WordPress emailed me recently to wish me happy 2nd birthday with them (plus obligatory 50% discount that I’ll never upgrade to) and I thought, “I’ve been doing the blog for two years?!” This got me thinking: 2 years is a long time in blog-world, especially with 59 sets attached to it. I decided last month that I’d wrap up the blog and thought it very appropriate that I’d do one more post, round off the number of mixes to 60 and finish with the Jungle Classics. For those handful of you that did make it to the end of the post (thank you and sorry I can’t give you back that fifteen minutes of your life) you’ll notice the last sentence does have an air of finality about it.

However… I had really excellent feedback regarding it and have at least another twenty different sets to mix, some already set up as a virtual folder, others scrawny little ideas that may not work. There’s also another two blog posts that have been in a draft-vortex for months and I never fancy mixing the tunes relevant to them so there’s a good year left in this blog yet. Sowweeeee. The faithful readers who do delve into it unwittingly give me support with their kind DMs and, more importantly, sharing the blog which means an awful lot to me…

Something that entertains people is my insight into the scene and my personal experiences so I thought it only adept to try and explain how I got into the damn music in the first place. I can’t remember where my first pair of decks ended up but I sure as hell remember the first time I heard a Hardcore beat: I was walking home from school in 1990, I remember who with and exactly where it was and one of my mates gave me a headphone to listen to on his Walkman. “That beat man, that beat!” I’ll never recall the tune which was on some absurd compilation named something like Now That’s What I Call Rave! and even if it was played back to me now I wouldn’t recognise it – I just remember that it wasn’t a standard 4-on-the-floor drop as the drums were scattered and there was huge reverb on the opening kickdrum of each bar which is what drew me to it like shit to a blanket. I asked what that kind of music this was and was told it was Acid. I asked to borrow that tape and was told quite sternly no way. Then the summer after “Charly” was released by a band called The Prodigy. I couldn’t get my breath. The breaks, the melodies, the bass, the FX… and even a sample of an outdated public information film that we used to rip the piss out of in the mid-80s because they were that bad. I already liked the electronic sound going back to 1988 with stuff like Theme From S’Express, Naked In The Rain and Pump Up The Volume, but this was a whole new level.

Sample-mania

You can take the piss, but I’m sure there’s a Hot Pants break sample in there…

A slow, yet very dark trip. This tune got me thinking about electronica

Watching a documentary on this kind of new mind-bending music on one of the 4 available TV channels back then, I remember some dinosaur radio DJ labelling it as “rubbish called Toytown Techno”. When I looked into it further (remember that there wasn’t any internet then), Smarte’s Sesame’s Treet and Urban Hype’s Trip To Trumpton fell under this category but I felt they were a step too far into cheese territory. Those beats though, man: Intriguing. Cue slowly – and I mean s l o w l y rotating my frequency dial on my lo-end hi-fi stack system that was made from plastic and ironically encased in a quality bit of wood cabinet that my mom bought me for my 14th birthday straight out of the Littlewoods catalogue (or Kays or Grattan, I can’t rightly remember), searching for pirate radio stations to listen to this style of then uber-fast-paced beats. I found a stable one for 3 months – a very long time for pirate radio back then before the authorities shut them down as the comics that were the Red Top press associated the scene with hard drugs, mostly because they didn’t understand it – Respect FM. I taped loads of stuff onto blank cassettes from that station, even did a little editing (i.e. rewinding back a bit and simply taping over the DJ talking).

Problem was, it was right next to BBC Radio 4 on the dial, and it was a very fine line which station you were listening to. One summer’s evening when I’d been smoking a great deal of Red Seal, I was listening to Respect FM in my bedroom and a song opened with Minor chord strings – a now familiar sound off the Experience album – then a break, then a heavier break overlapped with complex snare patterns and more reverb kicks, all showered with a simple bleepy melody. This stopped all of a sudden and the catchiest reggae hook ever chanted in and the rest is history. It was Out Of Space. I couldn’t believe how good the tune was, even to this day. I recognised it as The Prodigy due to Liam’s style and programming of beat loops that were pasted half a bar forward (making them very difficult to mix as I found out a year later). Then the tune finished, and this plum-in-the-mouth female voice announced, “that was a song by the band The Prodigy, and is classed as a new music called Jungle Techno”. I thought it was a piss-take, but it was BBC Radio 4 actually interviewing Liam Howlett! He sounded as stoned as I was but commentated on how he hated the way Acid was going into Hardcore, that House music was crap, and his roots were in Hip Hop. There’s some story that he entered two different DJ mix tapes into some Hip Hop radio competition in the 1980s and he won first and third place.

That was it for me and from that point forwards it was about getting hold (mostly copies) of these DJs with brilliant names on cassette playing Hardcore at events which were mythically named themselves. I also know that it wasn’t just a phase when I heard Grooverider drop New Decade’s Get The Message in the glorious summer of 1992 when I’d just left school. I haven’t looked back since.

So, no, this isn’t a 1990 set as that’s not my bag but I suppose my favourite era which is 1995. Drum programming had got to its peak and the music to me was properly developed and I never wanted it to end. I did a similar set with Mental Drumz but that involved some sinister and mean amen programming, this one’s more deeper and I agonised over whether or not to post it to the blog as I listened to it a couple of times at work and, truthfully, I wasn’t that impressed. However, there’s a lot worse mixes on the blog so… here you go.

