On Friday we hosted our last Kiss Me Again before Bleimann heads off to sunnier – and sexier – climes. In appropriate style it was a total gayfest, save a long overdue appearance from Dave of TOTHEBONE. It must have been over two years since the inaugural BONE ME AGAIN and nearly a year since Charlie TTB played us out – this time we had a late license so there was room enough for Dave plus 2toomanygays, Arty, and only the second club appearance of the elusive Sue and Giles (creators of KMA’s only official podcast…ever).
Arty neglected altogether to play any Sweet Pussy Pauline records, but I’ll forgive him since he made a Connaisseur record sound good, which I’m sure you’d agree takes great skill. 2toomanygays aka Sam and Os tempered their usual bitch track-heavy experience for the occasion, though to be honest with the volume restrictions i’m not sure bitch tracks would have been much of a problem anyway. Dave’s records struggled against the quietness too, bringing home to me quite how much of a shame it is that such a nice venue has been so hamstrung by its neighbours.
Sue and Giles took the issue head on by playing loud, unsubtle records, to great effect (I felt), and those left at 4am seemed to have had enough of a party to satisfy them. Sue’s mix from Artful Dodger into Bobby Brown will surely go down in the CLUB DRAMA hall of fame, accompanied by copious weeping to ‘Erotic City’. My personal highlight was an airing of this Hot Lizard record I got a few weeks ago which I can’t. stop. listening. to. With Sake being passed around the dancefloor – and there really was dancing – it felt like a fitting send off.
So despite my misgivings over the lack of volume I still enjoyed myself immensely – and I feel like LIFE can still host a good party if the ingredients are right. It is hard to complain about a venue generous enough to pay US to put on a party, rather than the other way round. KMA has generally been an uncomplicated affair and I think it can carry on in the same fashion as long as we relax and enjoy it for what it is.
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At the other end of the spectrum yesterday was Toi Toi’s latest party in a car park by the Olympic site. Fabulous venue, great sound and no neighbours – a sure recipe for success, topped off by a 2-hour set from Andrew. If the Toi Toi ‘family’ hadn’t been exposed to MJ Cole in the past, at least now they should understand what’s good for them. You couldn’t have asked for a better setting for Andrew’s first proper set in public and hopefully it means more of the same in the future. Reasonably priced drinks, proper toilets and a minority of weirdos meant everything was easy to enjoy.
I didn’t stick around long enough to find out if the residents have upped their game since last time – and they’d have to considerably in order to keep up that kind of quality – but then again after 3 hours of excellent music and sunshine I wasn’t totally into the idea of going indoors anyway, so made the slog home instead. In fact that was the only downside of the whole experience, but no-one ever said partying was easy, and the commute was more than worth it. May the summer last as long as we want it to!
I played in some order: Angel Freakin / Erotic City / Caught Up / Ramp One / Get Up / Rapture/ Djurgårdsbron / Slang Teacher / Chronoclasm / Night Chime / Beyond The Clouds / Luv 4-2 / Trail Of Dreams / Raptures Of The Deep / Kiki De Montparnasse / Crown Royal / Cosmic Fonk / Caught Up / New Age Technology / Otaku / Return Of The Speaker People / Area / Roboho / Got To Be Movin’ / The Helium Kid / Wiggin (Re-Mix) / Cause Of Suffering / Sorting The Afternoon / Composure / Your Love / Too Late / Ain’t Nobody / Hannah’s Dub / My Love Turns To Liquid / Black Or White / CAUGHT UP.
As far as my day-to-day interaction with new music goes, to say Scuba’s ascendance to prog-techno stardom has been anything other than a silly sideshow would be an overstatement. Once every few months I hear he has a new single out, listen to it, and promptly post it on a friend’s facebook page with an obligatory ‘lol’. The tragedy of his post-A Mutual Antipathy trajectory has long since faded into rueful bewilderment: ‘What the fuck happened?!’ has turned into a faintly amused ‘Oh what is he up to now’. Tracks as fundamentally torpid as ‘The Hope’, ‘Hardbody’ and ‘Talk Torque’ have become run-of-the-mill for him, and those track names, which on his debut seemed, like the music, mysterious or elliptical, have since been exposed as what they were all along: a meaningless mix of new-age bullshit and American Psycho.
Cue the latest mailout from Hotflush via LOCK N LOAD EVENTS, which some people will likely think is advertising a new series of Robot Wars. Actually, Robot Wars might have been all about boys and their toys but it was hardly macho, and it’s the lack of self-aware geekery that I find most offputting about this flyer.
In fact I’d find it positively worrying if it wasn’t so funny:
This exclusive showcase will illustrate Scuba’s exceptional ability to blow people away by his superlative talent, as his arsenal of rich synths and melodies is stretched to the max.
It’s Scuba remixed by goatse. And the hugely anticipated support act can now be revealed as…two funny looking men in a snowstorm. Actually, the photograph of Machinedrum and Jimmy Edgar is probably the most reasonable part of the pitch, being a picture of two normal people who are more comfortable making music than they are posing for photographs. Contrast with George Fitzgerald, whose striking resemblance to David Cameron would be enough to put me off even if he wasn’t glowering humourlessly at the camera.
The final support act is someone I’ve never heard of (nothing out of the ordinary there), despite being voted ‘No.4 Best New Act of 2012′ by XLR8R. This rather underwhelming endorsement is bettered by recognition from the dance music elite (their bold): Jamie XX, Benji B, Mary Ann Hobbs, Mosca, Claude Vonstroke and Richie Hawtin. The only name missing is Deadmau5, or maybe Swedish House Mafia. In fact I’d much rather listen to Swedish House Mafia than ‘Talk Torque’.
I suppose the worst thing about all this is that Scuba is in fact playing LIVE at this gig, rather than DJing. I still maintain some fondness for his RA podcast, in which he played lots of interesting records with quite a lot of flair. Here people are paying £18 to hear recorded anodyne shit produced without any roundness or depth being pumped out of what looks like the Crystal Dome, and it’ll all be over by 2am.
On Friday I returned almost 5 years to the day to the site of an accident that has stayed with me since then, visible for all to see on my long-serving (and -suffering) winter coat. This is the coat that has seen me through a terrible mushroom trip in Wales and acted as an extra tramp blanket at various locations some less salubrious than others (the least, I believe, being the corridor by the cat pee-fragrant front door of a friend’s house in Chorlton). In all these places anyone caring to look closely enough would have spied some faintly spunk-like stains on the sleeve and lapel.
Of course they were nothing of the sort. Rather, they were souvenirs from an ill-advised and ultimately unsatisfying journey to a Man Make Music party in a Hackney Wick warehouse to see none other than NATHAN FAKE. I could say my main reason for attending was the far trendier ONEMAN playing in the other room but this would be an outright lie, though I do claim some credit for ditching the pastoral trance quite early on when I heard ‘Night’ emanating through a nearby wall (not that much credit, obviously). Upstairs at said party was a sort of ‘art’ exhibition in which I managed to pick up various bits of white paint about my person.
Needless to say the coat was only one week old at the time.
You would of course be well within your rights to ask why I would return to the site of such tragedy. The lure was Jan Krueger and Daze Maxim playing at one of Toi Toi’s parties, with Vera in support. Also, crucially, I wasn’t aware it was the same building. Once we finally found ourselves approaching the place it all came rushing back, though of course the interior is now rather better turned out than it was 5 years ago, and there wasn’t such a terrible crush of people at the door (dubstep was the shit in early 2008 I guess). In fact things only started heating up when Vera came on, probably because she played proper music as opposed to Voigtmann’s rather tepid warm-up, most of which I spent sitting on a sofa massaging the feeling back into my frozen toes.
Vera was great, playing a Nordic Trax EP I’d only ever heard before in mine and Andrew’s houses, along with several great breakbeat-y numbers. Her mixing was relatively tight, though sadly the same can’t be said for Daze Maxim. He was responsible for it being an underwhelming first experience of Jan Krueger, who was clearly an exceptional DJ hamstrung by his inept and inappropriate compatriot. I can sum it up as follows:
Jan: I’ll play a pretty good groovy record just to get the crowd going.
