Panda 2006. Photo from MySpace

Fancy seeing international techno hotshot Radio Slave tonight? Get yourself down to the Coalition. It’s not often you get a chance to see Matt Edwards play in Brighton – even though he’s from here his schedule is booked up with international clubs and festivals. We haven’t seen much promotion about this event but it should be pretty special.

Radio Slave Biog (From Rekids.com)

No matter what sounds you profess to be your music of choice, chances are, that at some point over the last five years, you will have got your rocks off to Matt Edwards.

As Matthew E he fashions club-based, dancefloor slayers. Under that aegis he’s updated the classic Chi-town, jackin’ sound beloved of house aficionados and layered it with fractured funk, belligerent, oddball beats and mechanical soul.

If Matthew E is all about the Saturday Night Fever, then, by contrast, Rekid is the slower, more deliberate, rhythmical funk of the mid-week mayhem. Its well-intentioned muscular intensity making it perfect soulful sustenance.

Quiet Village is something else all together. A collaboration with long-time musical sparring partner Joel Martin (a vinyl freak, like Mr Edwards, who works in esteemed auction house Christie’s pop department), it’s sample-based music which veers from drawn out disco-not-disco delirium to evocative, under-stated soundscapes.

Sea Devils – you keeping up at the back? – is undeniable electronic pop brilliance. Working with Tom from Cagedbaby, it’s the least niche of Matt’s projects and thanks to Sea Devils alluring pop dance grooves they’ll no doubt be shagging the upper reaches of the hit parade sometime soon.

Last, but by no means least etc, etc, etc, is Radio Slave. Perhaps Matt’s most instantly recognisable nom de guerre, thanks in part to his inspirational melding of Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head to New Order’s Blue Monday, this is Matt’s DJ moniker and the guise under which he completes his incendiary remixes and re-edits.

However, before such sonic schizophrenia gets you calling for the men in white coats, just feel the quality and consider Matt’s legacy. Fired by the first wave of acid house, Matt gained his musical spurs by partying to dance music that was just that: music you danced to, irrespective of tribal factions.

This was the raison d’être he acknowledged when he took to the decks, first at London’s legendary Milk Bar in 1992, then onto the, then, recently opened Ministry Of Sound and then to parties across the country, most notably in Wales – where he was a regular at free parties – and in Brighton, his home since 1998.

His love of re-edits, dance music’s oft-forgotten backbone, led Matt into the studio himself. His own re-edits and remixes, such as the aforementioned epoch-defining re-imagining for Ms Minogue, soon gave way to his own productions and since the floodgates opened there’s been no stopping the man known as, erm, Matthew E, Quiet Village, Sea Devils, Rekid and Radio Slave.

He’s released records for Skint, Soul Jazz, Classic, Whatever We Want, and he’s worked with fellow travellers, Belgium’s The Glimmers. If Matt comes up with another two projects he’ll have enough alter egos for every day of the week.

Psychologists would probably have a field day with him; mercifully, we don’t have to worry about any crisis of identity, we just get to keep on dancing.

www.deputamadre.co.uk
£12/£10 concession

04/07/09

Hush Your Beak presents

David Rodigan
(First Brighton appearance for 15 years!)

David Rodigan:
At the age of approximately 15, Rodigan began buying records leading up to his first date playing out at the age of 16 in 1967. The first arena for Rodigan’s DJ skill was a youth club playing to teenagers like himself. It was at this point in his life in 1968 that he acquired his well-known nickname of ‘Ram Jam’. This name stemmed from his signing on and signing off at events. Radio London gave him a shot in 1978 and He’s been on the air ever since, spending over a decade at Capital Radio before moving to Kiss FM. He’s clashed with every sound system of note, Stove Love, Kilimanjaro, Bodyguard and recently collaborating with dubstep heavyweights Breakage & Caspa, fueling his legendary status.
He may not be Jamaican born, but rodigan’s acquired everything else to
make his ascension to reggae royalty bona fide!

Check the vids..

David & Bob Marley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OT_IGRsULc&feature=related

Clash Round 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2T4eRSOd9A

The Father Of Clash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkrKgxc1-os&feature=related

The Original
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR0oQwrlZD8&feature=related

Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_gK9k86JQk

Earl Gateshead:
Earl was born in Gateshead, he heard his first Sound System when, on holiday in the Lake District, he went to Bradford for a night out, Bradford has a large West Indian population (unlike Gateshead) and Earl heard a Sound System working in a local bar and was blown away.

He began Djing in 1978 playing reggae between punk bands at The New Queens Head in Brixton.

Shortly afterwards Earl began his 20 year residency at The Dive Bar in Soho, operating his own home made Sound System. He soon joined forces with a larger Sound Armoury 89, and through the Early eighties the Sound played West Indian clubs and squat venues all over Britain. During this period the Sounds main MCs were Maxi Jazz and Mr C.

