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Christ On A Bike!

I’ve just spent whatever free time I’ve had over the past week - and believe me, it has been a hectic time, but I won’t bore you with the details and apologise for the lack of activity here – listening to the first, confusingly titled ‘2’, of two Luke ‘Wagon Christ’ Vibert albums out in the coming months. This second one is as Amen Andrews and is a grime/jungle affair, but the one I’m playing is as Kerrier District, his electro/disco guise, and my God it is good.
I’m a huge fan of the warm, fluid (er, how many more adjectives should I insert to get my point across?) electro sound that has been doing the rounds for the past few years – expect a mega Nature/Clone/Viewlexx appreciation post here in the
not too distant future, maybe next week if I can get it together – but Vibert’s new material literally gushes from the speakers. This album has everything that I love about electro -  the sense of alienation and the automated precision but also the bowel-loosening bass and the ridiculous but bloody beautiful melodies.
Maybe I’m so enthusiastic about Kerrier District because his remix of Black Devil’s 'Timing, Forget The Timing' from two years ago, also on Rephlex, was a big favourite of mine, or perhaps
it’s exactly because that Kerrier District version left its squelchy footprint all over the current dance floor landscape -  everything from acidic Kompakt party
tracks (ja!) to one-dimensional electro house numbers (nein!).
Either way, I’ve got the son of Christ’s latest creation – bet he’s glad he decided to call himself Wagon Christ after all: Stuffed Cat Mathematician was the other choice of name that he was mulling over at the time of ‘Phat Lab Nightmare’ - on auto-repeat and it’s hard for me to make up my mind which is my favourite track, so I’ll end this post to the sounds of the third (as yet) untitled track . Enjoy!

Industry Standards

If you read this website a bit, then you will probably have realised that I have an innate dislike and distrust of major record labels and the mainstream music industry. One of the many reasons – believe me, I could go on for days on the subject - for my unwillingness to engage with the ‘industry’ is, well, how should I put this in the most diplomatic terms so as not to be offensive, a lot of the people who work in this sector aren’t the smartest apples in the bunch. PRs strike me as especially clueless – although there are some notable exceptions who truly believe in the artists they represent - and people who work for big labels aren’t far behind the PRs. Here's an email I received this week from an A&R from one of the ‘big four’ labels. The subsequent interchange would have been funny were it not for the fact that the guy was 100% serious. Note also how he does not get the MySpace joke and then invites me to become one of his friends!

A&R: Hello ____________I do A&R for ________and am on the lookout for new unsigned acts in Ireland and was wandering if there were any acts that you may know about that might be of interest to the label??

You can call me on _____________
Speak soon ____________________________

Testindustries: Mmmmm wouldn't that be me doing your job for you?!

A&R: Well, maybe. My job is to scout out new talent and one way of doing this is to network and speak to people like yourself.

Testindustries: Have you ever heard of MySpace?:)

A&R: Yes I have. I actually have a myspace page at ________. Maybe we could be friends?

I rest my case.

Coffee Break

I’m finally back in the real world after el Sonar. Now, does anyone like coffee? I do, but it’s really bad for me and makes me even more all over the place than I already am. I know that’s quite a tenuous link to music, but apparently going for an afternoon coffee is the way that these fine fellows, Tony Rohr and Tim Xavier, hooked up and decided to start recording together.
Anyone who has heard their ‘Glitches’ Brew’ release on ShitVath’s label, Cocoon, knows that this partnership has managed to ignite a firecracker under the arse end of minimal, getting rid of the notion of hamster’s fart basslines and piss weak rhythms in favour of cold, metallic rhythms, a cut-up sensibility and warped drums.
The resulting, rather beautiful mess sounds like Adam Beyer doing a cover version of an obscure Warp release or an IDMer (Jesus, I hate that bloody term) pumped full of steroids. They’ve approached their remix of Camea & Insideout’s 'Nothing Shocking' (no relation to the brilliant Jane’s Addiction album, 'Nothing's Shocking'), turning it into a warped drum apocalypse that rides roughshod over the spectre of pale white kids fiddling with their laptops. This is what techno should really sound like in my humble opinion, and the only people who are doing anything that reaches this gloriously noisy standard are the Nummer crew and that Solieb label…
On a totally different tact is the new Player’s Paradise release. I’m usually not a fan of this Dirt Crew-affiliated label - too many lame acid workouts for my liking - but Marcello Giordani (you can just imagine him in speedos oogling sunbathers on a beach in Rimini) has created 'Synthetic Music 2', a cheesy, fun take on the Moroder/Cowley electronic disco groove. I haven’t heard the first installment of this series and the 303 tracks on the flip revert to the Dirt Crew/Player’s Paradise stereotype, so maybe this is just an exception, but it sounds like Alden Tyrell in more upbeat form than usual and is an infectious, fun (remember that?) track…

