Teenage Cancer Trust: Arctic Monkeys Rock The Royal Albert Hall

The Arctics rocked it for The Teenage Cancer Trust on Saturday Night at the Royal Albert Hall! Sorry guys I'm proper busy with my dissertation, yes I know who cares - so the review for this one is pending at the moment, but I have a nice little video for your visual pleasure whilst you wait! Check us out, getting all exclusive in the box! I did get red wine poured all over me whilst videoing this too (from the balcony above)- that's commitment!



Review to follow - check out the rest of my YouTube channel videos!

Air 50 Skate Crew

Another quick post, just to say check out my brothers skate crew at in this vid. He's the protagonist as it were! Josh Cotton is his name, look out for him burning up a spot near you soon (or generally scaring the crap out of innocent pedestrians or annoying local OAP's with their 'noisey toys'). Here they are tearing up their local park in Charlbury a small town in Oxford - as you can see the skatepark is actually in the local 'dog field' - thats were you walk dogs, not park cars! Look out for that fat fakie varial over the hip! BLATTT!

Time To Get Grubby!

Ah, you see I found some more time from my dissertation slavery to grace you with another mix - this one is dirty! Hope you like it!

Sam Cotton - Wash Before You Mix March 2010 by SamCotton

Nu-House Mix

I love Nu-Disco! But I also love Disco too, but which one is best? There's only one way to find out...
No, really I'll leave it to Harry Hill (but he's gone until the autumn - I'm sure we can all depend on the repeats!)

So I knocked together my first sort of Nu-Disco mix today, but I couldn't resist throwing in some wicked new house tracks too - hence my ingenious naming "Nu-House" - probably already a genre - you guys know how it is these days!

So have a little listen to this - you can scrobble it too! - use this Mixcloud Last.fm Scrobbler handy link!

Sam Cotton - Nu House Mix by Samcotton on Mixcloud

BUT don't forget the real shit:



and I know this doesn't come to mind first - but what a tune!

Fantasy Festival

Just a quickie to say if any of you you guys are on Last.fm and Sony's Fantasy Festival - I'm now getting involved, got a bit more knowledge here than fantasy footie you see!

Catch up with my 'Fidget Fest' - what a line up! What if? Maybe one day, one day!

Josh Pyke

I gone done it again! Don’t worry I’m not going soft on you lot though! I just started to think, why not broaden some of your music horizons, and why not give you guys a little run down on the gigs I’ve been tapping my foot to. So this week, it’s all about Sydney boy Josh Pyke. It was a bit of an odd one, considering he was involved in a “Co-Headline” UK tour with Scot, Emma Pollock. The Tabernacle in Notting Hill gets the thumbs up for cool gig venue of the year so far for me. Supposedly it’s an old Catholic church (as one fan less eloquently responded when Josh asked “What is this place?”)

Right on time, Josh emerged from behind the curtain with his brown paper bag and guitar. Brown paper bag, what’s that all about, I thought, however it contained his wires and pedals – bless him! As he modestly set up, the crowd started to converse about how down-to-earth this guy was, as he invited us to chat amongst ourselves. He climbed up from his wires on the floor, took a swig of red wine and introduced himself. Straight in with Chimney’s Afire the Aussie went, to the 100 strong crowd – it doesn’t always have to be huge clubs or arenas! The next 45 minutes were executed blissfully, with some minimal polite chat in-between. Time was of the essence however as he was must have drawn the short straw that night, acting as the pre for Emma Pollock. So he ploughed on, cramming as many of his sun-drenched tracks in, leaving the crowd feeling all fuzzy. A beaming crowd gave a rapturous applause to his finale – Middle Of The Hill, leaving a positive ora for Emma Pollock.

Check Josh playing my favorite tune of his, Sew My Name…

Sorry for the arty/shaky black and white clip - not my professional work obviously!

Josh invited fans to the makeshift merchandise stool at the back of the hall, where he took part in his “signature” end of gig ritual by chatting, posing and signing autographs for predominantly eager Aussies.

 So big props to Josh Pyke for being a proper nice guy as always and delivering the goods musically. From such a high, Emma Pollock sort of warped it. Awkward banter and heavy handed guitar riffs blew away the clouds people pretended they were on with Josh, unfortunately. Which resulted us leaving half way through. Mean – yes, but why ruin a good night with disappointing finish? 

Dance-a-thon time again!

Ahhhh! 12 hours behind the decks…again! Yep it’s that time of the year for lucky me! Every year I DJ at my old school for a 12 hour ‘Dance-a-thon’ in aid of the Burford School Uganda Link charity. It kicks off at 8pm and goes all the way until 8am – for all students in years 7, 8 and 9 to rave away to. This year was a good laugh, even after all the hassle of tip-toeing round the new fire alarm system the school has installed. We usually use pyrotechnic fireworks to kick off the show, however, the fire alarm says no! So, I thought lets go in big with some Ibiza-esq Co2 cannons – it was all go until we found out that a 50 quid canister would give 45 seconds worth of blast and that was it! Bargain right? Oh not to mention the 75 quids worth of firing equipment! Joke, so we just went in big with the light show! Check this bad boy rig out!

