Ulysses 82 on Radio 1 !!!!!.

Me and christophe are craziliy over-excited about this-what a great way to start the year.

Big thanks to Danny aka Red Rack’em, who is seemingly destined for ever greater heights this year.

Catch him at the Vibe bar on the 13th, and listen to the full show here.

Bringing the cheap heat since 1982.

Thursday is the Ain’t it Black 1st birthday party at Favela chic.

It’s gonna be a monster session. A celebration of an amazing year of finding new music and making new friends.  There’s live music from Olivier DaySoul and the usual cut price/fully loaded, high fiving deejays.

Come down, if you’re local. Rumours abound of some crazy-assed fancy dress costumes (”just call me snake”) and what with the usual insane dancefloor antics and the friendliest crowd in the east there’s sure to be a lot of love in the room.

To celebrate here is an exclusive Ulysses82 edit fresh from my hard drive.

It’s been a great year!!

Ulysses82 -Easy to Find/Hard to Lose

Best known for his excursions into the outer limits of scifi electronics and freaky remixes, Joseph Quaid returns this week with a mix highlighting the influences and aspirations of the firemusic sound. It’s a head-y brew of deep detroit flavoured soul and futuristic afro rhythms boding well not just for the deep range series as a whole, but for the ’soon come’ releases of this mighty (yet barely known) collective of musicians.

You can check the full mix here

As ever hl not only points you to the things we think you need, but gives you things you stuff you can’t get anywhere else.

Pitched up and transformed from down tempo head-nodder to leftfield dancefloor soul, here is quaid’s take on a Flying Lotus killer.

File under ‘exclusive’.

Flying Lotus-Tea Leaf Dancers (Deep Range jackin’ mix)

Sorry for the slack posting and generally balls-upery on basilika recently. Moving servers turned into a freakin ‘mare and it’s only now, almost two weeks later that things are starting to return to normal.

All of our trax need to be re-upped at some point and there’s probably a good few kinks still to be ironed out. Still we’re home now and safer from the vagaries of cheap-ass hosting companies.

It was basilika at the elbow rooms, saturday, coincidently up against the mighty theo parrish playing just down the road at plastics-(think we’ll call that one a draw)
Thanks to ‘balearic chris’ for the backup and giving the night a whole new selection of angles-here is a little mix live from the night, keeping it pretty classic for the saturday night party people.

basilika (live at the elbow)

tracklisting

mc lyte-listen up/common-the people/roy ayres-we live in brooklyn baby (sasso re-edit)/venus gang-love to fly/ppp feat sa ra-deep inside/lee douglas-oh no not beastday/heatwave-ain’t no half steppin

enjoy.

In recognition of this sea change in the way we find and consume music, we are starting a new feature guiding lights. Every couple of weeks or so we will be putting together a 30 minute mix of the best of what is available from our favourite blogs. Hopefully it will lead you to discover new places and help deal with the overwhelming quantity of music that’s out there.

guiding lights (edition one)

tracklisting after the jump…..

three dog night-easy to be hard

Starting close to home, with this beautiful moody cut from the film zodiac.

onion display-norzin wangdu

Another moody, atmospheric track, this time from the ever-reliable Best Foot Forward, it’s the sort of tune that comes on ipod and you don’t want it to ever end.

questlove and friends-electric circus

Sort of a hangover from last week’s prince-athon, a simple pared down instrumental recorded at paisley park by questlove etc,-read the story behind the track here.

7 samurai-marlies & marcus

Just when I think I’ve had enough bootleg soul to last a lifetime, along comes this monster from 7 samurai. Mixing d’angelo’s brown sugar with something awesome, spread the word comes correct with all the dancefloor heat your ever gonna need.

bunny sigler-I’m a fool

douglas sound-do right

Two killers back-to-back from the mighty american athlete, who seems to be knocking it out the park on an almost daily basis right now.

the jacksons-living together (tribute to ron & bill hardy version)

A loving reconstruction of this impossible to find ron hardy edit by the superbly talented julien love from choqolat (check out the site for more disco love).

moreno veloso-deusa do amor

Last track is this gem from jez at Innersounds. Celebrating the birth of his second child Mika Charlotte.
He’s to you brother (and the ever growing Proctor clan)

Big love.

