music, events, dj mixes and soulpower

After breezing through a relaxed summer it’s time to get back into gear and let you know about my next gigs coming up. Firstly though I have to say that I have decided to translate my articles into French from now on too (I do live in France don’t I ?).

This weekend is packed with action as I’m going back to the UK for the bank holiday weekend.

Friday and Saturday mark two stops in Brighton where I have been kindly invited by Pablo Contraband one of the main disco specialists in town. First up I’ll be playing with him on Friday 27th August at Globe which is a small pub basement affair, a perfect soul disco night in perspective. Then on the Saturday afternoon we have the pleasure to be joined by the one and only Red Greg who has rapidly become one of the favourite guests to have graced the decks at mona. People loved him there last month (check out his set below), and I’m sure they will this time around in Brighton too.

Next day, Sunday 29th August I’ll be on my way to London for Notting Hill Carnival which is the second biggest event of the sort in the world after Rio. I’ll be playing at the now regular carnival jam organised by the More about Music crew on the two levels of the Fat Badger pub which is bang in the middle of carnival route. I am very happy to be involved once again in this party – this is the third year I am part of their line up and I must take the opportunity to thank Mark Potts for making it happen each time. He’s been doing this for 5 years with some of the best artists of the modern electronic soul music scene in the UK. This year will feature 26 djs including Phil Asher, Red Rack’em, Souled, my good friend Nick Rees, Jerry Dammers (from The Specials), Ladybugz (who rocked the Worldwide festival in Sète this summer), Aaron Ross … all spread over two days so no doubt I’ll be there the next evening to enjoy an extra dosage of music and vibes!

The following weekend the scenery changes as I head for Hyères in the South of France for the first edition of Festival Dance on the Beach. Three days of music, video projections and dance lessons including a special vogueing class. I shall be opening the festival on Friday 2nd September, playing on the beach just as the sun goes down … which is something I’ve always dreamed of so many thanks to The Ed for making that happen!

On Friday 10^th of September I’ll be back in Paris playing for the Open House crew. They’re having me twice this month. First gig is in a new place I’ve never been to called 1979 – I might get inspired to play even more disco in a place named like that. Alongside me there’s Marco Dos Santos, a great dj who knows loads about Brazilian music and even more about how to move a crowd, open house resident Paco and electronic music dj Alex Murak.

After this you have the return of mona on Saturday 18^th September with once again a very secret guest from the UK. More about that one soon on this space. That same afternoon the Plaqué Or team will be celebrating their 8^th birthday at La Plage du Glazart and shall be taking my music down to play alongside dj supreme Maurice Fulton. The end of the month there’s the second open house party (Friday 24^th Sept) in a big big place. More about that one soon too.

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Alors voilà après plus d’un an et demi j’ai enfin choisi de presenter mes posts en Français également, il était temps, je vis en France quand même (no excuses). Donc après un été plutôt reposant pour ma part il est temps de parler à nouveau de musique et de danse et vous informer notamment de mes prochaines dates à venir.

Ce weekend est particulièrement chargé puisque je retourne en ma terre natale pour l’un des moments les plus festifs de l’année outre manche.

Vendredi et Samedi je suis à Brighton où je suis invité par l’un des principaux djs disco Pablo Contraband. Vendredi 27 août je le rejoins à Globe, le sous-sol d’un petit pub pour une parfaite nuit de soul et de disco. Ensuite le samedi après midi on sera rejoints par l’excellent Red Greg qui est rapidement en train de devenir l’un de nos invités preférés à Mona. Il était là à la dernière et on a tous adoré (écoutez son set en dessous) alors il y a de fortes chances qu’il fasse le meme effet cette fois-ci à Brighton. C’est un événement extérieur de 15h à 21h, on croise les doigts pour qu’un soleil baléarique nous fasse honneur de sa présence!

Le lendemain, dimanche 29 août je repars en direction de Notting Hill pour le deuxième plus grand carnaval au monde (derrière Rio). Je participe à un très bel événement, organisé par l’équipe de More About Music, qui se déroule sur les deux niveaux du Pub The Fat Badger, en plein coeur du carnaval. Je suis ravi de faire parti de cette “carnival party” encore une fois, ça fera la troisième année de suite et je dois remercier Mark Potts sans qui tout ça ne serait pas possible. Depuis 5 ans il réunit au Fat Badger, à l’occasion du carnaval, le meilleur des artistes de la scène Soul électronique du pays. Cette année il y aura 26 djs dont Phil Asher, Red Rack’em, Souled, mon cher ami Nick Rees, Jerry Dammers (from The Specials), Ladybugz (qui ont fait chavirer le festival worldwide à Sète cet été), Aaron Ross … tout ça réparti sur les deux étages et les deux jours du carnaval!

