Wintertime Blues

Wintertime winds blow cold the season
Fallen in love, I'm hopin' to be
Wind is so cold, is that the reason?
Keeping you warm, your hands touching me

Come with me dance, my dear
Winter's so cold this year
You are so warm
My wintertime love to be

Winter time winds blue and freezin'
Comin' from northern storms in the sea
Love has been lost, is that the reason?
Trying desperately to be free

Come with me dance, my dear
Winter's so cold this year
And you are so warm
My wintertime love to be

La, la, la, la

Come with me dance, my dear
Winter's so cold this year
You are so warm
My wintertime love to be

[The Doors: Wintertime Love (from Waiting for the Sun album)]

Well - the long cold winter is finally over (unless you happen to be reading this in the southern hemisphere!). Vestal virgins are dancing around the sacred fire in preparations for an exciting summer of music festivals. In the UK at this time of year bands are extremely busy hounding festival promoters in order to fill up their summer calendars. The winter hibernation is over and the whole music industry comes to life. The Miami Winter Music conference has just finished and DJs and dance acts are groggily filling planes across the world, returning with their tales of mayhem, and the tracks which will be lacing the summer dancefloors from the Punta Del Este to the streets of San Antonio.

The creative spirit comes alive in spring, as flowers blossom and trees flood the countryside with green luminescence from their returning leaves. Like squirrels just run out of nuts, here at KryKey we are plaguing the landscape in search of new food to feast on as we bask in the sun's rays. At festivals across the globe there is a mad rush by emerging bands and artists to fill the bill in new stages. They need to showcase their music and gain new fans. We have decided to support these emerging artists and have opened the floor of four prime KryKey radio stations for this purpose. London Web Radio, Desert One, Oz Radio and DJ, are all seeking out music from artists to fill the airwaves. We believe that exposing new talent to the masses is a critical aspect of the music industry. Our growing radio network now has a significant impact on the music industry (there are now over 230 global KryKey radio stations) and we aim to use our new power responsibly. We realise that it isn't perhaps convenient for each individual band to set up their own PRS, so we aim to gather together those individuals and showcase their sounds on the KryKey network.

As we scour the social networks for interested parties, we have already struck gold with some excellent artists already submitting material. BenSem, Red Tempa, Lowkey aka Dolce, Viva la Resistance and Rowdee Methodz have all submitted some real quality music to us which is currently being blasted out across the KryKey universe.

If you are a band / DJ / artist, and would like your sounds exposed to a massive global audience, please email the relevant station address with your material in mp3 form, with a short 30s promo advertising your material (also in mp3 format). Here are the addresses:

londonwebradio@krykey.com (UK & Europe)
desertone@krykey.com (USA)
ozradio@krykey.com (OZ)
dj@krykey.com (Global)

If your area isn't included please just choose the radio station you feel most appropriate for your music and audience.

With your music supported by KryKey, we hope that you have a successful summer and manage to fully shake those wintertime blues as you head off to the best festivals and summer parties. Who knows? Maybe you can return to us with tales of your jaunts or maybe even record some live sets? One thing is for sure, we share your excitement for a bright future and hope that KryKey will be laying down the sounds of a great summer.

Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge - Beauty and the Beast?

Last week the trial began of Comrade Duch, one of five former Khmer Rouge senior personnel to go before a special UN-led war crimes tribunal, investigating the atrocities that were committed in Cambodia during the 1970s. I have studied Cambodia in depth and find it a very interesting subject so I thought it opportune to include an article in the blog.



The ancient Angkor kingdom prospered much during the Middle Ages and leaves us remnants today of a magnificent Khmer civilization which was highly advanced and produced some of the greatest architecture ever known to our planet. The highlight of this culture can be seen in the magnificence of Angkor Wat which is one of the most architecturally precise monuments of all time and lies locked away in the Cambodian jungle.



