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

Mona’s 2nd anniversary 20 guest dj live mix

Mona’s 2nd anniversary nickv live mix

Here is the whole mix recorded during Mona’s 2nd anniversary. Over 600 people came down to La Java to dance to the sounds of 21 djs and over 6hours of music! It was great to be able to invite so many friends to play with me. Most had already played at Mona or are regulars at the party and will be playing again in the near future. The night started with a special set from the mona crew with a wicked selection of songs ranging from soul to tsigane kitcherie. We had first timers at mona like Fred djaaleb who manages Jeff Mills but also has a very deep knowledge of techno and house, Miss Chrysalide who definitely rocked the crowd – check her out on the video below and dj Sundae who aswell as being a top notch dj has also been involved in mona’s graphic design. It was a pleasure to hear the sounds of Soul Sam from radio Space funk (we have been connected for over 20 years now), taste maestro Adam Green and also good friends Soulist and Freeworker representing What the Funk. Ex record dealers Soulmate and djAlmost, came down showing their utmost good taste for music in all kinds. Then we had classy disco queens Patrick Vidal, Aïcha and Emmanuel Caurel followed by techno and house garage heads LadyB, Slip Matt, Jasonw Fantomette and La Fleur. The exact line up is below! I took over around 330 to take the night through till 6am. I thoroughly enjoyed this one playing the sounds of Motor City Drum Ensemble, Pepe Bradock, ReelSoul, DJ Pierre, Roska, Radio slave, Roxy Music, Barbara Tucker, Mathew Jonson, Aril Brikha, Karizma and much more. Much respect to Arnaud light jockey, who has really worked hard on the lights – be prepared for a very special set up soon! Many thanks to everyone who came down and participated, what amazing energy !

Funk soul broken disco mix 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This is a three year old mix that I thought I’d put up here before Best Friends this friday. It’s actually the last mix I did using vinyl records (I said it was the sunday deep one that also features here but that one was done a month before, so this is the definite final vinyl mix). I though it was appropriate to have it up here as when I set up Best Friends this was the music I had in mind.

I’ll get a playlist up here as soon as possible.

Disco funk mix part 1 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Disco-funk mix part 2 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I did this mix in two parts in 2006 when I was still playing vinyl records, for an event I was helping to set up with Denis from Free Your Funk in Paris. Initially we were supposed to do it in two parts with a roller ball during the daytime then moving into a night time disco. We wanted to get people like Nicky Siano, Guy Guevas (resident dj during Le Palace’s heyday as Paris’ supreme discotheque), Dimitri from Paris. Sound issues at the venue led us to move the night to Le Bus on a smaller scale, unfortunately abandoning the roller disco idea on the way. We got Greg Wilson over from Manchester with his reel to reel tapes, Dimitri came down and I closed the night off. It was an amazing night that led us (Dimitri and myself) to carry on playing disco every month at Le Bus for about a year after that with specialists like : Romain BNO, Al Kent, Aïcha, Patrick Vidal, James Hillard … we didn’t get as many people as the other more mainstream nights at the club, but the atmosphere was always very uplifting.

Features : Camouflage, Roy Ayers, René & Angela, The World’s famous supreme team, a few edits by greg wilson and theo parrish, brenda taylor, skyy, patti jo, lenny williams, bill summers, rockers revenge, a taste of honey, vince montana, the strikers, GQ, david bendeth …

Nickv’s Mona Birthday mix

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This is a special mix I did for mona’s birthday. We had it pressed up on a CD and gave it out as a gift at February’s birthday party. The mix includes most of the tracks that have worked well for people at the night over the past year. It took me quite a long time to bring the number of tracks down to a reasonable quantity, and a few have been forgotten. In the end I gave in and decided to make the mix twice as long, issuing it in two parts to cover the different styles of music I mainly play during the night : deep house, disco, broken beats, electrofunk. This is part one, part two will follow soon. Tracklist and a few words on each track can be found here

I hope you enjoy the music we love.