John Digweed at Ruby Sky in San Francisco, Friday March 18, 2011:

If you're an iTunes Ping user check out my first Ping playlist:

iTunes Ping Playlist: ephobe (Dec 2010)

Tracklisting is below. The last track, "Ockeghem" (Original Mix) by Yamil Colucci, is an absolutely amazing piece of electroninic music.

1. Eelke Kleijn - "Arpeggiator Stories Continued"
2. JVC - "Maladjusted (The Pushers The Return of The Push Mix)

3. Christian Cambas - "Fireball" (Original Mix)

4. Marco Bailey & Tom Hades - "Bulldozer"

5. John Digweed & Nick Muir - "Bilder" (Club Mix)

6. Petar Dundov - "Distant Shores"

7. Yamil Colucci - "Ockeghem" (Original Mix)

If you are like me you like to listen to electronic music most of the time with the occasional diversion into other types of music. So, sometimes you need a good warm up set to the day for the drive to work or some downtempo house to entertain folks at home. Especially with some vocals. Ali Geramian has delivered his Winter 2010 mix over at Soundcloud and this set definitely prances beautifully from mellow, deep house to proper disco house without over amplifying your speakers or your head for that matter. Check it out...

Sasha has posted his set from the 2010 DJ Magazine awards here. Right click on the little arrow pointing downwards to download.

Nick Muir's special Bedrock 12 remix of "Heaven Scent" is now a free download on John Digweed's Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/djjohndigweed?v=app_10442206389

You can also see the reaction of it being played out for the first time here (great to hear "Age of Love" as the 2nd to last track of the Bedrock 12 night):

John Digweed has a forthcoming album out in July on Bedrock called "Structures". He has put up a preview mix on Soundcloud today. Check out it out here. Nine of the fourteen tracks are unreleased including Quivver back with a track titled "In Your Boat". Have a listen...

Elizabeth Fraser - "Underwater" (Charlie May Remix)

The Charlie May remix of Elizabeths Fraser's "Underwater" still remains, after almost ten years, an extremely sought after track. According to known sources, Elizabeth herself didn't like the remix so it was never released for public consumption. Thus, only the elite, in-crowd were touting the track in their bags, including Nick Warren, Parks & Wilson and John Digweed. Digweed actually ended his Twilo sets in early 2001 with the track on several occasions. It's an absolutely beautiful dance record that has yet to see the light of day. The only remnants are of a YouTube video I recently discovered. I imagine a few are curious who the YouTube user avgofeta80 really is. I know I do.

Luis Junior - Colache (Film Translation Mix)

What sounds like it could be a definitive on James Holden's Border Community label, the Film Translation mix of Luis Junior's "Colache" is a superbly orchestrated demonstration of thought provoking progressive house on none other than Bedrock Records. Without a touch of monotony, the music is mesmerizing melancholy at its best and yet at the same time incredibly uplifting at moments. The remix is aptly named as you could certainly imagine it being the backdrop to a pensive drama scene in a Hollywood film. Well done Luis Junior.

Grafiti - "Spooky Trains" (Nick Warren's Back of the Bog Dub)

This track starts out quite innocuous with a mellow house rhythm but then gains momentum and turns quickly into a never-ending landscape of sounds juxtaposing each other. This recent remix offering from Nick Warren is for sure one of his better contributions of late.

As usual, John Digweed again did his New Year's Eve gig in Los Angeles. I didn't go and I'm glad I didn't because I'm too old for the masses of people that showed up to hear the entire line up at Together as One, including David Guetta, Sander Kleinenberg, Dubfire and Digweed. It just doesn't seem worth it when you want to see only one of the performers and they only end up playing a couple of hours. In addition, I've already seen Digweed on New Year's Eve in Los Angeles: for 9 hours, on his own and in a club way back in 2003. Thus, there's very little chance I'll see Digweed again on New Year's Eve unless a commensurate event surfaces in the next few years.

However, a few weeks before the last day of the decade, I noticed that Digweed was going to be headlining a few shows after the Los Angeles event, including Seattle on New Year's Day and Ruby Skye in San Francisco on the 2nd. It was then time to dust of the Digweed shoes and plan for a night out.

