Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it’s that man again…

Thursday, November 15th, 2012

Okaydoke, I’m coming back from a forced couple-of-months hiatus, mainly due to having to find somewhere new to live and make a Kleptones base, which took rather longer than expected – Space, as you may well imagine, is at a premium in this overcrowded city, which has led to some very over-the-top rents (32% rise in three years apparently) and some rather minuscule dwellings – Being rather a tall chap with a bit of baggage, living hand-to-mouth, it’s not the most ideal of situations. Sorted now though, thank f–k, and it was just in time for us to kick off the new venue for Kleptonite on 10th November!

kleptonite banner
kleptonite bannerkleptonite bannerkleptonite banner
(Pics appropriated from Instamatic and DJ Payroll, sure they won’t mind!)

As I mentioned before, The Britannia in Hackney (map) seemed to be an ideal venue, and so it proved, with valiant back up from the Butch Auntie visual massive, and Instamatic producing a storming and very well received debut AV set, it all went rather well. Not the hugest of sound-systems, but good enough for now – If the crowd grows, we’ll be able to afford a better PA! And we’re going to continue, second Saturday of each month – The next one will be on Saturday 8th December (special guest to be announced soon!), so if you’re in the vicinity, come down, and if you think you’d like to play a set, especially if you’re video-centric, get in touch!

pretty vacant logo
While we’re on the gig front, after many attempts, I’m going to be DJing at Pretty Vacant in Dusseldorf on Saturday 1st December. Those of you will remember the last time I attempted this I ended up snowed in, so we’ll be pulling out some major weather spells to ensure it doesn’t happen this time!

Finally, now all the home-moving shizzle is out of my bizzle, we can get back onto the regularly-posting-tunes-and-mixes train, so here’s a couple of classic 70s rockers given a rather dubby makeover. Hope you like, and see you soon!

(Soundcloud links below – open the post in a new window if they don’t show up in your blog reader!)

Just a little bit louder now…

Sunday, September 23rd, 2012

So… back to modern times, sort of. Here’s a tune I debuted at Bootie SF the other week, which screamed Bootie as soon as I put it together, and worked a treat I must say. So much so, that I’ve passed the download over to them as an exclusive, so if you want a copy, you’ll have to head over to the Bootie site. It’s worth it though, there’s a fine clutch of tracks there to be had for free!

What’s more, I’ll be playing at the next Bootie London alongside New York’s finest DJ Lobsterdust, and local heroes Instamatic and Payroll in support. Like last time, it’s at Electrowerkz, running later this time till 4am, so if you’re about, you really should come down! Full details at the Bootie London site!

More plans are afot for future London and elsewhere shows, and we’re starting to investigate Kickstarter ideas to see how we can make more shows happen – if you want us in your area, wherever that may be, and/or you think you can help us with some ground level wisdom from your own town or city, please drop me an email, it would be amazing to make it happen, and it’s a lot easier than you might think!

I Just Wanna Dream…

Monday, September 3rd, 2012

Decided to have a crack at the new Major Lazer single, even though I think the original takes some beating… Tried a few styles but this knocked everything else out of the water by a country mile.

So here you go… hope you enjoy!

Love in the cities…

Thursday, August 30th, 2012

bootieA couple of things to announce and a couple of new tunes for you! We’re going off on a little September sojourn… First stop will be Bootie SF on Saturday 8th September, with hosts A+D in town, Smash-Up Derby live, and the finest mashup crowd on the planet!

bootieFollowing that it’s up to XOXO in Portland on Thursday 13th September (you need to be registered with XOXO to get into the Portland show, and it’s completely sold-out, but we’ll be around all weekend, so keep watching the Twitter feed, PDX-ers, you never know what might happen!)

And a couple of new tracks! Up top, “Love In The City” takes some Putney boys off to meet a Canadian Godfather uptown, or possibly round a campfire, and down below “Short And Round” gets rather silly and offensive indeed…

Hope to see you soon!

A Whiter Westway?

Friday, August 3rd, 2012

Just a quickie – A lot of people, myself included, have commented on the similarities between Blur’s “Under The Westway” and Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade Of Pale”, but until I tinkered, I hadn’t realised *exactly* how close they were – same tempo, same key (C major, I think)… although Blur cut the last bar of each verse three measures short to achieve a rolling, overlapping effect.

Didn’t need to do more than a minute for you to get the idea…

I do like “Westway” a lot, and, well, “Whiter Shade” was heavily influenced by Bach, so as usual, round and round the riffs we go…

New Reunited Remix…

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

Well, the sun came out here today in London for an hour, so to celebrate this momentous occasion, I felt inspired to do another “Reunited” remix, this time sending young Michael off to the Caribbean…

Reunited, and it feels so good…

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Not sure this is what Peaches & Herb had in mind – A couple of quick musical amusements for you that I just couldn’t resist, reuniting cover versions with their original vocals. Possibly the start of an off-and-on series, if I can find any more that sound good…

First up, a bunch of 80s new wavers get pulled into the Afrobeat revival:

And secondly, imagining how a certain soul legend might have sounded if he’d decamped to Jamaica instead of Belgium (From YouTube, as Soundcloud took it down!):

Hope you enjoy! – If you know of any other covers you think may be worthy of the treatment, feel free to let me know…

I’m probably the last person on the planet to advocate Valentine’s Day…

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

…but when you’re in the midst of demoing new things and a pairing like this comes along on 14th Feb (about three hours ago to be precise)… well, you’ve got to do it, haven’t you?

Yes, it’s very silly.

No, the next album won’t sound anything like this.

I hope.

Happy chocolates and flowers day!

Mashup Breakdown : A Night At The Hip-Hopera

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

mashup breakdown

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

Monday, November 1st, 2010

pucking funk rock

Direct download: MP3 or FLAC

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 like the one below – 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]