Chooooooooooon!

I've finished a tune. Bit of a cheat really as it's more of a remix but of a track I'd kind of binned so I reckon I can call it a new one. Can't I?

Can't be arsed putting it on my homepage so if you GO TO MY SOUNDLIFT PAGE you'll find it there.

It's called -Back track- and any comments on it will be most welcome :)

More Windcheater in cyber space?

If you don't get your fill here or at www.windcheater.co.uk, get your arses over to www.3kbreaks.com the blog/site of Hiroshima's finest break's night out and Windcheater's very own MySpace page. The next Arctic Monkeys? Doubt it but if you have a page of your own why not 'add' me and do all those other fun things you can do on MySpace. Let me know what they are when you do.

3K on tour

Well it was a long one but a good weekend that felt pretty satisfying. Hey I even fitted some work in somewhere along the line.

On Friday night GHB and myself hosted 3K again at Edge with special guest Dangerous Drum's ED2000. It wasn't full but then again we never expected it to be on a friday (always a funny night here in Hiroshima). However, the small crowd that did come down did enjoy it and ED2000 did what he does best and what a lot of DJs fail to do round these parts, get people dancing. Even the head nodders were up and that's no mean feat. Apart from anything, it was just great to meet such a nice guy. Hopefully we can hook up with DD again sometime. At 3am we took to the decks. I didn't expect anyone to be there at that time and was preparing to play to an MD recorder. In the end though, little pockets of people kept coming back and my god they were dancing too. It does seem that there are people who want something a little different to drum and bass. Many thanks to CA2, God Fxxx and MC Ali too who provided us with a couple of other great sets.

So, that was Friday out of the way, onto Saturday.... It's taken me 33 years to work out if I don't drink I can get through most things the next day. Work was a breeze and at 3.30 GHB and myself boarded the bus to Tottori for the San In beach party. What a great event. I haven't been before so can't compare it to previous years but I was really impressed with the set up, the beach and the weather. Many thanks to Steve and Tom for having us along (GHB is a bit of a regular). Two nights, two international DJs, on Saturday we shared the bill with Silva,a former Jpop idol now house DJ and singer. Her set was a kind of walk through of remixed party classics but putting snobbery aside she had the crowd loving it, mixed well and has a fantastic voice. To sing over records and not sound shit is not going to be easy. I had to laugh at the end when she was doing a call and response thing with the crowd and she would sing something that noone at the party could get anywhere close to. I did get the impression that on a different night she might play slightly differently as she dropped in a couple of less well known, slightly edgier tracks that didn't go down as well with the crowd. Unpretensiously she gave the people what they wanted. Then again what do I know, maybe she plays like that always.
Pretentiously me and GHB dived straight into the breaks and scared most of the dancers away :) After a while though the crowd seemed to noticeably change as a different breed crawled out of the dark and to our relief, lapped up the dub heavy bass that carried a lot of our set. This was all after a scare at the beginning when my laptop wouldn't switch on. If any of you have a Vaio out there, make sure the lock switch on your battery is switched on! At the end of the night we were approached by a couple of promoters from Osaka and asked to play in July, a date we can't unfortunately make. Nice to be asked though and I guess it can't have been all that bad.

At 6.30 and after only 3 hours sleep the previous night we crawled into our tents.....and woke up at 8.30. What? After dragging ourselves back to Hiroshima it was straight out to watch Japan vs Croatia.......hardcore!

Weekender

Criminally I haven't mentioned the San In beach party on the blog. It's this saturday, a bit of trek but sounds excellent. It also comes the night after Dangerous Drums, and that's the night after England's 1am kick off game against Trinidad and Tobago. Throw 3 days of work into the mix too and you've got one very very tired WC indeed. Oh well, rock and roll and all that.

WC in print

Future Music published a short review of Apathetic in their reader's demos section this month. It's not that long so here's what it said in full :

This is another track that has a catchy intro but the verse then lets things down by plodding along a little. The instrumentation is great though, and the bass carries things well. Overall, this is only one or two hooks short of greatness.

Can't really decide whether or not to be pleased about that. What do you think? Nice to see Jun's artwork (see above) included though as it should be.

Right, I'm off to look for a hook...

ED2000 exclusive mix

In the run up to the Dangerous Drums vs 3KBreaks night we've got an exclusive 30 minute mix from the man himself ED2000. You can go to GetHiroshima yourself to get it or you can just click here. Download, stick on ipod, enjoy, come to 3KBreaks. It really is THAT simple. :)

How did that NWA song go?

I doubt anyone who ever reads this blog and lives in Hiroshima is unaware of the situation at Barco so I will just point you in the direction of the GH blog for ideas on how to help and information about the recent arrest of Ricardo and Hideko.

Even if they weren't such nice people its all complete bollocks and very depressing. As it stands if they were arrested last Saturday for people dancing in their bar then me and GHB should be arrested on charges of inciting people to dance and would be languishing in prison with the owners of Edge and every other owner of any space that saw dancing last Saturday in Hiroshima.

