#colatron

I’m a self-taught hobbyist living in Birmingham city centre and I’ve been shooting for around 6 years or so. The majority of my images are captured in and around the city but I deliberately go out of my way to shoot the parts that everyone else ignores or walks by without realising they’re there – I’ve little or no interest in the major tourist attraction sights of the city, its the underbelly…

MIXTAPE MONDAYS by MOARRR 082  EXCLUSIVE MIX by COLATRON + the best mixes of the week >> Four Tet * Tensnake * Tomoki Tamura * Goldroom * DJ SNEAK * Copy Paste Soul * Rey & Kjavik * Damian Lazarus * Detroit Swindle * Soul Button 

This week's exclusive MOARRR mix is coming from Birmingham, and it was made by the king of MashCave, our long time brother in arms, Colatron.

Besides of the mix we have a Q&A with him, read it bellow after you pressed the play button. 

MOARRR: What's up in the Mash Cave these days?

COLATRON: To tell the truth, not a vast amount! My mashup output has all but dried up (I kind of quit last year for a number of reasons - Hiatus was supposed to be my goodbye tear-jerker of a track, but then the guys came knocking for some contributions to an album and I couldn't resist coming back for a little more Cola-madness) and also I've been so busy with my day job by the time I get home I'm absolutely drained of any desire to get creative.

That said, there's still something like 3 or 4GB of source files I've acquired over the years that I've not gotten around to yet, so never say never - if something moves me strongly enough, you know I'll be back to say something about it via my mashing ;)

Aside from that, I've somehow fallen in to the street art and graff scene quite by accident so I spend a lot of my spare time venturing out to go record and learn about these fantastic works of art and the people behind them, and I've recently joined the Street Art Birmingham team so we do a lot of work promoting local artists, events and so on, so creativity is still a massive part of my life.

My music hasn't completely fallen by the wayside though - I'm a part of a movement that began as a kick back against the way the mashup scene was moving, Crumplbangers (don't ask - I was drunk at the time!), which has become something quite magnificent musically with online festival weekenders that have drawn in some fantastic creators from around the planet. I may not work as fast as I once did when I started in this scene, but I still aim to contribute to one or two full length mash mixes per year to those events with all new material so keep an eye out for some more CLT madness and surprises in the future.

MOARRR: What do you think about the current state of mashup / edit scene?

COLATRON: It's an interesting question and everyone has their own views and beliefs as to where we are right now, but...

The short answer is, the scene I knew and grew up with the last 13 years or so is most probably dead. The days of creating this stuff as some kind of anarchic punk sneer at the music industry, or just for the sheer fun of messing about with other folks' creativity to give people a smile is long gone and obviously a lot of the original guys moved on too.

The days of grabbing everything you could from GYBO or Boomselection, or in latter years Mashstix, and then sifting through it all on burnt CD-Rs, sitting in utter astoundment at what these guys were doing have passed - suddenly mashup went 'mainstream' for want of a better word and everyone became a mashup producer, uploading truly atrocious stuff to Youtube for sheer click counts whilst looking for the next viral website share (looking disapprovingly at you Mashable). There was no craftmanship or thinking behind a lot of what was coming out, everyone just clammering to be the first to use a newly released 'pella or 'mental, not even considering what it was being mixed with.  Personally, I think Girl Talk has a lot to answer for. And of course, the rise of the dreaded EDM vs. EDM track pretty much nailed it for me... **shakes head in dismay**

The culture of "Look how many plays I have, thus I must be brilliant" just wasn't to my tastes - anyone can beatmap two or more tracks together based upon what Mixed In Key is telling them (some people paying a little TOO much attention to the results of their scans on occasion), but if it doesn't mean anything to anyone or doesn't form a sound narrative or theme, what's the point?! And some of the egos... in all my years as a Mod on the boards, I'd never seen so many people angrily proclaim themselves to be the greatest mashup producer ever the moment you'd offer some constructive criticism as I did those last few months before I walked away. Maybe we should have organised some kind of Fight Club for them all and work out who should hold that title :D

Then of course, with the impending self-implosion of a mess that is Soundcloud right now, deleting guys' accounts left right and centre, it does kind of feel like the end of an era and a lot of the guys I admire and respect are walking away. There are other platforms out there of course, but they aren't particularly user friendly for producer or fan. So ironically given the business model, Youtube may yet actually be the saviour of the scene.

There are still guys and girls out there nailing it on every release, but they feel fewer and far between, and from a personal taste point of view, the current state of 'normal' music just isn't very exciting to me anyway so the source files which are now coming out just don't really inspire me to do anything with them and what I'm hearing is rather meeeh (anyone for another Uptown Funk boot?).