Mediafire d/l

Tracklist:

• DJ Trace – Lost Entity (Remix)
• Acro – Superpod (Remix)
• Simon “Bassline” Smith – Hypnosis (A-Sides Rmx)
• Moloko – Butterfly 747
• D4 – X-Attack
• Danny Breaks – Step Off
• Leviticus – Burial (Amen VIP)
• Real Sportsman & DJ Rusty Dust – Sportsman Dust
• Dr. S Gachet – The Dreamer (Nookie Remix)
• The Bomb Squad – Balance
• Override – Critical Phase
• Cutty Ranks – Dark Justice (Half Breed Remix)
• Regulators – Sing Time (Exclusive Remix)
• Hired Gun – What Goes On
• Dillinja – The Angels Fell
• Rhythm For Reasons – The Love Statement (DJ SS Remix)
• DJ SS – United (Grooverider Remix)
• Blame – Dream Finder
• Darren H & Punisher – Unknown B
• P-Funk – P-Funk Era (diz1iz4yasoul)
• Neil Trix & Danny Mills – Pearls
• Dr. Know – Make Me Feel

Maybe I was too harsh on Alex Reece ref my last post; he’s easily one of the UK’s top producers and I love the fact that the Saturday afternoon I bought his Basic Principles in 1994, the Kenny Ken dropped it as an intro that very same night at Mr. B’s nightclub in the salubrious area that is known as Willenhall. I also loved Feel The Sunshine but when Pulp Fiction got released and was played by everyone including yer Nan, I was too heavily involved in my stuttered amens and reverse b-line for that airy-fairy StepOff sound.

To be fair to him, I bought the So Far album on CD just for the slightly remixed Pulp Friction that I was hugely disappointed with. I then listened to Candles and frisbee-tossed the little silver disc out the window. True story. BUT – his clinically accurate percussion portrayal is so realistic that when I drop one of his tunes in the bedroom studio he might as well be right beside me whacking ten tons of shit out of a triangle. Unreal and amazing writer. He’s also aliased as DJ Kid Twist and part of the excellent Fallen Angels so I bow and scrape, bow and scrape.

My point is that after re-reading a few blog posts I’ve learnt that I’m opinionated and ever so slightly arrogant with it, some times incorrect with certain eras and facts and always being self-deprecating about my mixing. A fellow DJ who was resident at a popular event in the 90s sniped on a forum 10 years ago that I shouldn’t use my name and the word mix in the same sentence; that one stuck with me for years. What I will say is that when I met that person in real life, I found out that he was a scrounger and that his hygiene was rather lacking. You know who you are. I’m Sunday league pub football when it comes to DJing but as my missus says, it’s my thing. I enjoy the challenge, just like the old days with a pair of twin decks with pitch control, some mate’s borrowed speakers, an old amplifier, a mixer that cost less than £100 and a bunch of beloved vinyl with Sellotape holding the sleeves together.

I still remember in my teens daydreaming at work all day about how I would exactly mix in Champion Sound into The Helicopter Tune for the coming Friday’s rented-by-the-hour decks session in one of the Custard Factory’s studios. The sets never worked out how I wanted but I always faithfully recorded them onto cassette. Then there was the loan from my dad for a home setup of a pair of belt-driven turntables (my boss at work initially refused me the loan, labelling them as “toys”) and owning about 30 pieces of wax and practicing, then practicing some more, then sending countless demo tapes off. I got my big break DJing a set before Fallout in a proper club and am still in touch with the pair of promoters to this day who always refer to me as “the intro DJ on the Fallout night”. And my set wasn’t too bad, man. That particular bunch of records I might re-record again in another blog post.

I could have pushed myself further playing out as I had the contacts but realised I would still have to keep my day job, which sucked. Pursuing the commitment, financial aspects, the travel and also the strain on relationships would have took its toll but, whether it be a twist of fate or not, the music changed drastically in 1996 to the dreaded TechStep and I loathed it. The clubbers were getting younger yet I wasn’t even 21 and the atmosphere was changing from that of sweaty young people drinking gallons of water just oozing in the euphoria to that of a smarter-dressed crowd who were serious about the music and it’s sophistication. That’s no slur on them though; if you were into drum & bass from 1996-99, then you meant business. I harp on from the very beginning of this blog about the TechStep but it was such a dynamic shift in style that for me it was almost physical. Gone were the dodgy samples, sped up RnB vocals, looped amens and sub bass. I kind of missed that because it all sounded so… home-made, y’know? The new stuff sounded professional like it was electronic and built in a studio which was the whole point of it.

After a lot of angst and still to my chagrin I sold my decks and vinyl in 2002 as amen simply wasn’t being produced any longer and for another 8 long years I dreamt of being able to mix old Jungle tunes again. The ultimate fantasy: I could have any tune I wanted without it wearing out, switch on a computer or some kind of boot-up system instantly and mix with a few extra FX buttons/sliders. The icing on the cake would be an original flyer from the best night out I ever had in the scene (NYE 1993/4 Andromeda VII) above the computer monitor, framed even. I kinda had to be patient and save moolah and wait for the technology on the software and hardware front to develop, but Goddamnit, I got there. Nearly a dozen years ago I was ecstatic when I won a Numark Total Control on eBay for a hefty sum, bemused that it took 3 weeks to get posted because the seller ‘forgot about it’ and then finding out that my laptop struggled to keep up with the software’s CPU requirements and I admit I had to phone some surly Numark engineer on the helpline on how to get my headphones to work. After my first ten minutes of mixing after years my ex arrived home from work, looked at my setup on the wobbly kitchen table, listened to the illegally-gained mp3 that was currently playing and said one word, quite matter of factly, No. I’m glad I didn’t listen to her. That controller is now at DJ Selfy’s abode (he doesn’t use it, he’s got much more modern tech) as it got us through some very dark times in our lives and although there are knobs missing and bent and the bass pot on the left deck has a mind all of its own, it still works. His lovely fiancee has agreed that if we enclose it in some kind of glass/plastic case, he can put it on display on the wall above his own controller. Sweet.

