Post by tomgolden on Oct 16, 2007 7:19:25 GMT
SATURDAY 10TH NOVEMBER 2007
@ The Attic, 50 New Wakefield St
Manchester M1 5NP - Directions & Info
11pm – 4am / £6 before midnight for message board members
£8 others and after midnight
Guest DJs:
RALPH LAWSON[/size] (2020 Vision / 2020 Soundsystem / Back II Bascis, Leeds)
DUBBLE D[/size] (2020 Vision / 2020 Soundsystem / Winding Road)
Resident DJs:
SCOTT CAREY
TOM GOLDEN[/size]
Ralph Lawson is back! It was 4 years ago on a wet and cold night (when isn't it like that in Manchester) that Ralph last played for us back in the old Music Box days... stop it, i'm welling up here... As a DJ, producer, remixer and 2020 Vision label boss, Ralph certainly likes to keep busy and his hectic schedule sees him jetting off all over the world DJing and performing live as part of the 2020 Soundsystem (himself, Dubble D and Silver City). Ralph is most famously know for his 15 year residency at one of the worlds greatest clubs, Back II Basic's in Leeds, where he has the honour of being the very first DJ to play a record there. Joining Ralph will be band mate Danny 'Dubble D' ward, so expect an evening of techy and funk laden house beats!
web: www.lovestylus.com
myspace: www.myspace.com/stylusmanchester
email: info@lovestylus.com
phone: 07946 512 885
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Ralph Lawson
Moving to Leeds in the late eighties, Ralph Lawson must have had second thoughts about the place with it's gothic buildings and beer n brawling attitude alongside it's dormant club culture. The fact that his favourite bands came from the city may just have tipped the balance, and a generation of clubbers can be thankful of that fact.
Ralph holds the honour of playing the first ever record at Back to Basics, and there is a very good chance that he will play the last if that fateful day ever rears up it's ugly head. Resident dj for 9 glorious years now, the success and vibe of Leeds' best ever club may be just one factor that has prevented Ralph from being mentioned in the same breath as some of the big-money djs of today. That he has not got a single commercial bone in his body is another. Preferring to play one set per night in a club in order to give that club his all, Ralph was never going to get the same national exposure as those other djs. But Ralph is no other dj. Don't ask us, ask Bill Brewster who recently described Lawson as Britain's best kept secret.
As more top US and European djs came to Leeds and witnessed Ralph's smooth-as-a-baby's-bum style, so the requests flooded in from abroad for his deck services. Ralph has played at just about every good club under the sun, and he would probably agree that the highlight of his career was playing to 20,000 people on Bondi Beach on Millenium Eve. He is also surely one of the few foreign djs to have made it in Moscow, a special night that was commemorated by the release of a cd recorded live on the night by Barcelonan label, Minifunk. Not bad for one who has been unnecessarily tarnished with the rather restrictive title of "deep house dj" for some years now.
Never one for resting on his laurels, Ralph has always kept a healthy interest in making music and, as an ex-drummer, was always destined to progress onto studio work. With Carl Finlow, and occasionally Huggy, Ralph has been responsible for a number of highly rated productions.. Most notably, Ralph collaborated with Chez Damier and Stacey Pullen early in his career, which must have had a profound effect on the way he approached production. With Carl, Ralph has recorded as Wolf n Flow and Urban Farmers.
2020 Vision, Ralph's record label, has been going for five years now. To quote Carl Finlow, "2020 has grown up and is no longer a baby. It has just started school, and has made some great new friends. Each day it learns more and more and always tries to do it's homework. If it continues as it is doing, it will mature into one of the schools very brightest pupils." With an ever increasing roster of artists from as far afield as Montreal and Helsinki, Avignon to Manchester, what started out for Ralph as a hobby is fast becoming an international enterprise of some repute.
Not satisfied with making his own music and releasing the music new artists, Ralph has earned himself a significant niche as a remixer. As always with Carl, Ralph has famously remixed artists that include Felix Tha Housekatt, David Bowie, Blaze, Jori Hulkkonen, Shawn Christopher and many more.
Now a regular guest at places like Fabric, Bugged Out and Home, and with his productions and remixes appearing regularly in the playlists of today's top djs, the sky is the limit for this most talented of people. But maybe even that is not beyond Ralph's capabilities.
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Dubble D
I started studying drums seriously at the age of 14 after dabbling with trumpet and piano whilst developing a perverse obsession with jazz and latin music (which led me to start also studying congas and afro-cuban percussion). Before I'd left school I was out gigging; doing a few jazz gigs and playing in Phoenix Nights-style cabaret clubs. At the time I was also hanging out at a lot of clubs and parties, mainly checking out hip hop and soul nights as well as a few house nights and raves.
Through jazz connections I started to get some touring gigs, mainly with Manchester indie bands and subsequently I got a gig with Chapter and the Verse - a jazzy hip-hop/soul act who were signed to Virgin. I had also started to play percussion in a few clubs with djs whilst continuing to do as much jazz playing and studying as possible. I started to get work through various dance/pop producers such as Love to Infinity, Urban Cookie Collective (my initial connection with Diane Charlemagne) and Awesome 3/Dance United. Whilst still principally a jazz musician,I started to play more club nights with my friend and percussion teacher Chris Cruicks. We started to play regularly at Back to Basics in Leeds as well as at various other nights all over the country. In Manchester, where I am still based, I was doing some playing at the Hacienda and occasionally at One Tree Island, The Planet and Eardrum with, amongst others, Mr Scruff (at the time still working at Kwik Save); I was also busy doing funk and reggae gigs (hence my connection with Dubdadda).
It was around this time that I decided to try to make a statement about what was going on in club music as a studied jazz drummer. So, I started to record live breaks for release with another friend, Danny Evans - undisputed genius engineer/producer who, amongst others now works with Scruff, Fingathing, Only Child, Elbow, and Homelife. We released some loops on vinyl and cd which caught the attention of Fila Brasilia and led to a session during which Steve Cobby convinced me that I should be writing and producing my own tracks. It also led to my involvement with Rae & Christian after they used my beats on Veba's track Fool on their first album. Ralph Lawson and Carl Finlow (Random Factor) also used those beats on their Urban Farmers project. Danny Evans and I went on to painstakingly produce a sample cd of played and programmed loops, Slam on the Breaks on AMG, the proceeds from which I used to buy my first music computer and started putting together tunes.
I started to tour with Rae & Christian - an awesome live show that included me playing drums with Veba, Q 'n' C, The Pharcyde, Kriminul, TCC, Roots Manuva, Fingathing, Supernatural and others. This led to my recording with Only Child and recording and touring with Aim, where I got to back Niko, Kate Rogers and Kwasi. It also led to my collaborating Dual Control on whose album, Left of Right, I co-wrote and produced Spring Again. I had released the Drummernauts ep on 2020 D Vision and Tea/Curtains on Grand Central during this time.
I decided that, whilst I was enjoying touring and was starting to get some great jazz gigs with artists including Jim Mullen, Gilad Atzmon, Dave o' Higgins, Byron Wallen and others, I was uncomfortable with being a 'career' musician and, although continuing to tour with the Rain Band (Universal Records) and gig most nights of the week at home, I started to work more seriously on writing and producing. Whilst finishing Reachin' Out I set up the 2020Soundsystem with Ralph Lawson and Silver City with whom I am touring, writing producing and re-mixing, alongside being Dubble D.
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PRE-PARTY
@ Sofa, Fallowfield, Manchester
9pm - 12 midnight / Free Entry
with DJs:
ANDY SANT
JOSH HEWITT (Imprint Music)
POOLEY (Wales)