Sunday is the day I spin two cool hours of Cosmic Disco at Picnik Electronik, from 14h to 16h!
Trust me, this set is SO going to fit with the weather and the venue! đ
BUT REMEMBER!
Sunday’s edition is at JARDIN DES FLORALIES, not at the Calder stabile, as usual!
ATTENTION!
The reason Sunday’s edition is at Jardin des Floralies is because of the FĂŞte des enfants, so it’s likely the parking spaces will be sparse unless you get there really early.
I strongly suggest parking near a metro station and using the tube to get to Parc Jean-Drapeau and then the shuttle to make it to the Jardin.
I’m jumping on the bandwagon and I sing their praise: The Phenomenal Handclap Band.
After seeing their name pop left and right over all my usual Web sources and friends’ FB statuses and tweets, I decided to check out their eponymous album. So I forked over 10$ to iTunes (didn’t feel like waiting for a CD, but stupid me, I didn’t think of checking on eMusic, first, if they had it, and they did) and gave it a good listen.
WHOA! Cool!
What’s more, I discovered in the meantime that the band is fronted by Quinn Luke, better known (to me at least) as Bing Ji Ling, a name I discovered through the Ubiquity’s Rewind series of covers complilations, where he had notably done a very cool cover of AC/DC’s (You Shook Me) All Night Long.
Now, I’ve read here and there that TIHCB were come kind of 70s revival band, but if you ask me, they are just doing an americanized (I mean that in a nice way) version of Cosmic Disco!
In other words: if you like the Handclap band and don’t know Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas, you need to get into them, and if you know L&PT but haven’t heard of the Handclap band yet, don’t waste any more time!
The newly repaired SL1400 and the subsequent trip down memory lane I’m going through these days â digitizing favourites from my vinyl collection â has made me wonder whether it would be a cool idea to spin a set of classic oldies at Picnik ĂŠlectronik on August 16th.
Part of my reflexion comes from the fact (aside from this recording process) that I believe the people who attend Picnik go there to have a good time and not necessarily be preached upon, which my idea of a Cosmic Disco set â a genre not very well known and therefore not yet fully appreciated â might be perceived as.
I’d like to know what you think about it, please leave a comment below with your opinion on this idea.
Here are a few tracks that would surely make the cut in my selection for an oldies set:
A large part of the genotype of Cosmic Disco (of which I am, humbly, the champion around these parts) is based on the Dub Mix, a concept that emerged in the late 70s and early 80s and which was borrowed from the Jamaican Dub, itself a product of the many technological breakthroughs in studio recording.
What, then, is a dub mix? It’s basically a dancefloor friendly remix of a track stripped down to it’s core elements, and back then, it’s the DJs themselves that created their dub version in the studio during the day in order to spin them at night. The luminaries of the genre are all well represented in the track selection (as well as interviwed in the generous booklet), with, first and foremost, François K(evorkian, a hero of mine), the legendary Larry Levan, Paul Simpson, John Morales and Nick Martinelli (as M&M), Shep Pettibone and Tee Scott.
BBE Music just released an amazing 3CD compilation of such seminal Dub Mixes from that era. CD1 is a mix CD by the Idjut Boys while CD2+3 contain 21 unmixed tracks in their full length glory. That’s 6 more in total than the mix contains! Now that’s value for your money â and if you buy it direct from BBE Music, the package only costs 9ÂŁ + 3.46ÂŁ S&H (to Canada), which, with a rough currency exchange rate, comes to about 25$!
I can’t stress enough the high quality of this compilation and it’s historic value, for most of these records are no doubt hard to find, to say the least.
The subtitle of the compilation is “a dubbed out collection of classic 80s dance music”, but I propose this one instead: “a priceless compilation of trippy disco and early electro mixes by the masters of the genre”.
Below, I propose to you one of the tracks that really flipped me out upon my first listening session of the Idjut mix. I’d never heard of this track or even the RAH Band (RAH standing for Richard Anthony Hewson) and it totally blew my mind!
The RAH Band – Clouds Over the Moon (Super Nova Mix)
Just a few months after the second iteration came the third of the series, Third Sun from the Rock.
This one’s birth was tougher.
I re-recorded it twice before I was entirely satisfied with it technically, while musically, I stretched out the boudaries of the genre even more, going as far as including tracks that didn’t readily fall within those boudaries.
Let’s put it this way: I was offering people to include them within those boundaries, if they were willing to stretch those boundaries alongside this DJ.
The presence of Swag’s edit of New Jersey Deep by Black Science Orchestra or Lullabies in the Dark’s Iridium are telling examples.
The jury is still out on whether this one or its predecessor is the better mix: they both have their strong points, and they both boogie!
After recording volume one, the urge to make a second iteration of the Cosmix Series (it was clear to me that this was going to be a series) rapidly became intense and Second Orbit was born a mere 6 months after its predecessor.
I find that this mix is more refined and focused, compared to the previous one, but that’s explained by the fact that I was still discovering and exploring the limits of the genre, six months earlier.
Here’ I’ve started to define what my Sound is going to be within this genre, as well as exploring and paying hommage to the roots, as witnessed by the inclusion of tracks by Kano and Alan Hackshaw.
As usual, you can stream or download it here. As always, your donations are welcome to help me pay for the file hosting!
TRACKLISTING
Monsieur Sebâs Cosmix, 2nd Orbit â Recorded Live June 14-15th 2008
Grn Aventurine – Château Flight
Suoivegan Mamadoo – Mari Boine vs. Mungolian Jetset
Love Love Love (Aeroplane Mix) – Low Motion Disco
Eurora (Blackbelt Andersen Remix) – Fjordfunk
In The Silver White Box – In Flagranti
Start Something – Morten Sorensen
Elektric Evening – Elitechnique
Stellar Way – Acos CoolKAs
Some Signs Are Good – Diskjokke
Meridian (Amberflame Edit) – Acos CoolKAs
Breakdown – Toby Tobias
Time To Let Go (Lindstrøm Remix) – Sally Shapiro
Fox In The Box (Telespazio Remix) – UND
Crush the Liberation – The Juan Maclean
Boston Food Strangler (Diskjokke Re-Mix) – Ost & Kjex
After Midnight (Original 12â version) – Ilija Rudman
Tito’s Way (Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas Remix) – The Juan Maclean
See And Know – Amberflame
Step In (Faze Action Remix) – Roland Schwarz
It’s A War (Serge Santiago Uk Re-Edit) – Kano
Global Pillage – Ichisan
Over The Sky (Reverso 68 Remix) – Ajello
Happy House (Prince Language Dub) – The Juan Maclean
It’s around 2005 that I discovered this new sound whose name (or names, as the case may be) I was still unaware of and which blew me away.
Slowly, I started researching, digging virtual crates and it took me a good year before I felt confident enough to try my hand at mixing the tenors of the genre.
As it happened, it was the first mix I recorded with my newly acquired Torq Xponent and the mix that made me decide I was doing away with the restriction imposed by the 75 minutes time limitation of the CD, which itself replaced the good old cassette tape, cutting out yet another 15 minutes from what used to be a good DJ mix.
From that point on, I have not recorded a mix shorter than 1h45 minutes, and all three Cosmix iterations are close to 2 hours and 30 minutes.
