This extra special BeatCanteen release is a big shout-out to Eric Prydz! His fantastic version of “MIGHTY LOVE” continues to be one of the most celebrated, yet unreleased, house tracks around the globe. In August of this year, John Gold released his bootleg of “MIGHTY LOVE” to bring this floor filler to the masses (http://beatcanteen.com/track/mighty-love). The feedback has been phenomenal and brought together five of the most recognized up-and-coming international house producers - Zach Le Sage from the UK, DeeJMD from Greece, Skingz from Germany, Funkhameleon from Finland, and Levantine from Mexico. Together they took on “MIGHTY LOVE” for one the most exciting BeatCanteen releases: the “MIGHTY LOVE” ALL-STAR REMIX EP!
All tracks are available as FREE DOWNLOAD in HQ mp3 or wav:
Zach Le Sage
Zach Le Sage from the UK is among the most talented and musically diverse up-and-coming house producers of 2011, mastering tracks that range from house and electrostep through drum & bass and dubstep. Zach remixes have shaken up various international remix contest, including John Gold’s “Afterglow” release.
DeeJMD
DeeJMD (aka Dimitri Iliakis) from Athens, Greece has become famous for his unique oldschool funky/disco house sound influenced mainly from the likes of Le Knight Club, Thomas Bangalter, DJ Falcon, Sedat and many other artists of the late 90′s and early 00′s. His last EP “Discomania” on Wicked Recordings won widespread acclaim and his tracks are frequently among the most popular releases on SoundCloud.
Funkhameleon
Finnish house and disco producer Funkhameleon (aka Max Huttunen) has rightfully become known for his disco-injected feel-good tracks. This SoundCloud heavyweight frequently remixes international house artists, and his solo EP “Feel Like Jackin’ “, released in July 2011, has left its mark on the global funky house scene..
Levantine
Levantine is the project name of musical multi-talent Oscar Avendano from Mexico: music producer, bass player and keyboarder. His recent EP “Montmarte” was released on the Chilean record label NotMadeForDance Records, and his new track “Marianne” has been exclusively featured by Italian magazine LOVE SEX DANCE. Levantine himself has remixed artists like Disco Ball’z, Arcadis, Austin Groove, Le Nonsense, Skibblez and more.
Skingz
SKingz is among the most watched discohouse DJs and producers from germany. Homebased on his own label 4DISCO Records (www.4discorecords.com) he delivers his refined house sound to labels like Bangin Grooves, Disco Galaxy, Stardust Records or Groovetraxx.
Here are a couple of videos recorded from my live stream that went out on the 8th October 2011. It’s mostly just a shot of me DJing but you get to see me dance like an idiot for a good few minutes
I’m off to Croatia this Saturday night to go and play at the Kameleon Day & Night Club in Split. This is a newly opened venue has asked me to come and play my specific brand of funky house and I’m really looking forward to it. Doors open around 10pm, local DJ Duda Dudes will be warming up and I’ll be stepping up at 1am. Expect funky basslines, hands in the air anthems, a couple of club classics and even a few cheeky bootlegs. If you are in the area and can make it then make sure you come up and say hello See you up the front!
As a DJ, I buy a fair amount of mp3’s online. Most of my spare time is taken up with listening to promos or browsing through dance music online. There are several places that I go online that cater for my specialist Funky House niche and one of those places I go to is djdownload.com which I reviewed over a year ago along with 8 other sites.
Below is a list of reasons why I love DJD so much. Quite a few of the reasons are common to other online music stores but for me personally, DJD has all these things in one place.
You Don’t Lose You Place When You Log In
This is one of those small subtle changes that make a world of difference when visiting a site. When I used to visit DJD to browse music, I’d find a track on their site that I liked and wanted to buy but wasn’t logged in. I would go to log in but as soon as I clicked the “log in” button I was sent back to the home page and subsequently lost the page I was previously on. Now what happens is that you stay on the same page when you log in. Sounds like an obvious minor detail but not all online stores do this and if you allow your browser to remember your details you can log in in just 2 clicks.
