Put Your Booty Shorts On

It's been a while since I graced the Tape blog with my presence, but it's hardly as if I've got no excuses for my cyber-laziness. While all you guys have been out enjoying yourselves, Puffin Jack's been keeping me under lock and key until I finished the mix for our new Mutant Pop night. I've been so busy doing the mix that I've neglected to update you with the info about the night! We'll be holding the Mutant Pop parties on the first Friday of every month at the Arc Bar on Broad Street in the centre of Bristol, and we'll be kicking things off with a bang on April 7th. Mr Soft'll be coming down from Oxford for his first DJ appearance in god knows how long, and he'll be joined by myself and Puffin Jack along with our new bedfellows Mike Bull and Gareth Watkins of the Vayge night. Expect the unexpected as we traverse our way through various styles of disco, house and techno; all culminating in a minimal masterclass from Mike & Gaz. We'll be putting the mix up soon for all you international Tapers, but in the meantime you can enjoy a track that missed the final cut of the mix, Booka Shade's 'Mandarine Girl' spliced with the saccharin sweet vocals of Annie's 'Heartbeat'. I think you'll all be pleasantly surprised at how well they actually fit and I was very tempted to put it on the final version. However, it was muscled off by the best track from their 'Movements' LP, the Mandarine Girl mk II that is 'In White Rooms'. Enjoy!

Download:
Booka Shade - Mandarine Girl (Carnage's Heartbeat Booty) // CD-R

Speaking of Vayge, they'll be holding their 3rd birthday party (and sadly, their last night for a while) on Friday March 24th at Blue Mountain. Me and Puffin will be sending them off the only way we can by joining them on a bill that includes a live set from techno wunderkind of the moment Alex Smoke, and a DJ set from Slovenia's Valentino Kanzyani. Kanzyani set up the Recycled Loops label with Umek, and has released material on various labels such as Intec, Tronic and Yoshi Toshi. We'll be going head to head with the mighty Smoke, so if you're in the area, pop down and say hi!

We've spoken before about Matt Edwards and Joel Martin's Quiet Village Project, but you can really never get enough of them. All the tracks on their two releases so far have been consistently excellent, and I'm still racking my brains as to what tracks they've actually sourced their samples from. Here's the A-side from their most recent release on Brooklyn's Whatever We Want label that I started my set with when Matt Tolfrey graced our System night all the way back in January. It's a super-smooth, super-slow balearic disco track that has the power to wash over you and take all your worries away. It's got it all - the beautiful piano and ranting diva drift along before that sax comes in and lifts it to a totally new level. If you like it and want to purchase the vinyl, then it looks like you may have to spend quite a lot of cash as the ultra limited records are now totally out of stock. I picked my copy up on release from Phonica and still had to pay £9.99 + postage so maybe you're the lucky ones!

Download:
Quiet Village Project - Too High To Move // Whatever We Want

Matt Edwards also releases his solo material under the names Rekid and Radio Slave. He's going to be releasing his new track, entitled 'My Bleep', on his own Rekids imprint, and boy does it kill. It's locomotive rhythm track propels it along, until it's joined by the throbbing, dubby bassline and the double combo of wonky and chordal (almost organ like) synths. It'll be blowing up dancefloors for a while to come upon it's release, but I'm still not sure whether it'll be coming out as Radio Slave or Rekid. Ewan Pearson's site seems to suggest Rekid, but Discogs.com says Radio Slave. Any ideas? Anyway, congratulations to Mr Edwards for a job well done.

This weekend will see the Tape crew (unfortunately minus Mr Soft due to his heavy work schedule) descend on London town yet again for a free party to end all free parties. Sadly, the Our Disco night's residency at Plastic People has come to an end (it was seriously disheartening to see Den Odell being informed that his spot had been muscled in on a by a fan on a message board of all things) but Saturday will see the start of a new era for Our Disco with a stellar line up at Canvas. First up you've got the Our Disco residents, then you get to witness the coming of age of fellow bloggers 20 Jazz Funk Greats. As one of the first music related blogs that I returned to time and time again, props have to go out to those guys, and I wish them all the luck in the world for what may be an intimidating prospect for them. All good so far, but the party won't have even started by then! The DFA duo of Tim Sweeney and Tim Goldsworthy will be warming up the proceedings nicely for Optimo's JD Twitch to bring things to a heady climax. And it's free! Not to mention the free glowsticks for the first 100 entrants... Rave on! Check JD Twitch on a kraut tip over at Beats In Space along with hours and hours of Sweeney's consistently excellent sets.

Also in playing London on Saturday will be our good friends Matt Waites and Pete Cage of Nightmoves. They've been creating a lot of heat over their mix of Klaxons' 'Gravity's Rainbow' which will be released in the next few months, and they'll be rocking a mish mash of house, electro, disco and techno with a bit of cheese thrown in for good measure at The Legion on Old Street. They're playing 9 til 2, so if you're heading down to Our Disco, you could do a lot worse than checking them out. This explosive dancefloor call to arms from 1972 is dedicated to the Nightmoves and 20 Jazz Funk Greats boys. 'It's just begun' indeed....

Download:
The Jimmy Castor Bunch - It's Just Begun // RCA

Hopefully we'll be awake enough to end our night by popping down to Bugged Out til its close at 7, so if you're there and see two tall, bedraggled gentlemen wondering through the door at 5am, come and say hello and tell us how completely wasted we look. It's yet another ridiculous London line up, including Erol, Miss Kittin, Midnight Mike, JoJo De Freq, Serge Santiago and Argy amongst others, so there'll be sure to be something to whet our musical whistle at that ridiculous time in the morning. If things go to plan, we should have some mix CDs to give out over the course of the night, so if you're going to be at any of these events, then play the good old game of 'spot the ginger and mullet', and we'll be happy to cross your palm with silver! A silver CD-R, that is... I'll be back tomorrow with more tracks and inane rantings for your eyes and ears.