Marc Reck

With all the xmas madness i still havent blogged about what a great experience this was. (New Year’s resolution is to get a lot more active on this site!)

For now here’s a little footage that Pyn caught of the great dancing from the huge cast. Ages from 15 – 65 so it was a seriously mixed bag of genres all thankfully went down really well.

There’s also some more pics here

Hope you all had a great xmas and here’s to a big 2010 for one and all.

This copied from our Mr Elephant website

For this month’s Live and Free at the Adam and Eve we saw a very special concert with two of the finest midlands artists, a great chillout dj and a some special guests

Rich Batsford celebrated his 40th Birthday as well as his debut UK album and album relase and peformed a great crowd pleasing set with some new material and 2 special guests. Great talent and brilliant audience rapport. If you havent already head on to his website and get yourself a copy of Valentine Court. You wont be disappointed.

Free Control were up next with their first Birmingham appearance, and they were quite simply awe inspiring. The room was packed with people and like most mr elephant gigs, there was a wide range of people. Aside from the roaring response during their set, they also were congratulated by so many people throughout the night, they are already wanting to come back. Big shouts also to some truly inspired live visuals from The Lab (as he’s the resident visual maestro with Free Control, and their very cool management.

On the decks this month there were 3 great sets from Mr Elephant regulars. Mark Smallman, Vj Chromatouch and our resident Marc Reck. The room was still dancing at closing time, but despite the clocks going back we didnt get an extra hour.

Next month (Nov 28th) we are well excited to be welcoming the return of Munch Break and their home cooking djs back and Mr Elephant favourites Jam Jah will also be returning.

This copied from our Mr Elephant website

Mr Elephant Presents – Party Rockin’ Mammal Sessions 1st Birthday – 2nd October 2009

The Party Rockin’ Mammal Sessions have become synonymous with playing floor filling underground dancing music, guaranteed to make your tail feather shake, and a reliable way to find some of the best underground djs in the city.

Celebrating it’s 1st birthday, and final party at the Bulls Head, great vibes were in full effect, with balloons, kazoos (& those lighty up things) adorning a lovely and well up for it crowd, whilst superb sets were thrown down with celebratory style from Marc Reck, VJ Blendstate, DJ Lopan, & The Beat Suite, all of which kept the birthday mammals stomping with a dancefloor journey through hip hop, glitch-hop, funk, breaks, drum ‘n’ bass and jungle!

New residents, The Beat Suite, are a Birmingham-based duo, who can scratch, genre hop, and rock the party, joining the Mr Elephant collective at the 2nd Cinephonic. Comprising of Skeleton and Dolhasz, these two DJs began their journey at the venue filling (and much missed) Open Beats events alongside Skeleton’s residencies at Trigger. Now they host their own radio show live on rhubarb radio every Wednesday at midnight, and watch out for big things from the new 4 way partnership in 2010.

DJ Lopan was welcomed back with his record bag full of party breakbeat, and dirty electro, with some fine turnatablist skills, alongside fellow resident VJ Blendstate who delivered without doubt the finest visuals yet seen at the venue.

whilst resident sock-rocker Marc Reck once again brought his magic to the turntables with a massive crowd pleasing breaks and drum and bass set,

followed by The Beat Suite’s 2nd set of the night with some huge jungle which set the place on fire.

One of the 4 regular nights from the Mr Elephant collective, the next Party Rockin’ Mammal Sessions will be on Saturday 14th November. Sadly saying farewell to the Bulls Head, but happily taking up a new Saturday night residency at the Hare & Hounds, where it will be on rotation with Cinephonic every 2nd Saturday of the month (though the next Cinephonic will be on Friday Dec 11th for a xmas movie mashup!)

Look out for other nights belonging to the Mr Elephant family including Live and Free @ the Adam & Eve, (great live music til 4am for free!), the return on Intermix in 2010, the bi yearly festival style events, and of course the Mr Elephant radio show live on www.rhubarbradio.com every Monday evening from 6pm – 8pm.

More photos of the night can be found here

This copied from our Mr Elephant website

After kicking off to a great start with Quantic back in June, Cinephonic well and truly settled into its groove with it’s second outing this month. It was a monster weekend with the Mr Elephant team also ramming the bull’s head the night before with a funk flavoured Party Rockin Mammal Session. A little sleep later and we’re back again at the Hare and Hounds for a very different animal.

Video by Jack Brabant

As always with Cinephonic we base the visuals of the night around a theme. This time around it was all about the road movies. Marc Reck opened us up with a great bit of chilled trip-hop, the room nicely filling up to the warm sounds of artists such as Kruder & Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation & Barry Adamson.

Mr Vj Blendstate was on the light fantastic, craftly mixing up some killer clips from Thelma & Louise, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103074/ David Lynch’s lawnmower powered movie “The Straight Story” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166896/, and the classic Easy Rider http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/ as the pace picked up ready for our special guests.