Good Choice Of Options When Downloading Tracks
Once your purchase is complete you can choose to download all the tracks in one go or grab them one by one. If you even feel like downloading them at a later date you can do this too. For me, the one click download everything option is great as I can get all my purchases with the minimum of fuss and effort. The tracks are bundled and delivered in a ZIP file which means you get them on your computer that little bit faster too.
3 Prices For 3 Levels Of Audio Quality
DJD’s pricing is nice and simple and the options they give you for the music you want to download is straightforward too. With most tracks on their site you can grab a 192kb mp3 for around 99p suitable for playback on mp3 players, or you can grab a club-quality 320kb mp3 for around £1.30, or if you want that lossless sound then grab a WAV for a few pennies more. You don’t need any more options than that and the tiered pricing is sensible too.
Better Prices Than The Rest
For me, I have found that the prices on DJD are generally the cheapest around. I know that based on the music I buy, a typical basket of tracks bought on Beatport for example will be more expensive than the exact same basket on DJD. It’s possible to buy the entire top 10 tracks on the home page of DJD for a tenner which means you are spending just £1 a track. Bargain!
They Give You Free Music
For every 10 tracks I purchase, I receive a download “token” to use to get any track I like for free. I don’t know of any other store that does this and it’s a nice little touch to reward loyal customers. I like to keep hold of my token (I don’t think it expires) and use it on some of the promos/new releases that are priced a little higher than other tracks so I can get the full benefit from the free download token.
Great Memory
When browsing music, often I will not make a purchase that same day; perhaps I might like to come back a few days later, add more things to the basket and then get all my music in one go. DJD allows me to do this when I’m logged in by remembering what was in my shopping cart the last time I visited. I can then line up a number of tracks for purchase throughout the week and buy them all in one go at a later date. This is useful as it helps to avoid the small charge levied for transactions under £3, a charge that is common to many other online music stores and not just DJD.
One Of The Best Online Customer Services In The World
I have rarely found the need to get in touch with DJD, but as I have been a customer of theirs for several years it’s inevitable that I have been at some point. The customer service I have received from DJD on every occasion has always been absolutely spot on. Staff on the phones and in emails are the nicest, most polite people I have ever met working on customer helplines in pretty much any industry.
Methods Of Payment
I can pay by credit card, Paypal or online ‘wallet’ (if you like you can deposit an amount into a virtual wallet where it is kept until you decide to use it). DJD will store my card details to make checkout a fast and simple process - all that is required is my CVV number from the back of my card and checkout is complete. Simple and fast - two important things I look for when shopping online. A lot of, if not all other, stores do this, but I find DJD’s to be the slickest and hassle-free.
It’s not all roses and cupcakes however, there are a few areas I feel DJD could improve on:
There’s No Specific “Funky House” Genre
Both Juno and TrackItDown have a “Funky House” genre, sadly DJD does not. If it did, this would help me to specifically filter out the tracks I don’t want to listen to and would save me bags of time in the long run. However it has to be said that some of the little gems I’ve come across in the past have been when I’ve strayed unknowingly into a different sub-genre of House so maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. I’d still like it as an option though.
The Audio Player Is Slow And Clunky
DJD was one of the first stores to use the needle-drop technology of previewing a song in its entirety prior to purchase and being able to jump to whatever part of the track you wanted to listen to is a bonus. Nowadays this is quite a common thing to see on other sites and it has to be said that other sites do it much better than DJD, Beatport currently being my favourite in this respect. The trouble with DJD’s player is that it is very slow and clunky to use. For me, the tracks take a long time to load in to the player and do not always start straight away; an unwanted frustration when trying to fly through a load of different tracks.
They Don’t Know Me
Although DJD likes me enough to give me free music, they aren’t too hot on recommending new music to me. When I log in to my account there is a list of tracks that DJD think I will like based on my previous purchases. Unlike Amazon for example, I find that they miss the mark quite far with this feature. The tracks they put forward are rarely good matches for the style I like and often they will suggest music I have already purchased previously. If this was tightened up a bit I feel it would make discovering new music easier, faster and more enjoyable.
