this summer. Firstly, Azari & III deviate only slightly from the original, but their subtle changes are key, turning ‘Deeper’ into a vintage Italian house-style tune, resonating those classic Don Carlos cuts on Calypso. Secondly, yet another character to emerge from the painfully hip chillwave/h-pop scene, CFCF (who dropped the awesome ‘Continents’ LP on Paper Bag Records last year) adds a little blurry-eyed nostalgia.

Monarchy Love Get Out Of My Way (Remixes) Mercury

9.0 Jagged electro-pop, that could be a seasonal smash, falls into the hands of DFA’s Holy Ghost, Tim Goldsworthy and Sinden, the latter giving a bold, club-friendly angle with his percolated-house overhaul, while Holy Ghost effectively ‘cover’ the track with an alternative vocal shredded through spring reverbs and other dusty, analogue treatments. Tim Goldsworthy closes with a druggy dub that’s driven by a chugging, DX bass and melancholic piano work.

Diskjokke 1987 Smalltown Supersound

8.0 Alongside the likes of Prins Thomas, Lindstrøm and Todd Terje, another name has emerged from creatively fertile Scandinavia — Diskjokke — a name which I’m assuming is Nordic for DJ. Capturing the moment before acid house broke, the rousing synthesized disco of ‘1987’ features additional production from the likes of Richard Sen, who adds some NY-style no-wave tactics to his mix; a cosmic version from Banjo or Freakout; and finally, pure Italo disco euphoria from Dreamtrak.

Hurts

Mantronix Remixes) Columbia

5.0 Catchy pop from coldwave duo, Hurts, spoiled by an over-affected vocal delivery. Neverthless, the tribal drums, haunting production, hook and Numan-esque melodies on the Vox Humana make for quite an infectious listen. Unfortunately, this single is flawed somewhat by a rather unpleasant remix from the legendary Arthur Baker, whose post-’Return To New York’ electroclash remix does not win any hearts. Furthermore, Mantronix’s crown as ‘king of the beats’ slips with these rather lacklustre 808 drum breaks. Shame.

Perseo

7.0 Debut release on Italians Do It Better’s sister label, Perseo, with label owner, Mike Simonetti, to bat first. Three edits of obscure proto-house available as a limited 12” run. Bottin and Vogel releases to follow...

Concentration Vol. 1

Mike Simonetti

ESP Institute

Let’s Be Careful Out There

9.0 Limited vinyl run of unfathomably obscure disco edits from beards Lexx, Lovefingers, Tako, Alexis Le-Tan and friends. Once gone, are gone. Ace.

MIKE002

7.0 Hill Street Blues tribute from US hardcore nut and Italians Do It Better supremo, who trawls through his vast collection to modify pop, new-wave and disco relics.

The Chemical Brothers Swoon (Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas Remix) Parlophone

8.0 Vanguards of the modern disco movement, Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas, turn their craft towards this latest from The Chemical Brothers preceding their seventh studio album. As one should expect, their exquisitely produced breed of disco is loaded with analogue warmth, woozy synth phrases and crystal-clear drum sounds. A classy remix resonating with glitterball sophistication, pitched against the slow, grinding pulse that has become the Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas signature.

Ali Love Smoke and Mirrors Back Yard

7.0 Tough arpeggiated electro-disco from Ali Love. Nothing on offer in the original is that new, but Bottin’s lush disco-noir remix stands out alongside a heavily compressed effort from Villa. Finally, Funtcase splits the tempo in two for a wobbling, steely half-time version.

James T. Cotton Spectral 01. Roy Ayers ‘Chicago’ Ichiban

“From the ‘Drive’ LP, a stripped-down funk stomper.”

02. Queen Yahna ‘Ain’t It Time’ P&P

“Some pretty deep and soulful disco and some fantastically heavy beats.”

03. Phreek ‘I’m A Big Phreek (R U 1 2?)’ Atlantic “A masterpiece by the legend, Patrick Adams.”

04. Talking Heads ‘Speaking in Tongues’ Sire

“This album is rhythmically loose with freckled grooves.”

05. Roxy Music ‘Love Is The Drug’ Island “One of my Mom’s records.”

06. The L.T.G. Exchange ‘Waterbed’ Disco International “A storm of very danceable funk.”

07. Patrick Cowley ‘Primitive World’ Metronome

“A tribal detour that is ornamented with alternating cowbells and chants.”

08. Bohannon ‘Wake Up’ Compleat “The sweetest spacey boogie track ever.”

09. Mr. Flagio ‘Take A Chance’ Squish “A perfect robot vocoder anthem.”

10. Wood Brass & Steel ‘Funkanova’ Turbo

“It’s full of tear-jerking horn arrangements. Plus, it’s a party on wax.”

Wonderful Life (Arthur Baker &

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catc

Sindenho kiss 10 n thursda0 morningy 1-2am s

Global baSS revieWs

Quickies

for mor bass-heave y

Donae’o I’m Fly

MIA

French Fries

My Ish/Zephron

XXXO (Remixes)

Senta

YounGunZ

6.5 MIA’s most pop single yet has some decent remixes with something for everyone. SBTRKT, Riton and Various all weigh in.

7.0 Global bass banger ‘Senta’ gets the remix treatment. Fellow Youngunz associate Bambounou gets tribally on the best offering here.

katy B

Africa Hitech

On A Mission

Hitecherous

Rinse

Warp

7.0 Benga handles production on the debut single from soon-to-blow vocalist Katy B. A dubstep track with heart that’s irresistible, really.

8.0 The Steve Spacek/Mark Pritchard collab is back. It’s all high quality stuff, but ‘One Two’ stands out with Spacek chatting ‘80s dancehall style.

9.0 The sound of a fly makes an appearance on the intro with the beat kicking in just seconds after, with the signature chants of Donae’o all over the top. It’s evident there are no flies on him here, but instead plenty of buzz. The inventive and catchy hooks of previous smashes ‘Party Hard’ and ‘Riot Music’ are on display, as is the neat combination of rap and sung chorus melodies. Production-wise it’s tight too, with kicks juddering to the repetitions of Donaeo’s wordplay and a heavy bassline to boot. Will be ruling summer carnivals this year.

Toddla T feat Wayne Marshall Sky Surﬁn Ninja

8.0 Jamaica and the UK connect on Toddla T’s ﬁrst release for new label Ninja Tune. Here we seem him hooking up with unsung dancehall hero, Wayne Marshall, over a rough UK breakbeat that Marshall obliges by destroying. It’s a fun, energetic ride with plenty of Shefﬁeld niche-style basslines, “hey hey” chants, quirky autotune choruses and a quite nice epic piano breakdown. Grab your board, surfs up!

J Bevin When It Comes Deep Teknologi

8.0 The Deep Teknologi collective in 2010 are some of the ﬁnest producers around, making mutant UK house. Bevin picks up where the ﬁrst two releases left off with another percussive cold roller. Both tracks are non-stop assaults on the dancefloor. ‘Jump Up’ is just that, a jumped-up grimey house track, whilst the leader on the EP ‘When It Comes’ bites with a brutal lead bass synth. Great stuff.