Daze: OMG FUSE LOOP!!
Jan: O…k… how about this nice bumping track, maybe Daze’ll take the hint.
Daze: THE CLIMAX THE CLIMAX THE CLIMAX! [/trainwreck]
Jan: ….
I’m being rather unfair here because by this point in the evening I was hardly paying any attention to the music, my mind being distracted by the pills i’d taken earlier and the presence of several dear and interesting friends. One has to justify a trip to Hackney Wick somehow. Safe to say, though, that when I did pay attention it was invariably to notice Daze Maxim screwing up another mix. Perhaps he didn’t play all the obvious tunes, but those that he did he played badly.
We went to the afterparty in Stoke Newington afterwards, an indulgence worth it solely to hear a set by Junki Inoue, a diminutive Japanese man with long hair and a fine taste in afterparty house music (Baby Ford et environs). Pity poor us that he only played for an hour before Toi Toi’s resident vibe killers Lamache and Voigtmann commenced another exclusive bore-off session.
We left far later than we should have, yet further evidence as if it was needed that mashed clubbers NEVER FUCKING LEARN. The ride back on the East London line was one of the most shameful in recent memory, said shame only just offset by the sense of achievement at having gone to the party in the first place.
And this is probably the moment to temper my earlier petty barbs at Voigtmann’s music policy with a frank acknowledgement of how much good he and Isis do for the London club scene. Of course I wouldn’t have gone all that way in incipient snow if I didn’t think it’d be a good time, and of course it was. Anyone who believes enough in DJs like Jan Krueger to make a party like that happen deserves my gratitude, but that gratitude will never be unmitigated as long as said positives come packaged with such dull nonsense from the hosts. We can only hope that ongoing exposure to Krueger, Lutz, Inoue and the like results in improvement. Fingers crossed.
I’m listening to this EP by DHS, which has been on my list to buy since I first heard ‘Hypnosis’ as the opener on Prosumer’s RA podcast. But I’m listening to it on 33 by mistake, so the B-side ‘Telephone Sounds’ is coming off as more of an experimental bleep throwback than the refined early 00s minimal house track it probably is.
It’s reminiscent of some of the downtempo/IDM tracks on the Deep Space Network meets Higher Intelligence Agency s/t by David Moufang and Jonas Grossman, which has been on heavy rotation since it arrived in December. ‘Ramp One’ was my main motivation for that purchase – and I’ve since put it in a mix for my sister – but the whole LP has proven interesting, if not all dancefloor material. There’s been time to listen to their ‘A La Pulpe De L’Orange‘ on Urban Flow many more times, too.
Move D – what happened?
My proper non-dance listening has mainly involved Miguel’s album from last year (late to the party again), the weird guitar elements and effects on which I can’t quite get my head around. Then actual guitars on My Bloody Valentine’s new album, most of which sound exactly like they did over 20 years ago. You can’t fuck with songs like ‘Only Tomorrow’ or ‘New You’, though, and they’ve been quite satisfactory for blocking out annoying noise at my office.
I’ve just realised I’ve been listening to the locked groove at the end of DHS’s ‘Subliminible’ for the past 4 minutes, on the wrong speed still. Time to leave the laptop alone.
Top 5:
Deep Space Network – A La Pulpe De L’Orange
Miguel – Arch & Point
My Bloody Valentine – Only Tomorrow
Angel Freakin – Angel Freakin
Herbert – Never Give Up
Now that this worst of months is – thank god – finally over, we can all go back to actually listening to music, rather than playing it only as a background accompaniment to our collective misery. I personally had something of a break from dance music, relying mainly on Chaka Khan, Queen and the new songs from Destiny’s Child and Justin Timberlake to get me through.