During the 1970s, when the US was fighting the North Vietnamese, neighbouring Cambodia became involved in the conflict. As a result of Cambodian government policies at the time, the US were carpet bombing much of the country. The King of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, sided with the political opposition in an attempt to save his country from peril. With massive rural support the Khmer Rouge army, led by Pol Pot, entered the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh on 17th April 1975, and seized control of the state. What followed in Cambodia is one of the most startling incidents in human history and resulted in the deaths of approximately 2 million people out of a population of 7.3 million.

The Khmer Rouge were communists and had developed their political theories through the study of marxism in foreign universities. Most of the Khmer Rouge leadership had in fact studied in Paris, the capital of the former colonial masters of French IndoChina. Pol Pot, however, the regime's leader had remained in Cambodia where he had built up his armed forces to a position whereby they were able to seize power. The Khmer Rouge had developed a version of Marxism loosely based on that of Chairman Mao, who had successfully swept his Red Army into power in China in very recent memory. The Khmer Rouge declared Cambodia as the People's Republic of Kampuchea and set about instantly imposing their political ideals.

Under the guise of protecting the people from the ongoing carpet bombing by the Americans, the Khmer Rouge forcibly removed the entire population of Phnom Penh, and indeed the other major cities, into the countryside. Khmer communism was a warped brand of the Marxist philosophy. in Kampuchea there was to be no steady shift of class revolutions. Pol Pot envisaged an instant turn to full communism and in the vein of Mao before him set about devising an agrarian revolution akin to China's Great Leap Forward. The parasitic city dwellers would join their rural compatriots as peasants and through forced labour, the entire population would put its hand to tilling the soil. Kampuchea would become self-dependent and effectively the Khmer Rouge leadership sealed the borders, shut their country off from the rest of the world and proceeded with one of the most radical social experiments in history.

Dissenters and potential opponents of the new authorities were quickly and systematically removed. The first elements of society to feel the terror of Khmer Rouge 'smashing to bits' were the doctors and lawyers and other professional classes who were the first to fill the mass grave sites that would become a lasting legacy of Pol Pot's régime. The army would be the backbone of Khmer Rouge power and would brutalise the population in ways beyond belief.

The political theory held that strong force would initially be necessary to enforce the goals of the revolution. The land was quickly collectivised and people were set to work in communes, under the auspices of committees who would liase with the government forces. Traditions were abandonned, religion was abolished. New education measures meant that history began again at day 1. Everyone was to be reeducated with the new doctrines. Dissent was intolerable and amid the severe torture that was used there was widespread killing. Where the bullets of Khmer Rouge soldiers failed to penetrate, starvation through famine due to a failure of the agricultural policy, in particular the failure of adequate food distribution, ensued. An army of child soldiers arose, who were completely brainwashed with the ideology of the new régime and who were trained to inform on their own families and were conditioned to provide the brutal backbone of the Khmer Rouge system of terror.



Pure marxist theory excludes the position of supreme leader. In a communist society all are supposed to be equal. However, Pol Pot was a pure dictator. He applied the purges of the people to his own party. Although the army and government were clearly a priveleged class, they were not free from the terror perpetuated by the new system. In the abandonned Phnom Penh an interrogation centre and prison for internal dissidents was established. Tuol Sleng or S-21 was assigned to the command of Comrade Duch. He was provided with the full range of torture istruments with which to extract confessions from any suspected clients so that they could then be legitimately executed for their crimes against the state. It is estimated that Duch was individually responsible for the deaths of 14000 Tuol Sleng prisoners. A British journalist, Nic Dunlop, went out to Cambodia in the late nineties on a mission to find Duch and to investigate the inner workings of S-21. He managed to discover Duch, a new Christian convert, living on a false identity and working as a teacher in rural Cambodia. This discovery led to the great book that Dunlop wrote, 'The Lost Executioner' (see below) and also meant that Duch's cover was blown. He was handed over to the authorities to await a proper trial for his actions. That trial has now begun.

