Sundaze 1733

Hello, dear oh dear the giant has fallen and the stadium roars with jubilation, what an end to the career of Usian Bolt, his hamstring refused to bend to his will, as he tried to catch the US and Great Britain the latter won the 4x100 in the 3rd ever fastest time 37,47. The Beeb went nuts now we've got 4 golden boys, born at the death of the giant. Note; before UK's golden star Mo Farrah had bowed out with a deserved silver on his final track event.


As i was thinking about what post this Sundaze, in came a request for today's artist..thanks Josh i go with that synchronicity flow...

Today's Artist is a DJ, musician, journalist, and self-described "international cheerleader of ambient," who has been one of the most visible -- and most active -- proponents of new ambient and electronic music. As renowned for his inventive, wide-casting DJ sets as for his original works under the Irresistible Force name, his influence on the direction of post-rave electronica has been enormous. From his relentless tour schedule, weekly playlists, and monthly release reviews to his extensive website chronicling the evolution of ambient and experimental electronic music, Morris has helped bring a whole range of otherwise obscure artists (from Terre Thaemlitz to Photek; from Ken Ishii to Robert Rich) to a wider audience. And while his holographic suits, Zippy connections, and soundbite approach to musical evangelism might seem a bit ridiculous, his commitment to the music and the quality of his ongoing contribution is undeniable. ....N'Joy

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Mixmaster Morris (born Morris Gould, 30 December 1965) is an English ambient DJ and underground musician. Relating specifically to ambient music, Morris stated "It's exactly what you need if you have a busy and stressful life".

Morris Gould was born in Brighton, Sussex, England, but grew up in Lincolnshire and was educated at Millfield in Somerset, and King's College London. At 15 he founded a punk rock band, The Ripchords, whose sole release, an eponymous EP with four tracks, was championed by the BBC Radio One DJ John Peel. After leaving university, he got his start as a DJ in the early '80s -- not in warehouse party chill rooms, but in dive-bar punk clubs spinning experimental rock, jazz, electronic, and other assorted weirdness in between bands. Eventually taking his deck proficiency and rapidly expanding record collection to pirate station Network 21 (where he worked with Jonathan More and Matt Black of Coldcut), Morris earned his nickname from his eclectic "Mongolian Hip Hop Show" , during which he might pair Terry Riley with Tibetan monks or Captain Beefheart with Amazonian field recordings. After finishing college in the mid-'80s, Morris worked in computer systems administration before forming Irresistible Force with friend Des de Moor in 1987. The pair played clubs and toured with Meat Beat Manifesto, eventually releasing a single before Morris dissolved the partnership in 1989. Retaining the Mixmaster name, Morris became involved with the emerging UK acid house scene, after organising Madhouse at The Fridge, Brixton in 1988 – which was the subject of a piece by Peel in The Observer. A show with the band Psychic TV led to him becoming full-time DJ with The Shamen, and touring with them on their 'Synergy' tours for nearly two years, meanwhile organizing London's first ambient club events, Telepathic Fish

Although Morris had experimented with real-time tape loops and low-rent electronics since the mid-'80s, it wasn't until the early '90s that he began to seriously pursue recording. He released his first full-length work, Flying High, on the Rising High label, and recorded a celebrated collaboration with Frankfurt ambient composer Pete Namlook, Dreamfish. Both albums landed Morris at the forefront of the new ambient movement -- a position he graciously accepted -- and a string of remix work for the likes of Coldcut, the Shamen, Barbarella, Rising High Collective, and Higher Intelligence Agency followed. Growing problems with his label, however, would plague Morris into the recording of his second album, which was delayed for two years. Following the release of Global Chillage in 1995, Morris dissolved his relationship with Rising High and began recording for old friends Coldcut on their Ninja Tune label. After a period of legal problems the third album It's Tomorrow Already came out on Ninja Tune. He also collaborated with SF-based musician Jonah Sharp and Haruomi Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra he made the album Quiet Logic for the Japanese label Daisyworld.

In 1990, he made one of the first chillout compilations, Give Peace a Dance 2: The Ambient Collection for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, followed by the series Chillout or Die for Rising High Records. A mix tape for Mixmag shared with Alex Patterson was also released as a CD. The Morning After became his first major-label mix album, followed by Abstract Funk Theory for Obsessive. Through the 1990s he was a regular DJ in the chill out room at Return to the Source parties in London, around the UK and abroad. In 2003 he released the mix CD God Bless the Chilled for the Return to the Source Ambient Meditations series.