In fact, Chaka soundtracked my musical highlight of the month, providing me as she did with the opportunity of belting out ‘Ain’t Nobody’ live on stage with an *actual funk band*. Never mind that I missed the cue for the second verse (I’ll give you a clue: it starts straight after the first) – I am counting this as the first step on the ladder to stratospheric fame. Incidentally, you can buy a box of Chakalates here.
I haven’t neglected dance music entirely. Two recent purchases have already leapt high on my list of all-time favourites: both Evil C & The Hustler’s ‘Get Up‘ and Morgan Geist’s Nebula Jersey Vol. 1 EP made the transatlantic flight in one piece, the latter notable among Geist solo EPs for not wasting a single moment over its four tracks.
Top of the pops: Queen – Another One Bites The Dust Steely Dan – Peg BWH – Stop Frank Ocean – Sweet Life Rick James – Give It To Me Baby
Lifesavers:
Bill Withers – I Don’t Know
Madonna – Borderline
Prince – I Wanna Be Your Lover
Janet Jackson – The Pleasure Principle
Whitney Houston – How Will I Know
House tracks from 2012 that I actually bought:
Schubaq & Verveine – Züri Dub (Tardis)
Xosar – Xephyr (L.I.E.S.)
Murat Tepeli – Good (Philpot)
Philipp Boston – Night Charm (BTAIM)
Fumiya Tanaka – 337 (Perlon)
Eurovision:
Kaliopi – Crno I Belo
Tooji – Stay
Sofi Marinova – Love Unlimited
Ivi Adamou – La La Love
Loreen – Euphoria
Zip, fabric room 1, 01/12/12:
Philipp Boston – Night Charm (BTAIM)
Omar S – The Maker (FXHE)
Die Sterne – Das Bisschen Besser (Herbert’s Er…Dub) (L’Age D’Or)
Kenlou – Gimme Groove (MAW)
Theo Parrish – Overyohead (Sound Signature)
Disco stalwarts:
Odyssey – Inside Out
Amii Stewart – Knock On Wood
Cher – Wasn’t It Good
Candi Staton – Young Hearts Run Free
Donna Summer – Heaven Knows
Pop tunes:
Azealia Banks – 1991
Florence + The Machine – Spectrum (Calvin Harris Remix)
Rudimental – Feel The Love
Usher – Climax
Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe
Hindhead:
Maple syrup
Blankets
Pile – The Spirit (Innervision Mix) (Perlon)
Stars
Drugs
KMA goes overground:
Tina Moore – Never Gonna Let You Go (Artful Dodger Remix)
Cameo – Word Up!
Madison Avenue – Don’t Call Me Baby
Janet Jackson – The Pleasure Principle
Jakatta – American Dream
Drinks:
G&T
G&T
G&T
G&T
G&T
January safety blanket:
Beyonce – 1+1
Thelma Houston – You Used To Hold Me So Tight
Usher – You Make Me Wanna
Queen – I Want To Break Free
Chaka Khan – Ain’t Nobody
Now seems as good a time as any to post my top records of 2012. To be honest new music isn’t really my bag, and I’m unwilling to spend minutes – let alone hours – trawling through the mailouts of the latest releases, the hot new things, what’s big on the nouveau-beard scene etc. I tend to stick with the timeless classics (Alain, of course), the obscure-turned-mainstream (Tony) and the straight-up blissed-out ‘Top Ibiza Dance Classics Of All Time’ beach holiday favourites (Gael in La Mala Educacion).
But every so often something new comes along to make me pay attention, so here’s my three top picks from an admittedly limited perspective on the year just gone by, for better or worse. Hope you enjoy!
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03. Fit Bulgarian Brothers – Acid Saviours EP [MITM, 2012]
Coming in at number three it’s a double A side! I’m not really one for this whole new-school Eastern European minimal-house sub-clique that RPR seem to have spawned, but when it produces gems like this it’s difficult to be too snobbish. I found these two when digging deep in the Bulgarian mountains: I was on the verge of giving up on finding anything good, drowning as I was in noodly US deep house and terrible bands, when finally these two popped up in amongst the Herbert and Svek tunes Brendan from Northern Purpose so kindly decided to bang out. Safe to say my evening was made. Short, dark, vaguely pervy…functional, true, but enough diversion for a trippy night out in the mountains. Great things expected if these two return in 2013!
