It’s therefore an absolute honour for me to announce that I will be warming up the dancefloor at their next party, the Fluffy Logic Autumnal Bumble, on Friday 21st October. For nearly a year I’ve been refining my music collection with this party in mind and I can’t wait to play some of these tunes out.

Fluffy Logic Autumnal Bumble flyer

At Fluffy Logic you get the whole package – an intimate dancefloor space with a carefully chosen sound system, amazing hand crafted decor, gorgeous visuals and projections, tasty refreshments to keep you going through the night, and the loveliest crowd you’re likely to find in London. And I haven’t even started on the music yet…

At this party I’ll be playing alongside some great talent: Asad Rizvi of the Reverberations Records label, Dusky (who have previously appeared as Solarity), and Toby Lyons – founding member of Fluffy Logic and the man with the musical vision.

No one gets to DJ without Toby and Hannah’s stamp of approval, so I was massively chuffed when they told me the demo I made for them was “amazing – exactly the kind of music we want”. You’ll be able to download the demo shortly after the event, so do check back here sometime on Saturday 22nd.

With all the excited word-of-mouth that has happened over the summer, the small number of tickets are expected to sell out before the party so make sure you get yours soon! And come and say hello after my set

Vintage Disco Patrick! My first 'proper' set at Planet Angel January 2004

And it’s quite appropriate that my first set in over a year should be for Planet Angel – my spiritual DJ home. I played my first ever ‘proper’ gig at this legendary club night in January 2004 at The Arches in London Bridge.

This July, however, I won’t be playing in a mental hot and sweaty club, but rather in the middle of a field in the countryside. Yep, Planet Angel have started doing their own festival.

The *Chilled* in a Field festival is much like the Planet Angel *Chilled* daytime indoor events that spawned as an offshoot from the Planet Angel all-night parties. They’ve always had a much more relaxed vibe where you could come and meet all the new friends you made at the party and get to know them better – much easier when you don’t have to shout over a massive soundsystem to be heard! Another aspect of *Chilled* was it’s family friendliness – babies, kids and teenagers could come along and get a taste of the party vibe in a safe and friendly environment. The music was of course more chilled too, but still bouncy enough that you could have a good dance before going home to bed at a reasonable hour

And so *Chilled* has now evolved into a festival format – expect all the same ingredients as *Chilled*, but – you guessed it – in a field. I missed out on the first festival due to being a bit of a grumpus this time last year – I was even asked to play but turned the offer down. But after seeing videos and photos from 2010, I thought this festival would be a sweet one to play. The site looks absolutely gorgeous – more than just a field, it’s surrounded by beautiful woodland where acoustic music, storytelling and other activities will be taking place. And it sounds like there’s loads going on here – as well as the usual bands and DJs there’s dancing workshops, good food, real ales, and even a sauna – to list just a few things. There’s a full list of festival goings-on at the official website.

The festival is quite reasonably priced at around £60-£80 for 3-4 days, and is even cheaper for infants, kids and teens.

I really hope to see some of you there, especially those parents and parents-to-be who may not have been getting out much lately!

My set will most likely be happening at some point on the Friday night. My set times have been confirmed as 22:00 – 00:00 on Thursday 14th, and 19:00 – 20:30 on Friday 15th. Come and help me make my DJ comeback in style

And if you’re still not convinced, I’ll leave you with a video that my friend Robert Jacobs made of last year’s festival. Fun times!

Chilled in a Field from Robert Jacobs on Vimeo.

I love Fluffy Logic as an event name. I see it as a play on the saying ‘fuzzy logic’, like when you put 2 and 2 together and get 5. There’s certainly no requirement for straight thinking at this party. As their flyer says: “talk nonsense, dance til dawn, it’ll be lovely”. And lovely it is.