Cooly g Dis Boy (DVA Hi Emotions Remix)/ Jelly Roll (Bok Bok & LVis 1990 Remix) DVA

8.0 I’m loving the versatility of Rinse breakfast show favourite Scratcha DVA. Just as comfortable making a gully grime beat as he is making his

own brand of quirky funky, his recent run of ‘Hi Emotions’ remixes, as you would expect from the title, take things more cosmic and deep. It’s a good ﬁt for Cooly G’s vocals that float nicely here. His Rinse cohorts Bok & LVis get crayola with the synths on the other side with a revisit to the classic ‘Jelly Roll’ from late last year.

greymatter Mind Of Matter Remixes Part 2 Unique Uncut

7.0 Greymatter recently released his album ‘Mind Over Matter’ to much acclaim. It’s only natural then that the remixes would follow, and they’re a diverse bunch. Kentucky-based Milyoo gets downtempo and dreamy, whilst Mr Lager gets emotive with his dubby take. Brighton’s Raw Root Klic get jazzy with the rides, but it’s The Altered Natives who impress most with their signature broken drums on the baile funk-ish ‘Eu Fumo’ featuring Rio’s very talented Deize Tigrona.

Them Jeans Balloons Top Billin

8.0 LA-based Them Jeans has really impressed over the last few months. Eschewing the noisier LA dance music, he’s been crafting a more European deeper and funkier sound. It’s only ﬁtting then that Helsinki’s Top Billin label would snap him up for a release. ‘Balloons’ is a really simple but effective skeletal house track with the saddest sounding Indian snake charmer-esque lead line. It’s pretty

hypnotic for sure, and strangely enticing. LOL Boys take things a little more uptempo and funkier on their mix, whilst Camo UFO’s take heads straight for the Amen breaks.

These Are Powers Anything Above Nothing Dead Ocean

9.0 Listening to ‘Anything Above Nothing’, these guys could well be my favourite new band. Hailing from American cities New York (Brooklyn) and Chicago, These Are Powers have tapped into everything I love about band music. This is a sweet pop record with infectious melodies, great keyboards and plenty of soul. Of particular interest here though is the drums that are inspired by Angolan percussion and UK house patterns, especially on the chorus where they ramp up a bit more without ever feeling like they’re shoehorned. Unique.

Vhyce Voivodine (Ha Ha Hoy Hey) Sweat It Out

8.0 Australian dance label Sweat It Out, headed by super DJ Ajax, has been pumping out quirky dance music at the rate of knots. Whilst admittedly there’s quite a saturated number of ‘world house by-numbers’ tracks around at the moment, I do welcome the smarter and futuristic sounding productions. ‘Voivodine’ is one of these, and whilst it isn’t reinventing the wheel it is great dancefloor material, providing a genius moment of Balkan vocal chopping that has to

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T.WiLLiams DEEP TEkNoLogI 01. BREACH

‘Fatherless’ Ramp

“Hybrid dub house music, the big bass does all the talking needed on this one.”

02. T.WILLIAMs

‘getting Mine’ Deep Teknologi

“Funky on steroids, super-sized and fused with Dutch house. A must-have in the box.”

03. DEADBoy

‘If you Want’ NMBRS

“Synth pitch slides and great use of a sampled vocal loop keep the skippy 2-step garage drum loop rolling.”

04. DJ MA1

‘Tribes of Africa’ Tribal Audio

05. MosCA

‘sing’ CDR

“New wave of UK music, where funky meets deep house.”

“From the intro you know that this immense samba-influenced track is going to make you jack your body all night long.”

06. sCRATCHA

‘IRL (Remix)’ Night Slugs

“An already great track remixed and given a hard funky makeover.”

07.

T. WILLIAMs FEAT TERRI WALkER ‘Heart Beat’ CDR

“A heartfelt serenade by UK soul legend Terri, takes me away to an island where love and drink are over-flowing.”

08. T. WILLIAMs & BREACH

‘The Bees’ CDR

“Energetic grooves so contagious you won’t know what’s hit you until you’re on the dancefloor with your hands in the air.”

09. sINDEN & sBTRkT

‘Midnight Marauder’ Grizzly

“A minimal house intro which breaks into a hybrid fusion of bass-influenced house music.”

10. DANNy NATIVE

‘Crush’ CDR

“A rhythm which instantly resonates and makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.”

DRUM & BASS REVIEWS

QUICKIES

Drumagick Dry Your Eyes (feat Ernesto)/The Drummer (feat Dynamite MC)

8 Bits

BMR

So Good/On Your Mind feat Riya

9.0

Digital Soundboy

7.5

Brazil-based Drumagick come here with a warm cheese and onion slice of jingly jangly soul. This has universal appeal for anyone who likes a smooth, crisp vocal with upbeat, bright textures. The vox includes wispy flutes that pirouette gracefully as filtered chords float in and out of focus. Superb lively romp on the flip that gives this single top spot status, smashing into your personal temple, and in its original mix version it reminds me of an up-to-date, jet-powered ‘Give The Drummer Some’ by James Brown.

A dark, soul-city encounter. Incisor-sharp twostep drum tears lumps of flesh out of chill-to-thespine metropolis chords while a haunting soul vocal sings “It’s so good, sooo goood!”.

Vague 241/Big Business Radius

Camo & Krooked Climax/Reincarnation Hospital

9.0 These guys can simply do no wrong, having settled down with a sound that sounds both fresh and classic and unwittingly injects itself into your mind like a highly virulent dance-spore. The rave-reminiscent keyboard riff does the job here, with a delightful opening that gets the crowd itching in anticipation, and joyously releases their pent-up stresses with much bouncing as soon as the drop kicks in. Like a good dentist that makes you want to smile from ear to ear!

Various Headroom EP Pts 3&4 Viper

8.0 Four acidic teeth-clenchers. Delta Heavy’s ‘Abort’ is aptly titled, as if it were a hulking space vessel’s learning computer malfunctioning. Offbeat searing alarm screams raid a polished, electro beat. Also check the Futurebound VIP remix of ‘The Edge’ with an instant quality stamp of grandiose production with mind-expanding ‘robotic orchestra’ arpeggios and riffs. Also ‘Awkward’ by Inside Info is another nutty cavorter with a myriad of comically hard computer gestures. Four curly fries.

Blockhe4d Last Days of Disco/Fadeaway Bad Taste

7.5 Ex-BCUK artist launches a warped, solo career. ‘Last Days’ is a schizophrenic parody of the sound, like peering through a cracked mirror into the past and seeing all facets of this narcotic-fuelled garish culture. Shimmers of glitter strings and a demonic voice chanting “disco, disco” clash with industrial feedback and a

chaotic rebellious blend. Musically portrays the emergence of the ‘don’t give a f**k’ electro/punk sounds that replaced disco. Stomping on a glittering goldfish.

Sub Zero Spin Doc VIP/Dodge City/Murdersound Ganja

7.5 Strait-jacketed DJ furiously breaks his shackles to move the crowd. A joyously insane blend of frenetic bass samples clash and combine on the VIP mix of ‘Spin Doc’, tempered with warm sunlight strings and sound-boy vocal samples. Carefully crafted to both delight and disgust — one to get those knees up to. ‘Dodge City’ on the other hand smoothes it out a little, skilfully collating an epic string slide with gurgling, super low bass textures. Rotten rockers.

DJ Fresh Gold Dust (Mixes) Data

7.0 A distinctly commercial effort from DJ Fresh on this Minstry Of Sound offshoot label. A wave of fluorescent beats are given tangibility through a dare-you-not-to-dance rave riff that sounds very much like the sounds Camo & Krooked are conjuring nowadays. Add a rapid-fire female vocal reminiscent of the style used on Shy FX’s smash ‘Shake UR Body’ back in the day and you have an instant floor favourite that could have crossover appeal.

SPY Favela/Xenomorph Metalheadz

7.5 Currently prolific producer graces classic label with a signature sound of cone-friendly drawling basses

over crisp drums that shine through like a lighthouse beacon on a stormy night sea. This piece exemplifies his philosophy, named after the Brazilian phrase for a shanty town as well as a cool multi-play level on COD MW2. Dark, ‘deserted space station’ moods in the intro cause uncertainty until unsettlingly deep electro bass pulses force you to wind your waist.