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02. Yahel Castillo Huerta – White Speedos In The Final EP [London, 2012]
Of all the records released on this label this year – and they put out a lot in a short space of time! – you’d struggle to beat this one. Bouncy, compact, a bit cheeky – but deep as anything. It sounded best at 1am on the replay (because I’d been out earlier in the evening and missed the main event), and even though it tragically failed to get any awards I still stand by it as one of the year’s best performances – slept on, I guess. Other stand-outs from London this year included Facundo Conte and the majority of the Greek water polo team. Shame we’ll have to wait so long until the next releases on this label – it’s a treasure trove!
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01. Tom Ellis – Tom Ellis EP [Tom Ellis, 2012]
And finally, my favourite record of the year – a late entrant, sure, but to be honest once I’d heard this there wasn’t really any contest. Picture the scene: it’s early on a Monday evening, night’s upon us and the lights are low (lightbulb shortage) – things are starting to buzz in the sitting room and the VJ has just started up iPlayer. Suddenly, out of nowhere it comes: Tom Ellis, slamming out of the screen, unexpected but perfectly formed, playing a father who’s lost a child and has flashbacks to some WWII subplot that I can’t really be arsed to try and understand – safe to say I couldn’t believe my eyes. Since that first time I’ve seen him out on Saturday Kitchen (food+Tom=dreamy), Miranda (elevating what is otherwise a pretty terrible compilation), and, best of all, in a range of hilarious fashion shoots.
To borrow a phrase from my associate Bleimann: FULL SUPPORT, WILL PLAY BOTH SIDES.
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If anyone else has heard any better records from this year then I will be surprised. I know everyone says taste is subjective etc, and FACT or LWE will bang on yet again about the new UK channel 4 scene (seriously, since the drug dealer left Misfits what the fuck is the point?), but there are better things to be doing than chasing the latest fad. The real treats are to be found off the beaten track: and on the end of a diving board, mostly, I find.
I should really be in bed by now but I want to write this down before the dark spectre of work and life back in London eradicates the memory of a long weekend spent far, far away at Meadows In The Mountains 2012.
Three of us took the Friday morning flight from Gatwick in truly apocalyptic weather. We were greeted in Sofia by blue skies, strong sunshine and a six-hour coach ride to the festival – the first of many harsh realities to have been glossed over by the event’s organisers on their website. Spectacular scenery reminiscent of landscapes I know in the South of France were enough to placate us even as the coach grew hotter and stickier with each twist in the road.
Fortunately, the process of locating our accommodation was expedited by G&A who, having arrived a day earlier, were able to walk us straight up the road from the village square to our guest house. Owned by an aged Bulgarian lady without a word of English called Maria, the house was remarkably cool even in the heat of the day and came complete with a bar, outdoor seating area, functioning shower and a range of terrifyingly huge six-legged residents (carpenter bees, anyone?).
The festival site itself was a good 30 minutes walk away (harsh reality #2) up a mountainside and was only half set up when we made the ascent on Friday evening. After some barbeque food, a quick explore and an even quicker dance we headed back down for a good rest before the festival proper. The quick dance was to the hideously earnest CD-disco of Bicep, who prompted in me a brief period of hand-wringing over a gut feeling that they were far too ‘straight’ to be playing that sort of music with any success…I hate having that reaction (how can I reasonably proclaim someone too ‘straight’ to play any sort of music?) but I couldn’t deny it when faced with a set so lacking in any sort of pizazz. I mean for fuck’s sake…PLAY THE VOCAL YOU IDIOTS.
