DJing
I have been DJing for nearly fifteen years, in situations which include dance nights (main and back rooms), relaxing beats in bars, outdoor events, all-day sonic installations, as part of a medium-size jazz group and even some weddings and birthdays. my set-up is usually a pair of Numark DJ CD players and one record deck through a three-channel mixer. go to the bottom of this page for a list of DJ mixes which I can send you on CD if you write and ask for them.
Duophonic
Duo, a new cafe/bar/bistro with a very nice ambience in Sedbergh, liked the idea of having an evening of high-quality, wide-ranging DJing, which was good since none of the other venues in town ever didwhen I asked them. we did the first 'Duophonic' on Friday 14 November 2008, and it went well. Nela Sound came and played some nice jazzy, bossa-driven European stuff; I played some worldy kind of things early on and a bit of techy dub later on. people came to it! so we were all happy. the second one was in February 2009 and was a bit quieter but worthwhile all the same - here's the setlist. subsequent nights went very well indeed; they were busy, people had a good time and enjoyed the music. the last Duophonic of the current series was on Friday 28 August 2009; attendances were falling, especially of locals as opposed to visitors, and we have put things on hold. watch this space.
Finestyle
this was my main thing for the best part of a decade. it was beats in a bar, always trying to play new stuff but make the links to the older stuff, always trying to bring in as much of the local talent as possible. from 2000 to 2002 I ran Finestyle at Centro on Tib Street in Manchester, and from 2003 to the end of 2006 (when the bar closed) it was at Eclectic in Kendal, where Rob and Nisha gave me a brilliant platform to get into long (four- and five-hour) sets that really did, er, take you on a journey. towards the end of the run, we changed the name to 'Friday Night Mixers'. when I have got it done you can link to some setlists and available recordings.
BoomBooom
this was where I learnt the craft. Boom Booom was a large collective of musicians, video artists, set makers, you name it, that organised some great club nights and ambient spaces in Manchester in the mid-'90s, so I was surrounded by some good DJing which stood me in good stead when I started to do it myself, and got some good opportunities to play.
photo by Jonathan Coleclough
Eclectic DJs
I've been posting intermittently to a blog called Eclectic DJs - click here for a link - hosting mix sets from me and from other people who were stalwarts at Eclectic. it's always worth a look because the music is great, but I don't get a chance to update it very often.
Creative Jazz Orchestra
this long-running group, run by Nick Purnell of ah-um Records, used some of the great names of the UK jazz scene (Mike Gibbs, Julian Arguelles, Mike Walker, Martin France and so on) in a series of projects, usually involving a new commission. sometimes, usually for Nick's own projects, I was drafted in to use my decks to put a comfy layer of whoosh at the bottom of the music. it was fun. my favourite moment was at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool at Hallowe'en 2003, doing a solo mix as a background to Ramsey Campbell reading Edgar Allan Poe.
Soundland
in 2005 and 2006 I presented three all-day events of drone, environmental, abstract and plain chilled music, two in Sedbergh and one in Kendal. it gave me a chance to really dig into some low-event-rate stuff, but ironically it's led into my recent composing/performing tendency and completely away from DJing.
Weddings, birthdays ...
playing at Eclectic presented me with the opportunity to do a couple of weddings and a couple of eighteenth birthday parties. I did another wedding this summer and it went well so I can even give references now. having been very sniffy about chart music for a very long time, I was surprised how much fun it was to, er, entertain people. I am available at a reasonable rate for your significant occasion!
Mixes you can get
here is a list of mixes I have done over the last 8 years (is it really that long?!?), how long they are and roughly what's on them. some of them have featured on Eclectic DJs in the past and may again, and doing this list has made me want to put some of the old ones on there in the next months, but I'm happy to put one or more on an audio CD (or MP3 CD for the long live recordings) and post them to you. just drop me a line at andi (at) music (dot) freakout (dot) biz telling me which mix you want and where to send them to.
| Duophonic Taster, 2.4.09 | 1 hour 16 minutes | funk, world, beats, disco and house |
| Lift Off!, 15.3.09 | 45 minutes | spacy, trancy breaks and house |
| Taiji Tunes, 24.11.08 | 1 hour | very eclectic ambience, drones and chilled beats |
| Smooth Minimal Set, 23.4.07 | 1 hour | minimal house & techno |
| Howgills Lounge, 2007 | 2 discs, 1 hour 15 minutes (approx.) each | very eclectic beats |
| Live at Eclectic 10.11.06 | 55 minutes | Deadbeat and dubstep |
| Minimal Techno, 20.5.06 | 1 hour 15 minutes | minimal techno (really) |
| Live at Eclectic 31.3.06 | 5 hours 6 minutes, MP3 file on CD | funk, Latin, Arabic, d'n'b, deep house and go-go |
| Live at Eclectic 25.11.05 | 3 hours 38 minutes, MP3 file on CD | ambient, house, funk and soul, hip hop, beats and broken beat |
| Dent Meditation Centre Demo, 1.6.05 | 1 hour 12 minutes | field recordings, drones, electronic and experimental |
| Learning To Fly, 2.3.04 | 1 hour 12 minutes | house music of many different kinds - a warm-up demo |
| Jazz Tech House Step Break Punk, March 2003 | 1 hour 11 minutes | house, electro house and breaks |
| Some Styles of Andi, November 2002 | 1 hour 9 minutes | d'n'b, beats, hip hop and house |
| Crunchy Punchy Funky Punky Tweaky Sneaky Breaky Beaty, 15.2.02 | 51 minutes | breakbeat |
| Deep Dub Tech Afro Space Break Funk House, 15.8.01 | 1 hour 5 minutes | house (inc. Latin and Afro) and breaks |
| Deep Bleep Latin Funk Space Guitar House Hop, April 2001 | 1 hour | hip hop, d'n'b, house and funky beats |