I played a similar set at Flammable last week. It was pretty good turnout wise, even remembering that it was Super Bowl that night. I got to laugh a lot with some friends and there were lots of people I hadn’t seen in months.. years even.

Nobody’s stomach exploded out of their ears while I was there, either.

Enjoy!

1. Delano Smith – Synergy
2. Nivek Tsoy – Feeling Loose – Graphic Instrumental
3. Not Boyfriend Material – Flammable -Accapella
4. Jimpster – Dangly Panther – Original Mix
5. Les Bijoux – Do It Again -Extended Mix
6. Rocco – Someday – Dub Mix
7. Jimpster -Got A Hold On Your Soul
8. Sleazy Mcqueen – Trains Over Broadway -Pezzner Mix
9. Mathew Anderson – We Hurt Each Other
10. Orbital – Chime – Shapeshifters Remix
11. Kevin Yost – Get The Horns
12. Round Two – New Day – Club Vocal Mix
13. Lisa Shaw – Music In you
14. Oriental Funk Stew – Sky High – Chuck Love Network Rework
15. Nick Waters & David Mateo Feat Nick Studer – Funky Experience

I sat down with Dan Dagen aka Spirals last week to talk shop, go through a substantial record collection and try to ignore the stacks of speaker cabinets that take up 60% (seriously) of his living room.

He pulled up a stack of records, I pressed record on my laptop and off he went, playing an hours worth of techno in what seemed like 20 minutes. Maybe I am just hungry for beats, but he played everything I needed to hear that day.

After, we played every dj’s favorite game: “have you heard this one?” for 2 hours. Yes.

1-sleeparchive- acd bleep- Research EP
2-sleeparchive- bleep 02- Recycle EP
3-sleeparchive- image photometer- Infrared Glow
4-surgeon- black jackal throwbacks- Force + Form
5-surgeon- sleep (ultravilotet)- Body Request
6-diversion group- all boys/no girls Playground Procedure
7-regis- execution grounds- Divine Ritual
8-portion reform- suffocate- The Supreme Negative
9-regis- aftertaste of guilt- Exercise For Institutions
10-function- disaffected- Anticipation
11-regis- white stains- Penetration
12-ancient methods-untitled – Second Method
13-the advent- light years away- Light Years Away
14-the kooky scientist- old vs. neav- O.L.D. vs. N.E.A.U.
15-sven vath- mind games-Mind Games
16-joris voorn- state of inner soul- The First Sound
17-robert hood- razr- Hoodmusic 1
18-james ruskin- return (original)-Return
19-regis and female- c/chaos- Faith Is Fear

This tape is deep as fuck. Doc at his peak. Heavy. Slamming drums, big vocals and nasty stomach twisting basslines. Snare rolls. Breaks, builds, tension and mother fucking drama in the club.

Extra points if you can tell me what the Energy Flash mix is at 21:00.

40 seconds later he starts teasing the tambourine from Green Velvets “Flash” in and you hear it: “FUCK YEA!”

FUCK YEA!

Not saying this is some uptempo trance fest because, well, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Summer is over, and the clouds rolled in quickly to make that point. Some good ideas turned into bad ideas and I have never been less inspired to actually write music since… who knows. I have not played out less, dj or live since I started doing this over ten years ago. Just keeping below the radar,

I am not complaining, just marking the fact that this mix is cool colored. Not blue, not grey, just cool. Full of heart and feeling, but still sad and expecting.

Quality tunes though, both serious classics and some current classics in the making.

Take Dave Angel’s “Endless Motions”. Released in 1993, and full of everything that shows how important the British music scene was in pushing Techno farther and in different directions that America was going.

Jeff Samuel’s “Off the Mark” is stunner, showing off his talent for combining movement with heart. Listen and listen again. The synth work by itself is incredible, bringing that kind of emotion with something so superficially confining like Techno is work best left to the masters. The innovators. The Jeff’s.

Gregor Tresher has been catching my attention recently, taking a playful approach the the minimal and electro sound, while keeping it dance floor friendly. “A Thousand Nights” is melancholy, sexy, girls like it and clubbers love it. Chin scratchers hate it.

Orbital comes correct with “Fahrenheit 3d3″ Giving techno and acid a distinctively British lean. One of my favorite Orbital songs. 1992, yo. Seriously.

