Nice one Utrecht! (and London!)

Thanks to the Black Sun Empire guys for having me and DJ Fresh over to play their 'Blackout' night in Utrecht on Friday night, and also to the DEF:INITION guys for having me over at Bar Rhumba in London. Both really fun nights indeeed!

Got the whole gang together in London and hit a few bars before the club. Brought back so many memories being back in Bar Rhumba, with Storm playing a Classic Headz set. Mighty! Piglet blew most of her student loan on champagne too haha!

Utrecht was nice and easy, not as stressful travelling as I can sometimes get, quick zip over to Amsterdam, didn't bump into many innovation nutters (meant affectionately!) then a quick dive to Utrect. I think we were lucky though, there were some serious snow & hail things going on. The hotel was so cool they leant me an umbrella to protect my hair on the way to the club! Hah! Stayed at the Court Hotel in Utrecht which has an ACE restaurant, and fabulous espressos the morning after too. You heard it here first...

Here's a few photos from the gig (if you stalk my iPhone photo gallery you've already seen them) ;-)

Got a busy week ahead, a new track to finish ('The Journey') and a couple of remixes to start, and finish (did anyone say the new BLOC PARTY!?), and pile of stuff I've been meaning to eBay for ages so I actually have some space in here...

Just taken a last minute extra gig in Rostov for December 5th so stick that in your diary too...

Siberian expedition...

Thought it merited a mention - my trip 2 weeks ago to Murmansk & Novosibirsk. Honestly I was dreading it. I knew the gigs would be great, but becuase of the location of the cities I was going to, the flight times & durations were always going to be pretty harsh, and meant a fair few on domestic Russian airlines, which don't exactly have a reputation for safety and comfort...

Anyway, it all turned out well, they got me on business class on a few of the internal ones and S7 airlines was actually really nice - they flights I was on had nice new 737s, not those scarey skanky old planes they normally use for domestic flights on Aeroflot etc, that have signs for the 'escape rope' and let people bring a gazillion carry on bags etc...

(Although apparently the last Russian air crash WAS a 737 and the pilots had forged documents to say they were trained to fly 737s when really they weren't - http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1010/42/372073.htm & http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4198399/

Anyway, S7 airlines was really nice, flights totally cool, and the lounge in Moscow was lovely and I actually got some sleep there in a nice big chair! Might make me rethink my current strategy towards gigs in far Russian cities - and accept MORE!

Big thanks got to go to the Radio Records guys for helping set the gigs up, and sending the lovely Irena to be my guide/interpreter. I managed to get her to watch an episode of 'The Wire' on the flight from Novosibirsk to Moscow so hopefully it'll be the start of a viral networking phenomenon out there and I could be responsible for it breaking into Russia! Hah! MCNULTYYYYYYYYY!

Got MAJORY delayed on the way home, so S7 isn't ALL that good. The flight home from Novosibirsk to Moscow was delayed 3 hours, so I missed my BA flight back to London and had to spend the night waiting in Moscow airport waiting for the first flight back to London - think I spent almost 8 hours there, £40 at the cafe on wine and caviar-ish sandiwiches, walked about 2 miles round and round inside, and watched 6 episodes of the Wire. Hah! BA were nice to me - they didn't charge me to change my flight, and the crew recognised me again from last week and brought me a blanket. Oh, wait, they give everyone blankets. DOH! Hah.

Stalactites on the Merc in Siberia



Just before the EPIC journey home from Novosibirsk. COLD.

Gig this Saturday cancelled...

Hey guys! I write u this from my iPhone in the BA lounge at Heathrow Airport...

I'm just about to get on the plane over to Vienna so I can do the gig in Linz tonight - but thought I should let u know that the gig tomorrow, on Saturday got cancelled at the last minute! :-( Not my call at all - my agent tells me the promoter just vanished and hasn't been answering any emails or phone calls - so it's off basically. If u turn up at the gig on Saturday and he's there pretending I'm coming u can tell everyone he's a big fat liar! Hehe

Shame about that - at least now u can maybe come to Linz instead!

Photos from Murmansk on Friday!