For now, show your support in the ways suggested by Ricardo's wife and others. If you can't be arsed, why not just go and have a drink at Barco. I'm sure the practical support of their businesses would be of help too.

Arse.

3KBreaks?

Well, we had a lot of people through the door, the music was banging, and there were people dancing, but at the end of the evening GHB and myself felt more like we'd put on a drum and bass night for a couple of the local d'n'b crews rather than the Breaks extravaganza we'd hoped for.

Not that the night didn't have it's positives. Ca2 proved himself an excellent DJ and it'll be good to have him along for the Dangeorus Drums night. There did seem to be a little crowd there for the breaks too. I think if we're going to push things here then we're going to have to boldly go where no man has gone before. Or if I'm doing the more up to date pc Star Trek, no-one. Get the popular local D'n'B DJs in and we're guaranteed a crowd, but it's not really what we're about.

It was interesting to see how, no matter what country your in, people always want to blag something. I don't think it's got anything to do with the money really (especially when our nights cost literally 500yen to go in), just wanky, I'm known around here bollocks. I remember regularly meeting twats in Brighton who would boast about how they could 'get into any club night in this town'. I haven't yet found out what the Japanese for 'SO?' is. Must do that. We did have a lot of people come who seemed to want us to pay for their night out and poor SH had to deal with most of them. Sozz mate x


Right. Enough moaning. Next month see's Dangerous Drum's ED2000 touch down at 3K. It's a Friday night this time so get your dancing shoes on a night earlier and make the effort to come down because if you're not in to Drum and Bass it's not that often you get to see a DJ of such quality out and about in Hiroshima. We'll have a mix of his up somewhere soon....will keep you informed.

Golden Week by phone

A quiet week kicked off with a couple of days in the countryside to relax and set myself up for a frenetic end to Golden Week 2006. Perhaps the highlight of which was Dove Pro-Wrestling at Chinatown. I'm always amazed at America's fascination with one joke but when you've got it happening right in front of your face, with DJs playing hip hop and drum and bass it's pretty compelling....and bloody hell it looks like it hurts. At one point a barbed wired clad board was brought out for the two wrestlers to jump off an oil drum on to. Fake barbed wire naturally I thought, until they got up from it with bleeding backs (and just to check, an intrepid WC pressed his fingers against one 'barb'.....ouch). Quality entertainment.
2nd highlight was a drum and bass night at Tribes. I say 'a' drum and bass night because I have to admit I have no idea who the DJ was although I do remember he hails from the UK. And he's big (in size, no idea about his popularity). Best part of the night for me was a record that Spins DJ Shimomura played. Awesome. No idea what it was though. Superb set alround that featured a very very good Japanese MC who disappeared before I could find out his name.

The udonya was visited 2 nights in a row :)

And to finish it all off, best of all, SH and myself got a photo op with some girls out doing PARAPARA at about 3am infront of a conbini...happy days.



Keitai slide show

Bugs, itchy trigger fingers and Bobby

I've worn shorts at night, had a few bugs fly in my mouth/eyes whilst cycling, been in a shop that's had it's air-con on and felt cold on a bus. Yep, summer is almost here. Well, summer for a Brit anyway, I know technically it won't be summer really til rainy season is over and done with but when it's 25 degrees of a daytime I am culturally unable to ignore the fact that outside it is NICE. Having said that, I have been moaning like a bastard for the last few weeks because it has rained so bloody much. Far too much like home for my liking. Bring on the sweaty arse crack, it may be humid but better than that waiting for summer to start feeling when you suddenly realise it's October :(

Weather aside, I've been getting ready for 3Kbreaks, buying tunes from here and eating very very nice pizza. It's all go, and, I'm on the way to finishing another WC tune with a little bit of help from my lovely lovely new toy.

The only cloud on my horizon is the fact that 3k is on the same night as the FA cup final which I hope Liverpool win. Having said that, I would also like to see WC's former hero Bobby Zamora play and do well, perhaps nick a consolation goal? God I used to love him...

3KBreaks time

As fun as 3KLounge was what we really need for a proper night of breaks is a dancefloor, and at Edge there'll be one. As always. 3Kbreaks returns with another great Line up ;
Kyosan (Infinity Vibes)
Choco B (Bass Instinct)
CA2 (Volt)
Daisuke

will, with GHB and myself , be tearing up the dancefloor from 10 o'clock on the 13th of May. Breaks based music all the way, put on your best dancing shoes and come down. It's still the stupidly priced 1000 yen including a drink.

See you there.

