Tagged “djing”

Clair and I just had a brilliant night at our friend’s 40th. It was held in the upstairs function room (The Old Burnt Barns) at Lynch’s Bar on London Road, Glasgow – just next to the Barras market. I didn’t know the venue before but it’s great – cool interior and loads of space.

It was a tonic to see so many familiar faces. I worked with Andy at Bright Signals a few years back and lots of the crew were in attendance including Pete, Woody, Oli B and Andrew M.

Among my music buddies present were Jamie T, the Radio Magnetic stalwarts Dougal P, Vic and Davie, and lots of the Stirling crew – Robert, Jamie, Julie, Ciaran, Matt. Always great to catch up.

We also got to spend time with Martin E and Izzie. I even made new friends, including Wendy T. While I was complimenting her on not leaving the dancefloor we realised we could count not only Andy but also Gav S from Edinburgh among our mutual friends.

I also really enjoyed the chance to DJ again, especially alongside folks like Craigy Moog and Ragnar. I played two sets. One at the start where I played records like Komiko, Dayton, A Certain Ratio’s Constant Curve and Krush’s House Arrest. There was one pretty comical moment. Asked around 8pm by Andy’s sister to play Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday while they brought out the birthday cake, I had to tell them I couldn’t… because all the DJs had been warned explicitly by Andy not to play it! She gave me a weary look that said “Yep, that sounds like Andy” and we found another way.

In my second set, a back-to-back with Ragnar, I played Mr K’s edit of Thelma Houston, Southern Freeez (much to Robert’s delight), Sylvester and closed with one of my all-time favourite house records, Mike Delgado’s Jazz Works.

At the end we shared a cab with Ragnar and Solveig for a brief nightcap at Andy’s place, but even still managed to get home at a reasonable time (despite Martin and Izzie’s best attempts to steal our taxi). I’d managed to exercise a few senseible tactics, like starting with non-alcoholic drinks, and that served me well on the night and the next day.

Cracking night, and Andy seemed to really enjoy it. Here’s to your health and happiness, chief.

The best SL-1200/10 set-up video I’ve seen.

I especially like the section on testing for channel imbalance by playing a mono record (such as Nat Birchall's Upright Living LP and comparing the output meter for any differences between left and right, then untightening the relevant tonearm screws in order to make adjustments.

I’ve been stockpiling good records for a while and it’s time they got an airing. I’ll be playing a few on Radio Buena Vida, Saturday 19/11 at 4–5pm. Tune in or even come hang out in the café, if you’re in the hood.

Fair play, Jeff – once this interview gets going it’s pretty damn good.

Amongst other ground, it covers:

• The technique of “Subtraction”;
• the last quarter of records being the best;
• the bar for electronic music being set too low;
• the complexity of the art form of DJing; and
• thinking about other things while DJing in front of 2000 people…

Plenty of good bits to chew over!

Jamie (aka Bud Burroughs of Stirling’s Jelly Roll Soul crew) kindly invited me to DJ with him at Max’s Bar last Saturday night (21st July ‘18).

We played from 9pm–3am. Max’s was rammed to the rafters as usual and it was fun to have six hours to play with, going through the gears and playing different styles and tempos. We also had some friendly faces for company – not only was it Jason Brunton’s birthday but we also had Chris Reid over from Italia and on the birras!

Music-wise, it was cool to mix on the DJR-400 and I particularly enjoyed playing EXU, the new one from Patrick Pulsinger & Irl:

Jamie played lots of tracks I liked, including an upbeat version of Space Jungle Luv by Oneness-Of-Juju that I would post but can’t find anywhere!

Thanks to Jamie for the invite, and if you don’t already know his productions, check out:

• The Mail Art EP by Bud Burroughs on Seventh Sign Recordings
• Jelly Roll Soul record label
• Too Many Voices by Dam-Ru on Temporize Recordings