Not all under the Khmer Rouge was bad. Although famine was initially a problem, productivity in the collective farms did increase and certain factories in the cities were re-opened. In moves reminiscent of the Angkor empire, vast irrigation projects were undergone in an attempt to improve agricultural productivity. Cash was eliminated and a pure barter economy existed, with rice being the principal form of currency. Cambodia had achieved a certain independence from the imperial forces that had traditionally dominated the region. This was an aim of the régime and apart from the good relations it maintained with the People's Republic of China, Cambodia was purely independent. Little was known of what was actually occurring within the borders due to its pariah status.

Ethnic populations did suffer incredibly, in particular the Vietnamese minorities. Thais in the border regions, Muslims, Christians and Buddhist monks were also prone to experiencing the full force of the authorities' brutality. With the control of the native populations achieved, Pol Pot began to seek out futher Khmer Rouge goals. He dreamed of a wider state, a means of incorporating the Mekong delta, an expansive empire akin to the great Angkor one his predecessors had carved out in the jungles of southeast Asia.

Eventually, the urge for war became too much. Constantly readying the army and practising manouvres in constant border skirmishes eventually proved too much temptation to resist a full scale war with the hated Vietnamese neighbour. Pol Pot relied heavily on his Chinese ally aiding a Khmer Rouge assault on Soviet-supported Vietnam. Preceeded by an increasing dispatch of distraught Cambodian refugees to aid camps set up in border areas, eventually a full scale war with Vietnam saw the brutal terror of the Khmer Rouge brought to a close. In January 1979 Phnom Penh was liberated by the Vietnamese army and Cambodia became a subsidiary state of Vietnam for the next decade. Pol Pot and the remnants of the Khmer Rouge sought refuge on the borders of Thailand where they managed to maintain Khmer Rouge control until the late nineties when in 1998 Pol Pot died.

The international community began to writhe in guilt after the true scale of the Cambodian horrors emerged. The world was a silent witness to some of the harshest breaches of human rights that man's warped mind has ever produced. Pol Pot dies without ever standing trial for his actions. Some of the perpetuators now face justice. in the dock alongside Comrade Duch, stand Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan. Having read the book about Duch, I feel a certain sympathy for him. As he has clearly stated at his trial, he was merely following the orders of his superiors. He had no real choice about his actions as he would have simply been 'smashed to bits' himself. However, in light of the terror he must have committed, his very humanity must be called into question.




The Khmer Rouge make an interesting tale as it is a tale of extremes. We focus now on the brutality of the régime and seek evidence of the full scale of horrors that emerged during the existence of the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. It is easy to condemn the movement. However, in studying it, I can see a mirror image, an image of beauty. We take our lives and our modern societies for granted. The leaders of the Khmer Rouge were empassioned by a vision which does not run parallel to that of common international ideas. They wanted to reject the status quo entirely, to create a better future for their country. They set about abandonning modernity for perhaps a neolithic alternative. I think that in some ways by putting the people back on the land they were very right. Are people in cities parasites? In the countryside man becomes closer to nature. In the modern world we are so far removed from nature that we have forgotten what it actually is. Perhaps the global problems of climate change would evaporate if there was a worldwide movement back to our rural hinterlands? The Khmer Rouge at the very least had the conviction to put their theories into practise. All revolutions experience bloodshed. At what point does the flow of blood become successful? To sacrifice for the common good is a noble quality. I think that not everything went to plan, however. Nature itself is very brutal, nowhere moreso in the deprived imaginations of men, especially when they are armed and have no resistance. To lose over a quarter of the population to mass graves and skull mountains must signify a failure of the overall Khmer Rouge movement. I would have been intrigued to see, however, what would have occurred with absolutely no international pressures on Kampuchea. I didn't mention it in the article but there was US involvment in them dropping chemicals on Cambodian farmland. The region was overly susceptible to foreign involvment and the situation with the Vietnamese was a constant threat. In the end China didn't provide the anticipated support that Pol Pot envisaged which ultimately led to the collapse of the Khmer Rouge.

