NO WEAPON IS ABSOLUTE - DJ Sundae - 26-06-2024 - NTS 2

Between Stations w/ Public Display of Affection: 13th August '25

Rádio Rakytník w/ Schaumstoff | Shella Radio 10.07.2025

DJ Sundae from Paris, France (NTS, Idle Press, Efficient Space)

https://www.instagram.com/idlepress
https://www.soundcloud.com/djsundae



DJ Sundae @ The Lot Radio 09-20-2025

Rádio Rakytník w/ Rinsal | Shella Radio 11.09.2025

Residency show broadcasted live at Radio Tempo Não Pára (18.10.2025)

Artist: @andrea_ida

Could be us, but u're human w/ Andrea Ida @ Radio TNP 18.20.25

Many long lost memories and unexpressed thoughts into this one

Curve

combining a couple of upcoming own projects & remixes w. old and new, you know the drill. trouble on

Benedikt Frey - Troubled Funk MixX #6

Up next in the series is Johnny Sais Quoi (@johnny_sait_quoi) who just released his dancefloor-focused pop debut album 'Love On Ice' with us last month. Interview (excerpt) below.

www.musicfrommemory.com

MFM: So, who is Johnny Sais Quoi and where does he (and it's name) come from?

JSQ: Johnny Sais Quoi is my new French identity, I felt that France needed another Johnny after the passing of Hallyday. I live in Marseille now, but I’m from the UK.

MFM: Your debut LP 'Love On Ice' just got released a few weeks ago. Do you remember the first
steps or moment that eventually led to it becoming a full record?

JSQ: Not so much.. I write quite consistently, so they were made over a long period of time. During that period I was trying to find my ‘sound’ and trying lots of new ideas, so I suppose it was when I had enough tracks that I could make a selection that felt good to me.

MFM: The music on the LP somewhat reminds to the sound of the '80s, like New Wave, Pop and Italo but with it's own new identity. Would you agree? In what way did the '80s have an influence on you as an artist?

JSQ: Yeah I love 80s music. I love the production, emotion and romance of it, it’s always been such an inspiration for me musically and culturally. I love how the production seemed to go a bit crazy and people were really pushing the way music, even pop music, could sound. Also the advent of home recording and the seemingly endless supply of people at home who were trying to be their own variation of Wham! or Depeche Mode. These days I’m really interested in finding ways to borrow from this epoch but still sound contemporary. I find that hard sometimes, but always more rewarding.

MFM: Although the music is all yours, it's easy to imagine a full band on stage. Do you have a
background in playing in bands? And do you have any desire to bring it out on stage at one point, alone or with band?

JSQ: I started playing bass when I was 12 and then in bands from around 18. My history in bands was short and I miss it - I would love to join a band to play bass or synths or drums. Then I was part of a duo with my brother, we had a band for a while but now it’s just me. I’m beginning to work on the live show for this project which I’ll do alone to begin with, then maybe bring in some other instruments as I go, we’ll see.

MFM: Does writing new music come easy to you or...? What comes first, the instrumental part or the lyrics?

JSQ: I say that I’m working on the live show but in reality every time I try to work on it I end up making new songs. Making the music often comes very easy and is normally first. I’ve realised recently that writing lyrics is a very different process for me - the instrumental often comes very fast and I work fast, but I often forget that I need to slow down and work in a different way for the lyrics. I’m still learning how I work.

MFM: Tell us about your mix!

JSQ: I made it in Bretagne whilst I was doing some work there this summer, in the peace of the countryside. I wanted it to be a wide mix of things that I’ve listened to since I wrote Love on Ice. New inspirations and some classics, maybe a taste of what’s to come next. 

MFM Mix 056: Johnny Sais Quoi

20 years later...

In recent times there has been a lot of looking back to the early 1990s in house music which made me curious about what my dj sets actually sounded like back then. As it's 20 years on I thought it might be fun to put one up as an Optimo podcast, but sadly I had no recordings of that time as I had long given away or lost any tapes i had from then (everything was on cheap C90 cassette tapes in those days). Then, last week a local producer sent me his album to peruse and mentioned that he had a couple of mix tapes of mine, both from 1991.

So, here is a genuine 1991 mix recorded in that year when I was co-resident at Pure in Edinburgh (which ran from 1990 - 2000) when i was known simply as Twitch rather than JD Twitch (the JD was added many years later to stop people billing me as DJ Twitch, which I loathed).

Although I started djing in 1987, I didn't start mixing records together until 1990 and couldn't afford turntables until the end of that year, so initially when i was djing at Pure I was literally learning on the job. Thankfully the euphoria of those times coupled with the fact it was all so new and exciting to so many meant that I got away with it as audiences were a lot more forgiving than they are today. Requests were fairly rare and usually a lot more oblique, often along the lines of "Can you play some "E" music?" Heckling or shouting "come on!', "harder!", "techno!" was non existent. it wasn't a better time, just different, but audiences in general were a bit politer and more patient.

This mix is two sides of two different C90 cassettes stuck together. The first half is from late 1991. It has a lot of that "E" music people were asking for on it. The mixing ranges from pretty good to the odd "ouch" moment but overall is not bad for a beginner. The second half is from earlier in 1991 and the mixing is a lot more, uh, "freeform" and gets through a high number of tracks in a short time. I think this section may have been recorded live at Pure although I can't be sure as despite running for ten years we only ever made a tiny number of live recordings. There are a couple of massively cheesy and seriously dated rave anthems on here and a couple of tracks I have absolutely no recollection of ever having heard in my life, but there is also a lot of music that I still play to this day and indeed have never stopped playing since, and some, such as MK's "Burning", Mike Perras and CLS that are enduring classics. To use the parlance of back in the day, the mix gets a little "mental" towards the end. The tape begins with a live recording of a bit of chat from the Ragga Twins live at Pure in early 1991 and ends with a particularly twisted take on David Lynch's "Lady In The Radiator Song" followed by a blast of Throbbing Gristle. Sometimes I'd drop in things like that at Pure which maybe helps explain why a few regulars ended up with mental health issues! Pure had a reputation for being a techno club and in the early days a temple to all things rave but it was always a lot more than that (as well as those things too of course) as this podcast demonstrates. Despite the sound (and mixing) limitations I think it's an interesting document of what was going on in my world 20 years ago. 


The audio fidelity of this podcast is not high, particularly in the second half. The original cassette tape was probably copied multiple times as it was passed around from person to person. Richard Chisolm who excavated the tapes has done some remastering to improve the sound but old multi generation tapes rarely sound good and it was probably quite lo fi to begin with. It was mixed live using a cheap mixer through a cheap amp. Back then the vast majority of dj mixers were very basic - no eq, no gain and no gizmos whatsoever; just a volume fader, a crossfader and phono / line switches which I used to flick to cut tracks in and out. The mix is 85 minutes long and is a 192kbps mp3 (118mb). 

Thanks to Richard aka Restless Native.
 

Optimo Podcast 11 - Twitch 1991 (recorded in 1991)

Odd Waves II

Music label created in 2004 in Paris. Home of Cosmo Vitelli, Bot'Ox, Red Axes and many more. 
Contact: imacliche (at) gmail (dot) com

NO WEAPON IS ABSOLUTE - DJ Sundae - 26-06-2024 - NTS 2

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