In Summary
I hope the guys at DJDownload appreciate all the nice things I have said about their online digital music store and will take on board some of the things I have mentioned that could be improved. All in all they are a great place to shop for music and are easily my favourite simply because they stock the music I like for the best price and give me a free download once in a while combined with great customer service.
All content in this article is correct to the best of my knowledge at time of publication.
I’ve been wanting to write about the current state of music for a while now. It’s not really a discussion about how music is getting worse because there are still plenty of quality producers out there pushing the scene forwards but I just wanted to take a look at how the industry is shifting in its current state today compared to when I first started out and how kids today don’t know how good they’ve got it.
Nostalgia
I’m 30 years old so when I started DJing, the common way to hear new music was to head on down to the local record store, have a chat and a catch up with the guy behind the counter (hat tip to Vinyl Frontier in Woking), get given 20 or so vinyls and settle down at one of the listening posts to go through each record in detail.
After a fair amount of time I’d make my selection and typically pay between £7 - £9 per vinyl. Imports and special orders would cost more as would ‘DJ only’ promos and test presses.
I’d take my music home with me and practise a DJ set with my new vinyl. That static you got as you pulled it out the crisp new paper sleeve and that indescribable ‘new vinyl’ smell would send shivers down my spine. It was exciting times.
Now we look at the state of the music scene today and I think my biggest gripe lies with the select few that illegally download music. In the age of MP3s and instant online musical gratification I understand that you simply must have a specific tune right now and that making a trip to a store to buy music seems almost absurd now, but there is absolutely no excuse to illegally download music.
Illegal Downloads
Illegal downloads have been covered by the news more and more frequently over the past few years and I really don’t understand why people feel the need to share/steal music online. Music today can cost as little as 29p on Amazon, a far cry from the £7 I used to shell out back in the day. Who doesn’t have 29p to spend on a track? What’s 29p today - the cost of a single cigarette. Even the specialist onlinedancemusicvendors rarely charge more than £1.50 for a 320Kbps MP3 single and I think this is more than a fair price when you consider CD singles used to cost around £3.99.
What’s Changed?
So what has happened to music to make people think that free music is their right, that they shouldn’t have to pay for music at all? When did it become obscene to pay more than £1.50 for a track? Even in iTunes most music cost less than £1. A POUND!
When you get people illegally downloading music rather than paying a few pence its no wonder that the top quality artists are struggling to earn a living any more.
I think that one of the problems is that music simply has no value any more. Its become too disposable. Let me try and use an analogy here. If you are going to paint a room in your house, what clothes do you put on? Is it your £2 shirt from Primark, or your £200 Armani shirt? OK, bad analogy but you see the point, because you spent so little on something it means little to you. You have little money and no time or emotion invested in an instant download as opposed to taking a trip to a record store and meticulously going through each and every tune. Today you can preview a song and skip through it in a matter of seconds.
I know this to be true because this is what I do when I listen to promos. There is literally so much music that gets delivered to my inbox on a daily basis that the only way to get through it all is to skip through each track and devote just a few seconds of my time to each one. A few seconds of verse and chorus and I make my decision there and then (to be fair I do put those ones to one side to listen back to them properly later on).
An Over Saturated Market
Music turns over at such a phenomenal rate today and there is so much software and online tools out there to enable anyone to make music that the market has become over saturated. Its only in the last year or so that mid-week chart positions became something to fight over. There are more people making music today than there ever has been - not to say that there aren’t some talented people out there but usually it’s only 5% of tunes that I listen to now which I even consider adding to my ‘listen to later’ pile. It’s now so easy to make a tune and put it out there that there’s simply just too much of it.
In the same way that XFactor started the ball rolling with talent contest-style stars in 2004. XFactor does what is says on the tin, it finds unsung (pun intended) talented people and gives them a platform to progress their career. Fine. I get that. But the effect its had is to push valuable airtime away from people with bags of talent and give it to those that have none. Now all these other talent search TV programmes have copied the format and instead of TV time being given to people that deserve it and worked hard it is now being dished out to people that have stood in a queue. As much as I hate N-Dubz, they feel the same way and they do have a point with respect to effort-to-success ratio.
