It's been a week and a bit since the chaps at Rothfink posted my Christmas Mix, Merry Rustmas Vol.1, and it's done alright. It's reached the heady heights of #28 in the bootleg/mash up chart and #84 in the beats chart, which is pretty sweet.
Not sure if the full tracklisting is on MixCloud, so here you go:
DJ Shadow - Best Foot Forward (Sammyfax Xmas Edit)
Wham - Last Christmas (Slugabed Ruined It)
Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmastime (Seven Davis Jr Edit)
GFOTY - Christmas Day
Bit Shifter - Let It Snow
Devo - Merry Something To You
Yo La Tengo - Rock'n'Roll Santa
Holly Golightly - Christmas Tree On Fire
Can - Silent Night
Haim - The Chanukah Song
Brother Nature - Merry Little Christmas
Dirty Boyz - All I Want For Christmas Is To Get It Crunk
Local Business Comedy - Wrapped 2
I've also agreed to do a Xmas Mix for FamilyPoint Cymru, and this one will be considerably more non-sweary, in fact there will be no effing and blinding at all. I'm thinking of going down a funky route for this one. I plan to work on it this afternoon and it is scheduled to go on their website on Friday.
All of which doesn't leave me a lot of time to do my own Xmas Mix. So this is kind of an early warning that there might not be one this year. What must baby Jebus be feeling?
Happy Friday everyone! Need some hard as nails techno and acid to get to pub time? BOOM.
It was featured in FACT's mixes of the week recently and they said: "Recorded live from a Milanese squat party for Haunter Records, it’s “a mutant mix from a mutant bastard”, exploding with jackhammer noise, twisted techno and flashes of speedcore."
I've got a long train ride ahead of me as I'm off to Falmouth to gatecrash my mum's staff Christmas party and drive off with her car on Sunday. She knows this, it's totes legit. Anyway, I plan to drop this mix around the time I cross the Tamar via the Royal Albert Bridge and crack open a cider. Enjoy.
Would you look at that? I got tickets for Field Day 2017 just to see Aphex Twin. Now they add Flying Lotus, Moderat and S U R V I V E. And that's just the first wave.
Also I deliberately used one of the choir samples on Fruity Loops (the aahs that are quite low in the mix), as Aaronson are an instrumental band and I thought it would be funny to use a choir. Well I thought it was funny.
Anyway Mark from Aaronson has suggested I tackle the other interlude tracks on Appearance And Reality, (As His Friends Remember Him) and (Do Their Hearts Not Weep Thinking About It Now?). I think this is a spiffing idea so will work on those over the next couple of weeks, maybe look at doing some sort of EP. I should probably speak with Creese about this first.
So for now, please give (Transient) Sammyfax Remix a spin, and please leave some feedback below or on SoundCloud, I'd really like to hear people's thoughts.
Not entirely sure Brown wanted to be there, sure he shouted out Brixton rather Bristol at one point.
Turns out I only really love Danny Brown when he is working with Rustie. So yeah 3/5.
What was 5/5 was the ramen we had before the gig. Sticks & Broth take a bow. Had the beef brisket ramen. Best thing I've eaten all year. Not only do Sticks & Broth have amazing ramen, they also possess a killer drinks menu (Plus Loo One had her first highball since Japan) and a banging music policy. When we were eating it was mostly funk and soul but right as we were finishing they only dropped the Bronksi Beat.
Amazing.
Sticks & Broth have a pop up opening soon in the Chinese Supermarket on Denmark Street, and I'm getting back on the train just for that. But come to Cardiff soon yeah Sticks & Broth?
So after my first remix, I've now made my first track since 2009 when I did the odd thing on Nos Da. Me. Look at me. I'm a special little boy. Mummy's little soldier.
At no point, when sat in my tiny bedroom in Llantwit Major on a grey February in 2009, did I think I'd still be doing this in 2016.
To say things have changed for me since I started this blog is a slight understatement. I'm now married to Plus One Loo. I bought a house. I got a dog. I found a job I really enjoy. And hopefully next month I'll be tearing around Canton in my first car.
Yet one constant in my life has been this blog. There have been times where I have walked away for months at a time, only be dragged back in by one more amazing track, mix or remix that I want to share. 5 times to be exact.