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Yeah I’ve got Xbox and several streaming services and everyone at work prattles on about how they’re going to cane them when they get home but I always have a little wry smile to myself at how I’m going to have a little mix instead when I get in. Every age group talks about their own generation of anti-establishment music right back to the 1950s but for me personally the Hardcore Jungle was a quintessentially English electronic sound nicked off loads of other Techno-based bits from Europe and the States and was unique as it felt quite working-class as you got to meet loads of other ravers who grafted all week with the sole purpose of the Friday/Saturday night where they could let their centre-parted curtains down and dance to the music that they loved and their parents obediently hated. It was a privilege, and I’ll always appreciate that. The drugs that went with it were, like other musical styles for the youth of the day, hand-in-hand and after a recent long phone call with one of my bezzies for life Pauline (who’s actually a gentleman) touching on the guilt of all that ingested stuff back in the nineties, he came out with an absolute belter: “Yeah, but we never hurt anyone”.

So here, for you, is a perfect summarisation of the Jungle era that I was slap bang in the middle of in 1993 & 1994, sans tracklisting as I want the tunes to surprise you. There is also one release in this set that I didn’t own on vinyl, which works out at under 5% of the tracks. I mixed a very similar all-vinyl set back in 2000, recorded it onto cassette and posted it off to a chap called Matt… he owns and runs the B2VOS (back to the oldskool) forum which to my knowledge is still going today and my set was one of the very first uploaded to that site. I swore I’d never do another Jungle Classics set as I did one a few weeks ago with clever cue points and cut & dry mixing which in the end sounded like it had been mixed by a robot and could have been released by HMV and the like. I’ve deleted said set, removed a couple of ‘classics’ (see below) because they weren’t classic enough and added a couple of others mixed in my style all hovering around the virtual green quartz lock at 160 beats per minute. Lovely.

These tunes tell a story of all of the above paragraphs and are the reasons I wanted to DJ and why I loved the scene so much – MY scene.

Mediafire download

Always looking for the different, unique mix with the blog at the forefront of my mind (wowee! Look at Swipez’ diversity!!), I’ve decided to upload this little selfish number; a mix practice without looking at the 22″ monitor that’s two feet from my face which I found difficult. Unluckily for you I pressed the record button at the start of the session after finding a year-old virtual crate simply labelled ‘MD’ – it wasn’t until halfway through the set that I realised it stood for Modern Dark – and mixing it up with a couple of recent acquisitions.

Yeah, there’s some Wicked Jungle/Rez in there that’s been in several other mixes but I don’t care man. I liked the intro, got bored of the outro, as I did the original in the clubs back in the day. This brings me onto a rather negative vibe thinking about the tunes the DJs spun back then that I really didn’t like: weird how some people understood the tunes and I didn’t, yet that’s what made the scene the way it was; I hated Alex Reece’s Pulp Fiction, especially after I found out it took under an hour to make and the title of the track was decided by Fabio after he’d seen the movie the night before – I was looking for an eyes-rolling emoji but this was the way it was in the 90s and, to be honest, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Mediafire download

Tracklist

• Brainkillers – Screwface (Vince Rollin Remix)
• Brain Killers – Screwface (BC Rydah Remix)
• Krust – Arizona II
• DJ Windmill – Divine Inspiration (Army Of Ghosts VIP)
• Hyper On Experience – Disturbance (Abyss Remix)
• Prayer – No One Left
• Slacker – Lost Hope
• Subjects – Wile Out
• Pariah – Urban Score
• Tech Level 2 – Revolt
• Law & Auder – Its Alright
• Origin Unkown – Valley of the Shadows [Abstract Illusion Rework]
• Marv – Reff
• Self Aware – Degloved
• Rez – Vega (A Lyrae)
• Msymiakos – The Voyage
• Tech Itch – Death Trip ’95
• DarkAli – Losing My Mind
• Tech Level 2 – The Almighty
• Furney – Boot With You

As promised, the finale to my Liquid DnB trilogy mixes. I enjoyed #1 back 18 months ago and still listen to it today, felt #2 was weak and didn’t justify itself so I had to make up for it with this. And boy it don’t half. Considering how anal I am with orderliness on my PC (example: the only icon you’ll find on my desktop is the recycle bin), the Liquid folder was a complete shambles. I found Dubstep in there (don’t ask) and even some kind of House/Skullstep fusion (same again) as well as some right filthy DnB that I moved to the appropriate folders. There were 1,071 tunes to consider once I’d cleaned up the genre, and I narrowed it down to 62 in my virtual crate. Still too much yet I loved them all. So I’ve been brutal and reluctantly syphoned off about half the tracks, and all of them were full of lovely amenness (©️ DJ Swipez 2021). All in all, this has taken me about a week of fiddling – I ain’t idle when it comes to set selection.

The intro is a two minute affair waaaaaay back from 1999 which would annoy my mate Pauline who once stated, “I hate long boring intros as all I want to do is dance“. Respect for that bruv 👌 I’ve also found by mistake an unreleased track from Swiss artists Task Horizon. The source was probably ropey and I’ve done my best to tidy up the track through Audacity but… anyway, one of the tunes in this mix that I didn’t know I had for 5 years made me well up slightly when I heard the strings; I won’t tell you which one. The mixing’s a bit Wedding-DJ as you can’t really chop with Liquid but can tell when I get bored with wishy-washy fading about 40 minutes in; some spectacular bust-ups between tunes too, so narrrrsty I might as well have invented a new electronic genre called ShitStep or something.

