State Mix #28: Kevin Blake
Our second mix of 2011 comes from Limerick native Kevin Blake who has been moving dance floors in Cork for the past four years with his Electric Underground night. Over the last four years EU has put on over 100 gigs, with an array of international acts from some of dance music's finest labels including Warp, Ninja Tune, Rephlex and Planet Mu. Kevin's live sets and productions have led him to play gigs all around the country and have even brought him to play sets in France and the UK as well as festival performances at DEAF and Electric Picnic. This mix showcases some brand new un-named and unreleased music from Blake that's due to be released some time this year.
MP3: State Mix#28 - Kevin Blake
[audio:http://www.state.ie/mp3/mixes/028_State_Mix_-_Kevin_Blake.mp3]
What do you have planned for 2011? I'm currently on the hunt for a bit of fresh inspiration so 2011 will see me move to Vancouver for a bit of an adventure. I'm looking forward to getting away from Ireland for a while and hopefully I'll come back with a new lease on life. I definitely have to come back before the end of the year because I've just spent the last year recording a really good and promising album with our rock band 'Private Underground Residence'. I haven't released anything in about two years now as I want to get my production skills up to a level that I'm fully confident with. Going to spend the year hopefully working some form of job there, writing as much new music as I can, gigging along with a healthy balance of enjoying myself.
Is there a tracklist for the mix? Unfortunately not yet. It's that fresh!
When did you write the songs on the mix? I wrote these songs over the past three our four months. I became a little bit obsessed with wanting to make wonky hip hop and this is what came out.
Any particular artists that have especially inspired your current sound? I'm still not convinced that I have a current sound. At the moment I'm just making bass heavy music. Sometimes it's dark, sometimes it's colourful. I'm not in any rush to get one either, just going to try and keep banging out good tunes.
As for artists who would have inspired the kind of tunes on this mix; Loops Haunt blew the shit out of me when I heard him first. He really took production standards to another level. As well as him there’s Flying Lotus, Prefuse 73, Kuedo, Zomby, Boxcutter, Dimlite, Mike Slott, Luke Vibert and a few more I can't think of!
Ten Past Seven (Johnston's Cows - Kevin Blake Sea Mix) by Kevin Blake
You reworked a track for Ten Past Seven - any plans for remixing other bands/ artists? Ten Past Seven was my first attempt at a remix. It was pretty daunting until I actually dug into it. Would love to have a go at remixing other bands and artists, so as long as I'm into the music then I'm open to anything.
What lessons have you learned from your years with Electric Underground? Electric Undergroundhas been a serious rollercoaster. The buzz never gets old meeting artists who've inspired you for years and getting bits of advice from them along the way. When EU first began my taste in electronic music was fairly all over the place.
I was pretty young though. I liked a bit of good dance music, but in retrospect some of the bookings were a bit naff. Over the course of it my taste has developed a huge amount. I'm a lot more musically educated so the bookings have hopefully gotten a lot better. I know the scene pretty well now and have gotten to know some great heads. I've also learned that to run a club night properly you have to book with your head more so than your heart. We've taken a huge amount of risks along the way booking people we wanted to see but if there isn't a market for them you're going to loose money. Eamon who runs the night with me will keep it going while I'm abroad.
If you're a band, producer or DJ and would like to contribute to the State mix series, drop us a proposal or a sample mix.
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