Whooping Bosh

First things first, hats off the the under_score lot for putting on one of the best nights that Bristol's seen all year with Saturday's Sleeparchive show. Every DJ that graced the decks played excellent sets, and the Sleeparchive laptop performance just took the biscuit. As Puffin's already mentioned, his sound palette was expectedly small, but things never got boring as he expertly manoeuvered the crowd down the techno tunnel that we've been loving on his 12"s for the last couple of years. I can't remember seeing a moodier looking DJ since Carl Craig's set earlier in the year at Native, and even then Puffin managed to get a wink out of him! Enquiring later on in the night about his reluctance to look like he was enjoying himself, Mr Archive (a.k.a. Roger Semsroth) replied with a wry retort of, 'I guess it's the German style'. When the music sounds this good, it doesn't really matter. Here's the first track from the release that kicked things off for Roger under his Sleeparchive moniker (he's previously released under the guises of Television Set and Skanfrom). In the beginning, there was rhythm...

Download:
Sleeparchive - Elephant Island // Sleeparchive

I wondered in expecting a 'more minimal than thou' set from our Puffin, and was pleasantly surprised to see him warming up the assembled techno lovers with the best dubstep set that I've ever heard him play out. Pinch's Qawwali rubbed up against the Punisher VIP with perfect synergy, and Toastyboy's breaksteppin' beats nestled nicely with Skream's new cut on Tempa (which is fucking fantastic by the way). It's a soft, uplifting, reggae-tinged heartwarmer with a much more subdued snare sound that we're used to from the boy wonder, and will be sure to feature in the more discerning dubstep DJ's sets in the coming months.

Download:
Skream - Dutch Flowers (clip) // Tempa

On Sunday I really should have pulled my finger out and gone to Normalise down at Hush Hush, but alas, I spent the day being incredibly lazy round at October's gaff whilst watching Columbo (a feature length episode directed by Senor Spielbergo, no less) and listening to the Rolling Stones. Whilst listening to Gimme Shelter, probably my favourite Stones track, I was reminded of this little gem hidden deep in the Kompakt back catalogue from Tape favourite Justus Kohncke. The b-side to his first Kompakt release, 'Shelter' samples Keef's sublime guitar intro, adds some moody keys, and turns the boompty knob right up to 11. You're never really going to beat the near-perfect original, but Justus' cheeky take on it will definitely put some smiles on people's faces when aired at the right early morning rave up.

Download:
Justus Kohncke - Shelter // Kompakt

Speaking of Mr October, he played a cracking multi-faceted techno set down at Cosies on Friday. The soundsystem wasn't realy up to scratch with the musical selection, but Jules soldiered on and got the too-stoned-to-stand crowd pumped up good and proper. There were too many highlights to mention, but he kicked off really nicely with the Luciano remix of Isolee into Carl Craig's Rhythm & Sound reworking, and outed both sides of the wonderous Sleeper Thief release on Mobilee. You can find one of the tracks, 'Chasing Rainbow', at the start of my mix on Viva Radio at the moment. Muchos thanks go out to Arveene for playing it on his radio show last Friday - it was certainly surreal to hear him talking over the top of it! Here's the full tracklisting for the latest Viva show:

Viva Radio - Show #3: 'After Hours'
Richard Carnage in the mix:
Sleeper Thief - Chasing Rainbow // Mobilee
Lazyfatpeople - Shinjuku // Wagon Repair
Exercise One - 12 Years // LAN Music
Guy J & Sahar Z - Hazui (Gui Boratto Remix) // Electribe
Steve Bug - Loverboy (Guido Schneider Remix) // Poker Flat
Crowdpleaser & St Plomb - 18 Years // Mental Groove
Heidi vs Riton - Vejer // Get Physical
Akabu - Phuture Bound (Ame Remix) // Z
Martin Buttrich - Full Clip // Planet E
Marcus Worgull - Dragon Loop // Innervisions
Minilogue - The Girl From Botany Bay // Wir Im Rhythmus
Locodice - Orchidee // M_nus
Ellen Allien & Apparat - Jet (Paul Kalkbrenner Remix) // Bpitch Control
Mike Monday - Tooting Warrior // Playtime
End of mix
Morane - Let Me Out (No, There's Nobody In The Cellar Mix) // Perlon
October - There's A Glitch In My Soup (Demo) // CD-R
Alex Under - Fortuito // Plus 8
SLG - Anymore // Level
Patrick Chardronnet - Eve By Day // Connaisseur

Listeners who get to the end of the mix get an exclusive hearing of October's new bomb that sounds like Pharrell jamming with Booka Shade down at the Panoramabar... Seriously! One track that he played on Friday that I hadn't heard before was the new Rice Twins' (pictured above) effort on K2. If you've heard any of their tracks before then you know what to expect - lush brooding techno that'll move your heart as much as your body.

