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Bugged out

OK, so it’s been a long time – just under a week -  since the last post, but I needed a few days away from a computer screen and now I’m back, batteries recharged and ready to step once again into the fray. This was one of the biggest weekends in Dublin this year, but work and family commitments meant that I missed the gig I was meant to do for DEAF on Sunday and I only stepped out once for Steve Bug at Electric Shock in the Music Centre on Saturday night. Having heard him perform at the Poker Flat party at Sonar in 2005 and because I am the proud owner of an inordinate amount of the label’s releases -  check ‘Loverboy’ and ‘The Other Day’ album to hear how far ahead of the m*****l bandwagon Bug was - there was no way that I could have missed him, and for the odd hour or so that I checked him out, he didn’t disappoint. Tighter than tight mixing, jerky grooves with the odd vocal thrown over layers of 303s and dramatic chord sweeps combined with freaky ass shaking dancing made most other DJs I’ve heard this year sound dull and dated. It was great to see a Saturday night crowd in Dublin -  and the venue was close to full – not complaining that it wasn’t hard enough and getting off on the kind of music that is commonplace on the continent. It’s strange to comprehend that muscial tastes could conceivably be dictated by licensing, but if venues were allowed to stay open later in Ireland, then surely people wouldn’t be always seeking immediate musical satisfaction and would be willing to listen to a wider range of music throughout the night. One of the reasons that Bug and his peers have done so well in Europe and beyond is because their music lends itself perfectly to parties that go on and on and on. I have no doubt that if our licensing laws were extended, we would be seeing a lot more of Bug and his ilk in our city, but until the situation changes, we’ll have to keep dancing to a more instantaneous beat.

Vath's entertainment

Glad to see that Vath has finally become so iconic that someone with an awful lot of time on their hands has devoted a ‘make Sven talk’ site  to him. My favourite is ‘obergeil’, but I was a bit disappointed that his old Omen catchphrase, ‘a pill an hour keeps Sven at full power’ is missing…Speaking of 90s clubs, Philip Ryan, one of the best DJs in Dublin, has compiled and mixed 'Sounds from the Temple of Sound' , an homage to the great Dublin club, where Johnny Moy and Billy Scurry were residents. The Temple ran from the early 90s and finally shut its doors in 1996 as far as I can recall. (although I’m open to correction on this one because my memory of this time is a little hazy to say the least). Anyway, Philip’s selection reads like a definitive Temple playlist, with tracks from One Dove, Phuture, Secret Cinema, Aphrohead and Paperclip People, peaking with Ron Trent’s timeless ‘Altered States’. Ah, the memories… In his spare time, Phil also runs the excellent Cypher Music website, which is home to loads more of his own mixes and mixes by other Dublin DJs. Actually, I was thinking of turning this slot into a regular feature on the site, with people recommending mixes. Where possible, I can also give a little bit of background about the person doing the mix and the reason why I chose the mix. Too often mixes that get commercial releases are inferior to promotional mixes, live recordings and podcasts. One of the problems is being able to license the right tracks -  DJ Hell told a funny story about wanting to include Lil Louis’ ‘Blackout’ on his new mix, but couldn’t find the copyright holder. Then one weekend he was playing in Japan and by coinicidence someone handed him a copy of local magazine which was giving away a free vinyl EP that issue. Guess what track was included on the EP? – but too often labels and DJs play it safe to appeal to a wide audience. Of course,  these rules don’t apply here, so email me your suggestions…
PS, some of you emailed to say that you couldn’t access 'Maximize' by Rex The Dog, so here it is again…

To Hell and back…

Just spent some time this week in Berlin with DJ Hell to interview him for DJ Mag’s last ever cover story (under its current ownership at least). It was actually a good laugh, if somewhat surreal. Hell was charming, a totally different person to the tense, suspicious guy I encountered four years ago when he last made it onto the magazine’s cover. Maybe that time the fact that he was in his home town, Traunstein in southern Bavaria, made him wary of our presence and out intentions. I’m sure that small towns and cities anywhere in the world can be bitchy, back stabbing places -  just try living in Dublin! He was far more relaxed this time around, and we ended up going to a toy car racing event – sponsored by Mercedes, natch – where there was loads of free booze, gorgeous models and minor German TV soap stars prancing about, whom everyone ignored (the soap stars, not the models). At times, it felt like being in a German version of ‘Zoolander’, only without the tiny mobile phones and ridiculous costumes – although the daft haircuts and relentless pouting made up for it. The reason for the trip? Hell has done one of those ‘Misch Masch’ mixes and it’s bloody good. The tracklisting is heavy on classic techno and electro -  Dopplereffekt, Rob Hood, Derrick May, B12, Carl Craig’s famous ‘no drums’ remix of Dave Angel and Lil Louis’ ‘Blackout’, as well as some great newer stuff from Literon, Sebo K, Woody and Ame  -  how come they all have one word names? There’s only a small whiff of  electro house, but it’s the better end of that sound from Oliver Huntemann and Bodzin. Hell has gone to his pre-electroclash roots and it sounds all the better for it. He also slipped me a copy of an unreleased Italo mix he did for Playboy -  he said that his career highlight was dropping Patrick Cowley’s remix of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ at a Playboy mansion party just as Hugh Hefner was descending the stairs with three playmates on each arm(!) -  so watch this space for a cheeky d/l…

