Old Skool Vinyl

Nope. We're not talking plastic shopping bags - which is what most Japanese think when you mention the word "vinyl", though it's pronounced something like veekneel over here.

I'm also not really interested in skirting the territory of the derivatives of ethene (CH2=CH2, with one hydrogen atom replaced with some other group), which is the scientific guff talked up on Wikipedia if you google vinyl.

The issue here is that other vinyl, a gramophone or phonograph record (yes, they do still make 'em), the analogue sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove.

Here I'm also plundering directly from Wikipedia (sorry, but it's 4:20 a.m. and my brain isn't functioning enough to be inventive in any way), though I did fix analog so it reads as analogue.

Anyway, where was I?


Oh yeah, the picture above slapped around my senses - old skool vinyl, in particular a little flattened black nugget my label IF? will now be releasing through Prime Direct in the UK at the end of November.

It's one of my Little Nobody tracks, 'The Condimental Op' (I actually nicked this from a chapter title in my upcoming hack novel), with remixes by Detroit’s superb old skool vets Aux 88 (430 West/Submerge/Direct Beat/Studio !K7) and Chicago legend K. Alexi Shelby (Transmat/Studio !K7/Djax-Up-Beats/Trax/Warp/Artform) kind'a all going back to the source: Pure electro/techno, 2010s style. Well, me likes to methinks, anyway.

It's already been spun, charted and is gathering a wee bit of steam thanks to support from Dave Clarke, Laurent Garnier, Shin Nishimura, Trevor Rockcliffe, Alan Oldham, Inigo Kennedy, Kirk Degiorgio, Dan Curtin, Steve Poindexter, Jerome Baker, Mike Dehnert, Ryuji Takeuchi and Anthony Shakir.

This vinyl baby will be available from November 27th (incidentally my mum's birthday!) via Prime, but you can get a sneak preview (in lovely lower-res audio) here:

Domo Arigato, Mr. Robota

Some things don't change, like my penchant for things robotic - no real surprise then that the name of my new Little Nobody vinyl EP out today through IF? is 'Robota'.

However there's another trace element influence here. Nope, it's not related to the project by Star Wars art director Doug Chiang - I only just discovered that today on Google while doing hack research for this piece - nor the freaky 'educational and therapeutic devices' promoted here. It isn't even a wayward misspelled homage to Styx's 1983 classic 'Mr Roboto'.

Instead I nicked the name off Wikipedia.

Yep, you read right. I was checking out the entry on robots and the origin of the word, and deep in there I discovered this pearler: "The word robota means literally work, labor or serf labor, and figuratively 'drudgery' or 'hard work' in Czech and many Slavic languages. Traditionally the robota was the work period a serf had to give for his lord, typically 6 months of the year."

Being a lazy git myself with an eye forever on the couch, I decided to call the track 'Robota'. Nothing deeper than that, I'm afraid - though we can always pretend otherwise and toot some people's horns.

For this baby I originally shanghaied into the arrangement Japanese producer Toshiyuki Yasuda - one of Si Begg's favorite musicians who'd just finished working at the time with Señor Coconut, a.k.a Atom Heart - to do his bloody brilliant robot-style vocoder vocals as Robo*Brazileira.

"Robo*Brazileira is my singing alias, a fictitious Brazilian robot," Yasuda patiently explained to the unenlightened (in this case myself) at the time. "For me, the robot is one view-point with which to see ourselves as humans. To see us more cautiously, I think I must have external eyes."

With an attitude and moniker like that I had no real choice but to get the laddie involved.

Then to do their own wind-up remixes of the original combo we first lassooed in the insanely respected Mr. Steve Stoll - a man who's released motorized techno over the years on labels like Proper NYC, NovaMute, Djax-Up-Beats and Harthouse.

I was a huge fan in the '90s and first interviewed him just over a decade ago; fact is that the guy continues to steer my personal techno inclinations pretty darned effectively and I love his drums - both real and programmed.

We also got on board the irrepressible Dave Tarrida, whose output through his old label Sativae and since then through Tresor, Musick, Neue Heimat, Dancefloor Killers and Feinwerk has been my repeated refill cuppa tea for years; his recent stuff continues to kick my butt about.


Rounding out the remixing troupe is Germany's Cem Oral (a.k.a Jammin' Unit/Ultrahigh/4E), the genius behind Cube 40's 'Bad Computa' and Air Liquide's 'Robot Wars'.

How on earth (or indeed off it) couldn't I include him here?

Finally, I indulged in a wee bit of the tyranny-of-distance e-mail mud wrestling thing, this time between Tokyo and Sydney, as me and fellow Aussie Simon Nielsen (DJ Hi-Shock of Elektrax notoriety) did the final mix.

There's a ripe possibility we'd together like to intimate that this record is machine-based disco-funk-tech for the next decade - the promo propaganda sheet says precisely that - then suggest you should hop online and order the wax now, since it's available from today here (surprise, surprise)... but the fact remains that none of these musos, who are also mates of mine, would be so pretentiously narcissistic. They're cool individuals with a great sense of humour and a definite interest in music for music's sake.

So instead, for shameless promotional reasons of a more ulterior bent, I gathered together all the boys involved in the vinyl remixes and bounced around some silly robot-related queries.

Far from earth-shattering, completely self-indulgent and occasionally obscure, this waffling conversation can be online at the Fun in the Murky website.

Funk Gadget 'Blah Blah' on White Vinyl

I know, I know - this is not really Japan-related, although the original track (which also appears here) was conceived and spat-out in my hack studio here in Tokyo just over a year ago, with the accidental input of the ever-brilliant Paul Birken (long story).

And the remixes concept was also dreamed up here in Japan over the past few months - but the rest of this story, as they say, was a global effort.

The record label is Slidebar Recordings, the sister label of Kitty Corner over in Germany run by Axel Sohns; the artwork is by Marcin Markowski in Poland.


And the remixes are by: Si Begg (Mosquito/Tresor), Patrick Pulsinger (Cheap/Disko B), Dave Tarrida (Tresor/Musick) and Birken (Bonus Round/Tonewrecker).

Oh yeah, and Funk Gadget is me - another of my silly production aliases (I have about 30 of 'em).

This one's a side-project I do for noisier electro/dubstep/cut-up stuff. So, when granted the insane opportunity to conjure up a record for Slidebar (and this lovely WHITE VINYL one at that), I decided to bring along a few of my like-minded mates.

This baby came out last month (February 2010), and you can check out sneak preview sample sounds (and/or order the vinyl, if it's your cuppa tea) here:
http://www.deejay.de/Funk_Gadget-Blah_Blah_Ep-SLR003__483917

Here's the hack video-clip: