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Elite Force
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The Eclectic Selector: Miami WMC 2010
I had a long discussion about music a few weeks ago in Rome with my good friend and musical ally Andrea Lai![[a]](http://www.beatportal.com/images/site/misc/wiki_box_a.gif)
, and then followed it up a couple of weeks later with a similarly involved conversation with Sam in Prague.
We discussed our music tastes and tried to define what exactly ‘does it’ for us about certain tracks, and whilst it’s hard to objectively put your finger on why we like what we like, perhaps it comes down to the ‘soul’ and how the musician manages to convey something of themselves through the music.
For me it can be a lyric, the shuffle of a beat, the bitch-slap of a bassdrop, the fuzzy warmth of an analogue embrace, the addiction to a lead line, or more often than not a combination of all of the above into one compulsive piece of music, into which you simply surrender yourself and tumble headlong. That’s the essence of this column - it’s just a personal standpoint of tracks that are broadly eclectic and appeal to my own sense of what works and what doesn’t.
It has been a fun few weeks on the road anyhow, and with Miami’s annual WMC taking place this week, there’s plenty more dancefloor action to come.
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The Eclectic Selector: 2010 rhythms
I’m not a massive fan of year-enders … the annual critical backslapping sessions are an all–too-predictable affair. It’s easy to fill column inches by throwing endless lists at the problem, and the end-of-a-decade just amplifies the list-mania. Boys love lists, they love to compartmentalize and they love to argue endlessly about the relative merits of A over B.
At school I was a serial offender in this regard. I had a big green book that I carried round with me everywhere and I would constantly badger people for their current Top 10s. At the end of the week, if I had enough reluctant participants, I’d spend my weekend compiling the list-of-the-lists and aggregrate the scores into a new list, which was worth slightly less than the sum of its parts.
Instead of dwelling on the year just passed, or indeed the year ahead, I’m having a most unusual holiday season this year, flying south from the icy freeze of the UK’s standard chaotica-in-the-face-of-a-light-frost-and-a-few-flurries to much sunnier climes. This will be the first year I’ve made not one but two pilgrimages Down Under and it’s a real thrill to be playing some major festivals again.
One thing an Australian tour does is it focuses the mind on DJing like no other, and this week has been all about preparation. I dug deep for these bombs.
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The Eclectic Selector: LovEvolution special
Tech-funk luminary and Beatportal blogger Elite Force reports back from San Francisco’s recent Love Parade event (this year called LovEvolution), with video montages and eclectic dancefloor gems from the world of wonk.
His monthly ‘The Eclectic Selector’ blog highlights storming dancefloor destroyers from a proudly mongrel universe where house, breaks, techno, electro and dubstep co-exist happily together.
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The Eclectic Selector: Burning Man special
I’ve just arrived back from a few days in the badlands at Burning Man festival in Nevada, USA, so I must apologise if my ramblings are slightly more ‘disconnected’ than normal. I thought I would focus my second Eclectic Selector post on some of the big tracks that soundtracked my time there.
For the uninitiated, Burning Man is a parallel universe run by 10-year olds with ADD on acid. Over the years I’ve been to Britain’s infamous Glastonbury festival many times, and one of the finest things it has going for it is when you stray from the mainstream stages to explore its rich underbelly, where the focus shifts from big-mouthed PRs flapping about where the next line’s coming from for their precious charges, to people selflessly creating art for the greater good; and the more demented the better.
The best way to describe Burning Man is that it takes the kernal of that idea and allows it to blossom, without any form of constraint.
Click through for my video montage, which shows you what it’s all about.
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The Eclectic Selector
The idea of starting a new monthly column on Beatportal that focuses on a wide selection of genre defying music, is one that Terry Church and myself had been knocking around for a while.
Like most people who run their own label, produce, blog, record and DJ, there’s precious little time at the end of the month for anything other than a sharp intake of breath, but I’ve always loved to write, and as the saying goes, ‘if you want something doing, ask a busy person.’
The main focus of the ‘Eclectic Selector’ pieces will not be to dwell on absolutes and the kind of purism that will always be the domain of others more ‘dedicated’ to their specialty than me, but to celebrate the open-mindedness of producers that live on the margins, and artists who walk the line.
Much of what I’ll be focusing on will still be bound together by a common BPM as represented by the tech-funk ethos (a loose amalgamation of house, breaks, electro and techno), but I’ll also concentrate on hybrid music that attempts to create dancefloors without boundaries.
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Elite Force @ Citadella, Budapest (AAD’s 10th Anniversary bash)
Nights don’t get much better than this one. I’ve been playing for Fine Cut Bodies and the Chi Recordings![[l]](http://www.beatportal.com/images/site/misc/wiki_box_l.gif)
crew for a number of years now and whilst Peace Division were killing it in the other room, downstairs we had a near riot going on.
The tune that’s playing is Lee Coombs‘s brilliant remix he did for Bassnectar, which for some unearthly reason the label have decided not to release. Doh.
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Elite Force @ Firefly (Nottingham) 15/11-08
A wicked night @ Firefly in Nottingham where I was playing with the legend that is Andrew Weatherall
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Elite Force Musings 003: Beginnings for a Plastic Junky
The key turns in the lock. Hands, damp with anticipation. Pushing gently, easing it apart. The bottom of the door catches on plastic wrap. Pushing some more. A red letterhead .... unmistakable card/postcard. Bending down with a broad grin, tossing aside the junk mail, the bills, the bank statements now.
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Elite Force musings 002: Journey to the Near East
As I pore over my itinerary for the coming months, sifting through travel plans to the outer reaches of our increasingly accessible planet, there’s one word that always resonates with me, that gives me a warm glow, and where I know I’ll be welcomed with open arms: every DJ has their rock solid ‘home games’, where the crowd & the vibe just feel like family .... in fact, I’d say that most clubbers feel the same, being the loyal, tribal bunch we are.
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Elite Force musings 001: introductory ramblings
So much has changed in the past 15 years.
Back in the day, £10k would get you little more than an entry-level studio set-up - good for demos, but lacking any real polish except in the hands of ‘the rare genius’.
There was a profound disconnection between the artist & the idea, and the end-user (that being the clubbed up drug monkey), to such an extent that the joining of the dots from creation to delivery relied on a series of conjoined professions, from engineers to producers to the cutting room, from the pressing plant to the postie to the dubplate.
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- The current soundtrack to my tech-funk world
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