Long time pal and driving force behind Invisible City it's Gary Abugan (@invisible-city) from Canada serving up the 29th mix in the series. Interview (excerpt) down below.

www.musicfrommemory.com

MFM: Hey Gary. How's life in Toronto today? Did you manage to do some more gardening? :)

IC: We have a really nice garden in front of the shop and also at home in my backyard, both get some nice sun and shade and are where I spend all my time. So yes, gardening everyday ;)

MFM: (Before the pandemic hit) You've seen quite a few bits of the world by now while touring. How would you describe Toronto as a city if you had to promote it to the readers who haven't been there yet? 

IC: It’s summer here now in Toronto and we’re in the middle of a heatwave. We’re lucky to have an island with nice beaches as a nearby getaway via ferry. Toronto is a very large sprawling city compared to most European cities. Our multiculturalism definitely sets us apart. We have heaps of reggae and island music here along with lots of record shops, and the variety of food here can’t really be beat. I miss giving guided Invisible City tours of the city to any traveling DJs passing through.

MFM: Would you say it's a good place for an artist to be, whether being a young upcoming talent or professional and all in between?  

IC: Sure you can make it here if you’re skilled/talented and not overbearing, the problem is that there isn’t that many music venues to play. Between the crazy expensive visa you need to play the USA and the costs of flights to Europe, we are kind of isolated musically. Rent is crazy expensive here and most artists have another job, but I’m not sure if Toronto makes it specifically harder or easier compared to other cities. 

MFM: People may know you as the driving force behind Invisible City, the record store and label. How much time do you spend with the one compared to the other? 

IC: I would say pre-Covid more focus was on the shop and getting that to a sustainable level and stocking the store. We didn’t even have a sign for years until recently. During Covid, when the shop was closed for about a year and a half, a lot of focus was on development and signing artists paying advances and getting back into production. I learned alot about Music Publishing too… Laura helps me a lot with organizing everything, label and shop, I would be lost without her.

MFM: Looking back on running a record store and label for over 10 years now, what would you say are some key changes that took place over time?

Back then there were not that many reissue labels and it wasn’t as competitive or extensive, now everyone has a reissue label. I only wanted to put out records that I was strongly connected to or somehow found on a whim. If someone showed me a record, I would ask them if they were planning on reissuing it, now people just go ahead. It’s crazy how many reissues there are so it’s challenging now as a label to dig even deeper. The record shop also was really niche and specialized in the past and now there’s just more in each genre. It’s still pretty curated, but I am finding that I didn’t know a lot of good common records, so we like having “high end cheapos”. I like that most people can just come off the street and buy records now, although we still have some niche stuff too. It feels overall more balanced and varied and for the people.

MFM: The label seems to run at a nice and slow pace. Is it on purpose to not have a heavy and steady output? 

IC: I like to only do a couple records a year, it’s only me and Laura who do it all and it takes me ages to figure out artwork, I’m very picky. The shop, DJing, and occasionally throwing parties also takes up a lot of our time. We always have a lot on the go. I also like to focus on one or two artists at a time, but also it costs a lot of money to make a record! Now things are totally slowed down and our plant says I can’t get pressings out till next March!

MFM Mix 029: Invisible City

we celebrate Black History Month as an annual observance 
of important people and events in the history of the African 
diaspora presenting the 5th studio insert series entitled:
Compass- An Obsolete Musical Voyage.

Traxx- Studio Insert 5- Compass- An Obsolete Musical Voyage

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Emission spéciale Festival Udada / Gros Volume Sur La Molle invite Vidal Benjamin pour 1 heure de sympathie sur 45 tours.

Les épisodes de Gros Volume Sur La Molle (GVSLM) se suivent mais ne se ressemblent pas. Deux fois par mois les frères Pochez se relaient pour vous emmener dans leurs tribulations sonores éclectiques.

www.diaradio.live/emissions/gvslm

Gros Volume Sur La Molle #10 w/ Vidal Benjamin (Spéciale Udada) - (25.07.22)

If we were to pick one word to describe Ziggy Devriendt, AKA Nosedrip, it would probably humble. He runs a one-man empire out of the modest Belgian coastal town of Ostend, and his STROOM label is one of the most quietly brilliant outfits in Western Europe. A mixture of obscurer-than-obscure reissues and quirky new material makes for a label as unpredictable as it is essential, and Devriendt's unusual touch is all over it—he prefers to make up his own compilations and sequences instead of just repackaging old records, for example, which explains how important curation and putting songs together is to him.