As the UK slowly blossoms out from lockdown (again) in perfect rhythm with the sunshine, here’s some tunes for that feel-good groove. So behave yourselves and, as the British National Rail advert said in the eighties:

Aaaaaahh yeeeeahhh

Mediafire d/l

Tracklist

• Makoto – Enterprise
• Lion Youth – Dancing Djedi
• Nebula – Encounters
• D Kay & DJ Lee – Eternal Sunset
• Sub – Skadi (Nebula Blue Notes Remix)
• Madcap – Paradise
• Calibre – Amen Tune
• State Logic – Salonic Sunrise
• Subway Funk – Information Highway
• Ufologist – Polar Effect
• Birdy – Wings (Nu-Logic Remix)
• Physics – Revolution
• Makoto & Deeizm – Release The Bird
• Funkware – Laygroove
• DJ Marky & Makoto – Bloody Mary
• Nookie – You Can’t Hold Me Back
• Sigma – Nexus
• ATP & Soultec – Chicolini
• Technimatic – Just Play
• Total Science – Soul Patrol (ft.Conrad) (Marky & S.P.Y Super Jungle VIP)
• Jaybee – Forgotten Soul V1
• Euphorics & Funkware – Elephant Boogie
• DJ Marky & XRS – Closer
• Vandera – Anandamide
• mSdoS – Dark Matter
• Q-Project – Obsession
• Entity – Portugal
• PFM – This Must Be Love
• Hazuki – Romantic
• Task Horizon – Lost & Found (Unreleased)

I had a good response to the last post which coincidentally (not) didn’t contain one of my mixes, so I thought I’d do a part deux to a pair of clubs that I spent a lot of my younger years in; indeed, I worked in one of them, an eye-opening experience that for good and bad reasons I’ll remember forever.

I’ll start off with the Q Club, a place I think I first attended as late as 1998. I was at a wedding and my cuz’s boyfriend told me about an event called Flashback where the headline DJs & MCs – some from yesteryear – played strictly old school. Old school, that eventually got properly named Oldskool, was a phenomenon that I thought was to do with the late 80’s Acid warehouse music, not Hardcore from 1991-ish. I thought it was too good to be true so popped down to Old Skool Daze in Selly Oak (opposite the Selly Sausage cafe next to the Selly Soak launderette, these business names still tickling my funny bone today) where I later started buying older vinyl myself, and bought some tickets. I think the first time I went to a Flashback I took my sister and we saw the Ratpack. If memory serves, Robbie Dee was there too and screamed the immortal words I’ll never forget after a rewind, “they don’t f*ckin’ make ’em like they used to!”. This was also when I heard for the first time in years and years the warm-up DJ spin Silver Bullet’s 20 Seconds To Comply.

The Q Club was first used as a nightclub in 1989 and would be what you would regard as a proper concert hall. Mistress Mo recently put up a fantastic pic of the place in it’s heyday, see below. The corridors bamboozled me, but we always found the rooms we wanted to yet there’s an unfortunate event where a clubber was in one of these corridors over the top of the spiral staircase and fell to his death. The other ‘corridor’ memory I have is trying to find my mates on the way back from the toilets and seeing two young women kissing each other with their friend photographing it. I shouted a good old Wahey! as I walked past; in hindsight, I should have applauded like the Italians did to the signorinas in the 1950s, smouldering cigarette dangling out the corner of my mouth. This may have been the NYE Atomic Jam night in 2000, all my memories of those events are blurred into one. The one night I do remember is a Flashback on the eve of the mighty Birmingham City’s league cup final in 2001, a game they lost on penalties to Liverpool. It’s evident in my mind because Bassman wished them well and all the blokes I went with were Bluenoses so we were real happy about it. That was the Flashback where I bought my brother-from-another-mother Andi his ticket for his 18th birthday (I also took him to his first Birmingham City game 3 years prior. We probably lost the match). Whew, what a night!!!

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Finally, I want to finish on the original O2 Academy in Dale End. The club opened in the 1960s as a traditional ballroom as the Top Rank Ballroom, some of my older work colleagues vaguely remember it and I’ve recently found out that The Stranglers played there in 1979. The premises then changed to an actual nightclub as The Hummingbird, which is the first time I’d heard of it in 1992 after I’d asked a teacher at school for the name of a nightclub in Birmingham for my art project exam. I basically ripped off this bad boy flyer and ended up, ironically, getting an E:

I first frequented the place which was by then the Carling Academy in late 2000 to some kind of indie-grunge-studenty Fridays called Ramshackle. I had some fun nights in there, man, I can tell you. It so happens a couple of years later that the crowd I was knocking about with also worked security there and I was asked to do a couple of shifts doing menial jobs to help them out. My first 3 hours as an employee at the Academy consisted of standing outside the ladies toilets making sure only ladies went in. Fast forward to February 2003 and I was running security for the club myself. I’ve seen many, many artists there from P!nk to Papa Roach, Feeder to Fun Lovin Criminals, Avril Lavigne to Alien Ant Farm, Moby to Morrissey and dozens more, some cool, others walking arseholes, about 50% of them absolutely talentless. I also partied with a lot of them, but I’m not name dropping… yet. I did get converted to rock during this period (still a trainspotter, I always attended the sound checks) when DnB was rediscovering itself again with a more focused sound and the only ‘electronic’ gigs I attended were The Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx and the most excellent DJ Shadow.

