Balearic Social and .Mw present an AOR Disco mix: An Outlander's Urge To Pave The Way
A
STORM BREAKS ON A SUNSHINE HORIZON
.Mw - an interview with the unknown by Andy Pye of Balearic Social
Hello .Mw. What’s the story?
Hey Andy! Without
wanting to sound too romantic, It seems
very much that we are all part of a musical tale, and like a dusty record, left
un-wanted and un-played for years. Who knows what tales reside in the grooves
within? It’s certainly a story that led us to hear Balearic Social and the
wonderful mixes you host. Also for those that haven’t got it yet…the .Mw stands
for Droozed On The Medium Wave…D.O.T. Mw…
You guys mailed me your Vol 3 While You Were Sleeping mix last year which has been listened to over 5,000 times on
Soundcloud. I didn’t get much more info except a brief description but I noticed
it came with a Spanish postmark. Are you Spanish?
When we were last in
Barna (Barcelona) we had a hung-over early morning Saturday near disaster when pouring through
the usual mix of Spanish ‘rastro’ (Records/Comics/Books etc) at Mercat Del
Encants.
We’d spent the previous
night drinking Kalimotxo, which sounds exotic but is really just the cheapest
red wine you can lay your hands on mixed with cola, which had the obvious caffeinated
effect of messing up our minds, when stupidly we decided to stay up watching
the sunrise, whilst ignoring the fact we’d already experienced a beautiful
sunset…
On the plus side we
also had the fortunate experience of Balearic Social sound-tracking our night
since after a bit of websploring, looking for sounds for our never-ending
day/night/day. People like Moonboots, AOR Disco, Psychemagik and DJ History
seemed to point towards the Balearic Social blog so that’s how we ‘discovered’
you.
Weirdly me and ****
were chatting about this the other day, the way you seem to have, in a few
short years, got together a lot of interesting, but musically different camps
and somehow joined the dots so that they all seem now to be part of something
bigger.
So morning came. It
was VERY hot. We walked and walked and walked from the apartment where we were
staying, tired for sure, but swept along by euphoria-driven vinyl cravings and
dreams of finds-to-be, stumbling ever further towards Placa Del Les Glories
Catalanes. Maybe it was the lack of sleep and sustenance, or more the thought
that we had to cover quite a few spots that day, but I felt the vibes were all
wrong.
When, after several
missed turns (blamed mainly on our smattering of Spanish/Catalan lingo which
blurred ever more hotch-potch due to the hazing, thudding of our feet and
pounding of our heads) we finally found the flea market, things ALMOST seemed
much righter. Imagine hundreds of sellers, stalls full of everything and
anything but most importantly, lots and lots of records.
But then flip that
round, HUNDREDS of sellers, stalls full of EVERYTHING and ANYTHING, and PILES
of records...Under the stalls, on the floor, under tons of books…EVERYWHERE…And
all simmering under the glare of the super-hot sun.
It’s very much a
chaotic, edgy environment, and if you ever wanted to get chased out of a
Spanish market, by angry shouting stall holders brandishing varnished wooden
billy-clubs, spurred on by laughing locals, then do as we did and make the faux
pas of taking a picture of what we thought was incredibly exotic, but in
retrospect probably stolen, parrot and pineapple combo cigar holder….
Maybe it was our
clothes that had us pegged as undercover Policia or perhaps they didn’t like
the thought of two guys, arms full of dusty 7’s, and 3-5 euro tacky yet sooo
cool pictures of Arabic folk art going from stall to stall, prodding and poking
around…
But anyway, there was
a chase involved, a few records were dropped and they tried to steal ****’s
camera and we were left with the familiar feeling that we didn’t quite
belong. And although out of this mishap we now have a somewhat wild tale to
tell, at the time I can honestly say it was very hairy indeed…
Oh man the look on
your face when they tried to steal your camera from you!!!
I’m still actually a
little confused by what really happened, one minute I’m taking a picture and
the next I’m running hell for leather!!!
Hahah!! So in a
rather long convoluted way, I can confirm that we’re definitely not
Spanish. Later on that day though, we did hit a sweet spot near Tallers at the
University end called Casa Usher which turned up a ton of Spanish language
beat/soul and some sweet funky rock.
That guy was SUPER
friendly! Really great shop…
It was later on back
at the apartment we decided to send you a mix we did a few years
previously. And the rest is history I suppose. Finding your address, now that
was the hard bit! Haha
You sent me another mix Vol 5 BlowingAway The Xerox Clouds earlier this year in a Cuban cigar box with a Canadian post mark. So it’s
starting to get a bit confusing. Do you travel a bit? After that came Backyard Boogie Droozing which blew everyone away with 10,000 listens over the last
three months yet that one was posted from Alabama. And now the new mix is
mailed from Hong Kong. What gives?
