Supersonic!

I've been lucky enough to meet some pretty cool people along my DJ travels, and have warmed up for Ian Brown and Fatboy Slim in the last few years. But the biggest call yet came a couple of months ago when Flash - them of the deep, deep pockets and live band ambition - called and asked if Loaded, the indie club night I co-run with Simon Allen, would like to open for Liam Gallagher. As in that Liam Gallagher, ex Oasis lead singer and motor-mouthed frontman. As in the band that soundtracked a generation, as grand as that statement sounds. They might have tailed off abysmally from the highs of Definitely Maybe and What's The Story... but what highs they were (and doubly so for the band).

Upon which point, I ingested my testicles, and breathlessly - and no doubt a few octaves higher than normal - replied back 'yes please, fankyouplease.'

And while I would rather share a pint with Noel Gallagher - the man is a raconteur, who has an opinion on most things, and normally an acerbic and witty one as this amazing press conference demonstrates - younger brother Liam is the quintessential frontman.

You know his flaws: his cat, sat, matt song writing, an inability to move out of top speed and taking Beatles fanboydom into plagiarism realms. But when it comes to balls out, rock and roll, the sort that turns you into a mindless indie hooligan and walk with a Manchester swagger, even though you've never been further North than Islington, no one can touch him.

And I mean no one. Who else could sell out venues across the world on the back of 1 album (and it's a patchy one in all honesty), and with a stone-cold, and entirely understandable (not to mention principled) refusal to play Oasis songs? Yes, it's Oasis minus Noel, but that's a huge, debilitating minus.

Which can only mean the thousands and thousands of fans have come to see Liam, hands held behind his back, neck crooned up into the microphone and pigeon-chest puffed out in all its Pretty Green glory.

And we have the honour of warming up for him, Gem Archer, Andy Bell and the other one (I'm being disingenuous here - it's Chris Sharrock on drums). Apparently Beady Eye's management are quite tight on what goes on before the band, and understandably so - you wouldn't want to play any Beatles or Rolling Stones for fear of hearing the same chords and melodies a few minutes later played live.

But we've got 30 minutes, with an anticipated audience of 4500 people, to show off our record collections. And considering I've been hoarding music ever since I bought Nevermind as my first CD (it's true! honest! My first tape was far less impressive - my excuse is I'm Scottish), that's not as easy as it sounds.

We've started pulling together a few ideas, and so far new bands like Sleigh Bells, M83, The Horrors are rubbing shoulders with lost indie classics like The Beta Band, Flaming Lips and The Delgados. And after that, hopefully I'll be lucky enough to meet Liam backstage and hopefully utter something more memorable than the nervous grunt I managed to throw Fatboy Slim's way. Get your tickets here



P.S. Big thanks to Adidas Originals for kitting us out for the night - we'll be standing proud in our three stripes.

Ghetto Funk Volume 3

Latest tracks by Da:Funct - SYNF Harry J Allstars vs Damn Horns - Liquid Heater Death in Vegas - Dirt (Slayer Edit) Sub Focus - Rock It (Bobby C Sound TV remix) Shy FX & Donaeo - Raver (DJ Wood Reboot) Mario Bros - Super Mario Jam (Matty Blades remix) Royksopp - Happy Up Here (WBBL remix) Stevie Wonder - Superstitious (Funkanomics remix) Arrested Development - Mr Wendal (D-Funk remix) Marlena Shaw - California Soul (A Skillz remix) Wu Tang Clan - As We Enter The Gravel Pit (Skratch Bastid blend) Chemical Brothers vs Jimi Hendrix - Ready To Galvanise (Diago mashup) Luke Vibert - Acid 2000 Toddla T feat. Roots Manuva - Watch Me Dance

Slow it down, son

I've been the worst culprit of this before - banging out fast and furious tunes when the situation demands something a bit more restrained. It's an easy trap to fall into: Dubai crowds can be a bit slow to catch fire sometimes, so throwing down some heavy-duty ammunition can be the easiest way to light the touch paper. That and a relatively early 3am finish added to the fact most clubbers don't show until 12am at the earliest, means that you've got a few hours to show them a good time. And invariably that means cranking up the speed. But, pop quiz hot shot - where does that leave the night to progress to? And it's not going to impress the headliner who's now stuck at lightspeed, and any decrease will risk losing the momentum you've so carefully blown up.

