Be Strong

Beats-based music is in a really strange place right now. There is a wealth of quality music being made out there that plays with the rather tired formula of the broken beat, but it’s loose, free from easy categorization & in many ways needs some digging to 'find'.
 

For me this is one of those tracks. It’s certainly bass-music, but it’s not really breaks (and given what is currently classed as ‘breaks’, it doesn’t belong there) … it’s jackin’ but tough, and hints at dubstep here & there. I don’t expect people to fully understand how or where to program it or play it and for that reason I fully expect it to fall through the cracks.

Also for that reason I’m dead proud of it as an addition to a body of work as Elite Force that dates back some 15 years now.

Be Strong (OUT NOW) by Elite Force


BUY NOW ON BEATPORT

Captain America comes to save the day ...

Despite having come up with literally dozens of remakes, remixes and revamps this year it's hard to believe that this is actually my first brand new track that's been released in over a year!

It's had a fantastic response from everyone on SOUNDCLOUD and FACEBOOK as well as lighting up many a dancefloor over the past few months. It hit Beatport today, and I would love your support in snagging a copy : GET IT HERE

The EP also includes the ferocious revamping I did of Peo de Pitte's anthem 'Burning Up', taking the chart-topping remix from Torqux & Twist and rinsing it 140 style :)

Boats & Lizards

The Boat Party this weekend just gone in London was incredible. The clouds parted as we set sail from Temple Pier, and a full house of revellers had it LARGE as we cruised down what was, at times, a choppy River Thames! Great fun, and look out for the possibility of more of these next year in differing locations.

Meanwhile I have a brand new remix out this week at Beatport. It's a proper techy-roller & is based on the original from The Lizard Kings (aka Electric Soulside). 

Show your support & snag a copy ...

The Lizard Kings - Oviparous (Elite Force Mix) *OUT NOW*

Perth - the video files ....

I think the easiest way would be to have 64-hour days and no need for sleep, but that's just a pipedream ... there's only so much you can fit in a day! Perhaps I will get a chance to blog about the second half of the Australia / New Zealand tour at some stage, but for the time being I was rather tickled by this nice video footage that came through from the lovely folk at Boomtick who promoted the show at Villa in Perth earlier this month.

18-hours in June [VIDEO]

... in Shock ...

The latest milestone in my career, 'Shockland' finally saw the light of day this week. A project that began as a collaborative series of pieces for the Motorstorm Apocalypse game for the PS3 with Klaus Badelt, finally blossomed into an album of extended versions.

These are designed as much for the head as the feet (so don't expect another 'Revamped'), but I really am dead proud of how the music's turned out and I hope you'll be able to support the project in whatever way you can / see fit to!

The Shockland Store is where you'll find the physical stuff.... T-Shirts and CDs mainly, and all in lovely limited edition runs.

The digital pre-releases are, as ever, available exclusively from Beatport until 27th June, when they will be unleashed throughout the intraweb.

To preview all of the tracks from Shockland, just CLICK HERE for the full Soundcloud set of tasters (each with Beatport link should you need a HQ version).

Enjoy & thanks in advance for the support!

s

Hammered in Hamilton, Twisted in Tauranga

"We're changing clubs. This place is fuckin' dead. We're heading to a Jaeger bar - you can play there, but you've gotta go NOW!" Thus began one of the stranger episodes of my life as a DJ.

It's Friday night and the Noize Control circus has moved onto the port city of Tauranga on the East Coast of New Zealand. The weather's been spectacular with torrential downpours mingling with biblical outbursts of radiant sunshine, but now we're at the business end of the day and all is not well with the club I've been booked to play in. The owner has done a spectacular volte face and left us with a hillbilly-styled bar to play in on a postage-stamp sized PA, and has by all accounts done little or no promotion for the night, so local legend and all-round crazy 'Tommy' (I think!) has decided to take matters into his own hands.

"This ain't right bru!" he hollers in a thick local drawl, "you're Elite Force man, I luv your shit - I gotcha back man, I ain't hiving thisss,  I GOTCHA BACK MAN!". With that, we speed off in convoy to a brand new Jaeger bar called Imbibe which is a few miles out of time & situated in a most unlikely shopping mall. Now we know where the people are. The place is rammed. It's launch night. The reaction couldn't be warmer but I'm reticent about kicking anyone off the decks ... 

.... 5 minutes later I have a pint of jack & coke in hand and the local DJ has very graciously welcomed me with open arms ... and then, it's ON. It may be a bar and sound control have their eyes on the dB meter, but it's a grand couple of hours. Afterwards, I speak to a guy who is thrilled to bits to have seen me play, completely by chance.

"OMG, I have not come out in a year and the one night I come out I see my idol EF! This is better than my wedding day". His wife is standing next to him, eyes like daggers.