3KLounge

Yesterday I thought any review of last night would start off something like; 'Well, the weather was horrible...'. When I left for Lotus I couldn't imagine that anyone would want to come out but as it turned out the lure of the company of GHB and myself was too strong to resist ;)
Big thanks to everyone who came and there were a lot of thanks to go round. From 10 onwards Lotus was pretty much full, and my god, some people were even threatening to dance. We kept true to the lounge spirit.....for a bit, then got pissed and played whatever we felt like. The great thing about Loutus is that with a sound system of that quality you can get away with playing quite banging stuff without rendering conversation impossible. So, a ball was had and it was gone 4 when we left. I hope the custom made the later finish more palatable for the boys at Lotus. Big thanks to them again. Hopefully see you all at Edge on May 13th for the real thing, 3K Breaks.

Stuff

Been a bit lacking in personality the blog of late, so I thought it was high time the man behind the anorak spoke with a few of my, recent, favourite things. First up a city; Fukuoka. Just down the road, kind of, on the northern coast of Kyushu, Fukuoka is a place I'd highly recommend. Esepcially if anyone is thinking of moving to Japan and can't quite face a place like Tokyo. Very chilled out, big enough and friendly locals, it gets the WC seal of approval :) There comes no higher praise.

Keeping things Japanese, I watched the best film I've seen in ages last weekend. Not since the Incredibles have I been so moved to praise a motion picture ;) Daremo shiranai - Nobody knows is one of the saddest most beautiful films I've ever seen. Chek-a-chek-a-chek-it-out.

And sod it, some breaks on this, 3KLounge-eve. Recently I have been mostly listening to Breakspoll Presents: Vol 2 - Mixed by FreQ Nasty, it's so good it's keeping me from my Japanese study podcasts, and, has me riding my bike at less than safe speeds.

Pics and words about Lotus very soon.

3KLounge

More physical lounge than musical one, the theme will, as always, be breaks in whatever shape they get served up in. Join us down at Lotus from 10pm for some relaxed 3K action. Its free ofcourse and apart from Ghb and myself some of our 3K friends will be in attendance. Warm up nicely for the real thing next month.

Spring breaks?

eurgh...it was a bit of a long weekend for me finishing off with DJ Fresh and Dieselboy at 4.14 on Sunday night. I wasn't really in a mood to go out but ended up quite enjoying it. Preferred Fresh to Dieselboy's more 'in your face' approach. You've got to hand it to the D'n'B faithful of Hiroshima as they turn out time and time again on Sundays or weekdays to party. Thank god I have Monday's off.
Part of the reason for going down on Sunday was to book a DJ for May's 3k. I'll post up the details soon but for now, you can pencil in these dates as myself and GHB bring more tasty breaks to Hiroshima. Apr 15th sees us relaxing at Lotus again for a more laidback 3k, 3k lite if you will. Come and lounge in the brown of Lotus. Then on May 13th it's the real thing back at Edge, where we will then return a month later hopefully with a very special guest. That'll be on a Friday :gulp: I'll confirm all of this as soon as I can. For now, why not get in the mood with ibreaks.co.uk - Breakbeat internet radio. Hopefully see you all out and about sometime soon.

Windcheater E.P. available on BeatPick

As promised, Windcheater's first E.P. is now available on BeatPick. You can visit the artist page and listen to the whole E.P. If you're then wanting to get your own copy it costs £2.50/€3.50 (that's about 500 Yen). It's got 4 tracks on it and they are;

1. Apathetic featuring Susan Doyon

2. Penalise 'em

3. Blank faced groove

4. The Pinch

Also check out other BeatPick artists as I have been doing the last couple of days. They are of a frighteningly high standard and cover a very widespan of genres. It also has a very 'sound' set up. You can read all about that here.

I'll let you all know how it goes, but for now it's nice to know I have a 'release' out there...somewhere :)

E.P.

Windcheater's first E.P. will be out pretty soon on Beatpick. It's not a 'physical' thing but it was cool to be chosen by the label, so, that's 'nice'.
I'll put links up when they're all in place once I've got all the relevant paperwork off. For now, why not have a browse anyway....

Last night I dined on Horse's tongue :) Not bad for a former vegetarian.

Talking out of my arse...

3k won't be around for a little bit longer unfortunately. Edge is pretty fully booked up so it's looking like a May date. Yes May! Hopefully see some of you in Lotus before then.

Apart from that it's hay fever season here (nightmare) and the Heiroglyphics are flavour of the month in the WC studios. Check them out, wickerrrrd.

Sickness permitting....

3k should be back in March. Well, whether or not I'm ill it's sure to be so make sure you check out Hiroshima's original (only?) breaks night. Mark our words, everyone'll be doing it. One day. Read some stuff about the last one here.

Apart from that, I've been battling flu demons and the far worse horrors of trying to build websites. I can kind of see why web designers charge 1000's of pounds now. Although I imagine they are a tad more fluent than I am in their chosen field.

Bought an mp3 off Breakbeat Online the other day. Well worth a look if you are interested in, er, breakbeats. Very easy to use and great quality, long samples for you to check out too.

And that's today's blog.

Feautured artist at Soundlift.com

The nice people at Soundlift.com have decided to feature me on their front page for a week. Lovely stuff.

WINDCHEATER'S SOUNDLIFT PAGE