In today's world we see other countries embark on paths not dissimilar to that of Cambodia during the 1970s. Colombia, North Korea and Afghanistan are cases all well worth examining. In analysing a failed state we can perhaps learn more about the world we live in. Cambodia has some harsh lessons to teach and we owe it to the people who suffered and died in Cambodia that we gain an understanding of their situation so that such atrocities will never occur again.



If this article has interested you then you may wish to study the topic further. There is a great film called 'The Killing Fields', the aforementionned book 'The Lost Executioner' plus a biography of 'Pol Pot' by Philip Short, which are all excellent sources of reference and can be easily purchased at Amazon using the links below.

Letztes Wochenende

I've been studying German for half a year now. I usually do my coursework handwritten but the last lot I typed. I thought I'd include it here. It's only basic but I'm proud of it!

Letztes Wochenende habe ich zu tun gehabt. Am samtag hat früh angefangt. Ich bin um acht Uhr aufgestanden. Mit meiner Freundin Nicola haben gefrühstückt. Dann habe ich die Deutschen Hausaufgaben abgeschlossen. Wie gewoht es gab eine Menge Hausaufgaben! Nachmittags danach ich hatte gegessen, ich bin zur Kneipe mit meinen Freunde gegangen. Leider habe ich zu viel Bier getrunken. Ich habe zu den Haus zurückgegeben. Samstag abends war meine Schlafengehen frühe.

Am sonntag habe ich spät geschloffen. Deshalb nicht habe ich das Frühstück gegessen aber Nicola hat ein leckes Mittagessen gekocht. Meine Freunde, mit dene Ich bin am Samstag zur Kneipe gegangen, haben zu meinem Haus gekommt. Sie waren immer noch betrunken. Wir sind alle Fans von Liverpool. Liverpool hat gegen Aston Villa gespielt. Liverpool hat funf Tors geschießt und er hat das Spiel gewonnen. Wir waren sehr zufrieden!

Wez G - High Horses

Wez G - High Horses

This mix takes you on a ride across a tribal plain. It's like you are traversing the Steppes on a flying horse, a stomping course of deep and funky beats, a journey through house finishing with some wild Arabic grooves. Saddle up and enjoy!

1. Vision Masters & Tony King feat. Kylie Minogue - Keep on Pumpin' It (Angelic Remix) [PWL Records]
2. Mooncat - Exploration (Original Journey) [Plastica]
3. Steve Lawler - Courses for Horses (Original Mix) [Renaissance]
4. Route 33 feat. Alex James - Looking Back (Redanka's Sunlight Vocal Mix) [Motivo]
5. Jose Amnesia vs Karen overton - Your Loving Arms (Vocal Mix) [Ego Music]
6. Franz Ferdinand - Ulysses (Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve Reanimation) [Domino Recording]
7. Kurd Maverick - Ring Ring Ring [White]
8. Joey Negro - Ride The Rhythm (Joey Negro Club Mix) [Z Records]
9. DJ Eako & Robert Livesu feat. Ezara Sanders - Night Moves (EKD Mix) [P1 Records]
10. Ballroom - Remember Me [Mauritius Music]
11. U-Facilities & Sciatica - Free My Soul (Original Mix) [Harlem]
12. Hybrid - Last Man Standing (Group therapy Mix) [White]
13. Djuma Soundsystem - Les Djinns (Sven Weber Remix) [Critical Mass]

Kylie's Groovy!

Being a DJ, it's all about getting the right vinyl. The party toonage, to deliver happiness. The joy of social networking meant that me old matey (and top DJ) Dean Nightingale, pointed me to a shedload of old vinyl going for cheap on ebay. I got about 20 records for £12. Most of them were naff, but an interesting little track popped up. I must admit, I wasn't thrilled to see a Kylie Minogue record in the pile, but on banging it on the decks, I was loving it. One of my favourite old skool tunes. Yes - it's cheezy, but it's also full of energy and nice Italian piano riffs. Takes me back to the party days when the ecstasy was proper and dancefloors truly rocked. Check out the Youtube above and set your living rooms ablaze with gurns and strange robotic movements... I'm doing a podcast later in the week so I'll slam it on there... And of course - make sure you catch Wez G playing a load of classics at The Tippling, Caldicot for Journeys Through House on April 11th.

