Worldwide FM broadcast the 22nd episode of Balearic Breakfast on January 26th 2021. Introduction. – Life can be so unpredictable... Sometimes, nothing makes sense. You wake up one morning and realise that someone you loved a lot has gone, forever. And you're lost. That's precisely what happened to the Family and its Captain on February 23rd 2021, when we all learned about the passing of Phil Asher. About this episode. – Without a shadow of a doubt, this 21st edition of Balearic Breakfast was one of the most "Balearic" of the whole series. Balearic in the music, of course, as there is not a single song in the first hour that hasn't got that slow, light, somewhat sexy rhythm! Balearic also in the way we're able to feel Colleen's sadness. Her voice in that show is sad, of course, how cold it not be with the passing of such a great DJ at such a young age? (Phil was 55 when he died of a heart attack in his bed while sleeping)... Last but not least, Colleen's tribute to Phil in the second hour is absolutely gorgeous and full of positive Balearic Forces! This show is a must-listen if you want to discover what an experienced DJ can achieve! Of Course, the rest of the show is an absolute killer (as usual, might you think, oh well you know I'm objective when I say this, don't you ? (laughs!)), but hearing songs like "7 seconds" or "All about her" just made me realise (already back then...) that I could absolutely stop requesting songs and simply enjoy the show. This was one of the times I really felt at Home... Pay attention for instance to how Colleen selected the songs present in the first half of the show, they all share a "common" tonality and a quite close rhythm ! Gorgeous selection made from Quality requests, I can tell ya (laughs)! Listen back to the 21st edition of Balearic Breakfast : That sense of unease and longing for something more. It can’t be cured with a pill or a hot bath or a good workout. Because it’s deep. A restless soul is an adventurer, explorer and they believe in the power of the universe. Phil Asher, Ransom note interview The WOW effect. – Of course, as I just said, Colleen's mix won the absolute WOW effect during that show. Her tribute to Phil was Astounding . There is no other word I could use to describe the beautiful set Colleen crafted with the help of the Balearic Family's song requests. I feel that it was her way to stop the sadness that was all around us back then (let me remind you that we were still amid the Covid Pandemic, the weather was not shiny, and we had to cope with Phil's passing... So when you consider all of this and hear what Colleen offered us during the second hour of the show, you can only feel a desperate will to make it all for the best despite the roughness of the times) ! I also remember we all liked Phil Asher's remix of "Cosmic Laws" when we heard it during the show (Colleen was already working behind the scenes on the first "Balearic Breakfast" compilation)! PLAYLIST Greg Foat – Symphonie Pacifique Youssou N'Dour – 7 seconds (feat. Neneh Cherry) B.B. King – Midnight Believer Bill Withers – You got the Stuff Ian Thomas – All about her Steve Miller Band – Macho City Ultramarine – Saratoga Victor Davies – Brother ----- Tribute Mix to Phil Asher ----- The Cosmic Laws (Phil Asher Remix) Reach Inside (Restless Soul Peaktime Mix) Butterflies (feat. Dyanna Fearon & Phil Asher) Portuguese Love (Phil Asher's Restless Soul Mix) Beautiful (Restless Soul & Valentine Etienne) Runnin (feat. Shea Soul) Blaze – I think of you (feat. Amira - Restless soul remix) Stevie Wonder – As

Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy broadcast the 200th episode of Balearic Breakfast on her Mixcloud on November 05th 2024. About this episode. – Streaming live from New York, where she'll meet François K in a few hours for a live event, Colleen proposed we discover Manu's Archeo Recordings in today's Balearic Breakfast 200th episode thanks to a beautiful recording where the DJ, producer and label owner tells us his musical story (bandcamp page). You can find the whole interview fully transcribed by Manu himself here, including a brand new edition of his recording I did exclusively for the blog! Thank you both to Colleen and Manu who agreed and allowed this to happen here! Balearic Breakfast is the gift that keeps on giving, and we're not faking, there's a whole lotta lovin' going on around here! In the show's second hour, Colleen took us to a very dub-fueled mix which evolved into a Balearic party and I can say that the Balearic Breakfast Family adored it to bits! "This morning’s Balearic Breakfast is now up on my Mixcloud for your listening pleasure at https://shorturl.at/ho664 (and please give me a follow while you’re over there). Today’s show features an exclusive mix and interview with @manu_archeo who is celebrating 10 years of Archeo Recordings – his label that reissues wonderful Italo classics with remixes from contemporary Italian producers. He has a lovely story and has given us a gorgeous mix of music from his label. In the next hour I catch up with some new music, your requests and a couple of old favourites. I’m in New York City at the moment and in a few hours I’m heading over to François K 's studio as we are hosting a live stream in tribute to Quincy Jones and the election. You can join us from 1pm EST on Francois’ Mixcloud Live. For now, thanks for listening and I hope you will enjoy this morning’s Balearic Breakfast with music from @higherloverec @sam_redmore @delesosimi @motonrecords @davidhill_photo @tactus_music @thenextmenofficial @danwainwrightmusic @rude_audio @feel_fly @daveharrow @huqo377 @tonyespositoofficial @airto.moreira.54 @bbemusic" Listen back to Balearic Breakfast's 200th episode: PLAYLIST Manu Archeo Mix: Infradisco – Beyond the Dulcis’ (Manu Archeo Remix) Pepe Maina – The Infinite’ (Manu Archeo Remix) Roberto Aglieri ft Stefano Faravelli – Danza N 1 (Feel Fly Meditan Trippy Remix) Futuro Antico – Pan Tuning (Mushrooms Project Danza Mix) Radio Band – Radio Rap (Radiomarc Remix) Tony Esposito – Kalimba De Luna (Hear & Now Onda Nueva Mix) Ettika – Ettika (The Veteran Delinquents Remix) Colleen Mix: (2024) Hugo Nicolson & David Harrow – Revolvalution (Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio Original Mix) (2020) Karime Kendra – 90% of Me Is You (2024) Lab Infinity – Touch Me (1984) Anne-Tina – I Mit Efterar (1985) Datalife – Dancing Dreaming (2024) Moton – Hold On (1982) Denroy Morgan – Happy Feeling (2024) Sam Redmore ft Dele Sosimi – Home (1995) Outernational Meltdown – Hungry on Arrival MANU ARCHEO'S FULL STORY Mix by Artur the Lioncub Unaltered audio [Colleen] Please tell us about your passion for music when you were young? [Manu] Ciao Colleen, thank you so much for the invitation, it’s a real pleasure and honor for me. Wow! I'm so excited. My passion for Music really dates back to when I was very young. I'm so happy to be in this world, I can say, for quite all my Life. When I was 8 I started studying classic drums for 5 years and I remember I used to spend lots of time listening to my mother's collection of vinyl. I should probably say thanks mom for having such great records! There were a couple of Tony Esposito in particular that thrilled me: his first ‘Rosso Napoletano’ LP (1974) and ‘Incontro Con’ (1978), a sort of compilation from Tony's first 3 masterpieces, with that incredible cover photo of him behind the drums and with the sunglasses. A true hero for me! He was my Master! I spent hours and hours to listening to those records and I can say to have been pretty lucky to have had such a collection in my musical formative years. That's why I love now the Italian artists like Tony Esposito, Tullio De Piscopo, Miro, Pepe Maina, Roberto Aglieri, Mario Acquaviva, Paolo Modugno ... such great legends for me! [Colleen] How did you get into DJ-ing? [Manu] I start DJing when I was 16, buying 2 grey Technics 1200,I still have them, and a mixer. I was a regular visitor of Night's Life before and I used to go to dance to Matis, Les Bains Douches and Kinky in Bologna on Friday and Saturday nights and Tenax, Space Electronic and Happyland (the ‘Torquemada’ venue) in Florence, also on Sunday afternoons. It was the Italo-House, Dream House and Progressive scene and I spent hours in front of DJ Ricci and others to see how they worked and mixed and let people dance and have fun. All this I can say in a certain way, turned on a light in me that still shines today! I was so influenced by the classic New-Wave, House, Electro, 80s and 90s scene. It was also when I started to buy vinyl regularly. A small step back ... Around 1985/1986, I started listening to music with friends, at the first private parties or on MTV, the popular TV program of the time, and I started buying cassettes which I then listened to on the cassette deck in my room, at home or on my Sony Walkman or again on the car radio. Then I always wanted the vinyl version of those titles that I asked my mother to buy. Any examples? 'Thriller' by Michael Jackson (1982), an artist I adored even though I was only 8 years old when that innovative album came out. I was completely entranced by the video clip, for the music and the effects. The zombie ballet was cutting-edge and every time I felt a feeling somewhere between amazement and fear when the music stops and he turns into a living dead ... Wow! I wanted the red and black jacket that Michael was wearing at all costs and I managed to get a similar one, even if a low quality copy, which my parents gave me with my immense joy. Other titles that marked my youth were 'Diamond Life' of Sade (1984), big companion of the trips in the car. And 'So' of Peter Gabriel (1986). The video of 'Big Time' was something unique and innovative for the time. Also 'Revenge' by Eurythmics (1986), which I went to see in concert at the PalaEur in Rome in 1989 – I went crazy for 'Missionary Man', 'When Tomorrow Comes', 'The Miracle Of Love' and above all 'Take Your Pain Away' - and finally 'Blue's' by Zucchero (1987), a must-have at naive and awkward middle school parties. I remember the first 12" that I bought was 'Buddy / The Magic Number' by De La Soul, in 1989. To get it I had to take a long ride on my yellow and red BMX bike from home to a small record shop in the suburbs and I was very satisfied with the purchase, not only for the music but also for the beautiful cover. A small parenthesis is also necessary regarding record shops of the time. In Florence, I used to go to Black Out, run by the legendary DJ Riccardino, who at the time played regularly in all the most important clubs in Italy and who introduced me with his sound to the world of Trip-Hop and labels such as Mo Wax and Ninja Tune; and to Disco Mastelloni in Piazza Del Mercato Centrale, where the owner was the great and unforgettable Roberto Bianchi, now no longer among us, a super DJ and a competent person and a true point of reference at a national level in the 90s. Then I often made trips to DJ Aky Tune's Disco D'Oro in Bologna, and to Goody Music in Rome. These 2 still exist and are active. At Disco Mastelloni I used to buy the a sort of 'artisanal' cassettes recorded by Roberto between 1991 and 1993 compiled with all the successful singles of the moment and artfully mixed, which at the time inspired me quite a bit to purchase many records that still are in my collection. The atmosphere in there was very lively. Every time I went I could meet friends and famous DJs with whom I could talk and learn about important background infos and cute gossip of the 'Night's World and Life'. I remember I always took my stack of records to listen to them patiently on headphones and it was fantastic to immerse myself in that atmosphere, I was always so excited. Now I go to my dear friend Daniele's Danex Records shop in Florence, to Logout of Fabio from Bosconi Records and Michele Alunni and Isoma of Lorenzo Fortino, my trusted shops and a meeting point where I can discuss about music and more with fellow friends and DJs. From the early 90s I started play more and more regularly as DJ in clubs, bars and private parties in Florence and Bologna. And this taught me a lot from the point of view of technique and how a club works and how to build the dancefloor from the beginning to the end. I'm quite lucky to have played at the famous Tenax and other venues between the early 90s until now, such as Dolcevita, Space Electronic, Rex, Viper Theater, Capocaccia, Stazione Leopolda, Palace, Caffè Italiano, Logic, Zoe, Rivalta, Mix Bistrò, some of which unfortunately no longer exist. They were very lively years with a great music scene of all genres. With my friends, DJs and not only, we started exchanging music and spending entire days and evenings playing, mixing and listening to everything and more. We met and talk about new, rare vinyl gems that we had in our private collections or just discovered. It was fantastic and so stimulating and I can say it only added fuel to the fire of my passion and has trained my ears to an eclectic sound. [Colleen] What was the club scene in Firenze like at the time? [Manu] Unfortunately I was too young to have experienced the 80s firsthand but I was absolutely involved and influenced by them, without a doubt. Florence in the 80s was a true cradle of innovations, new bands and new places, from Litfiba (the famous Italian New Wave / Rock band formed in Florence in 1980) to Neon (legendary New Wave band again, formed always in Florence in 1979 and part of the Florentine Dark Wave / Electronic scene of the 80s) and Diaframma (another famous Italian New Wave / Rock band, also called the 'Italian Joy Division'), from Krypton to Magazzini Criminali, from Tenax to Video Music, from Controradio to Radio Cento Fiori, from jazz clubs to New Wave cellars, from Pitti Trend to great prominent figures such as Piero Pelù, Ghigo Renzulli, Alexander Robotnick, Antonio Aiazzi and Francesco Magnelli, Ringo De Palma and Gianni Maroccolo, and so on. Each of these bands and people deserves a story of its own, but we don't have time now to tell them. But I would like just to tell a nice story with Krypton. Teatro Studio Krypton was founded in 1982 by Giancarlo Cauteruccio and Pina Izzi, dear friends of my mother and my aunt here in Florence and I remember that they often had dinner at our house and I often went to their wonderful avant-garde shows. In 1983 they release the fantastic LP 'Eneide Di Krypton' with Litfiba: the soundtrack for the theater show 'Eneide', at the Teatro Metastasio in Prato and one of the cornerstones of New Wave and Rock Music. Now it's a very rare and sought after vinyl and I own an original copy from the time given directly by Giancarlo and Pina to my mother. Those were also the years of the famous IRA Italian label, founded in 1984 by Alberto Pirelli in Florence. IRA stands for 'Immortal Records Alliance' and wanted to support the Italian underground scene with national groups who preferred to use Italian language rather than the more fashionable English in their songs, as advertised by their slogan: 'the new Italian music sung in Italian'. Tenax was born in 1981 and after a decade in which it had hosted the best DJs of the time, decided that it was time to expand the evening program with also live music, such as what for example later became the 1987 Litfiba LP 'Aprite I Vostri Occhi' (Open Your Eyes), an absolute masterpiece that contains the freshness, the dreams, the angers of those memorable years. Towards the end of the 90s, full of events, Tenax offered tropical, rock and heavy evenings and even high-level concerts. Fashions and trends changed but Alex Neri, former member of Planet Funk and resident DJ and one of the most famous and appreciated Italian DJs still today, relaunched by organizing the Nobody's Perfect format right at Tenax, giving life to an evening that would make the venue one of the most loved in Europe. Venues at Meccanò began at midnight and ended at dawn. It was spread over 2 floors with a main room and a private room on the upper floor, the very famous and so called 'pigeon house' (piccionaia). During the summer season it extended into the Cascine Park with 2 dance floors and a VIP terrace. Imagine that in 1993 Vasco Rossi, the so famous and beloved Italian singer, shot there the video for his song 'Vivere'. If Tenax represented the essence of cultural non-conformism with an 'International' club atmosphere, Meccanò was its mirror image, I can say pure entertainment and the desire to appear. Unfortunately in the spring of 2008 the disco was completely destroyed by fire and the flames, together with the fascinating steel structure, also took away the glow of those Florentine nights forever. Still today the most famous nightclub in town, YAB is a point of reference for 2 generations of Florentines and not only. It now boasts 40 years of success but immediately stood out for its attention to details. The mirrored entrance with great scenic effect, the private room with personalized rooms, the fiber optics on the chandeliers and in the center of the dance floor the floor with a very particular lighting effect. In the 90s famous people were spotted there, such as Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Sean Penn, Madonna, David Bowie, Renato Zero and Yves Saint Laurent. We kids love to tell each other those anecdotes. Furthermore, equipped with 6 bars, 4 dance floors, a restaurant and a pizzeria, Central Park - right in front of Meccanò - was another key point of the city at the time. Closed 15 years ago, today that space has been converted into a restaurant and children's playground. The activities certainly keep the place alive, but they are far from the glittering atmosphere of what was the largest open-air disco of the Florentine summer. In Empoli, a small town not far from Florence, there was the legendary Jaïss, a cult disco of 90s Progressive Music, also structured along the conceptual lines of Central Park. Inaugurated in 1992, it achieved national notoriety in a couple of years. And in 1994 it was already one of the most important trendy venues in Italy, doubling its openings: not only on Sunday afternoon but also on Saturday evening. Ten years later, overtaken by the new trend of "commercial" disco music, unfortunately it closed its doors. So many beautiful memories while I'm trying to remember, wow! [Colleen] What is it like now? (Tenax?) [Manu] Tenax is fortunately still alive and under the wise and refined guidance of Alex Neri always offers excellent Music. Yes, I have to say times have really changed and Florence has become a very difficult town for Music and with a trend that in my opinion is 'too' commercial and not one of research and innovation as it was in its heyday. Anyway sometimes something nice is still happening. [Colleen] Why did you start Archeo Recordings back in 2014? [Manu] Archeo Recordings was and is the normal extension to all these things and it satisfies my desire to be active in the production and diffusion of old and new good music. Also music is an artistic patrimony which might be lost and I don’t want it to happen. Mine – in a certain way – is a 'Labour of Love'. I can't think of my Life without my Love and Passion for Music and I also love sharing it with the whole world. This is the purpose of my label and I am very happy when I receive positive feedbacks from many people from everywhere. It really means a lot to me. For two years I documented myself and asked advices from friends in this world, then in a year I implemented all the technical and bureaucratic parts and in the meantime I got an idea of ​​what the possible first releases would have been. And here is how my journey has started. I come across the music I have reissued with all the vinyl I have and obviously with what I like listening to, playing in my gigs and think they deserve a proper attention. Like many other diggers I love to rediscover and bring back to light an old record, perhaps forgotten or not yet fully appreciated, so then people can appreciate it and know about it. Since I was a boy I was passionate about archeology and I remember I always bought the Italian Archeo magazine. I liked the idea of ​​a name - from the Greek 'ancient', 'primitive' - ​​that referred to a search for the past, for the lost. The Archeo logo is a stylized Angel that comes from a fresco in the Romanesque-Byzantine crypt of the Abbey of Monte Maria (1160), a Benedictine monastery that rises above Burgusio, in Val Venosta, north Italy. It's the highest Benedictine building in Europe. The crypt can be visited during the evening prayer of Vespers and I remember the first time I saw them. It was something unbelievable, I was completely embraced by all these Angels and their wings ... A wonderful feeling that I always carry deep in my heart. The Angel on the Archeo Logo is my guardian angel and I'm sure it brings good luck to me and to all the people who are involved, playing, listening to, buying or just following the Music I produce. The message was and is so important to me that I decided to take inspiration from it for the logo. [Colleen] Please tell us about the different projects & artists on the label (reissues and new music)? [Manu] I’ve had contacts with all the artists that I have reissued and that I will reissue and release. This is so important to me, it’s an essential part of my work and I really love it. It’s always so stimulating and I think enriches the entire process. Every artist has a great and important part of the musical history to tell and discover with her / his productions but also with her / his past and tales. I spent hours with them, in ecstasy with their stories which are many and varied. And that is what sometimes I try to bring on my releases with Archeo Recordings, yes with the music, but also with inserts full of old photos, anecdotes and others. I'm quite a nerd about that. When I do a release I always think about it as if I were the buyer. I have released 5 Tony Esposito records out of the 30 total now of Archeo Recordings. If I don't say I love him madly I would be lying. His 'Rosso Napoletano' is a key album for me. It was the soundtrack of my childhood, as I have already said, when I learned to play the drums, from the age of 8 to 13, of my adolescence and my maturity. I love percussions and drums and Esposito is the undisputed king worldwide. In particular, in this album there are some of his most beautiful and significant songs, starting from ‘Rosso Napoletano’, a seventeen-minute journey entirely covered on the side A which takes you to another planet. ‘L'Eroe Di Plastica’ was and is one of my favourites. As a boy I listened to it on loop for hours trying to understand how Esposito played the drums and then tried to imitate him with my Yamaha of that time. Also the album came out in 1974, the same year I was born. A coincidence or a connection again? I love to think about it. I started my adventure with the label with Tony Esposito - Je-Nà / Pagaia, the sought after 12" from 1983 with the 2 extended versions by Mario Boncaldo from Klein & M.B.O. Never get tired of these 2 masterpieces. In 2018 I released AR013 - Tony Esposito - Viaggio Tribale EP, with 2 previously unreleased tracks from Tony's 'Viaggio Tribale' CD from 2004 - Dove C'è Luce and Veronica Song - with also a special Balearic Remix of Dove C'è Luce by my dear friend and super DJ and Producer LucaEffeSunset, and enriched by 3 previously unreleased tracks from the Lucan musician and songwriter and dear friend Antonio Nicola Bruno, from his 2004 CD: 'Storia Della Terra Mia' and 'Danza E Ridanza'. He regularly plays with Tony and I'm very proud of this release. Again in 2018 it is then the turn of AR014 - Tony Esposito - Rosso Napoletano (Mushrooms Project 2018 Rework) single-sided 12", a 13 minute journey worthy of the best Mushrooms productions. I remember I met Mushrooms Project, in the person of the very nice and brilliant Marco and Giorgio, 2 great friends, one evening in 2015 at one of their DJ sets, in Bologna. We exchanged one of our personal releases ... they gave me Rio Disco 12" which I really love, with also a fun written dedication and I, if I remember correctly, I think I gave them AR003 Miro - Safari Of Love 12". Since that moment we have never lost each other and our friendship and collaboration has enriched and deepened, from their incredible Rosso Napoletano Rework, to AR023 - Sara Loreni - Neve A Maggio 12”, to AR025 - Infradisco - Aqua Cheta 12” and many more in the pipeline too. A great news: in spring 2025 we will finally come out with the first release of our new label Zahfari Recordings with an entire new LP from Mushrooms Project, after 8 years. Please stay tuned on this! Then, AR021 - Tony Esposito - Kalimba De Luna (Hear & Now Remix) 12", one of my favorite Archeo releases! I think it needs no introduction, but I would like to briefly tell you about the great friendship and immense esteem that binds me to Hear & Now. Hear & Now duo, in the persons of the great DJ Ricky L and the lovely and talented Marcoradi, are 2 other true friends, 2 splendid people with a refined soul and a touch of unique kindness which is reflected in their work on the beautiful 3 LPs on Claremont 56, one of my favorite labels of all time, of which I always buy and play everything. When 'Aurora Baleare’, their first album, was released in 2018, I immediately fell in love with that sound, so ethereal, dreamy and Balearic. For me it embodied and still embodies the best of current productions. I remember that Ricky played here in Florence one evening many years ago. I went to listen to him with the record in my hands to compliment him, thank him for the magic and have him sign it and from there a special friendship was born. Shortly afterwards Ricky introduced me to Marcoradi in Perugia and another special friendship was born with him too. I asked them to do a Remix for Tony Esposito and they chose Kalimba De Luna which then became the wonderful 2021 release, played by everyone, as well as DJ Harvey. Ricky L, a true genius, would love to underline the importance of Tony's Tamborder, his special drum an d invented by himself. So he thought about it and the gadget was born, a real shaped and working Tamborder parking disc ... Simply fantastic! From there our collaboration intensified with AR025 - Infradisco - Aqua Cheta, AR017 - Ettika and many many more in the pipeline. And last but not least, AR027 - Tony Esposito - Pagaia (Feel Fly Versions) 12", the reissue of his transcendent fusion-pop masterpiece 'Pagaia' alongside a trio of brand new reworks from Perugia's mighty Feel Fly. A killer release! Dani Feel Fly, another great friend, DJ and Producer, is a very talented and good boy from Perugia who delights us more and more with his amazing productions. Met way back in 2017, when with my immense pleasure and honor, he contacted me to play at the amazing Afro Templum venues for the Archeo 3 Year Anniversary. From that moment, a unique friendship and partnership was born with him too. I would also like to underline that from those years a special connection was born between me and Perugia and people linked to it, which led me to play many times, both in the city, again for Afro Templum in 2019 for the Archeo 5 Year Anniversary, and on the Lake Trasimeno ... I can say ... a super Balearic connection. With Dani we had been working on a collaboration for Archeo for years which came to fruition with his splendid masterpieces of Remixes for AR027 and, another small spoiler, his remix of Roberto Aglieri - Danza N. 1 which will be released for the first Volume of Archeo Recordings 10 Year Anniversary in late November. Dani has always managed to amaze me, making profound remixes, with his unique style but always respecting the original song and adding that magical touch that distinguishes him. AR025 - Infradisco - Aqua Cheta 12” + CD. I have been friends with Mark Bee and Albenati for years and I greatly respect their music and their work. Mark I remember contacted me and made me listen to these beautiful 6 previously unreleased tracks, the Originals on the CD and from there we built the idea of ​​making a release with 4 new Remixes too, the 12". It was the stimulus and my official debut as a producer with my Remix too. So happy, yes! The other 3 Remixes came as almost always in a very natural flow. Hear & Now and Mushrooms Project immediately appreciated the original work and joined the project. With Jon / Ocean Moon, we had been in contact for a long time and I'm a big fan of his, both as part of the amazing Seahawks duo, and as Ocean Moon, with his Ambient / New Age Music I really love. I had wanted his Remix for a long time, he too was immediately enthusiastic about the project and so he joined the team for this release. During the processing of the Remixes, Jon had also done another soft version, very Ambient and ethereal and so I thought to also ask Hear & Now and Mushrooms Projects and me of course, to do our soft, relaxed versions, something that was behind and beyond the original Remixes. Here ‘Beyond The Remixes’ were born, then released in July 2024 only digitally. But I can now reveal as a preview with great happiness that the 2 'Beyond The Remixes', the Hear & Now one and mine, will be released on vinyl in a super limited release in spring 2025. I'm so happy with my Beyond The Dulcis, a meditative, spaced out 13 minutes track, a sort of New Age meditation immersed in a balmy horn, delicate hand percussion and watery pads. AR026 - Modula Featuring Gino Saccio - Che E' Stato? 7". Filippo / Modula contacted me years ago, letting me listen to a draft of this wonderful track and saying that in his opinion it would be a perfect Archeo release. He was right! I accepted immediately and we worked on the idea of ​​the cover artwork and on the Remix. Filippo proposed me Pellegrino, his dear friend and collaborator and obviously it could not have been otherwise: an entirely Neapolitan release. And here is this fizzy and crisp Disco / Funk Neapolitan interpretation of Gino Soccio's cult cut 'Who Dunnit', backed with a remix from hometown hero Pellegrino. I'm obviously a big fan of the Neapolitan scene, from Tony Esposito, Tullio De Piscopo, Pino Daniele, Enzo Avitabile, Master Roberto De Simone and Nuova Compagnia Di Canto Popolare, to today Modula and Pellegrino, Quiroga, 291Out, Nu Genea, Whodamanny and Mystic Jungle. I love that unique sound and I am deeply attached to it. AR017 - Ettika ... The Holy Grail! It's truly a sought after record and I was obsessed with this song. I got a copy of the 1984 original years and years ago, when the price was still acceptable. I have had this title ready for years, but I wanted to do something really special. And finally here is the Record Store Day April 2024 Box Set (AR017-RSD24 Box Set) and the 2 singles, the 7" (AR017-7) with the 2 Original versions (French and Arab) and the 12" (AR017-12) with the 3 new Remixes, 2 by Hear & Now and 1 by The Veteran Delinquents (Craig Christon and Tim Hutton), a new interpretation both respectful and revolutionary. All enriched by a wonderful insert with the Liner Notes of my dear friend, DJ and curator of fantastic compilations, Vidal Benjamin, which I absolutely recommend you read to get an idea of ​​the incredible story behind this record. One of the Archeo releases that I'm most proud of and which reflects the work I do with my label. Again, a 'Labor of Love'. Sadly and with a little bit of shame, I didn't have the opportunity and time to meet Lucio Dalla, it would have been something incredible for me. For Lucio I have an enormous admiration for all his artistic work and a truly deep affection, as if he were part of my family, a distant uncle or cousin. When he died I was truly shocked and often missed him and still do today. An absolute genius! When I think of him and listen to his music I enter into a deep positive emotional transport that makes me feel very good and takes me to another dimension, as often happens to any of us when listening to the music we love. I made a T-shirt some time ago with Lucio's face, dreamy, enigmatic and a little melancholic, from his 1978 LP 'Lucio Dalla', which contains some of my favorite songs too, first of all 'La Signora', then 'L'Ultima Luna' and 'Stella Di Mare'. So many memories! It was a record that was in my mother's collection so I can say that I really grew up with it. In 2018 I had the pleasure of visiting Dalla's house in via D'Azeglio, now a museum, in my hometown, Bologna. It was a unique emotion. I was with a group of unknown people since it was a pre-booked visit, but I fully enjoyed that trip, immersing myself in the musical world and daily life of the artist, one of the greatest ever, as if a part of him was still there to breathe the magic of his poetry. 'La Signora' is one of the songs that has practically always accompanied me, I listened to it as a child, as a teenager and now as an adult, and every time it transmits something magical and indescribable to me. It would be a dream to be able to have the licenses for these masterpieces to release them on Archeo with various Remixes. I'll try, who knows. Lucio was also originally from and lived in Bologna like me, so again a deep connection. As for AR024 - Bottin Featuring Lucio Dalla - Lunedì Cinema 12", it is a record that I particularly care about and I am so happy and honored to have given light to this release. Lunedì Cinema track was for many years the RAI, one of the most important Italian public TV, theme song which preceded Lunedì Film, the films broadcast on Monday evening in the 80s and 90s. I remember as a child being totally in love and obsessed with this song. It all started then from the beautiful remix of Lunedì Cinema by Bottin released on the CD 'I Love Me Volume 1' in 2004, which I have been listening to and playing for years and years. I have been in contact with Guglielmo Bottin since long time and I respect him a lot both as a Producer and as a DJ. We share a great Love and Passion for the Italian music of the 80s and 90s and its greatest exponents, such as Lucio Dalla, Lucio Battisti, Toto Cutugno, Gianni Morandi ... the Bigs, the 'Sacred Monsters' in short! In one of our many emails I asked Guglielmo why his beautiful Remix had never yet been released on vinyl and if he wanted to make a specific release on Archeo, perhaps involving someone else for a remix. He accepted with joy asking if we could involve Leo Mas for a new Remix. The featuring of Lucio Dalla was a gift of the time that the great singer gave to Guglielmo as they were very close friends. I then asked Guglielmo to tell about their friendship and the story of the original track and so that's how the insert that is part of the release was born. Bottin, Leo and I worked on the idea of ​​the cover graphics and the packaging of the remixes and thus the release was completed, with Bottin's 'Martedì Mix 2008' and Leo's 2 new Remixes, the 'Drive In Mix' and the 'Dub Mix'. Lunedì Cinema is finally a record! How wonderful! A small necessary parenthesis on Leo Mas ... Leo, a true legend, my older brother, as I often like to think of him, a person with a talent and an unique taste who made the history of the club, of the Balearic and a piece of living history. He has always enriched the Remix he handled for Archeo in a superlative way, with a great attention to details and the final result. Let's think about precisely of the 'II° Coro Delle Lavandaie' 12" and 'Devozioni Dialettali' by Enzo Avitabile - another small spoiler, we will soon do the official release with new Remixes from the now 2017 promo - and again 'Tonica & Dominante' and obviously 'Lunedì Cinema' by Dalla. A champion and a true friend. More or less once a month we have long and very pleasant phone calls lasting hours in which we tell each other lots of things and he always comes up with new anecdotes that leave me speechless. So funny! AR023 - Sara Loreni - Neve A Maggio (Remixes) 12". It was another incredible story and release that I am very proud of. Sara Loreni is a very good singer and wonderful person, also originally from Parma, like Mushrooms Project. I remember that in the midst of the pandemic my dear friend Marco Mushrooms Project, as we usually do with each other, sent me a draft of a remix to listen to, what would later become the 'Mushrooms Project Disco Maxi Single Mix' of the 12" and I was very impressed. Many months later I asked Marco what had happened to that remix and he told me that it should have been part of a compilation but that it had been discarded and so I immediately thought and asked him if he wanted to make a proper release for me. Marco accepted the idea enthusiastically, but told me that he would take care of how to structure the entire 12", thinking of making another version - what would later become the very powerful 'Mushrooms Project Rave Mix' - and asking Alessandro Deep88 to make his own 90s house version, the 'Deep88 Remix'. I also asked for a Balearic version and Leo Almunia came to our minds and so the 4th Remix was born, the 'Mushrooms Project Featuring Leo Almunia Balearic Version'. I spoke to Sara who was immediately very happy too and we agreed on the licenses. This is how this wonderful collaboration was born. I later met Sara in person and we became good friends. She is such a kind and polite person with a unique talent and voice. I will definitely do more things with her in the future. AR020 - Tonica & Dominante 7" and 12". Another amazing and really sought after record is the Original 7". Originally released in 1979 on a small record label, the two songs became a total cult through the years and one of the most wanted and rarest and impossible to find record, with few copies pressed ... a true milestone in the underground Neapolitan Disco Funk sound. Leo and I were literally obsessed with these 2 tracks and decided to find the licenses and do a collaboration on the release. To enrich everything, the 2 new killer Remixes by Leo Mas were then born ... Marvellous! AR006 - Blues Gas - Shadows From Nowhere 12". Blue Gas is another incredible story. I had been obsessed with 'Shadows From Nowhere' for years and was desperately looking for the licenses and the artist. Finally I managed to find Celso Valli's phone number and have an appointment in his studio in Bologna. Another wonderful meeting with a special person of immense humility and humanity. Imagine that he was enthusiastic about the idea of ​​a reissue and thanked me for my interest, having never believed that his wonderful 1983 song could still be listened to today, work and excite people. A special mention goes also to these wonderful Artists, with whom I have established a particular relationship of friendship, esteem and collaboration. AR015 - Pepe Maina - Scerizza LP of 2019. The 1979 New Age / Electronic masterpiece by the Italian contemporary inter-dimensional and multi-instrumental maverick Pepe Maina. He is ranging between Prog Rock, New Age, Organic Jazz and Global Minimalism in his own unique way over the course of 50 years and almost as many albums, largely self-released and always absolutely far from commercial concerns. He is based in a small village in the hills of Brianza, just north of Milan and he spends much of the day in his studio making Music and translating the beauty of his surroundings into transformative tone poems. I can say that he is truly one of my favorite Artists of all time. I love his Music, his touch, his depth but at the same time his simplicity and his Joy in Life. I'm working with him on a Compilation of his most beautiful songs. It's a super important release for me and I'm really happy and honored. AR011 - Roberto Aglieri - Ragapadani double LP of 2017. The Original 1987 LP enriched by a bonus LP, which contains other versions and unreleased songs by the Italian flutist and composer Roberto Aglieri. His flute sounds haunting and evocative over the range of delicate synth treatments. Soothing, thoughtfully crafted music for tender times with an incredible esoteric atmosphere. I'm in love with 'Sogno Di Mezzogiorno' with the sound of crickets in the background, 'Danza N. 1', 'Made In Terraneo', a title that plays on the Italian pronunciation 'Mediterraneo' of the Mediterranean Sea, and 'Twin Piece'. I love this release and I love Roberto too. We're planning other collaborations for the future. AR018 - The Mario Acquaviva EP of 2019. The 1983 Balearic / Pop / Soft Rock masterpiece 12" and now so in demand by Italian Musician and Songwriter Mario Acquaviva, with the famous song 'Notturno Italiano', which will be featured with an amazing Remix in one of the next volumes for 'Archeo 10 Year Anniversary'. AR022 - Manrico & Nicola - Le Piante Del Lago LP 2021. A 1990 previuosly unreleased project by the Duo Manrico & Nicola: Manrico Mologni, the Italian artist, singer, musician and composer and Nicola Calgari, the Italian saxophonist, composer and sound engineer, enriched with 2 new Balearic Versions by Ed Longo, Italian DJ, Producer and Mixing Engineer based in Berlin. Please let's have a read about the beautiful and moving story behind this release. [Colleen] What is the future for Archeo Recordings? [Manu] I hope and wish for many many more years. I have various things in the works. First of all and of which I am very happy, proud, excited and grateful, I have been thinking of celebrating the Archeo Recordings 10 Year Anniversary with a series of vinyl releases with Remixes, Reworks, Covers by various Italian and worldwide Artists, Producers, Musicians, DJs and Friends on almost the entire catalog. The idea is to do a series of EPs / 12” on which the label's favourite contemporaries pay homage to past masters. Every single Artist, Producer, Musician can choose a song from the Archeo catalog and creates her / his new version. Volume 1 EP is in production and will be out for the end of November with 4 new Remixes: one is Pepe Maina - The Infinite (Manu Archeo Remix), a song originally released on Pepe’s 2014 only CD ‘Tales From The Hill’ with an intro with a recitation of Leopardi’s poem 'L'Infinito' (1825) by famed Italian actor Vittorio Gassman. Giacomo Leopardi, a leading figure in the Italian romantic movement, in this poem, explores the idea of time and space within the natural world, and the peace that comes with an appreciation of the immensity of eternity. It was a poem that I adored as a student in high school and that 200 years later evokes a strong feeling of ecstasy that seems so contemporary. The second Remix is Roberto Aglieri Featuring Stefano Faravelli - Danza N. 1 by Feel Fly, the Feel Fly Meditan'Trippy Remix, something unique; the third Remix is Radio Band - Radio Rap Remix by the mysterious Radiomarc from Popcorn Groove label, a killer track, and the fourth Remix is the fifteen minute fusion of séance and science Futuro Antico - Pan Tuning, Mushrooms Project Remix, the Mushrooms Project Danza Mix Part 1, 2 and 3. I’m so happy with this first Volume in the series! Please visit the Archeo website at www.archeo-recordings.com for more infos and details. Next Volumes will feature Artists such as Hear & Now, Mudd from Claremont 56, Leo Mas, Club Soda from Flexi Cuts, Bottin, Lova, Lorenzo Fortino, LucaEffeSunset and many many more give birth to new and exciting Remixes. Really looking forward! Then, I’d like to do some parties to celebrate with great DJs and friends. More infos soon in the next months, maybe I think we’ll go for Spring / Summer 2025. A special thanks & big big Love to Colleen "Cosmo" Murphy!

