Fresh from the Niagara Mission of Sunday, we hit the Monday Morning listening session to check out work in progress from participants up until this point.


I was actually pretty surprised how much stuff had been achieved in such a short space of time. Everyone seemed to have at least laid the bare bones or skeleton down of a track, and some had even finished full pieces already. In fact everyone wanted to be the first to share their work, such was the excitement about what had already passed and what lay ahead. Mauricio played his brand of kitsch Pop meets Lounge Jazz, Vario spun his unique blend of industrial washing machine music and space invaders Electro. Leon from Mexico twisted us all out with his incredible cinematic noise landscape Moog piece written in one take and Paul Movahedi shared his brand of drunk Funk waiting for some vocals and violin. Eden Krumins spun a grimey D&B tune that sounded ready for some extra bleeps and vocals and Luis shared his soulful dance tune. Rio previewed some stuff off the MPC, and Jacob made everyone screw their faces up with some head nod beats. Didem from Turkey played an amazing couple of compositions (I need to get them both please), and Raffaele played a song that had already been completely finished. All in all it was a promising show of what might be and a reminder that there are only 24 hours in a day and only 4 days to get it all done…

 




After a quick lunch I bumped into DJ Medhi on the stairs who had arrived with A Trak and the Fools Gold crew for the afternoon lecture, hosted by Torsten. DJ Medhi and A-Track both certified nice guys and superstar DJs alike talked us through DJ culture in 2007, CDJing versus Serato and the digital new school versus the golden era old school.

After dinner I returned to Theo’s domain where a cover version of Seawind was in progress, and chilled there until it was time to go to the A-Track and Ed Banger madness. I could only stay for an hour or so before wanting to return to the Academy to pick up where we left off.

I arrived with midnight snacks to find Waajeed and Jen holding court in Studio F with Rio and Theo. Instead of music making we ending up chatting until past 5 am, and then checked out the work in progress on Jeed’s joint with Rio and Jenny which is sounding fresh already. Definitely going to be burning a CD of that one.

A last little bassline work in Theo’s studio and a record listening session before a trip back to the hotel for a last drink we turned in about 7am. Gotta interview the man behind the sound of Voodoo tomorrow (today). Better try and get my 4 hours.