So i recorded my set last night in the club and even though i am far from happy with it i am offering it up here for download. It's not bad by any stretch, just not as tight as i am usually.
Vincent Price and Michael Jackson intro (i actually stopped the music in the club to do this bit) Digital Mystikz - Anti War Dub Benga - Crunked Up Skream - 2d Mala - Left Leg Out Marc Houle - Techno Vocal (Dub) Pirate Soundsystem - Scream if you wanna go rasta Underground Resistance - Footwars Smith and Mighty - B-line fi blow Bok Bok - World Changing Dub Blaqstarr - Shake It To the Ground (Claude Von Stroke Mix) Hannah Holland - Crackney Crookers - Para De Graasinha Congorock - Exodus A Hundred Birds - Jaguar Danielle Baldelli - Safari Rhythim is Rhythim - Strings Of Life Snoop Dogg - Sensual Seduction Nuyorican Soul - Nervous Track Efdemin - Lohn and Brot
Part 2 Efdemin - Lohn and Brot Isolee - Do Re Mi Green Velvet - Shake and Pop (instrumental) Jerome Sydenham - Timbuktu Jess and Crabbe - Council Jesse Rose - Wake Up SL2 - Djs Take Control Bassnectar - Yo (Speakerpunk Brazilian Rave Remix) Bassment Jaxx - Hey U (Switch and Sinden remix) Dr Evil - Mary Jane (Solid Groove Remix) Bonde Do Role - Solta O Frango Ludacris - Roll Out Radioclit - Divine Gosa Elite Force - Used and Abused (Zodiac Cartel Remix) Bell X1 - Flame (Solid Groove Remix) L-vis 1990 - Mr Wobble Twocker - Stitch Sawtooth Sucka - Crazy Pase Rock - The Motherfucking Rave Is Over Bassment Jaxx - Nifty Rod Lee - Understand Pitbull - Move Shake Drop Benni Benassi - Satisfaction (Mowgli Bootleg) Duke Dumont - Lean and Bounce Mattew Jonson - Followed By Angels
The Bulgarian is a producer from (wait for it) Bulgaria, now staying in Cape Town. We are pretty big fans of his music under the names The Bulgarian and Mr Elastik over here at Electrique Boutique so we were pretty chuffed when he agreed to do an interview for us.
Electronic Boutique) So you have quite alot of respect for releasing records as Mr Elastik, what made you want to release the Bulgarian stuff as well? Most of the people who i know who play your Mr Elastik records kind of look down on the fidget house genre for not being very serious.
Bulgarian) Really? Haha, thought it was the other way round. ;) Actually mr. elastik and The Bulgarian came about at around the same time. I was really into all the minimal stuff but then I heard “A little bit Patchy” by Switch (the original dubsided release)... and didn’t really like it. But the flip-side was really dope. So i started checking this sound out and really got into it. Back then it still didn’t have a name so i was calling it ‘electrojack’... thank goodness someone thought of Fidget, much better name.
EB) Was there a record or producer that inspired the switch over of style?
B)I never really switched, rather expanded, but yeah, as I mentioned above it was “The Something Like” on dubsided 005, the flip to “A Bit Patchy”. That, and hearing Switch playing later that year at the Exit Festival in Serbia that sealed the deal for me. It was just a real breath of fresh air at the time!
EB)What other producers do you feel an affinity to right now?
B)I value the people more than the products and our personas are just that: products. So I’ll rather just mention some of the cats i’m getting along with at the moment that i think are cool; Bryan Cox, KiNK, my man Vlad Sokolov and also my Potty Mouth cohorts. I’m also on good terms with the Crookers, me and Phra have some funny msn conversations!
EB)Where have you found the Bulgarian sound goes down best? Are you booked to play alot as him in Bulgaria or South Africa for example?
B)Never actually played in Bulgaria! Hoping to change that soon, but i haven’t lived there for a long time and there’s not that much of an underground scene. South Africa is also a very tiny tiny fraction of the musical pie but it was where “The Bulgarian” was born so yeah, played here a bit. ;)
As to where the sound goes down the best... ... i’ll let you know! ;)
EB)Do you feel that the Cape town scene is particularly different from Durban or Jo'burg due to it's Cape Malay, San etc population - the sheer mix of ethnicities must make for some different vibes - the Cape Flats are a hot bed of kwaito right?
B)South Africa is a very colourful place in general and yes the cities are quite different, not least of which is their relative isolation from one another due to the sheer distances between them, JoBurg is about 1500Km from Cape Town and Durban is just over 1000 i think, so cross-pollination is hard, but Kwaito is definitely a national sound! In fact myself and my old studio partner Damien have been credited by some of the local media as having invented a new genre as the Tone Deaf Junkies: We call it Kwaitech, think electronic tech-kwaito. ;)
EB)It was your Discobelle mix that turned me onto Brabe, which in turn revealed Rene Van Munster and Bootlickers. How on earth did you discover him? I have tried looking for music i like on Myspace before and it is a soul destroying task.
B)I have a very time-consuming habit of checking out every single myspace page of everyone i get a friend request from as i think its polite and you never know what you might find. Of my nearly 2000 friends i’ve hand approved and looked at every single one of their pages Brabe and Rene were among those. So if your friend request is taking a few days to get approved its usually because im trying to find some time to get through a whole bunch of back-logged requests.