Le décor change le weekend suivant, puisque je rejoins la première edition du Festival Dance on the Beach à Hyères dans le Sud. Trois jours de musique, projections video et cours de danse dont une classe de vogueing (enfin!). J’ouvre le festival vendredi 2 Septembre en jouant sur la plage pour le coucher du soleil … ce dont j’ai toujours rêvé, alors un grand merci à The Ed le programmateur et dj résident.

Le 10 Septembre c’est le retour à Paris avec l’équipe d’Open House, pour la première des deux dates avec eux dans le mois. C’est au 1979, un club relativement récent que je ne connais pas – avec un nom comme ça je risque de jouer encore plus de disco. A mes côtés il y aura Marco Dos Santos, ancien programmateur du Paris Paris durant son heure de gloire et excellent dj qui connaît un rayon sur la musique Brésilienne et peut être encore plus sur les subtilités du dancefloor. L’affiche sera complétée par Paco, le resident d’Open House, et le spécialiste de musique électronique Alex Murak.

Après tout ça vous aurez droit au grand retour de Mona samedi 18 septembre avec comme toujours un guest à l’identité secrete venu d’outre manche. En tout cas j’en dirai un peu plus bientôt par ici. Le même après midi l’équipe de Plaqué Or fête son 8e anniversaire à la Plage du Glazart, j’irai y jouer un peu de musique aux côtés de l’invité de marque Maurice Fulton. Enfin à la fin du mois (vendredi 24 septembre) il y aura la deuxième soirée Open house dans un grand espace cette fois. A suivre ici très prochainement!

This was one of my favourite gigs of late.

Firstly it was Didier Lestrade’s photo exhibition aftershow. I’ve known Didier for a few years now, we became close after running Otra Otra, possibly my favourite DJ residency in Paris, for nearly two years at La Boule Noire 2004-2006. Back in the 90s I’d only heard of him, through his militant work for ACT UP, which he founded in France in the days when the AIDS epidemic was causing a lot of damage (though it’s not over yet), and also through his pieces of musical journalism for French daily paper, Liberation, when house music was barely represented in mainstream record stores. A very respected man indeed who talks a lot of sense and knows when to stand up and be counted. He doesn’t live in paris anymore, he works from his house in Southern Normandy, I don’t see him very much so it was great just to see him again and be part of the show as they say. Didier isn’t a photographer, but even so the pictures he took are damn good, they are of faces he met, some famous some not, when he founded “Magazine” the first gay fanzine (in France at least I think) in the early 80s. I really love this guy, he’s so obsessed with detail, he used to clean the toilets in the Boule Noire, put joss sticks backstage and then spread talcum powder on the wooden floor (I reckon he nicked that idea from the Northern Soul nights in the UK the 70s) just before the club opened just so as it would look nice for the first few people coming through the doors. His pieces of journalism are fantastic. When I moved to France from England, I always missed that extra bit of excitement and humour that is so well conveyed in articles by British writers about sport or a particular music scene for example. I think Didier was the only French writing journalist ever to capture that and then make it his own, taking it onto another level with his focus on detail and all round loved up slant on things. Today he’s involved in a host of things, you can check out his blog to find out more, or connect to ‘minorités‘ a very conscious blog of which he is part, that defends minority groups throughout the world. The photo exhibition is still going on at the moment here at gallerie 12mail in Paris and music lovers should definitely get their hands on a copy of “Chroniques du dancefloor” which covers selected record reviews Didier did in Liberation between 1988 and 1999. It appropriately costs the price of a 12 inch vinyl record!

Secondly I had the chance to meet Daniel Wang again. Daniel is a very buoyant person with infectious energy that can bounce back at you. Also he’s a bit of a tekkie guy, and he’s not afraid to hide it, which is rare in these creative circles, where interest for anything technical can be unfortunately perceived as a bore. So we really got on well especially as we talked about acoustics which is my second part time, day time job, yes I am a tekkie too! Danny doesn’t drink nor do anything else, he’s just got this electrical energy about him that’s very catchy, we must have covered 5 different topics in the space of ten minutes between the moment the music stopped and when he jumped into a cab. He’s written this great article about discotheque acoustics that every club owner, dj and producer should read. Very inspiring ! So I have decided to write my own article on acoustics too that should appear on here very shortly.

