Last night we went to see Photek and Apparat at Kingdom. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of classic Photek, but that wasn’t meant to be. He has switched to producing house and techno & seems to be uninterested in drum&bass at all anymore. He kicked off his set by playing some bass-heavy electro house but then pitched the night down with some very slow, clunky 4/4 stuff for about 25 minutes. I saw the floor thin out and he must’ve noticed because he went right back to the big beat stuff. Overall the night was disappointing, but he’s still an excellent producer and a solid DJ so we still managed to have some fun.

Here are a couple of clips of some of his new stuff.

This is a free download of his “No Agenda” track from XLR8R.

Before Photek went on we dipped down to Plush to see Dara and Evol Intent for a few minutes. We weren’t able to stay long, but the club was rammed and those guys were killing it. Glad to see someone out there still enjoys drum&bass.

Tonight is the Official Hospital Records Showcase at Malverde. Some friends and I are going to try and get in the door, but the max capacity for the place is about 100 so we have a very slim hope. Not having conference badges or wristbands is going to hinder that, but we’ll give it a shot anyway.

Friday afternoon Boiler Room TV is hosting a party on the east side (in someone’s backyard!) featuring Hudson Mohawke, Lunice, Jackmaster B2B Oneman, Nick Hook, and Machinedrum. You can click the link above to watch the shenanigans live starting at 8pm CST.

Friday night Kenny Ken will be playing the Driskill Hotel. This is odd because the Driskill is a very swank, very old hotel downtown and I have no idea how drum&bass is going to go over in the “Victorian Room”…we’ll head down to check it out anyway so I can get my fix.

There will be other streaming events cropping up all the time so just search twitter for the hashtag #sxsw or google around and you’ll come across a bunch of stuff.

Here is another complete tape pack from 1997 that’s been making the rounds the last few weeks. The sound quality is very good to excellent on all the recordings and each recording has a wide variety of tunes from across the genre.

Highlights:
- The Kenny Ken set is surprisingly dark, especially in the latter half of the mix after he rinses Alex Reece’s “Pulp Fiction”.
- Hype is Hype…he was balls deep in the jump-up sound and just does his thing.
- Krome is kind of interesting because of the novelty (best known for The Slammer). He was not a regular DJ on any of the bigger recordings from this time period, but fits in with an all jump-up mix. I did like hearing Special K’s “Danger” though!
- Dr. S Gachet’s set is easily my favorite…he plays a bunch of super dark tech-step (ala Penny Black & No U-Turn). Despite their popularity now it was rare to play a lot of those records out to big clubs and hearing this mix was a nice change of pace.

DJ Sets:
DJ Hype
Kenny Ken
Mickey Finn
Krome
Randall
Ray Keith
Dr. S Gachet

MCs are Rage, Junior Red, and Ragga, but you don’t hear a lot of them. It sounds like they were turned down, or off, during most of the night. What you do hear is pretty solid and none of them ride over the mix.

Planet London 1997

Sound Quality: excellent
Filetype: zip/mp3
Size: 544mb
Bitrate: 179k

Listen to this one with plenty of low end.

“Ministry massive watch as we rinseout!” – GQ

**Note…I’m getting reports that the set on Soundcloud has no bass in it, if that’s the case download the original from the DOWNLOAD link just below.**

AWOL Live in London 1995 by westheoperative

DOWNLOAD

Tracklist:

1 DJ Biggs – The Hunter
2 Splash – Babylon
3 Northern Connexion – Reel Funk (A.W.O.L. V.I.P. Mix)
4 P-Funk – P. Funk Era (V.I.P. Mix)
5 Randall & Andy C – Sound Control (A.W.O.L. V.I.P. Mix)
6 Cool Hand Flex – The Melody Madness (V.I.P. Mix)
7 Dark Man* – Dis Sound Ruff
8 Kenny Ken – The Pied Piper (A.W.O.L. V.I.P. Mix)
9 D.R.S. – Everyman (A.W.O.L. V.I.P. Mix)
10 Dr. S. Gachet & Audio Maze – The Dreamer (DJ Aphrodite V.I.P. Mix)
11 Prizna – Fire (Dr. S. Gachet V.I.P. Mix)
12 Dr. S. Gachet & Audio Maze – Touch My Toes (Dream Team V.I.P. Mix)
13 Aladdin – Mash Up Yer Know (V.I.P. Mix)
14 Mickey Finn* & Aphrodite – A.W.O.L. (V.I.P. Mix)
15 L Double – Da Base 2 Dark (Mickey Finn Special Mix)