September 19th, 2009 by ollspin

September 17th, 2009 by ollspin

At the end of September I will be taking part in the Bristol 10k run for Cancer Research.  I have been training hard and keeping a weekly blog at my fundraising page.  My fundraising target was originally £100, then raised to £200, I tototally smashed that so fingers crossed I can raise £250 maybe more!  If you have any spare pennies to donate to this very worthy cause please head on over to my fundraising page to make a donation.  Thanks!

September 12th, 2009 by ollspin

I have finally had enough of spending hours and hours sorting through my tunes and burning off loads of CDs every time I play a gig, so decided to bite the bullet and go with a laptop and controller setup.

After seeing it in action and having a fiddle about with it I decided to go for an M-Audio Torq Xponent.  Managed to get a b-stock unit from the lovely helpful people at Digital Village for under £300, which is nice.

So far I am pretty impressed with the unit and software.  The jog wheels feel similar to the Pioneer CDJ 100.  The buttons are a soft and spongy but responsive.  The faders are ok, good enough for my style of mixing.  There are loads of knobs to twiddle and flashing buttons to press, although at the moment I haven’t got a bloody clue what any of them do!

Over the next 4 to 6 months I won’t be taking on any gigs (other than the few events I already have booked in) or putting out any fresh mixes whilst I take my time getting to grips with the new controller and software.  I’ll be back gigging proper and recording plenty of mix tapes in early 2010.

September 12th, 2009 by ollspin

What an awesome weekend Aeon festival 2009 was!  Although the festival has grown from last year it has still kept the magical charm and lovely chilled vibe that makes it such a beautiful event.  The dance tent was a big improvement on last year, up-scaling from a small marquee to a proper big top style festival tent, with fantastic decor and a stomping bass heavy soundsystem.

Highlights of the weekend for me were DJ sets from Ben & Lex, Elite Force, Break, Dicey, DJ Chamber and Full Melt DJs.  Was good to randomly catch the Thujones again this year whilst wandering past the live stage.  Saturday was loads of fun, starting the day with a Swedish massage, followed by finding classic Fighting Fantasy book Forest of Doom from the Book-Cycle free bookshop, then dressing up like a NASA space cadet and raving like a crazy monkey all night long.  I slept pretty much all day on Sunday and felt refreshed and invigorated all through the following week, which was a nice change from the usual festival comedown.

Watch this space for download of my set from the Jam the Channel dance tent coming in the next week or so.  Also I’ll also be sifting through some photos taken by various mates and uploading a selection of the best.

Massive respects going out to Gilly and crew for sorting the dance tent, plus of course Niki the main organiser and everyone else involved.

Roll on Aeon 2010!