Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Armin Van Buuren… I always knew he was the nice guy of the Dj world and this just confirms it….
His thoughts about how hard it is to warm up 5 people is spot on and is a massive respect for all djs who play because they love the music. Actually after hearing this, I’m rethinking setting up Startupbar again.
Found via Simon Lumb
The geometry set part2 by Cubicgarden on Mixcloud
Concept is simple, take a selection of tunes which are something to do with geometry in some way, then bust out a mix. If you think you can work out the link with geometry for each tune, feel free to comment below. Oh and part 1 is here.
Hope you enjoy…
Been a long time but I have decided not to upload every complete mix I do, just the good ones.
So here’s the Summer is brewing a storm mix, which is very true up here in Manchester right now
Its been a long while since I’ve uploaded a mix to Mixcloud or even Soundcloud. So I decided to throw together a mix on the pacemaker and stick it up. Its a strange mix of some classics and some new tunes. Nothing over thought, just good music mixed together…
I present the Satisfaction zero mix
Were at it again… The startup bar is back in full force.
This time we have 4 djs, starting up at 9pm and finishing at 2am. This Friday (22nd June) and every Friday (except maybe next week, 29th July TBC).
If your in Manchester and out on Friday night, you can’t do much better than experience the House, Electro and Trance played by some great up-shots in the Manchester scene… Feel free to RSVP here.
Hope to see you all there…
When I first moved to Manchester, I hoped to hear more trance… There wasn’t that much in London and to be honest London’s never really been a city for Trance. So with the move, the hope of trance. I mean all those great super clubs such as Gatecrasher, Cream, etc are from around the north of england.
But its not happen… I’ve been to a couple of nights run by Rong… but its gone quiet.
So in my usual way I don’t like to stand by and let it go. Instead I’ve setup my own night at Arcadia on Great Ancoats Street.
Of course its not just me, its Simon Lumb better known as Dirty Si is my partner in crime on this jump into the unknown. I’ve not played out for a while now but a long time ago I use to play regularly in Bristol but running your own night (even a bar night) is something else.
Others DJs are going to join us and we’re looking at going every week… Expect flyers, surprises and a full on promotion soon enough…. Now we just need a name for the night. I’m backing “Startup.”
I also switched from soundcloud to mixcloud, which unforgivable doesn’t have the option to download the actual mix like soundcloud use to. But I expect I’ll upload it somewhere else in the near future for those who want it on there portable music player.
So here’s the first effort… I bring you my appetite for disruption mix.
This is my latest mix on my pacemaker. Lots of new tunes and some classics returns.
Its known as just the geometry set, but why? Well most of the mix has something to do with geometry in some way. If you think you can work out the link in each tune, feel free to comment below.
You may have noticed this is also a much shorter mix that I usually do but it didn’t feel the need to be long and drawn out.
Ladies and Gentleman, I present The Geometry Set…
The Geometry Set by cubicgarden
The wrong end of irlam walkabout mix by cubicgarden
Another mix by myself (Dj Cubicgarden). This time its the wrong end of irlam walkabout mix. As you can imagine I did this while walking around Irlam (yes its a real place, near Manchester) and I kind of got a little lost. It was certainly the wrong end of Irlam, as the kiddies started gathering wondering why I was there, and what this weird thing I was clutching was (the pacemaker). Anyway, I made it out of irlam safely but unfortunately without my scooter, which also now needs a new battery.
The mix is far from perfect but its an enjoyable mix of trance. There’s a lot of new stuff mixed in with some old favorites. The problem with walking around doing a mix is you can’t see the screen very well when selecting tunes and things like buying a ticket or showing the inspector your ticket can really put you off the pace of a mix.
Anyway, hope you all enjoy it, here’s the playlist…
The secret garden sunshine mix by cubicgarden
So my latest mix is online, I’m sorry to say I uploaded while at TedXSheffield (it was break time and the wifi was pretty fast). I got to take the wifi as it comes because it looks like I won’t get connectivity till the end of the month now.
As always the mix can be downloaded from soundcloud if the flash player doesn’t take your fancy or you want to listen to it on the go. I would upload a OGG version (the pacemaker defaults to ogg actually, so creating a mp3 version requires extra time and effort) but soundcloud don’t really support versions of the same stuff, I’m considering going back to blip.tv for media uploading. The playlist is below, Yes I really like Thomas Bronzwaer, he’s got a style of trance which really plays to my ear, this is also the reason for Collider twice.
This mix was recorded on my pacemaker while sitting outside in the sunshine of my new shared garden at Islington Wharf. Not my best mixing but entaining and well worth a listen. Thanks to Simon Lumb (@dirtysi) for the new Gouryella remix. I love Gouryella and this remix is pretty true to the original in lot of aspects. Enjoy…
I had a listen to all of my mixes I recorded while in Hospital, and this is certainly the best mix of them all.
