blooooooc!

first day back at work after Bloc, and don't actually feel too bad!

Friday, we arrived at the Pontins around 8pm, just before the buses arrived with droves of revellers, so we managed to get checked in quite quickly; Thanks to Derek and Lisa, from the Wire, who i was rooming with, we got a pretty decent vip room - when i say decent, i only mean comparitively so!

Already the crowds of people were looking pretty mashed up and messy, which was pretty much how they were for the whole weekend! Musically, on friday night, the only thing i got really into were the Skull Disco DJ sets from Appleblim and Peverelist, but it was a long fun night anyhow.

Saturday, on a little sleep, we somehow made it out of the chalet for 3pm to see Christ playing, which turned out to be excellent, the sound system totally did his music justice and even so early on the day, there was a good turnout. Rustie was also on pretty early, around 5pm i think - he was fscking awesome again. The saturday evening definitely had the best lineup, and I caught a few really good shows - Monolake (with no sign of T++!) played an amazing set, which may well have been one of my highlights; the other highlights for me personally were Kode 9's set, Skream DJ set, and The Bug's live show, and then.. wow.. Juan Atkins was stunning. The second track he dropped was by Redshape, to which i went a bit nuts, but yeah, fully plus8 banging techno and soo good!

Sunday checked out some of Boxcutter, which was better than i was expected, but the decision was made to drive back on sunday eve and have a whole day off on monday rather than travel home on monday.

A great fun weekend, all in all, but on reflection, i think the festival itself was quite lacking - there didn't seem to be much effort put into making it an overall good experience, even down to the festival program being really cheaply designed, and compared to the small collectible packs you get from ATP, didn't seem worth holding onto, just a badly designed four page A5 booklet with adverts. With the abundance of festivals these days, I feel if you want to make something special, you have to make a good deal of effort and think about the details, rather than just a good lineup and bringing 2500 people to a kinda skanky holiday park. still - quite fun!

Labels: bloc, festival, rant, reviews

Thursday, March 13, 2008

glesgie - numbers - redshape - subclub

its already thursday again, and only getting round to doing an entry about last week!

So last friday, i hopped on a train back home to Glasgow. Went straight over to my friend Pat's house who was busy concocting some amazing homemade dinner and desert to set us up right for the evening ahead. Bunch of us headed down to MacSorleys for some pre-Numbers drinks, and we hooked up with a few people - good to catch up with Dave Erstlaub, and also got to meet Ali Gravious for the first time - we managed to talk him into joining us at the Sub Club!

The Sub Club was our club of choice back in the early 1990's, when we had first started going out - it wasn't as techno as Tin Pan Alley, it was the more "sophisticated" club! Loads of excellent memories are wrapped in nights out at parties like Joy and Atlantis, so it was ace to come back again, and to have Numbers rocking the place out. Dave/Production Unit and Ruardih/Village Orchestra were on the decks all evening and dropping utter bombs, the dancefloor was heaving and the atmosphere was excellent. When Redshape took to the stage, the place went pretty wild, and his set was so good - he looked totally in control behind his setup, wearing his red mask, all concentration and enthusiasm.

Saturday we went along to The Ivy for Miso with Konx Om Pax and Mike Dred DJing which was a nice follow up, but we weren't up for a full-on night out again, and declined to go see Luke Vibert at the Soundhaus. Was good to catch up with Tom/Konx Om Pax though, and theres talk of us doing a split 12" with him and The Village Orchestra, which would be amazing.

All in all, an excellent warm-up for BLOC this weekend! Ouch! Tonite we're heading out to an event put on by my dayjob, Last.fm, with Heartbreak headlining, an excellent italo house band by my friend Ali Renault. I think i've been roped in to do a video interview with them before the show! I'll post a link to it next week when i'm back from Bloc.

Other bits and bobs - Twerk is due to do the mastering on "Magnetism" tomorrow, so hopefully that should get finished over the weekend. Mary Anne Hobbs played one of the tracks from our upcoming Funckarma 'Stub Dane EP' on her show on tuesday. You can hear that streaming for a week if you head on over to her webpage at the beeb. And.. we're working on a makeover for the HPLL site; Mat/Fisk was showing me the mockups for it yesterday, and it looks amazing! I'm looking forward to seeing that go live.

Labels: bloc, erstlaub, glasgow, gravious, konx on pax, mary anne hobbs, numbers, production unit, redshape, village orchestra

Friday, February 29, 2008

upcomings and a month of gigs

First thing: "Magnetism, That Electricity.." is now well and truly under way!
I got all finished tracks, and they're all damn ace! They're now with Twerk being mastered for vinyl. Approx timeline is around 6 weeks - they'll take about a week to be mastered, then the redbook discs will be sent back to me, i send them on to the pressing plant, and if everything goes well, we get 300 copies of shiny double disc heavyweight audio goodness back!
I got some supernice flyers printed up for the release, which should be in the Hyponik flyer packs at the upcoming Bloc weekender - look out for them in your chalet if you're there.

And... super BIG news! I've been dying to announce this, but wanted to make sure we had it all in hand first - FUNCKARMA - yes, the genius Funcken brothers, Don and Roel, also known as Cane, Shadow Huntaz, and Quench - we have a 5 track 12" EP in the works by them named 'Stub Dane EP', which should be out very shortly after the "Magnetism.." release - all the tracks are finished, and are so fucking good its unbelievable - dark, off-kilter, heavy instrumental hip hop with a unhealthy overload of bass. Riffing on the idea of dubstep, basically these 5 tracks are Funckarma's take on dubstep.
If you head over to their site at http://www.funckarma.com/ you can hear one of the tracks in their flash player on the site. Again, its gonna be another heavyweight vinyl release!

aiight, well, almost time for the weekend! In fact, this is the start of a rather amazing month of music coming up - tomorrow sees Rustie here in London with Cylob, sunday Ikonica is playing; tuesday is Autechre; wednesday is the Magnetic Man gig, a collab between Skream and Benga which could be either amazing or total shit!; friday i'm off up to glasgow for Redshape at Numbers with Production Unit and Village Orchestra; and then the following weekend in Bloc! ouch!

[photo taken by Merlijn Hoek]

Labels: bloc, funckarma, gigs, glasgow, magnetism, production unit, twerk, upcoming releases, village orchestra, vinyl