In my defence, it's something that I've tried pretty hard to rectify in recent years, and I now take a lot of care in my warm ups, making sure the music, tempo and energy of the tracks fit the venue, the crowd, the time of the night. To me, a warm up now means starting at 95BPM at 10pm and finishing on around 120BPM at 1am when the headliner comes on. And that suits me perfectly, as I've genuinely fallen in love with music at around 110BPM in speed (hence the name of the blog, see).

It first started when I got into disco (as I think most DJs do at one point or another, it being the creation point of all dance music, after all), and I realised the energy a 100BPM banger could have, the propulsive momentum created by big, scudding beats and skittery hi notes to push it forward. And then there's my other new love, Ghetto funk, which is another slow but energetic genre that is essentially breakbeat slowed down to a hip hop speed, but with added dubstep bassline wobble and seismic beats. It's a genuinely exciting new type of music, and one that I've started incorporating into my edits and mashups.




It seems the 'slow is the new fast' school of thought is spreading around the world. House, once in love with minimal house (which to my ear sounded like a particularly annoying bat fight) has now added melody to the music, and stripped back the speed so much that 125BPM is now considered speeding. And even dirty Dutch house, the most virulent strain of electro, has taken a raincheck on its speeds, and has transmogrified itself and is now called Moobahton, with 110BPM tracks doing the same damage on the dancefloor as pitched up 130BPM anthems.



What does it all mean, then? To my mind, it's simply a re-adjustment to the previous few years, where dubstep and its halting, punctuated 140BPM scatter-gun breaks and nu-disco and its big-room melodies over beefed up beats have made a huge impact on the musical climate. Music needn't be Lighting Bolt fast to make an impact, and warm up DJs and headliners have brought the speeds down and with it raised the club's ceilings. Whether crowds in Dubai appreciate this slow-down is another matter, but with nights like Turn Me Loose, iLL Communications, audio tonic and the Electric Boutique at Trilogy flying the slow and funky flag, there's a lot of hope yet.


And if you've made it this far, here's my latest mix which works its way from 100BPM to 120BPM over an hour, with plenty of acid-fried disco flavours along the way.

http://soundcloud.com/da-funct-synf/da-functs-nu-disco-acid-wiggle

Shouting Together

My recent Horror's nu-disco edit got a surprising amount of love, so I decided to continue in that musical theme and given Primal Scream's 'Come Together' a drum-heavy edit and added Tears For Fears vocals along the way. Give it a spin and let me know what you think...

And if you like it, it'll most likely be played loud and proud at our next Loaded on Friday July 29

Ride on Still Life

Few bands have got at me the same way The Horrors have. They were the band of Glastonbury last year when we saw them at sunset on the Park Stage. It might have been a combination of a fuzzy red-wine head at 7pm, or the strange mushroom omelette that I had for lunch (ahem), but when they took to the stage and played their debut album Primary Colours in its entirety and it blew me and the missus away.

Understandably, we were HUGELY excited about the follow up material and first single from the new album, 'Still Life.' And it didn't disappoint. A buzzy, shoegaze meets pop blast of ever-evolving brilliance, it's one of the best tunes of 2011 already. But - and there's always a but - it didn't quite work on the dancefloor at Loaded.

So, I've added a fairly large tweak, sped it up slightly and mashed it up with one of my nu-disco bangers. The beats are now harder, faster and the two songs work really well together in my opinion. But that's just my thoughts, click on this link for my mashup and listen for yourself...

'Can you play something betterer?'

Loca was the busiest it's ever been on Thursday. From 8pm, it was standing room only, and every nook and cranny was filled with people. Which ordinarily, would have been perfect. In the year I've been there, Loca has always had a great vibe, and quickly built up a reputation as one of the best bars and restaurants in the city, and I love my Thursday nights there.

Sadly, it was so busy that a group of 30 teachers were press-ganged into the DJ corner, and for 5 exceedingly painful hours, constantly let me know about it.

