slow day

blah! my work day is going slow here, so i think i'll amuse myself by typing some random-ness here.

The Wire magazine have a new blog going called The Mire, over at http://www.thewire.co.uk/themire/
I don't think they officially announced it yet, but Simon Reynolds posted a link on his blog, so at least if anyone gets in trouble for telling you, it'll be him, not me! :)
Their latest piece is about one of The Heatwave refits of Kelis' "Trick Me", which can be downloaded from the heatwave site. It's well worth spending time going through the Heatwave blogs' music section, as theres loads of nice little gems.

I've been listening to a lot of italo and disco this week. Saturday night, after the lastfm gig, i went along with some friends to see Heartbreak play at Lasermagnetic, which is held at a shoreditch club i'd never been to before called Sosho. The actual club is pretty ace, nice and roomy with two floors and a crisp sound system. The two DJ's Neil and Johnny were playing some amazing music, and totally gave me the disco fever again.
I've always loved my Larry Levan and NYC early style disco, but had never really checked out much of this current space disco/italo revival. With my monthly emusic subscription renewed on sunday, i downloaded a bunch of Italians Do It Better releases, the After Dark compilation, Glass Candy and The Chromatics albums. Some of it is excellent, like Glass Candys' 'Rolling Down The Hills', and a lot of it more so-so, but definitely a nice addition to the library.
The other compilation i got was the Clone Classic Cuts album, made up of very similar material to the Serge mix i posted a week or two back. Some of it is incredible, particularly the second half of the album where its all early house/acid classics like Fingers INCs' "I'm Strong", Rodney Barkers' "House Girl" and Mike Dunns' "So Let It Be House".

Other emusic downloads were the two Darkstar releases on 2010 records. I think both releases came out a while back, but are getting a lot more attention due to their recent release on Hyperdub. I had bought the Hyperdub ones recently too, but i must say i'm not feeling any of the releases too much. On the Hyperdub release i really didn't like the vocodered vocals, even tho the music is pretty decent, but yeah, i guess its just the vocals that kill me, just a little too coffeetable like, and very similar to Various Productions material. I also bought the new Kode9 and Spaceape release, Konfusion, which is really good, just not too groundbreaking.

aiight, well, i think its late enough i can sneak off a wee bit early from work now! laterz...

Labels: blogs, boredom, clone, disco, downloads, heatwave, ramblings, reviews, the wire

Friday, April 4, 2008

weeeekender

yes! weekend is here again!

tonite could be a long one:
it was Mat/Fisk's birthday on tuesday and he's having a drinks tonite which should be fun. The Marcia lads are down in London for the weekend too, so gonna hook up with them for University of Dub later tonite as well. I've never been, and even though i'm balking at the £12 entrance fee, i want to go along and check it out - heard so many good things about it. hopefully should be some relaxation for the rest of the weekend though as its been a hectic one this week!

Heres a couple of downloadable mixes i've come across this week:
Serge doing a mix of Clone Classics records, all nicely proto-house/italo stuff, super good!
http://alainfinkielkrautrock.blogspot.com/2008/03/clone-classics-mix.html

Hudson Mohawk mix via the North South Divide's regular podcast series:
http://www.northsouthdivide.com/podcast/nsdpodcast_270208_wireblock.mp3

Labels: clone, downloads, fisk industries, hudson mohawke, marcia, mixtapes