Taken from www.john-b.com/site

-----

Here's a new photoset from the John B gig last weekend in Murmansk, Russia. John had a seriously heavy weekend, flying out of London early on Friday, and not getting to sleep in a proper hotel bed until about 4am on Sunday morning after the 2nd gig the other side of the country in Novosibirsk, Siberia!

Murmansk is a 2 hour flight North of Moscow, right on the coast, really close to Finland - and used to have the biggest Submarine base over there during the cold war. Its also very cold there in November!

Thanks to the guys on vKontakte.ru who sent the pics over!

If you want to see the whole photo set just head over to John B's flickr page. You can check them out as a slideshow by clicking here.

Photos from Novosibirsk on Saturday

You see the whole post over at www.john-b.com/site by clicking here.

----

Thanks to the guys at nightout.ru for sending these over so quickly!

You can see the whole set on John's Flickr account.

Photos from my gig in Donskoy City back in August

Taken from www.john-b.com/site

-----

Photos taken from the John B gig in Donskoy City, Russia on August 31 2008. Big thanks to the photographers and Julia from Radio Records for getting the CDs over to us! Felt quite spy-like picking them up in Siberia!

We had a great time over there, Donskoy City was a really cool city and the organiser looked after us so well - lots of blinis & caviar!! It was a shame that the weather was so bad - you can see from the photos just how wet it was - the city got hit with a huge rain & thunder storm all day long... ;-(

You can see the whole set on John B's flickr page, or view a full page slideshow by clicking here.

Also we have a video from the gig here.

Big Rusky Weekend coming up...

Feeling pretty mashed from last night in London - met up with my friends Andy, Candyce & Kirsty Hawkshaw (who I worked with on one of my new tracks 'connected') at the Sanderson Hotel, and had some very posh and VERY expensive Sancerre - then got on a crazy rickshaw cycle over to swerve, well, we got 2 of them and raced down Oxford Street... Video coming later via Kirsty hopefully!

Swerve was fabulous as usual, we arrived at the same time as Bailey so caught all of his set, and Fabio after - both smashed it! Pretty messy night really - my mate Marcus from the RCA was there with his sister, the mighty DAN! was in the place, Paul from Pendulum, MC Stamina - and LOTS of drinks. I virtually carried Hayley up the stairs on the way home...

With Bailey & Hayley at Swerve. Drunkenly...

Anyway, just thought I'd check in and let you guys in Russia know I'm looking forward to the gigs this weekend - I'm playing in Murmansk on Friday night, and then Novosibirsk on Saturday. The flights are HORRIBLE and I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep in a bed until I get to Novosibirsk on Saturday, and then only for a few hours before the show! So, if I look a bit like a ZomBee that's why! 

So, see you guys this weekend! SPASIBAAAAA!!

Officially 129th Best DJ in the World!!! Thanks!

Wow!

I'm thrilled to see I made it into the DJ mag top 100 DJs chart (well, the top 150 I suppose!).

John B - officially 129th most popular Dj in the world! (Might have to make me a Tshirt...)

Just check out some of the other artists/legends I came in above too! Dave Clarke, Jeff Mills, Felix Da Housecat. Hurrrah!

Its also pretty cool to note that the only other DnB Djs that came in higher were Andy C, and Hype - so I'm theoretically the 3rd most popular Drum & Bass DJ in the poll - even Pendulum came lower! Double Hurrah!

According to DJ mag there were 350,000 total votes cast from 167 different countries so this really is a big deal - I'm ecstatic to say the least!

So yeah - before I go and crack open a bottle of Tesco's finest Sancerre and do a little dance...

I want to thank every one of you guys & girls that took the time and effort to vote for me in the poll - it really means a lot. And also just thank everyone generally for the support out there in the clubs & tour dates, enthusiasm for my releases & the podcast etc. I work really hard to provide lots of free, engaging content on the web, all the podcasts, mixes and videos etc - and endure some pretty rough flights and sleep deprivation to get to the dark depths of Russia or wherever - so its really great to get some recognition & props. 

We're working on some really cool new things to hit the web soon, and of course the new album(s) and more and more tour dates so lets keep the ball rolling and hopefully break into the top 100 next year! More electrostep! Thanks again!

xxx

John B 

RIP NT2. Hello SE2200A

So, in my haste nipping in and out of the studio (I move at super-speed when I'm working this hard...) I tripped over my microphone cable last week, which pulled over the mic stand, which had my very expensive Rode NT2 on the top of it, which smashed out of the shockmount, broke the elastic bands in it, and dented the mic, and buggered the condenser or whatever so its basically broken.

