My Autumn Heart Mix

If you're still here, then many thanks for waiting. My blog, like a small and sleepy hedgehog, seems to have been hibernating for a few months. It crawled into a pile of dry brown leaves and snuffled itself to sleep.

My excuses are the inertia that often seems to come with the change of seasons; an increased focus on my other main hobby, messing about with film cameras; and a creeping indifference to quite a lot of 2010's music.

But it often only takes the discovery of one or two great tunes to get the metabolism back up to speed. In this case those are the tracks that wrap up this mix: It Takes a Muscle by Spectral Display, and Just A Bitter Love by the Dead Rose Music Company. Both are wonderful slabs of heart-on-the-sleeve emotional electronic disco.

I tried to make the pulse of this collection deep, and almost melancholy. 2 Late 4 U And Me and Pain In My Brain are to my mind two of the best bits of deep house you'll ever hear. There's also twinge of nostalgia I think that's appropriate to London's recent colder weather. Speedy J and The Orb both got heavy play on my Walkman as a teenager, and I've been listening to them lots again. Things get a little new-school-old-school ravey with I Got A Feeling, and Dirty Cash can move ANY dancefloor. Enjoy.

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Tracklisting:
1. Nicolas Jaar - Mini Calcutta 2. Lindstrøm & Christabelle - Love Sick (Four Tet Remix) 3. Isan - 64 Fire Damage 4. Space Dimension Controller - SH-8040 5. Jamie Principle - Waiting On My Angel 6. Bagarre - Dirty Love 7. Speedy J - R2D2 8. Moody - 2 Late 4 U And Me 9. Ladyvipb - Pain In My Brain 10. The Orb - U.F. Orb 11. Shit Robot - I Got A Feeling 12. The Adventures Of Stevie V - Dirty Cash (Eli Escobar Edit) 13. The Dead Rose Music Company - Just A Bitter Love 14. Spectral Display - It Takes A Muscle (Get A Room Edit)

Back In A Bit

Sheesh! Not only have I not posted for a bloody age, but I'm about to sod off without doing what I intended. I've been meaning (and trying) to make a new mix for about a month. But somehow it hasn't gelled. The mojo has gone AWOL.

The mix was meant to be taken out to the Nevada desert to gift to wild-eyed hippies at Burning Man. And also, of course, to be given to you lot. Turns out I'll have to think of something else to placate the dusty and unwashed Freaks of the Playa. For you guys, I've got some tunes I've been listening to a lot recently.

DOWNLOAD> JAMIE PRINCIPLE - WAITING ON MY ANGEL

Jamie Principle's Waiting on my Angel is one of those 'possibly the first house tune ever' kind of records. It's got a wonderful sense of alchemy to it. Glacial European new-wave has been melded with the campness of Prince for sweaty, outcast disco dancers in a basement on the wrong side of the tracks. But that's the beauty of the genesis of house. Circa 1984 it was being played off tape by Ron Hardy at the legendary Music Box in Chicago. It finally made it onto vinyl in 1985, with production by Frankie Knuckles. The two of them would storm on to make more bona fide early house classics like Your Love, and the totally filthy Baby Wants To Ride.

DOWNLOAD> FERN KINNEY - BABY, LET ME KISS YOU

I don't know much about Fern Kinney. The Mississippi soul singer had settled down as a housewife before a disco comeback at the end of the 70s. Baby, Let Me Kiss You is off her 1979 album, Groove Me. It's in the same camp as Donna Summer's I Feel Love, and Blondie's Rapture - though there's a more sexual playfulness here. It's gloriously bubbly electronic disco which flirts with you mercilessly, like the school tease. You can find it on the superb Balearic compilation Down To The Sea And Back - which is well worth buying.