EB) Are there any other up and coming producers you want to big up right now?
B) While he’s been around for longer than me and is not really doing badly by any means he is still up and coming and so i have to give a shout out to the other Bulgarian. My man KiNK (on my top friends on my myspace page), the dude has talent, especially when you see what he works on!!!
Remember to support the artists we feature here on the blog, if you don't they might not bother making the exciting music that you enjoy dancing to. Buy his stuff.
Since it is only five bat days until Crookers grace the stage at Snafu to grace us with a graceful dj set i am devoting this week to the genre of fidget/crunk/ghetto house. After that i'll move onto trend house and then haircut house.
Here is the Essential Mix from Radio One by none other than Herve and Sinden from the 5th of January. Pretty much business as usual as far as the tunes go, although thankfully business as usual for this pair is a big, party mash up of music from genres far and wide.
There is no tracklist as of yet, but this mix contains some Kid Sister, Toddla T, South Rakkas Crew, Soulja Boy, Dude and Nem, MJ Cole, Snoop Dogg, Pitbull, Burial, Benga and Coki, Rusko, Santogold, Bonde Do Role and loads more good music.
So we have Crookers playing at Snafu on Friday February the 15th and i am a bit chuffed about it. I love their weird take on modern dance music and i reckon that 2008 will be a big year for them. I could try to describe their sound but i think i will just post some of the tracks that have been leaked online with some of their live mixes. We'll start with a few mixtapes.
Brabe is a 17 year old unsigned producer and multi instrumentalist from the Netherlands who makes nice fidget house music. Although admitedly being influenced by Switch and the rest of the Dubsided crew, his sound is a touch more soulful and a bit slower.
I contacted him and he sent me a bunch of tunes by himself and Bootickers, which is him and his mate Rene, who also produces and djs.
I will be spinning more of this kind of stuff when i do what will be probably my only Friday gig at Snafu, where i have been curiously paired with the tasteful Martin Jay. Not entirely sure why we were put together as i favour the more dumb, faster style of dance music and he is a firm supporter of slower music with like, people playing instruments, singing and stuff. I actually had a Friday night back in 2004 in Snafu, where i spun records by Switch, Dizzee, Lady Sovereign, Deize Tigrona and also Sabrina, Rammstein, Britney Spears. That's probably why it didn't last too long. You can check out the only playlist i published here.
I remember back in the day when Martin and i both played in Po Na Na, spinning a million MAW related records a night and i seem to remember him having a penchant for filtered disco house as well. I can't talk though as i was probably spinning stuff far worse like Freestylers records and suchlike.
As a mark of respect i won't be playing any booty bass, baile funk, bmore, dubstep, grime, 4x4, kuduro, electroclash, punkfunk, indie or anything that could be percieved as the kind of stuff that hipsters or teenagers might like this Friday night.
This post is probably of no interest to anyone but a sneaker pervert like me, but..... THEY ARE RE-ISSUING PATRICK EWING TRAINERS!!!!!
On my 12th birthday i wanted to buy these and a pair of Filas but my mum said i had too many pairs of shoes already. I had to choose between them and i foolishly chose (this is after a lot of arguments) to buy Filas for myself and use the rest of my money to buy the purple suede Patrick Ewings for my little brother. Kind of a strange move maybe, but i just thought they looked so cool and the hip hop people i saw on Yo! Mtv Raps (when i went to my friend Peter-who-had-cable's house) sometimes rocked them.
Anyway i need cry no more as i will soon be able to be wearing a pair of shoes that hopefully no one else has in Aberdeen.
Because i am chuffed here are three new tunes that i am feeling right now.
I actually did a party for Blue Note records (the label this tune was released on) to promote some album that was coming out and had to play nothing but their records all night. The label sent me two boxes of records and a Blue Note tee shirt that i have since lost. How cool is that? What a bunch of dudes. Rose Rouge was the only tune people danced to though. This remix is getting mad play from a lot of minimal type djs and it is easy to see why. A dreamy, slow building, melodic track that could fit into most dj's sets.
Another minimal type record (or is it? i don't really know how to class this kind of music) that is getting a fair amount of love, again, from minimal dj's. I am not trying to jump on the whole minimal bandwagon here, it's just that when there is a lot of a certain kind of dance music coming out it tends to be hard to avoid hearing about the songs people get excited about. This track teeters on the edge of being a bit trancey, but thankfully manages to restrain itself, building up nicely for pretty much the whole tune.
The thing i think i like most about this kind of music is that only people who have a real passion for dance music would play it. I can't imagine ex hip hop djs or rock kids spinning minimal house very well as they generally stick to blog house, Justice and bad breakbeat bootlegs of MIA. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that, i just think it is good to have an open mind to dance music.
I suppose i had better put something fun for my last record.
Fans of the fidget house genre (if it indeed exists in reality) will probably already know of The Bulgarian. He fits in nicely next to Switch, Herve, Crookers and suchlike in London dj's myspace top friends lists. He also makes techy electro house under the name Mr Elastik and is also good at this. This tune bumps along with the sort of bouncy, almost 4x4 bassline that you would expect from a fidget/niche house tune.