8.0 A real wild one. Two furious swarms of killer bees trying their damnedest to sting every orifice. Buzzing basses clash with rapidly wobbling lows. Dangerous chemical spillage!

All Thieves/Need For Mirrors Stars (Zero T Remix)/ Sick In the Head Footprints

7.0 Subliminal psychic soul that permeates your sub-conscious and possesses your being. A scintillating, android drum shuffles over deep-depths of bass with graceful, strangely sad female vocals.

Camo & Krooked History Of The Future/ Verve (feat Tali) Audioporn

8.5 More rock-your-socks-off rave, C&K use retro sound sculptures to concoct a drum-step stomper that develops into a supersonic speed smasher.

Heist I Need Killers/I Need Killers (Rusko 140bpm Edit) Sumo Beatz

7.5 Prolific artist continues his adept skill of using memorable, foul voice clips and partnering them with an equally obnoxious percussion/bass mixture. Here, a character bordering on the hysterical professes that they want animals, they “need killers!” Then the madness ensues. A well spaced-out combination of dull thud kick and crisp thwacking snare is the basis for a low rumbling sub layered with a spoon-bending vibrato ‘seethe’ sound. A greasy, sickly stomping blend.

01. BROOKES BROTHERS ‘Warcry’ BBK

Culture Shock

02. SIGMA ‘Baltimore’ BBK

Bad Red/Surprise Ram

8.0 Floor-filling, rolling android soul with the sorts of moods that make you want to pack your bags, go on holiday and dance your butt off. Filtered nu-rave riffs that are reminiscent of classic disco moods gallop enthusiastically over a solid beat that lifts your spirits, while a tastefully serrated reverse bass riff reigns crimson warmth on even the coldest of hearts. AA-side continues the tasteful tirade and serves as a slightly more relaxed breather.

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DJ FRESH BREAKBEAT KAOS “Massive, experimental and exciting debut track from the new album.”

“Great track, wicked blend of ‘liquid’ and dancefloor tear-out.”

03. CAMO & KROOKED ‘Can’t Get Enough’ BBK

“The sonic terrorists are back, building up sounds like Godzilla climbing a mountain.”

04. DJ FRESH FEAT CE’CILE ‘Golddust’ Mos/Data

“This has been a sneaky VIP in my sets for a while, gives new life to the track.”

05. W TF!? & DEAD PREZ ‘Bigger Than Hip-Hop’ BBK

“So proud to be releasing this ultra-playable re-do of the classic.”

06. DJ FRESH ‘Acid Rain’ BBK “Dirty little album number.”

07. TC ‘Fu*k Face’ White

“Percussive roller with a twist, good to see TC back on form.”

08. BLOcKHE4D ‘Last Days Of Disco’ Bad Taste “Filthy BC-style bass weapon.”

09. RONI SIZE ‘Mayday’ V

“Been a while since I’ve had a Roni Size tune. This one’s big!”

10. DJ FRESH ‘Fight’ BBK

“Another album track, first dubstep experiment, been getting a lot of support from Skream, Hatcha, Trolley Snatcha etc.”

DUBSTEP

QUICKIES

Simon/Off Forever Immerse

Donae’o

Ruckus & Roke

I’m Fly

Spectrum

My Ish

7.5

New single in anticipation for his next album, ‘I’m Fly’ is a tidy, understated parcel of killer riddims and bass in your face.

Freestylers Cracks (Flux Pavillion Remix) Never Say Die

5.0

Teetering on the high-wire of noisy jump up, I can give him credit for managing to hold onto a sense of balance.

Offroad

2.0

Hearing people coughing and shuffling their feet through four minutes of uncomfortable silence would provide greater excitement.

Joe Untitled

7.0

This Austrian producer has created an EP with a number of notable merits. The use of percussion is as interesting as anything the Hessle lot put together, his subtle use of samples and melody on all tracks doesn’t over power, and each track has its own distinct personality. Nice. But make a b-line for ‘No Pills’, which should be getting regular plays from the likes of Appleblim, Ramadanman and Untold for its sheer oddity.

Applepips

7.0

Another brace of ditties from the North Londoner’s arsenal of scantily-clad beatscapes. Good, but not quite essential.

Andreya Triana A Town Called Obsolete Ninja Tune

7.0

One of the UK’s finest singer/songwriters, AT has shown what superb effect collaborating with electronica artists such as Flying Lotus can yield. Here, ahead of her debut album, she collaborates with UK beatsmith Bonobo for some funktastic mediocrity. But check the acoustic version that allows her voice to shine. Hot Flush alternatives Mount Kimbie are the remixers on spec, divulging the fuzzy, sunset awkwardness that they do so well. Shame this wasn’t the original backing track.

Falty DL Phreqaflex Planet Mu

8.0

Commodo Dokument

Origin Audio

6.0

DJ CYRUS ORIGIN AUDIO/TECTONIC 01. CYRUS ‘The Calling’ Dubplate

“One for the chest. Going down really well.”

02. DISTANCE ‘Mind Control’ Dubplate “Not much to say apart from BIG.”

03. CYRUS ‘Looking Back’ Dubplate “Eyes-down business.”

04. TUNNIDGE ‘7 Breaths’ Dubplate “A monster of a tune.”

05. DISTANCE FEAT ALYS BLAZE ‘Falling’ Dubplate “The anthem of 2010? I predict big things for this tune.”

06. COMMODO ‘Eastern Bloc/Dokument’ Origin Audio “So minimal and so effective.”

07. KILLA & INSTINCT ‘H20/Theory Of Knowledge’ Origin Audio “Film score music. New signings to Origin Audio.”

08. MALA ‘Living Different’ DMZ “Less is more. An amazing tune.”

09. L.D Blizzard Dubplate

“A little more grimey than his usual style.”

10. CYRUS ‘Manhattan Blues’ Dubplate “Been the topic on a few lips recently.”

Despite not being as acutely fashionable as the minimal machinations from the likes of Ramadanman or Joe, the style of eyes-down dubstep championed by Cyrus is still very minimal, but just in a more original dubstep form. And release number two for the label run by DJ Cyrus and Tunnidge drafts in Leeds newcomer Commodo for a bit of slap and tickle — low-slung beats, heavy atmospherics and plenty of swing. A chip off the old block.

501 The 501 EP NSFW

2.0

Were the entire genre wiped out by a fiery dubstepocalypse, future historians wouldn’t piss on this EP for posterity. Icily devoid of ideas, ‘Dub You’ ill-advisedly shoves a vocodered rendition of ‘Keep Me Hanging On’ up the sphincter of a forgettable arrangement, recalling only Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’. While even the kind of jazz-guitar lick reminiscent of the emotional peak of an episode of Cagney and Lacey can’t atone for ‘Bring The Styles Back’. Generic.

WTF? & Dead Prez It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop Breakbeat Kaos

0.0

Does anyone else find it equally hard to comprehend why anyone would think it’s a good idea to remix a super untouchable hip-hop classic like this? Especially when it stands up against any dubstep record in its original form. I don’t care if Zane Lowe made it the ‘hottest record’, it’s just dull, unimaginative remixing from Adam F (!!) and DJ Fresh. And the Sidney Samson remix can stick a grenade up its arse too.

