Couch Boy Music

A mix that I did on Saturday afternoon as a present for a friend’s house-warming party (did you see what I did there?).  All vinyl, one take, no software edits… quite boring really.  I was trying to do an all-house mix, and almost succeeded – as you can see from the tracklisting:

Eddie Amador – House Music

Mount Rushmore – You Better

Funky Green Dogs – Fired Up (Angel’s DDDDeep Vocal Mix)

Living Colour – Elvis is Dead (Elvis is in the House Mix)

Dreadzone – Captain Dread (X-press 2 Mix)

X-press 2 (feat David Byrne) – Lazy

Ruffneck Featuring Yavahn –  Everybody Be Somebody (Original Vocal Mix)

CJ Boland – Sugar is Sweeter (Armand’s Drum n Bass Mix)

Ladysmith Black Mambazo – The Star and the Wiseman (S-Man’s Supafunkee Club Mix)

Winc – Thoughts of a Tranced Love

They Came from the Stars I Saw Them – Moon Song (The Gospel According to Mung 2012 Live at the Hacienda Version)

Couch Boy – Warm House Mix

New music for a new year from Couch Boy! Apologies for the relative quiet of the last few months.

File this under ‘work in progress’ (for now anyway). Whatever was holding me back from working on music has disappeared and I’m back in front of Ableton Live again.  The track is heavily influenced by The Marcels version of Blue Moon but it is very much a piece of electronic music.

I hope you like it.  If you download it, please leave a comment. Ta!

Couch Boy – Bah Dang

This was our second year at the Wickerman Festival. The annual event set in an idyllic location near Kircudbright, not far from Dumfries is great for parents who enjoy music, and people who find T in the Park a little ‘full-on’.

Whilst enjoying the sounds of The Charlatans on the Friday night, we got talking to LeAnn,  one of the members of Joe Viterbo, a ska-punk band playing the following day.  They sounded interesting, and being the open-minded folk that we are, we decided to check them out… Well, my four year old decided

Anyway, we quite liked them (the CD has been on continuous rotation in our kitchen), so check them out using the following routes:

http://www.myspace.com/joeviterbo

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joe-Viterbo/114557185225307

Ghost Train by Joe Viterbo

Ok, here’s what happens when you let a four year old choose the tunes.  Excuse the mixing as I also had a one year old climbing all over me.  Some of the tunes are ones that Keir knows, and others he stumbled over and demanded requested that they get played… and a few were my choice!

Short mix this one, due to short attention spans!

Abba – Mama Mia

Terence Trent D’arby – Dance Little Sister

Fatboy Slim – Rockafella Skank

Elextric Six – Danger High Voltage (Soulchild mix)

X-press 2 and David Byrne – Lazy

Stone Roses – Fools Gold (Rabbit in the Moon mix)

They Came from the Stars I Saw Them – Moon Song

Download it

In honour of the release of version 3.0 of WordPress, the ubiquitous blogging-platform-slash-cms used, I have switched to the new default theme ‘twenty-ten’.

Not sure how long I’ll stick with it but it’s here for now.  I’ll post more of this boring, techy stuff at www.chrismackie.co.uk, if you’re interested.  If not, the next post will be along whenever it gets written.

I’ve been helping out a bit with the website for thisisnotanexit records.  They describe their sounds as ‘New Wave / Post punk / Techno’.  If any of those labels are of interest to you, I would recommend you head over to their website for more info/sounds/videos.

See here:

thisisnotanexit records

I must say I was sceptical about Spotify‘s mobile service. One factor was certainly cost (£10 per month). But battery life on my Nokia 5800 was another.

Happily, I’ve found the service to be well worth the money and also not too much of a strain on my poor battery – as long as you accept daily charging as a reality. Streaming is possible but only where a 3G mobile signal is present. Therefore, as others have stated, I’ve found the most effective way to use Spotify Mobile is to sync my phone to create offline playlists, so that playback is be unaffected by breaks in 3G signal. If you’re commuting between Glasgow and Edinburgh (or similar), this is a definite consideration.

What concerns me more is the low level of royalties that are passed on to the songwriters. The Guardian reported that one million plays on Spotify had earned Lady Gaga a total of $167.

Clearly this is a legal service, in that the record companies have signed up to Spotify but whether it is morally right that royalties are so low is another question entirely…

Posted this note on Facebook but I thought I should also put it on here:

Here’s a nice Sunday afternoon activity for you.
Put on your slippers, it’s time to have a snoop round your mp3 player

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Turn on your MP3 player.
2. Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.
3. Write down the first 15 songs that come up–song title and artist–NO editing/cheating!

Here’s what came out of mine:

1. Shy FX & DJ Ash – One in the jungle mix (1995)
2. The Walls – With or without you (U2 cover)
3. Bob Mould – Lost Zoloft
4. Alex Harvey – Silhouette and Shadow
5. Grimethorpe Colliery Band – Floral Dance
6. The Meters – The Handclapping Song
7. Lionel Richie – All Night Long
8. Beastie Boys – Sure Shot
9. The Beach Boys – I Know there’s an answer
10. Optimo Exotica Mix
11. Zero 7 – Warm Sound
12. Husker Du – Up in the Air
13. King Tubby – Sound Boy Massacre
14. Psychic TV – BB
15. Flying Matchstick Men – If you want to

Try it.  What came out of your ipod?

I promised this a while ago.  It’s a dub version of The Shadows’ 1961 hit, FBI.  I was reminded of this after seeing Cliff Richard on the telly the other night talking about his forthcoming reunion tour with his famous backing band.  Despite being influenced quite heavily by Hank & co, I won’t be rushing out to buy a ticket (however my mother might

Here’s some tv footage of the original

Incidently, this was also one of the first tunes I learned to play on the guitar.

Couch Boy – FBI (dub version)

My friend Mark (aka Telekom) had one of his tracks included on a recent electronic music compilation, released on Twoism records. It’s rather good, imho. Follow this link to buy/download:

http://www.twoism.org/oneontwoism/3/index.php