Mark Hawkins

check this guy out… the sound quality isn’t so great, but I love the way he’s doing it…..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IADFYdM2g2Y&feature=related

You might have noticed I’ve been on a bit of a marathon search through the record racks, which has spilled over into two pages of blog posts, you can still get to my gig and release info quickly by clicking on these categories to the right hand side of the blogposts.. Please take the time to read through the record reviews/vinyl tips as I did spend the past 2 hours picking them out as thge cream of whats in the online stores at the moment.. I would love to go out and buy all these records, but as the credit crunch bites and other life responsibilities take precedent, I’m stuck with just checking them out online.. if you see your record reviewed here, and are feeling generous, please feel free to get in touch and send me a copy, it WILL get played out….

It’s become apparent as I was checking out new releases how many old harder techno producers and labels were now releasing minimal with an amazing lack of originality, in fact I’m not sure if it’s actually any worse than 10 years ago in some ways as maybe tribal loops have just been replaced by minimal bleeps, but the end result is the same.. I must say that Mark Broom should get an honourable mention here for NOT doing that and actually doing some of his most impressive (to me anyway) work to date.. nice one Mark! 

A lot of records that all sound the same, it begs the question to me, what is the motivation behind a lot of this music? A desire just to “stay in the game” by any means neccesary, even at the cost of musical integrity? I feel that electronic music is going the same way as prog rock did in the 70s, becoming a stale dinosaur, but we have nothing as dangerous or anti establishment as Punk was to blow out the cobwebs and start a musical revolution..

Some might say that Grime/Dubstep is as close as we get at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, but it seems that much of that kind of music has already become typecast and pidgeonholed. One thing that is apparent is that more and more people are making electronic music for themselves, but whilst the quantity has gone up, the average quality has gone down. Whilst I have nothing against anyone “having a go”, the ease with which one can release their own music online has created a deluge meaning that good music is getting lost in amongst the mediocre stuff..

Vinyl releases seem to becoming more and more conservative, trying to conserve dwindling sales, so whilst people are still considering these as the “Proper releases”, the music on them is rarely pushing things forward.. the most exciting stuff I’m hearing generally seems to have a old school flavour (I guess as these will always be sure fire hits on vinyl), the few bits that arn’t so old school are very few and far between…

The next revolution will be the death of vinyl, and I say this as I think it will level the playing field between so-called “proper” vinyl releases and net releases, DJs will be using devices like final scratch and serrato much more, allowing them to play much more of a variety of music than they can right now just playing vinyl.. I say this as I know of quite a few djs who only play vinyl, which in this day and age seems to be more and more limiting.. and it’s not doing my back much good either!!

I havn’t reported much on the UK gigs I’ve done recently, as I was left feeling pretty uninspired, especially when starkly contrasted with the pure energy of the Russian crowd in St Petersburg.. seems that in the UK, and many countries in western europe, people just want a bigger and bigger bassdrum, and a general soundtrack to their drug taking.. The shouts of “Harder, Faster” while you are trying to play something different leave me feeling pretty cold, and whilst I understand that a DJ should be there to entertain, playing lowest common denominator hard techno just to keep people who are off their head happy is really not in my book, I’d rather stay home and not bother… An Honourable mention should go to the Pure Techno guys in Hull, as despite the club getting closed by 11:30 pm, we still managed to have a blast, big shouts to the Pure techno guys & also to Steve Makaton for a pleasant evening drinking vodka redbulls….

I have a few gigs to announce soon, but they will come in due course…