In the early 1990s his key residencies were alongside the Detroit masters at Lost, Megatripolis at London's Heaven, and also the Tribal Gathering parties. He became known for wearing holographic suits, produced by the company Spacetime, which he modelled for Vogue magazine. Throughout the decade, Morris wrote about electronic music for the NME, Mixmag, and i-D. He was resident on Kiss FM for several years, and then a regular on Solid Steel, the Ninja Tune syndicated radio show. He made his film debut in Modulations (Caipirinha Films), and his music was used in a number of other films including Groove and Hey Happy.

In 1998 he joined the UK's Ninja Tune record label, with whom he toured as a DJ and made three releases. 1999 saw him win 'Best Chillout DJ' at the Ibiza DJ Awards at Pacha, Ibiza, and in 2001 he won the title for a second time, becoming the first DJ to achieve this. He has appeared in many lists of the worlds top DJ's including the Ministry of Sound book The Annual and 2003's DJs by Lopez, and URB Magazine's Top 100 DJ list. Morris records regular radio shows for the Japanese internet radio station Samurai FM. In 2006 he started a new club at the Big Chill House in Kings Cross, London, and did a guest mix for BBC Radio 1's The Blue Room show. His essay about jazz was published in the book, Crossfade, and he made a one-off appearance reading it aloud.

Morris has produced many remixes since 1985, including Coldcut's "Autumn Leaves". This remix was nominated by Norman Cook as his favourite chillout track on BBC Television. His mix for INXS was a Top 20 hit in the UK. Other early remixes were of Lloyd Cole, Dave Howard Singers, Bang Bang Machine, Stump, Higher Intelligence Agency, Sven Vath and Rising High Collective. The Mixmaster has played in over fifty countries at nightclubs and parties, and particularly music festivals such as the Full Moon parties in the Mojave Desert, Glastonbury Festival, Rainbow 2000 and Mother SOS in Japan, Chillits in Northern California, and Berlin's Love Parade. He also ran the downtempo night Nubient in Brixton. In 1995, he played at the first The Big Chill festival, and then became a resident for the next 16 years.

In March 2007, together with Coldcut, he organised a tribute show to the writer and philosopher Robert Anton Wilson, which they performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. He also played in Goa for the first time with The Big Chill, and started a new residency at The Prince in Brixton. In May 2008 Morris undertook an ambient mix on BBC Radio 1, and put a The Irresistible Force band together to play at The Big Chill festival. In 2009, he compiled a podcast for Tate Britain to accompany their Altermodern exhibition, and opened a new AV night called MMMTV in Camden. The mix CD, Calm Down My Selector was released in January by Wakyo Records, and he made a tour of Japan to promote it. In 2010, he won another Ibiza DJ Award, for the third time. In October that year, he was announced as Head of A+R for Apollo Records. 2011 saw him rejoin Bestival as part of their "Ambient Forest" team.


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Along with the Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and the KLF's Chill Out, Irresistible Force's Flying High is one of the first and finest of the new ambient crop. Mixmaster Morris' mix of electronic and organic textures and epic song lengths helped set the standard (and was responsible for more than a few clichés). Even though Mixmaster Morris is known for his love of all things ambient, his first album, Flying High, fits more with the 'ambient dub' genre, as these tracks are still very structured and have a certain drive, rather than drifting off into the ether. Brian Eno hailed this album as a masterpiece, as it's thoughtfull, spacey, highly melodic ambient music, with occasional beats... A fantastic soundtrack for a psychedelic experience.

Mixmaster Morris takes Future Music through Flying High, track by track, December 04, 2014
Spiritual High
"This one starts with the sound of a plane taking off, which was a sound effect taken off a sample CD. With Flying High I wanted to put sounds of planes at the beginning and at the end. If you also take a look at the running time of this track, you'll see that it's 7:47, like the Boeing, which wasn't an accident. I hid a lot of things in this record, but I can't remember where I put the half of them now [laughs].

A lot of this track is based around some piece of film music I had at the time. I can't remember the original source now, but I remember taking my vinyl copy of it and running it live from the decks into the mix through Drawmer gates. I then triggered them with a Roland 909. Then I just changed the envelope on the gate to mess with it. "I wanted to find a way of putting sampled music into what I was making, with the goal of producing something out the other end that wasn't necessarily copyright infringement but took something of the texture and chord structure from the original tracks I was sampling. For two or three of the tracks on the album that's essentially much of what the whole thing is - I'd just put sounds through gates until they were unrecognisable. Pretty much each track on the whole album was made live in single takes as well."
Sky High
"This tune was just over 12 minutes long. A lot of the tracks, when I played them live, were over 30 minutes long. All the tunes on Flying High were played live at Heaven nightclub under Charing Cross Station about four times before I sat down to do them on the album. The Orb and The KLF used to play there a bit before I did nights there in 88/89 at a night called Land Of Oz. I saw a gig they did there and it was a big influence on me. I saw what they were doing and tried to make it work in the acid house world. I wanted to find a way of putting sampled music into what I was making, with the goal of producing something out the other end that wasn't necessarily copyright infringement but took something of the texture and chord structure from the original tracks I was sampling.