 :-( Gonna have to eBay it off to someone who whats to try to fix it. Keep an eye out...

The good news is it meant I had to order a newer mic, and got a neat little desk stand for it too, so I won't be tripping over it anymore, unless I decide to walk on my desk. Got a really cool second mic for when I'm Djing too - it plugs directly into the mixer and has a pointy goose-neck thing, so it looks a bit like a vocoder mic - used it in Budapest last weekend - RoooBotttikk.

And here's an excuse for some studio pr0n with the new mic in place...

Photos from Saturday in Budapest

Just finished uploading most of these to my myspace, facebook & flickr. Will shortly post to the new john-b.com site also...





Had a really good weekend in Budapest, promoters were lovely guys - I flew out with Hayley on Friday so we had all day on Saturday to see a bit of the city - I've played in Budapest loads of times but never really had the time there to actually look around... Mate gave us a great sightseeing-by-comfortable-car trip, and then for ALL YOU CAN EAT sushi - which was a BIG mistake on the restaurant's part with me and piglet in town... YUM! Jsut don't eat the white sad zombie bunnies with bleeding eyes (yes they had them as dessert sushi things... UGG).

Went to the Budapest Zoo on Saturday and had a quality time - they animals were all out, not hiding at all, so we saw all sorts of stuff (and filmed it) - camels, lions, tigers, bears, rhinos, lots of goats. In fact the highlight was watching the alpha monkey challenge the alpha goat for monkey nuts being thrown into the enclosure by an old man that was not only playing God to some degree, but literally looked like God. Apart from his green dungarees. I think I got some of this on film - will have to look later on today!

The gig was amazing - I played almost 4 hours - totally drained by the end of it but the set went phenominally - atmosphere in the club was electric, totally rammed, and a really nice system too so it was a pleasure. AND I got to try out my new goose-neck mic and talk like a robot. They recorded the set too, so as long as the levels were OK, I should have a super mega mighty 3.5 hr live set for you in the podcast feed soon...

Just uploaded a vintage video of my trip to Graz with MC Lowqui back in 2005 to my vimeo page this morning as well, I found hi-res versions of a lot of the better, older videos, so will be sprucing them up and gradually uploading behind the scenes in preparation for the grand relaunch of johnbtv.com next month... Watch. This. Space...

Hit the maximum 5000 friends on facebook! Arg!

So it IS true that there's a friend limit on Facebook - makes sense I suppose, but a bit of a pain...

So, if you didn't get in there early - well, regardless - please add my music page - they don't have limits on the 'fan' pages on facebook and I duplicate all my content on there anyway - so you lose anything. You miss out on status updates - but they all get automatically fed through from my twitter account - so I think it all works!

My new sport will be going through my actual facebook friends and purging all the randoms that now just spam me out for all the pseudo guestlist table service booking r&b crap from cities I don't even live in. Why they don't get kicked off I don't know... It'll be a lovely liberating experience though - eventually all 5000 will be the super creme de la creme ;-)

Indian Thriller...

Just had a friend send this link over - HAD to share it with you...

Nice Hillside in Switzerland

Saw this in a blur on the zooooom to the airport last weekend. It is somewhere in Switzerland...

PC errrggggg

I've been looking at this most of the day...

Don't worry, I only have one PC and I don't use it for anything important - just a big badass media server for the house and streaming video to my xbox 360s and stuff - but it annoys me like no other. Thank god for my precious Macs...

I had it lovely and resurrected like a dream so decided to replace one of the HDs with a huuuge 1 TeraByte one. Then realised I didn't have the right cables, then got a new sata cable but it wasn't long enough to reach, then got the right one, but it wouldn't boot properly, then waited 4 hours for it to format and to copy over whatever needed copying etc. Anyway, its fixed now I think, and I can watch episodes of Dexter that aren't out in the UK yet. And Hayley can watch series 99 of America's Next Top model - even though we buy all the DVDs eventually anyway!

Hurrah. 

