Mike Louth

Well this year is going extremely fast, think I’ll write an update tomorrow.

In the mean time, enjoy:

So it has been a while since I’ve posted. It’s not like I’ve had nothing to post about, merely a lack of time. Which makes a change. Normally I have heaps of time, and nothing to talk about.

Anyways. Going back in time, from the last post, this is what has happened. Each Friday since the 5th I handed work in for Uni, which took up most of my time. Already got the marks back from one of my essays and got a 60% which I’m quite pleased about. But work is boring, moving on!

Saturday the 13th saw me back home in the ‘toon’ to attend the Royal Marines Officers Mess Winter Ball. My parents are honorary (that really doesn’t look right, I don’t know) members so they get invited everywhere. I was quite looking forward to it but I wasn’t all that impressed with it, although wearing a tux is always fun, and free champagne is always extremely fun. We also got free bacon sandwiches. Yum.
That same weekend I went to see Pendulum with ol’ Bill and rocked out to their final gig of their winter tour. Awesome? Yes, I think so too. I have some recordings of it (thankfully they worked since I wasn’t inside the speakers like Digital) which I will be uploading and adding to the end of this post (if I find the cable).
Now don’t get me wrong, I do like Pendulum, but I’m gonna be one of those total cliche indie kids and say this; ‘I liked Pendulum before they got popular’. Yep, I went there. Their old stuff is FANTASTIC, whereas their newer stuff is more rocky and not my cuppa tea i.e commercial. Pendulum will always be pure drum and bass to me, and I only really like one track off their new album, two at a push.

Around this time I’d been fully taken on board to help run the Electro House stream on DI. A total dream come true. Tom (The Digitalist) was the program controller since the start, but with planning his wedding and a full time job I don’t think he had as much time as he wanted to put into the operation of the stream. So with me being the way I am and getting my foot in the door with starting the IRC channel (#electro @ irc.di.fm) and getting to know the DI admins etc when things went wrong, it was only a matter of time before I was running shop. I’ll be in charge of getting/scheduling shows, guest mixes, updating the calendar, aswell as running the IRC channel and the forums like I have been doing for a while anyway.

So end of semester arrives and I head home for Christmas. It seems/feels/is odd that I’m now at the half way point of University, time is most certainly flying. It doesn’t seem two seconds since I was sat in the common room getting ready to ring Northumbria to beg for a place in clearing. But I digress.

Christmas was disease ridden. The whole family with flu and cold, christmas dinner was covered in used tissues and drowned in hacking coughs. Terrible. Got some new shoes though.

I hit Digital on the 27th to see John Digweed, met up with Nicky before hand for a swift beverage or three but he decided not to go to the temple. Excellent night, typical Digweed prog with a smattering of deep house from Shindig founder Scott Bradford. Speaking of which I sent an e-mail to him outlining who I was, what DI Radio was and that I wanted to offer him a show on the Electro House channel in light of me ‘taking over’ per se. I decided to risk it at the end of the night and hope the bouncers weren’t around like last time. Thankfully they were on the opposite side to my normal spot and I managed to mingle with some people that knew the VJ (why don’t the promote these people? I would have said hello if I knew who it was..). I waited for them to leave and spoke to Scott about my email and asked if there was any interest in my offer; to which he replied he had seen it but has been too busy to reply. I’m still hopeful he will respond positvely but who knows. I also spoke to Digweed about DI, said thanks for putting the time in his ‘Transitions’ show and congratulated him on his 9th place finish in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJ’s Poll.

My sleep pattern becomes beyond stupid when I’m sleeping like I’m on the East Coast USA with a broken sleep pattern. Thanks Alicia.

New Years comes and goes, family round, Wii Fit is out, I score big on the Hula Hoop game and everyone gets merry. Balderdash is awesome.

The end.

Proper update tomorrow, in the mean time, enjoy!

TreeWaxHD from klipcollective on Vimeo.

So I was just thinking that I need a new chair and to try and fill up some blog space I look at my current throne to find out what it is. To my complete surprise and amusement it’s actually called Jeff.

Now, Jeff may well be a folding chair from Ikea but why did they have to called it Jeff?

Jeff:

I wanted to call my cat Jeff when I get my own place. Now all I’ll think about is this chair.

Jeff.

In other news, I got in contact with Sam who runs BassMent! Radio or rather he finally got in contact with me with regards to the radio show I was supposed to be starting back in October.
It’d be kind of awkward and dificult to carry my gear 2 miles down to the studio on campus everyweek for two hours, so Sam has figured out a way to remotely connect from home so I can broadcast from there. I hope.

Bearing in mind that everyone has work to be handing in and will be going home for Christmas I think it’d be a safe option to launch the show in January when everyone is back and settled in to Uni again.

Watch this space!

I’ll start saving now!

This weekend was pretty awesome.

Left lectures early to catch the train home and met up with my parents and aunt in Newcastle.

