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Mixtapes & Radio Sessions
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Radio Soundhog Vol. 4 - The Offshore Tapes |
It's funny how life works out, sometimes. One moment I'm sitting at home, buggering about with other people's records for my own amusement. The next, I'm getting emails from people all over Europe asking me if I'm a DJ and, if so, would I like to go over there (wherever that was) to play for them. I'd have been stupid to say no to both questions. Before 2004, I'd played a grand total of one DJ set, and that was just playing tracks off a couple of portable CD players. I'd never used any proper DJ equipment. However, I've always been the type of person who doesn't know what he can't do...
2004 saw me play sets in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and the UK. Everything from basements to large clubs, ultra-trendy south London bars to the biggest outdoor festival in Scotland. By the middle of the year, I seemed to be getting pretty good at this DJing business... a few nights stick in the memory as being particularly wonderful, most notably my first visit to Budapest and a couple of nights in the Boujis club in Kensington where the place just went mental for three hours.
Radio Soundhog Volume 4 was intended as a promotional mix, but a lot of people said "it's too long, it needs to be 30 minutes maximum". Well, there's no way I could have done that, my sets were already becoming incredibly eclectic affairs and I wanted people to hear exactly what I was up to. There are a few tracks by other people in here - ones I can still listen to today as well as being floorfillers at the time. Roughly two-thirds of the set is from actual live recordings, augmented with some new ideas, and all knitted together in one evening sitting at the PC. An aural snapshot of a very happy time in my life. It couldn't last... and it didn't...
The "radio" device in the title was finally used to proper effect here, as I used some archive recordings of the pirate station Radio Nordsee International to pepper the mix into some sort of "concept"... RNI was active in the early '70s, about three years after UK law had been changed to outlaw the pirate stations. The station had a particularly rough lifetime - not only were they one of the few stations who had their signals jammed by the government but they also suffered some frightening physical moments as a result of underground 'business troubles'. Clips used in the mix are from when an attempt was made, by people 'working' for a rival station, to destroy the ship by starting fires in the engine room in 1971. It's a fascinating story from start to finish, and I strongly recommend reading up on it, both at rni220.nl and Dave's Den...
Smash@Mash - Bootystition
EMF - Unbelieveable
Kelis - Trick Me
Lemon Jelly - Rock
Beastie Boys - Check It Out
Nightmares On Wax - I'm For Real
Soundhog - I Feel You Really Caught Me On Edge ('04 Mix)
John Martyn - I'd Rather Be The Devil (Soundhog Re-Edit)
Blackstrobe - Italian Fireflies
Kid Unknown - Nightmare
Prince Po - Hold Dat
Sweet Exorcist - Trick Jack
The Prodigy - Girls
Boney M - Night Flight To Venus
Kelis - Milkshake
An Der Beat - !Knuf
Chicks On Speed - Wordy Rappinghood
Tom Tom Club - Wordy Rappinghood
Playgroup - Front To Back
Whitey - Leave Them All Behind
Sparks - Tryouts For The Human Race
XXX - Scratch [Soundhog Remix]
Tiga - Pleasure From The Bass [Joakim Remix]
Lionel Vinyl - Untitled Mix (Soundhog version)
Depeche Mode - Just Can't Get Enough
Soulwax - N.Y. Excuse
SCO Network - Toxic Rhythm
Outkast - Hey Ya
Hexstatic - Nancy's Boots
A-Ha - Take On Me
AC/DC - Back In Black
Nelly Furtado - Turn Out The Light
Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)