Fluffy Logic LCD style needlework

I also dig the inclusion of the word ‘logic’, along with the LCD style lettering that has appeared on 2 of their flyers so far. To me, logic is quite an important part of dance music… It’s logic that drives most of the technology that goes into bringing dance music to us, whether it’s the synth that makes the sounds, the computer that records them, or the CD player the DJ uses on the night.

The music at both parties so far has been a good mix of different styles of House music – minimal, deep, tech, disco and even a bit of swing. Resident DJ Toby Lyons has done a pretty good job so far of lining up the DJs and programming our musical journey.

Aside from the music, another awesome element of the party is the decor – one piece of which is the amazing fibre-optic tree. A still photo wouldn’t do it justice, so I had to make a video of it. This tree is just the beginnings of a whole ‘fibre-optic forest’. I was helping decor artist Hannah Geller with some flower painting last weekend

Flower painting for the next party

In addition to the intimate main dancefloor there are 3 chillout areas, including the Diddlee Tea Room (serving ‘after-moon’ tea and all-night breakfast).

Asad Rizvi and Disco Patrick

Last time I got to meet DJ and producer Asad Rizvi. Asad has been quite a hit at Fluffy Logic – his tunes went down a treat at the first party, and he has been booked for every one since then! I’m looking forward to hearing him playing again this Friday, and will most likely be Shazamming every other track he plays

Take a look at some more of the Fluffy Logic photos.

The next Fluffy Logic is this Friday 20th May, and advanced tickets are only £6. See you on the dancefloor

Follow the Faun is quite possibly the most immense fun I’ve had while both a) leaving my clothes on, and b) not breaking the law!

It’s your chance to dance like nobody’s watching, to a soundtrack of unashamedly pumping house in a dance workshop led by Andy Black, aka The Faun.

Feel your inhibitions fall away as The Faun invites us all to follow his outrageous dance routines. He’ll give you simple ideas and inspiration that’ll have you creating your very own brand new dance moves, and remembering moves you’d long forgotten. The Faun had me doing things I didn’t know I was capable of!

All the while you’ll have fun interacting with each other in a way that often doesn’t happen on even the best dancefloors.

Be prepared to feel funky, cool, sexy, silly, and slightly risque at times, but most importantly get ready to have a bucketload of fun

The Faun will be leading one of his workshops at Blessed this Sunday 1st May 2011 – an all day music/dance/food event which will also be Andy’s birthday party – woohoo!

My sister and I had travelled to Brighton to see Iron & Wine live at the Corn Exchange, but just before we went in we saw a poster for a 2 hour live set by A Guy Called Gerald. We both know of this producer through a very early dance music track from the late 80′s – one I picked up on vinyl when I first started collecting records around 1999.

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

The track is of course his classic Voodoo Ray – an easy going, catchy tune with a typical acid house hook and some lovely Eastern-sounding female vocals. This is overlaid with strange shouty vocal samples that I’d never given much thought to, until I read the Voodoo Ray Wikipedia article. It turns out these are actually the voices of famous British comedy duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Well I never…

So we turned up for the opening night of seafront club The Tube (previously known as the Funky Buddha Lounge – I’m told that the clubs in Brighton change their names on a regular basis) and, as usual for clubs, the first thing I noticed was that it was ridiculously loud. I must be getting older, but I prefer to see it as my taste getting more refined. Anyhow, in went the earplugs, and we got started on the drinks – the first of which was free! We had already emptied a large bottle of Morgan’s Spiced Rum at this point, so we were in a pretty happy mood!

The second thing I noticed was the crowd – quite a few House-’n'-Garage type people, but no bad attitude, so all good. The warm-up DJ was keeping them happy with various bits of old-skool this and old-skool that.

Disco Patrick, sis and our new friend Dovydas

Our man Gerald graced the decks shortly after 1am and started playing what I had very much hoped he would – House music! You could see the mood of the dancefloor changing slowly – those punters who had wandered in off the seafront began to disappear, leaving the true House-heads behind. Of the few people I spoke to, all of them had come specifically to hear A Guy Called Gerald.

