Villalobos
Losing an Hour in a Weekend Chocca Full of Parties
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 | Event Preview | No Comments
Its pretty straight forward for party selection this week with a distinguished set of nights and days to fill every minute of the weekend despite the clocks going forward.
Warm at Plastic People (Buy Tickets)
As the club’s existence swings in the balance, Warm are continuing to make the most of what little time could be left for Plastic People. Berlin’s Sebo K will be joining Marcus Worgull for another Friday shindig of sublime house music. Get yourselves down to show Hackney council how important this club really is. And if they don’t take notice, vomit in the street to slowly take them down with street cleaning bills. › Continue reading
EarPipe’s Last Minute, One Page Sonar 2009 Guide
Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | Event Preview | No Comments
Its just gone midnight on Wednesday night… so no time for an in depth Sonar preview. So here it is in a business like bullet point format:
Thursday
Catch Konono No1 blast out some congo riddems. Seen videos and the look fun!
If you’re invited hit the Mobilee rooftop pool party at Hotel Diagonal
The Bank Holiday Just Stomped Right Through All Over My Brain | Garnier, Villalobos & Secretsundaze
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 | Event Reviews | No Comments
Now that I’ve picked up the pieces (Yes its been three weeks..) its time to talk about the bank holiday weekend that recently stomped all over my brain. The first outing was way out at matter, where the French master Laurent Garnier was down to show off his new live show. Unfortunately being a working man meant it was a bit tough getting back and mustering up the energy to head straight back out again, so I didn’t end up getting down to the club till gone midnight and therefore missed the whole live show. Not to worry as I’ll be catching it at Sonar and Worldwide festival this year. But what I did catch was the mighty Francois K who did his usual trick of coming on and obliterating any warm up. It’s not a bad thing because it does often work and that night it picked the night up in the right direction. However I think he might have scared some of the after work drinks crowd with the blistering tunes he was playing.
The crowd itself wasn’t as busy as I thought it was going to be. Usually a Garnier gig is a road block event. Maybe it was, but with matter being so huge it comfortably held everyone with plenty of room to dance. The rest of the club wasn’t used though with room 2 being closed early on or all night and › Continue reading
Omar S – Fabric 45 | Album Review
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | Album Review | No Comments
For the past few years Omar S has been releasing his unadulterated music across the world with the kind of swagger and disregard for everything else that only Detroit musicians can do. With Omar S there are no techno cliques, he’s just a guy that works at the Ford factory by day and at night he produces his own brand of luscious deep music at the same rate as a factory. His label FXHE is completely independent, releasing and distributing his music across the world from his lowly basement in Detroit. All this makes Omar S a definite character. God, he’s so out there he doesn’t even known who Ricardo Villalobos is.
For Fabric 45, he goes and does a Villalobos by mixing up a compilation of self penned works. But lets not worry about the technicalities of whom done what first, the real question is, is it any good? I’m happy to say the answer to that is a resounding yes. His Fabric 45 drifts you away on a sea of electronic synths following a natural current which casually floats you from one track to the next.
The mix weights itself around the focal point of Omar S’ synonymous Psychotic Photosynthesis. Each track from the very beginning edges towards the pinnacle in a fluid and organic manner. In the opening moments Strider’s World combines a haunting organ with 8bit gameboy sounds sets the mix up with an edgy tension before allowing the flood gates to open up to the warm deep synths of Detroit. The luscious melodies of Oasis Four, Crusin Conant and U are tightly intertwined and all reservedly controlled leading into 1 Out of 853 Beats which strips back to bare beats to set up the phenomenal release of Psychotic Photosynthesis’ resonant bassline. Its plunge into the emotive melodies is definitely the pinnacle of the mix.
From there the mix unravels out through various flavours, dicing between soulful numbers such as Set Me Out and the brilliant Day through to the spooky spaced out Blade Runner. And before you know it you’ve arrived at the end.
It’s such a strange mix; the progression is so gradual that any other mix would be considered boring. Yet with this mix the minute details keep you tied in, with wave after wave of intricacy and a build of so much purpose it just never gets tired. I’ve already listened to it countless times and I reckon you will too.
Buy Omar S – Fabric 45 on CD
Tracklisting:
01 Omar-S – Polycopter – FXHE Music
02 Omar-S – Flying Gorgars – FXHE Music
03 Omar-S – Strider’s World – FXHE Music
04 Omar-S – Oasis Four – FXHE Music
05 Omar-S – Crusin Conant – FXHE Music
06 Omar-S – U – FXHE Music
07 Omar-S – Oasis 13 ½ – FXHE Music
08 Omar-S – 1 Out Of 853 Beats – FXHE Music
09 Omar-S – Simple Than Sorry – FXHE Music
10 Omar-S – Psychotic Photosynthesis – FXHE Music
11 Omar-S – The Maker – FXHE Music
12 Omar-S – A Victim – FXHE Music
13 Omar-S – Oasis One – FXHE Music
14 Omar-S – Blade Runner – FXHE Music
15 Omar-S – Day – FXHE Music
16 Omar-S – Set Me Out – FXHE Music
EarPipe Has an Even Hazier Look Back at the Music Through 2008
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 | Music, News | 2 Comments
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.
Earpipe Looks Hazily Back at the Clubs, Festivals and Parties in 2008
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 | Events, News | 1 Comment
Well that’s another year over. Where did the time go? For us it was mostly spent in darkened rooms listening to repetitive electronic music in and around London with the occasional trip to another city or abroad. It probably explains why this look back on 2008 is a hazy one at best. I believe we left most of our brain cells splattered across Fabric’s dancefloor. But we’ve managed to piece together the fractured pieces of memory to come up with this half rate look back at 2008. Enjoy 
)
One of the main stories of 2008 has to be the shake up of London clubs. 2008 kicked off on a sombre note with the closure of The Cross/Key/Canvas complex in Kings Cross. Apparently Kings Cross needed some regeneration to make it look good for the incoming French on the EuroStar. As a double whammy Turnmills also decided to close their doors at the end of January, due to the lease holders deciding their central London location would make much more money as flats and offices rather than from weekends of debauchery. They’re right, but even though Turnmills had pretty much run its course pushing a dying Trance night and a load of “electro house” nights with asymmetrical haircuts it was still a shock losing two stalwarts of the scene.
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