Rhurbarb Radio favourites Skeleton and Dolhasz perfectly translated their radio show ‘The Beat Suite” http://thebeatsuiterhubarbradio.blogspot.com/ into a live environment. Covering a massive range of genres just like a certain resident of ours loves to do, the experimental pair seemed a perfect match for Marc and the night.

The Beat suite’s 1st set saw some great scratching from Skeleton & some seamless blending from Dolchasz. Taking it from the trip hop into the hip hop and building up into choice dubstep and big room breaks, their style, vibe and mixing was 2nd to none and kept the tension building and the party rockin vibe flowing!

Despite the soaring temperature the place was nice and full by 11:00 and our DJ’s responded accordingly cracking the tunes up and getting everybody moving. The visuals hit overdrive with some feedback powered cliff driving, motorcycle acrobatics, and Lawnmower action for good measure.

Midnight came and it was time for Marc’s 2nd set. Starting from breaks and switching it up with each track, it seemed our resident was looking for what was the crowd wanted in order to set the place off.

After breaks, a little swing, it was the huge bite from the liquid drum and bass which set the place on fire and took us into a great hour of crowd pleasing jungle & drum & bass!

Blendstates visuals were creating a filmic visual narrative that bought the cinema to the dancefloor with impressive skill and inspiring imagination! Skeleton & Dolchaz took to the decks for their 2nd set and displayed why they are two of the moste versatile djs in brum, effortlessly jumping from jungle to drum and bass, from breaks to dubstep, dropping in some cheeky numbers and keeping the floor locked and jumping all the way through.

Massive thanks to all those who came out and created a truly lovely vibe creating a proper night to remember. Also special thanks the venue for staying open an extra half hour allowing our DJ’s a unanticipated B2B set at the end!

Cinephonic will return on the 10th October with details to follow soon. If you’d like to keep posted automagically, please subscribe to the rss, or join the facebook group (invites for each event)

Saturday just gone i got the opportunity to warm up for the Ez Rollers along with Dj reaction and Funkbox. Was a cool gig, and a nice launch party for the Get Em Events strand of the Night Times.

Funbox duo Roy Roastbeef & Richie Re-issue were up first with a superb selection of funk, and with Roy sporting his brand new hat.

Host of the eve Ric aka Dj Reaction also played a superb selection of tracks, from smooth liquid through to big phatness and set the scene perfectly for the ez’s.

And the headliner Ez Rollers were on good form, with a good dj set from Alex, and Messy Mc and Lady Roller with nice style and great vocals

I had a great set too, building up a jazzy and liquid selection through to more big room tracks to a great crowd. Few people asked for track ids so i’ll update this post with what was played.

I recorded a bit of the set and a bit of ez rollers for the radio show, so if you fancy checking it out, its here (click on aug 3rd (split into 2 parts) I’ll post it via soundcloud when recording has come through

Or for the more visually inclined, here’s a little bit of video of their tough at the top track

Every last thursday of the month, me and Vj Blendstate get to play in the lovely back bar of the Hare & Hounds. He plays visuals and i play music, and its a nice environment to play the more downtempo side to the collection.

Free entry as the poster says, and musically ranges from afrobeat, trip hop, etc all the way through to nu-swing, funk and even a little jazzy drum & bass when people to start to their groove on.

It’s diverse and to suit the mood anyway, and a nice testing bed for new music. Basically a couple of monkeys in the back bar, hence the name. Here’s a pic with an added cow

I’ll post the tracklistings now i’ve worked out an easy way to do it, and we should have a special guest coming down to play some of his favourite downtempo tracks.

Here’s a little bit of video from Blendstate’s visuals at the end of the one in April. Music is Dub Fx who played at the Mr Elephant 2nd Birthday. You can buy his music from his website. Most recommended

This copied from our Mr Elephant Website

Settling nicely into its new monthly slot Mr Elephant’s Party Rockin Mammal Sessions, saw Dr Pepperspray joining our residents for a Moseley Festival special. A hot day, so took a while to fill up, but as the sun set, the basslines kicked, until a big singalongafinale and an expected heartwarming comment.

Long running DJ and producer Dr Pepperspray demonstrated his unique diverse style & sound building up through about 10 different genres of music and picking up the pace with each record. A wholesome concontion of strangely Trip Hop, Hip Hop, Breaks, Tech, Funk, Bass & lashings of sample based humour! You can check his many aliases – http://www.myspace.com/doctorpepperspray & http://www.myspace.com/3d2m

We were also joined by our Mr Elephant cameraman, Mr Jack B, who bought along some of his classic Jungle tracks for the floor. A dj in his days in Manchester, and a vinyl lover, it was great to see the roles being shifted in true elephant stylings. Great tunes from a top bloke.

The other visual maestro of the night was also on fine form, with his super power projector and a whole load of new clips he’d been working on. Liam Blendstate rarely has a free weekend these days, being booked out by most of the underground promoters in Birmingham, so we feel pretty priveliged that he’s such an integral part of the elephant crew.