The thing about
Canada is, it has embraced many different cultures. Obviously French (there are
some Canada only French language dreamy 70’s albums that no-one and I mean
NO-ONE seems to have picked up on yet) , lots and lots and LOTS of cheap
Bollywood records due to the large Indian communities and of course all those
re-licenced American records…
Also there’s a great
spread of record shops and thrift shops that haven’t been dug over too much yet
(although a friend of ours who’s lived there for a few years is totally rinsing
the place for modern soul and boogie). As for Alabama, well it sits like this.
In the UK would you
go digging only in London, Bristol or Manchester? It’s true they genuinely have
great shops with some big ticket grooves and certainly people like Gerald
(Jazzman) will turn you on to some incredible records, but they also have many,
many dealers, and DJ’s and diggers of ALL persuasions. It’s much the same as
America, a lot of the places famous for records like Detroit and New York has meant
a steady gravitation of vinyl fiends, drawn drooling to the dream yet picking
over the scraps left behind by some serious, methodical maniacs.
Yet in the Southern
states, famous more for live music, there are record shops with hundreds of
thousands of records. Man, there are thrift shops with thousands of records in
them, imagine that. Church records from the 70’s and 80’s, Disco that bit the
dust when the book-burning deluded thugs declared ‘Disco Sucks’, singer
songwriter private presses and, of course, all that funky country….
And the kind of stuff
that we like tends to be things we’ve never seen or heard before….
A friend of ours
called Fuz hit the states on a road trip and boy did he bring back some
incredible funky country finds (and a great pictorial thread on the VG+
Forum). In fact he pretty much single-handedly influenced the Light In The Attic
series when he went into a record shop asking if they had any ‘Country Funk’
and the person behind the counter said ‘Country Funk? What’s that?’ and the
rest is history. Someone should certainly let him do an official compilation
for sure!
What would you say the influences behind
the mixes were and how are they put together? I’ve noticed a lot of spoken word
in them too that I haven’t heard before. Is that from vinyl too? And have you
re-edited some of the tracks? It’s hard to tell if you’re not familiar with the
originals.
Personally I feel
that the influences for me is that .Mw is part experiment, part challenge, part dream and all fun…..hahaha
(At this point his partner in .Mw chips in...)
…Yeah, like the guy at
the end of Backyard says, music is supposed to be fun. We’ve definitely had
lots of that. All the spoken word is off ****’s vinyl (as indeed are all the
tracks) but sometimes we get through a lot of digital Sellotape.
We like using spoken word
to join tracks that don’t naturally gel and also for adding colour to a great
instrumental that is just a bit monochrome in places, but mostly to add to the
narrative. As for how we put mixes together, that bit is relatively
straightforward.
You gotta get the vinyl
as clean as possible to start with. (Let’s face it, the stuff can have 50 years
of dirt on it!) Then I use a simple set up: turntable to 2 track mixer to
soundcard to DAW to record the tracks to a reasonable standard at home. (After
all, you don’t need to do much for a mix that is mostly gonna be streamed at a
compressed rate.)
Anyway, **** has given me
a new batch of 40-50 tracks to record every month for the last 2 years and the
“well” is very, very, VERY deep!
As for the mixing part, I
usually sketch out ideas on a simple DJ program as a live mix. Rather than
beat-matching, mixing harmonically is essential. Using the key signature of a
track is crucial for getting any level of coherency out of different genres and
decades of music style. (I got Mixed In Key back in 2006 which has saved me
years of pain staking key identification, I’ll be forever in debt to those
gents!)
There’s usually three or
so sketch mixes on the go at any one time, each of which has a central
theme/story and any of which could end up never getting finished. I listen to
these sketches all the time in the car. They percolate for weeks until they’re
ready to filter.
The inspiration to take a
sketch further always comes randomly but usually follows a chat with ****. In
the end, some tracks get manipulated more than others. I have been brutal in
some places with extreme changes from the original BPM, or chopping out a big
chunk of a track that doesn’t need including on the mix, but generally, bar a
bit of volume limiting and light EQ to highlight elements within a track, I
don’t stray too far from the original recording.
At some point we wanna do
.Mw live, using the original records, so it’s important for me not to rely on
intricate FX and mastering as it’s not always easy to recreate stuff like that
on the fly.
On mix-sites you get
plenty of DJ’s mixing traditionally in lo-fi, looking down their noses at kids
with computers, me though, I’m not a puritan. I’ll use whatever kit that helps
me realise an idea. It’s ABSOLUTELY about the music content. PERIOD.
There’s an element of QC
before we post the mix though. I listen to it on several formats of varying
quality (On the hi-fi, on headphones, on my laptop speakers, on my mobile, in
the car… you get the picture….) to check it mostly stands up wherever/however
it might get heard.
