Another remix for you – coming thick and fast now eh? Well not really, this is the second one but a third will be added soon. This time I have remixed the genre spanning Tal M Klein’s slo-mo balearic chill out disco based groover – Without Her. Other people on the remix tip include The Hardway Brothers, DJ DRM and Fromage Disco. So its a nice healthy package of differences presented, and you should be able to buy it both on vinyl and digitally at some point in October. Id like to thank Tal for giving me the opportunity to work with him, and hope that you all enjoy the variety on the release.

Because we live in the modern age all of the tracks are available on Soundcloud for you to have a listen and make some comments, and if you wish to do so, they are all embedded below. Its really smart the Internet, isn’t it.

Without Her (Cosmic Boogie Mix) – Tal M Klein by Cosmic Boogie

Without Her 12″ by Tal M Klein

This Saturday see’s the launch of a new quarterly Cosmic Boogie Presents…night in Liverpool. The party is held in the second room of the city’s hugely successful MuMu night at new club Silo, and will run every three months to start with. The first brings in Trus’me, the Manchester deep house, disco, soul and funk pioneer and head honcho of the Prime Numbers record label. Rather than me tell you Trus’me’s biography, why not just read this excellent interview on the Fabric website.

We start at 10 carrying on till 4, and the supporting DJ’s are myself and good friend and one time Cosmic Boogie member Gavin Kendrick. We play a mixture of everything between us, and so with the addition of Trus’me as well, it should be a rich musical tapestry. If anyone who is coming gives me a shout through here or facebook, I have (at the moment) some special price tickets for people who follow Cosmic Boogie or used to come to the Archive nights.

If you can’t wait any longer to get a Trus’me fix, here is a big fat Soundcloud mix.

Trus’me – For My Jewel by trusme

COSMIC BOOGIE PRESENTS… (@ MuMu, Silo)
TRUS’ME
GAVIN KENDRICK
COSMIC BOOGIE

MAIN ROOM

Alex Celler (cecille)
Glimpse [live] (planet e / cadenza)
Anthea (phonica/cecille)
Lee Rands &
Harrison (mUmU)

10pm-4am
£10 adv / more on the door…

@ SILO LIVERPOOL
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=406704718956

Resident Advisor Tickets: http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?180133
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=124400364270950

I’ve met some decent people this year – its been a good year. Playing more places has meant that i know have more friends in Poland, Brighton, Bristol and (deep breath)…Swindon! However, one of the stand out nights of the year was being asked to play at the re-opening of the legendary 3 Beat (now 3B) records in Liverpool. It turned out to be well worth the trip into town, although I still havent been back to get my sunglasses or headphones because I am fucking useless.

One of the stand out things about the night, besides Thomas Tuft dad jamming to my djing with a saxaphone, was meeting the next Liverpool Disco Mix selector, Adam Helliwell. I’d known of him for a while, but never spoke properly…and it turns out that just like the rest of them hes a good, decent, knowledgeable chap.

I asked for a guest mix from him, and unlike the rest of them, he has actually come up with the goods (sort it out boys). Now whoever else is out there reading this knows that not only is he sound, he can also pull out a great mix. This is exactly what I wanted when I started asking people for Disco mixes – a different take each time and so far so good, with this mix expertly covering the deeper side of the nu-disco spectrum (without treading too far into edit territory).

It really has been a good year.

Tracklisting

al usher / lullaby for robert
sasse / shades of grey (paskal perspective)
eddie c / between now & then
williams / love on a real train (studio)
toby tobias / a little bit more
nathan fake / falmer
ripperton / the sandbox
lanoiraude / bloom doudouk
random house project / the one forever (toby tobias deep bass mix)
40 thieves ft. qzen / don’t turn it off (greg wilson edit)
toby tobias / afreek
runaway / dirty cake
foster / quiet before the storm (quarion)
peder g & dana bergquist / acapulco (sasse)
zepp001 / don’t sleep (the revenge)
ferry ultra / rising up (atjazz)

The Liverpool disco mix series continues with mixes from both known, and possibly unknown people from the Merseyside area spinning their own take on disco. This weeks installment see’s NuNorthern Soul resident Ste Edge mixing up a roller-coaster ride of what I would consider some of the best disco vibe stuff about. A really good uplifting Friday mix.

You can catch Ste playing at the next NuNorthern Soul night in Chester, alongside the likes of Phil Cooper, Ste Hodge. I will also be a guest on the bill for this one, the night before the country’s most successful club head to Manchester to let the southerner’s see us play. I wont tell you which team Ste will be supporting that day, but at least you can hear that with a mix as good as this, his brain hasn’t completely turned to mush yet.

Find out more about ste from Soundcloud. or give him a shout on Facebook.

Tracklisting

Imagination / Changes (DFP is Nightdubbin Remix)
Lady Love / Wrap Your Arms Around Me (Greg Wilson Ruff Wrap Edit)
Advance / Take Me To The Top (instrumental)
Firefly / Love (is gonna be on your side) Re-edit
Deetour / Karen Young
Nights over Memphis / The Revenge (Dub)
Motorcycle Theme / Motorcycle Boy (FM edit)
Sexy Lady / Disco Mungas (Lous Handin Out Bruises Breakdown)
Grapevine Boogie / Leftside Wobble
Forget Me “Nazi”/ Patrice Rushen (Mungas Cabin Fever Dub)
I Owe You One / Shalamar (Frico Edit)

Around this time last year I started off a small series of mixes called “Liverpool Disco Mixes”. There were around 4 or 5 from different people in and around the city, and they were well received. With this in mind, a repeat of the series this year inviting more DJ’s to contribute seemed a good idea. If it works, and the mixes come in, there should be enough to keep going for the next couple of months. I am also working on an article about the history of disco in Liverpool, which will be published at the end of the series.

The premise of the mixes is simple – when you look through them you might not directly think of them as “disco” per-say, but I have left the interpretation of disco to the DJ – so its up to them to put there own angle on it whatever that may be. Disco, in essence, is just music played in discotheques and therefore in theory could accomodate everything.

The first mix is from one time Cosmic Boogie member Gavin Kendrick – a friend and brilliant DJ, who will also be resident with me at the new Cosmic Boogie Presents… night in Liverpool. No better way to start.