But share with whom? I know I have a small readership, and although I do always check on my pageviews and audience location, most of which seems to be in France now, the only person I'm really writing for is Future Sam (hi me if you're reading this in 2023 or whatevs). Blog is short for weblog, and this is my diary for the stuff I'm into right that minute when I write it. Ceefax Of Life is my personal history, and the fact that other people dig it is a (massive) added bonus.
I clocked that the 500th post was coming up after deleting a load of duplicate articles and drafts over the summer. So I've been wondering how to mark it for a while.
I thought of doing some kind of pun involving Model 500. Obvs.
I even thought that I should start a Facebook Page, seeing that it looks like it's hanging around now. But then it suddenly hit me after watching Aaronson at Gwdihw. These were guys I knew, absolutely slaying it. And I thought, why don't I give music making another go?
As teenager I fought the insistence of Dance eJay 3 to make trance to instead make ambient stuff and pounding techno. I quickly moved on to what was then Fruity Loops and since known as FL Studio. Then I just kind of stopped.
So on Tuesday, while watching Aaronson, I thought fuck it. 2016 can't get any worse. And my skin has grown thicker over the years. I've become more resilient and confident in my abilities that I can now take the jokes if people think my productions are shit.
Now I always knew I struggled with melody, but that I had decent producing and editing skills, so I thought why not give remixing a go? Then I clocked the interludes that Aaronson where playing while changing instrument.
So then I did this last night...
Aaronson's (At Least Here) [Sammyfax Remix] is my first remix. You can hear the original here.
It feels good to be making stuff again. And I hope to do it again soon. Here's to more music and another 500 posts...
On Tuesday night Aaronson tore Gwdihw a new one. Ferocious post-punk shook the feathers off that little owl, as Aaronson celebrated the release of their debut album Appearance And Reality.
With my other hat on, I caught up with Mark and Dan from the band in the beer garden after their set. There are however a few things I feel I have to point out before you press play.
1. Yes, I know Bernard Sumner was the guitarist not the bassist in Joy Division and New Order.
2. I forgot to bring a mic stand, so be prepared for when Mark starts banging the table.
3. Peter Crouch is 6' 7" tall.
4. The singer in Young Marble Giants is Alison Statton.
5. I do not need a second invitation to start shouting the lyrics to Bound 2 by Kanye West.
Just when I thought I couldn't get more excited, what with all the Ghost In The Shell stuff and Christmas hurtling towards us, Soulwax decide to come back after flipping ages away.
11 flipping years to be exact!
You can pick up Transient Program for Drums and Machinery for free off the beautiful Soulwax.com. It's a heads up for a European tour and Plus One Loo and I are eyeing up the Amsterdam date in April. See you in The Bulldog!
So why am I writing about it now rather than on the anniversary of its day of release - 4th November 1996? Well I was late to RDJ, so I think it's fitting that I'm late in my tribute.
I came across RDJ in sixth form in 2001. And I can still remember the first time I played it in my blood red room in Grangetown. It sticks in my mind just as watching Firestarter on Top Of The Pops does. It bordered on an awakening.
I rewound 4, the opening track of RDJ, several times before listening to the rest of the album. I never rewind on a first listen. I always try and take an album as a whole piece of work. Yet with RDJ and 4, I was completely blown out of the water. I was deep into my drum and bass phase at the time and hearing Aphex Twin tear the genre apart and put it back together again was mind-blowing.
The rest of the album didn't disappoint either. In fact it's a classic. So here's a belated Penblwydd Hapus to the Richard D. James Album.
Jaw to the floor. One of my favourite ever films remade with the hardest one on Earth (with the possible exception of Christina Hendricks). Even Kasper pops in from brooding in Borgen. Excited doesn't really cover it.
From what I can gather, the music used in the soundtrack is Ki:Theory's industrial/EDM take on Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence.
And that's the only slight disappointment for me with the GITS trailer, as Kenji Kawai's score of the original 1995 anime is flawless.
So here's hoping for more trailers soon and with more music that matches the shimmering beauty of 攻殻機動隊.
There's no tracklist available, probably so you'll buy Plastic Dance 2 when it comes out. And I'm pretty tempted on the basis of this weird little mix. As The Vinyl Factory says, "Featuring 40-odd tracks in just as many minutes this bite sized tome seamlessly stitches together the finest in underrated plastic punk and overpriced synth pop from a global cast of unsung charity shop champions, Euro disco legends and library session royalty." Who could possibly resist?
