Mini-update time:

• Ibiza: Steph and I have booked our flights back to 'beefa for the 2nd August. We're outta here, baby!
• DJing: new mixer arrived today. Nothing spectacular at all - just a (very) cheap 'n cheerful Behringer mixer (with an instruction manual featuring a late-80's photo of the German chap who runs the company complete with a very shiny comb-over, saying "Hi, I'm so-and-so and I'd like to thank you for buying my mixer", etc etc etc). Fun times.
• New website: Greyhead.co.uk has its own hosting, courtesy of the amazingly Clive at Meteoric. You want super-fast, reliable web hosting with a personal touch? Go speak to Clive, and tell him Bob sent you... I'm currently tweaking a Wordpress installation and working out how to get it to automagically generate podcasts. Wee!
  
• Mixes and podcasts: to kick off the new website, mixer, Final Scratch's resurrection (I finally got it working again on the Mac - woo), and my impending trip to Ibiza, I'm going to knock together a few mixes and podcast them from the new site. If you fancy some free tuneage, I'll stick a big "get the Greyhead house music podcast here" link in the side-bar of the blog once I've figured out how to use the incredibly good Podcast Maker from Lemonzdream.com
• Photos: the Nikon D50 is lovely - very fast, very easy to use, and produces great photos. What more could you ask for? :o)

Sadly (for my colleagues) I'm back to work next Monday - boo. Still, it's only 2 1/2 more weeks left before Ibiza - yey!

I haven't done much in the way of recording mixes lately, but I did have a chance to have a play about on the decks last week while I was setting up Lux for Orange Fridays. It's a bit/very (delete as applicable) rough round the edges 'cos I was trying to rush around doing other things at the same time, so if I was grading myself I'd probably rate it somewhere around "could do better".

Hope you enjoy it ;o)

How to listen

If you can see the player below, then all you have to do is click "play":

... or you can right-click and "save as" to download it.

Tracklisting 

• Soldiers of Twilight - drive on
• Mei Lwun ft. Gine Rene - too late
• Bent - magic love
• Unity - I love you
• Amma - was it real?
• Deep Area - mad love for ya
• Inaya Day - keep pushin'
• Gabro & Libe - I can be this
• Spektrum - kinda new
• Felix da Housecat - shiny disco balls
• Despina Vandi - gia (Scotty K's Tribal Middle Eastern Mix)
• The Egg - walking away
• Nightcrawlers - push the feeling on 2005
• Sucker DJs - lotta lovin'
• Plump DJs - electric disco (Brad Carter remix)
• Dave Spoon - at night
• Fedde le Grande - put your hands up for Detroit
• Bug Kann and The Plastic Jam - made in two minutes (original)
• Justice vs. Simian - we are your friends (original mix)
• Artificial Funk - never alone
• Freeform Five - no more conversations (Mylo remix)
• Underworld - two months off

Disclaimer

Mixes aren't hosted by or the property of UPSU. Copyright remains with the owner of all tracks listed and this mix is provided solely for the purposes of shameless self-promotion. Got a complaint? Contact me :o)

/al

Yes, it's true - I'm running in the 2007 Sabbatical elections.

I'm running for the Media & Publications position, because it's the area in which I have worked almost constantly for the last 4 years, and because I think I could probably do a fairly good - ok, a very good job of it.

That, of course, is assuming I don't insert my foot in my mouth any more than is absolutely necessary, that I don't upset too many people, and that I don't inadvertently break the rules due to me being daft.

Oh, and of course, I'll have to beat the socks off the competition - I've heard rumours that there are no less than six candidates running for MAPO this year, including myself. Apparently, that means 2nd and 3rd place candidates will get a boost from the transferable votes of those in 4th, 5th and 6th places as they're knocked out.

All I have to do now is figure out how this transferable voting thingbob works...

Sleep deprivation. And stimulation... 

In the last 28 hours I've had 10 minutes' sleep, and in twenty minutes I'm off to start my first Pure:FM radio show. Today has been a haze of caffeine- and nicotine-induced consciousness, but as long as I stay awake long enough to finish My First Ever Pure Radio Show (TM) and don't break the studio too badly, I reckon I'll be ok... Uhhm, don't hold me to that though.

Over the coming days I'm afraid I'm planning to fill up this blog with more ramblings - this time about how my elections campaign is going. There will doubtless be neuroses and tears, tantrums and even some hair pulling - all from me, of course - so I really should warn you now; unless you like reading the inane babblings of a sleep-starved grey-head, maybe now's a good time to tune out...? ;o)

Seriously though, if you're reading this, I hope you'll stay tuned - the best way is to subscribe to the RSS feed up there on the right somewhere - and you can even chat to me - and ask me awkward questions - using the comments boxes (below each article) as my campaign continues....

With all that said, it's just starting to sink in just how much effort this campaign is going to take. While I don't mind the effort, I really do want to make sure it stays fair and friendly.

I'm also under no illusions that this will be an easy ride; even today I handed in my candidate pack with only a minute to spare because of some last-minute design tweaking on my flyers; seat-of-the-pants doesn't really begin to describe it...

Right, I'd better get off to my radio show. Sloppy's waiting for me, and the Channel 4 film crew should be heading out any minute.Ooh, note to self - must create a campaign logo... I have a cunning plan....

Peace out :o) /al

Ok, this is a bit scary - I've just been told I have a radio show on Pure:FM, starting tomorrow evening.

So that gives me a mere 24 hours to prepare a house and chillout show. Should be interesting then... Eep!

You can listen online at purefm.com/interact - I'll be on from 7pm to 9pm, assuming nothing goes horribly wrong. I'll probably cheat for the first show by playing a mix I recorded last year for most of it as I have a ridiculously busy day tomorrow.

I'll set up a web page for the show shortly with track listings and other gumph shortly :o) 

So, who wants to place a bet on how badly I break the studio/radio station rules/law in the first ten minutes? ;o)

Peace out /al 

(Bedroom DJ mode on, work mode off. Again ;o) 

If you like your house music funky and soulful, you might want to check out the Soldiers of Twilight. "Believe" has been one of my all-time favourite tunes, and a couple of days ago I also tracked down "Drive on" - now I can't get it out of my head (but, for once, that's a good thing, not an annoying thing) - I found "Drive on" on Tony Humphries' Fabric 4 compilation - definitely worth a listen.

You can pick their tunes up (legally!) online from various websites; DJdownload.com and Beatport worked for me (but other sites are also available ;o)

You can find out more about these guys on their Discogs web page.

/al