DISCLAIMER: The views expressed herein do not in any way reflect the actual views held by myself.INTRO: I started DJ'ing at the age of 13 - earliest influences were acid/psy-trance freaks Mark EG & M-Zone. I slowly realised that 4/4 music can be just as energetic if it's played on 33.3rpm as those records were cut to be played, and decided not to retune my decks to +/- 20% to cater for those 45's. Hyper-paced trance and techno was gradually superceded in my collection by a slower, slicker breed: more proggy forms of trance and tech-house.NEXT STEP: My mixing was confident, consistent and tight and my vinyl collection was large - I felt that having been DJ'ing for 2 years I should now be playing out.FIRST CLUB GIG: 15 years old on a saturday house & trance night @ The Fish in Cheltenham. I also picked up a couple of one-off sessions at Thekla in Bristol on the strength of a good 25-minute tech-house demo tape...STARSTRUCK: 2-hour warm-up set for Cass & Slide, then top of the all-dominant prog-scene/Sasha & Diggers' rivals!HI-FREQ: House parties/leaving parties galore (plus the odd club gig) from ages 16-18, playing eclectic, underground tech-house sets just before the...UNI-DAZE: "There is Hell on earth – it’s somewhere in Leicestershire, UK. Young people get sucked into the centre en masse – lives are slowly corrugated, set to rot in routine, sharing the same dull streets and bars, withering and greying under a blanket of misery. The clubs are crap, overpriced, filthy ‘spaces’ and have no atmosphere (but they do have sick on the walls and used needles in the toilets). The crowds want poor pop-hop with a bad attitude, and still give little reaction. Society is cut along sharp lines of racial and cultural alienation, and violence. Oh yes, you will find all of this in Leicester. But I’m sure it didn’t say this in the prospectus!"Leicester was once a banging city during the 90's decade of yellow smiley faces and acid house. There were few remnants of which by the time of my arrival in 2002... only the torn remains of some crusty, "wallpaper-paste-flyered" posters down inconspicuous alleyways advertising some night in 1996 where Carl Cox, Slam and Pete Tong headlined... we were pretty much left with dregs, although a few good nights were going on - most notably the cutting-edge Auxilec: a monthly session of techno/electro/electronica (mostly live sets), including guest appearences of the likes of Ceephax Acid Crew, Bogdan Raczynski, Yellotone, Shitmat, Dexorcist and Scrubber Fox to name a handful...LOOPHOLE: I ran a night in Leicester across several venues (including The Attik, Stax and the shitty-but-spacious "Bar Nova" - now dead) and all in the space of a year. I worked closely with fellow Music-Tech cohorts DJ Glitch and DJ Crunchy. The music policy was eclectic, electric, cutting-edge breaks, house and techno... First night at underground club The Attik was rammed and a quality crowd of music heads made for a sizzling atmosphere. Headlined by Access Tonal Communications' The Hidden Persuader playing a live laptop set of electronics and techno. Glitch and myself promoted this night via a Friday evening Loophole radio show on Demon FM (Uni Radio), with guests for the upcoming night doing warmup sessions for the gig.BREAK THE MOULD: Most successful of all my promotional ventures thus far. In collaboration with Crunchy and DTM, we put the Nomad venue on the map (but now it's gone grimey and nasty again since we left town!). This free eclectic night of electro, techno, breaks, d'n'b and hip-hop etc. had monthly residencies from Deadly Avenger (Illicit Records/FABRICLIVE 4), VIGI (Streetwise Records/TCR) and Steve Auxilec. We also held open deck sessions, getting the best and most unique underground DJ's in Leicester involved via demo mixes, giving the best crop a set playing out to a good crowd of enthusiastic "music-heads".PRODUCTION: Leicester is the place where I learned to produce music. It is the place where I spent "the good days" of my late youth as a student and got my degree in Music Technology. I am now based in Gateshead and as active in Music production as time permits (5-10 hours a week if lucky). I am most focused on developing a live electronics set at current and will soon have a fully interactive Flash-based website up and running to promote this. MY WORK CONTINUES!There will be regular uploads of excerpts of my live Electribe sets as and when new material is conjured...
I will bulletin my myspace friends to inform.
Currently uploaded live exerpt: noneSFX: I am also a co-publisher on soundscalpel.com, where I have over 200 unique sound effects and various recorded samples for sale...On The Cheap - Dreamstate MontageCredits: Visual Montage Production by Najeska.
On The Cheap - The Lights (Trains, Planes and Autos):
Pure evil, working his angles for futures passed:
Episode 1 - "meeting the man with the oil" (1984)...
...why else was he there? There are major humanitarian crises/dodgy dictatorships in all sorts of countries without major oil reserves - but he likes the scent of hydrocarbons, which tend to make these Iraqi diplomatic meetings far more worthwhile!
