greg wilson

We have a real treat today. Over 2 years ago we approached one of the men who responsible for turning us into disco fiends. We really didn’t expect to receive a response and when we did we were both surprised and enthused. This man was Greg Wilson. Not only did Greg take the time to give us one of our first guestmixes but he also spent an hour on the phone to us giving us a really in-depth insight (below) into the scenes history and his origins as a Dj. Suffice to say we have the utmost respect for Greg who has always taken to time to ensure people accurately understand where these timeless tracks all came from and whats keeping them relevant.

Greg recently came down to play at one of our parties in London and has very kindly given us the recording of his live set to use as his second guestmix for us. We think you’ll agree that it cements his position as both an adventurous selector and a talented Dj. There is no tracklist for this one but that’s half the fun.

Read interview here

Greg Wilson - House of Disco Guestmix - Live at Oval Space 24.08.13

Live mix from Shoom Summer Of Love 25th Anniversary at West Exit in Hastings 23.08.13

Accompanying blog piece at http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2013/09/shoom-summer-of-love/

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

SHOOM SUMMER OF LOVE @ WEST EXIT HASTINGS 23.08.13 (greg wilson live mix)

I played a hugely enjoyable 8 hour marathon at Kantine am Berghain in Berlin last Thursday, and although I wasn’t able to record the whole night, I did manage to get the first 3 hours and the final hour and a half. So this is a mix in 2 parts – the first 185 minutes a downtempo groove fest, whilst from 3.05.26 onwards we’re into the final furlongs of the party with proceedings much more upbeat.

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

EINE NACHT MIT...KANTINE AM BERGHAIN  BERLIN 12.12.13 (greg wilson live mix)

ESSENTIAL MIX - JAN 2009
Uploaded on 17.01.10 and exclusive to SoundCloud. Available for the first time without voiceovers and jingles,12 months on from original Radio 1broadcast on 17.01.09.


EMAILSHOT A FEW DAYS AHEAD OF MIX BEING AIRED:
2009 kicks in for me this weekend with my first gig of the year for Udio (1st birthday) at The Gramaphone Club in Shoreditch, London on Friday night, which coincides with the airing of my only just completed in the nick of time Essential Mix on Radio 1, made up of 43 tracks in just under 2 hours.

Given that the 5th anniversary of my DJ comeback has only just passed, I decided to take the opportunity to make the mix totally representative of this period, with all the selections being amongst the biggest tracks I’ve played since I made my second debut at Music Is Better in Manchester.

Five years represents a significant package of time, a fixed point from where I can reflect on what’s been a continually snowballing sequence of events, set in motion when Danny Webb asked me to appear in Manchester on that December night back in 2003.

There were less than 100 people there that night, but they were the right people, and I was taken aback by the response to my return, both on the night itself and during subsequent days, when people who were there began to post on the forums. I’d never expected all the feedback be so totally positive!

I’d figured that I’d play that night, using the combination of laptop and reel-to-reel for the first time, then go away and think about what worked and what didn’t before I made my next move. I would never have believed that things could come together so immediately, it was as if I’d hit a completely unexpected hole in one, especially when two of the people who were there, Ralph Lawson, DJ from Back To Basics in Leeds, and one of my fellow DJ’s that night, Richard Hardcastle (Solid State) from Society in Sheffield, both asked me to play at their nights no sooner had I finished my spot.

One thing kept leading to another and, in Sheffield, I was approached by Tony Daly to play at the now legendary Tyneside Cinema party in Newcastle, a bespoke event where he took on the substantial risk of presenting me in a city I’d never DJ’d in previously (unless you count the 1983 TV appearance on The Tube, which was filmed in the Tyne Tees studio). Then, of course, there was London, where Steve Kotey and Bill Brewster booked me for their parties, bringing me to the capital within the first few months of my return for Ouch and Low Life.