Since moving to the Bay Area from Manhattan in 2005, I've now had a chance to catch Digweed on three occasions and this third visit was by far the icing on the cake. My friends and I arrived at Ruby Skye around 11pm, found our reserved table on the second floor and enjoyed the sounds of the veteran Kazell. Like Jimmy Van M of the Twilo days, Kazell is an experienced opener who always establishes an excellent foundation from which Digweed can not only build upon but move in any direction he may see fit. Kazell's set was a good one and wrapped up around midnight. On came Digweed to a multitude of roars, cheers and rants. The night had officially began.

It was surprising how many vocals Digweed played in the first hour or so but soon after, the music got aggressive and then stayed aggressive almost the entire night. From about 2am until 4am, the music wasn't melodic and it wasn't housey nor was it minimal. The music was just god damn mesmerizing and absolutely insane. From recent remixes of classics like Saints and Sinners "Pushing Too Hard", Tone Depth's "Rumblefish", Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place" to the newly minted "Come Home" by Yousef, Digweed played at an astonishing high level and the San Franciscan crowd was all the more happier to urge him upward. On two separate occasions my friends and I thought the night might've been winding down and Digweed might transition into more disjointed sounds but we were wrong both times as Digweed incessantly hammered us with big room drama in the form of absolutely annihilating progressive house. To say the least it was a phenomenal night of music and one I was glad I got up for as my days of clubbing are indeed waning. I'm now convinced though that my limited nights out have to be worth it and the only way I can somewhat guarantee myself an excellent night out is to catch Digweed when he's in San Francisco. Uncompromising music leads to uncompromising nights out so I'll definitely be looking forward to Digweed's return to the west coast.

The Essential Mix of the year for 2008 went to Flying Lotus. I'm sure Steve Ellison deserves it because it's pretty hard to get that kind of recognition. However, to be honest, I haven't even heard the Flying Lotus mix because my favorite Essential Mix of 2008 was John Digweed's live set from Amnesia.

To me this Essential Mix displays to us all a little side of Digweed that we all know and love: peak time madness. There are indeed a few live Digweed sets that have found their way onto the net in the last 10 years that properly portray that middle-of-the-night chaos. Let's see, the first that comes to mind is the 4 year anniversary of Sasha and Digweed at Twilo set that was aired on Kiss 100 in April of 2001 (what a crazy night). The other is Digweed's 4 part Beirut set from Lebanon. But there aren't that many that really give the electronic head in Wisconsin a taste of what a Digweed night is really like, especially if you don't get a chance to see him live. So, it's even rarer when Digweed knows his set is being recorded and still lays down the law.

Digweed starts the set with the new Tom Middleton remix of Bedrock's "Forge", transitions perfectly through Guy J, On Spec and Gianlucca Motta and finally to what I consider a classic Depeche Mode mix. That's the Josh Wink Vocal Interpretation mix of "Freelove". It's a 6 or 7 year old track but I don't think Digweed chose it because he's necessarily in love with it but rather due to the fact that the track mixes flawlessly into Remute's "Condensated". "Condensated" is a seriously high flying tech-house track which only seems to get faster and more intense as it progresses. It's perfect music if you ask me. Digweed then takes us down a level with Christian Smith's superb "Flyertalk" before hammering Amnesia with Timo Maas' "Subtlelite". There's nothing subtle about Timo Maas latest addition. The track is a collage of hammering tech-house, lasers, congo drums and gnawing synths. The sequence between "Condensated", "Flyertalk" and "Subtlelite" is so damn good that it literally makes anyone with an ear for good mixing and track selection want to be instantly on the dancefloor. I can only imagine what Amnesia was like! The rest of the mix takes us downward but definitely does not lose the interest with a new mix of Mistress Barbara's "K-10" and Winona's "Without You".

Every once in awhile Digweed reminds us who's the king of peak time progressive house and this is certainly the case with his live set at Amnesia. The only thing better would've to been there in person. Alas, my Ibiza days are far from over.

It's time for a new beginning.  For those that followed electrophobic.com, you'll know it was once a site full of electronic music content surrounding the house/progressive house scene in New York and other destinations.  With time though, the site has gone the wayside as there wasn't enough content and not enough hands to push updates to the site.  In addition, the code-base just took too much time to maintain.  Rather than let all the musings disappear into the ether I thought we'd centralize them into a blog.  I can't promise it will be updated daily but stay tuned for a thought here or a thought there about what's going on in my electronica world.