The club itself had all kind of weird and wonderful fire escapes, secret corridors, anterooms and staff offices that were huge, infested with rats and mice, the walls and floors permeated by the odour of old, greasy cooking oil from the fast food restaurant next door. It was an interesting experience that quickly soured to boredom and the novelty of working in a place that everybody knew of wore off to the point where I wasn’t telling people where I actually worked any longer. I also saw several terrible incidents in that place that make you wonder if human beings harbour a soul due to the awful depraved things that they are capable of which is lower than shark shit. Some of the moments I can laugh off, others still haunt my dreams. Nightclubs inevitably have undertones of a lurking seedy, sordid menace about them that brings out the worst in people whether they’re under the influence of alcohol, narcotics or sheer lack of common sense which helped my decision to walk and get a proper job in the summer of ‘03 and since then, after a decade of hard clubbing at the grand old age of 27, nights out for me to these kind of places seriously dwindled. I’m still in touch though with a couple of colleagues who I worked with at the Carling Academy who are good, good people and will be my friends for life.

Cue my lame excuse for lazily grabbing pictures off the web: I couldn’t bring myself to cycle into town again this weekend and take pictures of this behemoth of a building which was originally going to be flattened in 2004 as I know the very presence of it – buildings talk to you, y’know? – will conjure up memories of being paid a pittance to get punched, kicked, spat/pissed/puked on and called every name under the sun and then some whilst trying my best to make sure these very customers were kept safe. It’s not all doom and gloom though, as better parts of my life were – and here are just a random few – of the following: being employed to watch Jimmy Cliff in the sound booth with a drink and a smoke overlooking a crowd that was as happy and laid back as he was. A Flaming Lips gig where the first 10 people in the queue unexpectedly got to get on stage with the band, all dressed in giant cute animal costumes with the biggest bubble machine I’ve ever seen. Being thanked by the then lead singer of Killswitch Engage during one of their mental shows and instantly falling in love with them. A certain female member of The White Stripes lamping me with a Hulk Smash! toy glove backstage then asking to go to Wetherspoons for a pint. Helping load out (putting sound equipment into a big van) a then little-known band who were ultra-nice calling themselves The Zutons; it’s a shame you’ll know them from the clown that was Amy Winehouse covering Valerie. Then there’s the time seeing heads turn (probably at my clanging) as I mixed hip hop and drum & bass on a pair of faithful Technics 1210s in the sister club next door, Bar Academy. The punters and staff that had spilled from the main club were like, “Errrrrm, ain’t that the childish security bloke???” The resident DJ who is now some kind of big cheese in the capital, clapped me and told me I was “a dark horse”. That’ll do. I left the Academy with an intricate knowledge of acoustics and lighting that has made me feel a richer man, so I’ll leave you with this one: ever stopped and wondered why spotlights swirl around the crowd moments before the main band or artist comes on stage at a concert?

Sadly, all good things come to an end and O2 upped sticks and buggered off down the road to The Dome. The giant building in Dale End, forever known as that weird smelly nightclub with the stairs, briefly reopened as The Ballroom but finally shut it’s doors in 2013. I loved and hated that place man, but it’s permanently etched onto my biological hard drive.

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Edit: one of my best mates who knows that building more than myself has just messaged to inform me that the building is reopening as an urban club (no, I don’t know either) which will hold all-nighters. Eeenturezteenk.

Now then, as the UK is road-mapping itself out of lockdown for the summer (myself included as I recently ate at a brilliant restaurant with my missus and after three pints of lager in the sun decided I wanted to go to bed) I’m compiling for next week the final part of the Molten Beatz trilogy: summery, uplifting, gurn-inducing 180bpm amen bangers that’ll get you driving your wheels like you stole ‘em. Hopefully.

If you’re scrolling down and see blocks and blocks of text, bear with it as there’s some pretty pictures as your reward plus a couple of shock! horror! other peoples’ mixes!!!…

No mix from me this week as I’ve gone all Bruce Lee on my DJing software and have spent coin on it which in turn means it is maxed out with all kinds of bells and whistles – and a very, very cool Inception horn – yet rather than mixing full sets I’m just very happy twiddling my knobs and playing about and simply getting used to it as I’ve had to change my skin (screen layout in layman’s terms) as the one I’ve been using the last 5 years crashes with the 2021 software. It’s all very nice, and if I get into the guts of it and map stuff out onto my controller (again, make my buttons and knobs do magic things) there’s a plethora of tricks I can do which is all quite overwhelming, yet it’s made me realise that my mixing is stuck in the last century and sometimes when I’m feelin’ all purist and stuff (drunk, in other words) I yearn for the fundamentals of two channels and a crossfader. Anyway, I’m re-educating myself with it all so nowt’s being recorded at the minute.

This is a good excuse to utilise my blog and waffle on about shit, so there’s no better place to start than The Institute, a grade B building and a bit of a local legend. Not the O2 Institute, The Sanctuary, or the HMV Institute; just The Institute, or “The ‘Tute”. The history of it is insane (click on the link above) and was basically a staple of my ravin’ years as well as Don Christie’s record shop. Shock C recently got in touch and marvelled at those years and said something that made me feel like I’m 45 (I actually am forty five): we were so young and everything was fresh and exciting. Yeah. It was, man.

The Institute building, cliches and all, will be in my heart forever. It’s not one of the best finished nightclubs I’ve been in but it is vast, and it is sprawling. It’s not Q Club-esque confusing with mazy corridors (another local club ledge that may be in another post), but it’s still got four tiers – I still dream about them. I vividly remember as a 17 year-old apprentice in a factory on one Monday morning in a job I absolutely hated yet was physically jittering at the thought of going to Pandemonium that Friday where Top Buzz were the headline act. Those motherfunkers never turned up in the end but it was still a class night. 28 years later, I realise that I used to look forward to going to the actual club. When you walked in you were searched by security – and I mean searched – chewing your gum like a good ‘un as otherwise you’d be chewing your lower lip off and all you could hear was the rattle of the cheap ceiling tiles in time with the bass in the main room above. Then you went up the stairs where the two dealers whom were more loyal to that place than even I was synchronised their trader’s spiel PillsSpeedTrips as an acknowledgement to the scene rather than a seller’s question. I bet they made loads of money. Then there were a pair of heavy huge doors to the lower main arena (or the dance floor as we called it) and as you opened them, a cacophony of breaks and bass slapped you across your face. Welcome to The Institute. Cue the lasers that sliced through the artificial and cigarette smoke like some kind of alien invasion. If I remember rightly the lasers were, at the time, top of the line and the envy of other clubs (flyers used to advertise in detail what lasers the promoters had underneath the DJ line-ups) and also very expensive. I remember one night where they spelled out the words “Mickey Finn” over the DJ’s head. No bonus points for guessing who was playing that night. We used to gather on the upstairs balcony over the mixing desk with prime viewing over the dance floor and level with the DJ over the other side of the club. There was also a handy bar right behind us; I think all they sold was Volvic water and Red Stripe lager.

As the night wore on and we were more ‘enhanced’ with the music, it was time to get on the dance floor via any number of stairwells. Some of my mates liked to shake it out on the platforms (neat idea, probably a Health & Safety no-no today) whereas the trainspotter yours truly used to go up to the front of the stage to try and see the DJ but always, always got distracted by the professional dancers. Jesus, they were some lovely girls. I remember one night was a Fibre Optic night a la Tango, Ratty and Fallout and they only went and brought their own dancers with them who then synced with the regular ones. It was like some kind of soft porn fantasy for me and the word skimpy clothing comes to mind. I recall on several occasions trying to talk to them whilst they weren’t performing but I regularly got fobbed off. The Streets released a song many moons later that summed them up: My gosh you’re fit but don’t you know it.

I also remember Ranski (in my older years I don’t despise him as much as when I had a run-in with him and MC $pyda on the merchandise stall once) mingling on the dance floor with the ravers… and MCing at the same time with a wireless microphone – this was 1993 remember and the technology was mesmerising. There were some astonishing speakers stage left and right and we used to dare each other to stick our heads in them – how we didn’t end up with permanent brain damage, I’ll never know. This reminds me, I don’t ever recollect any issues with the sound system, a regular occurrence in other clubs – one memorable incident at Quest where the Finn was playing and it was a typically Questy edgy/moody atmosphere when the music suddenly stopped in the middle of the set. Then a voice from the dancefloor shouted, “He’s broke the f*cking stereoooooo!”… just shows how professional Mark Chamberlain’s Pandemonium and The Institute were together. Jogging my brain, there was the end of the night when the house lights came on (you may notice I’m using proper industry dialogue as I worked in yet another famous local nightclub for six months; again maybe more on that in another post) and everyone trudged downstairs to the appalling cloakroom, a thankless job made to look easy by the young women working in there. Funny how you appreciate them some decades later. Then the long walk through the centre of “town” (Birmingham city centre) avoiding drunk assholes, gangs of teenagers trying to rob you and patrons in speeding taxis throwing whole bags of chips at you through the open window shouting, “Eeyah! Ave some SPUDS!”. This last event actually happened to me and I still get reminded of it. Twats. It was a minefield man, and then you had to walk to the fringes of town praying that the night bus service was a) actually running and b) on time. Think it only ever let me down twice. Then there was the ordeal of the bus journey itself and it’s lively customers before finally getting off to our sleepy suburbs and seeing postmen doing their rounds.

The Institute itself was to my reckoning deliberately built in a run-down and industrialised area and no matter how much money has been promised to be thrown at that B5 postcode, it will always remain a dismissed smudge of the regenerated city centre, like a black sheep of the family. The word “Digbeth” doesn’t conjure up romantic city life, but it certainly means a lot to me. I went down on my bicycle this morning with this blog post in mind and felt a right tit taking pictures of the area in my lycra (yes, I do resemble the Michelin Man when it is donned) but it was flipping worth it. I don’t want to stereotypically say that it transported me back to my youth as I still go there when I can, the last time being a gig on Xmas Eve eve 2016 to watch the ultra-cool Bentley Rhythm Ace and local-band-done-good The Wonderstuff but really the main reason I wanted to go was to see another native of my area, Fuzzbox. The keyboard player pinched my bum at the bar and then I was inexplicably talking to Radio One stalwart Janice Long a moment later. Bizarre. Considering the ‘tute had had a massive refurbishment and “overhauled” in 2010, I couldn’t tell any difference from 1993; it still had that enchanting skutty feel to it and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Time for some pics:

You’ll notice there’s a few of the industrial area behind The Institute, ‘proper’ Digbeth where even early on a Sunday morning you can smell the steel and oil in the air of the factories, one of them being Supreme Metal Spinning where I had my very first job interview at the grand old age of 16: I was considered too puny for the role. Above you can see the arches which is called, um, The Arches and a hell of a lot of decent artwork. I won’t call it graffiti – now there’s some shit I hate. There’s also The Custard Factory where I’ve also spent a lot of time, and I mean a lot. I’ve also uploaded photos of the Bull Ring Trading Estate with it’s 70’s font that makes the whole place still feel a bit of a cack-hole with the Birmingham Coach Station (known locally as just Digbeth station) that has been totally transformed as it was horrendously bad back in the day; still, you can’t polish a turd. The Subway next to the nightclub was MC Lenni’s record shop where I unofficially worked for 2 hours one Saturday morning and spent more money in than I care to remember on tunes (multiply that figure by one thousand to get even close to cash parted at the till of Don Christie’s). The blue Bull’s Head next door was where I used to fetch Lenni’s whiskey – in a proper tumbler and everything – and get rewarded with promo vinyls underneath his counter. The Kerryman the other side of the club was where we used to roll into if the ‘tute was unexpectedly closed (as said before in a previous post, we just used to turn up every week even if there was no flyer available). Not the most spiffing of boozers, but it had character, something which is hard to find these days. Finally, there’s St Martin’s church at the top of Digbeth, one of the only buildings that wasn’t torn down in the massive renovation of the Bull Ring; should bloody think so too… it’s nearly 800 years old. Around the corner of The Institute was the bowels of the club which was its very own arena called The Dance Factory, but the entrance was obscured by fencing. Shame, as it was actually where I made my DJ debut, all 20 minutes of it. With two people in the crowd, who looked bewildered as if they were in the wrong building or either they were mortified at my mixing blend.

