PO NA NA & SLIDE present
Wed 13 February
10pm-3am
ONLY £4 ENTRY
SICK RICK. THE EVIL HYPNOTIST
Q. INTERVIEWER: “Who killed the superstar DJ?”
A. ADAM FREELAND: “I hope I did…”
Of course, the above statements aren’t exactly true: in fact, in many ways, Adam Freeland epitomizes the term “superstar DJ.” A major presence on the international club/festival circuit for over a decade, Freeland continues to hold residencies at the best dancefloors around the globe (like London’s prestigious Fabric club), and recently made his third triumphant appearance at the renowned Coachella music festival. As well, Freeland joins the likes of Sasha and James Lavelle in being chosen to release the latest installment in the prestigious “Global Underground” mix series, Global Underground 032: Mexico City. Mexico City represents Freeland’s seventh commercially-released mix CD, following his successful compilations for the likes of Fabric and “Back To Mine", among others.
This is a rare UK appearance for Freeland, who now resides in Los Angeles, don't miss out!
SLIDE & TCT Music Present
At The Carling Academy Oxford
Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1UE
Tuesday 19 February
7pm-11pm
£15 advance
SLIDE, SIMPLE & ECLECTRIC Present
'FUSE'
At The Carling Academy Oxford
Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1UE
Friday 22 February
11pm-4am
£13 advance
Oxford’s burgeoning house and electro scene has been spear-headed by Slide, Simple and Eclectric over recent times, and they combine their respective talents and energies to form a brand new night, ‘FUSE’, over both levels of the brand new Carling Academy Oxford, with the launch night on Friday 22 February 2008.
13 years old and as strong as ever, ‘Slide’ has brought to Oxford the cream of the world’s electronic music talent over the last decade and more, including Groove Armada, Carl Cox, James Zabiela, James Lavelle & Simian Mobile Disco.
‘Simple’ have just celebrated their 8th year of throwing some of the largest parties in Oxford. The likes Erol Alkan, Annie Mac, Switch, Kissy Sell Out & Mr C have rocked it at their notorious venue, the ‘Backroom at the Bully’.
‘Eclectric’ has established itself as the midweek hangout for students into electronic music at their venues Love Bar & The Cellar, with the NME giving their slant; “Eclectric is the venue of choice for the cities brightest young sparks”. Their recent birthday party at the Academy had none other than Claude Von Stroke as the headliner.
The stellar line-up for the launch of ‘Fuse’, sees the AUDIO BULLYS bring their live show to Oxford for the first time. Their debut album 'Ego War' & follow-up, ‘Generation’ blended choice cuts of house, hip-hop, punk, soul & garage in a style reminiscent of Basement Jaxx and The Streets. Their biggest single to date, ‘Shot You Down’ emerged as a worldwide smash hit. The track featured the instantly recognisable vocal snippet of Nancy Sinatra from the film 'Kill Bill'. Expect to hear material from their new album, due out in the spring of 2008.
BOYS NOIZE describes his sound as, “like 4 times punching into a fried egg.” What he means by that is anyone’s guess, but if he’s trying to say “loud, brash, energetic, exciting electro punk” then he may just have hit the nail on the head. He’s released on labels such as Kitsune and Deejay Gigolos and remixed the likes of Bloc Party & Depeche Mode. This date is part of the Bugged Out 'Suck My Deck' debut album tour. Don’t expect this boy to quiten down anytime soon…
NIC FANCIULLI has become one of the hottest house and techno talents in the UK. Cutting his teeth at the excellent ‘Club Class’ in Maidstone, Fanciulli has gained massive respect from DJs across the spectrum for his unique take on house music. Production work on labels such as ‘Renaissance’ and his own label ‘Saved’ alongside extensive remix work and a gig calendar taking him all the way round the world make Nic a big draw wherever he goes. His stock has risen even further in the last two years, combining with Slide fave James Zabiela, and touring extensively their One+One show. The compilation CD that accompanied that tour was one of the biggest sellers of 2007, and their alliance is akin to Sasha & Digweed.
