“VIVA ESPANIA”
MUSIC IS THE ANSWER - SPECIAL POST MONDAY 12TH JULY
Without question the weekend was a celebration of all things superbly Spanish for us, as not only did Spain triumph in football’s world cup, but we were in exciting espaniol ecstasy with the magnificence of Matinee London’s “Open Air Summer” party which, for us was best club showing of 2010 in the capital so far. So, in celebration and in a slight change to our planned post, we are devoting the whole of this, our latest Music Is The Answer report, to all things Spanish, focussing on two of its countrymen & shouting for Spain with the latest track & compilation news to hit our desks.
Our first focus goes to London based but the supremely Spanish Gonzalo Rivas, who is thoroughly deserving of his maiden inclusion in our reports, as he has played a massive part in so many clubbing events over the last few years, proving that he remains one of the scene’s biggest talents & very much in demand. To list the gAylist gatherings Gonzalo has been involved in across the capital reads like a never ending gold medal haul & a towering trophy cabinet of achievements, which started back in 1997 when he was touted for a one-off set at the legendary club Trade, having been spotted by promoter Laurence Malice. So good was his performance in the infamous Trade test lounge, that he was immediately signed to play in the main room, becoming one of the biggest stars in the latter years of this amazing afterhours club brand in its only true home, Turnmills, we losing count the amount of times he thrilled us with his tough turbocharged tech (well verging on techno) house. But the list of other residencies & club appearances is endless, Mr Rivas racking up & featuring in a bevy of brands over the years, including, A.M., Action, Beyond, Factor 25, Heaven, Horizon, Juicy, Orange, & Salvation, while the gAylisting bar circuit in the capital always strived for a slice of the Spanish superstar, Barcode, The Box, Escape Lo-Profile & Shadow Lounge fighting over his devotions, a committed to his craft Gonzalo always managing to satisfy their needs & draw in numbers a-plenty with his amazing ability to play to his audience, his music genre range spreading from light & fluffy to tough & chunky.
However, while Gonzalo remains one of the busiest D.J.’s on the scene here in London, a reserved & private Mr Rivas is also a proud & patriotic Spaniard, spending as much time as he can back home in Seville with family & friends and where his D.J.’ing career started back in 1992, trips home intermixed with tours around the globe, touching on virtually every continent & starring in some of the world’s biggest named clubs & largest festivals. Indeed, just this last month he was very much in demand across a selection of Pride events across Europe, fitting in an exhaustive run between London, Seville, & Amsterdam, has featured in Sydney’s Mardi Gras, Miami’s Winter Music Conference, & Barcelona’s Circuit Festival, as well as virtually every big park celebration here in London. But his connections with Trade have seen him tour countries such as Brazil, Japan, Russia & South Africa, while his excursions around the globe have also seen him play alongside the best in the business, including Paul Van Dyk, Sandy Rivera, Frankie Knuckles, Tall Paul & K-Klass to name just a few.
Away from the D.J. decks & Gonzalo is an accomplished producer, having been quite prolific around the turn of the century, with a string of Trade inspired compilations, as well as tracks in conjunction with well known’s such a Paul King, Baby Doc & Alan X, his collaboration with the latter seeing “Let’s Go” hit the big time. Having given his production work a rest, Gonzalo, aka Stereo Man, is back in the studio, his latest hot off the press track “Bootleg Revolution” being a masterpiece & trademark Rivas rapturous percussive, progressive & tech house, this remix piece of work being due for release on label Deviate Records, although a generous Gonzalo has put it up for advance download, which you can grab now at http://soundcloud.com/gonzalo-rivas and we love it. However, he continues to chalk up a collection of compilations, each one reflecting his dynamic & diverse music tastes and while we can’t really single any one particular mix out as they are all superb, we absolutely adore his “Pride 2010” composition, Gonzalo lamenting of his work “...It’s lots of big tunes & big names, happy music for happy people...” he quite rightly concluding that the mix is “...spreading the music, spreading the love...”. Sampling the string of smashing sounds, each one hit a sweet spot of ours, leaving us smiling like a Cheshire cat & only a select single figure of D.J.’s do that to us, so we cannot recommend this enough, which you can grab for yourselves at http://gonzalorivas.podomatic.com/, although check out the others too as they are Gonzalo gems. As for Mr Rivas back behind the decks, well you can catch him regularly at A.M., Barcode, Beyond & Lo-Profile, although if you want a real Gonzalo treat get down to Orange where is now legendary RAW room appearances are a delight, the even better news is the re-joining of the partnership with fellow Spaniard David Jimenez, magic!