Meeting members of the Balearic Breakfast Family is always a favourite moment of mine on the blog! Let's chat with Steve (DJ Macaroon) today! 1) Hi Steve! I am so happy you joined us here on the Balearic Breakfast blog! I wanted to take this opportunity to talk with you about our beloved show and about our commune passion, Music! So tell me, how do you select the songs you request for the show? Hi Artur, thanks for having me! I select the requested tracks in different ways in fact! They may be the latest piece of vinyl to come in the post, or a track I’ve heard elsewhere that excites me at that moment, or tracks from the past that I had on CD, or perhaps a song I’d forgotten I had in my digital collection and which I rediscovered recently! Very often I'm surprised as they still sound so fresh and exciting! Hopefully, they fit in with what Colleen has in mind for the show! I also have an idea of what won’t get played and it’s always worth the effort of making the request more interesting with a bit of personal blurb about what the track means to me. It’s an honour and a privilege that over 22 of my requests were played by Colleen since Anga Diaz ‘Love Supreme’ in April 2022! I’ll gladly admit that getting a shout-out from Colleen and hearing my request played is always a thrill! 2) And do you have a never-ending list of tracks or do you simply go with the flow every Saturday? I’m always chasing that next musical thrill, that shot of endorphin that comes with finding and then obtaining a new tune, especially if just released on vinyl - I’m a sucker when I see ‘limited stock’ appear on my favourite supplier website (Juno.co.uk - other websites available!). I will buy a digital version if unavailable on vinyl or else added to my Apple Music playlist. I expect most collectors of music do the same, we’re all junkies! This year I’ve had to cut back on my spending, though my want list grows and grows! 3) A radio host and a DJ, can you take us back to your younger years? I grew up with disco and never left. My Dad’s music selection consisted mostly of Elton John, Barry Manilow, some classical and big bands (Count Basie), crooners like Jack Jones, and a few the odd old and worn-out party compilations from his younger married days. We later shared, in my mid-late teens, a love for Abba, Jean-Michel Jarre and Eurythmics. Through my school friend Jo's collection, I discovered other artists like David Bowie, Talking Heads, The Doors, J. J. Cale, Van Morrison, etc. Then, During University in the late 80s, I went further back in time with Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and Joni Mitchell, who were big favourites. I’ll admit that Phil Collins ‘Face Value’ became the go-to album to console myself from yet another broken heart! Ah those big saxophone solos… Returning home to Bristol in the early '90s I found Purple Penguin Records (now closed, sadly) and so many great compilation CDs - including the very important (to me) ‘Rebirth Of Cool’ series, amongst many others. I’ve been going through my old CD collection recently (resurrected from some dusty corners of my attic), many of which are no longer available on iTunes, rediscovering forgotten albums and tracks, and those songs my wife Alli and I used to sing along to on our many many trips to North Devon when our kids were growing up! I will be doing a show or two with tracks just from this period, so won’t spoil the surprise more than that, laughs! I later discovered Gilles Peterson, who was and remains a HUGE influence on me. I discovered SO much through listening to his Radio 6 music shows, and of course the hey-day of Worldwide FM through which I found Colleen, Collin Curtis and Coco Maria. The Covid epidemic and the spontaneous purchase of some old Berlinger decks and mixer resulted in my dipping my toes into the world of vinyl. This started with seeking out albums by artists that have been featured on the also very influential compilation ’Strange Games and Funky Things’, and a recording of a DJ set by Jazzy B at the Brixton Academy from the early 90s. During Covid, being able to collect, play and stream music via Mixcloud was a life-saver. Although my regular audience was quite limited (usually Alli, my close friend Carolyn and occasionally my son listening in with his mates at Uni, bless him) both Alli and I loved the time to turn up the volume, put on the disco lights and have a good-old dance. 4) Can you tell us how you work your way through when doing your live shows on Mixcloud? For my sets at home, I try and play as much vinyl as possible. I have a growing collection but still quite small compared to many people, so this does limit things. I much prefer the feel and sound of vinyl, the whole experience in selecting and playing is so much more satisfying. I also prefer the control being able to quickly select a track from an album if not sure what to play. The resulting set is then a mix of older vinyl that have great tracks I’ve not played before, new digital music finds that I feel will blend in well and new vinyl hot through the door - more often than not a great dance 12”. Usually, I’m quite spontaneous and the set list is pulled together about 2 hours before the show. The pattern of the set is often very much the same each week, starting off with something cool, laid back and jazzy, something spiritual and mellow to get the ears working and to warm me up as well as my listeners. The tempo and energy lift as the evening wears on, matching the number of cocktails I have drunk by then (mine’s a Negroni or Margherita, thanks, laughs!), ending with a full-on dance party and trying not to bump into the decks. I’m now adding a few comedown tracks at the end for me and my dear listener to slow the heart, sip the last of the drink, maybe put the kettle on and pop some bread in the toaster. It's always nice to have a few Balearicans join me on the stream, so please come and say hello next time! 5) You have a nice musical flow, very effortless, keeping music vibrant, not trying to mix at any price. Do you feel a DJ should behave differently on radio vs during a live set? That’s very kind of you to say Artur! A DJ should be creative in their own unique way, there are no rules for either a live set to a crowd or a broadcast show, though what the audiences are looking for are very different. I can’t yet beat match vinyl and it’s not that important on a radio show. I like to mix up styles, genres and tempos, whatever I feel inspired with and excited to play in the moment - that’s Gilles Peterson’s influence, as well as Colleen. I have felt constrained to play only what people recognise and can sing and dance to at friend’s parties mostly. That’s of course essential to have a good time, but I prefer an audience that is willing to dance to familiar and unfamiliar music! 6) We all know how much Colleen means to the whole Balearic Family (I did a tribute mix too and it’s clear we love to celebrate her!). There is that lingering question: Why? Colleen’s history, knowledge and experiences shine through in every show. She's like a bright ray of sunshine. The range of music is always appealing and it's always great to discover new sounds! The feeling of family in the chat is special, and I love and am honoured that you and a few others (shout out to Anna and Rick) have become regular listeners also to my humble efforts! 7) What’s next for you musically speaking? I heard you may be about to secure your first residency as a DJ at a very local new Japanese music bar. Congratulations! Can you tell us more about it? Earlier this year the very local ‘Lonely Mouth’ Japanese listening cafe run by the wonderful Liv (The food there is excellent by the way) opened up and Liv called out to local Bristol DJs to come and play, and I jumped at the chance. What's great is that I get to play just about anything I think is good to chill and eat to (all vinyl of course!). I now stream these sets live on MixCloud and record them to allow the staff and customers to listen back to them. The great feedback I get from customers and staff means a lot to me and helps me connect to the world again after the isolation that I’m sure everyone felt during Covid. I am on the fence at the moment about asking to try out at one of the many venues in Bristol. There are SO many DJs in Bristol and it’s hard for me to find the confidence to go out and give it a try. I guess I don’t have the ego to think that enough people will enjoy what I have to offer? Maybe when I’ve grown my vinyl collection? I do need to invest in my digital music collection outside Apple Music, so I can use digital DJ software (that I also need to learn to use) to add to vinyl. Through Lonely Mouth I’m meeting more local DJs and am being inspired by how to put sets together, what goes down well, and of course new music discoveries. One day soon… Until then I’ll keep enjoying my sets at Lonely Mouth and my shows from home! We wish you the best of luck Steve and you can count on our support!

Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy broadcast the 198th episode of Balearic Breakfast on her Mixcloud on October 22nd 2024. About this episode. – Balearic Breakfast celebrates music. So, when Black History Month hits, it is only logical that the Balearic Breakfast Family celebrates Black musicians, composers, and singers, in one word: Black Artists. As every year, the Family got together and, at Colleen's request, chose songs celebrating the unique and tremendous musicianship fronted by our fellow black people. Today's episode was a 2+ festive musical moment we all spent together on Colleen's Mixcloud, listening to her delicate and still perfect mix praising music we are deeply connected to! A second part is scheduled for October 29th (which is a first-timer as Colleen never did that before)! Listen back to Balearic Breakfast's 198th episode: "This morning’s Balearic Breakfast celebrates Black History Month and is now archived on my Mixcloud. We had so many great requests that next Tuesday’s show will be yet another tribute to the musicianship of Black and Brown artists. Thank you all for your incredible song requests that span over half a century." PLAYLIST (2021) Nina Simone – Four Women (Live at Montreux Jazz Festival) (1972) Terry Callier – What Color is Love (1973) Jon Lucien – Rashida (2000) Mos Def – Umi Says (2021) Figure of Speech? – I am a Man (1972) Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway – Be Real Black for Me (2005) Jill Scott – Cross My Mind (1977) Willie Wright – Nantucket Island (2024) Michael Kiwanuka – Floating Parade (1970) Cissy Houston – I'll Be There (1968) Dorothy Ashby – Soul Vibrations (1994) Sounds of Blackness – I Believe (1972) Roy Ayers Ubiquity – We Live in Brooklyn Baby (1977) Banda Black Rio – Mr Funky Samba (1976) Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – It's Your World (2000) Femi Kuti – Blackman Know Yourself (Roots Remix) (2009) Georgia Anne Muldrow – Roses (2024) Musclecars ft Aden – Hello? (Maurice Fulton Remix) (1981) Madagascar ft Marva King – Rainbow (1989) Soul II Soul – Happiness' (Dub) (1983) Herbie Hancock – Autodrive (1983) Eartha Kitt – Where is My Man (2024) Mike Nasty – Mother Earth (1981) Angela Bofill – Rhythm of My Mind (1988) Whitney Houston – Love Will Save the Day TO BE A BLACK ARTIST... For this episode, and also for the upcoming one, I felt we might take the opportunity to do something a bit different and reflect on what it felt, and what it presently feels, like to be a black musician, a black artist. Each of today's featured artists had his/her own perspective on racism and they all had an impact on this world's History. Starting with the great Nina Simone, she was direct about it, sharing: "I must say that Martin Luther King didn't win too much with his non-violence (...) "[Martin Luther King] is remembered more than Malcolm X, and Malcolm X never had a chance to get the kind of popularity that Martin Luther King got. But I was never non-violent, never. I thought we should get our rights by any means necessary." We can also think about Jill Scottt who recently changed the lyrics to the American Anthem. Refering to the Black experience in America, Scott, leading to controversy, changed the lyrics as follows "Oh, say, can you see, by the blood in the streets, this place doesn't smile on you, colored child. Whose blood built this land with sweat and their hands. But we'll die in this place and your memory erased. Oh say, does this truth hold any weight? This is not the land of the free but the home of the slaves." On the same non-compromising path, the legendary Gill Scott-Heron, with his radical and unforgiving lyrics, always championed his contemporary's spirits by singing protest songs. Femi Kuti is also directly speaking out about Racism in America and poverty in Africa, “One People One World” is the title track off of his 2018 album in which Kuti delivers an anthem of peace and unity. Poignant lyrics include “Exchange cultural experiences, that’s the way it should be” and “Racism has no place.” The song also takes on a global resonance with the line: “All nations are guilty / At one point of hostilities.” The song is relevant in light of systemic racism and current hostilities that certain countries are expressing towards immigrants. On the other hand, artists, like Terry Callier (who touched his audiences like no one else when singing live) or even Donny Hathaway, didn't want to be seen as activists although they did not refrain from speaking out about what it meant to be black. For them, Music was the key to their message, and that was sufficient. Other important musical figures did not hide from saying out loud that being black was not a curse, one of them being the great Mos Def, sharing: "I don’t mind being black. I’m black out loud. It’s more than the people that they are, it’s the condition that they represent. I don’t hate nobody. I hate certain conditions that are inflicted upon the peopleâ??and they’re helpless with it. To me, the job of the artist is to provide a useful and intelligent vocabulary for the world to be able to articulate feelings they experience everyday, and otherwise wouldn’t have the means to express in a meaningful and useful way. It’s not that people have to “ball” less, it’s just that they need to do something good. This is what I wanted to tell XXL" A fun fact Jon Lucien shared in an interview, “The record company was attempting to package me as a sort of ‘black Sinatra,’ ” he said in a recent interview. “Once the white women started to swoon at my performances, their attitudes quickly changed.” We could not write this article without mentioning the key role Dorothy Ashby had on many musicians, including black ones such as Brandi Younger, who found solace in her musical life. Yet, for Dorothy, being a black harpist was a challenge in itself as she shared in her 1983 book "Living the Jaz Life": “It’s been maybe a triple burden in that not a lot of women are becoming known as jazz players (...). There is also the connection with Black women. The audiences I was trying to reach were not interested in the harp, period – classical or otherwise – and they were certainly not interested in seeing a Black woman playing the harp.” Sometimes, even the most famous artists experience tough moments, and this hapenned to our beloved Withney Houston who was boed at the 1989 Soul Train Awards. Reflecting on her career and her "racial status", she shared: “Sometimes it gets down to ‘You’re not black enough for them. You’re not R&B enough. You’re very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.’” I would love to end this article by mentioning what Herbie Hancock said in 2017 (perfectly reflecting today's episode last song and Colleen's dedication to David Mancuso who would have turned 80 if he was still with us): "This music that was created by African-Americans in the past has blossomed. It was born out of difficulty and racism and turmoil and slavery," Hancock said. "But it is an example of something that’s deeper than just being black. It’s about being human. It means human beings have the ability to turn poison into medicine." Yes, Love Saves The Day... ABOUT THE SONGS Nina Simone – Four Women (Live at Montreux Jazz Festival). – Nina Simone with Black, with Four Women, an incredible song that depicts four different black women and the challenges and suffering they have endured. It's profound, it could only have been written by Simone, one of the greatest songwriters of the civil rights movement. Four Women was first released on Simone's 1966 album Wild is the Wind, but this version was recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival and released on a great double album that compiles some of her best performances there. Terry Callier – What Color is Love. – Terry Collier's voice has a gentle sincerity that never fails to tug at the heartstrings. The late Chicago-born jazz soul, folk singer, songwriter, guitarist got his start in the 1960s and released albums until the early 80s when he stopped performing as he had gotten custody of his daughter. He studied computer programming, worked at the University of Chicago where he also studied sociology, and he was rediscovered by the jazz DJs here in the UK like Eddie Pillar and Giles Peterson, and they really helped reinvigorate his musical career. Jon Lucien – Rashida. – John Lucien, was described by Herbie Hancock as the man with the golden throat. The balladeer was born in the British Virgin Islands and moved to New York City in the 1960s, and was discovered by a record exec while singing at a party. He signed a deal with RCA in 1970, and Rashida is the title track from his sophomore LP. Lucien's trademark was both his velvety voice and his emotionally charged, very personal lyrics. Mos Def – Umi Says. – As a big fan of the Silquerian movement, Colleen was happy that Ana requested Most Deaf's Umi says. From his incredible debut solo album, Black on Both Sides, a follow-up to his collaborative album with Talib Kweli as the duo Blackstar, born Dante Smith, a socially conscious rapper and actor who converted to Islam in his teens, officially changed his name to Yassine Bey in 2011, saying, "I began to fear that Most Deaf was being treated as a product, not a person. So I've been going by Yassine since 99". Figure of Speech? – I am a Man. – By the Manchester-raised, Bristol-based artist figure of speech, and thanks to Still Andy, really, who requested this song and encouraged people to check out, he encourages people to check out the entire album. It's not only is it filled with thought-provoking lyrics, but also the sales from the vinyl of, excuse me, from the vinyl of his 2021 LP are donated to the Bristol Black Carers Charity. Figureofspeech wrote on his bandcamp: "there are over 500,000 carers who are people of color in the UK, yet many do not even identify with the term carer. It's natural and expected within those communities for families or friends to look after loved ones. Active outreach is needed to provide them with the assistance they undoubtedly need." Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway – Be Real Black for Me. – Before Hathaway's tragic passing, he recorded two albums with his musical soulmate and fellow Howard University graduate Roberta Flack. She had included Hathaway on compositions on her album's first take in Chapter Two. In fact, Hathaway also arranged, played piano, and sang backing vocals for her. So the two of them collaborating was a natural next step. From their first LP as a duo released in 1971, this is Be Real Black for Me. – Reflecting on the album's recording, Flack shared in an interview: “The love and connection that Donny and I had, musically—it was like flying. Donny was a musical genius. I don’t use that term lightly. The recording of this album was a time for us that was joyful, creative, and effortless.” Jill Scott – Cross My Mind. – 2005 Grammy Award-winning single Cross My Mind by Philadelphia singer-songwriter, poet, and actor Jill Scott from her second album, Beautiful Human, Words and Sound, Volume 2. She's released five studio albums, but maybe even more well-known as an actress now as her filmography is more extensive, with her last appearance in 2023's Outlaw Johnny Black. Willie Wright – Nantucket Island. – Born of Harlem doo-wop roots and refined by Boston's counterculture scene, Willie Wright arrived in Nantucket in 1976, well worn by two decades of street corner and club performing and eager to make money the easy way on private yachts. He was trapped on Nantucket Island over the winter of 1976 and a set of original songs poured into Willie Wright's cover-heavy set. Tales of Wright's native roots, straight life, his abandoned four children and the many women he had known flooded his loose-leaf notebook before finally being set to tape in New York the following spring. The result was a 1977 LP, Telling the Truth, which was reissued just over a decade ago. Michael Kiwanuka – Floating Parade. – Michael Kiwanuka finally has a new album on the horizon, a follow-up to his 2019, Kiwanuka. We just heard Floating Parade, the first single from the London singer-songwriter guitarist and producer's new album, Small Changes, which will be released on the 15th of November. Cissy Houston – I'll Be There. – Gospel singer Sissy Houston lost her musical career singing with her family as a drink-art singer and then helmed her niece's group, the Gospel Heirs, before founding the Sweet Inspirations in 1967. They recorded four albums before Houston left in 1970 to pursue her own solo career. She was also an in-demand session musician for artists like Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Paul Simon, Bette Midler, Linda Ronstadt, and J.T. Cale. And of course, she was Whitney Houston's mother. Sadly, she passed to the next realm earlier this month, but she also enjoyed hits of her own, including this one, her 1970 cover of Bobby Darin's I'll be there, which landed Houston a spot on the R&B Top 20. Dorothy Ashby – Soul Vibrations. – Cut from one of the most played jazz albums in our house, as requested by Bradley Circles. We heard Soul Vibrations from the album Afro Harping by Detroit's late harpist, pianist, and composer Dorothy Ashby. The 1968 release has been a very sought-after record, especially by producers, and has just recently seen a vinyl reissue. Sounds of Blackness – I Believe. – From the album Africa to America, The Journey of the Drum, we heard, I believe, by Sounds of Blackness, a band that boasted both Ann Nesby and Lips Inc.'s Cynthia Johnson as former members. The Minnesota-based group was actually founded in 1969, and they continue to perform. Their 1994 album was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and the record won the Best Gospel Album at the Soul Train Music Awards Roy Ayers Ubiquity – We Live in Brooklyn Baby. – From the vibraphonist, keyboardist, and singer's group's album, He's Coming, released in 1972. And that was also sampled by Mos Def on the song Brooklyn. Banda Black Rio – Mr Funky Samba. – The Brazilian band Banda Black Rio, who formed in 1976, as an instrumental soul funk group often kind of put together with Earth, Wind and Fire and Early Cool and the Gang. They are still going strong today as the present band are the sons of the original members. Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson – It's Your World. – Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson's It's Your World is the title track and opening cut on It's your world, one of the best live albums of all time. Actually, it's a mix of both studio and live performances. Brian Jackson is still performing and recording and he joined Colleen for a Classic Album Sunday session to explore his album Bridges with Scott Heron. Femi Kuti – Blackman Know Yourself (Roots Remix). – The original version of this song came out nearly a quarter of a century ago and Fela Kuti's eldest son's Femi's 1998 LP Shoky Shoky. Femi has been prolific since the late 1980s. And last year, he released a collaborative album with Detroit techno producer Robert Hood called Variations. Georgia Anne Muldrow – Roses. – Los Angeles soul hip hop singer and producer Georgia Ann Muldrow, daughter of jazz guitarist Rommel Muldrow and singer Jackie Byers. And she's worked with Mostef and Madlib and has released loads of albums, both solo and as collaborations with Dudley Perkins, and also under another moniker Jyoti. Musclecars ft Aden – Hello? (Maurice Fulton Remix). – Colleen been championing this next NYC duo since their first remix landed on her radar during the pandemic. Since then, muscle cars have made waves as the new sound of New York, both with their debut album Sugar Honey Ice Tea released this year on BBE, and also with their DJ sets. Madagascar ft Marva King – Rainbow. – Rainbow was from Madagascar's 1981 LP Spirit of the Street. It was a soul group's only album. They were essentially a group of session musicians including the late keyboardist arranger songwriter John Barnes who got his start at Motown and singer Marva King who later joined Prince's new power generation. Soul II Soul – Happiness' (Dub). – By Soul to Soul from the London Sound System's debut groundbreaking album Club Classics Volume One released in 1989 which was one of the biggest albums by a black British artist along with Sade in the 1980s, and a seminal record that really changed the musical landscape. Herbie Hancock – Autodrive. – One of the greatest keyboard players and a true tech head, somebody who is always forging forward, Herbie Hancock. This is from his 29th album released over 40 years ago. Future Shock came out in 1983. It was co-produced by material bassist Bill Laswell and featured Miles Davis guitarist Pete Cosey and drummer Sly Dunbar. Eartha Kitt – Where is My Man. – The 1983 single by American singer and actress who played Catwoman in the 1960s Batman TV series Eartha Kitt, which became her biggest selling single in 30 years. And that was from her album very straightforwardly titled I Love Men. The track became a cult club anthem and it was Kitt's first recording released in the United States after she was ostracized and fled into self-imposed exile in Paris following her outspoken objection to the Vietnam War at a White House function in 1968. Mike Nasty – Mother Earth. – The Brooklyn based DJ and producer Mike Nasty, from his album Black Planet released this past spring, hails the pulsating fusion of electronic dance music skillfully interwoven with the rich tapestry of sounds from the diverse corners of the African diaspora. Angela Bofill – Rhythm of My Mind. – From Angela Bofill's third LP 1981's Something About You. The late singer was born to Cuban and Puerto Rican parents in the Bronx. She grew up studying and performing classical music until she was discovered by Larry Rosen and Dave Grusin of GRP, who helped launch her solo career. Whitney Houston – Love Will Save the Day. – Jelly Bean and David Morales remix of one of Whitney Houston's most beloved songs. – Only 250 copies of this promo 12" single were ever pressed, according to David Morales himself, in an interview with Music Week UK magazine. His quote from the December 3, 1994 issue, regarding his experience remixing the track: “My second commissioned remix. It was hard to get, and I made it a success, but the record company rejected it. I think they rejected it because it was too black and too dark. The only person I gave it to in New York was Frankie Knuckles – we played it and everybody was asking for it. Someone else remixed it in the end – a poppy remix – but DJ’s were asking for the Morales remix. The pop mix had no balls. In the end they had to press 250 copies for us DJ’s. About 2 years ago DMC put it out on a compilation – it had a huge buzz. It hurt they rejected it – I was devastated and it was essential to get the record out: for my resume, for more work.”

