Okay, a few friends have been asking me to do one of these mixes for a while, so here goes – it focusses on the deeper, funkier and sometimes jazzier end of 70s West African music (okay, Congo is Central Africa, but let’s not split too many hairs) – I’ll do another mix of the more intense stuff sometime in the near future.

Docteur Nico & L’Orchestre African Fiesta – Zadio (Congo, 1967)
The Funkees – Acid Rock (Nigeria, 1971)
Bola Johnson – Buroda Mase (Nigeria, 1970s)
Ogyatanaa Show Band – You Monopolise Me (Ghana, 1970s)
Gnonnas Pedro & His Dadjes Band – La Musica En Vérité (Benin, 1979)
Alhaji K Frimpong – Kyenkyen Bi Adu Mawu (Ghana, 1976)
Don Isaac Ezekiel Combination – Ire (Nigeria, 1970s)
Thony Shorby Nyenwi – No Wrong Show (Nigeria, 1978)
The BBQ’s – Aya Lolo (Nigeria or Ghana, 1970s)
Sahara All Stars – Alikali Adajo (Nigeria, 1970s)
Super Mama Djombo – Dissan Na M’bera (Guinea-Bissau, 1970s)
Peter King – African Dialects (Nigeria, 1979)

I didn’t intend to focus so heavily on Nigeria & Ghana, just tried to get a mix of some of my favourites that flowed well. I’ll be giving this a good few spins myself for sure, so it was definitely worth the effort! :D

The original vinyls of these tunes are worth mighty dollars, so these have been grabbed either from the many fine blogs posting this rare stuff or from the great series of compilations on Soundway Records – Thanks to them for making such excellent music more widely available!

Hectic City 12 – No Wrong Show (Direct Download)

Another contrast for HC 11 (Isn’t it always though? ;) – This time something a little more dancefloor-friendly, but with a twist, as we enter the world of Moombahton.

I feel this needs a little explaination, but if you’re not in the mood to hear the backstory, just scroll down and hit play – you’ll figure it out.

I’ve been following a few blogs over the last couple of years that promote a range of “Global” dance music. A variety of different styles from around the world, some of which I liked and some I didn’t care for, but it’s always interesting hearing what people around the world are getting off on :)

Through these blogs and the producers I’d discovered there and then followed on Soundcloud, the name “Moombahton” started popping up in the tags. I heard a few things I liked, but then I read this article by Wayne Marshall that gave me the backstory to it’s creation. I’d recommend reading the whole article, but in essence the sound originated (as did Cumbia Dub, I believe) through playing slowed-down European dance tunes, some of which had already picked up on certain offbeat snare rhythms – a very “now” style in Euro-house – listen to Afrojack, for example, who provided the remix that, slowed down, gave the style it’s name (“Moombah”).

But, as is often the way with a style that gains a name so early in its gestation, a lot of people aren’t really that sure exactly what Moombahton is yet, but as with something like dubstep there’s a template; a tempo (roughly round 110) and a rhythmic guide (in this case, the flying offbeat snares over the 4/4 that provide the necessary syncopation).

This obviously is the brightest of green lights to many a producer, who can quickly adapt and remix their own and others work to suit.

So naturally this tweaked my brain considerably, as I’ve been enjoying quite a large chunk of slower dance stuff recently (the “slow house” and “cosmic disco” styles which operate around 110-120 and sometimes slower – not a marked, or new, difference in tempo (more a reversion!) but considerably different to euro-house’s 130 and dubstep’s 140). There’s something that resonates with me also around that tempo – it definitely allows for a bit more space and groove – better to actually dance to, rather than just bounce. However, the tempo has prevented me from DJing the stuff, as crowds generally view it as a warm up to something faster and harder, rather than the main course.

Reading Wayne’s article left me highly inspired to experiment with mixing at that tempo, using the Moombahton tracks that I liked and also adding slowed-down versions of tunes that I already had, some of which I’m not so keen on playing out in their original form as they’re a bit too intense (and also there’s a lot of peeps that do it better than me!).