Single Life

OK, so you may have heard all about Audion’s Mouth 2 Mouth , but does it really deserve the hype? Certainly, it does a good job in rallying the troops, but I was far more impressed by the follow up on Spectral, by 2 AM/FM. It’s a collaboration between James T Cotton and D’Marc Cantu and Ace of Spades and Acid Planes are no-nonsense, heads-down acid assaults. The latter track in particular runs for close to quarter of an hour and ends up getting inside your head and using your brain as a football. This is the effect that Matt Dear was probably aiming for on ‘Mouth’, but methinks his Spectral colleagues have outdone him. Speaking of malfunctioning brains, it sounds like too many late nights and loads of chemical highs went into How Not To Be A Biscuit, the latest offering on Crosstown Rebels by upcoming Norwegian producers Ost & Kjex… the same label is also releasing the brilliant Pier Bucci’s Hey Consuelo with a new, more understated remix by Samim and the lovely Warp melodies of Instinct, while another Norwegian, Prins Thomas brings some heavy claps and spacey weirdness to bear on the  Disco Tek version of 20/20 Sondsystem’s ‘Tape’… Rex The Dog aka Jx is back on Kompakt with his fourth single, Maximize , an ode to the joys of raving if ever I heard one, while although part of the Cologne empire, Herve AK’s Taps of the Claps, forthcoming on  K2, is a more restrained affair. Remember, support indie labels and buy a copy of these releases once you have  finished listening to them (and if you like them, of course).

Read all about it!

Remember where you read first… Jesse Rose has been chosen by Get Physical to compile and mix the third installment of the ‘Body Language’ series. I’ve had a few listens to it and it’s radically different to the first two mixes by MANDY and DJ T... Alex Smoke is known mainly as a live act, but I’ve been enjoying his ‘Sci Fi Hi Fi’ mix on Soma, loads of classy Detroit techno from Juan Atkins and Rob Hood, the newer Euro-centric take on this sound from Smoke himself and Troy Pierce, some breaky electro - take a bow, Vienna’s Trust label - and even some dubstep. It’s a really imaginative mix, and I’m already looking forward to the next one, which will be from Andrew Weatherall… It looks like DJ Mag’s future (no pun intended) may be more secure than was reported here, there and everywhere online in the past week, and the number of interested parties that the mag’s owners, Future Publishing, are in talks with has hit double digits… If you read and believe what’s posted on the Mnml forum (www.mnml.nl), it would seems that Beatport is turning into the big bad digital distribution equivalent of the major label, and maybe that’s why there are mutterings of another rival service circulating at the moment. There are still an awful lot of great independent labels that don’t sell their wares digitally, but would there be enough to go around for a new entrant to compete with the likes of Bleep, Kompakt and Juno’s digital wing? Watch this space…Finally, will Umek win the Eurovision next year? It seems like a ludicrous claim, but he has been chosen to advance into the final round of the Slovenian national contest… whatever next, Ben Sims penning the England theme tune for the European Championship?

No butts, just I-Fs…

Hi, hope you are well. I spent last Saturday in the company of a room full of Dutch electro fans and probably some normal party people too checking out I-F. If you’ve never heard of the Dutch DJ/producer/activist then shame on you: he released ‘Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass’ in 1997 and the 'Mixed Up In The Hague' mix series (still my favourite electro mixes) and was doing tripped out spacey electronic disco a good few years before electroclash reared its cynical head. Speaking of electroclash, I got into a lengthy and occasionally quite entertaining debate over the past week about how it did or didn’t save dance music a few years ago at Pogo's section of the Bodytonic site under the 'Nu Rave' thread (if you’re not bothered to read it or to register with the site, you could probably tell already that I think it was nothing more than a load of chancers cashing in, a theory that didn’t fly an caused some dismay with some of the other people who posted on the topic…)
Anyway, back to I-F: he now runs the brilliant online radio station, CBS on a voluntary basis (he probably lives on what he earns as a DJ) and is getting ready for his label, the excellent Viewlexx, to enter the digital world. This was the second time that he played for the Electric City lads – the night was a collaboration with the Lunar Disko crew - and he played loads of stuff that appeared on the ‘Hague’ mixes as well as some Cybotron, rather surprisingly ‘Rej’ by Ame, and ‘Love N Music’, a recently released old school house track. All in all, it was a good laugh and great to see a full house for a proper underground night. My esteemed colleague Skkatter has posted some videos on his site and if you look closely enough, you can see me glowering in the corner in the second clip…