I also imagine how it
sounds to other people/DJs/artists… this usually ends up with a heap of
corrections I need to make. In the end though, there comes a point where I say
“enough” and let it go warts and all!
As far as influence goes
though… that all comes from being involved in process/experiment. Once you step
onto this merry-go-round, the momentum of the ride itself is self-sustaining.
I’m just a big kid in very large fairground, hanging out with my mates, looking
for some mischief.
Hahaha. Well said. I’d always been a fan of ****’s work, and
since I had been having drunken discussions and pushing records on him for
years, it made absolute sense to hook-up. So I just told him about a little experiment I fancied doing and he agreed
straight away. ****’s a perfectionist when it comes to recording too but he’s
also incredibly easy to work with.
Absolutely no ego and
massively open to new ideas but he’s always influencing my thoughts on what’s
possible and where we are taking this experiment. If an idea or track pops up
we’ll ring each other or meet up over a few drinks and wax lyrical. And the
too’ing and fro’ing of ideas means it’s always fluid, so it’s only done when
we’re both happy.
People like Bill Brewster obviously
liked the mixes from the Twitter messages I saw. Plus a quite varied bunch of
people from well known diggers like DJ Format too. Yet because you didn’t send
me track-listings the majority of tracks didn’t get any ID’s. Is this all part
of the mystery and experiment?
Yes, we are MASSIVE
fans of Bill. He has managed to articulate what a lot of music lovers think and
feel through years of writing and musings, not only by archiving the history of
the music and scenes that many of us fell in love with, but also by ‘breaking’
tons of records that are now integral classics.
He is a massive part
of music (and dance music’s) future. His ability to shine a light on
forgotten-about’s, unheard-of gems and modern classics, not just from a certain
time but also from right now is incredible and truly inspiring, I mean, just
check out his podcast, his writing and most of all…his PASSION and that’s what
spurs us on too.
The same goes with
being picked up on by Matt (DJ Format). Here’s a guy who would spend his last
dollar and final minute on earth to uncover music, The guy has some INCREDIBLE
records and uses his own releases and DJ’ing to fund digging trips around the
world.
He’s a beast with an
uncanny ability to turn up gold in far
flung places and boy has he got some incredible stories to tell! We’re just
stoked that you’ve let us loose on Balearic Social since I think a lot of your
listeners really ‘get’ us.
As for the no ID’s
and track-listings. Well, it’s sort of part of the experiment, but we’d love to
do things officially and may just have the chance to do some track-listed
compilations soon enough….
Plus we’ve been
approached to do some re-edits as well. As far as ID’s go, I think those that
know…well I guess they just know, because they too bare the bruised knees and
blooded hang nails of traded sunny days and have never been put off by all the
lost moolah from all those misses and throw-away finds.
But you gotta sift
through a lot of dirt before you strike gold and that’s what makes it all
worthwhile. And as the mixes gain more and more exposure you can guarantee
that, like a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces will reveal the bigger picture. And you
betcha we’ll be up for track-listing if it all goes the way things seem to be
going.
The depth of music you seem to include
in your cross-genre mixes means, I presume, you must have a record collection
and a half?
If it was measured in
time then mine started when I was 7 and has continued so far for the last 34
years, And when traversing the twists and turns and chanced finds, well…you
hear some pretty strange music that’s for sure. Eventually, like most
music-heads, the music you love tends not even to be pushed into good or bad or
even into genres, it’s all just songs you like and songs you don’t. Taste, like
philosophy, is very much fluid….haha
Hahaha, ****’s house is
something of a hoarder’s paradise. It’s got to be seen to be believed!
Where do you go digging? What are your
favourite places to find those hidden gems?
Mainly record
shops, and off the grid one’s are my personal favourite type of places to dig. And
although we’ve lost a lot, good and bad, there are still more than enough
replenished temples to worship in. Plus the good ones will always turn up
great stuff because they’re run by like-minds who are in-tune with your needs
and they’ll make you a nice cup of coffee (or let you hang out after for
beers).
The amount of times
I’ve heard the ‘You know that bag of 70’s rock you bought last time. Well I’ve
got a bunch more in the back for you.' Thrift stores still turn some
interesting stuff up, table-top sales too….
The internet I find
hard to dig because it’s stuff that you often already know and yes, you could
very well score that ultra-obscure UK Library cut but boy will you have to
pay.
Also when doing the
mixes it’s not just in the monetary sense either. You’ll pay for getting that
superb break-laden nugget…because you’ll have that feeling that you can’t
shake, the shudder of ‘someone has been here before’. I’d rather get hip to new
stuff, new to me that is, because there will always be someone out there who’s
wise to a lot of those tracks you think you’ve discovered.
Personally I need to
see the cover, the list of musicians, the instruments, the liner notes, even
the thickness of the faded cover for my spider sense to tingle and get all
excited. Although over the years I’ve explored different methods of buying a
bunch of cheap stuff blind online with varying degrees of success it’s never
the same as chancing all those hunches.
