This week, I have a very special guest. It’s not often he has the time to put together a mix, but when he does, it’s something I really enjoy listening to. He was pretty much my partner in crime for a good decade; we threw so many parties and events and had residencies at clubs I can barely even remember. Our Groov-E Company days were so memorable and just make me smile everytime I think about them.

DJ Britton was pretty much the first dj/promoter to bring underground dance music to the unsuspecting masses in Ft Worth TX. Our Nervosa night on Sundays at 8.0 featured some killer talent, local and nationally. From Rob Vaughan and Redeye to DJ Love and Lance Cashion, just about every Dallas dj played there in our 5 year run. But enough about the good old days……

Keep up with Britton and his mixes here and on his Soundcloud page. Or hit him up on Facebook. Time to get ya groove on!!

Britton Spring ’10

Happy New Year everyone! Sorry I’ve been away so long, but some big things happened in my life that required my undivided attention – the most important being the birth of my son, Griffin. He graced us with his presence in October, which was a few weeks earlier than expected. Next to meeting and marrying my wife, Kelly, he is the best thing to ever happen to me. As I told my cousin over the phone yesterday, my heart is full.

The other thing that required my attention was the continued and accelerated expansion of our artist roster at Topspin. We closed the year with more than 250 artists marketing and selling music directly to their fans using our platform. Part of this expansion has involved the onboarding of artists who appeal to my electronic tastes and one such artist that decided to take the plunge with us was Elite Force. If you’ve been a frequent visitor to this blog, you know I’m a sucker for some good tech funk and Elite Force is the reigning king of tech funk.

If you drop by www.eliteforcemusic.com you’ll find a ton of free and for-sale music in digital, CD and vinyl formats. The most recent Elite Force offering is a re-release of the 2003 record ‘No Turning Back’ only this time it’s available for download in 320kbps MP3, FLAC and Apple Lossless formats, and there are also a few bundles with complete sets of stems for remixing and limited edition CDs and Vinyl. You can also pick up a few free tracks using the widgets below, the most recent being an Elite Force vs. Yeah Yeah Yeahs re-fix of Maps.

There’s a new record called ‘Re:Vamped’ on the horizon – check out the streaming player below for a good tease of what’s to come. Get on his mailing list and you’ll get notified when the pre-order starts.

No Turning Back

Re:Vamped – Coming Soon

Some Free Tracks

I got my hands on the latest Boogie Basics release from Perfect Strangers and it’s slammin’. “Effer” is a solid groove featuring straight up house and tech mixes from the likes of Riche ‘BoOm’ Stanley, Jabwai, and PointBender, among others. The Perfect Strangers are Patchen (Harmonious Discord) and Sean Anderson (Grey) – very talented cats from Dallas who now call Austin home. They’ve been cranking out choice tunes for a while and this collaboration has resulted in some really good shit.

Riche came out to visit us on the Left Coast a few months back and gave me the rundown on Boogie Basics plans. They’ve released a ton of good music over the past year or so and I’m expecting even bigger things to come.

Have a listen to two mixes of ‘Effer’, then go to Beatport to get them all.

Perfect Strangers – Effer (Riche BoOm BB Edit)
Perfect Strangers – Effer (Jabwai’s Emergency Mix)

13 years ago, I spent a weekend in Austin, TX at the studio of a very talented DJ/producer (and good friend at the time), Scot Gray. Scot and I had a fondness for acid breaks and we spent this particular weekend creating what would be one of only two dance tracks I would produce as an active DJ. The things I remember most about this particular studio session were that we did most of the work in one weekend and we used Cubase as the sequencing software and a Mackie board (can’t remember the rest of the equipment). I was also committed to using a snippet of James Brown from “Make it Funky” and the baseline from “For the Love of Money” by the O’Jays. If memory serves me right, we also did the bulk of the work the first day and auditioned the track live that night on a DAT at a now defunct club on 7th Street called OHMs. Scot was a resident DJ at OHMs and I was his guest DJ every now and then. I think Saturday nights were also broadcast on a local Austin radio station. Anyway, that night was the only time someone other than me or Scot would ever hear that track. A few months later I retired as a full-time DJ, and Kelly and I moved to LA to start a new chapter in our lives. I ran into Scot in 2000 when I was in town for SXSW and that was the last time our paths crossed.

So, I was rummaging through two big boxes of mix tapes yesterday and decided it was time to begin digitizing and posting them here on Paper Buddha. The first tape I pulled out was one called “DJ Gary-O & Scot Gray – Untitled”. I dropped the cassette into the deck, hit play and what started playing was not a mix tape, but that track from 1996. It sounded great for a 13-year-old tape so I digitized it for you to enjoy. It’s long – almost 11 minutes – and there are a handful of breakdowns and change-ups that could easily have been the foundations for alternate remixes. I guess we decided to throw everything together for that live audition at OHMs. Suffice it to say, I think it sounds pretty good for a mid-90s acid funk track that was never fully produced and mixed down. Maybe with sprucing up some elements could be repurposed. Only problem is I don’t have the original source file and the tape deck I’m using has a recognizable hum in the background. I’ll have to do some work to get this cleaned up, but I’m posting what I have for now so you can have a listen. I think I called this track”Q-bass’d” back in the day so I’ll leave it at that.

Scot – if you see/hear this and you’re interested in re-connecting, please drop me a line. I’d love to catch up.

DJ Gary-O & Scot Gray – “Q-bass’d”

Back in March, I published a post re: the lead single from Freeland’s debut release ‘COPE™’. The record debuted today and you can stream it from end to end in the streaming player below. I really like what Adam Freeland has done with this new band and the cast of contributiung artists makes the record that much more diverse and unique (Jerry Casale from Devo, Brody Dale from Spinnerette and Tommy Lee, to name a few). The record is getting great reviews, like this one from musicOMH which dubs ‘COPE™’ a modern counterpart to The Prodigy’s third record, ‘Fat of the Land‘.

You can pick up ‘COPE™’ directly from freeland.fm in a variety of digital and physical formats including CD, vinyl and and even a Deluxe Edition that comes complete wth a hardbound COPE™ book, vinyl, CD, digital (high quality MP3, FLAC and Apple Lossless) and an ipod compatible video of a complete album listening party shot in Adam’s studio with his closest friends.

BTW – if you’re headed to SXSW in Austin, Texas next week (like me!) you can catch FREELAND and Adam doing the solo DJ thing at the following joints:

Thursday, March 19
- 3:00 p.m. Little Radio/Topspin Party @ Red Eyed Fly (FREELAND LIVE)
- 9:15 p.m. BIG STEREO @ Canvas Bar & Gallery (DJ set)
- Midnight – The Great Escape Party @ Rooftop/Maggie Mae’s (FREELAND LIVE)
Friday, March 20
- Midnight – Official SXSW Showcase @ Vice (FREELAND LIVE)
Saturday, March 21
- Midnight – Firehouse Lounge (DJ set)

Bush Records recently released a minimal tech house track by Devilfish and Roel Salemink called Manalive. A few seconds into the first mix and main synth line from Inner City’s Good Life reveals itself. Now, as sample rip offs go, Manalive is not very high on my best-of sample/remix list (especially given the original is a true house anthem), but I have to tip my hat to the production duo for creating something that is unique in and of itself. The Good Life sample just throws it over the top. Have a listen to a few of my favorite Manalive remixes and the original mix of Good Life below. You can pick them up at Amazon.

Manalive (Roel Salemink Remix) – Devilfish and Roel Salemink

Manalive (Jon Rundell Remix) – Devilfish and Roel Salemink

Good Life – Inner City