Leftfield’s “Swords” brings the whole thing down. Deep, dark and something I slept on till a few weeks ago. Not perfect, me.

1. Intro – Cliff Martinez -  Don’t Blow It
2. Carl Craig – Technoambient
3. Dave Angel – Endless Motions
4. Trentemoller – Snowflake
5. Mat Anderson – A Heart Like Thera
6. Isolee – Beau Mot Plage
7. Jeff Samuel – Off The Mark
8. Underworld – Beautiful Burnout – Mark Knight Mix
9. Gregor Tresher – A Thousand Nights
10. Orbital – Fahrenheit 3d3
11. Fatboy Slim – Next To Nothing
12. Moby – Go
13. Leftfield – Swords
14. Aphex Twin -Ageisopolis

The video is nothing short of amazing I think. Check it below. Swords, by Leftfield

No. Not when there is good work to be done in this world.

Soul Music. Funk Music. Deep Blues. This is music made for both big feelin’s and feelin’ big. No room lackluster. No room for anything but letting it all out, no matter if you have a tissue handy or not.

Big Feelin’s or Feelin’ Big.

Sun is out, life is good.

1. Alan Lomax Collection – No More My Lawd b/w Carl Craig – Climax
2. Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues
3. Bernard Herrmann – Thank God For The Rain b/w Alan Lomax Collection – Hammer Ring
4. David Axelrod – The Human Abstract
5. Burial – Forgive
6. Undisputed Truth – Take A vacation From Life
7. Curtis Mayfield – Hard Times
8. R.L. Burnside – Hard Time Killing Floor
9. Bernard Herrmann – Journey To The Center Of The Earth
10. Dadamnphreaknoizephunk – Reconstructed Polo Shirt
11. James Brown – The Boss
12. Gabin – It’s Gonna Be
13. Quiet Village – Too High To Move
14. Gardys Night And The Pips – If I Were Your Woman
15. Jay Dilla – Welcome To Detroit
16. Ben E King – Supernatural Thing
17. Undisputed Truth – Spacemachine

There is a long story and a short story to everything. I think today is short story time. The lady and I are no longer, and thus, my tenure at the farm is over. No more coyotes in the back pasture, no more cows eating the apples, no more salmon spawning in the creek, no more Abberdoodle.

I was going to write “No more Aberdoodle killing moles.” or “.. disappearing for 3 hours while hunting whatever” but the fact is this: Very little Poodle in my life. I swung by to get the almost-to-the-last of my stuff and Abby ignored me. I started loading out things and she followed me out, but stayed put until my car door was open and hopped up.

I told her to get down, but she just stared at me, and curled up and laid down, head buried and facing the other way.

We drove on a flat tire to the gas station, aired up enough to go to the Tire store, and took my dearest to whole foods, where we ate pizza and apples. She loves apples. We then had coffee and sat in the sun where she took to task a chew toy. We drove home and I dropped her off.

Here is what I have been listening to. Underworld’s “Dirty Epic”. Good moody tune to sing along with.  This is about half of the song. Easy to buy if you want the rest.

“Sweet in winter sweet in rain
shake well before use she said,
You never touch me anymore this way”

This mix clocks in around 30 minutes. 8 assertive, rockin’ out party tracks. I was thinking about the Flammable show last week, and when putting away my records I grabbed a couple I played and a couple more and jammed out for a bit. Does anybody play this fast either? I never play this fast, but jeesh, It just came out at me.

I played a little dark at rebar, and my feeling was I played a little too dark, but like Brian says “play how your feeling”. The relationship is over, I am trying to sort out a new home, my finances, my music ect. I played how I felt, and this mix continues with that feeling.

I am going to try something new too. Instead of putting out the tracklisting with the podcast, I will wait a week. My pea is thinking that less people listen if they know what to expect. I am guilty of that too. There is also the fact that some people will not listen unless they know what to expect. Guilty x2.

Maybe it all comes out in the wash.
The track listing has arrived.

1. Ian Pooley – Revelations – Definitive
2. Head Nodding Society – Nudge Up – Classic
3. Ooze – Down Up -Work
4. Josh Wink – You are the One – Nervous
5. Ian Pooley – Allnighter – NRK
6. Underground Resistance -HardLife Aaron Carl Remix – UR
7. Steve “Silk” Hurley – The Word is Love – Kelly G Dub – Silktone
8. Swag – Version 06 – Version
Do not pass go, nor collect a buckfitty.

