Flirt FM Presents Feed Me Weird Things - Elbow Face Edition - 2nd May '12

The show ends with a special 'Lampshade on Head' guest mix by Mr. Spam (AKA ALLLLAN). Before that there's an out there starship commander, Daphni's dancefloor mix of Emeralds, lushness from White Collar Boy, music for church Cleaners from Áine O'Dwyer, kaleidoscopic epicness from AU and some wayward girl blues from Lottie Kimbrough.

Interesting updates and pointless distractions here: https://www.facebook.com/feedmeweirdthingsflirtfm

spring 2012 - new music from Christian Prommer, Phil Asher, Boddhi Satva, Lay-far, DJ Krush, Session Victim, Bamboos, Crazy P and many others

This week's basic soul radio show includes a mix up of soul, jazz, funk, disco, beats, dubstep, house and lots more…..

Lost my voice so your not going to hear from me on this episode, but the music definitely speaks for itself. Music from Jazzanova's new live studio session, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Moodymanc, Mo Kolours, Argy, Fink and much more.

This week's basic soul radio show includes a mix up of soul, jazz, hip-hop, funk, brazilian, afrobeat, house and lots more…..

Spring selection of some classics, rarities and B sides mixed by Oleg Bombey for Rasols Radioshow 13.05.2012

Next up on the EPM Podcast we get our collective jit on as Detroit’s OktoRed gives us a full Motor City blast with his own OktoRed and Cocky Balboa productions mixed up with his own re-works of Franki Juncaj (aka DJ 3000), Katy B, I:Cube, Gauche Kids and the hip hop classic Wu Tang Clan ‘Aint Nothin’ To Fuck Wit’.

OktoRed, hailing from Detroit MI, has been gaining some real momentum of late. As one of Beatportal’s “Artists To Watch 2012”, and coming off his first YoSucka! imprint, ‘The Future Sounds of 8 Mile’ he wanted to showcase his ability to transcend from his kind, gentle side, to a more rough, dark side with the release of ‘Gemini 1 EP’ released on 4th May and the forthcoming ‘Gemini 2 EP’.

OktoRed continues a long lineage of Detroit Electronic Music. Limitless, genre expanding and intelligent, it can be said that this artist has pushed his music to project feeling. It is hard to define his genre and that would just be too limiting, as OktoRed morphs between indiscriminate tempo future bass, defined as Detroit infused techno, borrowing ideas from moombahton, dubstep, juke, footwork and ghetto tech.

A gun to the stomach by a typical Detroit stick up thug flashed his musical life before him, right before he gave up all the cash in his pocket, and his life was spared. He remembered his time as a kid, only 12 years old, teaching himself guitar while following the Detroit techno, ghetto tech and jungle scene. Over the next few years visions of gear, often given to him by older cats in the industry became realities, as he collected an old Koss drum machine, Fender Rhodes piano, various synths, and drum machines, coupled with a Roland MC 500 sequencer. At this point his tools would then be worked to all hours of the morning. Flash forward to the cold metal of a handgun, in his gut, he realized that his day gig was NOT the direction he needed to go in life and began working past sleep deprivation to give birth to tracks that have become Detroit underground staples. He had no choice but to make his grimy and dark, underground bass symphonies pound through the bodies on dance floors, laying them out one by one and turning them into frenzied fans.

He is currently releasing tracks on the YoSucka! Imprint, working on music that is sometimes inspired by current events. For instance, the track ‘How Many Moons’ was made in response to the riots in London of 2011. Overburdened by the thoughts of how people can burn down their own neighbourhood forced him to react in his own musical way. Software synthesizers, Ableton Live and esoteric tracker programs come under his command as he continues to produce, long after you’ve gone to bed and entered the deepest parts of slumber.


Q&A with OktoRed

1. Please give us a quick walk through your selection. Why did you choose these tracks for the mix?
I just wanted to showcase some of my current and upcoming releases from YoSucka! Music, Generation Bass and Motech Records. All of the songs are originals or edits made for personal use by myself. The songs in this mix are more to the smoother side of my production.

2. How would you begin to describe your style?
My style is all over the place. I like to mix it up as much as possible. I guess one consistent pattern from track to track is that I don't spend time over producing things. I like a more organic natural feel to a lot of my music. Lots of swing and lots of melody.

3. Your work although influenced by Detroit, also sounds from somewhere else. How has the fabled 7th City impacted on you as a producer and DJ?
Growing up we had a lot of good music on the radio that opened my mind and ears up to a lot of stuff I wasn't getting from friends and other places. We had lots of ghetto-tech and good dance music on the radio for most of my formative years. When the internet came around a little later, I got to experience lots of stuff that wasn't being played anywhere around here. I like to try to take from everything I listen to without being a copycat.

4. How has working with Brian Gillespie, one of the unsung heroes of the Detroit electro and ghetto tek story, helped you to envisage your work as an artist?
Working with Brian has been amazing. His knowledge has been a real asset and his ear for good music is the most valuable thing I've had in my corner in a long time. Also, I got to realise a dream of mine by releasing some new ghetto-tech/juke stuff with him on Juke Trax under the Cocky Balboa alias. His business knowledge and connection to the global dance scene has really helped in getting my music to people who would have otherwise never known of me.

5. How do you work in the studio? Do ideas come to fruition quickly or do you tinker with lots of ideas at the same time, going back and forth until one clicks and you focus on it?
I constantly work on music. Literally at least 6-10 hours a day so I have a bunch of different approaches. I like it best when I can sit and write and record a song in a few hours. I just let it flow on its own. If I get stuck I usually just delete everything and start from scratch. I just go be ear mostly. If it makes sense to me then I pursue it.

