Hed Kandi have decided to do an about turn and destroy the industry they were initially founded upon in the latest series of compilation releases “Destroy The Disco“.

Focussing on the “Twisted” brand Hed Kandi have built up over the last few years, usually consisting of breaks, electro and techno like sounds, Destroy The Disco seems like a rebrand more than something new. Admittedly, some of the tracks featured have a distinctively different sound to Hed Kandi’s usual stereotype, it seems like they’re also jumping on this year’s attempt at reinventing disco (such as the riduculously named “Space Disco” which has been cropping up throughout the year).

It may seem like quite a critical point of view. As much as a house advocate I am, since Hed Kandi was acquired by Ministry of Sound in 2006, I’ve always been concerned the brand will suffer from being overly commercialised in a somewhat niche market.

However, I’m personally quite fond of the design of this venture. Jason Brooks (the artist behind Hed Kandi’s look) has taken inspiration from Roy Lichtenstein’s Pop Art, originally inspired by comic book artwork. This look was made popular more recently by blockbuster movies like Frank Miller’s Sin City. The grungy illustrations lend well to the deeper side of house music, representing a somewhat darker experience at the club events.

It’ll be interesting to see how successful the Destroy The Disco brand works for Hed Kandi.

Destroy The Disco is released Monday 2nd November 2009 and is available to order from the following online stores:

• Play.com: CD (£9.99) and MP3 Digital Download (£9.95)
• Amazon UK: CD (£9.98)
• HMV: CD (£10.99)

Track Listing

Disc 1

1. Gossip - Love Long Distance (Riva Starr Remix)
2. Bloc Party - One More Chance (Alex Metric Remix)
3. Example - Watch The Sun Come Up (Devil’s Gun “Zeitgeist” Remix)
4. Calvin Harris - I’m Not Alone (Burns Rewerk)
5. The Young Punx ft Count Bass D - Ready For The Fight (Black Noise 6. Destroy The Disco Edit)
6. Fake Blood - Mars (Hervé Re-edit)
7. Double 99 - Rip Groove (Disco Damage Vs Hood Hooligan 2009 Remix)
8. AC Slater - Jack Got Jacked (Jack Beats Remix)
9. The Prodigy - Take Me To The Hospital
10. Polina - Shotguns (Trevor Loveys Destroy The Disco Remix)
11. Riton & Primary 1 - Who’s There?
12. Fatboy Slim - Star 69 (Rogue Element Remix)
13. Noisettes - Wild Young Hearts (Kissy Sell Out Remix)

Disc 2

1. Yves Murasca & BK Duke ft Angie Brown - Move Your Body (Funkanomics Remix)
2. Grum - Heartbeats
3. Lauren Flax ft Sia - You’ve Changed (War Games Remix)
4. Kraak & Smaak ft Ben Westbeech - Squeeze Me (Trevor Loveys 5. Skeezer Pleezer Jam)
5. His Majesty Andre - Peep Thong
6. Louis La Roche - Sunshine Hotel
7. Fake Blood - I Think I Like It
8. Noob & Brodinski - Peanuts Club
9. Sidney Samson - Riverside (Ralvero Remix)
10. The Young Punx - Juice And Gin (Riva Starr Mix)
11. Simian Mobile Disco - Audacity Of Huge
12. Sebastian Ingrosso - Kidsos

According to Feedburner statistics, the first Funky House Finesse was downloaded over 10,000 times - that is more than double of any single episode of the One Phat DJ Podcast. It just goes to show that funky house is still hugely popular online and there is a market for it.

The problem is this: I know that only a tiny minority of that figure actually spent money on the featured tracks. Naughty, naughty!

The reason Funky House Finesse is produced is to promote the latest funky house tunes to everyone, especially those tracks that don’t get prime time coverage but deserve it. Seriously, if you’re enjoying the tunes, reward the artists and producers for their efforts by purchasing the track. Nearly all the tracks featured are linked to legal download websites where you can buy the track, normally for about £1.

