Dom and Muzzla

Deejays of distinction, music lovers, fathers. Available for DJ booking ([email protected]) and re-edits. Based in Liverpool! We play clubnights, bars and private parties with our new 'Dom and Muzzla present...' show. Expect an eclectic exploration of musical tastes and influences taking you on an exciting journey - leave your maps at home.

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Gone but never forgotten

Festival No6 is now over and the recovery begins. I've just been part of a great festival and one which if it remains of similar scale, vibe and nature in future, will become a great festival of our times.

The setting is beautiful. Fellow festival goers were happy to be there and spread a great vibe. The music was sensational and varied. Even the bars were good. Shame about the weather on Sunday but it is mid-September so what did we expect.

^d

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XX - Coexist album stream

A great sounding album taking the xx sound a little further, a little uptempo and tweaking the deepness. Looking forward to getting hold of this in full. 

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Festival Number 6 tickets have arrived!

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The festival in a village

I can't remember a time when a musical event has been so eagerly anticipated.

Music festivals nowadays are ten-a-penny, covering every genre, catering for every age group and increasingly every opportunity for bluechip brands to market their services and products to mass groups of (un)willing punters trapped within the confines of perimeter fences.

This month a new kid is on the block, and one seldon seen kid since the heady years of early Glasto (which I don't remember) and the first Bestival (which I do remember - sort of).

Festival No6 will open its gates in a fortnight's time to just over 7,000 revellers who have chosen to end the summer with a last blast in one of the UK's finest and most awe-inspiring locations; the wondrous Portmeirion in the shadows of the Snowdonia National Park in Wales.

The Grade II listed 'village' originally designed and built by Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, is a mini Mediterranean-inspired village and holiday/geek destination, built around a large estuary on the river Dee. It features facades of buildings, porticoes, sculptures and other remnants of grand architecture salvaged by Williams-Ellis over many decades, to construct his perfect oasis within his beloved North Wales. The village was originally a destination for wealthy London types and peers of the realm, somewhere to recoup their energy and drink port, go for long walks in the surrounding woodlands and write their latest magnum opus.

That all changed in 1967, when actor and director supreme, Patrick McGoohan decided he wanted to film his conspiratorial spy series and follow-up to Danger Man, 'The Prisoner', in the village. McGoohan's series is mind-boggling and way ahead of its time, and if you haven't seen it here's a whole first episode to watch. The premise is very 60s. McGoohan plays a spy in the employ of the British secret service and after tendering his resignation is followed home by a strange man in a herse. After being gassed at home he wakes up to find himself in a dystopian prison, perversely made to look exactly like his own house, but when he opens to the window blind he is surprised to see that instead of his usual London street, he's in a strange looking village. He then spends the next 16 episodes trying to escape, figure out who are the prisoners and who are the warders, plus trying to stop the village's administration from extracting what ever information he possesses... by any means. I'm a Prisoner geek and have loved it for years, so I advise you to watch all 17 episodes and build up to the madness of the last episode, and if you can, please watch at least one before coming to the festival.

Since the show was televised, people have travelled far and wide to visit Portmeirion to trace the lineage of The Prisoner, experience the magic of the show and to secretly or in groups act out scenes which geeks of the show have admired and fawned about since their first experience of watching the show. Holiday makers will come to relax, soak in the beautiful scenery, eat in the lovely restaurants on site and use it as a base for visits around one of the UK's most unspoilt and beautiful areas. Can you tell yet it's one of my favourite places.

But now the wonderful organisers of Festival No6 have done what most, including me, have thought impossible. They have developed a festival programme which looks on paper to be one of the finest festivals staged for years. Fantastic and not so mainstream Bands, DJs, comedians, films, food, drink, pop up, pop down, art, theatre, shopping - the whole proposition is mouth-watering stuff and I for one can't wait to roll in, pitch up and get partying in one of my favourite places on the planet. Each day the line up is burgeoning. Recent additions include elbow's Guy Garvey and The Charlatans' very own Tim Burgess, sporting a rather spectacular new barnet reminiscent of an Olympic track cycling helmet. 

Festival organisers promise locally sourced food, drinks (welsh beer is quite nice) and cheaper tickets for locals, which is all a great idea and the antithesis of all things that have gone wrong with the concept of the contemporary festival.

If you are coming along, I hope to bump into you at some point. I also hope that festival goers respect the place, its significance, history and the pain-staking way in which it was built and continues to be maintained. It would be awesome if this festival happened again in the future so that those who aren't lucky enough to take part in the first-ever event could experience partying in one of the best places on earth.

If you haven't booked your tickets, do it soon or i'm afraid you'll miss out on a once in a lifetime experience. 

Be seeing you!

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Mix tape

Summer. Pah ... what summer.

For those wishing they were sat soaking up the sun on a far-away island, supping a cold beer in the embrace of loved ones, this vinyl-only mix from Dom is for you.

Enjoy.

Dom presents... a balmy summer's evening by Dominic Hope-Smith on Mixcloud

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We love you

There are so many weird and wonderful websites out there and loads of blogs dedicated to sharing beautiful music.

Here's a big fav of ours at the moment - test pressing has tons of guest mixes, edits for download and some pretty neat articles about musik too. 

Check it here.

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Guest mix tape - Matt Fernee

At D&M towers we have lots of mates popping in and sharing their latest creations. 

Here's a little guest mix by our good friend and fellow Condition collective member Phat Matt Fernee. Matt likes it deep, discofied, Detroit and Swedish - this mix is influenced by the former and a very groovy vibe it is too. 

