Biftas at the ready everybody, Summer Mix 2 is here!!! Apparently it hasn’t been much of a summer in the UK this year but from what I gather, the rain has finally cleared up and the August sun has arrived. Maybe because of the preemptive nature of the previous summer mix, I have decided to do another. This one has ended up as a real play-dead in the long grass affair. Don’t be fooled by the funky start, it gradually descends into psychedelic catatonia and progresses towards the final desert sequence of Blade Runner, before the Lindstrom cover of Vangelis perhaps allows you to pick yourself up and be almost half fit for the walk home. I think the slightly hallucinogenic nature of this mix is very much in debt to seeing Inland Empire at 11:20 in the morning after under 5 hours sleep last Friday. I don’t think I’ve really woken up from that experience yet. Which to be honest I’m really enjoying because the level of detachment from reality is just enough not to fall back into the mid-twenties crisis I was previously descending into…anyway enough about that….to the music!!!

*Warning-Do not drive whilst listening to this, you will fall asleep at the wheel and die*

1. A Certain Ratio – Touch
2. Patrick Cowley – Get A Little
3. Deodato – Whistle Bump
4. 23 Skidoo – Last Words
5. Tortoise – On The Chin
6. Barry White – Playing Your Game
7. Lindstrom – Arp She Said
8. Jah Wobble, The Edge & Holger Czukay – Hold On To Your Dreams
9. Alan Parsons Project – Mammagamma
10. Ilya Santana – Quasar (Original Mix)
11. Lindstrom & Solale – Let It Happen (Vocal Mix)

HERE HERE HERE HERE – Summer Mix 2

Hello all. Here’s a couple of A Taut Line remixes I have worked on fairly recently. The first is hot off the press for Tokyo band Vivians . The other is a slightly older one for London stereo-rad tinkertown popsters Hong Kong In The 60s. Both have a bit of a 90s feel to them, the 45 remix in a ‘primary school orchestra given a whole load of casio keyboards, early akais, distortion pedals and the sheet music to a acid house tune’ kind of way, and the Honkers mix, an Opus III feel. Anyway, please feel free to leave comments to let me know what you think!!! Laterz…

Vivians – 45 (A Taut Line Remix)

Hong Kong In The 60s – Mirror of Ink (A Taut Line’s Osaka In The 90s Mix)

The Summer of 2007 has started. Once again we find ourselves in the season of outdoor drinking, mild heat stroke and global warming paranoia. Being in Osaka, I have to say I miss lounging around on grassy areas enjoying the plastic pint glass flavour of the British Summer. Instead I get the pleasure of sharing my concrete imprisonment with ridiculous humidity and cockroaches. But Summer is Summer, and to celebrate the changing of seasons I have knocked together a just-over-an-hour nice mix of midsummer blitheness that you can download, put on your iPods and play at any barbeques, Summer parties, or whatever you might be gracing with your presence in the next couple of months.

Please right click and save target as if you want to download it…

Please left click if you want to listen to it whilst staring out of the office/library window, wishing you were at 6th Form again, where you could spend all your time just admiring all the nice female summer attire and have no reason to even start caring about responsibility….

-HERE– Summer Mix ’07

Quiet Village – Can’t Be Beat
Loose Joints – All Over My Face
Felix – Tiger Stripes
Escort – Starlight (Darshan Jesrani Parks Dept Dub)
Super Jay – Super Jay Love Theme
Chris Rea – On The Beach
Lee Douglas – Our Song
Justus Kohncke – Elan (Prins Thomas Version)
PigBag – Sunny Day
2 Man Sound – America
Lindstrom – Fast Ans Delirious
Patrick Cowley – Sea Hunt
Putsch ’79 – Kisses
Kelley Polar – Rosenband (Magic Tim’s Instrumental Version)
Isolee – Face B

What do modern high salary working couples put on at their dinner parties in the UK these days? At the end of the 90s onwards they had a massive freezer of trendy smokers’ chill to raid, but nowadays I couldn’t imagine anything more cringe-worthy than tucking in to my char-grilled lamb chump to the sounds of the K&D sessions…And for that matter what’s the compilation of choice for the current back-to-mine-comedown-bifta-bashes? If anyone has the answer I would be generally interested to know. Bearing all this mind I recently came across this track and have since been liking it more and more each listen, and infact it has become a skip resistant tune on my iShuffle. The track could fit as perfectly on the Ikea table mounted Hi-Fi, as in a montage sequence in the next Bridget Jones film. The lyrics are a bit cheesy and the whole tone so unoffensive that it could even have fairly conservative middle aged women happily having it played on their car radios as they drive to Tescos. So why do I like it? Well firstly Tracy Thorn’s voice is always a pleasure to hear under foot-tapping beats and I’ve been a fan of this ever since I first heard Todd Terry’s reinterpretation of Missing. Secondly New York band/producers Escort’s decision of totally stripping away the electro-pop klangs of the original Ewan Pearson production and rebuilding it in a Sade on the dance-floor architecture, really adds even more beauty and emotion to the timbre of Thorn’s distinctive voice (which is possibly slightly lost in the mix of the original). The lyrical sequence “close your eyes, count to ten, turn around back again..” is a wonderful little-girl lead in to the funky chorus. To hear this childlike innocence in Thorn’s usual furrowed-brow adult manner is a first for me and something I repeatedly enjoy, especially in contrast to her usual style throughout the rest of the track. Anyway, I can’t really play this out, even at some of my classy lounge club gigs I have been blagging recently so I thought I’d post it up here.. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Maybe you might even put it on when you are entertaining guests, unless of course you already do and I have subsequently answered my own question…

Tracy Thorn – It’s All True (Escort Remix)

Dreams Come True – Osaka Lover

Koda Kumi – Koi No Tsubomi

Yuki – Spiritless