This feels like a fitting chat to round out the past year and see in a new one - with the bold Sean Monahan from 8ball. Wishing you all the best for the year ahead..

I’ve been drawn to Sean’s insightful writing for a while now and he was gracious enough to have a chat with me about the notion of the world moving through trends and cycles. I find it comforting and helpful to view an increasingly chaotic world in these terms. Nothing lasts forever.

As a prolific writer, I was worried about feeling under prepared, but we jumped around quite easily and got to some interesting places.

I can’t recommend Sean’s work enough. You can follow it here ~

Thanks to everyone who made it out to the Car Culture show at The Doublet in Glasgow the other week! Daniel popped in to play some music and also chat about the new project.

We happened to first meet each other at Berlin Community Radio and have since followed various releases from each other over the years. This particular booking came about very last minute and was one of those impulsive things that worked out all round. Putting on a gig that had some hype around it is always a gratifying experience and one I could have done with after overseeing a few lower attended events this year. You never quite know what will hit, but sometimes you do.

I forgot to ask about the press shots which are superb. Best I’ve seen in ages.. I’m sure he’ll back :)

When I lived in London, I rarely managed to get along to the hype exhibitions and I’d usually be disappointed with them if I did. That wasn’t the case when I went along to see this Richard Mosse thing that people kept talking about. I managed to catch it at The Barbican in the last week or two of its run and was completely blown away.

Incoming is a project in which photographer, Richard uses military grade cameras to track migrant communities. The night vision lens added an eery but also very human quality and I still think about the characters in the largest piece. It crossed my mind to reach out to Richard for a chat and he was more than accommodating and shared some incredible stories behind the project.

Although the exhibition was open during 2017, the conversation about migration is pertinent now - and will continue to be important in the years ahead. With bleak stats and depressing headlines, anything that injects humanity into the conversation can only be a good thing. This is proven in the conversation itself as we spoke mid 2024 and much of what was discussed has grown louder since then.

The visuals themselves do most of the talking though and I’d urge you to seek them out in whatever form you can find.

https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2019/richard-mosse-incoming.html

https://mackbooks.co.uk/products/incoming-br-richard-mosse

Dan and I go fairly far back after hosting some memorable gigs with him over the years including an insane all nighter for his Daphni album launch. I was already a fan of his earlier Caribou music and happened to be doing things around London and particularly at Plastic People, just as he was getting into DJ’ing. So it’s been exciting to see how the two projects have evolved and overlapped over time.

Another fairly infamous gig was his first time playing at Plastic People. I remember being on the dancefloor at PP when Four Tet played this wild record with a William Onyeabor sample that I recognised, but was blown away by. It turned out to be ’Ye Ye’ which was getting roadtested for the first time and Dan, who I didn’t know at that point was also there with a huge cheeser!

Shortly after we put together a party with Dan playing Plastic alongside Floating Points, I’m pretty sure it was the first time they met, but that might be getting a bit too Forrest Gumpy.. It was def very early on and marked the beginning of them doing more and more fun stuff and great music together.

We had a fun catch up on and off mic, as we played a record each for the duration.

I haven’t listen to this in a while but it will undoubtedly hold up ~

I had another great chat with Moya Lothian-McLean and it felt a bit more fitting to share this one first for reasons that should become clear. If you enjoyed this, keep an eye out for part one coming soon.

You might already be familiar with Moyà’s work from her appearances on Novara Media or her writing at The Bell.

www.glasgowbell.co.uk

I had a great chat with the excellent writer John Higgs. John’s wildly unauthorised book about the KLF is an excellent read. I was first turned on to it by my pal Phil and it has went on to become a book that has percolated throughout a certain group of friends over the years. Which feels quite fitting. I’ve bought it as a gift for a few folk and would highly recommend reading it. One aspect I particularly connected to was the concept of the Ideaspace - which gets into how we generate ideas and the notion that these inspirations can be shared somehow. The book describes this is a far better way and I’d highly recommend it to you.

https://johnhiggs.com/books/the-klf/

When I first reached out to John he was reluctant to speak about the KLF book after publishing several others since, but he assured me his new book touches on similar topics which resulted in my devouring his most recent one about Dr Who. It’s a testament to John’s way with words, that I was fascinated with the subject, despite having never watched a full episode of Dr Who in my life!

https://johnhiggs.com/books/exterminate-regenerate-the-story-of-doctor-who/

I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed these two and they each came up during our conversation.

https://johnhiggs.com/books/the-future-starts-here/

https://johnhiggs.com/books/stranger-than-we-can-imagine/

Huge thanks to John! I hope you enjoy.

It’s almost 13 years since I first booked Lena at a now infamous Corsica Studios party (below). Like most of my favourite DJ’s, she has an evolving style which is still very much her own. We’ve seen a lot of each other over the years across different cities and at different phases in each others lives. Our last few encounters have been short and sweet, but fortune favoured us this time with a gap in her schedule that allowed to visit for an extra night and get a nice hang. The ones that are never long enough. Anyway, we recorded this at CBR studio and it was fun to play one for one with each other. Enjoy!

I’ve been steeped in the culture of mixes since I was buying compilation CD’s when I was at school. This continued through the minidisc / internet dial up era and began to be replaced by ipods and access to a seemingly endless stream of live club recordings. These were mostly hosted on forums and fuelled a new demand for track id’s at a rapid pace. I loved this particular period and it encouraged me to seek out and discover tons of new music and artists that I still view as important to me today. While the wheels have started to turn even faster in the ensuing years, I’m aware of certain fandoms which operate still from a thirst for knowledge and excitement. Apps like Shazaam are presumably still thriving because of this same need to know ‘WTF is this???’ There’s no better feeling. I’ve booked people solely on that basis and I’ve released the music of many artists who are capable of conjuring that emotion.

This is all to say, I still love listening to mixes and I love making them too. It seems like listener figures for all the main mix series are pretty low. I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise as our collective attention has became more fragmented. Over the years I’ve enjoyed making mixes for various platforms, you can check them out here. This either comes from an invitation and I find music to suit the outlet. Or I collect enough music over a course of time that I think works well together and I then go through the process of finding a suitable home for the mix itself. I’ve had good results in both cases. While I like the challenge of putting something together with a certain audience in mind, the best results are usually when I’ve put together something that I think works well together and would ideally bring different styles together to create something different. Finding a home is becoming a harder process as I’ve either done one for the platform already, or the remaining ones have a packed schedule. So finding a different way to present music is always appealing. I’ve tried my hand at committing mixes to tape. This was a fun experience and I hoped to create a mixtape series with others too, but it slipped through the cracks. I guess CBR has became a bigger version of the same incentive.

Anyway, I’ve had this particular mix in some stage of completion for a while. I was aiming for something timeless and something that represents the sound of music I like to play in a club setting most of all. Why not feature it here? Watch out for more by myself and others. Tracklist to follow.