This is Serbia Calling

In a previous blog, I discussed the impact of Radio Caroline, how it altered the status quo for British radio. Here, I wish to present to you a book which had a deep impact on me and inspired me to become involved with internet radio broadcasting. The book is 'This is Serbia Calling' by Matthew Collin. It is a factual account of the history of independent Belgrade radio station B92 during the Balkans conflict.

During the nineties, Europe was engulfed by its worst conflict since the Second World War. The breakup of the former-Yugoslavia turned into an horrifically bloody ethnic conflict. Religion separated the ethnic groups of Yugoslavia and the dark aspects of humanity presented themselves to the inhabitants as Serbian and Bosnian orthodox christians fought with Croatian and Bosnian Roman Catholics and Bosnian / Kosovan Muslims. The religious divide went back to the times of the Ottoman Empire and had always been a simmering bowl of contention but during the communist years of Yugoslavia and the protection of the Soviet Union, somehow the population had remained glued together. Political upheavals led to a rise in nationalism during the early nineties and the fragile bonds broke, releasing the full fury of suppressed anger amongst the ethnic populations as they fought for power in the region. To read more about the conflict I highly recommend Tim Judah's book 'The Serbs' which provides a detailed factual analysis of the ensuing war. 'This is Serbia Calling' is a case study of the remarkable work of independent radio station B92. It was run by youth and developed into an active resistance movement as the war progressed. During times of conflict the power of media becomes elevated. The history of warfare has been dotted by technological media movements. Propaganda is an essential part of warfare and masters of propaganda are usually in the boss seat during a conflict. Ideological dissemination is vital to all sides of the conflict. What B92 did was to use their radio station to express the youth's anger with the horrific happenings in their nation. It was a station which transcended the ethnic divides that were ruining Yugoslavia. A discontented youth movement emerged that would shake the very foundations of the empire that Slobodan Milosevic was attempting to create in Belgrade. The voice of the revolution was born and B92 was at the critical cultural edge.

The DJs sought to keep the population in touch with international culture, a voice of reason while the country around them was collapsing into chaos. In Serbia ultra-nationalist 'Turbo-folk' music was encouraged by the authorities. This rather bad form of Europop mixed ethnic sounds with nationalist ranting. Musically 'unique' is a term that may describe the sound but it certainly wouldn't receive any worldwide success. The book title is a bit of a misnomer as Rather than rock n'roll, B92 focussed on electronic music. They saw it as their revolutionary sound and it certainly was more popular than the turbofolk atrocities that was being spoonfed. Bands like the Prodigy and the techno Undergound Resistance system toured Yugoslavia during the conflict. youth could identify with the radical electronic sounds and it helped gloss over the internecine strife. There are stories of post-battle raves going off where soldiers from all sides joined in arms, firing shots into the air. Music has that sort of power.

Politics became rapidly involved as B92's popularity soared. The authorities made several attempts to close them down, some successful. Certainly, in a place such as Britain, tight regualtions would have forbidden the very existence of such an independent broadcast in the very first instance. B92 constantly operated in the shadows of legality. After a significant riot in Belgrade, they were initially switched completely off, then reluctantly allowed to just broadcast music with no speaking from the DJs. To encapsulate the feeling in the capital, DJs hammered the sounds of Public Enemy's 'Fight the Power' and The Clash. Throughout the conflict a cat and mouse pursuit between the station and the authorities was constant and somehow the wily station producers and DJs managed to keep their voice alive. At one stage the station owners had a bust up and split into two divisions, but the main B92 branch maintained its reactionary status. There was also a lot of technical difficulty in keeping the broadcast live. B92 demonstrates how a vital movement can be very adaptive in difficult conditions. These people were not profiteering like so many during the conflict. They weren't arms traders, smugglers or pilferers, they were an organisation with a clear ideology. Essentially an internal peace division, a voice of reason in a deepeningly madder by the minute world. Broadcasts at one stage were transferred to Bosnia and beamed back into Belgrade. A series of unmanned relaying stations serviced the dissemination of the airwaves. As technology progressed the internet became more important to the station and with the rebroadcasting facility it provided, listenership became more dispersed. By the end of the conflict, the station was heavily dependent on internet for its broadcasts.