The night before had been Hamilton's turn, and boy did they deliver. I'd been slightly perplexed beforehand by how keen the locals were to tell me in no uncertain terms that Hamilton is "The STD capital of New Zealand" (with no little pride it has to be said), but what no one warned me was that they RAGE HARD TO BASS. 

VIDEO (HAMILTON)

By midnight the Outback Inn was still filling up & I started with some ease-in tracks, but by the time 12.30 came around it was jammed in there, and by 1am had turned into a proper madhouse. Moshpit frenzies closed things out and the excellent Daniel Farley took a full floor to the close. Afterwards the night became lairy & whilst I bailed early I wasn't surprised to find that the promoters and their crew had a new badge of honour to wear the following day.  

"Banned from all Ibis Hotels"

New Zealand's been cracking and all that remains is to say a massive thank you to everyone I met, and especially for the kings at Noize Control for putting so much work into the shows. Big ups Jaycen, Ben, Nergal & all crew :)

An Auckland Sauna

An hour in now. Everyone is wringing wet, soaked to the skin. The Be Club in Auckland is jammed, the sound system throbbing, the beats bangin'. My knees are turning to jelly in the airless booth. Air-mad punters have turned the fans on themselves. It feels like I'm sweating out - might even hit the deck at this rate ... and with that I dial it back a notch or two and pace myself to see this epic 2 & a half hours through.

There's a real intensity in the air tonight - a fair few people have been waiting for years for me to make it back to Auckland after my one & only appearance some four years back - and it's an inspiration to feel that kind of energy. I'm booked as Elite Force but with Zodiac Cartel's name also on the bill, it's a tricky juggling act at times to keep everyone happy, but juggling's what I do and it seems to build pretty nicely to a dubstep conclusion, despite losing a few to heatstroke along the way.

All in all a massive buzz & now it's time to kick back for a few days ... well, when I say kick back, I mean work obsessively on the laptop - I'm midway through a Zodiac Cartel remix of Non-Believer & wanna get that in some shape to play at the next show in Hamilton on Thursday :)

Hanging Laundry out to Dry

After what seemed like an eternity of traveling, re-grouping, sleeping, not sleeping, the Australian Tour finally got underway last night at Chinese Laundry, and my, what a way to start!

The Laundry's one of those rare beasts - a club that remains, after all these years, consistently 'on the money'. When I last played here two years ago it was around the time that I was dropping my very first series of dubstep Revamps and Re-edits and I remember getting the distinct impression that the floor didn't quite know what to make of them. Fast forward two years and Friday night is reserved for Bass Music in all it's fine manifestations, and there were no such issues with pretty much anything I played in what I'd describe as a kitchen sink set.

The energy levels built and grew throughout towards a dubstep conclusion & the welcome couldn't have been warmer from the packed room's Sydney massive. I salute you all ... I couldn't have asked for a better way of kicking off my trip down under.

R.O.B.O.T.

It's Friday afternoon. I'm in a stunning warehouse space at Dock Des Suds in Marseille down in the south of France. All around me dozens of grizzled worker bees are putting the finishing touches to what is set to be a breathtaking production for a show I'm involved in tonight.

There's a robotic, Mad Maxian theme to the proceedings, with performance artists, twisted metal sculptures, TV installations, radical futuristic attire, and the centrepiece in an immaculate 30 foot high 3D video-mapped robot head. The booth is situated inside the demon's eyes, and all around the stage are the unmistakable shapes of Funktion One speakers. This is not a party to be trifled with and it's no exaggeration to say I haven't been this excited about a non-festival show in a loooooong time.

In a nutshell, this is Burning Man. In a warehouse.


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Tales of blind mixing & surgical elbow retraction ...

The monitor sits forlornly. Drooping downwards, devoid of power. The booth is two feet deep ... barely enough to entertain my generous waist. Bending down requires surgical elbow-retraction, and yet still this funny little venue has decided that the place for said booth should be a good 8 feet up in the air. A battered DJM-600, once the go-to mixer of choice occupies the centre ground ... most of it's knobs are MIA, sheared off at the tip, years since the 'effects' functioned properly. The CDJ-800s are basic, unruly with trademark sticky cue buttons.

In short it's a job & a half to make any sense of the situation with the muffled soundfug that's circling around the booth, but I'm faced with a crowd of Motorstorm programmers who are here to unwind, let go, breathe a massive, collective & drunken sigh of relief as their PS3 game is finally on the shelves. I'd been 'warned' beforehand with a wry sense of resignation that 'they are geeks ... and they don't dance'. I love a challenge ...

... fast forward two hours and I switch it up with a dubstep drop. There's a sweaty, pogo'ing throng. There's whooping, hollering, frugging. A roomful of drunken, smiley faces and I'm transported back to the halcyon days of Fused & Bruised residencies at the Dogstar in Brixton where I cut my teeth behind the decks.