The Last Reel

Saturday was a pleasant day at Sonar: I woke up at the relatively civilized hour of two pm and went to buy some fine wine and chorizo to bring home at La Bocqueria (the food market just down the Ramblas from the MACBA) and ended up eating some lunch at the same stall as John Acquaviva. He wasn’t playing Sonar, but we still managed a good three-hour bitch about some of the people who inhabit techno’s big bubble. Later on, John gave me some CDs and records back at his hotel and Jeff Mills was there doing a TV interview.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge Mills fan – his Purposemaker releases pretty much kickstarted loopy techno and the X-101/102/103 series are among the most inspirational electronic records - but as he gets older, it seems that his ego dwarfs his tiny frame. I had heard some horror stories about him in Dublin: the worst being that when a fan came up to him at the end of a gig a while back, Mills just looked at him and told him that if he (the fan) wanted to speak to him, he would have to clear It with his manager first. Who does he think he is, Elton John?
Our chatting and laughing in the lobby invariably disrupted his interview technique and, in between spewing forth about his latest art project, he dispatched a minion over to us to ask us to keep it down.
Later on, at about 6pm, I arrived at Sonar and bumped into Donnacha Costello, who played a stormer at The Loft on Friday (and who handed me the new Minimise release, hurray!) and then some press and magazine folk in the ‘pro’ area. I had my Sonar bag with me, so I popped out to the same corner store and stocked up on ice-cold beers (6 cans for €2.40 sure beats the €3 Sonar charges for a foamy glass of Budweiser piss!), updated the site for an hour or so - getting some weird looks from the beautiful people who wanted to check their email) and went to meet a mate from Dublin. We had a few beers, checked out the excellent exhibition of album cover art in the museum (my personal favourites were the mock serious totalitarian pastiches by Slovenian industrial act Laibach), avoided the Chernobyl exhibition in the same space and then went to dinner with the Spectral/Ghostly crew, who were playing the same outdoor Sonar pub venue that night as the Hawtin-Villalobos love child. Ryan Elliot and his girlfriend were at the dinner, but he was in far better shape and behaving like a gentleman this time. He could even understand English!
Matthew Dear was there too and Body Code, aka Alan, who lives in Lisbon. There were some other journos there, including the rather cool Thilo from Groove magazine and Sandra, the label’s charming PR woman.
Unfortunately, I had promised the Get Physical guys that I would go to their party in The Loft and have a few drinks with them, but my mate went along with the Spectral/Ghostly crew to Sonar by night.
The next morning at the airport when we were waiting for the plane home, my mate said that he had loads of fun – he was plied with free drinks and whatnot backstage - and that the music was great. The only drawback was that Alan from Bodycode kept on making moves on him, and by the fifth attempt, he got a bit bored by it (as you would).
My night was pretty enjoyable if a bit shorter than the others because I was exhausted and wanted to get up in good time for the flight (which was delayed by two hours, bah!), so I only stayed until 4am at the Get Physical party, but I loved what I heard. By the time I left, the rumour that Aphex was going to play in the Warp room proved untrue. Williams’ opening set in the Get Physical room wasn’t bad, but by the time that Fuckpony were in full flight, the dark warehouse space had filled up and it felt like a proper acid house party.
Jay and Samim played much tougher than on the album, ditching the melodies and with Jay screaming ‘Fuck Pony, Fuck The Pony’ into the mic as they dropped sheets of hard metallic rhythms and wired acid lines. DJ T, who was in great form, played a tough jacking set too, with the highlight being the evergreen ‘House Nation’.
It was also fun to hang out with Marcus the label manager and Jay afterwards, and the backstage area resembled a busman’s holiday for DJ/producer types, with Christian Smith, Billy Nasty, Ewan Pearson, Funk D’Void, Kieron Hebdan, MANDY and Booka Shade all swigging beer. 
So was Sonar 2006 as good as previous years? I think it’s a hard question to answer because each festival has its good and bad points.
On the negative side, I didn’t get to go to any of the beach parties (although it seems the best ones were on yesterday when I had already left) and, despite my best intentions, missed the Poker Flat, Bpitch and Kompakt parties (I was also briefly considering going to ’10 Years Of Sven Vath’ at La Terrazza, but I’m sure the sight of Sven gurning with his belly flopping out would have been funny for approximately 10 minutes) and I’m still kicking myself that I missed The Knife and Isolee performing live, but it’s impossible to hear everything and meet everyone I wanted to. Herbert was great, as were Senor Coconut, Sleeparchive, D.Costello, the Mobilee crew and Fuckpony/DJ T. Until next year then…