No Value Placed On Music
The generation of music buyers today will never be able to fathom the idea of treasuring music because there is an overwhelming abundance of it. Vinyl is a physical entity and as such it is prone to wear and tear. No matter how careful you are, music pressed on vinyl can only be played a finite number of times before the vinyl wears out and either starts skipping or sounds dull rendering the record ultimately useless. With MP3s there is no degradation of music and no limits placed on it, it will never wear away or sound dull and in 100 years time it will still sound the same. When you have an abundance of anything you treat it with less respect and value than you would something that is rare or something that you treasure.
The rarest of music I encountered when I started DJing was the limited edition test presses, acetates and dub plates. These were either one-off vinyl presses or super-small batches of records and because at the time you could not copy vinyl easily this made the music rare. So when you dropped that exclusive mix which blew the dance floor apart you’d get people coming up to the DJ booth asking where you got it from and what the name was. There was a certain bit of DJ snobbery I enjoyed where I took a guilty pleasure in holding up a white label and saying “Test press import, mate” to the punter.
It’s A Crowded Industry
But that’s the thing, test-press imports don’t exist any more. Producers around the world can upload their latest tracks to Soundcloud for example and share their latest creations literally minutes after it’s finished. Why? It’s because nowadays the competition out there is so much stronger than it was before and to get noticed and heard above the noise you have to put your music out there in this way to get people excited and interested in your music and to get it circulated among DJs.
Producers even give away free downloads to some of their tracks just to get people listening to their productions. It’s mad, but they have to do this in order to penetrate the market. It’s like one huge viscous circle because the more music that is given away free, the more the public demands, if not expects, from artists in general thereby feeding the fuel that diminishes the value of the music being produced.
Moving With the Times
In no way am I attacking the industry as it is at the moment because let’s face it the industry is always changing and we all have to move with the times, I just believe that the golden age of listening to music, buying music and music production has now sadly passed. Music production used to cost thousands of pounds just for the equipment alone and when something costs this amount of money you have to be really serious about doing it and have a real passion before you make that kind of investment. Now you can get programs like Reason and Ableton for a fraction of the cost.
It will be interesting to see how producers get noticed in future and how they expect to generate revenue required to carry on making music as a living. Looking to the commercial side, Professor Green for one believes that the future is in brand tie-ins, and you’d be hard pressed to miss Tinie Tempah jumping around in a Lucozade ad. Even Jennifer Lopez is selling out to Gillette. I guess you can’t blame them for when their revenue dries up from music sales, where else are they going to turn to in order to make their money? What was once a relatively stable industry has been taken over by an uncertain future.
Dance music has been a huge part of my life and it still is however the golden age of music has been and gone and now its time for the next generation to take what we have given them and to hopefully push it forwards in the right direction. Whatever happens to the state of music in the future I’m glad to have been a part of what it was in its glory days.
Its not often I post stuff like this up on my site but I felt I just had to draw your attention to the amazing talent of the dj/producer Dirty Freek. This is an artist that I have come across more and more often over the last few months while browsing funky house music online and Dirty Freek has really held my attention with each and every release. I beleive that every musical genre has its ‘Midas Touch’ producers where everything they touch turns to gold - and for me Dirty Freek is right up there on my list alongside eSquire, Audio Jacker and the Freemasons.
To find out more about Dirty Freek and to listen and buy his music, head on over to freek.me and check it out. If you like your music uplifting and funky then I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
Moving swiftly on to the main reason for this blog post - Dirty Freek has been kind enough to upload and share a handful of tracks which are available for download. It’s very rare in this day an age for any producer to upload and share their music for free online let alone music of this high quality. These tracks will definitely be making it into my forthcoming mixes and I expect to be supporting future releases too. I’m not sure how long these tracks will remain online so get them while you can!
Flawless return this year with an immense line up to be held over at Pacha in London on Friday the 21st January 2011. After establishing a name for itself as one of the coolest up and coming party brands last year including smashing a huge New Years Eve event, the Flawless party at the end of this month is set to be another spectacular night.
The established Flawless resident DJs will be playing alongside up and coming talent that you should definitly keep an ear out for, plus the stunning DNA dancers who you should definitely keep an eye out for!
