You may well have recently seen the excellent Mashup Breakdown site that was put together by Benjamin Rahn initially to display the sample data for Girl Talk’s “All Day” album – I certainly did as many of you emailed me a link! – However @bethgo on Twitter went one further than that and suggested to Ben that he do the same for “A Night At The Hip-Hopera”. I spotted the tweet, got in touch with them both, and, well, here you go – a complete (well, as complete as I can make it) visual breakdown of the entire album!

Click here, or the screenshot above to go to the breakdown!

This ties in quite nicely with another little plan, which is to (finally!) release fully lossless FLAC versions of all the albums, so, hopefully over the next couple of months we’ll be adding breakdowns of all the other albums one at a time, and will be releasing the lossless version of each album as the corresponding breakdown is published.

The lossless version is available as a direct download HERE.

However, if the hit to the servers proves too great, I reserve the right to replace the direct download with a torrent at any time – hopefully staggering the lossless releases should make the load more bearable! (*crosses fingers firmly*)

(PS In case you’re wondering – the lossless version has NOT been remastered or remixed in any way!)

FINALLY, we’ve extended the deadline for the video submissions to the “Body Jump” video till the new year, because, well, we haven’t had enough – we need loads! So all you people who thought “I don’t need to bother, everyone else will do one”… we want YOU! Really shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to film a quick clip and bung it over to us – I don’t want to grumble and point out all the things we do for you (like the above!), but hey, we rarely ask of anything much in return, and this is the only way we get to know who you are – so be proud and get jumping – we’d love you to :) – details are HERE!

Till next time,

Eric K

PS Very last minute gig: I’m DJing at “The Queen Of Hoxton” in London tomorrow (Thursday 9th) night – Three hour set too – come down if you’re about and let’s kick off the holiday season in style! Also don’t forget I’m playing in Brighton on Saturday too – details a couple of posts down!

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]

Something a little different for a change… Started life as a remix, but the backing is predominantly one track, so a mash-up it is. Bonus spotter points if you recognise where the kick and hi-hat are lifted from.

Comments, as always, are very welcome :)

The Kleptones – Vicarious Devil [direct mp3 download]

Video by the esteemed Ezra Kelptone (no relation).

The Kleptones – Jump You Fucker [direct mp3 download]

The Kleptones – Jump You Fucker (Bootie Edit) [direct mp3 download]

Thanks also again again again to everyone that’s been out to see us this Summer – Shame the weather hasn’t been as good as the shows!

Also, as a thank you to all the peeps who came out to the Playgroup Festival in August, the organizers are throwing a free celebratory bash this Friday (3rd) at The Concorde 2 in Brighton – Eric will be spinning up his hard drive for a surprise set, so get yourself down if you’re around!

Couple of mentions for some reading matter – Eric recently did an interview with Hiram from the rather fine Harvey Girls for the Circle Into Square blog – you can have a read here!

Also, amongst many other producers and DJs, Eric was interviewed for Aram Sinnreich’s recently released book “Mashed Up: Music, Technology, and the Rise of Configurable Culture” – You can read an excerpt from the book here!

And finally, a certain instrumental found it’s way into our nest this afternoon and in a little flurry of keyboard-and-mouse activity, we thought we’d flip it on it’s head – hope you like ;)

The Kleptones – Do You? (Direct download)

Next stop Bootie Rio! See you there on the 17th September :-D x

So there’s still time to enter the cover artwork “competition” if you like – Anything on the theme of the album title, the weirder and wilder the better – had some very weird and wild ones so far too! – email it to us here.

What? Another taster? Okay then – this should rinse the wax out of yer earholes…

Surf Mountain (Direct Download)

Link removed – Track is available on the Shits & Giggles Download page!

The Kleptones @ Glastonbury Festival Dance Village 24th June 2010 – a few quick dirty screengrabs! (Video bites and second set to follow as soon as it’s all converted and edited!)

Meanwhile, what everyone else got up to while we were away… THREE new Videotones from the legends that are Crumbs Chief, Mashup-Germany and Instamatic!

All we can say is a breathless thanks to the three awesome videopeeps above for their excellent work, and all of you that came and got crazy with us at Glastonbury! As u should all know by now, it really is one of our favourite places to play, and this year’s shows were genuinely THE best ever, for which we’re very grateful to the organizers and the excellent stage crews for making it happen so good! Me (Eric) of course must also extend the hugest of thanks to Pete Wallace, Simon Risbridger and all the Videotones contributors (especially the project helmsman Instamatic) for making it shine out so brightly – What a crew! :)

Here’s hoping we get a chance to try and top it next year! Wooop!!!