Missing In Action...

OK, so I messed up and didn´t get to post yesterday, but once you hear what has been going on, I hope that you will excuse me. Where should I begin? Well how about Thursday evening. Having spent a boozy afternoon smuggling in cheap cans to Sonar by day, I ended up going for dinner with Stuart from Slam and a well-known PR guy from England. Stuart headed off to play the Soma party and then we went and had a few drinks in a bar on Las Ramblas. There, we met a very nice and helpful Dutch man who gave us some nice things to get us through the night (and part of the next morning). We headed off to The Loft club and went to hear Donnacha Costello and Sleeparchive play. They were both great, perhaps two of the best live techno sets in years. The only problem was that, just as Sleeparchive was getting going, the power in the room went out and we were left in silence. At first we thought it might have been a minimalicious in-joke, but after about 10 minutes, it became clear that there would be no more music. So we left to go to Raum in the city centre, where the Berlin label Mobilee was hosting a party. First of all though, we met an American-New Zealand couple and decided to share a taxi with them. You know when you get a gut feeling about someone and you know that they are inherently weird? Well, this couple were odder than a virgin in a brothel. Dressed like Mormons or born again Christians, the New Zealand guy asked us where we were from. When we told him we were Irish, he said oh, I´m really Irish too, my name is Johnny McRory O´Reilly ( or a similar sounding diddley-ide stage Oirish name). I was sitting in the front seat of the taxi and didn´t realise that there was a plastic divider separating the front and back seats. When my mate eventually banged on the divider to tell me that all they could hear were muffled sounds, I just put my face up to the partition and clearly mouthed the phrase I am out of my fucking mind. Maybe it spooked them a little, bit they suddenly wanted to get out of the cab at the first opportunity. They also tried to pay their of the taxi fare in sterling coins, tight assed religious freaks that they were. In the end, the driver got so pissed off, that he threw us all out of the taxi. Luckily, the Raum  club was just around the corner. However, when we got there and asked for the guest list, the surly Catalan bouncer said it was closed. So in a moment of chemically inspired silliness I turned to my mate and said in my best gay Berlin accent, scheisse, ve must play in ten minutes und he vil not let us in. After hearing this, the security guy gave us a tired look and let us in. Raum is a really nice club, but when we walked in there was only about 10 people there. We bought a beer and stood around for a while until luckily, an Enlish woman I know came up a flight of stairs and asked us what we were doing. We followed her back downstairs and we walked into a room of about 800 people. The atmosphere could only be described as hedonistic, especially when we saw the state of Ryan Elliot who was gurning like a champion. My mate asked him for a light and Ryan answered, uh, smoke machine, yeah, there´s a smoke machine behind the DJ booth. So much for intelligent techno. Then his girlfriend accosted us and told us that she wanted him to marry her and how she should make it happen. We wanted to say that for starters he should probably lay off the tin mugs and stop shagging hookers every weekend, but we were too polite and baked, and ended up muttering something about love and committment etc..I think at that stage, the very great Patrick Chardronnet was playing live because we heard snatches of Eve BY Day. The night ebbed and flowed on for a while and at about seven things ended up. Of course we still had loads of beers to consume and kept on getting dirty looks from security. When they started hovering around us, I flashed my Sonar pass at them and muttered in a less convincing German accent that scheisse, ve still hav to get paid for ze gig. Pretty soonn afterwards, we were on the streets, getting accosted by weird people from Swansea and Switzerland who wanted to party with us. Barcelona is a real world city, but this people made a pretty convincing argument for a little less multi-culturalism. We dodged these buffoons and ended up in my hotel room for hours, listening to Tangerine Dreams greatest hits and arguing about the merits of Radiohead. I finally got to sleep at about ten and slept till seven the next evening, waking up in a scary cold sweat and immediately wondering why someone had skullfucked me with a sledgehammer. In the end, I managed to avoid the easy way of chundering like an emperor and had a shower and like a 70 year old Alzheimers victim stumbled into town. I managed to get into Sonar by day just in time for Senor Coconut who looked like gay accountants in suits, but they fucking rocked in a cha cha cha way. They played some amazing cover versions - Sade´s Smooth Operator, Kraftwerk´s Robots and Showroom Dummies and even, erm, The Doors Riders On The Storm, but they rocked in a laid back salsa style. Afterwards, we went for some dinner which saved me from fainting or hurling or just shitting myself (Sven Vath eat your heart out). Then we headed up to Sonar by night and listened to Laurent Garnier play the same tunes he´s been playing live for the past six to seven years. Move on dude! At least he played that Alaska tune, which made up for Man With The Red Sunburnt Cock or whatever it´s called. But it all came together when Matthew Herbert and his weird pop band hit the stage. We formulated this theory that Herbert is so intelligent that he creates lesser mortals like Sasha, who was on after him, to make him look good. Yes, it was that kind of evening. Apart from the music, there were some other funny sights to see and experience, like William the happy Ghanese man in the back stage area, who was at Sonar on business and whose shop was open 24-7. He even gave me his mobile for when I´m in Sonar again. We also saw a very stoned man on the floor during Herbert´s gig rolling a joint with an impassive look on his face as a woman nestled in his lap. At first, we thought she was partaking in a chemical treat, until we saw her head bobbing up and down and, to our amazement, the guy maintained his impassive expression and kept rolling, even when her head moved quicker and quicker and he climaxed. Lovely girl really. Her ass was hanging out of her dress and her legs were brusied all over. Wonder what her mother would say if she could see her? So after all that excitement, we jumped in a taxi (tip: always leave Sonar by night a few hours early or you will never get a cab) and headed off to dreamland. Now it´s Saturday evening and the Bpitch and Get Physical parties beckon, as does my 11.30 flight home on Sunday. So until then amigos, keep rocking in the free world and keep your noses clean...