Tracklisting

Linkwood & House of Traps / Barely Eagle
Leftside Wobble / Dub A Way
Affinity / Don’t Go Away (Runaway Dub)
Tri-Fire / Breeze Up
Onra feat. Olivier Daysoul / Long Distance
Dâm-Funk / Killdatmuthafu*ka
Flying Lotus / Do The Astral Plane
Bill Withers / Who Is He (And What Is He To You)? (Tss Tss Remix)
Greyship Daviz / This Groove Is On The Loose (Nick Chacona Remix)
Soha / Take Mussa
Les Edits Du Golem / Sumak
Red Fulka / Crazy Meera
Plastic Bertrand / Stop Ou Encore (Ron Hardy Re-Edit)

As anyone who might have been around for a while now will understand, I have been (and will continue) to use Serato as my preferred method of DJ’ing. I get asked all sorts of stupid questions about it when I use it, mostly by vinyl purists (because of course, I never buy vinyl)…and I have to admit sometimes it grates a little. I dont see how it makes me a worse or better DJ whatever method I use. DJ’ing is about the selection of tracks – not the format, and I am happy to use vinyl, CD or Digital. But thats only my opinion. Some people care passionately that you can only really play properly from original vinyl – and who am I to say they are wrong.

You see, using Serato has its problems – in fact – in the three years of using it, I have encountered many in situations were I really could of done without it, and its caused me to stress out and not enjoy myself. Yet, still, I persevere - as when it gets it right, it offers me a freedom and readiness to handle a situation that surpasses everything else.

What I thought I would share here, and this is by no means a definitive list – is what to do to solve problems that might arise. This is a collection of things that have happened to me in situations many times, and what to have in your DJ bag to counteract should you need to. I guess at the end of the day im trying to share experience.

Just as a precursor, before I give any solutions to things…I would say that you always need a backup music source. Sometimes, sadly, problems are unfixable. You just cant get the unit / laptop working, or something is stopping you from using Serato (it could be something as simple as there is no time to setup before you are supposed to be on). Always, ALWAYS take a backup source. I didn’t once, and guess what. Learning the hard way is not fun.

NB: this article refers to Serato SL3 – not the SL1, which to be honest I had so many problems with I couldn’t have written an article like this in a month.

Problem 1 – I dont have the right stuff…

Yes this is probably the worst one. Using any digital system requires leads – lots of leads, cables, sometimes power supplies…control Vinyl or CD…everything. And the problem with this is that its very easy to forget something that you absolutely need to have, to enable you to use the system. I have turned up without the correct cable, or forgot my control CD’s before and its a nightmare – in some cases it means there is nothing you can do, you just can’t play (with Serato at least). There are things you can do to be prepared better though.

The first thing is make sure you have 2 of each lead. None of the leads we use are expensive – or at the very least, backup options needn’t be even if your preferred leads are. Taking 4 phono leads instead of 2 doesn’t take much effort, taking 2 USB leads instead of 2 doesn’t take much effort. Taking 2 or even 3 different sets of control CD or Vinyl doesn’t take much – you can burn your own control CD’s (explained below) and the vinyl you can get for £10 each if you look around the net (and there is a secondary reason for taking more than just 2 control records of which I will mention later). If you always have two of everything the odds that something wont work or has been left at home are going to br shortened.

The other thing here is to make sure you empty and re-pack your bag the night before. Dont expect something to be in the bag just because it was the last time that you played. Things get left behind, lost, or broken. If you empty your bag the night before you should be playing and re-pack it, you can make sure that you have everything, and give yourself time to get anything that is missing should you need to.

Problem 2 – The computer crash…

This has not happened to me before until very recently. I thought, as I use a Macbook, I would be immune to such nasty things happening. But sadly, I found out the hard way that I am not. Wether it be your macbook shutting down completely (or your PC), or Serato freezing…the music stopping mid set is pretty soul destroying (in more ways than one). There is no magic answer for this – there is nothing you can do to make your computer fail safe no matter how hard you try. What you can do though is have some simple things in place just in case it does happen.

First things first, your SL3 unit comes with a power adaptor as standard. The SL1 you had to buy the power adaptor seperately so not many people did – but it can really help – hence they included it with the newer model. The reason its so important is that many people power the Serato unit from USB power only, and the USB power only works when the laptop is turned on. If the laptop crashes and shuts down – so does the Serato unit. if your motherboard fries on the laptop from a surge or something – again – the unit is powerless. If the unit is powerless,  you cant even use it in “through”mode (as in, you cant run normal CD’s or vinyl because it wont pass through).

If you have the unit plugged in, as soon as the computer crashes or shuts down, it will still have power and will automatically jump to through mode. This means that you can still get some kind of sound out of the mixer, without having to have a laptop powered on.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What it doesn’t do however, is keep the music playing – if the laptop or Serato crash then this is for you to deal with. The best way to do it is to have a backup CD or record ready and waiting. If you use CD’s in fact, there is a super fast solution. You can burn your own control CD’s – and they are only one track long. So you burn standard get out of jail music into tracks 2, 3, 4 etc. and then if Serato stops, your unit goes into through mode, and you just hit the next button on the CDJ and play. It will then play that track as normal music. Here’s a quick step by step guide on how to do it…

1. Download the Serato control CD as a WAV file that you can burn yourself
2. Use your normal CD burner to burn this file to track 1, as a normal audio CD
3. Add some tracks of the kind of stuff you play as track 2, 3, 4, 5…etc. until the CD is full.
4. Test the newly burned control CD to ensure it controls your serato correctly

This CD will now control your Serato on Track 1 just as your control CD’s do…but the rest of the tracks are normal music. Meaning if theres a crash, you dont even have to change CD’s. (You can find out more about this at serato).

If you dont have CD’s, and are using control vinyl, make sure you have some spare records handy that you can just flip on immediately. There will be a pause why you switch over, but it will be a small pause and shouldn’t cause too many problems. Of course, as I mentioned before –  it goes without saying (and I mentioned it earlier) that you should always take some form of backup in case of crash – be it a small bag of records or a wallet full of CD’s.

Problem 3 – The Dirty Control Records…

When you let the control records get very dirty, they no longer control Serato correctly. You see, the control record sends a signal to the Serato box, and if this signal is in any way corrupt (be it from very poor needles, or very scratched / dirty records) then your in trouble. I found this out much to my dismay in Poland, and it was pretty embarrassing. Playing two gigs one after the other on different nights whilst away, the Serato control records were pretty heavily soiled after the first night, as we were playing back to back with other people – they got left on the side (or the floor) by all of us as the next person went on. This meant that shit collected on them each time…but that first night it didnt cause too much of a problem.

The next night, when I came to play, was a different story. The records were now caked in rubbish that had dried into the grooves over night in my record case. The needles in the next club were really well tracked and very sensitive, and picked up all the garbage straight away. I spent an hour trying to use neat vodka to clean the records at the bar, to ensure that they played smoothly. Sadly, it didnt really work.