I could probably pay to fly the actors from the show to come and act it out for me if I spent nearly as much time making tunes as I do being the IT support guy for my house... :-p

Flyers & Info for my gig in Budapest on Saturday

http://www.pulzar.hu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7412

Fellépnek: JOHN B (Beta recordings, UK), Jade & Matt-u (Citrus, Black Sun Empire), Danny Darko (Weekandbass), Elf (ImpulseCreator)

2008. október 25., Club Diesel - Budapest, X. kerület, Népliget – a Planetárium mellett

Belépő: 2000 / 2500 Ft

Elővétel: Akt Records /Budapest, IX. kerület, Üllői út 51./

Infoline: 06304604161


Fellépnek:

JOHN B (Beta recordings, UK)
Jade & Matt-u (Citrus, Black Sun Empire)
Danny Darko (Weekandbass) Elf (ImpulseCreator)

kisterem:

Szab (Carbothornic)
Bergi (Monkey6)
Svindler (Monkey6)
Max Factor (Monkey6)


Web:

www.myspace.com/johnbbeta
www.john-b.com

Last weekend deserves a mention...

Before I forget about it, which I hope I do (well, the bad airport parts anyway)...

If you follow me on Twitter then you would have seen the rough travel stuff I dealt with last weekend - in true John B style of course, but it still got pretty stressful! 

Despite the fact I'm in and out of Heathrow several times a week and how much could potentially go wrong with delays and missed connections these days, things usually run nicely and I rarely miss a flight because of it, and even then usually find a way of getting to the gig on time... When things start messing up that are out of my hands I just do my best to stay calm and use my supertraveller skills to sort it out - quick thinking & the stuff I learned through PUA to do with communication etc all help. Although this weekend it was mostly about doing stuff very quickly, some brisk walking and some out alpha-ing of a very rude French security LADY. 

I never thought I'd end up having to use social dynamics techniques to get past a troll at an airport checkpoint... Thank you Tyler & Eric... ;-)

So for the first time ever I turned up at the airport at the wrong time on Friday, I'd misread my itinerary, the time in bold was the arrival time in Brussels, not the departure time, so I went to the desk to check in but the plane had long since gone - even though I was nice and early. Ticket was non-refundable/non-changable as is pretty standard these days, so I was left having to pay for a new one for £160. Nice. Luckily there was one pretty soon, so I still made it to Brussels in time, but not in a leisurely fashion...

Gig in Belgium was great - lovely promoters & guys at the night - turned out he's going to help me with some php programming if I need it for the new sites I'm working on... (john-b.com/site)

Next day, got to Brussels arport for my 230pm flight, to cut a long story short it transpired BA had cancelled the 530pm flight back to Heathrow, and delayed ours until then, and combined all the passengers onto one flight. Leaving me with not much time at all to get on my next flight to Basel. As it happened I made the flight with minutes to spare, but my suitcase didn't so I didn't have a lot of my stuff when I got to Switzerland! I always have my main CDs with me, and basic make-up etc, so it didn't really affect the show, just my comfort, and choice of stuff to wear... Oh, and my classy improvised DJ bag - the hotel laundry bag...

Next day, they cancelled my return flight form Basel to Heathrow, but I only found out on the way to the airport. Had to zooom there and get in the ticket line, blag a ticket on Air France, via Paris CDG - zoom to the Air France desk, who couldn't see the new reservation becuase the etickets take a while to get through the system - boarding had already started... Managed to sort it eventually, steamed through security and straight onto the plane as soon as I made it to the gate... THEN - get to Paris, in a different terminal, so have to get a bus to the other terminal, then get through the security which was at an absoulute standstill... (You know French + queueing sytems = pain...). People were actually sitting on the floor and just compressing the whole thing if they were actually moving, nothing moving through really, madness - and my flight was already boarding too - if I hadn't done anything I'd have missed it, on a rebooked ticket so Air France wouldn't have been too helpful should I have missed the flight. Anyway, stress. Found a line for Business class passengers, which was working OK, and there was no one waiting in line - put on my most polite voice and explained simply my situation to the lady who just switched on me soooooooo horrifically, shouted at me GO AWAY and turned her back on me and held her arms out, SOOOO RUDE! I started asking loudly 'GET ME YOUR SUPERVISOR - MY FLIGHT  IS BOARDING' and some other woman comes, so then I switched to my special wavering help-me-this-lady-is-evil-and-you-probably-know-it-you-have-to-work-with-her-don't-let-her-take-another-soul voice and the 2nd lady let me through. I can't emphasize enough how pure evil that first lady was. Anyway, zooomed through, got to the gate and walked straight on the plane, last one on again. If she'd got her way I'd probably still be stuck there like Tom Hanks.