In the first episode of Tina Edward's "My Year In Sound" podcast, music obsessive Colleen Cosmo Murphy brings us back to her version of 1986. About this interview. – I remember discovering Tina during "Covid Times" on Instagram thanks to events she hosted for Classic Album Sundays that were aired on Facebook back then, around May 2020! She's been a DJ I've been following like you follow a friend, and I remember also listening to a few of her shows and mixes. I enjoyed what she did (and still do, of course, laughs!); it simply connected. So, seeing Tina interviewing Colleen in this first "My Year in Sound" episode really brought me joy, and I had to share this one here! This conversation really hits a lot of musical, personal, and intellectual spots! I love how Colleen and Tina talk together about Colleen's journey; they both get along so well! If you want to discover more about Colleen's musical life, she shares some bits she didn't previously, like why she doesn't write album reviews anymore, how moving to New York in 1986 was a pivotal moment in her life, how live concerts impacted her musical journey and, of course, how much Balearic Breakfast means to her not only on the musical level but on the human level too (that part brought tears to my eyes, rargrf)! The freshness of the interview is unparalleled, and it allows you to appreciate how much Tina is a great interviewer! As usual, I transcribed the interview and added a few links, videos etc. Enjoy... (and thank you so much, Tina, for the Pictures) ! In our very first episode of #MyYearinSound , we’re joined by Colleen Cosmo Murphy – DJ and vinyl-loving curator, founder of global listening event Classic Album Sundays and the host of Balearic Breakfast, an eclectic radio show hosted on Mixcloud with a legion of loyal fans. Colleen’s music community know that she’s a vinyl-loving audiophile and curator who digs deep to find music that moves people. Today, she brings us back to her version of 1986: high school graduation from a small town in Massachusetts, working as an assistant manager at a record shop, moving to New York City and the beginnings of her passion-filled career. "𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘐 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘮. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸, 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 18 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴, 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘪𝘵? 𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 – 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘭𝘣𝘶𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵". Subscribe to our channel for more exclusive podcast content from the music community. ------------------------ 𝗗𝗝, 𝗯𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗧𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗘𝗱𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁. 𝗘𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲, 𝘄𝗲'𝗿𝗲 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗮 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗼’𝘀 𝗯𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗰𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰. 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗳𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗴𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗰 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲𝘀, 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝘀, 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿, 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀, 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀. 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆: https://snd.life/spotify   𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝘀 📱 INSTAGRAM:   / sol.soundoflife     FACEBOOK:   / sol.soundoflife   TINA EDWARDS & COLLEEN'S INTERVIEW [Tina] How's it going? I'm Tina Edwards and you're listening to My Year in Sound, a Sound of Life podcast powered by KEF. In each episode, we ask our special guests to put their year in music under the spotlight. We explore everything from iconic album releases through to unforgettable live shows, all kinds of music memories entwined with personal experiences and anecdotes. What's more, they'll bring in three personal items to help illustrate their special year in music. We're joined by a woman who's dedicated herself to the pursuit of music, whether that's from behind the DJ decks, the radio mic, or the production suites. Colleen's music community know that she's a curator who digs deep to find music that moves people. She's the founder of Classic Album Sundays, an intimate listening event that's been going strong since 2010. She's also the host of Balearic Breakfast, an eclectic radio show hosted on Mixcloud with a legion of loyal fans, and that also branches out into a compilation series. Many will know Colleen as a vinyl-loving audiophile, hosting a London version of The Love Party, a weekend of DJs in the love dancing tent at We Are Here Festival, and playing sets around the world. You might also hear her playing out some of her much-loved remixes as well. Today we are going back to 1986. Colleen, welcome to my year in sound!   [Colleen] Hello, thank you.   [Tina] It's a pleasure to have you here. Let's take it right back. What are your earliest memories of music?   [Colleen] My earliest memories of music had to do with my aunts and uncles, who were teenagers when I was growing up, and they were the ones with the cool records, not my parents. So my aunt got me, you know, Elton John's Greatest Hits for my birthday. It was the first vinyl album that somebody had given me. I was also driving around with my Uncle Dennis and his red convertible with the top down listening to The Beatles. I have lots of memories of that, and I remember once sitting alone in my Uncle John's room with all the blue lights on, the ultraviolet blue lights, and the glow-in-the-dark poster, and I was listening to the radio, to his transistor, and I heard the opening notes of David Essek's Rock On, and it was unlike anything else. It sounded like nothing else, and I thought there were little people in the radio, you know, making the music, and so those are kind of all my early kind of musical memories, but they really revolved around my aunts and uncles. [Tina] Beautiful. That's lovely. There's always, I feel, like a relative who is a bit of a instigator sometimes, whether it's like an older sibling or that cool auntie and uncle who kind of shows you a different way of listening to things, perhaps, than what your parents might.   [Colleen] Absolutely.   [Tina] For me, it was definitely like, you know, my mom was all about pop, you know, like Cliff Richard really mainstream pop, and then it was sort of, I don't know, I think, yeah, my auntie sort of introduced me to some cool stuff, but I feel like it's always that someone on someone else.   [Colleen] Yeah, exactly. Your parents aren't cool enough when you're young.   [Tina] That's it, exactly. That's the pickle. And I mean, the music that you love, that you champion is extremely eclectic, you know, from obscure disco through to shoegaze, through to indie, wherever it may be. Is there something that maybe ties together or maybe there's a common thread? [Colleen] Yeah, there's two kinds. There's good music and bad music! And that's about it! But I've always had very eclectic tastes, and I couldn't tell you why. But I started record collecting very early, you know, I was borrowing records from my aunts and uncles, even records like Kate Bush from my aunt. This is pre, you know, Hounds of Love. So this and Kate Bush was not a big name in America. I was just had very, very open ears. So I also started working in record shops at a young age, I started hosting radio shows in 1982 when I was 14. So I was just exposed, I exposed myself to a lot of music. I remember even going into Nuggets , which was a secondhand record shop in Kenmore Square in Boston, and going in when I was about 15 years old. And, you know, I was more into bands like New Order and Brian Eno. And I was looking through the records bins for more artists like that. But they're playing Roland Ressaint-Kirk . What is this? And I bought it. And they were really surprised. I think this kind of young, white teenage girl just bought this, you know, Rip, Break and Panic album. I mean, it was so I just really had wide open ears. And I still do. And I really feel there are two kinds of music, good music and bad music. Of course, it's subjective, you know, subjective to my ears. But everybody has that ability, not just me. [Tina] Completely. How do you sort of define good music? Is it a feeling?   [Colleen] No, you can't. I can't describe great music in words. It goes beyond words for me. It really does. I used to even write record reviews in the 1980s, actually, for Rockpool and then also for Project X magazine. And I stopped. I stopped writing record reviews because I hated describing music in words. I said instead, I'd rather interview the artists and find out their stories. But I don't read record reviews. I used to read my own and stopped.   [Tina] I guess that's a whole another experience.   [Colleen] But I don't read them. I don't really pay attention to them. I don't really think they're that important for me. I mean, maybe for people who don't have access to music, they need to figure out what they should buy or listen to. But I think times have changed, too. We can all sample anything and make our own decisions. So I just don't even read record reviews. I just have no time for them. And I just I have a really hard time describing music in words. It is so deep a feeling that words just there are no words.   [Tina] There is that phrase, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.   [Colleen] Yeah, that's a great one. Right. No, I haven't heard that. But that totally nails it for me.   [Tina] Yeah, quite an abstract thing to put into words. [Colleen] Exactly. [Tina] You mentioned you got into radio at 14, that's remarkably young!   [Colleen] Well, we have high school radio stations in the United States. And I started researching some of these high school radio stations. I thought at the time, everybody has a 10 watt high school radio station. But we didn't actually. And in Massachusetts, which is the state that I'm from, only 19 towns had a high school radio station. And my town was one of them. And it just transformed my life. I was invited up to be a guest on another cousin, a third cousin on my mother's side, on the Anderson side, not on the Murphy side. She was doing a radio show. She was in the same year as me. She was a freshman. And she was doing a radio show with a guy named Eric Ewers, who has since become quite big in the documentary film area. And they invited me to come out to play some records. I brought some oldies. And I was really into the Doors at the time as well. And they turned the mic on. And I ran across the library, ran out of the studio across the library and hid. And I was so afraid of speaking on the radio. But then I got used to it. And I had a radio show every single year for four years in high school. So it was a great, it was a great time. And I learned so much. And each year was quite different musically as well.   [Tina] Nice. I guess, yeah, it must have been a really great way for you to document your music loves at such a formative time.   [Colleen] Absolutely. Yeah. And it was like, it was so eclectic as well, because most of the shows on that station were top 40 or classic rock. I think there was one Christian rock show as well. But mine was all different. You know, the first year is more, as I said, more oldies, 60s stuff. But then the next one was called, I did more new wave and indie. The third year, I did a show named Punk, Funk and Junk, which is where the name Cosmo came from. And that was early hip hop, electro, funk, but also punk, hardcore and everything else, new wave, post punk. And then the last year was Strawberry Alarm Clock. And I brought the poster in for that. And that was my show that I had, let's see, Mondays and Fridays from 6 to 7.30am. Beautiful. [Tina] We're going to dive into that in good detail later on. I'm excited to take a closer look at that. I would love to ask you, you know, as a DJ, a radio host, a curator, you know, a journalist, a producer, there's so many things that you do. Do you find that they fulfil you differently in a creative sense?   [Colleen] Absolutely. I don't think I could just be one. Part of me sometimes thinks, gosh, you know, I'm a jewel of all trades and a master of none. And I go through that sometimes thinking, what if I had just dedicated myself just to DJing and producing? Or if I had just dedicated myself to radio? Or had just dedicated myself to my Classic Album Sunday's Platform? Would it be better? [Tina] I don't think that's you. [Colleen] I don't think it's me. I think I have too much interest in all of these things. In fact, it's hard for me to say no. I've learned how to say no now that I'm in my mid 50s! I don't say yes to everything. But they all kind of balance each other out. Plus, because I've always been interested in kind of underground genres of music, none that have been hugely commercially viable. The fact that I have a few things kind of ticking along and, you know, I've always thought, you know, juggling a few different balls and one's always kind of an effect. You know, I've been supporting myself independently since the late 90s. I haven't had a proper job. I've just worked for myself. So, you know, taking that flying leap and jumping off the cliff sort of, so to speak, and just hoping that you can survive, you know, living in major cities and paying rent. And so I just had to, you know, work really hard. But I love my work. You know, I love what I do. So I wake up like, oh, what can I get started on today?   [Tina] Yeah. And one, you know, feeds the other. I think, you know, I sort of, I think it's almost like being a professional fan. It's like you're sharing your fandom through as many different mediums as you can.   [Colleen] That's a great way of putting it. I feel like I'm a musical curator, educator and sharer.   [Tina] Yeah.   [Colleen] It's like, you know, I'd love to turn you on.   [Tina] Yeah. We've got to be careful (laughs)! I know you're a real, like, audiophile. And, you know, I'm thinking about with the love dancing tent that we out here, you bring a sound system in and, you know, you're very particular about audio. And I wonder where you got that kind of such care for audio from?   [Colleen] Well, I started, I studied sound at NYU and I went to New York University, but it was more recording and editing, you know, and tape. And it was more, it wasn't really for music. It wasn't like micing up drum kits or anything like that. It was more recording voice, mixing things, doing radio drama, editing lots of tape. I was a teaching assistant as well in the sound department. And so that was, I wasn't afraid of sound equipment, but in terms of playback, you know, I had a crappy hi-fi, you know, just something that was cheap and cheerful and worked. And I think I had two tape decks. I was really happy. So I could dub tapes. It wasn't until my friend, David Mancuso from the loft started teaching me about sound. And first, it started with him just showing me pragmatic, pragmatically, like how to operate the turntables that he was using and using these Koetsu moving coil cartridges or using class A amplifiers, you know, low, very low wattage and horn speakers and all of those elements. And it was really him who taught me about audiophile equipment. And when we started our loft parties here in London, we bought a bunch of equipment and some of it landed in my house. And that's when I really started getting into it. My husband and I, you know, we had these two Kliphshorns and then just kind of whatever kind of solid state amplifiers that we'd been using for years. And we were just starting to change component by component by component, you know, going to a different preamplifier, going to another amplifier, switching back and forth between valve and solid state, and then upgrading our turntable and then getting a Koetsu that David got for us in Japan. [Tina] And what is a  Koetsu? [Colleen] A Koetsu is a moving coil cartridge . So you have another, there's moving magnet cartridges, which is what we usually use for DJs. But moving coil, instead of having a magnet, the cartridge has a coil and it's very sensitive. But once it warms up, it is so much more dynamic than moving magnet. And it's just such a beautiful sound. Now you cannot back cue, and you can't even look at it wrong because the stylus might break. So they're very delicate. And this is what David used. So when he first asked me to play records, this was what I was worried about because he was really broke at the time. And the cartridges, this is the early 90s, were $2,000 each, and he only had two. And if I had broken one by just back spinning or looking at it wrong, he wouldn't have been able to fix it.   [Tina] Wow. So you've begun your DJ career using sort of the best.   [Colleen] Well, I was also DJing on regular stuff too. And yeah, so I was DJing. This was musically hosting with David was different than DJing. There are two different things, really. I mean, not that they don't, again, feed into one another. Everything I do feeds into one another. But I would say they're pretty distinct experiences in some ways as well, especially with the equipment. So yeah, once you hear music differently, it's really, I wouldn't say it's hard to go back because I still love listening to music on headphones and in my car, and I can listen to music anywhere. But when you hear it in its glory, you really want to share it with people. And that's why I started Classic Album Sundays, because we had all this equipment in our house. People are coming over, listening to albums, their favorite album. I'd say, just what album do you want to listen to? Just pick one of your favorites. We put an album on. And a friend of mine said, this is like a Classic Album Sunday, because we were hearing things completely differently. You know, all these records I had grown up with, like Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division. When you hear it on a great sound system, you hear a level of detail that I just never heard before. You know, I could hear all these things that Martin Hanna was doing production-wise, and all these different layers, and it was incredible. So I just started to immerse myself more into the sonics of the recording. But of course, also in your DJing, it does make a difference too, because you're amplifying whatever the music is very loudly. And then you might be able to hear some of the mistakes. And you can also hear some of the problems maybe with the pressing, or the mixdown, or the recording on a great sound system too. So that's one of the sad things about it. But when everything is done right, when the song is mixed properly, it was mixed properly, it was recorded properly, it was pressed properly, and you play it back on a great audiophile hi-fi, I mean, it is just such a great experience just to immerse yourself into the recording.   [Tina] And I love that that's an experience you picked up with David as well. It seems like he was a really big figure in your life, still is a big figure in your life. Are there any other sort of things that you've taken away from your friendship with him that play to this day? [Colleen] Well, what we were just talking about, he would always say good sound is a human right. But the two other things is being independent, and not feeling like you have to say yes to everybody else and doing things your own way is another thing. But also community building. I think David's greatest legacy is community, actually, and inspiring people. And that's something that I feel that I've done with both Classic Album Sundays and also Balearic Breakfast. I mean, Balearic Breakfast is a success. There might be partially me and things that I've done, but it's also a success because of all the people that get involved. I mean, that's really, they're all talking in the chat group while I'm doing the show, and they've made friendships amongst one another. And, you know, someone started a Balearic Breakfast blog that comes out every week, and then interviews other people. And I'm not even, you know, it's great. It's the springboard for other people to be creative as well. You know, getting other people to do mixes, or doing song requests, just normal people that just have a huge passion for music, but don't work in it like I do. And, you know, I'm really proud of that aspect of Balearic Breakfast. And that's something that I think I learned from David.   [Tina] Beautiful. And I think, you know, it's so wonderful when you see something that you have created with a seed of thought, and obviously, you put an awful lot of work into it. But when other people kind of adopt it, and to some people, Balearic Breakfast feels like it's theirs. You know, like they might go to your Instagram every week because they want to recommend a song for the next show or something.   [Colleen] They might be thinking about all week, what can I recommend? And, you know, they're all, and literally, they're all chatting to one another. They all got to know each other across continents, across oceans, different sides of the world. You know, that's really, really beautiful. I mean, I just love seeing that. And, you know, I just, and they're all united by a love of music. It's great.   [Tina] Amen. And that's why we're here. [Colleen] Yeah. [Tina] So let's introduce the year once more. It's 1986. We've got the likes of R.E.M. and The Smiths coming around. Hip-hop is breaking through into the mainstream. I'm curious to know why you picked this year and to ask you to paint me a picture of who Colleen is in 1986. [Colleen] So 1986, we start in January. It's the last half of a year of my senior year of high school in Massachusetts in a small town. I'm 17 years old. Then I graduate in June. Then in the summer, I am working as an assistant manager at a record shop , Strawberries Records and Tapes . And then in August, I turned 18. And two weeks later, I moved to New York City.   [Tina] Big year.   [Colleen] So this is a huge year. And there's a lot going on musically. Like, all the time, there's a lot going on musically because, you know, working in a record shop, working on the radio and high school radio, making that transition to college radio. And plus, I went to so many gigs. You know, it was just great. It was also great for film, too. I saw so many great films that year. But yeah, it was just such a big, pivotal music year for me, but also a pivotal year for me in terms of my life, you know, moving from a very small town in New England, about half an hour, 40 minutes outside of Boston, and then moving to New York City to Greenwich Village. I mean, right in the thick of it. And, you know, going to NYU, going to New York University, and then the first week just volunteering at the radio station there. So it's a massively pivotal year for me.   [Tina] Brilliant. And you've brought in a few items to talk us through it. So can you talk me through, and I know you've not been able to bring in all of them. One of them we're talking about sort of metaphorically. What one do you want to talk about first? [Colleen] I'd like to talk about the high school radio show first because it's really important. I have this poster. As I said earlier, I did a radio show every year. And this is my senior year. I had a show called Strawberry Alarm Clock. And it was called Strawberry Alarm Clock for three reasons. One, the record shop that I worked at was called Strawberries Records and Tapes . It was owned by a gangster, Morris Levy, who was in The Hitman, and who in September 1986, after I, you know, had already moved to New York, he was arrested.   [Tina] Oh my gosh.   [Colleen] And yeah, so he was arrested. And it turned out he'd been working with the mob. And he'd been one of the co-founders of the jazz venue, Birdland. He had been, you know, he was hugely, you know, a big figure in the music industry from the 19, late 1950s onwards. But he owned this massive chain called Strawberries Records and Tapes. And I worked there from 1984 through even when I would go back from college, you know, the first summer I worked there as well. In any case, so that's one of the reasons it's called Strawberry Alarm Clock because I worked at a record shop called Strawberries. It's called Alarm Clock because it was a morning show. It was 6 to 7.30, so before homeroom. [Tina] That's a commitment as a teenager. [Colleen] And I also worked in a record shop sometimes till 10 o'clock at night, you know, because during Christmas hours on the weekdays, you know, I'd work till 10 o'clock at night, get home, sleep, get up at the radio station for six.   [Tina] Something I know about you is that you don't need a lot of sleep!   [Colleen] Yeah, I don't need a lot of sleep. I never have. I never have.   [Tina] I could wish for anything. My nine hours a night is just, I cannot negotiate with it! [Colleen] I can't even remember when I have ever gotten nine hours, maybe twice in my life. But the other reason is I was also good. There was a scene in the 1980s called the Paisley pop scene, and it was kind of it was kind of big in Boston. Actually, we had a lot of kind of 60s type garage bands. They were invoking the sound of the 60s, the three o'clock and the Liars. But I also got into bands like Plastic Land. I think they were kind of an XTC to Dukes of the Stratosphere. So there was this kind of feeling of this kind of Sergeant Pepper sound coming back. And there was an old 60s band named the Strawberry Alarm Clock as well. And they had a big hit called Incense and Peppermints. So that's why it was called Strawberry Alarm Clock. And I played everything. I mean, I played all the kind of music that wasn't top 40 or classic rock that I was into. You know, and it could even play Sade because Sade wasn't necessarily getting a load of, you know, play on commercial radio. I mean, there was some, but I was playing the more obscure songs, playing hip hop, new wave. It could be rockabilly. I mean, it was literally just a whole array of music, which was great.   [Tina] Did you ever stop to think about how to tie that music together? Or did you think it doesn't matter? It's all just good music. I want to play it.   [Colleen] Yeah, I mean, I had been making mixtapes from about the age of 12, 13, and sometimes they were thematic. And I was thinking about a musical arc and how to develop the tape. But on the shows, I kind of just threw stuff together. It was a bit more haphazard as opposed to kind of creating a whole flow. I would do the flow for my mixtapes more.   [Tina] Okay. And I would love to show people just watching on YouTube as well and describe for people that are listening. So it's kind of a bit like a mood board. [Colleen] Yeah. [Tina] These are things that you've cut out, right?   [Colleen] Yeah, these are things I cut out and photocopied. So I had like a love of vintage clothing. Nina Hagen, who I absolutely adored. I think I had my Nina Hagen ticket stub there. I used to watch David Letterman. I mean, there's some kind of TV figures. There's some kind of things that make fun of Ronald Reagan because, of course, this was during the time of Ronald Reagan. Something from the Dead Kennedys down there. I loved the Dead Kennedys. I thought Jello Biafra was just great. Because he was also standing up to... What was her name that they were doing? It was called the Parental Advisory Board or something, where they're trying to censor music. And her name was Gore. Al Gore's wife was heading it off. And Jello Biafra was always kind of talking against them, which was great. He's very, very astute, Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys. Very good-looking guy there. Let's see. But yeah, so it was just fun. And I had these posters. I would photocopy them and put them around in my high school. [Tina] I love it. [Colleen] And yeah, it was really fun because a lot of people... Well, that was a 10-watt radio station. It wasn't a lot of people. But friends of mine would listen to the show to get turned on to music. I was kind of known as the person in the high school who listened to different things. And, hey, come along to this gig with me. Let's just all go. Just buy tickets. You'll like it.   [Tina] You know, like, let's go.   [Colleen] Yeah, exactly. So that was really great. And that just, you know, is a fantastic kind of education to be able to do that. There was only 19 high school radio stations in Massachusetts. There I was thinking we all had one.   [Tina] Right.   [Colleen] You know, and I'm just so lucky and fortunate to have had that because I could have had a completely different life.   [Tina] Totally. You know, it's a wonderful thing when you discover what it is that you love at an early age. And you can just target yourself.   [Colleen] Exactly.   [Tina] Knowing that you've fallen in love with that part. Yeah. How, you know, you've been doing radio since then. How do you prepare for your shows now in comparison to your first shows?   [Colleen] Well, I didn't speak a lot on the radio.   [Tina] OK.   [Colleen] I was quite shy still about speaking. And I had a little bit of a Boston accent, like W-H-H-B, you know. And I found one of my old cassettes and it's just I hardly even spoke. But there were some great tunes on there. And I really started to improve the way I presented once I got to NYU. I had two great mentors. I had a mentor, Lynn McVeigh. She ran the sound and radio department and she really took me under her wing. And I came from a family that didn't have a lot of money to pay for university. So she ended up getting me, you know, nominating me for broadcasting scholarships. And I would get broadcasting scholarships and things like that. She was a huge influence. And then I had a guy that was kind of like my big brother, Hugh Foley. He had an amazing radio voice. He had already been on commercial radio. In fact, he was putting himself through graduate school by working as an overnight jock on one of the radio stations. And he just taught me a lot of stuff. And so then I started taking it more seriously. It wasn't just about playing music and just lining it all up. And now I really prepare. I find, and it's not just because I'm a Virgo, but I find the more prep you put into something, the better it comes off. And you're the same way. You host a classic album. Sundays events, I've worked with you before. You do your homework. David used to call it homework too. David Mancuso, he'd like listen to all the records before, you know, the night. It's like doing your homework and being prepped and not taking it for granted. I don't take anything for granted. I'm not owed anything. And so I have these listeners that are tuning in week after week. And one thing they love about the show is finding out about the artists and the records. So I have to do a little bit of research. So I think the radio show is different than a lot of other shows that might be out there because people are just a DJ first and then become a radio host. They tend to still stay a DJ and that's fine. But I think a radio host is different. I think a real broadcaster is communicating with your audience. And you're trying to share knowledge. It's not just like, here's a tune, here's a tune, here's a tune, here's a tune. And also, I like to put music together so that it makes sense. So sometimes some people doing it, you know, where you're juxtaposing songs that don't make any sense together can make something new. And I like that too. But that's just not my style. My style is more about a flow. And especially because it's a morning show, balleric breakfast, starting mellow. Then you're building up, you know, throughout the show. So that's also how I DJ too. I always think about the flow. And yeah, it's all in the prep. I would say it's all in the prep. And then you can relax into it.   [Tina] Right.   [Colleen] You know, you're not racing around and freaking out like, oh, what do I need to do? It's like, you just have your head on, you know, and have a good time.   [Tina] I remember reading somewhere, I'm checking my notes, at NYU film school, you became the first female program director.   [Colleen] Yeah.   [Tina] Which is a major thing. You know, I often don't like to bring gender into conversations because I think we want to try and move past that. But I am wondering how being a woman in that environment, if it had any impact, you know, given that you were the first, that's quite something.   [Colleen] Yeah. I mean, one thing that was interesting growing up in the 1970s, you did hear women's voices on commercial radio. We had some on the AOR stations like WBCN and WCOZ. And so I would hear women's voices, even though they weren't my favorite radio hosts. I had other hosts who were my favorites. Because a lot of times those women were on in the afternoon when I was in school. But you heard voices. So it wasn't like this is something that's completely not accessible to me. You know, it was like, oh, I can do this. You know, so I never even questioned the radio side. I was surprised when I found out I was the first woman program director because WNYU is one of the biggest college radio stations in the country. And the 1980s was the height of college radio and college rock. So I was kind of surprised when I heard that I was the first one. I was like, really? But an interesting story. I was the program director. I was there all the time. You know, all of us were. We lived there. I would sleep overnight sometimes in the studio. You know, actually, because once I got attacked, you know, sadly, going through Washington Square Park at three in the morning, you know, after editing all night. So I was like, maybe it's I just would start to sleep over and sleep over. People be coming into school. I'd be laying there. In any case, spent so much time there. And I was there one summer and the phone rang and I answered the phone. And this was 1988, maybe. And it was someone said, you know, we're starting a temporary radio station. I'm calling from the CBC in Japan. We're starting a temporary radio station in late 1989 for the World Design Exposition, and we would like some of your male DJs to audition. Oh, really? So, of course, I rallied up everybody, men, women, anyone to go to the audition anyways. So and I remember going in and it was this really flashy apartment. It was in the same building that Isabella Rossellini lived in. I looked like quite like a ragamuffin. I never had any money. And I walk into this gorgeous apartment with a baby grand piano. And it's a Japanese woman. And I auditioned for and she said, I'm going to make sure you get this. [Tina] All turned around. [Colleen] So, yeah, there was and she probably had experienced a lot of sexism. And I remember when I went to Japan as well, one of the best broadcasters there was this woman. And she did both television and radio. And she was the main CBC broadcaster. And she was a real feminist. And she wouldn't even let people open the door for her. You know, we had kind of gotten past that in America, right? Yeah, you can open the door for me. That's fine. That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. But she was she was amazing. And even my bosses or our bosses who are guys, and this is very, you know, this is quite something for people to say this in Japan said, you know, she's smarter than us. She's super talented. So I knew a lot of Japanese women were kind of going through a similar thing and moving to New York because they felt like they had more freedom. So, yeah, got the job. So it was. Yeah, I did experience quite a few firsts in terms of, yeah, you're the first woman that's you're the first woman that's played here in Indonesia. I mean, I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But, you know, it doesn't make too much of a difference. It's more sad that I am the first in some ways rather than it being like a big, you know, reward or award. So, yeah, but it was it was it was a great time being on college radio in New York. And I just you know, we had all the bands coming up, you know, because we were in New York City and, you know, bands that later became big on on AOR radio, on album oriented rock stations, weren't getting any play. The only bands that had really crossed over from college radio at that time were R.E.M., Depeche Mode and U2. And the rest were still we had our own charts. We had our own trade magazine, CMJ. We had our own everything. It was this own entity. And it was huge. And, you know, bands always came through New York City and we were our radio station was in Manhattan. So they'd come down, do interviews and, you know, have Sugar Cubes, Bjork, Nick Cave, all coming through the station. It was incredible.   [Tina] Wow. Colleen, tell me about your second item.   [Colleen] OK, my second item is still high school, but I don't actually have the item because I can't find it. But it's a ticket stub from May 16th, 1986, a show at the Orpheum . And it was Suzy and the Banshees. And I went with my friend Patty, who worked at another Strawberries Records and Tapes, and she had very spiky hair that she used egg whites to put up. And she always had this big goth, you know, kind of makeup. And she was more forward than I was. You know, I'm confident, but I'm more quietly confident. Like I don't go up and introduce myself generally. If it's someone famous, I've always kind of walked the other way. I mean, I've met so many famous people in my life because of work. But, you know, I've seen so many people I could have introduced myself like Patti Smith or whoever. And I just haven't.   [Tina] There's an awkwardness to it because you know you're going up as a fan. You don't want to be too gushy. [Colleen] Exactly. Exactly. [Tina] It's hard to know how to navigate it. [Colleen] Exactly.   [Tina] It's like, well, what do I have to say that's actually going to interest? [Colleen] Exactly. [Colleen] So I would have never done this. But my friend Patty just had a lot more confidence in me. She said, I know where they're going to be after the show. So we went to the hotel that she thought they'd be staying at. And there was Budgie and Susie sitting at the bar and they were very kind and signed our ticket stubs. I didn't say anything. Patty did all the talking. I was just like mouth open, jaw drop like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm so close because this is before I had started meeting all these artists and interviewing them. This is like the first the first time.   [Tina] Right.   [Colleen] I was this close to, you know, an icon, you know, someone I really looked up to Susie Sue. I mean, I looked up to her so much. You know, I looked up to her. I looked up to Laurie Anderson. I looked up to Patty Smith, Nico. I mean, maybe Nico for musical reasons and not for other reasons. But, you know, there were all these incredible Kate Bush. There were just some real trailblazers. And Susie Sue was one of them. I've always wanted to interview her. It's never going to happen. I'm still trying. And I just got another rejection. So it's fine, though.   [Tina] I get it. Does she do many interviews? [Colleen] No, she doesn't. And you know what? That's fine, too. I kind of get it. It's I wouldn't want to interview someone who's uncomfortable about it. So I just it was such a time. I couldn't believe that I had, you know, I had actually been that close to someone that I just hugely admired and was famous and an incredible musician. So that's why I don't have the ticket stuff somewhere in a box in my loft. But I have the Cities in Dust 12 inch. And that's the first song she sang that night.   [Tina] Ah, that ties together so nicely. I became a huge fan of Susie Sue and the Banshees in music college. Oh, really? So it was quite a creative kind of course, really. It was like a two year BTEC thing. But every time you were given a band to really research and then I had to do a performance like a live show of just Susie Sue and the Banshees songs that I've been given a set list in. [Colleen] Which songs did you choose? [Tina] Ah, they were given to me. I did metal. What's it called? Dazzle? No, there's a...   [Colleen] I love that song, Dazzle.   [Tina] There's a staircase one and a metal one. Oh, why can't I remember the track?   [Colleen] Don't worry about it. Let's move along.   [Tina] I'll put it. Yeah, I'll put it in the podcast. (ed. The songs Tina was referring to were Metal Postcard / Jigsaw Feeling) . But yeah, some like epic tunes. And I had never come across them before. But there was something about hearing Susie Sue's voice for the first time and just how purposefully dissonant she is. And, you know, the sliding and her way of singing felt really new to my ears at the time. And I sort of approached her stuff with like, how on earth do I sing this? I'd been having this really kind of more proper vocal coaching education to that point. And then it was a bit like, throw out the rulebook, get a rough idea and then just go for it. [Colleen] Open up your lungs. [Tina] Yeah. And yeah, it was such a cool experience sort of delving into her stuff. I'm still checking the charts in the back of my head.   [Colleen] It'll come to you at the end or tomorrow.   [Tina] Yeah, later on. But that's cool. I mean, it sounds like you went to a lot of gigs in your teenage years.   [Colleen] And they were so varied. I mean, so I would go, OK, so Rush, like the Prague band was massive in my town. Yeah. Everyone knew Rush. In fact, going to a Rush gig was how I got the job at the record shop, because afterwards was me and I went with a bunch of girlfriends were hanging with a bunch of guys that we just met. I started talking to one of them who was particularly cute. And I was like, yeah, I went to see Black Flag and Stevie Ray Vaughan. And I went to he's like, gosh, you know a lot about music. Yeah, I went to the Gap band and like all these different gigs, you know, and he's like, you should come and work. We need some Christmas help at Strawberries at this record shop. And he was the one that suggested I go and apply because I knew I had been going to all these bands, you know, all these gigs. You know, I was seeing lots of great British bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, the Smiths. I danced on stage next to Johnny Marr. I was at the New Order gig where there was a riot in Boston at the Opera House. I saw Nina Hagen from Germany. There were lots of kind of indie bands like Husker Du and The Replacements. I would go see them play. I would see go to the all ages hardcore shows at the channel and see, you know, gigs like Black Flag. I would see Stevie Ray Vaughan like a blues show or classic rock show like Billy Squire. I went to the Providence Funk Festival, saw Gap Band, One Way, Bar Case, Grandmaster Mellie Mel. I'd go to a freestyle night, you know. So I just had open ears. And the thing that was so great about where I grew up, again, I was so lucky because Massachusetts is small. We have a lot of different little cities. It has the most colleges and universities out of any other city in the United States. So there's a lot of venues, all different sizes. We had stadiums. We had midsize. We had small size. You could go to Providence, Rhode Island. You could go to Boston. You could go to Worcester, Massachusetts. And I just was able to go to all these different gigs, you know, Ramones, B-52s, Chuck Berry. You know, it's just it was the cure. I mean, I went to so many gigs. And then when I moved to New York because I was on the radio station, I got free tickets to go to go see.   [Tina] Lovely pads.   [Colleen] Exactly. So loads and loads and loads of gigs. And that's the other reason why I chose Susan the Banshees, just so I could talk about the gigs I went to.   [Tina] I mean, part of me just I'm living vicariously through that. I spent my teenage years on the Isle of Wight. And there's not a lot of you've got a couple of really tiny venues, but that's not an awful lot happening. So [Colleen] I do the Isle of Wight Festival. [Tina] Yes, that's very true. I mean, yeah. I feel like there's a rotating sort of lineup that maybe every three years. But I have had some really, really good times there. But yeah, I would get the boat to Southampton or Portsmouth and then have one, maybe two songs at best before I had to run for the last boat home. [Colleen] Oh my gosh, really?   [Tina] Yeah. So it was a real commitment to potentially being, you know, getting stuck and getting to 7am. My parents would have killed me. Anyway, moving on. You've got one more item you brought in to represent 1986.   [Colleen] Yeah, it's an album. And there's a lot of favorite albums that I have, which I'll talk about as well. But I picked Victoria Land by the Cocteau Twins because I was a huge Cocteau Twins fan. And I wouldn't even say this is my favorite album, but it's the one that came out in 1986. And I played it a lot when I moved to New York because, you know, I loved living in New York and it was transformative and I couldn't wait to get there. But, you know, I was still a small town girl. And sometimes I just needed some peace and quiet and calm. And, you know, being 18 is difficult anyways, isn't it? I mean, it's also great, but it's, you know, there's so much transformation happening. There's so much going on. This was an album that just chilled me out. I could play it in my dorm room at the end of a day, turn the lights out, and it would just kind of reset me. So the Cocteau Twins and Elizabeth Fraser's voice, I mean, just always did something. I've been playing their records for a long time. I would say actually Bluebell Knoll is probably my favorite Cocteau Twins album just because I got to interview them for that one. So that was great. But, you know, it was really, really great record. And there was a lot of great records. And one was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds kicking against the Pricks. He was just kind of getting into his Johnny Cash kind of phase. And that inspired me to go out and research Johnny Cash. Raising Hell, Run DMC, of course. They also had Aerosmith, Boston rock band, on that album. And gosh, there were so many great albums. Another one which came out when I moved to New York was the Beastie Boys, Licensed to ill. And I know they kind of get this frat boy image, but they were actually a lot smarter. And the rhymes are really good. And the thing that was interesting is when I went to NYU, my first year, I lived in the dorms Weinstein. And that is where Rick Rubin set up Def Jam in that dorm. Yeah. And also Spike Lee went to film school. So Spike Lee's movie comes out. She's got to have it. We're all into it. And then, you know, anything that came out of Def Jam and Slayer, Rain and Blood also came out. I used to listen to that all the time, too. Rubin produced it. But Licensed to ill was a really fun album. My group of people, we all got into it. And we all knew the songs. And there was a bar we used to go to in Brooklyn that used to serve us called the Alibi. So we would always sing No Sleep to Brooklyn, you know. And I ended up being in the video.   [Tina] So how did this happen? You mentioned it before we started recording. I'm like, oh, my God, we have to talk about it.   [Colleen] I know. I mean, I'm only in a crowd shot and it's fleeting. But basically, they wanted, you know, they wanted people for a crowd shot for the video for No Sleep to Brooklyn. And we went to the World Club, which was on Second Street between First and Second Avenues. It was an old club. I'm pretty sure that's where it was. No longer exists. And we were just there all night just so they could get some shots. And I was with a friend of mine who was kind of like a skate punk from Long Island who had a mohawk. So he kind of figures, you can see him really well in the crowd shot. I'm kind of the one wearing the John Lennon glasses, like banging my head in front of him. But he's really tall. I think the camera liked him. So whenever you see him, I'm near. You can pause. You'll see me. [Tina] In the shadow of the mohawk. [Colleen] It was really fun. Yeah, it was just really fun, you know, but we never got to meet the band. I was like, really? We got hung out all night in this cold, cold, dingy venue and didn't even get to see them play.   [Tina] But there's still time.   [Colleen] Yeah. You know, so it was like, really, it was just fun. And I kind of forgot that I'd been in the video. And then I remembered a few years ago, I was like, I found it. So, yeah, there were a lot of great albums that year. And, you know, both hip hop and rock and indie. And Victoria Land by the Cocteau Twins was really the one that chilled me out. And I remember just playing quite a bit by myself, you know, in the dorm room.   [Tina] Gorgeous selection. And I relate to that experience with Cocteau Twins personally as well. Colleen, thank you for being part of my year in sound. What does the rest of 2024 have in store for you? Oh, my gosh. What is the rest of this week?   [Colleen] I have a new record, a new remix that came out today. Brian Jarman, Brian E. Jarman Pinto. Did I send that to you? Moving forward. Yeah, it's a gorgeous remix. I'm working in the studio with Joe Goddard from Hot Chip on a new project. Original stuff, and that's been going really well. It's me, him, Alexis Taylor. Alexis from Hot Chip, Lou Hayter, and Al Doyle. And, yeah, a few members from Hot Chip and some other people. And we're just having a really good time working on a project. So we're in the studio this week. Lots of gigs, festivals, and doing a bunch of Classic Album Sundays events , and some at the new KEF Music Lounge as well.   [Tina] Awesome. Great. When can we find out the program?   [Colleen] Well, I'm just working on it now, but it will launch in September.   [Tina] OK, nice. All right, Colleen. Thank you so much.   [Colleen] Thank you.

Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy broadcast the 195th episode of Balearic Breakfast on her Mixcloud on October 1st 2024. About this episode. – Coming back from the beautiful Last Note Party held in Perrugia (Italy) this week-end – which has been praised by a lot of Family members on the chat, Francesca Girelli posting "Thank you so much Colleen for all your love and passion!!! It has been so emotional, F A N T A S T I C! I can't wait to be again on the dancefloor with you and dancing_james (such an appropriate username!) I send so much love to you two ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Last Note is always a great experience! Come everybody next time! 🎈🎈🎈" and dancing_james answering "Last Note was brilliant, great energy from the crowd of proper dancers, detailed sound, incredible location and Cosmo dug deep and also coordinated her outfit with the decor!" – Colleen wasn't ready to let the party's spirit leave without embracing it one last time in today's show, letting a beautiful Latin mix enchant the Balearic Breakfast Family's ears and souls! Before dvelving into this episode, let's give our captain the mic: "This morning’s Balearic Breakfast is now archived on my Mixcloud at https://shorturl.at/MLWgS (and please give me a follow while you’re over there). In the first hour I catch up with some new music and take a Latin excursion and in the second hour, I’m joined by Cyndi & Chris from Handson Family. They have a new compilation called If Music Presents: You Need This – an Introduction to Handson Family. The double vinyl comp is out on BBE Music and you can order it on Bandcamp. On the show, I chat with Cyndi and Chris about their first comp, their DJ story and the motivations behind their community events in South London. And they have also put together a soulful exclusive mix for us. Thanks to all who joined us for our Last Note in Italy this past weekend – L’amore salva il giorno!" Listen back to the 195th episode of Balearic Breakfast: PLAYLIST Colleen's mix (1973) Mel & Tim – Keep the Faith (2013) Ian O'Brien – Love Beams (2024) Cantoma – Summer Rain (NOL) Sasha Galperin – Now! (Mark System Remix) (2024) Emperor’s Machine – La Cassette (Tigerbalm' Remix) (2024) Earth Wind & Fire – September (Eric Kupper Remix) (2020) Unknown Artist – This Kind of Latin Rhythm (2024) Audrey Powne – Souled Out (Joaquin’s Deep Version) (1981) Ray Barretto – Pasttime Paradise Handson Family's mix (1998) Crazy P 3 – Plays it Cool (2001) Soulstice – Colour (Atjazz Remix) (1998) New: Sector Movements – Veonga Vonge (2002) Jazzanova – Another New Day (2000) Mark de Clive-Lowe – Control (2001) Agent K – Betcha (did) (2001) Shur-i-kan – The Freezone (1995) DJ Cam – Dieu Reconnaitra Les Siens (2024) DJ Bemi ft Chocscee – The Diasporians (2023) Shall I Bruk: It ft Alex Phountzi & Heidi Vogel – Space Talk (2009) Mr Beatnick – The 4% Day (2003) Cybophonia – Cut & Paste (Hefner Remix) (2005) Sabrina Malheiros – Maracatueira’ (Incognito Remix) (2001) Bugge Wesseltoft – Change (2023) The Main Ingredient – Summer Breeze (Jim Sharp Edit) (1995) Incognito – Barumba COLLEEN'S NEWS Colleen will take part in the following events: 5th October 2024 - Bristol - Disco Isn't Dead (at Strange Brew) ; 6th October 2024 - Glitterbox Ibiza closing party (Colleen will join Dimitri from Paris) ; 18th October 2024 - Strut Record's 25th Anniversary party at the Jazz Café (w/ Danny Krivitt) ; 9th November 2024 - New-York - To be announced (parties w/ François K. Also, not to be forgotten, Classic album sunday's october events. THE LISTENING EXPERIENCE Today's mix takes us to a nice forest in which we'd be all walking, with the Lioncub goofing and jumping in and out of the autumnal leaves! The cool walk image is very present in the first two tracks played by our beloved Captain (Mel & Tim's Keep the Faith and Ian O'Brien's Love Beams). There is a cool and light wind in the air in these two tracks which belong together both rhythmically and sonically, a beautiful way to start this 195th episode! Did you notice how, for instance, both songs share a beautiful, large realistic and profound soundstage? Even through Mixcloud's compressed audio stream (there's nothing after 15000 Khz sadly), we can hear these songs' sonic qualities. (1973) Mel & Tim – Keep the Faith By Mississippi cousin duo Mel and Tim, from their self-titled second album, which came out on the Southern Soul label Stax back in the day in 1973, Keep the Faith (written by Mark James, most famous for composing Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds") is also featured on a new compilation called Everything Above the Sky, a double vinyl on Rewarm, lovingly compiled by Luke Una and on which he explores late-night after-hours meditations on sound. (2013) Ian O'Brien – Love Beams From Cindy and Chris' "If Music presents: You Need This! An Introduction to the Handson Family" compilation, a beautiful Lonnie Liston Smith cover (originally from his 1975 Visions of a New World studio album) by the British Detroit techno-obsessed producer who is just as deft as a musician playing down-tempo futuristic jazz. In an interview, Ian shared his view on "Understanding Is Everything" in which Love Beams has been included, saying: "Above all, what I wanted to express with this album is what kind of world we can leave to our children who will be responsible for the future, as the world we live in now becomes more violent and heading toward constant war. It was my own response to the feeling of despair. I can't express my feelings clearly in words because it doesn't have lyrics like Curtis Mayfield or Bob Dylan's protest songs, but it was made as a protest album from me with a message of opposition to any violence or war within the scope of an instrumental album. There's a song on this album called "My Dreams Of Peace," and at first I was thinking about using that phrase as the title of the album. It's a song that really expresses how I feel and what I wanted to say on this album. I mentioned the dark world situation such as war and violence earlier, but in fact, it is an album made with positive wishes. I don't know how long it will be, but it represents my dream of peace." Speaking of "Love Beams", Ian noted: "Herbie Hancock and Lonnie Liston Smith are my heroes from the golden age of jazz, funk and soul in the '70s. Their music is special and spiritual to me. It has been a long-held dream of mine to one day cover their songs. The chords and harmonies of "Spiraling Prism" are indescribably beautiful, and "Love Beams'" is a simple yet surprising spiritual piece of music that expresses pure positivity. The light is intense, dispelling all darkness. It's the music of hope, and I think that's what the world really needs." Then, Colleen takes us to a groovier part of her mix, stepping up the pace quite quickly as Cantoma's Summer Rain starts, yet, if you close your eyes and concentrate, you should see autumnal images of our dear forest or, eventually, because you are your own leader, a tenderly and warmly sunny beach! Keeping the beat even when silence steps in, Colleen then plays Mark System's remix of Sasha Galperin's Now! followed by the unexpected (and very jumping) Tigerbalm' Remix of Emperor’s Machine's La Cassette (do you see why I had images of the Lioncub jumping in and out of these leaves?!). Listen back to Balearic Breakfast's 143rd ep. w/ Harry Charles (2024) Cantoma – Summer Rain Phil Mison's Cantoma project, Summer Rain is taken from Phil's latest double album, See in the Sun, out now on Highwood Records, a great album, and a more evolved sound from one of our favorite Balearic producers (also a protégé of José Padilla). (NOL) Sasha Galperin – Now! (Mark System Remix) Spanish musician and producer Sasha Galperin with Now has been given a surprising Balearic rework by drum and bass producer Mark System. Now! can be found on Harry Charles's forthcoming word-of-mouth label, the next evolution of his Ibethan grassroots venue. The label aims to exclusively release music by artists who have performed at the venue, including their incredible in-house live band. (2024) Emperor’s Machine – La Cassette (Tigerbalm' Remix) From Tigerbalm who has a new album out "International Love Affair". She did the "International Love Affair" remix as a first which came out in 2022, 2023 on Ubiquiti. Emperor's Machine also have a new album out this year, Island Boogie (which was already featured in the 186th episode of Balearic Breakfast). Colleen will then, for the next few tracks, take us on a very Latin vibe musical trip, starting with the logically also jumping number that is Eric Kupper Remix of Earth Wind & Fire's September. Once again, I just try to put forward Colleen's choice and show you how she mixes the selected songs, and the unity she creates, this part of the mix being a perfect example! Today's wow moment happens when Colleen perfectly mixes September with the next song, Unknown Artist's This Kind of Latin Rhythm, beautifully followed by 2 other jumping numbers that are Joaquin’s Claussel deep version of Audrey Powne's Souled Out and Ray Barretto's Pasttime Paradise! (did you notice how much these last two songs beautifully stray together despite their different rhythm? 😉) (2024) Earth Wind & Fire – September (Eric Kupper Remix) September was issued as a single on November 18, 1978, by ARC/Columbia Records but was not included in a studio album then, rather being part of The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1 compilation. Although the song deals with a failed love affair, the lyrics do not have a predominant place in the song. You might have noticed, and I did, how much the lyrics fall into the groove! The explanation can be found here: "Lyricist Allee Willis worked on the composition for a month or so and wasn’t certain that White’s “ba-dee-ya” hook would work. But it did. Said Willis: "learned my greatest lesson ever in songwriting from him, which was never let the lyric get in the way of the groove." Willis died in 2019 and also co-wrote “Boogie Wonderland,” “The Neutron Dance” for the Pointer Sisters and the theme for “Friends.” (2020) Unknown Artist – This Kind of Latin Rhythm From the five-track of Latin workouts on Screwniversal Records, on which you can find tracks by Thierry Thomas, Screw Screw, Frank Virgilio, Virgilio, Virgilio, Virgilio. Screw Screw is a Armenian producer and DJ, and his real name is Anton Bogomolov. After searching on the internet, I found that "This Kind of Latin Rhythm" does reproduce Poncho Sanchez's Soñando (Making Sound) track, taken from the 1983 studio album. (2024) Audrey Powne – Souled Out (Joaquin’s Deep Version) Audrey Powne, multi-instrumentalist, singer, producer, is a product of the contemporary Melbourne, Australia jazz scene. She released her debut album, From the Fire, on BBE last spring (a track was featured during Ariana's show on the Boat Pod), and now there are some great remixes of that song sold out, all by Joe or Joaquin Claussel, and he did quite a few. (1981) Ray Barretto – Pasttime Paradise The 1981 cover of Stevie Wonder by Ray Barretto, the American conga player, drummer, percussionist, bandleader, composer and producer who also played in Tito Puente's orchestra from 1957 to 1960 (Tito Puente composed 'Oye Como va', famously covered by Carlos Santana). He then formed his own orchestra and put out dozens of albums. Ray was also an in-demand session player and a member of the Fania All Stars and played with the greatest names of the Jazz scene, including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Dexter Gordon, just to mention a few... This song, the darkest one on Stevie Wonder's masterful "Songs in the Key of Life" album, recently turned 48. It was not issued as a single when the album came out and was rather frightening with its short and somehow "attacking" lyrics. The track's sound was not cool, as it used synthesised strings, letting the listener feel rather cold vibrations while listening to the tormented and lonely song. THE HANDSON FAMILY'S INTERVIEW [Colleen] Well, I have Cindy and Chris from Hands On Family here with me on Balearic Breakfast, and they have a new compilation out called Hands On Family, an introduction to the Hands On Family. And it's a fantastic compilation. Cindy and Chris, welcome to Balearic Breakfast. Welcome. Oh, so good to have you two here. And I'm absolutely loving the compilation, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But the two of you are a married couple who have been hosting parties in South London for 20 years. Could you tell us a little bit about how you got started DJing? [Cindy] Crikey. I mean, we both were separate DJs before, with very long histories there. I think I started DJing in my teens, doing mixtapes for friends, and then, you know, graduating to school discos and things like that. So I've always loved music. My dad was the DJ, so I inherited a lot of his records, which was great. I moved to Ghana, and I was DJing there as well. And I moved back when I met Chris. So that's my background with DJing. I'm not sure, what were your, what's your background? [Chris] With DJing itself? [Cindy] Yeah. [Chris] Well, I didn't start really getting into it, taking it seriously until we met. And I've just always had an interest in music. Not necessarily clubs. It's like a weird thing, because most of the things I love, I sort of heard in isolation. I was very, very much a homebody. So I didn't have the reference of clubs or, you know, scenes or anything like that. I just got into sound. So I collect music and sort of listen to it in my room, which is really weird. It's weird that I ended up DJing, because a lot of the stuff you'd even hear on the comp are things that I've kind of discovered by myself. [Cindy] Yeah. [Chris] I met this one here, Cindy, and realised after a very short while that she understood the same things that I understood about music that I love. And just, it just kind of went from there, to be honest. [Cindy] And I guess just as a person that likes to start doing things, I was just keen. I think we were going out, and we were going to places and just annoyed at the music we were listening to. And I was like, we can do this. [Chris] That's the bit I was going to mention. We were listening to stuff in the house. And it was the sheer force of frustration of not being able to hear it in clubs. So we said, okay, we're going to start our own night. It was never about money or anything. We just wanted to hear the music that we love outside. [Cindy] And I think also it's the explosion of bars culture as well. And so much of the music, even if you hear the compilation, isn't necessarily completely banging or anything. But it's like music that you can listen to over a drink. So we always kind of had this discerning taste, if you like, on what we wanted to listen to. And yeah, that's how we started. And we started to DJ in little spaces and places really. [Chris] Bars, restaurants. [Cindy] And in our locality, because we were like, we're not going to try and compete with the likes of Uncle Giles and so on. We're just going to do our own thing in our end, where we'd like to listen to music. [Colleen] And that started to build a community around you, I expect. [Chris] Because everything was more or less locally based, it happened kind of by default. You're working in a local area, so we got to, I don't know, the fan base of it, if that's the right word, but people got to know who we were. [Cindy] But also there were a lot of, at that time, I mean, we're thinking about the early noughties. That was a time when there was a lot of New Jazz and Broken B and really still excellent, like Soulful House and Deep House happening. So it's not to say that we were the ones bringing it. A lot of our friends were into it, but it was like we always had to go out of the community to hear those tunes and those artists. [Chris] Yeah, you would never come down south and hear that sound. And it did coincide with an explosion in independent labels. You look at them now, I can name them all, but they're all about 20, 25 years old. So we got in. [Cindy] So we saw the birth of independent kind of music in London that was not sort of following the format of maybe R&B, hip hop, all the various black music genres that were really big in America and were global. But there was this really exciting thing happening in London and the UK in general that was just, you know, there was the whole, I don't like the term trip hop, but like down-tempo chill out. You know, that was the days of Mixmaster Morris doing these amazing soundscapes. And, you know, obviously people like Jazzanova or, you know, True Force had just started, Wawa had just started. There was just amazing things happening. And we were just very lucky to be around at that time and then just really excited about it. [Colleen] And it was one of the things that excited me when I moved to London too. I moved here in 1999 and the whole broken beat scene was what I immediately gravitated towards. But I had a record label named Bitches Brew with my friend Nikki Lucas and we were distributed to people. [Cindy] No way, that was you? [Colleen] I didn't know that. [Cindy] Babe, we used to sing those lyrics. [Colleen] I didn't know that was you. [Cindy] Straight Men's Painter and all that. I need to go to this, I need to go to this. [Colleen] That was us. We even had like a chill out night called Chill Bitch. Anyways, it was such a London sound and that's what I really loved about it. And the fact that you were doing that in Peckham. Brixton, mainly. [Chris] Brixton, mainly. Yeah. [Colleen] So how did you start to build your parties? [Cindy] I mean, the very earliest days, I can remember where things, we started to see that people liked what we did was we played in a really cool place called Tug and Brew. We always used to go to Tug and Brew and we used to go to parties to kind of give a lot of reference to that little space. It was a little bar in Brixton on Atlantic Road, and on a Thursday, they had like Trevor Fung DJing with the Mucho Soul Boys. On Fridays, there was like Spiritual South, who did