ENJOY! 

Tracklisting

Like a child (Carl Craig remix) – junior boys  Demented drums version – Carl Craig  Wang (Baby Ford re-work) – Roku  For you (Chris Lum remix) – Oliver Desmet & Chuck Diesel (feat. Latrice Barnett)  N'arrêt pas – Morgan Geist  Kind of people – Rubba J  Werk'd – e.b.e.  Rights of passage - s.w.a.t.  Groove la chord - Aril Brikha

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Mix tape

Here’s a lovely deep tech-tinged house mix by Muzzla.

We try and keep things as fresh as possible and to save you scrabbling around for Shazam when you hear a track you like, here’s a full tracklisting too. Expect more mixes, both solo and back to backs to follow.

1. Tanner Ross – 4 U (Deniz Kurtel Remix)  2. Cagedbaby – Hello There (Radio Slave Remix)  3. Basti Pieper feat Eddie Pirax – I Love You  4. Maya Jane Coles – Not Listening  5. Nick Curly – Keep On  6. David Mariscal – Beeper  7. Gui Boratto – Matryoshka  8. Stephen Hinz – Diescinerum  9. Tom Demac – Crewcuts & Curls (Jamie Jones Watercooler Mix)  10. Marvin Gaye – If This World (Simon Garcia’s Private Dubtherapy Remix)  11. Lindstrom – I Feel Space  12. Coyu – The Nu-Nu Sound (2012 Treatment)  13. Sasha – Park It In The Shade (Audion Deep Steeple Mix)  14. Caribou – Sun (Midland Re-Edit)

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Totally tropical taste!

One of my all time favourite record labels for afro beats is absolutely on the money at the moment.

Soundway Records, out of London, is releasing some really well put together albums from the likes of Will Quantic and Batida.

If you like your afro funky, deep and packaged with some dance floor friendly remixes, Soundway will always deliver.

Check out this awesome 12” by Lancelot Layne, with a deep percussive remix by Drum Talk.

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Guetta scandal – does it really matter?

So superstar popstar DJ producer stage act David Guetta has supposedly been caught with his faders down playing a set to a packed field of ravers at the Tomorrowland Festival in Belgium.

This 'scandal' comes as no surprise to music industry insiders and deejays.

The latest breed of superstars, including self-styled mafia mimer, Steve Angello who was also caught allegedly ‘miming’ a DJ set, aren’t in the business of showing off their super-fly turntablist skills, ala Grandmaster Flash or DJ Yoda. Cast your mind back to Sunday’s Olympics closing ceremony and DJ Norman Cook’s weird appearance inside an inflatable octopus. He stood behind a pair of CDJs with his hit records blaring out, gurning and arms aloft. Was he mixing those records? Probably not!

Instead, they provide a pop soundtrack which is solely focused on selling huge numbers of compilations, big open-air concerts in far-flung places and movie and video game soundtracks. According to Luxpresson.com, Guetta earned a whopping £13.5 million in 2011.

Guetta may have started life/booted up as a bedroom DJ, but since success and big money record deals, has morphed into a sort of deity, adored by fans and lusted after by teenagers; a poster pin-up of the naugties post-rave generation.

This means that although he probably was miming his DJ set, it doesn’t really matter because the people who paid £30 to go and listen to him couldn’t care less. They have bought into the Brand Guetta; hook, line and sinker. For all we know, he could have been mixing on a wet haddock. But as long as the consumers of his music continue to dance, grin, gurn and spend wads of cash on his musical outputs, he’ll carry on playing his sell-out shows – miming or otherwise.

^D

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Coyote mix dem good

Finding a good mix to listen to can sometimes be harder than peeling a rock even with the thousands available on Sound and Mix clouds.

Luckily the Coyote Howl from the Is it Balearic? soundsystem run by DJ / producer Timm Sure has a blog here which consistently has great mixes uploaded for our listening pleasure. If you're in to low-slung, balearic mixes with an eclectic edge, there are loads on here produced by friends of Coyote.

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A hero of our time

John Peel is without doubt the undisputed hero of British music. For decades Peel championed music of all shapes and sizes, playing musical genres on his radio show which ordinarily would have been strange and uncomfortable bed-fellows.

Now, eight years after his untimely death, Peel is being immortalised in an archival project, the scope and size of which would make any seasoned archivist shudder with incredulity.

The project is being coordinated by The John Peel Centre for Creative Arts, with the archive being featured on The Space. The project is funded by Arts Council England and supported by the BBC and will be available until October 2012.

In the words of Tom Barker from the Archive:

John Peel’s vast record collection contains over 26,000 LPs, 40,000 singles and many thousands of CDs - it really is quite awesome. With the help and support of John’s family, we are taking the first steps in making John’s amazing collection available through an interactive online archive.

Without being too gushing about Peel, I have very fond memories of listening to his show on Radio 1 from being a teenager; regularly amazed, sometimes bemused but always enlightened once the show ended.

More recently, his Fabric mix CD is a Masterpiece mixing up dub, rock, gabba and drum n bass, like only Peel knew how... with a rendition of the Kop's 'You'll Never Walk Alone' segueing into The Undertones to finish things off and leave you feeling warm and tingly inside.

Thanks to this great archive and the work BBC radio does each and every day on 6 Music playing extracts from decades of Peel Sessions, his untold influence on British popular culture is now more visible than ever.

^D

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We like balloons. We love parties. 

If there's a party with balloons we're in heaven.