It was going to be beautiful. Beautiful and pretentious.
DJ Dim Parcio was going to come out of retirement later today. Sadly my mixer is bust. The plan was to do a tape only set as yesterday was Cassette Store Day. My friend is doing a photobooth as part of madeinroath and I was gonna do some background music. Well as background as I get.
I've had an interest in work-based music selections since I did my dissertation down in what is now the University of Falmouth (was University College Falmouth in my day).
It was called "What's the Point of In-store Radio?" and I originally wanted to take a Marxist approach, detailing how it was used to affect the mood and output of workers. Just like China, I eventually gave up on Marxism and switched to consumerism, with a study of the affects of music on shoppers and coffee-quaffers in a basic compare and contrast between ASDA FM Live and Starbucks. If you've got nothing better to do with your time you can read it here, replete with typos and terrible spelling.
Back to the here and now, I got in early to the office this morning and thought sod it, let's put some tunes on. So with my Listen Later list on MixCloud fired up, I started on VF Mix 65: Eastern Disco by Moscoman for The Vinyl Factory. By the time my colleagues started piling in, I'd moved on to Stamp The Wax's Monday Morning Mixtape series. And even though it was a Tuesday, there was consensus that this was some good shit. We stuck with it till lunchtime because even though we disregard days of the week, we hold the difference between AM and PM as sacred.
Were we more productive? Maybe. Was our mood improved? I think so. Like Cuba, maybe I should've stuck with Marxism?
Teki Latex channels 2manydjs/Radio Soulwax on his latest mix. As the man himself says "It's the feeling of listening to Radio Nostalgie in an Uber at night combined with the feeling of listening to Rinse FM on a Sunday in 2010."
It's two hours of cut-ups, bangers and cheese and it's a thrilling two hours.
Highlight of the mix is towards the end of the mix when the acapella of AJ Tracey's Naila rolls over DJ Q's Sonic.
Long-time Ninja Tune associate DJ Food, steps up once again for Solid Steel Radio duty and delivers with the third of his Future Shock mixes. Taking in the Human League, both the Doctor Who theme and the Imperial March, Boards of Canada, and Black Devil, this is well worth an hour of your time...
The highlight for me comes early in the mix when Strictly Kev drops the beautifully named Datashat in with their cover of Grandmaster Flash's The Message...
In light of this news, there's one song that will do, and that's the new single from Bristol's Idles called Well Done. As well as Berry, and whoever the fuck Tarquin is, Trevor Nelson also gets a shout out which is always a good sign.
Back to Bake Off for a second though, I got not one but two Guardian news alerts on the same day about it switching to Channel 4. Now it's a nice break from the alerts of bombs going off and black men getting shot in 'murica but were two updates necessary?
It might just be the thing that tips me over the edge and give up on the news altogether. I know I should be an active citizen, I should engage, challenge, be informed but I can see why people don't bother. Touching on Adam Curtis' Oh Dearism, it feels like 2016 has been a tsunami of shit times and that if I want to be happy maybe I should just stop reading the news, chuck some good tunes on, go for a walk, bake some fucking bread.
I've already detuned Radio 4 in the kitchen. I couldn't face yet another politician not answer a simple fucking question, instead engaging in all this newspeak, all this hot air rather than give a straight answer. I can see why they do it though.
I was watching Get Shirty last night, a great documentary about the rise and fall of sportswear company Admiral (designers of the iconic Welsh strip of the 70s). They had footage of someone from Thatcher's government explaining to the recently sacked seamstresses and other factory workers that they really should just suck it up. I think the line was if you really want to see the breadline, I'll take you to Africa. I'm sure the Tories still think this but hide behind the spin and dazzle of PR. Maybe for some it's better to have this charade. I'd rather the people in power were honest to our faces.
So that turned into a bit of a rant. Just make sure you listen to Well Done by Idles and buy it in a couple of weeks. And watch whatever the BBC makes to replace Bake Off. Or watch Bake Off on Channel 4... who gives a shit?
The Cyclist is one of those rare beasts for me in that I found out about him purely by him popping up in a mix series I'm into.