Our other focus goes to Ivan Gomez, this Barcelona based bearded bloke having been featured here quite recently, as he was part of the massive international D.J. line up that graced the capital for promoter Alex Erfan’s weekend long London Global Dance Festival of events at the end of May, Mr Gomez featuring large at the LGDF Orange Afterhours outing at Area on the bank holiday Monday. Taking up the mantle of the main room madness from our man above, Gonzalo Rivas, Ivan certainly packed a punch with his progressive & tech tunes, igniting the atmosphere with a rousing rendition of masterful music that left us more than impressed, a rarity for us when it comes to certain Spanish imports who don’t always hit the mark at Matinee or scintillate at SuperMartXe. But it has to be said, Mr Gomez more than held his own that morning, so it was only a matter of time before we would feature his work again. However, not wanting to go over old ground, much of the background to Spaniard Ivan can be found in our “Two Peas In A Pod” LGDF special post at http://discomattmusic.blogspot.com/2010/06/music-is-answer-two-peas-in-pod-lgdf.html, a whistle-stop tour of his career also honing in on his considerable work in the recording studio.
And it is this production work that we want to concentrate on here, as Ivan’s truly exhaustible pace of work away from the live D.J. decks in recent weeks has left us spellbound and magnanimous in our admiration for his energy & enthusiasm for producing mountainous amounts of music. It is difficult to know where to start really, although a track that we had tipped for big things when it was released last September, received Ivan’s treatment recently, his version of “Strings Of Motion” tipping this dance drenched disc into a more tech/tribal fuelled direction which, in truth, we prefer to the original. Since this release about 5 months ago, Mr Gomez has produced no less than 18 tracks, some in collaboration with close working partners Nacho Chapado & Fran Ramirez, others sole productions, two standout pieces being “Work My Beats” which has been included on the official Matinee Summer 2010 compilation, and “SeX” which is literally hot off the press, having been released just three days ago. Add to that his two part full on completion mix volumes, entitled simply “July Promo” to add to his June gem and we reckon he has racked up well over 4 hours of music in as many months, making for one of the busiest producers we know, plus he has also devoted time to setting up tribal & progressive label Guareber Recordings, as well as holding gigs across Spain & Europe, including the full on Pride weekends in is home town Barcelona, as well as Madrid, leaving us wondering where he finds the time & energy to fit all this in. But he does, testament to that, very much reflective through http://soundcloud.com/ivangomezmusic, and http://soundcloud.com/guareber-recordings where you can access all our picks, plus plenty more, both sites well worth a thorough investigation.
Right, what other Espania entrapments are out there at the moment? Well, you may recall we focussed on one Javier Medina a couple of weeks ago and, following our review, the dust has not settled beneath his feet, or the exposure gone to his head, rather this charismatic Catalonian has been busy in the recording studio and his superlative tech/tribal re-work of Kobe vs Hugo Rizzo’s “Bring Back The Drums” has literally just been released on download chart Beatport, the track also out at http://soundcloud.com/javier-medina and is a corker of a track treatment. Add to that his latest project, which is his own remix of Guaraber recordings duo Ivan & Nacho (mentioned above) find Blind Angel’s “Self Delusion”, which Javier is working on as we speak, as well as Israeli D.J./Producer Guy Scheiman’s “My Life”, Mr Medina’s “Addicted To Devotion” remix due out next week, it goes without saying that our Barcelona bright boy is very busy indeed. Plus, on speaking with him a short while ago, he expressed his excitement at a forthcoming gig with Italian stallion, one Francesco Pagano, at Barcelona’s Devotion nightclub where Javier is a resident and will be playing alongside our man from Sicily during the city’s Circuit Festival week. We will be tracking Mr Medina’s progress and will keep you posted on further projects of his, although meanwhile mention goes to his mix crested especially for Barcelona’s pride partying, a camp (for Javier) call to Lady Ga Ga, which is still available direct at http://soundcloud.com/javier-medina/gagaalejandrojaviermedinamashup.