Still, it's not all negative! As I say, there are guys out there who have paid their dues and are still keeping the smiles beaming; some of the new guys coming through also have some interesting production skills coming on (you still can't beat a good old A+B though) and once in a while, a massive tune breaks that genuinely sounds better once paired with something else, which is what we all aimed to do back in the day. And the Crumplbanger thing as I say is pure creativity - a throw back to the glory days when the weird, wonderful and damn right crazy ruled the airwaves. As an example, we threw together something named #ProjectFlake as a tribute to the legendary bootleg track, Jay-Zeezer's "99 Luft Problems" - it's just 2 source files, yet something like 50 or 60 tracks were made, each of them totally unique, surprising and brilliantly done. The stuff like that still keeps me listening and downloading so there's hope yet.

People just need to get back to being individual in their sounds and stop following the herd (there's a reason guys like Phil Retrospector, FWD, LeeDM101, Reborn Identity, Wax Audio, Fissunix, Kleptones, Schmolli, the list goes on and on, inspired me to do this - you hear a track and you just KNOW it's those guys behind it. And that's not even going back to the glory days of '02 - '05).

MOARRR: What do you do besides of music? 

COLATRON: Again, not too much!!

I work in telecoms by day (I'm an astrophysicist by degree so how that works...) which is pretty taxing, but in my downtime, there's the aforementioned street art hunting/researching/documenting which is now slowly branching out to other cities around the UK (oh, and there may possibly be some CLT art of my own - I can neither confirm nor deny). I also enjoy meeting up with friends and hitting the pubs and bars of Birmingham for good food and conversation (my clubbing days are long gone now - I'm older than I look!) and we like getting out in to the countryside whenever possible for downtime and some R+R. Hopefully I'll get around to getting a hold of a decent camera one day soon too, I'd love to get in to photography and follow in the footsteps of some of my local heroes and friends with their fantastic urban snapping. I've been fortunate enough too to have visited some wonderful places across Europe the last few years too so I'd like to do some more of that in 2016 and go see as much of this world as I can.

I still spend a lot of time seeking out the weird and wonderful of the web too - there's a reason my personal Facebook feed is a bit weird and silly, life's far too short for the serious stuff on a public platform - and of course, I love reading up on all things creative (it's no coincidence Moarrr is one of my fave blogs!). Oh, and the occasional spot of ghost-hunting is great fun too.

MOARRR: Tell us about the concept of this mix...

COLATRON: :) Well, when I had the honour of being asked, I had a bit of a panic on. Normally a full length mash mix would take me at least 3-4 months to construct from scratch to seek out new and unused sources, the trademark samples and dialogue and so on, to do what I love to do and tell a fully formed story from start to finish. So that wasn't going to happen given the deadline!

I decided early, I was going to focus on playing out the music and NOT use it as an opportunity to plug myself or my old tracks. And me being me, I like to surprise people with whatever I do next - I'll be forever known as the guy who does the downtempo, the emotional, the obscure, the acoustic or sometimes turns it all on it's head doing the complete opposite by focusing on the heavy electronica/d'n'b stuff and that's ok with me but I thought it would be fun to play something somewhere in the middle this time. I actually used to love the 120-135bpm tempo in my younger years, so I thought it would be fun to revisit my younger years and dig out some remixes and dubs in that style.

My only plan was that I had to include Loud Places (my fave track probably of the last few months), THAT remix of Deee-Lite (thanks FWD for the heads-up!) and somewhere in there I had to play that glorious piece of music from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory which should become my personal anthem - it pretty much sums up my 'career' and inspiration in 4 beautiful minutes. Everything else that came in around those were a bonus or fluke!!

There's some old Cola-faves in there - the Jürgen Paape track opens one of my favourite DJ sets from Erlend Øye and I had a big love on the dancefloor of the French House sound hence the Alan Braxe and Thomas Bangalter. The Ralphi Rosario vocal is of course dance music legend.

There are some throwbacks to the sounds that influenced my musical tastes over the years - I was a bedroom raver hence the Altern-8 remix. I saw LRD play whilst at Uni and was totally blown away by their whole 80s retrowave thing before retrowave was even a thing. And of course, Burial changed EVERYTHING for me.

There a couple of tracks that represent my own sound and tastes - Volor Flex nodding back to my chillstep mashup mixes, Dead Can Dance giving the soaring emotional end of everything CLT-esque injection, the Endorphin track representing the CLT downtempo sound and also acts a nod to my beloved partner in crime - the wonderful Fissunix. And Four Tet is in there simply because some of my own personal fave mashups of mine were made using his incredible electronica.

