Electronic music old and new
The current lockdown has given me the opportunity not only to work on some new music and record some mixes, but also to sift through my archive of tunes. I quietly set up a Bandcamp page last year to make some of my old music available, and over the past few weeks I've added a… Continue reading Reissues & Bandcamp bits
I'm notoriously slow when it comes to recording DJ mixes, but over the past few months I've been unusually productive by my usual standards. Aside from the Drum & Space Redux mix that I posted at the weekend, here's what else is available now: Origin Podcast These guys from Slovenia reached out after hearing my… Continue reading Some recent mixes
In 1995 I recorded the first of a series of mixtapes featuring some of the drum & bass records I’d started buying obsessively. I was a 16-year-old with a set of cheap belt-drive decks in a suburban Cardiff bedroom, whose burgeoning interest in techno and house was rapidly expanding in all directions. UK bass music… Continue reading Drum & Space Redux
Here’s the first in an unapologetically nostalgic sub-series of my Sunday Selections mixes devoted to ‘golden era’ deep UK techno. I have to admit I was feeling pretty miserable about the state of the nation last week; digging out the records that blew my mind in the early/mid-90s transported me to happier times and I… Continue reading Golden Era Techno, Part 1
Much like his former 4hero partner Dego, Marc Mac has been steadily ploughing his own personal furrow through post-broken-beat music, from the politicised hip hop of his sample-driven ‘beats & knowledge’ mixtapes to the organic Detroit-inspired techno of his long-running Nu Era project. This year’s Fourth Kind album is a hard-to-pigeonhole blend of tight live… Continue reading 18 for 2018, #11: Fourth Kind
Sneaking onto my list of the year's best records just in the nick of time is this seven-track debut EP from a 23-year-old artist which blows most of 2018’s music out of the water. The standout cut is probably Rounded, which updates the classic dub techno template with fizzing breakbeats and bowel-quaking bass blasts, but… Continue reading 18 for 2018, #7: Perko – NV Auto
Another belter from the mighty Firecracker crew was this four-track EP by Edinburgh’s all-round good egg Gavin Sutherland. It includes a vintage from-the-vaults house gem in the shape of Late Feeling Yourself - which I’ve been desperate to own ever since hearing it dropped on a DJ mix a few years back - alongside three new… Continue reading 18 for 2018, #5: Other Lands – Pattern Transform
I dunno, you wait three years for a follow-up to a brilliant album and then two beautifully packaged 12”s turn up at once. This year we were blessed with new music from the mighty Linkwood after an extended radio silence following the 2015 Expressions LP, and it was well worth the wait. The Night Theatre… Continue reading 18 for 2018, #3/4: Linkwood
Here’s a producer who hasn’t been all that prolific recently but has clearly been hard at work honing his craft to perfection. This six-tracker covers various stylistic bases, fusing London bass music influences with hi-tech sound design and an almost IDM feel in places. These are not obvious club tracks, but they come alive at… Continue reading 18 for 2018, #2: Joy O – 81b
So here's something I've been meaning to do for a long time - a mix of tracks on Headspace and Emoticon, the labels I ran with Raeph Powell from 1996-2006. Since the whole operation kind of predates the internet as we now know it - none of this stuff is available digitally, and probably never… Continue reading Headspace & Emoticon Retrospective
Nothin' But Magic 