The brand new mix for this year is available to get hold of right now from the mixes page. Theres so much dirty funky house music in there I’ve had to use a crowbar to get it all in. So step well back when you take the lid off this baby!
Over an hour of pure dancefloor jetfuel to get you fired up as we approach that dreaded time when many of us have to go back to the reality of a full-time job. I hope everyone had a good holiday over the Christmas period, I know I certainly did.
Keep it locked for some very special exciting news to be announced very, very soon and enjoy the mix!
As a special treat to those that regularly download my mixes, I thought it would be a nice gesture to put together a special extra mix this month to get you in the Cristmas mood.
There’s no mention of Santa, no reindeer, no elves and no bloody mince pies. But there is over an hour of solid, thumping funky house for you to destroy your eardrums with.
Grab the special festive Funky House Mix from my mixes page right now.
Yep, I’m back once again and I thought I’d write a quick blog post just to let you know what’s been happening since a few months ago when I decided to jack it all in.
Without getting too personal, I’ve been on a bit of a downer for the past six months or so and at one point things got so bad I just wanted to stop doing everything and just go sit in a big dark hole. The DJing wasn’t really going in the direction I wanted it to go in and I had been toying with the idea of knocking it on the head for a while. A few months ago I decided to do just that.
However, almost as soon as I announced I was leaving the scene, I was overwhelmed with people sending me in emails and comments and tweets and messages saying how much they liked my sets and how much I would be missed. I was really touched that people take time out of their day just to drop me a message no matter how long or short that message was.
A few personal things have happened to me over the last few weeks and it has made me realise that music is one of the biggest passions in my life and perhaps the reason I had been a bit low is because I had let other things get in the way of me enjoying making and mixing music. After reading each positive email that had come in and with the support of my friends I’ve decided to make a comeback to DJing and to do the one thing in life that makes me truly happy… spinning huge, piano-led, wobbly basslined, dancefloor destroyers!!!!
And with that in mind I have put together what I feel is my favourite Funky House Mix of all time. It’s a real blinder of a mix with some ‘roight proppa nawty’ edges. A real mix of classics brought bang up to date as well as some fresh-out-the-oven HOT promos. Head on over to the Funky House Mixes page to download the December 2010 mix right now!
Mixes and audio available from this site are intended for home review only. If you like the music, please support the artists and purchase the music legally from the links provided.
This extra special BeatCanteen release is a big shout-out to Eric Prydz! His fantastic version of “MIGHTY LOVE” continues to be one of the most celebrated, yet unreleased, house tracks around the globe. In August of this year, John Gold released his bootleg of “MIGHTY LOVE” to bring this floor filler to the masses (http://beatcanteen.com/track/mighty-love). The feedback has been phenomenal and brought together five of the most recognized up-and-coming international house producers - Zach Le Sage from the UK, DeeJMD from Greece, Skingz from Germany, Funkhameleon from Finland, and Levantine from Mexico. Together they took on “MIGHTY LOVE” for one the most exciting BeatCanteen releases: the “MIGHTY LOVE” ALL-STAR REMIX EP!
I’m off to Croatia 
See you up the front!
As a DJ, I buy a fair amount of mp3’s online. Most of my spare time is taken up with listening to promos or browsing through dance music online. There are several places that I go online that cater for my specialist Funky House niche and one of those places I go to is 
I’ve been wanting to write about the current state of music for a while now. It’s not really a discussion about how music is getting worse because there are still plenty of quality producers out there pushing the scene forwards but I just wanted to take a look at how the industry is shifting in its current state today compared to when I first started out and how kids today don’t know how good they’ve got it.
Its not often I post stuff like this up on my site but I felt I just had to draw your attention to the amazing talent of the dj/producer 
Flawless return this year with an immense line up to be held over at Pacha in London on Friday the 21st January 2011. After establishing a name for itself as one of the coolest up and coming party brands last year including smashing a huge New Years Eve event, the Flawless party at the end of this month is set to be another spectacular night.
The brand new mix for this year is available to get hold of 
As a special treat to those that regularly download my mixes, I thought it would be a nice gesture to put together a special extra mix this month to get you in the Cristmas mood. 