My first Rambla

Survived the red eye flight and the inevitable group of Spanish teenagers on it - actually for once, they weren´t that loud: maybe the stewardess slipped them some junior valium. Despite these minor discomforts, it´s great to be back in Barcelona. The sun is out, a few degrees hotter than Dublin, I have cleared the notoriously complicated festival bureaucracy with minimum hassle and am looking forward to some serious fun and games. Tonight it´s a toss up between the Mobilee party in Raum and the Sonar opening party in Razzmatazz. When I went to the opening party in the same venue last year, it was too full of bemulleted teen ravers with razor sharp elbows and that and a lack of oxygen meant that and I had to leave, only catching Adult´s live set on the way out but missing Tiga, Holden and Nathan Fake (in his pre-indie bliss out incarnation). Anyway, I digress: Holden occupies the same room at Razzmatazz tonight, but I think Mobilee will get my attention. Smaller club, more messed up sounds and the Border Community lot are playing at one of the many beach parties tomorrow to cater for our sore heads. But for now it´s enough typing and time to start partying...

Summer Daze

Hello, I hope you are well and enjoying the sunshine. I’m inside, going through loads of music and trying to work out a few technical issues. I’m listening to Boards Of Canada’s new EP, which is helping to keep the feeling summery if somewhat melancholic. Correct me if I’m wrong though, but does 'Dayvan Cowboy' not have an almost stadium rock like quality to it? I’m not suggesting that they suddenly surprise us all with some U2 cover versions, but this track certainly has shades of epic guitar rock (you can almost see the video with a group of disaffected electronic music producers driving down the freeway through a canyon in an open-top Cadillac, on the way to rawk nirvana).
I’m also listening to Magda’s debut mix, ‘She’s A Dancing Machine’, on Minus. It’s pretty impressive stuff, coming at the concept from a similar perspective as her mentor, Hawtin. There are sixty odd tracks cut and spliced digitally from the international minimal-not-minimalocracy, but the end result is something shuffly, twitchy and pretty uneasy. It was also interesting to read in the press release that Magda is indeed the unfortunate grasshopper to whom the task falls to digitise the great blonde one’s record collection. I certainly feel her pain because I’m trying to do the same with loads of my vinyl (for assessment purposes only, I’m not keen to contribute to the much-awaited death of the thick black stuff anytime soon.) and it’s proving quite a task. One record I did manage to sort out and make available – for listening and assessment purposes only, I assure you - is Lee Jones’s 'Kinder Country'. Foolishly, I dismissed ‘Klatta’, the first release I received from Jones and his My My cohorts last year (was it really that long ago?), but they soon made amends with the wonky madness of ‘Serpentine’. Working on his own, Jones has gone for a far more relaxed, laid back groove, but the way that the melody flickers in and out of tune lends it an alluring eeriness. It’s a real summer soundtrack, unlike say, the glut of chill out releases that hit the shelves at this time of the year.
Finally, I’ll be playing at the Ice 9 night in Bodkin’s, Dublin this Friday night, so stop by and say hello if you are in the area.

Garden Of Delight