B92 is the incredible story of resistance radio. Whether you plan to broadcast from a conflict zone or from sleepy suburbia, the book tells a message. There is hope in even the most dire of times and there is a critical need for good radio broadcasts. Internet radio broadcast capability today gives anyone with the most simplest of equipment the facility to create their own independent voice. KryKey is a platform which will allow you to set up your own radio station. Maybe by reading 'This is Serbia Calling' it will give you the inspiration to make your Personal Radio Station a success.

I'm an addict

I have an addiction. A proper addiction. It’s untreatable. There is no cure. I am a junkie. I hang around in darkened alleys, change jingling in my pocket, waiting for the dealer’s shop to open. I rush in and start filtering through the shelves. I am a vinyl junkie and record stores are where I score my fix. It’s a strange addiction, I know. People laugh and don’t recognise the condition. But it exists, I swear. Black plastic gives me a buzz. Has done since I was ten years old. All of my spare money goes on this disgusting habit. But it’s beautiful. I love needles in the groove and the sound of dustmites crackling in the speakers. Vinyl is not just a habit, it is a passion. People think that DJing is all about glamour. They read in their glossy clubbing magazines about Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and John Digweed, touring the world, hanging out in swanky nightclubs and getting paid a small fortune for doing so. I tell you – they suffer the same craving as any other proper DJ. They like nothing more than getting their hands dirty, flicking through record racks, in search of that ultimate rarity. The picture disc, the deleted album, the white label.

DJing isn’t just a technical ability. As a technical skill it’s actually quite easy. If you can count you can beatmatch. Simple as. Anyone can flick a crossfader. The art of DJing is to inject passion into your skill. Selecting tunes for the audience, to educate and entertain is the artform. Danny Tengalia wrote quite a few years ago about ‘finding the groove’. He performed marathon ten hour DJ sets and therefore should truly understand a dancefloor. It’s all about seaming tunes together in a constant groove. To do that, you need to know your music inside out. A DJ I once worked with, Anthony Pappa, impressed me a lot. He had risen to stardom by winning the DMC Mix championship. I warmed up for him and was pleased to do the honour. He arrived, same as any other professional DJ, courteous, nice greeting, appreciative nod to the sounds you were spinning. He then cast open his box, to prepare his set. DJs are nosy animals and I couldn’t help looking at his tunes. They were all marked up with stickers. I’d seen BPM labelling previously, but Pappa’s was different. They were all colour coded and Key marked. At an advanced level of DJing, to help stitch the groove, you not only beat match, but also key mix. It was a new concept to me. It seemed a bit anal but on chatting to Pappa he explained to me the reasons. You generally have a feel for what tunes sound similar and how they mix together. Most DJs rely on chance for this, but not Pappa. Certain keys mix with certain other keys musically whereas other keys clash. However, as I soon learnt there is slightly more to it than just that. I had gone home and banged out the keys on my sister’s piano and marked up my vinyl with letters. However – you get on the mixer and try blending, say a ‘D’ with another ‘D’ and it doesn’t quite sound right. Beats are Ok and you’d presume the keys too, but what happens is that as the pitch of the record shifts for beat matching, the key also migrates. To truly understand the theory of key mixing you have to be able to calculate the effect of BPM on a record’s pitch and then match up the vinyl. Listen to Pappa. He’s a DJ’s DJ and is musically superb.