With the lecture out the way, let’s move on to the second show from the Funky House Finesse series.

Featuring some monster tracks from the likes of Bassmonkeys, De’lacy, Jay J, One Foot In The Groove, Rudenko, Bimbo Jones, Ricky Luchini, Moony and a sexy remix by Jazz N Groove of Soulsearcher’s classic “Can’t Get Enough” kicking the show off, you’re in for 90 minutes of pure class mixed up by your resident One Phat DJ.

As before, the show will only be available to download for 1 month so make sure you don’t delay and download it right away.

Download Funky House Finesse 2 (April 2009)

Funky House Finesse 2 will also be broadcast on Lifted Radio soon. Dates and times are still to be confirmed but I am over the moon about landing the slot. I’ve been keen to broadcast the Funky House Finesse shows since the start and its an honour that Lifted Radio have offered me the slot. I’ll be sure to announce where and when you can check it out.

Talking of Lifted Radio, good friend Paul Velocity who also hosts a fortnightly show every Thursday afternoon kindly allowed me to sort out a guest mix a few weeks back. Thankfully, you can download and listen to the Platform Six show any time you want as all the shows are archived in a podcast. Check it out - I start about 25 minutes in.

Finally, if you enjoy the Funky House Finesse series, how about contributing to the production and download costs? A lot of work goes into the show behind the scenes and those downloads don’t come for free - bandwidth for 10,000 MP3s over 100MB in size isn’t cheap so if you’re feeling generous, how about donating to the cause via PayPal? Click the button below.

With all that said and done, I present to you Funky House Finesse 2 (April 2009).

Don’t forget to send us feedback on the show and spread the word. Even a mention on Facebook or Twitter will do the job.

Track Listing

1. Soulsearcher - Can’t Get Enough (Jazz N Groove Nu Disco Vocal) [Defected]
2. Jay J ft Latrice - The One (Original Mix)
3. Passionardor - There’s A Candle (Passion Vocal Mix)
4. Leon Lopez - Dance (One Foot In The Groove Club Vox) [One Foot In The Groove Records]
5. Kings Of Groove ft Andrea Love - Dreaming About You (Original Mix)
6. Boheme ft Angie Brown - Music In My Life (Matt Williams & Steve Price Vocal Mix)
7. Bibi ft Malou Beauvoir - Got To Believe (Original Mix)
8. Ministry of Funk - Way Back (Clubzound Remix)
9. Rudenko - Everybody (Morjac Remix)
10. De’lacy & Marco Gee - Bodyswerve (Soulshaker Remix)
11. Bimbo Jones - And I Try (eSQUIRE Mix)
12. Ricky Luchini ft Moony - Little Bird (Disko Kriminals Klub Mix)
13. Bassmonkeys - Purplehaze (Original Mix)
14. Alessia Kay  & Cannyrock - Cube AH Reloaded (Soul Power Mix)
15. Da Slammin’ Phrogz - Something About The Music (Kamasutra Extended Mix)
16. Star Pilots - In The Heat Of The Night (Dave Armstrong Remix)
17. House Bros - Let The Music (House Bros Back To Funk Mix)

I’ve recently been asked on several occassions how I keep up-to-date on the house music scene.

To be honest, there is no easy way to do it.

As a big fan of house music, I tend to listen to a lot of music anyway, so I like to hear fresh new music on a regular basis. There are certain tracks that stick around, those that I enjoy and like to hear more of but, generally speaking, my playlist tends to change monthly.

With that said, there are a certain techniques I’ve adopted over the years which helps me keep up-to-date on the latest releases around the house music scene.

Online Music Stores

There are certain online music stores that I seem to frequent more than others. These mainly consist of:

• DJ Download
• Traxsource
• Xpress Beats
• Juno Download

Thankfully, most of these offer RSS feeds of their latest releases too so I subscribe to the feeds in my preferred aggregator Google Reader and group them together in folder called “New Music“.