Our other resident sock rocker Marc Reck was on devastating form, with a whole load of new promos, and some really filthy drum and bass. The last hour was pure joy/bedlam, and an impromptu b2b session created that special party rockin atmosphere synonymous with the mammal sessions.

After a big finish we got treated to 3 classic elephant encore tracks – The Correspondents mix of I wanna be like you, and end of night elephant faves – The Banana Boat Song, & Dont Worry Be Happy, which left many a happy mammal leaving the bulls head, and chilled out the pace beautifully.

Next Party Rockin Mammals is on Friday August 7th 2009 @ the Bulls Head, with brummy Funk King – Roy Roastbeef

Last night was an exceptional display of great musicianship, and talented performers. Legends in their own right, and with an ever evolving line up. Transglobal still rock the house like they did 13 years ago.

I have the fortunate pleasure of djing all night, and while i made 3 bizarre choices (one right at the end, and two just before the band came on! ) , i loved every (other) minute til 2am.

I used Traktor for most of the night, which very usefully keeps your last played tracks automagically, so for those lovely people that came up, the tracklisting is below, and here is some footage of the end of the mighty Transglobal Underground.

This copied from our Mr Elephant Website

Massive elephant noises to everyone who came down and filled the Adam & Eve with appreciative sounds to the great array of talent on show from our 3 special guests this month.

Flame of Fervour were dark, gritty, acoustic with a very cool sound and great musicianship, the flamenco & latin fusion of the Hidden Half ignited a huge response from the audience, and The Heels, once again, set the whole place on fire, with one hour of inspired musicianship, and plenty of crowd pleasing ska….literally a band so large the brass section wouldn’t fit on the stage!

Also very special shouts must also go out to Jack for coming to video, Tony the sound sound man for rockin the last two hours, and Tony from TheLab who came down all the way from Leicester to Vj all night long.

Not only did he perform with an unprepared selection of material (not that we knew til he said!), but he also used footage from the 2nd Birthday made in the kids animation workshop in his vj set!

…plus he also gave 2 workshops to our resident dj Marc Reck, and our guest Paulo Riddle, both of whom got to perform live as a vj on the night! Nice work Tea!

In what is deemed to be Birmingham Music Month, it was refreshing to see so many multi instrumentalists in one room, and experience so much diversity of music, all of which generated a real warm crowd response.

Our resident videographer Jack Brabant, will be posting his video of the evening and we also have more photos taken by Marc on his flickr page here. Marc also recorded some of the audio which will be featured on Mr Elephant radio in our new monday night residency next week on rhubarb radio – 6pm – 8pm, and check out his own set from the night, which was as wonderfully diverse and crowd pleasing as the live music.

For now we’ll leave you with a little footage of the Hidden Half. Our next Live & Free event is on Sat 25th July 2009, and as always it will feature great live music , a range of dancing music, and is free all night long til 4am.

One love

Mr Elephant x

Last night was a truly memorable Birmingham gig @ the Rainbow Warehouse supporting the Destroyers for the release of their debut single “Out of Babel”, and the night, as Rich Batsford quite rightly puts it, “was the most eloquent response to noise abatement you could want”..

The Rainbow Warehouse looked magnificent with it’s 1000 capacity space cut in half with a mid room stage, and a seated area with sofa’s at the back. The Destroyers collective and friends had gone to a lot of trouble and it really showed. With Syzygy’s ever impressive multi screen visuals, and a large array of hats adorning the ceiling, the venue had somewhat of a festival feel to it, especially when it was filled with people all bouncing in time to the music.

Doors opened at 9.30ish, and i got to warm up the room with the 1st of my 2 sets, playing a selection of world music, trip hop, reggae, and acoustic balkan, building the energy up to 360 who delivered a rocking ska set, with the transitions and hosting being beautifully handled by our hostess for the eve.

The place was brimming now with people and anticipation, and with energy like that bouncing around a room it was the perfect setting to drop some swing, and then some balkan music, which was a real joy to play, despite being unprepared.

Just 24 hours earlier, i had gone out to drop some posters off, and met a mate for a pint catch up before my planned practice session on the evening. A wine festival and some great conversation led to 3 pints and a whole bottle of rioja, which to be fair is far too much to be drinking any night of the week, not least a support gig like this!

Neverthless i was on a huge high after i’d finished my set, and worrying aside, it lead beautifully into the Destroyers set, which was the best i’d ever seen them perform.

It was a shame i didnt have enough memory on the card to capture the later parts of the set, but for anyone who missed it, here’s the start of the destroyers set from my view after finishing mine.

Just hours earlier Kent Davis & John Tigue had issued their response to the noise abatement order which was recently issued due to that recurring problem of just one complainer. Pete Ashton caught it on video, and its the same story as The Fiddle & Bone, Epic Skate Park, The Spotted Dog, and in my eyes, has been a complete contradiction of the Big City Plan.

Rainbow Meeting – Kent Davis from Pete Ashton on Vimeo.

Rainbow Meeting – John Tighe from Pete Ashton on Vimeo.