Marks out of 10?

How long have I had this blog? Don't answer, I'm being rhetorical. It is, as the name suggests, a 'Windcheater' blog. There's been plenty of DJing chat but that's not really what I'm supposed to do. Producing music is what WC does (of a fashion), and finally, this blog can announce the arrival of a new track, dragged kicking and screaming this very fine autumnal day into the digital realm.
Yes, the music page of www.windcheater.co.uk has finally been updated (and what a pain in the arse that was). You can click here and open the track directly, or go and have a gander at the site yourself.
It's called -Mrk 0- and it's available in all it's 128kbps Mp3 glory. Feel free to leave any comments, fair or foul right here on the WCblog.

Do you like cos-play girls?

errrrrr, I mumbled, not wanting to insult the cos-play girl asking me. Luckily before I had to come up with an answer she had thrust a flyer into my hand with a breezy 'here you are' for what I am sure was one of Akihabara's finest tea houses. Didn't go though......couldn't understand the kanji, fnar. I was surprised to read that a lot of the cos-play girls who work in these places do it as part of their hobby. They get paid, the customers love it. Isn't that beautiful?

Tokyo makes everywhere look small. Every time I go there it's size just bowls me over. I've been in Japan 3 years, can speak a bit of Japanese and can read Hiragana and Katakana and have some knowledge of how things like public transport work here. Then I go to Tokyo and stand outside a simple train station and think, 'What the FUCK do I do here?' No big city I have spent any time in, London and Madrid mainly, can come close to how overwhelming the whole experience can be. Infact the first time I didn't really like it....now I love it. Becomes a bit of a cliche the amount of times you say it but just the sense of safety and ease you can walk down a Tokyo street that I never feel even in my home country's capital is fantastic. It's a brilliant place to people watch rather than wallet watch.

My mate has just moved to within a World Champion Strongman's throw of Yoyogi park which is a great place. It's ironic that the little space Japanese people have in their apartments, so that they are forced outside to do things a lot us take for granted such as practising a musical instrument, creates such a fantastic environmnent. Hundreds of people, rehearsing plays, playing games, singing, dancing, even one high school girl practising her Happyokai speech, on her own, on a rock. Bless.

And then there are the Otaku :) One of my favourite spots in Tokyo is next to Yoyogi, at the Shibuya entrance. Along here you can see hundreds of bands/singers/comedy groups plying their trade to anyone who'll listen. Again its a great atmosphere (all that equipment would be gone in minutes back home) and some of the Idol hopeful's attract some really handsome chaps.....

So go. You'll get lost in a station, see some freaks/beautiful people and get really dizzy looking up at/down from some stupidly tall buildings. You can take some photos too....

TLF - Until you get dizzy

About 5 years ago, when WC was first trying to get to grips with the internet and making music, I came across a site called Sample City. There were some good people there....and some idiots. Infact it was probably my first exposure to being annoyed by people I'd never met, BUT, this is about one of the good people, Stephen Braiden, aka Craig Johnston, aka The Tea Leaf Family. I think SC was the first place I ever put up a track for review. I can't remember what it was but I do remember a guy who had the same username as an old Liverpool legend liked it. I had a listen to his stuff and, after my only exposure to music on the internet being the boards on the old Mp3.com I was amazed. Today, through my post box I received TLF's first album - Until you get dizzy, released on Berlin breakbeat label (and one time Hiroshima visitors) Dangerous Drums. Played by the late great John Peel no less, it's hard to pigeon hole TLF. Not that I'd want to but we all do don't we? House, that isn't quite house, breaks, that aren't quite breakbeat, all helped along by the vocal talents of JJ the Detroit diva and Japan's very own Yuko Matsuyama. Yep there's Japanese on there. Can I understand it? Can I fuck. Lovely voice though. There are some classics that I remember from my old SC lurking days such as Flow and Eyeswide (infact I still have the vocal samples to that somewhere, maybe I'll have a stab at that remix again...) and a lot of stuff I haven't heard before, particularly in their entirety. Like Groove Armada TLF can and aren't afraid to mix it up, lovely rolling bass lines are a specialty that I'm quite jealous of. A really, very, very good album.