At the back end of a number of inspired remixes, the New York resident stretches his own canvas for once, pursuing his penchant for the more esoteric aspects of classic garage. There is no escaping the oddities within Falty’s approach: influences collide, ricochet and mutate, yet this EP also oozes a certain retro ambience. Warm synth stabs, emotive vocal snippets and clipped, swung beat patterns collude to tap the nostalgia mainline.

at radio and TV rather than the bassbins. Inevitable compromises.

Benga Stop Watching

Digital Soundboy

Magnetic Man I Need Air Columbia

5.0

The first single from their major label deal with Columbia, Skream, Benga and Artwork smooth out the edges of a sound they have wowed festival crowds with over the past couple of years. In a field it’s all energy, on record it’s all about catchy vocals and teaming up with Angela Hunte does just that. Add in soft chords and a gentle rhythm, this was always aimed

6.0

Whilst the sycophants and copycats continue to wank out chainsawinspired mayhem for the underage masses, it’s good to hear the pioneers keeping on top of the pile with a slightly more sophisticated style. Well, only just. But you’ve got to give it to them, if you were playing to thousands of sweaty ravers each week you’d be making this kind of dancefloor material — like a punch in the kidneys with a knuckle-duster. Booof.

leftfield REVIEWS

QUICKIES Max Sedgley

Vladislav Delay

Sound Boy

As Sistol Sistol Remakes

Jalapeno

7.0 Skip the original and head for Sedgley’s steroid-pumped Afrodub version, featuring the rolling lyrical flow of Tor Cesay. Kraak & Smaak deliver the bass message, too.

Jaga Jazzist Bananfluer Overalt Ninja Tune

Simon/Off

8.5 Granted, Jaga Jazzist’s brand of complex jazz-rock and general psychedelic, Nordic weirdness may not be to everyone’s taste, but even taking into account the fickle and arbitrary nature of taste, you have to concede that they remain one of the most unusual, innovative and frankly interesting bands around at the moment. Bursting with all the usual effortless originality and uncontrived creativity then, ‘Bananfluer Overalt’ is a case of business as usual. Look out for the Prins Thomas mix too — exceptional!

Africa HiTech Hitecherous EP Warp

6.5 At the risk of being hunted down by the dubstep hipsters and Warp diehards, I have to say that this minimal marriage between Pritchard and Spacek has so far proved to be a little disappointing. Individually, there’s no denying the pedigree of the duo, but for some reason, this particular collaboration seems to fall a little short. There are flourishes of brilliance and promise (like on ‘Too Late’), but on the whole, ‘Hitcherous’ is short on ideas and short on innovation.

Four Tet Angel Echoes Domino

8.0 Caribou has been turning his hand to some brilliant remixes of late and this knee-trembling, crescendo-charging re-touch of Four Tet’s beautifully machined soul-nugget ‘Angel Echoes’ is no exception. Taking the bones of the original and fleshing them out with a simple but brilliant pulsing 4/4 and swathes of prowling, self-perpetuating electronic moodiness, it becomes an entirely new entity. Less angelic,

Forever

Halo Cyan

8.0 The impressive Alva Noto get to grips with one of Delay’s more moody projects. Tonal bleeps and glitch dominate this earthy electro-influenced piece, with John Tejada adding able support with a more direct tech approach.

Immerse

more demonic: seven minutes and 55 seconds of devilish brilliance.

to the genius/madness of Syd Barrett and all those who followed him.

Mark Ronson & The Business Intl

The Aikiu Just Can’t Sleep

Bang Bang Bang

Abracada

5.0 Chances are, by the millionth time I’ve heard this, I will probably be hooked, but right now, even despite the addition of the great Q-Tip, Nick Hodgson (Kaiser Chiefs) and MNDR (Yeah Yeah Yeahs keyboardist) it all still sounds a little too commercial and watered down for these ears. Unfortunately the remixes don’t help much either as Count & Sinden, SBTRKT and Russ Chimes all turn in distinctly average reworks.

Throwing Snow

7.5 Not quite sure if the original will do sufficient damage on playlists (even when you take into account Pilooski’s endorsement), so it’s straight to the mixes for this male vocal Gossip sound-a-like. Hence Clement Meyer does the necessary business with a deep yet grinding slo-mo breaks version, whilst being bolstered by a stripped down dub re-rub. A grower, as they say.

Columbia

7.5 Tight eastern beat/ dubstep influenced beats from Simon/Off. Head for the lead track that transforms into a pacey Afrobeat excursion with enough fx’d inflections and crusty samples to keep most leftfield heads happy.

Cowbell Oh Girl/Just Want Your Love Stoveponey Records

7.0 Part Hendrix, part Cream, part Faces, part Sonics and part Kinks, this is certainly a rabble-rousing debut from Hackney boy/girl duo Cowbell.

Un Vingt/Cronos

Fat Freddy’s Drop

Ho_Tep

The Raft & Big BW Remixes Giant Step

7.0 Given their reliance on the same old palette of sounds (soul, reggae and downtempo beats,) you could argue that Fat Freddy’s Drop are a little stuck in their ways. In fairness though, they don’t actually try to pretend to do anything else, and to those ends, what they do, they do incredibly well. Enter this latest single, which amongst that trademarked sound, features a couple of excellent remixes from Jet Jaguar and Butterfish Black (aka DJ Vadim & Lil Ste).

Tame Impala Solitude Is Bliss Modular Records

8.5 Classic Pink Floyd ‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ pastiche from this four-piece Australian psych unit. With enough flailing drums, reverb and canny lyrics (“There’s a party in my head and noone’s invited”), this should be a cert for the shopping list. An honest ode

7.5 One for the Dabrye heads out there, in particular ‘Cronos’; three and three-quarter minutes of swirling electronics, compressed snares, weaving analogue melodies and a time-shifting bottom end. A promising effort from Ross Tones who slips into that tight niche between the aforementioned Dabrye, Flying Lotus and Floating Points. If you like your downbeat moody, then this is for you.

Fennesz Daniell Buck

Diskjokke

Smalltown Supersound

01. Rocha ‘Feel The Love’ International Feel

“All the needed ingredients to become this year’s Balearic anthem.”

02. Walls ‘Hang Four (The Field Macarena Remix)’ Kompakt “The Field explores Balearic territory and the result is grand.”

03. Mano Le Tough ‘Oblique (Chateau Flight Remix)’ Internasjonal “Amazing techy rework that can just go on and on and on...”

04. Ajello ‘Bun Attack’ Demo Disc

“Now and then Ajello hits the nail on the head, and this is a great dance tune.”

Knoxville

05. Simon Baker ‘The Trick’ 2020 Vision

8.0 Another mighty offering from the esteemed Thrill Jockey camp, who look to the collaborative efforts of Christian Fennesz, David Daniell and Tony Buck on this sprawling, soundscape influenced 12”. Recorded over a year ago, it packs intensity and depth as the three merge their talents in this dark, foreboding outing of rich electronics, guitar feedback and abstract rhythmical patterns.

06. Rodriguez Jr. & Marc Romboy ‘Lac de Nivelles’ Systematic

Thrill Jockey

www.djmag.com

“Cool house music with a great organ hook.”

“Rodriguez Jr. always puts a certain melancholic feel to his tunes.”

07. Paul Jackson ‘Drum & Bass’ Killa Tunes

“Simple and tracky house music with a KILLER bassline.”

08. The Shookt ‘Bug In The Machine’ Luna Flicks “Totally crazy but it works!”

09. Nelue feat Russian Red ‘Deconstructed (Crazy P Remix)’ Lovemonk “Lovely ‘80s flirt that goes down really well.”

10. Pete Gooding & Chris Coco ‘Night Dance (Toby Tobias Remix)’ Nang “Nice early hours track with heavy bass and arpeggios.”