The bookings kept coming, and I found myself driving up and down the country on an increasingly regular basis. Later in 2004 I was approached by Sav Remzi, from Tirk / Nuphonic, with the idea of putting together an edits album, which would be issued the following year as ‘Credit To The Edit’. This would help bring my name to the attention of people outside the UK. There was soon a need to step things up further, now that I was receiving enquiries from Europe, and so began a fruitful relationship with my agent, Matt Johnson (Matty J), who’s done a wonderful job of representing me during recent years.

The last few months have been, to say the least, manic for me, with 25 flights, including 6 long haul, taking me to gigs in the US, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Europe. From a personal perspective I still find it remarkable the way everything has developed, pretty much organically, since I made the decision that I was going to be a DJ once again – had I concocted some sort of comeback masterplan, it could never have worked out anything like as well as it has. It’s definitely been a case of ‘from small acorns’.

It still never ceases to amaze me that people from another continent are interested in my DJ past. Back in the early 80’s, before I went into retirement for 20 years, the furthest I travelled (with the exception of the appearances I made in the South of England as part of The Hacienda Review in late ’83) was to places like Birmingham and Nottingham, when I played at All-Dayers, so to find myself in clubs on the other side of the world is pretty nuts!

Anyhow, I’d like to wish everyone all the best for 09. Big thanks to all the promoters who booked me and everyone who danced to the tunes I played during ’08 in Adelaide, Barcelona, Belfast, Berlin, Birmingham, Blackburn, Brighton, Bristol, Dublin, Dundee, Edinburgh, Fukuoka, Glasgow, Hamburg, Leeds, Lisbon, Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Newcastle, Nottingham, Paris, Porto Alegre, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Sheffield, Sydney, Tokyo and Warsaw. Also the festivals and special events that I appeared at - Bestival (Isle Of Wight), Big Chill (England), Camp Bestival (England), Garden Festival (Croatia), Ibiza, Lovebox (England), Notting Hill Carnival (England), Rockness Festival (Scotland), Sonar (Spain) and the Southport Weekender (England).

Hope to see you soon.

Greg


FORUM POST DURING FOLLOWING DAYS:                                                        
Thanks for all the positive words. The feedback has been pretty phenomenal, far exceeding what I’d hoped for, especially on the BBC page, where I’d expected that some people would criticize the amount of older music included - the Radio 1 audience is used to current stuff ('in new music we trust'), so I’d anticipated a more mixed reaction. What’s particularly pleasing is that they were all made without the people seeing what each other wrote (they all came online at once, having been checked first by whoever moderates the BBC pages, I presume for swearing etc following the Ross / Brand controversy).

You always hope something you've done will be well received, but the response to this has blown me away.

Greg


ANSWER TO POST RE MIXING PROCESS:                                                      
It was quite a laborious process. Before I could start the actual mixing part I had to edit every track to a coherent length of around two and a half minutes average, inclusive of in and out points. I had a pool of about 90 tracks that fitted the criteria I'd set (a representative selection of the biggest tunes I've been playing during the past 5 years). It wasn't as straightforward as just editing the 43 tracks I ended up featuring - in order to have the necessary options once I started to piece the mix together I needed to have all the tracks at my disposal, just as I would have if I was out deejaying in a club, so the only thing to do was edit all 90 to the required length, even though I knew that only half would make the cut .

Once that was finally done they were all taken across into my laptop, enabling me to vari-speed them via PCDJ whilst I recorded across to my home computer into Cool Edit Pro, where I put the mix together track by track, before adding overdubs (fx, samples, textures) in a similar way to what I do live using the Revox (reel to reel).

I could quite easily have spent another day, tweaking bits here and there and adding more overdubs (the older I get the more finicky I become), but I had a deadline to work to, so, as it moved ever nearer, it became a race against time, with me doing as much as I could before the cut off point arrived.

Greg
                       

Greg Wilson - 2009


ESSENTIAL MIX (by greg wilson for bbc radio 1 2009)

The Sound of Glitterbox - Greg Wilson is the second instalment in a series of mixes from our Glitterbox Resident DJs and Guests.   

