Champagne tastes on a beer budget...

You may have noticed me twatting on in these pages about a certain Mike Bull, and his partner in crime Gareth Watkins. These two blokes are Bristol's answer to the Wighnomy Brothers, and have lit up many a night, including our own TAPE, with their storming, ludicrously tasteful sets of minimal house and techno. I first heard of them back in May of last year; Lazerboy burned me a CD of Mike's mix, entitled 'Back to The Marina Pt.1', so-called for the Portishead waterfront location where Herr Bull resides; from the moment I heard its opening strains, I could tell I was in the hands of someone who really knows their shit. That mix was, and remains, one of the best minimal mixes I've ever heard, and for me it eerily prefigured the k-house explosion that was to happen across the world over summer (I'm the first to admit that I was clinging to notions of Tiefschwarz's long-term greatness back then..); it's the definitive All Back To Mine CD at TAPE HQ after a hard night's raving. Since that fateful day, there's been 'Back to The Marina Pt. 2', Mike's top-notch collaborations with Gareth on 'Death to Warped Vinyl' and 'Triple Drop & Lose Your Shoes', and now Mike's latest solo installment, 'Champagne Tastes On A Beer Budget'. So why's it called that? Mike: "In tribute to 2005 being another year in which I lived totally beyond my means, I have entitled it 'Champagne Tastes on a Beer Budget'. The mix is dedicated to Egg, Barclaycard and Lloyds TSB who not only paid for all of the vinyl and MP3s that were used but also funded the shiny new equipment that it was mixed on. I can't thank them enough!!" There you have it.
You can download all five mixes on the page I've linked below; I seriously recommend them to one and all - hot tracks from hot labels, sweetly blended. Your lives will be better for hearing them, mark my words. I have the tracklistings for three of the sessions (below); I'll post the others as soon as I remember to.

DOWNLOAD: MIKE BULL & GARETH WATKINS - MIXES

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Mike Bull - Champagne Tastes On A Beer Budget Tracklisting:

01. Butane - Flexor
02. Fraktion - This Never Works
03. Guido Schneider - Mistaken Identity
04. Pan-Pot - Black Current
05. Mathias Schaffhaeuser - Lost Vox (Pan-Pot Remix)
06. Ame - Rej
07. Cant - Reach For It, The Verdict (Brian Ffar Remix)
08. Fark - Patty
09. 2 Dollar Egg - Module Shaker (Tommie Nevada Remix)
10. Magnatic Base - Mad Racket (Format B Remix)
11. Fraktion - Acid Drop
12. Argy - Sub But Still Nutty
13. Mark Ashken - Part Time Isolation
14. Konrad Black - Medusa Smile (Rockets Revamp)
15. Theo Parrish - Falling Up (Carl Craig Remix)



Mike Bull & Gareth Watkins - Triple Drop and Lose Your Shoes Tracklisting:

01.Patrick Chardronnet - Eve By Day
02.Ryan Crosson - Ashes
03.Pascal FEOS - I Can Feel That (Wighnomys + Robag Wruhmes mix)
04.Hearthrob - Grounded
05.Heartz4 - Eep Dip Deep Jeep
06.And.I.D - Less Is More
07.Slam - Kill The Pain (Marc Houle mix)
08.Onur Ozer - Envy
09.Martinez - Solarbeams
10.Pan-Pot - Randy Ho
11.Argy - Rhino in a Glass Shop
12.Steffan Goldman - Blood
13.Richie Hawtin - Twin Cities
14.Luciano - Ameal
15.Magda - 48 Hour Crack in the Bass
16.Butane - Next + Mr Barcode - Barcode Vocal



Mike Bull & Gareth Watkins - Death to Warped Vinyl Tracklisting:

01. Arnaud Le Texier & Yossi Amoya - A Short Trip to Yukk
The Wighnomy Brothers - Pele Sagt Hallo
02. The Wighnomy Brothers - Kraftakkt
03. Guido Schneider & Andre Galluzzi - Survivor
04. Heartthrob - Hot Sugar Candy Apple Taffy
05. Jeremy P Caulfield - Grotbox (Alex Smoke Remix)
06. Andre Kraml - Safari (Alex Smoke Tink Mix)
07. Troy Pierce - Smack The Back Off Ya (Run Stop Restore Mix)
08. Koerner & Treplec - Prof Dr Knusper
09. Claude Vonstroke - Deepthroat (John Tejada Remix)
10. Robert Babicz - Battlestar
11. Booka Shade - Mandarine Girl
12. Patrice Baumel - Shower Of Ice
13. Holden - The Wheel
14. Vath vs Rother - Maggie

To recap, all three mixes, along with Back To The Marina Pts. 1 & 2, are available for download here. Do it...