It began when one of the Arabic teachers in the party told me - not asked, told me - I should be playing Arabic music. When you're in a Mexican restaurant. And I'm a white guy currently playing New Orleans funk and soul which is going down very-nicely-indeed-thank-you-very-much. That didn't stop the muppet asking a further 3 times however, each one accompanied by an imploring arm swung round to presumably imply that no one was enjoying my music when people where actually quite happily getting down.

That was nothing compared to the agony inflicted by the drunk, cackling, middle-aged pack of teacher hyenas who pounced on every track I played. I can't replay the whole night (more for fear that I might end up curled up naked in the shower rocking myself from side to side as I re-live the memory) so here are a few excerpts...

Woman: 'Can you play something betterer' - that's not better, but betterer.

Woman: 'Can you play something we can dance to/Can you play something I know/Can you play something faster' - all of which were met with a confused/disdainful/please-god-let-this-end-soon look from me. 

Woman: 'I was born in the 70s (that's a lie, but moving on) - can you play something I know.' So I drop some Fleetwood Mac and some Rolling Stones.
Woman: 'I did ask you for some 70s music, are you going to play any or what?'
Erm...

Woman: 'Is this what the venue have told you to play - why don't you play something we can dance to and that we know.'
Me: 'We don't really play commercial, radio music.'
Woman: 'Why not, it's better than this shite.'
Me: 'That's quite rude.'
Woman: 'Play some Usher or some Pitbull.'
Me: 'No.'
Woman: 'You're the worst DJ in the world, I've never met anyone so rude. I don't understand why you won't play what all the other bars are playing.'
Me: (While turning the music up) 'Well fuck off to one of those bars then.'

Woman: 'Why were you laughing and talking to that person who just made a request.'
Me: 'Erm, what?'
Woman: 'You've been nothing but rude to me, why won't you take my request?'
Me: 'Well, that was one of my friends who I haven't seen for a few months. She's nice, friendly and doesn't bust my balls about the rather excellent choice of music I've been playing. You however are a pissed twat who's had one margarita too many, and are now being a bolshy, musical moron trying to push your weight around.' Except you can't say that to people, so I just put my headphones on and dropped some more 'shite.' 

What total twats like that fail to appreciate is that a) I have the other 300 people to cater to (of which a lot of people regularly come up and say how much they liked the music) b) I have to be consistent with what we've been doing at the venue for the last year (and that's playing funk, soul, disco and rock and roll, and judging by how busy we are, are doing it rather well) and c) when else would you be so down-right rude, condescending and petulant to another human being and think that it's perfectly normal behaviour?

You're a punter, a consumer. We play different music, it's our niche, our calling card and judging by how busy it is and how many repeat customers we get, a very succesful one. Vote with your feet and go to Chi/Rock Bottom/anywherefuckingelse instead of giving me a hard time for 5 long hours.

But they didn't. They stayed in my DJ corner from 8pm until a very drunk 1.15am. When the music was so bad that they presumably went home and ripped off their ears so they could never endure the pain again. A whole 5 hours and 15 minutes of hell, or 315 minutes of unadulterated musical perjury for both them and me.

So this blog post is dedicated to them. As is the this song that I played when they were walking out, accompanied by a few backward looks over their shoulders, before they plummeted over an unseen step and ended up on a drunken heap on the ground. 

Re-Loaded

Loaded - Just Good Music.

I think we stuck to our musical mandate on our 2nd Loaded event, as we played everything from The Supremes to The Vaccines, and drum and bass (Marky and Stamina) to Nirvana. And if anything, it went down even better than the first event: well, that is apart from the batty old bird who vehemently complained that we weren't playing enough indie (amusingly, while The Stone Roses was playing) and Simon's laptop getting splattered in beer which meant he had to play off my laptop (hence the above-average number of mashups!)

Then again, it's maybe not surprising that Si's laptop took a dunking as there was a full on moshpit in Casa Latina from 11 until a sweaty, sweaty close at 3am. We're back on Friday July 29 which is the last night of clubbing before Ramadan, so it should be rather large. Until then, here are some great pics that our good friend Duncan Dodgson took from the last gig - see if you can spot yourself in the moshpit.