Part IV

I've been promising it for what seems like forever....and it's finally here. It's been on release only via an exclusive on Ramdomthoughts.co.uk and it appears to have gone done really well, but now it's time for it's Brian Blessed filled goodness to be unleashed on the world.

If I may, and I'm sure they won't mind, I'll quote a couple of mini-reviews from Scott and Bobby

"It's absolutely f**king fantastic basically"

"I can't fault it at all"

-Scott Johnson - http://ramdomthoughts.co.uk/

"Well, what can I say.......I'm absolutley gobsmacked mate. It's nothing short of amazing. I want to avoid all the cliche's but it's hard to. It's a real tour de force, a journey, a visual fim/story."

-Bobby Martini - http://bobbymartini.blogspot.com/ and http://www.bobbymartini.co.uk/

Haha! Success at last!

The first step in this mix took place roughly around the middle of August. I was messing around on with Acid Pro as always, and I thought back to stuff I could use. I have the Turin Brakes edition on the Late Night Tales compilation CDs, and I thought back to the curious 4th part of a 4 part story included at the end of the CD, as read by Brian Blessed. Its surreal, completely out of place, and it made very little sense, but the words "Welcome to the final part, of this 4 part story" rang in my head. I had messed around previously, making 3 previous full length "mixes" which whilst having stand out moments, never really worked for me, having no flow or theme running through them. And after chatting with Bobby via the gift of Facebook, I discovered that his fabulous full length mixes were all constructed in Acid so the capabilites of doing a proper mix were all there.

Immediately I began chipping away at Brian's spoken word, adding atmospheric strings and the obligatory George Bush samples. Fantastic. Sounded like the start of a movie or something.

It was around this time I also came across the debut Skinnyman album, "Council Estate of the Mind" after seeing him on a documentary about UK urban music. I had previously heard his amazing track "I'll Be Surprised" (still in my top 20 songs) on a Scratch Perverts mix CD so I knew his quality, but the album blew me away, especially for featuring heavily, dialogue from gritty Brit film "Made In Britain" by Alan Clarke. The samples just worked so well with the theme of the album. I had to purloin them for myself. Chopped them up. Inserted tactfully. They worked beautifully contrasting with Brian's vocal. "I'm not signing any contracts". Damn straight. I know too many folks in the music business been screwed over. This was perfect! 1min 20secs laid down and after, it just sounded like the perfect intro to a full length mix, and the theme of having Brian narrate throughout the mix really appealed to me, and so that was that. I just had to have one last go, and this time really mean it.

Check out the White City story over here - http://http//www.patrickneate.com/page.asp?p=wc1

Check out Made In Britain over here - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084287/

Now as some of you know, I have a completely un-structured way of working on these things. I generally make the tracks as I go along, depending on what source files I have to play with at the time, and a bonus of this is, that the ones I make that I can't use, release them on here anyway! It's a process though that has its drawbacks. Do I make it housey, trance, hip-hop, indie? My tastes are too eclectic to restrict myself to one style though, which becomes a nightmare for beat-matching, and keeping the flow going (I spent roughly 3 weeks working out how to get back from the reggae interlude to something a little more upbeat). As luck would have it however, I've been going through a phase of getting back to my musical roots, which was classic old-school rave and drum n' bass. As a result, I had a load of tracks begging to be used, and kept the flow going, all the time the dialogue from Brian and Made In Britain weaving in and out to match the pace of the music.

I finally finished this a couple of weeks back, and the response as highlighted above from the quotes has been phenomenal to me. As mentioned elsewhere on the web, I started on this journey around 8 months ago or so, as a hobby, a pastime to keep me doing something on a weekend when skint and bored from staying in. I started off crap, heck, I'm still crap relative to many other people (check my links on the left), but I think I am actually starting to get a little bit better, bit by bit, and with support from various other folk (you all know who you are), I am actually really glad I got in to all this and now live for a Friday night when I sit down and mess around with this wonderful genre. So this mix is the culmination of the last 8 months hard slog and practice. The perfect end to the year for me. So a big big thanks to those in the know for all your kind words, advice and support. This mix is for you chaps.