Now, we simply couldn’t complete our special shout to all things Spanish without including a shout for the star of SuperMartXe’s “Wizard of Oz” gay pride party a couple of Saturday’s ago, the hunky Hugo Sanchez (aka Huguito), who treated us to three hours of hypnotic house that saw us dancing delightfully on our privileged balcony spot. Now, the man’s exhaustive season as a SuperMartXe resident, means he rarely gets into the studio, a shame as his performances, certainly in London, have been the most prolific of any and we love his style of music. However, you can get a small slice of Mr Sanchez with samples of his music & video clips of his performances at http://myspace.com/hugosanchezhuguito and we are hoping he will be diving into the studio soon, so watch this space for news on that.
One person who has definitely been in the studio and has laid down two superlative compilations, is Matinee London resident Alessandro Londra, who fought the odds stacked against him this last Sunday at Ministry of Sound, when he drew the short straw of playing inside at Matinee’s massive “Open Air Summer” smash & the first set to boot. However, he really came up trumps with a stunning set, not far removed from the second of these duo of Matinee devotions, very much the soundtrack of this Ibiza inspired alfresco outing, which Mr Londra contributed to in making for, not just the best Matinee of 2010 so far, but probably the best for us since the days of Area three plus years ago. Now, if you missed out on this smash clubbing hit of the year, you can get a slice of the Spanish inspired sounds through Alessandro’s two compilations, part one being a nod towards the tougher side of Matinee’s music, while part two very much mirrors his set on Sunday, both worthy additions to your collection which you can grab at http://soundcloud.com/djalessandrolondra.
Our final mention goes to another Matinee mover, who put up an inspired performance inside at MOS on Sunday too, emerging talent Michel Mizrahi, who played out at the recent Lookbetternaked party at Fire, but was also part of Logan’s D.J. team for the Easter Party “Queen Of Clubs” at the Coronet, when he played an opening stormer of a set laying down the gauntlet for special guest Offer Nissam, definitely a tip for the future, with both ours & Mr Schmitz’s minds thinking alike in this respect. On speaking to Michel both on the day and subsequently, he will be giving us advanced exposure to forthcoming compilation works he has in planned for the near future & given his showing on Sunday, they will be well worth a listen.
Right, that’s virtually it for another week (or few days at least), although no report of ours would be complete without a mention for the music page of clubbing website Seen Queen, which continues to keep a step ahead of us with over 10 new releases already downloaded this month and a lengthy list of others from the scenes biggest D.J. names. With links to podcasts, websites & plenty more, http://seenqueen.com/music is a must visit for music lovers, plus they even have their own top ten dancefloor hits & tips, which includes our favourite track of the moment, the fabulously funky “ The Bassline” by Dr Kucho.
Next time, we throw the doors open on love, with focuses on two D.J.’s with the same first name, first Oliver Mohns, who will be starring on the Cirque Du Salvation stage at Lovebox this Sunday & then look into mystery man, The Oli, who guests for the first time at Lovechild’s “Makin Hay” party on Saturday night, plus we will be shouting for the much anticipated & overdue compilations from scene favourites Brent Nicholls & Steve Pitron.