really well in the early noughties. He was starting to make beats, you know, make that wicked tune Green Gold. Then on Saturday, there was a guy called Eric. But generally speaking, like every night there was really good music, but they never did anything on a Sunday. And these were the days when you'd go into bars and clubs and just hand out a CD mix. So we handed out a CD mix to this bar. Didn't hear anything from them for months. And then we got a call from Maria and she was like, do you know what? I found this on the floor of my boyfriend's room. He's the owner of Tug and Brew, we really like this. Can we give you a Sunday night? So that was one of our... [Colleen] You found it on the floor?! [Cindy] Yeah. She was like, but I loved it. And I think it's amazing. You guys must do it. So we started there. And then, yeah, I guess if you fast forward to probably some of our more successful parties, they would have been certainly not that long ago, about eight, nine years ago, working with the late Ty, Ben, running a party called No Long Ting, which was really a labour of love of his, again, a love of Brixton and wanting to do a family friendly party. I was very hellbent on making sure that young people and children and babies could come to parties as I was getting older. [Chris] You start very, very early. [Cindy] I was like, I don't want to stop raving, but I've got to find a different way to rave. I think we've kind of aged gracefully, dare we say. We've always just recognised that there's a space for every age group. And as we got older, we started to do more daytime parties, which is now a cool thing to do, as you may already hear yourself. And you've been doing it for a long time. But for us, it was like, well, they're just like the old school all dayers that we were raised on as kids anyway. And we were just having, we were missing those sort of things. So we've done a lot of different parties, but I think people know us a great deal from No Long Ting. [Chris] I would say that's when everything started to expand. [Cindy] And Covid, unfortunately, but fortunately, Covid was a really strange one for us because even though there's lots of people that know us and have been going to our parties for years and blah, blah, blah, one thing that we noticed was that our age group were very nervous about social media, where I'm not, as I'm sure you can see on my... [Colleen] You must follow Cindy, hands on. It's just hands on fam, right? [Cindy] Yes, that's right. [Colleen] Your Instagram is fantastic. It's fantastic. [Cindy] So I've never, thank you. I've never shied away from journaling my thoughts and interests. And we realised that as there was this lull of the world or the so-called Western world, that it was a really great time to stay relevant. And we were like, you know what? We're just going to keep pushing what we do. We're not going to just, you know, forget about this. [Chris] Sit back and wait for everything to start back up again. You've got to prepare to do it. [Cindy] No. [Chris] So we do mix here, keep yourself present online. Everyone's online. [Cindy] I'm always about documenting culture, especially Black culture and the absence of it. And I think social media has been very helpful to Black creators in general across the board. And so it was just a happy but sad medium because it was like Black Lives Matter version two, wasn't it? So everybody was like feeling a bit uncomfortable about, oh my God, we need to like think about the Blacks more. And because I've always spoken about these things, you know, through all my adult life, it just felt very natural to speak on it because actually what we do as DJs is quite political, we feel, without being pretentious. It is a kind of activism to kind of spread good, you know, good vibes and, you know, love to people in times of effort, which is what we're in at the moment. [Colleen] Yeah. I mean, also we were talking earlier too, you came along to the London Loft Party and we were talking, which is also community-based, all different ages. And you were saying, oh, it's really great that younger people are going to this and they can see, you know, how these types of parties rather than performances can be. And you were also tying that back to the Black community. Can you expand on that a bit and let us know exactly what you're talking about in terms of community parties and the Black community and how they're different from what a lot of the young DJs are experiencing today? [Cindy] I mean, it goes back to the whole Shabin tales, which I know you're very well read in, but I guess for the new listener, maybe this is the first time someone's listened to your show. Ultimately, because of the nature of racism in the UK at the time, and I'm pretty sure that would be echoed in places like America anyway, it ultimately, the parties that we went to were because we weren't actually allowed to go to mainstream events because there were racist door policies, et cetera, et cetera. So often our parents would put on events anyway. I think Black folks are more in tune with amplified music anyway. So if you speak to the average Black person across the board, if they've been raised in a Black household, they'll be telling you about remembering seeing mum and dad dance in the living room. And then, you know, by five o'clock, three or four, people have turned up. And by ten o'clock, there's a whole party and drinks have been bought. And then before you know it, you've got a full blown house party. And I think Chris and I were both really exposed to that. So when we came to your party, we just felt like, oh, this just reminds me of, you know. [Chris] It was familiar. It was very familiar because what clubbing has become now is something [Cindy] slightly foreign to what we knew... [Chris] Yeah, to what we know. We've come to see you and it's like, OK, well, this reminds me of when I was a kid. These were like the parties in my dad's living room. [Cindy] Yeah. [Chris] These unintentional, unannounced parties where he'd have a few friends. It kind of brought us back to that. So that's what a lot of us really do understand. [Cindy] And that's what even we think about, you know, the term house. I mean, that's literally what it's about, home, a feeling of safety, etc. So I think a lot of us come from similar communities. So that's what we liked when we came to your lovely party. [Colleen] It's really interesting because when David started The Loft and his own home, first he started throwing parties in 1968, just friends coming over. But in 1970, he formalized it as a rent party that was based on the Harlem rent parties that started in the 1920s. The black Americans were migrating to the northern cities from the south. And because they could not get in to venues in Manhattan, they did their own thing and made their own thing happen. [Cindy] We make lemonade out of lemons regularly. That's the situation. And then everybody wants this lemonade and it's like, oh, God, you know. [Colleen] But well, let's have a listen to some more music and then we'll come back and talk about the compilation. This is Hands On Family of Balearic Breakfast. Second part of the interview [Colleen] You're listening to an exclusive mix by Hands On Family for Balearic Breakfast. And they have a new compilation. Their first compilation is called If Music Presents, You Need This, an introduction to the Hands On Family. And Cindy and Chris are here with us in the studio. Now, this compilation is fantastic. And one thing I really love about it, number one, is it's so eclectic. Can you tell me about what you wanted to achieve with this compilation? [Chris] I could say nearly every track was a first discovery of the sound of this not necessarily a scene of a label. [Cindy] So many of them have a personal connection, like you said, of the discovery. [Chris] Yeah. [Cindy] So as an example, Bring Me To Your Life with Heidi Vogel on the vocals. Heidi has become a very good friend of mine. I first saw her in a bar in Brixton singing and I was blown away thinking, how on earth has no one ever heard of her? Then I discovered that, well, people had heard of her in the very same scene that I was interested in. IG Culture was working with her. She was friends with Eska. She'd worked with Marcina Arnold. And she's a jazz girl. Currently, she sings with Cinematic Orchestra. Like there's the constant dots hanging around. And she's a very well respected musician in the musician world, in the London jazz scene, as well as globally. We traveled with Spacebeats. That's from Emma Native, who Nick Woodman sees group. He's been doing a lot of releases. I believe he's even got a new release. But amongst many of the things that we've done, we used to sell music. And any time we played that particular track, it'd be like in Camden or Portobello on our store. It was like if we were having a slow day selling music. You know, there's certain tracks. You've worked in record shops. You're like, I'm going to play this because I know someone's going to buy this. And bam, every time. So that's another kind of record. [Colleen] We also have Ty. Yeah, I think we should talk about him. Can you tell us about how you met him? [Cindy] We actually met very briefly in college, but I was asked to leave Nick's girl being a primary child. I'm sure he did well in whatever he was doing. But on a serious note, this is a guy that's just you see his face everywhere. He's really calm, very nice, very kind. And that's how I kind of knew him in the area. You know, those people that you see in your head not respectfully because you know them, but you don't know them. [Chris] The first sort of meeting that we both had together with Ty, we were running a record store in Brixton and you saw him pass. [Cindy] I was doing that. Any time I saw a music person, I'd be like, ah, you're selling music. And he was like, oh, amazing. And he gave us his special kind of full album to sell. Like a lot of artists just come because we were a tiny little shop with other things selling. You can't just say it was our shop, it was a whole owned store. He does a beautiful head that's that's a carved wooden head of Ty's on that album. You check it out. And he brought it to us to display in our window. And that started a whole long friendship. And he would tell everyone and anyone that there's these guys in Brixton selling music. You need to get there. And that's kind of how we became much, much closer as friends. But then also, Chris, you've also got other stories. You know, you knew him. [Chris] Oh, from a very long time ago. This is school days. I'm slightly older than my little brother. He's sort of 55 now. But I knew Ty as my little brother's best friend. And he's someone I'd go to work and come home and see him and my little brother rapping in their school uniforms. Just bought a new sample. I didn't know who this guy was. Said hello a couple of times. Used to come to the house. Didn't see him for a few years. I heard about this Ty, Ty everywhere. Not realising that it was Ben. For about two, yeah, because I knew him as Ben. Yeah, I didn't know him as Ty. And it just turned out we sort of met again some 15, 20 years later. And the rest of the sort of history really started working together, doing lots of things, you know, just discovering also that we have the same taste in music. [Cindy] Yeah. [Chris] And a lot of this music we were buying, he was working with those artists. [Cindy] Yeah. And he would always be like, Oh, so you know Terry? Oh, I know Terry Walker. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I know. [Chris] Anyone you could mention, he'd work with them or he knew them. [Cindy] Yeah. [Chris] So, yeah, that was another reason why we started working together. We understood each other's art. Yeah. [Cindy] And we were angry, but in a positive way. We always, I always talk about positive anger, like being angry and kind of internalising and doing something as an action counter to the anger. We were angry about how like black artists, especially in the UK, were mistreated, not platformed with one in one out rule, which is still unfortunately happening today. And we were very much into like having a DIY attitude. And Ty had just got to, yeah, a few years before, just got to the stage of the same mindset. So everything about what we did was like, let's just do it ourselves. DIY. Let's just get hands on with everything. [Chris] It's fair to say he gave us a heads up on the industry as well. Good and bad, because he was already there. He was already in there. So he took a lot of guidance. [Cindy] Yeah. He was Mercury Award nominated. [Chris] You'd already seen everything. [Cindy] Seen various aspects of it. You know, the man that knows De La Soul, you know, Damon Albarn. Obviously, when he passed away, I think people were very shocked to see the amount of musicians and artists that were devastated because of the work he had done with them. It wasn't just some people think he was just a hip hop artist, but he's got a huge discography. [Colleen] Well, may he rest in paradise. And it's great that, you know, he's part of this compilation because he's such a big part of your story. And obviously his music, music lives on, you know. McNasty is another local, right? Tell us about Mackenzie. [Cindy] Yeah, Josh. So, Josh, we know through his partner, Umpol. Again, another singer, artist. Her name was Umpol Skeef. Her artist name, she was doing a lot of Broken. I think she even made a track with the Bugs in the Attic earlier. So she was even on her own trajectory in the early days. Similarly, she had the same old story about the industry. But that's her story to tell. But she just by her connection and us knowing each other and also on top of that, when we had our little shop in Brixton, honestly, a few doors away, she had a little tea shop in the same avenue. And we ended up, long story short, taking over her tea shop in the evening, making it a pop up bar and inviting DJs. And we really came closer through that. And then eventually, when we all left those operations, that bar still stands there today in the market as a bar that has DJs. So that was an interesting connection. But Josh is like a happy outcome of marrying a lovely person like Umpol. And when we heard this record, we were like, God damn, because he's known as a session drummer for some of the largest names in pop music. And he comes from a gospel background, but he rarely does this kind of sound. And the Mech sisters are his sisters. So Umpol and his sisters wrote the lyrics. And if you see them working together, it's just like they're in their house jamming. And he literally said that that record, I think I've got a voice note of him explaining that it was a one take session with a few friends that he'd got in a free music session. And he said, right, I'm going to do this. And he did it. And he what he did, because he's very much like a vibes man. He just kind of sings out what he wants. And then the band just follows. And that's how the song happened. [Chris] I think that's what it was about that particular track. You can hear the energy in it. I think if you were to get together and re-do it, you could never do a better version than the one that's there. [Cindy] And it feels so old school. [Chris] Like, yeah, I have no idea. [Cindy] Old school kind of reggae. [Chris] Why have I not heard this before? [Cindy] Yeah, so it was and given that with with the lack of, you know, the money of local, of independent labels, you know, we could have licensed some really cool rare grooves. So this was like our take. Like, this is actually because Rare Groove is so much part of our musical upbringing. So this kind of head nods nicely to that. [Colleen] The thing that's great about this compilation, it does feel very family and it does feel very community oriented. Like you've got your spirit on wax and which is great because you're really representing the community, which is exactly what you want to do. I mean, how does it feel, because you've described yourselves and I felt the same way as a women DJ who's been going since the 80s as an outlier. And, you know, there have been times when somehow I would never say I've ever been mainstream, but more accepted and visible, I guess, is a better way. And sometimes I definitely haven't. Now you're becoming more visible. How do you feel now that you're shifting into kind of a a new moment for Hands On Family? [Chris] It's nice that it exposes other people to what we do. You know, that's a really nice thing, but it's really important to not let go how it got to this point in the first place. You know, I don't want to be crass, but it's not the money or anything like that. Once you let go of that, I think that's an issue. And you lose creativity as well. And you also lose an interest in what you're doing if you are just... if you are just there for the exposure. [Cindy] Do you know what I will give? I will say I will always say this fair play to people that want fame and success through the hype. But for me, it's like maybe 20, 30 years ago when I was younger. But I'm 50. I'm literally thinking about my kids going to secondary school this week. Like I'm thinking about, you know, we're like, you know, with all this terrible stuff happening in the world with the cost of living, like, will I have enough for my funeral expenses? I'm seeing my friends pass and get ill and and God's honest truth. So for me personally, this is a massive like if there's a DJ bucket list for people that love music 100 percent, this is probably the top for me to have achieved. Fruit, thank God, you know, through John, Claude and Pete of BBE and obviously with Chris. And I'm really grateful. But like I said, I'm just too long in the tube to care so much about that aspect. And if you know me, like even when we've, you know, had the pleasure of playing in more not mainstream, but visible gigs like the amazing We Out Here festivals and things like that, you know, I'm always quick to tell younger people to calm down and forget about this hype. Be polite when you're in the green room. I'm always the first person to just break bread. And let's stop with all this pretense. You know, we're all going home. We've all got bills to pay. You know, a lot of this isn't real. Calm yourself down, you know. So that's how I feel about it. And that's what I internally tell myself. Like, for example, for some strange reason, after our launch last week, you know, we get a lot of flying colors and we become some level of high end DJ getting paid thousands of pounds. I promise you, I'll be telling myself every morning in the mirror. It's not that deep. This isn't real. Calm down. [Colleen] Yes. Don't believe your own hype. I was taught that a long time ago. And I also agree with you that you should always remember why you do it. So the loft parties, for instance. I don't make any money. I don't pay myself. [Chris] Right. Right. Yeah, we understand. [Cindy] Two weeks ago, we did a street party in Brixton and we didn't we just asked to have our expenses covered. We played for six hours on the streets of Brixton. People came and it was fantastic [Chris] Because it's what it's for... [Cindy] And that was it. I just told them, look, I'm hearing there's a street party. I want to be involved. This is what it is. Can we do it? Of course, they were so excited. We had loads of people come down. --- a bit of the interview is missing here --- [Colleen] And mentor some young DJs. And what I tell them when they're asking, well, these people are offering this, but it's not going to pay much. And I'll say, is it good? Because the good things are usually the ones you don't get paid as much. And also as a creative, you should always be doing stuff for free. Like I have a lyric breakfast. It's one of the most important things in my creative life right now. Yeah, I do it for free. And I really believe that you need the balance. You know, it's great to be able to to still make a living through your passion. And I'm grateful, you know, but you have to always remember why you do it. And that really hit home during the pandemic when I was broadcasting every week from this room for free, realizing I do it because I have to. [Chris] Yeah, it's who you are. [Cindy] Exactly. And I wish, you know, not to not to be difficult with the younger people, because there could be somebody my age that wants to start DJing and there's accessibility now. So it's not really age related. I guess it's for people that are new to the game. I just feel that too much of it is caught up in, oh, get an agent, get paid lots of money, you know, and it's like, well, what are you bringing to the culture? There's got to be a kind of an exchange here. And I do always try to kind of remind people of that. So people are like, oh, but, you know, you guys are lucky. People always ask you to do things. It's like because we also do things in kind. We don't just it's not everything is about the bottom dollar. You'd be surprised at the things that we do in kind. And the things that, you know, [Chris] Yeah. and that's reciprocated and so on. [Cindy] And so it's not luck. It's like, oh, I did that. I did that gig for free with those people that... [Colleen] Well, it's this is saying the harder, the harder you work, the luckier you get. [Chris] And that's right. [Colleen] And when you create your own things as well, you've created your own platforms. You haven't sat around waiting for the phone call. And you did it because you wanted to make something happen because it didn't exist. [Chris] Yes. [Colleen] So, you know, that the two of you are really into creating community parties, safe spaces and also inspiring other people to to do things and to also recognize local talent, recognize people in the community as well. So this compilation is out. If presents, you need this an introduction to the hands on family. It's out on BBE. What's coming up in the calendar for hands on family? What's coming up in the future? [Cindy] Well, we're going to be pushing this. So this is interesting because we I keep saying this to Chris. We come from school. I don't know if you've seen the TV show when we were kids. It's called His Was and Swap Shop, right? And these are shows that you see on a Saturday. This is like the 80s. And these TV shows would always be like, we've got Spandau Ballet on, you know, coming on. And it would be like, right, Spandau Ballet are going to talk about their album. And they would, you know, talk about their promotion. And, you know, for months on end, we'd be hearing about Spandau Ballet's new album. And what I've noticed with a lot of independent releases these days is that, OK, it's out now. Job done. And that's because most of us don't necessarily have the skill set of marketing, maybe. I don't know. But for us, it's like we're going to do a couple more parties promoting this this this compilation before we think of anything else outside of what we already do. We do have parties in Brixton Village. We still we've got a residency every Thursday in Peckham. And we still getting invited to do it. [Colleen] Are you going to tell people where it is? [Cindy] Yeah, it's a place called Corner House, Peckham Rye Lane. We're there every Thursday. In terms of Brixton Village, if you follow Brixton Village Lates on Instagram, you'll see everything that we're doing. We do have a last Saturday party at the end of October, which will be great because a lot of our music DJ friends will come. So from about three o'clock all the way till 10, there'll be a free party on the courtyard. Everybody loves a free party. Lots of things juggling, you know, and and trying to raise a daughter and, you know, continue to argue with people online. Yeah, there's a lot of things. [Colleen] But it's great. It's really great. Well, I'm so happy for the two of you. And I'm just chuffed to bits that this compilation is out. It sounds great. [Chris] Thank you. [Colleen] And it's a really true testament to what the two of you have created together. And I wish you all the best with it. And so thank you so much for coming up to Balearic Breakfast. [Cindy] I'd just like to say a big shout out to Jean-Claude of If Music, who is the person that asked us and has handheld us for the last 16 months to get this on track. So, yes, we all thank you. We've been very fortunate to have a mentor. In this whole process.

I met Andres Y Xavi's Steve KIW Ellis for an interview about the band's musical landscapes and his relationship towards records and DJing. Let's dive deep! 1) Thank you so much for joining us on the Balearic breakfast blog. It's an absolute pleasure to have you here with us! We discovered Andres y Xavi's Estrella during the 192nd episode of Balearic Breakfast when Bradley Circles played it in his incredible mix. When working on this track with Glenn, did you have a picture you wanted to convey or a story? This track seems to picture a liberation via transformation followed by a flying journey... Thanks for asking me along!  And thanks to Bradley for including us in his mix – it’s always lovely to hear the music in a new context, especially since Bradley included a few of my personal favourites in there too! It feels like a long time ago now but it was back in the summer of 2018.  Glenn had just brought one of his long-term projects to a close and had a few ideas that all had a similar vibe, he sent them over to me to see if it was something I’d be interested in working on with him and I jumped at the chance.  One of these became Estrella. It has a sense of movement for sure. A few of those early ideas evolved into tracks that appeared on the album, and they have different elements that we stitched together. Those add to the feeling of travelling I guess, but with a sense of reflection, maybe moving forward with one eye on the rear-view mirror because each track has a sombre tone.  Ibiza brings that out in people: it’s hard to watch those beautiful sunsets without thinking of times past, and the people those times have been spent with, and that’s what those early ideas evoked for me. Overall, what we sought to achieve with each of our original compositions on Vibraciones was to make something that reminded of the more rustic, traditional side of Ibiza, and that is what I think we did.  Lots of people were making chill-out music rather than music that is influenced by the Balearics per se and I wanted us to do something that felt true to my experience of the islands, which is as much about jumping on a moped and finding a remote beach as it is visiting a club.  I re-watched A Short Film About Chilling a few times when we were making the album and kept that close by when I wanted inspiration (or a sample or two!) 2) As an experienced DJ, you know how much songs talk to each other in a set and how much you can expand one track's energy by playing a tune that enhances its vibrations. While listening to " Vibraciones y Sentimientos " (released in 2019), there is indeed that great sense of "Continuity". Do you feel it is a key component of the "Balearic" sound?  That’s very kind of you to say, thank you!  A lot of time went into sequencing the album and I guess, maybe because we’re both DJs, Glenn and I wanted the record to flow in a certain way. Both of our albums had a concept of sorts - the dirt tracks, the villages, the drives across the island, those spots of outstanding natural beauty inspired the first - and this carried on into our second album when we focused on making music that we thought would be right for some of the bars that we’d hang out in when visiting.  I guess that a concept lends itself to continuity on an album. That said, we deliberately made music that we felt was location-appropriate for Ibiza but not necessarily Balearic, by which I mean it’s not necessarily music that would have found its way into Alfredo’s box way back when which, for some, is the true measure of what Balearic is.  Each to their own, of course, but I don’t think there is one sound, or one key component.  I DJ’ed as part of a collective known as BAOL and we had a saying: “Balearic is whatever we say it is” and that wasn’t driven by arrogance, but simply our way of saying it can be whatever anyone wants it to be.  Some records are, some records aren’t, some records can be, some records can’t! The art of storytelling through records isn’t really something I’ve ever associated with Balearic music – certainly not in the way one thinks of, say, Larry Levan playing records together because they share a lyrical theme. The beauty of it comes through when you hear DJs seamlessly joining the dots between one genre and another, moving the tempo up and down as it suits, and avoiding the dull repetition of one paced four to the floor sets.   It’s less about continuity then for me, more about travelling. Some people think the art of DJing is in the quality of their mixing, some think it’s in the selection of tunes, but for me they’re equally important.  If you listen back to the way Alfredo used to sequence his records over a night, or listen to, say, the mixtapes recorded at the Café Del Mar in the early 90s, then, although the music is quite different, there is a feeling rather than a flow, and each is descriptive through tone rather than words. That’s the Balearic sound.  3) You have a pretty amazing vinyl record collection (30000 records if I'm not mistaken)! How did your musical taste evolve over the years? Did you immediately fall in love with the "Balearic" style, or did it happen gradually (for those interested, you founded the Balearic Assassins Of Love Collective )? I started buying my favourite chart records in my early teens and some of these were being played over in Ibiza, but I certainly had no idea then about the Balearic Beat – at that time [early-mid 80s] very few people here [in England] did. Towards the end of the 80s I was buying lots of singles that hadn’t quite made it into the charts but were popular in clubs and my favourites were often the slower ones, like St Etienne’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Electra’s Autumn Love, or Pleasure’s Please, and through these, and the music press, I started to see the same names on the records I liked: Paul Oakenfold, Andrew Weatherall, Terry Farley etc, and around this time I also heard Chill Out by The KLF which led me to The Orb and from there it was into an ambient rabbit hole, discovering all sorts of beautiful records.    I didn’t visit Ibiza until 1994 but I’ve been going back ever since and it’s a huge part of my life.  That said, I’ve always loved listening to lots of different music – I’m still a huge fan of hip-hop from the same era - and I’m as likely to be listening to eighties pop at home as I am rare groove – and the BAOL sound really took that to another level.   Ade P was my partner in BAOL. He and I love so many different sounds and BAOL was our way of playing these in a way that somehow made sense – we knew what the true Balearic dons like Leo and Alfredo had played, and we loved the tapes of Jose Padilla and Phil Mison, of course, and closer to home we knew through Ade’s time in Manchester, what Moonboots and Jason Boardman were playing at Aficionado and we had our own unique take on it, taking a little from each but with our own ideas too. BAOL ended up running for 20 years! I’m still playing some of the records I listed a moment ago but always open to hearing new music and am always digging, wherever I am. I spent some time in Barcelona and Italy in the early summer and then a week digging in New York and came back with around 100 records from each trip. Most of those would initially have been pigeon-holed as something else but they nearly all had that something, that Balearic feeling. 4) Speaking about records, what makes a record enter your collection? Which records would never have a chance to be added to it? I’m open minded.  If I like something and can afford it then I’ll try and find a copy, but I have hundreds of records on my wants list that I’ll either neither see or never be able to afford and that’s ok, because there are thousands upon thousands of great records out there and, truth be told, I’ve got more than my fair share already! I do like taking a gamble when digging; unearthing future classics from dollar bins, euro bins, pound bins and the like, and I spend ages listening to my peers, following up leads and checking out Bandcamp. Like all diggers I’ve got those things I look for. Beyond the obvious tell-tale signs of checking the credits I’m all in on buying records where there’s eight people in the band and they’ve got long beards. Cover versions are a weakness too. An album performed by a dozen-strong band, preferably with beards and afros and photographed in an instantly-regrettable fashion choice, ideally with a ten minute version of a pop song as the last track on the b-side would be straight in the bag. I don’t think there’s anything that I’d turn my nose up at other than prices; I don’t understand musical snobbery at all. I can’t remember who said it, possibly Bill Brewster, but almost every act you’ve heard of has got at least one decent track out there. 5) Lastly, can you share with us your next musical moves? There is a new Andres y Xavi EP out on Higher Love Recordings on October 7.  It has one new track, Lagos, plus remixes from Craig Bratley and Mass Density Human of Bibbles, a track we first put out last summer. There is a second EP ready to share as well and hopefully that will be out before the end of the year. We’ve just completed a remix for Tambores En Benirras but I don’t know what the plan is for that just yet.  I’m DJing at Guilty Feet in Brighton on the first Saturday of every month and the West Street Bear (yep, Bear, not Beer or Bar!) in Walthamstow on the second Saturday; plus, between now and Christmas I’ve got a handful of great gigs to look forward to: Down To The Sea And Back with Kelvin Andrews and Balearic Mike in November and then I’m playing with Phil Cooper and Brother Mark Broadbent at the NuNorthern Soul all-dayer uptown and at the Luke Una show for English Disco Lovers at Brighton’s Concorde too. Busy times ahead! Thank you for having me on! It was a real pleasure Steve!