Getting back to the music anyway. I was a bit weary about playing last in line at 430 am on a thursday night. Even at Le Rex they don’t fill up Thursdays like they used to maybe 10 years back when it was definitely the night to go out on in Paris (only Le Pulp has succeeded since and they have been closed down for over 2 years). So I was wondering if I was actually going to play at all.

Patrick Vidal started off first laying down the kind of atmosphere that you want to get started in a club. Patrick is one hell of a dj, I know him well now and I think he’s the dj I’ve played with most, ever. I’ll find some time to write a few words about him in a later post as he deserves it in my opinion definitely. Then came Morgan Geist, of Metro Area fame, playing the sort of edgy disco and early house sounds that have inspired him and Darshan Jesrani to make such class music. Daniel Wang was on at 3am. That’s make or break time, especially on a thursday night, but he put so much energy and enthusiasm into his djing that he turned the Rex into second party, as if people had come back through the doors all over again. It completely distilled my fears of an empty room and it was so easy for me to ride the wave and play right after him, taking the night to an end with Daniel Wang himself and a young african kid vogueing elegantly to the music in front of me.

Redbull music academy recorded the whole night so check the links at the end of this article to listen to Patrick Vidal, Daniel Wang and myself. Morgan Geist’s set is not available but he has a show on Redbull academy you can check out.

Nickv all night long at mOna :

Keeping up with the blogging has been quite hard of late. The past two months have been full of interesting and amazingly fun gigs that have taken a lot time to prepare, on top of that I have had a lot of work on the two latest mOna nights, plus my daytime (all be it partime) acoustics consultancy job. So I just haven’t had time to sit down and write a few lines on this space.

Firstly though, I thought I’d put up this all night long mix up. It was recorded at the last mOna night on 17th April. Despite being serious about our music, we have always been more into the fun side of things at mona (as opposed to the more serious dj orientated parties), so this time instead of inviting a guest dj we decided to invest heavily on the deco side of things around the chosen theme of Masters and Servants, and I played music all night.

It was quite a stressful affair at the start as we were obviously late on most aspects (deco preparation, lighting, opening time …) and as usual people really started to show up at 2am, which left us worrying again for a couple of hours (this may even be heard on the mix itself).

Anyway as the night went on and energies were released things began to flow. This mix becomes quite varied, especially towards the end (sorry for the distortion and approximate mixing over the last hour, what was I drinking at the end?!) and includes tracks by : Grace Jones, Lil Louis, Taana Gardner, Aril Brikha, The Digital Underground, Tamiko Jones, Carl Craig, Oliver Cheatham, Seiji, Faze Action, Melba Moore, The Cure, Aksidan, James Pants, DOP, The Daou, Malcolm Mc Claren, Crazy P, The Roots, Deelite, Hot Chip, MCDE, Omar S, Lektroluv, Kink and Neville Watson, Cookie Watkins, The B52s, Coral Way Chiefs, YBU, Nathaniel X, The Motivators, Donna Summer, Kenny Dope, MFSB, James Johnston, New Order, Llorca, Omar, Madonna, Andre Lodeman, Tony Lionni, Pepe Bradock …
I hope you’ll enjoy it.

I must thank once more everyone who worked on mona this time around a lot of good work and creative energy was put in : Carlos, Fred, Moh, Arnaud, Adeline, Mat and David. Also big thanks to Titi and Khiet for their performances and all the heads who came down and dressed up!

Next mona : Saturday 15th May

Photography by David Volants

MUSIC HERE (you have to scroll down to the post on 26th december 2009 and you’ll see the player there)

This mix was done for Yvan Le Bleu who kindly invited me to feature on his monthly radio show on radio Grenouille broadcasted in Marseilles. I’m stupidly slow at getting mixes out to people who request them, as, aside from being very busy, I always make a point out of making exclusive work for them and not copying something that has already been done.  The idea around Yvan’s show was to do two half hour parts, the first of which was to be focused on older influences and the second more based around more contemporary sounds.

I was listening to a lot of amazing jazz funk fusion records at the time and decided to do a short compilation of that stuff to start off with and then go into some 4/4 based disco and house bits. Yvan’s shows can be heard on his blog, please take time to check them out you’ll find some excellent music on there. Enjoy the music!