Enough blabbing. On with the tracklistings:-

1. Intro - Part IV
Brian Blessed vs. George W. Bush vs. Moulin Rouge (OST) vs. Made In Britain

2. Colatron - Work It the Fuck Out
Skinnyman vs. Beyonce
(Fuck Da Hook vs. Work It Out)

3.Colatron - Red Hot Work Out
Jurassic 5 feat. the Daptones vs. Beyonce
(Red Hot (Up Above) vs. Work It Out)

4.A brief interlude - Still being Smart
Miscellaneous Piano vs. Made In Britain

4.Colatron - Shhit Shack
Fedde Le Grande vs. B-52s vs. Wildchild vs. DJ Supreme vs. Afrika Bambaataa
(Take No Ssh... vs. Love Shack vs. Renegade Master vs. Tha Wildstyle vs. Get Up and Dance)

5.Kleerup (feat. Robyn) - With Every Heartbeat

6.Colatron - X-Hale Slowly
Aphex Twin vs. Kylie Minogue
(Xtal vs. Slow)

7.Easy Star All*Stars - Exit (Music For a Film)

8.The Upsetters - One Step Dub

9.Madness - One Step Beyond

10.Madness - One Step Beyond (Italian Version)

11.Colatron - Killa Katie
Killa Kela vs. Kate Nash vs. The Streets
(Crop Circles feat. Lee-Ra vs. Foundations vs. Don't Mug Yourself)

12.Bloc Party - The Prayer (acapella)

13.Colatron - The Preacher
Leftfield vs. Bloc Party
(Phat Planet (Lethal & Imaginary Forces remix) vs. The Prayer)

14.Colatron - The Second Coming
Italian Love Songs vs. Muse vs. Bad Boys vs. RJD2 vs. Aphex Twin vs. Greg Nice
(Italian Love Songs. vs. Intro vs. Veronica vs. Salud vs. Avril 14th vs. 3 mintues)

15.Colatron - Ms. Nelly's Nightmare
4-Hero vs. Nelly Furtado
(Mr. Kirk's Nightmare vs. Say It Right)

16.Colatron - Do You Really Like Hardcore?
Outlander vs. Pied Piper
(Vamp vs. Do You Really Like It?)

17.Colatron - The Congress of a Clown
Congress vs. Smokey Robinson
(40 Miles vs. Tears of a Clown)

18.TC - Flatline

19.Moby - Feeling So Real

20.Colatron - Teardrop[s]
Newton Faulkner vs. Massive Attack
(Teardrop vs. Teardrop)

21.Colatron - Beautiful Acoustic Blues
Buena Vista Social Club vs. Christina Aguilera
(Acoustic Blues Slide vs. Beautiful)

22.Colatron - My Cheated Heart Goes Bang
Stone Roses vs. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
(She Bangs the Drum (Elephant remix) vs. Cheated Hearts)

23.Colatron - I Saw a Bouncing Ball
Bat For Lashes vs. Aphex Twin
(I Saw a Light vs. Bucepahlus Bouncing Ball)

24.Outro - And there was nothing but darkness
Brian Blessed


I was going to write a little explanation of each track, detailing why each one was made or chosen for this mix, but I'd be here all night and I'm sure you just want to get to the music. If you really need to know about a track or selection, drop me a comment and I'll respond accordingly. But I will apologise in advance for "Beautiful Acoustic Blues" - I was hammered is all I can say. Still, two of the tracks in here made the Anti-Hit List so can't all be bad!

Now kick off the shoes, sit back in your armchair, turn up the volume and enjoy. I'm off for a glass of champers.

Part IV - 71min 55secs - 132Mb (256kbps)

Download page here:
http://www.divshare.com/download/2671439-139

Direct Download here:
http://http://s08.divshare.com/launch.php?f=2671439&s=139

Proper artwork too! It's a double cover, so if you don't like my mush, have Brian's instead!

Cover (double version)



Front Cover (single version)



Inlay Cover (Single version)



Rear + Tracklistings



Gordon's Aliveeeee?????? x x x