Just had to get that off my chest... ;-)

Big up to the promoters from both gigs this weekend though - top guys and excellent gigs! And thanks for the Swiss Chocolate!!!

  

OMG FACEBOOK OVERLOAD LOLZ WTF

Hah! Seems today I hit the facebook limit of 5000 friends! It won't let me approve any more. Boooo!

Guess you'll all just have to go and join up to the fan page instead!

Maybe I'll have a weekly elimination competition to remove bad friends and try out new ones... 

:evilplanz:

Resons not to give your girlfriend the online shopping log in #3

Piglet's Pineapple. My suprise in the grocery shopping this morning... ;-)

Square Eyes...

Man I'm frazzled. Was up far too early to take Hayley to the station to get into London for Uni lectures etc after a pretty late night out for Styles' birthday with Linus, Smunty & Hayley...

Went staight to work in the Beta Office working on a new john-b.com news/blog site... It's shaping up really well, and should be a nice newsfeedy hub for all my media as it gets posted up - videos etc. Also sorting out any of the new tour videos and uploading them to the many video portals you have to send them to these days...

If I don't see another LCD display for a few days I can't say I'll be sorry!

Off to the airport in the morning again for the gigs this weekend, first flying out to Brussels to play in Ostend on Friday night, then back in and out of Heathrow on Saturday to get to Switzerland. Gona be a bit heavy, but looking forward to the gigs and playing some of the new tracks that have come in this week... Greg Packer's come out of hibernation with a wikkid new track called 'Space Rock' - and my mate Mr. Mendez send over a Mindless Self indulgence bootleg some of his friends did that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE! Got some hot new Black Sun Empire stuff too. Hurrah!

Get well soon Grandma!

Grandma B had a fall last week and broke her hip :-(

She had an operation to fix it on Sunday and apparently it went well, so she should get better soon...

She doesn't use the internet, so I'll print this out for her - but wanted to wish her a speedy recovery!

Video from Donoskoy City, Russia!

Yes I HAVE been busy! Need to spend more time in the studio than editing videos right?

Filmed this back in August when I played in Donoskoy City, a cool city about 2-3 hours drive from Moscow. The promoter was a really cool guy, a local Government official, but he had a special nature park place, with a lake and outdoor nightclub all connected in - think they had plans to build a little hotel there too in the future and promote tourism to the area. The idea being people could come and escape from the hustle and bustle of Moscow to see come nice countryside and go fishing etc - but at nighttime it goes all Ibiza, Russian style!

Alas we were VERY unlucky with the weather - one of the biggest thunderstorms I've ever seen (apart from in Texas) decided to come and hassle us, in fact I'm suprised the plane was even allowed to land in Moscow - so what could have been a load of happy Russian ravers dancing to the sounds of John B under the moonlight was more of a mudpit under thunder and lightening and floods... We still had a great time, but it was a shame that the first time they paid to fly out an international DJ the weather scuppered it :-( I'll be back next year though and they promised me it will be sunny then... ;-)

Big thanks to all the guys that helped out, and for the BLINSKI ETLITCHNA!!!!

Oh, and see the vid through till the end - you get a nice bit of a VJ video for my remix of Glamour for Better at the end...

Extremely Cheesy John B Holiday video...

Not sure why I'm sharing this with you - maybe its just so you can see my amazing tennis skills...

Upcoming gig: London October 16th

Thought I'd post this up here as its for a good cause...

I'll be playing an electrotechno set at this gig so come on down - my friend MC Lowqui is emigrating to Australia so there's a big send off party in Brixton, raising money for charity into the bargain!

Thursday 16th Oct 08
@ Plan B, 418 brixton Road, SW9 7AY (There is parking on side streets near the venue.)

Dress Code:
its fancy dress, hats & wigs, or anything goes. so go stylish in a hat or jokes in a wig or full out fancy dress or be boring...

