Not only has Discam been lucky enough to win one of the two finalist places on the main stage at Tidy Weekender 25, his mix, which is one of the most streamed from all who played in the competition, it has now been released as a bonus CD with The Tidy Lockdown Annual. We caught up with him.
You’ve mixed the third CD of the new Lockdown Annual which is the first triple CD annual. How does that feel and how did it come about?
I am eternally grateful for the support the Tidy team are showing me since my DJ competition performance last January. I had already been asked and produced a mix for the Insomnia 7 album alongside Andy Farley which sold out. Sam Townend then approached me asking me if I by chance had a high-quality recording of my competition set which they didn’t have. When you release music on CD the recording needs to be in Wav file format, so I had to rerecord it again in my home studio. TBH I’m glad they did ask me to re-record it as the original FB live performance had a few slips in it, (just to prove it was live), which I wouldn’t have been happy if it had been put on the album!
The mix is your Tidy Weekender competition live performance. You had a free reign to pick any of the Tidy or Vicious releases. Why did you choose the tracks that you did?
The set I played was inspired by the Tidy Boys Live at Tidy Weekender 2. I knew just mixing the tracks together wasn’t going to cut the mustard as anyone can do that these days with the technology we play on. I wanted it to be energetic with a mixture of well-known bouncy and offbeat tracks but ones that weren’t too filled with vocals, so I had space to put all the samples over them. As we were playing on a 2-channel controller there wasn’t many places where I didn’t have both channels playing so most of the vocals were put over the tracks in Ableton before I went up to Leeds for my Live performance. There are five live accapellas in the mix though. They are all tracks close to my heart from my clubbing days and one of my new ones squeezed in too.
If you were given free rein to mix an album to be released on Tidy what would be the concept?
I would do a Quadruple CD album CD1 would be “The Party Starter” with lots of groovy house that’s hard. CD2 would be “Vocal Anthems” CD3 would be “Crazy Bounce” and CD4 would be “Go Hard or Go Home”. It’s easy to get pidgeon holed as a DJ so to put an album like that together would be a challenge but hopefully show that I’m not a one trick pony.
You are also a passionate producer. Are there any plans to see you releasing tracks or remixing on the Tidy label?
It’s on my bucket list! I have been in discussions with Sam Townend about releasing music on the label. I don’t engineer my own tracks and prefer to be in the studio with the engineers I use while making them, so once the coronavirus restrictions are eased, I will be putting my ideas down and hopefully Tidy will pick one of those up.
What are your thoughts following the announcement from the government that clubs could re-open from 21st June?
I think the announcement from Boris is great. It’s a sensible approach to allow the opening up each part of society and see the impact of that. The last lockdowns and restrictions were reviewed every two weeks which was way too soon these four easing dates are five weeks apart. We are already below the peak of hospital admissions and deaths of the first two waves and we are still two months away from the same time it peaked last year in April 2020. With vaccines in place, we are in a much better place to recover from this third lockdown and virus in general. Whether you believe in it or not if you want some sort of normality back and to be able to get back on those dancefloors and the Tidy 25 Weekender you have to respect what’s required for that to happen and that is for everyone to play by the rules set out. Stay safe and see you all in that Main Room at Tidy 25 Weekender.
What can we expect from you next?
I have a number of live streams lined up while the clubs are still closed. Once the restrictions are lifted on nightclubs, I have a b2b with Craig Lee at Birmingham’s Off Your Carrot on 26th June then two weeks later you can catch me in the main room of the Tidy 25 Weekender!