BUY> DOWN TO THE SEA AND BACK

DOWNLOAD> MICHAEL NESMITH - CRUISIN'

Cruisin' is one of those tracks you'd instantly file in the 'I'd rather tempura my own testicles' corner of your brain if someone described it to you. It's the picaresque tale Lucy and Ramona journeying through LA with their friend Sunset Sam. The song is the 1979 disco-rap creation of the ex-Monkee, Michael Nesmith, and it could charitably be ascribed to his 'when will the acid wear off' career stage. That said, there's magic here. It's irresistibly funky, and the video has to be seen to be believed. This way happiness lies... a total leftfield dancefloor bomb.

Anyway, I'm off to the desert for three weeks. I'll have another crack at that mix when I get back. Toodle pip!

Summer In The City

Here's some music for urban heat. London's wonderful current spell of sizzle demands only one course of action.... move the boom box out onto the front step, grab a frosty bottle from the fridge, and sit enjoying summer pass by. These are tunes that just wouldn't feel right in the countryside. They need blaring car horns, yellow streetlights, and mile after mile of concrete to sound as they were meant to.

Quincy Jones' Summer In The City is perfect. The cover of the Loving Spoonful's most famous song has been sampled, pilfered from, and robbed blind umpteen bazillion times, but it still retains all its shimmery glory. Hazy keys, soporific bass line, purring female vocalist. It smells of blistered asphalt and lingering perfume.

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Buy the album from Amazon

Detroit's Underground Resistance label make tracks as uncompromising as music gets. Its signature sound is purist techno that often sounds like misanthropic machines locked in a perpetual diatribe against humanity. However, The Jaguar is the bunch at their most delicate and humane. This track still bumps and rolls, but the soft bubbling synths and swung percussion give The Jaguar a beautiful sense of yearning. Perfect for a night time drive along deserted fly-0vers.

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Buy the EP from Amazon

Attention all raving crew! Throwback is a scorcher. This could easily fit into any set of mongrel London bass music going back as far as 1991. Weirdly, despite its overpowering whiff of Croydon, it comes from Texas, and has only just been released. If there's an old pair of Reebok Classics lurking in your wardrobe, pull them out and get stepping. Then holler for a reeeeewind!

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Buy the EP from Amazon

And something sad to finish with. I'm a huge Nina Simone fan, but I'd never heard Baltimore until very recently. It's off her 1978 Baltimore LP and it's a reggae requiem for a dying city. Yup, Nina doing reggae. This Ex-Friendly edit from Nottingham's Justin Turford just gently turns up the dub a couple of skank levels, and adds a few swooshy effects. It draws the track out nicely and doesn't do anything to get in the way of Ms Simone's peerless voice. Melancholy magic.

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The Charmed Snake

Sometimes when a musician is on a winning streak you've got to assume there's some sort of supernatural shit going on. In the 1920s the blues guitarist Robert Johnson was rumoured to have sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in return for his fiendish talent. I suspect Tensnake might have made some similar Faustian pact.

I've already posted from his most recent EP with the dancefloor monster, Coma Cat. And I've used a couple more of his tracks in mixes that I've made. Let's say I think the fella's got some chops. He just doesn't do lacklustre.

So his latest creation isn't out yet, and can't actually be heard in full form. But the available snippet shows this particular snake's charm goes on giving.

He's taken last year's camp house bomb Reckless With Your Love by Azari & III and alchemised it into a stadium dance smash that would fit perfectly into a Now That's What I Call Music compilation from 1989. That's a good thing.

I can hear Soul II Soul in there. There's definitely some of Snap's The Power... and maybe some Pet Shot Boys too. It's got cowbell. It's got uplifting piano chords. It's got an early house bass line. For the love of all that's holy, there are even airhorns in there! This will be waaaay too cheesy for the purists, but they never have any fun.

Basically the tune could end up totally owning your summer. I just hope Tensnake still owns his soul.

I Wanna Go Back...

This was the last mix I ever did on vinyl. I think that was about 8 years ago now. I guess it's fitting that the content is nostalgic in nature too. All killer. No filler. Classic house music.

Chicago gave the world a wonderful thing in the mid 80s. That particular strand of machine-driven soul blew out of the Windy City, and changed the planet. House now comes from anywhere anyone has access to a drum machine or a computer. It's mutated and splintered and cross pollinated and distorted sometimes beyond recognition.

