Lots of cool new stuff going on this week!
After a bit of a break with my podcast we're back with a brand new episode - and a big one at that - 2.5 hours of fresh new Drum & Bass - the Spring 2015 studio mix! Thought this time I should keep the chat to a minimum and do a proper, long, DnB mix representative of all the new stuff around at the moment that I'm into & don't always get to play in my club gigs if the set-times are shorter.
I get a lot of messages from fans of the podcast, and I can tell its something you guys love & were sad that I stopped doing them every week. I will always continue doing as regularly as possible - it was great to be doing them every week last year but it was taking up so much time, everrrrry week, planning what I should play, doing the mix, recording the voiceover stuff, and then all the technical stuff to get it up on itunes, soundcloud, johnbpodcast.com, john-b.com, reposting on Facebook, twitter blah blah blah etc. So the plan now is probably once every few weeks or so for the normal podcasts - and of course whenever I can record my live sets from the clubs I'll get them up on there too!
CLICK HERE to check out all the links, or you can stream it from this soundcloud thing below:
I also took a little break from the podcast at the beginning of the year because I GOT MARRIED!!! Back in February I married Magda, and we were away for our Honeymoon in Miami for the whole of March (and I also did some US tour dates including the week-long Miami WMC as usual) - hopefully a decent enough reason to take a break from doing the podcast every week during that time! ;-)
Now that I'm back - I'm fired up and ready to go in the studio with the next phase of my studio output - when I got back from the honeymoon I pulled apart all my studio stuff, changed all the desks to reduce their height (for some reason when I designed my set up years ago I decided it would be a good idea to have the desks much higher than is comfortable for some reason!) - got some proper Herman Miller chairs that I've always wanted, so I can actually sit there for the hours and hours you need, and rewired everything and got all the random cables that has spewed out of control over the years all tidied up and out of the way. Studio Mac Pro is all upgraded and running smoothly now, just a few more plug-ins and software instruments to upgrade... Here's a quick photo - I'll be recording a proper behind-the-scenes video in the next week or so for all you audio geeks!
Also - another free download - this time a new track of mine called "Electricity". I made it back in December just before I played at Soul In Motion, to use as the intro track that night. The original idea was obviously a political one, a dark industrial electro drum & bass hybrid track, with robo-vocoder vocals talking about society, bankers, tax evasion, inequality, corruption etc. With elections coming in the UK this week, more protests in America over police brutality & inequality, ongoing propaganda issues with Russia/USA/Ukraine stuff and talk of big businesses avoiding tax in times of austerity etc I figured it was a good time to put it 'out there' - and to make a serious video to go with it.
I love the venue they use for Soul in Motion - the club is in the basement of a really cool posh hotel and whenever I go there it always strikes me the different types of people there are upstairs vs. downstairs. Even though the vibe in either is totally cool & inclusive you can't help but notice how in the posh hotel bar and expensive restaurant upstairs there's all the rich, London media-types & international businessmen (and their hookers) while downstairs, in the same place there is this super underground other world - existing right in the same building. Obviously its still people that live in london and can afford to go clubbing etc but you do notice a contrast. That's where the 'Upstairs there is bourgeoise, downstairs music energy' line comes from anyway.
So... when Russell Brand was on BBC Question time he made a decent speech about a lot of those issues - Farage & UKIP using immigrants as scapegoats for the cutbacks/austerity when the real villains are the banks that caused the crash & the big businesses that avoid paying tax, and the politicians that allow it etc. Realised that would be great for the intro for the track & set the tone for what was to come and it worked really well - except I couldn't get in touch with any of his people to get his bit officially cleared & also in the spirit of the track I think free download is more fitting.
So I got my head round Final Cut X and spent a few days last week working on the video, cut up loads of new archive footage, managed to sync up Russell Brand on the BBC show & then figured out how to overlay all the text so it drives home what the lyrics were. Anyway, here's the video, you can download the track from my soundcloud here.
We now have a brand new webstore!
The old webstore was getting pretty out-of-date looking so I moved it over to a new Shopify system. The great thing is now we offer digital downloads bundled with any physical product - so basically if you buy anything on vinyl or CD you get instant access to the music as a download too - AND as well as the usual mp3s you can now buy high definition WAV files. Lots of new merch too and some exciting new shirts and other clothing coming soon!
Check it out at www.beta-store.com