Talking of mixin’ (again), here’s 2 mixes for your aural delight, an LTJ Bukem tribute mix by the Dev/Null (all vinyl) and an amazing, if not perturbing intro (even more frightening if you don’t understand Japanese) by my other American friend, Rez. As he would say: Czech it.

LTJ Bukem: In Focus Tribute Mix

Pandemix Mix

As if I needed any excuse to mix Jungle – especially fresh(ish) stuff: does what it says on the tin, really. I’ve been wanting to do this mix for a while but felt that I required a few more releases under my belt and reached the magical number of 25 luuuuurvly songs this morning after purchasing Rez’s Ignition. This tune hits all the right spots for me with an almost drumfunk-like layered bit of amenage and a variation of a very famous Hardcore riff stab that I’ve only heard J. Majik in terms of 21st century music pull off in his classic, The Lizard. There’s more stuff from Rez that’s been in previous blog mixes, but the Contact film sample in Vega (A Lyrae) simply haunts me. Hopefully an exclusive mix of his releases soon, I have it on good *insert Cartman voice* authori-tay that there’s a few more tunes coming out later in 2021.

Intro – Dom & Roland; expect no less from this maestro with those typical sci-fi drenched synths that somehow darken your soul, yet you don’t ever want it to end. There’s a flirting with DnB on Stevie Cee’s Your Mind and DJ Vapour’s remix of the legendary Drowning that sounds like it’s been reworked by, well, DJ Vapour. Some fun from the solid Pete Cannon, a lot of stuff from Kayaman, an artist recommended to me by the Stuz and an almost Liquid-ey taste from D Light with the beautiful Are You Mine. Note there’s also stuff from Ant To Be, who’s killing it at the moment (in a good way). I’ve omitted a couple of re-releases by Krust and Swift + Zinc ‘cuz they sound too 1993ish which ain’t by no means a bad thang, brother. Oh yeah, and Blame’s back… not that he ever went away. For those who have the ears of a wolf, you’ll notice in the mix where I very nearly let the tune run out as I was agonising over what choice of 3 sauces to have on my doner kebab on the Just-Eat app. I ended up having Chinese 🤷🏻‍♂️

There’s a colossal amount of new Jungle out there, but I’ve only just discovered the Bandcamp app to be honest and the mighty Dev/Null always tweets how overwhelming it can be so although it would be ace to trawl my way through the possibly tens of thousands of Jungley tracks released this year and last, I’d also like to keep my girlfriend thank you very much.

Where are the dickheads that claimed Amen was dead? And listen. To this.

DJ Swipez – Jungle 2020/21 Rinse (Mediafire download)

Tracklist

• Dom & Roland – Gasoline
• Unknown Artist – Salute
• Ant To Be – Nineteen
• Kayaman – Diva Jungle 160
• Kayaman – Gunman 84
• Forme – In Your Dreams
• Blame – Lift Off
• Prisoner – B.I.A.S (Amen Mix)
• Ant To Be – South Out
• Pete Cannon – Audacious
• Subjects – Khanage
• Unknown Artist – Sidewinder Business
• Kayaman – Right Here
• Unknown Artist – Sweet Murda (Dwarde & Tim Reaper Remix)
• Subjects – Wile Out
• D Light – Are You Mine
• Rez – Ignition
• Stevie Cee – Your Mind
• Kayaman – BloodPadClaat
• Rez – Vega (A Lyrae)
• Rez – Take You For A Ride (Original Mix)
• Law & Auder – Just 2 Right For Me
• Kayaman – Roots One
• Kayaman – Promise
• 4 Horseman Of The Apocolypse (DJ Vapour Remix) – Drowning

Whenever I’m in the kitchen I’m a typical bloke: I whistle the Imperial March from Star Wars. I realised I was doing this yesterday so I sat down to watch my favourite film from the franchise, Rogue One. I then googled how they made the TIE fighter sound which was interesting. The whole experience got me in the proper mood so I went to watch the fillums in timeline order starting with the Phantom Menace; I forgot how irritating it was so turned it off, and turned my PC and DJ controller on instead. The intro was naturally Bladerunner’s VIP mix of Terror Wars, and the mix sort of evolved from there, with just DnB tracks from that year. I’m just glad I recorded it, a habit I should be doing every time I have a little mix.

