Henrik Schwarz
Prove Your Love to the Rave – Weekend Options
Thursday, February 11th, 2010 | Event Preview | No Comments
Valentines weekend, according to numerous industries the only weekend where you can show your love to that special person through expensive mediocre set menus, wilted single roses and novelty heart shaped gifts. The whole thing has become such a charade, but luckily there are plenty of options this weekend to show our protest against the greeting card and novelty item dictators.
Red bull Music Academy at South Bank Centre (Buy Tickets)
This weekend sees the start of the Red Bull Music Academy which is taking place over the coming weeks in London. The academy brings together prospective musical talent from across the world to work and share ideas with help from established and successful music industry types. In conjunction with the academy, Red Bull have a series of events lined up for the general public. This Friday sees Red Bull team up with Resident Advisor at the stunning Royal Festival Hall in the South Bank Centre for a head on collision of experimental electronica, Jazz and techno. There are two acts in particular that have us foaming at the mouth. We have a showcase from SHAPE, › Continue reading
A Multiple Birthday Weekender
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 | Event Preview | No Comments
As always we’re on hand to help you through the plethora of London nights happening this weekend. For the first weekend of Feb we have a selection of birthday celebrations, toilet raves and basement debauchery.
Act Natural @ The Hub (Buy Tickets)
Initially it was just Anthea and Alex Cellar set to headline this Friday night get together, but with 54 losing its license, Product have handed over their headliners Kruse & Nürnberg to set up a now pretty sizeable night. Expect lashings of deep percussive house easing you out of Friday and right into Saturday morning. All is not lost for Product though. They’ll be throwing a free party at the Castle pub round the corner. So if you’re in the area pop down and show some support!
Decked Out 10th Anniversary @ Coronet Theatre
The first of the weekend birthdays comes from Decked Out a London based DJ/artist agency celebrating 10 years in the business. They’ve roped in all their DJs to lay on an extravagant celebration with the likes of Dave Clarke, Justin Robertson, Erol Alkan, Justice’s Xavier, Boys Noise, DJ Mehdi, The Glimmers, Aeroplane and Busy P. Plus all DJs are playing slightly alternative sets and donating their DJ fee to local charity Kids Company. Its gonna be noisy, sweaty but definitely bouncy fun. I hope you got your tickets sorted as this sold out weeks ago! › Continue reading
Dixon – Temporary Secretary | Album Review
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | Album Review | No Comments
I’m a big fan of Dixon, his ability as a DJ and producer is often unsurpassed and his taste in house music and beyond is often faultless. Dixon’s last outing on a compilation mix was with his Innervisions buddies Henrik Schwarz and Ame. The resulting CD was a masterpiece which knitted together an intricate composition of varied sounds that had a common minimal style to them. The complexity of sounds and the fluidity of the mix made it such an interesting and pleasurable listening experience, which dare I say made it a timeless CD. It’s that winning combination which Dixon has tried to emulate on his solo effort for Temporary Secretary.
The track selection on Temporary Secretary definitely reflects a similar approach that features on The Grandfather Paradox. He’s used tracks which revolve around a house come 4/4 base yet they all have their own diversely individual sounds. Dixon craftily blends each track with such flow and smoothness that the whole mix simply glides.
There’s no rushing this CD with things starting in carefully measured amounts. Fever Ray’s If I Had A Heart sets a deep warm tone with its multi layers of vocals and melodies. From there he melds into the spooky whistles of Roland Bocquet’s Exotique before slowly layering in the vibrating motif from Ame’s Tube Beats. It creates a fine build of tension before brilliantly releasing into a medley of Jazzanova’s Let Me Show Ya and Daniel Paul’s Something About You. Quite a mouthful to describe and that was just for three of the four opening tracks. › Continue reading
Some Reasons Why Not to Waste Your Time on Clapham Common this Bank Holiday
Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | Event Preview | 2 Comments
- Image by Paul at Vision7Media
All things exciting seem to point to Clapham Common on the bank holiday weekend. But in all honesty, it’s not really all that it’s cracked up to be. Here are some reasons why not to waste your time on the common and some canny alternatives.
Rubbish Soundsystems
Being stuck in the heart of Clapham means you’re in the middle of a massive residential area. Residential area equals people with dogs, children, twitching curtains and a massive thirst for pissing on any parade. Call me crazy but these people hate it when their windows are vibrating during afternoon tea. Unfortunately they also pay taxes and actually have a say in how the world is run. So despite the soundsystem probably having tens of thousands of watts bottled up at its disposal, you can probably expect that the local council has it capped to a dreary cesspit tap drip. So the only way you’re going to hear anything of worth is if you’ve camped out inside the bass bin like some free party crusty.
What you need is some grotty warehouse space where you can crank it up a few notches. It just so happens that Eastern Electrics will be holed up in some grotty warehouse space › Continue reading
The Mother of All Weekends is Upon Us!