In the spirit of the speed this sound seems to be mutating I wanted to do it very quickly (also grabbing the inspiration while it was there!), so I spent Friday working my way through a pile of tracks, mostly taken down 15-20bpm (although the odd one pitched up!). It was very surprising to find what worked best – quite an across-the-board selection indeed. I assembled the tracks and spent the weekend jamming with them and putting together this mix (recorded live, but tweaked and edited in Ableton afterwards), which is about 40% “genuine” Moombahton tracks and remixes, and the rest my own slow-down edits, samples and added percussion.

I think it sounds pretty good indeed. I’ve certainly achieved what I set out to do, had a blast doing it and am looking forward to experimenting some more. Have a listen and see if it suits you! :)

(PS No tracklist as I don’t want to spoil any surprises in the mix – feel free to tag the track in Soundcloud as you spot ‘em, if you like!)

Hectic City 11 – Moombahtronica! (Direct Download)

Hectic City 10 – Once Upon A Time In The Seventies (Direct Download)

Haven’t done one of these in…well, far too fucking long. Sorry about that. This time taking a dip into the slightly murky world of groove-influenced 70s rock – an odd time for many artists, some of whom really weren’t known for, or quite sure exactly how to “get funky”, but it produced some interesting tracks for sure. Some things you might know, some things you might not, some are edits, some don’t need editing!

Dire Straits – Once Upon A Time In The West
Suzi Quatro – Can’t Trust Love
Danny Edwardson & Seamus Sell – Stuck In
Bob Dylan – Gotta Serve Somebody
Ian Hunter – Bastard
Ace Frehley – New York Groove
ZZ Top – Cheap Sunglasses
The Equals – Mystic Syster
Bad Company – Burnin’ Sky
Thin Lizzy – Johnny The Fox Meets Jimmy The Weed
Area Code 615 – Stone Fox Chase
John Lennon – What You Got
Nazareth – Born Under The Wrong Sign
Steve Miller Band – Macho City
Fancy – Wild Thing
Czerwone Gitary – Coda
Sweet – Funk It Up
Status Quo – Don’t Drive My Car

Hope you like it – shouldn’t have to wait as long for the next one, I promise :) x

If you’ve been following on Soundcloud, you might have noticed that we’ve been sticking up a few experimental remixes and edits – there’ll be more to come, so it’s worth keeping an eye there too!

2 Live Crew ft. Mannie Fresh – I’m 2 Live (The Kleptones um-bia remix) [Direct Download]
(Removed from Soundcloud as we ran out of space!)

John Martyn – Acid Rain (The Kleptones Re-Edit) [Direct Download]

Okay, due to seriously popular demand, and cos technical gremlins interrupted some people’s listening at the time, here’s the mix from the plinth. It’s a bit ragged, as my controllers were playing up a bit (not their fault!) and I’ve hacked off the last tune, as it was an afterthought to leave something running while I packed away and left, but apart from that… here it is – warts and all.

All K-tunes (including quite a few new album ones) apart from the last track, which is the Chase & Status mix of Nneka’s “Heartbeat” and is an absolute bomb that I only heard that day for the first time. I couldn’t get out of my head and it became my anthem for the day, so I played it!

Thanks again to all who tuned in, or tried to and failed. If so, hope this makes up for it. What an intense experience! It’s given me a taste for Extreme DJing though, so I wonder where next…?

The Kleptones – Hectic City 9 : Rough & Ready On The Plinth (Direct Download)

The final part of HC8, and the final word from me on 2008 (maybe ;). Looking back on this there’s some things that really should have gone in (Squarepusher, Byrne & Eno, “Shackler’s Revenge”, Busta’s “Don’t Touch Me”, Wiley etc…) but they didn’t quite seem to fit anywhere while I was mixing, so it goes… Hope you’ve enjoyed the selection anyways, and a very Happy New Year to you all.

Only thing that remains is to ask if you think there’s anything obvious I’ve missed out on? – let me know if so – I’m all ears as usual :)

The Kleptones – Hectic City 8e: Burned In A Feathering Pyre (Best Of 2008 Part Five)

Pacific UV – Alarmist
Shearwater – Rooks
Bon Iver – Blindsided
Evangelista – The Blue Room
Thomas Brinkmann – Words
Portishead – The Rip
Peter Broderick – Stopping On The Broadway Bridge
James Blackshaw – Echo And Abyss
The Caretaker – Long Term (Remote)

Right – Let’s get on with 2009!