But in this mix I've used tracks from what I think is the golden age of house. Mr Fingers, Marshall Jefferson, Trax Records... that's the real deal. But also I've also used the European imitators who first picked up the baton and danced with it, those Britons, Germans, Italians who felt the beat and moved our feet. Rave on.

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Tracklisting:
1. Mr Fingers - Can You Feel It, 2. Marshall Jefferson - Open Our Eyes, 3. Don Carlos - Alone (Paradise Mix), 4. Jomanda - Make My Body Rock, 5. Professor Funk - Move Your Acid, 6. Inner City - Good Life, 7. Fallout - The Morning After, 8. Curtis McClaine & On The House - Let's Get Busy, 9. Royal House - Can You Party, 10. Glam - Hell's Party, 11. Gat Decor - Passion, 12. Sublime - The Theme (Sublime Dub), 13. Robert Armani - Circus Bells. 14. (Hardfloor Mix), 15. ?-?, 16. Rising High Collective - Fever Called Love (Hardfloor Mix)

Just Say No

Government agencies are always trying to come up with ways to keep us off the smack. They print leaflets, commission celebrities, send earnest young proselytizers into schools... It don't do shit. People are still getting high.

The thing is, the answer's been around for a while now but not one civil servant chump has twigged. Home Is Where The Hatred Is was on Gil Scott-Heron's 1971 debut album, and was covered by the soul singer Esther Phillips a year later. It's an utterly devastating song.

With Phillips wrapping her sweet, junkie's voice around it, the lyrics are like a rusty syringe to the heart. I can't think of anything else that matches this for desolate self-loathing. It would actually be unbearable if it weren't for her band's delicately funky restraint.

Seriously, play this to a bunch of impressionable teens and they'll stay cleaner than a spring breeze. Job done.

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Eyesdown

Bonobo's new single Eyesdown, is a classy package that manages to sound both timeless and bang up to date.

I bought it for the Floating Points remix, which was used instantly on my Musical Chairs Mix from three weeks ago. But the whole thing is a total gem, and I keep drifting back to Appleblim and Komonazmuk's treatment. This swings wonderfully deep and low. A stern chord progression builds the tension, while the sad vocal line and restrained flourishes of disco strings make this perfect for the melancholic dancer.

I really recommend buying all the tracks though. The original mix, and the aforementioned Floating Points remix drift through hazy sub bass, mournful brass, and a 2-step lope, while Warrior 1's effort injects a bit of carnival fire.

And if you're still feeling generous after that, Bonobo's album Black Sands, is out now on Ninja Tune. I haven't got that though, so I can't say what the whole thing's like.

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Bonobo - Eyesdown (Appleblim & Komonazmuk Remix) from The Milky Bar Kid

Buy it from Amazon.co.uk

Shari & Vari

I have a lot of time for Shari & Vari, the two ladies behind the awesome The Number 20 blog. Here's why:

~ The music they post is invariably cracking
~ They keep it brief (which I most definitely don't)
~ The blog looks great
~ They obviously have a lot of fun

Recently Shari, who I think is quite new to DJing, posted a mix. It's called Things Are Going To Get Easier, and it's a wonderful blend of camp and star-spangled electronic disco. That's a good many of my buttons pressed right there.

So well done Shari, and well done also for letting me post it here so you good people can hear it.

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Tracklisting:
Nicolas Jaar – Time For Us, NUfrequency – Fallen Hero (Motor City Drum Ensemble Remix), Fortune – Highway (Eli Escobar Remix), Acos Coolkas – Untitled, Ali Love – Love Harder (Prins Thomas Diskomiks), Chaz Jankel – You’re My Occupation (Fromage Remix), John Daly – This Is A Lonely Beat, KRUSE, Florian ft SAARA – Thrill (Vincenzo & Elmar Schubert’s Satinsoul Remix), Mario Basanov & Vidis ft Jazzu – I’ll Be Gone (Downtown Party Network Remix), Sebastien Tellier – Things Are Gonna Get Easier

The Musical Chairs Mix

I shouldn't be farting around with this. I should be packing. My plane for India leaves in a few hours and I've still got packets of wet wipes and hand sanitizer strewn all over my room. But I haven't done a mix for a while and wanted to lay down some of the music I've been enjoying recently. They'll hold the plane for me, right?

