Record Store Day

Well it's been a long hiatus. I have been really slack with the blog, but pumping out loads of mixes, so I need to catch up.

But first...

Yesterday was international Record Store Day, just google it for more info.

This is a celebration of the ever dwindling band of independent record shops, a cause close to my heart, as after clubbing, time spent in record shops was my second favourite pastime in the 90s!

Of course life has moved on for me, and working away from home, family, financial and other pressures make those relaxed weekend shopping trips a thing of the past, but of course with that the world around me has changed too, and the decline of physical media music sales has killed off the majority of traditional record shops, and this event took place to celebrate and promote those that remain.

To support the event dozens of artists and labels produced limited edition release for the day, with others offering pre-release availability of items that will not be normally available till Monday.

I got to my nearest record shop, Rock-a-Boom in Leicester at about 10:05, just after opening, hoping to fit a quick visit in between other commitments. By 11am I had actually managed to enter the shop, the queue was so long. And by 11:30 I got served, by which time I had missed my next stop-off (a quick phone call home saved my bacon), and many of the most sought-after items had gone, but I managed to bag a quartet:

Chemical Brothers - Escape Velocity (limited edition, single sided)
Jònsi - Go Do (limited 1000)
Jamie Lidell - Compass (on WARP, limited to 150 in the UK)
LCD Soundsystem - Pow Pow (limited 1000 copies, single sided)

the Chemical Brothers track seems to be more widely available from tomorrow, 19th, and is a precursor to a new album.

Not all of them are things that I would normally have bought, but I had to support the day and the lure of limited edition material by interesting artists is always too great for a vinyl addict such as myself.

Each purchase at the shop also brought with it a free 18-track sampler CD. Most of the stuff on there is guitar-based stuff which I have a hard time getting into, but there were some gems for me too.

So deep into last night I knocked together an eclectic if rather brief mix of these tracks:

Jamie Lidell - Compass
Oceansize - Legal Teens
LCD Soundsystem - Pow Pow
Falty DL - Discant
Hadouken! - Turn The Lights Out
Chemical Brothers - Escape Velocity
Blame featuring Ruff Sqwad - On My Own (Drumsound & Bassline Smith Remix)
Jònsi - Go Do
Yeasayer - Ambling Alp
Jònsi - Boy Lilikoi
Jamie Lidell - Lies Inside

I have to confess to cheating slightly - the FaltyDL track is not actually on the sampler CD, but was a secondhand promo that I bought in the shop at the same time, so it sort of counts.

In spite of the wide variety of styles here, I think I made a decent fist of it, in particular I was surprised by the way that the Chemical Brothers and Blame tracks ended up in the same key, and I hope that my beatmixing of the likes of Jònsi and Yeasayer demonstrates that these techniques are not limited to pure dance music.

I hope you enjoy the mix!

download it here