Solution? Simple really. There are three things I now do when I use control vinyl. Firstly, make sure that you look after the vinyl as it comes off and back onto the record. This might sound pretty obvious to some, but I am mostly an idiot. Secondly – always take record cleaner out with you. I have two different kinds of cleaner in my bag now, a liquid solution and also one of these roller bad boys. The liquid solution is great but some airports will take it off you and bin it (even though I have a small bottle) thanks to the current liquid restrictions (certainly in the UK – dont know about anywhere else). This means that if it happens again, I dont have to waste perfectly good Vodka – I have everything I need to give the records a very good clean.

The third thing, and probably most important, is take a spare pair of control records with you. What do they cost – £22? I’ve spent more than that in Macdonalds. Its nothing, and for peace of mind…lets say one record gets an almighty scratch, or even worse – gets snapped – you have a spare pair in your bag to carry on.

Problem 4 – The sound is fucked…

When you have little time to get setup its easy to make mistakes. If everything is plugged in but the sound is coming through distorted, there are a number of things that you need to check for. As with any digital solution, Serato requires that you have all the leads plugged into the exact place, calibration is correct, and needles and equipment are at a decent level. Below is a list of things to run through when the sound is garbage…

1. Check that you have all the right leads plugged in to the Serato unit and mixer. The sound will come out very distorted if you have any of them the wrong way round, or sometimes the control record will play the track backwards (this is the classic sign of leads in the wrong place). If you are having trouble go through each lead to see which one it might be, one deck at a time.
2. Make sure your Serato is calibrated correctly. Serato recommend that you re-calibrate the system every time you get to a new club. This means calibrating for new needles, background sound, etc. I used to forget to do this alot but it only takes two minutes so if you have the time before you are on, I would recommend it also. It can make that 10% difference between Serato sounding good and being responsive. You can see a video of how to calibrate serato below.
   

   Click here to view the embedded video.

3. Background noise can come from your laptop. I have only had this a couple of times, but what I do now before I am about to go on is reboot the laptop just before I plug everything in, this means that any programs that might be eating up CPU and having the fan running at full blast are shut down (they could be stuck running in the background).
4. As well as calibrating the needles (step 2), you should also make sure they are clean and no sheep has built up on them from the previous DJ, or throughout use of your own records. if the needles that you are using in the club are sensitive and better tracked compared to the ones you use at home, then the needle might dig further into the groove and let crap build up over time. This will massively distort the signal from the control record and will cause problems.
5. If you are using control CD’s – check that they are not scratched or damaged. A good scratch on the cd can cause the signal to pause or skip, and this will make the sound jump or distort. I take 3 pairs of control CD’s out with me as you do not need to buy them, you can just make your own…so there is no excuse for not having good cd’s.
6. Finally – always make sure that your Serato is set to the right mode. If your using CD or Turntable there are two different modes. You can even set the decks independently in SL3 to use Line and Phono input at the same time (eg. left deck CD, right deck turntable). I use turntable at home but very often when i get into a club I use CD, so the first thing I do is make sure my Serato is set to the correct feed. if you don’t, rest assured your Serato will distort.

Problem 5 – I only have one working turntable…

Another one that happened to me in Poland – and sadly at he time I didn’t know about this solution. Wether it is one of your serato channels has broken on the unit, or you only have one deck working because of needle or deck problems – Serato is capable of handling it. My friend with me at the time tried to show me how to do it, but I was stressing too much to listen. I got back and looked into it, and found that its very easy. You can follow this tutorial on the official Serato site, or you can watch the easy to follow tutorial on Youtube below. It really could get you out of a sticky situation, and just requires a bit more concentration than usual (so maybe lay off the Jack Daniels for a while).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Further Help…

This article doesn’t cover everything that can go wrong, just the stuff that has happened to me in the past, and how to deal with it. If you want more information – type the word “Serato” into youtube, and watch one of the thousands of tutorials on how to do things properly. Alternatively, you could always RTFM, or check out the Serato Forums and How-To’s.

I am hopeful that as more read this they will also add tips in the feedback below, because the internet is a lovely place full of friendly, helpful  people.

I am going to a festival next weekend that is probably unlike any other in the country this year (or any year to be honest). If you have not already heard of Vintage at Goodwood, then here is how the website eloquently describes it:

Vintage at Goodwood – 13, 14, 15 August 2010 – is the first of what will be an annual music and fashion led celebration of creative British cool from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s & 80s, featuring the leading DJs, bands, collectors, purveyors of vintage clothing and vintage vinyl from each decade, as well as contemporary bands and brands inspired by Britain’s rich creative and cultural heritage.

Allow me to elaborate a little. This festival has artists from every relatively modern era of music that this country has ever seen. Jazz, Soul, Funk, Disco, House, Reggae, Rave, Swing, Rythm and Blues, Rock and Roll…and everything else you could think of to join the dots.

Artist highlights (for me, at least) are: The Buzzcocks, Don Letts, Mike Flowers Pops, Bob Jones, Eddie Piller, Richard Searle, Earle Gateshead, A Guy Called Gerald, Ashley Beedle, Trojan Soundsystem, Steve Kotey, Snowboy, JOE BATAAN!, Bob Jones, Colin Curtis, Lowlife, Kid Creole, Jazzie B….I mean…do I really need to continue? Why not just go and look at the full list.

If you want to get tickets, you can still get them online. If you want a small taste of Vintage, then you can get it below from the included Greg Wilson mix. If you dont think this festival has something for you, then I dont get why your even reading this blog.

If you are going, try and say hello. I will be the person moping around wishing I had enough amphetamines to make a night of it with the Northern Soul.

VINTAGE FUTURE RETRO (by greg wilson for vintage festival / goodwood) by gregwilson

Sorry for the lack of a post for a while (if, indeed, anyone cares). Sometimes I just have too much to do. I can feel hearts bleeding.

Today, I upgraded my Flickr account to be able to see all the sets of photos that have been taken over the last couple of years, and so I can upload some others…and some (very handsome) press shots and flyers and such. My account had ran out so you could only see the three most recent, and I couldn’t add any more. Rubbish. I dont really like giving yahoo money, but I do think Flickr is great. A very small dilemma it was.

So, without further ado – why not head on over to the Cosmic Boogie Flickr account and have a look at how much fatter I get over the two years. Its something I am very proud of. The most recent set (from playing with Greg Wilson and Pablo last week) I have to send great thanks to Heather Shuker for her brilliant work, and super after party.

This is the first, hopefully, of what should be a step into the world of remixing. Over the next few months I have 4 or 5 to have a go at, as well as carrying on the edits, so there should be enough Cosmic Boogie stuff ticking over.

This remix is a mix of Frank Booker’s El Salvador, and will be coming out in August or September on Wonderful Noise records. It will be a vinyl only release, for now, at least. High five to Frank for throwing the parts at me, and high five to my kids for listening to the track on repeat 28 hours a day for the last 3 weeks.