The thing is I only tend to give something a spin if I know something of the artist, a remix here, a production credit there. But The Cyclist? The first time I head of him was when he did FACT Mix 498 and the second time was yesterday when he popped up with Dummy Mix 453.
But other than that I've not seen or heard anything. And it's odd as I'd have thought his murky and muffled mixes would have raised his profile a lot higher. If he keeps chucking ESG and Throbbing Gristle early into his mixes, I think it won't be long till more people sit up and take notice of his Tape Throb thinking.
This week's listening has been all Pangaea and Conformist, as that what I'm reviewing for next month's Buzz Magazine. Preferred Pangaea so here's what I said...
Head Hessle honcho Pangaea finally gets around to dropping a début album and it has been worth the wait. Releasing singles and EPs since 2007, In Drum Play takes in everything Hessle Audio stands for, with 50 minutes of weirdo techno, electronic exploration and bass blowouts. This is an album that fidgets and fizzes with energy, that clearly knows its onions and bangs when it wants to. The warped funk of closer DNS is the highlight of a LP of many.
I can't find DNS online ATM (the album is out October 14th) and I don't want to be that guy, so here's More Is More To Burn...
It's available till 4am on Saturday 8th October 2016 and features tracks from Vince Staples, Burial, ESG, Quasimoto, Shabazz Palaces, FlyLo, DOOM, basically everything good.
The track that stood out the most, as in stood out like a sore thumb, was this glorious racket from Rough Trade signed Girl Band.
Yowzers. Yeah, Paul was one of Thom Yorke's selections.
Despite them not meaning shit to me after they gave the 2008 prize to Elbow, fucking Elbow, instead of Burial, I still keep an ear out for the shortlist. And have a moan that the album I like didn't make it. This year that's Bwana but its unconventional release might have disqualified it TBF.
Cardiff Bus uses a different four letter word every day as a security measure on its app.
Monday's was OOPS. Apt as the app is pretty balls most of the time. Anyways it meant that I had Oops (Oh My) by Tweet (feat Missy Elliot) in my head most of the day...
I know it's not an original sentiment, I mean Bump & Grind have rinsed a successful club night out of it in Cardiff for years, but damn early 00s R'n'B was next level. Seriously, I think people will be name-dropping the productions of Timbaland, The Neptunes et al for years as a key influence and inspiration, the way that Motown has always been held in high regard.
How is this the first time that Missy has come up on the blog?
A bumping mix from Lone got me through the drizzle on the walk to work on Monday morning, so you know it ain't half bad...
Recorded as part of Dutch festival Dekmantel's podcast series, I was switched on to this by Pitchfork and their mixes of the month feature. As with everything on Pitchfork, they use overly flowery language and a TL;DR approach to writing, but it's worth wading through to find gems like Lone's bumping set. So if you fancy a tidy hour of great house music then get on this.
As an aside I've never got the 'rave revivalism' tag that is always thrown at Lone, if his stuff has nostalgic touches then I think it shows he knows his onions rather than being a retrograde step or a regressive sign.
The small town Americana, the missing persons, the ambiguous endings and the amazing scores, the comparisons between Stranger Things and Twin Peaks are obvious, inevitable and ubiquitous.
This has now reached its zenith with Prom Queen knitting the signature iconic theme tunes to both shows together in this super synthy reworking...
Alright, Sunday night, kicking back, everybody looking at the quarterback!
Well almost, we're within a gnat's crotchet of the start of the NFL season and that means scouring NFL UK to see how much free to air American Football there'll be on in the UK.
It looks like it's slightly up on last year with the BBC having highlights from Week 1 rather than from halfway through the flipping season like last time. It'll be in the post Match of the Day slot on Saturday night. Hopefully it'll be a repeat of a programme shown earlier in the week, otherwise they'll be waiting a full 6 days to show highlights from the previous Sunday's action. Which would be shit.
As far as I can tell there's also live coverage of the London games, aka the International Series, which includes a game at Twickenham for the first time, as well as the Super Bowl.
Sadly the podcast Americarnage, my main source of NFL info, is on hiatus (just as I bought a t-shirt) but there is a kind of family friendly incarnation of it on Talksport 2, imaginatively called The NFL Show. Nat Coombs presents and Iron Mike Carlson pops up as a contributor, and his intro music is Johnny Cash's version of I've Been Everywhere...