Download:
The Rice Twins - For Dan // K2

Following this, Jules laid down the Ame/Schwarz/Dixon collaboration, and with the way he brought it in it seriously seemed like a bomb had gone off in the club. A dancefloor bomb of course - it was a proper mood explosion with the perfect amount of whoop factor. Speaking of DJs with a whoop factor...

I never really got the chance to talk properly about the last Mutant Pop party, which as you regular readers only know too well, hosted minimal wizards Italoboyz. Warming up the swelling crowd with fairly skeletal sounds for the first half of their set, they swiftly flipped into a 'right then, let's get this crowd going mental' mood, and drove everyone wild with their simply righteous DJing skills. Here's the moment where it all really kicked off (apologies for the darkness, but it is a dark, cavernous club after all!):

Just listen to the crowd! Now this is the atmosphere that I was talking about when I was making the comparison to the lacklustre crowd in the main room at the recent Phonica party. Why they weren't going absolutely apeshit to Simon Rigg and Konrad Black I just don't know. Anyway, the track in question is Smith N Hack's delightful remix of Matthew Herbert's recent single, 'Moving Like A Train'. If those parping horns and stomping percussion don't get your feet going, then the breakdown two thirds of the way through definitely will. I never thought that I'd ever catch myself pumping my fist along to beatless brass, but I was obviously very wrong indeed. Altogether now... 'WHOOOOP!'

Download:
Herbert - Moving Like A Train (Smith N Hack Remix) // !K7

Thanks again to Marco and Federico for coming down to play and being such charming characters. Here they are pictured above with our Mutant Pop collaborators, Mike and Gaz. Just check that 'tache on Federico! Mike was pretty spot on in the taxi when he blurted out, ' I've just realised who that Federico looks like... it's only the bloody 118-118 bloke!'. But seriously, they really did prove themselves to be cracking DJs, and we even recorded their after hours set in Puffin's gentlemen's lounge. I'll get it up on here as soon I've lugged his archaic minidisc deck over to my place. Hang on - didn't I say that a few weeks back? Better late than never I suppose.

I know that there’s been a fair old mp3 drought of late, so I’ll stop with the narrative witterings and get straight to the additional audio. First up we’ve got a remix of Radio Slave’s ‘My Bleep’ that didn’t make it to the 12” release. Distributed as an mp3 only release (download the high quality version from Beatport here), Luke Solomon’s version strips things back and injects a fair amount of bounce to proceedings, and it’ll definitely go down well on the more minimal-hungry dancefloors about town. The original ‘My Bleep’ was a bit of a love/hate thing (I quite liked it, but I know many people who didn’t), but this is definitely the version for all those who didn’t particularly enjoy the brash forcefulness of Matt Edwards' original.

Download:
Radio Slave - My Bleep (Luke Solomon Remix) // Rekids
(Buy the high quality version from Beatport)

So Johnny boy does it again. Just when you think that he’s going to have to stem the flow of great tracks that he’s been putting out over the last couple of years (check his releases on Palette and Poker Flat if you haven’t already), he goes and puts a totally fresh twist on his ever reliable sound on this remix for Ben Watt's Buzzin' Fly label. Based around a cracking phased synth riff and so-micro-they're-almost-not-there clicks, it swells into its groovin' three note bassline and keeps on building without ever going too over the top. Full marks yet again to that man.

Download:
Jimpster - Square Up (John Tejada Remix) // Buzzin' Fly

Just a little footnote to say that I've changed the Tape website so that it forwards you straight to here (seeing as it hasn't actually been worked on for a year now), so instead of typing out the lengthy blogspot address you can use www.tape-club.com. Also, you may have noticed that I've re-encoded all the mp3s at a lower bitrate to try and encourage you all to go out and buy the high quality versions over at the usual digital retailers. Failing that, just go out and get yourself the record and help keep vinyl alive! They're still at really listenable quality (generally 160kbps, 128 for the pre and new releases), so don't worry about it obscuring your home listening pleasure. Anyway, peace out, and we hope to see some of you at Mutant Pop in a couple of weeks where we'll be hosting Tiny Sticks bossman Mock.