The tunes from this year I think was the year I got back into DnB and from this selection alone the diversity of it is engaging. There’s Neurofunk, Liquid and even some Prodigy in there. So here you go, a little taste of what I get up to if you think I’m a pure Jungle don that lives in a 1994 bubble:

Swipez – 2006 DnB Mix (72Mb)

Tracklisting

• Ray Keith – Terror Wars (Bladerunner VIP)
• Higher Sense – Cold Fresh Air (Cyantific Remix)
• The Sect – Zeroid
• Manifest – So Sick
• The Prodigy – Wake The Fuck Up
• Current Value – Dark Rain
• Noise Factory – Breakage 4 (RKive Remix)
• Usual Suspects – Therapy
• Rawthang ft. Kari / Rawthang – Beautiful Morning (Black Sun Empire Remix)
• Sub Focus , Howtek & Brookes Brothers – Verano VIP
• Hive & Gridlok – Standing Room Only
• Logistics – Krusty Bass Rinser
• State Of Mind – Money Train
• Twisted Individual – Swan Cake
• Future Sound Of London, The – Papua New Guinea (Wicka Remix)
• Breakage – Trance

Yeeeeaaaahhhh… all good things come to those who wait. This badboy has been in my virtual crate ready to mix for a good six months after I discovered Harmony’s excellent 2020 album Resurgence. I bang on about good modern Jungle/DnB with a 90’s flavour but this is it down to a goddamn tee. The opening track Dark Matter that was released less than a week ago proves my point: a deep vibe audio journey that transports you to some point in time around 1995; the latest production values blatantly abundant – man, them dark strings make my eyes ‘sweat’ – that tear the beat through yer speakers yet are ruffed-up enough so it doesn’t sound too sterile out of a PC; something I imagine is difficult to develop. After the intro, we go back in time to the legend that is ‘93 and hover around a couple of years of that mark with a few 2020 releases thrown (or clanged, you decide) in.

I first discovered DJ Harmony on a cool 10” back in 1995 on Moving Shadow with some clinically simple artwork that I adored on the sleeve, the remix of Flytronix’s Shine A Rewind, a track I first reviewed I think on my first ever blog post.

Back when I bought this in MC Lenni’s shop I was unaware of Harmony’s previous releases, although I’d heard them on one of the best mixtapes of all time, DJ Destruction @ Southern Smile 1994 👇👇

This compilation was a pleasure for me to mix together as I listened to how Harmony picked up new little tricks with his track writing through the years yet regains the same kind of cut-throat amen sharpness, soulful pads and song build structure.

Anyway, for lack of recent posts I think I’ve done enough babbling; the quiet front lately is down to the Darkcore getting on my tits a smidge and I want the blog to go in another direction for a while. I dare say we’ll be back to the murky and sinister breaks soon though…

DJ Swipez – DJ Harmony Mix Mediafire download

Tracklisting

• Harmony – Dark Matter
• Xtreme & Harmony – Temple Of Heaven
• Harmony & Xtreme – Temple Of Doom
• Harmony & Xtreme – Red
• Harmony & Xtreme – Wicked & Bad
• Danny Breaks – 4 The Thinking Positive Crew (Harmony Remix)
• Harmony – Amonzo
• DJ Harmony – Let Me In (Harmony Remix)
• DJ Harmony & Extreme – Mystified
• DJ Harmony – Serious
• Harmony – Move Me
• Harmony – Rage
• Flytronix – Shine A Rewind (DJ Harmony Remix)
• DJ Harmony – Cali Sound
• Harmony – Foundation For Years
• DJ Harmony – When You Hold Me
• DJ Harmony – So Real (Harmony Remix)
• Harmony – Up In Smoke
• Harmony – What A House
• Harmony – What I Bring
• Harmony – Shadow
• DJ Harmony – Let Me In
• Adam F – Burning Deep (DJ Harmony Remix)

Just for a diversion from early 90s Darkcore, I decided for a taste a tad more modern, i.e. something from this century. This set compromises of 2 labels, Cylon Recordings and DSCI4, owned respectively by Dylan & Loxy and DJ Trace. It’s still dark, but ranges from 2001 to last year. It’s what I consider the forerunner for today’s DnB, something I’ve touched on in an earlier post with heavier kicks, snares, bass and, oh everything. Consider it a kind of advanced version of Techstep – something regular readers will know that my opinion of the original garbage that was churned out from 1996 until the 21st century is the purest of shite. I won’t mention any particular tracks that make me clench my teeth in disgust *cough cough as I’m all for promoting the general scene, not slagging it off. Apart from Roni Commercialize.

The music here sort of grew into itself, with accentuated snares and a simple yet clinical break with something I can’t describe other than BIG bass. Myself, I prefer lots of alternating high-tops layered on rather than in time with the kick drum and snare hit, but this stuff is industrial sounding with industrial strength. I found this set sort of hypnotic, a perfect accompaniment to my latest fad of booooring treadmill-running, which will probably last a week. The set opener doesn’t really cast the vibe I wanted for the remaining hour, but I needed a decent intro. Right then – the mixing: considering it had to be meticulous to compliment the style, it ain’t too bad, with a load of attack and decay filtering business. Listen carefully, and you can tell when I was checking my footie accumulator on my iPhone mid-mix. Did I get away with it?

Cylon + DSCI4 Mediafire download

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ Check out the new embedded Mixcloud player… Shibby!!! ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

Tracklist

• Pacific – Modern Age
• Mindmachine – Epidemic
• PRTCL – Revelations Of A Corner Shop Encounter
• Dynamix – Cold Heat
• Paragon & Cypher – Frenetic
• Paragon & Stranjah – Hegemony
• Cypher – Red Mist
• Paragon – Vermin
• Notion – Sawshark
• Overlook – Existence
• Anile – Orthodox
• Cypher – Downturn
• PRTCL – Gutter Funk
• PRTCL feat Xenon – It’s Snowing Outside And It’s Basically April (Original Mix)
• Cypher – Purge
• Cypher – Scavenger
• PRTCL – Your City
• Silent Witness – Pursuit
• Muffler – Pandemonium
• Trace – Sniper VIP
• Dylan – Dark Skies (The Remix)