In the meantime, we trust you enjoy all our splendid sun drenched Spanish inspired selections and in sitting back and succumbing to these superb sounds, like us, simply shout “Viva Espania!”. (DISCO MATT)
MUSIC IS THE ANSWER - SPECIAL POST MONDAY 12TH JULY
Without question the weekend was a celebration of all things superbly Spanish for us, as not only did Spain triumph in football’s world cup, but we were in exciting espaniol ecstasy with the magnificence of Matinee London’s “Open Air Summer” party which, for us was best club showing of 2010 in the capital so far. So, in celebration and in a slight change to our planned post, we are devoting the whole of this, our latest Music Is The Answer report, to all things Spanish, focussing on two of its countrymen & shouting for Spain with the latest track & compilation news to hit our desks.
Our first focus goes to London based but the supremely Spanish Gonzalo Rivas, who is thoroughly deserving of his maiden inclusion in our reports, as he has played a massive part in so many clubbing events over the last few years, proving that he remains one of the scene’s biggest talents & very much in demand. To list the gAylist gatherings Gonzalo has been involved in across the capital reads like a never ending gold medal haul & a towering trophy cabinet of achievements, which started back in 1997 when he was touted for a one-off set at the legendary club Trade, having been spotted by promoter Laurence Malice. So good was his performance in the infamous Trade test lounge, that he was immediately signed to play in the main room, becoming one of the biggest stars in the latter years of this amazing afterhours club brand in its only true home, Turnmills, we losing count the amount of times he thrilled us with his tough turbocharged tech (well verging on techno) house. But the list of other residencies & club appearances is endless, Mr Rivas racking up & featuring in a bevy of brands over the years, including, A.M., Action, Beyond, Factor 25, Heaven, Horizon, Juicy, Orange, & Salvation, while the gAylisting bar circuit in the capital always strived for a slice of the Spanish superstar, Barcode, The Box, Escape Lo-Profile & Shadow Lounge fighting over his devotions, a committed to his craft Gonzalo always managing to satisfy their needs & draw in numbers a-plenty with his amazing ability to play to his audience, his music genre range spreading from light & fluffy to tough & chunky.
However, while Gonzalo remains one of the busiest D.J.’s on the scene here in London, a reserved & private Mr Rivas is also a proud & patriotic Spaniard, spending as much time as he can back home in Seville with family & friends and where his D.J.’ing career started back in 1992, trips home intermixed with tours around the globe, touching on virtually every continent & starring in some of the world’s biggest named clubs & largest festivals. Indeed, just this last month he was very much in demand across a selection of Pride events across Europe, fitting in an exhaustive run between London, Seville, & Amsterdam, has featured in Sydney’s Mardi Gras, Miami’s Winter Music Conference, & Barcelona’s Circuit Festival, as well as virtually every big park celebration here in London. But his connections with Trade have seen him tour countries such as Brazil, Japan, Russia & South Africa, while his excursions around the globe have also seen him play alongside the best in the business, including Paul Van Dyk, Sandy Rivera, Frankie Knuckles, Tall Paul & K-Klass to name just a few.
Away from the D.J. decks & Gonzalo is an accomplished producer, having been quite prolific around the turn of the century, with a string of Trade inspired compilations, as well as tracks in conjunction with well known’s such a Paul King, Baby Doc & Alan X, his collaboration with the latter seeing “Let’s Go” hit the big time. Having given his production work a rest, Gonzalo, aka Stereo Man, is back in the studio, his latest hot off the press track “Bootleg Revolution” being a masterpiece & trademark Rivas rapturous percussive, progressive & tech house, this remix piece of work being due for release on label Deviate Records, although a generous Gonzalo has put it up for advance download, which you can grab now at http://soundcloud.com/gonzalo-rivas and we love it. However, he continues to chalk up a collection of compilations, each one reflecting his dynamic & diverse music tastes and while we can’t really single any one particular mix out as they are all superb, we absolutely adore his “Pride 2010” composition, Gonzalo lamenting of his work “...It’s lots of big tunes & big names, happy music for happy people...” he quite rightly concluding that the mix is “...spreading the music, spreading the love...”. Sampling the string of smashing sounds, each one hit a sweet spot of ours, leaving us smiling like a Cheshire cat & only a select single figure of D.J.’s do that to us, so we cannot recommend this enough, which you can grab for yourselves at http://gonzalorivas.podomatic.com/, although check out the others too as they are Gonzalo gems. As for Mr Rivas back behind the decks, well you can catch him regularly at A.M., Barcode, Beyond & Lo-Profile, although if you want a real Gonzalo treat get down to Orange where is now legendary RAW room appearances are a delight, the even better news is the re-joining of the partnership with fellow Spaniard David Jimenez, magic!