Runrig:

Was mighty disapointed that they didn’t play Stamping Ground, but the drumming interlude made up for it I guess..

Then I went to digital on my lonesome. And what a night I had!

I hadn’t even got in the club yet and a guy approaches me;

‘Alright mate have you got tickets?’
‘Er nah I’ve not pre-booked’
‘Well my mates vanished, you wanna buy his ticket for a fiver?’
‘Er, aye’

Bearing in mind entry was £12 on the door if you hadn’t pre-booked them, I think that was good deal to start the night off. I offered to buy the guy a drink but he said no, oh well.

So the launch night of Sub Prime was in full effect with TC Monkton filling the warmup slot - he also openned for Kissy Sell Out back in August which was also just as good. The place was filling up, so I had a quick scout to see if there was anyone in that I knew to no avail, so I claimed my regular spot next to the front left speaker.

TC finishes up with a stomper of an electro track and on come Evil Nine on the stage set up infront of the DJ booth. Now at this point I did actually record their first track, but the microphone on my Nokia N95 sucks a bag of lemons and can’t handle the sheer power of the Dance Stacks in Digital (although I was rather close..).

Anyways, Evil Nine rock it out with some amazing tracks, playing with two bass guitars which was an odd but good style the had. Obviously they were ran through some heavy EFX, with one bassist playing the lead riff with some mega synth sounds. Vocals were run through EFX too, make a Daft Punkesque sound for one track which sounded fantastic. I’d love to see them live again, and if you’d like to check them out they hold a residency down in Sheffileds’ Urban Gorilla.

Scratch perverts were up next with their 3-piece DJ set, each one having a set of decks to themselves. And I’m pretty sure they had a bit of MIDI kit up there too with the amount of sampling, looping and on-the-fly production that was going down. These guys were on fire, mixing dubstep like there was no tomorrow. Now I’ve never heard dubstep on anything other than my headphones, and I think it’s safe to say that going from headphones to Dance Stacks in Digital will make you think differently about the kind of music that’s playing.

So consider that dubstep is dubstep because of it’s bass (a broad brush to paint with but it’s generally true), and that club speakers are club speakers because of their bass (and volume) - well what can I say. Incredible.
The breakbeat style drum sequences and the wonky-whompy-wobbly bass proved a massive enlightenment for me; If there’s dubstep at Digital, drop everything and get yourself down there.

Kissy Sell Out finished up the night with a stomping Electro set, he even played a bit of deadmau5 (which I recorded but will not be sharing because of the sound issues).
Now as some of you may know, I’m involved with the Electro House Radio stream of Digitally Imported Radio. And I took the opportunity to ‘exploit’ the situation a little bit - I did run it past James first though, honest..

I’m waiting on the stairs beside the booth for Kissy to make for an exit, I lean over and offer my hand for a friendly shake as he says ‘Alright mate?’.

‘F*cking fantastic set you did there man! Well played! My names Mike and I’m with Digitally Imported Radio, and we’re very interested in having you do a guest mix for our Electro House stream, don’t know if you’ve heard of it but your tracks and remixes are played there a lot, you can contact me at mike@di.fm’.
Is what I’d like to have said but I got blocked by a bouncer and promptly escorted out of the club - after stealing some posters on the way..

With my first week of work over, I’ve learnt a life skill.

How to fold a napkin.

It’s easy really, fold it in half, grab it at the top, bunch it up five times, take the corner and tuck it in, set it on the table, let go, then watch it fan out majestically and look excellent.

I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be working with linen again, I spent too long as a child folding 70 x 70’s and 144’s. But now I know how to fold a napkin, and set tables with cutlery in the correct place. I know what a damn fish fork is.

But anyways, the job is quite good, the people are a laugh and the clientele aren’t anything to be intimidated by. I’ll obviously not mention the name of the hotel incase they sack me for slandering their customers. Ahem.

I made a start on my essay for Animation last night, and it’s quite hard to talk about the history of animation without mentioning Walt Disney. Strict instructions from Rob though, no mention of Mickey Mouse allowed. If you do; nil point. I’m quite looking forward to the lab on Friday morning though, we get to animate the stop motion pictures we took last session and see how well we managed to portray frying an egg (obviously with fighting eggs). I’ll upload the finished product when it’s done.

Also on Friday, I’m heading home for the night to see Runrig. Been listening to their albums for a few days, haven’t heard them since driving to Scotland and Dad having all their stuff in the CD player. Might also pop into Digital for the Sub Prime launch night;

“For this inaugural event we have sourced a premium lineup involving some of the biggest players from the world of Electro, Breaks & Fidget House”

That sounds like my cuppa’ tea.

Seeing as how this website hasn’t really done much for me since I bought it back in June - I decided to get my finger out of.. Well, my arse I assume, and do something about it.

If any of you actually know me, you know I like to write. That old thing was fun, but I’ve neglected it for too long and let it rot with the bots.

So yeah, fresh start, new leaf and all that jazz. Let’s see how long it takes before I apologise for not posting.