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 | Event Preview | No Comments
When most people think of Easter they think the second coming of Christ, Easter eggs, fluffy bunnies and daffodils. For a select few it’s all about Easter weekend and how to run your mind into the ground for four days and nights. I’m in the latter camp.
This year the options seem to be bunched around key days. Thursday night has an all mighty clash. In one corner you’ve got your scenster nights. Secretsundaze do their annual thing at the coronet theatre which will see Ame, Dixon and Henrik Schwarz combine forces to create some ableton improve amalgamation live set where they be as one together. No its not some gay love in between the quartet, it’s actually their new project Critical Mass. The whole thing sounds pretty interesting, especially if its anything along the lines of their recent Granfather Paradox mix. After the live session, Dixon and Ame will be dropping a dj set or two along with the SS and Horse Meat Disco ressies.
However if Secretsundaze all sounds a bit too complex with the live sets and you just want to go and party your ass of to some party tunes, then maybe Disco Bloodbath is for you? They’re celebrating their 2nd birthday and to help them they’ve brought in their Scottish mentors Optimo who have been playing party tunes for countless years. Todd Terje will be headlining the main room for the Bloodbath along with the residents, whilst Optimo residents Twitch and Wilkes will be keeping a handle on things with Gucci Soundsystem.
If that all seems a bit to fashionista and you just want raw big room stuff, then you want to be heading towards Koko or matter. Old Coxy is doing a party at the former with Nic Fanciulli and Yousef, whilst Diggers is doing his Bedrock thang at the latter.
DJ Hell – The Angst Part 1 & The Angst Part 2 | Single Review
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | Single Review | No Comments
The first single from DJ Hell’s new album Teufelswerk is to be The Angst & The Angst Part 2 where DJ Hell binds guitar folk melodies with the electronic preciseness of the techno and synth pop genres. The entire track is a massive progression from the folk end of the spectrum to the electronic. It begins with a gently strummed guitar riff which casually unfolds to subtle electronic beats and undertones, which gives it a slight Radiohead feel. As the track progresses, soaring vocal harmonies begin to carry the track away from the guitars towards the electronic end of the spectrum. Come the half way point and The Angst has completely transformed into a pulsating techno track with flashes of white noise and distorted synths. It’s an interesting and quite epic journey but I do wonder whether the full on techno ending is really needed.
Henrik Schwarz on the other hand offers to make The Angst a bit more formal by providing his “Innervision”. From the very beginning Schwarz sets out to create a techno come house track, using the folk elements to add texture to the track. The vocal harmonies are brought in early on to help with the gradual build of the intro. As more and more elements slide into the mix the track finally bursts at the seams with a distorted wall of synths. Whilst it is a little too drawn out it is a good interpretation of the original. However with this being Henrik Schwarz I was expecting a little more from him to make it more epic.
Tracklist (Click for Mp3):
1. The Angst & The Angst Pt. 2 [Original]
2. The Angst [Henrik Schwarz remix]
EarPipe Has an Even Hazier Look Back at the Music Through 2008
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 | Music, News | 1 Comment
I normally struggle to think what tunes have been and gone in the last month, so trying to remember what I was listening to back in January is a mountainous mission in itself, which is probably why I’m going to write this avoiding any specifics and will talk around the subject pretending I know what I’m talking about like any good politician would do. But from what I can recollect “minimal” became housier (or maybe I became housier?), Dubstep collided with Techno and Disco has undergone a massive revival
So lets start with the shift towards the housier sounds. We noticed a lot of DJs ditching the repetitive and bland “minimal” sounds that were starting to stagnate and instead nudging more towards the house end of the spectrum. This meant a bit more funk and soul embedded into tracks, more vocals and jazzier samples. It may sound like we’re harking back to the funky house days circa 2000-02, but this was slightly different, it was more an amalgamation of what came out of the “minimal-tech” sounds which dominated ’05-’07 with older house music sensibilities as seen from the Chicago deep house days. A perfect example of this is probably My My, their remix of Djuma Soundsytem’s Les Dijnns ’s typifies where the sound was during 2007 whilst their latest release Everybody’s Talkin’ is a glimpse into the house sound doing the rounds at the moment. The same goes for Josh Wink’s Stay Out All Night and Matthew Styles We Said Nothing, both distinctly Chi-town influenced numbers which bebop’s to a fun and funked up skipping rhythm. In a similar vein who could forget Johnny D who’s had a fantastic year. His track Orbitallife was causing raucous everywhere through the summer not to mention all his other releases.
But then it wasn’t all fun funked up house, this year saw a lot of dub style house and techno music with heavy basslines at a relaxed pace. Tracks like Trus’me’s W.A.R Dub particularly stood out as did a lot of the output from Gedde’s new label MurMur which had artists like Bearweasel pumping out deep and hypnotic house. One of the best tracks of the year for me was the highly elusive Wax1001. There was no artist or label, just this white label containing the rawest house track ever. A simple track with clunky beats, classic hi hat patterns and a dark raw bassline made Wax1001 show how less is definitely more.
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