I was astounded after hearing the Keys mix of ESA's 'A Muto'. I then asked band founder Martin Socko Moukoko a few questions about the original song and its incredible remix. Nota: L'interview est disponible en français plus bas, cliquez ici . 1) Hello Martin! Thank you so much for joining us here on the Balearic Breakfast Blog! Like other members of the Balearic Breakfast Family, I was blown away by 'A Muto' Keys mix! At first, I didn't even recognise the original melody, and I felt like I was watching an episode of Twilight Zone from the 80s! First, can you take us back to how the original song came to life and share its story? First of all, thank you for your enthusiasm, interest and attention to this Keys Mix of the song “A Muto”, Artur! This song is part of the first album by the group ESA, of which I am a founding member. My first cousin, Georges Dayas, who has now passed away, came to see me about the idea of releasing an album for Cameroon, just as I was about to release a 2-track single of my own, on which I asked Stephan Dayas, his brother and a young singer by the name of Assitan to sing. We got together in Paris at the end of 1986 to discuss the project. The idea was to bring something new to Cameroonian music, particularly makossa. Georges suggested several melodies, and we selected a few that seemed interesting for this 1st album. I took charge of everything, preparing all the songs and scores for the musicians. I chose the musicians, called them in and directed all the sessions. We recorded the album over several days in different studios in Paris. As far as the song “A MUTO” is concerned, I knew from the outset that it would be THE key song on the album, and one that would undoubtedly appeal to the public. When I first heard it, I was particularly moved, which inspired me a lot, and I made the arrangements so that it would convey all the emotions and joy I was feeling myself. When the album was released in 1987, the song quickly became a huge hit. Listen to the original version of 'A Muto' 2) From what I understand, 'A Muto' is a positive musical adventure! Conversely, the Keys mix has such a strange and weird feeling! It's like something is going to happen! How did you come down to this incredible, ethereal, worried, almost surreal version? Does the Keys mix extend the original song's message in some ways? “A Muto” is certainly a joyful, rhythmic and enthusiastic song. But it also contains everything you don't hear, everything you don't see, and which exists yet. The Keys mix is an integral part of the song, and it's an element that's fundamental and essential, that supports it. For me, it's the manifestation of a whole. The Keys mix is made up of balafon, bell, koto and electric piano sounds. For me, these sounds represent the spiritual and somewhat mysterious side of life. Listened to in isolation, they can give a singular and surprising impression. In the same way as in an orchestra, for example, if you isolate the sound of certain instruments, you can experience emotions different from those of listening to the work as a whole. But once assembled, the individual sounds form a harmonious whole! 3) The original song is being reissued on vinyl for the first time since its initial release in 1986. It's astounding news and a great accomplishment! Could you take us through the remastering journey? How did you work on this reissue, what did you want to achieve and which were the most challenging parts of the project? This is indeed the very first official reissue of “A MUTO” since its release in 1987. We owe it to Kevin Griffiths of “ISLE OF JURA Records”, who contacted me 37 years after the release of the original track for this reissue. I'm very grateful to him for giving me this opportunity, which is a testament to the quality of the work I did back then, and to the impact this track has had and continues to have on the public. The remastering process involved digitizing the original analogue 2-inch/24-track original tape in my possession. In the Paris region, following the digitization by Gildas Lointier , I carried out a remixing session with Jérôme Caron in his studio. I'd like to thank him for the idea of creating a specific version with the Keys Mix that underpins the song's universe, and for his enthusiastic involvement in the remix work. Using today's digital tools, the idea was to make some subtle improvements to the song “A Muto”, while retaining the spirit of the original 1987 mix. This is particularly true of the 4 instruments present in the Keys Mix – balafon, bell, koto and electric piano – as well as the horns and some percussion, which have been given greater prominence in this remix. All the stages of the remastering and mixing process were very harmonious, like a sort of alignment of the planets, because everyone involved already knew this song and particularly liked it! So I can confirm that it is indeed a great success! Click here to purchase the new LP 4) If I understand correctly, the vinyl edition also contains other remixes. Fans will be so happy about that! It seems obvious we can expect a sonic journey like no other. How hard is it to touch "a classic" when crafting new versions? The double vinyl contains the remixed version of “A Muto”, an instrumental version, a Dubstrumental version, a Keys Mix version and an Acapella version. These 5 versions, which are also available on streaming platforms ( Qobuz & Deezer , among others), are completely new and will delight all fans – old and new –  who will be seduced by these different variants. The difficulty of reworking a “classic” depends essentially on the work and what you want to do with it. For my part, I took great pleasure in bringing a new freshness and dynamic to the original version of this song. 5) Martin, Although the Esa adventure stopped in 1989, you've stayed true to your musical passion. Can you briefly share some of your most essential releases from the last few years? What's next for you? I studied jazz for 4 years at the American School of Modern Music in Paris to perfect my knowledge of composition, harmonization and arranging. I continued to compose, produce corporate music, and work and arrange for other artists. I've also given music lessons and music awareness workshops for children, because for me, transmission is essential. Lastly, I'm presently working on a work that draws on the various influences of my musical culture! Thank you so much Martin for this interview. Your Music makes our world a better place to be... Thank you Artur, I'm moved! Interview en Français 1) Bonjour Martin ! Merci beaucoup de nous rejoindre sur le Balearic Breakfast Blog ! Comme les autres auditeurs de l'émission, j'ai été époustouflé par le Keys mix de A Muto! Au début, je n'ai même pas reconnu la mélodie originale, et j'avais l'impression de regarder un épisode de Twilight Zone des années 80 ! Tout d'abord, pouvez-vous nous rappeler comment la chanson originale a vu le jour et nous raconter son histoire ? Tout d’abord, merci pour votre enthousiasme et pour l’intérêt et l’attention que vous portez à ce Keys Mix issu de la chanson « A Muto » Artur! Cette chanson fait partie du premier album du groupe ESA dont je suis l'un des membres fondateurs. Mon cousin germain, Georges Dayas, aujourd’hui décédé, est venu me voir pour me proposer de sortir un album pour le Cameroun alors que j’étais moi-même sur le point de sortir un 45 tours de 2 titres sur lequel j’avais demandé à Stephan Dayas, son frère et à une jeune chanteuse Assitan de chanter. On s’est réunis fin 1986 à Paris pour parler du project. L’idée était d’apporter quelque chose de nouveau à la musique camerounaise, notamment dans le style makossa. Georges m'a proposé plusieurs mélodies et nous en avons sélectionné quelques-unes qui nous semblaient intéressantes pour ce 1er album. J’ai pris tout en charge en préparant toutes les chansons, les partitions pour les musiciens. J’ai choisi ceux-ci, je les ai convoqués et j’ai dirigé toutes les séances. Nous avons enregistré l’album sur plusieurs jours dans différents studios parisiens. En ce qui concerne la chanson « A MUTO », dès le départ je savais que ce serait LA chanson-phare de l’album qui allait sans aucun doute plaire au public. A son ébauche, j’ai été particulièrement touché, ce qui m’a beaucoup inspiré et j’ai réalisé les arrangements afin qu’elle transmette toutes les émotions et la joie que je ressentais moi-même. A la sortie de l’album en 1987, la chanson a très vite rencontré un grand succès. 2) D'après ce que j'ai compris, A Muto est une aventure musicale positive ! À l'inverse, le Key's mix a une sensation tellement étrange et bizarre ! On a l'impression que quelque chose va se passer ! Comment en êtes-vous arrivés à cette version incroyable, éthérée, inquiète, presque surréaliste ? Le Key's mix prolonge-t-il d'une certaine manière le message de la chanson originale ? « A Muto » est certes une chanson joyeuse, rythmée et enthousiasmante. Mais elle contient tout ce qu’on n’entend pas, qu’on ne voit pas et qui pourtant existe. Le Key's mix fait partie intégrante de la chanson et c’est un élément qui est fondamental et essentiel et qui la soutient. C’est pour moi la manifestation d’un tout. Le Keys mix est composé de sons de balafon, de cloche, de koto et de piano électrique. Ces sons représentent pour moi le côté spirituel et un peu mystérieux de la vie. Ecoutés de manière isolée, ils peuvent donner une impression singulière et surprenante. De la même manière que dans un orchestre par exemple, si on isole le son de certains instruments, on peut ressentir des émotions différentes de celles que procure l’écoute de l’oeuvre dans son ensemble. Une fois assemblés, les différents sons forment pourtant un tout très harmonieux. 3) La chanson originale est rééditée en vinyle pour la première fois depuis sa sortie en 1986. C'est une nouvelle stupéfiante et une grande réussite ! Pouvez-vous nous parler du processus de remasterisation ? Comment avez-vous travaillé sur cette réédition, quels étaient vos objectifs et quelles ont été les parties les plus difficiles du projet ? C’est effectivement la toute première réédition officielle depuis sa sortie en 1987 du titre « A MUTO ». Nous la devons à  Kevin Griffiths  du label « ISLE OF JURA Records » qui m’a contacté 37 ans après la sortie du titre original pour cette réédition. Je lui suis très reconnaissant de m’avoir donné cette opportunité qui témoigne de la qualité du travail que j’ai réalisé à l’époque et de l’impact que ce titre a suscité et suscite toujours auprès du public. Le processus de remasterisation a nécessité la numérisation de la bande originale analogique 2 pouces/24 pistes qui était en ma possession. Dans la région parisienne, à la suite de la numérisation effectuée par Gildas Lointier , j’ai réalisé une session de remixage avec Jérôme Caron dans son studio. Je tiens à ce propos à le remercier pour l’idée qu’il a eu de créer la version spécifique "Keys Mix" qui sous-tend l’univers de la chanson ainsi que pour son implication enthousiaste dans le travail de remixage. L’idée a été, grâce aux outils numériques d’aujourd’hui, d’apporter à la chanson « A Muto » quelques améliorations subtiles tout en conservant l’esprit du mixage original de 1987. C’est notamment le cas des 4 instruments présents dans la Keys Mix – balafon, cloche, koto et piano électrique – ainsi que des cuivres et de quelques percussions qui ont été davantage mis en valeur dans ce remixage. Toutes les étapes de ce processus de remasterisation et de mixage ont été très harmonieuses, comme une sorte d’alignement des planètes, car tous deux connaissaient déjà cette chanson et l'appréciaient tout particulièrement ! Je peux donc confirmer que c’est effectivement une grande réussite ! 4) Si j'ai bien compris, l'édition vinyle contient également d'autres remixes. Les fans vont être ravis ! Il semble évident que nous pouvons nous attendre à un voyage sonore sans précédent. Est-il difficile de toucher à un « classique » lors de l'élaboration de nouvelles versions ? Le double vinyle contient la version remixée de « A Muto », une version instrumentale, une version Dubstrumental, une version Keys Mix et une version Acapella. Ces 5 versions qui sont également disponibles sur les plateformes d’écoute en streaming ( Qobuz  & Deezer , parmis d'autres) sont totalement inédites et feront en effet la joie de tous les fans – anciens et nouveaux – qui seront séduits par ces différentes variantes. La difficulté de retravailler un « classique » dépend essentiellement de l’oeuvre et de ce qu’on veut en faire. Pour ma part, j’ai pris beaucoup de plaisir à apporter à la version originale de cette chanson une nouvelle fraicheur et une nouvelle dynamique. 5) Martin, bien que l'aventure Esa se soit arrêtée en 1989, vous êtes resté fidèle à votre passion musicale. Pouvez-vous nous parler brièvement de quelques-unes de vos sorties les plus importantes de ces dernières années ? Quels sont vos prochains projets ? J’ai étudié le jazz durant 4 ans à l’American School of Modern Music à Paris pour parfaire mes connaissances en matière de composition, d’harmonisation et d’arrangement. J’ai continué à composer, à réaliser des musiques Corporate, et à travailler et faire des arrangements pour d’autres artistes. J’ai aussi donné des cours de musique et fait des ateliers d’éveil musical pour les enfants car pour moi la transmission est quelque chose d’essentiel. Enfin, je travaille actuellement sur une oeuvre riche des différentes influences de ma culture musicale. Merci infiniment pour cette interview cher Martin et surtout pour toute la musique que vous avez créée. Vous rendez notre monde meilleur… Merci beaucoup Artur. Je suis très touché...

Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy broadcast the 193rd episode of Balearic Breakfast on her Mixcloud on September 17th 2024. About this episode. – Just before heading to Margate Arts Club where she was about to play on the 14th of September, Colleen posted the request line for today's show, saying: "Good morning! North Devon was like a lush English rainforest and I’m definitely heading back for more walks on the southwest coastal path - the vistas were stunning. And a big up to @thefarmersarms_ - if you’re ever in Bideford try to pay a visit. And thank you to Bradley Circles of @findourbalearicspirit & @djsmokinjo for being my special guests on last week’s show which is archived on my Mixcloud. We are still reeling from Dani Moore’s sudden passing and two other legends have also passed to the next realm: Sergio Mendes and Frankie Beverly. On this weeks show we will pay tribute to them and we will also dig out some new music so now over to you for your requests and dedications. Remember you can join me for the live stream on my Mixcloud Live on Tuesday from 10am to 12 noon BST. Just packing my record bag before heading down to the @margateartsclub for @dancetimesthree - the sun is out - can’t wait! Enjoy your weekend" Lately, times hit hard, or is it just me? Anyway, as we shall see, today's show had a special vibe: a lot of love towards lost and beloved artists and friends in a beautiful set, curated and structured by our Captain! As they say, Onwards... Listen back to the 193rd episode of Balearic Breakfast: "This morning’s Balearic Breakfast is now archived on my Mixcloud for your listening back pleasure. In today’s show we celebrate the musical legacies of Sérgio Mendes, our dear Danielle Moore of Crazy P and Frankie Beverly. It’s an emotional show with some heartfelt words and dedications from the Balearic Breakfast family and thank you to all who contributed and who joined in the live stream this morning. They all live on through their music." PLAYLIST (1989) Electra – Autumn Love (Future 3) Sérgio Mendes (1968) The Fool on the Hill (1978) That's Enough for Me (1970) Righteous Life (1977) The Real Thing (1978) Ned Doheny – To Prove My Love Crazy P (2002) Keep On (Daniel Wang & Brennan Green Remix) (2009) Never Gonna Reach Me (Hot Toddy Remix) (2019) This Fire (2015) Hear My Song (2017) Dedication (ft Danielle Moore) – Show Me Love (2015) Cruel Mistress (2017) In My Hands (Hot Toddy Remix) (1978) Melba Moore – You Stepped into My Life Maze ft. Frankie Beverly (1981) Joy and Pain (Live) (1980) Changing Times (1983) We Are One AND EVERYTHING STOPS... A new day, the one you’ve been waiting for, impatiently. A new hour. The perfect one. The one that will lead you to that moment you expected so much. The precious minute then arrives, and you’re all set. In one second it will be the right time and everything stops. A call, a message, an unexpected illness, an accident, we don’t know where your child is, I’m leaving you, I don’t love you anymore, I cheated, you have only a few months left to live, my god, Ashley just had a seizure, did you hear the news, Danielle Moore passed away. In your perfect day now lies a black hole; it’s watching you, eating you, making you cry. It’s heartbreaking and heart-wrenching; whatever the word, nothing can explain the sadness. And you’re lost for words, and you’re lost for action. There’s absolutely nothing you can do but get swallowed by it and try, try with all of your useless might to smile, smile in a tear, send messages of comfort while being torn into pieces, stay close to your loved ones while dying inside and, by doing so, somehow, somehow, somehow keep on living, because when everything stops, there’s still something to do: believing that something from your recent past will ... stay... THE LISTENING EXPERIENCE The opening track gave me goosebumps and immediately brought this post's title to my mind. It was an instant shot. Autumn Love's lingering sadness took me by the throat (Paul Oakenfold's and Steve Osborne's masterpiece features the following samples: Drum beat and vocal from Soul II Soul - Keep On Movin / Drum beat and vocal from Tears For Fears - Shout / Drum beat from Led Zeppelin - When The Levee Breaks / Vocal from Donna Summer ‎- Love To Love You Baby, beautifully encapsulating the end of the 80s sonic vibes). Of course, it was dedicated to the late Claire Dodd, Balearic Burger's John C. Bawcombe longtime friend. Tears came rolling down as I was thinking about a friend of mine who is presently battling an aggressive form of cancer, yeah, sometimes life hits hard. What more is there to say? The show went smoothly and we were all happy to be together despite the sadness that could be felt throughout today's episode... I love how Colleen built today's show, with clear sections dedicated to each artist that we lost recently. Time would have permitted, we could have added a tribute to the late Tito Jackson who passed away on September 15, 2024... Tough times indeed... But let's get back to today's episode... As I said, Colleen organised today's show in sections, 3 of them (with Ned Doheny's To Prove My Love and Melba Moore's You Stepped Into My Life (a cover of the Bee Gee's 1976 song) acting as – lighter and happier – separators, both from the heydays of Disco). And there's also something more: each part respects the show's musical legacy if I can put it that way. Let's look closer at what I mean here! Sergio Mendes' part is relaxed, with changing rhythms lurking on the Balearic side, the Brazilian musician being known for playing Bossa Nova, often mixed with funk. Drawing his musical inspirations from his passion for Jazz (a style he discovered in 1956 at 15), although, like Nina Simone, he studied Classical Piano from an early age, Sergio Mendes played with artists such as Cannonball Adderley or Herbie Mann, among others. Thanks to the Balearic Breakfast Familly's outstanding requests, Colleen's set beautifully encapsulates Sergio's musical legacy. The soundstage on The Fool on the Hill (and the realism of the sound) is astounding even when played on laptop speakers (hence what I said before, you don't need high-end equipment to train your ears), and Colleen's mixing delicate as can be while That's Enough For Me starts (a cover of the Patti Austin song taken from the 1977 Havana Candy studio album)! The light Righteous Life then beautifully gives way to The Real Thing, which, although keeping its bossa-nova groove intact, gently lurks into disco! Originally written by Stevie Wonder in the 1970s for Sergio Mendes, this tune was covered by Vanessa Williams in an astounding 2009 Balearic Version, but it seems Stevie Wonder did not record it. And I love it how much this last Sergio Mendes' song opens it up to Ned Doheny's "To Prove My Love", both tracks sharing a very similar tonality! My relationship to the DJ community started with “To Prove My Love,” which was on the Prone record. It was a groove that I had been fiddling with at home that I had no melody for and only background vocals, no actual lyrics. [Steve] Cropper, the producer of the album, heard this and went, “Oh my god, that’s so great, let's do that.” We jump on this thing, he calls a bunch of players, and we stay up all night making this thing and it was one of those things where we staggered out of the studio in the morning and the sun was coming up and you really felt like you had done something fabulous. CBS never released the Prone album, they wouldn’t do it. I don’t know how, but it found its way to England – they sent over what is called a “TV mix,” which is everything but the lead vocals. It got to London and they went completely nuts; apparently it influenced the acid house people. If you go out in clubs you can still hear it now, and that was a long time ago. Crazy P's part has a more upfront rhythmic approach (as expected), and keeps evolving upward until Melba Moore's You Stepped Into My Life arrives. This part, dedicated to Danielle Moore, is also the longest and strongest one of today's episode, beautifully relying on the two other parts of the show, which acts as a kind of "pedestal". Colleen's astounding mixes (Never Gonna Reach Me / This Fire & Show Me Love / Cruel Mistress) took our breath away... Of course, Greca's dedication brought tears to our eyes, and I want to thank her for sharing it with us here on the Balearic Breakfast blog! Greca's Tribute to Danielle Moore To the formidable Danielle Moore. I am still in disbelief, you were so full of life and energy no one could have ever imagined this happening. I never met you... but I loved you. Being late to the Crazy P party I first came across you at the beginning of Covid when I became obsessed with the tune ‘One True light’. I ran to my laptop and spent the whole evening watching you strut your stuff in Crazy P and that was that I was hooked from that very moment. Your performance radiated through the screen and hit me like a bolt of lightening, the voice, the style, the moves, the haircut - lets face it you rocked a bob like no other! You were the whole package and more. You made it look so effortless and natural like you were having the time of your life, I can’t recall ever having witnessed such a performer, nor do I think I ever will... You knocked my socks off lady and I freekin loved it! We chatted on line a few times and you were always so warm and friendly. I was so happy to learn we had lots in common and I felt a strong connection, I reckon if we had met we could have been friends! And that’s the point, that’s how you made us feel. Listening to every Crazy P show on Worldwide FM on repeat changed my musical world for the better. Listening to the three of you chat and laugh while playing your carefully curated selections was a true pleasure, your musical tastes blowing my mind, inspiring and making me feel so happy, I thank you for your brilliance. The outpouring of love is like nothing I have ever seen, you were clearly loved and I hope you knew that. You leave a massive hole, but your legacy will never die. To everyone who ever loved you, never stop dancing. Greca" Maze featuring Frankie Beverly's section is more relaxed, groovier, and it beautifully follows Melba Moore's You Stepped Into My Life. The band was actually discovered by Marvin Gaye under the name Raw Soul and recorded its first studio album in 1976. Joy and Pain's live version made me realize that the title I chose for today's post had a dual message... It just stopped me in my tracks, and I shared my feelings on the chat about it: of course, everything stops when life hits you hard, but everything also does stop when you listen to some good music or when you see a great artist live, everything stops then too... Once again, I intellectually joined Colleen without thinking about it, and it brought tears to my eyes as I cracked up the volume of my stereo listening to Frankie Beverly's perfect vocals (supported by a band like no other and an audience hot on its wheels!). I was struck when I heard Colleen beautifully letting Changing Times enter the mix; moments like these always bring thrills down my spine (both songs are initially from the 1980 Joy and Pain studio album, as reminded by our Captain, this version being taken from the 1981 live in New Orleans album). Ending on the nostalgic and reflective "We Are One", this last part is the perfect closure for an immensely emotive show... And I would like to share it a few words written by Clifton in 2009 on his blog: "One of their best songs is a cool groove about unity titled We Are One. It is the title track of their album released in 1983. It features the smooth vocals of the great Frankie Beverly and the soulful melody with the classic Maze sound. Pay special attention to the organ in the background. We Are One explains the idea that despite the cruel and hurtful things we do and say to one another, we are all connected and can get through anything with the love we have for one another. In the song Frankie Beverly lets us know that if we are one no matter what we do and we just need to put it all together things would be better. The words fit a lot of issues going on around the world and especially here in New Orleans. It’s a perfect song for bringing family and friends together. It’s perfect for a community that has been shaken by disaster and fighting through rough times. It also could be a great song for a country that could use more of a united feeling. It’s a great song of a great R&B album." All in all, this specific structure created a beautiful balance, showcasing Colleen's delicacy, preserving the family's emotions with happier moments, speaking about her forthcoming projects, which allowed us all to keep a smile during this very moving show. Thank you, Colleen... COLLEEN'S NEWS Wednesday, 18th September: Classic Album Sundays presents ‘Hard Candy’ with Ned Doheny (click here to buy the tickets) ; Tuesday, 24th September at 8pm GMT Colleen will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Portishead's debut album 'Dummy' (click here to join Classic Album Sundays) ; Monday, 14th October: Classic Album Sundays presents Saint Etienne at The British Library with National Album Day, celebrating the 'Foxbase Alpha' album with Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs (click here to join the live stream).

Radio host, journalist, producer and DJ, among others, Martyn Ware received Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy in the 207th episode of his ' Electronically yours ' radio show, streamed on August, 8th 2024. THE INTERVIEW [Martyn] Hi, it's Martin here, Electronical News as always. Today's guest is a very, very interesting woman who has been in the music business a long time, but she's coming at it from a slightly different direction. Her name is Colleen Murphy, otherwise known as Cosmo. Her DJ name is Cosmo. She's American, but she lives in the UK now. She calls herself a musical selector, DJ, radio host, and a curator and an audiophile. And she's, I suppose, most famous for Classic Album Sundays, where they do a playback of a famous album and comment on it. She's really good. She's done stuff for BBC Six, Sounds of the City, Radio 4, Turntable Tales. She's a lover of music, a lover of bringing people together in a community to appreciate good music and good sound. She's also a prolific remixer. Roisin Murphy, The Rapture, Fat Freddy's Drop, Beardy Man, Candy Stanton, Chaka Khan, etc, etc. Here she is, Colleen Cosmo Murphy. [Martyn] Tell us about growing up in Massachusetts.   [Colleen] Well, growing up in Massachusetts, it was a great place to grow up, actually. I grew up in a small town, a very small suburban town just outside of Boston. And although the town was quite normal, it was great for childhood, but once I came of age to, say, 12, 13, I started to feel a little bit trapped, and mainly it was because of music. Luckily, I grew up with a lot of great radio because Boston had some very progressive, album-oriented AOR radio stations, and they also had a lot of college radio stations because Boston has the most colleges and universities in any city of the U.S., possibly in the world, I don't know. And so I was turned on to a lot of different kinds of music, like hearing Brian Eno on WBCN, on Oedipus' show Nocturnal Emissions. I would have heard Heaven's Seventeen on that show. I would have heard New Order. I would have heard Zymox, all sorts of great 80s bands, and earlier, you know. So that was really good to have that, and that's really what got me started into collecting records before I even started working in a record shop.   [Martyn] Are you an only sibling?   [Colleen] No, I have a younger sister who's not as much into music. I have a lot of aunts and uncles. I'm a big Irish Catholic Murphy clan, and they were all in the same town, and my dad was the eldest of six, so one aunt was eight when I was born. The next uncle was 10, then it was 12. So there was this big Murphy clan, and I used to raid my aunts' and uncles' collections. So my aunt was into Elton John and David Bowie and Peter Frampton, as you can imagine, in the 70s. I had another aunt who was into Bitches Brew by Miles Davis and Kate Bush. She was really heavily into music, and then other uncles that were into Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles. So I would borrow all of their records.   [Martyn] Oh, you're very lucky to have that as a background. You're also very lucky to be Irish. I've got an Irish passport as well. I'm a quarter Irish.   [Colleen] Really?   [Martyn] Well, actually, I think it's a quarter. Both of my grandmothers were from Ireland, born in Ireland. [Colleen] Where? [Martyn] Yeah, so hence I've got an Irish passport. I'm very proud of my Irish heritage. So am I. Not quite as strong as yours, probably.   [Colleen] Well, that's just one side of the family. Actually, my grandmother was English. She was a war bride. My grandfather was in the Navy during World War II and was stationed in Plymouth. So a lot of my family, even my father went to school in Plymouth for a little bit. Then the other side is the Scandinavian side. All right. I can't claim 100% Irish ancestry despite my name.   [Martyn] What a beautiful combination of genetic traits. Thank you. The Scandinavian and the Irish. What more could you possibly want?   [Colleen] Vikings and Irish.   [Martyn] Yeah, come on. You're not a fight boy. Yeah. Well, you know what they say about the Irish, basically. They fucked their way around the world, didn't they? It's called Irish imperialism.   [Colleen] Yeah, exactly. Love it.   [Martyn] They were a big Irish empire, but they're, shall we say, more of a soft power landscape. That's a nice, eloquent way of putting it. So how did you, I mean, obviously you loved music from an early age and you loved vinyl from an early age.   [Colleen] Well, vinyl was the only option, really.   [Martyn] Yeah, of course.   [Colleen] I mean, my parents had an 8-track and then I later got a cassette player, but vinyl was really the main option.   [Martyn] You made your own mixtapes and stuff.   [Colleen] I made loads of mixtapes. I started making them when I was 12. I even have a couple here somewhere. And I think that's how I started programming. I started doing that at the age of 12 and then at 14 I started on my high school radio stations, which was a 10-watt station, and I did that for four years. So I really got into programming. 10 megawatts, 10 watts. 10 watts. Yeah, just 10 watts. It went to the borders of the town and everybody else had kind of top 40 or classic rock shows, but I didn't. I had very different shows.   [Martyn] Were you in development? Were your stuff more eclectic, would you say?   [Colleen] Yes. Oh, absolutely. I had a very open ear. I did a show called Punk Funk and Junk with my friend Mary Caruso, which was exactly what it said. It was early electro, early hip-hop, but also punk because I was really into that, both post-punk, punk. I mean, I hate using all these genres, but it's just a simpler way of kind of describing it. I don't know where Nina Hagen falls, but I loved her. I had a show called Strawberry Alarm Clock, a morning show, because I was getting into that Paisley pop sound and the 60s pop, but it was very eclectic, and it was also referencing the fact that I worked at a record shop called Strawberries. I started there when I was 16.   So I was a real obsessive, and yeah, it was kind of strange.   [Martyn] Did you use to do the equivalent of doing mixtapes for the radio then?   [Colleen] No, I did the radio live, and I did mixtapes for myself and for friends, so I'd copy them. I ended up getting one of those double cassette recorders.   [Martyn] Right. And then live DJing, when did you start doing that?   [Colleen] Live DJing really came out of college radio. So I went to New York University and was lucky to get in with scholarships, but I also had, what did they call them? I got paid to also work at the radio station. Not very much, not with all the hours I put in, but it was one of the biggest college radio stations in the country because we were in New York City. Our transmitter was in the Bronx. We broadcast to all five boroughs, Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey, and plus all the bands were there, so they would come through on their promo tours, and this is the 1980s, before Nirvana broke and changed American radio forever. This was the only place where you could hear this music. Some of the bands graduated, like R.E.M. and U2 graduated to more kind of album oriented rock stations, but we were the purveyors of fine music throughout the 1980s, and Nick Cave would come through the studio, Shea McGowan would come through the studio, Bjork would come through the studio, everybody did because there weren't any other radio outlets really for them to do interviews. So it was a really great experience, but we did a lot of events throughout New York City. So I DJed at CBGB's like record can team when they started. Oh, I'm really jealous. Yeah, that was really fun. I also played at Mars, you know, on the roof of Mars, which was a really cool club on the west side, a highway area.   [Martyn] Have you ever been to Danceteria? Are you too young for that?   [Colleen] No, I didn't, and then really I started getting into dance music more. I think Danceteria was closing right around the time I moved there. I moved there in 86, and I know the garage closed in 87, it was before I ever went. I used to go to Palladium and places like that to dance, but it was really in 1991, really when I started heavily going to other clubs, like dance music clubs and really immersing myself in that world.   [Martyn] I've done quite a lot of interviews with people from the dance scene, and particularly in New York. I'm fascinated with all that, because to us in the UK, or to me in Sheffield precisely, before I moved down to London in 81, it was a thing of unimaginable charisma, really, I suppose. And the eclecticism of the music that was coming out of that time, because I was always a big soul fan, non-soul fan, but also a fan of the kind of proto-punk stuff that came out. So actually when punk first started happening in Sheffield, we kind of regarded it as a little bit old hat, actually. Right.   [Colleen] Well, I think the Brits are usually further ahead musically than the Americans when I talk about the majority of the population.   [Martyn] Yeah. Well, I don't know about that, but the other thing that we could never fully grasp, and I still have a little bit of a problem with it, is the complexity of the kind of radio ecosystem of America, and the segmentations of the market, and the kind of genre-based radio stations. There was no equivalence of that in the UK.   [Colleen] Well, this is why I'm saying that I think the majority, when I look at the British population, they had kind of a more expansive ear, and I think this is true with Europe too, especially with music, Black American music. I mean, we take a look at the jazz musicians that had far more success over in Europe than the UK, and this still happens as well with Black bands, like Sister Sledge or Nile Rodgers. They're much more popular here than they are in the US. The USA, you have to remember, the number one radio format is country, and I like some country music. I'm not putting down that. There's some great country music, but it is the number one radio format, and then it's like top 40 and classic rock, classic tunes, and because it was so formatted as well, sometimes white artists wouldn't be played on radio stations that were Black-run, and vice versa, or MTV. I think they weren't even featuring Black artists. Everything was so segregated, sometimes racially and musically as well. The thing that I think has really broken down a lot of these barriers is actually online radio. Now, I'm a terrestrial radio fan. I love broadcasting on FM airwaves. It's what I love to do, but the whole onset of online radio has certainly made things a lot more competitive in some ways, but people really have to be on their A-game and turning people on to new stuff as well as maybe playing some old favorites.   [Martyn] Yeah, I think so. I had a fantasy because I've done quite a lot of sound installation work in the last 20 years. I know you have, yeah. [Martyn] And I've had a fantasy for a while about, in fact, I looked into it seriously at one point, about buying a big, or buying some time at least on a big shortwave transmission that could actually go worldwide. That's amazing, that'd be fun. I just love the sound of shortwave radio so much.   [Colleen] I do too. We had one when I was growing up. We used to go to a place called Shop Aquatic, which was part of Martha's Vineyard sometimes. Ted Kennedy story famously there around that time. I was going in the 70s, and we had a shortwave radio that I used to play around with. It was a lot of fun.   [Martyn] Those big, powerful shortwave transmitters, buying time is so insanely expensive.   [Colleen] How much is it?   [Martyn] It's a lot of money. If you were going to do an hour's radio show- A lot of hounds. It would cost you, to get a decent strength of signal that could actually transmit around the world would probably cost you $10,000 an hour. You're joking. Yeah, because it's just not, it's only used for propaganda if you think about it. Yeah. Shortwave is only really listened to nowadays by pretty much either specialists or people in third world countries.   [Colleen] Right.   [Martyn] If you want to do a worldwide propaganda station, it's normally paid for by the government, right? Right. Anyway, so I looked into, I thought, surely there must be a cheaper way of doing this. I looked into buying-   [Colleen] Do some British musical propaganda.   [Martyn] We need some of that. Well, you know, I've had some-   [Colleen] Prove to our government that the events in the music industry is a huge part of the British economy and they should be treating us better.   [Martyn] Oh, by the way, I don't know if you've done any advocacy for artists' rights or British artists' rights, or what I have. I was on the board of the Ivers Academy for like six years and then the British Artists Coalition before that. I'm a little bit disillusioned with all that stuff now, I have to say. It's a bit depressing because they don't seem to get anywhere. The British government don't seem to appreciate art in general, actually, but they don't seem to appreciate the economic benefits of music. I mean, I've told this story a couple of times, but I'm sure you're conversing with it. There was a time in the mid-80s where 13 of the top 20 singles in the Billboard charts in America, top 40, were UK-signed artists.   [Colleen] I know this because I grew up listening to it. I was 14 in 1982. I was a keen advocate and embracer of the Second British Invasion, as it was called then.   [Martyn] Right, yeah. I think the year I'm looking at it, probably a little bit later than that, but it was George Michael was massive then.   [Colleen] Even in the early 80s. Honestly, the cultural export, the cultural musical export in particular, of Britain is so great. And I'm not even talking just about America.   [Martyn] But why don't they dig this? Why don't they understand, just from a pragmatic point of view?   [Colleen] That's what I'm wondering. It became very clear during the pandemic when events were closed first and the last to reopen. And I do like football, but the fact that the, was it the World Cup or the European Cup, in June 2021, thousands of people were allowed to gather in stadiums and all of the festivals that we were booked for got cancelled. Oh, right, okay. And you just think, oh, so 15,000 people or 3,000 people in a field is more dangerous than tens of thousands of people in an arena? And they just, I guess the Tories know that a lot of us musicians don't vote for them.   [Martyn] Let's dig a bit deeper here. I think that's all it is, right? Let's just say it. The Tories aren't enormous fans of young people. They're not, they don't understand or like the rebellious nature of art in general, but music in particular. They see it as some kind of rallying call against conformity. I think it's actually pretty similar in America as well. Oh gosh, yeah. But this is destroying our cultural landscape. And I know you are a big advocate for audiophilia, which I am as well, obviously. I mean, I've spent 45 years doing it. But I'm not an obsessive about the finest, finest, I don't have to have, you know. I'm quite...   [Colleen] More pragmatic than crazy.   [Martyn] Yeah, more pragmatic, yeah. But I do care. Me too. I do care about the, shall we say the ecodiversity of the musical system. And I think we're losing that now and everything becomes more homogenized. Ironically, even though there's more people making music and putting it out into the world than ever before. I saw a quote from that dick, Daniel Eck, from Spotify this morning. He was saying, oh yeah, he was referring to music as products. And now, you know, he's almost implying the subjects of what he was saying in this quote was there's too much product out there now. And I think they're leading the idea that people should just take it down off their servers or they should take it down off their servers after a certain period of time because it's not relevant anymore. I'm going, what the fuck are you talking about?   [Colleen] Oh my gosh. I mean, it's interesting because I have, you know, one thing with these streaming services, I mean, obviously how they treat artists is despicable. So I'll lead with that. But what I wanted to say on the other side of things, so my daughter is nearly 20 and she grew up with almost all of popular music at her fingertips. Yes, of course. And it's very interesting too because, you know, when I was growing up and you were growing up, you either had to hear something on the radio, you had to hear it at a friend's house or you had to own it. You had to own a physical copy. And I'm not saying one's worse or better or worse, by the way, I'm just making the differences because there's advantages and disadvantages to both. The advantage to having all the music at your fingertips, of course, is that you can have a very expansive knowledge of music from a very early age, which my daughter did growing up in a musical household, I suppose. So I do see a good thing with streaming services if they pay their artists greatly. And I think this is also a problem with the major labels as well, though, because I believe, from my understanding, that Spotify is doing deals with the labels themselves.   [Martyn] Do you want me to tell you the inside joke on this shit?   [Colleen]  Yes, I think we should tell people. People need to know.   [Martyn] I was involved in the, you know, inner sanctum kind of negotiations and lobbying with Spotify. In fact, one of the key representatives of Spotify came to talk at a meeting of artists because some of the artists were freaking out at the Ivers, and they put the word out and they had a huge number of people coming. Could have been Fischoff's college. I can't remember. There were about 200 artists in the room, a lot of high-profile people. There was me and Nick Mason on the stage.   [Colleen] Oh, Nick's last guy.   [Martyn] Sandy Chor.   [Colleen] Oh, wow.   [Martyn] Yeah. A lot of different areas covered. Laura Mvula. Oh, cool. She's great too. And various people, anyway, lots of different areas covered. And the bullshit he was coming out with just frightened me, and this was 12, maybe 15 years ago now. And so anyway, we dug a bit deeper and we found out that the major record labels in particular were approached at an early stage by Spotify and said, look, we obviously need your catalogue to make this work. We want it to be the go-to place for streaming. Spotify, I'm talking about now. There are others, of course, but let's talk about Spotify. We need your catalogue. How can we get hold of your catalogue? And they just said, well, if you give us a share in your business, so Spotify gave them a percentage.   [Colleen] Of their overall business.   [Martyn] Of Spotify, right? Okay. On the basis that they would sign an NDA, so they couldn't divulge to either the artists, auditors, the general public, that there was a vested interest in them acquiescing to Spotify. So we don't know. I still don't know. We don't know what the percentage is because it's under NDA, right?   [Colleen] How can that preclude auditors? Surely auditors should be able to get around that loophole because it would be a legal demand.   [Martyn] They can demand to see the end result, if you like, which is all the corporate payments. Okay, but not the contract. But not the contract. I suppose, ultimately, you could deduce from that what the hell was going on. But the thing that Spotify do is they change the royalty rates all the time. So it's impossible to go, well, 0.000001 cent multiplied by X gives you an equation if you fill it in because they change it all the time. And the bigger artists, because I went up to Nick Mason after this meeting, which was riotous, by the way. People were up in arms and said, Nick, look, we need somebody very high profile. I mean, I'm not high profile yet. To stand up against this land grab, essentially. And I said, Pink Floyd, you're one of the biggest rights holders on Earth in terms of the amount. And he said, yeah, it's kind of difficult because our business manager has done a special deal with Spotify. Right. So what they do.   [Colleen] Well, because they also, Pink Floyd.   [Martyn] Under NDA. Right. So what they do is they hive off the big players and go, right. We'll give you a better deal, a proper deal. But you're not allowed to talk about it.   [Colleen] Right. Yeah. And I know there was something of Pink Floyd as well about the sequencing that originally when these streaming platforms came out, they didn't want their albums to be resequenced by the end user. So they wanted it to be streamed...   [Martyn] Right.   [Colleen] Apparently. It's sad, isn't it? It is sad because it's really the larger artists, the bigger artists are benefiting. And you find this also with collection societies, like whatever monies are unclaimed gets divided up and it goes to the big songwriters, the big publishers.   [Martyn] Exactly. It's not right.   [Colleen] And it's not right. It's not right. It should be going to the smaller publishers. It's so difficult to make a living in music now if you are not a major artist. Because you're not making money selling product, as they call it, but you're not making money selling records. Now touring is so expensive, especially with Brexit.   [Martyn] Yeah, it's all gone. I mean, we're just about survival with MSMT because we do a lot of festivals and touring. And we can make a bit of money out of that. But I mean, I won't even, I can't tell you. I just got my publishing royalties for the last six months. I don't know where you can go with it. I mean, I could probably have a holiday for a week in Ireland. That's about it. But anyway, let's talk about cheerful stuff.   [Colleen] Let's talk about cheerful stuff. These discussions are important because I just want to say one more thing about this. When people think about how important music is to them, they really need to kind of think about this with their hands in their pocket because it costs about four to five pounds to go out and have a coffee. Right now. And you could be buying even digital songs, like a few of those, or that's part of an album. So it's really important to support your favourite artist.   [Martyn] It definitely is. Now the main way that people do that is by buying merch for vinyl at the event or online. In fact, with MSMT, we made a conscious decision to never release any new material on digital platforms at all. So now we only release new material on vinyl. Wow, that's cool. Well, it's cool, but you don't make much money out of it.   [Colleen] But you wouldn't make any money to help the streaming services anyway, so what's the point?   [Martyn] Exactly. So what we're now in the process of doing is creating collectibles over a period of time, which will increase in value. I quite like the Wu-Tang Clan thing with the one million pound single album.   [Colleen] Yeah, I do, that was clever.   [Martyn] That's really good, man.   [Colleen] Very clever.   [Martyn] That's probably worth a lot more than a million dollars.   [Colleen] It probably is now, yeah, exactly. And it's just a big F you to the music industry.   [Martyn] Exactly.   [Colleen] And to show what hype is as well.   [Martyn] Yeah, yeah. So, right, so what I love about you is you've got a portfolio career, which actually you've always aspired to that, it seems to me. But a portfolio career is actually, in a family ironic way, is now the way that most people have to make money out of the music industry. What do you think about that?   [Colleen] Well, the thing is, as a woman DJ, almost every woman DJ that I know that started when I started had other jobs, because you had to. Yeah, yeah. We almost didn't even, I never even, when I started DJing and became a professional DJ out in clubs and places, I still didn't think that, it took me a while to jump off that cliff and take the risk of not having a job. So I worked in record shops, I ran a record pool, I did marketing for major record labels, I produced syndicated radio shows. I did a lot of other things. I also, my taste has always been very wide. You know, I started working in a record shop when I was 16, and the beauty of that was that everybody I was working with, they weren't there for the money, because there was no money. They were there because they were obsessed. And so I had, you know, my assistant manager was the jazz devotee and turned me on to Charles Mingus, like the Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, which, you know, when I was 16, or there was another guy that turned me on to the Electric Prunes, and then someone else was into the remixes, someone else turned me on to good Bruce Springsteen, because I was a bit of a snob, and he said, oh, there's some good Bruce Springsteen albums. So I got turned on to so much stuff, and I've always had a very open ear. And not just in my private life, but also in my professional life. Classic Album Sundays, as you know, you know, we feature albums from all areas of the musical spectrum. And even as a, you know, I started on college radios playing, all my radio shows have been very different. It was very hard for me to reconcile this for a very long time. I saw myself as two different individuals. There's Colleen, yeah. Colleen who did like all the music business stuff, Colleen Murphy, who did Classic Album Sundays and could talk about other kinds of music, and then DJ Cosmo, who just played clubs and, you know, did radio shows that was focused on dance music. And then I realized that I couldn't be two halves. It wasn't, I guess, the overused word right now. It wasn't authentic. It probably wasn't fair to myself as well. And I don't fit into the cookie cutter DJ thing. Sometimes I wish I did because I think if you had a very easy to digest brand and this is what you are, it is easier for people to understand and comprehend. And I confuse people. But I think also that it's, that the fans that I do have are so great because they understand me and they like that eclecticism. They want to learn something new as well as hear something that they know.   [Martyn] So if you were running a... Well, there's two things I want to dig a bit deeper on. One is your... Let's just stick with the second one first. When people employ you to be a DJ, say for a festival, do they know, do you discuss what you're going to do or do you just turn up and they trust you?   [Colleen] I turn up and they trust me. I've been doing this for... I mean, I've been in the music business for over 40 years, professionally DJing for 35. I think they should trust you, yeah. Yeah, but the thing is, is I do always think about who is there. I'm not there to show off and show how great a train spotter I am. I mean, in certain situations, that's what the situation calls for. But when I'm on a festival stage, it depends on if I'm opening up for Chic. I know who the audience is.   [Martyn] Yeah, yeah.   [Colleen] I'm not going to start playing, you know, Black Flag records. You know what I'm saying? It's like, I just... or Big Black. I just noticed Dean Albany has passed away. You know, I understand who my audience is and also I understand people bought tickets.   [Martyn] Yes.   [Colleen] So I'm not saying...   [Martyn] You're an entertainer. Come on.   [Colleen] Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying... I'm an entertainer, but also a musical curator and a musical educator. Yes. And I try to squeeze all of those into my DJ sets. So maybe you'll hear a few songs that you know. That's great. I don't see an issue with that.   [Martyn] No.   [Colleen] I don't see why that's a problem. But I also might play some things that you don't know, whether it's new, something that's breaking, or something that's old. And that's kind of always how I have been. Oh, I love that. Yeah. I think of these kind of musical stepping stones of people like, oh, I know this song, and they get into it, and it makes them feel good. And maybe it also builds up a relationship between you and the dancer or the listener saying, hey, you can trust me. Here's a common ground here, but let's go here now. You know, I do mixes sometimes for people that are very obscure, and I like that stuff too. And I listen to some train spotter DJs because I'm train spotting. And I'm trying to figure out things I don't know. But I find a lot of it is people playing things that aren't even that good, but they're rare. And that's the difference that I have. I don't agree with that. I think a song has to stand on its own. And you need to judge it for the song rather than, oh, this is 200 pounds.   [Martyn] Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the wildest situation regarding a DJ set that you've ever been involved with? Would you say, like, for instance, an unusual set of circumstances?   [Colleen] Okay. It was very early on. It's when David Mancuso first asked me to play one-on-one with him at his loft party on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C. And it was maybe 93. So just over 30 years ago. And I didn't know David that well. I had had him up on my radio show. I had been going to the loft, but I'm not the kind of person that starts yakking away to the DJ or musical host while they're playing. I'm not that type of person. I'm actually less extroverted than that. And I had a lot of respect for him, too. So he had been up at my radio show. We had gone out once, talked about music, really were getting along. And then he just turned around and said, will you play some one-on-ones with me? And I was pretty floored, number one, because I respected him so much. I also respected the dance floor and the dancers. And I knew they knew their stuff. But the other things that were surrounding this was David's sound system. And he, we're talking about audiophilia. This is where I first really got into it. I had studied sound at NYU. I had been recording and producing radio. Yeah, I edited on tape. I mixed radio shows. I was an engineer and that side of things. But I didn't know about the playback side. So the fact I had heard about these moving coil cartridges called Koetsus that he was using, I mean, I didn't even know the difference between moving magnet and moving coil at the time, but I knew that if I whacked it, that it would have to be sent to Japan and would cost far too much money to repair because David had no money at that time.   [Martyn] So you were nervous about that?   [Colleen] I was nervous about that. I was nervous about there's no headphones. You were using a Mark Levinson M01 preamplifier, which is a classic audiophile amplifier. It's called cult status. And it just has a phono one and a phono two. There's no headphone jack. So you have to know your records. You have to cue this $2,000 at that time. You know, moving coil cartridge by eye, no back spinning, and hoping you're on the right speed, hoping it's the right cut. That's difficult. It was difficult. Now, I only played four songs that time. But I did well enough that he asked me back. But that was the biggest... Oh, gosh, I was the most nervous for that more than anything else.   [Martyn] Outside your comfort zone, perhaps.   [Colleen] Yes, it was. But it was a start of a great mentorship and friendship as well. So I'm forever grateful for that.   [Martyn] So I'm forever grateful for that. And what's your favorite set that you ever played?   [Colleen] I can't even... I have no idea. I just can't even... Because I really try to make every set like that. And it's really something that's important to me that I bring positive energy and the life force of music to every single thing that I do, whether it's a radio show, a club gig, a private party, or a classic album Sunday's event. I want to feel uplifted, and I want everybody else to feel that way. And so really, that's my mission.   [Martyn] That does pretty much chime with what we always say to each other in Heaven's 17. We say, look, sometimes you're going to be playing to 100,000 people. Sometimes you're going to be playing to 100 people. They all deserve a show. 100%. So do it. Yeah. And okay, what's the biggest number of people that you played to?   [Colleen] I think about close to 8,000 or something around that, like at a big outdoor festival. It was a big outdoor festival in Italy. But again, maybe 8,000 to 10,000. Some of the clubs, there were a few thousand. I used to play at this club in Red Zone in Italy. It was called Red Zone, and it had 6,000 people there. You know, I have to say, I think it's easier to play for a larger crowd than for a smaller one.   [Martyn] And the reason why- I remember- Yeah, sorry. I was going to say, the reason I think is because when you perform into a huge audience, the behavior of the crowd is different. It's like a big, benign entity. I often characterize it as a kind of big, dumb cow. It's not going to get really over-the-top excited. Maybe some people at the front. But it's also going to be kind of- it's not going to be hypercritical, probably.   [Colleen] Yeah. And there's enough people that are into you there that the spirit kind of keeps going. Whereas a small crowd, like the first gig I played in Italy, no one knew me. Fair enough. They shouldn't have. I mean, there's no reason for them to know me, quite honestly. I think there were like 10 people there, but I kept them on the floor all night. That was the hardest gig I've ever done because I kept them on the floor, cheering, dancing. There you go. In a club too, not like a little room. And that was the hardest gig, but I also knew I'm a professional now.   [Martyn] Have you met Anna Matronik?   [Colleen] I have. She's wonderful. She's lovely, isn't she? She is great. I've been up on her radio show as well.   [Martyn] Have you?   [Colleen] She's another keen musical sports DJ.   [Martyn] Have you ever done any DJing with her? Because she's DJs too, actually.   [Colleen] I should, yeah.   [Martyn] Yeah, she had me up on her Radio 2 show. Oh my God, what a bill that would be. You two together. My God. Frying them to death. You do a lot of remixing, right? Yes. You've had a lot of success with that stuff. So how did you get into that? Was it just something you did one day or was it something you pursued?   [Colleen] Actually, yes. And actually, I wasn't even asked to remix. I was asked to produce an original tune. So it was the late 1990s and I was still working at Dance Tracks and there was a very great soulful house label that I really loved called Suburban and this guy Tommy Musto was behind it. And they were always really great vocals on key and paid off key vocals. Great keyboard playing, great bass playing, some live instrumentation. And it was kind of like the same kind of sound on a lot of these records, but they're all really good. And he came into the store one day and said, I want to release your first record. I had actually started songwriting already.   [Martyn] Right.   [Colleen] I had gone through a breakup and was writing lyrics and melodies. So I had a song ready to go and it's actually just been reissued with remixes, strangely. Cool. What's it called? So that one was called She. The song was called Loneliness. It features Alison Crockett. I know all the things I've done wrong. It was overly wordy, but I had a great teacher. Then I did another record with a guy named Danny Wang, which was a bit more electro, kind of quirky, keyword oriented. Then I started my own label, Bitches Brew, and was able to do a lot more there in terms of original productions and sometimes remixing things that we had signed. Really, I stopped doing it for a while. I did one for Fat Freddy's Drop around 2014. Then Classic Album Sundays was taking off and my focus just went to that.   [Martyn] Yeah.   [Colleen] But right at the beginning of the pandemic, I had read this book called The Artist's Way, which a lot of artists have read. It was becoming clear to me that I wanted to make music again, but I didn't really want to do original music because I didn't have the time or my own studio anymore. I was more into remixing. I had heard this Roisin Murphy song, Murphy's Law, and I thought, it has my name all over it.   [Martyn] Roisin. Yes. Probably my favorite contemporary artist, actually.   [Colleen] She's great. She's such a great artist. We asked, and she was really into the idea. That was after a long break. It was my first foray back into remixing. The thing that I'm really pleased about is that I get to do a lot of different kinds of things. I could mix bands like A Certain Ratio or Joe Goddard from Hot Ship and go more into a different sound than maybe some of the other artists like Lady Blackbird or Secret Night Gang or some of the more soul-oriented groups. I've also done a lot of down-tempo remixes that are quite dubbed out or kind of very beautiful. Like Jacob Gurevich, who is a guitarist. I did one for him. Phenomenal Handclap Band and Phil Meissen. I've done a lot of different types of remixes. The way I look at it is that I don't have, again, a cookie-cutter imprint. I hear the song. If I don't hear an idea that I feel either lifts it more or is a drastic rearrangement, then I don't do it. If I have nothing to offer, I don't do it.   [Martyn] I've been doing quite a lot of remixing together with my colleagues over the last two or three years. Mainly for friends, actually, but some of it's turned out incredibly well. I couldn't have prayed better myself. It's like you have to feel inspired by the raw material and you have to take a different view on it. You look at it through a different lens. My ambition is that when the artist hears it, that they are surprised. If they're not surprised, then I've done something wrong.   [Colleen] Absolutely. Also, if you can't improve upon it in your own head or rearrange it, sometimes it's just perfect as it is. I'll just say, there's nothing I can do and add to this that I think is going to make it any different or better. I think this is the perfect encapsulation of this song.   [Martyn] I agree completely. Another thing that I was doing research on you, your love of narrative in songwriting and music, which is something I share with you. I really miss writing content for songwriting, largely. I like story songs. I like to be included in a kind of... I like to be invited into a secret world of the story and feel like I've discovered it for myself. Absolutely. It's made up of that stuff, I don't think.   [Colleen] Bob Dylan really helped change the fabric of pop music by going into these stories and narratives and not just singing about love songs and really inspired so many musicians. One of my favorite songwriters is Joni Mitchell. She's just another level in terms of lyrically, phrasing, unique melodies, guitar tunings, you name it. Country music, actually. Good country music has some great narratives. If you look at Chris Christopherson, some of the great songwriters, Jimmy Webb.   [Martyn] Jimmy Webb, yeah.   [Colleen] Great songwriting. Hal David and Burt Bacharach.   [Martyn] Oh my gosh. That's amazing.   [Colleen] I mean, they're classic songs for a reason that have stood the test of time. I hear both sides now. Joni Mitchell and the version she did in her 50s because I'm in my 50s, is better than the one she recorded. She wrote a song that was beyond her years. She was in her early 20s and then she performs it in her 50s and then she just performed it again recently in her 70s and brings so much more to this song. I mean, a great song can make you cry. A great song can make you laugh. A great song can make you cry from happiness. And, you know, lyrics are really important, even if they're impressionistic. They don't need to even make literal sense.   [Martyn] Well, they don't. They don't. And, I mean, I always say to people, you only have to look at MacArthur Park, for instance.   [Colleen] Someone left the cake out in the rain with a great opening line.   [Martyn] Jimmy Webb's the master of metaphor, right? And there was one English song that he wrote and he was 17 when he wrote it.   [Colleen] It wasn't by the time I got to Phoenix, was it?   [Martyn] Oh, my God. So many of his songs make me cry. He's brilliant. Anyway, it's my favourite song. So, tell me about your... Let's dig a bit deeper into the audiophile aspect of it. So, do you go... When you agree to do a gig, are you very picky about what system is?   [Colleen] Yes. I have a tech writer. Luckily, my husband's my manager in advance and does all that stuff for me. But I always have a rotary mixer. There's some mixers that I just absolutely love and there's some mixers I won't name, that I don't love and won't use. And, yeah, the turntable, if I'm doing vinyl, the turntable setup is very specific. I get very angry when I see subwoofers underneath turntables. That's not a good idea.   [Martyn] Who thought of that?   [Colleen] Oh, there's a cattail.   [Martyn] Yeah. Come on, Vito. Say hello. He's running away now.   [Colleen] Oh, hello.   [Martyn] Oh, cute. Oh, my gosh, very cute. But he always appears on every podcast. At one point. He's like, I'm not paying enough attention, right?   [Colleen] But going back to what I said before, I always do a sound check as well. Unless I'm, if I'm doing only digital and it's a festival, and you know with festivals, only the big bands get sound checks, like you guys. We don't get sound checks. And fair enough. So now I'm tending to do a bit more digital when it's on stage. Because, you know, I don't know if there's going to be dancers dancing around and it just becomes a nightmare situation. And I did do it for a while. But, you know, it's generally, I always do a sound check. And it's really important because you identify the problems. You also figure out how loud you can go or how the system is EQ'd. Because I like the, well, I like the EQ different than a lot of other DJs. I don't like a lot of sub-bass taking up the sonic spectrum.   [Martyn] Right.   [Colleen] Because it eats it all up.   [Martyn] Yeah.   [Colleen] And also you can't listen to it for that long.   [Martyn] That's right.   [Colleen] And I am also very careful of volume. And I'm also very careful of not going into distortion. Because these are all things that really irritate people without them even knowing it.   [Martyn] I have to tell you, and if this ever happens again, I'm going to give you a call because it was fucking incredible. We were sponsored, Illustrious was sponsored for about 15 years by Bowers & Wilkins. And as you know, great audio equipment. And, but they've been moving over the years. There's less money in selling speakers and stuff like that. Because less people are into hi-fi, unfortunately. And they're moving more into like Zeppelins and headphones and all that stuff. Anyway, but they had one last big push on selling hi-fi. And they basically, what they did was they put the world's biggest hi-fi, as far as we know, I'm pretty sure, in the... Was it Womad? No. Oh, they did Womad as well. No, this was in the atrium of the British Library. British Library, yeah. Yeah, I remember that. Did you go to any of it?   [Colleen] Yeah, and I used it.   [Martyn] Oh, you used it?   [Colleen] It's a modular system. Oh, did you? Yeah, it's a modular system as well. I mean, the acoustics in the atrium of the British Library are very challenging.   [Martyn] Yeah.   [Colleen] But it's a very good system. It's modular. And they've used it for... They used it at Womad. They've used it... They did use it at Primavera. I think they're interested in using it again, by the way. So maybe you need to keep speaking. Oh, right. Cool. I just saw some of them.   [Martyn] I saw some of them.   [Colleen] The power of the world is yesterday.   [Martyn] Yeah, as a lover of... As a lover of HiFi myself, the thing that really frightened me about it was, it was like a million pounds worth of quadraphonic in this case. Brian Eno had done an installation the week before, and I was doing one based around recordings of Delia Derbyshire and I did a soundscape, an immersive soundscape. But then after it, as part of the event, the Moog Ensemble, I don't know if you know who they are, Will Gregory, Goldfrap, and Adrian Utterly from 47, did a gig. And as you know, the synthesizers can have an incredible dynamic range and can be, in the wrong hands, quite dangerous through a PA, should we say. And I'm going, this sounded like the world's loudest hi-fi. And I'm going, if the wrong frequency hits are put out through this hi-fi, could actually deafen people, for sure.   [Colleen] Well, it's also interesting, too, with Sonic, I remember when I first got a pair of KlipShorns. We had bought some KlipShorns to do a party with Dave and Mancuso here, and two ended up at my house. And I started listening, and I had a pretty crappy amplifier, actually an integrated pre and power. And a CD Walkman, that's all I had, I didn't have anything else. So I literally had these two huge KlipShorns. But I started listening to my records again and hearing it on the system. And then I started upgrading the system, you know, my husband and I, it's kind of crazy what we have. But in any case, what became apparent was some of the stuff that I had loved on a crappy hi-fi was really challenging on a great one. Well, it's exposure to irritation. Yes, you could hear the problem. So like, you know, and I find this as well, because when I'm working in a studio, you know how it is. Sometimes you want to add a little distortion to a keyboard sound or to a drum sound, because it gives it a bit more gravitas and push. But I'm very careful about overusing that, because I just heard it done so badly. I've also heard distortion because of the recording levels were wrong, or the mastering wasn't good, like all the different aspects. But what did happen is like the things that were, you know, recorded properly, mixed properly, mastered properly, impressed properly, would just shine. And it was like, oh my gosh, I am feeling this in a way that I've never felt before. But you do hear the mistakes, you hear. And that's a challenge, too, because there's a lot of great music. I mean, I love punk rock, and I don't expect that to be a hi-fi, you know. And there's a lot of Jamaican music, too, that was recorded kind of quickly, people coming in very quickly, they're doing sessions. And maybe some of it's great, like those great producers, like Joe Gibbs stuff just always sounds amazing. But there are some that are just like, oh gosh, that sounds like it was just done really quickly without checking the levels and the singer's distorting.   [Martyn] And I've got a funny story for you. So I think it's funny. I was recently doing some remastering of some early HEM 17 stuff, and I was introduced to a mastering engineer, a very famous mastering engineer called Barry Grint, who works at Ayr, Ayr Lindhurst, and lovely guy. And he happened to have, we were listening through to our stuff, but it all sounded great. I said, what have you been working on recently? Because we got on so well. He said, well, I've got a repurposing of Oasis material from like the early 90s, a remastering and reissuing. And he said, it sounds terrible technically. I mean, beyond terrible. And he played it for me on his system, which is like the most accurate thing you could imagine. It's got like 128 bit mastering and everything. The sound colors are incredible, everything. So it exposes every limitation. And he played it for me. And of course, he played it to me before and after he'd done this thing, and you would not recognize it. So I now understand that a lot of material, I'm not giving Oasis a kicking or their producer. It's just that there is so much technology now that can actually mitigate against the worst excesses of recording in the past, particularly analog, actually, strangely enough. Everything I ever made sounded fantastic, by the way.   [Colleen] Of course it did. Of course it did. That goes without saying, Martin.   [Martyn] They can't improve on it. No, but I mean, for instance, this is all a bit technical, but the massive improvement in either software or hardware, multiband compression, for instance, multiband limiters. It sounds very dull, but I assure you, it will make a mix from decades ago blossom into something incredible, if it's adjusted correctly. And you need to know what you're doing. Obviously, it's a very specialized field. So the reason I mentioned it is because I've got a big problem with automatic, you know, with one shot, press a button, mastering. [Colleen] And especially for vinyl. Because vinyl, it's an actual, I went to almost all of my vinyl mastering sessions for my label. And the one that I didn't was screwed up. And it was my fault because I didn't go. It was too much bass. Whenever there's too much bass on a record, it just hogs it all up and there was no dynamic. But I learned just by sitting there and just asking questions and learning about sibilance and learning about, you know, how they EQ everything and how, as you go in further into the record and how they had to change EQ on that, it was really enlightening. And I do suggest to anybody who is pressing records, whether you're a label owner or an artist, that you go to your mastering sessions. You can learn so much, so much, especially when you're doing your mix.   [Martyn] To, I mean, I cannot understand why they would allow people to just let some stranger do it. That's how strong I feel about it.   [Colleen] Yeah. I request certain mastering engineers, actually.   [Martyn] Yeah. I mean, mastering engineers are trust because there are many correct answers to any particular questions. So there is a subjectivity to it.   [Colleen] The same with good sound, too. I mean, you get to this kind of audiophile level, but there's some that like a more colored sound. Like I do love Klipschorns. I can hear the horns, you know, but I also love the transparent sound of the Bowers and Wilkins 800 series. So it's like there's differences and sometimes different music and sound has a better kind of situation. I mean, for instance, like if you're using valve amplifiers and horns, jazz sounds amazing.   [Martyn] Yeah, yeah, yeah. One more cautionary tale. I remember in 98, just for people in general, because I've thought about it, when Strongroom decided to, yeah, Strongroom Studios in Shoreditch. I used to do a lot of stuff with it. I did Trent Dalby's first album there.   [Colleen] Oh, okay.   [Martyn] Well, partly is there and mastered it there. And yeah, anyway, so yeah, there was a, they sent me a note one day saying, we've got a guy coming over from America. We're re-equipping all our studios with 5.1 and he's going to show you what the possibility, you know, creative possibilities are of 5.1. Is this for a recording studio?   [Colleen] Yeah.   [Martyn] Strongroom Recording Studios, yeah. And they were going absolutely straight in, no messing about. This is the future. We're doing this. So their main room went in there and had a demo and this guy played, he'd got hold of some of the multi-tracks of some very famous albums. So one of them was, I think it was The Eagles, Hotel California. And he's going, listen to this. It sounds like you're in the room with them while they're playing it. And I'm going, well, basically what they've done is separate all the instruments into different spaces. And fair do's, they'd managed to make it sound that way. But I'm going, it didn't sound charismatic anymore. It sounded like a trick. I know what you mean. It didn't feel stuck together anymore. It didn't feel like a performance. It felt like it was showing off something.   [Colleen] Yeah. I mean, this is the whole argument that was used. So the stereo mix of Sgt Pepper to the mono mix. And the mono mix has so much more power. And the original stereo mix, they're playing around with stereo. They throw the vocals. No one does this anymore. You don't throw the vocals onto one side, maybe backing vocals, but you never throw a lead onto one side. Drums are usually center. There's certain things that you do in a stereo mix that just make it sound more cohesive, but they were experimenting. And it's true. I mean, sometimes the sound becomes too wide and the soundstage is too wide. It doesn't sound like a band anymore because you wouldn't hear a drummer over there and a saxophonist behind you. It can be fun, though. It can definitely be fun. And it can be a lot of fun and sound great and psychedelic.   [Martyn] Yeah, that's right. So the other thing is this DJ contacted me because I do a lot of immersive sound stuff. And he said, I used to work in radio DJ. I've retired now, but I've just been going through my stuff in the attic and I found a whole bunch of quadraphonic eight track cartridges. Quadraphonic eight track? Yes.   [Colleen] How is that? Oh, I get it now. They'd have one. They'd have the four. I got you.   [Martyn] It's a special machine. Yeah. All right. With different outputs on the back. Connects it up differently. And I said, well, look, have you got the machine? I can digitize these for you. And I said, well, then we can put them into our studio. I've got an immersive studio. So I took this collection. He gave me about a dozen of them. And most of them, this was really experimental times when people hadn't been doing commercial distributed sound. So there was one that was like a three eight track cartridge set of Emerson, Lake and Palmer live, right? And it was like, it sounded terrible. When he came to Keith Emerson doing his electronic, doing his synth solos, he's going, it's like all of a sudden, it's like wandering around the back of the room and the rest of the band is in the front here. And I'm going, what the fuck is going on here? It doesn't work. Very interesting, though. So there's a whole bunch like this. There was some soul acts, there was Days of Future Past, I know you like.   [Colleen] I love that album.   [Martyn] I've got that in quadraphonic.   [Colleen] Do you? That was my first favorite album. That was my first favorite album.   [Martyn] I read that. Yeah.   [Colleen] Yeah. I love that.   [Martyn] The one that worked and it was the least famous was a guy, a composer called Morton Subotnick, who was one of the earliest electronic music experimenters. Built his own machines, built his own synthesizer.   [Colleen] Where was he from?   [Martyn] I think New York, actually. Morton Subotnick. After I finish this, I'm interviewing, part two of an interview with him, so you'll be able to hear it on my podcast.   [Colleen] Oh, good. Okay, great.   [Martyn] He's a legend, this guy.   [Colleen] Is he part of the Lamont Young, Terry Riley, that whole kind of group?   [Martyn] They were his contemporaries. Yeah. One of these eight-track cartridges, quadrathonic, was a piece that he created called Pulse, was it, or something? And he got it completely. It was electronic sounds moving around, popping up here and then. It sounded 10 times better than anybody else has attempted it because the people from the traditional rock field obviously saw it as a gimmick rather than a creative tool.   [Colleen] Right. So they're crowbarring something they've already done into that format, whereas he was writing for that format. He was creating for that format and using it.   [Martyn] Exactly. Exactly.   [Colleen] Right.   [Martyn] We're near the end. This has been amazing.   [Colleen] We've not even got to- You haven't talked about my compilation yet, Martin.   [Martyn] No, no, no, no.   [Colleen] Why have you got to plug? Tell me. I got to tell you about my Balearic Breakfast, three compilations coming out on Heavenly. Basically, it's from a radio show I started on Worldwide FM during the pandemic. But when Worldwide FM, which is Giles Peterson's radio station, took a pause, I thought I had built such a community. It was like also a request show or streaming the show live on Mixcloud and people were chatting and meeting each other. I just thought I wanted to keep it going. So it's now a radio show with no radio station. It's just on my Mixcloud. I stream it live every Tuesday morning, 10 to 12, British Summertime or GMT. People join in the chat from around the world, literally from around the world. So it's a whole community as well. So even when I go DJ, I was just DJing in Athens a few weeks ago. There's a bunch of people, you know, Balearic Breakfast family there, as we call them. But I started a Jeff Barrett from Heavenly Recordings asked me to do a compilation and I suggested, let's do Balearic Breakfast. Now we're on the third volume. There will be a number four. Avoiding the major labels. So we are not licensing anything from majors. I'll come up with two or three kind of obscure tracks that go for quite a bit on Discogs because it's a vinyl pressing. And there's no digital downloads. Then I play a lot of newer artists or artists that are putting out their own music and can't afford to put out vinyl because it's so expensive. So I, you know, go on to Bandcamp and find, you know, the songs that I've played and liked. And if it's not on vinyl, you know, then we reach out to see if we can license it.   [Martyn] I'm a big fan of community in general. Completely dovetailed with my political beliefs. I think we need more community. And I think I really admire what you're doing. I think it's fantastic and more power to your elbow. All right. Stupid smash hits type questions now. Okay. What's your favorite film?   [Colleen] Oh gosh. I mean, it's terrible to say, but Spinal Tap. I was like, should I do like Vim Vendors to the End of the World or Wings of Desire is another one. Apocalypse Now. I mean, I could go all this way. The first one. I don't know. Probably because I memorized it. That and like the, in high school, we had like the Holy Grail and Spinal Tap, you know, or like two that we just quote all the time. Say, read book. Oh gosh. This is going to be Russian. It's either going to be War and Peace or Anna Karenina. Because I could read them over and over again. There are so many books that I love. Oh, James Baldwin though. He's another one of my favorite writers. What's this famous? The Fire Next Door, Giovanni's Room. Oh gosh.   [Martyn] The great thing is talking about community. What I've learned through doing these podcasts is this is people's favorite part of the whole thing. We could talk for hours, but they love going down rabbit holes based on people's tastes because they understand the artist's intention better, you know. And the tips that people interview like you give are really valuable to people, you know. You need recommendations. So, yes. Favorite TV show, past, present, anything.   [Colleen]  You know, The Good Wife. I remember watching that a few years ago. I couldn't believe how good it was.   [Martyn] Yeah.   [Colleen] Honestly. And that's strong women characters as well. I just started watching a Ryan Murphy, a new Ryan. Oh, I think it's Ryan Murphy called Feud. The first one, it was before the pandemic and it's Susan Sarandon starring as Betty Davis and Jessica Lange. Oh, I love Susan Sarandon. Oh my gosh. You got to watch this. It's Betty versus Joan Crawford. And Jessica Lange plays Joan Crawford. In any case, the new one is about Truman Capote and the Swans. I don't know if you read that book. I read this book a while ago. He had befriended all these New York socialites and then kind of turned on them and told the world their secrets. And it was terrible. But the cast, and again, it's older women actors, which is so great and so great to see. Demi Moore is even in it. Molly Ringwald. I know. You haven't heard that name since the John Hughes films. But there again, Jessica Lange is in it. But the acting is phenomenal. Great scripts. And another one that I've been really, I need to get Apple TV is the Morning Show. Speaking about strong women characters, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, believe it or not. I mean, it's incredible. Incredible stories about a news team, a really high, a morning show, basically, on a major network. It's excellent.   [Martyn] Wow. Favorite DJ? That's a tough one. I know.   [Colleen] I would just say in terms of a living DJ, somebody I still respect and admire greatly is Francois K. He's another one of my friends and mentors. And I just love him because he's always looking ahead. And he is truly eclectic. And he is a technical pioneer as well. And a great friend.   [Martyn] That's great. Favorite musical artist? I know it's incredibly difficult.   [Colleen] This one I can't do. I mean, there's so many. It's difficult to say. I'll just say Joni Mitchell because I said her before.   [Martyn] Okay. What do you think the best sounding album you've ever heard?   [Colleen] Oh, gosh, there's so many. You listen to those old Frank Sinatra albums on Capitol. Oh, my God. The microphones they were using.   [Martyn] And the preamps and the valves.   [Colleen] And the preamps and the valves. It is divine when you get an original pressing on something like that. Because of all the valves. Because they're recording with valve equipment. But there's also some great, great reissue labels, too. Like, what's his space in Iowa. Chad Haslam. Quality Pressings. And they do a lot of double 45. And like Jeff Buckley's Grace. That's another one that's on a different label. I think it was called Org. There's some really good audiophile labels as well that will get the masters and the stems and remix and then remaster and press beautifully. But yeah, those old jazz recordings. You know, you think about Rudy Van Gelder was recording stuff in stereo as early as 1958. He was recording everything in stereo as well as mono. They really were painstaking with the actual recording. And it's just sublime.   [Martyn] Okay. Music that makes you cry.   [Colleen] I guess both sides now. Joni Mitchell, Little Green, Joni Mitchell. There's quite a few of them, I guess. Yeah.   [Martyn] Okay. Final question. What's your favorite synthesizer?   [Colleen] Oh, my favorite synthesizer. I love the Nord. Right.   [Martyn] Interesting.   [Colleen] Which one? I don't know the numbers or models, but whenever the Nord one is the one, I just find so many fun sounds on that. And whenever I'm kind of a little bit stuck.   [Martyn] You've got a Nord, yeah?   [Colleen] I don't. I work out of somebody else's studio.   [Martyn] Okay. I was going to say, I was contacted by one of the Nord marketing people, I think, saying, oh, would you like some Nord equipment? And I'm going, why not? I'm going, sure, why not? I get given stuff a lot and I do a bit of endorsement. And then they said, but look, I know Nord really well because a lot of the people I work with use Nord and they bring it on tour and blah, blah. It's all very rugged and very good for live and everything. Yeah. Sounds are good. And I said, but if I'm going to incorporate it into my live rig or into my studio, I don't want to be taking it back after three months. Exactly.   [Colleen] Now you need it.   [Martyn] Right. I know I'm not, I'm not bothered about trying it out and you get some free publicity and they went, oh, we don't give anything to anyone. We're going, bye-bye. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So thank you Nord for the offer, but it wasn't the right offer. So that's it. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. It's been a joy.   [Colleen] It really has been a lot of fun. It's great to see you again.   [Martyn] And it'd be great to see you in the flesh at some point. I'd love to be your DJ as well. So if you're in town doing anything, I mean, I'm in Marylebone, central London. If you're ever doing anything in central London, give us a shout and I'll come down and say hello.   [Colleen] Absolutely. Well, maybe we should do a Heaven 17 album for Classic Album Sunday sometime. Oh yeah, well, I'm up for that shit. Okay. I'm riding it down. I'm riding it down on my Lyft. All right, darling. Thank you so much, Martin. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Okay. Me too. Bye. Take care. Bye-bye.   [Martyn] Colleen, what a lovely person. Really interesting, exciting, eclectic, good-hearted person who's interested in creating engagement and happiness for people through her DJ work, radio work, and many other things that she does. If you want to email me, email me on electronicallymartinwithay at gmail.com or please consider contributing to my Patreon site, patreon.com stroke electronically hours to keep this going advert free. Doesn't it irritate you when there are ads on all those other podcasts? It does me. Advert free, totally independent. I can say anything I want. Boom. There, I did it. And free to the public. Yeah. So if you appreciate it, there's a vast back catalogue to go through as well. And I'm starting to put them out on video as well, as many as I can from the beginning on our YouTube channel. That's it for now. Have a great week. Another great guest next week.   [Colleen] Bye!

Worldwide FM broadcast the 20th episode of Balearic Breakfast on January 12th 2021. About this episode. – It is pretty often that I reluctantly indulge in listening to "older" Balearic Breakfast episodes. Not because I don't like them but because they plunge me back into a mental place (and times) I wish I had never been to. This 20th episode is one of them. It does have that "weight" to it; there's some deep concern in the music the Balearic Breakfast Family chose; it's not your "free" and happy episode. Of course, it has its happy outbursts, but they're if I can put it that way, "strained" by a darker force. Take a second and think of what was happening back then: there was the pandemic, and countries were starting to administrate the vaccine but no one really knew how to halt the virus, so contradictory decisions were made (in France, a new curfew was put into place and scientists were not at all convinced by its positive effects on the spreading of the virus, the Presidency of France fearing a new lockdown would not be accepted by the population...) and change was always in the air (UK entered its third national lockdown on January the 6th...), you never knew what each day would bring. Also, on top of it, there was a palpable tension in this world of ours with the astoundingly disgusting events happening in the US with the then president, Donald Trump, contesting the electoral results and urging his supporters to march on the Capitol, the week before this episode took place... And I'm not even starting to cover all of the other related topics here... "We just don't know what's going to happen. There's so many things up in the air. Whether it's the pandemic or the politics or what's going on in the United States." So yeah, these uncertain times were taking their toll on the Balearic Breakfast Family, and when Colleen asked us to request songs reflecting our times, of course, both songs of hope and songs reflecting our times were put onto the request line posts on Facebook and Instagram. With an "easy to read" musical narrative (one of Colleen's finest in fact), and as we shall see in the listening section of this post, this episode is one that can't be easily forgotten! "What is Balearic? Goodness knows but we do quite a number on stretching the boundaries. You can hear for yourself as this morning's Balearic Breakfast is now available on demand on the Worldwide FM website. It's a musical mashup put together from your requests. And sending a special shout out to all who joined in on the video and chat on Mixcloud Live - it's great to get the family together." Listen to the 20th episode of Balearic Breakfast: THE PLAYLIST ( 1964 ) Odetta – Got my mind on Freedom ( 1970 ) Neil Young – Don't let it bring you down ( 1980 ) Gil Scott-Heron – Willing ( 1973 ) The Honey Drippers – Impeach the President ( 1981 ) Brian Eno & David Byrne   – America is waiting ( 2015 ) Andy Bey & The Avener   – Celestial Blues (The Avener Rework) ( 1991 ) Sounds of Blackness   – Optimistic ( 1999 ) Romanthony   – Hold on (Classic Vocal) ( 1981 ) Change   – Hold Tight ( 1974 ) William DeVaughn   – Be thankful for what you got ( 2013 ) Jean-Claude Gavri (feat. David Bowie)   – Les Dance (Club Cut) ( 1997 ) M People – Fantasy Island ( 1973 ) Chuck Mangione – The Land of Make-Believe ( 1997 ) Ballistic Brothers – Love Supreme ( 1990 ) L.U.P.O – Hell or Heaven ( 2005 ) Loosefingers  – Dreaming of Better Days (12" Version) ( 2011 ) Coyote   – Love ( 2000 ) Naoki Kenji –  Dos Mundos ( 1990 ) Depeche Mode  –  Waiting for the Night ( 1985 ) David Bowie  –  This is Not America THE LISTENING EXPERIENCE I know it seems weird, but the goal of this blog is to make you listen to this show differently. Everything Colleen does is set to make you react, even if it's not consciously. So, never take anything for granted. Don't think it's a show on "autopilot" mode; it is not the case, and it will never be. When I started listening to this episode, I had forgotten about it (today is September 09th 2024, as I write these lines). The first thing I did before writing and listening to this episode was check what hapenned in the world back then on the Covide front. Then, I hit play and was taken aback by the lyrics and the first song's tonality. Then a second... what, wait, a second song without Colleen speaking? What on earth... And then, a third song? And still no Colleen?! This 20th episode is one of the few starting with more than one song. These three songs go very well together intellectually; this is where my passion for the show grew and grew; it became something I needed: my weekly cup of Joy and Fresh air! ( 1964 ) Odetta – Got my mind on Freedom From the late musician activist who inspired many in the 1960s folk scene, including Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of folk music. And that song was from her 1964 LP, It's a Mighty World. – The first in-depth biography of the legendary singer and “Voice of the Civil Rights Movement” ( Odetta, A life in Music and Protest ) , who combatted racism and prejudice through her music, was issued in 2020 and written by author and journalist Ian Zack . ( 1970 ) Neil Young – Don't let it bring you down From Neil Young's 1970 studio album " After the Gold Rush " (his third actually), " Don't Let It Bring You Down " is a song about hope that never was issued as a single (as Neil did not bother about hits) and which was funnily described by its composer as follows: "Here is a new song. It's guaranteed to bring you right down, It's called 'Don't Let It Bring You Down.' It sorta starts off real slow and then fizzles out altogether." ( 1980 ) Gil Scott-Heron – Willing Gill Scott-Heron's "Willing" is a song about racism, and it beautifully embodies Gill's altruistic nature (a beautiful article about him here ). The song has been played during Balearic Breakfast in another version . 1980, the studio album from which Willing is taken was well received by critics back in the day. Did you hear how well Neil Young 's and Gill Scott-Heon 's songs go together? Colleen always manages to create such a flow! Keeping our musical revendication strong, she then chose to play The Honey Drippers' Impeach the President / Brian Eno's America is waiting , followed by The Avener' s Rework of Celestial Blues , putting the sampling aspect in the music on a lovely little pedestal, which is also a form of protest, when you think about it! Sadly, Colleen's hopes about Donald Trump didn't come to fruition! I loved it so much when Colleen gave us hints by saying, " Of course, the message is in the music. Impeach the President, America is Waiting" (there's much more to come down the line 🤠). ( 1973 ) The Honey Drippers – Impeach the President Roy C., Roy Charles Hammond 's Honeydrippers. Roy sadly passed away in September, so he didn't even get a chance to hear his song being revived. Originally penned for the President Nixon impeachment , the song has been sampled many times by dozens and dozens of hip hop artists. ( 1981 ) Brian Eno & David Byrne   – America is waiting The opening song from their 1981 LP, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts , which was one of the first using sampling to a large degree with the samples taking centre stage rather than just rhythmic background. ( 2015 ) Andy Bey & The Avener   – Celestial Blues (The Avener Rework) From the singer who's worked with Gary Barth, Stanley Clark, Horace Silver, Andy Bey for the original of which the song's called Celestial Blues . The original is from his debut 1974 LP, Experience and Judgment, which he composed but not the first one to record as the song was cut by Gary Bart z a few years before in a funkier but less inhabited version ! This cool rework is from French pr oducer Tristan Casara (aka The Avener). The next phase of the show will bring us a more uplifting musical moment with songs that really elevated our tired spirits back then, Romanthony 's Hold On lyrics talking straight to our hearts... Pay attention to how Colleen did not focus on the rhythmic side of the selections but on the message conveyed by each song, gently leading us from revendication to hope and ways to keep that hope alive and well; this path then leading us to a natural and Direct Escapism through Dance and allowing us to reach The Land of Make Believe ... Read that again... and listen back to the songs. Isn't what's happening here simply beautiful?! ( 1991 ) Sounds of Blackness   – Optimistic From Sounds of Blackness's first studio album, issued in 1991, Optimistic was written and produced by Gary Hines, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. The urban contemporary gospel song featured vocals from Ann Bennett-Nesby, Carrie Harrington, Coré Cotton, Patricia Lacy, and Jamecia Bennett and was released as the group's debut single, reaching the top three on Billboard's Hot R&B Singles chart. In a recent interview to The Fader , Gary explained: “We [wanted] to create something that’s not a flash in a pan, but something would be a classic that you’d hear 20 years from now,” ( 1999 ) Romanthony   – Hold on (Classic Vocal) Fun fact, the song was first issued in a "dirtier" version by Romanthony, who believed his fans would love that unpolished version, and then remastered by Daft Punk and reissued in 1999 ( see here ). Fun fact number 2: you can hear Romanthony's vocals on Daft Punk's "One More Time"! ( 1981 ) Change   – Hold Tight Released in 1981, "Miracles" is a single by Change, a studio group founded by Jacques Fred Petrus and Mauro Malavasi, featuring vocals by Diva Gray. The track, along with "Paradise" and "Heaven of My Life", topped the US dance chart for five consecutive weeks. ( 1974 ) William DeVaughn   – Be thankful for what you got Ranked at number 374 on Rolling Stone's "Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time," " Be Thankful for What You Got " is renowned for its recurring lyric: "Diamond in the back, sunroof top, diggin' the scene with a gangsta lean," which has been utilized in various songs through sampling and interpolation. The song's title originally was "A Cadillac don't come easy" (DeVaughn then working as a government employee). It was rewritten in 1972, selling a million copies and becoming a soul classic recorded with MFSB band members! The song has been famously covered by Massive Attack. ( 2013 ) Jean-Claude Gavri (feat. David Bowie)   – Les Dance (Club Cut) One of Tel Aviv's most prolific and eminent DJs, a world-renowned producer, remixer, keyboardist and vinyl fiend, French Jean-Claude Gavri proposes here a Balearic reduction of David Bowie's 1983 hit, produced by Nile Rogers with Steve Ray Vaughan playing the lead guitar and found on Bowie's studio album from the same name. The song, as heard in the lyrics and as explained by Nile, deals with "the dance that people do in life; the conceptual dance of not being honest. He sings, 'put on your red shoes and dance the blues.' Like you're pretending to be happy but you're sad" ( 1997 ) M People – Fantasy Island M People (fronted by Heather Small ) is known for their 1993 hit "Moving on Up" 1997 saw the release of their fourth studio album " Fresco " , on which a song about unity, love and friendship ("Fantasy Island") can be found, being the album's second single back then and peaking at number thirty-three on the UK Singles Chart. ( 1973 ) Chuck Mangione – The Land of Make-Believe Land of Make Believe is the eighth album by jazz artist Chuck Mangione . The title song, written by Chuck Mangione, like all of the other tracks found on the album, is sung by Esther Satterfield . It also features Mangione's older brother, Gap Mangione , and jazz trumpet player, Jon Faddis . This very song was a favourite of David Mancuso, and he often played it at the loft. The album is an authentic audiophile experience, with a beautiful soundstage and the instruments sharing that realistic feel. Also, the dynamics are Huge! Keeping the rhythm steady, Colleen then takes us to the next part of the show which opens with the astounding mix taking place beetween Chuck Maglione 's and the Balistic Brother 's tracks... While the magic is clearly there, this moment winning the Wow Effect of the show as I'm concerned, something slightly darker shows itself on our dancefloor. Some clouds are there, and they will stay for a while, with the following songs being slightly more worried... Listen to how Impeccable Colleen's mixing is here... She simply reaches musical heights without effort, ending this part of the show with the incredible Waiting for the Night , which, once again, spoke so rightfully to all of us... Can you feel the Force we were back then (and the one we still are to this very day...), and can you understand why this show is so important to us? ( 1997 ) Ballistic Brothers – Love Supreme British-based band comprising Ashley Beedle, Rocky & Diesel of X-Press 2 ( Darren Rock, Darren House ) and David Hill (of Nuphonic Records), the Ballistic Brothers crafted jazz-influenced funky electronica music, releasing two full-length studio albums in the mid-1990s. Love Supreme is taken from their second 1997 studio album, Rude System. The album's closing track is heavily influenced by John Coltrane's studio album "Love Supreme", released in 1965, especially its opening track Part 1 - Acknowledgment which shares the same rhythm and a very close melodic line! ( 1990 ) L.U.P.O – Hell or Heaven German Techno/House/Electro producer and DJ Lutz Ludwig , born in 1957, was a former DJ at Munich's "P1" club. He began releasing his own House Music tracks in 1990 on Low Spirit Recordings in collaboration with Klaus Jankuhn. His debut track "Hell Or Heaven" quickly climbed to the second position in the national Italian charts, title the subsequent release, "Keep It Up", achieved success in the UK and US Dance & Disco charts. His third release, "So Hard", marked the end of his prosperity as a House Music artist. All of these tracks featured vocalist Cathy Adams. After a three-year hiatus, he returned in 1994, shifting his focus primarily to Trance Music with less success. Following the electro-music trend, he resurfaced towards the end of the 1990s but sadly passed away on April 10th, 2014. Fun fact: the lacquer for that release was cut at Pauler Acoustics in Germany, which is, as of today, producing Stockfish records releases , among others! ( 2005 ) Loosefingers –  Dreaming of Better Days (12" Version) American DJ, record producer, and musician who has recorded under various names, most notably Mr. Fingers, Larry Heard, issued Dreamin of Better Days in 2005 on the Soundtrack From The Duality Double-Play album. ( 2011 ) Coyote  – Love DJ and producer duo from the UK, Richard Hampson and Timm Sure, are the Founders of the "Is It Balearic?" Recording label. Love is taken from Coyote 's 2011 album, "Half Man Half Coyote". ( 2000 ) Naoli Kenji – Dos Mundos From the German-Japanese keyboardist producer Naoki Kenji. Dos Mundos from the album Tozai, the new sound of Japanese breakbeat cultures. This one came out about 20 years ago ( 1990 ) Depeche Mode – Waiting for the Night Depeche Mode, Waiting for the Night from their classic album Violator , which came out just over 30 years ago now. Francois K mixed that record . The band hired him, and Danny Miller hired him, because of his work with Kraftwerk. – The song was a complex musical piece, as explained here . The book Colleen speaks about, " Halo: The Story Behind Depeche Mode’s Classic Album ‘Violator’ " is available here . Ending the show with David Bowie's " This is Not America " , Colleen leaves us on a deep reflective note... Wait, wasn't this the state we were all in (no play on words intended here, I promise...)?

1985: The Double's song "The Captain of Her Heart" took the world by storm. Behind the song is a beautiful album (blue) that has more to offer than just a hit. I met Kurt Maloo for a nice chat! 1) Dear Kurt, thank you so much for joining us here on the Balearic Breakfast blog, it’s an honour really! To me, “Blue” is an album that could be turned into a comic! The songs share a cool, free, and engaging feeling allowing the listener to picture their characters. Was making the album hard back then? How did you choose the song’s order? It’s a pleasure to be on the Balearic Breakfast blog. Before we started recording songs for the album Blue, we released three 12”: Naningo, Rangoon Moon, and Woman of the World. The last two songs made it on Blue in different, smoother versions. The success of the 12” "Woman of the World” must have convinced the record company to give us a go on the album. We suggested the running order, starting with WoTW, our biggest success so far. Actually, “I Know A Place” used to be the favourite as a first single. The decision to release "The Captain Of Her Heart" as a first single was made at the last minute because the record company's secretaries couldn’t stop humming the melody. The Captain of Her Heart was featured in the 14th Episode : 2) Were you aware back then of the Balearic Nature of the album, was it something you worked on consciously during the creative process or did the direction reveal itself later on? How did you chose the album’s title? We sort of created our sound while recording. Everything came out smoother than our previous recordings. Maybe it was the vibe in the studio (it was a great summer), or because we reduced the synths to a minimum in favour of classic instruments... The album’s title is a tribute to Blue Note Records and its Jazz artists, who have always been an undeniable influence. 3) Blue also reveals, although delicately, some jazzy inspirations and the listener also finds himself somehow close to David Sylvian’s universe at times. It seems Blue is a poppy Balearic cross point! Do you feel that, too, when listening back to the album? The songs on Blue are definitely pop songs. We weren’t really aware of the album's Jazzy side because jazz was the music we were listening to all the time, except some early Funkadelic/Parliament stuff. However, all the additional musicians on the album (saxophones, trombones, upright bass) were jazz musicians and gave the record the flavour you mentioned. 4) On “Loopy Avenue”, there is another beautiful cut of “The Captain of her heart”. Although it must have been a tough moment working on it following Felix’s passing, can you share with us how that album came to be and who joined you to complete it? In the late 90s, Felix and I went back to the studio to record some songs for a possible comeback with Double. We weren’t fully satisfied with the results, though, so we decided to put it in the drawer for a while before starting a new attempt. When Felix died in 2004, I was working on another solo album, but it was clear to me that the material we recorded together in the 90s had to see the light somehow. I didn’t want to “finish” the songs on my own without Felix, so I asked Pit Baumgartner of De-Phazz, being a neutral person, if he could imagine doing the job, and it worked out more than just fine.  5) When reading the other great interviews you gave, it’s astounding to see with how much talented and renowned musicians you worked with over the years! To think that even Herb Alpert joined you on Double’s 1987 album is mind-blowing. Could you share with us how that collaboration hapenned? When we visited our American record company A&M in LA for the first time, we met Herb in his private studio. He was the “A” of A&M and seemed to really like our music personally. He even played some melodies on the piano he was working on and asked our opinion. Knowing he was on our side, we dared to ask him later in 1987 if he would accept playing Devil Ball's piano part on the trumpet. He immediately agreed, and Felix flew over to his LA studio, where Herb played the whole song through in one go. A real pro, a great musician… and two very happy guys on the other side of the World! Thank you so much, dear Kurt! Cheers, Artur!