Marek Larwood has turned up on The NFL Show but there's been no sign of Hollywood Dan Louw or Producer Harry as of yet...
If you need some funky as fuck disco in your life, then get you ears round Pam Todd & Love Exchange's Let's Get Together.
8 minutes just isn't long enough.
Greg Carmichael is on production duty here. Carmichael, a highly influential yet slightly unsung US producer, worked on some beautiful disco records in the 70s, before heading in more of a club direction through the 80s, inspiring many house producers that followed. Check out this rundown from The Vinyl Factory for a handy intro to his output.
Is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' mighty, marvellous, magical Maps the most influential song of 21st century?
Someone at Popbitch certainly thinks so, and makes a thorough case using music theory and stuff. You know notes and keys and the like. Beyoncé, Kelly Clarkson and the godawful Black Eyed Peas have used bits of it. You learn something new everyday.
Volume 2 of the Stranger Things soundtrack was released yesterday (Friday 19th August 2016) and it still seems that it is an Apple only thing, available via iTunes and Apple Music only. You can preview it below...
Rather cheekily it's the volume with the extended version of the theme tune, AKA the main reason people are streaming/buying it.
If you don't Apple like me then in the meantime there's the playlists of Spotify or DJ Yoda's rather fun mixtape...
On Monday I went down to The Waiting Room at The Tramshed with Plus One Loo to see the unveiling of Swci Delic's whacking great installation for the cafe/bar...
It was a nice evening, an inspiring evening, and I just love this painting. It's vibrant, kinetic and it's got my old manor slap bang in the middle of it.
Anyhow, on the way back home and after a few pints of Bad Apple (and a Swci Delicious cocktail), I tried to hum Me, Myself & I by De La Soul, as I saw a poster for their show in Newport a few weeks ago. Yet the cider kicked in and it turned into 20 minutes of an increasingly passionate version of Popcorn by Hot Butter.
FYI Hot Butter's Popcorn was the biggest selling single in France in 1972. More alarmingly the Crazy Frog version was the sixth biggest selling single in the country in 2005. Mange tout.
So yeah, Swci Delic good, shouty versions of Popcorn less so.
At 11.30am this morning (Saturday 13th August 2016), Gameweek 1 of Fantasy Football and Draft Fantasy Football begins. I've been tweaking and shuffling, a little confident. This smidgen of confidence is soon completely crushed, as guaranteed starters are shunted to the bench, offloaded to Italy (particularly perilous in Draftos) or are just utter dogshit.
But right now they are world beaters, league destroyers, my beautiful bastards until 3.01pm.
Here's some songs called Fantasy...
Breakbot - Fantasy (feat. Ruckazoid)
Mariah Carey - Fantasy
Earth, Wind & Fire - Fantasy
And, why not, some drums falling down the stairs from Squarepusher...
I came very close to naming my Fantos team Dial Squarepusher, one for all you Victorian football and IDM fans, but went with Ol' Dirty Barnsley. I'm Rumpy Pompey in Draftos, as the league requirement was for sex-based names. I was initially Jizz Richards and seriously weighed up The Frottagers. I am 31.
I may need to do some more tweaking, so for now, godspeed and good luck to all players. And never forget, Draftos > Fantos, I just didn't seem to have any songs called Draft.
I mentioned yesterday that I've not heard much that's blown me away during the last couple of months, as I've sailed through mixes and NTS shows on Mixcloud.
That was a tiny lie, there's been a couple of things. One that's sure to make my end of year list of best things I've heard is when Teki Latex dropped the Benny Hill Theme 15 minutes into his Hard & Fast Mix for Overdrive Infinity.
The tracklist of the show is incomplete but good old Google came to the rescue. I simply did a voice search on the S4 and they pinpointed it as Kelelawar by Koes Plus.
Shazam ain't got shit on this, honestly Shazam has never identified anything I've tried to used it for. But Google knows Indonesian pysch rock when it hears it. And I didn't even have to use an app. Here's my data Google, you're welcome to it.
A Llantwit Major-based music blog for things post-punk, electronic and a little bit left of centre, with second-hand cultural musings, third-rate sociological stabbings and very rarely the odd mp3.
I also write the odd album review for Buzz Magazine and used to present Amser Electroneg on Bro Radio.
.jpg){kind=link}
%2C_24_June_2002.jpg){kind=link}