I’ve just spent a weekend in the sun, a rarity in Ireland, even during the summer, so I’m far less grumpy and cynical than usual. I was also at a bloody good festival on Sunday, the Garden Party. I’m not one to heap praise on promoters at the best of times, especially when they put on pedestrian line-ups that masquerade as festivals and fleece people with overpriced ticket prices.
However, this time, they deserve the kudos, at least for their inspired choice of location. It took place in a walled garden on the grounds of one of those rambling country piles that the British were so good at building for themselves duiring the 17th and 18th centuries (and the rebels were so good at burning down, but that’s another story!) all over our fair and green countryside.
The gardens were certainly put to good use - apart from the fact that the owners were going to use the money to restore the house and maintain the grounds, there were cheap massages (no, not that kind), tasty food (surely a first at a music festival), bean bags and a really good looking crowd.
These plusses made up for the fact that the bar shut at 10pm (the only real drawback) and the fact that I missed most of the acts that I wanted to hear – The Orb, Alexander Robotnick and Carl Craig. Blame it on the weather or the fact that I was pretty hungover from the night before, but we spent most of our time at the Bodytonic tent, where Ewan Pearson surprised with a more trancey than usual set, the Pogo DJs lashed out techno’s greatest hits from the past and present – ‘A Walking Contradiction’, ‘Acperience’ and Hardfloor’s version of Robert Armani’s ‘Circus Bells’ - before the Booka Shade guys came on and performed a set full of peaks and troughs, starting off with a mellow version of ‘Night Falls’ and a shit kicking rendition of ‘Mandarine Girl’ midway through. It was heartening to see a full tent freaking out  - especially when the first few bars of ‘Body Language’ kicked in - to what is still a pretty underground sound.
By the time 2 Many DJs got on the decks and started playing the same set we’ve heard for the last four years it was time to beat a hasty retreat back to Dublin and order some more sun cream…

Night Moves

I was hugely impressed by the turnout for the Dublin fundraiser for the Give Us The Night campaign. Close to 500 paying guests showed up and each room in the Music Centre (including those great little practice spaces where the breaks and drum’n’bass guys stole the show!) rocked to the sound of pretty much every style of electronic music. Note to happy hardcore fans: next time you’ll get your own room. Of course it finished way too early – hence the campaign! -  and it would be great if it could have gone on and on like the rest of our European neighbours.
It’s one of the realities of living in Ireland, but hopefully we can change that and I remain optimistic about our chances. There’s a general election coming up next year and I’m sure that all the opportunistic politicians will be looking for issues like ours to align themselves to. We’re keen to avoid it becoming a political issue though, but we aim to keep raising awareness about liberalizing licensing laws and bring it to a mainstream discussion platform. Already, the issue is being debated on political message boards like this one , so the signs are encouraging. In the mean time, if you haven’t signed our online mandate , please take a minute to do it now! Long overdue music update to follow tomorrow…