SLIDE's 'Very Good Friday'
At Carling Academy Oxford
Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1UE
Friday 21 March
11pm-4am
£10 advance
Described once as the Hunter S. Thompson of DJs, James Lavelle remains as individual a figure in contemporary music as he was as a teenager, when he first gate-crashed his way in with the genre-shattering MoWax Records. Now he divides time between his internationally-renowned DJ career, his UNKLE act with singer/producer Richard File, and a brand new independent set-up: Surrender-All, which combines music, fashion and art.
The DJing takes him to clubs like Womb in Tokyo and Fabric in London. UNKLE have just completed, ‘War Stories’, their third album after the international success of ‘Psyence Fiction’ and its follow-up, ‘Never Never Land’. And Surrender is a new creative centre that connects everything Lavelle is interested in – a record label, a studio, a clothing line.
MoWax was fresh, frenetic and freewheeling, spawning artists as diverse as DJ Shadow, LA Funk Mob, DJ Krush and Carl Craig. Equally, the label was involved in the young and upcoming eclectic and electronically influenced music scene which bred producers and artists such as Tim Goldsworthy, who developed into DFA and 3D from Massive Attack.
Lavelle helped to set-up clubs such as Blue Note, Fabric, Bar Rumba and The Scala (and was the first to ever do nights there), as well as The Gardening Club and Fridge (the latter being a place where at the age of 16, James became the youngest DJ to have a residency in London).
Lavelle’s act UNKLE began as a loose MoWax ‘supergroup’, originally started by James, Tim Goldsworthy (DFA Records) and Kudo (Major Force fame). Having released a number of singles, Tim moved to New York and Kudo to Japan after which James proceeded to record artist and friend DJ Shadow, of which his 1998 album ‘Psceynce Fiction’ recruited guests like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Beastie Boys’ Mike D, Badly Drawn Boy and The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft to an album of beat-heavy experimental beauty.
Trimmed down to a duo of Lavelle and singer/producer Richard File, UNKLE collaborated with director Jonathan Glazer on the soundtrack to his stylish gangster movie ‘Sexy Beast’. In 2002 they released ‘Never, Never Land’, an album which brought an electronic dimension to the sound. Ian Brown sang ‘Reign’. ‘In A State’, with remixes from DJ legend Sasha. There were contributions from Jarvis Cocker, Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, and Massive Attack’s 3D.
2007 saw the release of UNKLE’s third studio album, ‘War Stories’. There are a host of guest vocalists that appear on this album including Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), The Duke Spirit and 3D (Massive Attack). Lavelle makes his vocal debut on this album, singing on “Hold My Hand” as well as dueting with Richard File on “Morning Rage.” Rock icon Ian Astbury of The Cult lends his world-weary drawl to “Burn My Shadow,” the first single to be taken from War Stories. Built on the pulsating, insistent beats for which UNKLE are known, it ebbs and flows between foreboding and abrasiveness. In a marked departure from the previous two albums, most of the instrumentation on War Stories is played live.
This will be Lavelle’s secong Slide appearance after the sell-out in 2006. Make sure you don’t miss out, this is a rare appearance in amongst his worldwide UNKLE commitments…
SLIDE
At Carling Academy Oxford
Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1UE
Friday 25 April
11pm-4am
£10 advance
Slide resident from 2000 to 2002, James Holden returns after a 4 year gap to his old stamping ground in April!
James is far from your average DJ-producer. With his cant-be-arsed-to-make-an-appointment-with-my-hairdresser shaggy hair and vintage Judas Priest t-shirts (with authentic holes) he sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the clean-cut short-haired bloke DJs whose unremarkable faces adorn the pages of the dance music press. ("I dont trust anyone who is cleaner than myself!" jokes James).
Musically he is also a million miles from the faceless repetitive beats mentality of so many of his peers, much more likely to be listening to leftfield albums from the likes of Mogwai, Four Tet or Boards of Canada than the latest essential mix CD. James Holden is a young man plotting a course through the music world all of his very own, putting some personality back into dance music and refusing to stay in the pigeonholes where other people seem so keen to shove him.
If an artist like James hadnt been into music from an early age youd be seriously worried, so we shant bore you with the details, suffice to say it involved his dad teaching him piano, a man called Mr Draycott teaching him violin, an (un)healthy appetite for the music of Queen, early dabblings on his first proto-computer and the unlikely musical guidance of his A-level physics teacher towards all things electronic.