Ideally, I’d check these feeds every few days but with a demanding full-time job and family as well, it’s more realistic on a fortnightly or monthly basis. Unfortunately, the folder usually builds up to around 1,200-1,500 new releases every month so be sure to give yourself a few evenings dedicated to listening to the new material.

For those online stores that offer email newsletters, I also subscribe to those as they tend to highlight the more popular or exclusive releases moreso than their RSS counterparts.

Similarly to the RSS feeds, I automatically archive and apply the label “New Music” to these emails using automatic filters in Gmail so I can check these out periodically without them taking over my inbox.

When listening to the online samples, it’s worth adding your favourites to the store basket or wishlist feature (if available) for later. For me, this is the preliminary part of the selection process.

When I have been through all the new releases, I shall return to the list of selected favourites, listen to them again to give them some thorough attention, discarding any tunes I change my mind about.

Once I’ve refined my selection to your absolute favourites, it’s a case of purchasing the new material, downloading and listening rigorously, either through your computer, MP3 player or even burning them to CD for playing elsewhere like in the car.

Podcasts

Another method of keeping abreast of new music is to subscribe to podcasts within your favourite genre.

There are quite a few other funky house podcasters apart from One Phat DJ, most of them who can be found in the iTunes Podcast Directory.

It’s amazing how many tunes that get released every month that can pass under your radar so it’s worth edging your bets by listening to your peers’ tune selection for those tracks you’ve missed.

The beauty of this technique is that it requires minimum effort. You can listen to a podcast while doing something else, whether it’s working, exercising or just relaxing. It’s unobtrusive.

Here are some of my personal favourite podcasts that you may enjoy:

• Paul Velocity (regular mixes of similar taste to One Phat DJ, including occasional interviews with industry big-players)
• DJ Cruze (slightly more electro of late but plenty of crossover into funky house and breaks too)
• Evil Rabbit (funky house and electro, verging on breaks)
• Funky House London Style (extremely popular podcast, very similar style to One Phat DJ)
• Podrunner (mixed by DJ Steve Boy as an energetic mix for exercising)
• Ministy of Sound TV Podcast (mixture of Ministry promos and exclusive mixes from MoS DJs)
• Defected In The House (very short intro of the weekly show on Defected’s website)
• Traxsource.com’s Weekly Essentials (Weekly highlights from Traxsource’s latest releases)

Unfortunately, the official Hed Kandi podcast seems to have died a death in the last year but, fingers crossed, they may put some effort back into that some time soon.

Compilations

Over the years, I have become quite fond of certain labels within the industry, specifically Hed Kandi, Fierce Angels and Defected.

All three labels release regular compilations (some more than others), usually filled with new material from the scene. Buy the compilations and listen to each track thoroughly (don’t even hit the skip button on the first play).

You will probably find quite a few that overlap - these are normally the tracks that are quite popular at the time with big support from other DJs and labels. Some may just be commercial tripe - some, on the other hand, are just so good, everyone wants a piece.

Socialise

This is something that requires a lot of devotion and commitment but one of the most powerful ways of keeping up-to-date with new music is to keep tabs on what your favourite artists are doing by building contacts with them.

Befriend them on social networks like Facebook or MySpace (most artists who want exposure nowadays are on MySpace already), get talking, keep in contact.

Many artists keep blogs as well nowadays. Subscribe to their blogs to see what they’ve been up to, when they’ve been in the recording studio, any PR stunts they’re involved in to promote new material.

I’ve managed to build up some quite good contacts through the podcast, mostly with DJs and producers featured. By keeping in contact with them, I have been able to hear some very early exclusives, way before they make it to public availability - I’ve even influenced some of the material that has been released by sending them early feedback!

You should now have a good idea of the selection process I go through in an effort to find new music. As you can see (and I told you at the start), its a time-consuming process that requires a lot of effort. That said, you can’t beat that proud moment you have when you find that special track before your peers and throw it into a mix or suggest it to them first.