When they moved out I took over that room for a couple of years. The difference is that I made it open to the public. It was just VIP when they did it and it wasn't very busy. When I did it you got Joe Public in there. For the first couple of weeks they'd burst into the DJ booth and go, 'What the fuck are you doing? Where's the drums?!' A lot of my tracks started off as dance tracks then I just thought, 'Fuck it', and took all the drums out to make it more ambient. Sky High has a lot of samples in it. It's got Sun Ra in, obviously, from the ending of a track of his called Nuclear War, which is a very rare and sought-after 12-inch. It has a lot of swearing in the original, which is quite rare for a Sun Ra record, but it is about a very serious subject, I suppose. That was the only 12-inch he released in his life. He was a huge influence on this album. I first went to see him live in 85, and I must say that a light went on in my head."
Flying High
"This is the one with the big tempo change in it. I remember spending most of the day trying to get the tempo change to clock to synth code, which was hugely difficult then. I think this track goes from 60 to 120bpm - it goes double time over a minute. You have some things going on at the same speed there, while others accelerate. I thought that was a really interesting thing to play with, especially given that most music had suddenly all gone one tempo at the time. It was massively inspired by French Kiss by Lil' Louis. Not many records have ever done what his did. It was a wonderful thing to have a record that changed like that. Lil' Louis was a big inspiration. He was one of the first Chicago artists that I really got into.

The one person I didn't credit on this record and feel guilty about is Sonic Boom. There are a ton of Spaceman Three noises on this track. I met him through gigging with The Shamen. I used his track Ecstasy Symphony, I believe, as a drone here, and then put that through all the gates. His records always have a magical, psychedelic quality."
High Frequency
I think bits of this are taken from The Human League. Probably a couple of notes off the Dignity of Labour EP that I cut up. I ran them through an Eventide and got a really strange effect. The spoken word bit is off the Open University. I just recorded it off there. Then there's a creaky door sound - that's Pierre Henry. It's a piece of musique concrète from the 60s called Variations for a Door and a Sigh. It's just a creaky door and a girl sighing. He just used those two sounds to make a whole album. It's a wonderful sound, that creaky door; it takes me back.

I did discover something amazing the other day, which is that there's a one-note sample of Aphex Twin at the end of High Frequency. It's a very cheeky use. It's quite appropriate as he's just done a record with a sample of me on it. I couldn't remember doing it, but I took one note of his. It must have been absolutely contemporary with his album Analogue Bubblebath. There's a lot of auto-panning on this album and a lot of modulated panning and reverb, as well. On one of the tracks we actually had a pitch wheel controlling the size of the reverb. It's kinda normal now, but at the time it was pretty far-out stuff, you know? [Laughs]. I'd read about a lot of stuff Conny Plank was doing and wanted to try it."
Symphony In E
"All the strings on here are from a box set of classical music from Hungary that has demonstrations of all the instruments of the orchestra. So I got the cello and violin and stuff, sampled them all separately and layered them all up. I was very into this thing where you played a sample at half and double speed, then they'd be in the same key but at half and double speed. The high string sample in this track is a low string sample an octave up on the keyboard. Sometimes you'd play it an octave down. I used to do that with breaks as well. It makes for a very strange effect. I never hear that now, but I'd recognise it on other people's records years ago. Playing around with breaks on a keyboard was just incredible. It's hard to imagine how incredible that was 25 years ago.

The voice of Joyce Grenfell is used on the intro. She was a very posh English comedian from the 60s. She used to play a school teacher and do monologues. I had some of her albums. I used to play them out in my sets. At the time there was a phrase, 'Toytown Techno'; it was after the Sesame Street dance record was a hit, and things like that. There was a vogue of sampling kids' TV, what with the Prodigy record with the Charly sample in it as well. The Joyce Grenfell sample was a dig at that. Infantile is the word for a lot of rave music [laughs]."
Mountain High (Live)
"This went on a bit too long at just over 20 minutes. It could have easily been 15. I think it was like, 'We have another five minutes to add and then we've filled up the CD'. I made Flying High as long as possible to give you value for money. That was the other thing, of course - suddenly with a CD you got an extra 20-30 minutes than you'd previously had with vinyl albums. It had to be on double vinyl when we released it on record.