The Kleptones – Hectic City 8d (Best Of 2008 Mix Part Four)

Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Dig, Lazarus, Dig
Mrr-Adm – Track 04 (from unmarked 12″ EP)
Clinic – Corpus Christi
El Guincho – Antillas
Neon Neon – I Told Her On Alderaan
Mountain Goats – Lovecraft In Brooklyn
Deerhunter – Nothing Ever Happened
The Fall – Can Can Summer
The Dodos – Fools
Elbow – The Fix
Durutti Column – Glimpses
James Yuill – This Sweet Love (Prins Thomas sneaky edit)

Professor Pork says : “It’s a fine line, I know. Oink. But as house music continues it’s return journey from innovation back into pure functionality (discuss somewhere else, pls), it’s been left to the online production world to come up with the goods – Unfortunately their tendancy to promote and duplicate musical memes as quickly as possible for fear of seeming out of touch has left them with five hundred remakes of every half-realised idea, and no one that has the time nor the inclination to sift and sort through. Snort. You could make your own variation in the time it takes to listen to everyone else’s. See what you’ve done, Kleptone? Underground, overground, now everyone’s wombling free, you dig?”

Eric says: “Good for them, I say. Kudos to Fake Blood though, for having the decency to avoid repeating the same sounds across every tune he makes, and to Duke Dumont and Funkanomics for their persistance of vision in the face of fashion.”

Hectic City 8c : La blouse piscine (Best of 2008 part three)

Mystery Jets – Two Doors Down (Duke Dumont remix)
Gregor Tresher – A Thousand Nights (Dubfire Quiet Storm remix)
Letroset – Skillex
Kriss Kross – Jump (Funkonomics Planet Cross remix)
Alex Gopher – Belmondo (Just A Band remix)
South Rakkas Crew – Mad Again (Fake Blood remix)
Underworld – Ring Road (Fake Blood remix)
Shinichi Osawa – Electro411 (Lies In Disguise Remix)
Trip – Who’s That (Jack Beats remix – Kleptones sharp end edit ;)

P.S. Apologies for the language skills. And thanks for the comments – very welcome as always :)

The Advisory Circle – Civil Defence Is Common Sense
The Bug – Freak Freak
Karl Hector & The Malcouns – Psycles
Q-Tip – Dance On Glass
Wayne And Max – Boston Jerk
These New Puritans – Numerology (Kleptones Quick Cumbia Over Dub)
Chancha Via Circuito – Cumbia Murguera
Drums Of Death – Ozzzy!
The Bug ft. Killer P & Flowdan – Skeng
Benga & Coki – Night
Caspa – Born To Do It
Vex’d – 3rd Choice (Loefah remix)
Matty G – 50,000 Watts (VIP mix)
Matty G – The 808 Bass
Rusko – Love Is Real
Sunship ft. Warrior Queen – Quita (Kaibata remix)
Skream – 2D
Rusko – Cockney Thug
The Advisory Circle – A Clear Yarn Warning

The Kleptones – Hectic City 8b: Best Of 2008 (Part Two)

Enjoy some bass with your hangovers…

Still, in a year dominated by Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Elbow, Portishead and the like, the three albums that got the most plays from me are as follows:

The Advisory Circle – “Other Channels” (Ghost Box) : Jim ATT100 tipped me to this on our now sadly defunct radio show, which was quite a surprise. I’d been keeping an eye and ear on Ghost Box’s releases, but had thought till now that they hadn’t quite found the sound to match their splendid eye for design (check their website to see) – “Other Channels” is the record to rectify that – a deranged collage of music concrete, lost 70s educational TV soundtracks and fragments of vintage Public Service films that blend into the perfect backing track to one of your strangest “Back To School” dreams/nightmares.

The Mountain Goats – “Heretic Pride” (4AD) : There’s almost nothing more satisfying than discovering a band and then finding they have a lengthy and impressive back catalogue to dig into – once you’ve got over the “how the hell did I miss this lot before?” stage, of course. John Darnielle has been recording as The Mountain Goats since 1991, and has gradually updated his sound and style from lo-fi cassette recordings to recent full blown studio experiences, courtesy of a 4AD bankroll. The sound may have got clearer and tighter, but there’s no denying the man’s exceptional ability to write fine tunes.