This mix is pretty rowdy. Dropping “Love will make it right” over the “Play that music” is one of those mixes I got attached to right off. I never had the balls to play it live, as it took a fairly quick mix to get out and I was always one of those “hold it till you pee” mixers. It took some control to only put two Ian Pooley mixes in this, I almost had 4 on it, but I narrowed them out. The final track, by Dj Drazil is a Seattle born classic from head to toe. Produced by the Jacob Londons, (You can find their version floating around too if you look) this track came out on the Eat House imprint of Carlos Miguel. I am releasing a few of Drazil’s track soon. He will be the second release on TKFL, and has both a couple classics and some incredible new tracks ready for release.

Enjoy the music

The charitable listing of the music titles:

1. BlakDoktor – Alacazam – 1998 – Shaboom Records
2. Anti Trance Terrorists – 1999 – Creative Music (Backed with PJ – Love Will Make It Right… Again -1996 – Stickman
3. White Label – Feel free to help me out. Possibly Inland Knight, most likely British from 99-01
4. Johnny Fiasco – Don’t Stop – 2000 – Distant Music
5. Mike Delgado – Soul Good – 1997? – Henry Street.
6. Dj Sneak – Throw your Hands – 1996 – Strictly Rhythm
7. TAKK. This record is somewhere in a crate from a gig. It may be lost forever.
8. Dave Angel – This is Disco – This might be the Ian Pooley remix -1997 -Island Records.
9. Daft Punk – Musique – 1996 – Virgin
10. Hollis P Monroe – I’m Lonely – 1999 – Stickman
11. Ian Pooley – 1997 – After Midnight Records
12. Jacob London and DJ Drazil – Hydrogenated Funk – 1998 – Eat House

This is the kind of tune I would have gone apeshit over when I was 16. To be honest, I felt like I was 16 while making it. Isn’t that what it is all about anyway? I used to work with a girl, an artist, and she had an attitude that if you are having fun, you are wasting your time. “You have got to take this seriously, this is ART!”

Fuck that. This ain’t art. If you ain’t having fun, you ain’t doing it right.

Love Tip for Girls: Everything a boy says before he sleeps with you is a lie, especially when he means it. When you accept this as fact and look at all the personality traits that are not directly attached to his hunting instinct, try to decide if you want the honest part of him around after you sleep with him.

Back to the topic. I get uncomfortable playing new music for people because I am too aware of the differences between what I write and what I think people hear when they listen to it. Does that make sense?

Early last year I started reading about Dubstep (late comer since day one) and what I heard did not seem any different to the dub I was listening to when I was a kid. What the press and the blogs described sounded miles better that what I was hearing, and I was getting more inspired by the words I read, rather than the music I heard.

I played some stuff for a fantastic DJ named Michael Lakeman and he wrongfully assumed that I had been listening to Burial. Late last year a local mailing list I am on lit-up in both praise and annoyance of the new Burial album and Dubstep in general. Again, all verbage that spilled out interested me greatly, but I avoided listening to the albums that were talked about, as I did not want to get my ideas tainted by what the “proper” guys were doing.

After I had given Burial a proper listen I came to two conclusions:

1. Burial is the goods, and anybody who thinks otherwise can suck it.
2. Burial is about as related to Dubstep as Dubstep is related to House. You might have some dubby House, but please, Burial is a dubby Two-Step artist.

Oh, I get it, If you put the words together and you make Dubstep. Is anything with echo’s dubstep? Or is it defined by a…. Who cares.

With a deep breath, here are a couple samples of what I have been working on.

Track 1. Kicked in the ribs. I was having a ton of fun recording the drums into a tape player, playing with extremes in the noise floor, and using various noise reduction techniques to achieve the sound on the drums. I was looking for that compression sound that you get when using shitty mp3 encoders, but by tweaking with the dolby 3 ways to Sunday I was able to be really happy with it.

Track 2. Without works I sampled the piano, a turn of the century Steinway that is in good condition, with the exception of some moisture that caused a few of the tines to crack. Most of the percussion is samples from the sound of a hammer hitting a dead note, ect.

Track 3. We all must sleep. This has been developing for about a year, and is in what should be its final state. Lots of Jupiter 8 in there. There were these birds that woke me up everyday, and I recreated, almost perfectly their phrasing. Nature is crazy.

-Mat