ALBUMS REVIEWS

9.0 Quantic Presenta Flowering Inferno Dog With A Rope Tru Thoughts

8.0 Oriol

Night and Day Planet Mu

Starry-eyed, bushy tailed

Buena Vista Social Dub Worcestershire’s Will Holland, aka Quantic, just keeps getting better and better. His metamorphosis from the electronic beatsmith of his early albums to songwriter and band-leader of a deep psychedelic South American funk troupe is complete, and since relocating to Cali in Colombia, his records have become increasingly astonishing. While his last one, ‘Tradition in Transition’ nodded to the Panamanian and Colombian Cumbia soul that so inspires him, here he grabs a touch of the Champeta sound of his current home, adding a healthy dose of echo deck drenched dub to the full live band’s recordings. The result is a little like the Cuban son and salsa of ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ but heard through a gauzy dub reggae curtain. ‘Echate Pa’lla’ could be Santana’s ‘Oye Como Va’ produced by Lee Perry. Summertime in sonic form, this is a future classic. Ben Murphy

Altered Natives

This Planet Mu new boy is yet another welcome addition to the world of postdubstep. As more styles are thrown into the melting pot, Oriol has joined Mount Kimbie, Ital Tek and James Blake in the quest to refine dubstep by infusing fractured beats with electronic influences from the last 20 years. Slightly less stepped-out than his aforementioned peers, Oriol weaves elements of funk, jazz, boogie and trip-hop in and out of blissed-out vocal samples, disco basslines and cosmic synths. The resulting sound is both harmonised and textured, at times reminiscent of the computerised fantasy world of Hudson Mohawke. Synth arpeggios, airy pads and glistening key samples instill wonder as, track-by-track, it serenely trots over an organic landscape of sun, rushing water and skyline visuals. Undeniably groovy but not revved for the dancefloor — unless blissful swaying is the intention, of course. Adam Saville

Tenement Yard Vol.1 Eye4Eye Recordings

10 Acid house reborn

6.0 Matthew Dear

M.I.A.

Ghostly

XL Recordings

Subtle sublime songs

The modern-day Madonna

When not making our eardrums bleed as his techno incarnation Audion, Texan terror Matthew Dear reverts to his given name and a far more experimental facet of his sonic persona. Like his last album ‘Asa Breed’, Dear’s latest sees him taking lead vocal duties and crafting subtle, sublime songs midway between post-punk and electro-pop. Imagine Talking Heads and Eno engineered by one of the Michigan masters. ‘I Can’t Feel’ rides low-slung moody bass guitar, grungey tones and organic blips like the chirruping of metallic beetles. ‘Little People’ finds the funk and is the most overtly house number here; over the washes of antique synth, there’s a glimmer of classic Bowie’s beating heart. The darkness of the title perhaps alludes to the overall downbeat nature of the record. Those who love emotional, murky post punk will be in seventh heaven. Ben Murphy

Riding into popular consciousness on the hype of baile funk, M.I.A. has built a career on the zeitgeist beats of hot new talent. Yet her political lyricism has increasingly become out-of-kilter with the public profile of a fashionista engaged to the heir of a billionaire business empire. ‘/\/\/\YA’ represents exactly this kind of confusion. Drawing on the formidable Rusko, Diplo, Blaqstarr and Switch, it adds grinding dubstep (‘Story To Be Told’) to a catchy musical palette of cultural comment that includes a sublime reggae cover of Spectral Display’s ‘It Takes A Muscle’, the robotic r&b flex of ‘Tekilla’ and the chart potential powertrance pop of twitter-driven ‘Xxxo’ . So when she tries to revive the revolutionary posturing of old on the Kraut-punk of ‘Born Free’, there’s the feeling she’s trying too hard to maintain a facade that’s long since slipped. Joe Roberts

Black City Erase what you think you know about house, about dance music in general. Revert to factory settings. Reboot. Plug your cerebral cortex into this. Emerging from the technological undergrowth, intrepid sonic explorer Altered Natives (Danny Yorke) has arrived with a sound so highly evolved, so different, so goddamn powerful, most will wonder how it’s possible he hasn’t been producing music for years and still craft something as special as ‘Tenement Yard Vol.1’. Actually his second album, after the under-the-radar ‘1000 Days Of Patience’ and subterranean dancefloor hit ‘Rass Out’ (a highlight of Martyn’s fabric mix), it attaches electrical nodes to house music’s nipples and gives it a right royal jolt, right back to life. Dark, murky, deep techno and house tracks, stripped to the bone, and hewn from the shattered fragments of every (decent) form of dance music under the sun, it packs megawatts of bass

pressure and dancefloor power the like of which we haven’t heard since the heady days of Sheffield warehouse techno and LFO at their loftiest heights. ‘Afterlife’ packs the disembodied orgasmic moans of Raze’s ‘Break For Love’, but set over druggy, splintered mirrors of Detroit synth and bubbling hardcore bass, while a sinister music box melody drifts just into earshot; ‘Blackvibes’ adds junglist drum clatter beneath the 4/4 pump and acid subs; ‘Boneyard’ rescues tribal house from its cul-de-sac and drops it on the Predator planet, at once as sultry and close as a rainforest but bristling with the unfamiliar and deadly. Altered Natives’ music is unique in capturing that sense of danger and illegality that made the original acid house vibes so alluring and exciting. Ostensibly house, but taking on the lessons of the post-dubstep generation (the dangerous levels of bass and sense of imagination), it points to a brave new future for dance. Perfection. Ben Murphy

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/\/\/\YA

ALBUMS REVIEWS

8.0

Skream

The Count & Sinden

Ali Love

Sleigh Bells

Tempa

Domino

Back Yard

Mom+Pop Music

Another side of Skream

So good they named it thrice

Increasing returns

Ringing in your ears

Think dubstep don Skream is about nothing but gully basslines? Think again. This follow up to his 2006 debut album ‘Skream!’ couldn’t be more different. Anyone who’s shadowed Ollie Jones’ music closely will know he’s never been afraid to mess with tempos and styles, and ‘Outside The Box’ sees him push this maverick spirit to its limits. From the hazy, deliquescing synth funk of ‘Where You Should Be’ to the retarded, mutant Nintendo hip-hop of ‘8-Bit Baby’, featuring LA MC Murs, to the euphoric, Amen break-rocking drum & bass of ‘Listening To The Records On My Wall’ and ‘The Epic Last Song’, it’s anything but your run-ofthe-mill boystep. An album for electronic music lovers, full stop, not just the dubstep crowd.‘Outside The Box’ is just the latest instalment in the career of one of our scene’s brightest lights. Ben Murphy

With a superlative repeated in triplicate, it’s clear that subtlety isn’t really part of The Count & Sinden’s make-up. What is, however, is crafting dancefloor bangers to get mashed to as demonstrated on their long awaited debut. With the sound of UK Funky heavy in the beats and basslines, it’s peppered by a liberal seasoning of rave, tropical dance, grime, r&b and bashment, ‘Desert Rhythm’, ‘Mega’ and ‘Panther’ all going straight for the jugular. Elsewhere guests including Rye Rye, Bashy and the brilliantly named Coolio Iglesias lend their vocal talents, circularly describing exactly the kind of frenzied rave manoeuvres the album is bound to induce. Biggest shout though goes to After Dark , their Mystery Jets collaboration, whose jangly indie guitar and warm wandering bass revels in Hervé & Sinden’s eclectic tastes and throws a genuine curveball into the proceedings. Joe Roberts