These New Puritans – “Beat Pyramid” (Angular) : I genuinely expected this to be a smash hit this year, but that shows you how much of a fashion barometer I am… Why not? I don’t know – Too arch and knowing? That chestplate? No marketing budget? All I know is this is the sound of two very current worlds colliding with excellent consequences – grime-y tech-step beats rub shoulders with Wire-y guitars and chanted vocals to fine effect. The frantic pace makes it a great “music to work to” album too which is probably why it got the most plays from me this year :)

So here’s part one of the five mixes. Five? Yes! Rather than bundle stuff into CD sized chunks, things seemed to sound nicer in smaller sections, so I’ve rolled with it. Hope that’s okay with you? Good.

Plenty fine stuff in part one, from Breakbot’s French House-meets-Hill Street Blues take on Pnau, DJ Downfall’s poptastic down-home distorted charm (and winner of the Mr Kleptone Award for best Genesis sample of the year) , Pearson & Usher’s symphonic deconstruction of Kelley Polar and yes, three Aeroplane remixes. It’s been another fine year for our cosmic Belgians, and my fingers are firmly crossed for their debut album, which should be landing sometime next year!

The Kleptones – Hectic City 8a – Best Of 2008 (Part One)

Pnau – Baby (Breakbot remix)
DJ Downfall ft. Gene Serene – Seven Dials
The Shortwave Set – Now Til’ 69 (Aeroplane remix)
Ricardo Villalobos – Enfants (Olin fix – Kleptones edit)
Samos – Alpha Storm (An-2 remix)
Lovelock – Maybe Tonight (Kleptones Quick Instrumental edit)
Lullabies In The Dark – Song For Marie & Elise (Aeroplane remix)
Kelley Polar – Entropy Reigns (Pearson & Usher’s Second Law instrumental)
Ajello & Daniele Baldelli – Magic Feet
Nomumbah – Like A Rainbow (Dub mix)
Kelpe – Yippee Space Ghost (SID version – Kleptones edit)
Grace Jones – Williams Blood (Aeroplane vocal remix)

Hope you enjoy! Next part to follow very, very, shortly!

Firstly, Very sad to bid bye-bye and good fortune to my fine friend and erstwhile Radio sparring partner Jim of All Time Top 100 as he moves up to that London to try his luck as an apprentice underling in the Corridors of Power. Yes, I know it’s not that far, but it does render rather impossible the continuation of Eric & Jim’s Look-In. Shame really, just as we were getting our speed back up after the first sacking hiatus.

But Lo!, being as the ratio of clouds-to-silver-linings is equivalent at the moment, the sad ending of the Look-In gives forth more time with which to improve and continue the Hectic City podcasts. Oh Yes!

So here, without any further delay (ha!), is HC7 – A mix made initially to soundtrack a hazy afternoon garden party or simple cocktail on the terrace in May, although it’s sure to keep for a while and be an equally fine dinner companion for the rest of the summer.

The tracklisting may look slightly unusual, and it did indeed surprise me whilst digging for appropriate tunes to suitably bookend the fine grooves of Al Usher and Aeroplane, but the end result is, I think, quite piquant:

As I haven’t dropped one of these for a while, there may be a brief but immediate period of digging around in the back with plugin updates and wiggling bits of wire to get it to fire up satisfactorally, so if the linky is dodgy, let me know in the comments and we’ll have someone round in a jiffy with some molegrips to sort you out.

Tracklisting:

Al Usher - Here Today
Aeroplane – Aeroplane
Force Of Nature – Liberate
Chris Rea – Josephine (Vista & Meyland Rain Edit)
Brian Briggs – AEO (Parts 1 & 2)
Timmy Thomas – Why Can’t We Live Together (Pressure Drop Remix)
Aeroplane – Above The Clouds
Can – Vitamin C (Eli Escobar Re-Edit)
Mugwump – Boutade
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Rage Hard (Young Person’s Guide To The 12-Inch Mix)
Pimps Of Joytime – San Francisco Bound
Paul Simon – Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes (Todd Terje Edit)
Coyote – Too Hard (Aeroplane Remix)

The Kleptones – Hectic City 7 : May Daze (Direct Download)

Till next time… (sooner than you think :)