One small gripe.....where's my Japan only bonus track? ;)

How to get it : iTunes (a measly 99 cents, the European ones, a track, or 9.99Euros for the whole thing), search for TLF. Order it on TLF's news page via Paypal. If you live in Berlin, visit the news page again to see what shops it can be found in.

It also represents the first time the name Windcheater has appeared on a CD jacket.......in the thanks section :)

3k

Thanks to everyone who came down to Edge last night for 3K. It was the most satisying night of 'being a DJ' I've had so far. The place was pretty full, and there were people on the dance floor for most of the night. Another shout out to Messyman from me for his mastering work. Played Dune last night and although it's about 2 years old now, hearing it out that loud was kind of spine tingling....the bass sounded amazing. Enough self regarding though. Daisuke played a funky hip hop opening two hours that kept my head nodding.....even out watching the door. Abu then warmed up the crowd very nicely until he quite literaly ran out of records. Apart from bringing his DJ skills he also brought in a lot of friends/fans who really helped to make the atmosphere on the dance floor. GHB and myself were up next, and apart from a 'metronome' moment things went pretty smoothly. GHB mixed very fluidly and depsite a lull in the middle at the end people were up dancing again. I enjoyed punching the sample pads on my Kaosspad, so much so that I ended up wanting more than two and even went to see how much Akai's MPC costs today. After us came Asuka who really is brilliant. I had no idea she played hip hop too...I should have guessed really from her singing along to Witness.
A fair few people were there and I can't wait for the next one. Can I also recommend to anyone out and about in Nagarekawa after 5 in the morning to visit the 24 hour Udon shop at the end near Chuo Douri. It only costs 350 yen for a bowl of Udon that I SWEAR has saved me from some of the worst hangovers I could have experienced. Oh, and one more big thanks to SH for manning the door while we were on. He's currently in bed with the flu.....can't think why he might have caught that :sorry:
A few photos from the night

Whistle posse

3K is only 4 days away and I've been busy scouring my music for samples to punctuate our set with on Saturday. I've been mostly dipping into the many gigabytes worth of old skool hardcore my friend Chem7 dilligently put together over the past year. I've always hated the way some older people high on nostalgia go on about 'back in the days' whether they are into prog rock, punk or hip hop, it's all bollocks. Music's always evolving and churning out brilliant stuff......that said, ahem, the rave scene in the UK of the early 90s is something I always get slightly misty eyed over. In a way it's what probably led me to start making music (over 10 years later!) and it was most definitely what made me dance for the first time. I'm not going to go on about the history, but in short, 'reserved' Brits took a gay, black, US underground phenomena and turned it into perhaps the largest ever youth culture explosion our country (the world?) has ever seen. One that still reverberates today, albeit with perhaps a little less vigour and originality (I give you trance). That isn't to say that the UK was the only place this was going on, Joey Beltram even made Belgium seem cool back then, but the raves and festivals of the those first few summers of the 90s were something special, were massive, and, at the time, it seemed like EVERYONE was doing it. And if you weren't, you were some kind of dinosaur.
The music sounds pretty dated now next to today's production techniques but it's easy to forget, especially for people who have grown up with a big 'dance' scene, just how completely NEW this sounded. Mad breakbeat loops, driving basslines, sped up vocals urging the dancers on and mad synth sounds which made the punk and hardcore I had been listening to only a month previously sound like music from another generation. Aphex Twin's Diggeridoo made me physically throw up when I first heard it in a friend's car on Kiss FM. Well, maybe it wasn't just the record. T99's Anasthasia was a massive tune at the time. It was one of the fist tunes to really use a biiiig orchestra stab. I remember hearing that for the first time in a club. Everyone stopped for a moment and looked around as if to say 'what the fuuuuck is this????', before going mental.
A couple of my favourites from 'back in the day' (christ) - Compounded - Edge 1, The House Crew - Keep the fire burning, Zero B - Lock up to name but a few of the many many others.
A superb book on the scene is Altered State by Matthew Collin

Right, now I've got that out of my system maybe I can concentrate on making some up to date music.