Here’s another* outing for Prince’s alter-ego ‘Camille’, the uber violent, misogynistic parody, Bob George. Apparently, the ‘Bob’ in the title refers to Prince’s Manager at the time, Bob Cavallo and the ‘George’ refers to Nelson George, an outspoken critic of Prince during the mid eighties.

The original version is edgy, dark and funkier than Jaksoul’s socks. I’m re-posting the ULYSSES82 re-edit for your listening pleasure. Cut with the dancefloor in mind, it’s got more of a bass bounce and some synth-stylings to round things off. 320 styles baby – for one week only.

I’m off to see ‘that skinny muther f**ker with the high heels on’ tomorrow night..

I’ll be the other one in the Cubans.

Prince-Bob George (ULYSSES82 edit)

*Both ‘Housequake‘ and ‘Feel U Up‘ were originally on the unreleased Camille album

Taking a (very) slight detour for part five, here is a track from the Prince produced Mazarati. The band known as much for their ridiculous hair as the songs that Prince wrote for them then decided to keep for himself-originally writing ‘Kiss’ as a track for their debut, before thinking better of it. I was introduced to them , very generously by good friend Disco Jesus a few weeks ago and after some heavy tweaking and twisting by those ulysses82 fellas here is the a version of my favourite cut from the album Stroke

masarati-the stroke (Ulysses82 dub)

This coming Friday will be the first time I’ve seen Prince live. I’ve now got an interminable five day countdown until the Purple one graces the stage. Already my blood pressure’s 160 over 100, my temper’s shorter than Ronnie Corbett and my laundry bill has sky-rocketed.

Today’s addition to Prince Week has been [kinda] pre-empted by the good people over at Dilate, who I’ve just noticed have posted the full-length version of ‘Housequake’. Shucks.

Anyway, here’s my take on the track – more of a blend and a tweak than an out and out remix, but it got road tested over the weekend and got [at least] my feet tapping. It owes a rather large nod to Greg Wilson and his ‘Galactico’ edit, a fine tune in itself.

Enjoy.

Housequake (ULYSSES82 Edit)

So wednesday’s Prince gig was great.

It was so good being with so many people that I didn’t know but with whom I had all these shared memories and, as much as you don’t want it just to be about nostalgia, it’s the past that draws you and the the past that will always be Prince’s worst enemy. I guess it’s a good problem to have, a peerless back catalogue, the greatest live act around for the best part of a decade, how do you compete with that ?

Well you don’t really and that’s just gonna have to be fine.

When I was growing up Prince was barely even human. He was this other being, someone to whom the normal rules didn’t apply- the man who feel to earth. He didn’t do interviews, he put freaky record out after freaky record all sounding like nothing you’d ever heard, all drawn from a magical place, Paisley Park, that no-one else could go, like sly stone and willy wonka had some secret love child.

And maybe sly stone is a good a reference point as any, there is something unforgiving about music-the nowness of things seem so massively important.

So he played some hits, he did his thing in a way that, even now, no-one else could dream. It helped us remember all the good times (and bad) to which his songs have provided the soundtrack and, more importantly, it was obvious to us all that he is entirely human, (the guitar solos whilst performing spilts/ the crazy dance moves are long gone) and, strangely, that was a relief. That I could let go of this semi-religious awe and enjoy him for what he is-a supremely talented individual.

Prince-Climax (Ulysses82 redub)

It’s not what you need, hungover, day two of your site relaunch.

Oh well.

I’ll give you a full run down of last night’s gig tomorrow (when my brain is working again), but suffice to say it was a great night out in a facing-up-to-the mortality-of-your-adolescent-heroes sort of way.

o2 is a great (if a bit bluewatery) space, the aftershow was superb, our seats where incredible and I need to go and take some more advil.

In the spirit of keeping things quiet and hangover friendly, here is part two of our Prince-athon, taken from Prince’s unreleased Dream Factory album (the one that eventually got edited down into sign o’ the times). It sounds more like a Bill Evans track than anything else-which is certainly no bad thing.

Shhhhh….

Prince-Visions

[audio:Visions.mp3]