DJing at the Foundry in Old Street several years back, which finally closed today. I’ll miss it!

I also hear Fabric as of today is in receivership, Astoria, The End, Turnmills, Ghetto and Scala are also gone for various reasons over the last year or two.

It seems a lot of the small bars and mid-sized clubs are going to make way for the Olympics to be developed as overpriced hotels and CrossRail, and a few like Fabric to the current economic woes. I hope it’s worth the death of a lot of smaller venues that were the lifeblood of London’s musical scenes – because ironically all those visitors will arrive in 2012 looking for ‘cool London’ will otherwise find a nightlife that consists of depressing chain pubs and mega-O2 venues only – the very life they came to look for will have been cleared out to make way for Olympics PLC.

But of course that sort of local character is never preserved; with the stupid laws on small venues that came in a few years back they’ve succeeded to help the megapub chains and kill the smaller places which struggle against the Wembley and O2 arenas, rather than foster a local creative culture.

Still not all bad – I see the free raves are back. Will this be the summer of free rave parties again? Ones out of the range of sponsors and brewery control? I hope so.

EDIT: Fabric is still open, despite being sold. It’s sister club Matter though has closed…

Known about this for a long while but finally got a flyer etc: Bootie London! A one-off, with The Kleptones, A&D, the Bootie Berlin Mashia and DJ Payroll DJing at Cargo on the 9th April…I’ll be there, definitely. And am planning to meet up with A&D beforehand too. It’s interesting cos last time they were here I asked them if there would ever be a Bootie London – and got a coy response…and now they indeed return with a special Bootie London.

And it looks like most, if not all of the UK Mashuperati will be there…

As well as being released and played in part on XFM, 72 the collaborative mashup project will have a live mashup event in London on Thursday 29th October at Loom bar from 7pm-1am with many mashup DJs in a continuous moving mashup feast! Idea is like the old Bastard ‘Bring Yer Own Boots’ – each DJ brings 3 tracks but similar to 72, one track at a time, in order!

This means the night has a dream DJ list of many people picking just the best 3 tunes, which I think should provide great if chaotic results – totally in the spirit of Bastard! And like Bastard it won’t just be mashups, but I’m sure you’ll hear a few

I will be DJing (well putting on 3 tunes) as well as:

Osymyso
Freelance Hellraiser
LV15
Bush No.10
Jez Celebrity Murder Party
Joel 90
Ape
Lee Spoons
Cartelmike
Eddie Pedalo
Dsico
Pheripheral
Scott Cairo
Tizwarz
Gara Gara
and Pom Deter, who ran the 72 project with Eddie Pedalo.

I’m sure many more to be added! Should be a great night, it’s free so come on down, the mashup’s lovely! And it will be one of the few (read: only) events you will see me anywhere near DJ decks in the near future since I am officially retired

Well I retired the DJing but seem to have gone through a creative burst on the mashup front – a new one from DJNoNo (in the realms of a Supercalibreakz classic, I mean it!) which might be released tonight or tomorrow, and a few others in production!

Iin the mean time you can hear an exclusive of another mashup I’m working on by listening to the great Amanda Shinji aka Ms Cyberpink’s electro mix as first premiered in Second Life’s premiere night-spot Club Republik:

(And yes Amanda you should create that Madonna vs Blue Monday live mashup into a proper one, it’s a corker!)

Fed up with YouTube pulling my videos, here is MutantPopTV – really a bunch of FLVs and MP4s on my server, but a hopefully permanent home for these videos. As with any TV channel you’ve got a mix here – from my mashup music videos, full VJ sets, video podcasts and random DJing/drunken rambles and old art degree videos – many hours of watching, and as it’s on shuffle you’d always get a random next video – or select from the list if there’s something you like the look of.

I’ll add more as I find it or export it at the higher quality here – this should play fine on broadband connections 512Mb or faster – if not let it preload, as it’s not live streaming you won’t miss a thing

Oh and before you rip any videos from here I’d be happy to send you a link to a hi-res QT H264 MOV if I have it (and most of them I do) rather than anyone trying to use or play low-res FLVs – just click ‘contact’ above.