The stuff everyone is really interested in begins aged 19, with a track called "Horizons". Written during his summer holidays from his maths degree at Oxford University on a £500 PC and a piece of revolutionary music software called Buzz (a freeware internet download), this crossover anthem of the summer of 1999 propelled young James and his bedroom set-up into the top flight of dance music production. The rest, as they say, is history.
To this day, James' DIY studio set-up remains largely unchanged since those early efforts, bar a few computer upgrades here and there. Despite initial whispers throughout the establishment about analogue warmth, the days of the twenty grand studio entry level into the world of production were numbered. James had already opened the door for a new generation of talented young bedroom producer-punks who bolted after him, whilst those very same doubters are left scrambling to catch up to the digital revolution which threatened to pass them by. Meanwhile, James has taken his computer production to a whole other level, exploiting the full potential which the new software opens up and unleashing a life of its own where others merely try to recreate what you could do on conventional studio equipment.
"There’s always going to be these people who are going to say, 'You just don’t get that sound unless its analogue',"explains James. "And it’s just complete rubbish. You just get a different sound. And I personally prefer the sound out of a computer to the sound out of a load of rotting analogue equipment. You just need to know where to inject the life into it, and how to, and then the computer can become an instrument just like any other. Where I’m at now is trying to make my music feel less like a cheesy sequencer Lego building and more like I’m playing the computer like it is a guitar or something & more human and raw."
What James has created with this trusty PC is an edit-heavy hybrid sound all of his own, which crosses traditional genre boundaries and has found him fans in almost every scene. Holden tracks slot seamlessly into the sets of techno, trance, progressive and electro DJs alike. From pixie-trance to leftfield dance music, new wave house to melodic techno, the genre-classifiers have yet to find a label which accurately captures the unique yet universally appealing nature of Holden’s music. And although he has spawned many an imitator, Holden’s constantly evolving sound and rigorous attention to detail has been equalled by none.
To a music world overly obsessed by scenes, the James Holden success story reads like a catalogue of contradictions. 2003’s collaboration with vocalist Julie Thompson, "Nothing", was picked up by legendary UK house label Loaded, yet proclaimed by trance legend Tiesto to be his tune of the year. James has remixed everything from Crosstown Rebels electro-house to Positiva dance-pop.
James' own DJ sets embrace the same spirit of eclecticism as his productions, uniting his own tracks and remixes with acid house, techno, electro and down tempo melodies, as demonstrated on last year's groundbreaking Balance 005 mix CD. "Aphex Twin doing Ferry Corsten up the bum" is James' current (rather unsavoury) description of choice. On the borders of everything yet at the same time accessible enough to be slap bang in the middle of it all, Holden's own steadfast musical vision and his often unorthodox fusion of tracks which the purists have traditionally grouped into distinct genres have won him dedicated followiers the world over. One of a handful of young DJs who have been allowed to rise up the ranks in recent years whose age bears more relation to that of the majority of club punters, the coming year promises business as usual, taking in every corner of Europe, a tour of Australia and Asia and regular trips to the USA.
James' sets are always topped off with a huge helping of previously unheard fresh young production talent, many of whom have found a home on his Border Community label. In just one year the label has gained a reputation as a breeding ground for similarly free-spirited genre-benders, with every release fusing solid dance floor rockers with leftfield ambient interpretations and handy dj tools. "Border Community is my favourite thing that I do at the moment", says James. "It is really rewarding seeing the young artists we release go on to do great things." Names like Nathan Fake, Petter and The MFA are now following James lead and already beginning to leave their own unique indelible imprints on the production world. James is also keen to take his troop of multi-talented live acts and DJs on the road with him, bringing the Border Community road show to a town near you.
Still only 29 years old, James Holden now finds himself exactly where he wants to be. As the digital producer par excellence he is blazing a trail through as yet un chartered territory, showing those who follow in his wake how it can, and should, be done. As a DJ he gets to travel the world, surprising and delighting in equal measures, and enlarging his band of followers at every port of call. And at the helm of his own buzz label Border Community he is proving himself to be quite the A&R man, discovering like-minded souls to help turn his musical vision into reality and peddling something a little different to the record-buying public. Underlying the three components of the James Holden recipe for success is an unerring belief in his own vision and a refusal to do things the way others tell him they always have been done. He is well into the process of carving out a niche all of his very own, and is not about to let anyone stop him now. |