All is good with the world.

Adventures

Post-gig / Pre-gig. Transiting across the outer limits of Vilnius where the harsh tower blocks quickly merge into rolling pine tree stands. A vast shanty town-like black market sits on the fringes, and then we cruise the smooth highways towards Klaipeda.

It's sometimes hard to appreciate the moment. I'm someone who needs time to stand back, assess, decide and then action ... and at the moment I'm lacking the luxury of time away; time away from the job, the machines; just living in the now. I need some perspective.

One issue that's troubling me is the Serato Vs CD 'debate' that I've been having with myself. Its often a nightmare & last night was no exception with the two decks wired in right to left. The first mix was a total shambles because your visual references of right & left are completely subverted & it took ages to find my groove after that. I'm seriously considering moving back to CDs!


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Back 2 The Old Skool

This Friday just gone I found myself at the Big Beat Reunion in London's lovely but shady Jammm in Brixton, one of my old stomping grounds. I'm always slight wrong-footed by South London ... even though I know it so well, it has an intensity about it that you seldom find North of the river with layer on layer of humanity battling for survival space. As an example, the cab ride back to the hotel afterwards was full of banter & was strangely worth the £22 I was knowingly being *fleeced* for a four mile ride.

To say the gig was an unusual one for me to take would be understatement. I've never before agreed to do an old skool / big beat set, and despite the huge time-drain of 3 full days of preparation, it was actually a great - re-education sifting through the piles of old vinyl. Each banger I unearthed was greeted like a long lost friend, even to the point of 'knowing smiles' accompanying the recall of each bit of vinyl's unique quirks. Trying to mix these rough & ready slices of history together was a whole new ballgame & my plan to journey from 107 - 137 bpm seemed like a good idea in principal, but in practice it was a wild beast of a ride, and one that was hard to tame for much of the time.

I didn't get a chance to record the set, but for the tracklist fiends and the mildly interested, this is what I played in my hour & a half. Perhaps I'll find time to do a similar mix for the archives at some point soon ... we will see!

Midfield General - Devil In Sports Casual                           
Ceasefire - Trickshot                                
Eddie Scratch & DC - Dusty's Sermon                           
Dave Clarke - No One's Driving (Chemical Brothers Mix)
Cut & Paste - Cut It Nice - Original Mix                       
Freestylers - Breaker Beats Part One                    
Head Lamp - Petrol Salt Lick                                 
Wax Assassins - Feel The Funk Baby                               
The Chemical Brothers - The Loops of Fury                        
Roxy Breaks - Apache Rock                                      
The Wiseguys - Start the Commotion (Put the Body in Motion)     
CHARLATANS, The - Nine Acre Dust (Chemical Brothers remix)         
Basco  - Rock The Funky Beat                              
Sol Brothers - That Elvis Track                                 
Fathead, 2 Fat Buddahs  - Cut The Music - Original Mix                     
Fatboy Slim Vs Bassbin Twins - 2 Aaaw Shut Up                                   
Bassbin Twins & Doom Selector - Between The Fro                                            
Laidback  - Cold Rock
Josh Wink - Higher State of Consciousness     
Laidback  - Cold Rock (Reprise)                                  
Elite Force  - EF001 Go Rockin' Beats                           
The Treble Spankers  - Samira (The Eboman's Bakkuf Beats - Mix)         
Lunatic Calm - Leave You Far Behind -  Lunatics Rollercoaster Mix                       
Definition of Sound  - Outsider (Lunatic Calm Mix)                      
Messiah  - There Is No Law                                  
Curve - Chinese Burn (Lunatic Calm Remix)                
Fatboy Slim - Going Out of my Head                             
SCHUMACHER, Timmy - Bring Back Big Beat  
Chemical Brothers - Psychedelic Reel (Elite Force Edit)                  

Breakspoll Blur

It's been quite a weekend. 

I was thrilled this year to find myself short-listed for no fewer than six awards at the annual Breakspoll bash, and unlike last year when I played the graveyard shift to an exhausted dancefloor, I was blessed with a peaktime slot at this year's party. I'd barely arrived at Cable (great club - go check it out) before being summonsed to the stage for the awards, & was fortunate enough to pick up the awards for BEST PRODUCER and BEST LABEL for U&A Recordings amongst some serious competition.

I wasn't sure how winning something would make me feel, given that awards ceremonies have never been too high up the chain in life's rich list of priorities for me, but now I know, and I can safely say "thrilled to bits" is the answer. If anything, moments like that give you a punctuation in life, a brief chance to reflect on a year gone by and your achievements, as well as being a small reward for a huge amount of hard work.

