Schematics

Strangely enough, I was only introduced to James Ruskin’s music at around 2005 or so. I was over at my friend Monika from Poland’s house and leafing through her collection of harder-than-I’d-normally-play-myself techno when I picked a blue piece of vinyl by Mr. Ruskin called “Return” on his Blueprint label. When I say “leafing through” I actually mean “trying to impose order upon” as Monika’s records were all thrown together in a big heap in a corner of a room, half of them in the wrong sleeves and the other half in no sleeves at all! My OCD kicked in big time and I was trying to sort everything out a bit.

The Regis mix was the only I liked the most and I ended up buying the record a few days later. I also got “Take Control” which featured a Surgeon mix and a year later picked up “Transfer” which although not the best, was the most interesting of the three to me because it had a Kero mix on it. For those of you that haven’t heard of Kero, he runs the excellent Detroit Underground label and makes music that would mostly reside in the “IDM” area, although I hate the word IDM and wince every time I use it. (What better name should I use? “Weird chopped up finely edited crazy town music”?) The Kero mix of James Ruskin isn’t his best work, and isn’t my favourite Blueprint release, but to me the fact that James Ruskin is collaborating with him is a good thing in the grand scheme of all things techno as I think there should be more “weird” techno, stuff that combines all the basic dancefloor ingredients with a dash of mentalism, like the new and improved Autechre live shows!

I haven’t been following Ruskin’s work of late, he has a new album out on Tresor apparently called “The Dash” but I haven’t seen any sound samples on Juno, has it actually been released yet or what lads? Anyway, he’s playing for the Junction guys this Saturday (the 22nd of September) in The Cavern, it’ll be interesting to see what his new material sounds like, and if he’s been influenced much by the people he chose to remix his recent 12″ releases. Supporting DJs in attendance will be Sunil Sharpe and Junction’s own Stam. Sunil recently got what in my opinion was the best slot ever at Planet Love, right after British Murder Boys and right before Surgeon! (Yes, Surgeon played as BMB with Regis and then on his own later on) I wasn’t there myself as apart from those guys and Dave Clarke there wasn’t enough there to warrant me buying a 70 Euro+ ticket and hanging out in a racecourse in Co. Meath with 15,000 16 year old Irish kids. However part of Sunil’s set was recorded by 2FM and posted up to the DMI forum which I’ve stuck up on my own site here: Sunil Sharpe at Planet Love 2007 (I’m sure Sunil won’t mind! PS: Sunil, any chance of a tracklist?)

Hope to see you down there!