Defected presents Glitterbox Ibiza 2015, available to pre-order now: http://defct.de/GBa

Defected Presents Glitterbox: a weekly playground for an international party crowd of all persuasions, where the DJs have free reign to educate and entertain - there’s no slavish following of ‘trends’, charts or genres – just the chance to hear true masters of their craft on one of the world’s best soundsystems.

Buy on iTunes

The Sound of Glitterbox - Greg Wilson

Official Podcast page  / http://balance.hr/podcast.html /
.......................................................................,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Live rec. from Savannah Ibiza 2014-06-22
......................................................................................................................
With the courtesy of Mr.@gregwilson we share this Live DJ recording 

/ https://gregwilson.co.uk / https://savannahibiza.com /
-

BFMP #244 | Greg Wilson @ Savannah Ibiza 2014-06-22

Lovebox asked me if I could put together a Balearic flavoured mix for them ahead of my appearance at the London festival in 2015. The mix features a dozen tracks I've either produced, remixed or re-edited during recent years.

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

MY BALEARIC (by greg wilson for lovebox 2015)

Full live recording from the Glitterbox Closing Party @ Space, Ibiza 25.09.15.

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

GLITTERBOX CLOSING PARTY @ SPACE TERRACE IBIZA 25.09.15 (greg wilson live mix)

GREG WILSON @ THE GARAGE LIVERPOOL 09.04.16

Recording from Festival 23 in South Yorks 23.07.16. Write-up at SWS website: http://www.superweirdsubstance.com/discordian-happening-festival-23

Check out our Super Weird sounds at: https://superweirdsubstance.bandcamp.com
Stay up to date with the latest at: http://www.superweirdsubstance.com

Greg Wilson @ Festival 23 South Yorks 23.07.16

Greg Wilson recorded live from the Abandoned Chapel at Lost Village 2016

YouTube 🌲📺🌲 www.youtube.com/lostvillage

Website 🌲💻🌲 www.lostvillagefestival.com

Live from Lost Village - Greg Wilson

Live recording of Greg Wilson from The Haçienda Residents Party @ Sankeys in Manchester 27.12.16.

I’d decided to go for an early 80s vibe on this, playing edits alongside originals of some classics and cult–classics from my time at Legend in Manchester rather than The Haçienda, although all of these tracks were played at The Haçienda at some point or other, either by myself or original resident Hewan Clarke. Great to see Hewan, Mike Pickering, Graeme Park, Jon DaSilva, Chad Jackson, Tom Wainwright and Allister Whitehead – it was quite a gathering of eras.

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

HAÇIENDA RESIDENTS PARTY @ SANKEYS MANCHESTER 27.12.16 (greg wilson live mix)

Full recording of Greg Wilson's closing set at Beat-Herder Festival in Lancashire's Ribble Valley 16.07.17.

TRASH MANOR @ BEAT-HERDER FESTIVAL RIBBLE VALLEY  16.07.17 (greg wilson live mix)

Recording from the Glitterbox closing party at Hi in Ibiza 28.09.18.

GLITTERBOX CLOSING PARTY @ HI IBIZA 28.09.18 (greg wilson live mix)

Recording from a special Essential Mix 10th Anniversary appearance at XOYO in London on 26.01.19. More at the blog:
http://blog.gregwilson.co.uk/2019/01/essential-mix-10th-anniversary/

ESSENTIAL MIX 10TH ANNIVERSARY @ XOYO LONDON 26.01.19 (greg wilson live mix)

Greg will join us and a merry gang of friends at Glastonbury this weekend!

"Recorded in May 2019 at the FAC 51 The Haçienda party, held at the stunning Albert Hall in Manchester. I've played a number of Haçienda events in recent years, but this was undoubtedly the best environment, with the venue full by the time I went on at 10pm. I really enjoy this type of scenario where I can build things up from scratch, starting off around 100bpm and gradually increasing the tempo so the next DJ, in this case Chez Damier, is teed up to transition into the House vibe more associated with The Haçienda. This gave me the opportunity to illustrate some of the other tracks that were played and loved at the club down the years. "

