”This mix is an example of some of my favourite tracks from the last couple of years and has no fixed genre, mixing together different styles is the beauty of DJ’ing”

Download it

For those of you who don’t know Zekkas Ten is Liam Turner, he runs a lot of stuff on this station and presents the IF show with Gemma, but when he finds time and isn’t making excuses he does things like this.

Mixing crackly vinyl with CD’s, as they allow more room for creativity, he manages to traverse LA Bass & Beats from the likes of Flying Lotus, Noise from Ben Frost and Fuck Buttons, Hardcore from No Age and some Post-Punk while also finding room for more centralised 4/4 music. Liam loves Techno but appreciates that not everybody else does ” I’ve always loved Techno, Detroit Techno in particular, they’ve been doing it right for so long, but unless it’s a Techno crowd it can be wasted and I understand when people don’t feel it, so with this mix I just wanted to put together some great, great music, no matter of style or tempo and blend it together, you’ve gotta keep others and yourself for that matter, interested”

For a look at the tracklist you can click here, but don’t ruin the surprise.

To contact Liam for Bookings etc:  liam@differentclassradio.co.uk

Ben Frost – Theory of Machines

Flying Lotus – GNG BNG

Darkstar – Need You

Qoso – Jurassic Park

The Fun Years – I Am Speaking Through Barbara

DJ Shadow – Enuff

Ital Tek – Archaic

Evil Nine – Icicles

The Field – The More That I Do (Foals RMX)

No Age – Everybody’s Down

Fuck Buttons – Sweet Love For Planet Earth (Andy Weatherall RMX)

Joy Division – No Love Lost

Zekkas Ten – Gone Into The Land

Future Islands – Little Dreamer (Jones RMX)

I think that I’m probably miles behind regarding this but over the last few months I have been getting really into Podcasts. I have found some gems so thought I would spread the knowledge!

On the Electronic Tonic I have played tracks from the likes of Redshape, 2562, Modeselektor, Ikonika, Kode9, Trentemoller, FaltyDL, Instra:mental etc not realising that there are free Podcasts available from all of these artists. Amazing.

Many of these guys I haven’t seen live in the flesh, so until I rectify this, the Podcasts provide an excellent way of knowing what their DJ sets would sound like.

Here are the pick of the bunch I have found so far (apologies, they are all electronic but then that’s really no surprise is it?):

Autonomic

Maybe the best of the lot; 12 “layers” that can be downloaded from the above link. Put together by Dbridge and Instra:mental, each layer features an ‘Influences’ section and then a mix. Absolutely brilliant music, these guys are seriously talented producers.

XLR8R

Past mixes have featured Floating Points, Ikonika, Nosaj Thing, Kode9, Cooly G, Modeselektor, Martyn, Trentemoller and as I write they have just put up an excellent ‘cast from FaltyDL, a guy I have bigged-up loads on the Tonic.

Whitenoise (Dave Clarke)

What can I say, two hours of the Baron playing techno every week………

Resident Advisor

Got to be on the ball with these, online for three weeks and then gone; 2562, Carl Craig, Starkey, Thomas Fehlmann, Surgeon, Erol Alkan, Redshape have all done ‘casts.

FACT

Past podcasts from Autechre (!!!), The Black Dog, and current one is Marcel Dettman. Tends to feature more “out-there” artists.

Fabric

London club have offered ‘casts from FourTet, Surgeon, Mad Professor, Andy Weatherall and loads more.

Hotflush

Podcasts from Scuba’s label

I’ve only just scraped the surface, if you know of anymore worth checking out please let me know!

Electronic Steve x
Stephen@differentclassradio.co.uk

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So today is National Record Store Day and what did you do to celebrate?  I awoke at 6am groggy after one too many rum and ginger ales on a sofa in North London. Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I made my way to Rough Trade Records to spend two and a half hours queuing for the Blur record, ‘Fool’s Day’; limited to 1000 copies, in the whole world! On arrival I was 25th in the queue, someone mentioned that the store had 50 – 70 copies; I should be fine.

The queue was a great laugh – let’s face it, people who are mad enough to get to a record store at 7am to buy a 7” are going to be sound – it all adds to the event. It reminded me of when I queued for 6 hours on a freezing January morning as a teenager with my Dad to get tickets to see Blur play at Southend, or the time queuing to get in to the closing night at the End nightclub in London – all little adventures that I will never forget, moments of excitement shared with strangers queuing. We were all concerned though, maybe we’d all have to frantically search around the shop to find the record, and by which time……maybe they had fewer copies, perhaps only 24….

In the end they gave out paper tokens and I got one, pretty easily. I was concerned that perhaps they’d made an error, perhaps giving out too many. By the time the store opened at gone 9am the queue was down the road and around the corner, easy over 200 people. Amazing.

Inside the store it was carnage, for those unaware – there weren’t just Blur records up for grabs. A Flaming Lips record was ridiculously popular, as was a Stones’ record. People were grabbing records left, right and centre. Records fell on the floor, people were getting squashed – madness.  In the end I left with Beatles’, Hendrix, Stones’, Babyshambles’, Gorillaz’s records limited to 1000 copies in the UK, a Factory Records’ release limited to 750 and the golden prize, ‘Fool’s Day’ by Blur. I am one of only 999 other people in the whole world who own it, but not only that (and more importantly) it’s a new Blur track, a band which I have always loved and cherished. People said I was crazy, even sad – but then I’ll never forget this morning and every time I ever play this record I will tell the story. Well worth having a great time in a queue for 2 hours in front of a record store.

