DJ Cruze

The Warehouse Project 2008 - Sasha

I’m off to the opening of the Warehouse Project 2008 tonight for an Ibiza reunion with the guys. Should be a great night of catching up with everyone and we’re all looking forward to seeing what tunes Sasha pulls out of his virtual box. I’m hoping for some early 90s piano classics from his Shelly’s days but I don’t think it’ll happen!

I’m really looking forward to hearing Paul Woolford too as I haven’t heard him DJ for a good few years. Last time I heard him (probably early 2001/2) he was great so he should provide us with some corking tech-house. I think he plays an Ableton Live set too so it’ll be a night of geeks in front of laptops!

Also on the bill are LocoDice (who insist on having a crappy Flash webpage – just give me the information without all of the Flash animations please!) Not sure if they’re playing live or doing a DJ set but I’m looking forward to seeing them too. I’m not the biggest tech/minimal house fan but I’m always open to new tunes so it should be a great night. I’ll let you know how it was once I’ve recovered!

I just came across this awesome video for the new track from Autokratz called “Stay The Same”. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t know much Autokratz until I heard this but they’re an electro-house (electro-pop?) act with a similar sort of vibe as Justice, Digitalism and the like. They’re based in London and sure we’ll hear plenty more of their distorted synths and quirky indie vocals in the months to come. If you want to pick up their album “Down and Out in Paris and London” then you can get it here.

Anyway, this video caught my attention as it has a real charm about it. It features loads of different animated sequences which showing things not staying the same! Check out the video (above) and hopefully you guys will like it too.

It reminds me of the old Royksopp video for “Remind Me”, which is possibly one of the best videos ever made! See it below:

I came across this classic cover video when I was doing my evening trawl through some YouTube videos. Pleasant Hill High School’s Solar Jazz Band played a cover of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” as part of their feature performance at their annual Pleasant Hill Jazz Festival and I have to say – it’s amazing! The drummer needs to be a bit tighter but they way they’ve arranged an electronic song into a jazz track is great.

Check it out:

It’s funny how you find the most random things sometimes!

To promote the release of The Chemical Brothers’ new (greatest hits!) album “Brotherhood” they decided to run a competition. They asked people around the world to film a short film clip, up to 20 seconds, on the theme of Midnight Madness, they’re first single. The clips were then uploaded to Google Earth via The Chemical Brothers website and they were all put together as a concept video using Google Earth.

Here it is:

The result was posted on their website on 1st September but I’ve only just caught up with it. Although the YouTube video has crappy compression on it, I think the concept is really good. The Chemical Brothers have really embraced user generated content on their website by allowing their fans to make a new video for them. Since the revamp of their site they’ve also included a per-gig tag for the fans to tag their YouTube videos and Flickr pictures with. They then aggregate this information and pull it back onto their site to get their fan’s views of the gigs. What a fantastic idea which no doubt keeps their fans coming back for more.

The official “Midnight Madness” video is here if you want to see it:

Way back on Episode #37 of the DJ Cruze podcast I gave you an exclusive listen to my remix of World of Colour’s new track “Change”. Well, 7 months later and it’s finally out as a DJ promo. Marketing of dance music tracks often takes a while so it’s worth the wait.

As well as my Funkfinders remix there are some other fantastic mixes from Steve Haines (Hed Kandi), Yoriy Poleg, Deep Elements and World of Colour included in the promo release. These cover funky electro house and more classic vocal and piano mixes. All in all it’s a wicked promo package which I expect to see on all of the usual digital download stores on the release date of 13th October 2008. So get it downloaded if you like it (…and hopefully it’s my mix that you like!)

I got back from Ibiza on Monday afternoon but it has taken me this long to get my mind and body back in shape so that I could post about it on my website! A great time was had by all as you can see from the picture above. That’s me and the guys on Monday morning after a night out at Space. Big love to the stag Will, whose picture we all have on our t-shirts. I think he had a good stag weekend and I know I did.

