I started DJing years ago, when vinyl was commonplace and CDJ’s were still far too pricey to be considered a viable option.

Like so many, I would spend pretty much all my disposable income on records, picking up promos and spending countless weekends mixing it up, unfettered by genre or tempo. I maintain that my record collection and DJing equipment are the last things I’d ever sell.

Though, as is the case with so many things, ‘life gets in the way’. you get a set of CDJ’s, your pitch faders go out of kilter, your needles break. The list in endless, it’s a natural progression to move to a digital format.

However, like the book and kindle, both vinyl and digital formats can exist in harmony, they should compliment not compete.

However, as both a producer and label owner I can’t bear to be one of those label heads who pushes the vinyl format but never buys it himself. This has to change.

Having seen the success of some of my friends in yearly challenges, I’ve decided to set myself the challenge of buying a few bit of vinyl every week. The argument being that if I can spend money on sushi, I can cut back on the nigiri and buy a few slabs of wax instead.

The premise behind this is that this will both encourage other people to buy more vinyl and also to explore new music and give me an outlet to share some thoughts and music that is more than absent-mindedly clicking a ‘share’ button as I scroll through various feeds and sites.

With this in mind, I’ll try and get as much new music as possible as it would be too easy to go back through all the music that has been released over the last few years.

Anthony Linell – Sculpting Energy

I picked this up because, though I know my way around techno, I always go for the big hitters, Dettmann, Klock, Ost Gut Tun. There are so many variations in the genre, I thought this was something that I’d definitely play. I hadn’t heard of the label or the artist.

Here’s what Juno had to say:

“It would be fair to call Anthony Linell prolific. As one of the best, well-regarded solo acts since 2011 and founder of Northern Electronics, he’s already released a trio of acclaimed albums, as well as a couple of tidy EPs all the while dishing out deep, subtle and highly textured music from his imprint. Here he ends 2018 on a high via an EP of floor-focused, modular-sounding techno workouts. There’s much to admire across the four tracks, from the melancholic melodic movements, fizzing sci-fi effects and foreboding drumbeats of “Vision of the Imminence”, to the dense industrial motifs and thunderous beats of peak-time slammer “Sculpting Energy”. Arguably best of all, though, is opener “Therme”, a hypnotic and mind-altering blast of foreboding and paranoid, off-kilter techno in which psychedelic TB-303 flourishes, spacey chords and electro-influenced drums combine to memorable effect. “

This is definitely going in a techno mix.

DJ Sports – Adaptation 

I’ve got both feet firmly roots in Drum & Bass. I love it, I make it, I release it. However when people talk about the scene there are major players, labels and routes to follow.

the typical expectation is that people who make drum and bass, will diverge and make music at slower tempos – Zinc, Synkro, Akkord, Martyn, Pessimist, however what we’re now seeing is this going the other way, most notably for me, in the form of DJ Sports.

I first came across his music from his album Modern Species Well worth a listen.

ASOK – To Think I Hesitated

Weirdly enough, I came across this EP when I was going for a run, I enjoyed the tracks so much that I had them on repeat for pretty much all of the time.

ASOK, a name I haven’t heard before, gets it done on pretty much all of the four tracks.

This Liverpudlian, is someone I’m definitely going to watch.

The stand out track for me has got to be this deep, borderline electro vibe. Can’t get enough of this track at the moment.

And that’s it!