Breakage ATM Mag mix CD

I’ve been listening to this CD on repeat over and over again for 2 days now – just bloody brilliant, incredible; a beautiful mix of Drum & Bass and Dubstep from the likes of Shy FX, Martyn, and of course Breakage himself – it’s the future; fuck all these genre barriers, why stick to just one genre?  It’s the same music at different speeds..almost…

I’ve been trying to fit myself into a genre or set of genres for so long; regular readers will know how much the Dubstep at the WMC blew my mind, and ever since, I’ve been looking for a style that fits in perfectly with my tastes – well, I was spoilt with sets from the likes of Mala and Skream, so I was looking for the top shelf stuff! Now I think Breakage has proved that you don’t have to stick to one style; along with Martyn, Shy FX, Calibre and the Soul:r crew slowing their tempo’s down when the mood suits, I think D&B is at a critical mass point, when producers are becoming artists. The next few years are going to be a fascinating, exhilirating time for the scene.

Anyway, if you haven’t got your hands on this mix CD, go out and get hold of it now; honestly, it’s the best mix CD I’ve heard in a long time; completely inspirational…

Tidying up

Been spending some time unifying my online presence; http://bluze.net now has a design that runs in line with my myspace page, which is turn was based on my brother’s original design for my demo CD’s – I thought the design he did was so ‘me’ that instead of using it for my batch of demo’s – which turned into an almost-full-on-album anyway (more on that another time) - I turned the design into the ‘Bluze brand’.

Next up is a re-jig of the main blog page; although the wordpress blog (which I love using) sends RSS feeds out to the other two online presences (http://bluze.net and http://www.myspace.com/bluze), I suspect that anyone reading this will end up on the wordpress page, so I’ll be playing at CSS hacking on that next.

I’m holding back on the digital downloads for a short while, as there are a few exciting developments in the pipeline, which I’ll be talking about soon, and as a result, it’s worth holding back….

Hope you like the new-look Bluze!

WMC Sub Bass Aftermath

Back nearly two weeks now. Jetlag’s a killer! Bought a sub-bass unit the first weekend I was back; I had to do something about my monitoring, and sound treatment and sub-bass were the first on my list; and sub-bass is by the the easiest and least expensive so..

I got myself a KRK Rokit RP10S from Digital Village – big, loud and the room shakes when you use it – wicked.

Now, I’m not under any illusions here – I haven’t come back home and gone “my sound’s not good enough, I need a sub-bass unit” – well, ahem, I guess I did actually, but the point is I know that minor miracles can be performed nowadays with the most modest of kit; I just really appreciated in Miami how much goes on in the studio that you simply don’t hear until it gets to the dancefloor, and by then it’s just too late. And for the relatively tiny price of one of these bass units, it’s well worth the cash.

Getting the bass unit has totally changed the sound of my monitors though; as all sounds pass through the unit first, then through a high-pass filter and on to the main stereo monitors, the latter have a lot less work to do; tweeters for tops, 6 inch cone for mids, and then all the bass down in the woofer; previously the bass and mids were sharing a cone, and I was getting a lot of distortion; now they’re so much clearer, and I can hear so much detail in everything I listen to; it’s almost like I’ve got myself a whole new monitoring system for a hundred and forty quid (got a bargain second-hand one as they were out of new ones – makes no difference to me).

So, when you’re in the store buying reference monitors, and the salesman says “you really need the sub-bass unit to do justice to these”, he’s not just trying to make another sale, he’s telling the truth!

I’m now happily going back over my most recent tunes and re-checking the mixes; Blue Nine particularly needs some TLC…

WMC Diary – Day 6 and home..

Well, after the Shocklee brothers erm.. ‘insistence’ that I’m there (Hank: “You be there, you be there!” as we strolled through the WMC lobby – lol!) My only destination on Saturday afternoon had to be poolside at the Miami Beach Hotel – the WMC venue. After pretty much a whole week of four to the floor house and techno poolside, I was happily surprised to hear the beautiful bass of an all-afternoon dubstep show; highlights for me were Mala (original dub warrior for sure) and Skream (totally, totally brilliant), as well as the first-ever live performance by the Shocklee brother’s Bomb Squad, playing live dubstep themselves; I loved it. Hooked up with Alex (of label2net), who I met pretty much every day throughout the conference, and Ray (aka Fatso Brown) and we spent the afternoon drinking Budweiser and laughing in the 28 degrees heat; great great way to finish the conference.

Finally caught a cab to the Ultra Music Festival; a mental dance festival right in the middle of the city; I’ve never been to a festival surrounded by skyscrapers before, and it was a surreal and excellent experience. I hooked up with my old raving friend Steve, who moved to the states some years ago, and who I haven’t seen in years and years – oh the wonders of Facebook! Caught Carl Cox, Goldie (again) and Underworld among others, but for me it was really about wandering around and catching up with Steve(and his girlfriend Ashlie), absorbing the atmosphere..

The next morning, I headed for home; Miami > Ft Lauderdale (1 hour) > New York (3 hours) (gutted I couldn’t meet up with my old mate Alex Church in NYC, and didn’t have his phone number to tell him!! doh!) > and finally from New York to London (7 hours), to Shropshire (3 hours).Now I think I’ll sleep for a week, and talk about this for months. What an experience; only time will tell how it affects my music; it can only move me on; I’ve learnt so much. I’ve met so many great people, swapped tips and opinions on all aspects of the industry, so I’d like to say thanks to everyone I met; I received nothing but welcome wherever I went; you guys made it a really worthwhile and enjoyable experience.

I’ll do everything I can to do it all again next year, for sure.

WMC Diary Day 5

The rest of the week blurs a little now, so is in no particular order. The ViRam night at the Soho Lounge, Downtown Miami was incredible; Andy C was brilliant, SubFocus wicked too, and Goldie really kicked off. Met a very loud John B at the bar – as funny as he looks in his pictures (“Lovin’ your work, John”, “Me too!”). The Dubstep room was absolutely incredible, mind blowing; deep deep dubstep, low loud bassbins that totally shook your whole body, with wicked ragga MCs chatting over the top of syncopated 138 bpm riddims as the heaving crowd swayed, hands raised, to the half-beat; awesome… staggerred back to my room at around 4am…

I braved the Demo Listening workshop on Friday – my biggest disappointment of the week; After working so hard to prepare my demo’s, it turns out I mastered them badly – there was a WHOLE load of sub-bass in my demo track that I didn’t even get a sniff of on my monitors or any of the test systems I tried it out on; massive lesson there; if you’re gonna make music for big sound systems, particularly drum & bass or other bass-heavy styles, I’m pretty sure you need a sub-woofer before you can be sure your tune’s gonna sound alright. Had to handle hearing DJ Rap telling me that she couldn’t imagine which DJs would play it out, as my head span in confusion at what I was hearing coming out the speakers – damn!!!

It was a lesson though – I’ll be buying a sub-woofer at the weekend, and Rap advised that downloaded a whole load of d&b that I really love, and analyse how those tunes are mixed and arranged; advise I’ve heard before, but advise I’ll definately be taking; The biggest thing I’ve come away with is that I need to focus completely on what style of music I want to make, and study that genre. Despite the proliferation of downtempo this year for me, I’m pretty sure I’ll go back to drum & bass; it’s where my heart is.

I’m also thinking of taking up DJing, so that I get to test out my tunes in clubs before I send them out to the masses; I learnt the skillz required right at the start of my music career, as part of my enthusiastic absorbtion of Hip Hop, and it now makes sense for me to get right back into it again; but I need to sound-treat my studio first, and get my mixes much better before I do anything.