This has American philosopher and psychonaut Terence McKenna on it. That was through The Shamen, as I'd been their tour DJ for two years and he'd worked with them. It was really Colin and Angus from the band that introduced me to him. He wasn't really known in the UK until they brought him over and got him on Top of the Pops. I ended up doing a few shows with McKenna in London. One show, he spoke for eight hours and I played ambient music underneath him for the whole day at an old age pensioner's centre in Camden. It was wonderful, I must say. I didn't get paid for it, but to get something out of it I recorded the whole thing. That's where I got the sample from. I must have the eight-hour tape somewhere…"

The Irresistible Force - Flying High  (flac 332mb)

01 Spiritual High 7:47
02 Sky High 12:11
03 Flying High 15:33
04 High Frequency 9:42
05 Symphony In E 8:47
06 Mountain High (Live) 20:15

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Global Chillage brings The Irresistible Force around for another round of ambient bliss, as "Natural Frequency" brings in the sustained tones, filling the track with layered chords and arpeggios. "Downstream" brings in some steel pan tones for a momentary island excursion, while "Moonrise" sweeps up and down the spectrum, as if searching for just the right tone, and "Sunstroke" stretches out like a digital sunset, even as the chorus hums its way into being. But for a more melancholy, icy trip, "Snowstorm," with its tablas, blows its way into your head, though it's very reminiscent of his "Autumn Leaves" remix for Coldcut. The psychedelic "Waveform" sounds as if it could have come from his Flying High album, and the short "Manifesto" closes things one a dubby note. Another extraordinary listening experience.

The Irresistible Force - Global Chillage (flac  370mb)
 
01 Natural Frequency 14:06
02 Downstream 10:05
03 Moonrise 9:41
04 Sunstroke 8:25
05 Snowstorm 8:39
06 Waveform 12:00
07 Manifesto 2:12

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A funny thing happened when The Irresistible Force moved to Ninja Tune, after two previous albums on Rising High. He was already familiar to the Ninja Tune crowd, of course, having created a sublime remix of Coldcut's "Autumn Leaves," but with It's Tommorrow Already, his focus turned to songwriting, rather than just ambient soundscapes. And, as a result, this album was accomplished, mature, and just more than a little funky. "Power," for instance, has a light breakbeat, to accompany its mellow political message, while "The Lie-In King" delivers a groovy easy-listening vibe. "Nepalese Bliss" turns an anti-drug message on its head with a long, resonant bassline, and "Fish Dances" brings in jazzy elements for a finger-snapping good time. "Playing Around With Sound" puts the jazz even more up-and-center, with its filtered saxophone layered in, but the title track takes the album out on a thick, more fuller note, while still remaining sedate. It's a shame that Mixmaster Morris never released a follow-up, because It's Tommorrow Already can, and should, still be played today. While the period separating Global Chillage from It's Tomorrow Already was one of the most explosive in post-rave electronica, the album is remarkably consistent and suffers little from the over-zealousness that tends to plague music that knows too much about itself. Many of the tracks display the same fusion of warm synths, pattery rhythms, paired with the loose organicism of Ninja-styled downtempo.

The Irresistible Force - It's Tommorrow Already (flac 386mb)

01 Power 8:37
02 The Lie-in King 7:44
03 Nepalese Bliss 7:46
04 12 O'Clock 8:15
05 Another Tomorrow 6:36
06 Fish Dances 9:28
07 Playing Around With Sound 6:20
08 Its Tomorrrow Already 8:50

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This release carries on the tradition of high quality music from Morris. Where bands like the orb seemed to lose their touch, Irresistable Force has carried on full steam ahead! A veeery slow, groovy breakbeat, warm & spacey repeating synth-stabs and a funky rhodes. Walking into a tunnel of sound, only to be carried out on the backs of bongo playing cheetahs, strolling along at a lesiurely pace. All the while, Alan Watts is hovering next to you chatting you up with some trancendental advice, occasionally getting his tounge caught in the sampler. A worthy addition to every space cowboy's collection.

The Irresistible Force - Fish Dances EP (flac 345mb)

01 Nepalese Bliss (Remix By Jimpster) 7:02
02 Power (Remix By Mixmaster Morris) 5:44
03 Fish Dances (You Dance In Me) (Remix By Frédéric Galliano) 8:49
04 Nepalese Bliss (Remix By DJ Food) 7:01
05 Nepalese Fish Dances (Remix By Fila Brazillia) 7:35
06 Playing Around With Sound (Remix By Voda) 7:38
07 Fish Dances (Remix By Plaid) 6:49
08 Fish Dances (Instrumental) 9:25

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