Tour: Cos/Mes

We stopped posting flyers as a while back as it was all getting a bit Time Out around here but anyone that can be bothered to fly from Japan to play great chuggy balearic records gets our vote so we thought we’d post these flyers for Cos/Mes visiting our shores. Get high and go listen.

[Apiento]

Just Because 026: Wild Bunch Vs Soul II Soul Flyer

This one is a nice find courtesy of Milo of the Wild Bunch, the flyer for the party of the mix that we posted ages ago on Test Pressing here. If you’ve not heard it check it as it is an amazing session and they were rarely captured on tape. “If you ain’t dancing get off the floor…”

Download
zShare Download

[Apiento]

Just Beacause 024: Harvey Japan Tour 2011 Flyer

You have to say this was a good one…

[Dr Rob]

Party: Aficionado

Quick heads up on the the first Aficionado of 2011 on Sunday February the 13th which sees Chris Duckenfield join residents Moonboots and Jason Boardman to play the best in across the board music with a balearic tilt. It’s at the Electrik Bar in Chorlton, Manchester and runs from 7pm to midnight. Best in town.

[Apiento]

Just Because 020: Dog Eat Dog/ESG/Liquid Liquid Flyer

Credit: Richard McGuire

[Apiento]

Party: Cutloose (Manchester) & Bad Passion (London) With Golf Channel’s Phil South & Anton Esteban

Another good couple of nights on the cards along with Claremont’s Tiago party… Golf Channel and No Ordinary Monkey’s Phil and Anton over from NYC playing for the always up for it Bad Passion and Cutloose crowds. Go here for more details on Bad Passion and here for info on Cutloose (also check out their ridiculous collection of mixes while you are there).

[Apiento]

Party: A Night With Andrew Weatherall

All a bit Weatherall-centric round here recently but anyway, I think this one is getting near to selling out so if you are interested click through to the Ransome Note and get involved…

[Apiento]

Party: Balearic Mystique

Terrible name for a party but this one needs a heads up as half of our mates are playing at it. Check the Sunday below. You probably won’t get such a nice line up in town for a while (Phil Mison, Moonboots, Balearic Mike, Ross Allen etc…). If the suns out I strongly suggest heading over, grabbing a beer and getting down. [Update] Saying that I just re-read the Saturday night and thinking about it that looks like loads of fun as well. Sheffield’s Chris Duckenfield and Winston Hazel worth the admission alone. Then you have Alfredo, Nancy Noise etc all doing their thing as well. Nice work DJ booker man.

[Apiento]

Tokyo Weekender: A Song For Guy – DJ Harvey at Eleven

All the smart people said they were going late.

I’d been having conversations with people all week about the best time to go to see Harvey at Eleven. The last gig of his current Japanese tour. The queues would be horrendous at 10. It would be rammed until all the “non-music” club kids went home at 4. Harvey would save the most interesting music until the end (which was rumoured to be somewhere between 9 and 12 AM). All the smart people were going to bed Saturday night and then getting the first train in on Sunday morning. I even got a call from The Lowrider while I was taking tea with the original Disco Child in Shimokitazawa, questioning me on my plans. Informing me of DJ schedules (Garth was on til 2). “So what time you going then?” The Lowrider, he wasn’t going at all.

I was going early. I figured if the evening was gonna move from the edgy and uncomfortable to the ecstatic then I was along for the whole ride. Ease and convenience have never brought me anything of lasting value.

Waiting in Bar Jam at 10PM sharp with Sir Bruce. Wondering where the fuck everyone else is. Watches were supposed to have been synchronized. Continually having to go back upstairs to pick up reception and apologetic missed calls regarding re-visited ETAs. Joking, that with everyone being smart, the queues would be at 4AM and not 10PM. Obviously, getting a bit anxious to leave.

11:35 outside Eleven and there’s 10 of us standing there. Basking smugly in the wisdom of our decision I walk through the doors of the club to greet a queue of about 100 on the stairs. Not so bad.

1AM and the club is packed to what must be beyond capacity. Garth’s set is being pumped upstairs and it’s classic content causing some discussion in some quarters (Tamiko Jones?). Once we’ve actually moved downstairs though Garth plays an edit of an 80s track and you can feel the energy in the room step up a level. Me and Spacey compete to try to work out what it is. It’s Japan.

5 to 2 Harvey appears. No one can move. Even enthusiastic head-nodding is likely to butt your neighbour. 2AM and the club fills with the sound of monkeys chanting, then the voice of a very stoned god attempts to tutor the crowd on the path to enlightenment and unity. In English. Then it’s a re-edit of the Black Cock edit of The Dells. At the “No Way Back” chorus the volume is dropped but there is only a muffled response and I wonder if it might be a bit ambitious even for Harvey to attempt a sing-a-long on his first tune proper. I wonder if it’s all gonna go pear-shaped. Three records in 30 minutes, unable to do more than a vague bounce, I know I need more drink.

On my way across the dancefloor to the bar a young Japanese guy bumps into me, takes the slice of lemon out of his mouth, puts it in what’s left of my existing drink, and then stares at me. I don’t feel particularly threatened but I am surprised. Last time I was here, around a year ago, when the Idjuts played the closing week of Yellow, I could never have imagined this happening.