So what did we do out there? Well predictably we managed to do an awful lot of drinking as you’d expect. We hit the beach bar Bora Bora on both afternoons, once for only about 20 minutes! It’s a long story – don’t ask! It’s an amazing bar which looks right out onto the beach at Playa D’En Bossa and at about 5pm it starts banging out some amazing tunes. It’s a weird feeling being in your shorts and on a dancefloor looking out onto bright blue skies! If you’re in Ibiza you have to check it out though as the tunes and atmosphere were amazing.

On Saturday night we headed out to Ibiza Town to check out some of the bars and then those that survived moved on to Pacha for Def Mix night with David Morales. Sadly I wasn’t in a fit state to make it out there after a 4am wake-up call on Saturday morning and an afternoon of drinking. Good reports were given by those that were there but most people couldn’t really remember much!

On Sunday we chilled by the beach and pool and then headed back to Bora Bora for a pre-club warm up before heading to “We Love” at Space. Space now doesn’t open until 4.30pm due to the new licencing laws out in Ibiza but it was still weird to arrive at a club at 6.15pm! Big thanks to Mark Firth who sorted us all out with guestlists to save us the whopping 55 Euro entrance price. I was quite amazed at how busy it gets even at that time and by 11pm the place was absolutely rammed! So after a wander around we headed into the terrace bar for a few beers to warm up for the evening. In the back room we listened to Smokin’ Jo for a lot of the evening. Although she’s technically a very good DJ, the music didn’t really do it for me. It was a more on the tech-house, minimal house vibe which sometimes feels a bit cold and soulless. We then headed out into the main room for some dirty breakbeats from the Plump DJs and Boyz Noize who were both rocking. I also managed to catch a bit of Tom Novy’s set (I think) in the other room and he was also rocking the crowd.

Good times were had by all and thankfully we all managed to get back from Ibiza safely. I’d definitely head out there again and hopefully next time I’ll be behind the decks!

Check out the latest Radio 1 Essential Mix if you want a slice of funky 80s disco house. The first hour is from Kris Menace and the second from Fred Falke, two of the hottest French producers at the moment. It’s absolutely rocking and features some of my favourite tracks of the past few months and some cheeky DJ edits too.

The other thing that really made me laugh is the volume control on the BBC iPlayer. The developers of the iPlayer are obviously big fans of Spinal Tap. Their volume control doesn’t go up to 10 like convention dictates but, in an homage to the amplifiers from the film Spinal Tap, it goes “one louder” to 11 as you can see from the picture at the top of this post. See the clip below of the scene from Spinal Tap if you’ve never seen it before.

All I could say was “WOW!” when I saw this video of DJ Sara (8 years old) and DJ Ryusei (5 years old). I’ve been scratching for about 20 years now and they’re so much better than me already! These two are going to go on to win the DMC world championship (a big scratching competition) before they’re in their teens.

Check out the awesome new video for Justice’s “Stress”. It’s very, very dark and contains scenes of violence so don’t watch it if you’re easily offended. I think it suits the foreboding nature of the track and it reminds me of a great French film called “La Haine”. If you’ve never watched the film and you enjoy dark movies about guns and gangs then make sure you pick up a copy and check it out. It’s a pity that the “Stress” video doesn’t have a happy ending though as I thought it might!

Justice “Stress” video:

A classic scene from “La Haine”:

I’ve just been pointed at a wicked bootleg mash-up of Spit’s “Falling” (Daddy’s Groove Magic Island mix) with the classic acapella from Kings Of Tomorrow’s “Finally”. Works really well. What do you lot think?

Although I don’t normally directly link to MP3 files I’ll make an exception just this once. If you like this mash-up and want a direct download link then click here.

Update: I’ve decided that it’s not worth being flagged as an MP3 blog so I’ve taken the link down. Enjoy the video though and I’m sure you can find the bootleg if you want to.