Happy National Record Store Day!

Electronic Steve x

stephen@differentclassradio.co.uk

Last Friday was Good, Good Friday and a good gig, we welcomed Drum Eyes, Angrydan, Kurtz and Victoria & Jacob.

With the day off to prepare it helped with our preparation but not with an early influx of people, Gem and I sat there at 9:15 like school kids in an empty classroom waiting for a telling off, but with a sudden rush  nerves were settled and Victoria & Jacob took the stage, Victoria has a great voice which becomes even more apparent live; bright, powerful and guided superbly by Jacob’s electronic backdrop, a bright future awaits.

Recent years, to me, has seen slim pickings for aggressive guitar bands, with the likes of Paramore and Lost Prophets often being described as punk or hardcore bands it’s always going to be a battle to find decent new ones, welcome Kurtz, they took the stage and from the first moment stated intent, playing through a flurry of drums and baritone guitar these lads from Wakefield play with hurt. No vocals just powerful string play and individualist drumming, the crowd wanted more.

There is a reason you ask people back for more live shows, maybe a few, one being the music, obviously, but what also helps is people that are good to work with, reliable, positive etc. Angrydan personifies this and happens to be pretty decent live, he’s ditched the laptop in place of a sampler and visual edge and it’s added to a great show, a true modern one man band with a big glitchy sound that while staying interesting never strays from a poppable melody.

Drum Eyes were put onto me by Digby as a band that had to be seen, so we put them on, they filled the stage with boxes, gear and people, two drummers driving the sound with a bass so deep I doubt I’ll get that range back in my ears, most people loved them and a few wanted their money back, just the way I like it!

Me and Gem made a big decision this week, we decided to go bi-monthly with the shows, it was always meant to be a part of DCR but it’s taken over, I never wanted to be a music promoter and I still don’t, I just want to see and be involved with good bands, so when I couldn’t find time to do my show something had to give. The next IF show will be mega.

Next show June 11th – Bardens Boudoir – Line up to follow !

We have  a limited number of tickets to give away to our keen listeners, just be one of the first to email liam@differentclassradio.co.uk and show your support, in return we’ll give you FREE entry to this Friday’s gig at Bardens Boudoir with Drum Eyes, Angrydan, Kurtz, Victoria & Jacob and Zekkas Ten. It’s that simple!

Along with the current push to save BBC 6 Music, there’s also a very important campaign being fought to stop the Shoreditch club Plastic People from being closed by the police.

Even though it is tiny it has one of the best sound systems in the county and is increadibly important as a home to the kind of forward thinking music we play on Different Class Radio. It has hosted nights such as FWD>>, Bash and CD-R. Producers such as Four Tet (anyone notice a song called Plastic People on his new album), The Bug, Kode9 and Erol Alkan have all played there.

The most up-to-date info about the situation can be read here but it seems that the reasons the police have given to shut it down are very poor.

To find out how you can help the club have a look at this Facebook group or sign this petiton, which will be given to Hackney Council.

Digby

Here’s looking back at a great gig on Friday, I must say I was rather humbled by how many people turned up,I didn’t know at which point to start enjoying myself but that comes with the territory I suppose.
It was a busy day at DCR, this time I think we got the DCR brand over a bit better i.e it was there!  But we got the word to people, something we’ve missed before. The musicians were great, Tall Ships missed sound-check, Pevin Kinel inspired in a solo act full of layer upon layer of swirls, glitch and pleasant/un-pleasant vocals, great stuff.  So Tall Ships turned up about ten minutes before they went on, line-check PLAY! You wouldn’t have noticed, they blew the room away, it’s funny because physically they possess nothing more than your average guitar band but to hear their sound and watch them play you understand there is something not only different going on but fucking good as well ! They should be back for main support later in the year, they need more time ! We didn’t want to fill the slot with any one for the sake of it, I’m glad Talons dropped out this time because it changed the course of things.
Chik Budo were a solid and funk-driven support band that lapped up the audience and bounced the deck, a shame I couldn’t catch all of them. Three Trapped Tigers were everything we wanted them to be, original, heavy and angry! People too easily compare them to another certain band but I think they possess an original sound and instead of standing in someone else’s shadow they piss over it in the sun.
Gold Panda spun and surprised with a mixture of bounce and classic for the good and the hard before Zekkas Ten rounded things down and the sound of
Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain played host to the end and 3:30am.
If you want to look at some pictures they can be found here

On March 5th the Electro legend Radioactive Man will headline for us at Bardens, you will never have heard anything quite like this mans dexterity and true Electro godness, this is proper electro like mum used to make with a big kick and groove that shakes the floor, this will be amazing ! Also playing with us on the night will be The wonderful Sonic Tramp, The Monroe Transfer, Still Corners and dj set from Zekkas Ten.

Cheaplist: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/71532

See you there ! ! !

thanks,

DCR

The Brighton band Tall Ships will replace Talons on Feb 5th, we did’nt want to replace Talons with any old band just to make up the numbers but we were recommended Tall Ships and we’re happy to welcome them on our night.

http://www.myspace.com/tallshipsfromfalmouth