Stream the preview directly from Soundcloud below…

El Salvador (Cosmic Boogie Mix) by Cosmic Boogie

Greg Wilson, great friend and contributor to this very blog, has now launched his own piece of the web to go alongside the excellent electro-funk roots website. I cant do it any better justice than Greg can, so I hand you over to him for the lowdown:

“Been wanting to sort this for a long time, but simply haven’t had the time to properly wrap my head around it until now. I’ve had more than a little help from my friends with regards to its construction and design, so big thanks due to you know who. It’s great to have a place of my own where I can highlight the things I feel passionate about – not just music, but various aspects of popular culture – stuff that remains relevant, at least to me, regardless of where or when it was made. Hopefully there’s a bit of something there for everyone.”

“The reason I called it ‘Being A DJ’ is laid out in the column to the right hand side of the blog. It’s been online for the past week, whilst  the initial content was uploaded and all the necessary tweaks were done. I wanted to get a reasonable amount of stuff up there, to kick things off, before letting everyone know about it.”

At the time of writing this, there are 11 posts online with a little something for everyone. Have a look around…

http://www.gregwilson.co.uk

Also, to coincide with the launch of the blog, Greg is also now on twitter.

http://twitter.com/djgregwilson

As I may have mentioned on here a few times, I am very fond of Poland. I have been to play out there twice now and have people I consider friends for life. One of the best things about the place is the passion and knowledge the people have for music and partying, often putting my own knowledge – and partying ability - to shame.

Last time I was out there when we had finished our night about 3 a.m. – we went to another club with as few local DJ’s playing hip hop, funk, boogie…you get the picture. One of the DJ’s was a guy called DJ Boogie (yes, a great name)…and I dont think I have danced as much without the aid of *cough* consumables, since I was about 18. Thats quite a while ago.

I dont think I need give any more reason as to why I got in touch with him when I got back and asked for a guest mix. If your a DJ who knows how to make people dance, then you deserve all the mix time you can get. Thank you, DJ Boogie.

Tracklisting

Chime Disco / Keep It Up
Webster Lewis / Are You My Life
Nccu / Super Trick
Cameo / Your Love Takes Me Out
Locksmith / Unlock the Funk
T-Connection / Midnight Train
Teddy Pendergrass / Only You
Crown Heights Affair / You Gave Me Love (Boogie edit)
Donald Byrd / Caricatures
Idris Muhammad / Turn This Mutha Out
Midnight Starr / Two in Love
Instant Funk / Slap, Slap Lickedy Lap
Roy Ayers / Can’t You See Me
Dynasty / I’ve Just Began To Love You
New Bird / Up Against The Wall

A new digital EP from me hit the download shops today (well – Juno at least). I will let the official speil do the talking for me, as usual…

Straight outta Bedmo – that’s Bedminster for non Bristol folk – comes a brand new digital-only label… Bedmo Disco Records!

Named after the website, club night and production outfit of the same name, Bedmo Disco Records launches this June with a very special E.P from rising star and friend of the family, Cosmic Boogie.

The Liverpudlian producer and DJ has been enjoying a stratospheric rise of late thanks to a series of much-heralded releases on Disco Deviance and, of course, his own Cosmic Boogie imprint.

Now he’s kick-starting a busy summer of gigs and festival appearances with a killer set of edits for Bedmo Disco.

‘The Disco Grinch’ is Cosmic Boogie’s first digital release, and it’s a belter. It features four wildly different slabs of dancefloor-friendly disco and electrofunk, all with Cosmic Boogie’s trademark eye for detail and ear for a killer groove.

The E.P kicks off with ‘Catch 22’, a sensual slow-jam that’s perfect for those ‘eyes wide shut’ moments. It’s sexy, scintillating and, frankly, a little bit naughty. If it doesn’t make you go a bit wobbly down below, we’ll eat our flat caps.

Next up is ‘Must Come Down’, a chunky groover that teases out a lesser-known disco gem for nine action-packed minutes. Think sizzling synth-bass, cut glass strings, heavy percussion and just the right amount of vocal. As we’d say in Bristol, proper job.

Bursting out of its third-place billing is ‘Calling Lenny’, an endorphin-releasing beast of shirts- off disco set to fire-up festivals across the globe this summer. With its dizzying disco horns, floor-slaying vocal and thumping groove, ‘Calling Lenny’ is sure to cause a commotion on any disco-minded dancefloor.

Rounding off the E.P is the digital bonus ‘Let’s Jam’. Only available for those who buy the whole release, it’s an intergalactic P-funk jam with more wonky percussion than your average crusty drum circle.

The goodness doesn’t stop there though. In addition, Bedmo Disco Records will be making another Cosmic Boogie edit available free-of-charge to lucky disco diggers. The frankly rather enormous and funksome ‘Talk To Me’ will be made available as a free download (see the link below)

Bedmo Disco – breakin’ out the happy music!

So there you go.

You can buy from Juno Download:

http://www.junodownload.com/products/1591237-02.htm

You can listen to the full release on soundcloud:

BEDMO01 – The Disco Grinch EP by Cosmic Boogie

And you can also download a free edit from the EP either at Juno Download, or soundcloud:

Talk To Me – Cosmic Boogie Edit by Cosmic Boogie

Donald Byrd and 125th Street re-edited to strip it down to be more…well less of a song more of an instrumental – stretched out in places to build up, chopped and changed around. Another simple style edit – nothing too fancy, just making it more how I want to play it – but really, a truly great original track. Not really a dancefloor thing as its very slow but its very very cool…

I found out that The Revenge used it on McLovin – so I thought I would just upload the wav edit of the original and share out the edit for people to play. You can find it on the soundcloud account and its embedded below…

nb: this edit it intended for dj play only (thats why i edited it like this in the first place)

Feel Like Loving You Today by Cosmic Boogie

It actually has been ages. Looking back through the archives, the last time I did a mix for my own blog (directly that is – one thats not hosted by or created for anyone else) is over two years ago. A time when my football club hadn’t imploded, my second child was still a mere grub, and apple hadn’t “changed everything” at least 14 times.

So last night I thought about what kind of mix to do – seeing as there are going to be a few others released on other sites over the next week or two, and the path it took me down was much of the more nu-disco and houseier sounds that I have in my box, and like, but get little chance to work into what I play normally.

So here it is, a mix of stuff that shows a different, perhaps more up-front, vibe. I suppose this is Cosmic Boogie Mix 15 – but I have decided to drop the numbers on the mixes as they mean nothing. Gav Kendrick asked me to do that a while ago, and sadly I didn’t listen then. I hear you now, Gav lad.

