Great to get my first gig of 2022 under my belt last Saturday at Ministry Of Sound. I’ve played at this legendary club a number of times down the years, but this certainly ranked amongst my favourite appearances.

In light of my Essential Mix being chosen for BBC Radio 1's classic series earlier in the month, I decided to kick off the year with a selection of some of the tracks included, a few of which are different edits/mixes to those featured back in 2009 when the mix first aired.

MINISTRY OF SOUND LONDON 29.01.22 (greg wilson live mix)

Recorded by Sagami river park Kanagawa.
February 2011

Melting snow

Erot - song for Annie vs. Us and Them (Supraphon Dub) 10.01

Greetings Everyone!
Just Recorded This 72 Mins Mix Of Bollywood Funk & Disco Classixx. Hope You All Like It & Share It. Thanks & Happy Listening :)
- AmuL

https://www.djamul.com

Official Website

DJ AmuL - Bollywood Disco Funk Classics! | www.djamul.com

DOWNLOAD FOR FREE: 
https://sandunes.bandcamp.com/album/unfinish

DASHIGA

Full recording from the Freeze promoted party at The Garage in Liverpool on 05.12.15 to mark the 40th anniversary of my first club appearance on December 6th 1975. For further info: http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2015/12/40th-anniversary-weekend-recorded/

Check out my label's music at: https://superweirdsubstance.bandcamp.com

5 HOUR 40TH ANNIVERSARY @ THE GARAGE LIVERPOOL 05.12.15 (greg wilson live mix)

unconditionaLove

Unconditional Love - Resolve

Buy us a coffee to support the page: www.buymeacoffee.com/theclassicmixcdseries
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About the CD:
005 of the 'Classic Mix CD' collection brings a much slower affair. From the superb 'Back To Mine' CD series. The first I purchased was actually Danny Tenaglia's disc, which I bought out of curiosity being a fan of his house DJ sets. That disc almost made it here, but it was the Groove Armada release which really got hammered on my old Sony stereo. No other disc reminds me of lazy summer sundays more than this. And it was really the first musical selection that steered me towards collecting and playing a mix of music all together. Going from A Tribe Called Quest, into Barry White's incredible "Playing Your Game Baby" then house and other genre's coming in.... really resonated with me and elevated the way I put music together. Both listening to and playing out. A truly seminal release.

Buy on Discogs

005 - Back To Mine - Groove Armada (2000)

c++ code recorded on an organ
are things really random?

freq_stop

Recording from socially distanced event at Escape To Freight Island @ Depot Mayfield in Manchester 08.08.20.

A socially distanced gig is strange, but it’s all we have for now. With people required to be sat at tables and dancing a no no, a different approach was required, where I could be a bit more free-flowing in what I played without a dancefloor to take into consideration. I started off at Freight Island with a Beach Boys favourite from ’68, ‘Do It Again’, harking back to their surf style of the earlier ‘60s, having scaled the heights and sailed the psychedelic seas in the intervening years, ‘Do It Again’, with those wicked drums, carried a weight of nostalgia and a hint of melancholy – an after the summer song if you will, about a time that can never return. This seemed an appropriate starter for the situation we find ourselves in – dancing in a club or a field already a memory.

This booking, my first since I got back from Australia in March, fell just a few weeks on from the death of Denise Johnson. This was a big shock – she was literally just about to release her first solo album ‘Where Does It Go’, and nobody could have imagined that this would be issued posthumously. Denise came to the clubs I was playing at in the early-‘80s and I remember her first band Fifth Of Heaven from the latter years of the decade. She guested with likes of New Order, Electronic, Ian Brown and A Certain Ratio, but will forever be remembered for her contribution to Primal Scream's ‘Screamadelica’ in ’91.

It has to be said that the Manchester Evening News and a number of publications including The Guardian, The Independent and the NME were shambolic in reporting her death, running a picture that wasn’t Denise. I know that Dave Haslam, the former-Hacienda resident who DJ’d before me that day was one of the first to point out this insensitive blunder on social media, which evoked long-standing black stereotypes and must have been horrible for her family and friends.