There's been a bit of a musical crisis going on inside my head in the past couple of months or so. I'm not feeling much of the disco that's been produced recently. There's the creeping feeling that I've heard it all before. I've been so in love with the form over the past 4 or so years that I'm taking this as a bit of a betrayal. In revenge I've been seeking solace in the icy embraces of dubstep and its myriad offshoots.

This is a mix that tries to get my old love, and my new one, in a room together to talk about how we can all work this one out. It starts all hushed and splintery, but gets warmer and groovier, and there's a even a party at the end.

No cover art yet - haven't got time. I'll do you some when I'm back. Hope you like it and see you on the flip side! I'll be the sunburned one.

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Tracklisting:
Fever Ray with Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid - Here Before, Mount Kimbi - Vertical, Bonobo feat Andreya Triana - Eyesdown (Floating Points remix), Joy Orbison - So Derobe, Bei Bei & Shawn Lee - Make Me Stronger (Floating Points remix), Dorothy's Fortress - Neon Cities, Pixeltan - Scatter, Skatt Bros - Walk the Night, Tensnake - Get It Right, Cymande - Brothers On The Slide (Bonar Bradberry edit), Pantha du Prince - Stick To My Side (Four Tet version), Massive Attack feat Hope Sandoval - Paradise Circus (Gui Boratto remix), Spaghetti Circus - Still Going, Friendly Fires - On Board (Joakim Remix)

Versions

When it comes to inventions, it's generally agreed that the wheel was a pretty good one. As such, any attempt to reinvent it has usually gone down badly. Unnecessary, is the usual criticism. Don't bother.

Luckily, music ain't like that. It doesn't matter if your song is great, someone is going to come along and have another go at it.

Often that reinvention is going to be a turgid pile of tosh. But sometimes a reinvention comes along that brings new life to the old. It isn't necessarily better, but it has things that the original didn't. That could be a different sense of space, a different mood, a different flow... whatever. So here are four remixes I'm really liking.

DOWNLOAD> Stoned Green Apples - Sugar K (Yura Yura Teikoku Remix)

Japan's psychedelic mavericks, Yura Yura Teikoku turn out a wonderful bit of doom-disco from the Stoned Green Apples' J-punk original.

DOWNLOAD> Spleen United - Suburbia (The Juan Maclean Remix)

The rubbery bass line in this remix from The Juan Maclean is going to have dancefloors losing their nuts. Chunky.

Massive Attack and Hope Sandoval - Paradise Circus (Gui Boratto remix)
++REMOVED ON REQUEST++
Gui Boratto puts some propulsion into Massive Attack and Hope Sandoval. This is sexy, uber-deep, spacious, and fizzy.

DOWNLOAD> The XX - VCR (Matthew Dear Remix)

Matthew Dear manages to make The XX sound fun! Some almost beatbox-like percussion, woodblocks, and other tasty bits and bobs really bring the funk to London's hipster darlings.

Too Slow To Disco

Is it Sunday yet? Because this is a mix on the prowl for a lazy Sunday afternoon. In fact, it's basically cooking you eggs and bacon, tucking your favourite newspaper into your hands, and phoning your mates to see who's up for the pub later. That's how much this mix has its Sunday shit locked down.

Berlin resident Marcus Liesenfeld, aka DJ Supermarkt, has very kindly let me post it here for you people, and I think you should take full advantage of his generosity.

It's a wonderful collection of 70s soft rock gems and Californian singer/songwriter grooves. Interspersed throughout are the kind of radio jingles that instantly transport you to a time and place where handlebar moustaches are a must, aviator shades are a plus, and you've just taken your dad's Mustang without asking if you could.

