KEEP CALM & RAVE ON

I miss DJing. I miss seeing sweaty smiling faces bobbing around in front of me and riding the energy of the room from tune to tune whilst leaping around behind the decks.  I really do miss it.

Or maybe I just miss the audience, because there has been one or two moments over the past year where I’ve at least got to play some tunes, even if it’s to an empty room in lieu of the crowds at home.  To be fair, though few and far between, even those sets have felt a little special.  

There was the Area 404 broadcast somewhere near the start of the first lockdown, a ravey affair on my part from a pub in the middle of a Bristol warehouse.  If you missed it I’m 26min45 in on this video, although Haych from Gorilla Tactics smashes his DNB set just before too. 

Then there was a special Soca set for Hoots TV (a lockdown live stream from Hootananny in Brixton) which coincided with Notting Hill Carnival (or the lack thereof).  You can watch that here, see if you can spot where the coffee kicks in and my mixing suddenly improves.  There’s also a guest spot from my dog Marley. 

But I think by far my favourite so far has been a short and sweet 15 minutes for the BST Rave organised by acclaimed producer and beatbox extraordinaire SK Shlomo to raise money for CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), a wonderful charity leading a movement against suicide through vital, life-saving support, impactful, provocative campaigns and collective action (if this sounds like something you might need, or if you’d like to make a donation then please do head over to thecalmzone.net and check them out).

Aside from the excellent cause and the chance to DJ, I couldn’t well turn down a chance to play alongside such rave and jungle legends as Slipmatt, Jumpni’ Jack Frost, Micky Finn, Altern 8 and DJ Rap, plus other friends, freshness and all round legends in the shape of Rob Da Bank, Matt Black from Coldcut, Lau.ra, B Traits, Jax Jones and even Sophie Ellis-Bextor put in an appearance. In fact if you want to watch the whole thing then you can check the link here. - otherwise here’s my contribution to the party.

As you can tell I went all out rave warrior and it felt damn good too.  I had originally intended to play a set featuring more of the classics and potentially a few BPM below where I ended up, but on the day I couldn’t find my hard drive for love nor money so had to make do with tunes from the past couple of months.  Personally I think it went beyond making the best of a bad situation and was more of a divine intervention situation, at least that’s how it felt when I actually got to play! I also had to change where I recorded it last minute and ended up in the Run Tingz studio with their lovely Void sound system carrying me through on a hotbed of bass. Shlomo seemed happy too as the reply I got was “holy shit bro!!! This is off the scale…. It’s like a mini Boomtown”.  I’m not gonna argue with that!

Hopefully if you’ve read this far and haven’t checked it yet, that should sway you at least.  Enjoy and if you’re thinking I’ve left out some important DJ sets (ahem, SWU??), then keep an eye out for the next post.