That Venetian Snares snippet HAD to be included because a) I can't resist that dialogue sample and I wish I'd used it before and b) I wanted to make sure anyone who had dropped off at this point in the mix was wide awake for the end :) Plus hey, I couldn't resist whipping up a couple of cheeky quick mashups from the sources along the way just 'cause I can.

Hopefully the whole thing will get a few toes tapping, possibly even have a few people up and dancing, with maybe a little bit of singing along, and if I'm fortunate, it'll have people falling madly in love with each other. Its the full Colatron Experience!

MOARRR:  What's going on Birmingham in these days? Please recommend few art, cultural, music things for MOARRR readers who are visiting the city in these days.

COLATRON: Oh, what ISN'T going on! There so many things - finally Birmingham is shaking off it's unfair image of being a concrete jungle where everybody talks a bit strange, and is beginning to live up to it's billing as the UK's second city.

Every week there's something new in terms of culture or art going on, and here in Digbeth, we're known as being the Creative Quarter of the city (centred around the historic Custard Factory complex) with award winning street food events (Digbeth Dining Club and various pop-ups across the city), graffiti jams (City of Colour in 2016 is going to be a MUST for everyone, along with Eye Candy Festival), spoken word evenings, theatre and music happening all the time. First Friday is a great example here too, with the various back street warehouses and experimental venues being used for a series of events such as art exhibitions or live performances (we had urban Opera here recently!) on the first of each month, giving great opportunity to up and coming artists, film makers and musicians alike.

The city is being rejuvenated through a series of new iconic residential, retail and office buildings going up, sitting amongst the beautiful old Victorian and the modernist Brutalist, giving a wonderful patchwork of architectural styles to the skyline. There are amazing quality restaurants galore (as featured in the NY Times! We proudly have more Michelin stars than pretender to the second city crown Manchester) that build and celebrate upon our rich and diverse multi-ethnic communities and of course, the world famous Balti Triangle itself. We have fantastic events and festivals spring up around the entire area regularly, celebrating everything from roots/reggae music right down to the various gins or whiskeys of the world, via other things such as independent film-making (Flatpack Festival is a must! I went to see a showing of Murnau's Nosferatu in the city's cathedral, backed with an electronic orchestra - darkly magical).

And the music scene is still huge and influential, with a range of live music venues large and small putting on fantastic shows from world famous performers right down to the kid who's just picked up a guitar, plus the club scene is more vibrant than ever, I myself living around the corner from the famous Rainbow Venues complex which puts on a range of nights and street parties featuring big name DJs from all over the globe along (check the recent MADE festival or the annual Drum and Bass Awards events).

Not forgetting our past, Birmingham is super proud of its history too, being widely known as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution so there are plenty of great museums and attractions based around the older parts of the city with historic areas such as the Jewellery Quarter still functioning much as they did back then. Plus the world loves the Peaky Blinders, right? Well, that's my backyard right there on the screen...

Don't forget the cliché - Birmingham has more canals than Venice, and if that doesn't float your boat, 15-20 minutes drive in most directions should have you out in the most gorgeous of countryside.

Basically, everyone should aim to visit Birmingham at least once in their lives and if they do, be sure to knock on the Mash Cave door, where you'll be welcomed with a smile, hug and a cup of tea :)

TRACKLISTING 

Jürgen Paape - So Weit Wie Noch Nie Alan Braxe & Fred Falke - Penthouse Serenade Ralphi Rosario - You Used To Hold Me [acapella] Robyn - Call Your Girlfriend [Kaskade Dub] Thomas Bangalter - Turbo Kylie Minogue - In My Arms [Sebastien Leger Dub] Altern-8 - Infiltrate 202 [remix] Burial - Archangel [Phaseone Remix] Volor Flex - Unfeeling Dead Can Dance - Song of Sophia Colatron - Interlude Jamie xx - Loud Places (ft. Romy) [Eekkoo Edit] Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart [The Reflex Bootsy + Q-Tip Re√ision] Les Rythmes Digitales - From: Disco To: Disco Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart [acapella] Endorphin - Moonlight Four Tet - No More Mosquitoes Venetian Snares - Walmer Side Anthony Newley & Leslie Bricusse - Pure Imagination (ft. Gene Wilder) 

COLATRON LINKS

http://www.colatron.co.uk/ https://soundcloud.com/colatron22 https://www.facebook.com/Colatron https://twitter.com/djcolatron 

ABOUT MMM SERIES

Time and Time Again- Colatron

This is a quick drawing I made of my friend Andy aka Colatron.