DJ Supermarkt describes the delight inside as:

...an ex-monkee rapping, a weird erotic christmas song by georgie fame, the 70s 'super-studio-group' the attitudes, who played on thousands of records, Ned Doheny, Alessi Brothers, Rupert Holmes, Sanford & Townsend Band, Valerie Cartere, Paul Davis and commercial breaks by frank zappa, jefferson airplane, spliff (the nina hagen band), plus lots more other forgotten diamonds. enjoy and take the trip.

It slips down real smooth and nice. Like a chilled Mimosa. Thanks Marcus.

DOWNLOAD> DJ Supermarkt - Too Slow To Disco Mix

Too slow to disco (softrock-disco- radio-dj-mix) by dj supermarkt

Cometh the hour, Cometh the man

Well that's a big fat phew! I was starting to get a bit sulky and petulant about my next post. Sometimes I go for a what seems like a worryingly long time without hearing anything to get really excited about. One starts to doubt one's faith... start cruising for other highs... contemplate foraging in bins. But then, WHAMMO! It all comes good. Cometh the hour, cometh these chaps.

Hot Chip's new album is out soon, and if it's all of the beauty displayed on Alley Cats, I'm going to be one happy punter. Alexis and Joe's voices blend perfectly as they so often do. Soothing keys, Arthur Russell-esque electric cello, and African sounding guitars combine in a deceptively simple composition. The lyrics are all about stroking stray cats, or something, and it's bittersweet and sublime.

It's been a long time since a new house track has excited me as much as Coma Cat has. Tensnake is a guy from Germany who channels the energy and enthusiasm of mid 80s Chicago, and fuses it with the best of Paradise Garage style disco and boogie. Not dancing to this is impossible. It's a wonderful testament to the durability of house that classic tracks like this are still being conjured up. I'm making this listen-only I'm afraid. Magicians like Tensnake deserve your money, so if you like it... buy it. It's out in the next few days.

Finally, everyone likes a bit of gay rape don't they? Well the Skatt Bros came up with a gay rape anthem. Recorded in 1980, I imagine Walk The Night was a bit of a hit in the sort of clubs where black leather dominates, and you don't want to look too closely at what's going on in the corners. The song's about a night prowler who'll do all sorts of unspeakable things to his prey. It's seedy, sinister, and very, very funky.

DOWNLOAD> Hot Chip - Alley Cats

PLAY ONLY> Tensnake - Coma Cat

DOWNLOAD> Skatt Bros - Walk The Night

Golden Afrique

To welcome in the new year, here's the opposite of snow. Don't get me wrong, I like snow. It's nice seeing London all covered in white, and there's much satisfaction to be had in the journalistic creativity put into such unexpected headlines as 'Snow Causes Travel Chaos'. But these are small pleasures.

Sunshine. Ah, sweet hot sunshine. Think of cycling in a t-shirt... cold beers in the park... the smell of barbeques... bronzed skin... the sound of crickets... lying with your eyes closed on the beach. Let's face it, if sunshine is round the corner, snow better pull up those shorts and jog on.

The bitch is though, sunshine ain't round the corner. It's about 4 months away, punks. So if you need a little sunshine advance these tunes might help. They're off an album that I listen to an astounding amount considering I barely understand a damn word being sung. Golden Afrique is a totally joyful compilation of west African pop from 1971-1983. The guitars chirrup, the trumpets swing, the syncopated rhythms shuffle and hop, and the voices soar. In short, it's like tipping your head to one side, raising an arm, and pouring a large jug of high-proof sunshine into that lug-hole of yours.

I know very little about these two artists. Bébé Manga is a Cameroonian singer, and Ernesto Djédjé was an Ivorian who pioneered a musical style rather wonderfully called 'ziglibithy'... and that's about as much as I can tell you. 2010 should really be the year that I crack into African music, because from the little I've heard there's some absolutely magical stuff to be discovered.

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You can buy Golden Afrique Vol. 1 from Amazon