Tickets £5 plus 95p booking fee:
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=xxx&query=schedule&promoter=essenceofchi

See ya there!

Yes, I DJd in a Russian Waterpark

Saturday was pretty wierd to be honest, but in a good way. It had been a heavy week really - did Cologne on Thursday, then London on Friday night, where much wine was consumed, then flew to Moscow for this gig on Saturday, then home on Sunday. I was actually in Heathrow Terminal 5 for 4 days in a row. They must have thought I was scoping out the duty free to nick some Chanel for Christmas or something...

So yeah, I was a bit daunted at the prospect of playing with electical equipment in a Russian Swimming pool (you've heard about the party where the ravers got blinded by lazers - and seen the photos of the flamethrowers behind me last time in Moscow). But it was worth it - I was literally laughing the whole 2 hours I was playing at just how random the situation was - if I'd known properly in advance I'd have been rocking the speedos too.

Gotta say big thanks to Mary and Max & everyone that took care of me, and Dimitri - good luck with the winemaking in Alsace mate!

So yeah, I was playing 2-4am in a water park, in the middle of a shopping mall, in the middle of Moscow - surrounded by people that would normally be full-on ravers, except they were in bikinis & speedos - but still dancing at full-pelt!

The video is up on the podcast now, and youtube, and facebook, and vKontakte.ru hopefully too.

John's work on display at the Royal College of Art

Well, on the whiteboard in the Office...

Yes. I can draw horses.

Big shouts out to Marcus Lanyon and all the people helping out on Friday night when I played at the Royal College of Art Students' Union in London. The whole gang came down and rockkkked it. Hayley dressed as Lara Croft, for the Superheroes theme thing, and Smunty almost went as Kong but chickened out.

I really enjoyed playing, so much so that I did 3 hours, and really was able to play across the board, lots of DnB of course, but I had so much time that I could really play what I wanted and take it right through some dirty electro & techno too. Only downside of the night was some eager young student boys knocking my wine over all my CDs :-( I'll just consider it performance art and save them in case they become famous so I can sell them and buy a swimming pool... ;-)

Slug in the Bathroom!

Don't know where this little feellah came from but he somehow sneaked into the house and waiting to ambush me when I got home... We released him back into the wild ;-)

The End of the mighty DAT mountain!!

This lot took a LONG time....

Think I managed to extract almost 200 unreleased remixes, different versions, things that have previously only been on vinyl, or white labels, and stuff I never got round to releasing from these DATs (the tapes you used to use to record finished tracks onto in the studio before CDRs & super-powerful computers...). Have gone through and remastered most of them too and sorted out for digital release and the best ones to get included on some new compilations, greatest hits type stuff... Exciting...

And now I can give the DAT machine back to Martin's dad, after over a year! Got some apologising to do! ;-)

Why I hate PCs

I need some help... :-(

Brand New John B Message Board...

The mighty Trickartt has put the finishing touches to the theme design for the new John B Electrostep RoboPunk Drum&Bass Message Board this afternoon - so I'm going to let you guys in on it before anyone else. :-)

www.john-b.com/board

If you want to hop on over there and try it out, and join in on the discussions (and fill us in if you spot any technical problems we haven't spotted yet) then take a look at www.john-b.com/board and register and get involved! Hopefully it will develop into a cool hub to keep up to date on things and network with my other fans/followers...

Rock on!

xxx

JB

John B @ Bassment @ Mango, Reading Gig Cancelled on October 8

Thought I'd post this up here so you spot it if you were planning to come, I know a few of you have been emailing my agent and stuff asking about details for the show...

Unfortunately the Bassment guys had to cancel this particular event due to venue difficulties - but I will be playing there at a future event in February. They ARE still using the venue, got a BIG event with Shy FX coming up too so everything's cool otherwise...

"It would have been impossible to put the event on as a free entry night which is what we wanted it to be... Bassment is not about ripping people off and just wants to get good music out to as many people as possible". 

Just thought I'd let you know as soon as I knew in case you were planning a huge trip down from Australia or something... ;-)

YAAAARRRRRRR

Oh, and a big YARRRRRRR for the International talk like a pirate day yesterday.... 

Hope the jokes on the mic last night weren't too much...