This one is certainly the best sounding of the bunch which includes the the amazing recover mix, the outta of hope mix and of course the pulse of a nation mix. Its a good length too at almost a hour long. The mixing isn’t perfect but its good enough for a listen. The choice of tunes is also good, a nice upbeat selection, I must have had a good day the day I recorded this mix. As always enjoy it… oh an you can directly download this mix using this link.
I had a listen to most of my mixes I recorded while in Hospital, and there some good stuff there. Its going to take a while to recover and make them decent for sharing because sometimes I had the cross fader in the wrong position which is a shame or forgot to do something equally silly. Anyway here’s a nice short one to kick us off. As always enjoy…
I can’t be the only one to notice that people don’t have a clue how to dance anymore.
Its just a thing I’ve noticed.
When I was growing up we had expressive arts which was a bit of crap subject but at least you learned how to dance if you couldn’t already dance. I remember learning how to moonwalk in a lesson and how to do forward flip over the course of about 1 month.
I’m not saying we should bring back expressive arts in school but I am saying when I go out clubbing (rarely) I’m shocked at the dancing I’m seeing.
I don’t know whats to blame. My flatmate thinks the music may be to blame. Some tunes are just un-dancable but I’m not so sure thats true.
When I was growing up there was a lot of stimulate for dancing such as House Party 1-3, Normski’s dance energy show on BBC2, Fresh Prince of Bellair, electric boogaloo, breakdance, etc. Now I think the only stimulation comes from So you think you dance and those cinemantic dance films such as step up. So it can’t be the stimulatus because there is plenty of that, no matter what you think of them.
So what is it? Maybe people don’t get to practice enough or something like that? Maybe they don’t get a chance to practice in front of friends and family so they only get the chance to impress there friends with there so called dancing.
I admit theres plenty of different types of music with there own types of dance but I’m talking about what use to be disco dancing, the type of thing you hear and dance to in a nightclub. There use to be a rash of latin dance clubs and recently a lot of them have shut down, not that I’m saying thats to blame but its just interesting.
So whos to blame? I honestly don’t know… Maybe I’m mistaken and its just about the places I’m going which has bad dancers?
Over the Easter weekend I have been cleaning out all the old crap I own and found not only my vinyl collection (mainly hardcore/rave and happy hardcore) but also my magazine collection. I have a load of the home computer course magazines and early T3’s but more interestingly I have Eternity which is not the monthly conservative Christian magazine according to Wikipedia. Nope its the controversial underground dance magazine and I seem to have issue 4 onwards till the last one. Currently Fantazia.org.uk are selling them at between 9.99 and 14.99 a issue which is a markup of at least 500 percent, and they seem interested in buying more. Which is good, because I could shift my lot and it will go back into the hands of someone who will enjoy them.
I also have a ton of Rave flyers in a briefcase (heaven knows why). I was able to remember the combination even after so many years and so now have access to about 250+ flyers. Once again Fantazia seem to want to buy them, but I also noticed Fantazia don’t just sell them, they can put them on Canvas and ship it to you if you like. So I’ve been thinking it would be great to get some of the really good flyers up such as the Obsession fish flyer. Like the magazines, I’d be happy to help out on any project which puts all the flyers online including Fantazia, raveflyers, its-all-about-flyers, phatmedia and hyperreal.
There is so much that happened during this short period of rave culture. The history of house music timeline is worth reading if your not aware of the differences and don’t know where house music came from. Its also quite interesting to super impose the timeline of house music on top of the history of rave timeline. There are some classic bits that even I remember reading or hearing about….
1988
At a time when football violence was escalating, rival fans dance together in an ecstasy induced euphoria thinking the world is going to change. – “…like angels from above, come down and spread their wings like doves…”
Paul Stone & Lu Vukovic start RiP. They provide a harder edged party. Located in a labyrinth like warehouse complex on Clink Street, near London Bridge, home centuries ago to Britain’s first prison. RiP sees Mr C (Later of the Shamen – who played their first experimental acid set at RiP) and Eddie Richards & Kid Batchelor play a harder more underground house (“as opposed to the pop songs at Shoom” – Mr C) to a very diverse crowd, from gangsters to people in shell suits.
In Manchester the Hacienda’s Hot & Nude nights kick start acid house in the North.
April – RiP (still at Clink) move to Fridays with their ‘A-Transmission’ nights and Sundays with ‘Zoo’.