Our other focus goes to Ivan Gomez, this Barcelona based bearded bloke having been featured here quite recently, as he was part of the massive international D.J. line up that graced the capital for promoter Alex Erfan’s weekend long London Global Dance Festival of events at the end of May, Mr Gomez featuring large at the LGDF Orange Afterhours outing at Area on the bank holiday Monday. Taking up the mantle of the main room madness from our man above, Gonzalo Rivas, Ivan certainly packed a punch with his progressive & tech tunes, igniting the atmosphere with a rousing rendition of masterful music that left us more than impressed, a rarity for us when it comes to certain Spanish imports who don’t always hit the mark at Matinee or scintillate at SuperMartXe. But it has to be said, Mr Gomez more than held his own that morning, so it was only a matter of time before we would feature his work again. However, not wanting to go over old ground, much of the background to Spaniard Ivan can be found in our “Two Peas In A Pod” LGDF special post at http://discomattmusic.blogspot.com/2010/06/music-is-answer-two-peas-in-pod-lgdf.html, a whistle-stop tour of his career also honing in on his considerable work in the recording studio.
And it is this production work that we want to concentrate on here, as Ivan’s truly exhaustible pace of work away from the live D.J. decks in recent weeks has left us spellbound and magnanimous in our admiration for his energy & enthusiasm for producing mountainous amounts of music. It is difficult to know where to start really, although a track that we had tipped for big things when it was released last September, received Ivan’s treatment recently, his version of “Strings Of Motion” tipping this dance drenched disc into a more tech/tribal fuelled direction which, in truth, we prefer to the original. Since this release about 5 months ago, Mr Gomez has produced no less than 18 tracks, some in collaboration with close working partners Nacho Chapado & Fran Ramirez, others sole productions, two standout pieces being “Work My Beats” which has been included on the official Matinee Summer 2010 compilation, and “SeX” which is literally hot off the press, having been released just three days ago. Add to that his two part full on completion mix volumes, entitled simply “July Promo” to add to his June gem and we reckon he has racked up well over 4 hours of music in as many months, making for one of the busiest producers we know, plus he has also devoted time to setting up tribal & progressive label Guareber Recordings, as well as holding gigs across Spain & Europe, including the full on Pride weekends in is home town Barcelona, as well as Madrid, leaving us wondering where he finds the time & energy to fit all this in. But he does, testament to that, very much reflective through http://soundcloud.com/ivangomezmusic, and http://soundcloud.com/guareber-recordings where you can access all our picks, plus plenty more, both sites well worth a thorough investigation.
Right, what other Espania entrapments are out there at the moment? Well, you may recall we focussed on one Javier Medina a couple of weeks ago and, following our review, the dust has not settled beneath his feet, or the exposure gone to his head, rather this charismatic Catalonian has been busy in the recording studio and his superlative tech/tribal re-work of Kobe vs Hugo Rizzo’s “Bring Back The Drums” has literally just been released on download chart Beatport, the track also out at http://soundcloud.com/javier-medina and is a corker of a track treatment. Add to that his latest project, which is his own remix of Guaraber recordings duo Ivan & Nacho (mentioned above) find Blind Angel’s “Self Delusion”, which Javier is working on as we speak, as well as Israeli D.J./Producer Guy Scheiman’s “My Life”, Mr Medina’s “Addicted To Devotion” remix due out next week, it goes without saying that our Barcelona bright boy is very busy indeed. Plus, on speaking with him a short while ago, he expressed his excitement at a forthcoming gig with Italian stallion, one Francesco Pagano, at Barcelona’s Devotion nightclub where Javier is a resident and will be playing alongside our man from Sicily during the city’s Circuit Festival week. We will be tracking Mr Medina’s progress and will keep you posted on further projects of his, although meanwhile mention goes to his mix crested especially for Barcelona’s pride partying, a camp (for Javier) call to Lady Ga Ga, which is still available direct at http://soundcloud.com/javier-medina/gagaalejandrojaviermedinamashup.