# Roy Ayers – A Tear To A Smile
# Melyvn Price – Voodoo Love Dance
# Webster Lewis – El Bobo
# Matthew Cassell – Heaven
# Kenny Talley – Everybody’s On A Trip
# Roy Ayers – Turn Me Loose
# Odyssey – Don’t Tell Me Tell Her
# Dee Dee Sharp Gamble – Nobody Can Do What You Can Do (Chalk Hill Edits)
# Crazy P – Do it
# Red Light – Who Needs Enemies (Italia Club Mix)
# James Duncan – Untitled
# Langenberg – Times (MTA’s Kugelrohr Dub Mix)
# Mark Henning – Moops (Agnes Advantage Federer Mix)
# Linkwood – Who La La ?

I’m lucky to be involved in some amazing gigs over the next three months : playing with Danny Krivit at Djoon (26.02), Elevation with Rork, Ladybird and dj Elias (07.03), mona goes Chicago (20.03), with Derrick May for the Technorama crew at Rex (26.03), back at Elevation this time at Djoon with Elias and Emmanuel Caurel (28.03), a disco deluxe with Dimitri from Paris (09.04), a Mona special (17.04), a trip to play in Marseilles at Le Passe Temps and Le Polikarpov (23.04), Rex with Danny Wang, Patrick Vidal and Morgan Geist (29.04).

So it’s quite an exciting start to this year and I’ll be sharing a few nights with some amazing djs and artists. Of course I’ll keep you posted with the flyers and more information about these nights, but definitely big fun to be had over the next two months!

A special mention goes out to the guys at Elevation who have started up a Sunday late afternoon early evening dance party at Le Back Up club, a great space, with a massive dancefloor and good sound system. The club isn’t in the usual eastern Paris circuit but they still managed to attract a good amount of people to their previous events with a relaxed (but definitely up for a party) Sunday night atmosphere and quality deep house played by residents Rork and Elias with Ladybird on live PA. I send out my fullest support as we all know how hard it is to set up a new project in Paris at the moment. You can find out more about Elevation on their Facebook group

Favourite tracks on the night were :

Erykah Badu – Honey (Souled Remix) by Souled

So a new season begins for mona, the third one now. La Java remains our venue of choice but we’ve made  few changes this year. Firstly, a new light show has been built. The old one kept breaking down and we wanted something more dynamic this year so we decided to invest a little. I really believe a good light show is essential, it’s as important as your sound system. Great lights and the possibility to black them out make a massive difference in a night. Most people don’t realise this, including many promoters and venue owners, which is a shame. When I used to play at Boule Noire for otra Otra we built an amazing light show there, my friend Robert designed it and it was run by Daniel, who also became a friend in the process. We used to get our routines synchronised using sign language to cue ourselves up, believe me we made people go crazy in there. So I’m really looking forward to unveiling and enjoying the effects of our new system on the crowd tomorrow night !

We’ve also changed our art direction a little and made the logo a little more organic and do it yourself. It sort of looks like a home made stamp, that’s how we wanted things to be as we felt our previous graphics didn’t suit the venue and our crowd as much. The rough stamp is more fitting to the edgy faces that show up at mona every month. Many thanks to sundae for his artwork.

My guest tomorrow is a French DJ I’ve always loved since I started going out in Paris. He’s been around a long long time – I used to tape record his radio shows in the early nineties – but he still remains of the most upfront people around, always interested in what’s going on around him, but always keeping close to the music that he’s been playing from day one. Arguably he runs the best boogie and disco nights in Paris and has been doing so for over 10 years. He was one of the first heads to pioneer house music back in the 80s. I think his collection must be one of the world’s best, whenever I go out to listen to him there are always tracks he pulls out that I’ve never ever heard. Never one to compromise he’s always been one of the freshest DJs around. Make sure you check him out tomorrow night or get down to his residency when you find out who it is !

So who came to play in July ? My biggest thanks go out to Clement aswefall who you can see in the picture above. Clement used to run the infamous dagroove (later daphonics) record shop in Paris and is also half of aswefall, French electronic folk group. He’s a big house music head and came down to play exactly that. The first part of his set was a live set up he does on ableton live, more on an electro nuwave tip and totally innovative, great music. I’ll post a recording in a separate post for you to listen to.

If you’re a facebook user you can also check out Brice Smo’s pics of the night here

See you tomorrow hopefully !

mona / la java / sat 19th Sept 2009 23h30 / 105 rue du Fbg du Temple Paris 10e / facebook event