April 11th – Paul Oakenfold opens Spectrum in London. A brave move, in that it is to be held at Heaven, near Trafalgar Square (at the time one of the biggest club venues in London). To make matters worse it is held on Monday nights. Even so after 3 weeks they had 1200 people in every week with just as many locked out. Spectrum quickly gains a musical reputation as anything goes. Paul Oakenfold even plunges the complete club into total darkness and played Tchaikovsky’s 1824 Overture on one occasion. They also hold a few nights at Legends in Manchester and one party in a marquee by the Thames.
1989
The location of these events was a closely guarded secret up until an hour or so before the start. Meeting points would be made available through flyers and pirate radio stations (Sunrise, Centre Force, Fantasy). Mobile phones were still widely regarded as Yuppy toys but thanks to BT’s messaging service they became an ideal way to co-ordinate people to different meeting points (Motorway service stations usually) and eventually the venue itself. It generally turned into a game of “follow the car in front” until you find a party. By keeping the venue secret like this they could get everyone on the move heading for the party or in the wrong direction if needed. The police have no option but to follow. So the end effect is that 1000’s of people can descend on one location in a matter of minutes. Once a party’s goes past a certain size there is, in reality very little the police can do.
June 24th – Sunrise’s Midsummer Nights Dream at White Waltham airstrip, Berkshire is attended by over 11000 people. The Sun newspaper runs the headline “Ecstacy Airport”. Other reports involve “youngsters so drugged up they ripped the heads of pigeons!” & “at the end of the night the floor was covered in empty ecstacy wrappers”, unsurprisingly , both are untrue, the empty wrappers are actually pieces of silver foil that fell from the ceiling – dead pigeons nowhere to be seen.
1990
10th August – “It’s a fad. It will be over in 3 months” claims Superintendent Mick Bromwich of the Coventry police.
Alex paterson (later of the ORB) and Jimmy Cauty (KLF) take over DJing in the VIP room at Land of Oz (held at Heaven in London). They play a weird mix of film music and animal noises! Ambient music is born.
October 13th – The Legendary Eclipse opens at Lower Ford Street, Coventry. Britains first legal all night rave club. The club is packed all night every Friday & Saturday.
September 1st – Pirate radio station Kiss becomes Britain’s first legal dance radio station.
1991
January 30th – Hacienda closes after door staff are threatened with a gun. “We are sick of the violence” – Tony Wilson
New Years Eve – 12,000 at Fantazia at Westpoint Exhibition Centre ending with the now legendary Top Buzz set & Raindance-Big Bad Head at Melton Mowbury.
1992
April 10th – ITV’s Hitman & Her program do a show from the Eclipse in Coventry. A classic TV moment see’s Michaela Stachen having to leave the club because “its too hot … they’ve all got eyes like saucers … “. – I have this somewhere!
June 27th – Amnesia House hold “The B
ook of Love” at Brayfield Stadium. After first announcing hit intention to get married at a rave on the BBC’s “The Time, The Place” back in 1989. Mickey Lynas (partner in Amnesia/Nemesis) gets his wish and marries with 15000 ravers as witness’ and Grooverider as the best man.
July 25th – Fantazia hold “One Step Beyond/Castle Donnington”. Licensed for 25000, the totally outdoor stage is made to look like a castle with a huge dragon in the middle of the crowd.
1993
April 30th – Universe do the first Tribal Gathering with 25,000 people at Warminster near Bath. Total chaos on the surrounding roads with a 15 mile traffic jam leading up to the site at about 9pm.
August 13th – Universe stage their Big Love event attracting 30000. With 2 totally outdoor stages set back to back, Heaven (House) & Earth (Hardcore). Probably the last totally outdoor event. Sound restriction problems cause the levels to be turned right down half way through the Prodigy’s set.
The Criminal Justice bill is put to parliament. With the new rave clause, defining a ‘Rave’ as 100 or more people dancing outdoors to music “mainly comprising of repetitive beats”. New powers for the police will include the right to detain anyone they believe is heading to an illegal rave and the right to confiscate sounds systems (like they hadn’t been doing this anyway)
This is the mix I used for the Next Generation DJ contest. I lot of people asked if they could listen to it without Flash, and I had to said no simply because I had to get as many listeners and votes on the contest site as possible. Now Stage one is all but over, its very unlikely that my mix will make it to the second stage due to lack of votes (needed at least 200) I can open the mix up on Soundcloud for people to download and listen to away from the site.
Anyhow, I’ve already had my say on the contest rules and cheating which was going on. There’s also suggestions that music genres outside of House and Techno were/would have been voted down in the end because the contest involves djing live at a famous house arena….
But enough, check out the mix on Soundcloud and if you still feel like voting for it, its still available till 3rd Feb here.
The running order is the same as before of course
