Mix Time: Shoreditch Trauma

 

OK, first, I know that Duckie, that bizarre electro/retro/arty/queer Vauxhall club, isn’t in Shoreditch, but I was aiming for a slightly edgier vibe to the mix that usual - and yet not be po-faced.

Soooo, when the lovely Ant invited me to his 40th birthday a couple of weeks ago and encouraged me to DJ, I thought I’d make him a mix that he would like. He’s a Duckie boy, and we’ve not yet had a chance to go there together (it’s not really Andrew’s thing, you see. Duckie is an acquired taste, it seems!).

Anyway, this is the suite of songs I began with. Not funky house as usual, more edgy, but not frighten-the-horses edgy. Even still, a chap asked if I could please play some Freemasons because this was ‘thrash metal’ (not looking at anyone in particular, Soulwax).

See what you think, and happy birthday once again, Ant!

Tracklist

• Destroy Everything You Touch * Ladytron
• Heartbeats (Rex The Dog Remix) * The Knife
• Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above  * Cansei De Ser Sexy
• Crazy Logic * Arty Fufkin (mashup of Gnarls Barkley, Supertramp, Rockwell & The Who)
• Collarbone * Fujiya & Miyagi
• Jimmy * M.I.A.
• I Feel Love * Usha Uthup (utterly deranged ‘cover’ of Donna Summer classic)
  
• One More Try (feat. Antony) * My Robot Friend
• Young Folks (feat. Victoria Bergsman) * Peter Bjorn and John
• Bonnie And Clyde * Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot
• The Eraser * Thom Yorke
• What Else is There? (Trentemøller Remix) * Röyksopp
• Standing In The Way Of Control (Soulwax Nite Version Mix) * The Gossip
• E Talking * Soulwax
• Hustler * Simian Mobile Disco (a track of the year?)
• Frank Sinatra * Miss Kittin & The Hacker
• Overpowered (Seamus Haji Mix) * Róisín Murphy
• I’ll Be By Your Side * Sally Shapiro 

Download Shoreditch Trauma (Remastered mp3 76mins, 75MB) [mediafire link]

Whither Joe Chester?

He never calls, he never writes. He hasn’t updated his MySpace since May. He leaves us with one fantastic album in 2005 and then he buggers off. That’s a very long time to leave us thirsty for more sublime melodic on-the-verge-of-overproduced indie/rock/pop, don’t you think?

I’ve blogged about the marvellous Joe Chester before, and now I’m getting a tad impatient for more sunkissed intelligent layered pop. Nobody else seems to be doing that well, you see.

I managed to get some fab doohickey plugin for Firefox to download one of the tracks streaming on the aforementioned MySpace area. It’s called The Bodies Start To Move and it’s utterly wonderful. I thought I might share (don’t worry Joe’s record company, it’s encoded at a very underwhelming 96kbps, so anyone that likes it will want to purchase it. Or download it illegally a a higher quality, whatever.

Talk to me, Joe.

Download The Bodies Start To Move (96kbps(!) 3.2MB mp3) [Mediafire link]

And here is the wonderful Anyway from the debut album. [guilt free mp3]

Another Nail In…

Look at last.fm’s most played tracks this week. The top 10 is made up entirely of new entries; this is unprecedented. The CD is on it’s way out, pop kids. We are witnessing the beginning of the end.

And that’s OK. Hard drive space is becoming ever-cheaper so we will be able to have as much stuff as we like in uncompressed format. Already I’ve noticed that I’m encoding at higher rates, and lots of that stuff that I download is also encoded at high rates.

Well done, grumpy old Radiohead! (Oh yes, the album is alright too, but you probably know that as it seems everyone downloaded it last week.)

The Mercy Drill: Prefab Sprout vs The Drill

In a spectacular fit of procrastination, I decided to opt out of study for my course and instead opened a lovely Bordeaux and have a go at finishing the mashup I began months ago.

Prefab Sprout are genius and Jordan: The Comeback is probably the best thing they’ve ever done. One of the zillion tracks there is called Mercy and it’s largely acappella with some sparse guitar strums here and there. The Drill by The Drill is an insistent, nagging full-on progressive house track with no vocals and is a bit scary.

Mercy is 1min 23 secs and The Drill is 6 mins 49. Mercy comes from a ’song suite’ about redemption, religion and the devil realising that he can’t be forgiven because he is needed to give man free will. Matt Schwartz’s last track as Dada was about offering to eat someone’s ice cream as long as they licked his lollipop. Could these be fused? As soon as I discovered they are both in the same key, I reckoned ‘why not?’

Anyway, this is my first attempt as a mashup, so be nice. I’m not 100% pleased with it at all, but I want to get it out there. I may revisit it another time.

Download The Mercy Drill (Prefab Sprout vs The Drill) (10MB mp3) [Internet Archive link]

Kitty!

More at http://xkcd.com

DJ Chuck on the decks (ok, laptop…)

DJ Chuck on the decks (ok, laptop…), originally uploaded by Enda P.

Yay! I finally got to perform as a DJ in London! What fun! The people who lived nearby complained about the noise!! Some gay boys kept demanding the Freemasons! Some boys pogoed crazily when I played Destroy Everything You Touch by Ladytron! More!!!

Sorry about the dearth of posts of late. Work is going to continue being exhausting til the week after next, and it’s coming up to a major assignment in my OU course.Normal service should be resumed at the end of the month!