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Saturday morning we ate the first of a few huge breakfasts cooked by Maria, consisting of: cheese, olives, peppers, bread, sausages, eggs, bacon, more bread, jam, honey…lethal. As far as I can remember most of that day was spent alternately drinking Calsberg in the sun and retreating inside to cool down, conserving energy for the night ahead. We headed up for some more kebabs before trying the stage at the top of the mountain. This festival was a bit of a lame celebrity spotting exercise for someone like me – i.e. someone who recognises faces from parties but has never actually made the effort to talk to any of the people. The place was crawling with DJs I recognised – e.g. Jane Fitz, Northern Purpose, Kit, Homepark – and on the Saturday afternoon it was a few of these who decided to embark on an EPIC SOLO-OFF, each trying to outdo the other with harrowing offenses against the rules of good taste and decency in house music. Amidst all of the awful noodling there was one truly acceptable moment, when Carl from Northern Purpose visibly came up behind the decks and had to rely on another DJ to graciously mix in his record for him: the mercifully solo-free ‘Kinda Kickin’. The party was go.
It’s a close run thing whether I’d prefer good deep house with awful solos over it, or contemporary ‘tasteful’ ‘house’ that’s really nothing of the sort, i.e. the Visionquest-or-whateverelse style that seemed to dominate much of the weekend’s programming. But since we’d started taking our drugs we just went with it, so by the time the proper music came round we were ready. Cue Brendan from Northern Purpose playing the set of the weekend on the main stage from about 11.30pm, including my personal highlight:
The main stage funktion one soundsystem was out of this world, something I understand demonstrates a marked improvement on last year’s festival. Both that Herbert record and ‘Going Down’ sounded completely new, and the whole group of us repeatedly turned to each other to register our delight that Brendan was playing the kind of music we know and love so much, rather than the endless stream of Rick Wade records we had mistakenly expected. Sign me up for more of this if it’s representative of your average Northern Purpose night.
Brendan was only matched by Jane Fitz, who came on later to play a two-hour set of the sort I have now come to expect from her, and which she seems to deliver without fail every time she gets behind the decks. Huge records linked with ease, building up to a sense of enjoyment that in some way exceeds the sum of the constituent parts. Which is what you want from a DJ set, isn’t it.
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That concludes the sensible part of the story. At about 6am we somehow came to the decision that we should take a load of acid, which resulted in me experiencing one of the most enchanting (shamefully there’s no other word for it) walks of my life down the mountain as the sun rose through the clouds that had settled over the village. Think My Neighbour Totoro in super high definition and you’re halfway there. Several hours later in the guest house and I had read some six pages of a crime noir (not a suitable genre for tripping, to be honest), spent quite some time analysing the acceptability of my various limbs and, finally, found myself in a state to have a nap before heading back up to the festival. Consider this the biggest mistake of the weekend, since we were subjected to an evening of abysmal ‘bands’ on the main stage (what a waste of that soundsystem) before heading back far too early, thus missing out on more Jane Fitz early on the Monday morning. Lesson learnt for next time, I suppose.
The rest of our time was spent as before: drinking beer, eating food, reading trashy magazines and generally talking shit. Our journey home on Tuesday was a mixture of bliss (outdoor swimming pool in Devin – yes please) and anxiety (choice quote from a fellow traveller: ‘I never turn up to the airport more than 40 minutes before the flight leaves’ – this coming from a girl who had missed her flight the day before).
On this last point: the whole festival comes with a big fucking pinch of salt, and if I go again next year I will prepare myself mentally for many of these issues to remain unfixed, since the organisers may have the chutzpah to put on a festival up a mountain in the middle of fucking nowhere, but do not have the organisational powers to make sure it goes smoothly. But despite it being a complete shambles I sit here happy and satisfied with the whole experience. It was a cheap holiday and all worth it in the end. And there were a few undeniably brilliant elements: Herbert on that soundsystem under the milky way; meadows covered in cobwebs picked out in the moisture from the surrounding clouds; for once, meeting some genuinely lovely people at a festival; and finally being able to come back to work and tell my boss deadpan ‘Oh I spent the weekend dancing in the Bulgarian mountains.’
A collection of club tracks, afterparty tracks, afternoon cocktail tracks, basement tracks…all the tracks I want to hear out at parties and so rarely do.
Apologies for the mono fail partway through – a new hifi is nothing when faced with faulty phono cables.