When House music came in 1986 the Sound were among the first people in England to play it. Organizing parties in London and abroad.

At the start of the nineties Earl became Saturday resident at the Blue Note in Hoxton in partnership with Bob Jones and was a regular guest at Gilles Petersons Far East nights.

He later started the worlds first Broken Beat night at Smithfields with Bugs In The Attic, I. G. Culture, and Phil Asher.

Ade Fakile at Plastic People then asked him to programme and D.J the now legendary Reggae Nights where Earl worked with Big Youth, Sugar Minott, Bobby Digital,Cutty Ranks, Junior Delgado, Adrian Sherwood, Little Roy,
and many others.

He became Big Youths and Dr Alimantados tour D.J.

Tickets: £10 in adv / MOTD
Available from: Resident, Rounder Records & Ticketweb.co.uk
Info: hushyourbeak@filthymedia.com Tel: 01273 683591

BRIGHTON COALITION 8.30 -01.00
(Please note its an early show as we know you all have work on Monday)

26/07/09

Doll and the Kicks - Photo by Mary Rhiannon Pryce

So time has come for me to write my first article for Brighton Fusion, a few days before our next Podcast goes live to our worldwide audience, which now regularly exceeds 300 listeners per show. This is all very exciting for me as I have had the dream to write articles about music for quite some time, but I have never had the portal available to me.

You might have noticed that there are a lot of bands in this beautiful sea-side city of ours and our show tries to highlight this as best as we can with over 90% of the music played on the last five shows coming from Brighton based bands.

There were times when bands, if they wanted to make it, moved to the big smoke and settled down in some small, filthy and overpriced house in, let’s say, Brixton. None of the major record companies ever sent their agents any further afield than the border that is the smoky ring of the M25. If you thought that your music was brilliant enough to deserve air time on the radio or nationwide sales of your albums, you had better got hold of some London gigs.

A lot of things have changed since these days and Brighton is making a big name for itself on the musical map. More and more bands decide to ditch their quest for a record deal and do their own releases. A brilliant example of this is Woodland Recordings which house such artists as The Great Park and The Diamond Family Archive. They press their own albums and they sell quicker than you can imagine.

Of course we do have bands from Brighton who are making it big. The Kooks for example who, even though they are not actually from Brighton, were based here and all met at Brighton Institute of Modern Music. The Levellers are another good example of home grown talent.

My insider tips for this year, should you not know about them already, would have to be /Passenger who, after a long tour in the States, are back in the studio to record the follow up album to their brilliant debut “Wicked Man’s Rest”, you can catch some of their b-sides on Penflick Podcast show #3 and #5. The second one is Doll and The Kicks. Doll and her band are playing tonight at the Brighton Coalition and it is free entry. Doors open at 10pm and DATK are on stage at 11pm, but get there early beacuse it is going to be a very busy night. My guess is that this gig will be one of the last small, and indeed free, gigs they’ll ever play. Their debut album is due for release in the near future and they embark on a massive tour supporting Morrissey starting in March. Myspace UK has also named them in their Top Ten Bands To Look Out For in 2009 list. If all goes well they will come in to the studio and do an acoustic session for us before they go out on tour and make it to super stardom. If you want a sneak pre-view of their upcoming single you can catch them on show #4.

Janice Long had them in for a live session on her show on Radio 2 just last week and my insider friends tell me that Janice is very excited about the band and that she was dancing around in the studio when the band played their songs.

Bands to look out for in the future are too many to mention, but never forget the brilliance of 12 Stone Toddler, Los Albertos, The Grams and Red Shark In Vegas. The latter which are doing a live session on the next podcast.

As always I would ask you to join our Facebook group, to receive regular updates about our show, and help us make the show even bigger and better than it has already become by sending invites to all your friends and send us suggestions for bands and for features for the show. For now, this is it from me, I am now going back to writing the score for an upcoming BBC show, then to sort out the playlist for Penflick Podcast #6 which will be aired next week.

/Milton

Penflick Studios/Penflick Podcasts

Click here to join the Penflick Facebook Group

Brighton Fusion has been running as an online magazine since 2004, starting our infancy with a flash-clunky site and music writers’ opposing penchants for electro, techno, breaks, free parties, experimental music and indie. Since the site’s formation, we’ve stuck to our guns, offering honest articles about Brighton events and nightlife. While other magazines / sites have business suits, corporate ownership and sushi, we have shared passion, cigarettes and meetings in pubs.

We now cover culture, technology and art, but we still keep music at the heart of everything we do – with the aim of telling you the inside scoop on going out in Brighton.