Wanted to post the Glastonbury set times before we went though:

Thursday 24th June – 11.30pm : East Dance Tent, Dance Village (Silent Disco – 2hr AV set)

Sunday 27th June – 11pm : Rabbit Hole Stage, The Park (Noisy Disco! – 90m AV set)

There’s a considerable possibility that Eric will be popping up somewhere to do a DJ set or two in between the above shows – details may appear here, or more likely on the Twitter and Facebook pages – watch the skies!

As a sign off, here’s a little piece of role reversal for any fans of “24 Hours”:

Unwanted Whisper (direct download)

Link removed – Track is available on the Shits & Giggles Download page!

First up is some gig information, which we’ll attempt in an orderly fashion:

Thursday 10th June : i_beta festival, Niewe Nor, Heerlen, Netherlands (Venue and ticket details here)

The event descripes itself as “…all about being in development, learning, adapting and evolving. At the i_beta/festival 2010 we present new trends from e-culture, e-conomy and the challenges for the international region of Limburg. A varied programme offers new experiences and ideas for creatives and entrepreneurs alike.” A great concept and one that we’re delighted to be a part of. We’ll be opening the event at the ace Niewe Nor venue, playing a full AV set. Tickets are available just for our show, or for the full event!

24th-27th June : Glastonbury Festival, UK

Well it wouldn’t be summer without a customary visit to the finest music and arts festival on the planet would it? This year we’re delighted to be playing in three different locations (and there may be more to come…) including another legendary Silent Disco set. We’ll have days and times for you very, very soon, so watch this space.

27-29th August : Festinho, Hinwick House, Northamptonshire (NOT Bedfordshire, but near!)

Given the excellent reception and generally awesome time we had here last year, it’s going to be an absolute pleasure to return to Festinho and their new (gorgeous) site at Hinwick House. With Hexstatic and AGT Rave Cru on the bill too it’s going to be quite a cut’n'paste fest! Highly recommended that you come along!

More summer shows to be announced soon, and a couple of extra-special shows in planning for September and October that are really going to knock your socks!

Okay… while this is all very well and good, you’ll be wanting some more music won’t you, insatiable ones?

Well, in the preparations for the above we have indeed been creating some new bits and pieces (as well as remixing and twisting some oldies, but you’ll have to come to the shows to hear them!) and also doing some general clearing out of the hard drives, and yes there’s a lot of stuff on them that you haven’t heard (over two CDs worth!) – part of the problem of doing “concept” works is that things that don’t fit the concept get left out, which is often a shame!

So in the time-honoured tradition of stop-gap albums, we’re putting together a collection of our favourite unreleased tracks. There’ll be a few new ones too, a couple of previously-blog-only favourites and maybe even the oft-whispered-about “Night At The Hip-Hopera” missing tracks, that were left off the final running order so it would fit on a single CD.

Having surveyed the possible inclusions, we’ve decided to entitle the collection “Shits And Giggles”, as that was indeed what many of the tunes were created for.

It’ll be out sometime towards the end of June, but in the meantime we’d like to ask you a favour… It has come to our notice that more than a few of you are of a visually artistic bent, so we’d like to invite you to make the cover for the album themed around the title. (“Shits And Giggles”, innit?). Doesn’t matter whether it’s photography, hand-drawn, photoshopped, whatever, if you think you’d like to have a go, do so, and email us the results by 15th June at the latest, preferably sooner! Whoever does the one we like the best can negotiate a prize with us :)

As a bit of a taster, here’s a couple of new tracks from the album to get you in the mood.

Lazy Dancer (Direct download)

Flik Flok (Direct download)

(Links removed – Tracks are now available on the Shits & Giggles Download page!)

And as an additional bonus, amongst many other awesome producers we were asked by the fine folks at Bootie Rio to contribute a track towards Brazillian national newspaper O Globo’s style guide to the last decade, using only tunes from that decade. We just happened to be working on a tune that fit the bill so we gave it to them! Have a listen here:

Heydrum (Direct download)

(Link removed – Track is now available on the Shits & Giggles Download page!)

We’ll be posting more tunes to Soundcloud as they near completion, so keep your eyes peeled there, or join up and follow us – you never know what might appear…

Phew. So much going on and more to come – hope you like the tunes and looking forward to seeing you at a festival for a drink in the sun!