So it's not a surprise that , in addition to being a music nerd supreme, Devriendt is also a remarkably good DJ, whose ear for oddball cuts translates well into intuitively danceable music. Judging from his RA Podcast, he's had trance on the mind—the mix features flighty beats that range from CJ Bolland and Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia to new-school practitioners like J-Zbel, plus a major highlight from Peter Van Hoesen that you might remember from Marcel Fengler's Berghain 05 mix and plenty of new material from Stroom. (He's also putting out a compilation of Belgian trance, which might explain the direction of this mix.) It's a three hour-ride that varies from jaw-dropping mixing to abrupt, almost shocking transitions that might startle you out of your chair. 

@ziggy-devriendt

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/843

RA podcast

RA.843 Nosedrip

The ninth mix in our series comes from long time friend and creative mind behind many previous Second Circle sleeves: Orpheu The Wizard (@orpheuthewizard). Q&A (excerpt) here below.

www.musicfrommemory.com

MFM: Hey Orpheu, so nice to have you on the series. How have you been, recovered from what seems  another busy festival season?

OTW: Heyhey guys, all good here, thanks for having me! I had a good summer indeed with some very nice festivals. But there is always more than just festivals right? It’s been a good year with club gigs all over the world, I have seen a lot of places, opened Dynamic Range, RLR still going strong. Keeping myself busy yeah!

MFM: You've always lived in Amsterdam, right? How do you feel living here now compared to let's say 10 years ago?  

OTW: I have lived here all my life, have lived in different parts of town throughout the years and now live and work in the city centre. Well…… the city has changed. Some of it for good, but also a lot of it for worse unfortunately. I do still enjoy living here though and as many places as I have travelled over the years, Amsterdam still is home.

MFM: You've been involved in culture and it's development within the city of Amsterdam for quite some years now, RLR and Dynamic Range probably being the best known achievements. Do you think a lot about the city and how it's developing (culturally)? 

OTW: I do care about how the city develops, in general but also about how it develops culturally. I feel I am doing my part to contribute to the city’s culture in a positive way and it makes me very happy when I see other people or initiatives that are doing the right thing. 

MFM: Being such a busy man and having a broad interest in sound, what's your trick on staying on point in discovering (new) music and keeping your record box fresh? Assuming you probably get sent quite a lot of music too?

OTW: Give music a chance! And stay interested to hear something you haven’t heard before. Listen to records, labels and artists that you don’t know yet, give music you get sent a quick listen. And trust your ears, that’s all. It takes only a few seconds to know if you want to hear the rest of this tune or not. 

MFM: If you compare being the part-time DJing music enthusiast from years ago with the globe trotting professional DJ that you are nowadays, would you say you as a DJ or your approach to it has changed much? 

OTW: I think it’s change is inevitable because of many factors, context, experience, growth, development, but in the end the essence is the same. When you are playing you want to enjoy the music you play and playing it out to people and you want your crowd to have a good time! 

MFM: What are some key things you found out about and learned in the past 4 years?

OTW: Don’t believe the hype!

MFM: While being so musically interested and coming across so much talent worldwide, did it ever cross your mind to start a label too?

OTW: Yes it has, working on it, teaser in the mix!

MFM: Thanks again for contributing a mix to our series. What can you say about it, did you have a specific idea or approach with it? 

OTW: I love making mixes! The approach was actually to really do a mix like we used to do, a listening/mood experience constructed with records you found in the past months and you hope Tako and Jamie haven’t heard yet haha.

MFM Mix 009: Orpheu The Wizard

VERSATILE/GILB'R REDLIGHT RADIO #2

Mix by https://soundcloud.com/vidal-benjamin.

A contribution to P.A.M.'s new online resource POSITIVE MESSAGES.

Visit perksandmini.com/positive-messages for more...

Image : Nara, Japan (2015) by Misha Hollenbach

POSITIVE MESSAGES #17 : VIDAL BENJAMIN 'Songs for Michel'

The Red Light Radio resident from Amsterdam is, in symbiosis with PAM, behind one of the best Blogs/Youtube Channels out there going by the name of Onkokole y Trompa. A quiet but persistently excellent fixture in the city's fairly digging-oriented club-culture, he seems to represent the really good stuff about the Amsterdam scene (together with a handful others maybe). For 5918mins., he pulls his tissues out for this emotional weeping boogie mix. Maybe in light of the current situation, maybe in light of the recent closure of his home-base Red Light Radio (R.I.P.)

weeping boogie

Satoshi Yamamura(Weeping Boogie Mix)

Artiste : @i-cube
EP : Cubo Live Sessions
Label : @versatile-records
Sortie : 18/09/20
100 copies vinyles sont disponibles sur Bandcamp avec une carte postale écrite à la main et signée par I:Cube. Chaque carte postale est unique.
Acheter : https://bit.ly/3hN5OZK

Tsugi Premiere : I:Cube - Cubo Live (Session Three)

Tears 003
Written & produced by D. Stump
Additional mix & master by Lorenz Lindner at Mad Premium

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Versatile Records

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