Birth of the Combo

A COMBO IS BORN

Wow.

Well, I haven't done one of these mini-updates for a while now, which comes as no personal surprise given how busy I've been setting up the new BLOG, and beavering away for the winter season of DJ Shows.

Several months ago, just before I played at the Glade Festival, I'd really got to the point where I felt like I was drowning under a sea of data - every day dozens & dozens of new pieces of music were making their way onto my laptop, and come the latter part of the week I'd find myself embarking on a a crazed orgiastic listening-frenzy, usually selecting around 20 new tunes for the shortlist of re-editing, re-sequencing and re-processing.

Two days later I would still be burning CDs on my way out of the door after a manic session on the mouse, with a wallet stacked full of another 20 new tunes to play out that weekend .... only to find that I was booked for an hour's set at a megarave somewhere where they only wanted massive breakbeat anthems. The reality is that those two days were wasted days, and whilst my ever-increasing library of CDs left me perfectly equipped to play a 12-hour Garnier-sized marathon, it was leaving me baffled & exhausted come Monday morning.

Now I've been known for a while for my re-editing of tracks ... sometimes this process involves little more than switching round a couple of sections of a track, but I've often done re-edits that have taken tracks into whole new forms, to the point where they verge on being something new, and this became the focus of a new series of edits I began work on, primarily looking at building some completely fresh rhythms and then delving into a series of tracks in similar keys for components that would work well with one another.

On some occasions, this meant complete bassline re-programming from a single note, on others whole basslines and leadlines were lifted and grafted onto the new rhythms, wholesale. Either way, it was an exciting way of deconstructing familiar material and recycling it in a unique way, and now, as we hit mid-September, I find myself in a position where I have at least 20 of these finished tracks, which I have decided to christen, the COMBO (click the image at the foot of the post ... ;).

With the advent of technology that allows you to be way more individual and creative than ever before, and with the vast majority of people having decided that they are no longer willing to pay for original productions, in some ways the logical conclusion is for the artists to look to play DJ sets full of bespoke material, rather than to devalue it's worth by adding it to the swirling vortex of free music out there.

This way, when you come to see me play out over the next few months, you will be certain that you'll be hearing something unique and something you simply won't find in any other environment than the live arena.