SPIXMIX by DJ Spiller

My set on the Glitterbox bus for Defected London at Drumsheds in September 2021. Before me Melvo Baptiste played a great set and like magic a cloudy day opened into the perfect sunny afternoon for my set where by the end I rejoined with Sophie Ellis Bextor to perform Groovejet together one more time after 20 years, a day to remember. Unfortunately her microphone was connected to a different mixer so on this recording you won’t hear her voice but just the backing vocals.

The first time Groovejet was played? It was March 1999 I was going to the Winter Music Conference in Miami for the second time, my flight was in the early morning and I wanted to stay awake until it was time to leave, so went in my studio and I sampled a previously unreleased Tom Moulton version of Carol Williams “Love is You” that I had just bought on a Salsoul release called “12" Gold Master Series”. I played with those samples for an hour or so and came up with this instrumental track, I quickly burned 1 copy into a CD and ran to the airport. When I landed in Miami my old friend Boris Dlugosch came to pick me up at the airport with a nice rented cabriolet and drove me to my (shitty) hotel in South Beach. While on the road he asked me if I had some new music and I put the CD on the car radio but we kept talking about things and I forgot the CD there. Later that day he was playing along with a great lineup in a club called “Groove Jet” and he invited me to go, when I arrived there people I didn’t even know ran to me asking about my new record, I didn’t understand what they were talking about until Boris told me he had played that demo and that the people went nuts. That’s how the story began for the record that changed my life and that’s why I decided to call it Groovejet, also Boris suggested calling the EP “Mighty Miami EP”. I always regretted arriving late that night and missing that special moment when it was played for the first time, I wish I was in that dancefloor but… Incredibly enough, 10 years later a friend of Boris told him that he was there that night and that he recorded the whole set from the middle of the dancefloor using the internal microphone of a MINIDISK WALKMAN. As the room wasn’t that big the recording is somehow even better than a proper direct one because you can hear people’s reactions to each record, you can even hear people asking him what the record was. The whole set is amazing and an accurate portrait of the best tracks of that season in my opinion. So here it is: Boris Dlugosch live at Groove Jet, March 16th, 1999.

This episode is dedicated to the club Divinae Follie in Bari which has its 30th birthday this week. It’s one of the most important clubs of south Italy, was always mentioned by Radio Italia Network and by all the magazines about clubbing. Ex mc Alex Galluzzi sent me this 2001 tape of the Just X event at Divinae Follie, I was playing after Nicola di Venere, resident of the club and Puglia’s house music pioneer. As I didn’t have any picture or flyer of that night I went digging for material on the “Diary of the 100 best italian discotheques” and the DiscOteC guide of 1991, this is how they review the club: “Maxi-discotheque with a 13.000 mq parking lot, a rotating dancefloor and facing a stage able to host any type of performance. Many international djs play here thanks to the great relations with england established by the owners”. It was indeed thanks to Titti Mastrogiacomo’s management who was attending the best parties and events in London, Ibiza and Miami to promote her club and book dj guests.

Back in 1997, I was invited by Valentino Kanziani to play at “Morning Grooves”, the Sunday morning at slovenian club Ambasada Gavioli that a the time was one of the best clubs in the world, with clubbers coming every weekend from Austria, Croatia and Italy. For many years to come, after playing Saturday night, me and my blond dreadlocks would jump in my Fiat 127 and drive to Slovenia. What music do you play at an after-hour? I was never going if it wasn’t for djing but I have spent a lot of time in my youth listening to mixtapes recorded at the best Italian after-hours between 88 and 92. It was usually a very different selection from what you would listen during the night from the same DJs, it was much deeper atmospheres often with influences of jazz, ethnic, or even ambient music. The lounge DJ sets didn’t exist yet and things like Cafè Del Mar, LateNightsTales and Hôtel Costes were yet to become a phenomenon, so you could say that the best time to play those records was either the warm-up or the after-hours. Let’s be clear it was still dance music and most of the people came because that’s what they wanted to dance to, but now and then you would also get one fella too high on something begging you to play harder in front of the DJ booth. Alas! Seeing what is played at after-hours nowadays it seems like the latter have prevailed.
During the first few minutes, you can hear the classic consumed tape noise, the record is Loni Clark “Rushing” (Mood ll Swing Dub) and ironically it goes like “I won't slow down, no, can’t can’t slow down!”
🕔🕕🕖🕗🕘🕙🕚🕛

SPIXMIX 03 - Between 1995 and 2000 I was the resident DJ at House Nation, a sunday night party in Jesolo that was a fixed spot for all the djs and promoters of the area, plus of course all tireless clubbers ending there their long weekend. After paying my dues for 5 years in other smaller clubs in Venice, it was the first residency that gave me the opportunity to play alongside some of the biggest names of the italian and international scene. I would open the night and play for a few hours until the dj guest or the host Angelino would take over. It’s Angelino and Ricky Volpe that I have to thank for this opportunity, they believed in me when no one else did. In this recording I open the night for one of the best italian house djs of all time: Massimino Lippoli. You can hear many (too many) MCs, it was a common thing at the time, I can hear 4 different ones but Moony unfortunately is not one of them, she started her career as a vocalist there.
This and other recordings of House Nation exist thanks to Nicola Gardin who was the light and tech-guy of the club. I have worked in many other clubs but I have never found a rock like him, when he was there you would always find the dj booth in order and he would meticulously record every night on tape.

Back in 2000, I was invited for a 1-hour guest mix at Weekendance on RAI Radio 2, a show by Luca de Gennaro and Fabio De Luca which aimed at being the Italian answer to BBC1’s Essential Selection. I found a CDR of that mix, it has some evergreen classics that had just been released like St. Germain “Rose Rouge” that I was remixing at the time, Markus Nicolai “Bushes” which in my opinion is one of the best releases on Classic records and an edit of Cosmo “Busted”, my secret banger for a good while.

I started buying disco and jazz funk records soon after I started djing in 1990, but my first dj mixes were mainly made of dance and house music, often with disco influences and samples but never original versions. This is the first time I recorded a mixtape made of only original funk and disco tunes for my friends, i named it "Privè" as in northen italy during those years disco was a genre played in the smaller rooms of trendy clubs. Enjoy :)