GW



1. St Etienne only love will break your heart (andy weatherall mix)
2. Happy Mondays hallelujah (monkey boots rework)
3. Bass-O-Matic fascinating rhythm (henry greenwood rework)
4. SOS Band just be good to me (late nite tuff guy rework)
5. Neneh Cherry buffalo stance (henry greenwood rework)
6. Deee-Lite what is love (facets edit)
7. Herbie Hancock rockit
8. Nitro Deluxe this brutal house (tabro t edit)
9. FPI Project I’ll bass you / rich in paradise (gw ruff edit)

GREG WILSON - Live From FAC 51 The Haçienda @ Manchester Albert Hall 2019

Exclusive Greg Wilson T-Shirts: https://gouranga-music.myshopify.com/ 

Greg Wilson
"During the past decade The Rabbit Hole has gained a somewhat mythical status amongst Glastonbury’s bounteous array of attractions. It’s an off-the-beaten-track oasis, tucked away and difficult to access. There’s a festival facing space, diagonally opposite the Stonebridge tent in The Park area, which features bands and DJs, but that’s exactly what it is – the face of The Rabbit Hole. Finding your way into the main burrow, however, isn’t meant to be as straightforward.

Once you’re inside you’ll discover the delights of Funkingham Palace - a full-tilt dancing space with a delicious sound, courtesy of Sova Audio’s 4-point system, and an ever on-point DJ line-up.

I played there on the Saturday, directly after I’d finished my stint in The Rabbit Hole, and it turned out to be quite a night. The place was already jumping when I kicked-off soon after 11pm, and the vibes in there were palpable. I knew they had a special guest following me, but I wasn’t sure who it was until I was about to finish and checked if the next DJ was ready. Turned out that they’d pulled off quite a coup, with Carl Cox about to unleash a secret 3-hour set. It’s the first time I’ve played on a bill with Carl – I’ve only met him once previously, briefly on the Isle Of Wight with Nile Rodgers, but I was asked to DJ at his 50th birthday back in 2012, an offer I had to unfortunately decline as I was already booked that night. I really enjoyed watching him work close-up, the energy he emits is quite something, and this, of course, enraptures this audience, causing an active circuit between DJ and dancers.

It was a pleasure to play at both The Rabbit Hole and Funkingham Palace, so big thanks to Nick and Isaac from Gouranga for making things work out and providing such a great environment for me to spend a wonderous Saturday night in Somerset. Hoping we can do it again in 2020."

1.Chewy Rubs future freak
2.Change glow of love (dave gerrard rework)
3.Booker Newberry III love town (dr packer rework)
4.Chaka Khan I feel for you (dr packer rework)
5.Sister Sledge lost in music (dsd balearic mix)
6.Oliver Cheatham get down saturday night (dr packer rework)
7.Bobby Hebb sunny (pillow talk edit)
8.Hercules & Love Affair blind (frankie knuckles mix)
9.Idris Muhammed could heaven ever be like this (late nite tuff guy rework)
10.Paul Simon you can call me al (flight facilities rework)

GREG WILSON - Live From The Rabbit Hole's Funkingham Palace - Glastonbury 2019

Things were somewhat on top for Liverpool radio station Melodic Distraction, having lost their studio space in the Baltic Triangle they were left homeless, and this mix was put together in support of their plight. They set up a Kickstarter and I’m happy to say that they reached their required amount of £35,000 and plan to move across the city into new premises in the Fabric District, novelly housing their studios in shipping containers.

The hour-long mix features original tracks I’ve played during more recent years, rather than re-edits or older stuff, so, especially given it’s a bit different to the norm, it’s good to be able to get up onto SoundCloud, where my uploads have been a bit threadbare (in comparison with previous times) since coronavirus shut down the industry.

DISTRACTED MIX (by greg wilson for melodic distraction 2020)

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)

Live recording from the Stonebridge tent at Glastonbury Festival 2013.

Read the accompanying blog post, 'Glastonbury - The Greatest Show On Earth' here:
http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2013/07/glastonbury-the-greatest-show-on-earth/

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

greg wilson

Mark Grainger 4