One guy we met called Dovydas was from Lithuania but living in Brighton, and a big fan of Gerald. A girl I got chatting to was there because… she was Gerald’s girlfriend! Surely his biggest fan and nice to see her on the dancefloor, not stuck in the DJ booth (as is sometimes the case with the DJ’s entourage…)

Speaking of the DJ booth, I had a peek inside to see what Gerald was working with. He had two (count ‘em) Macbook Pros, both running Reason software. I’ve always thought of Reason as production software, but obviously it gets used for performance too. Presumably he was running each laptop through a separate channel on the mixer, and using them a bit like they were two turntables. It was hard to see how much live tweaking and twiddling he was doing. I certainly didn’t see any physical control surfaces with knobs or faders in there, but he could have been using the mouse – fiddly as it is!

Sounds, colours and shapes!

The music itself was brilliant. Gerald took us through about 90 minutes of deep techno and tech-house. Me and the sister danced our socks off and there were quite a few times when I totally lost myself in the music and awesome lightshow (good work Tube!). I’ll have to search through his back catalogue to see if I can find anything that I heard that night. Naturally, at about 3am he dropped a remix of Voodoo Ray, and much cheering ensued!

Then he pulled out the Jungle and Drum ‘n’ Bass… a nice, unexpected treat! Things got really ravey at this point, and I decided to capture some of it on video. The footage I caught (see below) is almost exactly like what I used to imagine a rave would be like, back when I was too young to attend one. I think you get a good sense of the atmosphere

We came back to London the next day feeling rather satisfied with our long weekend. Big thanks to A Guy Called Gerald!

A Guy Called Gerald at The Tube, Brighton from Disco Patrick on Vimeo.

Sam Beam aka Iron & Wine

‘Iron & Wine‘ sounds like it could be a band, but it’s actually just one guy – a singer-songwriter from Florida named Sam Beam. He makes folk music – perhaps even what’s known as ‘alt-country’. Over his many albums and EPs he’s used a range of musician line-ups, from collaborating with Calexico, to his own ‘bespoke’ band, to being pretty much a one-man show by overdubbing himself on a multi-track recorder. Last time I saw him at the Union Chapel in London he was playing mostly solo with minimal accompaniment from his friends. When I heard he was playing again I jumped on a pair of tickets and very much hoped he would have a full band with him this time… which he did!

They played almost all my favourites, including a bit of a tear-jerker called Naked As We Came (Spotify, free download). I don’t know if I believe in ‘love’ but there are a few songs that sometimes make me think otherwise. This is one of them. It’s about a couple who know they’ll be together until one of them dies.

Iron & Wine at the Corn Exchange theatre

She says “if I leave before you darlin’,
don’t you waste me in the ground”.
I lay smiling like our sleeping children.
One of us will die inside these arms,
Eyes wide open,
Naked as we came.
One will spread our ashes ’round the yard.

Beautiful. Here are a few of my other favourite songs from Iron & Wine:

• Woman King – the track that started it all off for me. A rolling track with a bit of slide guitar. This was one of many free downloads from Sub Pop (the greatest independent music label in the world) that I acquired a few years ago.
• He Lays In the Reins – a lovely song about a trusty horse, a pretty stable-girl, and a few drinks after a long journey.
• Jesus the Mexican Boy – a song about being humbled in the face of selflessness.

Lots more free downloads at the Iron & Wine page on Sub Pop.

And after all that loveliness, here’s something to bring you back down to earth. Even at an Iron & Wine gig, there’s still time for some synth-porn – take a look at the curves on this little beauty I spotted onstage (identified as the Korg SV-1 Stage Vintage Piano):

Korg SV-1

Korg SV-1 up close

A great start to a long weekend in Brighton with my awesome sister. Stay tuned for more coastal escapades!

