Well, there you have it. London have gone and taken a page out of Mike Baird’s book and shut down one of the greatest clubs in the world, fabric. There’s been a huge outpouring of grief from the global electronic music community, but perhaps it was best put by drum and bass royalty Goldie: “I’m wondering whether or not the likes of me, the likes of Jazzie B, Norman Jay, Pete Tong for that matter, should just trade our MBEs in, melt them down and put them in a pencil-pushers coffee, so it can taste a little bit sweeter for him today, so he feels more successful in killing counter culture and culture itself.” Massive fucking sigh over here. All too familiar. The Lord Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has now invited Four Tet to City Hall to discuss fabric’s closure – it will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes from it.
You’ve got once chance left to see arguably the only good thing to come from Newcastle, Mall Grab, before he moves overseas to the UK. Side note: I’ve been told that Newcastle once demolished a heritage-listed building to construct the largest KFC in the southern hemisphere, can someone confirm this for me? Anyway, back on track. The producer, who only entered the game a year ago, has already released eight 12”s and even launched his own label titled Steel City Dance Discs. Kid moves fast. Catch him on Sunday September 18 at Ferdydurke. See him before he’s playing headline shows all over Europe at some of the biggest clubs in the world like fabr… oh.
One of the biggest names in UK garage, DJ EZ, is coming our way. A true veteran, the don has held down a weekly radio show for London’s KISS FM for 15 years, and most recently has shown no signs of slowing down with gigs for Boiler Room, Mixmag and Coachella. Furthermore, earlier this year he raised over 80,000 clams for cancer research in the UK by DJing for 24 fucking hours straight. Legend. Catch him on Saturday November 12 at Platform One.
Some news for the producers and gearheads out there: Roland have announced the release of three new products in their Boutique line: the TB-03, TR-09 and VP-03. They’ve also teamed up with Serato and announced the DJ-808, which adds 808 drum machine, synth connectivity to the DJ controller in an aim to bring “production, live performance and DJing even closer.” Native Instruments are releasing the Maschine Jam performance instrument (piano role mode, anyone?), while Pioneer are bringing out a new two-channel mixer dubbed the DJM-450, with an in-built soundcard and USB input for integration with laptop setups.
Tour rumours: some bloody serious techno is coming our way with the one and only Ben Klock. Announcement imminent. A return of Radio Slave is also on the cards – not to confused with the god-awful Audioslave.
Best releases this week: Kornél Kovács’ new album The Bells (on Studio Barnhus) is bloody fun listening, as is his latest mix for Resident Advisor. Otherwise I suggest spending some time with Ruf Dug who has just put all of the Ruf Kutz releases up for free on Bandcamp. Although, to be honest, after being in a room with every single The Sun Can’t Compare while it was performed by Larry Heard on the weekend I don’t know if anything will ever sound that good again.