It's been a year when Breaks has bounced back. There have been far too many people bashing it as a genre and deriding it, but last year it was strong, and this year it will be stronger as more new talent is nurtured and they hone their skills, and as more of the old guard of refuseniks return to the fold. I'm by no means a 'purist' when it comes to Breaks, or to any music come to that - I'm just not a fan of people boxing off certain tribal sub-genres at the exclusion of open-mindedness and other quality sounds - but I'm thrilled to see many tempos and experiments happening in the world of bass-driven warehouse-music (as I'd prefer to describe my own output at the moment!).

Needless to say everyone who cared enough to vote for me deserves my heartfelt thanks, & I will of course endeavour to turn it up one louder in the coming months & hopefully find myself once again in the mix at the end of the year.

Keeping it Mont-Real

It seems like only yesterday that I was knee deep in chicken guano with a scraper in hand, birds pecking my boots and the warm spring sunshine flickering through the trees. Well that's because it was only yesterday, and today I have awoken mid-morning in the beautiful French city of Montreal.

Last night I popped my Serato cherry, which for those less versed in the tedious technologies behind playing tunes is not a reference to some dodgy room-service-with-happy-ending but to the digital switchover from CDs to CDs + laptop, and I have to say it went pretty well. The marvellous Fingerz in the Noize crew were behind the party, and put on a wonderful display at the Corona Theatre. There were dozens & dozens of sponge Elite Force-stamped cubes flying through the air throughout, and whilst the laptop took a couple of minor nudges, they were a great addition to the night.

I love how simple physical 'events' such as throwable cubes breaks down barriers in clubs - people's guards come down, they lose their personal-space protection and just engage with one another (and in this case, the DJ!). So, a fine start to my Canadian trip. It's on to Toronto tonight. I can't wait!

Deathwish Discotech

There's something in the air, something building from within the UK's fiercely multi-cultural music scene. There's always been a rich diversity and a loyal tribalism to our multiple strands of sonic subculture. Often they're seen pulling apart from one another, distancing themselves through their own idiosyncrasies, but right now it feels like they are coalescing ... or it certainly did on Friday night in London.

I was booked to play at Deathwish Disco at 93 Feet East, a night which the promoters told me on arrival had been spawned, in part, as a response to the dubstepbreaks collision of the Revamped album of last year. As a music producer there can be no finer compliment than that - to see an idea grow, evolve, have impact - and in many ways the night could be characterised as a celebration of one simple word. Bass.

Like any big city London can sometimes be a hard nut to crack with crowds a little 'cooler' and more reserved than those out in the provinces. Not Deathwish Disco though - predominantly young, massively enthusiastic, open-minded & eager to consume all angles of the 'Warehouse' style - this was a genuinely thrilling return to the capital for me, and one that I hope will become a fixture in the diary over the coming months.

Elite Force for President

01.03am. Saturday night. Sevilla.

My ride to the club arrives. I sling my bag in the back & leap in. We grin at each other & I attempt to engage in some basic language-transcending chat. 'Party. Good?" (thumb raised). The response is a nervous laugh & the sad shake of a head. 'No entiende'. Long ride to club.

The streets around Ypodromo have been hard-wired into excess. Bottles roll, hoodies lurk, voices are raised, gangs gather around car stereos, dancing in the streets. At the door a hundred people are scrumming to steamroller their way in - I'm pushed through the centre and then we're inside. The music's tough, angular, driving. Crowd are biding their time through the drop, and as I make my way to the front to reach the stage, the beats kick back in & the whole place erupts as one, leaping like lemmings, arms akimbo, touching the sky. I'm swept along & squeeze through the gate to an enclave behind the booth.

As I take over from Krafty Kuts, signs are raised aloft saying 'Elite Force for President'. With that, a dozen people jump on the front of the booth and for a minute it looks like the whole structure is going to crash & burn. 

This night is hotfire.

Fishnets, Flamboyance & Flair

It's hard to imagine a city more suited to seeing in the New Year than San Francsico, and that's where I found myself last night playing for the Opulent Temple crew at the spectacular Sea of Dreams party at the Concourse Exhibition Centre. 

Playing over midnight comes with it's own little pressures - not least getting the timing right (last year in Perth I was about 3 minutes out, but no one seemed to care) - and this time round I had to time the triggering of my 'countdown' track bang on the T-minus 15 seconds point, and to my complete amazement, it worked out ... although afterwards I was told that the clock on the big screen was a clear minute early. No matter, it's only time.

Once again, San Fran was at it's most dressy, glitzy - it seems that the good people of the city have perfected their own kind of twisted burlesque-hobo-raver-chic, and it's a look that I love to bits. Fishnets, flamboyance and flair, the perfect tone to begin 2011 on.

Hope you all had a good one

s

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