As promised, here’s the demo I made for Fluffy HQ prior to my warmup slot. I’ve called it Fluffy Beginnings. You can stream it via Mixcloud.

I may update this page with a download link at some point – let me know in the comments if this is something you’d like…

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

I once had a very short, intense relationship. It was awesome for one night and then pretty much went downhill from there! This song reminds me of the good bit.

The Thermals are an awesome punk pop band from Portland, Oregon, USA. I guess they sound a little bit ‘emo’ at first, but don’t let that put you off – they do it tastefully! They are yet another band I discovered through the best record label in the world, Sub Pop, who’s website has a free download of A Stare Like Yours.

I saw the Thermals live earlier in 2011, though I’ve yet to blog about it.

I also recommend this track, Never Listen To Me. It’s taken from The Thermals’ most recent album entitled Personal Life. You can hear Personal Life on Spotify.

If that’s left you feeling blue too, then have a listen to one of Little Dragon’s more upbeat songs: Looking Glass. This tune was the first of their’s I ever heard. This unofficial-looking video is actually on Little Dragon’s official YouTube page.

I found this track while searching for Beck tunes on eMusic. It’s fairly typical of Beck, but there’s more to it than first meets the eye… (or ear…)

It’s from Dimension Mix, a cover album of songs from Dimension 5 Records. The songs were originally written in the 60′s and 70′s by a duo named Bruce Haack and Esther Nelson, electronic music pioneers who primarily wrote for children – hence a lot of the songs are wacky and fun. The album introduced me to another couple of bands I now also like: The Apples In Stereo, and Oranger.

If you’re in the UK you can listen to the whole of Dimension Mix on Spotify.

I also just found a cool animation for Funky Lil’ Song made by Ross Harris and Joel Fox - nice!

I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful.

It’s sad that this sort of attitude is not only accepted in music, but also respected by so many people around the world (this song hit number 1 in several countries). Akon is a wally, and David Guetta is a disgrace to House music. That is all.

To get started, go and ‘like’ the 30 Day Song Challenge community page, and read the rules to get each day’s prompt. Then use your Facebook status updates to share your songs. You can encourage friends to join in by including the link in your updates (tip: type @30 and hit Enter).

Let’s kick things off with day 1: your favourite song. Talk about starting with a difficult one! Are we talking ‘now’, or ‘all-time’? The Disco Patrick LastFM charts would suggest a few different tracks, based on play counts over the last 7 days, 3 months, 6 months, and so on. What this doesn’t account for is all the music that my LastFM account doesn’t know about, i.e. the dance music that I DJ with but don’t play on the iPod. The Disco Patrick Spotify profile tells a different story too.

It’s a tough choice, but narrowing it down to ‘favourite song right now’ makes it a bit easier, and that makes it ‘Take Me Over’ by Cut Copy, who are also my favourite band right now. I went to see Cut Copy earlier this year and they played this song then. It hasn’t failed to put a smile on my face yet, and it makes me bounce around in my chair at work

Enjoy, and see you tomorrow!

Cut Copy – Take Me Over

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!