That’s the way I get
the best stuff. I’ve never understood the desire of some people to just fill up
their precious space with big money-spins, or that kind of one-up-manship of
rare, but usually played-out finds within certain circles like the soul or
psych scenes.
That’s why my
favourite DJ’s, clubnights and even
record labels are often the ones that have that uncanny ability of not only
finding new songs but also changing the way people look at certain types of
music. Re-introducing long lost styles and productions, unearthing connections
hidden away that even the artists themselves weren’t even aware of.
But of course I also
understand the desire of having to track down a record you’ve heard a DJ spin
that just blew you away, we’ve all been there eh? I also love the social aspect
of hunting for records. Especially getting to know people who inhabit your
particular ‘patch’. They’ll always tip you off to other great places.
Any plans to introduce who is behind .Mw?
I’ve heard a few
rumours lately about who or whom we are. Some people seem convinced we’re
certain well known DJ’s and I’ll neither confirm nor deny that.
The thing is, it’s
not important. The MUSIC, that’s the important thing, and the chance that if
people dig it enough then a few labels may be interested in working with us to
release it. A .Mw Fabric or Another Late Night, maybe even Numero or Light In
The Attic that would be nice. How about you ****? What you reckon?
I’m with **** all the way
on this. I also love the idea that some forgotten about artist might have to
come out of retirement as a result of finding a new audience through what we’ve
put out there.
Top 5 records in no particular order?
What?!?! That’s a
tough one….
Hahaha! Could YOU
tell us your Top 5 Andy?
How about, and be
honest now, your Top 100? I’d say it’s an impossible question. I could give you
5 records that you and your listeners might dig. But then the prices would go
up and be out of reach for people.
How about our top 5
mixes on Balearic Social? Which is real
hard…. I’ll admit! I think that someone should interview you. Maybe we should
do?
Here are our CURRENT
Top 5 Mixes on Balearic Social
We’ve digging a lot
of people you’ve introduced us to like Mushrooms Project, Old Pal, The
Starkiller, Joe’s Bakery and David Barbarossa so thank you for that. And again
it harks back to my theme that personal taste can make such a difference. 'Find
Your Own Way’ as the legendary Keef James once said and more power to them for
following through and getting mixes and DJing out there.
10. And the new mix, An Outlander's Urge To Pave The Way?
I’ll let **** introduce this one….
This one could so easily
have never been made. **** and I had been so taken aback by the positive
response to Backyard, especially from AOR DISCO, that the next mix was gonna be
another themed one as far as I could see. Failing that, I was supposed to be
continuing working on a fistful of re-edits and DJ tools that may end up on a
12” one day.
But… then **** gave me
such a rich batch for the month of April ’14 that I started to do some
sketching. The real turning point was when **** suggested the title should be An Outlander’s Urge To Pave The Way, which lit my fuse, full stop.
I’d always felt that some
of the recordings were evocative of another world, an out-world if you like,
and decided to group them together on a simple playlist.
Before long there were 40
tracks that really shone. What I particularly liked was the way each one had a
story of its own to tell, which is kinda why the end result feels in some way
like a collection of dreamtime/bedtime stories for grownups.
Meanwhile, We were both
working on a mix that suited sunshine hedonism, a female vocal only mix and
also I was lining up tracks that could end up in a follow up to Backyard.
I phoned **** to say I
had something and would he meet me to review it. So a rainy afternoon and four beers
later, he suggested I take out a bunch of tracks and save them for an even more
rainy day. What was left, to me had a certain purity of emotion, not
necessarily from the Outlands any more, but still evocative of a story, which,
I decided to pursue.
Several weeks of listens
and one unrelated chronic hangover later I got transfixed by the mix’s last
track “The Preacher” by…. well… you’ll find out sooner or later. I got this
image in my head of an old Western style preacher wandering the outlands, looking
for converts…and those who wouldn’t convert, he’d gun down with his shotgun.
It’s the Preacher who is
the Outlander, it’s his urge to pave the way to a better way of living where
love and music is the true path. If you can’t be into love and music, then
you’re as good as dead. Or at least that’s part of the story.
There’s actually a few
tales in there for those that want hear them. Themes of despair, loss, arrogant
youth and betrayal…but also themes of hope, love and joy to balance things. Oh, and some clues/breadcrumbs as to our identity. (Just for the fun of it!)
It’s much more down-tempo
than Xerox but quite spiritual, melancholy and uplifting… well, that’s the design of it anyway. You should decide
for yourself. Just remember the fate of those who don’t agree…hahahaha.
We wanted to also say
thanks so much for your support, and the support of your listeners, but most of
all, thanks for opening the packages and giving us a chance to try out
something new…..
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