Ali Love has, for years, been teasing us with tasters of his inimitable talent for combining 1980s pop and disco flavours with fresh sounding 4/4 sounds (try last year’s Italo disco-infused cut ‘Diminishing Returns’ for size) and now, finally, he’s coming at us with this, his second album. ‘Love Harder’ is full of the kind of mid-tempo, nu disco sounds currently rocking dancefloors in Ibiza as well as in clubs up and down the UK and beyond. Best bits include the to-die-for ‘Darkstar’ and the utterly addictive ‘Smoke & Mirrors’; an airy, summery, melodic house tune with a Prince-style vocal. Luckily, Love’s penchant for replicating sounds from the decade that gave us Duran Duran doesn’t compromise the quality on this album and nowhere does this opus feel like an exercise in nostalgia. Claire Hughes

The phrase ‘Brooklyn duo’ was most likely to have the likes of Pitchfork salivating over their plaid shirts but with the boundary between indie and electronic music less distinct than ever before, it’s also become something to prick up our ears. Enter Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller whose scuzzy blend of rock and dance beats has been causing an internet storm, especially since signing to MIA’s NEET imprint. The 11 tracks of ‘Treats’ whizz by in just 32 minutes but deliver a sound rowdier and more youthfully energetic than a mephedrone-fueled school trip. ‘Tell Em’’ stomps along over an anthemic lead, ‘Straight A’s’ sounds like the kind of surf rock that Anthony Kiedis’ character in Point Break would have listened to and ‘Run The Heart’ channels the raging hormones of first love over booming 808 distortion. They seem to have come from nowhere, but Sleigh Bells are heavy in every sense. Joe Roberts

Outside The Box

Mega Mega Mega

Love Harder

Treats

Jimmy Edgar XXX !K7

8.0 Who gives you XXXtra? At the age of 26, Detroit’s Jimmy Edgar is arguably the youngest veteran on the scene. Eight years since signing to Warp at the tender age of 18 and the release of his debut ‘Color Strip’, he is again straddling a fine line between chinstroking genius and sleazy piss taker, and ‘XXX’ takes the latter even further. While the title of 2005’s ‘I Wanna Be Your STD’ reeked to high heaven of adolescent banter, its chopped-up take

on techno was a mature, almost prophetic, experimental pre-cursor to the sort of mutation going on in dubstep right now. ‘XXX’ is a different affair altogether. Rather than peering into the future, it glances backwards to retro-butfuture-sounding music of the ‘80s — future funk, boogie, electro-funk/soul. Edgar is clearly aware of the past and with tracks titled ‘Turn You Inside Out’ and ‘Vibration’, it’s not hard to work out what else is on Edgar’s frivolous mind.

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On opener, ‘Function Of Your Love’, salacious vocal whispers seethe over a flabby Bootsy Collins bassline and standout single ‘Hot, Raw, Sex’ is like a ‘70s NYC version of Hot Chip. The maturity, however, is in the production. Tightly crafted, cheeky pop music, guaranteed to steam up the house party windows. Adam Saville

ALBUMS REVIEWS

6.0 ASC

quickies

6.0 Mr G

Nothing Is Certain

Andreya Triana

P.U.D.G.E

Baths

Ninja Tune

Ramp

Anticon

Lost Where I Belong

Still Here

NonPlus

Rekids

Drum’n’space

Missing the G Spot

One of modern d&b’s most consistently onpoint and experimental talents, James ‘ASC’ Clements has a decade of pristine releases behind him on such forward-looking imprints as Offshore, Outsider and Exit. Combining the chilly melody of early Autechre with intricate drum-machine beats, he’s done much to keep the so-called “atmospheric” sound alive during periods when the majority of drum & bass was anything but. The debut ASC long-player finds Clements drifting his sound out into the deepest of deep waters, and offers 13 tracks of pleasant noodling and unhurried shuffling aimed squarely at stoned home-listeners rather than rewind-hungry ravers. Sadly, nothing here reaches the dizzy heights of ASC classics like ‘Drum Track 2’ or ‘Porcelain’, and excursions into techno and beatless ambience feel like unnecessary concessions to variety. But high points like the Orbitalesque ‘Yatta’ do tingle the spine in fine style. Joe Madden

There is no doubt Mr G aka Colin McBean is an expert at making slamming house beats, but how does his approach fare on an album? Unfortunately, ‘Still Here’ is a game of two halves. In the second part, McBean delivers solid but uninspiring rolling, filtered tracks - ‘Space-Based’; ‘Lord Have Mercy’; ‘Light’N’Shade’. The evocative, downtempo closing track, ‘Stolen Moments’, while pleasant, sounds like a tokenistic nod to diversity. It’s a shame because the first part features some of Mr G’s best material. The drummy opener, ‘Blessed’, veers into a spacey segue, replete with airy female vocal, ‘Firewater’ is a nagging acid track, ‘Platonic Solids No 5’ makes great use of the maligned cowbell and, best of all, ‘Dark Town Orchestra’ is an inspirational take on US tribal, powered by bubbling break beats and menacing horns. If it was an EP, it would rank as one of Mr G’s best. Richard Brophy

5.0

6.0

No show Bonobo When Andreya Triana’s dulcet tones floated gracefully on Bonobo’s ‘Black Sands’ earlier this year, it generated a lot of “Who’s that girl?” reactions in the DJmag office. ‘Lost Where I Belong’ is what you’d expect from this talented, soulful jazz singer — just minus the broken beats (despite production from Simon ‘Bonobo’ Green). Adam Saville

LA LSD Pitched somewhere between the woozy sampladelica of J Dilla and the experimental wonk of Flying Lotus, P.U.D.G.E’s debut album is the sound of LA’s beat scene at its most wilfully bananas. It’s enjoyably disorientating in a ketaminey, sunstrokey sorta way, but ultimately way too stop-starty and self-indulgent to be truly engaging. Joe Madden

Washed out In May, we had Walls. Now we have Baths. What next? Sink, Floor or just The Full Bathroom Suite? Will Wiesenfield’s Baths falls somewhere between kaleidoscopic beat maestro Four Tet and “chillwave”— merchant Toro Y Moi. A master of neither, ‘Cerulean’ is textured, but not textured enough. Adam Saville

Wehbba

Midnight Juggernauts

Cari Lekebusch

Tronic

6.0

8.0

Flore

Macc & dgoHn

Botchit & Scarper

Rephlex

Ruff ‘n’ rugged tropical beats

Beats workin’

Having blazed an early trail through nuschool breaks in the late ’90s mashing up warped bass, sci-fi samples and hip-hop beats, Botchit and Scarper drop another eracapturing album from French producer Flore. True to its name, this is the sound of rough-edged urban dance music recycling the remains of breakbeat and electro into something familiar yet fresh, all seasoned by the addition of tropical riddims and a host of guest vocalists including UK hip-hop legend Rodney P, Yo! Majesty’s Shunda K and Batty Bass’ MC Chickaboo. ‘The Test’ is heavy bashment pressure and ‘Pum Pum Gal’ adds an ounce of soca bounce, as does a cover of Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’. By resisting the urge to slavishly follow the route of either dubstep or future garage, Flore creates her own distinctive opus. Joe Roberts

While mainstream drum’n’bass continues to debase itself with funkless gabba-beats and cheesy synth stabs, there remains a hardcore of producers striving to keep the original junglist template — chopped breaks over dubwise subs — alive. Macc and dgoHn (pronounced, erm, “Jon”) are two such faith-keepers and their debut album is a wildly invigorating blast of kick, snare, hat and sub purism. Live breaks (played by Macc) are expertly sliced up into brutally propulsive and hypnotic grooves, with only washes of gloomy FX to distract from the unstoppable avalanche of beats. The overall sound is both jazz-cat organic and gnat’s-chuff tight, with new patterns revealing themselves amid the labyrinthine rhythms with every listen. If you’re a fan of Squarepusher’s darker, dancier moments or the stripped-back drum science of Paradox, ‘Some Shit Saaink’ is a must. Joe Madden

