- music -
Mixtapes & Radio Sessions
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BBC Radio Wales Mix |
I'd never listened to BBC Radio Wales in my life beforehand, but I was contacted by presenter Adam Walton in the middle of 2002. It turned out he'd played "52 Scrubs" a couple of times, and was sufficently interested in what I did to offer me a session for his show. My original intention was to do a few bootlegs and leave it at that, but by December when I'd finally got things sorted it had become a continuous 34 minute mix - the first longform project I'd ever undertaken.
It was important to me to make it more than a load of tracks shoved together, and only a couple of parts of the mix already existed as finished (or semi-finished) tracks. As soon as I thought I'd got it finished, another idea came into my head which resulted in a lot of fiddly work to reorganize everything (hence the distinct speeding up after the "High Voltage" section). Not easy, as it was all done in a combination of Sonic Foundry Acid V2, Cool Edit Pro and Amiga-style tracker software on a Cyrix 233 based PC (remember them?) and a pair of headphones from a Aiwa personal stereo.
I played additional bass and keyboards on some parts (particularly on the backing track for "What About Us"), and threw in some parts of 1970s government Public Information Films, The Young Ones and the '70s BBC Cymru interval music (by John Baker of the Radiophonic Workshop... I don't think anyone else remembered it, sadly). The Macy Gray/PIL track was badly mixed but caught the attention of John Lydon, who gave it a thumbs up (or something close to that, anyway). A nice moment, that - as was managing to get the Pink Floyd guitar solo in there. Adam played the result on his show three times in the end. Now I talk bollocks about old records most weeks on it. Who'd have thought, eh?
BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Troes Y Garreg
Faust - Why Don't You East Carrots?
Kenny Everett - speech from 'The Kenny Everett Video Cassette'
Rare Earth - Get Ready
Speech from 'Audio Fidelity' demonstration record
D12 - Purple Pills (vocal)
The Young Ones - All The Little Flowers Are Happy
Public Image Limited - Public Image
Macy Gray/Fatboy Slim - Star 69 (vocal)
The Soundtrack Of Our Lives - Nevermore
Craig David - Fill Me In (vocal)
John Gorman - speech from 'OTT'
Cat Stevens - I Think I See The Light (piano)
Brandy - What About Us (vocal)
Brian Wilde - speech from 'Frisbee' P.I.F.
The Wildbunch - Danger! High Voltage
Yazoo - Don't Go (vocal)
Pink Floyd - Money (guitar solo)
LCD Soundsystem - Losing My Edge
Kelis - Caught Out There (vocal)
Donna Summer - I Feel Love
The Kinks - You Really Got Me
Rockers Revenge - Walking On Sunshine (vocal)
The Rapture - House Of Jealous Lovers
Afrika Bambaataa - Funky Heroes (vocal)
Basement Jaxx - Just One Kiss (vocal)
The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
Soulsearcher - Just Can't Get Enough (vocal)
ELP - audience noise from 'Pictures At An Exhibition'
ZZ Top - My Mind Is Gone
Public Enemy - Shut 'Em Down (vocal)
The Young Ones - All The Little Flowers Are Happy