Quick hello from Dallas

(Me riding a mechanical bull here in Dallas back in 2003)

Got a few spare moments here at Dallas airport waiting for my flight to LA so thought I'd check in with you guys! Had a fabulous gig last night here at the Lizard Lounge - so thanks to everyone that came out... 

Was a loooonnnng day yesterday - I flew straight out of London direct to Dallas - about a 10 hour flight, we got delayed because they couldn't close the cargo door, and then when we got to Dallas had to wait 2 hours for the bags to come out because it was jammed shut! Haha! I bet the Dallas maintenance crew were cursing the Heathrow dudes... Met some nice brits while I was waiting at belt 5 anyway so no harm done really - just ate into my disco nap time a bit...

You can see the post-gig discussions over on the forums at www.dallasdancemusic.com and hopefully some decent photos in the coming days - I spotted a couple of dudes with big cameras around about the place so they should surface eventually.  Big shouts to Big John over there for taking care of me (although I need to teach him what constitutes good wine...) hehe and Jeremy and the guys on before me - I didn't really have time to chat so feel a bit bad about that - those guys brought me out to Dallas a fair few times in the past... Was also great to finally meet Mark Subsonik -  definitely a producer to look out for - I really love the trancey DnB stuff he's doing and I've been trying to persuade him to do something for Beta... So watch this space...

Oh and bollox to iTunes video selection. I've been MEGA getting into a show called 'the wire' - watched about 6 episodes on my iphone back to back on the way over here, but realised I missed a few episodes of season 3 when I was copying them the day before I flew out... For some reason iTunes UK store only has season 1 and 5 available - but the USA store has all of them and it won't let me get em. Lame... If anyone out there has season 3, episodes 2, 4 and 6 and can rapidshare them to me today I'd love you forever... (I have the DVD at home so its not naughty...)

Anywayyy. Off to LA now, playing some big rave there tonight which should be interesting... My old Uni mates from Durham are in town too so I'm hoping we can link...

Lots of love till later...

Nice Review of my remix of Glamour For Better at Djmag.com

Just spotted this while bumbling through their site - didn't spot it in the print version though, so hope I didn't miss it. If anyone has a copy and can scan it for me that would be lovely...

"Glamour For Better - Architects Of Discotech (John B Remix) (Ear Candy)

John B is truly one of the most multi-talented producers on the planet, having adeptly spanned every style in dnb with his own special penchant for '80s electro-inspired pieces. Re-hashing duties here are fulfilled with a rave-inspired bumpy choco-latte slider that lasts from start to finish. And successfully going against the grain (as always), expect sanguine chanted lyrics, rising sunrise chords and the sort of riffs that make you feel at peace with yourself. (4/5)"

Nice.

You can buy it on vinyl here:

Or just do a search on iTunes, Beatport.com, Trackitdown.net - or your favourite mp3 internet shoppe... It WILL be there! ;-)

Photos from Donetsk

Photos from my gig in Donetsk on Saturday are now up on my flickr page, myspace & facebook.

I nabbed them from www.goodnight.dn.ua so thanks guys! Hopefully more will pop up soon...

Enjoy!

PS And yes, Geordie Laforge called and he wants my sunglasses back.

Back from Holidays!

In case you were wondering why the blog was quiet for the last week or so, it was because I was away getting a mega-tan in Greece. 

Back on the case now though - played Donetsk in Ukraine on Saturday night (photos coming tomorrow) and getting things done in the studio as we speak. Off to Dallas and LA this weekend - very excited about that!

john-b.com & beta-recordings.com updated!

Quick post just to let you know I've redesigned and updated the www.john-b.com site & the Beta Recordings site AND all the other labels sites too...

Been really busy actually - thought it was long overdue that I actually got something up at www.john-b.com instead of it just redirecting to the Beta Recordings website (which is looking a bit old now to be brutally honest) - so I've been reading up on web design and actually did it myself!

The other ones are all pretty simple - but I think its good to tie everything in together and get a base to build up Tangent & Nu Electro in their own right, and get some more excellent music out there...

Have a look:

www.john-b.com

www.electrostep.net

www.beta-recordings.com

www.tangent-recordings.com

www.nu-electro.com

www.chihuahua-recordings.com