Tipping the iceberg

Here’s some stuff that I’ve been listening to a lot: Arctic Hospital: ‘Citystream LP’ [Narita] Narita is shaping up to become a great label: it’s already home to Anders Ilar and now it’s putting out an album by Arctic Hospital aka some guy called Eric Bray. I’ve no idea who he is or where he’s from (not that this really matters), but I love his take on techno, which is far less austere and more welcoming than the title suggests. It has all of the futuristic elements of Detroit, but it’s shinier, more metallic and somehow more optimistic or utopia-seeking than anything else I have heard in ’06. Listen to Oel to hear what I’m getting at - the percussion sounds like an automated production line in a factory, but there is a sense of brightness and hope,whereas the Detroit stuff that inspired it is often introspective, like the authors looked to an  inner rather than an outer space as is often claimed.
Anyway, I digress: the other album that I can’t get off my stereo at the moment is John Tejada’s ‘Cleaning Sounds Is A Filthy Business’. It marks the tenth anniversary of his Palette label and it must have been a difficult task to better any of his back catalogue. Tejada has never released a duff record, and he’s not about to slip up here. Some of the stuff can be listened to anywhere and his more Detroity/Warpy side comes to the fore on tracks like ‘What Happened To Manners’ and ‘Clever Bunch’, but there’s also no shortage of subtle dance floor tracks, like the sublime The Zone and ‘The End Of It All’…Thankfully, he has no plans to go into retirement as the press release to that last track suggested last year… speaking of coming out of retirement, I see that Weatherall and Tenniswood have released a best of (in as much as that term is applicable) of the Swordsmen’s work. For those that missed out first time round on the breath and range of their work, ‘Emissions Volume 1’ is an essential compendium of the work of two great British eccentrics  who were never in The Fall. I also love the My My debut album, ‘Songs For The Gentle’ and the first Mobilee compilation (although I have nearly all of the releases on vinyl), but I think that these releases deserve a separate post next week… stay tuned…

Noise annoys…

What’s going on with T.Raumschmiere aka German mentalist Marco Haas? For those of you suffering from short-term memory loss, he’s the whisky-swilling, spliff-smoking punk rocker who sports the kind of nasal piercing you’d normally find on a young bull. Remember ‘Monstertruckdriver’, the breeze block slab of techno noise that made Miss Kittin sound deranged and allowed her to briefly slip out of her self-obsessed windbag persona? How can you forget his 2005 album, ‘Blitzkrieg Pop’ and the accompanying feedback-drenched live shows? The last time I heard an update on Haas’s screwed up alter ego, the death rattle of his last single, ‘Sick Like Me’, was about to get used on ‘Nip/Tuck’ the hugely popular drama-noir about plastic surgeons in Miami, and it seemed like superstardom beckoned. That was about a year ago.

Given his track record, it would be difficult to imagine that his latest project, the ‘Random Noise’ album, consists mainly of hushed ambience and inoffensive white noise. Maybe it’s a reaction against years and years of producing noisy techno music - his label, Shitkatapult was doing an impressive line in broken, glitchy club tracks years before m*****l was trendy – or he just needs to chill out and give his larynx a rest, but this is the other extreme, too tepid and tame, and right at the end, there’s a reserved round of applause for over an hour’s worth on meandering. Someone please force feed this man a gallon of JD and a mountain of speed before he turns into one of the limp wrists that he has spent most of his career kicking against…

Blissed out in Berlin

I've made my mind up: I don't want to live in Berlin. I had toyed with the idea over the past few years because I have a lot of friends and connections there, it's a world city with cheap prices and because I speak German (blame it on my university degree), but having watched the 'Feiern' DVD recently, I decided that to protect my mental and physical well being, it would be better not to move to the German capital. 'Feiern' (it means 'celebrate' or 'party' in German) is a soon to be released documentary about the club/party scene in the city and it features interviews with some of the scene's well-known names. Villalobos and Luciano come across well enough - although Mr Nicolet gives his Chilean compadre a dirty look when he says that partying is like being part of a big happy family and why would you need kids? (Luciano has two children and is very much a family man); Thilo from Groove magazine's contributions about the infamous dark room in the Panorama Bar are hilarious, and the story about the gay couple who fall in love at a club and don't even notice that the lights are on and the music is off is quite cute. Apart from that though, there is something depressingly seedy about the rest of the contributors ( don't get me wrong: I like seediness as much as anyone else, but not four days a week). The girl who says that she feels like someone has died as people drop off and go home on the third day of non-stop partying needs to have a good long think about her life, and the gay guy who says he thinks it's cool that all the couches are dirty in the Panorama Bar because it makes him feel like a homeless person is funny for all the wrong reasons. Most tellingly,  nearly all of the party people say that they will never be able to find true, lasting love out on the dance floor in Berlin. That claim neatly sums up what's missing from the lives laid bare on 'Feiern': nothing is lasting, everything is transient. At some stage, the party ends, and as Ewan Pearson points out, the most important thing to remember is not to forget to go home. Unfortunately, it looks like that message has been lost on the motley crew that constitute the cast of 'Feiern'...