Raw

Some Shit Saaink

Cerulean

6.5

Full Circle

7.0

Idiot Box

Going round in circles Brazilian producer Wehbba’s debut album tracks the same big room filtered techno sound that Tronic boss Christian Smith follows. While it sounds dynamic in Smith’s DJ sets, it’s hard to sit through an album’s worth of functional tracks. It’s a pity Wehbba didn’t focus more on the sensuous deep house approach of ‘Still Life’ and ‘I Am’. Richard Brophy

The Crystal Axis Siberia Record

2.0

No Bruce Springsteen Even if a Greek cab driver played you this while pissed up on Ouzo on the way back from a taverna, you would beg him to switch back to ‘Zorba’s Dance’ midway through the second track. Cringeinducing cosmic pop — a diminished follow-up to ‘Dystopia’, which merely reminds us that Bruce Springsteen is still the god of pop. Adam Saville

State of the Art H Productions

6.5

Uncompromised Art Unlike many of his peers, Swedish producer Cari Lekebusch has not gone down the mnml route. The coruscating drums of ‘Wickeded’ and the slamming techno of ‘Simplicity’ are reminiscent of the ‘90s Swedish sound, while ‘As Above So Below’ replicates Resse’s growling bass. Richard Brophy

repeatTHE LPS WE CAN’T LEAVE ALONE...

Mount Kimbie

Ital Tek

Ost & Kjex

Hotflush Recordings

Planet Mu

Diynamic

Crooks & Lovers

Midnight Colour

Cajun Lunch

8.0

A subtly crafted debut oozing with texture, offering boundless promise.

Deep and emotive, more stepped-up soulful brilliance from Planet Mu.

Crazy Norwegian techhouse, best heard with a spicy meat sandwich.

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The world's first event dedicated to the nightlife industry and electronic music will be taking place on the 11, 12 & 13 of November 2010

Design

Light

Show Time

Sound

Music Meeting

Beverage

New Technology

NIGHT

DAY

From 2 to 9 pm, 12 000 square meters of exhibitions, conferences, and networking opportunities await you within the Grimaldi Forum while you enjoy total comfort and a unique view over the Mediterranean. Exhibitors' list now n available on www.mics.mc

From 6 pm onwards, Monaco will become the center of the clubbing universe as the world's most renowned clubs will take over the Princi pality's venues to make you dance to the rhythm of their country

techNEWS

you spin me riGhT rounD, baby vestax’s pDX-3000mkii turntable intends to put you in a spin… THE DEVICE THAT MADE IT ALL POSSIBLE all those years ago — the humble turntable — lives on, lest we forget it. Technics 1210s may no longer be in manufacture but Vestax have stepped up to the challenge and are flying the flag for all deck aficionados with their new turntable, the PDX-3000MKII. The all-improved PDX Turntable is a heavyweight affair and is designed to fill the gap that Technics have left in the turntable market. Whilst many DJs are using DVS systems to play their MP3 files, the use of the turntable is still a favoured tool for controlling all this wonderful futuristic DJing software like 56

Traktor, Serato and the like. The PDX gives ultimate deck control for the job in hand. It has all-new upgraded components to make sure that every bit of manipulation is fed back to the computer-software combo, offering tighter and more responsive control. Included in the upgrades are a new platter that offers higher stability and accuracy, with specially designed sides for tighter pitch control. An all-new motor, meanwhile, keeps the deck spinning at a rock solid torque, no matter how hard DJs mess with the platter creating spinbacks, scratching or manipulating the pitch. The air suspension insulators — feet www.djmag.ae

to me and you — are now designed to absorb more low audio frequencies, ensuring that the deck suffers from a minimum of bass vibration, which we all know is not good for vinyl jocks. The PDX also has some nice little features like the digital torque control — there are two control modes that can be selected. Performance mode keeps the deck at the optimized rotation speed, while the MIX mode enables DJs to control precise RPM shifts with the slightest touch to the platter for ﬁne mixing. The very fly reverse mode, that changes the direction of the platter with no apparent loss of torque, is still present.

SOUNDBYTES SoundS nIce… Denon’s DN-HP500 headphones are aimed at the entry-level market for the next generation of superstar DJs. While they’re easy on the pocket, the DN-HP500 cans offer high quality audio performance. As with Denon’s more expensive headphones the DNHP500s are well-built and will last the rigours of a demanding DJ schedule. Dhs350 denon.dj

teStInG teStInG 1 2 3 Mixlr is a new computer-based service to enable DJs to broadcast their DJ mixes live as they play. Listeners will be able to post comments about DJs sets in real-time over the net. DJs can also upload sets to their Mixlr page for others to download and enjoy. mixlr.com

prIce

Dhs2750

news

tech

SIlver Surfer The cDj-850 is pioneer’s newest cDj media player aimed at the semi-pro Dj, offering a lot of the features of the top-of-the-range models but at almost half the price. This silver surfer has the same jog wheel and large view screen as the cDj-2000 and 900 models and also interacts with pioneer’s rekordbox software, meaning that sets can be organised and practiced at home. Then, when the Dj turns up to the club faced with the cDj-2000, they can feel comfortable and step up to thrill the crowd. Dhs4000 pioneer-uae.com

TECHTALK hi, i have just got ableton 8 and i am going to teach myself how to use it. Does anybody know of any websites or videos offering useful tips? Steven fair, dJmag tech forum hi steven, Try this. have you ever thought of using the magical tool that is the internet? http://lmgtfy. com/?q=ableton+live+tutorial everything you asked for and more. chris earpipe, dJmag tech forum

contact

vestax.com Vestax have also kept the Ultra Pitch section. The Ultra Pitch Fader controls the pitch range by +/-50% and there is also a ﬁne pitch fader, which means that the PDX will offer a total pitch control of +/-60% — this offers a lot of scope for extreme pitch change. For all adventurous DJs, the PDX has MIDI control, so a keyboard can be added and played from it. The PDX is initially available with the straight tone arm, but the S-bend arm will be shipping in later models. While this is all good for DVS jocks, the PDX-3000MKII is a fullyfunctioning turntable, so vinyl DJs will have all the beneﬁts of playing on the most up-to-date platter on the market.

Stand and delIver Crane Stands are a slick multiuse DJ accessory that will give DJs valuable space in the DJ booth. With a quick and easy locking system, multiple conﬁgurations can be achieved from this stand, enabling it to hold a laptop, CDJ deck or other suitable DJ equipment. Dhs500 thecranestand.com

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steven, there are loads of vids on youTube, and if you look on sites like Time and space you’ll find DvD tutorials which you can buy. There are also loads of ableton live courses all over the uk that you can enrol on, but to be honest the best knowledge comes with practice. spend loads of time on it, that’s the best way to learn. dJ Shock c There is a dude called Tom cosm who does ableton stuff on the net, he is worth checking out. or simpler still just go on the ableton live website. Millie, blackpool

tech

SOUNDBYTES

news

paul woolford (We love…)

can’T live WiThouT dbX SubharMonIc SyntheSIZer “The DBX Subharmonic Synthesizer is a really quirky and yet simple piece of hardware that I found when I was rooting around the stock of a company that supplies the television and ﬁlm industry with equipment. I happened upon it by mistake. What it does is to add a subharmonic bass note an octave beneath whatever signal you feed into it. I’ve been experimenting with bass notes that you would naturally do, but it sounds crazy on certain types of low frequencies. I used it recently on my dubstep/ techno track ‘Let It Go’, but it also sounds crazy with low-rumbling surface noise fed through for that Peter Van Hoesen-esque grinding techno vibe. I’m working on some material for Tresor in Berlin at the moment and it’s coming into its own.”