The kids were great too, dancing their socks off all night, even at 5am! We managed to fight the sleep off, and keep the management happy – until 7am, when it all went off! Well, at least the fire alarm did! Sort of got a bit trigger happy on the old smoke, oops! After the fire alarm machine printed an economy bog roll’s worth of paper receipt out, we finally got the bloody thing to stop! As we continued for the final hour smoke free.  

And that was it, my seventh 12 hour music marathon, and the best one yet! Let's say I'm not quite looking forward to next year, just yet. Once a year is enough for me!

Mumford & Sons

Who? Yea, you lot might be wondering either who on earth Mumford and Sons are or maybe what’s got into me – or both! They are a folk band from London, who have exploded within the last 6 months, although their album has been knocking around since 2008 – only now they have been picked up by the mainstream. Folk, WTF Sam! – some of you may be shouting at your screen – but my girlfriend’s musical taste is rubbing off on me. One of my mates said I was musically whipped the other day! Oh dear. But, to be absolutely fair they were amazing when we saw them on Saturday night in Wolverhampton. So why not do a 360 and talk a little about folk, this blog is about anything that gets you dancing, so why not!

The Civic Hall was rammo, with a well-mixed crowd, some of who were clutching onto their 2 pinter lagers (2 pints of drink in a massive plastic cup – it was mental anyone drinking a half looked like something out of The Borrowers!) and the quirky pre-act Fanfarlo got everyone’s legs shaking. The boys hit the stage after a ridiculously long wait (a good 45 mins – maybe I’m not used to it enough as dance music acts switch seamlessly!) but it was worth it and the crowd sure appreciated it too. Noise levels were incredible from the floor to the humble foursome, Wolverhampton what hosts! They dived straight into big hitters from the album Sigh No More, and energy levels went through the roof. Marcus, the lead, showcased his percussive talent, from thumping a single bass drum along with his guitar to playing a full kit and still singing the lead – how often do you see the lead behind the drums by the way?

Anywho, the banter wasn’t bad either – which was refreshing as the amount of people you see these days who turn into mutes in-between tracks is ridiculous (I spose it’s who you go to see) but either way Mumford and Sons are funny guys – check out their tong-in cheek live lounge interview here (BTW how un-charismatic is Sara Cox in this?) All in all they well and truly took little Wolverhampton by storm, and Wolverhampton rocked me – what a great people!

Mumford and Sons will be hitting festivals up this summer, go and grab some cider and jig along!  

The XX

The XX certainly have taken the music industry by the horns and wrenched them off as we storm into 2010. This time 9 months ago the trio were playing modest pubs in suburbia, then they got their break supporting Florence & The Machine. Since then its all been going off for the South Londoners. In amongst it all they donned their remixing hats and set fire to Florence’s (well Candi Staton’s) “You’ve Got The Love” set the group in good stead, with DJ sets alongside big dogs like Annie Mac and a more extravagant tour around Europe. Last night Shepherds Bush Academy saw The XX grace the stage for the last night of their London shows.

Mandatory pre-gig drinks were held at The Walkabout next door for classy people like myself, after a few it was time to make over to the Academy. Saw the set list, “These New Puritans” were the pre – TBH I didn’t have a clue who they were, after their performance I knew why. The band looked cool as they wondered on stage with clarinets, horns and two electric drum kits (the drums didn’t walk on obviously!) – that was fine, it was the 12 year old chav vocalist that ruined it, check them out for yourself but they don’t come recommended from here.

So, the night wasn’t great so far, my drink was empty – no thanks to those puritans – and we had some greasy Italian couple complaining about people taking pictures, seriously just get over it! Anyway, rant over. A white curtain dropped and up shone a simple X which painted the bands logo as a back drop, then the chilled chords and synths leaked through the O2’s speakers to a hyped crowd. Silhouettes shone through the curtain as they lead with Intro. On the tracks final note it dropped, cue crazy screams! (Weird considering most people were draped in black as if we were at a bikers convention). The trio stood before us and went on to deliver every track with perfection. Vocals were incredible live, simple and raw – like the band.  With only 11 tracks to play with, some interesting covers were tackled with wicked results. UK Funky sensation Kyla’s “Do You Mind” was particularly unpredicted but interesting choice.

The contrast between pre and headliner was huge, but I don’t mind it when goes the way last night did. The XX were incredible – so if there playing at the same festival or gig your going to – get your ass over there! 

Lomo

Lomography? What's that all about then? Well it's quite cool actually (you wouldn't of expected any less of me I suppose) - it's a type of arty/retro analogue style of photography. My girlfriend has been getting to grips and has been snap happy since December. You should go and check out her skills with her own lomography photos. Pretty mint I reckon – it’s wicked how you can take pictures over each other (multiple exposures – check me getting all techy) and do other things like splitting the image up like the one of me above. Give her a little comment, she'd love that ha! I might even have a little photo shoot to top up my artist pics on MySpace and Last.fm, hmm could be interesting! And why on earth doesn’t anyone print pictures anymore? I wish they did because it costs an arm and a leg nowadays (well a good tenner to get a 35mm film developed) so it’s an expensive but cool little hobby. Get involved!