Disco Patrick and sis outside the Corn Exchange

Cut Copy

I’ve been telling everyone how awesome Australia’s Cut Copy are for some time now, so you can imagine my excitement when I heard they were coming to London.

For me, Cut Copy really capture the spirit of 80′s music, and their latest album Zonoscope is no different – the record is spilling over with synths, deep male vocals just like New Romanticists The Human League, and that well-produced sheen you got on 80′s pop records. The second single from the album is Take Me Over (Spotify, YouTube), a song about leaving your comfortable life behind and following your dreams… this seems to be a theme of the album, and something I’ve been thinking about doing myself! Listen and you will surely hear influence from two 80′s classics: Down Under by fellow Aussies Men At Work (Spotify, YouTube), and Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac (the similarity here is uncanny – Spotify, YouTube).

frontman Dan Whitford

A feat that Cut Copy are highly skilled at is what I call the “seamless indie-rock to electro-dance segue” – in other words, you can start a song and be listening to an indie band, and by the end of the song you’ll be listening to an electronic dance act. This is beautifully executed on their previous album In Ghost Colours on two tracks: Feel the Love (check out the vocoder on this one! Spotify, YouTube) and So Haunted (Spotify, YouTube). It’s for this reason that I usually introduce them to friends as “indie-electro” or similar.

Hands in the air

So it was with great expectations that I turned up for the show at the Forum in Kentish Town (where I happened to live for the first 3 years of my life – yet another 80′s throwback!) …and I can tell you that they did not disappoint! The atmosphere was great; Cut Copy obviously have a massive following and a lot of the crowd really got involved with plenty of sing-alongs and hands-in-the-air moments. They played almost everything I could have hoped for, even some tracks from their first album. The light show was also very good.

Most of their songs sounded very true to the albums, though to be fair they did have some backing tracks playing. This is a controversial subject, and one I will save for another post. For now all I will say is that whatever they may have lacked in being fully live was made up for by being in the presence of my favourite band and a few thousand other fans.

Cut, Copied and Pasted - two happy fans

Big thanks to my gig buddy for the evening and thank you Cut Copy, officially Disco Patrick’s favourite band!

This night was all about the music though, and DJ’s Cal Jader & Arias started things off nicely with a mix of flavours of Latin-American music, none of which I can remember the names of… trust me though, it was good! You can hear some of their mixes at Movimientos’ page on Mixcloud.com. The night was also seemingly about the alcohol, with a Peruvian liquor called Pisco-Peru being the special of the night.

Disco Patrick at Movimientos

Movimientos doesn’t belong in one venue as such, but this installment was at the Notting Hill Arts Club. The place has had a bit of a refurb since I was last there around 6 years ago, and now looks a bit less like a bank vault and a bit more homely. The atmosphere was also helped along by Movimientos’ own vibrant projections that really set it all off.

Movimientos projections

Live music came from Fernando’s Kitchen, a 6 piece band who describe themselves as a “fusion of Flamenco, North African and Latin sounds, mixed in with the modern day contemporary styles”. Now, I like to gyrate my hips from time to time, but I have to admit that when I’m doing it to authentic Latin-American music, surrounded by authentic Latin-American people, I can feel like a bit of a fraud. Thankfully, being the lightweight that I am, it only took one bottle of fine Peruvian beer to loosen me up a little and before I knew it I was at the front of the crowd giving those hips a workout. I think someone caught the moment on camera – it would be nice to see those photos! Fernando’s Kitchen were great, and got us involved in some crowd interaction, which I usually find a lot of fun

Fernando's Kitchen at Movimientos

Fernando's Kitchen at Movimientos

Speaking of the crowd, they were a good mix of ages, backgrounds and styles – just how I like it! No edginess, and no too-cool-for-school-ers. Just friendly faces

Sadly I had to leave before the 2nd act came on, what with work in the morning, but I had a fun night and I look forward to attending another Movimientos sometime, wherever it may be.