Now, we simply couldn’t complete our special shout to all things Spanish without including a shout for the star of SuperMartXe’s “Wizard of Oz” gay pride party a couple of Saturday’s ago, the hunky Hugo Sanchez (aka Huguito), who treated us to three hours of hypnotic house that saw us dancing delightfully on our privileged balcony spot. Now, the man’s exhaustive season as a SuperMartXe resident, means he rarely gets into the studio, a shame as his performances, certainly in London, have been the most prolific of any and we love his style of music. However, you can get a small slice of Mr Sanchez with samples of his music & video clips of his performances at http://myspace.com/hugosanchezhuguito and we are hoping he will be diving into the studio soon, so watch this space for news on that.
One person who has definitely been in the studio and has laid down two superlative compilations, is Matinee London resident Alessandro Londra, who fought the odds stacked against him this last Sunday at Ministry of Sound, when he drew the short straw of playing inside at Matinee’s massive “Open Air Summer” smash & the first set to boot. However, he really came up trumps with a stunning set, not far removed from the second of these duo of Matinee devotions, very much the soundtrack of this Ibiza inspired alfresco outing, which Mr Londra contributed to in making for, not just the best Matinee of 2010 so far, but probably the best for us since the days of Area three plus years ago. Now, if you missed out on this smash clubbing hit of the year, you can get a slice of the Spanish inspired sounds through Alessandro’s two compilations, part one being a nod towards the tougher side of Matinee’s music, while part two very much mirrors his set on Sunday, both worthy additions to your collection which you can grab at http://soundcloud.com/djalessandrolondra.
Our final mention goes to another Matinee mover, who put up an inspired performance inside at MOS on Sunday too, emerging talent Michel Mizrahi, who played out at the recent Lookbetternaked party at Fire, but was also part of Logan’s D.J. team for the Easter Party “Queen Of Clubs” at the Coronet, when he played an opening stormer of a set laying down the gauntlet for special guest Offer Nissam, definitely a tip for the future, with both ours & Mr Schmitz’s minds thinking alike in this respect. On speaking to Michel both on the day and subsequently, he will be giving us advanced exposure to forthcoming compilation works he has in planned for the near future & given his showing on Sunday, they will be well worth a listen.
Right, that’s virtually it for another week (or few days at least), although no report of ours would be complete without a mention for the music page of clubbing website Seen Queen, which continues to keep a step ahead of us with over 10 new releases already downloaded this month and a lengthy list of others from the scenes biggest D.J. names. With links to podcasts, websites & plenty more, http://seenqueen.com/music is a must visit for music lovers, plus they even have their own top ten dancefloor hits & tips, which includes our favourite track of the moment, the fabulously funky “ The Bassline” by Dr Kucho.
Next time, we throw the doors open on love, with focuses on two D.J.’s with the same first name, first Oliver Mohns, who will be starring on the Cirque Du Salvation stage at Lovebox this Sunday & then look into mystery man, The Oli, who guests for the first time at Lovechild’s “Makin Hay” party on Saturday night, plus we will be shouting for the much anticipated & overdue compilations from scene favourites Brent Nicholls & Steve Pitron.
In the meantime, we trust you enjoy all our splendid sun drenched Spanish inspired selections and in sitting back and succumbing to these superb sounds, like us, simply shout “Viva Espania!”. (DISCO MATT)
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