Tracklisting

The Time & Space Machine / More Cowbell
Dicky Trisco Edit / Night Dancing
Illija Rudman / Call Me Tonight (The Revenge Engaged Mix)
Russ Brown / Find A Way (Leftside Wobble Dub)
Space Ranger / Herbal Cake (The Revenge Rubdown)
Alkalino & BlackLodge / Breaking Bad
The Francis Inferno Orchestra / Meet Me In Salt Lake City
Dan Electro / Look Around
Chopstick & Johjon Feat. Fritz Kalkbrener / Keep On Keepin On (Fritz Zander Drunk Disco Jam)
Jacques Renault / Miranda
Ron Basejam / Run With You
Christophe / Make A Mark (Family Affair Remix)
Polargeist / Home From The Can (Tensnake Remix)
Space / Carry On, Turn Me On (The Time & Space Machine Remix)

Yesterday I upgraded my Soundcloud account to give me enough “minutes” (surely the stupidest way ever to manage storage space), and I created a set that will just have all the decent Cosmic Boogie mixes that have been created over the last couple of years.

At the moment, they are all hosted on this blog obviously, and also the Cosmic Boogie Mixcloud – but the problem is on the blog they are separated with guest mixes and mixes from Greg, and on Mixcloud you cannot download the mixes, only stream them. And as good as I think Mixcloud is, it still only has a fraction of the users that Soundcloud gets.

So anyway – now you can get all the Cosmic Boogie mixes as downloadable 320 MP3 from the Soundcloud site, all stored in one handy place, and they have full tracklists and notes and so on. I’ll update it with as many mixes as I have kicking around as time goes on.

http://soundcloud.com/cosmicboogie/sets/cosmic-boogie-mixes

Cosmic Boogie 004 is now out in record shops online and offline somewhere near you. This time its a straight up edit twelve from me same as the first one. Take it away official blurb…

Side A: Youngblood (Cosmic Boogie’s You Don’t Know Me Edit)
Side AA: The Users (Cosmic Boogie’s Shergar Edit)

Cosmic Boogie is back and drops two funk fuelled bombs for the fourth release on the imprint.

First up is a driving, peak time version of War’s classic hard edged funk cut ‘Youngblood’. Cut up, extended and rearranged, it has a devastating impact when it hits the dance floor. Flip side cut, ‘The Users’, is a heavily percussive funk outing that is packed full of soul vibes, a heavy dose of boogie and a hint of Caribbean groove.

Re-mastered and cut loud for vinyl lovers, Cosmic Boogie is all about exploring a different meaning of ‘cosmic’.

You can buy the track at the following places:

Picadilly: Buy / Listen at Piccadilly Records
(a staff pick at picadilly: http://www.piccadillyrecords.com/shop/feature.php?feature=642)
Juno: Buy / Listen at Juno
Phonica: Buy / Listen at Phonica

And you can, if you so wish, listen to them both in full here:

Soundcloud: Listen in full at Soundcloud

The chances are that if you are reading this from somewhere that is not Liverpool or Birmingham, you wont have ever heard of Chris Barker. This is a real shame because he’s not only a thoroughly decent individual, he is also (as you will soon hear) a very talented DJ and producer.

His skills are about to be unleashed on the world with the signing of many of the records from his Deep Space Orchestra project with Si “jazzchops” Murray, and the continuing success of the Altiplano night in Liverpool that he is resident at along side Kelvin Andrews.

I have been asking him for a guest mix for some time, as every time I hear him play, it usually ends with me drunkenly shouting at him that he is the best DJ in Liverpool. He finally passed me one a few weeks back, and now I pass it on to you.

Its things like this that make me pleased to chip in on a site were I can put up mixes from people I want to hear (and want others to hear) – without any high profile name stigma.

Full Tracklisting

Weather Report / Cucumber Slumber
Renergie / Stone Groove
Hudson Mohawke / Fruit Touch
Santana / When I look into your eyes (outro)
Atmosfear / Outer Space
Jimi Tenor & Kabu Kabu / Mystery Spot
Tommy Stewart / Fulton County Line
Soulphiction / A short history of…
Ron Trent / Morning Fever
Super Value / Super Value Special Edits 5
Danny Mekanik / Osmondosis
Million Dollar Edits / Magic Lady
George Duke / Carnival (interlude)
A Hundred Birds / Black Water
Roy Ayers / Fast Money
Pamela Joy / Think Fast
Christian Gaubert / Sweet Maryline
Break SL / My love is for you
Darondo / Sure know how to love me

Cosmic Boogie isn’t always about dubby percussion, having disco drinks in the park, or me spouting bollocks. No sir, one of the things that still brings many people to the site are the tutorials I wrote a while ago about how to use Serato and so on. I need to update these, as all my methods have changed now (I am 100% committed to my Macbook and iTunes these days), but that’s for another article. This one concentrates on something I found mixed information on everywhere I looked, but nothing that cohesive; ripping vinyl.

When I say ripping vinyl, I don’t mean ripping it down to 128 mp3′s for sharing on blogs, something that is personally not for me (only an opinion – each to their own). I mean ripping my collection so I can use it with Serato, or any other digital solution I choose to adopt in the future. Because, lets be honest, its kind of all going that way.

Background Research

When I started to look into this I didn’t realise how many options I would come across for ripping the correct way, or someone else’s correct way, or someone else’s correct way, or…well you get the idea. Everyone has a take on this, so I am going to lay down some caveats for my methods so you can understand what I am trying to achieve writing this and make sure it sounds useful before you have to dive in (it’s quite a lengthy article after all).

1. This article is written in such a manor that it is more about the reasoning why I chose to rip vinyl a certain way, with background info and alternatives suggested. Its not a step by step how to.
2. I am not an audiophile. I mean, I like my sound to be as good as I can with the budget I have, and try to make sure the basic things are right, but this article tries to look at things from the angle of someone who cannot spend £800 on a power supply.
3. To back that up, I am operating here on a strict budget, only buying things within budget that will really help the process. I cannot afford to spend £500 on new equipment, and I think that many other people would be in that position.
4. I struggle to fully explain technical terms. I am not a sound engineer. I know what compression means because I bought a book that explains it to me (written by a sound engineer), but that’s about it.
5. I took a lot of help from people on the wonderful DJ History Forum (in particular the ninja that is Darryl Funk and the super digital convert Captain Cookson), and other such places. You could do worse than look there to accompany this. I will add some “further reading” at the end.
6. This article is by no means the be all and end all – that is, even though I have learned a lot I don’t know everything. Anyone who disagrees or has something to add please do so in the comments at the bottom. I am  just as much a novice as some of you reading this might be, and nowhere near an expert as others will be.
7. Please don’t use this to have a debate about whether or not vinyl is better than digital. The answer is it probably is, but great music is great on all formats.

