Here’s the first Local mix. Recorded on-the-fly at Local HQ, fellow resident Diesler brings the first 30mins, reflecting the jazz/funk/beats side of things, and I take over for the second 30 with a house-ier sound. We’ll be getting together each month to give you a taste of what we spin down at our sessions at Cord (1st Thursday of every month! Plug plug!)
We’ll be joining the dots between jazz, soul, hip-hop, funk, house and beyond – paying homage to dusty classics as well as the future sounds they inspired.
We hope you enjoy, and look forward to seeing you all down at our next one!
So…2012 is off to a good start. Putting on a new session with man Diesler at Cord, a great venue in the heart of the Northern Quarter, Manchester. We’ll be at the musical helm every 1st Thursday of the month, weaving between soul, funk, latin, disco, hip hop, house and all sorts in-between.
Expect sounds to warm your souls and wash away early-week blues!
Good people, music with feeling – this is us adding our own square on the warm fabric that makes Manchester great.
The New Year is nearly here, and what better way to kickstart this blog for 2012 than to look back on a cracking year of music. Here are 10 bits I loved during 2011 – in no particular order. Too many to choose from! 2011 best of turntable mix soon-come too. Happy New Year!
A steel-drum killer from Jamie XX – check his rework album with Gil Scott Heron too.
Massive track from our friends at Wolf Music – such a good year for those boys. Could easily have gone for tracks by KRL or Greymatter. ‘Alllll IIIII Dooooooooo!!!!’
Mr Terje proves once again than he’s not just an edit king. Big synth key change. Hands up.
Nuff drums from Julio Bashmore. Was tight between this and ‘Father Father’, but that military rolling beat had me playing this A LOT all year
Every DJ Kicks artist has to produce a track to go with their mix, and MCDE didn’t disappoint. Best intro to a track all year.
Huuuuuge track from Chris Duckenfield. Gospel beatdown smiles-all-round business. Love.
Dropping the tempo – tough to choose one off the great “Within and Without’album.
Another awesome slow one – Bon Iver follow up with a brilliant self-titled album. Lovely video too.
Last of the lot… balearic goodness from White Elephant, a collaboration between Jim Baron, Benjamin Smith of Smith & Mudd fame and Chris Todd (Crazy P). Check the Mark E remix too.
Wait, here’s some more Wolf howlings as a bonus – it’s a music cliche but 2012 is set to be an olympic year for KRL
Honourable mentions…
Caribou/Daphni
James Blake
Christophe
Dead Rose Music Company
Martyn
Move D
J-Rocc
Floating Points
Suzanne Kraft
Nocturnal Edits
Boof
Begin
Eddie Murs…
Some beautiful street art from Philladelphia. Murals should be done like this – great thick lines and typefaces. Lovely style. Go have a gander: aloveletterforyou.com
It seems like settling in to a new decade has happened pretty quickly. Maybe that’s because there were a lot of forgettable goings on in the “naughties” (no-one ever did come up with a better name, which says a lot). Purpose Built has gone all 2010 with a bit of a new look, and to mark this new start, one of the Godfathers of dance music in the UK has very kindly given us a live mix to share with you.
It’s been hard to steer clear of the shallow but sprawling pile of “reality” music over the last decade but fortunately the underground caverns have produced a big store of quality, soul-filled records. Fortunately Mr Greg Wilson untangled his headphones to come out of dj retirement in 2003, to carry on where he left off in showing us the way to this dancefloor treasure. His sets over the past few years – from the Bestival to a long-overdue Radio 1 Essential Mix – have satisfied his old faithful and won over younger heads at the same time. His trademark razor-spliced edits of yester-year sound as fresh as his new interpretations, and have influenced a new generation to fire up Ableton and re-work disco, funk, boogie and electro groovers for the 21st Century.
Greg was a pioneer the first time round (he was one of the first DJs in the UK to mix 2 records together don’t you know: see for yourself!), and is without question one of the key players of the latest disco revival, as well as one of the most genuine characters in the game. This mix is Greg’s appearance at Manchester’s mighty Warehouse Project last November… It hasn’t seen the light of day before now, and features plenty of his own edits, so get it going through your speakers:
Some say that originality is dead in music – that fewer creators are pushing things on – but in my book, fresh edits of past sounds educate the young about the old, pointing towards hidden gems. In our age of throw-away culture, music as commodity, we need to get back to the stories behind the beats. I grew up with vinyl. I get how great it is, that it’s hard to grow attached to an mp3, but if our ipods open up new ears to the massive store of musical greatness and the lives behind it all, reality might just stay real, and music might still have feeling for a good while yet.
Click here for Greg’s myspace, check his excellent site Electrofunkroots for more of his backround story and dancefloor history, and grab some of his tasty edits + more mixes from his Soundcloud page.
Without getting all fanboy, every Prime Numbers release so far has found its way onto the record shelves at PB Towers. Not least because I’m a sucker for design gimmicks (they’re spelling out the label name with scrabble-like letters on every 12″ sleeve, as well as going up the prime number scale). The preview below is the next piece (E11), and features none other than Mr Scruff, one of Stockport’s finest exports. He’s enlisted legend Kaidi Tatham on keys & flute, for a track that has that trademark Scruff bounce but less of his usual bass wobble. Instead the sound is a more stripped back, slo-mo house affair. Certain to get them to get a move on. Drops on 30th November. And apparently, as it’s a split artist ep, we can expect Andres and Motor City Drum Ensemble as well! Triple Word Score.