6. Which modern day producers currently impress you?
I really like Diplo’s stuff a lot. He seems to be all over the place but consistently good on the board. I recently found out about Boddika and lost my mind. It’s very simple sounding stuff that has so much feeling behind it.

7. What plans do you currently have for your own music productions?
Right now we are just working on getting out some new stuff. I’d like to keep everything different from release to release. Different tempos and feels. Once again, I just don't want to get pigeonholed into a one sound music career.

8. Where do you play out these days? Any plans to come to Europe?
I'm doing a bi-weekly live webcast with 8EN, Jawa and Brian Gillespie on the Everyday Sucka Webcast. I do visuals at a bar in the Corktown area in Detroit called "The Works" for Calico and Matt Clarke for their weekly Bass Down Low parties. I’m up to playing anywhere I can right now, but I mainly focus on production over doing live shows. I’m also working on starting up a weekly live radio show on TapDetroit.com.

9. Please give us your top 10 all-time favourite Detroit tracks:

in no particular order…
DJ Rolando – ‘Knights of the Jaguar’
A Number of Names – ‘Shari Vari’
Starski and Clutch – ‘Triple Gold’
Subject No001 – ‘Black Lives’
Drexciya – ‘You Don't Know’
Ectomorph – ‘Insert Another Data Disc’
Inner City – ‘Good Life’
Aaron Carl – ‘Down’
Rhythim Is Rhythim – ‘Strings of Life’
Jeff Mills – ‘The Extremist’

This week's basic soul radio show includes a mix up of soul, house, drum & bass, boogie, funk, dubstep and lots more…..

It's that time of the year again, the Snooker World Championships at The Crucible in Sheffield, aka my favourite sporting tournament of the year, so to celebrate here is a snooker-themed show for you all. Find within tracks about chalk, triangles, pockets, billiard players, big breaks, mid-session intervals, snooker referees, the baulk cushion, and the finest player to ever pick up a cue, Ronnie O'Sullivan. Bola, Shellac, Von Sudenfed, Half Man Half Biscuit, Samiyam, John Oswald, and Winifred Atwell among many others in here. For now though, c'mon Ronnie, don't let Ali Carter bore you into submission...

One of the difficulties of being an incurable record collector is that there really isn’t an end to it. A collection is never finished, just abandoned. One of the difficulties of collecting Aussie records is that the bastards keep reissuing them, hence making you either want to find things you didn’t even know about, or decrease the worth of what you did. Let’s complicate the matter further; I live in London, nowhere near a good Aussie record store, with amazon and the internet, but still it’s a regular thing to spend hours going through all the labels and sites to find what is being reissued, only to find that an obscure Japanese label has reissued the complete back catalogue of the Victims on limited edition vinyl which sold out weeks ago.

So, with that in mind 2012-6 kicks off with three tracks from the recent Church re-issues featuring a host of b-sides and bonus tracks. Easy choice with ‘The Unguarded Moment’ to start from Of Skins and Hearts, ‘Electric Lash’ from Seance (for Xiola Blue who got me into this song in the first place) and finishing with ‘When you were Mine’ from Blurred Crusade. Next we come to the aforementioned Victims, a punk band from Perth in 70s featuring one D.Faulkner and James Baker later of the Hoodoo Gurus. Three songs from their extensive discography(!) all about TV, ‘TV Freak’, followed by Telethon Song and the very legendary ‘Television Addict’, with lyrics very much of their time. We round this set out with the original 7” version of the Hoodoo Gurus ‘Leilani’ which has just be reissued on the Greatest Hits compilation (what ever happened to the Electric Soup compile?).

Johanna Piggot was the lead singer of the amazing XL Capri’s (who have been featured on the show twice already). She put a band together in 1986 with Todd Hunter and future Church drummer Tim Powles called Scribble releasing one album and this single ‘Don’t give your heart away’. Three tracks follow all written by j.piggot for the almost-mythical ABC series Sweet and Sour reissued recently on CD. All bar one is from the stupidly rare Sweet and Sour vol 2 soundtrack which sold nowhere near the quantities of the first. Where is the DVD aunty, eh?

This song has been lauded in so many places as being one of the greatest Australian songs ever, but its only when you listen really closely that you hear why, ‘Quasimodo’s Dream’ was released in 1981 by Dubbo’s own ‘’The Reels”. We follow this up with piece of frivolity from Melbourne’s incredibly strange ‘The Shower scene from Psycho’ which I first heard on a JJJ ‘Cooking with George’ compile in 1985. They are hear covering the Mentals track, ‘The Nips are getting Bigger’ recently resiisued by OMNI recordings. Also from a very early era in my Aus listening comes ‘Date with a Vampyre’ by the Screaming Tribesmen. A band I managed in 1986/87 called ‘Dark Shades’ covered this amongst the various Van Halen, Angels and Led Zep covers. We didn’t conquer the earth, or Sydney, or even Dundas, but I still have memories of screaming ‘Take a long line’ by the Angels at the top of my lungs during a rehearsal standing in for the singer! I suspect the neighbour’s memories are even longer and more traumatic. Moving on. A live take on ‘Didn’t tell the man’ from the Hitmen reissue ‘Tora! Tora! Tora! DTK’ and the Visitors riding the ‘Haunted Road’ off their reissue of their one and only album. Try and link Masuak to Kannis to Tek. Easiest 20p ever. We finish the set with an absolutely brilliant piece of spoken word from Aerial Maps. There is something about Adam Gibson’s poetry that evokes a time, a place and a memory. This track is especially brilliant because on the greyest of grey days, drizzling large drops of rain as it is today, you can still remember why you left Sydney and moved to London in the first place…London still exists. ‘til next time. Peter

This week's basic soul radio show includes a mix up of jazz, soul, hip-hop, funk, house, dubstep and lots more…..

Working Hours Podcast #02: Midnightopera

Excerpt from a more experimental set