purpose built

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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…

Lovely stuff from Low Motion Disco.

Check the man’s blog here

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:

GREG WILSON @ WAREHOUSE PROJECT MANCHESTER 16.10.09 by Purpose B

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.

Mr Scruff & Kaidi Tatham ‘Fresh Noodles’ by Mr Scruff

Our fellow Mancunian beatblog friends the Disco Outcasts very kindly put together this KILLER selection of balearic disco goodness for our inaugural guest mix. And boy is this good! Balearic getaway gems lead seamlessly up to some heads-down belters:

Disco Outcasts – Doing Stuff & Things by discooutcasts

Manchester hero Stefano and rising star Leo make up the Disco Outcast duo – just check out this impressive biog:

“Stefano is a real legend in the Manchester music scene, having released records that sold in excess of 70,000 units and playing everywhere from the Hacienda to Glastonbury, from Ibiza to Reykjavík… Stefano has toured with acts such as Oasis and Run DMC, demonstrating he’s one of the most versatile DJ’s around. Leo has quickly become one of the city’s most exciting talents, with a record collection reminiscing those who are twice his age. His technical ability has allowed him to impress many a veteran, dubbed junior disco amongst his peers. Leo is the brains behind Manchester’s legendary Phuture parties, as well as holding residency for Ibiza’s notorious Zoo Project crew.”

The pair offer up their electric eclecticism every Saturday night at Manchester’s kitsch disco dive The Purple Pussycat, 19 Backstreet (just off Deansgate) – packing them in every week. You really need to get there.

Next guest selection on the way soon!

Speaking of disco, this has got me HOOKED. A deep melodic groover from the consistently good Bearfunk cave – Ronda give us “Forlana” on the Hibernation vol. 1 sampler. Have a listen here and get ready for the drop at about 4 mins (how good has sound cloud turned out to be eh?!) And check the bearfunk back catalogue at the label’s home.

Go buy it here or here, or the bears will wake up and come find you.

As Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton point out in their excellent, must-read history of the beat slinger, the term “disco” used to represent a thriving, edgy and party-loving community – dance music’s first melting pot, which through its own success, was swallowed up by the mainstream. Purged of its soul, the powers that be detached disco from memories of deep, discrimination-free warehouse parties to replace it with images of builders, indians and their mates, and eventually retro themed venues with giant pictures of David Hasselhoff, the overlord of cheese.

The new breed is a far cry from the manufactured drivel – with razorsharp dancefloor friendly edits, reworks and productions sparking a renewed appreciation of the raw energy of early disco music. I don’t really pay much attention to genre labels to be honest. The “nu” tag isn’t well liked, for the obvious reason that it sounds pony (see: nu metal, nu rave). The creators seem to prefer to avoid tags altogether for a scene with no name, maybe to keep the nu disco bandwagon rolling away to one side. Disco-not-disco? Cosmic? Who cares. Genres soon become parodies of themselves anyway, and the best music always crosses the boundaries that we use to identify ourselves more than our music.

The solid underground music arguably never went away. The scene has been bubbling for a good few years now, and recently the mainstream has begun to sit up and take notice again. Inevitably we’ll see more and more disco “lite”, through the time-honoured commercial raping of anything creative. Or, just maybe, we don’t have anything to worry about this time round.

Also check this solid rework that blends in and out with the Loleatta Holloway original (respect to you Mr Scrimshire).