With all that in mind, and if your still with me, Ive split what I learned into three stages; preparing your vinyl, getting the right equipment and recording to digital.

Preparing Your Vinyl

Old records get dusty. In fact, new records get dusty too, but not like old records. Even if you have all your records stored immaculately in plastic sleeves in dry places, if they have been sat for years unused, they will be dusty. Old records also get scratched, worn, used, damaged and generally soiled more than new records simply because they have been around for longer. Dusty records sound terrible when recorded to digital, and although you can do your cleaning at the stage when its in the computer – do you really want to, when you could do it before hand and take away the need for often over zealous click / scratch removal software?

Before you rip your vinyl it needs cleaning. Maybe if its brand new from Juno / Piccadilly that morning you would be OK, but in general, it needs cleaning. There are of course many solutions to do this, ranging from soapy water in a kitchen bowl, to wonderfully expensive robotic cleaning systems. If you can afford it, for sure, buy one of the robots. If you cannot, there are a few things that I have purchased that made a real difference for me.

• Vinyl Cleaning Fluid – this one to be exact. Cheap, and good. Two little sprays and a good wipe is a good start.
• Ant Static cloths – for wiping the vinyl. Be careful which ones you buy because they sometimes leave fluff on the record, which I am sure defeats the object. Choose carefully, and they make a big difference.
• Static removing gun. I managed to get one of these quite cheap from eBay, and i was a little skeptical at first. However when I was cleaning my records it was really evident just how much static was on them, and static discharges through the needle – so it was really a no-brainer. Its made a big difference (just use it on the record before you are about to rip it).

That’s it. That’s how I clean my records, with a combination of the above. I guess, really, it doesn’t matter how you clean them as long as you follow one of the more tried and tested methods. Someone will undoubtedly tell me that using the vinyl cleaning fluid is bad for your records, and so on. I’m going off what I know, and all the above cost me about £40 altogether, which is palatable. I am thinking about getting one of these for some of my older records, they really clean into the groove well (read that review and you will see), but its an (admittedly small) expense (at around £30 on ebay) that I don’t need at the moment.

I’m not saying that all your records will come up scratch or crackle free if you give them a good clean, that’s really not going to happen. At least you have done your bit though to get rid of either years of neglect or overplay. Its probably an obvious step really, anyone who tries to rip dusty arse old records without even trying to do something about it probably deserves what they get. Once your records are nice and clean its probably a good idea to get some plastic sleeves over them, make sure they have an inner sleeve also – and generally try to keep them in as good a condition as possible. Sounds obvious doesn’t it, but I know loads of people who never follow any of these steps.

Getting The Right Equipment

I agonised over this for weeks. Months, if I am being honest. My poor girlfriend often had to be on the receiving end of what I had decided to buy and how I had decided to do things, just so I could hear my decisions out loud and make sure they made sense. Even then I wasn’t sure, and unlike many other facets of my life, she couldn’t help me. You see, I am a little bit obsessive compulsive (it runs in the family) and I start to freeze up a bit if I think I could be doing something better. (This, incidentally, is one of the reasons I am dreading comments from people who read this who know nu-fangled solutions I didn’t discover). In the end, I had to decide and get on with it, trying not to worry that if I spent another £1000 then I could get that little bit more from the rip – I wanted good solid quality with pretty much the equipment I already had, and a small budget for improving or upgrading.

The key to getting the best quality recording is taking as many links out of the chain between your record decks and your PC as possible. Everything that you have between the vinyl and the final digital output can colour the sound in some way. Mixer, Amp, Cables, Digital Audio Interface – everything. You need to minimise the links, and if you do have to use equipment, use the best that you can. Same with cables, needles, and so on. Using the best that you can, however, does not mean that everything you have at the moment needs to be chucked out and new equipment purchased at huge expense, as you will see.

There are three different methods I looked at:

Ripping with a dedicated turntable that has digital out

For me, you can forget this method. I don’t really even want to waste that much space saying why – all you need to know is that they sell these record decks in the ever awesome electrical goods isle at Asda. That might sound snobbish – I don’t mean it to, what I am saying is that these are made for the mass market. If you just want to rip your old collection for your shitty pc speakers and play it through iTunes then these will do the job. They are not made for serious ripping (and subsequent playing), and should be avoided. Your DJ Turntable has a better needle, tonearm, everything. One of the decks I looked at only converted to MP3 onto a flash card with its own in built software. That’s some scary shit. If you want to see an entire list of what NOT to buy for ripping vinyl, why not browse the entire stock at Maplins.

As a side note, there are USB turntables that you can get from Numark and Stanton – although they are a good few hundred quid, maybe if anyone has used these and had any experience they could post up about it in comments…I am not even sure that these are something that you could successfully rip with (I assume they do analogue to digital conversion down the USB lead – but just don’t know).

Ripping with a Technics turntable through a dedicated phono stage

I learned a lot about sound quality and how mixers work with amps when I was reading up on this. It would shock most of the proper DJ’s to hear this, but I didn’t know what pre-amps or phono stages and such things were. Why should I? Its not something I ever really had to be concerned with. I don’t really use my turntables for listening – i use them as a technical tool. Somethings I do listen to on vinyl but always found the quality from the usual setup to be adequate.

It turns out it is something I really need to be concerned with when looking at ripping vinyl, and correct sound reproduction from vinyl…and everything else to do with vinyl. Its something that passed me by through ignorance rather than design. I am not going to go into the details of how these things work here, because Wikipedia is cleverer than me and can do a better job. However, I am sure if your serious about ripping vinyl then you have come across these terms and may be thinking about this route. There are three different ideas I toyed around with.

The Ripper

The first is this thing – The Ripper. Not only does it have a great name, but it also looks like it does nothing other than RIP YOUR VINYL. Which, of course, is a good thing. No gadgets, no fanciness, no over complifimication – just pure RIPPING ABILITY. It is basically a phono stage of seemingly very good quality that you plug your deck straight into, and it has a USB lead coming out of it that goes straight into the computer. So it does the analogue to digital conversion in the box, and then you use whatever software you want at your end on the computer. You don’t even need an external soundcard to go into – truly an awesome black box for RIPPING and RIPPING ONLY. There are, however, a few draw backs with it. Firstly its around $400 – which at current exchange rate equates to about £270. Not exactly fitting into my “small budget use the equipment you have” mindset is it. You can of course buy a kit version and make your own (for much less expense) but it requires you to have a masters in molecular nuclear physics no doubt, and I am stupid. So no.