The message I’m trying to send out is that DJs are obsessive. They love their work. In order to be a good DJ you have to respect your tools. These tools, the ones that separate you from the next jock, are your records. It takes years to build a vinyl collection. Years of dedicated shopping. Of searching high and low for the unique sounds that distinguish you and enable you to deliver to the dancefloor.

You may wonder why I emphasize vinyl. Surely these days we have moved on. Technology has improved. We have digital formats. We are in the ipod revolution. MP3s, computer music , Pioneer CD decks. Oh no! I cringe when I hear the ignorance blasted out by pretend DJs about how vinyl is outdated. For technology to improve, the old format must be surpassed in every way. Digital formats were announced to be superior quality to vinyl. This is an urban myth which the music companies have now admitted to being a marketing ploy. CDs were introduced and vinyl was supposedly obsolete. For years DJing kept the vinyl factories in business but then pioneer released their replica technics model CD decks and CD DJing became all the rage. Download sites like Beatport pushed out mp3s, and DJs burned up their CDs and suddenly an entire collection could be built overnight. There is a fundamental flaw in this, well several in fact. There is an art in itself to building a collection. You appreciate vinyl a lot more when you have starved a week to get the latest import. That part of your collection has a certain significance. I browse through my records and each sleeve tells a story. The record has a soul, a character that emits itself when I place the tune on the decks during a set. Each tune has memories, lovingly attached to it. How can you develop such a bond with something that has taken 10seconds to download and exists in a single-sentence data file on your hard drive. It isn’t as romantic. Yes, vinyl is more expensive, and perhaps more difficult to track down, but at least you get something solid for your money. it is an investment. The weight, the sleeve artwork, the labelling, the peculiarities (is it warped? Is there a misprinted label? is it a picture disc?) The generation of CD and MP3 DJs are missing a vital part of the essence of DJing. The rush of shopping for vinyl. I cannot see how a ‘new’ DJ can become knowledgeable about DJing, missing out on such an important part of the lifestyle. As well as the purchasing there is a whole social aspect to record shopping. You meet other DJs, other ‘trainspotters’, pick up tips on hot remixes, rarities, quality gigs, available work and so forth. Until you can purchase mp3s in the dimly lit streets of SoHo I cannot agree that MP3 DJs will ever emulate the emotion of a vinyl DJs work.

The biggest myth buster of all has to be that the actual quality of digital music is poorer than its analogue counterpart. Try it for yourself. Get the same track on vinyl, cd and mp3 and play them one after the other, preferably on a loud sound system. The digital formats eliminate the high and low frequencies of a tune. The sub bass lines and ultra high vox disappear in digital. The sound is condensed. Music producers nowadays are unaware of the intricacies of true sound production as they are working without a true sound spectrum. Not only are DJs being cheated by this, but also the listeners. I have been reliably informed that DJs aware of this who use cds and mp3s for mixing, are buying vinyl, then recording it themselves onto digital format, rather than buy purchasing it in digital format, just so they can replicate the true sounds of a record. There is a backlash and last year saw the first rise in vinyl production since the dip induced by the introduction of the CD. Bands are releasing on vinyl again, realising that it sounds better. It is still an industry in dire straits, however. We need to turn back to vinyl. To keep it alive. Record shops are closing down in their droves. It brings tears to my eyes to see maybe 75% of my favourite stores now shut. Tag in Soho, Woosh in Cardiff and Bang Bang in Bristol. They no longer exist. My most regular haunt, Plastic Fantastic of Covent Garden, are now an online only service (http://www.plastic-music.co.uk) I wish to preserve the art of DJing, to teach a new generation of the wonders of this exotic and mysterious world. I want to see a new generation of junkies, lurking about dark alleys, seeking their fix. Vinyl is sexy.

KEEP VINYL ALIVE! SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL RECORD STORE!