I, of course, wanted to play something in memory of Denise, as I had with Andrew Weatherall following his death earlier this year. That two of the key contributors to ‘Screamadelica’ had passed within a matter of months is still difficult to take in, the chaos of the times we’re experiencing amplifying the unreality of things.

Rather than a Primal Scream track I picked out a lesser-known personal favourite Denise recorded for Creation Records with Hypnotone, 1990’s ‘Dream Beam’. The Primal Scream hook-up came about when Hypnotone performed at Danny Rampling’s legendary acid-house party Shoom in London, with Denise impressing. Hypnotone faded into the memory as she scaled the heights with the ‘Screamadelica’ LP and subsequent recordings with Primal Scream. The Jesse Jackson speech over the top of Hypnotone was unplanned, but randomly reeled up on my tape at that point for me to appropriately add its Weatherall reference.

The mix then heads off in its own direction, which turned out to carry a recurring jazz-funk theme via big back in the day tracks from George Benson, The Crusaders, Sea Level, Rodney Franklin and MFSB. These are tracks Denise would have instantly recognised from when she first started going out to the clubs. The late-'70s Jazz-Funk scene in the city, with Colin Curtis and John Grant at Rafters and regular all-dayers at The Ritz, a far too rarely mentioned, a part of Manchester’s musical lifeblood.

My next gig was supposed to be a socially distanced Halloween fancy dress at Camp and Furnace for the Liverpool Disco Festivall, but the new COVID-19 restrictions placed on Merseyside put paid to that. The good news is that it’s now been re-arranged for the final weekend of November, which falls around on the Festival’s 4th anniversary, so all is not lost and there’s something to look forward to after restrictions are lifted. Tickets/details here: skiddle.com/e/13892893

ESCAPE TO FREIGHT ISLAND @ DEPOT MAYFIELD MANCHESTER 08.08.20 (greg wilson live mix)

My mix from The Haçienda's 24 hour live stream on New Years Eve 2020.

All of the tracks I featured were from the opening two years of the ‘90s. I hadn’t set out to do this, but it was very much guided by the opening track I’d chosen, in memory of two irreplaceables we lost that year, DJ icon Andrew Weatherall and Manchester’s own Denise Johnson, both crucial to Primal Scream’s ‘Come Together’, which is followed by Weatherall’s mix of ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ by Saint Etienne, whilst Denise’s vocals feature on the lesser-known gem ‘Dream Beam’ by Hypnotone.

The event, hosted by United We Stream GM, had begun at 10am with Hewan Clarke, the club’s original resident, and concluded at 10am on NYD morning with Peter Hook. I followed on from Norman Jay MBE and DJ Paulette, and seeing all the comments on social media, it was soon clear that a lot of people felt a strong emotional response watching the DJs, some among their all-time favourites, playing much-loved tunes in empty spaces, devoid of the dancers who made that music make sense in the first place – a sad, but poignant parody. Also appearing were Haçienda Classical, Inner City, Phuture, Carl Craig, Danny Tenaglia DJ, Dj David Morales, DJ Woody, Graeme Park, Jon Dasilva, Justin Robertson, K-Klass, Moby, Soul Central, Sub Sub, Todd Terry, Tom Wainwright and Tony Humphries. It was line-up, even including a tribute to Frankie Knuckles by way of a recording of the house legend’s 2013 NYE appearance for The Haçienda at Albert Hall, Manchester.

HAÇIENDA NYE 2020 (greg wilson live mix - streamed during lockdown)

I make music as ‘The Alaska None’, using lo-fi obfuscated and contorted fragments from vinyl and tape which are augmented with synths & field recordings . contact - thealaskanone[ at ]googlemail.com.

Erot - song for Annie vs. Us and Them (Supraphon Dub) 10.01

The Alaska None

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