The other problem is slightly more technical – as I will explain in the recording to digital section further down, when recording, you really need to to be able to capture at a high sample rate and bit resolution. You may be familiar with the standard resolution for CD’s – 16bit and 44.1khz – 16bit is the resolution depth and the 44.1khz is the sample rate. Just because CD music is at those rates doesn’t mean that’s all you can have with digital, you can record a far greater level. Ill explain more about this later, but The Ripper only rips at the aforementioned 16bit and 44.1khz – so straight away, even through it would sound good, you cannot record any better. That’s a limitation too far (and one I admit I didn’t spot at first). This coupled with the price led me to a sadly negative conclusion about this particular piece of hardware.

Alternatives? Yes, there are plenty. There is another USB cable straight to PC Phono Stage (of sorts) called the USB PhonoPLus V2. It looks a bit tacky compared to the machine that is THE RIPPER, however, I am told by a couple of people that it does a good job. Its about £80 (although hunting on eBay I found it for less) but sadly it has the same limitations musically as THE RIPPER – that is, your pretty much restrained to recording audio at CD quality. Its just not really good enough, so maybe a dedicated phono stage that’s not a digital converter would be better, and let my soundcard handle the analogue to digital conversion by itself?

I looked into this, and it would be great – but once again I found that it would cost me a good amount of money to get a really good pre-amp. The one I finally settled on, if I was going to go down this route, would be the Cambridge Audio 640p. This seemed a reasonable price and I also like Cambridge Audio gear. It might not be top audiophile standard, but its good value and good quality equipment and it has served me well over the years. Looking into what else I would need if I purchased one of these, in order to get the best recording I would need a moving magnetic cartridge (a needle for the deck) and also some really top notch audio leads from the pre amp to my computer. All this is starting to seriously mount up, and if you remember, there is a very limited budget I have on offer here so I am starting to wonder at this point is there any compromise between this method and the equipment I already have?

Ripping with a Technics deck through a mixer

This is almost identical to the method listed above, however, instead of a dedicated pre-amp, it uses the pre-amp that you already have in your DJ Mixer (assuming, of course, that you have a DJ mixer). In this instance, I am lucky that I own an Allen & Heath Xone 32. Some quick research on the web and I found out that the pre-amp installed into this mixer as standard is very good, and that I would be hard pressed to beat it even if I spent decent money…so, with my new found knowledge, I settled on using the pre-amps in the mixer.

The solution entails your Record deck going into your mixer via the phono leads, then some good quality phono cables coming from the “Record Out” of your mixer, and into your computers external (or not-come-as-standard internal) soundcard. Something that many people would already have setup these days because it is probably how many of us record mixes in the first place. The things I needed to do were upgrade the cables between the mixer and the PC – and, I settled on the best Cambridge Audio Azur cables I could get (around £40 each I paid for them), and I also needed to make sure my soundcard could handle the incoming signal and had decent analogue to digital conversion, at the correct 24bit / 192khz format that I wanted. Luckily, mine is ok. I have an Audiophile Firewire (picked up from ebay for about £100), and it can handle everything I need to throw at it.

Rme Fireface 400

Thats not to say if I had money to spend I couldn’t get better – there are a million soundcard’s out there that are better than the on I am using, but again, going back to the budget debate – I have to be practical. Realistically, to get the best possible sound conversion, you are looking at high end cards like the RME FireFace 400 – but this little beauty weighs in at about £650 brand new, or £550 second hand – so clearly, its aimed at a spectrum that is out of my range at the moment. Another good soundcard, and one that I will eventually upgrade to (in the next few months I hope) is the Edirol FA-66 (which I have seen going for around £200 on ebay). Both of these cards have better analogue to digital convertors, and so you will get a better, cleaner sound from your recorded vinyl. I am not exactly sure how much of a difference you would notice as an average user on standard equipment though, but maybe someone else could shed some light on that?

Hardware Setup

So you really dont need me to tell you how to plug a record deck into something with the minimum of fuss, and I am not about to do that. I am going to give you some basic bullet pointed tips for things to make sure you have your hardware setup correctly.

• Make sure whatever needles you have decided to use are tracked correctly and are in as good a condition as possible
• Make sure your Technics deck is grounded properly either with the ground lead attached to the ground on the mixer properly, or the technics ground lead modification fitted (i.e. – no need for a ground lead anymore).
• You want as few steps as possible ftom your deck to your computer – so really, one lead that comes out of the mixer straight into the soundcard. No shitty extension cables joined at the middle, no ground loop isolators getting in the way, nothing. Just one lead from the deck into the mixer, and one lead from the mixer to the soundcard.
• Make sure that any digital djing solution you might use is not connected – as in, dont use the pass through option. No point in “passing through” Serato for ripping, might as well just bypass it altogether.
• Make sure that you are not connected to an amp – you don’t need to be. As were taking the signal straight out of the mixer into the soundcard, we don’t need use the amp at all. If your connected to an amp and the sound is being ripped through that, the sound will be coloured by the amp.
• Make sure no noise enters the room during the recording process – there is no point you hearing what you are recording – all you are in effect doing if you have the sound turned up is increasing the chances of bass / noise feedback into the rip itself.
• Check your equipment for any digital hum – try to figure out if anything is laying any noise or interference down that could potentially upset the track that you are ripping. You can check for this quickly by listening through your speakers with nothing playing – if you hear something, there is a chance it could be recorded. (There is also a way to check for this in software I will mention later).

Conclusion

Just to re-cap…I am going to use the equipment I already have to rip:

1 x Technics 1200 Turntable
1 x Ortofon Nightclub S cartridge (properly tracked and setup)
1 x Allen & Heath Xone32 mixer
1 x Audiophile Firewire soundcard
2 x Cambridge Audio Azur reference phono leads

Sure, with a better soundcard it might be better. Sure, with dedicated pre-amp and moving magnetic cartridge, it might be better – but ultimately, it would also be significantly more expensive, and I do not have that kind of money to invest at the moment. Its something I will upgrade over time. The only thing I really need to do now, is make sure I have everything I have decided on setup to the absolute optimum it can be. That doesn’t cost money, just the time and care to get it right.

Part 2 of this very wordy article will cover the software side of things – what to use, correct settings, cleaning up recordings, storage, tagging…the works. It might take me a few weeks to write it, but when its done, I will link back to it here…

Its friday, and the volcano is causing havoc across the airports of europe, meaning that many of the international superstar dj’s due to be flying into the UK have had to cancel. Fear not though, because here is a guest mix from an International DJ that I think is probably the best mix ive had up on the site this year so far.

When I started Cosmic Boogie, I did it to break away the shackles of what was a pretty restrictive genre id been djing for many years. I wanted to be able to play different genres and BPM’s side by side. I wanted to be able to do exactly what this mix does. I cant really articulate it better than that.

