November 2011

In the last How’s Your Party? of 2011, Mixed Bizness have returned to an old favourite who has never once let them down. People who were lucky enough to witness his now legendary performance at the Art School last year will all testify that Beni Uthman aka Benga is one of the biggest party-starters this city has ever seen and his appearance at the Sub Club next Friday will no doubt only serve to strengthen that reputation. A pivotal player in the stratospheric rise of Dubstep, Benga is arguably one of the first superstars of a genre which only ten years ago was confined to the underground.

Friendly Fires are perhaps one of the few bands who are as highly respected behind the decks as they are on stage. From curating their own arena at this year’s Bestival (featuring a set from Frankie Knuckles no less) to providing one of 2009’s finest Essential Mixes, Friendly Fires have become an embodiment of the dancefloor, the heritage of House, Disco and Euphoria apparent in both the music they record as a band as well as the sound they promote in the club.

2012 will be the year. Over the last twelve months or so we’ve watched as producers who had started making music as a hobby have steadily grown into some of the most exciting new artists Scotland or indeed the UK has on offer. As skills have been honed and sounds developed, we can sense that next year is definitely going to be a good one for Glasgow. Take super-fresh edit duo, Slow It Down for example. Featuring in our ‘Get To Know’ feature way back in January they have now become one of the most successful and consistently popular edit teams on Soundcloud, shooting up the charts with every upload while counting everyone from Number’s Jackmaster to living legend, Greg Wilson as fans.

Loneliness and touring go hand in hand. Despite the free-loading entourage, the newly acquired groupies and the constant encounters with press, promoters and fanatics, each new city, country and in some cases continent detaches you further from the essential familiarities of home. Never in one place long enough, you become a slave to your own popularity. It is this crushing contradiction of life on the road that French Electro producer, Yuksek has explored with his new album.

There can be few hotter names in club music than Julio Bashmore. One of the leading lights in a new wave of forward-thinking House producers coming out of Bristol and pivotal player in recently formed label, Futureboogie Recordings, Julio (real name Matt) has quite literally turned a genre on its head, creating a sound which is so sonically charged it’s in danger of taking off.

We’ve been neglecting our promise to bring you a weekly recap of our show on Subcity, so starting fresh, here is a run down of this week’s show, plus some of the outstanding guest mixes we’ve had recently made available to download:

Grobbie is a time-bomb waiting to explode. It’s been five months since we first featured the Tuff Wax producer in our Local Hero feature and ever since the tunes have just kept on coming. Remixing fellow Aberdonian, Yoin on new single ‘Tired Of Me’, this very much fits in with the current influx of RnB flavoured Dubstep, incorporating pitched up vocal cuts and rumbling sub bass to great effect.

Oh yesss….our day has just got instantly better! You might remember us posting a short minimix from Domsko’s forthcoming LP, ‘Family Affair’ a few months back - a five minute fusion of irresistible beats and shimmering synths which pretty much had us frothing at the mouth. Well, we’ve now been treated to a collection of full length songs in part 1 of an official album sampler, and to say they surpass expectations would be an understatement. Featuring two fresh original productions as well as a Milton Jackson remix and summer smash ‘Hard Yards’, this has instantly reminded us just why we got so excited the first time.

It’s not often that one band provides the soundtrack for two consecutive summers, but in the case of Azari & III, they’ve managed to do just that. Be it Ibiza, Sonar, Glastonbury or Coachella, the Canadian quartet have quickly become one of the hottest names in modern dance, releasing single after single of sex-dripping, four-to-the-floor action and claiming themselves some of the most heavily played and instantly successful remixes of the last five years.