JARGON: torque BUSTED: Spinning force of a turntable Torque is the tendency of a force to rotate an object about an axis, fulcrum, or pivot — at least, that’s what Mr Spock would tell you. Ask any Scratch DJ what torque is and they’ll tell you it’s how much power a turntable has. The more torque it has the harder you have to push against the platter to stop it spinning. When scratching or cueing up records, having lots of torque means more precise deck control.

calIfornIa dreaMInG peace love productions have released a new sample loop pack aimed at Dj/producers who want to get that feel of the california electro scene, encompassing the sounds of Djs like steve aoki and his Dim mak label. The pack features synth loops from the moog voyager synth, fat ready-to-use sounds that are great for Djs who are not too tip-top on their keyboard-playing skills. Dhs100 clickproduce.com

Get on track

dJ’S delIGht KAM specialise in budget-priced, high-featured products for many a budding DJ and their new KAM Digi Mini is a VJ/DJ’s dream. It basically allows DJs to be able to mix audio and visuals from one unit. The KAM Digi Mini includes a built-in soundcard and comes free with Virtual DJ Pro as well as a handy gig bag to keep it safe on the road. Dhs1000 Kam.co.uk

whIrlwInd Vestax’s new Typhoon controller will put the wind in your sails. This funky-looking black and red controller will work with Mac or PC computers and comes shipped with Native Instruments Traktor LE. This can be upgraded at any stage to the Pro version. With a simplistic layout and built-in soundcard, this is a must for any newbie DJ wanting to dabble in the digital DJ domain. DHS1000 Vestax.com

numark just won’t give up their assault on the Dj community, and come with yet more new kit for your Djing delights. The miXTrack controller lets Djs control their digital Djing software. The miXTrack is set up in the traditional two decks and a mixer approach, so Djs from amateurs to pros will find it easy to use from the off, and those nice people at numark have also thrown in Traktor le for straight-out-of-thebox party action. as with all modern Dj controllers it can be used with your Djing software of choice. numark.com

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news

dJ doctor dear dJ doctor, Is it worth investing in CDJ decks, or are they dying a slow death like vinyl? Should I look at going down the route of Digital DJing software like Traktor and Serato as this seems to be a lot cheaper than what is on the market in regards to a half-decent CDJ deck? William Baker, via email hi william, There is a fantastic amount of choice for DJs on the market today and it seems less and less DJs are relying on CDs for their sets. Moving over to laptop DJing has a lot of advantages, including having a huge amount of tracks at your ﬁnger tips, digital FX as well as having the exact same set up with you at every gig. With the introduction of the new CDJs the possibility of turning up to a gig with just a hard drive and headphones has became a reality. But at the moment not every venue will have these fancy new CDJs, so you could be back to using CDs. The most important factor in making your decision should be your DJing style and what feels most comfortable for you to use. Have a look at the various options out there, a lot of the software on the market will have demo versions for download on their website, so you can try it out for yourself for free. When it comes to the hardware, it’s either CDJs or controllers for software. Do some research and read reviews to narrow down your choices, and then if possible get hands-on by visiting a decent shop or, even better, friends who can give you a ﬁrst-hand report of their experiences as well as letting you loose on their set ups. Of course, your budget is always going to dictate your options, but it’s worth remembering that if you go down the software route you can always add hardware controllers to your DJ set up later on.

tech

SIlence… pleaSe blackbox m10 noise-cancelling headphones are just the ticket for mid-ﬂight laptop production sessions. These phones do all sorts of techno wizardry that, when turned on, makes the sound in the phones very detailed and clear — especially at lower volumes. The science is that the phones emit a noise-cancelling audio wave that, when used for the first time, gives quite a strange sensation in the ears. What this frequency does is to cancel out any outside noise and give the user a unique, cleaner listening experience. Djmag has tried these over the last few months and we love using them for our laptop production sessions. The added bonus is that they can also be used without any music going through them. Dhs450 blackboxonline.com

Got a burnInG QueStIon? senD your query to the DJ Doctor at djdoc@djmag. com and you could win the wicked akG k81 headphones.

JARGON: rpM BUSTED: revolutions per Minute This was a term widely used in the good old days of DJing and was in reference to the rotational speed of the record and how many revolutions per minute a platter would spin. So 45rpm would relate to the rotational speed of 45 revolutions per minute. This basic principle also applies to 33rpm and the near-extinct 78rpm.

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swedish house head axwell allows us a glimpse into the music that has played important parts in his life… Words: HELENE STOKES

The track that takes you back to your childhood? “Well that has to be Bob Marley, especially ‘Exodus’, ‘Stir It Up’ and all of those records, because I grew up in the ’70s where my parents were listening to that sort of stuff. It was a kind of hippie vibe. There were a lot of parties in the neighbourhood where we grew up and there was always Bob Marley playing, at one stage or another. My parents liked Bob Marley. And who doesn’t?”

The ﬁrst record you ever bought? “That was Bros’ ‘When Will I Be Famous?’, it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure! I remember buying it and I remember the cover and why I bought it, it was because there were really cool ’80s drums on it. I used to play the drums and I was really inspired by the drums in that track, actually. I would try to play along to it, but I had real drums and theirs were synthetic, and I was like ‘Why the fuck don’t my drums sound the same?’ but I realize now why!”

The ﬁrst record that you danced to? “I have a really strong memory of ‘Lady In Red’. That was the point at the school dance when you wanted to dance with a girl and I have many bad memories to that track when girls said ‘no thank you’. I remember when we were really young and people had their birthday parties at home and in a small room there was dancing afterwards and there was about ﬁve people dancing cheek to cheek. It was pretty naff, but it was a long time ago.”

enhance your feelings. If you feel sad you can feel more sad by listening to it and if you feel happy you can feel more happy. That’s really amazing. One track especially would be ‘Trouble’.”

What’s the most valuable record in your collection? “Unfortunately it feels like music has lost its value in terms of records, there’s no value as such because it feels like everything is everywhere. “But I treasure my Coldplay collection, because they will never feel old to me. There’s not many ﬁllers from those albums, I think as records as a whole when you want to listen to a record without skipping through, they are my favourite ones and I treasure them.”

Your all time favourite track — of all time? “It’s so hard to say the best song in the world. But I think in terms of excitement when it was made I would say Michael Jackson’s ‘Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough’.”

The track that inspired you to make dance music? “That has to be ‘You Don’t Know Me’ by Armand Van Helden. Because I remember when I heard it, I was like ‘What the fuck is this?’. It was disco but new, and I couldn’t identify if it was a sample or if the vocal was new and it was so good, so damn good, and still is. I think that really inspired me to make the kind of music that I’m doing.”

Music to make love to? “I used a lot of Enigma, you remember? And that was good for that, and it was featured in the movie ‘Sliver’ with Sharon Stone and obviously that movie was pretty much only about making love and I guess I was inspired by that.”

Music you might cry to? “Coldplay. All of their tracks. Those albums are incredible for whatever you want to do. They

Axwell’s compilation ‘Axtone Volume One’ and his latest single ‘Nothing But Love’ are available now. The Autumn sees more touring, more music from him and Swedish House Maﬁa as well as a SHM documentary/ soundtrack.