Where I Am Musically – 2022/23

Music is still a huge part of my life but I don’t really talk to people about it – people ask me what my favourite roast dinner is, not what my favourite track is.

Plus I do like some weird music, anyway.

But on the off-chance you are interested, here goes.

Firstly, I’m way more organised than you might think. I have blogs. Yep, James has a blog about something.

Every single track that I love, I list on House Minimal Techno Disco – which is basically a load of YouTube videos on a website. I wrote the website years ago, and it feels a bit like that, but it still functions – maybe one year I’ll re-write it.

If you prefer YouTube than I have a channel with links to all the above tracks in quarterly playlists.

Or my current pride, which is my DJ Mix Of The Week website – rebuild with headless architecture in a framework called Frontity which seemed really cool but now it has been abandoned. Hopefully the website survives as I don’t fancy rebuilding it again!

Basically, some weeks I do a tiny little write up about whichever DJ mix has most floated my boat.

There’s still some features that I’d like to add, and a few bugs to iron out, but I’m getting there.

Is Minimal Still My Main Love?

You probably won’t be too surprised that I reckon I listen to minimal techno more than any other genre, but it’s a pretty close call nowadays – minimal has kind of gone down a rabbit-hole of repetitive production, and it is difficult to find the gems. There was a phase of every artist imaginable being squeezed onto an edit (do we really need a minimal techno version of Tina Turner?) and it just got tiring.

Plus some of the main Romanian minimal DJs seem to be playing tougher music nowadays, when I listen to their sets.

Gone has the glorious hypnotic minimal of 2013-2020.

The best example of recent minimal that I can think of at the moment is Barac’s I Let My Head Fall Back.

Ricardo still makes some mind-bending repetitive beats (what would the Conservative government in the early 90’s have made of Ricardo, I wonder) – though whether this could really be called minimal, is questionnable.

Just the 40 minutes long.

I still listen to plenty of house music, Mr G’s music gets plenty of plays, and this laid-back dreamy track from Melchoir Productions Ltd is probably my favourite house music track of the last year or so:

I guess you could call it minimal instead. Either way, totally fucking dreamy.

So Nothing New Then?

Well…it isn’t new to me but I think a lot of people are unaware of what I know as the offbeat techno scene – which kind of encapsulates a post-dubstep space, and incorporates house, techno, breaks and post-dubstep into something new.

The best way to introduce yourself to it is to listen to the Hessle Audio radio show on Rinse FM, which is every two weeks. Either Ben UFO or Pearson Sound tend to host it, I’m particularly a huge fan of Ben UFO – quite often the shows start with something fairly experimental (occasionally horrid but normally delightful) and progresses into house, minimal, techno, breaks, garage, jungle, bass – I appreciate the unexpected nature of where it ends up.

This is the one truly exciting area of dance music for me at the moment – and there are plenty of tracks that have this kind of offbeat techno feel to them too, including this which I just bought on vinyl (annoyingly without any form of cover):

Tammo Hesselink is another artist that I’m getting into:

Or Forest Drive West who is probably one of the best DJs and producers out there at the moment, for my current tastes:

Or maybe you just want a sub-bass heavy remix of The Sugababes:

Converted?

Favourite DJs

The DJs that I keep an eye on within the offbeat techno (ish) scene are Ben UFO, Call Super, Objekt, Forest Drive West and Pearson Sound.

For minimal, I still have quite a long list – though some of them seem to release mixes rarely. They include: Barac, Jay Bliss, Rhadoo, Raresh, Priku, Matei Tulbure, Cristi Cons, Zip, Melodie, Margaret Dygas, Petre Inspirescu, Denis Kaznacheev, Roger Gerressen, Dubtil, Sascha Dive, Miss I, Nu Zau, Cabanne, Herodot…and plenty I have forgotten.

For more housey sounds, then: Dana Ruh, Ricardo Villalobos (yeah he plays house/techno mostly on his rare published sets), Julietta, Vera, Adam Shelton, Mr G, Madga, Maayan Nidam, Move D, ItaloJohnson, Cinthie.

Phase Fatale or Marcel Dettmann if I want something heavy. And no, Sven Vath plays wishy-washy crap nowadays.

Horse Meat Disco or Antal if I want some disco/beach kind of grooves.

Won’t see you on a dancefloor as I’m too old. Soz.