You might know Frantic as one of the leading figures at the excellent Sleazy Beats Recordings – who have so far had tracks out from Eddie C and LTJ Experience, and if you dont know him from that, then now you know him from this. A truly superb mix of records, many that I didn’t know. Surely the best kind.

Full Tracklisting

Tal M Klein / Plastic Starfish
The New Mastersounds / Hole In The Bag
The Fantastics! / Soul Child
Parliament / Flash Light
Ave Blaste & Lopez / Drakefield Soul
Talbot / Amo El Funk
Touche / Wrap It Up
Pete Herbert / Don’t Let Go (edit)
Steal Blue / Spun (edit)
Tal M Klein / Emmylou’s Underwater Petting Zou (Neighbour remix)
Greg Wilson / I Was A Teenage DJ (edit)
The Glimmers / Tape
Prince / Head (Yam Who? re-work)
Sharon Redd / Love How You Feel
Popular People’s Front / Any Way Ya Wanna
Raph Dumas & Pascal Comelade / Le Chanson Douce
Jacques Renault / Sweet Rollin’ On
Mystic Slot / No Way Back
Mr. Confuse / Low Life

This saturday night see’s the return of a djing performance that went down as Legend in the city of Liverpool. Terrence Parker, he of detroit house, techno, disco….well just about everything fame comes back to a city that has been lay in wait.

The night sees the T-Funkshun boys perform with the man himself @ The New Picket, just around the corner from were we run Leaf. Over to Scott McGill with the details…

T-FUNKSHUN – THE DARK NIGHT RETURNS
(SPECIAL ONE-OFF EVENT)
TERRENCE PARKER (PMW/Detroit)

SCUZZ MCBOOB (t-funkshun/archive)
MARK FORSHAW (t-funkshun/outofboundssounds)

THE NEW PICKET
61 NEW BIRD STREET, OFF JAMAICA STREET, LIVERPOOL L1 0BW
11AM-5AM

Facebook Event - http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=285822153012
Skiddle Tickets - http://www.skiddle.com/events/11355114/

Detroit has been credited as one of the Soul Music capitals of the world, spawning legendary artists like The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross just to name a few. Within the past decade Detroit’s Underground Music Movement has brought rise to new artists such as Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Carl Craig, Kevin Saunderson and a host of others. But unlike the aforesaid names, Terrence Parker has established himself as a producer, remixer and DJ of the classic sound of House Music, and is known as a pioneer of the Inspirational / Gospel House movement!

Terrence Parker has performed as a DJ in more than 100 cities throughout the world. Since 1988, he has released more than 100 recordings, and had top 20 hits with his songs “Love’s Got Me High”, “The Question” and albums like “Detroit After Dark” in the U.K. The Netherlands, Germany, and France. As one of the headliners for the 2004 Detroit Movement Festival (May 2004), TP (along with his friend & Detroit legend DJ Mo Reese) performed a stunning Tagteam DJ set on 4 turntables with 2 live vocalists for a crowd of over 100,000 people.

As part of the Detroit Historical Museum’s History of Techno International Exhibit, TP’s collective musical works and pioneering efforts have been recognized as a valuable contribution to Detroit’s music history, as well as the International History Dance Music. This exhibit is currently touring museums throughout the United States.

Between Scott and myself, we threw some questions his way. Here is what he had to say…

It’s only taken us 6 years to get you back after that wondrous party in the Masque! The best things come to those who wait. Looking forward to playing in Liverpool again?

Yes, I am very excited about returning to Liverpool after so many years!

Do you have a connection with the floors in the UK, or is the connection the same worldwide? I know you play Germany a lot so if so do things differ greatly?

One common ingredient in all the many places I’ve played is dance floor energy. There has to be positive energy and excitement on the dance floor for any event to be successful. My goal as a DJ is to provide the musical environment for that energy to flourish.

Being from Detroit, the city that gave the world techno, you were always tagged as some sort of an enigma being the first global house dj from Motown. Over the years since your pioneering footsteps the world has opened up it’s ears to a thriving scene of house producers a la Moodymann, Norm Talley, Kyle Hall, Keith Worthy, Theo Parrish, Rick Wilhite to name a few. Who is it that does it for you in the scene? Anyone special that we have to look forward to?

All the names you’ve mentioned are great. However the person I am most excited about is Kyle Hall. He is a young guy with promising talent! We played an event together last year and his set blew me away!!!

I asked Theo Parrish is there any kind of music you cant take something from and he said absolutely not – everything has an energy you can tap into. You echo this feeling?

I totally agree! There is always something positive that can be derived from any musical composition.

This is a question you have been asked many times I shouldn’t wonder but I think there are still a lot of people who still aren’t aware of the importance that the late Ken Collier had to this music. I know you are are a massive advocate of him, and like you I see Alan Oldham has just created a tribute EP to Ken, so it would appear many still do not know enough about him. Care to give us a quick insight and maybe a little of what he meant to you?

Ken Collier was the “godfather” of dance music in Detroit. He was legendary; known for his remixes of artists like Was Not Was. He was also a Dance Music Reporter for Billboard Magazine here in the USA. Each time I received a white label/promo copy for one of my releases I would bring it to Ken for his advice. Ken would give me great advice which helped me make better records.

And what parts of the world have you played that were an eye opener?

I would have to say DJing in countries like Japan, Russia, Germany, UK, and France have been the most eye opening experiences for me.

You have been djing for over 20 years, throughout the supposed rise and fall of house music, techno, et al. How do you manage to keep things fresh your own way?

Actually I have been DJing closer to 30 years now. I keep things fresh simply by doing my own thing yet embracing technology

To me things don’t change much, just the words that describe them. All these new scenes like dubstep, future-disco have been here before here before. I mean minimal house/techno was here along time ago, just Rob Hood was too busy making it, to name it. Do you feel you have to keep an eye on these media-driven fads to see which way the scene shifts, or do you tend to ignore them?

I am aware of the various genres but I don’t get caught up in the hype surrounding them because in the many years I’ve been DJing I’ve seen them come and I’ve seen them go. I simply stay true to what I feel is good music.

When I was fortunate enough to be at Movement 08, I was talking to Dwayne Jensen about your dj cohort Mo’Reese. Care to tell us a bit about him as he is another name we do not hear outside of the ‘D’?

DJ Mo Reese is a good friend of mine who I’ve known for many years. He is a very good DJ who now has established his own label called Mo House Records. He has been DJing 20+ years and is a well seasoned DJ.

Finally, a little over a week to go, what should the T-funkateers expect from TP?

Good music! Positive vibes! Lots of love!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Amen to that.

Below is a mix Scott passed to me to host on Cosmic Boogie. Stream it, download it, or just come and see the man do it for real this weekend. Makes sense.