Marc Reck

Aside from partaking in that great gigbeth fringe show last week, i’ve also had the opportunity to check out some more musical treats in brum over the last couple of week, so thats what will form this blog.

First up was Cogs first birthday at the hare and hounds, with their residents djs, their resident vj Blendstate, and special guest and brummy legend Mr Sir Real. It was a really nice vibe in there, and the specially erected “cog screen”and the birthday cake added nice touches to a thoroughly pleasant evening.

A few days later i went back to the hare and hounds to see Laura Louise perform. Orginally from New Zealand, she’s got some great tracks, and manages to create a full orchestral type sound using only a loop pedal, a flute, and her voice, which is very, very good. Check her out for yourself here, doing a rendition of Fat Freddies Drop

So the next thing was the Consider It Done with Mr Elephant Gigbeth Fringe show, with the multi talented John Mostyn, which was great fun, and from a djing point of view was especially good as i got to play a breaks set, a drum and bass set, jam with a live mc , and then play a bham opera type set for the last 2 hours! Loads of fun and a lovely crowd.

On the subject of the live jamming with the mc (which as a rule of thumb i rarely do), he was a lovely bloke/barman, and a really good mc, but it seems no matter how many people are dancing, and how much they know the tune (Roni Size/Brown Paper Bag), the mc stepping up seems to have the inevitable effect of clearing the floor!) Not the best for the mc confidence, but then it was a real mixed crowd, and gave me a perfect excuse to drop the proclaimers!

While i love “proper djing” in peak time clubs, theres a lot to be said for classic party tunes, and a lot of sillyness and connection can be had, making it easy to traverse the genres. Muppets to James Brown, Artic Monkeys to Queen Latifah, Quantic Soul to Happy Mondays, it was great fun, and a really reponsive crowd.

Anyway, i digress, brum the day after was good as it was drop beats not bombs, and it felt suitably celebratory now that bush is finally out. Boogie and the drop beats crew had once again gone to enourmous lengths to make the event into something special, and while i missed a lot of it, we did catch my two favourite beatboxers Bass6, and the incredible Mc Xander. (sorry about the sound quality)

And the fabulous correspondents (all in Custom Made Room by the way)

Expect to see one or all of the above at the next Mr Elephant, and i’m hoping we can get all the above to come play the next Project X Presents Show next year too.

One band i dont think we could get (at least not at our “all of us working for free stage”) is the inspiring Fat Freddys Drop, who played at the Bham Academy last friday. I’ve been getting more and more into them over the last few years, so it was great to see them in the flesh. I was pretty tired after doing the “shuffle dance” (for some unfathomable reason), and the singer seemed a little out of sorts, with no encore, but still their music is great! It was also nice to see our favourite landlord and local promoter/ dj Mr Adam Regan on that big ole stage warming up the audience with some quality tracks.

So thats been the last couple of weeks in terms of seeing some music in my favourite city. The rest of the time, i’ve been working on a huge reorganise of pretty much everything i have. This has included sorting through 2000 contacts, 1000 pieces of vinyl, millions of mp3s (it seems) and hours of video footage. On top of all the backing up and sorting out, i’ve also been putting into place a whole host of organisational “systems”, for want of a better word, based around gtd, in order to make way for some new arrivals to the studio.

More on that later, but for now, i’ll leave you with some footage of the end of Mama Matrix’s set (again apologies for the quality