The crowd is younger tonight. My experiences have made me think that if I’m having a splendid time it is only natural for me to turn round and either hug or vigorously shake the hand of the complete stranger next to me. The people here tonight aren’t old or stupid enough to have such behaviour within their frame of reference. From their point of view, I guess I might not be too happy about an old bloke I’d never seen before currently suffering from a rather unpleasant eye-infection and who can barely string a (Japanese) sentence together, beam at me and attempt to perform some alien introduction. The crowd are younger and I ain’t getting any. Maybe I shouldn’t have cut my hair.

Casualties line the entire run of the narrow stairs as I make a move back to the lounge. Heads hung in their laps. In the lounge you still can’t move. And still with only nostalgia as my guide I’m reminded of that space that used to be at the back of the Soho Theatre. A real buzz about the place. Endless excited conversations. A who’s who of Tokyo`s surprisingly small House scene.

The red-head that makes geishas look tanned says “if he played the Birdy Song, then everyone’d still go nuts”, but that’s not true. The only people in those Stussy tour t-shirts are staff. What is true is that there is an awful lot of love for the man. And I think that’s purely because people genuinely feel that they get that love back. I don’t think anybody has come to hear the most amazing DJ set of their lives. They are here to show support for someone they consider a friend. It’s a welcome back lets have a party, not an arms folded waiting blow me away.

5AM and I’ve got to give downstairs another shot. Macho’s cover of The Spencer Davis Group gets chopped and teased for at least 20 minutes. This time the sing-a-long trick works and when the volume is dropped the whole of the dancefloor screams “I’m a man, yes I am, and I can’t help but love you so”. All I can see is Harvey’s smile. All teeth. Tuesday morning and I’m still stuck singing this. And humming the Dells.

From the camp euphoria of Macho the room is dropped immediately into dubbed out ambience. Sounds like Basic Channel to me. A more up-to-date guess might be Intrusion. It sounds huge. Immense. There’s apparently been a lot of on-line discussion, none of which I’ve read, on how Eleven’s sound system compares to the original Yellow one, which was unfortunately fragmented across lucky clubs and bars when Yellow was forced to close. The Yellow system having been based on that of the Paradise Garage. I can’t make any comparisons, but if you do go to Eleven, make sure you get over to the right-hand side of the dancefloor. The sound is about 100x better over there.

Thirteen odd minutes of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘1983 A Merman I Should Turn To Be’ through deep delay and I seem to have drunk myself sober. The beautiful woman my imagination had my good eye on is in the arms of one of my best friends. I have to find and check out of my hotel in three hours. I figure it’s time to go.

On my way out I bump into Nick The Record on his way in.

The queue still coming down the stairs.

The smart people, they never made it.

Download
Harvey’s re-edit of Macho ‘I’m A Man’ (hacked from a mix)

[Dr Rob]

Party: Gettin Hectic A.K.A The Best Night Out Next Saturday In Vauxhall

Our Adam has a night to plug. Sounds like a fun one – Ed…

Gettin Hectic is the occasional party I have been involved with for the last 11 years. We’ve criss-crossed London venues, been feted in newspapers, The Face and even had a party in New York and its twin city of Leicester. Now we are laying it to a timely rest with a huge jamboree at Vauxhall’s Hidden night club.

The night will be the equivalent of the last day of term when you could bring in buckaroo, a massive Boy Scout ging gang gooly where loads of girls from the next field have invaded and brought Lambert & Butler, hooch and poppers. Music-wise, it’s like your over excited little brothers are slapping together hip hop, funk, soul, house, rock and/or roll and those odd records that blow up every party. Damn, I nearly made it through without any clichés. We’ve got a great venue, we have lots of friends but we would like even more….. Gettin Hectic – we were never being bored.

[Adam K]

Party: Cosmic – New Year’s Eve

If you are at a loose end tomorrow in London town you could do worse than get down to Sosho in Shoreditch for this one. Enjoy people.

[Apiento]

Flyer: Boy’s Own – Bogner Regis

In a recent interview for the Defected website Darren Emerson was asked about his initial involvement with the Boy’s Own crew. Here’s what he said…

When and how did you start playing at the parties for Boy’s Own?

The one that sticks out is the one where Andrew asked me fill in for because he couldn’t make it and he requested me to play for him. I was honoured because I looked up to Andrew and thought it was a fantastic thing to be asked to do, at a young age as well. It was in Bogner Regis so it was a weekender, I remember going on and doing my usual thing of using two records and starting off with a long intro. I remember Norman Cook was there and it was the first house party he’d been to, and he always says now in interviews that I was the first person to get him into house music. I remember using Robert Owen’s ‘I’ll Be Your Friend’ over and over again just looping it and going back and forth. Justin Robertson was playing there as well, it was really good fun to play that weekender. I remember waking up the next day and feeling a bit hazy sharing a hair of the dog with Charlie Chester! I spent that Sunday with him at the bar having Sunday afternoon pints.
::
Thanks to Phil Mison (love the way you wrote ‘now that we’ve found love’ on the flyer Phil – Ed)
[Apiento]

Being Slow…

Apologies for being a little slow at updating recently ladies and gents but it’s been a busy time at Test Pressing towers. Forthcoming will be an interview with the lovely Sheryl Garratt, a fireside chat with Green Gartside of Scritti Politti, some East London talk with Trevor Jackson and a lovely mix from Balearic Mike of Mancunia. Also, while I’m here, if anyone is in the Dalston-end of town this Saturday those top chaps from Bad Passion have Thomas Bullock of Rub ‘N’ Tug at one of the best venues in town for a heads-down-arms-aloft session, The Shacklewell Arms.

[Apiento]